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Constitution's Bar on Religious Tests Withstands New Campaign in San Diego

blind justiceA group of conservative attorneys declared that they were on a mission from God to unseat four California judges in the election on June 8. "We believe our country is under assault and needs Christian values," said Craig Candelore, a family law attorney who was one of the group's candidates. "Unfortunately, God has called upon us to do this only with the judiciary." The challenge is unheard of, especially in California, which is one of 33 states to directly elect judges. Vowing to be God's ambassadors on the bench, the four San Diego Superior Court candidates won the backing of pastors, gun enthusiasts, and opponents of abortion and same-sex marriage. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's school of law, special interest groups, including those representing opposition to gay marriage, have recently increased donations for judicial races. Adam Skaggs, counsel for the Brennan Center said: "An effective way in driving policy is to try to influence who is on the courts in a state, particularly the highest court, the supreme court." For example, in Iowa's June 8 primary, two Republican gubernatorial candidates announced they favored ousting Supreme Court judges whose unanimous decision last year legalized same-sex marriage.

The Future of Government Secrecy

WikiLeaks, the Swedish website that publishes sensitive government and corporate information while preserving the anonymity of its sources, has come under serious criticism in recent days. Last week, authorities arrested Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst suspected of supplying WikiLeaks with 260,000 secret cables between U.S. diplomats and their contacts around the world. In addition, Mr. Manning is suspected of leaking footage of a U.S. helicopter gunning down a crowd of men in Iraq that included two journalists from Reuters. Most commentators find that WikiLeaks will drastically alter the government's ability to protect classified information. Whether or not that is a good thing is a more divisive question.

American Crossroads: The Hit List

target manAmerican Crossroads, a 527 group created in 2010 by right-wing political operatives and supported by Karl Rove and former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, officially entered into the political campaigning arena last week by airing attack ads on incumbent Nevada Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada). The week-long ad was the newly formed group's first foray into the race and it came at a cost of $120,000. According to the Washington Post, the group has raised a little more than $1 million to date. Slow fundraising hasn't slowed their plan of attack as American Crossroads recently announced the 11 races they plan to target in the upcoming election season.

In addition to Nevada, their targeted races include those in Ohio, Missouri, New Hampshire, Colorado, Arkansas, Kentucky, Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Washington state. The group plans to hire a pollster and media consultant for each race in hopes of crafting more tailored and effective campaigning messages. To that end, they have already hired the advertising firm Wilson Grand Communications and Jan van Lohuizen, former pollster for Elizabeth Dole, to be in charge of campaigning in Nevada. They also hired Carl Forti, former political director for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, as research director for the organization.

Last Call on Financial Reform!

Last call on financial reformToday, U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas) was dragged into a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada), Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts). It was a pile-on to ask her to agree to weaken her strong derivatives reforms to accommodate Wall Street. Lincoln made it clear she was not pleased with the pressure. "There are some that are not as interested in being as aggressive in making sure that the possibilities of this financial crisis don’t happen again,” the Arkansas Democrat told Roll Call after the meeting. The issue of derivatives will be taken up tomorrow in the House-Senate Conference Committee which is pounding out the difference between the two bills. Will they adopt the Senate version (which covers 90% of derivatives, with a narrow exemption for legitimate end-users like municipal gas companies) or the House version (which is riddled with loopholes and covers only 60% of derivatives trading)?

Impeach the Oil-Investing Judge Who Declared Deep Sea Drilling Ban Void

Judge Martin Leach-Cross FeldmanA federal judge sitting in Louisiana struck down the Obama Administration's six-month moratorium on new deep water drilling, despite the unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico caused by BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling operation. Who is the unelected man standing in the way of permitting a six-month review of this inherently dangerous activity?

