Invisible hands pull strings in Michigan campaigns
(This article is re-posted from the Michigan Campaign Finance Network.)
In the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned precedent to allow corporations to make independent expenditures in election campaigns on a narrow 5-4 vote.
Less noted was Part IV of the Citizens United decision, where the Court ruled 8-1 that corporate spenders in election campaigns can be required to disclose the identities of their contributors and the amounts they give. The Court’s opinion said, “The First Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages.”
So, what is the state of campaign finance disclosure in Michigan? In a word: pathetic.
The Michigan Chamber of Commerce recently asked the Department of State to make a declaratory ruling on disclosure requirements for its newly won right to engage in ‘express advocacy’ – those campaign communications that explicitly exhort a vote for or against a candidate.
The Department told the Chamber that it cannot solicit or accept a contribution from any entity that is given for the purpose of paying for campaign express advocacy. But if a sympathetic-minded person or corporation just happens to give the Chamber a million dollars without saying it is “purposed” for express advocacy, then the Chamber can use the million bucks to pay for TV ads that tell you how to vote and it will only be required to report that the source of the funds was its general treasury. It doesn’t have to reveal who contributed the money.
Furthermore, if the Chamber, or one of the political parties, chooses to buy television ads that say, “Kilgore has our values and he’s fighting for us,” or “Call Kilgore and ask him why he hates the elderly,” the sponsor of the ads doesn’t even have to report that it spent money. Under the prevailing interpretation of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act, an electoral communication that doesn’t explicitly tell you how to vote is not an expenditure.
A contribution is not a contribution unless it is purposed. An expenditure is not an expenditure unless it has magic words of express advocacy. That is not a Lewis Carroll fantasy. That is the operational interpretation of our law.
Over the past decade the Chamber and the political parties have spent more than $45 million for campaign television ads that carefully avoided the language of express advocacy. They reported nothing about that spending or the contributions that enabled it. I know the scope of this undisclosed spending because I collect the data from the public files of our state’s television broadcasters and cable systems.
Most of the money in the 2008 Michigan Supreme Court campaign was off the books. In the 2006 gubernatorial campaign, nearly $20 million was off the books. If you remember any TV ad from one of those campaigns, it is very likely that it wasn’t financially disclosed.
Why does this matter? Because campaign spending in a judicial election may compromise the impartiality of a judge. Because interest groups that pay for election campaigns expect to have their policy agenda addressed.
Citizens have a right to know whose money is driving political processes so they can properly evaluate the conduct of public officials.
This is not a matter of Republicans against Democrats. It is a matter of interest groups and political parties against citizens. Big-money donors’ desire for anonymity pitted against citizens’ need to know whose money is paying for election campaigns.
Transparency and accountability are progressive values and they are conservative values. In Michigan politics, transparency and accountability are an unknown ideal.
We need a new political culture. We need an end to the old shell game where the political masters of the universe arrogantly condemn the electorate to ignorance.
To legislators: If you want trust from an angry, disaffected electorate, write serious new campaign finance disclosure laws that cover all campaign ads.
To the angry electorate: If you want to take back your country, this is where to draw the line. This may be democracy’s last stand against the invisible hands that pull the strings that make politics inexplicably polarized and dysfunctional.
We’ll have better government when we have transparent politics. Not before.
Chomsky on the Israeli assault on the Freedom Flotilla
(This article by Noam Chomsky is re-posted from ZNet.)
Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a serious crime.
But the crime is nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats between Cyprus and Lebanon and killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes holding them hostage in Israeli prisons.
Israel assumes that it can commit such crimes with impunity because the United States tolerates them and Europe generally follows the U.S.’s lead.
As the editors of The Guardian rightly observed on June 1, “If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a NATO task force would today be heading for the Somali coast.” In this case, the NATO treaty obligates its members to come to the aid of a fellow NATO country—Turkey—attacked on the high seas.
