Legislation key to US President Barack Obama's trade agenda has passed a key hurdle in the Senate, just two weeks after it appeared to have failed.
The bill known as the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) or, more commonly, Fast Track, makes it easier for presidents to negotiate trade deals.
Supporters see it as critical to the success of a 12-nation trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The bill is expected to pass a final vote in the Senate on Wednesday.
Tuesday's 60-37 vote - just barely meeting the required 60 vote threshold - is the result of the combined efforts of the White House and many congressional Republicans to push the bill through Congress, despite the opposition of many Democrats.
This is primarily a tech news site, and it's generally good to avoid political news, but the TPP is a huge trade deal, negotiated in secret, that will have large ramifications for the world economy that affects us all, and that also has large implications for the accountability of major world governments to their citizens.
Original Submission
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From EFF:
The U.S. Senate has paved the way for the passage of Fast Track legislation, to give the White House and the U.S. Trade Representative almost unilateral power to negotiate and finalize secret anti-user trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Yesterday a "cloture" vote was held—this was a vote to end debate on Fast Track and break any possibility for a filibuster, and it passed by the minimum votes needed—60 to 37. Today, the Senate voted to pass the legislation itself. TPP proponents only needed 51 votes, a simple majority, to actually pass the bill, and they got it in a 60 to 38 vote. Following months and months of campaigning, Congress has ultimately caved to corporate demands to hand away its own constitutional mandate over trade, and the President is expected to the sign the bill into law as early as tonight or later this week.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:41PM
Congress won't even wield its own power.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:00PM
They are paid not to.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @08:50PM
Of course it's wielding it's own power. They just voted internally that when the actual treaty comes up for ratification they will have to pass it with a straight up or down vote; no amendments to the substance of the treaty.
In other words, they're wielding their power irresponsibly, incorrectly, and recklessly.
Which may mean that this democracy is even more dead. But let's try to be correct in the way they're not. :)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:46PM
This shit is bad news as it will allow corporations to go on a global rampage unimpeded. It will be up to citizens to put an end to it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:08PM
At least, on the other treaty being secretly negotiated with Europe, the people on the other side of the pond are starting to put some serious pressure on their governments... So we may not get shafted from both ends.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:30PM
Yay...., I'm in the USA. So, I'll still get shafted . . .
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 24 2015, @10:02PM
Shaft-ed is a bad mother (Shut your mouth)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:16AM
The shaft root is the USA.. (I guess)
But for a deal to make it. Both parties must agree..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by enigma32 on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:50PM
I've often fantasized that "law" could be written as commits, stuffed into pull requests, and then merged into the master branch of what "the law" currently is. Transparency and simplicity all around.
You know, rather than secret documents, potentially thousands of pages long, that amend other documents so that you'd have to look up the entire chain to figure out what "the law" is.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by WillAdams on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:56PM
Hell, I'd be happy if we just required that bills be read in their entirety, on the floor, in the presence of everyone voting on it before being passed.
Similarly, the President should be required to read the entire bill and initial each page in advance of the signing ceremony.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:15PM
Courtesy of polarization and filibustering, many US bills are actually passed with the chambers almost full.
I've seen many pictures of major laws passed in other countries with barely 10% of the elected people voting (and a few fun moments when minority parties flooded an otherwise empty chamber to get majority bills rejected).
The threshold for a bill to pass should always be based on the eligible voters, and missing lawmakers should be fined a percentage of their income (including campaign funds) if they exceed n sick days.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:41AM
It's typical for a body that takes votes to have a requirement for a quorum. [google.com]
What you claim does sound extremely undemocratic.
I wonder if the photos you referenced aren't taken during *debate* or some such.
I know that some USA congresscritters take to the floor of a nearly-empty chamber during evening hours in order to read things into the record.
.
Though I seem to be picking on you repeatedly today, you shouldn't take it personally.
It'll be somebody else's turn tomorrow. 8-)
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 25 2015, @05:53AM
Nope, some assemblies indeed have no quorum, or have rules allowing one guy to vote for half his party-mates.
I am saddened by the fact that I grew up in a place which allows politicians to be paid while not actually bothering to sit in session.
(Score: 2) by davester666 on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:44PM
That makes it harder to replace pages afterwards.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:20PM
You can't force lawmakers to actually do their job in any way other than voting them out when they don't. For instance, you want a requirement that bills are be read on the floor in their entirety? They'll get around that with little effort procedurally. They'll write laws that essentially say: "The regulations in the 2,954 page long document XYZ are hereby incorporated by reference into this Act."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by khedoros on Wednesday June 24 2015, @08:01PM
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 24 2015, @10:05PM
They'll just get around that by passing a bill saying "No text or other 'blah blah blah' on the bill."
