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June 8th, 2016 
Awake Goy 
Print FriendlyOpen government groups and others have been calling for the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) to be more transparent about the agreements that it negotiates on behalf of all of us. That seems reasonable, doesn’t it?
Apparently not.
The administration’s response to requests for transparency have been to obfuscate. When asked to create a Transparency Officer, the USTR chose its legal counsel, Timothy Reif, the person in charge of defending its secrecy. Members of Congress say that Reif seemed to interpret his new responsibilities as finding ways to avoid being transparent.
Last week, in response to a request from last July for Clinton’s emails about the TPP negotiations, the State Department suddenly decided that it would not cooperate with the request until after the November election.
Hmmmmm……. what are they hiding?
Well, some groups have gained access to emails from the USTR, and they reveal pretty much what we thought they would: a revolving door and cozy relationship between government and Wall Street and Big Industries. As Bill Waren of Friends of the Earth described this morning on Clearing the FOG Radio, Obama’s Harvard buddies enter government to rewrite the rules, then go back into industry or finance to benefit from those rules, and the revolving door just keeps spinning.
On top of that, the administration tells outright lies about the TPP to the public to build support for it. The Hill reports that the Obama administration continues to ignore reports which show the TPP is not good for the economy, workers or the environment, and says the exact opposite. Now, the administration is using China as a scare tactic and threatening, “Either you are with America or you are with China.”
Well, we aren’t falling for this. We won’t let them hide the facts from us or scare us into supporting this rigged corporate power grab. We won’t let them sneak it through the lame duck session of Congress this November.
We are winning this struggle to end trade deals that are bad for people and the planet. As Michael Brune of the Sierra Club writes, it doesn’t have to be this way. Trade agreements could be a positive rather than a destructive force. They could encourage positive practices.
It’s up to us to make that happen. And here’s how we’ll do it.
1. We are organizing the No Lame Duck Uprising to stop Congress from voting on the TPP this fall. If you haven’t signed up, please do so. And if you have signed up, thank you! Please don’t sign up again. Instead, tell your friends and encourage them to sign up.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE NO LAME DUCK UPRISING.
2. We are launching a new email and call-in tool, thanks to our friends at Fight for the Future. Please use it every Tuesday (we call them TPP Tuesdays) from here on and encourage others to do the same.
CLICK HERE TO CONTACT YOUR MEMBER OF CONGRESS.
3. We must keep the pressure on our members of Congress and there are all sorts of great things that people are doing across the country to accomplish that. To learn more about them, please join the regular TPP Resistance calls every other Wednesday night. The next one is Wednesday, June 8 at 9 pm Eastern/6 pm Pacific.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE CALL
Finally, if you are able, please donate to support this work. Click here to donate. Thank you!We are winning, but they haven’t given up and we haven’t crossed the finish line yet, so please continue to stay involved. Our future depends on it.
Unite for Global Justice,
FlushtheTPP Team
TPP Occucards
Flush the TPP on the web
Flush the TPP on Facebook
Flush the TPP on Twitter, @FlushTheTPP
Source Article from https://www.popularresistance.org/why-so-secret-take-action-to-stop-trans-pacific-partnership/
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