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The House has BLOCKED both the TAA and TPA.

The fast-track is officially dead in the House, even though members may still hold a vote on it to allow people to share their views/opinions/yell at each other over it for awhile. It can no longer be passed for now, even if they have enough votes to do so.

It wasn't even close, 302-126. This is a major setback for the TPP itself, as Obama now must return to the negotiations with his tail tucked between his legs and tell all the other countries that Congress will be allowed to debate and amend the final agreement.

edit: The House took their fake vote and the fast-track passed 219-211.
We were saved by union Democrats.

Can't rest easy yet though.

TPA (fast track) re-vote set for tomorrow.

However, they're not voting on the TAA and Obama says he'll veto the TPA without the TAA included.

This is the most bipartisan legislature in decades~

And now these bastards have sent the bill to the house again!

ffs, they sent it to the Senate, the House voted first this time.

Which will be interesting, since Senate Dems only voted for it the first time because it was paired with the TAA as a package. It may not pass again without it.

And now senate fucked up again by passing it.

So has it been passed this time? Absolutely? Or is there more shit it has to go through?

For God's sake will you please read articles instead of headlines .

The Senate passed a motion to end their debates/filibuster and actually vote on it tomorrow, Wednesday. It's expected to pass now that it's separate from the TAA, but Obama says he won't sign one without the other, and now he wants the AGOA too (African Growth and Opportunity Act).

This is still only the TPA, not the TPP, but a trade bill with fast track authority has never not passed.

So… panic? Or no? Pretty sure I read somewhere that even when Obama signs it, they still have to vote on it, and at that point, the entire thing will be there for us to read.

The fast track let's them read the TPP but not vote on it or amend it. When the TPP itself passes you can sort of panic. It's not going to be received well and tbh I expect a massive public shitstorm when the full text is avaliable, which is when democrats will say WE DIDN'T DO THIS IT'S THE REPUBLICANS FAULT! as is standard.

Let's assume it does pass and the shitstorm does happen. Will the government reconsider or will they be all like "Lmao who cares we get more money"?

Depends on who is in charge at the time and what the corporations backing them have to say about it but it's REALLY unlikely that it could be repealed as its an international agreement. They could ignore certain parts of it but who knows what kind of penalties it assigns to countries that back out. We could also ignore those, but at that point we'd be risking military action.

I don't think panic should really be a course of action, even if these bills do get passed. We couldn't affect them even if we wanted to, given that we can't really organize enough people in time for something like this, and even if we could, they would still hold the ability to vote any which way they choose.

It's best to follow this with an emotional detachment. Whatever happens with the house and senate and politics, will happen. The Koreans, from what I understand, have a cultural concept of Han, which is, to quote wikipedia, "feeling of unresolved resentment against injustices suffered, a sense of helplessness because of the overwhelming odds against one, a feeling of acute pain in one's guts and bowels, making the whole body writhe and squirm, and an obstinate urge to take revenge and to right the wrong--all these combined.""

I don't agree with a lot of it, but I do agree with one thing. Come the next electoral cycle, every American who doesn't like what happened has an opportunity before them. They'll know who did or did not vote for these bills. And they'll be allowed the opportunity to see them out of a job, and out of politics, come the next election.

Assuming they actually take that oppurtunity to do so. And don't just blow it off to do some family bonding or have fun. In all honesty, I can't fault people for wanting to enjoy themselves with the free-time offered to them, instead of opting for vote spitefully.

{ every American who doesn’t like what happened has an opportunity before them }

Just like every year lmaooo the people who turn out to vote for our legislators don't have any problem with the TPP, and the people who do can barely hit a 35% turnout for PRESIDENTIAL elections, let's not even go into gubernatorial and representative elections, it would only be depressing. How do you think all these people got where they are in the first place? Why do the same guys keep getting elected over and over and over? Because the old ass dinosaurs that grew up with them are the only people left who actively vote.

Just sit back and enjoy the ride to full government welfare state. Nobody native to this country is going to have a job for much longer, beside the rich businessmen in high level corporate positions.