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:15AM
That's why there needs to be a constitutional amendment. Mere bills can't override the highest law of the land.
(Score: 1) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:53PM
s/law/legislation/g
Law is not what's in the law books. Law is decided by courts and derives from the interpretation of legislation by various judges over time. This means that in addition to legislation, you also need to study case law for whatever precendents may apply. Which is impossible even at superhuman reading speed--but ignorance of the law is no excuse. And you'd have to figure out for yourself whether each one can or can't be applied to your case. The English Common Law system gets dressed up to seem necessary for fairness but IMO it's oppressive and exists only to enrich lawyers and oppress the poor (who can't afford to let someone else figure out in advance what is or isn't likely to be safe).
In parting I quotes Tacitus at you:
"Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws."
"The more corrupt the republic, the more the laws."
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday June 24 2015, @10:25PM
Need to let IBM's Watson parse it.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:51PM
This is primarily a tech news site, and it's generally good to avoid political news, but...
I prefer a well-rounded news site to a tech news site.
(Score: 5, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:05PM
I prefer a well-rounded news site
Well that'd just be inviting a lawsuit from Apple.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @01:02PM
Yes, round the straight edges, not the corners, that should be enough to side step that crap
(Score: 5, Informative) by SubiculumHammer on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:03PM
Because the Constitution gave the President such limited power, Congress dominated the executive branch until the 1930s.
With only a few exceptions, Presidents played second fiddle to Congress for many years. However, those exceptions — Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson — provided the basis for the turning point that came with the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s.
Andrew Jackson, greatly loved by the masses, used his image and personal power to strengthen the developing party system by rewarding loyal followers with presidential appointments. Jackson also made extensive use of the veto and asserted national power by facing down South Carolina's nullification of a federal tariff law. Jackson vetoed more bills than the six previous Presidents combined.
Abraham Lincoln assumed powers that no President before him had claimed, partly because of the emergency created by the Civil War (1861-1865). He suspended habeas corpus (the right to an appearance in court), and jailed people suspected of disloyalty. He ignored Congress by expanding the size of the army and ordering blockades of southern ports without the consent of Congress.
from http://www.ushistory.org/gov/7a.asp [ushistory.org]
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson each expanded the powers of the presidency. Roosevelt worked closely with Congress, sending it messages defining his legislative powers. He also took the lead in developing the international power of the United States. Wilson helped formulate bills that Congress considered, and World War I afforded him the opportunity to take a leading role in international affairs.
Franklin Roosevelt, who was elected four times to the presidency, led the nation through the crises of the Great Depression and World War II. Roosevelt gained power through his New Deal programs to regulate the economy, and the war required that he lead the country in foreign affairs as well.
So, the powers of the modern presidency have been shaped by a combination of constitutional and evolutionary powers. The forceful personalities of strong Presidents have expanded the role far beyond the greatest fears of the antifederalists of the late 1700s.
--
I think its time for Congress to assert itself again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:31PM
A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for a bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be, in practice, a bad government.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VortexCortex on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:38PM
You think congress isn't exerting itself? This in the age where global corporations who stand to benefit by the TPP have bought congress, turning the nation into an oligarchy or plutocracy? [economyincrisis.org] (PDF [cambridge.org]).
It's not congress that needs more power, it's the people themselves. Though, we're unlikely to get it because, unlike corporations and plutocrats who buy off politicians, our cut is taken in taxes. What I'd like to see is programs proposed in congress allocated funding via what the population wants. Give congress, perhaps, 25% of the funding pool since sometimes they really do know more about what the public should fund, and the rest be left up to the public as to where their tax dollars get spent. Of course this will shift the balance of power to those who control the media -- which is full of propaganda and falsehoods due to a 2003 amendment to the Smith Mundt Act [ wikipedia.org (Warning: Unicode in URL) ] in order to allow propaganda to be used against US citizenry -- Prior the propaganda had to be at least somewhat believable from the perspective of the government, but now no holds are barred. This is some of us are currently fighting for more journalistic integrity... We can't fix anything so long as the 4th estate is against us. [youtube.com] One way to help prevent news from becoming corrupted by conflict of interest is by preventing corporate sponsorship and relying on community support, thus new information outlets are starting to take off using this business model. This doesn't guarantee corruption is absent, but competition then incentives other outlets to point out falsehood rather than stand in solidarity as propagandists like the mainstream media does. In both instances, budget allocation and media funding the commonality is giving more influence to the citizens directly rather than to gatekeepers of information.
