Trade Promotion Authority gives additional powers to an already overly powerful Executive Branch. The bill itself is meant to speed up the process of negotiating a trade deal called the TPP. Unfortunately for us, the TPP is a massively destructive trade agreement that could irrevocably harm our country's economy, internet freedoms and our very national sovereignty.

First things first, out of the 29 chapters of the TPP, only 5 have to do with trade. The rest are all about changing our own domestic laws in favor of international corporations. One of the many things this agreement does is change our patent laws on medicine and other products. For one, it extends medical patents, allows plants and animals to be patented, and increases the length of patents/copyrights for almost all products you use on a daily basis. What does that mean? Increased prices and less competition in the market place. Imagine the next cancer drug patent lasting 2-3times as long. Generic drugs would take longer to make it to market, keeping the cost of potentially life saving medicine out of the reach to those who cant afford it.

One of the bigger parts of this bill is a re-introduction of SOPA/PIPA/CISPA legislation. In it, it would be a CRIMINAL act to have your computer “buffer” videos that are copy righted on the internet or share purchased information/products with others. Want to put a sound track to your new YouTube video? Well if you do, you’re now able to be prosecuted as a criminal. This agreement also allows companies to violate your first amendment rights by giving Telecoms the ability to censore your content online. For example, if you post something to Facebook that Time Warner doesn’t like, and Time Warner is your internet provider, Time Warner can remove your content from the internet.

Another of the many scary chapters in this agreement keeps the U.S. from regulating imported food domestically. It would force the U.S. to import food from other countries that we know wouldn’t meet our FDA standards and with the language as it reads, the FDA couldn’t step in and ban the food from market. So if we knew that China had a massive outbreak of mad cow disease in their beef, the U.S. couldn’t stop Chinese beef from being imported and put to market in our stores, or the U.S. would have to compensate those corporations for the ‘loss in profit’.

Finally, and most frightening in the entire agreement is the corporate tribunal system that would allow a group of corporate lawyers to act as judge, and jury when suing the U.S. government for lost ‘potential’ profits. Here’s how it works, 3 rotating judges would be selected for each case out of a pool of corporate lawyers that generally have worked for said corporations in the past. A corporation who wishes to sue our government for lost profits would take their case to the tribunal and then extract compensation from U.S. taxpayers. SO, lets say the U.S. has a regulation that says companies cannot dump toxic waste into our rivers and lakes. That corporation could sue the U.S. government for whatever amount it decides they lost in revenue from having to dispose of said waste according to our guidelines, essentially bypassing any laws we pass to protect ourselves. This part of the agreement literally takes all power away from the legislature to govern our country and removes any sense of democracy/republic we have left. Forget the Supreme Court, the Corporate Tribunal will be the final say as to whether or not a law is ‘constitutional’ according to this agreement.