Author: Tom Sullivan

Another day, another boondoggle
by Tom Sullivan

Stick a fork in it. Another of those public-private partnership deals is done. Investors are ready to bail:

Barely 10 years after paying the city $1.83 billion for the right to run the Chicago Skyway for 99 years, a Spanish-Australian group of investors has put the historic tollroad concession deal up for sale.

The Skyway concession company’s executives have informed Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration they’re trying to sell their interest in running and collecting tolls from the 7.8-mile-long road on Chicago’s South Side, city officials said Monday.

And right on schedule, too. I described how these go down in December:

US and state taxpayers are left paying off billions in debt to bondholders who have received amazing returns on their money, as much as 13 per cent, as virtually all – if not all – of these private P3 toll operators go bankrupt within 15 years of what is usually a five-plus decade contract.

A “staggering” number go bankrupt, Salzman continues.

Of course, no executive comes forward and says, “We’re planning to go bankrupt,” but an analysis of the data is shocking. There do not appear to be any American private toll firms still in operation under the same management 15 years after construction closed. The original toll firms seem consistently to have gone bankrupt or “zeroed their assets” and walked away, leaving taxpayers a highway now needing repair and having to pay off the bonds and absorb the loans and the depreciation.

Now, those are the P3 construction deals. The Skyway already existed. There is no indication of the Skyway partners’ financial condition (or the roadway’s physical condition). Let’s just say that after Spanish-Australian consortium Cintra-Macquarie declared bankruptcy last fall on its 75-year concession to operate the Indiana Toll Road after only eight, they may be dumping the Skyway before it comes to that.

Meanwhile, Cintra has signed contracts on its project to widen I-77 north of Charlotte with high-occupancy toll lanes (HOT lanes). Called Thom’s Tholl Road by critics, the project was championed by now U.S. Senator Thom Tillis over objections from local businesses and his own party’s rank and file.

Local business leaders and politicians chartered a bus to Raleigh on Tuesday to lobby legislators to de-fund the project. State Sen. Jeff Tarte, a Cornelius Republican, has introduced legislation to do just that:

Mecklenburg County Commissioner Jim Puckett was shocked to hear of the contract signing.

“It’s the most arrogant and insulting piece of governance I’ve seen in my 18 years in politics,” Puckett said.

“The fact that five boards, all five boards that are affected by this, asked for a delay and it was not only delayed, but sped up. I think people fear the fact that the government is not listening to them,” Puckett said.

In Raleigh on Tuesday Puckett called the contract “a disaster” and said the state should get out of it as soon as possible.

Not only was the deal sped up, but somebody is erecting roadblocks to slowing it down:

The group waging a legal battle over the $650 million plan to add toll lanes on Interstate 77 claims an N.C. Senate proposal would “scare off” lawyers from representing citizens groups that oppose state road projects.

The provision, included in a bill outlining changes to statewide environmental regulations, would take away judges’ discretion in awarding attorney’s fees in lawsuits that challenge the state’s “transportation improvements.” Instead, law firms would be made to pay the state’s legal fees if they lose a civil suit.

Kurt Naas of Cornelius believes the legislation is aimed at his group’s lawsuit:

“This is a direct aim at the WidenI77.org legal case and a gross abuse of legislative power by those elected to represent the public’s interests,” Naas said in a news release. “This proposed legislation is an intimidation tactic to hinder citizens from their right to due process of the law.”

Your name doesn’t have to be Rorschach to see patterns here.

How should we then rule?
by Tom Sullivan

For a sub-sect of Christians, it is an attack on “religious liberty” when they can no longer tell equally free Americans how they can and cannot live. As Yul Brynner said, playing Moses, their god “IS God.” The Big G, the top dog, the Big Kahuna. Freedom of religion in America is fine, and all, so long as other, lesser faiths understand whose god IS God.

Fear of losing that top-dog status is behind the insistence by conservative Christians that America was founded as a Christian nation. White fear of having to share power with former slaves was behind decades of Jim Crow and KKK terror. Thus, it is “erasing white history and white culture” to take down a flag flown as a constant reminder of just whose race is boss.

“Religious liberty” has become the catchphrase for people who find their ability to lord it over their neighbors eroded by America extending freedoms they enjoy to “lesser thans” whom they fear. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges to extend the blessings of legal recognition of marriage to same-sex couples has them freaking out. The American Spectator calls the ruling “the Dred Scotting of religious liberty.”