It's folly to blame the Presidency for the failings of Congress, when both are essentially bought and paid for sock puppets of the same elites. In other words: It's not that congress needs to take back presidential powers for themselves, it's that the government needs less power in relation to its citizenry at this stage. If we're ever successful in swinging the pendulum towards less government powers (a first, but necessary to prevent cybernetic death of the USA) it will eventually swing too far and more governmental powers will be favorable than less. Without allowing the pendulum to swing, the clock will stop for this nation.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by buswolley on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:56PM
No problem this big comes from a single source. The decreasing role of congress is but one.
There is also a problem with Congress. For example, the House needs to go back to its roots and restablish traditional ratios between represented and and representative (~25,000:1; http://www.thirty-thousand.org/) [thirty-thousand.org] which is now at least ~800,000:1. In one case I might regularly run into my rep at the coffee shop, but in the present case? We are no longer represented.
subicular junctures
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VortexCortex on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:55PM
(Warning: Unicode in URL)
Interesting. There are ways of spoofing a URL to make it appear as something it's not via alternate glyphs. In this case it's the "en dash" symbol that's triggering this flag, which I suppose could cause people to mistake a domain name having a dash: - vs – (U+002D vs U+2013 respectively).
Granted wickedpedians could simply use the U+2D to avoid such issues; However, what I posted, "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act" does not contain unicode, it contains ASCII that has URL escaped UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters in it, which some browsers display as Unicode glyphs in the URL bar.
Now, let's experiment. Here I encode http://soylentnews.org/ as URL escaped UTF-8 encoded Unicode characters: "https://%73%6F%79%6C%65%6E%74%6E%65%77%73%2E%6F%72%67/" homepage [https]
The lack of warning demonstrates that the warning is misleading as it doesn't detect Unicode, but higher Unicode codepoints, perhaps those that don't overlap with ASCII. Now let's place a Unicode NAK ("Negative Acknowledgement") within the domain name and see if it, being both an ASCII and Unicode code for NAK is acknowledged as "Unicode" being in the URL: "https://%73%6F%79%6C%65%6E%74%6E%65%77%73%2E%6F%72%67/%15" homepage/NAK []
I put it to you that with the adoption of UTF-8 Unicode in URLs such a warning is moot as having more frequent false positive will cause the dangerous links to be clicked anyway despite the filter actually being warning about them. As more URLs adopt such encodings the signal to noise ratio will drop, and the filter will be unable to reliably detect the signal. Yet another instance of bubble gum and duct tape in the guts of our web. Finally, I'd like to point out that were one to have discovered an exploit via making such posts, one could be jailed under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act...
To that end I'd like to point out that there's a glitch in the source code that converts inline plaintext URLs into links. I won't give you the XSS exploit, which I, obviously, DID NOT exploit... on a live server, anyway... but you might want to look into why a URL that looks like this:
http:<b>//mal.net/</b>
becomes the following:
//mal.net" rel="url2html-24961">http://mal.net
Which is to say: Look into what happens when placing an HTML element after "http:". I must now conclude the experiments, since the exertion of even the slightest mental force by a curious individual will crack almost any website's security; Web security is so bad that it's frequently cracked by accident... This is primarily not the fault of website coders but due to the complex parsing headaches caused by the flawed original assumptions made by the Architects of the Web that its sites would have no state (and thus have no user generated input to sanitize).
P.S. My my, just look at the interesting [domain.name]s after those URL-escaped links above...
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:04AM
There's a pretty major problem with using any large character set with amiguous glyphs in an application where you are using the characters to make identifiers which are intended to be unambiguously readable by both humans and machines. Honestly, it seems like the real solution is to break unicode into language specific (not necessarily disjoint) subsets and forbid identifiers that mix and match from multiple subsets. Allowing such identifiers will surely lead to pestilence and crop failures.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Thursday June 25 2015, @05:20AM
Good points, but some of this has been addressed.
