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Fast Track Bill Would Legitimize White House Secrecy and Clear the Way for Anti-User Trade Deals
Fast Track Bill Would Legitimize White House Secrecy and Clear the Way for Anti-User Trade Deals
April 16, 2015
Following months of protest, Congress has finally put forth bicameral Fast Track legislation today to rush trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) through Congress. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden, and Rep. Paul Ryan, respectively, introduced the bill titled the Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015. With Fast Track, lawmakers will be shirking their constitutional authority over trade policy, letting the White House and the U.S. Trade Representative pass Internet rules in back room meetings with corporate industry groups. If this passes, lawmakers would only have a small window of time to conduct hearings over trade provisions and give a yea-or-nay vote on ratification of the agreement without any ability to amend it before they bind the United States to its terms.
The Fast Track bill contains some minor procedural improvements from the version of the bill introduced last year. However, these fixes will do little to nothing to address the threats of restrictive digital regulations on users rights in the TPP or TTIP. The biggest of these changes is language that would create a new position of Chief Transparency Officer that would supposedly have the authority to “consult with Congress on transparency policy, coordinate transparency in trade negotiations, engage and assist the public, and advise the United States Trade Representative on transparency policy.” ...However, given the strict rules of confidentiality of existing, almost completed trade deals and those outlined in the Fast Track bill itself, we have no reason to believe that this officer would have much power to do anything meaningful to improve trade transparency, such as releasing the text of the agreement to the public prior to the completion of negotiations. As it stands, the text only has to be released to the public 60 days before it is signed, at which time the text is already locked down from any further amendments.
There is also a new "consultation and compliance" procedure, about which Public Citizen writes:
The bill’s only new feature in this respect is a new “consultation and compliance” procedure that would only be usable after an agreement was already signed and entered into, at which point changes to the pact could be made only if all other negotiating parties agreed to reopen negotiations and then agreed to the changes (likely after extracting further concessions from the United States). That process would require approval by 60 Senators to take a pact off of Fast Track consideration, even though a simple majority “no” vote in the Senate would have the same effect on an agreement. Thus, essentially the Fast Track bill does the same as it ever did—tying the hands of Congress so that it is unable to give meaningful input into the agreement during its drafting, or to thoroughly review the agreement once it is completed.
.....But more troubling than what has been included in the negotiating objectives, is what has been excluded. There is literally nothing to require balance in copyright, such as the fair use right. On the contrary; if a country's adoption of a fair use style right causes loss to a foreign investor, it could even be challenged as a breach of the agreement, under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions. Further, the "Intellectual Property" section of today's bill is virtually identical to the version introduced in 2002, and what minor changes there are do not change the previous text's evident antipathy for fair use. So while the new bill has added, as an objective, "to ensure that trade agreements foster innovation and promote access to medicines," an unchanged objective is "providing strong enforcement of intellectual property rights." What happens if those two objectives are in conflict? For example, in many industries, thin copyright and patent restrictions have proven to be more conducive to innovation than the thick, "strong" measures the bill requires. Some of our most innovative industries have been built on fair use and other exceptions to copyright—and that's even more obvious now than it was in 2002. The unchanged language suggests the underlying assumption of the drafters is that more IP restrictions mean more innovation and access, and that's an assumption that's plainly false. . . .All in all, we do not see anything in this bill that would truly remedy the secretive, undemocratic process of trade agreements. Therefore, EFF stands alongside the huge coalition public interest groups, professors, lawmakers, and individuals who are opposed to Fast Track legislation that would legitimize the White House's corporate-captured, backroom trade negotiations. The Fast Track bill will likely come to a vote by next week—and stopping it is one sure-fire way to block the passage of these secret, anti-user deals.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/fasttrack-bill-legitimize-white-house-secrecy-and-clear-way-anti-user
68 replies
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and it is not supported by liberals. It's supported by the New Democrat Coalition(aka "old Republicans"
, that bills itself as "centrist" and pro business. The NDC is also in bed with Wall Street.
which required super majority votes in favor of such treaties and a lot more visibility and time to work out the details than Fast Track would allow.
