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Trade Bill Fails In the House
schwit1 writes: President Obama suffered a major defeat to his Pacific Rim free trade initiative Friday as House Democrats helped derail a key presidential priority despite his last-minute, personal plea on Capitol Hill. "In a remarkable rejection of a president they have resolutely backed, House Democrats voted to kill assistance to workers displaced by global trade, a program their party created and has stood by for four decades. By doing so, they brought down legislation granting the president trade promotion authority — the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress — before it could even come to a final vote." This was after Silicon Valley heavyweights made a last minute push to pass the bill and the White House got personal with many Democratic lawmakers.
are the last vestige of the place congresscritters respect the will of their voters
in every other realm plutocrats own them
this will be "corrected"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
showing the Obama Democrats who's boss.
While the summary is trying to make this some kind of huge rebuff of the President by democrats in Congress, the only serious problem with this bill is it was for too long of a time period. Obama is only in office for another 18 months, and this fast track authority would have extended years after he is gone. This vote had almost nothing to do with democrats not trusting Obama; it was them not trusting the unknown President who will take his mantle a couple years from now.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Boehner, the GOP house speaker, spent much of the two years before the last election battling the Tea Party on stuff such as forcing a Fed. government shutdown over the ACA, etc.
It's a reminder that these guys are the leaders (or one of the leaders) of their party. They aren't dictators, even of their side of the aisle.
the power to negotiate trade deals that cannot be amended or filibustered by Congress
It is important to realize here that this does not mean that the bills would be automatically passed, rather that congress either has to say "yes" or "no," they can't add pork to the bill (like they tried on this one).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
To make it clear, this fight isn't over. The House and Senate can still hash out something to grant Fast-Track. The House still passed the Fast-Track part, it was only the assistance that failed and took the Fast-Track with it.
I get the feeling that House Democrats voted they way they did knowing it would further stall the Fast-Track vote; it would be a lot easier to get Republicans to vote against that than the Fast-Track itself.
... there is a long way to go before declaring victory here.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You do realize that the Government has already made similar deals with Canada and Mexico, so what we see now is simple hoodwinking. Wikileaks has blown their cover too many times and people are largely fed up. If they could have kept it all secret it would have happened, so now we have to find all of the back door bullshit they are pushing through elsewhere.
The US has not been Capitalist since at least Reagan, but at least until NAFTA we could say "pseudo capitalist". More and more control, more and more wealth redistribution where the majority goes to the wealthy, Fascism at it's purest definition.
How is that Utopia working out for all of you people that keep thinking more Government will solve all our problems? (Not directed at GP, just a general audience question)
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
That is all. ... next time don't mess with the best.
P.S.: Try this during Iowa (next time up) and we'll hand your hat to you ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute. Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo. While the Congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, to settle the conflict..."
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
It will be back. A little more time. A few more congressmen will be investigated and blackmailed. Small slips of paper with a string of offshore bank account numbers and a dollar figure will mysteriously appear on the desks of some wavering legislators, who know the money will be theirs if they cast a vote for TPP. It's all standard operating procedure in DC.
The oligarchs want this, and by hook or by crook, they'll get it.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
There were never any Obama Democrats. The first couple of years of this administration was all Nancy Pelosi. When she was kicked out, Harry Reid blocked pretty much anything significant until he was kicked out. Obama has never worked with Congress and doesn't know how to get anything done now that he should.
The TTP should be a Treaty, but what it is instead is a secret agreement that Congress would vote on as a regular bill, not a Treaty. The whole point of "fast track" is that it wouldn't be approved even on this basis, so the President needs advance approval on an agreement with terms that are not final and in any case cannot be legally revealed in public. (Congressmen and women have to go to a special room to read them, and can't take notes out.)
Never mind that this "trade agreement" really just represents corporations trying to get things through the back door they could never get through Congress directly, even if it just contained recipes for Apple pie it should be opposed by anyone who cares about our Constitutional system of Government. Treaties, or for that matter normal laws, can be negotiated in private, but they need to be discussed and passed in public.
How can we influence our elected officials if we don't know what is in the bill?
Let them eat cake!
Apparently it was not a personal plea, it was a 40 minute condescending lecture.
There's a quote in the summary but it's not attributed.