It’s as peculiar a conception of liberty as it is a peculiar definition of persecution. Especially for a group so flush with cash and influence. Talking Points Memo reports on the Hobby Lobby Bible museum planned for just off the Mall in Washington. Among other things, it will be there as a staging area for lobbying efforts and marches by the Christian right:

The museum will be a living, breathing testament to how American evangelicalism can at once claim it is under siege from secularists, the LGBT rights movement, or feminism—yet also boast of acquiring a prime private perch, strategically located at the nation’s epicenter of law and politics, and nestled among its iconic public monuments. If you ask its creators, it’s meant to protect American Christianity from persecution. But it may be the most strident example yet of how that expression of religion, which in many ways is running counter to trends in American public opinion, continues to flex its political—and financial—muscle.

The founders of the Museum of the Bible are the Green family, the owners of the arts and crafts store chain Hobby Lobby, whose litigation against the federal government over contraception coverage in the Affordable Care Act turned their franchise into a new ambassador for the overt expressions of Christianity in public spaces—including workplaces, museums, and even the nation’s courtrooms.

How it is any of an employer’s business how employees spend the compensation they’ve earned and, in a contractual arrangement, the employer agreed to pay? Well, when you feel employees are lessers, not equals, and your god IS God, it all makes sense. George W. Bush wanted to give people a tax cut from the Clinton surplus because it was “your money.” For outfits like Hobby Lobby, your compensation (cash and benefits) is not really your money if it’s paid from their accounts. It’s still their money, and an infringement on their “religious liberty” not to be able to control how equally free employees choose to spend it.

We’re still waiting for the religious liberty people to get incensed over the string of recent suspicious fires at African-American churches in the South. The count is up to seven.

Them boys ain’t goin’ gentle into that good Knight
by Tom Sullivan

You knew it was coming as soon as calls to remove Confederate battle flags caught fire across the South starting in Columbia, SC:

The Ku Klux Klan has been approved to hold a protest rally at the Statehouse next month against removing the Confederate battle flag, with the group calling accused mass murderer Dylann Roof a “young warrior.”

The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan applied for the permit last week to hold a rally for 100 to 200 people on July 18 on the north side of the Statehouse.

If you are holding your breath for Fox News’ Griff Jenkins to cover the Klan rally live just to remind us all that racism is dead and only racists and race baiters say otherwise, don’t.

Actually, this Klan group hails from North Carolina:

Calling itself the “Largest Klan in America,” the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan are based in Pelham, N.C., according to the group’s website.

A man identifying himself as the “great titan” of the N.C. chapter of the Loyal White Knights left a message with The State saying his group is holding the demonstration because “to us they are erasing white history and white culture right out of the history books. That’s why they want to take that flag down.”

Violent insurrection ending in what Southerners in other circumstances call an ass whuppin’ (followed by decades of Jim Crow, domestic terrorism, and thousands of lynchings) is the heritage some here are most proud of and remember with Confederate battle flags. Of 400 years of history on these shores, the 4 years of violent treason are the ones by which some Southerners still define themselves. This makes them a very special breed of 1%-er. As John Fugelsang put it in the video I linked to the other day, it is “a heritage of quitting America because you want to start your own country to keep people as pets.”

South Carolina state senator Paul Thurmond (yes, son of the famous Dixiecrat/Republican) spoke to WBUR in Boston about his speech outlining his decision to support removing the flag from the state capital grounds. Thurmond thinks it is the right thing to do. It is “a symbol of hatred that needs to be brought down.” Thurmond is worried about his safety.

The boys were out over the weekend celebrating their heritage with Confederate flags flown from the backs of their pickup trucks. At my SC hotel last night, a guy just finishing fixing a flat on his truck stuck a Confederate flag onto the left rear, as in this picture a friend shot in Marion, NC.

A reporter in Asheville spoke with an eighteen year-old kid doing the same:

We were talking about the reaction he’s gotten flying the battle flag, and Billingsley said it’s been overwhelmingly positive — lots of honks, thumbs-up, and more than 600 likes on a Facebook page.

