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Obama’s Controversial Trade Deal Is Back From the Dead

by VictoriaPethebr Posted on June 23, 2015

Mother Jones

Things were looking grim for the Trans-Pacific Partnership—Obama’s controversial trade deal—after House Democrats turned on the president earlier this month and struck down a major provision in the “Fast Track” Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), a bill that would enable the president to complete trade-deal negotiations and present trade accords to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no amendments. But, in a stunning turnaround, the Senate voted 60-37 today to end debate on the fast-track legislation, a clear indication that it will pass and clear the way for Obama’s trade deal to move forward.

Fast-track legislation is nothing new. This type of authority has been granted to every president since Gerald Ford. But what makes it controversial is that it paves the way for negotiations to continue on the secretive and sweeping trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which have been met with heavy criticism from both liberal advocacy groups and Republicans who are concerned with granting the executive more power.

House Democrats nearly derailed the fast-track legislation earlier this month when they helped to vote down a measure, known as Trade Adjustment Assistance, that had been appended to the bill. By knocking down the TAA, a program widely supported by Democrats, House Dems gambled that their Senate counterparts would balk at passing the fast-track bill without the assistance program. But on Tuesday they lost that bet, when 13 Senate Democrats joined with their Republican colleagues to end debate on the TAA-less fast-track bill, which is expected to come to a final vote tomorrow. (The assistance program has been attached to another, more popular trade bill that will be voted on later this week.)

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Obama’s Controversial Trade Deal Is Back From the Dead

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TPP, TPA, and TAA: Explaining the Unexplainable

by ConcepcionHargis Posted on June 18, 2015

Mother Jones

Even granting that I haven’t followed the TPP treaty debate all that closely, the latest maneuvering to get it passed is a little puzzling. As you may recall, the original strategy was to pair up TPA, which most Democrats oppose, with TAA, which most Democrats like, in hopes of attracting enough Democratic votes to pass the whole package. With these preliminaries out of the way, Congress could then vote on TPP itself. It didn’t work. Dems voted heavily against TAA anyway, because they knew it would sink TPA too. So what’s next?

Hold on. That probably barely sounded like English to some of you. Here’s an acronym primer:

TPP = Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade treaty between the United States and bunch of other countries around the Pacific Rim. It’s been under negotiation for years and will be ready for a ratification vote soon.

TPA = Trade Promotion Authority, aka “fast track.” This comes before the TPP vote, and guarantees that the treaty text will be submitted to Congress for an up-or-down vote with no amendments allowed. Without it, the treaty is dead, since obviously all the other countries won’t allow the US to unilaterally makes changes.

TAA = Trade Adjustment Assistance. Trade agreements with poor countries often lead to job losses in the US, as jobs get moved overseas. TAA is a laundry list of measures designed to help workers who lose their jobs because of the treaty, and it’s supposed to make trade treaties more tolerable to organized labor. It very decidedly failed to do so this time.

Now go read the first paragraph of this post again.

Right. So where were we? Oh yes: The TPA+TAA package bombed with anti-treaty Democrats, and it needed at least a few Democratic votes to pass. So what’s next?

On Thursday the House will vote on just the fast-track portion—also known as Trade Promotion Authority, or TPA—on the understanding that the workers’ aid would be approved later.

….In a renewed push to win support for the fast-track bill, Mr. Obama huddled Wednesday at the White House with pro-trade Democrats. House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.), meanwhile, said they would find a way to separately pass legislation renewing the workers’ aid program, also known as Trade Adjustment Assistance or TAA, hoping to shore up the Democratic support necessary for the new plan.

Hmmm. TPA actually passed the House last week, even though TAA had already been voted down earlier in the day. So I guess the idea here is that pro-treaty Democrats will vote for TPA as a standalone bill too. I mean, if they were willing to vote for it last week after TAA had been defeated, why not vote for it this week with no TAA? Following that, it’s just a matter of sending the standalone TPA bill to the Senate and finding out if a few Democrats there will still vote for it even without TAA.

It’s all a little weird and desperate, but it might work. Republicans are swearing that if TPA passes, they’ll bring up TAA for a vote later, which is supposed to appease Democratic concerns about job losses. Dems only voted against TAA in order to kill TPA, so if TPA has already passed there’s no longer any reason for them to vote against TAA.

Of course, even if Republicans allow a vote on TAA, it also needs a few Republican votes to pass, and the problem here is the opposite: Republicans have little reason to vote for TAA once TPA has already passed and there’s no longer any need to appease Democrats. But Democrats can’t pass it alone. They need some Republican votes too. So do they trust the GOP leadership to deliver those votes?