But how to abolish TPP once it's passed?

Well don't these bills have some sort of expiration date? (I know there was something about renewing the maligned PATRIOT act)

Also I think the Supreme Court might have a say on if the treaty or its Atlantic counterpart is constitutional.

BTW what are your thought on this (this was a response to last years petition, but It does address one of the 3-4 common issues people have with the bills)

Oh…and guess what Reddit has been doing!

So my doubts of two evils joining forces were right all along!

There's nothing more to be said to senate than curse words at this point

Also, TPP entry needs to be updated!

People keep saying that there's some other thingy that's gotta vote on it, and this is AFTER the whole thing has to be released to the public. Can someone confirm this? There are SO many conflicting reports on what the TPP is and is not.

They will vote on the TPA, fast track, first today at some point. Then both the House and Senate will vote on the TAA (the House most likely wont get to it today), a bill to offset the American job losses caused by the TPP, which is packaged with an African trade bill called the African Growth and Opportunity Act. If passed, those are the three Acts that Obama wants to see on his desk by the end of the week.

The TPP is finishing negotiations with all the involved countries who are also debating their own issues atm. That final bill will be presented to Congress to read at some point when it's done, but because of the TPA they wont be able to change anything or kill the bill.

Companies involved

Companies that may be involved and is definitely not comprehensive*

It's a list of companies the USTR says they're keeping updated as negotiations go on, but the USTR also say any lawmaker can come down and read the full text whenever they want, and we know that's not true.

Like that reddit comment says, look at the companies who aren't on the list. The first one they list as being absent is Google, but we know from Google's lobbyist disclosures that they've spent ~$5.5 million lobbying in the past three months, and their reports mention "TPP" a total of 17 times.

Searching the lobbying disclosure database would be a lot more helpful for people who are actively interested in just how much which companies have been investing in this decision.

Check off "specific lobbying issue" then in step two type "TPP".

edit: here's a direct link to Google's first quarter 2015 disclosure. Says right there, "trans-pacific partnership".

Here are some companies who mention that!

oohh, good list. I am so unsurprised that Nike tops it.

If this doesn't spur a mass turnout and changeover during the next election cycle, we can officially consider society fucked. This is legitimately our last chance as a peaceful country, it will come down to revolution or globalization with this.

Nike probably wants a cheap workforce.

Also, this may be a last chance of a peaceful country and one of the last decades where it's possible to revert a country to a normal state until technology won't allow it.

Nike wants a bigger cheap workforce than it already has.

I guess we should say "revolution and globalization" because one of them is not gonna happen without the other.

Technology is such a problem. The more we use it in our workforce, the less we have need for a human workforce. The less we have need for a human workforce, the less the we have need for humans. Like seriously, dystopian as it sounds, at what point are the uber rich going to stop needing our money, stop caring about producing goods, and consider themselves the ascended human race which will stomp out all lower lifeforms? If they keep us around, it will literally be Wall-E. What are 7 billion people going to do everyday on the planet if we no longer need jobs to provide for ourselves, because the global government is providing for us? We're livestock at that point.

Before this gets derailed into a Luddite discussion I must point out that there must be some form of maintenance for the robots, both on the technical and programming fronts and that automated repair bots and AI seem quite a few ways off

"Nobody native to this country in this world is going to have a job for much longer, beside the rich businessmen in high level corporate positions and engineers."

fix'd

Well, at least this confirms I'm leaving the country as soon as I possibly can. I'm getting to the point where I'd welcome a society-resetting cataclysm. [sigh] Guess I'll just play Fallout until then.

Surely the creative/acting industry would be one of the few spared?

Rich businessmen, engineers, and thespians. The future is bright.

That does not answer my question at all. Once again. Surely the creative/entertainment industry will survive, since it requires humans.

Leaving the country wont help you.

…I was pretty sure your question was sarcastic lmao, the extremely dystopian hypothetical I was describing doesn't require humans, so why would it need entertainment?

