Many reporters have noted that on both of the two trade treaties that the Obama Administration is pushing for (one with Europe called TTIP, and the other with Asia called TPP), panels selected by international corporations would gain the power to override laws and regulations that protect workers, consumers, and the environment. In fact, Kate Sheppard in Huffington Post headlined on 24 September 2013, "Michael Froman, Top U.S. Trade Official, Sides With Tar Sands Advocates In EU Negotiations," and she reported that Froman was threatening the European Union with retaliation unless they'd weaken their anti-global-warming regulations so as allow them to import and burn the world's most-global-warming-bad oil, which is the oil from Alberta Canada's tar sands, half of which oil is owned by America's Koch brothers, who have lots ( perhaps $100 billion ) riding on this matter.
In these and other ways, President Obama appears set to close out his Presidency with a flurry of conservative achievements.
Perhaps in this context, we can better understand his neo-conservative agent who appointed the current leader of Ukraine having said "F--k the EU," as she gave this instruction to the U.S. Ambassador there. It's becoming increasingly difficult for Republicans to position themselves to the right of this President, because in his final term, he has already taken such a strong hard right turn.
The result will inevitably be that Republicans running now for Congress in 2014, and the Republican nominee who will be running against the Democratic Presidential nominee in 2016, will be at least as fascistic as the current crop of Republicans.
The American political center is moving so much to the right as to be raising the question of whether American democracy can survive -- or whether it may already have died. If this rightward movement of the center becomes the cardinal achievement of Obama's Presidency, then he may go down in the history books as the worst U.S. President of all time.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .
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