Fast-Track Proposal

* Kevin Phillips (Opinion, Nov. 16) is correct to note that lobbyists for large companies enjoy privileged access in Washington to the detriment of ordinary people, but he is wrong to say that “fast-track” authority makes things worse.

Congress, absent fast-track, operates by byzantine procedures in which members trade votes on amendments to benefit narrow, moneyed interests. Most of this occurs in committees, where ordinary Americans are not paying attention, but where lobbyists are directly involved. Fast-track, by limiting the role of amendments--but still requiring Congress to approve the whole package--reduces the pull of special interests. We should use more fast-track, not less.

Without fast-track, we’ll still have trade agreements. But those agreements will be narrower in scope, as they are amended to suit every manner of special interest. If trade agreements are to incorporate labor and environmental standards, we need fast-track to get such standards.

MATTHEW SHUGART

Carlsbad

* Phillips may well be right. The globalization of the world economy rests on the fallacious assumption that infinite economic growth is both a good thing and is possible in a finite world of limited resources. Current patterns of economic growth are unsustainable and there will be a day of reckoning.

Continued gross exploitation and impoverishment of the world’s workers both at home and abroad to produce huge windfall profits for a financial elite are morally and ethically obscene. Thankfully there are still many in this world whose sense of decency makes them ache for some semblance of social and economic justice. Hopefully “fair track” is an idea whose time has come.

MALCOLM D. WISE

Ontario