Globalization is not quite as drastic, and to avoid revolution they'll keep it as quiet as possible for as long as possible. It's just going to be so obvious, and with independent news sources becoming the mainstream alternative as the alphabet networks become too obviously government controlled, it's going to get around even faster, then by word of mouth to people who don't keep up with current events but can feel the effects of the TPP on their daily life.

I just don't see the country sitting idly by after the full text of this comes out.

News Saying Opponents of the Trans Pacific Partnership Don't Understand How It Works

Thoughts?

It misses many criticisms and doesn't even address the issues to criticisms.

{ Many people reading this analysis will probably dismiss it as free-market ideological nonsense or pro-business claptrap. }

Well, their argument is: foreign workers will work for less so those jobs would have been eventually lost anyway and protecting American manufacturing jobs is useless because China is going to cheaply manufacture everything and all our business is going to move there whether we like it or not, so we need to send all the stupid people to China to work there for next to nothing and keep all the smart people in America to fill the high skill jobs that will be left after all the manufacturing/farming/etc jobs disappear or are filled by imported, non-native workers.

Their only suggested solution for displaced American workers is 'git gudder and ull b okay', which we all know is not going to fly for the majority of the 300,000,000 people in this country. Git gud, or get on government welfare and become no better than livestock. These people are so obsessed with whose bank account will reach a trillion first that they're carelessly destroying the economies that built up their fortunes in the first place. You guys thought we were the "99%" before, wait until the whole world is the "99%" working for pennies producing luxury items for those "smart" people who got to keep their high skill jobs.

Here's an investment chapter!

"The Investment Chapter highlights the intent of the TPP negotiating parties, led by the United States, to increase the power of global corporations by creating a supra-national court, or tribunal, where foreign firms can "sue" states and obtain taxpayer compensation for "expected future profits". These investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals are designed to overrule the national court systems. ISDS tribunals introduce a mechanism by which multinational corporations can force governments to pay compensation if the tribunal states that a country's laws or policies affect the company's claimed future profits. In return, states hope that multinationals will invest more. Similar mechanisms have already been used. For example, US tobacco company Phillip Morris used one such tribunal to sue Australia (June 2011 – ongoing) for mandating plain packaging of tobacco products on public health grounds; and by the oil giant Chevron against Ecuador in an attempt to evade a multi-billion-dollar compensation ruling for polluting the environment. The threat of future lawsuits chilled environmental and other legislation in Canada after it was sued by pesticide companies in 2008/9. ISDS tribunals are often held in secret, have no appeal mechanism, do not subordinate themselves to human rights laws or the public interest, and have few means by which other affected parties can make representations."

Not directly related to the TPP but it's a good article and something to consider as China expresses interest in joining the TPP and what that might mean for us.

At the same time, here's how American savers (topic of the China article) are doing.

Any updates?

Let's see checks EFF

>Hacker Contest
>25th anniversary
>Something about Internet Shutdown being used as a tool of oppression

Nope, nothing here since the Fast Track passing

Got a info graph outlining TPP, no TTIP info graph yet.

It has no severance clause or expiration date. Once it passes it is here for good.

It starts to happening, Streamers are awakening and knowing that this is a shit of law, we need that Internet celebrities knows about the TPP and share the information by the media and help to inform about this.
Thanks based Vinny.

Which is actually fucking stupid. With stuff like this, you always gotta have a kill switch. If it fucks over governments as WELL as people (lest we forget that if it does pass, people will riot, hopefully) they'll have no way to get rid of it.

Are there any unpopular international agreements that are no longer in effect? If so what caused those to be abolished?

But the main problem is that something HAS to be done with not only TPP but those agreements already in effect as well? Because trying to get copyright extremists to go bankrupt is not that easy.

There is no kill switch because TPP was written by corporation
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150605/11483831239/revealed-emails-show-how-industry-lobbyists-basically-wrote-tpp.shtml

You know what's worse? Most people are afraid to name those people who wrote TPP.

Any updates?