How Top Law Professors Are Working To Expand Corporations’ Constitutional 'Rights'

AlterNet.org

   

AlterNet / By Steven Rosenfeld

How Top Law Professors Are Working To Expand Corporations’ Constitutional 'Rights'

Academia’s best and brightest include conservatives who help corporations hide behind the First Amendment to protect profits.

June 18, 2012  |  

 

 

 

Corporate America is hijacking the First Amendment. 

In the political world, the Supreme Court continues to expand corporate speech rights, opening one more avenue for big money to flow into elections. And in the business world, federal courts have also cited commercial speech rights to block all kinds of government efforts to add health warnings on products or change the way unhealthy products are advertised. 

The list is startling. America has an obesity crisis, but food producers and broadcasters beat back voluntary advertising guidelines. Tobacco beat back adding images to cigarette boxes. Milk companies beat back milk hormone labels, as did cell phone makers with radiation labels and video game makers with violence and sexual content labels. These defeats were based on asserting corporate speech rights—arguments with which the courts have all too often agreed. 

 

But behind this depressing trend—which could change if there were more fair-minded federal judges—is an eyebrow-raising corporate ally: esteemed law professors who have been paid by business to expand on their scholarship as private consultants. 

 

They develop pro-corporate strategies in papers and are far better paid than their liberal counterparts. Their work is cited by lobbyists and judges. Whether conservative scholars see the social costs of using the First Amendment as a deregulatory tool is debatable, but what is indisputable is that they are a key pillar in America’s ongoing "war of ideas."

 

“The work of many of these legal scholars has indeed undercut common-sense standards of free speech rights,” said Craig Holman, Public Citizens’ government affairs lobbyist. 

 

Scholarship And Commerce

 

The best-paid corporate lawyers are like master chess players. They are always thinking about their next series of moves to win—to protect profits. They look for accomplished scholars to help them frame new issues and arguments in many areas of law, including law professors who specialize in the First Amendment. 

 

Does Google’s search engine have the brain of a newspaper editor, making decisions that entitle it to First Amendment protections, such as being able to decide what and how to publish what it wants free of any regulation? Google thinks so and has paid a respected conservative First Amendment law scholar, Eugene Volokh, to write about it. 

 

Similarly, when drug and medical device makers wanted to make a case that the federal government should let them tell medical professionals about ways their products can be used that haven’t been approved by federal regulators, they turned to Martin Redish, one of the foremost commercial speech scholars, to write a paper arguing exactly that—by citing the First Amendment privilege to disseminate information.

 

And when communications giant Viacom wanted to attack the federal government’s proposed food marketing guidelines for teenagers and youths—guidelines that would be entirely voluntary—it turned to ex-Stanford Law School Dean Kathleen Sullivan, who said the federal effort, though well-intended, did not meet the legal threshold in First Amendment law. Her brief was part of a campaign that defeated the guidelines effort.

 

Are Volokh, Redish and Sullivan legal scholars or corporate shills, or are there shades of grey where academics—including faculty in other fields—have long-developed expertise that they have been asked to take outside the academy with big economic and political consequences?

 

The answer appears to be yes to all of the above. It’s clear these accomplished scholars—especially Sullivan, who has since left academia—have used their scholarly credentials and smarts to advance and expand corporate speech rights, in some cases at public-interest expense. While that more than bothers progressives who seek to reverse constitutional rights granted to corporations, it raises questions about why so much constitutional scholarship seems to be on one side of the fence.

 

Both Volokh and Redish defended their outside advocacy as consistent with intellectual views they have had for years, saying there was no conflict of interest posed with their scholarly work—where the pre-eminent value is impartial inquiry—because their views are known and fully disclosed, as is their consulting. (Sullivan did not respond to AlterNet’s request to comment.)

 

“I don’t plan to answer your questions (which, by the way I consider insulting and offensive). Instead, I will direct you to my first three articles (all written before I became an academic),” Redish said in an email. “Hopefully, those articles will demonstrate to you that the views I now hold are not all that different from the positions I developed as far back as my law school days.”

 

“The question you raise is important,” said Volokh, “but it’s hardly limited to corporate clients, or to paid consulting: a criminal law professor who takes on some criminal defendants’ cases faces the same problems, as does a constitutional law professor who litigates in favor of (say) abortion rights or a military detainee. One’s desire to win cases, to appear consistent with one’s past positions, and to help the clients to whom one owes a duty of loyalty can affect a scholar’s judgment as much as fees.”

 

Volokh said the way to avoid conflicts of interest was to disclose one’s advocacy, adding that his students appreciated hearing about it because it was an activity in the real world. But beyond the issue of finding the “right balance between commerce and learning,” as Ken Auletta put it in a recent New Yorker profile of Stanford University titled, “Get Rich U.,” the outside consulting by leading First Amendment scholars underscores a troubling trend—that in recent decades corporate commercial speech rights have grown and triumphed over public interest concerns more often than not in federal court.  

 

“Commercial speech rulings in the federal courts have increasingly been upheld or expanded in recent years—with public interest efforts stymied or blunted,” Public Citizen’s Holman said. “The federal courts have generally enlarged commercial speech protections afforded under the First Amendment while limiting or rejecting government attempts to share information, via labeling, messaging or simple disclosure that is in the public interest.”   

 

Corporations, of course, would not hire liberals who would argue that their speech rights should be restricted—as anti-corporate personhood activists do. Volokh, Redish and Sullivan have plenty of company in the academic legal world who privately consult, where the focus can be evidence, anti-trust, regulatory policy or political speech. Their scholarship and arguments reveal how corporations obtain and maintain powerful positions, particularly by expanding First Amendment corporate speech rights.

 

Editorial Brain or Smart Machine?

 

In April, Volokh, a well-known and prolific blogger and UCLA law professor, co-wrote a much-discussed paper for Google with Donald Falk, a lawyer at Mayer Brown LLP, a major Silicon Valley law firm, titled, “First Amendment Protection for Search Engine Search Results.” Google has been attacked by competitors for favoring other Google operations in its searches, which European regulators said might be anti-competitive. Like many large companies, it wants some scholarship on its side to protect its core business should it end up in court. It found that expertise in Volokh.

 

“Search engines are speakers,” Volokh boldly declared, saying the search process is akin to any writer making an editorial decision, and that publishing the results of that intellectual process is the same as offering “useful information” in “newspapers, guidebooks and encyclopedias.” Thus, “these exercises of editorial judgment are fully protected by the First Amendment,” Volokh concluded, which handily for Google, also protects it from antitrust laws. Legal precedents—in federal court rulings—shield corporations in precisely this way.

 

While Google wants its search engine to have the same speech rights as an editor under the First Amendment, it is notable that it also did not want to be held liable should anything bad result from the information it provides. Volokh’s paper also contained a liability argument, positing that a Google search wasn’t mechanical like a computer virus, but instead was a brainy editorial process deserving constitutional protection. 

 

This line of thinking is not very different from gun makers, who have spent decades in court drawing legal lines that separate their products from users’ actions. “Thus, if a Web page contains a virus, courts and legislatures may be able to impose liability on the producer of the page,” Volokh said, whereas, in contrast, “the information output by a search engine ‘is pure expression’ and … implicate[s] the First Amendment.”

