Kathy Kelly Freed, Convictions of Oak Ridge 3 Overturned
By David Swanson, David Swanson's Blog
10 May 15
athy Kelly is just out of prison, where she'd been sent for nonviolently opposing drone murders.
An appeals court has just overturned convictions for Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Gregory Boertje-Obed, imprisoned for entering and protesting a nuclear weapons site at Oak Ridge, Tenn., three years ago. Resentencing on lesser charges, and quite possibly immediate release, is expected.
Amazingly, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the government failed to prove that the activists intended to "injure the national defense." (Maybe Venezuela, accused by President Obama of being a threat to the same, should appeal to the Sixth Circuit!)
The U.S. government has just dropped charges against eight members of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance who nonviolently protested the U.S. military's environmental destruction with a march from the EPA to the Pentagon this past Earth Day.
"It can only be speculated why the charges were dismissed," said NCNR. "The eight activists were charged with 'Failure to Comply With a Lawful Order' and were scheduled to appear for trial on June 4 at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA. The group was well prepared to challenge the charge and to speak some truth to power in the courtroom. Perhaps the U.S. attorney recognized that the defendants at the Pentagon were simply exercising their constitutionally-protected right to speak out against our government's wrong-headed policies. Or possibly he agreed with the defendants' messages."
In recent months there have been absurd indictments and sentences. But there have also been surprising acquittals and the dismissal of charges.
Freedom isn't free, it's won by continued protests of wars.
Now to free all the other prisoners!
John Kiriakou, just out of prison, writes about his experience here.
Why Are We Still Asking if a Dying Woman Should Be Able to Get an Abortion to Save Her Life?
Sunday, 10 May 2015 08:03
Dalven writes: "A recent analysis of abortion attitudes by The New York Times came to the right conclusion: The divide on how Americans feel about abortion is much smaller than partisan politics would have us believe."
Protesters rally in Austin, Texas. (photo: Mike Stone/Reuters)
Why Are We Still Asking if a Dying Woman Should Be Able to Get an Abortion to Save Her Life?
By Jennifer Dalven, ACLU Blog
10 May 15
recent analysis of abortion attitudes by The New York Times came to the right conclusion: The divide on how Americans feel about abortion is much smaller than partisan politics would have us believe.
But there's a bigger idea that the piece in the Times — and the poll it relies on — missed: All too often, we're still asking the wrong questions when it comes to gauging public opinion on abortion. We're too focused on questions at the margins — death versus abortion, rape, and incest or abortion under all circumstances or no circumstances. These questions do little to illuminate the reality of most women's lives and the range of feelings people have about abortions that happen in the real world.
Much of the piece centers on how Americans feel about two questions. The first is whether a woman who needs an abortion to save her life should be able to get one. Why are we still asking this? Is whether a woman should be forced to die rather than have an abortion really still up for debate when it comes to public opinion? I don't think so.
The other question examined at length concerns a woman who wants an abortion because of the sex of the baby. To set the record straight, that's a largely imagined scenario, designed in part by abortion opponents to communicate the stigmatizing idea that a woman who has decided to have an abortion is doing so for a frivolous reason. Not to mention that it's racist, relying on ugly stereotypes about women of color. Asking this question doesn't get at any kind of truth on abortion attitudes.
I'm thrilled that the analysis in the Times' got the real answer. But it's still not asking the right questions.
Women have abortions for complex reasons — to better take care of the children they already have, to pursue an education or career and improve their life circumstances, or simply because they know they are not in a position to be the best parent they can be.
For many years, it's been clear that when you ask people about how abortion impacts real women's lives — instead of party-line questions about abortion under all circumstances or no circumstances — you get surprising answers and high levels of agreement.
Vox recently took this wholly different approach. Instead of asking the standard questions, the poll asked questions like:
"Which comes closer to your view: The law says a woman has a right to an abortion. As long as this is the law, women should have access to safe and affordable abortion care. Or even though there is a right to abortion, we should work to reduce abortions by making it harder for women to access care."
And:
"Think about a woman who has decided to have an abortion. How would you want that experience to be for her?"
And even:
"If a close family member or friend told you she decided to have an abortion, would you give her a lot of support?"
When you ask these types of questions, a much deeper, more nuanced, and more accurate picture of attitudes on abortion appears. In that picture, it's clear that Americans are in overwhelming agreement that a woman who has decided to get an abortion should be able to get one without additional hurdles. They're in overwhelming agreement that we shouldn't be passing laws that make a woman who has decided to get an abortion feel ashamed about her decision.