Jesus. What a rat’s nest. If you didn’t understand any of that, try reading it again. And then again. If it still doesn’t make sense, just forget the whole thing and eat a quart of ice cream. You’ll be better off.

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TPP, TPA, and TAA: Explaining the Unexplainable

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Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

by Shella17Xguiwno Posted on April 11, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to have Cheryl Rofer, who for 35 years worked as a chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. If you don’t follow her already, be sure to check out her writing on national security, women’s issues, science, and nuclear power and weapons at Nuclear Diner.

When I started blogging in November 2004, Kevin was already defining the field with short, topical posts and Friday Cat Blogging. The internet was a smaller place then, and most of us knew all the others, or at least knew of them. We argued. We linked to each other, hoping to boost our SEO. We shared each others’ successes and mourned when Inkblot disappeared. Kevin has been a good companion over the years. His broad coverage of topics and to-the-point style are touchstones, even as I stray into the wonkier corners of the news.

Recently, I’ve been writing a lot about the recent negotiations with Iran. A few days past a deadline that had nuclear wonks on the edge of their seats, the talks between Tehran and officials from six other nations brought forth a plan for a plan.

That’s not nothing, although it sounds vague. Some vagueness is necessary to keep all sides happy—and that means that any description of the deal will sound vague. The United States and its partners in the P5+1 would like a neatly written-down to-do list (which they have sorta provided), and Iran’s Supreme Leader has decreed that all must be written down just once—exactly when isn’t yet clear. The results of negotiations must be spun by the sides to their very different bases.

In America, two consensuses are building. Most in the arms control community and a wide swath of foreign policy experts, including some conservatives, feel that the deal as described in that fact sheet is better than expected and should keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon for the next decade or more. Not bad.

The more hawkish consensus ranges from bombing Iran now to leaving the talks in hopes of a better deal, which amounts to bombing Iran later. Why not, when you’re confident it would take only a few days of air strikes? They say the deal is no good because it does not guarantee Iranian compliance for perpetuity and does not totally destroy Iran’s enrichment and other nuclear capabilities. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is apoplectic, but what else is new?

The same hawks also assured us back in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk. Their arguments this time around are just as boneheaded. According to the fact sheet, Iran would enter into agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; that would be, as much in perpetuity as any international deal can be. Under that treaty, Iran is entitled to peaceful nuclear energy, and, like any other country with smart scientists, can figure out how to make nuclear weapons. Bombs can’t change that.

The final deal remains to be negotiated. The fact sheet is only an outline, and some issues will be easier to solve than others. Still to be worked out: Sanctions, particularly the schedule on which they are to be lifted. A list of research and development activities that Iran is allowed to pursue may or may not have been drawn up in Lausanne. Details on how Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile will be reduced and the redesign of the Arak reactor are missing.

The extent of Iran’s past activity on nuclear weapons was relegated to the IAEA by the P5+1 throughout the negotiations, and is a lesser provision in the fact sheet. Do we have to know all Iran’s dirty secrets to police a future agreement? Probably not.

The Supreme Leader issued a tweet stream that seems to give his blessing for a deal to go forward, but his words were unclear enough that domestic hardliners could seize on them in an attempt to scuttle the deal. Iran’s President Rouhani has voiced his support. In Israel, even the general who bombed the Osirak reactor thinks it’s a good deal.

Stateside, President Obama is doing what he can to move the agreement along, talking to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the author of the bill most likely to throw a wrench in the machinery. Democrats who once supported that bill are now reconsidering that stance. The President has given major interviews to Tom Friedman and NPR. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, who was part of the negotiations, is talking to the press.

Yes, if the sanctions are lifted, Iran might be able to make other sorts of trouble in the Middle East. But it’s doing that anyway. We won’t know for some time whether an agreement can mellow Iran by opening it to the world and better economic conditions.

If an agreement can be negotiated to completion, Iran can’t get the bomb for a decade or more. That’s enough for now.

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Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

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Mitch McConnell Is Now Telling States To Ignore Obama’s Climate Rules

by YMKNildadcbtfzo Posted on March 4, 2015

Mother Jones

It’s no secret that Republicans leaders hate President Barack Obama’s flagship climate initiative, which aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. So far, the main opposition has been at the state level. The new rules require every state to submit a plan for cleaning up its power sector, and a host of bills have cropped up—primarily in coal-dependent Southern states—to screw with those plans. These bills tend to be backed by GOP state lawmakers, the coal industry, and the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council.

