US Senate Manages Non-Debate Democracy Corporatacracy Fast-Track TPP Advancement Bill Fiasco Approach

""The decision on whether to surrender the authority of the US Congress to amend and potentially improve trade agreements goes to the very heart of whether the United Statesrespects democracy. If members of the House and Senate cannot check and balance executive branch choices that will define the economic future of the country, then the ability of the American people to petition for the redress of economic and social grievances and to have those grievances addressed by their elected representatives is severely undermined. That is what is at stake with debates about whether to eliminate basic congressional oversight of trade deals, via the “fast track” Trade Promotion Authority that President Obama seeks.

The vote Thursday by the Senate to shut down debate on a measure to provide Obama with this authority was the first step in the deconstruction of the democratic processes by which citizens can influence not just trade but economic policy. If the Senate now approves fast track, and if the House goes along with the plan, then the ability to alter or improve sweeping new trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be lost. All that will remain is a take-it-or-leave-it vote on final approval of a deal negotiated behind closed doors and without adequate scrutiny by the American people or their elected representatives.

It came when 13 Democrats joined 49 Republicans in supporting a cloture motion Thursday. Thirty-one Democrats, two independents who caucus with the Democrats, and five Republicans opposed the move to shut down debate about amendments and to effectively restrict meaningful discourse on what the measure’s sponsor, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, described as “quite possibly the most important debate that we’ll have all year in Congress.”

Among the senators who are current or potential presidential prospects, Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, voted “no,” as did Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts. So, too, did Senator Rand Paul, R-Kentucky. But Republicans Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida sided with the Obama White House and the corporate interests that have advocated aggressively for fast track and the TPP.

The Senate’s 62-38 decision to end debate on the president’s proposal to fast-track what could be the largest trade deals in American history was a travesty.""

http://www.thenation.com/blog/207921/no-debate-equals-no-democracy-folly-fast-track

The Dragnet Surveillance Program, NSA's Gem of Tracking World Phone Telecommunications, at an End?

""Congress is up against a tight deadline to extend or reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the provision that the government claims authorizes the National Security Agency’s phone-data program, before it sunsets on June 1. Naturally, the legislature is in a state of disarray.

The House has already passed the USA Freedom Act, which would put modest limits on the intelligence agency for the first time in decades. Now the Senate is under pressure to act before lawmakers leave for recess Thursday afternoon. If they do nothing, Section 215 will expire hours before they return to Washington, imperiling not only the phone records program but whatever other still-secret intelligence-gathering activities the government conducts under the statute.

The USA Freedom Act is hardly radical. One of its main components—mandating that phone companies store phone records instead of the government—was initially suggested by former NSA Director Keith Alexander, and it’s been endorsed by President Obama. But a major blockage to the reform bill has been Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who proposed instead to extend the current version of Section 215 for five years, and then last week offered a two-month extension. GOP leadership in the House indicated that an extension of any length was a non-starter and that they would not wait around while the Senate hemmed and hawed. In other words, McConnell could accept the USA Freedom Act, or nothing.

On Tuesday McConnell retreated slightly, and announced that he would allow a vote on the reform bill. It isn’t clear if it has the 60 votes needed to pass; McConnell seemed to be betting that it would fail and Congress might then accept a short-term extension rather than letting Section 215 expire completely.

Things got even more dramatic on Wednesday afternoon, when Rand Paul showed up to stage a “filibuster.”At the time of this writing Paul is speaking on the Senate floor, but it’s not totally clear what he’s doing there. It’s not technically a filibuster, and the first thing it disrupts will likely be work on the fast-track trade bill. There’s some speculation that Paul is trying to run out the clock in order to block both a clean extension of Section 215 and the USA Freedom Act, which he opposes on the grounds that it does not go far enough (as do some civil-liberties groups). Whatever his other goals are, it’s definitely at least partly a campaign stunt. “As you read this, I will be on the Senate floor to launch my filibuster to stop ANY extension or reauthorization of the ‘PATRIOT Act’s’ unconstitutional and illegal domestic spying programs,” he wrote to donors.

Oregon Senator and NSA critic Ron Wyden joined Paul on the floor, where he promised “to use every procedural tool available to me” to prevent an extension of the bulk-phone-records program. Wyden also criticized supporters of surveillance programs for waiting until the last minute and then claiming, “‘Oh my goodness! It is a dangerous world! We’ve got to continue this program to protect us.’” As he and Paul chatted, Wyden suggested that they could continue indefinitely.""

http://www.thenation.com/blog/207857/patriot-act-fight-enters-twilight-zone

Obama's Lobbying on the Trans-Pacific Trade Deal (TPP) So Far Rejected on Senate Floor

""President Obama takes it personally when Americans disagree with his free-trade fundamentalism. He keeps griping about the Democrats who usually support his agenda but are ardently opposed to his request for “fast-track” authority to bypass congressional input and oversight on a sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

The president has from the start of the debate over fast track and the TPP had a practical problem: If most congressional Democrats align with labor, environmental and human rights activists rather than the White House --  as they appear intent upon doing — they can block Obama's trade agenda. In the Senate, just 40 votes are required to erect a procedural barrier to fast-track legislation. In the House, a reasonably united Democratic caucus could align with the significant number of Republicans who have traditionally opposed unrestricted free trade to thwart fast track and/or the TPP itself.

