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from Web of Debt:
The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic
Posted on April 24, 2015
by Ellen Brown
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.
Article IV, Section 4, US Constitution
A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .
On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers.
The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40% of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it.
Abdicating the Judicial Function to Corporate Lawyers
James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. . . . Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. . . .
And that, from what we now know of the TPPs secret provisions, will be its dire effect. ....................(more)
http://ellenbrown.com/2015/04/24/the-trans-pacific-partnership-and-the-death-of-the-republic/
based on Article 4, Section 4 the ISDS is unconstitutional.
Could this be applied to Fast Track or just the TPP vote?
Baitball Blogger
(46,757 posts)I was so absorbed with the knowledge that our own leaders were capable of inflicting severe damage on us, that it never occurred to me that it could be worse.
appalachiablue
(41,171 posts)TJ and Madison would be all over. The de facto loss of our republican government to the higher power of international investors and capital is clearly the plan. It would render governments, elected representatives and the public virtually powerless. Only those in the investor class, 'with stocks' could benefit and there seem to be quite a few of them here from remarks on posts particularly concerning the TPP. The average American won't have a clue for years, because of the almost complete control of the media by corporations, and their own struggles and daily lives which are about to get worse. ~ Sic Semper Tyrannis ~
Octafish
(55,745 posts)She certainly pegged Timothy Geithner and AIG-Gate
SoapBox
(18,791 posts)...just saw a sign with the above in the Video section.
I think that sums up this smelly deal.
Xolodno
(6,401 posts)...in one of his criticism's of capitalism, was it's constant need for new markets.
Trade deals are nothing more than an outlet looking for new markets.
Long as we continue to support loosely regulated both here and abroad...trade deals like the TPP are necessary. Its just the economics of capitalism.