 

It is not unusual for big corporations to pay scholars for innovative legal interpretations. Conservative think tanks have been doing this for years—funded by big business, while liberal think tanks for the most part have ignored commercial speech issues, instead focusing more on campaign finance and political speech. (The last big commercial speech case captivating the political left arguably was about Nike, which was sued for making incorrect and misleading claims about conditions in its overseas athletic shoe plants. It went to the Supreme Court, which returned it to a lower court in 2003. A settlement was quickly reached.)  

 

Volokh was proud of his Google work as cutting-edge legal thinking. He said that he was careful to disclose his outside consulting, both current and past, to his students, and that he tried to avoid writing “as an impartial academic” on a subject where he has been consulting, such as on freedom of speech and search engine law. Volokh said he only accepts consulting for views he has long espoused.

 

“The main barriers to impartiality for an academic are generally not concerns about consulting or clients,” he said, “they are (a) the human tendency to let one’s ideological and emotional predispositions affect one’s frank evaluation of the arguments, and (b) the tendency to not want to find evidence that one has erred in the past. All of us academics have to constantly struggle against these tendencies (as I imagine journalists must as well).”     

 

Desperate Patients, Desperate Profits

 

The pharmaceutical industry has some of the deepest pockets of any industry when it comes to lobbying and pushing federal officials to license its products, as such approval can yield billions over many years. But obtaining federal approval is often slow, costly and very frustrating, both to drug makers and to sick people who are desperate for cures when legally approved prescriptions fail.

 

Enter Martin Redish, who for decades has been widely respected as a First Amendment scholar at the Northwestern University School of Law and in August 2008 joined Sidney Austin LLP, a globally known corporate law firm, as a senior counsel. In March 2011, Redish co-authored a paper with Coleen Klasmeier, a partner in the firm's Washington office. The first footnote emphasized the paper’s importance, saying, “both authors are involved in the representation of one or more drug manufacturing company clients… in which the arguments in this article have been or could be presented to a court or prosecutorial authority, including the Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration.” 

 

The paper, “Off-Label Prescription Advertising, The FDA and The First Amendment: A Study in the Values of Commercial Speech Protection,” argues that drug and medical device makers should be able to sell their products for uses not licensed by the FDA (hence the "off-label" moniker). They argue that the FDA is “unambiguously inconsistent” with approving alternative uses for drugs and devices, which ultimately harms the public. Moreover, not sharing information about other uses with medical professionals violates the company’s First Amendment commercial speech rights, Redish said, because the information they want to share is factual and true. 

 

First Amendment law is complex. There are different legal standards for political speech and commercial speech. Redish’s argument that the FDA’s failure to allow discussion of these alternative uses is unconstitutional censorship is shrewd and parses some fine legal lines. Researchers and physicians are free to share information about off-label uses and do all the time—that’s how science works. The FDA’s prohibition is about how companies market those off-label indications, which involves profit motives. 

 

Redish’s paper acknowledges that the FDA’s approval process is designed to weed out “quackery—fraudulent therapeutic claims,” but he says that in many treatment areas, starting with pediatrics and oncology, there is an “indisputable value of off-label uses” and “the obvious reality that manufacturers are in a unique position to provide valuable information [about] off-label uses to the medical profession.” 

 

After citing a history of the FDA changing its mind about approved uses since the 1960s, Redish becomes indignant, noting that between 1993 and 2001, the FDA took strong steps against “materials of a lasting nature like books, audio, video tapes and software” that curbed the “free flow of information.” But “starting in 2001, the FDA at least gestured in the direction of First Amendment values, but that period of greater circumspection proved short-lived.” In other words, under the Clinton administration, the FDA cracked down. Under the Bush administration, its political appointees initially eased up. And now, under the Obama administration, the FDA is again saying no.

 

Like Volokh’s Google paper, Redish argues that his client’s core business should have full First Amendment protection but be free from liability if something bad happens to consumers who use it. He cites a lawsuit where the conservative Washington Legal Foundation filed a brief against the FDA arguing, “that a manufacturer should be permitted to provide information about off-label uses as long as the information is accompanied by an adequate disclaimer.” He cites the FDA response, which said, “WLF’s suggestion that the manufacturer of … a dangerous product has a First Amendment right to promote it for unapproved uses, and to do so without providing adequate directions (or, in this case, any directions) for use, is breathtaking.” However, Redish calmly returns to his argument, repeating that drug companies have a First Amendment right “to give physicians information they need.” 

 

Redish took great offense when asked if there were conflicts of interest between being a constitutional law professor specializing in commercial speech—where one teaches all views of issues—and his consulting. He said he has espoused the same views since his Harvard Law School thesis in 1970, and in early law review articles in 1971 and 1972. Beyond that, he declined to answer any questions.

 

Obesity Crisis? Don’t Blame Us!

 

The federal government’s effort to push junk food makers to voluntarily change the way they advertise to children and teens is one of the highest-stakes legal battles over product labeling. After a multi-year, multi-agency effort based on extensive science, the food and broadcast lobbies prompted Congress to withhold funding for this Federal Trade Commission-led effort earlier this year—despite the startling fact that many tens of millions of American youths are either overweight or obese.   

 

One of the most aggressive advocates for media giants, which did not want to see any loss of advertising revenue, was Kathleen Sullivan, the former dean of Stanford Law School who left academia and is now a partner at Quinn, Emanuel, Urquhart and Sullivan, where she chairs its national appellate practice. “Since joining Quinn Emanuel in 2005, Sullivan has represented a wide range of clients,” her firm bio says, “including Shell Oil, Entergy, Morgan Stanley, General Electric, Samsung, Pfizer, Motorola, Coca-Cola, Google, Siebel Systems, Oracle, Intuit, Hearst News, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, Allegheny Energy, PG&E, AIG and CNA.” 

 

Her brief on behalf of Viacom, the media conglomerate, against the federal Interagency Working Group on Food Marketed to Children (IWG) was dismissive of the federal effort to adopt voluntary marketing guidelines. From the start, she attacked it as one “that would limit the advertising of food and drinks directed at children and adolescents… in violation of the basic First Amendment principle that regulation of speech, including commercial speech, should be a last, not a first resort, for government action.” 

 

The public health effort to stem childhood and teenage obesity by adopting voluntary marketing guidelines—which, as the FTC repeatedly stressed, were not requirements—was “government paternalism,” Sullivan wrote, saying it was a fiction that these were called voluntary. “The food marketing ‘guidelines’ cannot escape full First Amendment analysis merely because [they are] styled ‘voluntary.’” 

 

Even though Sullivan taught at Harvard and then Stanford, there is not a drop of public-interest blood in her brief. She noted the target of the FTC labeling effort—“breakfast cereals, snack foods, candy, dairy products, baked goods, carbonated beverages, prepared foods and meals, frozen and chilled desserts, and restaurant foods”—and said these are “definitions that sweep in many adult audience members as well.” 

 

Indeed, there is a national obesity crisis, among all ages, and yet Sullivan said, “The proposal would… have the effect of reducing the quality of original children’s programming (as well as adult programming attracting a high share of children) by diminishing or diverting the advertising revenues upon which such fully protected forms of programming depend.” Moreover, she said that, “any causal connection between advertising and childhood obesity is far too attenuated to satisfy the strong empirical showing required for restrictions on commercial speech.”