A novel solution I've experimented with is to render the Unicode string then run it through an OCR program that favors output of the "expected" characters, typically due to multi-character recognition which is sort of like on the fly language detection. Compare the raw input URL chars to the OCR'd output URL chars and if any char doesn't match then it's likely an impostor URL using Unicode to mask itself. However, this is not a 100% fool proof solution. Without language detection it can generate false positives as there are valid uses of Unicode in URLs / domain names. For instance, Unicode can be included in domain names via Punycode's ToASCII() specified by Internationalized Domain Names. [wikipedia.org] (RFC3492 [ietf.org], required by RFC5890 [ietf.org], etc.) The Punycode function is complex as it attempts to avoid using common look-alike characters. Rehash should be using this to sanity check domain names, and not worry about the Unicode included after the domain name, as that's not important. Punycode is yet another encoding instead of using a escaped UTF-8 as in URL encoding; Used mostly due to the 64 char max limit of domain names, but also to remain somewhat human readable (Naming it Punnycode would be too punny).
However, the complexity of Unicode encodings in URLs has little to do with the failure to sanitize the anchor tag's title attribute and following "[domain.name]" via something like Perl's CGI module's escapeHTML() function prior to output, without which soylentnews.org is vulnerable to HTML and/or Javascript injection...
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:19AM
More than a decade ago I proposed an HTML tag that will disable active/fancy stuff (the opening and closing tags need a matching random string).
That way even if the browser makers or HTML bunch come up with new features, the new stuff would still be disabled.
It's ridiculous to have a car with only "GO" pedals and not a single "STOP" or brake pedal, and to stop the car you are required to make sure that all the "GO" pedals are not pressed.
Apparently in recent years Mozilla has come up with something called CSP ( https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Security/CSP [mozilla.org] ) which supposedly would help do this sort of thing and is better than my original suggestion.
FWIW if they had implemented my suggestion, many of those XSS worms wouldn't have worked.
And by now people could say "add another brake pedal option" to stop such stuff - since the concept of brake pedals would no longer be novel in the browser/HTML arena.
(Score: 2) by snick on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:31PM
I don't get why people are saying that Congress isn't asserting itself. Congress IS asserting itself with this move.
By passing fasttrack, they are ensuring that the only ones at the table are the President and the Republican leaders.
Everyone else can go eat a bag of salted dicks, because what the President and Republican leadership agree to will pass. There is no way to block it at this point.
That is pretty assertive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:28PM
That may or may not be true, but it doesn't explain why most of your posts are politically oriented with an ax to grind.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kadal on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:39PM
TPP should be rejected just because it's secret. There isn't anything to discuss.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 24 2015, @06:54PM
Specifically, it's secret to those whose opinions should matter (We the People of the United States), and not at all secret to those whose opinions do matter (big business lobbyists).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:05PM
If you weren't white and/or wealthy your opinion has never mattered in the US.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:37PM
This case is particularly egregious, though, because right now there are corporate bigwigs that have more access to this proposed treaty than US senators. Even the white and wealthy senators.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:57PM
If you weren't white and/or wealthy your opinion has never mattered in the US.
"If you aren't wealthy, your opinion has never mattered in the US" would be sufficient. My whiteness has done absolutely nothing to stop this or other proposals I find disagreeable because it didn't come with sufficient wealth. On the other side, it's clear Obama's blackness did not magically negate his wealth, or he'd never have managed to become President and have the power to push things like this.
Money talks, and wealth is disproportionately held by certain demographics in the US, but that doesn't mean that those demographics are all automatically winners. It just means that the people with the real power -- money -- are more likely to fit those demographics in the US. A poor white person might get some residual benefits because people will assume they're more likely to have money, but once that assumption is gone they'll get shit on just like anybody else that made the mistake of not being rich enough.
A lot of racist attitudes I seem to stem from this anti-poor sentiment, too; I've seen people get mad about blacks entering a neighbourhood, not because of their blackness, but because they're "probably poor" and going to "bring down the neighbourhood". Those same people didn't give a fuck about Japanese moving in, though, because they were assumed to be wealthy enough, which meant they were "good people". People here worship the "American Dream" of the working class person making it big and becoming rich, and it's been perverted in such a way that far too many of us look at people with less money as being inferior. After all, if they weren't inferior, they would have improved their standing, because that's the American Dream in action. A scary side-effect of this is some people being so eager to improve their apparent status that they'll neglect necessities because they spent all their money on cars and phones they can't afford just to look wealthier, and thus more important.
TL;DR: It's always about the money; in the US, poor people go to prison while rich people go to Congress.
