How the Media Misrepresent Obama’s “Fast Track” “Secret” International Trade Deals

[djean111]

1. This cannot be said enough - and is contrary to the "oh, this is ALWAYS how this is done" lies -

Only 16 times since Nixon was in the White House has his Fast-Track TPA been applied, and yet hundreds of free-trade agreements have passed Congress without any need for (or application of) Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority during that time. How and why has this been so, and why does the public not know these crucially important things?

TPA, or “Fast Track,” is the device that is used only when a President wants to ram through Congress a trade-deal that would never be able to pass Congress under the traditional, and fully Constitutional, method, because these are the few trade-deals that have provisions in them that, for the typical member of Congress, would cause him or her to lose the congressional seat if he or she didn’t at least try to get the bill amended before it was passed. In other words: only fascistic, or outrageously pro mega-corporate, trade deals, need TPA in order for them to pass Congress. That’s why Nixon initiated TPA. It works as he intended it would.

Fast Track just lets the president ram through corporate deals - this is NOT about countries, it is about corporate rules over countries - and enables Congress to cover its ass at home.

Why not let the few chapters that are actually about trade stand on their own? No, most of the TPP - and TTIP, I believe, judging from the anger in the EU - is about corporate power. It is almost like we are being told that everything - every law, every rule, every regulation - has to do with trade, and, as such, shoud be decided by corporations. That, IMO, is what is being handed to corporations - globally - on a silver platter.