Dem/Repub One-Party colluding against public interest

BREAKDOWN

Rocky Anderson

Notes from today’s Democracy Now interview with Justice Party-USA presidential candidate Rocky Anderson

Editing by Carolyn Bennett

one party corrupting, corruptible

Sides against public interest

The Republican-Democratic regime “through its collusion has brought this country to its knees economically,” Rocky Anderson said today on the Democracy Now program. Without the Democrats colluding with the Republicans, we would not have engaged in an illegal, aggressive war against Iraq.”

Democrats and Republicans grant retroactive immunity from prosecution for clearly felonious acts

Before winning the 2008 Democratic primary for the U.S. presidency, U.S. Senator Barack Obama promised to “join a filibuster against telecom company immunity.” As soon as he won the nomination, he not only did not join a filibuster, he voted for the legislation grating retroactive immunity.

Sides with criminals, against public interest

Reaching the Oval Office, U.S. President Barack Obama said,  “‘Let’s look forward, not backward,’ when it comes to war criminals — people who have engaged in torture, clearly in violation not only of international law, but domestic law.”

The system of government is two-tiered, Anderson said, not only relative to the economy. The courts allow the executive branch to come in and they dismiss cases on the basis of the subversive state secrets doctrine; the executive branch gets to determine whether these cases go forward—victims of torture, people who are challenging illegal government surveillance programs.

In the economy, a very few privileged people “clean up while the rest of us are suffering in so many dramatic ways because of the economic upheaval.”  Related to criminal activity, this two-tiered system allows “this special class of people to escape being held accountable under the law.”

All three branches of government are part of this system, a state of affairs “unprecedented in this nation and completely contrary to the notion of an equal justice system.”

Sides with the money against public interest

“President Obama received more money from Wall Street than any other candidate has ever received in a presidential or any other election campaign and he surrounded himself with all these alumni from Goldman Sachs.

“Not one person has spent one day in prison as a result of the massive financial fraud that we know took place by these Wall Street firms, and the people that work for them, that did so much damage to the American people.

“All any of us have to do is look at our pension plans, our 401(k) accounts, and we can see the direct impact of this economic disaster — brought to us by and large through these criminal acts committed by these Wall Street firms and their employees.

Not one of them has been brought to justice under the Obama administration.

Polluting industries make their campaign contributions, the EPA tries to impose stricter ozone standards, President Obama basically vetoes the EPA. He is serving the interest of those polluting industries.

We’d have a universal healthcare system (real healthcare reform) like other nations in the industrialized world — were it not for the corrupting influence of the money flowing in from the medical insurance industry.

 

embraces corrupting influence against public interest

Corporate campaign contributions make a very good return on their investment. Follow the money and you’ll see why Congress and the White House are pursuing policies that go contrary to the interest of the American people.

The failure of every major public policy issue intended to serve the public interest can be attributed to the corrupting influence of money. 

Source
“Ex-Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson, Former Democrat, Launches Third Party Presidential Bid Against Obama, GOP,” Democracy Now December 13, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org

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Clear and present Congressional Conflicts of Interest

Liberals, Conservatives on the public payroll rich, enriching themselves

Editing, minor comment by Carolyn Bennett

One percent, roughly, of Americans at large are millionaires.

Sixty percent of the newly seated members of the U.S. Senate — and more than 40 percent of the newly seated members of the U.S. House of Representatives — are millionaires.

“Even though millions of Americans continue to struggle financially,” a Center for Responsive Politics analysis reports, most of the United States’ newest “congressional representatives are a world away from those constituents’ financial realities.”

The “median estimated wealth for Senate freshmen is $3.96 million,” according to the Center’s calculations. “For House freshmen, the median estimated wealth is $570,418.”

Can Congress regulate, legislate fairly in the public interest private interests it owns and owes?

The Center for Responsive Politics reports the 112^th Congress’s popular Blue chip, oil company investment — “New members’ favorite assets include stock staples popular with Congress at large: 

General Electric (17 new members invested), Bank of America (11) and AT and T, Cisco Systems, Johnson and Johnson, Microsoft and Proctor and Gamble (each 9). 

Coca-Cola ties PepsiCo with seven freshmen investors each, while ExxonMobil (7), edges ConocoPhillips (6) and BP (5) among oil companies. 

