NEWS ARCHIVE - U.S. AND THE WORLD

Senate Committee Fights To Keep Contractor Campaign Contributions Secret

Sunday, May 20, 2012
Senate Committee Fights To Keep Contractor Campaign Contributions Secret
Coming in response to a White House executive order that was never implemented, a bill is now moving through the U.S. Senate that would prevent the disclosure of campaign contributions by government contractors.
 
S. 1100, the bizarrely named “Keeping Politics Out of Federal Contracting Act,” would prevent the public from learning of any political spending on campaigns and elections by a contractor during the time it receives taxpayer dollars.
 
The bill cleared its first hurdle this week when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved it.
 
Supporters of the legislation said it was needed to combat an executive order proposed by President Barack Obama in April 2011 that would have required federal agencies to collect information about federal contractor spending on elections.
 
When a draft of that executive order was leaked, however, the Chamber of Commerce and its cronies in Congress raised objections. So the rule has not been put into effect, critics of S. 1100 point out.
 
The American League of Lobbyists has taken a position similar to that of the contractors, claiming that being required to disclose their political donations would inhibit the ability of lobbyists to do their job.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
To Learn More:
POGO Opposes Legislation Allowing Contractors to Pay-to-Play in Secret (by Suzanne Dershowitz and Angela Canterbury, Project on Government Oversight)
Sanctioning Corruption in the US Senate (by Lisa Rosenberg, Sunlight Foundation)

  

 
Forgotten Tragedy: NATO Killing of 72 Innocent Civilians in Libya
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Forgotten Tragedy: NATO Killing of 72 Innocent Civilians in Libya
Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report this week seeking to call attention to the more than 70 civilians who died as a result of NATO bombings last year in Libya.
 
After conducting a seven-month investigation, HRW concluded that at least 72 men, women and children were killed in the course of NATO airstrikes on Tripoli, Zlitan, Sorman, Bani Walid, Gurdabiya and Sirte (the former home of dictator Muammar Gadhafi).
 
The human rights group said in its report that a third of those killed were under the age of 18. The worst incident took place on the night of August 8, 2011, when NATO hit four houses in the village of Majer, killing 34 civilians.
 
NATO leaders were called upon by HRW to acknowledge the casualties and compensate survivors. An alliance spokesperson expressed regret for any civilian casualties, while adding NATO used “unprecedented care and precision” in attacking Gadhafi’s forces as they battled rebels.
 
“We have reviewed all the information we hold as an organization and confirmed that the specific targets struck by NATO were legitimate military targets,” said NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu.
 
NATO forces dropped more than 7,700 precision-guided bombs during its seven-month campaign in Libya.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
To Learn More:
Libyans Want Answers Over Deadly NATO Airstrikes (by Kim Gamel and Rami al-Shaheibi, Associated Press)

Unacknowledged Deaths (Human Rights Watch) 
 
Obama Administration Quietly Weakens Emergency Planning at Nuclear Plants
Friday, May 18, 2012
Obama Administration Quietly Weakens Emergency Planning at Nuclear Plants
The holidays are a time of celebration for Americans, and a perfect time for their government to bury controversial changes in policy.
 
That’s what apparently happened last December when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) decided to weaken rules requiring emergency planning at the nation’s nuclear power plants.
 
For the first time since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, not to mention Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi crisis last year, the U.S. government revised policies governing local responses to power plant emergencies, including terrorist attacks and radiation leaks.
 
The changes now require fewer exercises for major accidents and recommend fewer people be evacuated following a plant disaster, according to the Associated Press. The NRC and FEMA also did away with a mandate that local police and firefighters always conduct practice exercises for radiation releases.
 
The agencies did add one new exercise, requiring state and community police to participate in exercises simulating an attack on a local plant.
 
The NRC and FEMA adopted the new rules in December, but issued no news releases about them. The changes were done so quietly that even some watchdog groups that closely monitor Washington failed to learn of the new rules until informed by the AP.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
To Learn More:

  
 
Richest 1% Battle the Richest One-Hundredth of a Percent
Friday, May 18, 2012
Richest 1% Battle the Richest One-Hundredth of a Percent
In what some are calling the “Shareholder Spring,” the owners of large corporations and banks are letting CEOs know that they’re getting paid too much compensation through so-called Say-on-Pay votes.
 
It’s a battle of shareholders, or the top 1% of earners, versus chief executives, or the top one-hundredth of one percent (.01%).
 
The most prominent example so far of shareholders voting against outrageous CEO pay packages involved Citigroup, where CEO Vikram Pandit’s $14.8 million comp plan was voted down, 55–45.
 
A similar shock hit CEO Thomas Joyce at Knight Capital this month.
 
Other CEO and executive packages have survived close tallies in Say-on-Pay votes, including those at Bank of New York Mellon (41% against), NYSE Euronext (43%), and Lazard an investment bank (49%),.
 