And Americans agree that lawmakers who are determined to restrict access to abortion are moving our country in the wrong direction.
Buried in the Times piece, even with it's strange focus on scenarios that have little connection to most abortions, is one clear truth: "Focusing on the exact details of abortion decisions may reveal more about when Americans agree on this difficult issue than when they disagree."
Bernie Sanders Could Be the Greenest Presidential Candidate Ever
Sunday, 10 May 2015 07:29
Adler writes: "The Democratic presidential primary race got its second major candidate last week, and its first true climate hawk: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, self-described democratic socialist."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
Bernie Sanders Could Be the Greenest Presidential Candidate Ever
By Ben Adler, Guardian UK
10 May 15
Hillary Clinton is also dedicated to climate action, but Sanders could set himself apart by calling for a clampdown on fossil fuel extraction, reports Grist
he Democratic presidential primary race got its second major candidate last week, and its first true climate hawk: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, self-described democratic socialist. Sanders has one of the strongest climate change records in the Senate. In fact, according to rankings released last week by Climate Hawks Vote, a new Super Pac, Sanders was the No 1 climate leader in the Senate for the 113th Congress that ended in January.
Climate Hawks Vote measures leadership, not just voting records, tabulating actions like bills introduced, speeches given, and so forth. In the 112th Congress, Sanders ranked third behind Sheldon Whitehouse, Senator for Rhode Island, and Jeff Merkley, Senator for Oregon. In the last Congress, he edged out Whitehouse by one point.
“Sanders is very much among the top leaders,” says RL Miller, founder of Climate Hawks Vote. “He has a record of really strong advocacy for solar in particular.” Miller notes that distributed solar, which enables everyone with a solar panel to create their own energy instead of relying on a monopolistic utility company, fits especially well with Sanders’ democratic socialist philosophy. It’s bad for corporations and good for regular folks who get to own the means of production.
Here are some of the highlights from Sanders’ climate and clean energy record:
In 2013, along with Senator Barbara Boxer of California, Sanders introduced the Climate Protection Act, a fee-and-dividend bill. It would tax carbon and methane emissions and rebate three-fifths of the revenue to citizens, then invest the remainder in energy efficiency, clean energy, and climate resiliency. The bill, of course, went nowhere (even if it had advanced in the Democratic-controlled Senate, it would have been DOA in the Republican-controlled House), but it shows that Sanders supports serious solutions and wants to keep the conversation going.
Also in 2013, Sanders introduced the Residential Energy Savings Act to fund financing programmes that would help residents retrofit their homes for energy efficiency. This bill didn’t become law either.
In 2012, Sanders introduced the End Polluter Welfare Act, to get rid of special tax deductions and credits for coal, oil, and gas producers. As he wrote in Grist at the time, “It is immoral that some in Congress advocate savage cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security while those same people vote to preserve billions in tax breaks for ExxonMobil, the most profitable corporation in America.” The bill didn’t pass.
In 2010, Sanders authored a bill to spread distributed solar throughout the country, the very literally named “10 Million Solar Roofs & 10 Million Gallons of Solar Hot Water Act.” As Grist’s David Roberts explained, it would “provide rebates that cover up to half the cost of new systems, along the lines of incentive programs in California and New Jersey.” The bill didn’t pass.
In 2007, he cowrote with then Senator Hillary Clinton of New York the Green Jobs Act, which allocated funding for clean energy and energy efficiency research and job training. This did pass, as part of a big 2007 energy bill.
Also in 2007, with Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, he cosponsored the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant programme, to help states and local governments pay for efficiency and clean energy programmes. It was also passed as part of the 2007 energy bill, and both the block grant programme and the green jobs programme got a funding infusion from the 2009 stimulus package.
So we know Sanders is dedicated to climate action and clean energy. Looking forward, though, it’s unclear how Sanders will differentiate his climate and energy proposals from Clinton’s. Clinton, like President Obama, firmly supports regulating carbon emissions domestically and getting strong international agreements to reduce emissions globally. While it is certainly true that Sanders has made more of an issue of his support for the same, it is not necessarily an issue on which Clinton needs to be pushed leftward. Many climate hawks love the fee-and-dividend approach that Sanders supports, but the truth is that no big climate-pricing bill will pass in the next few years, no matter who’s president, because the Republicans will continue to control the House for years to come. And Clinton already supports the kind of strong executive action that Obama is taking to curb CO2 emissions from power plants.