Israel’s pretext for the attack was that the Freedom Flotilla was bringing materials that Hamas could use for bunkers to fire rockets into Israel.
The pretext isn’t credible. Israel can easily end the threat of rockets by peaceful means.
The background is important. Hamas was designated a major terrorist threat when it won a free election in January 2006. The U.S. and Israel sharply escalated their punishment of Palestinians, now for the crime of voting the wrong way.
The siege of Gaza, including a naval blockade, was a result. The siege intensified sharply in June 2007 after a civil war left Hamas in control of the territory.
What is commonly described as a Hamas military coup was in fact incited by the U.S. and Israel, in a crude attempt to overturn the elections that had brought Hamas to power.
That has been public knowledge at least since April 2008, when David Rose reported in Vanity Fair that George W. Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Elliott Abrams, “backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.”
Hamas terror included launching rockets into nearby Israeli towns—criminal, without a doubt, though only a minute fraction of routine U.S.-Israeli crimes in Gaza.
In June 2008, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement. The Israeli government formally acknowledges that until Israel broke the agreement on Nov. 4 of that year, invading Gaza and killing half a dozen Hamas activists, Hamas did not fire a single rocket.
Hamas offered to renew the cease-fire. The Israeli cabinet considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to launch its murderous invasion of Gaza on Dec.27.
Like other states, Israel has the right of self-defense. But did Israel have the right to use force in Gaza in the name of self-defense? International law, including the U.N. Charter, is unambiguous: A nation has such a right only if it has exhausted peaceful means. In this case such means were not even tried, although—or perhaps because—there was every reason to suppose that they would succeed.
Thus the invasion was sheer criminal aggression, and the same is true of Israel’s resorting to force against the flotilla.
The siege is savage, designed to keep the caged animals barely alive so as to fend off international protest, but hardly more than that. It is the latest stage of longstanding Israeli plans, backed by the U.S., to separate Gaza from the West Bank.
The Israeli journalist Amira Hass, a leading specialist on Gaza, outlines the history of the process of separation: “The restrictions on Palestinian movement that Israel introduced in January 1991 reversed a process that had been initiated in June 1967.
“Back then, and for the first time since 1948, a large portion of the Palestinian people again lived in the open territory of a single country — to be sure, one that was occupied, but was nevertheless whole. …”
Hass concludes: “The total separation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank is one of the greatest achievements of Israeli politics, whose overarching objective is to prevent a solution based on international decisions and understandings and instead dictate an arrangement based on Israel’s military superiority.”
The Freedom Flotilla defied that policy and so it must be crushed.
A framework for settling the Arab-Israeli conflict has existed since 1976, when the regional Arab States introduced a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement on the international border, including all the security guarantees of U.N. Resolution 242, adopted after the June War in 1967.
The essential principles are supported by virtually the entire world, including the Arab League, the Organization of Islamic States (including Iran) and relevant non-state actors, including Hamas.
But the U.S. and Israel have led the rejection of such a settlement for three decades, with one crucial and highly informative exception. In President Bill Clinton’s last month in office, January 2001, he initiated Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Taba, Egypt, that almost reached an agreement, participants announced, before Israel terminated the negotiations.
Today, the cruel legacy of a failed peace lives on.
International law cannot be enforced against powerful states, except by their own citizens. That is always a difficult task, particularly when articulate opinion declares crime to be legitimate, either explicitly or by tacit adoption of a criminal framework—which is more insidious, because it renders the crimes invisible.
Obama Administration Might Hold Non-Afghan Detainees at Bagram Indefinitely After Prison Transfer
(This Media Release was sent out by the American Civil Liberties Union.)
According to a Los Angeles Times report, a senior U.S. official said the Obama administration wants to detain and interrogate non-Afghan terrorism suspects captured in countries outside Afghanistan in a section of the Bagram prison, even after it turns the prison over to Afghan control. The proposal is reportedly in the early stages of development.
