{"id":150815,"date":"2015-05-14T02:59:06","date_gmt":"2015-05-14T02:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=150815"},"modified":"2015-05-14T21:01:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-14T21:01:15","slug":"democrats-cave-in-on-tpp-and-ttip-good-bye-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/democrats-cave-in-on-tpp-and-ttip-good-bye-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats’ Cave-In on TPP and TTIP. Good-Bye Democracy."},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On Wednesday afternoon, May 13th, a catastrophic failure became clear to the few honest Democrats who were determined to stop Obama\u2019s disastrous \u2019trade deals\u2019 which are actually going to transfer regulatory sovereignty away from elected government officials as at present (who are answerable to voters), and instead move these powers into the hands of international corporate cartels, which will have the final say over the safety of our air, water, automobiles, and other products, and of the environment, and of workers\u2019 rights (and which regulations will become answerable instead to the controlling stockholders in those mega-corporations). Mega-corporations will set international standards, which none of the signatory nations within the TPP and TTIP will be legally able to exceed without paying heavy penalties to those corporations for violating those corporations\u2019 \u2018rights\u2019 under these trade-deals. The current ability of individual nations to establish their own standards will disappear, except to the extent that international corporations allow.<\/span><\/p>\n

Senators Sherrod Brown, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Harry Reid, and others that wanted to block Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority for these deals \u2013 Senators who were against this loss of democratic sovereignty and introduction of international fascism \u2013 counted the votes of their Democratic colleagues, and found that, whereas just a day earlier on May 12th the President was 8 votes short of what he needed in order to win this battle for the mega-corporations, that seeming progressive victory was fleeting; it was mostly just for show to the voters, to convince voters that their Senator had tried his or her best and won whatever concessions from the President and the conservatives, that remained possible, so that displaced American workers might receive some compensation for their lost jobs that will result from these international-trade treaties. In other words: a crumb might yet be won for what still remains of America\u2019s labor unions. But product-safety, and the environment, will now be virtual free-fire zones for the large international corporations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On May 5th, The Hill<\/i> had published the list of Senators who were for and against and swayable on this. It was headlined,\u00a0\u201cThe Hill\u2019s Whip List.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0From what they reported, it seems that the only Senators who were definitely opposed to these bills, as of that time, were probably the following:<\/span><\/p>\n

Republicans:<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Burr, NC<\/span><\/p>\n

Rand Paul, KY<\/span><\/p>\n

Democrats:<\/span><\/p>\n

Tammy Baldwin, WI<\/span><\/p>\n

Richard Blumenthal, CT<\/span><\/p>\n

Sherrod Brown, OH<\/span><\/p>\n

Bob Casey, PA<\/span><\/p>\n

Al Franken, MN<\/span><\/p>\n

Kirsten Gillibrand, NY<\/span><\/p>\n

Martin Heinrich, NM<\/span><\/p>\n

Patrick Leahy, VT<\/span><\/p>\n

Joe Manchin, WV<\/span><\/p>\n

Ed Markey, MA<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Menendez, NJ<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeff Merkley, OR<\/span><\/p>\n

Harry Reid, NV<\/span><\/p>\n

Bernie Sanders, VT (Independent)<\/span><\/p>\n

Brian Schatz, HI<\/span><\/p>\n

Charles Schumer, NY<\/span><\/p>\n

Debbie Stabenow, MI<\/span><\/p>\n

Tom Udall, NM<\/span><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Warren, MA<\/span><\/p>\n

Sheldon Whitehouse, RI<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s 22 of the 100 Senators. All the others are already either publicly committed to the large international corporations, or else are still bargaining with them, in one way or another, regarding how much financial support their re-election campaigns will be receiving. (And maybe even a few of these 22 will yet turn out to be for sale.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is probably the reason why Senator Sherrod Brown was quoted in Huffington Post on May 13th as saying,\u00a0“I can read votes. I also think that nobody saw us being successful yesterday three days out.\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0In other words: The token concession to labor unions that Harry Reid was able to swing from Mitch McConnell was the best deal that can be arranged, under the circumstances.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This outcome was predicted by me on several occasions during the latter half of last year. I\u00a0summed up on November 4th<\/span><\/a>\u00a0by noting that:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For several months now, I have predicted that if no House Democrat would introduce a bill of impeachment\u00a0against President Barack Obama (for whom I voted, incidentally), then Republicans on November 4th would\u00a0elect not just one but both houses of Congress, and the closeted conservative Obama would be having a field\u00a0day during his final two years signing into law lots of pro-big-business, anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-environmental, legislation, which Democrats in both the House but especially the Senate have thus far been\u00a0blocking. And, now, on Election Eve, this nightmare seems finally to be coming true.\u00a0\u2026.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t happen; and so we\u2019ll get an all-conservative Government: Obama\u2019s final two years in office will be\u00a0spent signing conservative bills into laws that the majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate have,\u00a0heretofore, blocked: laws reducing the cost-of-living adjustment in the Social Security formula, and approving\u00a0the TTIP and TPP international trade deals that grant international corporations the power to control the\u00a0regulations regarding the environment, consumer protection, drug safety, food safety, and virtually all\u00a0regulatory matters. Republicans and Obama have wanted to transfer those national regulatory powers over to\u00a0international corporations, but House and Senate Democrats did not; and, now, because there wasn\u2019t a single\u00a0House Democrat who had the courage to introduce a bill of impeachment against Obama, we will have a\u00a0Government that is Republican in the House, Republican in the Senate, and Republican in the White House\u00a0except on women\u2019s issues, where Obama actually has been a Democrat. He hasn\u2019t been lying about that one.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That statement was accompanied by a detailed analysis of the public polling on the question of impeaching Obama. <\/span><\/p>\n

The only thing that stood even a chance of retaining the Senate for the Democrats was for a Democrat in the House to introduce a bill of impeachment against Obama. Not a single House Democrat stepped forward. That failure, of all House Democrats, was effectively the end of the chances to retain a vestige of democracy in America \u2013 and even throughout the other TPP and TTIP countries. It could possibly have prevented TPP and TTIP.<\/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 On Wednesday afternoon, May 13th, a catastrophic failure became clear to the few honest Democrats who were determined to stop Obama\u2019s disastrous \u2019trade deals\u2019 which are actually going to transfer regulatory sovereignty away from elected government officials as at present (who are answerable to voters), and instead move these powers into the hands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":149073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,973,96,927,535,843,694,40,779],"class_list":{"0":"post-150815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-consumers","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-environment","14":"tag-global-news","15":"tag-tpp","16":"tag-ttip","17":"tag-white-house","18":"tag-workers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}