The thrust of much of this legislation is to effectively stonewall the Environmental Protection Agency and hope that the rules get killed by the Supreme Court. It’s a long shot, given the Court’s long history of siding with the EPA. And the longer states delay in coming up with their own plan, the more likely they’ll be to have one forced on them by the feds.

But in a column for Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) threw his weight behind this obstructionist strategy:

This proposed regulation would have a negligible effect on global climate but a profoundly negative impact on countless American families already struggling…

Don’t be complicit in the administration’s attack on the middle class. Think twice before submitting a state plan—which could lock you in to federal enforcement and expose you to lawsuits—when the administration is standing on shaky legal ground and when, without your support, it won’t be able to demonstrate the capacity to carry out such political extremism.

Refusing to go along at this time with such an extreme proposed regulation would give the courts time to figure out if it is even legal, and it would give Congress more time to fight back. We’re devising strategies now to do just that.

There’s plenty to take issue with in McConnell’s analysis. For starters, the EPA rules are unlikely to cause any problems with blackouts or sky-high electric bills, as the senator implies. But I’m sure it’ll make good ammunition for state lawmakers and fossil fuel interests as battles over this thing play out this year.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/03/03/3725288_states-should-reject-obama-mandate.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/03/03/3725288_states-should-reject-obama-mandate.html#storylink=cpy

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Mitch McConnell Is Now Telling States To Ignore Obama’s Climate Rules

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Mitt Romney Shifts His Position on Climate Change—Again

by ErwinHanson Posted on January 20, 2015

Mother Jones

Is Mitt Romney becoming a climate change crusader?

During his 2012 presidential bid, Romney was dismissive about Democratic efforts to combat the effects of climate change, and he pushed for an expanded commitment to fossil fuels. But in a speech in California on Monday, Romney, who is considering a third run for president in 2016, signaled a shift on the issue. According to the Palm Springs Desert Sun, the former Massachusetts governor “said that while he hopes the skeptics about global climate change are right, he believes it’s real and a major problem,” and he lamented that Washington had done “almost nothing” to stop it.

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Mitt Romney Shifts His Position on Climate Change—Again

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The Senate will vote to decide if climate change is real

by BarryWickens Posted on January 14, 2015

may the eyes have it!

The Senate will vote to decide if climate change is real

By on 14 Jan 2015 6:24 amcommentsShare

Senate Majority Leader and honorary fifth ninja turtle Mitch McConnell announced yesterday that he will graciously allow the Senate to vote on climate change. Specifically: thing or not a thing?

Here at Grist, we understand that plenty of things that seem real might not be real (Drake, cake pops), and vice versa (ghosts). And we agree with our nation’s House of Lords: The most important part of fighting existential threats is determining if they are real, preferably by simple majority. “Evidence” means jack until you put it to a vote.

Like climate change, there are lots of other societal bugaboos we’re just not sure we buy. Since we can’t DO anything about them until we decide, let’s look at the evidence for and against a few of the big ones — and then vote on them, Senate, we beg of you.

Shutterstock

1. Time

For: The inexorable ravages of age; sand.

Against: The Rolling Stones; this broken Swatch; Interstellar; R.E.M.

Shutterstock

2. The Moon

For: Neil Armstrong; R.E.M.; werewolves; tides.

Against: Investigative journalism; clouds.

YouTube

3. Adnan Syed

For: Sarah Koenig.

Against: Sarah Koenig.

Shutterstock

4. Vegetables

For: Your mom’s lying word; lying farmers.

Against: Fruits.

YouTube

5. Jean Claude Van Damme

For: Footage of devastation via roundhouses and crotch punches; the 90s.

Against: This CGI nightmare fever dream; the 2000s.

Honestly, I see where Mitch is coming from: You don’t want to deal with a thing? Pretend it doesn’t exist; get your friends to agree with you. In that vein, I have one more item for this list:

Gage Skidmore

6. Mitch McConnell himself

For: This disappointed hare; this empty pizza box.

Against: There were only ever four teenage mutant ninja turtles, and you know it.

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The Senate will vote to decide if climate change is real

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France’s Far-Right Leader Exploits the Paris Attack and Calls for Reviving the Death Penalty

by JMUDesiree Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

Shortly after gunmen burst into the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo and murdered a dozen people, Marine Le Pen, the leader of Front National, a far-right, anti-immigrant party, called for France to revive the death penalty, which it abolished in 1981. In an interview with France 2, she declared that capital punishment should be part “of our legal arsenal,” and she vowed to hold a national referendum to restore it if she is elected president in 2017.