Health care reform aside — freshman (seven of them)  reported assets in drug maker Merck; seven more disclosed investments in Pfizer; six listed investments in CVS/Caremark; four are investors in Bristol-Myers Squibb. 

In banking and finance — JPMorgan Chase (7 of the newly seated members), Charles Schwab and Co. (6), Wells Fargo (6), Citigroup (5), and Goldman Sachs (4).”

[Financial collapse culprit] “Citigroup is notable among new member assets because of the potential amount of money freshmen lawmakers have collectively invested in it — somewhere between $1.01 million and $5.05 million.…  Only Proctor and Gamble and Wells Fargo also have the possibility of cracking the $1 million mark.”

U.S. law requires members of Congress only to report their assets and liabilities in broad ranges. Therefore, it is “impossible to determine precisely how much value their assets are worth, or have gained or lost.”  

However, according to the Center’s calculations, “the full freshman class of the 112th Congress has an estimated wealth of $533.1 million, with a minimum net worth of about $221 million and a maximum net worth of about $845.2 million. This group includes former members of Congress who, after being out of Congress for varying lengths of time, again won election.

Some [of these rich public servants] are “Democrats.” Some are “Republicans.” Many are “Tea-Party conservatives.” Others are “unabashedly liberal.”

“What unites these freshmen is that, on balance, they are rich.’”

Sources notes

“Freshmen in 112th Congress Exceedingly Wealthy Despite Struggling National Economy” (Open Secrets Blog, March 9, 2011,

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/03/as-a-class-congressional-freshmen-e.html#

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) — average estimated wealth $94.87 million

Followed by seven House freshmen with average calculated wealth somewhere between $22.1 million and $49.4 million

•    Diane Lynn Black (R-Tenn.), $49.4 million

•    Rick Berg (R-N.D.), $39.2 million

•    Blake Farenthold (R-Texas), $35.8 million

•    Scott Rigell (R-Va.), $29.9 million

•    James Renacci (R-Ohio), $28.4 million

•    Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), $23.2 million

•    Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.), $22.1 million

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]
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Entrenchment costs

Re-reporting, compilation, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett
U.S. Government, Corporate Black gold corruption sets back policy, progress

Three in four oil and gas lobbyists worked for federal government
Washington Post July 22
A Washington Post analysis shows “Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door standards on Capitol Hill.… All told, more than 430 industry lobbyists once had jobs in the legislative or executive branches according to the Post analysis based on CRP [Center for Responsive Politics] lobbying data, employment histories and other records.” Records show “scores had ties to major congressional committees that shape federal oil policies or to lawmakers who supported industry priorities while in Congress.”

(ALLEGED)
Bribes  abound ─ New York Times July 22
A four-member bipartisan subcommittee on Standards of Official Conduct has found evidence of U.S. Congressman Charles Rangel’s improper use of his position as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in supporting “a tax loophole worth more than half-a-billion dollars for an oil company” [Nabors Industries oil drilling company]. Allegedly the “oil company’s executive, Eugene Isenberg, had promised $1 million for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at City College of New York..” As well, the committee has explored “whether Rangel broke ethics rules when he failed to report taxable income received from his Dominican villa.” At 80 years of age, this entrenched Member of Congress, reelected repeatedly by his constituency is slated to face an ethics violations trial.

Oil and gas and coal industries
Some of the most powerful lobbies in Washington ─ Kretzmann July 23
As the latest energy legislation misses the mark, Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International recalls today on Democracy Now that twenty Democrats including climate champions like Sen. John Kerry in earlier actions had “voted against removing subsidies to the oil and gas industry.” This was happening as 100,000 barrels a day were spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

BP again this week suspended cleanup due to weather.

Environment be damned
Friends of the Earth policy analyst Kate Horner on the Democracy Now program today spoke of the U.S.’s dangerously entrenched obstructionist and regressive energy policies. “I think that the position of the United States government in the negotiations is finally being made clear to the rest of the world,” she said. Of last year’s Copenhagen Climate Conference, she said, “No one really foresaw the extent to which the U.S. government would actually play such an obstructionist role.”

The biggest problem with the U.S. right now in the international negotiations is that they are actively trying to dismantle the international negotiations, trying to weaken the international architecture and replace it with a system of pledges, something far weaker, which is “not based on science and not based on equity.”

