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Thread: Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Constitutional Tipping Point

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    Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Constitutional Tipping Point

    Free-Trade Masquerade: Fast Track Authority, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Constitutional Tipping Point, Part 1

    After the mid-term elections, you may have heard Mitch McConnell make public statements about the GOP being willing to work with President Obama to push through free-trade agreements. McConnell said that GOP leaders favor free trade and believe it brings prosperity to the country.

    What you may not know is that the President is asking Congress to renew what is known as Fast Track Authority, allowing the President to negotiate and even sign trade treaties without the participation of the United States Congress. Under Fast Track Authority, the President calls for Congress to vote either up or down on a treaty without allowing time for debate. Congress may not amend or filibuster the treaty. Instead of the two-thirds majority approval needed to pass a treaty mandated by the United States Constitution, a fast track treaty needs only a simple 51% majority approval. {IF THE TREATY IS PASSED THIS WAY IT MEANS IT IS ONLY FOR THE TERRITORIES OF THE UNITED STATES THAT IT DOES NOT BIND THE STATES. THE US WOULD THEN BE A LOW CONTRACTING PARTY AFAIK.}

    Currently, the President is negotiating a trade treaty called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). He and his Trade Representative are negotiating in secret with multinational corporations, but the Congress is not privy to the terms under negotiation. That’s right, even before the Congress moves to renew Fast Track Authority allowing the President to negotiate trade treaties without congressional oversight, the President has already been engaged in what are basically unconstitutional and rogue negotiations conducted in secrecy. {WHEN THE FEDERAL GOVT DOES SOMETHING THAT ABROGATES THE CONSTITUTION THEY ARE DOING IT BECAUSE THE ACT OR REGULATION IS ONLY BINDING ON THE TERRITORIES OF THE UNITED STATES BUT UNSUSPECTING STATE ACTORS MIGHT BE CLUELESS AS TO THIS.}

    Members of Congress are being locked out of the proceedings, while the “U.S. Trade Representative has given some 600 corporate lobbyists special ‘cleared advisor’ status that enables them to review and comment upon specific negotiating drafts. U.S. negotiators have said they will not share texts with the public until after negotiations are completed—at which time it is virtually impossible to make substantive changes” (ObamaTrade.com). So, just like the Affordable Health Care Act (ObamaCare), which passed by a simple 51% majority vote under Reconciliation, Congress will have to pass the TPP treaty in order to know what’s in it.

    What Leaked Documents Tell Us About the TPP
    Nevertheless, there have been documents leaked to Wikileaks that give us a glimpse into what is being cooked up for Americans. Stephanie Scruggs, from EndGlobalGovernance.com, tells us leaked documents reveal that, of 26 chapters, only two chapters deal with trade, while the remaining chapters deal with issues of global governance (not to be confused with government), such as regulation of the Internet, health and the environment, and that these chapters reveal a global system of rules “designed to dispossess Americans of authority over themselves and their government.” {IT MIGHT BE THAT THE "AMERICANS" THEY ARE ABLE TO EXERCISE AUTHORITY OVER ARE THOSE PERSONS BORN SUBJECT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE UNITED STATES WHO RESIDE IN DISTRICT-STATES.}

    So, though both Republicans and Democrats represent the Trans-Pacific Partnership as a free-trade agreement, perhaps evoking F.A. Hayek’s vision of a tariff-free market, in reality, the TPP, and other trade treaties, are more about implementing an overarching set of international laws that supersede American sovereignty and favor powerful, multinational corporations by subjecting the United States to the ‘jurisdiction of two systems of foreign tribunals, including the World Bank and the United Nations Tribunals. These foreign tribunals would be empowered to order payment of U.S. tax dollars to foreign firms if U.S. laws undermined the foreign firms’ new special TPP privileges. The TPP would establish a foreign judicial authority higher than even the U.S. Supreme Court that could overrule federal court rulings” (ObamaTrade.com). Opponents to this treaty justifiably point out that this is unconstitutional.

    Ambassador Alan Keyes notes that because, under the Constitution, treaties become law, it becomes possible to amend the U.S. Constitution by a series of treaties. For that reason, America’s Founders were gravely concerned that members of Congress, those representatives elected to protect the people’s interests, should alone be authorized to negotiate treaties, and that those treaties should not be passed by less than a 2/3 majority approval.

    {Note: the idea that treaties of the United States become part of "the Law of the Land" mean AFAIK that Federal courts are required to take judicial notice of standing treaties. That is, treaties do not necessarily become law within the several states. The treaty making power delegated to the Unite States Government by States under the Constitution of the United States are international treaty-making power not an internal law-making power. As in, if there is a fishing treaty and a Japanese fishing company is fined by the United States in U.S. waters, the court has to take the treaties into consideration--so if the treaty limits the amount of the find the Japanese fishing company can point to the limit of the treaty the treaty does not make laws internal to the several states. Treaties cannot over-ride land rights within the state. If there was some dispute between a US company and a foreign company in Maryland over some pricing issue, judicial notice would have to extend to applicable treaties--but the laws of Maryland would not be generally effected. AFAIK a delegate has no more power than the power delegated and the delgator can delegate no more power than he or she has.}

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    Last edited by allodial; 10-05-15 at 09:27 PM.
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