 

In other words, Sullivan is saying "don’t blame us" and "leave our ad revenues alone."

 

Sullivan’s brief describes in great detail how the federal courts and particularly the Supreme Court in recent years has “repeatedly invalidated commercial speech regulations for failing to directly advance the goal of discouraging consumption of some product or service (electricity, beer, vodka, gambling, underage tobacco use), even where it has accepted that such goals are substantial.” In the cases she cited, just as in the voluntary food marketing guidelines, Sullivan said the government had not shown that its need to act was sufficiently compelling to interfere with commercial advertising rights. 

 

Sullivan did not respond to an email requesting comment. 

 

To be fair, there were plenty of briefs submitted to the FTC by progressives during its comment period on the voluntary food marketing guidelines. However, advocacy groups submitting comments to a government agency is not the same as having the nation’s top conservative legal scholars write position and strategy papers, and then also filing briefs. One is a longer-term strategy, while the other a shorter-term response. 

 

Do Google searches deserve the same constitutional protections as New York Times editorials? Should drug and medical device makers tell physicians about alternative, unapproved uses for their products? Should broadcasters take a role in assisting the government to reverse the largest health crisis facing America’s young people? 

 

These are interesting and timely questions for law students, scholars and public officials on both sides of the issues to study and debate. But that becomes harder when most of the First Amendment commercial speech scholarship is coming from the pro-corporate side of the fence, and the federal courts are packed with judges who reject public interest arguments.  

 

Steven Rosenfeld covers democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).

Supreme Court: U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Undefeated This Term

Supreme Court: U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Undefeated This Term

Huffington Post

Thursday, June 21, 2012

By Mike Sacks 

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is undefeated at the Supreme Court this term, continuing to improve its success in securing business-friendly judgments since Chief Justice John Roberts took the bench in 2005.

 

The Constitutional Accountability Center, a left-leaning think tank and law firm, reported its findings on Thursday, noting that this term, which began in October and will likely conclude by the end of June, could be the chamber's "first 'perfect' term before the Supreme Court since at least 1994."

 

This term's "string of seven straight victories brings the chamber’s overall win/loss rate before the Roberts Court up to 68 percent (60 of 88 cases)," wrote Neal Weare, the center's litigation counsel and Supreme Court fellow. That success rate is significantly higher than during comparable periods of personnel stability under the past two chief justices, William Rehnquist and Warren Burger. From 1994 to 2005, when Rehnquist was chief justice, the chamber succeeded in 56 percent of the cases it backed. The business lobby had a 43 percent success rate from 1981 to 1986 during the final years of Chief Justice Warren Burger's tenure.

 

The chamber, a pro-business lobbying group that supports conservative candidates and causes, formed its modern litigation strategy in 1971, when corporate attorney Lewis Powell wrote a memorandum that urged the group to aggressively pursue its interests in courts, citing the liberal American Civil Liberties Union's success as a model. "Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change," Powell wrote. Then-President Richard Nixon nominated Powell that same year to the Supreme Court, where he wrote the opinion that the Roberts Court relied upon in the Citizens United decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in political campaigns.

 

The health care cases, likely to be decided next week, may yet spoil the chamber's perfect season. The chamber took no position on the individual mandate's constitutionality, but did urge the justices to strike down the entire law if they decide to void the mandate. That position, however, found little support among the justices during oral argument in March.

 

Still, not even a loss in the Supreme Court's highest profile case of the term, if not the decade, would do much to dent the chamber's high rate of success at the Roberts Court.

 

CORRECTION: 11:35 p.m. -- This article has been updated to show that the Constitutional Accountability Center study of the Rehnquist and [Burger] courts did not count all of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce cases in all of the years of those courts. The center study was designed to compare periods of court personnel stability.

High Court Produces a Politics Of, By and For Corporations

Published on Friday, June 22, 2012 by Common Dreams

High Court Produces a Politics Of, By and For Corporations

- Common Dreams staff 

Though all political eyes and ears await an upcoming decision by the US Supreme Court on the Affordable Care Act, likely to be handed down next week, a new study released on Thursday suggests that many Americans, while awaiting one decision or another, are missing a larger trend pervading the Robert's court. The report, released by the Constitution Accountability Center, found that in every case before the court this term, the majority has found in favor of the position taken by the US Chamber of Commerce, a conservative lobbying group.

 

The Supreme Court ruled that unions must win approval in advance from dissenting members before they collect extra dues in mid-year to pay for a political campaign. (Alex Wong / Getty Images) This trend, in which the Chamber has scored seven consecutive victories, bolsters arguments made by many observers who note that the Supreme Court in recent years has taken decidedly favorable positions for business interests while siding against the arguments of consumer advocates, labor unions, and the public interest.
The Nation's John Nichols, responding to Thursday's SCOTUS decision that will now require public-employee unions to get specific permission from employees in workplaces they represent for special assessments before making political campaign expenditures, said the pattern of corporate interests winning out over the interests of "real human beings" is quite clear.

"The Court-ordered shift creates an incredible bureaucratic nightmare for organizations that represent hundreds of thousands of workers," contends Nichols. "And," he adds,"It was entirely unnecessary, as key unions have indicated that they would be willing not just to maintain their “opt-out” clauses but to refund special assessment money to any member or represented nonmember who might object to a political initiative."

Writing the dissenting for the opinion was Justice Stephen Breyer who was joined only by Justice Kagan in opposing the majority. “The debate about public unions’ collective bargaining rights is currently intense,” Breyer wrote. “The question of how a nonmember indicates a desire not to pay constitutes an important part of this debate.… There is no good reason for this court suddenly to enter the debate, much less now to decide that the Constitution resolves it.”
If both history and legal precedent are being written at the Supreme Court, the tale seems to be that big business has a court quite willing to take its side in arguments. For many, the more troubling development is the manner in which the court has gone out of its way to make life that much harder for those who seek to put the reigns on corporate power.

*  *  *

Huffington Post: Supreme Court: U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Undefeated This Term

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is undefeated at the Supreme Court this term, continuing to improve its success in securing business-friendly judgments since Chief Justice John Roberts took the bench in 2005.
The Constitutional Accountability Center, a left-leaning think tank and law firm, reported its findings on Thursday, noting that this term, which began in October and will likely conclude by the end of June, could be the chamber's "first 'perfect' term before the Supreme Court since at least 1994."
This term's "string of seven straight victories brings the chamber’s overall win/loss rate before the Roberts Court up to 68 percent (60 of 88 cases)," wrote Neal Weare, the center's litigation counsel and Supreme Court fellow. That success rate is significantly higher than during comparable periods of personnel stability under the past two chief justices, William Rehnquist and Warren Burger. From 1994 to 2005, when Rehnquist was chief justice, the chamber succeeded in 56 percent of the cases it backed. The business lobby had a 43 percent success rate from 1981 to 1986 during the final years of Chief Justice Warren Burger's tenure.
The chamber, a pro-business lobbying group that supports conservative candidates and causes, formed its modern litigation strategy in 1971, when corporate attorney Lewis Powell wrote a memorandum that urged the group to aggressively pursue its interests in courts, citing the liberal American Civil Liberties Union's success as a model. "Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change," Powell wrote. Then-President Richard Nixon nominated Powell that same year to the Supreme Court, where he wrote the opinion that the Roberts Court relied upon in the Citizens United decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in political campaigns.
The health care cases, likely to be decided next week, may yet spoil the chamber's perfect season. The chamber took no position on the individual mandate's constitutionality, but did urge the justices to strike down the entire law if they decide to void the mandate. That position, however, found little support among the justices during oral argument in March.
Still, not even a loss in the Supreme Court's highest profile case of the term, if not the decade, would do much to dent the chamber's high rate of success at the Roberts Court.

