Hightower Lowdown

One vote. That’s the margin by which lobbyists for corporate globaloney squeezed out a victory in the House of Representatives over We the People.

The vote was on handing “fast track” authority to the president, letting him arrange more trade scams like NAFTA in secret, then railroad them through Congress. It’s a total abdication of Congress’s responsibility to provide a check on executive power and ensure that workers, farmers, and the environment are not trampled by corporate greed.

The lobbyists for global corporations saw the current war mentality in Washington as an opportunity for them to slap a patriotism label on their trade scam and—choo-choo-cha-boogie!—ride it right through Congress.

Squadrons of lobbyists stormed the Capitol. Bush himself spent three days rounding up votes. High-tech giants told members that they’d remember this vote when doling out campaign cash. And the shameless Dennis Hastert declared that a “no” vote would “undercut the president” in the war effort.

Even with these bullying tactics, they still came up short. When the votes were tallied, fast track was defeated 215 to 214.

But the corporate credo says, “If you can’t win . . . cheat.” So Speaker Hastert simply refused to gavel the vote closed, while his G.O.P. henchmen surrounded Rep. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and browbeat him into switching his “no” vote to “yes” and handing the lobbyists their rigged, one-vote “victory.”