Swap 'Till You Drop

As the fight on Capitol Hill for financial reform enters its final stages, it is worth asking what will be done to protect states and localities from the Wall Street con. On Thursday, the House-Senate conference committee on financial reform will take up the controversial section of the bill dealing with derivatives reform. Not a local issue right? Wrong. Service Employees International Union's (SEIU) Big Banks campaign has uncovered about 71 states and localities which have bought into dangerous derivatives and swaps deals to finance local priorities.

This information was not easy to uncover, and the total number of munis holding these little ticking time bombs is not known. For the big banks, these deals are off book and off record, and politicians of course don't like to brag about getting swindled. It is only when these deal explode and there is a huge shortfall that the public begins to be aware. Sometimes even that is not enough, and some districts are in denial about the problems posed by their investment portfolio.

Chamber's "Virtual" March on Washington: Only an Avatar Can Love a Big Bank

AvatarThe U.S. Chamber of Commerce has launched what it is calling a virtual march on Washington to oppose financial reforms being considered by Congress this week. With relatively few actual Americans willing to take their summer vacation in D.C. to march in favor of the Big Banks whose gambling broke the economy and whose practices have pillaged the financial security of working people, the Chamber has resorted to urging "avatars," or computer representations of people, to march on the virtual capital of the U.S. This so-called march seems a fitting symbol of the emptiness of the whole gambit by the Chamber. With Wall Street lobbyists swarming the capitol and Wall Street spending millions of dollars to thwart the reforms most needed and wanted by actual American people, the Chamber has had to manufacture a people's protest against the reforms, but sans real people. Apparently, they could not even enlist their buddies orchestrating the Tea Party, like former Congressman Dick Armey, or their cashroots allies in astroturf over at the Orwellian-named FreedomWorks, to cajole or even hire stand-in protesters to come to the National Mall to take up pitchforks against financial reforms. But lest all this computer gamesmanship be in vain, the Chamber is taking steps to ensure that Members of Congress know how many of the avatars are their purported constituents -- residents who love the Big Banks enough to send the very best: their idealized computer images.

Rick Berman's For-Profit Non-Profits Under the Microscope

Former lobbyist-turned-advocate Rick Berman's six non-profit groups all funnel business to his for-profit PR companyFront group king Rick Berman, who has worked in the shadows for years, is starting to draw closer scrutiny from the IRS, the media and the public for the unique, self-dealing business model he developed to champion for big business. Berman, a former lobbyist, set up six nonprofit organizations with innocuous names like the Center for Consumer Freedom, the American Beverage Institute and the Employment Policies Institute. Despite their nonprofit designation, together these groups provide as much as 70 percent of the revenues of his for-profit enterprise, Berman and Company. The Center for Consumer Freedom, for example, took in $1.5 million in revenues in 2008, of which 93 percent went to Berman and his firm. The American Beverage Institute took in $1.7 million, of which 82 percent went to Berman and his firm. None of his non-profit groups have independent offices or staff, and all of them pay Berman's for-profit business for services like accounting, copying, writing, operating Web sites, placing opinion-editorials, and bookkeeping, which is managed by Berman's wife, Dixie Lynn Berman. Rick Berman sits on the boards of his organizations, holds a total of 24 positions within them, and he serves as Executive Director for most of them. Sounds fishy, right?

The Other Oil Giants? Just as Unready as BP

The Gulf of Mexico response plans of four of the five major oil companies discuss protecting walruses. No walruses live in the Gulf.On June 15, the CEOs of ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Shell, Chevron and BP were grilled by the House Subcommittee on Energy and Natural Resources. Unsurprisingly, much of what they said was spin. They paraded industry investments in alternative energy and safety that make up a vanishingly small percentage of their balance sheets. BP's competitors claimed again and again that they would never have made the catastrophic mistakes that led to the collapse of the Deepwater Horizon. But the hearing's scariest moment came when Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson told the truth. Tillerson stated that when oil spills occur "there will be impacts." According to ExxonMobil, the cleanup effort launched by BP represents the best efforts of the oil companies. For the oil companies, this travesty is the cutting edge of safety and environmental protection.

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