The Democrats voted against TAA (the fig-leaf program that pretends to help workers who lose their jobs to a new trade bill), which was contrary to their normal voting pattern, AS A TACTIC TO INDUCE A DELAY. "Fast Track" actually PASSED. Given that TAA and Fast Track passed together in the Senate, their failure to pass together in the House is a temporary shoe tossed into the gears of this monstrosity, BUT it can be overcome easily by the Senate simply mimicking what the House did.
This was political magic for a bunch of people; Democrats Senators will be able to tell their union supporters that they supported TAA (in the earlier Senate action), even as enough of them voted for Fast Track. Democrat House members will be able to say they stood against Fast Track, even though many supported it and the Senate may align their work with what the House did and thereby pass it. Many Republicans who opposed Fast Track were able to vote "yes" in order to placate their business backers even as the thing stalled. Many Republicans who oppose TAA but did not want to be the ones to kill it got to watch as the Dems did that, etc. Nearly every political group in DC got something they can use to deceive this or that voting block. Ultimately, the groups pushing this massive crap sandwich are going to demand it and get it, unless the public (from labor-concerned Dems, to sovereignty-concerned TEA Partiers) stand up and make it clear that votes out-weigh campaign cash.
After 200+ years, the congress critters have highly-optimized the political theater in Washington so their big money backers get what they want without the public getting too mad. They have gotten away with this garbage over and over again with things like NAFTA, the WTO, etc. People on the other side of the Atlantic have had the same thing done to them by their political elites.... The UK into the EU, followed by continual-but-never-filfilled promises of a public vote on that membership was such a trick that subsumed national rules into an international agreement. These things are all alike: they allow the wealthy and powerful to get what they want and the politicians to pretend to be powerless because: unaccountable international body and treaty. They never want the public to ask "WHO CREATED THAT BODY OR THAT TREATY?"
It allows corporations to bypass laws and even take a country to court if some law restricts a foreign company's trade, right?
It allows a corporation to bypass any democratically determined rule or regulation.
But in your mind that's because "too much government"? All I can say is ??????
What's with the "helped" bit? The House Reps were pretty solidly in favour of the Bill, the House Dems were pretty solidly against it.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
are the last vestige of the place congresscritters respect the will of their voters
No, it's not because they respect the voters. It's because it's time to nerf the boss's power in case we don't like the next one, or perhaps because they want to make a whole bunch of "it's in the interests of our people, honest" amendments to the treaty. When Congress votes themselves more power, I don't automatically think it's for altruistic purposes.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I don't know if any US president has ever over-stepped his authority as constantly as Obama.
You're full of it. Either that or you can't read.
Also, by standing by hired thugs instead of the oppressed people you reveal yourself to be a fascist cunt.
The strikers opened fire first, murdered a few Pinkertons, tried to burn alive Pinkertons who were attempting to surrender, and then after accepting the Pinkertons' surrender, proceeded to torture them.
Not at all suprising that Wikipedia conspicuously fails to mention this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Pinkerton agents attempted to disembark, and shots were fired. Conflicting testimony exists as to which side fired the first shot. John T. McCurry, a boatman on the steamboat Little Bill (which had been hired by the Pinkerton Detective Agency to ferry its agents to the steel mill) and one of the men wounded by the strikers, said: "The armed Pinkerton men commenced to climb up the banks. Then the workmen opened fire on the detectives. The men shot first, and not until three of the Pinkerton men had fallen did they respond to the fire. I am willing to take an oath that the workmen fired first, and that the Pinkerton men did not shoot until some of their number had been wounded."[29] But according to The New York Times, the Pinkertons shot first.[30] The newspaper reported that the Pinkertons opened fire and wounded William Foy, a worker.[30] Regardless of which side opened fire first, the first two individuals wounded were Frederick Heinde, captain of the Pinkertons,[31] and Foy. The Pinkerton agents aboard the barges then fired into the crowd, killing two and wounding 11. The crowd responded in kind, killing two and wounding 12. The firefight continued for about 10 minutes.[32]
After a few more hours, the strikers attempted to burn the barges. They seized a raft, loaded it with oil-soaked timber and floated it toward the barges. The Pinkertons nearly panicked, and a Pinkerton captain had to threaten to shoot anyone who fled. But the fire burned itself out before it reached the barges. The strikers then loaded a railroad flatcar with drums of oil and set it afire. The flatcar hurtled down the rails toward the mill's wharf where the barges were docked. But the car stopped at the water's edge and burned itself out. Dynamite was thrown at the barges, but it only hit the mark once (causing a little damage to one barge). At 2:00 p.m., the workers poured oil onto the river, hoping the oil slick would burn the barges; attempts to light the slick failed.[36]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The Pinkertons, too, wished to surrender. At 5:00 p.m., they raised a white flag and two agents asked to speak with the strikers. O'Donnell guaranteed them safe passage out of town. Upon arrival, their arms were stripped from them. With heads uncovered, to distinguish them from the mill hands, they passed along between two rows of guards armed with Winchesters.[41] As the Pinkertons crossed the grounds of the mill, the crowd formed a gauntlet through which the agents passed. Men and women threw sand and stones at the Pinkerton agents, spat on them and beat them. Several Pinkertons were clubbed into unconsciousness. Members of the crowd ransacked the barges, then burned them to the waterline.[42]
As the Pinkertons were marched through town to the Opera House (which served as a temporary jail), the townspeople continued to assault the agents. Two agents were beaten as horrified town officials looked on. The press expressed shock at the treatment of the Pinkerton agents, and the torrent of abuse helped turn media sympathies away from the strikers.[43]
That's your "Wikipedia conspiracy" you little fascist cunt.
