“The corporate trade agenda is stalled in Congress. After a stinging defeat last week on one provision of the fast track trade package on worker retraining, the House considered re-voting on that measure as early as today. Both the worker retraining and fast track trade procedure had to pass identically to the Senate measure for the package to go to the president’s desk to become law. But last night the Republican leadership realized they could not win a re-vote on the worker protection provisions and decided to extend the time they could reconsider this measure until the end of July.”

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“’Elected officials are receiving tens of thousands of calls from constituents opposing fast track trade authority and we want them to see that people opposed to this undemocratic approach to passing laws are so dedicated they will stay outside 24 hours a day. Elected officials need to know the anger of their constituents is deep and that if Members vote for fast track, there will be serious political repercussions. We remember the impact that NAFTA had on elections. The people will not let Congress destroy their rights to protect the health and safety of their communities,’ said Flowers.”

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“Those tortured and who remain imprisoned at Guantanamo, the over 2 million imprisoned by the U.S., those murdered by drones, by police, and killed in unlawful wars, and countless others oppressed by the U.S. ask, as Frederick Douglass did about the meaning of July 4 during slavery, ‘What to us is this Magna Carta?’ What have become cornerstone freedoms derived from the Charter: due process, habeas corpus, no imprisonment without a fair trial, the prohibition on torture and no delay in the right of justice are given at best lip service while justice is denied.”

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“It’s serious flashback time for those involved in the 1993 debate over the North America Free Trade Agreement. With the ‘fast track’ trade vote … a Democratic president is once again twisting arms and dangling rewards in a desperate effort to muster votes for a corporate-driven trade deal. … The word is only about a dozen members remain on the fence, most of them Democrats. The president is reportedly putting the tightest screws on members of the Congressional Black Caucus. After the NAFTA wheeling and dealing began in earnest back in 1993, it didn’t take long to push enough Dems…

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“With Fast Track for the Trans-Pacific Partnership now on its way to the House floor, it’s time for our Representatives to stand up to the so-called free trade attacks on common sense protections for public health, the environment and consumers. Fast Track will unleash havoc on American workers, offshore millions more jobs, and exacerbate the economic inequality that widens the gulf between economic ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’”

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“If Hawaii can make renewables work on isolated island electrical grids, the rest of the nation — with the flexibility to transmit excess power between states in the event of strong winds in Iowa or excess solar generation in Arizona — can certainly accomplish even more. … Fortunately, other states can also benefit as renewable energy is becoming cost-effective everywhere. For 93 percent of single family households in the nation’s 50 largest cities, North Carolina State University researchers found that investing in solar panels is cheaper than paying current electric bills.”

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“This leak reveals that the Obama administration, acting at the behest of pharmaceutical companies, has subjected Medicare to a series of procedural rules, negotiated in secret, that would limit Congress’ ability to enact policy reforms that would reduce prescription drug costs for Americans — and might even open to challenge aspects of our health care system today. … Not only does USTR [United States Trade Representative] want to expand and extend intellectual property rights on medicines, they also want to undermine the ability of governments to negotiate reasonable reimbursements, and give drug companies the ability to sue governments who don’t…

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“What we see in this agreement is that it’s not really about trade; it’s about creating a backdoor for corporations to get some of the changes that they want. So deregulation of the financial industry, longer patent protections for the pharmaceutical industries, Internet privacy restrictions, these are the things that these corporations have wanted to get but they haven’t been able to so far, and this is a vehicle for doing that.”

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“President Obama continues to hear criticism for his failure to swiftly defeat ISIS. But while crushing ISIS may be the official stated goal, the actual agenda may be a long, drawn-out war to weaken regional powers. We have seen this policy before — with many of the same players — in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. … U.S. President Ronald Reagan officially allied with Iraq during the conflict. In secret, however, government officials sold arms to Iran. The eight-year war, sustained by the U.S. backing both sides, yielded over a million casualties. The extended conflict also left two of…

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“If FIFA executives are indeed guilty, this is no doubt serious corruption, with many poor countries submitting to extravagant FIFA demands for souped-up stadiums, draining resources and creating risky working conditions in which vulnerable workers have died. But this is also a conventional corruption story, accusations of clearly illegal activity. The corruption I investigate is fully legal, underreported, and often vastly damaging to the public trust. Wedel cites the recent disclosures around the Clinton Foundation as a small window on this ‘new corruption.'”

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