*  *  *

John Nichols: High Court Produces a Politics Of, By and For Corporations

The most politically partisan—and politically activist—Supreme Court in modern American history has already assumed that, when it comes to electioneering, corporations have pretty much the same rights as human beings. Indeed, the High Court’s Citizens United ruling has given corporations unprecedented flexibility to act on their own behalf to influence election campaigns and results.
Yet, the same Court has now said that groups of actual human beings—trade unions that have organized public-sector workers—must sacrifice their flexibility in order to meet standards never before demanded of labor organizations.
Do we detect a pattern here?
Of course.
That pattern was on stark display in Thursday’s Supreme Court decision to require that public-employee unions get specific permission from employees in workplaces they represent for special assessments that are used to advance political agendas. This high court swipe at the ability of working people to make their voices heard in the political life of communities, states and the nation won't get the attention that will be accorded the Supreme Court's equally politicized ruling on the Affordable Care Act.
But there's a good argument to be made that, by further skewing the Democratic process that was so badly warped by the 2010 Citizens United ruling, the court has done even greater damage to the long-term prospects for renewing the republic.
The damage is contained in a structural shift that will make unions -- and potentially other membership-based organizations -- less flexible and functional in the political fights of the future.

#  #  #

New World Order Blueprint Leaked

June 22, 2012 at 12:33:56

New World Order Blueprint Leaked

By Rudy Avizius (about the author)

On June 12, a leaked copy of the investment chapter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was made public. This copy was analyzed by Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch and has been verified as authentic.   This agreement has been negotiated IN SECRET for 2-1/2 years and no information has ever been released until this leak. So why have the details of this negotiation been so secret? This agreement has been framed as a "free trade" agreement and yet out of 26 chapters only two have anything to do with trade. The other 24 chapters grant new corporate privileges and rights, while limiting governments and protective regulations.

If implemented, this agreement will hard code corporate dominance over sovereign governments into international law that will supercede any federal, state, or local laws of any member country. This TPP agreement   alone should set alarm bells ringing, but if one steps back and looks at the larger picture, the future ramifications look even more ominous. After completing this reading, see what your conclusions are.

This video is a must see for anyone who wishes to more fully understand the implications of this secretly negotiated agreement. This article will also show how if this agreement is considered in the context of other recently passed legislation and developments, and the "dots are connected", the results would be total corporate global governance with an accompanying police state. In this new system the role of elected   governments would be to serve as subservient agents for the transnational corporations, while the armies, police, and courts would serve the interests of these transnational corporations. The   status of the member states would be locked-in,   similar to countries once they are inside the Eurozone.

The TPP is being negotiated by some of the same cast of characters that brought us NAFTA, CAFTA and other so called free trade agreements. Some of the provisions in this document include the establishment of a parallel system of justice to be administered by 3 attorneys with no conflict of interest limitations. This 3 attorney tribunal could order sovereign governments to use taxpayer money to pay these transnational corporations for any environmental or regulatory costs that these corporations expended to meet local standards. Many existing laws would need to be rewritten and no new regulatory laws could be passed.

Governments that tried to pass regulations such as limits on the financial industry using risky bets such as derivatives would have the burden of proof to defend such regulations in a court system controlled by the corporations. The taxpayers would pay should a corporation prevail in one of these "private courts". In fact over $350 million of taxpayer money has already been paid out to corporations under the NAFTA style deals, because of zoning laws, toxic bans, timber rules and other regulations. This TPP agreement is like NAFTA on steroids. This corporate tribunal bears a resemblance to the private US Supreme Court approved   binding arbitration that corporations use to severely limit an individual's or a group's right to sue for damages. With binding arbitration we essentially have a " private corporate court system " outside of any government judicial system where the corporations choose the arbitrators and pay for their services. This creates an apparent conflict of interest because   the arbitrators know that if they do not rule favorably to the corporations in the majority of cases, they will not be hired back.

The kangaroo courts setup by this TPP agreement will have binding corporate guarantees with both trade and cash sanctions. These cash sanctions would effectively transfer taxpayer money to transnational corporate coffers.   Can you imagine the excesses we will see in the financial industry as they challenge regulations within their own private court system forcing governments to pay or eliminate them?
 
The result of these corporate tribunals will be to setup a race to the bottom, where if one country chooses not to regulate something, then the corporations would be able to sue the other nations inside of the TPP to have taxpayers cover their losses for any such regulations. These other countries would be vulnerable to corporate led lawsuits to be decided in the corporate tribunals.  

So how could such an extreme agreement that literally gives corporations everything they could possibly want have been negotiated with little or no resistance? The answer is that the ONLY way this agreement could ever pass is if everything is done in secret and the details never see the light of day. Lori Wallach , the director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch recently said:
"These agreements are a little bit like Dracula. You drag them in the sunshine, and they do not fare well. But all of us, and also across all of the countries involved, there are citizen movements that are basically saying that this is not in our name. We don't need global enforceable corporate rights. We need more democracy. We need more accountability."

These talks have been so secret that Senator Ron Wyden, chairman of the Trade Committee in the Senate which has jurisdiction   over trade agreements has been denied any access to information on the negotiations for over 2-1/2 years. This is a man who is on the Intelligence Committee and has access to nuclear secrets, yet he cannot see this TPP agreement? On the Democratic side, Senator Wyden has introduced legislation to force the Obama administration to make the details of these secret negotiations available to the Senate Committee.  

On the Republican side, Representative Darryl Issa has also questioned the Obama administration's extreme levels of secrecy on this agreement. This is not a liberal cause, this is not a conservative cause, this is a common cause. It is vital that the public be aware of this TPP agreement because BOTH of the 2012 presidential candidates are supporting this agreement.    Since TPP was negotiated under the watch of the Obama administration, and Mitt Romney has indicated that he wants to quickly complete negotiations of this bill, the results of the next election will be irrelevant to the future status of this bill.
With the corporate takeover of sovereign governments, we see the very essence of a global fascist system. When most people think of fascism, they think of Hitler brown shirts marching through the streets, however, that is not the real definition of fascism. Fascism was defined by President Franklin Roosevelt:
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group"

Polls show that most Americans from both major political party believe that money exerts far too much influence on public officials, effectively making these elected officials the "hired servants" of the wealthy elites. Both the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement believe that there is too much influence of money on our legislators. Our representatives are essentially the puppets while the corporate elites are the puppeteers. What this   TPP agreement does is to take this puppet metaphor to the international level. Our elections have been reduced to the people choosing who will be the "hired servants" of the power elites from a list preapproved by these same elites.

