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Common Dreams reports:
Now that official debate has begun, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) wants to pass Fast Track bill before Memorial Day.
[...] The U.S. Senate on [May 14] approved a motion to begin debate on the Fast Track authority President Barack Obama needs to advance controversial trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The measure passed 65-33.
Senate Democrats blocked the first attempt to proceed on the trade legislation on Tuesday, but backtracked in the wake of further negotiations--and intense pressure from the White House.
Boing Boing warns URGENT: Senate backtracks on TPP fasttrack--call Congress to oppose the Trans Pacific Partnership
TPP is a treaty negotiated under extraordinary secrecy--Members of Congress were threatened with jail for discussing its contents--and virtually everything we know about it comes from leaks. One thing we do know is that it contains a provision to let multinational corporations sue governments for passing environmental and labor laws that undermine their profits (similar provisions in other treaties have been used by tobacco companies to sue the Australian government over a law mandating plain packaging for cigarettes). We also know that TPP hardens the worst elements of US copyright, trumping Congress's right to review the term of copyright and the scope of the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA (these are the rules that allowed John Deere to claim that farmers don't own their tractors, because of the copyrights in the software in their engines).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation needs your help to contact your Congresscritter to block this. TPP is a fragile monster, and it can really only pass if the Congress abdicates its legislative authority and lets the President make up laws and legal obligations without Congressional input. The Republican Congress--and many Democrats--is vulnerable to messages from voters opposing the extension of these powers to the President.
Related: Fast-Track Trade Measure Fails Key Test Vote In Senate
(Score: 3, Informative) by AudioGuy on Tuesday May 19 2015, @04:04AM
"At best, you have a democratically elected oligarchy. The oligarchy part is indisputable. The "democratically-elected" is the part that needs scrutiny."
And the real problem is that BOTH are degenerate forms of government! Switching from one to the other does not help matters.
I offer the following, from Aristotle, who wrote the best book on government ever written:
"Having determined these points, we have next to consider how many forms of government there are, and what they are; and in the first place what are the true forms, for when they are determined the perversions of them will at once be apparent. The words constitution and government have the same meaning, and the government, which is the supreme authority in states, must be in the hands of one, or of a few, or of the many. The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one or of the few, or of the many, are perversions. For the members of a state, if they are truly citizens, ought to participate in its advantages. Of forms of government in which one rules, we call that which regards the common interests, kingship or royalty; that in which more than one, but not many, rule, aristocracy; and it is so called, either because the rulers are the best men, or because they have at heart the best interests of the state and of the citizens. But when the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name- a constitution. And there is a reason for this use of language. One man or a few may excel in virtue; but as the number increases it becomes more difficult for them to attain perfection in every kind of virtue, though they may in military virtue, for this is found in the masses. Hence in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens.
Of the above-mentioned forms, the perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy. For tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy, of the needy: none of them the common good of all."
The best form of government is constitutional government. Which we have lost.
An earlier commenter wanted to know what was better than democracy. I offer the above for consideration.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday May 19 2015, @07:49AM
For that reason, I'd like to see the larger countries broken up. Give Bavaria and Texas back their independence. Sure, have trading and travel agreements, have legal alignment agreements even, but have self-governance. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pro-EU, and love the Euro (yay, 6 countries in 10 days last month, and didn't need to change money once), so I don't have a problem with super-structures existing. However, despite what the Flaily Fail tells you about pints and sausages, the EU really doesn't have that much control over the lives of hoi poloi in each individual country.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:51PM
I don't really see how that follows. I understand the rest, but I don't understand how democracy is a perversion of a constitutional government, nor how it is a perversion that only has a vested interest in the needy. It reads like a false equivalence to me.