Wanda Arnold: the Trans Pacific Partnership on Your Back

Wanda Arnold wrote these articles to the Hickory Daily Record in relation to the Trans Pacific Partnership wanting to rebut some of what she had read in that paper. The HDR has a policy that they only permit one letter to the editor every 20 days from a contributor. Some say that they are just a mouthpiece for the government. Let's see them put a 20 day moratorium on contributions from government officials. After all, most of their statements are opinion based. Aren't they?


There are 29 chapters in the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement that Obama wants passed. Only 5 of those pertain to trade matters. The rest would set binding rules on food safety standards, on access to medicine policies, on financial regulations and on internet freedom.

Here are three real-life examples of how the TPP works in the section called Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS).
(1) Germany wants to phase out nuclear power. The nuclear power industry there can sue Germany for posing a threat to their profits.
(2) Canada wants to place a moratorium on fracking in order to study its effects more carefully. The energy industries involved can sue Canada for infringing on their profits and causing them loss.
(3) The governments in Uruguay and Australia want to pass anti-smoking policies. Phillip Morris can sue those countries because their profits have suffered.

This system has been in use for several years. TPP adds 9,000 more corporations to the list of those empowered to sue. The cases will be tried in a parallel legal system that goes around domestic courts. A tribunal of three lawyers will make a binding decision in each case. If the corporation wins and the government loses, guess who pays the corporation. Friends, you pay. The government produces nothing and earns nothing. The government lives on the back of YOU, the taxpayer. While we are being distracted by TV reality shows, national sports competitions, titillating sex scandals, social media, online games of every kind and the huge din of constant entertainment, "they who shall remain unnamed" are stealthily ensnaring us in a web and drawing the noose tighter and tighter. It's called Fascism and Hitler was the trial run. Unless we do something now, we are the end game.

Surveys have shown that citizens here don't trust their government. They don't trust Congress, they don't trust the Executive, they don't trust the Courts. It's not enough just to feel something is "not right." It's up to you to find out what's wrong. Didn't we believe the lies about how NAFTA would "create jobs" for Americans? Didn't over 3 million U. S. jobs flee overseas since that agreement and others like it were passed. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. We better find out what else is
in the TPP!