Mr. Egberto Willies (Dkos Contributing Editor) on May 17, 2015 put up this excellent blog with 16 minute interview of Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch The TPP will pass unless progressives make compelling case that touches lives of Americans. Lori is everyone's favorite "expert" (she really is!) on the so-called free-trade agreements and their consequences on normal people in the U.S. Egberto is long-time faithful and articulate person in Kossakville, so check out his and Lori's work here.
Ms. Lori Wallach recommends learning about the Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment Act of 2009 or the TRADE Act of 2009 - an alternative to NAFTA/WTO-style trade and globalization policy stated in a formal, legal format. The TRADE Act was sponsored by our current Senior Senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown with 9 cosponsors, and in the House by then-Representative Mike Michaud [ME-2, 2003-2014] with 149 cosponsors. It was introduced in both the 110th and 111th Congress and had 4 titles. To make it easier for interested Kossaks to search for relevant data on The TRADE Act, here are All Bill Titles:
Short: TRADE Act of 2009 as introduced.
Short: Trade Reform, Accountability, Development, and Employment Act of 2009 as introduced.
Official: To require a review of existing trade agreements and renegotiation of existing trade agreements based on the review, to set terms for future trade agreements, to express the sense of the Congress that the role of Congress in trade policymaking should be strengthened, and for other purposes. as introduced.
Official: TRADE Act of 2009 as introduced.
Public Citizen maintains different sites to help us learn about the TRADE Act. The
2009 site '10) site shows "then" and the
2015 site shows "now". Check them out as they both lots of quality tools for organizing and lobbying work...
May 21, 2015: Squeaker of a Vote on Fast Track in Senate Highlights Troubles Ahead in House Statement of Lori Wallach, Director, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
The Fast Track bill’s unexpected troubles in the U.S. Senate, capped by today’s squeaker vote by lawmakers to end debate and proceed with a vote on the legislation, certainly did not create the intended momentum for consideration in the House, where Fast Track is known to be in trouble. If President Barack Obama had only followed through on his 2008 campaign promise to replace the Nixon-era Fast Track mechanism with a more inclusive, democratic process, his prospects for obtaining trade authority would not be so dim. Since 1988, only Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have persuaded Congress to provide the multi-year, open-ended Fast Track delegation that Obama seeks. In the past 21 years, Congress has allowed the outdated procedure to go into effect only for five years.
Thanks to Mr. Willies and Ms. Wallach for helping us (all) have many good opportunities to do homework and learn much about these otherwise mystifying issues, why and how to organize our communities using those issues. Issue campaigns are always more difficult than personality campaigns and of them, taxes and trade are among the most difficult issues around which to organize for improved quality of life as Senators Warren, Sanders, Brown, Durbin, Baldwin, Markey, and several others are trying to accomplish. In Daily Kos, we must get away from the cults of personality that hype our attention and genuinely dig down into issues to better help ourselves help ourselves.
The issue in the Senate yesterday, 5-21-15, was to keep open the debates about an amendment ( S.A.1221 ) that, in turn, amends the legislative vehicle for TPA and about summarily closing debate on hundreds of amendments to S.A.1221 that were proposed by more than half the Senators but that had been defeated in even debating discussing and voting upon them as befits Democracy and its processes.
Orchids and Onions:
Orchids: Thanks to this cadre for trying to maintain a democratic open forum in the midst of global tomfoolery.
Baldwin (D-WI) Blumenthal (D-CT) Booker (D-NJ)
Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Cardin (D-MD)
Casey (D-PA) Collins (R-ME) Donnelly (D-IN)
Durbin (D-IL) Franken (D-MN) Gillibrand (D-NY)
Heinrich (D-NM) Hirono (D-HI) King (I-ME)
Klobuchar (D-MN) Leahy (D-VT) Lee (R-UT)
Manchin (D-WV) Markey (D-MA) Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR) Mikulski (D-MD) Murphy (D-CT)
Paul (R-KY) Peters (D-MI) Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV) Sanders (I-VT) Schatz (D-HI)
Schumer (D-NY) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL)
Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Udall (D-NM)
Warren (D-MA) Whitehouse (D-RI)
Onions: No thanks to these clowns for defeating passionate, honest, transparency in their brazen so-called "leadership" to actualize cloture with their cataclysmal decision to plunge the Senate into a caliginous atmosphere of underhandedness, concealment, covertness, stealth, and subterfuge as they led the charge into the
Cloture Vote on S.AMDT.1221
President Barack Obama Senators Mitch McConnell John Cornyn,
Orrin G. Hatch Daniel Coats John Boozman
Thom Tillis Mike Rounds Pat Roberts
Richard Burr John Barrasso Mike Crapo
Jeff Flake Tom Cotton Shelley Moore Capito
David Perdue Chuck Grassley, Dan Sullivan
the same Senators having long ago filed the cloture motion to H.R. 1314, the legislative vehicle for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA).
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