La Pen’s remarks were not surprising. While the manhunt for the Charlie Hebdo killers was underway, she used the horrific attack to justify her own political war on Islam. And it did seem that her party, which promotes a hard-line anti-Islam and anti-immigrant message, was in a good position to gain politically.

But, it seems, Le Pen and the suspected terrorists, Cherif Kouachi and Said Kouachi, who were killed by French authorities on Friday, shared a view: they both wanted death for the gunmen. When the Kouachi brothers were cornered in a printing plant in Dammartin-en-Goele, northeast of Paris, a French lawmaker who had been inside the SWAT command post told a television station that the brothers had told French negotiators they “want to die as martyrs.”

This was not surprising. The goal of martyrdom has motivated numerous jihadists to conduct murderous action. Suicide bombers, the 9/11 plotters, and others seek to die in pursuit of their cause and believe that there will be a reward on the other side.

So the best punishment, when such criminals are apprehended, would be to deny them martyrdom and force them to wait decades, maybe half a century, to meet their violence-supporting maker—preferably in a small, isolated cell for all that time. Recruiters of jihadist killers might have a tougher time selling a decades-long stint in prison than a glorious exit in a blaze of gunfire or a high-profile state execution that would receive attention around the world.

One key, though dubious, argument for the death penalty is that it deters would-be killers. But terrorists like the Charlie Hebdo murderers are not deterred by death. They desire their own demise. Putting aside the moral considerations regarding state-sponsored executions, a sober (and, yes, vengeful) calculation would be to keep such evildoers alive and miserable for many years. Perhaps that would make them less compelling inspiration for potential terrorists. Le Pen’s call for reviving the death penalty is not geared toward preventing bloody events; it is designed to exploit them.

Unfortunately, in the Charlie Hebdo case, the supposed killers got their death wish. It would have been more gratifying—and probably more beneficial—if they had been captured, placed on trial, convicted, and forced to rot in jail for the rest of their lives.

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France’s Far-Right Leader Exploits the Paris Attack and Calls for Reviving the Death Penalty

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Mitch McConnell Wants to Open a Giant Loophole for Superrich Donors. Harry Reid Has Vowed to Stop Him.

by BenedicShultz Posted on December 9, 2014

Mother Jones

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is vowing to block any effort by his GOP counterpart, Mitch McConnell, to loosen the nation’s campaign finance limits as part of a bipartisan budget deal taking shape in Congress.

Last week, the Huffington Post reported that McConnell, who will take over as majority leader in January, wanted to slip into a major government funding bill a measure that would give presidential and congressional candidates more leeway to coordinate their campaign spending with political parties. Right now, candidates for federal office can coordinate some of their election spending with the parties—but only up to a certain amount. (The limit ranges from tens of thousands to several million dollars, depending on the size of the state’s voting-age population.) Beyond that threshold, parties and candidates can’t coordinate their spending plans, and the parties must spend their funds independently of the candidates they back.

The existing rule is intended to prevent donors from using political parties to skirt legal limits on donations to candidates. As it stands, donors can give up to $5,200 every two-year election cycle to each candidate for federal office. But McConnell’s measure, if enacted, would create a massive loophole in that rule, says Fred Wertheimer of Democracy 21, a group that supports limits on money in politics. If McConnell gets what he wants, rich donors who hit the $5,200 limit could simply route further donations to candidates by giving to political party committees—which may accept far larger donations and could work directly with the candidates to ensure the money was spent as the donors intended. “The practical effort here is to repeal the limits,” Wertheimer says.

McConnell has a broader plan here. Politico recently noted that McConnell is seeking to direct more big money to political parties, as opposed to outside groups such as super-PACs that in theory must remain independent of candidates. In a subsequent interview with Roll Call, McConnell suggested he might not force the issue, saying his proposal is “not on the agenda” but that the coordination limit he wants to eliminate is “an absurdity in the current law.”

That doesn’t mean the plan is dead. Should McConnell reverse course and attach this change to the budget bill, Reid’s office says the majority leader will block such a maneuver. “Reid strongly opposes and will fight against any efforts to include the McConnell measure,” an aide in Reid’s tells Mother Jones.

House and Senate members hashing out the budget bill were expected to release a version of the legislation as early as Monday evening.

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Mitch McConnell Wants to Open a Giant Loophole for Superrich Donors. Harry Reid Has Vowed to Stop Him.

