It looks as though the Current Occupant will get the democracy crushing authority he so desperately wants thanks to Repugnant senators beholding to corporate plutocrats. Obamanation gets to pass "Go" and collect on the other side of his White House front job. When the so-called free trade treaty is signed into law, the Trans-Pacific Partnership will be an unmistakable milestone in the death march of democracy and perhaps even for the planet. The treaty trumps our judiciary with star-chamber tribunals run by corporate minions. The simple fact is that the "fast track" authority which allows the Executive to ram trade legislation through the Congress on simple majority votes violates the Constitution's Treaty Clause.
The Greatest Imperialist, Richard Nixon, introduced "fast track trade promotion authority"in his Trade Act of 1974. No one in Washington really pays attention to the contents of the Constitution since the Korean War when Democrat Harry Truman decided not to ask Congress for authority to wage war against the North Koreans, then rapidly passing the 38th Parallel en route to Pusan. But for what its worth, the clause says the President has the authority to make treaties provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur. "Fast Track" abolishes that requirement and replaces it with 50% + 1, the Vice-President voting in the case of a tie. Obama's trade deals do not have a snowball's chance of receiving a two-thirds Senate majority, nor does an amendment to the Constitution allowing the change to simple majority vote a political possibility since, as we all should know, a constitutional amendment requires a convention or two-thirds of the states voting in favor of the organic change.
Nowadays, the political double-think artists in Washington play games with the language, calling TPP an international agreement not a treaty, so the clause does not apply. Nixon's Trade Act was itself a conventional law, not a treaty. Since 1974 five treaties have been put on the "fast track" railroad by the President and Majority Leader. TPP has international signatories and cannot be undone unless the other nations are willing to change the agreement, unlike an ordinary law that can be changed or abolished unilaterally. Thus, TPP is a treaty not a law, no matter how much you want to twist the language. Hopefully those strict constructionists on the Supreme Court will pay attention to this analysis, but then the global corporatocracy is behind the treaty, so their construction may not be so strict. Thomas Jefferson said in his Inaugural Address, Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations--entangling alliances with none." Still wise policy over two hundred years later.
Eric Zuesse at Washingtonsblog.com writes the source of the fascistic, unconstitutional "fast track authority" can be found in the Bilderburg Group machinations, which from the organization's very start worked toward global rule by American, European and later Japanese aristocracies. David Rockefeller and Wall Street magnate George W. Ball were two leading Bilderberg members from its inception. The Bilderberg archetype was counterpoised to the concept Franklin Roosevelt with the aid of policy advisor Rex Tugwell envisioned: an evolution from the bottom up of a world democracy, not a corporatocracy, a sort of federal United States of the World backed up by an international police power. This world democratic government concept was endorsed by Albert Einstein in 1946 after a visit to the University of Chicago where Rex Tugwell taught. The TPP is of the Bilderberg paradigm that leads to global fascist dictatorship. Their is democratic wisdom in our founding document. We do well to always follow its dictates.