trading democracy

[Guest guest]

It is not often that we advertise for TV programs, but we'll make an exception

this time. On Tuesday February 5th at 10:00 PM we should all be watching a Bill

Moyers documentary on PBS entitled: " Trading Democracy. "

 

" Trading Democracy " is a one-hour documentary that covers, in understandable

terms, the legal and technical aspects of NAFTA's investor rules. These rules

allow corporations to sue countries directly to overturn legitimate public

interest laws and regulations when they believe their actual or potential

corporate profits have been undermined. Incredibly, these suits are decided in

secret by unelected bureaucrats who have been given the power to determine

whether laws ranging from zoning ordinances to environmental protections

constitute an interference with corporate profits.

 

Already Chapter 11 has led to corporate assaults against health, safety and

environmental laws, with one company demanding compensation close to $1 billion.

Beyond that, even " Buy America " laws intended to protect our country's steel

industry are now under attack by multi-national corporate profiteers.

 

Amazingly, the Bush Administration is now in negotiations to expand this

dangerous NAFTA investor provision to 31 more countries in the hemisphere,

through the so-called Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The first step in

paving the way to this expansion of the reach of Chapter 11 will be a soon-to-be

held senate vote on the Baucus/Grassley Fast Track bill.

 

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WHAT CAN YOU DO? Below are three simple and straight forward, and important

things you can do to ensure your voice is heard:

 

1) FEBRUARY 6th: ALL-CALL DAY TO YOUR SENATORS! Urge your Senators to oppose

these outrageous " investor-to-state " provisions in trade and investment

agreements, and DEMAND that they vote against the Baucus/Grassley Fast Track

bill. Its weak language (contained in the foreign investment section of the

bill) would lead to further corporate assaults on the environment, and on health

and safety regulations. Tell your senator that Chapter 11 investor rules

undermine our democratic rights to choose our own laws to protect the

environment, as well as our health and safety, and that a meaningful and

substantial revision of this terrible NAFTA provision is necessary. (For a

list of some necessary revisions to Chapter 11, check out the letter from

Congressman Doggett (D-TX) on our web-page:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/Fast_Track_-Doggett,Eshoo_Chp._11,_Pres._Bush_1\

..pdf).

YOUR SENATOR MAY BE REACHED BY CALLING THE U.S. CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD AT

202-224-3121, OR 202-225-3121.

 

2) Tell everyone you know about the program and urge them to watch this

incredible expose. (You can send electronic postcards by visiting

www.thirteen.org/moyers/trading_democracy/index.php). Tape the show and arrange

for a screening of it to friends/family/colleagues later on.

 

3) Send a letter to the editor about Chapter 11. You can find some sample

letters on our web-site:

http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/CH__11/articles.cfm?ID=6692. We will also

post a sample op-ed and letters to your elected officials on this site after the

program has aired so keep checking the site!

 

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Want more information about Chapter 11? Visit these links: Public Citizen

released a comprehensive report on Chapter 11 called: " NAFTA Chapter 11

Investor-to-State Cases: Bankrupting Democracy " :

http://www.citizen.org/publications/release.cfm?ID=7076

 

There is also a shorter article from Multinational Monitor " NAFTA's Investor

" Rights " A Corporate Dream, A Citizen Nightmare " that is well worth reading:

http://www.essential.org/monitor/mm2001/01april/corp1.html

 

Several organizations have also released information on Chapter 11, including

Center for International Environmental Law (www.ciel.org), Friends of the Earth

(www.foe.org) and the Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org).

 

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BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY REVEALS HOW AN OBSCURE PROVISION

HIDDEN IN NAFTA CAN COST TAXPAYERS MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WHEN MULTINATIONAL

CORPORATIONS SUE` THE GOVERNMENT OVER ENVIRONMENTAL AND HEALTH LAWS THAT

THREATEN THEIR PROFITS

 

 

Documentary Exposing How NAFTA's Chapter 11

Has Become Private Justice For Foreign Companies

 

Premieres February 5, at 10:00 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings)

 

Newest Collaboration Between Bill Moyers And Sherry Jones

Investigating Our Democracy At Risk

 

 

Three years after a Mississippi jury found a Canadian-based conglomerate

guilty of fraud in attempting to put a family-owned Biloxi funeral home out

of business, the Canadian company filed a claim against the United States,

demanding $725 million in compensation.

 

When California banned a gasoline additive that had contaminated drinking

water throughout the state, another Canadian firm sued the U.S. government

to force citizens to pay nearly 1 billion dollars for its potential lost

profits.

 

In what one attorney called " an end-run around the Constitution, "

corporations are using a little-known provision of the North American Free

Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to challenge public laws, regulations and jury

verdicts not only in the United States, but in Canada and Mexico as well.

And, they are arguing those cases not in courts of law, but before secret

trade tribunals.

 

How can this be happening? And why do so few people know about it?

 

In the latest in their series of exposés on the secret recesses of American

democracy, Bill Moyers and Sherry Jones uncover how multinational

corporations have acquired the power to demand compensation if laws aimed at

protecting the environment or public health harm them financially. The

one-hour documentary, BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY, premieres

February 5 at 10:00 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

 

" When the North American Free Trade Agreement became the law of the land

almost a decade ago, the debate we heard was about jobs, " notes Bill Moyers.