President Obama’s special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, has taken a stance whereby the government actively tries to undermine all of the relevant, important provisions in the international architecture ─ a most damaging stance.

We are in a place where the onus is on the rest of the world to continue to be leaders in their respective areas. Europe, for example, was the architect of the Kyoto Protocol, which is the only existing international legally binding instrument. The questions are whether European leadership will put muscle behind it and support it; and whether the rest of the world will pressure the United States, isolate it in its obstructionist role.

Oil is King/Queen

U.S. in IRAQ
Militarizing [oil] “diplomacy” in Iraq ─
“One more step in the blurring of the lines between military activities and U.S. State Department or diplomatic activities,” Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security is reported by McClatchy Newspapers.

Under terms of a 2008 ‘status of forces agreement,” all U.S. troops are scheduled to be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of 2011. But a sizable American civilian presence including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, and five consulate-like ‘Enduring Presence Posts’ in the Iraqi hinterlands will remain. Therefore, the U.S. “State Department is laying plans for “diplomats to field an army… In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance.”

Entrenchment hurts the globe: the earth, the air, the waters, the land, the people.

Sources and notes
“Three of every four oil and gas lobbyists worked for federal government” (By Dan Eggen and Kimberly Kindy Washington Post Staff Writer), July 22, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072106468.html?hpid=topnews
“House Panel Will Try Rangel in Ethics Cases” (ERIC LIPTON and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI), July 22, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/nyregion/23rangel.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=rangel&st=cse
“State Dept. planning to field a small army in Iraq” (Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers), July 21, 2010, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/21/97915/state-dept-planning-to-field-a.html#storylink=omni_popular
Democracy Now July 23, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/
“As Senate Dems Give Up on Climate Bill, What Does the Future Hold for US Energy Policy?” July 23, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/23/senate_dems_give_up_on_climate
“Three of Every Four Oil & Gas Lobbyists Worked for Federal Government,” July 23, 2010,
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/23/three_of_every_four_oil_gas

Friends of the Earth is an international network in seventy-seven countries around the world whose national groups put pressure on domestic governments for a continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and very strong provisions for additional resources for developing countries.

IRAQ’s OIL
Petroleum is Iraq’s most valuable mineral. This country has the world’s second largest known reserves. Before the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq was the second largest oil-exporting state. Oil production contributes the largest single portion to GDP and constitutes almost all of Iraq’s foreign exchange. Iraq is a founding member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), but disagreements over production quotas and world oil prices have often led Iraq into conflict with other members.

Because Iraq has such a short coastline, it has depended heavily on transnational pipelines to export its oil. Iraq’s narrow coastline is adjacent to that of Iran.

In 1985 Iraq constructed a new pipeline that fed into the Petroline (in Saudi Arabia), which terminated at the Red Sea port of Yanbu’. In 1988, that line was replaced with a new one but it never reached full capacity and was shut down, along with all other Iraqi oil outlets, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. In December 1996, the Turkish pipeline was reopened under the oil-for-food program. Later the gulf terminal of Mīnā’ al-Bakr also was revived. In 1998, repairs were begun on the Syrian pipeline. Following the end of the 2003 conflict, Iraq’s pipelines were subjected to numerous acts of sabotage by guerrilla forces.

Oil was first discovered in Iraq in 1927 near Karkūk by the foreign-owned Turkish Petroleum Company, which was renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) in 1929. Finds at Mosul and Al-Basrah followed. Several new fields were discovered and put into production in the 1940s and ‘50s. New fields have continued to be discovered and developed. [Iraq notes from Britannica]

Kyoto Protocol
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change signed by 154 nations at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro calls for voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Under the convention, international negotiations for stronger commitments to reductions in emissions led to the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement proposed in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol is named for the Japanese city in which it was negotiated.

The Kyoto Protocol has been the subject of intense debate and discussion, which tend to distinguish developed countries (which are included under the protocol) from developing countries (which are not included). Within developed countries, the protocol has its proponents, who seek to reduce the risks of future human-caused climate change; and its opponents, who seek to avoid the risks the protocol poses to economic development and growth. Debate has focused on the United States because it emits more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than any other country; and because, in 2001, the United States government rejected the protocol for economic reasons. Despite the lack of support by the United States, the protocol garnered sufficient participation to go into force in 2005 [Britannica].