The top 1% reportedly controls nearly 40% of the nation’s stock market wealth, while the top .01% represents about 15,000 people who earn a minimum of $5.5 million a year.
 
In 2010, the last year for which figures are available, the richest .01% took in 3.3% of the nation’s personal income. As recently as 1985, that share was less than 1%. Their dominance peaked in 2007 at 3.53%, the largest share since 1916. Meanwhile, the richest 1% haven’t done that badly, hauling in 17.42% in 2010 compared to only 9.13% in 1986.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
 
To Learn More:
Upset about the Richest 1%? The Top .000003% Own $25 Trillion (by David Wallechinsky and Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

  
 
Obama Justice Dept. Supports Citizens’ Right to Record Police
Friday, May 18, 2012
Obama Justice Dept. Supports Citizens’ Right to Record Police

The U.S. Department of Justice under President Barack Obama has made it clear to police departments that citizens have the constitutional right to record law enforcement activities, including arrests.

 

In a letter to the Baltimore Police Department, the Justice Department stated that officers cannot seize and destroy video recordings made by individuals without a warrant or due process of law. To otherwise do so might constitute a violation of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

 

The letter comes at a time when Baltimore police are trying to resolve a lawsuit brought by Christopher Sharp, who had his cell phone seized when he used it to record officers arresting his friend.

 

Jonathan Smith, head of the Justice Department’s Special Litigation Section, cited in his letter the famous 1991 Rodney King incident in which Los Angeles police officers brutally beat King after pulling him over during a traffic stop. Smith said the recording of the assault exemplified the importance of public oversight of police activities.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

To Learn More:

Justice Dept. Defends Public’s Constitutional ‘Right to Record’ Cops (by Kim Zetter, Wired)

Letter to Baltimore Police (U.S. Department of Justice) (pdf)

Why are Americans Arrested for Videotaping Police in Public Places? (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Police Arrest Bystanders Who Use Phones to Video Arrests of Others (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

 
 
Older Long-Term Unemployed Don’t Just Lose Income, but also Lifetime Benefits
Friday, May 18, 2012
Older Long-Term Unemployed Don’t Just Lose Income, but also Lifetime Benefits
Prolonged unemployment for older Americans has become a serious problem with both immediate and long-term consequences.
 
As of December 2011, approximately 3.65 million older Americans were unemployed or underemployed. For workers age 50 and older, being without a job for more than six months is now common.
 
“The prospects are dim for older workers who lose their jobs….They face pointed discrimination when they go looking for work, and they are especially vulnerable to financial instability,” said Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project (NELP), before the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
 
Long-term joblessness also can severely impact the future security of older workers. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported sustained joblessness can “diminish an older worker’s future retirement income in several ways.”
 
These include forcing someone to stop saving for retirement, as well as having to tap into retirement savings sooner.
 
“In addition, long-term unemployment can motivate older workers to claim early Social Security retirement benefits, which will result in lower monthly benefits for workers and their survivors for the rest of their lives,” the GAO stated in its report.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
To Learn More:

Most U.S. Jobless Don’t Receive Unemployment Benefits (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov) 
 
Wells Fargo and a Foreclosure Suicide
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Wells Fargo and a Foreclosure Suicide
Norman and Oriane Rousseau’s American dream of owning a home turned into a tragic nightmare involving Wells Fargo.
 
In 2000, the Rousseaus purchased a home in Newbury Park, California, putting down 30%—their life savings. Six years later, they refinanced their home at the urging of Wells Fargo officials who insisted they would be paying less per month at a lower interest rate.
 
Despite the fact that this was not a fixed-interest loan, which is what they had wanted, things were fine until the bank claimed in 2009 that the couple missed a mortgage payment. The Rousseaus presented proof they had made the payment with a cashier’s check, but Wells Fargo insisted the money was still owed. This mistake set off a series of fees and problems that resulted in foreclosure proceedings.
 
The couple fought the bank’s attempt to evict them from their house, even filing a lawsuit, but on Mother’s Day, a few days before being kicked out, Norman Rousseau reportedly gave up and shot himself. Her husband’s death won Oriane Rousseau a delay in the eviction, but she could no longer bear to live in the home.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, Vicki Baker
 
To Learn More:
Wells Fargo Lawsuit (Superior Court of California)

  
 
Wrongly Executed and Forgotten for 23 Years
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Wrongly Executed and Forgotten for 23 Years
Three decades after the wrongful execution of Carlos DeLuna, the Columbia Human Rights Law Review (HRLR) has devoted its entire spring issue to evidence proving the 26-year-old was not guilty of the crime of which he was accused.
 
In February 1983, DeLuna was arrested at age 20 for the stabbing murder of a young woman, Wanda Lopez, in Corpus Christi, Texas. The young man insisted that he was innocent and that another man, Carlos Hernandez, had killed Lopez.
 