" One provision was too obscure to stir up controversy. It was called

Chapter 11, and it was supposedly written to protect investors from having

their property seized by foreign governments. But since NAFTA was ratified,

corporations have used Chapter 11 to challenge the powers of government to

protect its citizens, to undermine environmental and health laws, even

attack our system of justice. "

 

Speaking with legislators, public policy experts, community leaders and

citizens about the lawsuits filed under NAFTA's Chapter 11, BILL MOYERS

REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY unravels the hidden repercussions of a treaty

that was supposed to promote democracy through free trade, but now appears

to have given deep-pocketed corporations the means to undermine democracy

across international borders.

 

The program explores the case of Methanex, a Canadian company that is the

world's largest producer of the key ingredient in the gasoline additive

MTBE, which was found to be a carcinogen. In 1995 MTBE began turning up in

wells throughout California, and by 1999 had contaminated thirty public

water systems. The state ordered that the additive be phased out. Methanex

filed suit under NAFTA's Chapter 11, seeking $970 million in compensation

for loss of market share and, consequently, future profits.

 

With regard to the Methanex case, environmental attorney Martin Wagner tells

Moyers, " they're saying that California either can't implement this

protection or that they get a billion dollars. People should be outraged by

that. "

 

As Moyers reports, many people who have been affected by MTBE contamination

are indeed outraged. But they are helpless to do anything. The NAFTA

tribunal that will decide the Methanex case - like all the tribunals hearing

Chapter Eleven-based cases - is closed to the public. Yet, it is the

taxpayers " who will foot the bill if the tribunal decides in favor of the

Canadian company, " says Moyers.

 

But the ramifications for the public go well beyond the loss of taxpayer

dollars, a journalist William Greider explains. " If Methanex wins its

billion dollar claim over California environmental law, there ain't gonna be

many states enacting that law, are there? " he says, adding that the NAFTA

provision " hobbles the authority of government to act in the broader public

interest. And, in fact, that was the idea in the first place. "

 

Addressing a Chapter 11 case in which the Ethyl Corporation, an American

manufacturer of another gasoline additive called MMT, successfully sued

Canada over a ban on the product, Greider tells Moyers: " Governments are

already being intimidated by the mere threat of a claim being filed against

some regulatory action. If you're a civil servant, or even a political

leader, you've got to think twice when a corporate lawyer comes to you and

says, quite forcefully, we're going to hit you for a half a billion dollars

if you do this. "

 

Moyers also takes his investigation south of the border to the Mexican state

of San Luis Potosí, where an American company called Metalclad tried to

bulldoze over the protests of both state and local governments to reopen a

toxic waste dump that many citizens feared was making them sick. When

Metalclad was stopped by the local town council the company invoked Chapter

11 and was awarded $16 million in compensation. The crux of Metalclad's

victory was the Chapter 11 phrase " tantamount to expropriation. " As Martin

Wagner explains: " Not only do governments have to compensate when they

expropriate or take away property, but they have to do so whenever they do

something that is 'tantamount to expropriation'. "

 

Challenges being mounted under Chapter 11 are not only directed

toward regulatory activity, they are also successfully overruling jury

decisions in civil courts of law. The documentary explores a case in

Mississippi where a Biloxi funeral home owner was awarded punitive damages

by a jury in a civil suit against a large Canadian corporation called the

Loewen Group. The local funeral home owner alleged that the Loewen Group had

engaged in " fraudulent " and " predatory " trade practices, and the jury found

against the Canadian company. Three years later, the Loewen Group filed a

Chapter 11 claim against American taxpayers saying the jury was biased

against Canadians, and in a preliminary ruling, the NAFTA tribunal has

declared the Mississippi trial a legitimate target. The Loewen suit, notes

Moyers, " could conceivably open the U.S. civil justice system to challenge -

including decisions of the United States Supreme Court. "

 

This startling realization, and the knowledge that corporate

giants are pushing to expand NAFTA to 31 more countries in the Western

Hemisphere, prompts Moyers to ask, " Are we promoting democracy - as we claim

- or trading it away? "

 

TRADING DEMOCRACY is the latest collaboration between Bill

Moyers and producer Sherry Jones, who produced TRADE SECRETS: A MOYERS

REPORT in March 2001. Their previous productions include WASHINGTON'S OTHER

SCANDAL, the Peabody-winning investigation of campaign finance scandals in

the 1996 Presidential elections, and the Emmy-winning HIGH CRIMES AND

MISDEMEANORS for PBS's Frontline series.

 

Major funding for BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY was

provided by The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; The Kohlberg

Foundation, Inc.; The Herb Alpert Foundation; and The Bernard and Audre

Rapoport Foundation. Corporate funding was provided by Mutual of America

Life Insurance Company.

 

BILL MOYERS REPORTS: TRADING DEMOCRACY is produced by Public

Affairs Television, Inc., in association with Washington Media Associates,

and is presented on PBS by Thirteen/WNET New York. Producer: Sherry Jones

editor Jennifer Beman-White; Associate Producers: Christopher Buchanan and

Matilda Bode; Executive Editors: Bill Moyers and Judith Davidson Moyers;

Executives in Charge: Judy Doctoroff O'Neill, Judith Davidson Moyers;

Executive Producer: Felice Firestone; Executive Director of Special

Projects: Deborah Rubenstein.

 

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For more information on " Trading Democracy " :

Kristin Fellows

TRADING DEMOCRACY Outreach and Promotion

Kelly & Salerno Communications

kfellows

703-780-4006