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FOCUS: Landowners Fighting Pipeline Get Their Day in Court |
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Sunday, 18 December 2016 11:20 |
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Galindez writes: "The pipe has been laid, the damage to their land has already occurred, but yesterday the landowners finally got their day in court. They are arguing that the Iowa Utilities Board violated the law by granting permits to Dakota Access to drill on their lands."
Christene Novis, a water protector addresses a rally for landowners in Des Moines, Ia. (Photo: Scott Galindez/RSN)
Landowners Fighting Pipeline Get Their Day in Court
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
18 December 16
 he pipe has been laid, the damage to their land has already occurred, but yesterday the landowners finally got their day in court. They are arguing that the Iowa Utilities Board violated the law by granting permits to Dakota Access to drill on their lands. Pipeline fighters packed the courtroom and filled the hall outside the courtroom during the hearing. Following the hearing they marched in single digit, frigid temperatures and rallied in support of the landowners who have not given up the fight.
The farmers argue that the pipeline will not provide an economic benefit to Iowa so Iowa Utility Board erred in using eminent domain to force them to allow Dakota Access to carve up their land for an oil pipeline.
Keith Puntenney, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, told RSN that the principle of the case is “We believe that private landowners should not have their land taken by a private corporation.” He also said, “The pipeline provides no goods or services to the people of Iowa so eminent domain should not have been used to take our land.”
The Iowa Utilities Board is arguing that since the pipeline is already in the ground, the lawsuit is moot. Puntenney responded to their claim by arguing, “The pipe can be pulled out, and there is no oil running through it, and even if there was it doesn’t make it right. The rule of law is what we think is important. If it wasn’t lawful for them to put the pipeline in the ground they should pay damages.... We believe in the rights of private property owners to determine how they are going to use their own land. We don’t believe another private company should be able to come in and tell us how they are going to use our property.”
If the landowners win, they’ll be seeking damages separately. One of the landowners’ attorneys, Bill Hannigan, suggested that Dakota Access should be charged for any oil that will travel through his clients’ proprieties via the pipeline.
Polk County District Court judge Jeffery Farrell says he hopes to issue his decision as soon as possible. Both parties agree that any ruling will almost certainly be appealed.
Following the hearing, landowners and their supporters braved frigid temperatures to march and hold a rally. Steve Higginbottom, a landowner, told the crowd that it is the politicians and Dakota Access that are responsible. He defended the workers as people who were just doing their job. Higginbottom also expressed disbelief that “a Texas oil company has been allowed to come through and gash our state catty-corner across the whole thing.” He went on to say it was explained to him a long time ago that “it’s easier for the pipeline companies to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.”
Christene Novis, a Native American who has lived in Iowa for the past 10 years, compared what is happening to the landowners to colonization. “This act is an act of colonization. It has not stopped, it has only manifested in a different form. It has manifested itself into the black snake. It no longer discriminates who it attacks. It no longer only attacks indigenous people. It is now attacking the settlers of this land.” Novies went on to say that her people “will not let anyone else experience the atrocities that her people went through. It is time to draw a line in the sand.”
Jonas Magram, of the Sierra Club, which also has a lawsuit pending against the Iowa Utilities Board (IUB), told the crowd, “Last March the IUB threw the health and safety and the future of Iowans under the bus. We are here today to say one message above all, it is time to end putting profits over people! The IUB kowtows to our conservative money-grubbing governor. It is time for us to take back our future.”
Ed Fallon, of Bold Iowa, said that no matter what the outcome of the lawsuits is, they would continue to stand with the landowners and fight for them.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Trumped by Putin |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=18165"><span class="small">Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Bill Moyers & Company</span></a>
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Sunday, 18 December 2016 09:34 |
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Excerpt: "It is very likely now that Donald Trump will be inaugurated as president of the United States on Jan. 20, in no small part because of the direct intervention in and manipulation of the American electoral process by Vladimir Putin, Russia's strongman who rose to power as a ruthless agent of the KGB, the former Soviet Union's secret police."
Cars pass by a billboard showing US President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin placed by pro-Serbian movement in the town of Danilovgrad on Nov. 16, 2016. (photo: Savo Prelevic/AFP/Getty Images)
Trumped by Putin
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers and Company
18 December 16
There are lots of reasons why Hillary Clinton lost and Donald Trump won, but the hacking of our election by Russia's Vladimir Putin is the most frightening.
 t is very likely now that Donald Trump will be inaugurated as president of the United States on Jan. 20, in no small part because of the direct intervention in and manipulation of the American electoral process by Vladimir Putin, Russia’s strongman who rose to power as a ruthless agent of the KGB, the former Soviet Union’s secret police.
