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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday June 24 2015, @05:39PM   Printer-friendly
from the pass-it-to-know-what-is-in-it dept.

The BBC reports:

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.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Marand on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:57PM

    by Marand (1081) on Wednesday June 24 2015, @07:57PM (#200554) Journal

    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.

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