One way Sanders could set himself apart as the greenest candidate would be to propose clamping down on domestic fossil fuel extraction, especially on federal lands and waters – something a president could move on without congressional approval. Sanders has not spoken up about the extraction issue in general, but he could call for a moratorium on fossil fuel leasing offshore or on federal land. That would please climate activists, who are already expressing concern that Clinton isn’t committed to keeping dirty fuel sources in the ground. “What we really need,” says Miller, “is someone to advocate for closing down the Powder River Basin” – an area in Montana and Wyoming that’s a huge source of coal mined from federal land – “but no one is really willing to come out and say that, so instead they come out for higher prices on coal leases. Sanders has not.”
In an interview with The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, Sanders called for a progressive climate agenda that includes a carbon tax and investments in renewables, energy efficiency, and alternative transportation – but he made no mention of restricting fossil fuel development. Here is what he offered:
A tax on carbon; a massive investment in solar, wind, geothermal; it would be making sure that every home and building in this country is properly winterised; putting substantial money into rail, both passenger and cargo, so we can move towards breaking our dependency on automobiles. And leading other countries around the world.
Bill McKibben, who founded 350.org and has led the fight to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, says he is confident Sanders understands the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Sanders has opposed Keystone, while Clinton has avoided taking a position on it. “He’s been the most consistent and proactive voice in the entire Keystone fight,” writes McKibben in an email. “Everything that’s been needed – from speeches on the floor to legislation to demands that the State Department change its absurd review process – he and his staff have done immediately and with a high degree of professionalism. On climate stuff he’s been the most aggressive voice in the Senate, rivalled only by Sheldon Whitehouse. He understands it for the deep, simple problem it is: that we can’t keep burning this stuff.” (Full disclosure: McKibben is a member of Grist’s board of directors.)
One area where Sanders indisputably differs from Clinton is trade. Clinton, like her husband and Obama, has been an ardent supporter of free trade agreements. Some environmentalists worry that these agreements – like NAFTA, CAFTA, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that is currently under consideration – give polluting companies too much power to undermine environmental regulations in signatory nations. As secretary of state, Clinton supported the TPP, although as a candidate her campaign advisers say she hasn’t made up her mind on it. Sanders is one of the most sceptical members of the Senate on trade agreements and he is currently helping to lead the charge against the TPP.
To describe Sanders’ challenge against Clinton as uphill would be too generous. It’s more like climbing Mt Everest – without oxygen or a guide. But by bringing attention to some of these issues, he may raise awareness and draw Clinton out. Sanders’ office declined to comment for this story, citing an overwhelming number of interview requests following announcement of his candidacy. That speaks to the megaphone a presidential campaign can grant a candidate, especially in a nearly empty field. Sanders is sure to use it for worthy causes. Will keeping fossil fuels in the ground be one of them?
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=15102"><span class="small">Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Saturday, 09 May 2015 13:15
Sanders writes: "We don't hear it discussed much in the media, but the reality is that the middle class of this country, once the envy of the world, is collapsing, 45 million Americans are living in poverty, and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider."
Senator Bernie Sanders. (photo: Reuters)
Break Up the Big Banks
By Bernie Sanders, Reader Supported News
09 May 15
e don't hear it discussed much in the media, but the reality is that the middle class of this country, once the envy of the world, is collapsing, 45 million Americans are living in poverty, and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider.
Despite a huge increase in technology and productivity, median family income is almost $5,000 lower today than it was in 1999.
There are 45 million people living in poverty and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. Half of the American people have less than $10,000 in savings and have no idea how they will retire with dignity. Real unemployment is not 5.5 percent - it's close to 11 percent.
Today, 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. During the last two years, the 14 wealthiest Americans saw their wealth increase by $157 billion, which is more wealth than is owned by the bottom 130 million Americans.
In the midst of all this grotesque level of income and wealth inequality comes Wall Street.
As we all know, it was the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street six years ago that drove this country into the worst recession since the Great Depression.
Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, life savings and ability to send their kids to college. The middle class is still suffering from the horrendous damage huge financial institutions and insurance companies did to this country in 2008.
It seems like almost every day we read about one giant financial institution after another being fined or reaching settlements for their reckless, unfair, and deceptive activities.
In fact, since 2009, huge financial institutions have paid $176 billion in fines and settlement payments for fraudulent and unscrupulous activities.