“I’ve only had one negative, and it was a colored looking at me,” Billingsley said. “He made it look racist, but it’s really him being racist by judging me for flying it.”

Congratulations, Fox News. Mission accomplished. Mr. “I know you are, but what am I?” is America’s future.

Thurmond is probably right to worry about his safety, judging by the driving prowess the Southern Pride faction showed over the weekend in Dalton, GA:

Great balls of jello
by Tom Sullivan

Frank Rich takes aim at the gutlessness of the GOP’s 2016 presidential hopefuls:

Say this about the Old Confederacy: At least its leaders had the courage of their own bad convictions. Today’s neo-Confederate GOP politicians, vying for primary votes in Dixie 150 years after Appomattox, proved themselves to be laughable cowards. Confronted with the simplest of questions – should a state capitol display a flag that stands for slavery, racism, and treason? – they hedged (all of them), spouted gibberish (Ted Cruz), or went into hiding (Rand Paul). If they’d been the Rebel generals in the Civil War, it would have been over in a week.

This was, Rich writes, “the second time in three months we’ve seen GOP presidential contenders unwilling to stand up to the unreconstructed bigots still infesting their party’s base.” In April, they had caved or hedged over “religious freedom” bills passed to sanction discrimination against gay families. They then retreated faster than Lee at Gettysburg after civil rights groups and the NCAA condemned Indiana’s version, and influential CEOs objected to the states dissing their customers.

Seems like only yesterday that Gov. Bobby Jindal and his legislative tigers were lying down like the Siegfried and Roy cats before the once enfant terrible, Grover Norquist. They wrote asking his and Americans for Tax Reform’s permission to sorta kinda raise state taxes after Republican economic dogma had driven Louisiana’s balance sheet (like Kansas’ before it) deep into the red.*

But boy howdy, whichever of these bowls of jello survives being a debate contestant on the RNC’s “Who Wants To Be The Next War President,” you can be sure we will be treated to months of tough-sounding ads telling us that only he (it will be a he) has the balls to protect Uh-murca from the jihadis’ long, curved knives.

* Meanwhile in Minnesota, Gov. Mark Dayton’s Democratic leadership led the state to the top of CNBC’s list of best states for business in 2015.

The best convention speech you’ll never hear
by Tom Sullivan

Perhaps America does have a reckoning coming. If so, it will not be the fiery one predicted by conservative ministers and pundits in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare and same-sex marriage. But perhaps a reckoning nonetheless.

Popping up now and again since his 1988 presidential campaign collapsed, Gary Hart is not remembered for his speeches. The former Colorado senator’s presidential aspirations, like so many others’, died in the glare of public scrutiny. In a Time magazine extract from his upcoming “The Republic of Conscience,” Hart gives the best convention speech we will never hear.

Hart has had a lot of time to watch what has happened to the republic he hoped to lead. Distanced from the Village bubble, he offers a blistering indictment of systemic corruption in Washington that is now so ubiquitous as to be invisible. The army of lobbyists. The rise of the consultant class. The revolving doors. Campaigns as a billion-dollar industry. Rentier capitalism. “[S]pecial interest stalls in the halls of Congress.” The abandonment of “the common good and the interests of the commonwealth.” All of it is an outcome, Hart believes, “our founders would not recognize and would deplore.” Hart writes:

On a more personal level, how can public service be promoted as an ideal to young people when this sewer corrupts our Republic? At this point in early twenty-first-century America, the greatest service our nation’s young people could provide is to lead an army of outraged young Americans armed with brooms on a crusade to sweep out the rascals and rid our capital of the money changers, rent seekers, revolving door dancers, and special interest deal makers and power brokers and send them back home to make an honest living, that is, if they still remember how to do so.

What angers truly patriotic Americans is that this entire Augean stable is legal. Even worse, recent Supreme Court decisions placing corporations under the First Amendment protection of free speech for political purposes compounds the tragedy of American democracy. For all practical political purposes, the government of the United States is for sale to the highest bidder.

Yet, a Washington media enamored of its own savviness and protective of “access” greets legalized corruption with a shrug and a “So what?” Hart continues:

Restoration of the Republic of Conscience requires reduction and eventual elimination of the integrity deficit. Virtue, the disinterestedness of our elected officials, must replace political careerism and special interests. The national interest, what is best for our country and coming generations, must replace struggles for power, bitter partisanship, and ideological rigidity. This is not dreamy idealism; it is an idealism rooted in the original purpose of this nation.