The U.S. government has stated its intention to turn over control of the Bagram detention facility to the Afghan government early next year. In May, a federal court ruled that unlike at Guantánamo, prisoners in U.S. custody at Bagram, including those who were captured far from any battlefield and brought to Afghanistan, cannot challenge their detention in U.S. courts. That decision paves the way for the U.S. government to use Bagram to detain indefinitely, without any judicial oversight, terrorism suspects captured far from any battlefield who have not been charged with a crime.
“The Guantánamo problem is not solved simply by recreating a Guantánamo somewhere else. Closing Guatánamo is essential but it is equally important that the Obama administration put an end to the illegal indefinite detention policy behind Guantánamo,” said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “The entire world is not a battlefield. We cannot just capture people far from any zone of armed conflict and lock up them up indefinitely without any access to the courts or due process. Such a policy not only flies in the face of our justice system, but opens up the possibility that mistakes will be made and the wrong people will be imprisoned – which is exactly what we have seen at Guantánamo.”
The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit in September 2009 demanding information about Bagram, which has thus far been shrouded in much secrecy. In response to the lawsuit, the government has turned over some important information but continues to withhold key details about the prisoners detained at Bagram, as well as information about the implementation of its new detainee status review procedures and about a separate “secret jail” on the base. The secret facility is reportedly run by either the Joint Special Operations Command or the Defense Intelligence Agency, and detainees maintain they have been abused there. It is unclear whether guards and interrogators at the secret facility are subject to the same rules that apply at the main Bagram detention facility.
“The possibility of continuing to hold and interrogate detainees at Bagram is even more disturbing given the lack of transparency about the facility,” said Goodman. “Plans to continue holding prisoners in U.S. custody at Bagram must be accompanied by the disclosure of key information about what currently goes on there.”
As part of the ongoing FOIA lawsuit, the ACLU late Tuesday received several documents from the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Justice. The disclosures include a number of detainee policy documents from the early years of the Bush administration, including a 2004 document describing “Global Screening Criteria for Detainees” used to determine who – no matter where they were captured – could be detained as an enemy combatant and which detainees could be transferred to Guantánamo. Also just turned over to the ACLU are Obama-era records including policy guidance from February 2010 regarding access to detainees and facilities by non-DOD government officials, foreign governments, members of the media and representatives of non-governmental organizations that confirms non-DOD agents can visit detainees at Bagram in order to interrogate them. The DOD also disclosed its policy regarding the waiver of autopsy requirements for detainee deaths.
The documents received in the ACLU FOIA lawsuit are available online at: www.aclu.org/national-security/bagram-foia-dod-and-doj-documents-released-692010
More about the FOIA lawsuit is at: www.aclu.org/national-security/bagram-foia
When Eating Locally becomes a class issue
In recent years the issue of eating healthy and eating local has become quite mainstream. Years ago the very idea was only found with people who took gardening or small scale farming seriously as well as people who have understood for a long time the importance of eating that promoted justice.
Now you can’t turn the radio or TV on without someone talking about selling local produce. At one level this is a good thing. For decades in the US most of us ate food that would travel on average over a thousand miles before it arrived on our plate. The amount of fossil fuel used to transport and grow food in an agribusiness model is overwhelming.
Another benefit to eating locally means that you have a greater chance of having a relationship with the people who grew the food. Eating locally doesn’t always mean that those who labor in the fields are treated well, but with the increased emphasis on eating local and organic more and more people are turning to small scale farms that rely more on family labor or production models used with Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs).
However, this new emphasis on eating locally has also received the attention of the private sector, business people who see the marketing potential of eating locally. This new brand of green capitalists realized the market value of selling “locally grown and organic foods,” so much so that eating local and eating organic is now often a class issue.
Take for instance an article posted on MLive today, which featured a partnership between JW Marriott and Trillium Haven Farm. The article communicates that the upscale hotel/restaurant of JW Marriott will offer classes on “what local, organic food brings to the table nutritionally and to the area’s economy.”
