Perverse as such an idea may seem, this is exactly what is being put before the United States Congress as yet another trade treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is being shoved down America's throat.

There are two parts of this idea which ... in fundamental principle ... I think are "simply nonsensical."

(1) That it is possible for any body to be said to have "approved" something ... when they do not know what it is. Even though the President is the one who is authorized to negotiate a treaty, I would argue that the Congress cannot be said to have lawfully "ratified" it if it is not a clear matter of public record that the entire treaty was brought before and studied by that legislature. Otherwise, their ratification is specious and therefore unenforceable. If, in saying "yes," you did not know what you were saying "yes" to (and especially if that knowledge was kept from you), then you did not say "yes" to anything.

(2) That a trade agreement can supersede, pre-empt, or overrule any law within any country that signs to it. When two nations agree to do business with one another, they don't exchange their governmental authority for what's contained in a treaty. The domestic authority of its legislatures is not "hog-tied" by an agreement concerning trade. If "the supreme law of the land" sets forth a legislative procedure by which laws are proposed, enacted, and adjudged, then a trade-agreement must be subject to those laws, not superior to it.

Most countries on earth long-ago set aside the principle of "governance by royal proclamation." And yet, here it is again, in a different form. I say that it's nonsense, and that it should not have the force of law. We have "sunshine laws" everywhere which dictate that laws and public discussions must be public.

I also say that existing trade agreements should be re-reviewed in this light. If these treaties were negotiated "in secret," and ratified "in secret" by legislators who actually did not know what they contained, then they are null-and-void until such time that the legislators do review and understand their provisions and subsequently ratify them, thereby being demonstrably conscious of what they did. But, if an existing law is contrary to the provision of the treaty, the law holds. (Otherwise, "what's the law good for?") If you want to keep what's in the treaty, you must change the law using the proscribed legislative process.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Yeah what he said!

Thirded. All these years I've been vaguely wondering what nasties could lie in the secret code pedalled by certain software producers, and now a large government tries to sell secret law. If the decree gets passed, what are the chances of its first few victims getting it (or its effects) declared unconstitutional in court?

It makes me glad to be British. Although, looking at our own government, not as glad as I'd like to be.

Well, the most remarkable thing about the TPP is that its text is a government Top Secret.

Only a handful of Members of Congress have that kind of security clearance. (No one knows, exactly, who assigned the document this classification.) Therefore, they are literally being put in the position of being asked to vote for something that they can't and haven't read. So, they simply want to "Fast Track" the whole thing, in spite of Article 2, Section 2:

("Well, say, none of us are 'present,' see? Therefore, can't we just wash our hands of this duty, take the billions of dollars the nice businessmen promised to pay us, and just keep eating the fat of the land from this nice, big, trough?")

Foreign corporations (well, corporations try to pretend they don't have any national home these days) can sue nations for the sins of passing laws that the corporations don't like. Since "countries are 'constrained' by Constitutions" and such, these people simply try to set up a way to "game" the entire world in their favor. "We make the courts, we make the laws, we tell you you have to pay us, and (what Fools these Mortals be ...) you accept what we are saying and say, 'd-uh, okay.'"

And what is utterly baffling to me is this: "Is human Greed ever accompanied by Intelligence?" Let's talk computer-science here: we build systems for things like robustness, resiliency, error-detection, strength, damage-control, as well as efficiency and profitability. But these latter two characteristics can only exist "because of" the others, not "in spite of" them.

These (probably, couple hundred, max ...) greedy businessmen know that they are trying to pull a caper on billions of people, and upon the governments (also composed of "give-or-take eight hundred people, each") that those billions of people chose to put in positions of power over them. But what they are actually doing, thereby, is to set up something that has neither economic-strength nor the rule of law, both of which are vitally important. As long as their bank-account grows fat enough to cause numeric overflow, they simply don't think beyond that.

As engineers like ourselves know, they are creating a system that will fail catastrophically. It will not stand-up because everything that causes a "deployable system" to survive, let alone "prosper," has been removed. Redundant systems don't build themselves.

I think it's high time for billions of ordinary people to speak up. We, all of us, can do better than this. We can be princes in our own respective kingdoms, not paupers clutching to a world-wide begging bowl, specifically because "nations" do exist, and because their laws (and [vive la ...] differences) mean something to us. All must "trade" from a position of strength: otherwise, the system itself will fail, to our now world-wide ruin.

It's time for people to bear in mind that they outnumber all of these people, multiple-millions to one. It is apparently not human nature to govern, if you can instead fatten your own pocket (at the expense of millions of others) by not governing. But I am sure that these people can be forced ... peaceably, but inexorably ... to do it anyway.