Don’t hold your breath or expect to stay up late to hear this as a convention speech. Hart may be just a voice crying out in the wilderness.

Then again, perhaps we are on the cusp of a different kind of reckoning. Since the Trayvon Martin shooting and all the other deaths of young, black men at the hands of police — recorded in living color — law enforcement in America may finally be emerging from its bunker. Those videos have shown us all, and police themselves, what policing has become. Training police for a “warrior mentality” may be giving way to a new emphasis on de-escalating encounters that too often needlessly became deadly. And what do you know? “If we just started to treat people with dignity and respect, things would go much better.”

A century and a half after the end of the Civil War, reflection following the Charleston church shootings has ripped the false history away from Southern myths surrounding the war and the Confederate battle flag. Again, don’t hold your breath, but with Confederate flags coming down from prominent places across the South, perhaps a reckoning with secession, slavery, and a nation’s institutional racism is finally beginning.

If we can be honest enough with ourselves to tackle that, perhaps this country can look itself in the mirror and see that, as Hart writes, “today’s American Republic is massively corrupt,” and maybe even do something about it.

Gay people can now get married in all 50 states. Who ever thought that would happen?

Hearts still need to be opened
by Tom Sullivan

In “the land of the free,” the fight for equality is far from over.

In a 5-4 decision yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges  that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry in all 50 states. We won’t dwell this morning on the particulars of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority decision, nor on Justice Antonin Scalia’s bitter dissent, but rather on what comes next.

Marriage equality victory rally last night in Asheville, NC.

At the victory rally in Asheville, NC last night, social justice activists addressed the crowd:

“It’s extraordinary,” said the Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of the Campaign for Southern Equality. “There are people who have been waiting their whole lives to marry the person they love, and now they are equal under the law. Think about the families racing to the courthouse in Mississippi right now. I’m overwhelmed by the emotion and historical significance of this. It took decades and decades of work to get to this moment.”

Now, about Mississippi …

All things old are new again

After the ruling, I emailed a friend with the Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE is based in Asheville, NC) and asked how soon he would be out of a job. Not anytime soon. Just because SCOTUS ruled that states must allow same-sex marriages doesn’t mean they will any more than Brown v. Board of Education  meant states would integrate their schools. In some places, that took federal troops. And wouldn’t you know, some of the same Brown v. Board  holdouts are balking again?

In Mississippi and Louisiana, the states’ respective attorneys general cited different reasons as to why the court’s decision does not yet immediately apply.

In Louisiana, Attorney General James D. “Buddy” Caldwell called the Supreme Court’s ruling “yet another example of … federal government intrusion into what should be a state issue.”

Nothing in the court’s decision makes its order effective immediately, Caldwell’s office said in a statement posted on its website. Louisiana voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2004 that banned same-sex marriage and civil unions.

Once again, dissenters are invoking “states’ rights.”

Mississippi is considering not issuing marriage licenses at all:

As the state’s governor and lieutenant governor condemned the court’s decision, state House Judiciary Chairman Andy Gipson began studying ways to prevent gay marriage in Mississippi. Governor Phil Bryant said he would do all he can “to protect and defend the religious freedoms of Mississippi.” To Bryant’s point of doing “all” the state could do, Gipson, who is a Baptist minister, suggested removing marriage licenses entirely.

“One of the options that other states have looked at is removing the state marriage license requirement,” Gipson told The Clarion-Ledger, a local newspaper. “We will be researching what options there are. I personally can see the pros and cons to that. I don’t know if it would be better to have no marriage certificate sponsored by the state or not. But it’s an option out there to be considered.”

All others need not apply

Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn told the Clarion-Ledger:

“As Christians, we are to speak the truth in love,” Gunn said. “But we are not to shy away from speaking the truth, even though the truth may be unpopular or not embraced by the culture around us. This decision is in direct conflict with God’s design for marriage as set forth in the Bible. The threat of this decision to religious liberty is very clear. I pledge to protect the rights of Christian citizens to teach and operate on the basis of Christian conviction.”

Evidently, requiring people wanting to marry to first obtain government approval was not in direct conflict with God’s design nor a threat to religious liberty until yesterday.