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A Nuclear Deal With Iran Probably Won’t Happen

by Leila7054fzwlze Posted on November 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Over at Foreign Affairs, Aaron David Miller and Jason Brodsky run through four reasons that we failed to reach a nuclear deal with Iran by this weekend’s deadline. This is the key one:

An internal IAEA document that was prepared in 2009 detailed an April 1984 high-level meeting at the presidential palace in Tehran in which Khamenei — then president of Iran — championed a decision by then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to launch a nuclear weapons program. According to the account, Khamenei said that “this was the only way to secure the very essence of the Islamic Revolution from the schemes of its enemies, especially the United States and Israel.”

….The fact is that Iran knows what it wants: to preserve as much of its nuclear weapons capacity as possible and free itself from as much of the sanctions regime as it can. The mullahs see Iran’s status as a nuclear weapons state as a hedge against regime change and as consistent with its regional status as a great power. That is what it still wants. And that’s why it isn’t prepared — yet — to settle just for what it needs to do a deal. Ditto for America. And it’s hard to believe that another six months is going to somehow fix that problem.

This is why I’m skeptical that a deal can be reached. Iran wants to have nuclear weapons capability. The United States wants Iran to verifiably abandon its nuclear ambitions. Everything else is just fluff, and it’s hard to see a middle ground here.

This doesn’t mean an agreement is impossible. Maybe there really is some halfway point that both sides can live with. It sure isn’t easy to see it, though. The disagreement here is just too fundamental and too definitive. One side wants to be able to build a bomb, and the other side wants exactly the opposite. How do you split that baby?

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A Nuclear Deal With Iran Probably Won’t Happen

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Negotiating With Republicans != Negotiating With Tea Partiers

by KlaraGuzm Posted on November 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Megan McArdle was pretty unimpressed with President Obama’s press conference following the Democrats’ midterm defeat. “No one reasonable expected the president to grovel,” she says, but surely he could have adopted a more conciliatory tone?

Most notably, of course, he said he would take executive action on immigration by year’s end unless Republicans passed a bill. It’s certainly a bold negotiating tactic: You can do what I want, or I’ll go ahead and do what I want anyway. This is how you “negotiate” with a seven-year old, not a Senate Majority Leader.

I’m not sure that isn’t what Obama thinks he’s doing….But Mitch McConnell is not a seven year old….McConnell is not the proverbial Tea Party extremist who won’t negotiate; he’s an establishment guy, known as a strategist and a tactician, not an ideologue (which is why the Tea Party isn’t that fond of him). In short, he’s someone who can make deals. Responding to McConnell’s rather gracious remarks about finding common goals by announcing that you know what the American public wants, and you’re going to give it to them no matter what their elected representatives say, seems curiously brash. It might chill the atmosphere today when he sits down with congressional leaders.

I wonder if Obama even knows how to negotiate with Republicans….

I’m not here to defend Obama’s negotiating record. I’d rate it higher than McArdle, probably, but it’s obviously not one of Obama’s strong suits. Still, she’s rather pointedly ignoring the elephant in the room here.

As near as I can tell, Obama has regularly demonstrated the ability to negotiate with Mitch McConnell. Not perfectly, and not without plenty of hiccups, but they can do business when the incentives are strong enough. In fact, they did do business on immigration reform. A year ago the Senate passed a comprehensive bill 68-32. Here’s what Obama said about McConnell on Wednesday:

My interactions with Mitch McConnell, he has always been very straightforward with me. To his credit, he has never made a promise that he couldn’t deliver. And he knows the legislative process well. He obviously knows his caucus well — he has always given me, I think, realistic assessments of what he can get through his caucus and what he can’t. And so I think we can have a productive relationship.

The unnamed elephant in the room, obviously, is John Boehner and the tea party caucus in the House. Boehner has repeatedly shown that he can’t control his own caucus and can’t deliver a deal of any sort. That’s not because either Obama or Boehner are incompetent negotiators, it’s because the tea partiers are flatly unwilling to compromise in any remotely constructive way. So when Obama adopts a combative tone on immigration, it’s aimed at Boehner, who really does have the miserable job of trying to ride herd on a bunch of erratic and willful seven-year-olds—as he himself has admitted from time to time.

Does Obama know how to negotiate with Republicans? Sure. Does he know how to negotiate with tea party extremists? Hard to say. But then again, even John Boehner hasn’t figured out how to do that. Perhaps Obama’s playground style hit-them-over-the-head approach is about as good as it gets.

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Negotiating With Republicans != Negotiating With Tea Partiers

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