As we all know, The Washington Post and The New York Times recently reported just how deeply Russian hackers invaded the computers of the Democratic Party, a move intended to confuse voters with leaked excerpts of emails and other documents and thus throw a monkey wrench into the election. Now The Post reports that the CIA believes the Russian meddling was deliberately intended to help sway the vote in Trump’s favor. And NBC News says it was Putin himself who “personally directed” those leaks.
Why did he do this? For one thing, according to Michael McFaul, the former American ambassador to Russia, Putin has a thing about Hillary Clinton. “He has had a vendetta against Hillary Clinton that has been known for a long time because of what she said about his elections back in the parliamentary elections of 2011,” McFaul told NBC News (Clinton had questioned the integrity of the Russian elections). But more important, McFaul continued, “He wants to discredit American democracy and make us weaker in terms of leading the liberal democratic order. And most certainly he likes President-elect Trump’s views on Russia.”
All of which, apparently, now has helped land us in the worst political fix since the Civil War, an electronic invasion that former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson says he believes could be “the largest intelligence coup since the cracking of the Enigma code during World War II.”
Yes, we know some of this remains speculation. Yes, we know Democrats would like to point attention away from some bad, self-inflicted mistakes the Clinton campaign made, mistakes that hurt it on Election Day. That they failed to realize the depth of the anger in the American heartland didn’t help. And neither did the FBI/James Comey intrusion.
Yes, we know the documents handed to WikiLeaks from the Clinton campaign and the DNC were real (although it’s worth noting that as The Times reports, some documents leaked from George Soros’ Open Society Foundation “turned out to have been altered [apparently by the hackers] to make it appear as if the foundation was financing Russian opposition members.”)
Yes, we know that despite all the Russia news, Republican efforts to suppress the vote are ongoing and a huge concern from which we cannot be distracted — and which must be addressed as well. And yes, we know the United States has consistently intervened in and sabotaged elections in other countries, actively working to install leaders who would kowtow to the interests of our government and American corporate interests.
But none of this negates the greatest implication of Putin’s ability to influence the election of a fellow authoritarian and would-be strongman to the presidency of the United States.
It is, in the words of former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who briefed George W. Bush on 9/11 but supported Hillary Clinton this year, “an attack on our very democracy. It’s an attack on who we are as a people. A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11.”
Nancy LeTourneau notes at Washington Monthly’s Political Animal blog, “To understand what is happening here, it is important to reject the old Cold War frame about a contest between capitalism and communism. Russia has long since ceased to be a country built on the teachings of Karl Marx and has evolved into a right-wing ethno-nationalist plutocracy.”
As circumstantial as some of the evidence may seem, we must not forget that these anti-democratic tactics are something that Vladimir Putin has attempted not only in the United States but also in a lot of other places. He is the “standard-bearer and patron” of extremist politics, Daniel Benaim and Perry Camack wrote in The New Republic this past March, and “has paired his brand of hyper-macho contempt for liberalism with active support for radical parties in Europe.” Now he has brought his brand to America and found a kindred salesman in Donald Trump.
Did Trump or members of his staff know what was going on? Probably. Remember that Trump’s first campaign manager Paul Manafort — the “King of K Street” lobbyists — had pro-Russian factions as clients; his name with multimillion amounts beside it was found in a log of financial transactions after he had helped Putin’s friends in the Ukraine. When word began to spread of these ties, Manafort left the campaign. He is now back in Trump’s graces and, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, positioned to reap the harvest of his relationship with Trump and his merry band of crony capitalists. It could be most revealing to hear what Manafort would say, under oath, about his intercession between Trump and Putin.
And just how extensive are our president-elect’s ties to Russian oligarchs? How much does he owe Russian banks? Now we may know more exactly why Trump has refused to release his tax returns; they could be full of clues about his foreign creditors. We’d learn more if he’d divest his business interests, too, but he won’t. We do know that Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets… We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” And there’s more to come as Putin and Trump mix and mingle Russian oligarchs with American plutocrats.
What happens now? How do we confront this crisis of a president-elect who may owe his victory partly to the stealth of his Russian doppelganger? How do we get to the bottom of this before it is too late and a very unstable, egomaniacal and vindictive Donald Trump is handed control of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the US Army and Navy and Air Force, the Departments of State and Homeland Security, the IRS and every regulatory agency of the US government? Who from within will challenge him then?
President Obama has ordered a full report from the intelligence community before he leaves office. A bipartisan commission like the 9/11 investigation could become the public watchdog, certainly more so than proposed House and Senate committee investigations which Trump loyalists in the GOP might publicly support but certainly attempt to stymie.
