More Nuanced View Of Roberts After Health Care Law

The battle over hydraulic fracking of oil and natural gas has pitted land owners against each other. It has also created divides between neighboring states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. And now, after the Environmental Defense Fund joined a coalition of nonprofits and oil companies called the Center for Sustainable Shale Development, fracking is also splitting the environmental community.The Center for Shale Development advocates that oil and gas companies voluntarily adopt 15 performance standards. These cover wastewater disposal, fracking fluids, air pollution standards for drill engines, limits on gas flaring in the fields and more. But this week, 68 grassroots groups protested the Environmental Defense Fund’s move, arguing the big environmental advocacy organization had allowed itself to be “co-opted by industry interests,” and that it was engaged in “greenwashing.”Continue Reading

Google’s indexing of extremist websites helps police track their activity and will continue, the company’s chief told an audience at the Hay festival. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, was asked to act to take down terrorist-sympathising websites from his search engines during a question and answer session at the literary festival on Saturday. This weekend MPs, including the Labour politician Paul Flynn, called on the company to prevent searches listing sites for groups such as the Islamist organisation Al Shabaab. Schmidt said: “We cannot prima facie identify evil and take it down. We have taken the decision that information if it’s legal, even if it’s despicable, will be indexed.” He went on to argue that extremists are usually possible to detect through their internet activity and that their online presence can sometimes help. “Extremists are not clever enough not to be found out. They leave a digital trail the police can follow,” he said, after an interview with the mathematician Marcus de Sautoy. Schmidt put the ball firmly back in the court of government when it came to questions raised this month about corporate tax avoidance, following criticism that Google does not pay a fair level of tax in Britain. Answering a question posed from an impassioned audience member, he said: “I am rather perplexed by this issue. The international tax regime has been around a long time. No rational computer scientist would have erected such a system.” He said that decisions about these matters should be taken by elected governments and not companies. “Under US law we have a fiduciary responsibility to do what we’re doing. We understand the complaint but we can’t fix it. The British government can fix it,” he said. Asked if Google is now more powerful than many countries and whether it in effect operates just like one, Schmidt said it was not an aim of the company. “We’re not becoming a state. We don’t want to be because states have a lot of complicated problems. “On the whole, it is a fight between the internet community and government who do what they want to do. We can’t force governments to do what we want,” he said. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013

The upcoming Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement is using a process that is rigged from the start. It is not being negotiated by governments for the benefit of their people, it is being negotiated by executives (or future executives/lobbyists currently in government) largely for the benefit of the giant corporations they serve. The process has these giant corporations "in the loop" but groups citizens, working people, consumers, the environment, human rights groups and especially democracy are not part of the process. That can only go one way: if you don't have a seat at the table you are on the table -- the meal. Chile's TPP Negotiator Quits, Warns Citizens Rodrigo Contreras, Chile's lead TPP negotiator recently up and quit to warn people of the dangers this agreement poses to everyone except the giant multinational corporations. In The New Chessboard, (English translation) Contreras warns that the TPP is solidifying multinational corporate control over the Internet, copyrights, patents (especially drug patents), and in particular warns that the giant financial interests are solidifying their current control over the regulatory process. He writes that this will block countries that are trying to "restore the space for applying financial safeguards. In these circumstances it does not makes sense to further liberalize capital flows, depriving us of legitimate tools to safeguard financial stability." In particular, Contreras warns that smaller countries face a threat from this agreement's solidifying of the con trol of the giant multinationals, concluding, It is critical to reject the imposition of a model designed according to realities of high-income countries, which are very different from the other participating countries.Otherwise, this agreement will become a threat for our countries: it will restrict our developmentoptions in health and education, in biological and cultural diversity, and in the design of public policiesand the transformation of our economies. It will also generate pressures from increasingly active socialmovements, who are not willing to grant a pass to governments that accept an outcome of the TPPnegotiations that limits possibilities to increase the prosperity and well-being of our countries. Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, in Chile’s Recent Lead Negotiator on Trans-Pacific Partnership Warns It Could Be a “Threat to Our Countries”, gives us a look at the context of what it means for a country's TPP negotiator to quit and sound the alarms. She writes that this is "a statement of principle that comes at considerable personal cost" and that "his call to Latin American negotiators has deep-sixed his chances of getting another senior government role or being retained by large companies as a lobbyist or advisor." A job as a lobbyist or advisor to the multinationals is the golden goose that drives the negotiators. The last US negotiator, Ron Kirk, recently left that post to join the law firm Gibson Dunn where he will advise giant multinationals, probably for free. (Just kidding, he isn't doing it for free.) The Financial Times notes that "Other former US trade representatives, including Charlene Barshefsky and Mickey Cantor under President Bill Clinton, also joined law firms after their tenures in government." They probably also are not advising giant multinationals for free, either., Smith at Naked Capitalism notes that, "Some of Asian participants in the negotiations (particularly Japan) are also believed to have serious reservations about the provisions of the TPP that would weaken national sovereignity by allowing corporations to challenge laws and regulations as violations of the TPP." Americans are also reacting to the threat that the TPP poses to national sovereignty -- government's ability to control the wealth and power of the giant multinationals. Bloomberg News yesterday, in Wall Street Seeks Dodd-Frank Changes Through Trade Talks warns that, "U.S. bankers and insurers are trying to use trade deals, which can trump existing legislation, to weaken parts of the Dodd-Frank Act designed to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis." The Bloomberg report gets into some specific problems that watchdog groups see. For example, “The trade talks could easily become a Trojan Horse,” said Marcus Stanley, the policy director for Americans for Financial Reform, a group that includes labor unions, civil rights organizations and consumer advocates. Trade agreements, once signed, override national sovereignty and limit a country's ability to regulate giant corporations. The Bloomberg report noted that the financial industry is already trying to use existing trade agreements to roll back regulations required by the 3-year-old Dodd-Frank law, The financial services industry has already invoked international trade rules in its bid to weaken proposed regulations, notably the Volcker rule that would ban proprietary trading. Named after former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, the rule is a signature part of Dodd-Frank. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sought a review of the rule by U.S. trade authorities, arguing it violated existing agreements. So the financial industry is trying to use the upcoming TPP to overturn portions of Dodd-Frank and other rules in other countries they see as restricting their power. Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke of this at a recent Senate hearing: Fix The Process The process that we use to negotiate our "trade" agreements needs to be changed to relect that this country is supposed to be run by We, the People. The current secrecy must give way to an open, transparent participative process that serves citizens, workers, the environment, consumers, human rights and other considerations of all the stakeholders. The way the process is currently set up, the giant multinationals have a seat at the table, and they are salivating as they await the main course. We the People and our silly laws and regulations that are in the way of the profits of the 1% are being prepared to be served up. And a fine meal we will be. ----- This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF. Sign up here for the CAF daily summary Click to follow me on Twitter. --- Click to follow CAF on Twitter.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Saturday that they must stamp out the “scourge” of sexual assault in the military.

President Obama is trying again to get the Senate to confirm the top lawyer for the embattled National Labor Relations Board.