Feel free to read up on events leading up to the
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Yes. Congress is MUCH more responsible with the use of their power than the President is.
Both cooperation and gridlock are preferable to a lone individual making US trade policy. Some national policies must have a national consensus of some sort.
You haven't been on this planet for long, have you? Just 'cause you get asked for your opinion every 4 years doesn't mean that it matters.
Actually most people forfeit offering an opinion by being loyal to a particular political party. When one is loyal to one party then both parties may ignore you. One already has your vote, the other cannot attain your vote.
Being a member of a party to promote an issue or message is fine. But do not vote for a party, vote for a candidate regardless of their party. That is the only way to make candidates care about your opinion.
Remember the true currency of politics is votes not money. As long as its one person one vote the 99% actually have the power, they just fail to use it. Party loyalty is one of various examples of how the 99% fails itself.
... the most anti-american event in the history of this country was 2010's citizens united ...
You don't seem to know what the Court said in Citizens United. What you read in the popular press and hear on TV is largely political spin mischaracterizing the decision. For example the "corporations are people" meme was a brilliant piece of spin by the losing side's PR team. What the Court actually said is:
(1) Groups of people have the same speech rights as individual persons.
(2) It does not matter what the nature of that group is; Trade union, corporation, activist organization, etc. They all have the same rights.
(3) Media corporations have no special privileges nor status. Every corporation has the same rights as a corporation that owns a TV station or newspaper.
Don't let anybody confuse you with the names and acronyms - that too is an evil tactic.
TPA (Trade Promotion Authority) aka "Fast Track" was actually publicly readable and was the big item voted upon. When opponents complain about secrecy, the TPA supporters will rightly (but misleadingly) point out that it is NOT secret. TPA is NOT a trade treaty, it is an end-run around the Constitution that is meant to "grease the skids" for the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) treaty which is the actual massive wad of evil and corruption (TPP is the actual secret law that members of congress can only read in a locked room and which Obama and the Chamber of Commerce do not trust the public to see while there is a chance to stop it). What the Chamber of Commerce tried to do was quietly pass the seemingly innocuous TPA now, and then several months from now TPP would slide right through the congress without any of the ugliness of debates and amendments (you know, all that Constitutional ickyness that interferes with the proper function of bribery and lies).
The president can negotiate any treaty he wants and the congress can vote any treaty up or down under normal Constitutional rules. The ONLY reason TPA is needed is to dodge the Constitution, violate the will of the people, and give members of congress political cover. If Obama and his new partners McConnel and Bonehead had a great treaty, they would easily get it through congress under normal order with the support of the public. With TPA, passage of TPP would go on auto-pilot and then later when many Americans are harmed by it, their representatives would say "don't blame ME, I'm powerless to do anything about it! It's all the fault of some nameless bureaucrat! Some international organization is doing that!" etc.