On Tuesday, the first major test came in the Senate, and the president lost. Sixty votes were required to open a debate on fast track, but only 52 senators voted to go forward. Forty-two Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats, Vermont's Bernie Sanders and Maine's Angus King, voted "no."

The trade fight is not finished; negotiations with Senate Republicans who favor Obama's agenda could make the fast-track proposal more attractive to at least a few wavering Democrats. And if that happens, expect Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to exercise the option he has retained to bring the issue up again.

Unless and until that happens, however,  the president has taken a hard hit. It happened because a number of traditionally pro-free trade Democrats, who had been expected to vote with Obama and the Republicans, joined with the Senate's growing caucus of fair-trade Democrats to block action.

This was what the president feared would happen.

In the run-up to Tuesday's vote, the president made no secret of his frustration with his fellow Democrats.

“There have been a bunch of critics about trade deals generally and the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” he told the crowd that was assembled last week for his appearance at the corporate headquarters of Nike, a US-based firm that (with its contractors) now employs roughly 40 overseas workers for every one American. “[What’s] interesting is typically they’re my friends coming from my party."

Instead of listening to their objections, however, Obama simply announced that he was right and the Democrats who have backed him on so many other issues were wrong.

The problem is that has "evidence" the president has mustered on behalf of fast track and the TPP is unconvincing. In part that's because, as Bernie Sanders warned with regard to proponents of free-trade deals during Tuesday's Senate debate, "These folks have been proven wrong time after time after time." But there is also the fact that the current promises are so hollow. Consider the case of Nike and that 40-1 ratio. Even if every promise about the benefits of free trade and the TPP were to come true—an exceptionally unlikely prospect if the history of trade pacts is any guide—the ratio of overseas workers to Americans employed by Nike and its contractors would shift to somewhere in the range of 30-1. That best-casescenario, everyone admits, would take more than a decade to be achieved. And, though fewer admit it, much of the new employment would likely involve technical workers developing automated production schemes that reduce rather than increase living-wage employment in the US and abroad.

These are points that foes of Trade Promotion Authority and the TPP have made in precise and thoughtful detail, and with substantial support from economists and policy analysts.

Yet, Obama has dismissed those who disagree with him as somehow wrongheaded and ignorant. “[What’s] interesting is typically they’re my friends coming from my party,” he said of the fast-track and TPP critics. “And they’re my fellow travelers on minimum wage and on job training and on clean energy and on every progressive issue, they’re right there with me. And then on this, they’re like whupping on me.”

Why does the president think this is so? “[On] this issue, on trade,” he says, “I actually think some of my dearest friends are wrong. They’re just wrong.”

Obama’s criticisms of fellow Democrats, which became more and more intense as Tuesday's Senate vote approached, disregarded not just the honest concerns of Democratic members of the House and Senate but the sincere objections of union members, environmentalists, civil-rights and human-rights activists.

Ultimately, the president's approach harmed his own credibility, as his comments created the impression that he was unaware of the long experience, and the deep insight, possessed by progressive critics of free-trade absolutism. The largest and steadiest public-education project on a major economic issue in modern history has played out over the past quarter-century in union halls and church basements and community centers across the country, as Americans have wrestled with the promises and realities of trade policy.

The people the president keeps saying are “wrong”—a group that includes Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Sanders and most House Democrats -- are not unthinking protectionists or crude isolationists. They are supporters of workers, the environment, and human rights in the United States and abroad. They have come to recognize that, while fair trade holds immense promise, free trade along the lines the United States has practiced it in recent decades has done immense damage.

The most ardent opponents of fast track and the TPP have first-hand experience with failed trade policies. They have seen what the North American Free Trade Agreement, the permanent normalization of trade with China and other trade arrangements have done to their communities.Their current position is rooted in an understanding that, as Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison (a co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and an early supporter of Obama’s 2008 presidential run) says, “We cannot afford to rush through another NAFTA that values corporate profits above families.”