While this may sound like a wonderful idea upon further investigation one finds that the classes that they will be offering over the next few months cost $125. According to the Facebook posting for these classes participants will be instructed by Trillium Haven Farms and JW Marriott chefs, along with some meals, a T-shirt and a guided tour of the Jenison-based farm.
The article also includes a picture of two of the chefs from JW Marriott who are growing food at the hotel facility and provide a link to what kind of food is offered at their Six, One, Six restaurant. Looking at the dinner menu of this restaurant we find that appetizers range from $6 to $12 and dinner meals can cost from $21 to $27.
These prices beg the question, “who can afford to eat organic and local?” Most working class individuals and families are not likely to pay those prices for a meal, which means that more often than not they will be eating at fast foods joints. This is what I meant by eating locally grown food at local restaurants as a class issue.
One could argue that the cost of eating local food served at the JW Marriott restaurant or many other local restaurants does not preclude working class individuals and families from buying locally grown produce at a farmers market and preparing it for themselves. While this is true, it does not take into account that most working class individuals and families have less leisure time to be able to prepare meals, but this fact also distracts us from the larger question of why healthy local foods are not affordable for everyone.
Community Supported Agriculture is one way to provide healthy, local, organic and affordable food to people, which is why Trillium Have Farm’s partnership with the JW Marriott hotel/restaurant is troublesome. Eating well should not be a privilege, but a right for everyone.
There are local groups attempting to address some of these food justice issues, particularly for working class families. The Greater Grand Rapids Food Systems Council addressed this topic at a gathering last month and Our Kitchen Table will be addressing the issue of Food Justice at a Food Summit they are hosting Thursday, June 10 from 6 – 9pm at the Film Farm, located on the 7th Floor of the Masonic Temple in Grand Rapids (233 E. Fulton St).
Oil spills, oil kills. Learn more and take a stand.
Crude: The Real Price of Oil
7pm Thurs. June 17
Trinity U M Church
1100 Lake Dr. SE Grand Rapids
Rally against BP
5pm Friday June 18
BP in Eastown
1560 Lake Dr SE, Grand Rapids
Does the oil spill make you angry? Does it have you wondering just how much more corporate inflicted damages the earth and the creatures living on it can withstand?
Here’s your chance to learn more about the true costs of oil and take action against BP.
Thursday June 17, The Bloom Collective hosts a screening of Crude: The Real Price of Oil, 7 p.m. at Trinity United Methodist Church, 1100 Lake Dr. SE in Grand Rapids. “The inside story of the infamous ‘Amazon Chernobyl’ case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power.”
This is the film that made headlines in May, 2010, when Federal Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered Joe Berlinger, its producer and director, to turn over more than 600 hours of raw footage used to create the film to Chevron. Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001 and is attempting to wiggle out of potential damages of $27.3 billion for the horrific injury that Texaco’s personnel inflicted on the indigenous people.
Rally against BP!
On Friday June 18, a group of local folks is asking everyone who is fed up with BP’s actions, including its latest PR ploy to highjack Internet searches about the oil spill, to join for a 5 p.m. rally against BP at the BP in Eastown,1560 Lake Dr SE, Grand Rapids.
Take a stand for a viable future. Find out more about the BP disaster. And, come away with ideas for challenging our social and economical dependence on—and addiction to—oil.
Watch the trailer:
(This article is re-posted from PRWatch.org.)
BP has purchased search terms relating to the Gulf oil spill disaster on Google, Yahoo and Bing, a move some say is designed to limit the public’s exposure to news reporting about the Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe.
BP confirmed that it has bought search terms like “oil spill,” “gulf oil,” “offshore oil,” “Louisiana coast spill” and “oil cleanup,” on the top three search engines, so that when people perform searches on these terms, a link to BP’s corporate page about the spill (www.BP.com/OilSpillNews) appears up at the top of the page.