This TPP agreement is nothing less than a power grab by the largest corporations on the planet to establish a legal framework for global corporate government making all sovereign governments subject to international law enforced by corporations. Passage of this bill would essentially be corporate coup against all member states.   
 
So while this TPP agreement should frighten anyone who is still breathing, the threat does not end as the corporations make their ultimate grab for power. Here are some of the other forces that are potentially focusing the power of the corporate state.

National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA)

With the passage of the NDAA, our legislators overrode constitutional protections so that Americans who are "suspected" of providing "material support" to a terrorist organization can be detained indefinitely on American soil, without access to legal counsel, and without any charges being filed. Think about this for a minute, you do not even have to be charged with a crime and you can be locked up indefinitely? What exactly does "material support" mean? Exactly what is a terrorist? Some states have actually declared that people who secretly video record animal mistreatment as "terrorists", even if no property damage was done. If nonviolent protests can be declared as terrorist acts, it does not take a great leap of the imagination to see how NDAA might be applied. Imagine if the government used NDAA legislation against journalists or whistleblowers such as Julius Assange ,   Russ Tice , or even Daniel Elsberg ? How will we ever know what is happening in a corporate state if the corporations are successful in indefinitely detaining those who would shed light on their activities?

This NDAA is another example of dangerous legislation being passed in darkness. This bill was signed by Obama on December 31, 2011, during the Christmas break when the media attention would be minimal. In an effort to divide the opposition to the indefinite detention of Americans, Obama promised that his administration would never use the provisions. The questions most people should be asking is: "what is to prevent any future president or even Obama himself from using indefinite detention, and if there is no need for concern over this, why was it necessary to make that signing statement?"

Progressive and conservative groups such the ACLU, Gun Owners Foundation, Tea Party Movement, Institute of the Constitution, US Justice Foundation, Tenth Amendment Center, Occupy Wall St, and many other   groups are joining forces to fight this legislation. On social media, resistance in the form of a Facebook group called " Recall Every Congressman Who Voted for NDAA " has been formed.   Now, in the context of the TPP, think of how useful this NDAA law could be to a global corporate government in silencing its critics.
 
Citizens United Ruling
 
Americans have long had a sneaking suspicion that there was a "hidden hand" directing our government in Washington and the states, and they were right. The "hidden hand" was actually the corporations, unions, and other self-serving special interests that contribute literally $billions to our politicians in order to influence legislation that will favor them. This has happened even with limits that had been placed on these groups that prevented them from directly contributing to campaigns.   Thursday January 21 2010, will go down in history as a dark day. This is the day that a divided Supreme Court, in the Citizens United v. FEC ruling, removed all limits on corporate political campaign spending.
If you thought our politicians were corrupt and beholden to corporations before, things are about to get a LOT WORSE now that all limits have been removed. Justices Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy swept aside decades of legislative restrictions on the money from corporations in political campaigns and ruled that companies can use corporate funds to support or oppose candidates. This ruling will certainly take its place in history alongside other shameful rulings such as Dred Scott v. Sandford, and Plessy v. Ferguson. These 5 justices opened the floodgates of unlimited funds to influence elections. The strangle hold the banks have over the nation's wealth will now be amplified by this Supreme Court ruling now that all limits on campaign financing by corporations have been removed.

This black day will go rightly go down in history where the Supreme Court officially validated the takeover of the government by the corporations. The 2012 primary election cycle has already seen where approximately 4 dozen people have contributed massively to the super PACS and decided the outcome of the elections. This type of money influence will cut both ways regardless of which political party you support. One donor has stated that he is willing to spend $100 million in this election cycle. This one single donor "donated" the same amount as 2 million families sending a check for $50. This type of funding by large donors undermines the very foundation of our government and creates an environment conducive to corruption. Now in the context of the TPP, think of the impact that huge global corporations will have on governments with their ability to spend unlimited money anonymously.
Corporate domination of media
 
Media ownership has now become so concentrated that six corporations effectively control US media today. These companies are Time Warner, Walt Disney, Viacom, Murdoch's News Corp, CBS Corporation, and NBC Universal.   With this type of concentration, it becomes very difficult to find diversified news in order to form independent opinions. One aspect of this concentration is the increasing number of negative political ads, many of which have no accountability as to their factual accuracy. This will end badly if we do not stop the media from undermining the foundations of our election system. This concentration of media ownership allows billionaires and corporations to ensure that the politicians who will work to pass self serving legislation favoring these wealthy elites are elected to office.

One place where the corporate media has not met with great success in controlling is the independent media on the Internet. Attempts have been made to control access to it, to create " toll system " ,   as well as extreme copyright rules. We have seen a veritable alphabet soup of acts designed to enhance corporate profits and limit the flow of information. Some examples include PIPA , SOPA ,   CISPA , and it seems as soon as they are knocked down due to public resistance, another threat arises. For now, the Internet has remained free and a diverse source of information, but vigilance must be maintained.   Now, think of the effect that the loss of an open Internet and   the increasingly concentrated media ownership will have on the electorate when combined with the unlimited funding that the Citizens United ruling allows, as well as the power that the transnational corporations could gain under TPP.
 
Increasing Use of Drones for Domestic Surveillance
 
The use of drones for domestic surveillance is becoming more and more common. The FAA has approved   drones for use over the United States and projects that 30,000 drones will be over our skies by 2020. The EPA is actually using drones to monitor cattle ranchers in Iowa, police and universities are using them, and cities are using drones to keep an "eye on things".   New much smaller drones the size of birds and insects are now in development.   These smaller drones will be cheaper to produce and deploy which will likely raise the 30,000 estimate significantly and will be much harder to detect. Under a government subservient to the corporations, these drones would effectively be controlled and "regulated" by the corporations. Can you imagine the misuse of this technology to violate any privacy we may have left and to conduct clandestine surveillance?
 
Militarization of  Police Forces
 
The militarization of our police forces is proceeding rapidly. After 9-11, the Department of Homeland Security gave generous grants to police forces across the nation. Some of the purchases   included riot gear , armored personnel carriers , and even acoustic weapons for small towns with hardly any violent crime. A nexus has formed between vendors of military equipment and the nation's police forces. There are certainly consequences to this militarization of police forces. Once a police officer is deployed into a situation with full riot gear and military training, the chances of violence increases significantly even when the protests remain peaceful. There is significant evidence of this during the Occupy demonstrations.  
The roles of police and military are totally different. The police are trained to protect lives, the military is trained to take lives. Consider how these same military trained riot police would be used when they are under the effective control of the transnational corporations and how they would be utilized to silence their critics.    
 
Privatization of Prisons
The privatization of prisons is expanding rapidly. In most societies prisons are run by the state where the incentive is to have fewer prisoners with a lower recidivism rate. In a private system the perverse incentive is to maximize the number of prisoners, and raise the recidivism rate   in order to maximize profits. This results in higher numbers of prisoners, broken families, poor healthcare for inmates, and few resources spent to prepare inmates to reenter society. This has contributed to the shame of the US having largest prison population on the planet whether measured in absolute numbers or on a per capita basis, with most prisoners serving time for non-violent crimes. The private for profit prison industry is growing and has actually influenced immigration legislation in Arizona in order to gain more inmates and raise profits. Think of the impact that private prisons, private policing, private contractors providing soldiers for hire, all with loyalty to $$$ instead of their country. We will quickly devolve into a fascist controlled state. This aspect of corporate control should be one of the most frightening to everyone who holds freedom and democracy dear. 

