As reported in the Huffington Post today, President Obama is saying some mighty strange things about Sen. Elizabeth Warren:
"I love Elizabeth. We're allies on a whole host of issues, but she's wrong on this," Obama said. "When you hear folks make a lot of suggestions about how bad this trade deal is, when you dig into the facts, they are wrong."
Wrong on the Facts? Is President Obama suggesting that Elizabeth Warren has not read the text of the agreement that has been made available to her? Is he suggesting that she has misunderstood what she read? Or is he hinting at something worse.
Pres. Obama is not saying that Warren is wrong in her interpretation of the documents, or in her statements about the implications of the agreement, but in the actual facts of the agreement themselves.
If this is the case, President Obama could simply state which facts Senator Warren is mistaken about. That would indeed clear things up, and we could all go home.
Personally, I do not see Sen. Warren wrong about the facts. And from what I have read in the WikiLeaks published TPP Investment Chapter, she seems to be spot on. And in actual fact, her comments have been among the most incisive I have seen::
ISDS would allow foreign companies to challenge U.S. laws — and potentially to pick up huge payouts from taxpayers — without ever stepping foot in a U.S. court. Here’s how it would work. Imagine that the United States bans a toxic chemical that is often added to gasoline because of its health and environmental consequences. If a foreign company that makes the toxic chemical opposes the law, it would normally have to challenge it in a U.S. court. But with ISDS, the company could skip the U.S. courts and go before an international panel of arbitrators. If the company won, the ruling couldn’t be challenged in U.S. courts, and the arbitration panel could require American taxpayers to cough up millions — and even billions — of dollars in damages.
If that seems shocking, buckle your seat belt. ISDS could lead to gigantic fines, but it wouldn’t employ independent judges. Instead, highly paid corporate lawyers would go back and forth between representing corporations one day and sitting in judgment the next
I suggest President Obama should point out where Senator Warren is wrong. Baldly stating that she is wrong on the facts implies that she is not telling the truth. And this could be taken as a personal attack on her character. Such an attack is strikingly unfair, given that the text of the agreement is not available to the public for their own understanding.