It should make every American very nervous that in this weak regulatory environment, the financial supervisors in this country and around the world are still able to uncover an enormous amount of fraud on Wall Street to this day. I fear very much that the financial system is even more fragile than many people may perceive. This huge issue cannot be swept under the rug. It has got to be addressed.
Although I voted for Dodd-Frank, I did so knowing it was a modest piece of legislation. Dodd-Frank did not end much of the casino-style gambling on Wall Street. In fact, much of this reckless activity is still going on today.
During the financial crisis of 2008, the American people were told that they needed to bailout huge financial institutions because those institutions were "too big to fail."
Yet, today, three out of the four financial institutions in this country (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo) are 80 percent larger today than they were on September 30, 2007, a year before the taxpayers of this country bailed them out. 80 percent!
No single financial institution should be so large that its failure would cause catastrophic risk to millions of Americans or to our nation's economic well-being.
No single financial institution should have holdings so extensive that its failure would send the world economy into crisis. If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
The enormous concentration of ownership within the financial sector is hurting the middle class and damaging the economy by limiting choices and raising prices for consumers and small businesses.
Today, just six huge financial institutions have assets of nearly $10 trillion which is equal to nearly 60 percent of GDP. These huge banks handle more than two-thirds of all credit card purchases, write over 35 percent of the mortgages, and control nearly half of all bank deposits in this country.
If Teddy Roosevelt were alive today, do you know what he would say? He would say break 'em up. And he would be right. And that's exactly what I plan to do.
A bill that I've written would require financial regulators within one year to identify and break-up huge financial institutions like JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley so that they can never again cause another financial crisis like the one that happened in 2008.
I am delighted that this legislation has been endorsed by the Independent Community Bankers of America, representing more than 6,000 community banks. Their support is an important recognition that the function of banking should be boring and the current situation still contains too much risk and too much emphasis on profit-making.
The function of banking should be to provide affordable loans to businesses to create jobs. The function of banking should be to provide affordable loans to Americans to purchase homes and cars. Wall Street cannot be an island unto itself and we need to break up those largest banks to put the focus back on working class Americans.
We write out of grave concern about a document we have not been able to see. Although it has not been made available publicly, we understand that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement currently being negotiated includes Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions. ISDS allows foreign investors—and only foreign investors—to avoid the courts and instead to argue to a special, private tribunal that they believe certain government actions diminish the value of their investments.
Courts are central institutions in the rule of law. Americans have much to be proud of in the evolution of our court system, which has evolved over the centuries and now provides equal access for all persons. Courts enable the public to observe the processes of development of law and to watch impartial and accountable decision-makers render judgments.
We write because of our concern that what we know about ISDS does not match what courts can provide. Those advocating using this alternative in lieu of our court system bear the burden of demonstrating why such an exit is necessary, and how the alternate system will safeguard the ideals enshrined in our courts. Thus far, the proponents of ISDS have failed to meet that burden. Therefore, before any ISDS provisions are included in the TPP or any future agreements, including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), their content should be disclosed and their purposes vetted in public so that debate can be had about whether and if such provisions should be part of proposed treaties. Below, we detail the ways in which ISDS departs from the justice opportunities that U.S. courts provide.
Our legal system rests on the conviction that every individual, regardless of wealth or power, has an equal right to bring a case to court. To protect and uphold the rule of law, our ideals of fairness and justice must apply in all situations and equally to everyone. ISDS, in contrast, is a system built on differential access. ISDS provides a separate legal system available only to certain investors who are authorized to exit the American legal system. Only foreign investors may bring claims under ISDS provisions. This option is not offered to nations, domestic investors, or civil society groups alleging violations of treaty obligations. Under ISDS regimes, foreign investors alone are granted legal rights unavailable to others – freed from the rulings and procedures of domestic courts.
ISDS also risks undermining democratic norms because laws and regulations enacted by democratically-elected officials are put at risk in a process insulated from democratic input.
Equal application of the law is another critically important hallmark of our legal system—one that is secured through the orderly development of law. Court decisions are subject to appeal, ensuring that conflicting lower court decisions are resolved by a higher authority. Judges also must follow legal precedent. The goal is uniform application of the law regardless of which judge or court hears a case. This law development allows people, entities, and nations alike to order their behavior according to well-established legal principles.