A Third acronym, TAA was the phony political-butt-covering that politicians have attached to all these sell-out of middle-class America agreements. It pretends to compensate American workers who lose their jobs to these trade agreements by pretending the government will cover some of their expenses for a short time and re-educate them to get better jobs. This never actually happens however. This TAA bill originally was to be funded by stripping billions from Medicare, but when older Americans found out, the congress critters who'd been bought by the Chamber of Commerce tried to save it by quickly changing the funding stream. This TAA (which was intended as a sop to quiet the unions just long enough to get TPP through) was the thing most Democrats and some Republicans voted "no" on. Some opposed it on principle and others as a tactic, but this whole TPA-TPP monstrosity of elite globalist megalomaniacs came withing a hair's width of passage and only stalled because TAA was tied to it and TAA failed. The vile people behind TPP never wanted TAA anyway and now that it is the only obstacle they will work overtime to overcome the speedbump.
Politicians in the "establishment" (bought-off by Wall St Investment bankers) of BOTH PARTIES are terrified that the public is waking-up to this and starting to understand how people can spend millions of dollars on campaigns to win sub-$200K jobs yet end-up as multi-millionaires. THAT is why you see supposed opponents like Boener, Pelosi, Obama, McConnel, and Reid all use the same sorts of rhetoric in their arguments for various recent bits of law like "we have to pass it so you can see what's in it..." (the opposite of sane legislating), "don't listen to what people on the internet are saying..." (ALWAYS suspect people who want you to wear blinders), "we need to pass this simple procedural 'enabling legislation' now, and we will fix all the stuff people don't like later..." (the fixes never happen because the bad stuff the people hate is actually the features the politicians and their owners want) and so-on.
Even now, as most of America sleeps, Bonehead is removing the safeties... he will not make that mistake again...
The Chamber of Crony Capitalists will not accept "no". They will push House Republicans to split these two issues apart and re-vote (and remember: the Democrats provided PLENTY of votes to pass the actually-important TPA today). The TAA was only a distraction the cronies allowed in an attempt to get more support for the TPA which is the hammer for driving the TPP spike which is the goal of the cronies. As an alternative, they will push the Senate to split the TAA from the TPA (so the arrangement matches the House vote) and ram it through that way as a Senate vote (if the House and Senate agree on something, it goes the the President and the chamber of cronies did not want the TAA anyway).
People need to hammer their Representatives and Senators with demands for a "no" vote on all 3 things (TAA, TPA, and TPP). There are plenty of Democrats willing to support TPA and TPP right now as proven by today's voting which provided a big bi-partisan "yes" on TPA.
TAA was never going to give anybody a same-or-better career (with same-or-better wages and benefits) to replace one lost to rich Wall Streeters getting even richer by selling-out the American middle class. It would theoretically provide "job training" to help the newly unemployed computer engineer to learn to flip burgers or clean the bed sores of nursing home patients for half the pay. After-all, if we are to the point of outsourcing and H1-B visa-ing our highest tech jobs then there's NOTHING better to re-train workers TO.
TPP, which TPA is designed to jam-through congress and TAA is meant to pacify "the little people", would over time effectively remove all the caps of the H1-B visa program by eliminating the need for the program by removing all the barriers to workers freely moving between countries. One TPP is in full effect, ANY American can be replaced by an immigrant without ANY requirement for a special worker visa. TPP also proposes to make it illegal to require data to be stored in any country - so when the federal govt sets up programs to hold patient healthcare data for example, and subcontracts to some service provider, it would not be able to (by international treaty) require that data to be stored in the US. The service industry desperately wants this so they can start pushing more service jobs out of the US because: Stock options and golden parachutes! cha-ching!. If the public complains that their health or tax data is in the hands of foreign workers in other countries, the politicians will claim to be powerless to do anything about it because it's controlled by a treaty that was pushed-through by that (by then) long-out-of-office-and-un-accountable President Obama and his equally-comfortably-retired friends Boehner and McConnell. The public will have no recourse - just like the English who's political leaders pretend to be powerless to stop waves of immigrants seeking benefits in the UK.... this is a global crime perpetuated by the global elite and their global banker friends.
At some point of time they have to deal with the fact that the president they elected from their ranks turned out to be a wolf in sheeps' clothing. And it will happen again. So just stop giving one person silly amounts of power, enough to corrupt a Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Not that the lesson would be different for Republicans but at least they don't need to overcome bipartisanship right now for stopping the accumulation of power at the top.
And the summary claiming the TPP grants "assistance to workers" is a real laff.
If someone else is willing to work for less than you, why do you want to force me to hire you? You are preventing the product from being made cheaper just by your existence. How is that a contribution to the world? At least the business owner is making something useful.
Is taxing foreign goods like affirmative action for inefficient workers? I mean seriously people talk about reverse discrimination and then they are willing to discriminate? How is that even possible?