In Google, the result appears as a sponsored link, with a line that says, “Info about the Gulf of Mexico Spill Learn More about How BP is Helping.” On Bing, searching for “BP” returns a link to BP’s “Gulf of Mexico Response” site, with the same “helping” tag line.
BP spokesman Toby Odone explained to ABC News, “We have bought search terms on search engines like Google to make it easier for people to find key links to information on filing claims, reporting oil on the beach and signing up to volunteer.”
Kevin Ryan, CEO of a California-based Internet marketing company, Motivity Marketing, says research shows most people can’t tell the difference between paid and unpaid search results. He says BP’s efforts to divert people looking for information about the disaster to their own, corporate site is “a great PR strategy.” Estimates are that the company is paying over $10,000 a day for the search terms.
Media Bites – BP and the “apology”
In this week’s Media Bites we take a look at a new BP commercial, where the CEO is trying to “apologize” for the oil disaster. However, the commercial is really a well-crafted public relations piece that distracts the public from the reality of the oil disaster and the oil company’s practices and influence in Washington.
Despite the massive global protests against the recent Israeli attacks on several boats attempting to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, Michigan Senator Carl Levin is taking the side of Israel.
In a statement the Senator released a few days ago, Levin said:
“Israel has the right under international law to set up a naval blockade to keep weapons from being sent to Hamas. Hamas is an organization that is listed by our State Department as a terrorist organization and that controls Gaza, indiscriminately attacks Israeli citizens and cities with rockets, and denies Israel’s very right to exist.
“While all the facts are not yet known, it seems clear that the organizers of the flotilla, particularly those on the Mavi Marmara, set out intentionally to use force to challenge the blockade. This confrontation and the tragic loss of life could have been avoided had the organizers of the flotilla agreed to Israel’s repeated offers to accept the humanitarian aid at an Israeli port and transfer it overland to Gaza under the supervision of those in the flotilla.”
Levin is basically restating exactly what the State of Israel has said, which is that these attacks against the humanitarian vessels were an act of “self-defense.” This is not a surprise since Levin has supported Israel and US funding of Israel for decades. Last year, the Michigan Senator voted for a resolution in support of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and Levin has been one of the largest recipients of PAC money from the US-based Israel Lobby, receiving $1,649,962 during his political career.
A group of nearly 50 people gathered in front of the Gerald Ford Federal Building in Grand Rapids Monday to rally awareness of US complicity in Israel’s continuing human rights abuses against the people of Gaza, as shown by last week’s slaughter of innocent volunteers attempting to deliver humanitarian aid there via a flotilla of small ships.
Christian and Muslim, American-born and immigrant, the people rallying held signs that said, “Israel is Using Your Tax Money to Kill the Innocent” and “Help Free Gaza! The Largest Open Air Prison on Earth.”
Indeed, residents of Gaza are imprisoned in their own land, much as German Jews were in the Nazi proscribed ghettoes. However, the prison analogy falls short as the people of Gaza are denied food, shelter and medical care. There is no Auschwitz in Gaza. Instead, Israeli military forces are inflicting a slow death on the people of Gaza by blockading food, building supplies and medical supplies while bulldozing homes and food crops.
The Arab-American Association of West Michigan issued this statement about the recent Israeli assault on the flotilla.
“The Israeli assault violates International Law and is morally reprehensible, especially since those on board the flotilla were non-violent activists on a humanitarian mission. This humanitarian mission was of vital importance because the people living in Gaza have been suffering from lack of food and medical supplies due to the Israeli blockade of Gaza since 2007 and the 2008/2009 Israeli military assault on Gaza.
The Arab-American Association of West Michigan and dozens of local supporters call for a full investigation into these crimes, an end to the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and the suspension of all US aid to Israel until these crimes are fully investigated.”
Afghanistan is now the longest War in US History
(This video is from Brave New Films and is part of Rethink Afghanistan.)