(L to R) Carmen Ramos-Kennedy, Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, Lindsey Simerly of Campaign for Southern Equality.

At the Asheville celebration last night, CSE’s Carmen Ramos-Kennedy addressed the crowd in the shadow of a monument to the state’s Civil War governor. People wonder why a straight, black woman joined the effort to secure marriage equality, she said, holding back tears. Because it was not so long ago that she would not have been able to marry her husband. Ramos-Kennedy’s husband is white.

President Obama’s eulogy in Charleston yesterday for the slain Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney spoke of the “uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society.” We must not “settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change — that’s how we lose our way again,” the president said.

Reverend Pinckney once said, “Across the South, we have a deep appreciation of history — we haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history.” (Applause.) What is true in the South is true for America. Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other. That my liberty depends on you being free, too. (Applause.) That history can’t be a sword to justify injustice, or a shield against progress, but must be a manual for how to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past — how to break the cycle. A roadway toward a better world. He knew that the path of grace involves an open mind — but, more importantly, an open heart.

Campaign for Southern Equality heads to Mississippi next week. There is still hard work to be done and hearts there still needing to be opened.

Rule by tantrum
By Tom Sullivan

In response to yesterday’s Supreme Court decision upholding Obamacare … again … expect Republican leaders to prescribe another thousand cuts. They’ll eventually “cure” America of Obamacare the way medieval barbers used bloodletting and leeches to cure patients. They’re just folksy, that way.

But first they will pitch a patented right wing hissy fit. If T-Party cannot have Torquemada for Chief Justice, it will at least try to inflict the kind of pain that (it believes) would make him smile:

Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas) said that his SCOTUScare Act would make all nine justices and their employees join the national healthcare law’s exchanges.

“As the Supreme Court continues to ignore the letter of the law, it’s important that these six individuals understand the full impact of their decisions on the American people,” he said.

“That’s why I introduced the SCOTUScare Act to require the Supreme Court and all of its employees to sign up for ObamaCare,” Babin said.

“Trolling as Governance,” as Chris Hayes tweeted. This will be Obama’s Waterloo, dammit!

Indeed, throwing tantrums seems to be the best prominent conservatives can manage lately. Whether it is Bill O’Reilly declaring war over criticism of his network’s coverage of race, or Sen. Ted Cruz vowing … again … to repeal “every single word” of Obamacare.

They have not only a policy problem, but political and image problems. The tantrums keep landing them in corners they’ve painted themselves into. A new poll, for example, shows that Republican primary voters are uninterested in improving race relations at a time three-quarters of the rest of the country is focused on it:

One-third of likely Republican primary voters see race relations as unimportant to some degree, compared to only 9 percent of likely Democratic voters who feel that way.

“There is a tension Republicans are trying to navigate, and they are really stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson.

“You have the majority of the public on one side, but the people who are actually going to vote for them in the primaries are less interested in this particular issue and may have different takes or alternate priorities altogether,” he said.

Plus, they need to learn to appeal to minorities before their old, white base becomes one. How’s that going, Donald Trump?

The would-be leaders of the future still can’t get their heads out of the past.

SCOTUS watch Th, Fr, Mo
by Tom Sullivan
“As goes the next president, so goes the court,” Rachel Maddow wrote in the Washington Post. It is best to keep that thought firmly in mind going into 2016. It is easy to get bogged down in the personalities, the coverage, and the presidential horse race. The Big Money Boyz put their attention elsewhere. Maddow asked a Democratic campaign operative if candidates heard different concerns from donors than from just plain folks:

I got a surprised look in response — I think it was shock at my naivete — and a two-word answer: “Supreme Court.” The direction of the court and potential court nominees came up infinitely more often with donors than they did with average people.
I then asked a senior Republican operative the same question. I got the same response, minus the shocked look (I think he already knew I was naive).

Shoes are about to drop at the Supreme Court any time now. Power plant emissions, redistricting, same-sex marriage, and of course, King v. Burwell, in which we find out whether the court will rule against the Affordable Care Act and its own credibility.
Amy Howe runs down the remaining cases “in Plain English” at SCOTUSblog. An all-star panel at Slate is discussing the effects the rulings will have on an already polarized country. Or check out the Wall Street Journal, if you prefer.
Marriage equality activists are planning “Decision Day” rallies across the country to respond to the court’s Obergefell v. Hodges et. al. (same-sex marriage) ruling, however it goes.
Stay tuned at 10 a.m. EDT today to see which shoe drops next.