Hernandez and DeLuna looked a lot alike, so much so that they could have been twins—and DeLuna had seen Hernandez committing the crime. But DeLuna was the one caught running from the area.
 
After a cursory hunt for Hernandez, police decided he did not exist and scrambled to wrap up the case. Despite his consistent protestations of innocence, DeLuna was killed by lethal injection in 1989.
 
Chaplain Carroll Pickett, who officiated at 95 executions, said that only DeLuna’s led him to seek psychiatric help. For one thing, DeLuna’s actions after the murder did not fit those of a murderer. Instead of running as far away as possible, DeLuna was found cowering underneath a truck just a block away. In addition, according to the HRLR report, “Pickett was also haunted by his belief that the anesthetic in the mixture of drugs injected into DeLuna’s vein had failed, so the terrified young man was awake as the other drugs paralyzed him and slowly suffocated him to death. Reverend Pickett has since become an outspoken critic of the death penalty.”
 
Hernandez died in prison in 1999 for an unrelated crime, after bragging for years that he had murdered Wanda Lopez.
 
This fact and numerous others were uncovered law professor James Liebman and 12 students, whose work fills up the 436 pages of the HRLR.
 
Liebman began investigating the DeLuna case in 2004, and with the help of his law students, chased down numerous leads, and interviewed more than 100 witnesses.
 
An expert in capital punishment cases, Liebman said the case turned out to be “a house of cards. We found that everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” he told The Guardian.
 
In the past 30 years, some 482 people have been executed in Texas.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, Vicki Baker
 
To Learn More:
Yes, America, We Have Executed an Innocent Man (by Andrew Cohen, The Atlantic)
Los Tocayos Carlos (Columbia Human Rights Law Review)
Los Tocayos Carlos Table of Contents (Columbia Human Rights Law Review)

  
 
Thanks to For-Profit Prisons, Louisiana Has Triple the Incarceration Rate of Iran
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Thanks to For-Profit Prisons, Louisiana Has Triple the Incarceration Rate of Iran
Crime is down in Louisiana, but the state still holds the ignominious title of “the world’s prison capital.”
 
An exposé by the New Orleans Times-Picayune found that Louisiana incarcerates more people per capita than any other state or country in the world. One out of every 86 adults is behind bars, which is nearly double the U.S. average.
 
This means Louisiana’s prison rate is nearly three times higher than Iran’s, seven times more than China’s, and 10 times that of Germany.
 
For African-Americans from New Orleans, one in 14 is in prison, and one out of seven is either in prison, on parole, or on probation.
 
Overall, Louisiana’s prison population has doubled over the past 20 years.
 
“The hidden engine behind the state’s well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash,” wrote Cindy Chang at the Times-Picayune. “A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.”
 
For-profit prison operators include several “homegrown” companies, as well as many of the state’s rural sheriffs, especially those in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll, and Concordia.
 
“A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations,” Chang reported.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
To Learn More:
Louisiana is the World's Prison Capital (by Cindy Chang, New Orleans Times-Picayune)
Wanted: Criminals to Fill Empty Prisons (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
Private Prison Company to Demand 90% Occupancy (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

  
 
The Case for Criminalizing Filibusters
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The Case for Criminalizing Filibusters
One of the nation’s leading business lawyers has decided to take on the filibuster and get it outlawed.
 
Emmet Bondurant, selected Lawyer of the Year for Antitrust and Bet-the-Company Litigation in 2010, has proposed that the U.S. Supreme Court abolish the U.S. Senate’s use of the filibuster. Common Cause, of which Bondurant is a board member, has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of filibusters.
 
According to Bondurant, the filibuster was created by accident. Senators in 1806 accepted Aaron Burr’s recommendation to do away with “the previous question” motion, which Senators used to end debate. The understanding then was that lawmakers knew when it was time to stop talking and move on to a vote.
 
It was only decades later that someone realized the absence of the “previous question” motion allowed Senators in the minority to bottle up legislation or a presidential appointment and prevent it from being voted on. In 1917, the “cloture” rule was adopted to end lengthy debates, but since it required a two-thirds vote, the filibuster was still used to block legislation. In 1957—in the longest filibuster in history—Strom Thurmond spoke for 24 hours 18 minutes to block the Civil Rights act.
 
“Far from being a matter of high principle, the filibuster appears to be nothing more than an unforeseen and unintended consequence of the elimination of the previous question motion from the rules of the Senate,” Bondurant wrote in a paper published by the Harvard Journal on Legislation.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
 
To Learn More:
Is the Filibuster Unconstitutional? (by Ezra Klein, Washington Post)

The Senate Filibuster: The Politics of Obstruction (by Emmet Bondurant, Harvard Journal on Legislation) (pdf) 
 
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