The 99% always have the power. No dictator can rule without the approval - however grudgingly given - of his subjects. So why do they give that approval to someone like Saddam? Because in their mind there is an internalized image of the nation they happen to identify with, which is constantly telling them how to act, speak and think, and which gets constantly reinforced by and synchronized to other people's actions and reactions.
So why do people vote against their own interests? Because they're a member of a Group (democrats, republicans, evangelicals, greens, communists, whatever), and members of a Group vote in a certain way. Or, put another way, a person is a part of a community but the community is also a part of a person. So people are actually voting according to their interests, just not their personal interests.
I suspect the next big leap in human evolution is becoming fully aware of this mechanism and bringing it under conscious control. Currently it isn't, which is why strong identification with a group - such as a particular nation, ideology or religion - tends to lead to highly irrational behavior. Such groups don't have brains of their own, after all, so if the members just blindly obey, the end result is that it can't evaluate its own actions. We need more patriots who are willing to criticize their nation/church/party/shady backroom club/whatever, to treat it as a sports team that needs to be whipped into shape rather than an idol to be worshipped.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
True - even a country with as small an economy as Indonesia in 1975 can afFord to do it.
Although technically it was a party donation he did turn up to collect it in person the day East Timor was invaded. Thus a government run as a US inspired democratic republic was denounced as a bunch of communists and pressure, including a veto, was applied in the UN to stop any other countries from interfering with their obliteration.
So yes, it has happened and efforts to reduce the damage when it happens again are worthwhile.
This is a President who thinks himself a King. Not in this country, buddy.
E Proelio Veritas.
This is the same China that has largely pissed off the bulk of the Pacific by claiming absurd dominion over waters that are nowhere near territorial, yeah?
Sure that leadership role is going to work out swell for 'em.
The 99% would have power if it wasn't that the 1% decided what they can vote for.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The 99% would have power if it wasn't that the 1% decided what they can vote for.
That statement is as flawed as the original. The 99% get to pick the candidates in presidential primary elections too for example. You might notice a wide range of people running who are not the choices of the 1%. Whether they have a chance is up to the 99% not the 1%.
The reason a more socialized approach works in Nordic countries (and a few other places as well) is sadly this: tribalism. These are societies where there is a good chance everyone is distantly related as going way, way back, everyone was part of the same *tribe*.
When your neighbor is down on his luck, you don't mind him being on the dole as you both probably share the same great ^x grandfather. But if your new neighbor is visually, obviously from 'somewhere else', that's when the tribalist (read:racist) resentments kick in. Because the US is so heterogeneous, those differences are always there to be exploited by the cynical puppets of the (99% white) power structure, to keep all the various tribes at each others' throats, instead of them all realizing and turning on their common enemy.
Another issue is that individuals do not in general defeat groups. If you have ten million disaffected individuals and an army of a hundred thousand, the army prevails. The ten million will not rise up as one, and the army can shoot the individuals who make trouble first. Even if they did rise as one, the army could win, because it's an army. In WWII, we had examples (I'm using Yugoslavia here) where large numbers of brave Partisans faced badly led, badly trained, and badly equipped regular troops, and the partisans generally lost.
When the disaffected individuals form into groups, and get military training (like von Steuben trained Washington's army), they can win.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
For fucks sake child a lot of the people involved are still alive so just because the only information YOU can be bothered to find without cracking open a book is incomplete only demonstrates your own lack of understanding on a topic you appear to want to lecture me on for some illogical reason. Interesting revision on the lair thing - if that is actually true then I suggest in the future phrasing things so they look a lot less like "corrections" with an implied accusation of lying.
Your "commie" turned out not to be one by your own eventual admission and I'm sure you'll eventually find "the whole process was basically designed to give power to folks who didn't like the US Foreign policy stance" isn't true either since the US wasn't even considered in some of those situations until an interested US connected party turned up. Also with the Timor situation Kissenger was having internal disputes with the State department and getting them off Indonesia's back - the situation as run by Ford and Kissenger was contrary to US Foreign policy as it stood before the visit to Jakarta - Kissenger notably chastised his staff when one of them raised the issue of Indonesia violating the arms end-use agreement by using US supplied equipment for offence instead of defence. A large donation to the Republican party meant some laws could be ignored. Ford sold himself to a foreign power just for the sake of a Party donation.
Thus I have given my example. If you are too naive to take on on board so be it.