{"id":153242,"date":"2015-05-21T19:22:22","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T19:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=153242"},"modified":"2015-05-21T19:40:18","modified_gmt":"2015-05-21T19:40:18","slug":"how-the-media-deceive-the-public-about-fast-track-and-the-trade-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/how-the-media-deceive-the-public-about-fast-track-and-the-trade-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Media Deceive the Public about “Fast Track” and the “Trade Bills”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

The way that \u201cFast Track\u201d is described to the American public is as an alternative method for the Senate to handle \u201cTrade Bills\u201d (TPP & TTIP) that the President presents to the Senate for their approval; and this alternative method is said to be one in which \u201cno amendments are permitted, and there will be a straight up-or-down vote on the bill.”<\/span><\/p>\n

But, in fact, the \u201cFast Track\u201d method is actually to require only 50 Senators to vote \u201cYea\u201d in order for the measure to be approved by the Senate, whereas the method that is described and required in (Section 2 of) the U.S. Constitution is that the President\u00a0\u201cshall have the Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.\u201d<\/span><\/a> That\u2019s not 50 Senators; it\u2019s 67 Senators, that the Constitution requires.<\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: \u201cFast Track Trade Promotion Authority\u201d (which was invented by the imperial President Richard Nixon in 1974, in order to advance his goal of a dictatorial Executive, that the Presidency would become a dictatorship) lowers the Constitutionally required approval from 67 Senators down to only 50 Senators.<\/span><\/p>\n

This two-thirds rule is set forth in the Constitution in order to make especially difficult the passing-into-law of any treaty that the United States will have with any foreign country. The same two-thirds requirement is set forth for amending the Constitution, except that that\u2019s a two-thirds requirement in both the House and the Senate: it can be done\u00a0\u201cby either: two-thirds (supermajority) of both the Senate and the House of Representatives \u2026; or by a national convention assembled at the request of the legislatures of at least two-thirds (at present 34) of the states.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Getting two-thirds of either house of Congress to vote for a bill is rare and difficult, but it has happened 27 times<\/span><\/a>, because the entire process was public, and because there was widespread support of each Amendment.<\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast: Obama\u2019s proposed trade treaties are still secret.<\/span><\/p>\n

The difference between 50 Senators versus 67 Senators is, essentially, the difference between a treaty that is publicly discussed and widely acceptable to the American public (the people, after all, who voted for those members of Congress); versus a secret treaty that will be widely unacceptable to the American public when the America public will become informed of its contents, which won\u2019t be until years after the treaty has already gone into effect.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the reason why only a tiny fraction of authentic \u201ctrade bills\u201d even need \u201cFast Track Trade Promotion Authority\u201d in order to pass; most trade bills are passed in the normal way. A President doesn\u2019t ask for \u201cFast Track Trade Promotion Authority\u201d unless he is going to be presenting to the Congress a treaty that is so horrible for the American people that only few members of either the House or the Senate would vote for it \u2013 the bill needs \u201cFast Track\u201d in order for it to be able to pass.<\/span><\/p>\n

What types of \u201cTrade Bills\u201d are these?<\/span><\/p>\n

They are treaties in which only a tiny fraction of the treaty actually has to do with \u201cTrade,\u201d or with tariffs and other legal favoritisms toward one nation as opposed to another. \u00a0In other words:\u00a0They\u2019re legislation to cede our national sovereignty to international corporations. Issues of tariffs and other \u201ctrade\u201d disputes between nations are tacked onto these multinational treaties in order to be able to fool the public into thinking that all that\u2019s at issue is \u201ctrade.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s true that \u201cFast Track\u201d does also eliminate the ability of members of the Senate to propose an amendment to the treaty that the President is presenting for their approval. But that\u2019s a relatively minor feature of \u201cFast Track,\u201d which was included in the concept in order for \u201cFast Track\u201d to be able to be described by politicians and by the \u2018news\u2019 media as being a minor matter \u2013 no \u201cbig deal,\u201d no ceding of sovereignty to international corporations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a minor matter; it\u2019s the biggest matter in President Obama\u2019s entire Presidency:\u00a0it\u2019s about scandalously bad international treaties with many nations at once, in which international corporations (that is, the hundred or so individuals who own the controlling interests in them) will be handed our national and democratic soverieignty over<\/span><\/a>\u00a0labor rights, consumer rights, environmental rights, and investors\u2019 rights \u2013 it\u2019s every way that those billionaires can think of to pass off onto the public the harms that they do while keeping for themselves all the benefits of the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose game they\u2019re playing with the U.S. public and that of every other signatory nation. It\u2019s international fascism, not merely fascism <\/span>of the local type.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what we\u2019ve now got.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of \u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse The way that \u201cFast Track\u201d is described to the American public is as an alternative method for the Senate to handle \u201cTrade Bills\u201d (TPP & TTIP) that the President presents to the Senate for their approval; and this alternative method is said to be one in which \u201cno amendments are permitted, and there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":153245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[96,529,962,64,522,526,843,694,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-153242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-cover-up","10":"tag-fascism","11":"tag-fast-track","12":"tag-world-news","13":"tag-obama","14":"tag-propaganda","15":"tag-tpp","16":"tag-ttip","17":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}