Lack of Prosecution for Financial Fraud

If a criminal gets away with committing a crime, there is a strong likelihood that they will commit it again. The lack of prosecution for the major financial fraud that brought about the 2008 economic collapse almost guarantees that it will happen again. Justice Department officials have stated that these are difficult and complex cases. However, during the Savings & Loan crisis, there were thousands of successful felony convictions , despite the fact that it was 1/70 the size of the 2008 crisis. In fact when the 50 Attorneys General were close to starting their own prosecutions due to the lack of any federal action, the Obama administration stepped in and negotiated its own agreement.

To paraphrase David Petrovich , the Executive Director for Society For Preservation of Continued Homeownership:

"This agreement granted immunity to the big banks for the criminal robosigning   where they forged documents and fraudulently tried to present them in courts across the country. This was essentially another bailout of the banks only this time the bailout was not in the form of money, but rather where changes were made in the law to retroactively transform banks' illegal behavior into legal behavior. (Watch how this concept of "retroactive" immunity comes up again.) Think about what would happen if you or I forged notarized signatures and tried to pass them off in court. We certainly would serve prison time. Yet, these huge banks were let off the hook even after forging tens of thousands of these signatures and illegally foreclosing on peoples' homes."

We also recently had the spectacle of the Senate Banking Committee " questioning " one of its largest donors . While wearing presidential seal cuff links, presumably to show his powerful connections, JP Morgan chair Jamie Dimon, easily handled all the softball questions asked of him.   Dimon lost over $3 billion (and growing) on risky derivative bets and yet these same senators actually had the audacity to ask him for input and advice on regulating his bank. Think about the implications of total immunity from prosecution for financial crimes in an environment where the TPP has been approved and global corporations are the effective government.


Lack of Protection for Whistleblowers
 
The increasing prosecution and harassment of whistleblowers has a chilling effect on government transparency . The government often prosecutes the whistleblower rather than the crime that the whistleblower reveals. The Obama campaign in 2008 promised to protect whistle blowers, but instead he has been waging a relentless war against them. Bradley Manning was declared guilty by Obama BEFORE he was even charged with any crime, yet the shooting of the journalists by the US helicopter crew and their callous statements during the shooting was ignored.   When William Binney blew the whistle on the NSA's huge surveillance program, the FBI raided his home in an effort to quiet and intimidate him. Corporations as well as government also often retaliate against whistle blowers.   In a corporate state, how would the citizens know about the activities of the corporations if there is no protection for whistleblowers?

Corporate Spying on Americans
 
The information William Binney made public dramatized the huge scale of the (at that time ) illegal surveillance that was being done on Americans. It also included the fact that AT&T as well as other communication companies were deeply involved in this illegal spying on US citizens. Later, as lawsuits against the corporations started to look like they would be successful, the Obama administration claimed state secrets to kill the lawsuits.   Since the telecommunications industry is another VERY large "contributor" to political loyalists, Congress showed its gratitude   by passing legislation to grant the telecommunication companies retroactive immunity. (This concept retroactive immunity comes up again.)   The questions that should come to mind are: "if no crime was committed, why were the corporations granted retroactive immunity, or if crimes were committed, why were these corporations granted retroactive immunity?" Think of the implications of this in a corporate state, with the increasing use of smaller and smaller drones in an environment that allows corporations to legally spy on you. Then also consider this concept of governments granting retroactive immunity for criminal actions in order to please their major corporate donors. How will the transnational corporations   use these "tools" to maximize their profits or to silence opposition? 
 
Summary
 
What we see is a confluence of forces that has the potential to solidify a shift towards corporate fascism and encase it in international law. Governments will merely be the tools of the corporations to provide a degree of separation from the inevitable police state that will accompany this corporate global governance. Sovereign governments even with all their failings still have at least some concern for the general welfare of their citizens. Corporations by their very nature have only one purpose and that is to generate profits. If an individual whose sole purpose was to blindly enhance profits, without any regard to the standards of what is wrong and what is right in society, would likely be considered a sociopath by mental health experts.

If the TPP were to be enshrined into international law, these same sociopath corporations would now lord over sovereign governments, indifferent to criminal law, and beyond the control of nation-states. They would have the ability to utilize the militaries of some states to wage war on other "less complaint" states.

  Doug Casey of Casey Research recently wrote :
"It's most unfortunate, but the US and its allies will turn into authoritarian police states. Even more than they are today. Much more, actually. They'll all be perfectly fascist -- private ownership of both consumer goods and the means of production topped by state control of both. Fascism operates free of underlying principles or philosophy; it's totally the whim of the people in control, and they'll prove ever more ruthless. "

There are those who would say that it is unpatriotic to be against corporations, however should corporations be in the business of governing?   An open public debate on the future role of corporations is needed.

It is vital that the details of this TPP agreement become widely known and circulated. Once it sees the light of day, it will be defeated because people will oppose it. Sorry, corporations really are NOT people, they are merely state created entities.

What Can You Do?
 
Get money out of politics

Until we get money out of politics, corporate control of our government will continue and   because of the Citizens United ruling, will most likely increase. Attempts at a corporate coups such as this TPP agreement will continue and will keep resurfacing in various re-invented forms until one day one will be successful. We have already seen this pattern with the repeated attempts to impose limits the Internet.

There are organizations that are working towards eliminating the corrupting influence of money. Find out more about them and support their efforts.   Some of them include.

Public Citizen
http://www.citizen.org 

Common Cause
http://www.commoncause.org  

United Republic
http://unitedrepublic.org 
 
End the secret TPP negotiations

Until we bring this process into public view, there is the danger that it will be passed quickly and secretly with little or no congressional or public input. Once the details of these agreements are made public, the TPP will defeated, or at the very least modified.

There are organizations that are fighting this TPP agreement and they deserve your efforts and support. Some of them include:

http://www.citizen.org/tpp 
 
http://www.citizenstrade.org/ctc/ 
 
http://www.straight.com/article-688656/vancouver/prointernet-community-must-fight-tpp-weekly-update-openmediaca 
 
We have reached a crossroad where either we allow the corporations   to take control of our nations, or we stop them in their attempts. Take an evening off from the TV and make the effort to make a difference so that you leave your children a better future. Don't expect others to do this vital task.

Rudy Avizius
http://www.endtheillusion.org

Where is the love? How About Some Corporate Patriotism!

June 21, 2012 at 08:58:11

What About Some Corporate Patriotism!

By Rob Kall (about the author)

What would happen if we asked the executives of the giant U.S. corporations, whose products constantly surround us, to show some corporate patriotism?

After all, General Electric, DuPont, Citigroup, Pfizer and others demand that they be treated as "persons" under our Constitution and our laws. And, they expect unfiltered loyalty from American workers even to the point of blocking the organization of unions so workers can band together for collective bargaining.



Moreover, many of these corporations expect to be bailed out by American taxpayers when they are in trouble, and they regularly receive a covey of direct and indirect government subsidies, giveaways and complex handouts.

