The TTIP trade deal makes their planned huge expansion of fracking and drilling an international law, taking it completely out of the hands of all American legislators, Senators, Congresspeople, state legislators, local towns.
TTIP even takes the ability to reverse the fracking and drilling and exporting of the resultant gas out of the hands of the President!
Thats why they need these state and national laws pretending to block local laws -its to hide this!
And of course, the courts that decide how much of the taxpayers money to award corporations for any violation, they are stacked for the corporations too.
There is no appeal! This is how Obama is being hypocritical- He’s pretending to be for the environment, but he’s undermining his and his successors forever’s powers so that they will just be figureheads. The real power will be in the hands of many global Corporations.
TTIP and TISA also threaten the science we need to protect our health!
Disinvestment (privatization) represents an attack on independence of the science of medicine - science which is being used to expose adverse health effects of dangerous endocrine disrupting and toxic chemicals. This began with the 1990s WTO-GATS trade pact which made some very little known but crucial changes to society’s stated goals in the fine print of GATS.
GATS Article 1:3 is the source for a definition which is used in TISA and TTIP, to define the scope of their mandatory privatization campaign, and it should not be.
Rejecting GATS is the place we should start, as GATS is already existing and hanging over the countries that have signed on to it, such as the US. Article 1:3 - by means of a two part test, defines the scope of what can be considered to be “services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority” and not a “nonconforming” “monopoly” that is framed as stealing corporate profits.
Citation:
"For the purposes of this Agreement…
(b) 'services' includes any service in any sector except services supplied in the exercise of governmental authority;
**(c) 'a service supplied in the exercise of governmental authority' means any service which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers."**
(emphases added) (See discussion here)
GATS was the beginning of a very serious block on US government ability to set policy and its standstill also forbade subsequent creation of new public services (forbidding new public health care, housing, public works corps, and educational initiatives, and committing the signatory nations, especially the US, to privatizing our existing ones. This imperatie lurks like an unseen hand behind many otherwise inexplicable policy decisions, and its something that they feel they must cover up for that reason.)
GATS intent was also to globalize these areas but that part was frustrated so now that is being re-attempted by TISA.
GATS started the process towards privatizing higher education (and science) The real attack on education is in TTIP and especially, the secret TISA which will incrementally make it FTAillegal to give the people free education if there is even one charter school or private college in a country.
That will make new scientific information scarce because colleges likely will incrementally be forced to become privatized
This process is occurring because TTIP and TISA have the effect of further entrenching a truly horrible “agreement” from the 1990s, the WTO “General Agreement on Trade in Services” which commits countries to a goal of total disinvestment from many public services, forcing their privatization and then, their globalization. (Its not unlikely that TISA will shift ultimate power to decide which national laws may be seen as trade barriers to WTO jurisdiction in the future because global services firms (whomever is the otherwise qualified lowest bidder) will likely staff the former public services in countries without strong national labor laws, like the US.)
Is a situation likely to occur where a very strong financial incentive will exist to push staffing of energy related jobs towards globalization?
That already has happened in the Middle East. The increase in international services contracting has to be bilateral, on at least some level but that may be accomplished by other commitments.
So, I do not know if the fracking jobs will be globalized under TISA’s likely new procurement rules, or if if US companies would get to do energy contracts in trading partners under these new globalization rules, if we then might have an obligation under trade deals to let the global firms from low regulation countries bid for and then perform contracts they won here in the exact same sectors. (presumably at a far lower cost)
But that very much bears looking into by experts.