Patching the Voting Rights Act
by Tom Sullivan

The hole the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County v. Holder ruling blew in the Voting Rights Act will get patched this session if Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Georgia’s Congressman John Lewis have anything to say about it. They plan to introduce legislation today to repair the damage. Ari Berman has this scoop at The Nation:

… The Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2015 would compel states with a well-documented history of recent voting discrimination to clear future voting changes with the federal government, require federal approval for voter ID laws, and outlaw new efforts to suppress the growing minority vote.

According to the Washington Post:

The bill is the latest in what has been an ongoing effort to restore the preclearence provision of the Voting Rights Act, which required many southern states to have any change to voting laws cleared by federal officials. The Supreme Court, in its 2013 Shelby v. Holder decision, tossed the formula used to determine which states need preclearence, effectively ending the federal government’s role as a monitor to state voting changes until a new formula is approved by Congress.

A new federal preclearance regime for changes to election procedures or laws would apply initially to New York, California, Arkansas, Arizona, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. A previous bill filed after the Shelby ruling received neither a hearing nor a vote from Republican leaders.

Rick Hasen sees possible constitutional issues with the bill, but notes approvingly that this legislation is not the compromise the earlier Voting Rights Amendment Act was. The new bill includes voter ID laws in its scope of violations. Half the states have adopted measures making it harder to vote since 2011.

Berman writes:

The legislation faces an uphill road in Congress. Few Republicans were willing to support the more modest VRAA, even after the historic 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma. Leahy could not find a GOP co-sponsor in the Senate for the old bill or the new one. That’s a sad development, given that the VRA has always had strong bipartisan support, and the 2006 reauthorization of the law was approved 390-33 in the House and 98-0 in the Senate and signed by George W. Bush. “A decision has been made within the Republican Party that we’re not going to do anything,” Leahy said.

Even if the law requiring preclearance for future voting restrictions were to pass, a lot of damage has already been done by the bills passed in the wake of Shelby. Measures put in place by the states since 2011 are a conservative, rearguard effort against the future as well as an effort to undo the past. Changing demographics? Can’t win under the current rules? Rewrite the rules. And not just for federal elections. Having lost a string of state Supreme Court elections in 2014, North Carolina Republicans have since changed those rules in what the director of North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections calls “merely the latest attempt to change voting rules to conservative benefit.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren believes the economy is rigged. GOP-controlled legislatures are working hard to ensure elections are too.

This morning: Fast track on fast track
by Tom Sullivan

Reports of fast track’s death were greatly exaggerated. (Good luck finding this on the front pages this morning):

President Obama’s fast-track trade bill is poised to clear a procedural hurdle Tuesday in the Senate, all but ensuring it will win final passage this week and be sent to the White House for his signature.

Despite deep reservations from many in the president’s party, enough Democratic senators appear ready to join most Republicans to finish the legislation, which has sputtered in Congress but is a top White House priority.

A key procedural vote on a House-passed trade promotion authority bill is supposed to occur this morning:

McConnell (R-Ky.) can afford to lose only three of the 14 pro-trade Democrats who last month backed a package granting Obama “fast-track” trade authority and a companion measure to help workers who lose their jobs to free trade. But the Senate on Tuesday is voting only on so-called Trade Promotion Authority, not the workers aid, which is known as Trade Adjustment Assistance. That has some Democrats nervous about whether a separate effort to approve worker assistance will succeed, given that Republicans strongly oppose the program.

Organized by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who is threatening to vote no, a group of pro-trade Democrats huddled for a strategy session in the Capitol on Monday evening. Most emerged tight-lipped, but several Democrats said that the vote is likely to succeed on Tuesday morning.

Fast track opponents held rallies yesterday, and another is scheduled this morning in Washington, D.C. In an email yesterday, Florida congressman Alan Grayson wrote, “The Senate will vote again on Fast Track, tomorrow. Basically, they’re just going to keep voting on it, until you get screwed.” Call your senators.

As much as anything else, this fight is emblematic of whether we live in a world in which money serves humans or in which humans serve money. Or has that already been decided for us?