Maybe, as Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) has suggested, the vote of the Electoral College on Monday could be delayed. In a tweet, he wrote, “I believe that Electors should be given all information relevant to this interference before they make their decisions and before they cast their votes,” and told The Washington Post, “If we don’t act early, and soon, we run the risk of having an illegitimate president. That’s not good for Donald Trump and not good for America.”
Not likely to happen, we know. But listen well. Not only does this increasingly seem like yet another step in Putin’s worldwide subversion of liberal democratic beliefs and Trump’s desire to enrich his family and cronies by surrounding himself with multimillionaires and billionaires known for their predatory appetites; it is one more step to a planet dominated by international oligarchs and kleptocrats, part and parcel of a “huge con job,” as Nancy LeTourneau writes. The Trump campaign “convinced a lot of Americans that they are a populist movement on behalf of the American worker when in reality it is all about an attempt to improve the fortunes on the very global elite they rail against.” If that means hooking up with Putin and authoritarianism, she concludes, Trump’s people believe that’s not a problem.
Just look at the appointment of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, a man who’s been a happy business partner of Putin’s Russia — and other totalitarian regimes — for years. He has shaken the bloody hand of just about every despot whose power rests on the black gold beneath their subjects’ feet, and it doesn’t seem to keep him awake at night. He’s made it clear: His only interest is making money. So don’t be surprised if one day soon you hear talk from the White House of something very like that golden oldie of World War II, a non-aggression pact — this one to divide up the world’s natural resources.
Trump had nothing to say about the judgment of the intelligence community that his pal Putin directed the sabotage of his opponent’s campaign, except, “I think it’s ridiculous. I think it’s just another excuse. I don’t believe it.” It was the reaction of someone whose answer to any summons toward responsibility is a tantrum. The difference is that this immature, undisciplined and thuggish 70-year-old is about to be handed the keys of the kingdom.
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What's Good for Exxon Is Bad for America |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=31563"><span class="small">Carl Pope, EcoWatch</span></a>
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Sunday, 18 December 2016 09:23 |
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Pope writes: "Whatever his voters intended, we can abandon the notion that President-elect Donald Trump is a right-wing populist. Right-wing, yes, authoritarian, probably, demagogue certainly. But his cabinet gives the lie to populism as part of his character."
Tillerson and Putin go way back. (photo: Mikhail Klimentyev/AP)
What's Good for Exxon Is Bad for America
By Carl Pope, EcoWatch
18 December 16
 hatever his voters intended, we can abandon the notion that President-elect Donald Trump is a right-wing populist. Right-wing, yes, authoritarian, probably, demagogue certainly.
But his cabinet gives the lie to populism as part of his character. Wall Street may have paid Hilary Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars to make speeches; but it is Trump who has given Wall Street four cabinet slots, three of them to Goldman-Sachs alumni. (Imagine the outcry if a President Clinton had done that). There's a clutch of corporate CEOs—sate, labor, small business; a retired military trio—national security advisor, defense and homeland security; Republican senators, governors and congressmen make up the remainder, plus Ben Carson, who had conceded he was not qualified for such a post. So far, we have four billionaires.
Based on his choices Trump doesn't like or respect Hispanics, but admires Russia greatly.
Trump himself just explained that he wanted a cabinet of "people that made a fortune!" His argument—making a fortune is proof that someone is a great negotiator and that's the job of the cabinet. This is hardly the stuff of populism, right or left. His choices reveal some other traits. He leans toward inside financial manipulators, military brass and the businesses that dominated the American economy of his youth—fossil fuels, manufacturing and real estate. He has no interest in the major drivers of the economy of the future—technology, communications, services other than finance. The American "Greatness" he aspires to, as many said during the campaign, is the world as it existed before 1970. This is pure reaction, nostalgia as politics, memory as vision.
Steve Bannon's choice as senior counselor is clearly the most outrageous. For a while it was hard to decide which of the choices ranked as the second most appalling—was it a labor secretary who wants to drive down wages for working Americans, an U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator who believes that the cornerstone of the agency's mission—clean air and pure water for every American—is outrageous federal overreach or an interior secretary who wants to turn America's public lands over to commercial interests?
Sadly, those have all been, in the pun of the moment, "trumped" by the choice of Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Tillerson has a rock-solid record of putting the interests of the oil and gas industry ahead of those of the U.S. He never repeated, but also never retracted, the explicit statement by his predecessor, Lee Raymond, that ExxonMobil was not an American company and did not make its decisions based on "what's good for" the U.S.