As a presidential candidate in 2008, Obama visited many of those communities and stood side-by-side with many of the leading opponents of ill-conceived and poorly administered trade agreements. He decried “a Washington where decades of trade deals like NAFTA and China have been signed with plenty of protections for corporations and their profits, but none for our environment or our workers who’ve seen factories shut their doors and millions of jobs disappear…”

Now, Obama suggests that those he sided with in 2008 are clueless in 2015.

That is not the case.

“American workers have seen the effects of unfair foreign trade on their jobs and manufacturing facilities—they don’t need their elected leaders making personal attacks on each other during an important policy debate,” says Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat who remembers when Obama stood with the critics of failed free-trade policies.

“During the 2008 presidential primary, I watched President Obama argue in Cleveland that we should renegotiate NAFTA. Instead, we’ve seen more empty promises of jobs through exports while American workers are hit with a flood of imports and jobs shipped overseas,” says Brown. “It’s clear that the American public doesn’t support these trade deals and I am disappointed the president has resorted to name calling in an attempt to shift the debate.”

Brown’s opposition to fast track and the TPP is inspired by what he has seen happen to Ohio communities like his hometown of Mansfield, and in statistics that confirm the failure of trade deals to live up to promises made by Republican and Democratic presidents:

The Obama Administration predicted that the South Korea Free Trade Agreement would create 70,000 jobs and deliver up to $11 billion in exports. Instead, it only increased U.S. exports to Korea by $1 billion, while Korean imports have skyrocketed to more than $12 billion. The growing good trade deficit with Korea has eliminated over 75,000 jobs in the last three years.

The U.S. already has a trade deficit with Japan and 10 other countries included in the TPP. Since 1997, the deficit with these countries has increased by $151.4 billion.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, a Democrat who has worked on trade policy since the 1980s, explains that the president’s suggestion that his critics do not understand the issue is “absolutely inaccurate.”

“We know exactly what we’re talking about,” says Slaughter, the daughter of a coal miner who has charted trade-related factory closings and job losses in her upstate New York district for decades. “My concern is that he does not understand what’s in it.""

http://www.thenation.com/blog/206897/why-so-many-democrats-rejected-obamas-lobbying-trans-pacific-trade-deal

Gun Restrictions and Ammo Bans!: US Congress Facilitates Shady Moves Against the American People

ACTION: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Orrin Hatch may soon give the President authority to write gun control restrictions into a “trade agreement.” So click here to contact your Senators –- whether they are liberal or conservative. Urge them to vote against the anti-gun “fast track” bill (S. 995).

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Will UN-style gun control be rammed down our throats?

""Gun import bans ... Microstamping of firearms ... Ammunition bans ... The full implementation of the anti-gun UN Arms Trade Treaty ... Illegal amnesty which locks in millions of new, anti-gun voters.

This anti-gun wish list could be part of the secret trade agreement that President Obama is getting ready to spring on the Congress.

This trade pact is called “fast track,” and what it means is that Obama can write any form of gun control he chooses into a trade agreement -- import bans, amnesty, etc.

And this agreement DOESN’T need two-thirds vote in the Senate, as a treaty would. When completed, the agreement is merely subject to a majority vote in both Houses ... it can't be filibustered ... it can't be amended ... and the GOP can't refuse to consider it.

Top Secret TPP means you won’t know what’s in the bill

Reports have already surfaced that the TOP SECRET draft contains a whole chapter with a European Union-style provision allowing unlimited migration from Mexico into the United States. This would fulfill Obama’s dream -- which he begun with Executive Amnesty -- to import millions of new anti-gun (liberal) voters into the country.

Of course, we can't quote for you any of the language in the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement because the document is TOP SECRET. Obama won't reveal it, even to most congressmen, until Congress has given it its imprimatur by allowing it to pass under fast track procedures.

On Monday, Politico reported:

If you want to hear the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal the Obama administration is hoping to pass, you’ve got to be a member of Congress, and you’ve got to go to classified briefings and leave your staff and cellphone at the door.

If you’re a [congressional] member who wants to read the text, you’ve got to go to a room in the basement of the Capitol Visitor Center and be handed it one section at a time, watched over as you read, and forced to hand over any notes you make before leaving.

And no matter what, you can’t discuss the details of what you’ve read.

Truly, even more than with ObamaCare, this is a case of "You have to pass it to find out what's in it."

Some Republicans are being duped

But that's not all: The fast track authority being granted to Obama and his successor for the next six years applies to whatever type of trade negotiation Obama chooses to enter into.

So, if he can write the UN Arms Trade Treaty into a trade agreement, then it can't be filibustered or amended or prevented from consideration.""

http://www.gunowners.org/alert5072015.htm

US Army Recruiting Illegal Immigrants by the Border Truckload

""The Pentagon is speeding up its recruitment of illegal immigrants in a program that fast-tracks them to U.S. citizenship, as Congress debates allowing the military to do so.

