The House of Representatives voted today, June 16th, to change their rules and extend the delay passed last Friday after the trade assistance portion of the fast-track bill was soundly defeated. It's a delay tactic to give both lobbyists for both parties plenty of time to purchase a path forward on the legislation that failed in the House last week. The vote went down largely along party lines, 236-189 "that saw just a handful of Republicans vote against it, and a handful of Democrats vote for it." In order to pass fast-track to the treasonous Obamatrade, a series international, corporate of coups des lois, the House needed to pass two interlinked bills. The trade assistance bill, designed to pay the costs to workers who lose their employment as a result of "trade," i.e., outsourcing of their jobs, failed last Friday 125 - 302. Immediately after, Speaker Boehner rose to call for a delay to reconsider the vote that an obscure House rule allowed. That delay was for two business days, but the Republican leadership knew that two days was not enough time to change enough votes for the trade assistance bill to have it pass. That will require more time and lots of bribes, i.e., "campaign contributions."
An email from the Daily Kos declares, "this is so incredible, I almost can’t believe it—We may have just beaten Fast Track trade authority and, with it, one of the biggest anti-labor, anti-environment trade deals of all time." Don't count on that.
Speaker Boehner knows how to grease the wheel of "democracy." Once, in the mid- 90's he "decided to play Santa Claus by handing out checks from tobacco lobbyists to fellow Congressional sleazes right on the floor of the House." Six weeks is plenty of time for the corporate lobbyists to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to House Republicans and Democrats to turn the "no" votes on the TAA into purchased "yes" votes. This is how the fast-track bill passed in the Senate.
In 2004, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Ron Suskind reported that an anonymous source, who turned out to be Karl Rove, told him, "we're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality...we'll act again, creating other new realities,...and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors." In addition to being an empire, the United States government has also become a corrupt plutocracy where lobbyists can legally tell politicians they have tens of thousands of dollars to donate in the next election cycle, and they would really appreciate a yes vote on whatever bill their corporate employers want.
Activists trying to stop the unconstitutional fast-track to Obamatrade, a new, corporate international order, have their work cut out for them in the coming six weeks. They will get no help from the corporate "news" media.
Poster Comment:
We need to stay vigilant.