In contrast, ISDS does not build in the development of the law. An ISDS arbitral panel’s decision cannot be appealed to a court. The ISDS provisions of which we are aware provide only limited— private—review through a process called annulment that does not permit decisions to be set aside based even on a “manifest error of law.”1 Moreover, ISDS arbitrators, like other arbitrators, do not make law because their decisions have no precedential value, and ISDS arbitrators in turn are not obliged to follow precedent in reaching their own decisions.
None of the hallmarks of our court system would be possible without a fair and independent judiciary. Federal judges take an oath to uphold the Constitution and are nominated and confirmed by our democratically elected representatives. State judges likewise commit themselves to upholding the constitutional order. In contrast, ISDS arbitrators are not public servants but private arbitrators. In many cases, there is a revolving door between serving on ISDS arbitration panels and representing corporations bringing ISDS claims. Yet, although such a situation would seem to call for more—not less—oversight and accountability, ISDS arbitrators’ decisions are functionally unreviewable.
As noted at the outset, we have not been able to read the terms of the proposed ISDS chapters for the upcoming TPP and TTIP treaties. But what we know from the past gives us many grounds for concern. During the past few years, foreign investors have used ISDS to challenge a broad range of policies aimed at protecting the environment, improving public health and safety, and regulating industry. These challenges have been around the world, including under trade agreements to which the United States is a party. The publicly available information about these challenges raises serious questions as to whether the United States should be entering into more ISDS agreements with a broad array of nations.
Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly’s pending ISDS proceedings against Canada provide an example of how corporations have used ISDS to challenge a nation’s laws outside the courtroom. After a Canadian court invalidated one of Lilly’s patents, the company initiated ISDS proceedings against Canada under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).2 In seeking $500 million (Canadian), Lilly has challenged as violative of NAFTA the standard the nation uses for granting patents.
Although ISDS tribunals are not empowered to order injunctive relief, the threat and expense of ISDS proceedings have forced nations to abandon important public policies. In the third ISDS proceeding brought under NAFTA, Ethyl Corporation brought an ISDS proceeding against Canada for $251 million for implementing a ban on a toxic gasoline additive. The proceeding took place not in a court, but before an arbitration panel of the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). After the arbitration panel rejected Canada’s argument that Ethyl lacked standing to bring the challenge, Canada settled the suit for $13 million. Moreover, Canada lifted the ban on the toxic additive as part of the settlement.3
It is particularly noteworthy that the three NAFTA countries are each in the top 11 most-challenged countries under the ISDS system. This high rate of challenge in our view has little to do with a rule of law deficit in the U.S. and Canada. Instead, it represents investors taking advantage of easy access to a special legal right available only to them in an alternate legal system.
ISDS weakens the rule of law by removing the procedural protections of the legal system and using a system of adjudication with limited accountability and review. It is antithetical to the fair, public, and effective legal system that all Americans expect and deserve.
Proponents of ISDS have failed to explain why our legal system is inadequate to the task. For the reasons cited above, we urge you to uphold the best ideals of our legal system and ensure ISDS is excluded from upcoming trade agreements.
Sincerely,
Judith Resnik
Arthur Liman Professor of Law, Yale Law School
Cruz Reynoso
Professor of Law Emeritus, UC Davis School of Law
Former Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court
Honorable H. Lee Sarokin
Former United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Joseph E. Stiglitz
University Professor, Columbia University
Laurence H. Tribe
Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard Law School
cc: Ambassador Froman and Chairs & Ranking Members of Finance & Ways & Means Committees
Please note: Organizational affiliation for all signatories is included for identification purposes only; individuals represent only themselves, not the institutions where they are teaching or other organizations in which they are active.
Impregilo S.P.A. v Argentine Republic, ICSID Case No. ARB/07/17 (Annulment Proceeding), Jan. 24, 2014, at ¶ 132. http://www.italaw.com/sites/default/files/case-documents/italaw3044.pdf (“[T]here is a difference between a failure to apply the proper law and the misapplication of the applicable law, and that the latter does not constitute grounds for annulment, even if it is a ‘manifest error of law’ …”) (emphasis added).
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athy Kelly is 
recent analysis of abortion attitudes by 
he Democratic presidential primary race got its second major candidate last week, and its first true climate hawk: Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, self-described democratic socialist. Sanders has one of the strongest climate change records in the Senate. In fact, according to 
e don't hear it discussed much in the media, but the reality is that the middle class of this country, once the envy of the world, is collapsing, 45 million Americans are living in poverty, and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider.
