Skip to content Skip to footer

They Are Trying to Sneak Fast Track Past Us Again

We beat them once; we can keep them again from sneaking it past us.

Honest, paywall-free news is rare. Please support our boldly independent journalism with a donation of any size.

Wall Street and the big corporations don’t like to lose. It looks like The Money has told the Republicans to try again to get fast track through and they are preparing to vote before we can rally and organize people to try to stop it again. News reports say the House plans to vote today!

Call your representative in Congress right now. You can use ClickToCallCongress.org if you don’t know the number to call.

In this week’s post “Sea Change: Citizens Beat Wall Street And Multinationals In Congress,” I wrote about how Wall Street and the big corporations use these rigged “trade” deals to get around democracy, and use the rigged “fast track” process to get the trade deals through. Now they are trying again to get this past the pesky “democracy problem” that keeps getting in their way,

The Wall Street/multinational corporation “trade” deals are about getting around democracy so they can lower the wages they have to pay, not pay for environmental protection and get government out of the way of their profits with their meddlesome regulations that protect health and safety and citizens.

Fast-tracking these agreements is a way around democracy to get the Wall Street/multinational corporation “trade” deals enacted.

This pesky “democracy” problem – “government interference” getting in the way of profits – was the reason corporations put together our rigged trade processes in the first place. If open, transparent debate in Congress won’t give you what you want, then slip it into secret, corporate-negotiated “trade” agreements and use a rigged “fast track” process to tie Congress’s hands and keep our representatives from being able to “meddle” with the result. (“You can’t get a trade deal done if Congress can change it.”)

It looks like they are trying again, scheduling another vote without giving the pubic time to see what is going on.

If this passes, they are preapproving the secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and future trade deals before We the People even know what is in them.

So help get the word out, call your representative, call your family, call your friends, call your neighbors and let them know they have to weigh in right now before the Wall Street-corporate cabal gets a chance to slide this through. We beat them once; we can keep them again from sneaking it past us.

Important Message: Please Read

For 25 years, Truthout has survived by publishing impactful investigative journalism and analysis; distributing full editions 365 days a year; and building a community of readers who support us with small, hard-earned donations.

Eighty percent of our $3 million yearly budget comes from small donors alone. Of those, 8,000 readers support us with monthly donations. Back in 2018, when Facebook decided to suppress the circulation of posts made by organizations, thereby cutting readers off from seeing many articles shared by the news organizations they had intentionally decided to follow, Truthout’s total traffic declined by 40 percent, as nearly all of our traffic from that platform disappeared.

Now, Google has recently rolled out its AI search bar, providing AI summaries instead of directing readers to our site. Google Search is our single largest source of traffic; it’s the route by which nearly one third of our readers find us. Much like in 2018, a shocking 40 percent of our Google traffic has disappeared overnight.

It will not be easy for Truthout to shoulder this blow. Nor will it be easy for our peers and collaborators — news sites that depend on traffic and aren’t bankrolled by large corporations.

If you can support Truthout with a donation today, you can help us resist the AI onslaught. Please give today.