Since January, the Pentagon has enlisted 81 illegal immigrants who arrived in the U.S. as children and qualify for President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, according to figures provided by the Army on Thursday. 

Between January and April 8, only 43 had been enlisted, an Army spokesman said.

Since then, at least 38 more recruits have signed up. 

But in Congress, members are debating whether illegal immigrants should lawfully be allowed to join the armed forces. 

Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), a Marine veteran and son of Hispanic immigrants, inserted a provision in the 2016 defense policy bill that would encourage the Defense secretary to consider qualified illegal immigrants as "vital" to national security. 

The House is scheduled to debate the bill next week, but some House Republicans, led by Rep. Mo Brooks (Ala.), are trying to strip the provision, arguing it endangers the measure's passage.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) said he will propose an amendment during consideration of the bill to remove the provision if it has not already happened by then. 

Gallego's plan could help pave the way for more DACA participants to be recruited through a Pentagon program known as the Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest program, or MAVNI. 

That program was created for legal immigrants with medical training or critical language skills deemed vital to the national security, according to its creator, retired Lt. Col. Margaret Stock. 

The MAVNI program stalled last year after the Pentagon last September extended eligibility to qualified illegal immigrants, since the program was not designed to accept people without legal documents. 

This year, the Pentagon expanded the number of slots available from 1,500 to 3,000, and is slated to expand that number to 5,000 in October. 

Army spokesman Wayne Hall said the 81 MAVNI enlistees have signed enlistment contracts but are not yet officially in the Army. ""

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/241338-army-speeding-up-recruitment-of-dreamers

True Operations Purpose Of The TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership has been Released by WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks Reveals The True Purpose Of The TPP Trans-Pacific Partnership. From Their Press Release:

""WikiLeaks releases today the “Investment Chapter” from the secret negotiations of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement. The document adds to the previous WikiLeaks publications of the chapters for Intellectual Property Rights (November 2013) and the Environment (January 2014).

The TPP Investment Chapter, published today, is dated 20 January 2015. The document is classified and supposed to be kept secret for four years after the entry into force of the TPP agreement or, if no agreement is reached, for four years from the close of the negotiations.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor said: “The TPP has developed in secret an unaccountable supranational court for multinationals to sue states. This system is a challenge to parliamentary and judicial sovereignty. Similar tribunals have already been shown to chill the adoption of sane environmental protection, public health and public transport policies.”

Current TPP negotiation member states are the United States, Japan, Mexico, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand and Brunei. The TPP is the largest economic treaty in history, including countries that represent more than 40 per cent of the world´s GDP.

The Investment Chapter highlights the intent of the TPP negotiating parties, led by the United States, to increase the power of global corporations by creating a supra-national court, or tribunal, where foreign firms can “sue” states and obtain taxpayer compensation for “expected future profits”. These investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals are designed to overrule the national court systems. ISDS tribunals introduce a mechanism by which multinational corporations can force governments to pay compensation if the tribunal states that a country’s laws or policies affect the company’s claimed future profits.

In return, states hope that multinationals will invest more. Similar mechanisms have already been used. For example, US tobacco company Phillip Morris used one such tribunal to sue Australia (June 2011 – ongoing) for mandating plain packaging of tobacco products on public health grounds; and by the oil giant Chevron against Ecuador in an attempt to evade a multi-billion-dollar compensation ruling for polluting the environment. The threat of future lawsuits chilled environmental and other legislation in Canada after it was sued by pesticide companies in 2008/9. ISDS tribunals are often held in secret, have no appeal mechanism, do not subordinate themselves to human rights laws or the public interest, and have few means by which other affected parties can make representations

The TPP negotiations have been ongoing in secrecy for five years and are now in their final stages. In the United States the Obama administration plans to “fast-track” the treaty through Congress without the ability of elected officials to discuss or vote on individual measures. This has met growing opposition as a result of increased public scrutiny following WikiLeaks’ earlier releases of documents from the negotiations.

The TPP is set to be the forerunner to an equally secret agreement between the US and EU, the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership).

Negotiations for the TTIP were initiated by the Obama administration in January 2013. Combined, the TPP and TTIP will cover more than 60 per cent of global GDP. The third treaty of the same kind, also negotiated in secrecy is TISA, on trade in services, including the financial and health sectors. It covers 50 countries, including the US and all EU countries. WikiLeaks released the secret draft text of the TISA’s financial annex in June 2014.

All these agreements on so-called “free trade” are negotiated outside the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) framework. Conspicuously absent from the countries involved in these agreements are the BRICs countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China."" -WIKILEAKS

https://freedomfighterreports.com/2015/03/29/boom-wikileaks-reveals-the-true-purpose-of-the-tpp-trans-pacific-partnership/