He should be asked in his confirmation hearings whether he ran the company as an American or rogue, enterprise. The evidence is fairly clear. ExxonMobil was the first oil company to challenge U.S. foreign policy on channeling the oil wealth of Iraq through its central government, signing an oil exploration agreement with the Kurdish Authority. More ominously, when the U.S. was imposing sanctions on Russia, Tillerson maneuvered to complete an Exxon well drilling project in the Arctic Ocean even after the U.S. imposed sanctions.
Exxon's completion of the well enabled Putin to prove to the world that Russia's Arctic reserves were a reality, strengthening his hand is withstanding the pressure of sanctions. It also established Exxon as a reliable friend of the Russian autocrat, insuring Exxon's billion dollar joint ventures from hostile Russian action while they remained suspended by sanctions. But Exxon-Mobil went further, negotiating new deals with Russian oil companies already slated for sanctions by the West at that summer's St. Petersburg Economic Forum. One observer commented that "By defying the White House, the oil majors salvaged what would have otherwise been an embarrassing event for the Kremlin."
Tillerson openly boasted of lobbying against and evading the impact, of the sanctions, boasting that "Our views are being heard at the highest levels. ... There has been no impact on any of our business activities in Russia to this point, nor has there been any discernible impact on the relationship" with Rosneft, one of the sanctioned Russian oil companies closest to Putin. Later sanctions bit. The company has reported that it has lost a billion dollars to the final Western crackdown on investing in Russia.
Raymond's view that Exxon is not an American company, which Tillerson clearly shared, is not surprising. ExxonMobil's reserves are predominantly—70 percent—foreign. (Canadian tar sands are the largest single portion of those foreign reserves). So, relationships with the governments of places like Russia, Nigeria and Qatar are extremely important to Exxon and Tillerson.
But Russia, after Canada, is uniquely important to Exxon (and Tillerson's pension which is tied to the company's stock price). Exxon's deals position it, once sanctions are gone to exploit, the country's Arctic shelf, estimated to contain 105 billion barrels of oil and gas, more than the U.S. and Canadian Arctic combined. Putin's Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavroy, has publicly endorsed the choice of Tillerson as a "pragmatist."
Media coverage of Tillerson's Putin connections have focused on one aspect of the US conflict with Russia—Putin's aspirations to recover influence and perhaps actual control over areas on Russia's borders which were formerly part of the Soviet Empire—particularly the Ukraine and the Baltic.
But there are looming and more immediate threats to American interests. Over the last four months, Russia has constructed a new partnership with OPEC to manipulate global oil markets, limit supply and raise prices. Under the unprecedented agreement signed in Vienna side by side with OPEC, Russia along with Oman, Azerbaijan and the Sudan, agreed to cooperate with OPEC and coordinate cuts in production. Markets responded to these events by raising oil prices by 12 percent. Russia has now joined Saudi Arabia and Iran in declaring war not only on climate protection, and the long term survival of the planet, but on the core short term economic interests of U.S., Japanese, Indian, Chinese and European drivers, shippers and economies—affordable fuel. Global economic growth is once again threatened by manipulated oil markets.
Exxon is a key beneficiary if producers win this economic war. And Exxon's CEO has just been nominated to govern the U.S. response to this war. It's as if after Pearl Harbor Franklin Roosevelt had nominated a key Japanese industrialist to mobilize American industry to win the war.
Tillerson should face some tough questions in his confirmation hearings. And then his nomination should be quashed—the Senate should not confirm the first secretary of state in American history whose primary demonstrated loyalty was not to the U.S.
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This Is How Tyranny Begins |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=36361"><span class="small">Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page</span></a>
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Saturday, 17 December 2016 15:23 |
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Reich writes: "The President-elect continues to lie big-time."
Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)
This Is How Tyranny Begins
By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
17 December 16
he President-elect continues to lie big-time:
- Trump told a rally audience last night that “The murder rate in the United States is the largest it’s been in 45 years,” when in fact it’s near a 50-year low, according to the FBI (see below).
- He also keeps saying he won the election by a “landslide” when in fact he lost the popular vote by 2.8 million votes – over five times Al Gore’s margin over George W. Bush in 2000.
- He repeatedly says the election was marred by “massive voting fraud” when in fact there’s no evidence of voting fraud at all – unless you consider Russia’s hacking.
A democracy can only function on the basis of truth. If the public is repeatedly told by its president that the murder rate is soaring, it may support policies such as harsher policing and sentencing – the opposite of what we need. If repeatedly told that Trump won by a landslide, the public may give him a mandate he doesn't deserve. If told of “massive voter fraud” the public may support further efforts to suppress votes through rigid ID and other requirements.
A President-elect who repeats boldface lies poses a clear threat to American democracy. This is how tyranny begins.
What do you think?
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