NAFTA is an example of what the TPP will do to us that has destroyed American jobs and lead to a huge trade deficit that we hadn't had in this country before it was passed, which ultimately leads to the huge debts we have now that the Republicans use as an excuse to not invest in any thing through government to help make most Americans lives better at a time when they sorely need it!
TPP is about the wealthy and powerful being obsessed with getting more and not knowing when to stop and pushing us all to the brink in the process. Thom Hartmann is so right when he renames this SHAFTA instead.
Anybody who supports Fast Track in my book should be voted out of office. And I include Senator Wyden in that statement, who I now want to see primaried by Pete DeFazio here in Oregon, as much as I like what he's done in other areas in congress. It is really that bad a bill in my book, and is that big a sign of a politician selling out to the powerful elites and surrender his/her mission of serving the people who voted for him that traditionally politicians have had as their responsibility.
We need 300 million 'experts' in...well, everything. 
[hr][font color="blue"][center]There is nothing you can't do if you put your mind to it.
Nothing.[/center][/font][hr]
Read the leaked document.
TPP Job Claims Earn 4 Pinocchios!
U.S. workers should beware of promises that the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) will create jobs. When evaluating the recent Obama administration claim that the TPP will create 650,000 jobs, the Washington Post’s Fact Checker gave it the lowest possible rating of Four Pinocchios—aka “Whopper.” Fact Checker editor Glenn Kessler wrote:
Be wary whenever a politician claims a policy will yield bountiful jobs. In this case, the correct number is zero, not 650,000, according to the very study used to calculate this number. Administration officials earn Four Pinocchios for their fishy math.
We agree. After asking the administration for more than four years for information on expected jobs gains from the TPP—by industry and geography—we have still not received any information. Given the job performance of prior so-called “free trade agreements” (FTAs) such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (nearly 700,000 jobs lost) and the U.S.-Korea FTA (60,000 jobs lost), we view any promises about trade and job creation with extreme skepticism. And so should we all.
Read the complete article here.
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Political-Action-Legislation/TPP-Job-Claims-Earn-4-Pinocchios
Here's more from the AFL-CIO YouTube Channel:
And more:
AFL-CIO: Tell Congress Fast Track Is a Bad Deal
04/02/2015
When Congress returns from its Easter/Passover recess, it will continue its debate on Fast Track trade authority for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and try to rush it to a vote as soon as possible. That’s why your lawmakers need to hear from you that Fast Track is a mistake we can’t afford to make. . . . . . . Click here to contact your representatives now and tell them to stand up for workers and democracy by opposing Fast Track when it comes to a congressional vote.
Fast Track is an extreme deal written by the big banks and big corporations. Wall Street says that Fast Track and bad trade deals will create jobs and that we don’t want China to write the rules. But allowing closed-door negotiations of trade deals that affect real working people like you and me rigs the rules for global corporations and leaves us behind. It is a mistake that we can’t afford to make again. . . . . . . . . Fast Track and the bad trade deals that will follow won’t create American jobs. When trade deals are fast tracked, jobs go overseas, increased safety measures go out the window and workers’ wages go down. And that can’t happen--because America's workers support trade, too.
It’s time for Congress to put working families first. Working families deserve a trade policy that encourages an open-door, democratic process available to all, not just the 1%.
Also you can sign the AFL-CIO's Fast Track petition.
the burden of proof rests with those promoting such agreements, not with those defending democratic process & Congressional authority.
It is somewhat disingenuous for such an agreement to be peddled to Congress by first asking Congress to give up, in advance, their constitutional authority (by removing the leverage Congress constitutionally possesses by virtue of Congress's power not only to approve or disapprove, but to amend with the threat of filibuster), not only for the TPP, not only for the TTIP, but also for any other "trade" agreement that might be proposed by whoever may be president for the next 6 years.
And it is disingenuous to expect those who oppose such surrender of Congressional authority to bear the burden of proving why a future agreement should be rejected, and to imply that if they cannot prove the case against any and all future "deals" 6 years in advance of whatever might be proposed, that the defenders of democratic process should be expected to approve, in advance, a process that not only surrenders Congressional authority for present and future "trade" agreements, but enacts a process that requires a supermajority to remove a future "trade" agreement from the Fast Track process.
That kids in college love to engage in at some times...