(Score: 1) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday June 24 2015, @09:25PM
(We the People of the United States)
As New Zealander; there are far more then just the people of the US being screwed over by this. But don't feel special; our politians ignore us just as much as yours ignore you.
Does anyone know of any positives from this trade deal? All that I have heard about is the negatives from the leaks.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 2) by kadal on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:15PM
Further, if TPP is passed, does it then become public? or does it still remain secret?
If it becomes public can it's provisions be struck down by the courts?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday June 24 2015, @08:02PM
Further, if TPP is passed, does it then become public? or does it still remain secret? If it becomes public can it's provisions be struck down by the courts?
What they have done here pre-ratify a treaty. They've decided they don't need to wait until the treaty is written and signed, they have provided the Constitutionally-required treaty ratification ahead of time, so when the President signs whatever it turns out to be, it already has the force of law.
So will it become public? Only if the President decides it will. Can it be struck down by the courts? No, not really. If there are provisions that are in direct conflict with the Constitution, it's possible they could strike down that provision. Of course, the treaty could always include provisions that trigger some other specific things if a court challenge is successful.
One thing that this vote does do is ensure the treaty will need to go back to Congress for anything. They have just given the President a blank check to sign anything he wants to, and it's automatically a ratified treaty.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday June 24 2015, @08:08PM
Nope. As in nope. Not even close.
Unless they changed the definition of fast-track, they still have to vote on it, but they can't change it.
It's an up-down vote only, to avoid endless tinkering with provisions which have taken years to agree with with our "partners".
(Score: 2) by kadal on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:24PM
From the other Fast Track submission (which links to this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/06/senate-passes-fast-track-we-can-still-prevent-tpp-train-wreck) [eff.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mr_mischief on Wednesday June 24 2015, @09:13PM
The parts of the TPP that has been leaked includes copyright changes, which impact software. It includes provisions to allow polluters to keep polluting so long as they are selling their products across national boundaries. The consumer electronics lobby will be thrilled with that part.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday June 25 2015, @12:47AM
This is why voting in the current system is completely worthless, your "choice" is between corporate ass kissing douchebag A or B, that's it. Its not even Coke VS Pepsi, its Coke in a bottle VS coke in a slightly different shaped bottle.
As the late great Bill Hicks put it "I think the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well I think the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart....hey wait a minute, there is one guy working both puppets!" and that one guy is the 1%, who would burn the country to the ground if it boosted profits. Thomas Jefferson pointed this out when he wrote "Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Thursday June 25 2015, @02:36AM
All true, but I'm glad the country at least HAD hope for change. It shows that the citizens want improvement, even if we are all being played for fools. The bad thing for goons is that they're sinking themselves further into a hole where people won't forgive or trust them again. I am worried that its driving the more disenfranchised people closer to violence. I for one would prefer to NOT experience a revolt.
I just can't fully wrap my head around the insanity... the only thing I can figure is that the greedy bastards are improperly educated and don't really understand the consequences of their actions. Humanity survives together, and the Earth is a relatively closed system we all depend on. It is very informative when politicians like Santorum tell the Pope to stick to religion and leave science alone. I would only agree if the Pope was not in agreement with the science...
Argh, this shit is just so stupid it hurts. I hope some other leaders step up to the plate and encourage Humanity to stand up for doing the right things, not just the most profitable.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2015, @08:43AM
1) There are more than 2 parties. And when > 95% of the voters who bother voting keep voting for either Twiddledee or Twiddledum why should the Two Parties change? They might lose votes if they change too much.
The Two Parties will change when the voters start voting for other parties. Those other parties may never win, but if the Two Parties change enough to do some of what you want, then it works better than just not voting at all, or the insanity of voting for the same thing and expecting different.
2) what most voters care about is different from what the corporations and minorities like you care about. And the system sure seems to be delivering what they want the most.
Far more voters care more about guns, gay marriage, abortion, marijuana than about TPP. So the politicians give the voters the gay marriage stuff, and they give their sponsors the TPP stuff. Win-win. It's happened for marijuana already - voters started caring more about marijuana and so some states have changed their laws accordingly.
Seriously - go around and ask voters what they think of guns or gay marriage. Then ask them about TPP. Even after informing them about TPP I bet most of them still won't care as much. Somehow many allegedly straight people seem to care a lot about gay marriage despite gay marriage not affecting them, and the most gay couples not having children and thus all those "protect the family" stuff is irrelevant and bullshit.
Basic divide and conquer.
So we' are the minority, the weird ones for caring more about stuff like the TPP.