Some of them pay no federal income taxes year after year, and a few game the tax laws to receive additional money back from the U.S. Treasury. Historically, the U.S. Marines and other U.S. armed forces have risked their lives to protect or protect these corporations' overseas interests by invading or menacing numerous countries.

So it is reasonable for the American people to expect some reciprocity from these immense corporate entities that were born in the U.S. and rose to their economic prowess on the backs of American workers. The bosses of these companies believe they can have it both ways -- getting all the benefits of their native country while shipping whole industries and jobs to communist and fascist regimes abroad that keep their workers in serf-like conditions.

The first test as to whether these U.S. companies have any allegiance to the U.S. and its communities is to demand that CEOs stand up at their annual shareholders meetings and pledge allegiance in the name of their corporation, not their boards of directors, "to the flag of the United States of America," ending with that ringing phrase, voiced by millions of Americans daily, "with liberty and justice for all."

More than seventy years ago, a famous Marine general, the double Congressional Medal of Honor awardee Smedly Butler, said his Marines were ordered to make sure the flag followed U.S. companies from Central America to Asia. In the past, the lack of allegiance was shockingly callous. DuPont and General Motors worked openly with fascist Germany and its companies before World War II and did not sever all dealings when hostilities started.

About fifteen years ago, I sent letters to the CEOs of the top 100 largest U.S. chartered corporations asking that they pledge allegiance to our country in the name of their company at their annual shareholders meetings. Their responses were instructive. Many said they would review the request; others turned it down, while some were ambiguous, misconstruing the request as being directed to their boards of directors instead of their U.S. chartered corporate entity.

Walmart replied that they would "give it every consideration." Federated Department Stores expressly thought it was a good suggestion. Citicorp (now Citigroup) wrote that it is "not our practice to respond."

Time for an update. I've just sent letters to twenty of the largest U.S. chartered companies renewing the request for the pledge. They include Exxon Mobil, Walmart, Chevron, General Motors, General Electric, Ford Motor, AT&T, Bank of America, Verizon Communications, J.P. Morgan Chase, Apple, CVS Caremark, IBM, Citigroup and Cardinal Health.

Imagine the CEOs of General Motors (or Exxon Mobil, Citigroup, Bank of America, etc.) pledging allegiance "to the Flag of the United States of America and the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

You may wish to contact these companies and urge their CEOs to take the pledge. This effort needs your participation as consumers, workers, taxpayers or shareholders. It opens up a long-overdue discussion about corporate patriotism and what it all should mean.

As conservative author Patrick Buchanan wrote some years ago: "If they [large U.S. corporations] are not loyal to us, why should we be loyal to them?"

Rob Kall is executive editor, publisher and website architect of OpEdNews.com, Host of the Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show (WNJC 1360 AM), and publisher of Storycon.org, President of Futurehealth, Inc, and an inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com
Mediate ranks Rob Kall among the top 150 print/online columnists, often ahead of NY Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post columnists.

With his experience as architect and founder of a technorati top 100 blog, he is also a new media / social media consultant and trainer for corporations, non-profits, entrepreneurs and authors.

Rob is a frequent Speaker on the bottom up revolution, politics, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey and Positive Psychology. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates, and optimizing tapping the power of new media. Watch me speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

 See more Rob Kall articles here and, older ones, here.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out 

A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

And Rob's quotes are here.

To watch me on youtube, having a lively conversation with John Conyers, former Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here Now, wouldn't you like to see me on the political news shows, representing progressives. If so, tell your favorite shows to bring me on and refer them to this youtube video.

Rob's radio show, The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show, runs 9-10 PM EST Wednesday evenings, on AM 1360, WNJC and is archived at www.opednews.com/podcasts Or listen to it streaming, live at www.wnjc1360.com

Rob also hosted a health/mind/body/heart/spirit radio show-- the Rob Kall Futurehealth radio show. Check out podcasts from it at futurehealth.org/podcasts

Follow me on Twitter

A few declarations.

-My articles express my personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

Recent press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

Corporate Medicine: Has the Drug Industry's Grip On Health Care Become a Pharmageddon?

June 17, 2012 at 20:48:37

Has the Drug Industry's Grip On Health Care Become a Pharmageddon?

A Conversation with David Healy, MD, author of the new book Pharmageddon

David Healy, MD by Healy

Rosenberg: Your new book, Pharmageddon, gives a bleak picture of the doctored data, skewed drug trials and rigged treatment guidelines that characterize today's pharmaceutical industry. Many people will be shocked to learn the abuses are not limited to the US, where direct-to-consumer advertising is legal, but found in Europe.

Healy: The situation is identical. Pharma actually finds socialized health care systems easier to exploit. And despite direct-to-consumer advertising, more money is spent on marketing to doctors who are the real consumers. They are also pressured by the treatment guidelines process which is based on "evidence" that Pharma makes sure to keep secret so they are really in the dark, though they may not realize it.

Rosenberg: One example you give of Pharma's reach and power is the eerie symmetry between the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), conceptualized and funded by US Pharma, and Britain's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Healy: Despite their public/private differences, both organizations recommend the use of branded antipsychotics like Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroquel before the use of older, affordable antipsychotics which of course enriches Pharma. One of the other issues is this--there is a new bill aimed at speeding up the FDA approval process yet again--and also getting regulators to take into account the jobs that come with a strong pharmaceutical sector.   Both America and Europe have been keen to keep their companies happy and have turned a blind eye to the outsourcing of clinical trials to Asia and Eastern Europe.

Rosenberg: In Pharmageddon, you chronicle how clinical trial oversight has gone from a hospital and university-based system to a for-profit system run by clinical research organizations or CROs.

Healy: The drug companies have outsourced all their operations from drug development and testing to clinical trials to scientific and academic writing so that they have become nothing but marketing organizations at their core. At each juncture where they have spun off a traditional responsibility, no one has objected and so it continues.

Rosenberg: There have been reports of risks to human subjects in overseas trials as well as bribes and protocol irregularities. Who oversees the ethics of outsourced trials and the quality of their data?

Healy: Clinical trials are overseen by private Institutional Review Boards, which are funded by the organizations they regulate--

Rosenberg: Like Moody's and Standard & Poor's are funded by their clients?

Healy: Yes. A recent large trial for the antipsychotic Abilify demonstrates the danger with outsourced clinical trials. On the basis of about 28 trials in the US, Abilify did not prophylactically stabilize mood as the manufacturer wants to claim. But when data from just two trials from Mexico were mixed in, it did.

Rosenberg: Most of Pharma's power to mislead and harm comes from such opaque and distorted data, you charge in Pharmageddon.

Healy: Without access to the raw drug data, medical professionals cannot practice responsible medicine and guidelines cannot be written. Yet Pharma, with very few exceptions, refuses to publish the data and share them with practitioners. This result is guidelines that are fictions and doctors who lack critical information they need to prescribe and treat.

Rosenberg: Pharma's stonewalling of data and use of ghostwriters has resulted in articles in major medical journals that made Vioxx,   hormone therapy and Neurontin look safe when they weren't. Another example you give is a paper in the Journal of the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in which GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has made the antidepressant Paxil look safe by hiding raw data. Then editor, Mina Dulcan, says about the missing data, which hid Paxil's suicidal side effect in children, "I can't control the authors. No, I don't have regrets."