Over here (UK) we have the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) which seems to be pretty much the same disgusting story. The attempt is to try to sneak it in via the EU. So much for "representative democracy".
jdk

tpp and ttip and tisa are ? basically ? the same

The "trade agreements" are LAW binding and will TIE the hands of congress and Parliament

now the USA house and senate have been VERY CONSTIPATED for the last 6 years
and your Parliament also has had the same problem

BAD for the PEOPLE
GREAT for the HUGE multi national corporations

right now the income difference is grater than it was in 1920's

soon in both the USA and UK it will match that of that right before the French revolution

when THAT happens ....... all bets are off
in 86 the world saw what was thought to be impossible
- the fall of the WALL and the cccp


i think it is tpp that has a COPYRIGHT section that would make it imposable for the USA copyright office to MAKE the fixes THAT THEY WANT TO ( orphan / HOSTAGE works)

Indeed. "Same song, different verse."

And-d-d-d . . . if we care to "flip the coin," as these penultimately-greedy and self-centered (sic...) "industrialists" do not(!!) wish to do, it reeks even worse.

As they say, "fool me twice, shame on me." All of this contretemps is pathetically-obvious to anyone who actually looks at it. But, the "few hundred(!!)" people who have dreamed-up these ideas ... and who have worked bribed so earnestly to make them happen ... are pure-and-simply taking for granted, either that "hundreds of millions of other-people 'are not looking,'" or that "the desires of hundreds of millions of other-people simply do not matter to me."

As Sting famously penned in his song, The Russians: "It's a lie we don't believe anymore."

The tried-and-true formula goes like this:

1. "We" ... a collection of well less than two hundred people on Planet Earth ... happily find ourselves in the position to directly tap into "the stream of Currency Units" that Various (and one, in particular ...) Governments "borrow" (sic) from themselves. (A stream that consists of multiple millions of such Currency Units per minute, 24/7/365.)
2. "We" use This Money to manipulate 'Countries,' knowing, and exploiting, that each 'Country' consists ... (for our purposes, at least) ... N-O-T of the "hundreds-of-millions of people that live and work within its Borders," but: "the (much) less than one-thousand people) who live and work within its Capitol."
3. ... in short, "we drown those (pathetic) people with Money, while simultaneously feting them with their own sense of National Self-Importance." They don't stand a chance.
4. In this way, we impose our designs upon billions(!) of people, ruthlessly exploiting hundreds ofmillionspeople on One side of Planet Earth, at the expense of a similar group. And, "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLnTWxpTQt4."

But all of this depends on the presumption of one thing: "Sheep-le," In both global hemispheres. "Sheep-le" who, like "Lemmings," will obediently "just be part of the Herd." Who will never refuse. Who will submit to The Slaughter, if but led to it.

Because, all of these people are perfectly aware that "they are outnumbered." That the collective will of (even a tiny fraction of ...) "the population(s) in question" is a Force Majeur, i-f it is Peaceably(!) manifested. That it is impossible to resist the will of enough people who ... again, peaceably ... "just say 'No.'"

"No, you don't 'have to' take this. The one and only reason why you 'have to' 'take this' ... is that (so far, at least), you do." The various martyrs who gave to each one of you 'your respective nations' gave to each of you 'an unstoppable power.' However, "as long as We can, by whatever means, befuddle you into failing to recognize those powers and as one Acting upon it, those powers become: Ours."

And, yes, "in the end, it always winds up in the selfsame place." Like that biblical King of Babylon who stared (sh*t-faced self-absorbed drunkenly ...) at "the handwriting on the wall" that could have been writ by any of his constituents. Constituents who gladly ("it's about time you got here!!") held the city gates open for King Darius ...

"Folks, we can Do Better ... than this." And, no matter in which Hemisphere of this Planet we presently reside, I think that we are all in the same sinking boat being conned, by the same (tiny group of ...) people, and in the same way.

"People who are ... 'out-numbered, 750,000-to-one.'" People who can 'be Peaceably Stopped, by Rule of Law.' (People who count upon you not to believe it.)

I am very worried about the copyright provisions. The DMCA is already bad enough. Putting it into an international agreement like this will make everyone except the big corporations lose.

There are reasons ... good(!) reasons ... for "these silly little things called 'sovereign nations.'" Maybe the "S"-word makes you uncomfortable, or inconveniences your greedy self-serving business plans, but, when the chips are down, you will abruptly discover that you are outnumbered: millions to one.

Those "millions," by the by, consist of (among many others ...) businessmen who know far more about real-world human business than your greed will ever allow you to acknowledge. These trade-agreements, in their concerted effort to outlaw Sovereignty, utterly forget that Sovereignty is one of the key reasons why international trade is ... or, can be ... a robust, self-adjusting, therefore reliable system that can fulfill the needs of billions of people, not just a handful.

The concept of "Sovereignty" is the Key.