Healy: If we were getting our drug information from the New York Times instead of medical journals, we would all be a lot safer. When the Times reporter Jayson Blair was found to have fabricated stories, he was history. But the editors and writers involved with journal fraud still have their jobs and the articles are not even retracted. In fact, Liz Wager, the chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is herself Pharma linked.

[ Ed note. The COPE site says, "Liz provides writing, editing, training and consultancy services for various pharmaceutical companies (most recently Astra Zeneca, Cephalon, Cordis, GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, Janssen-Cilag, Merck Serono, Mundipharma, Norgine, Novo Nordisk, Sanofi Pasteur and Vifor). ]

Rosenberg: Many conflicts of interest in your book, including COPE's leadership, are structural and create a closed loop of misinformation, especially because of the money that Pharma wields. How can sunlight and transparency ever break through?

Healy : Some colleagues and I are in the process of fine-tuning a free web site that offers FDA MedWatch data with other crucial dug information but gets people affected by treatment to report in detail for perhaps the first time. The site, called RxISK.org, also helps patients file an adverse event report to US and Canadian authorities, with other countries to follow. For too long, patients, doctors and pharmacists have been isolated   from each other when they encounter adverse drug events and only Pharma's messages get out. This will help them communicate directly. END

Pharmageddon

David Healy
University of California Press; 1 edition
Hardcover: 320 pages




David Healy is a Professor of Psychiatry at Bangor University. He is a former Secretary of the British Association for Psychopharmacology, and author of over 175 peer reviewed articles, 200 other pieces and 20 books, including The Antidepressant Era, and The Creation of Psychopharmacology from Harvard University Press, The Psychopharmacologists Volumes 1-3, Let Them Eat Prozac, Mania, & Pharmageddon.   He has been involved as an expert witness in homicide, suicide and birth defect legal actions involving psychotropic drugs, and in bringing problems with these drugs to the attention of American and British regulators, as well raising awareness of how pharmaceutical companies sell drugs by marketing diseases and co-opting academic opinion-leaders, ghostwriting their articles .

Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and commentator whose work has appeared in Consumers Digest, the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Los Angeles Times, Providence Journal and Newsday. She serves (more...)
 

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

US Trade Agreement Leak Reveals 'Radical New Powers' for Multinational Corporations

Published on Wednesday, June 13, 2012 by Common Dreams

US Trade Agreement Leak Reveals 'Radical New Powers' for Multinational Corporations

Obama administration agrees to deal that contradicts domestic agenda

- Common Dreams staff

The release today of a confidential document from ongoing US trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations -- known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) -- reveals that provisions included in the trade agreement would drastically undermine Obama's proposed domestic agenda and give unprecented political authority to multinational corporations.

 

 President Barack Obama during a meeting of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, November 2011. (Photo: Larry Downing/Reuters) The TPP negotiations have gone on for two years between the Obama administration and several Pacific nations under conditions of 'extreme secrecy' without press, public or policymaker oversight, says Public Citizen who posted the leaked document on their website today.
“The top U.S. trade official effectively has said that the administration must keep TPP secret because otherwise it won’t be able to shove this deal past the public and Congress,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
“The top U.S. trade official effectively has said that the administration must keep TPP secret because otherwise it won’t be able to shove this deal past the public and Congress,”  --Lori Wallach, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
The leaked document, according to the Huffington Post, reveals 'extreme provisions' that have been agreed upon in secret negotiations that "bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations" in global trade and contradict key promises made to the US public about such deals.
According to Public Citizen, the leaked text now confirms that the terms of the TPP would:

• Limit how U.S. federal and state officials could regulate foreign firms operating within U.S. boundaries, with requirements to provide them greater rights than domestic firms;
• Extend the incentives for U.S. firms to offshore investment and jobs to lower-wage countries;
• Establish a two-track legal system that gives foreign firms new rights to skirt U.S. courts and laws, directly sue the U.S. government before foreign tribunals and demand compensation for financial, health, environmental, land use and other laws they claim undermine their TPP privileges; and
• Allow foreign firms to demand compensation for the costs of complying with U.S. financial or environmental regulations that apply equally to domestic and foreign firms.

“The airing of this one TPP chapter," said Wallach, "which greatly favors foreign corporations over domestic businesses and the public interest and exposes us to significant financial liabilities, shows that the whole draft text must be released immediately so it can be reviewed and debated. Absent that, these negotiations must be ended now.”

* * *

Public Citizen: Controversial Trade Pact Text Leaked, Shows U.S. Trade Officials Have Agreed to Terms That Undermine Obama Domestic Agenda

A leak today of one of the most controversial chapters of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) reveals that extreme provisions have been agreed to by U.S. officials, providing a stark warning about the dangers of “trade” negotiations occurring under conditions of extreme secrecy without press, public or policymaker oversight, Public Citizen said.
“The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of TPP negotiations,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. “Via closed-door negotiations, U.S. officials are rewriting swaths of U.S. law that have nothing to do with trade and in a move that will infuriate left and right alike have agreed to submit the U.S. government to the jurisdiction of foreign tribunals that can order unlimited payments of our tax dollars to foreign corporations that don’t want to comply with the same laws our domestic firms do.” [...]
“US officials are rewriting swaths of US law that have nothing to do with trade and in a move that will infuriate left and right alike have agreed to submit the US government to the jurisdiction of foreign tribunals”
While 600 official U.S. corporate advisers have access to TPP texts and have a special role in advising U.S. negotiators, for the public, press and policymakers, this leak provides the first access to one of the prospective TPP’s most controversial chapters. In May, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness – the committee with jurisdiction over the TPP – filed legislation to open the process after he and his staff were denied access even to the U.S. proposals for the TPP negotiations.
Last month, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk defended the unprecedented secrecy of TPP negotiations by noting that when the draft of a major regional trade pact was released previously, it became impossible to finish the deal as then proposed. [...]
The TPP is the first trade pact the Obama administration is negotiating. Today’s leak further complicates the administration’s goal of completing TPP negotiations this fall. Already the TPP timeline was generating political headaches for the Obama re-election campaign, as repeated U.S polling shows that majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans oppose more NAFTA-style trade deals.

* * *

Huffington Post: Obama Trade Document Leaked, Revealing New Corporate Powers And Broken Campaign Promises

A critical document from President Barack Obama's free trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow radical new political powers upon multinational corporations, contradicting prior promises.
The leaked document has been posted on the website of Public Citizen, a long-time critic of the administration's trade objectives. The new leak follows substantial controversy surrounding the secrecy of the talks, in which some members of Congress have complained they are not being given the same access to trade documents that corporate officials receive.
"The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of [trade] negotiations," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch in a written statement.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been so incensed by the lack of access as to introduce legislation requiring further disclosure. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) has gone so far as to leak a separate document from the talks on his website. Other Senators are considering writing a letter to Ron Kirk, the top trade negotiator under Obama, demanding more disclosure.
The newly leaked document is one of the most controversial of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. It addresses a broad sweep of regulations governing international investment and reveals the Obama administration's advocacy for policies that environmental activists, financial reform advocates and labor unions have long rejected for eroding key protections currently in domestic laws.

* * *

Public Citizen: TPP = Corporate Power Tool of the 1%