Lawmakers Vote to Keep Drone War Deaths Secret

Friday, November 22, 2013 by Common Dreams
House Intelligence Committee rejects provision that would count those killed in US bombings
by Sarah Lazare

The House Intelligence Committee on Thursday rejected 15 to 5 what supporters call a "modest" proposal to require that the Obama administration publicly report those killed by U.S. drone strikes overseas.

"By blocking transparency the House [committee] denies accountability for the slaughter committed against innocent lives in drone strikes," said Suraia Sahar of Afghans United for Justice in an interview with Common Dreams. "This is a gross disregard for human life."

The provision, proposed by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), had already passed the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this month. It would have required that U.S. agencies involved in drone wars produce annual reports in which they account for all deaths in U.S. drone strikes overseas and identify the civilians and alleged combatants killed.

"The production of this report will require minimal resources, but will provide a modest but important measure of transparency and oversight," said Schiff in a statement released Thursday. While the bill failed along party lines, with Republicans voting "no," Schiff said he plans to continue efforts to advance the legislation in the House. Supporters say that in order for this bill to move forward, constituents must pressure Republicans both in the House and Senate to get on board.

The bill failed despite a lobbying blitz earlier this week by attendees of a global summit demanding an end to Obama's ongoing drone wars. Groups including delegates from regions terrorized by U.S. drones, such as Yemen and Pakistan, appealed directly to Congress to end the deadly strikes. The groups charged that, at the very least, an increase in transparency and oversight is needed.

"People complain justifiably that the Obama administration is not being transparent," said Robert Naiman, policy director for Just Foreign Policy, in an interview with Common Dreams. "But Congress also is not being transparent. Every day this drone policy continues, Congress is voting through its inaction to do nothing."

While Obama administration officials have been famously secretive about the lives lost in U.S. drone attacks, they have repeated the unverified claim that civilian deaths have been minimal. Yet this is contested by experts and witnesses, including Bureau of Investigative Journalism researchers who have documented high numbers of civilian deaths in Pakistan and Yemen.

In a drone war that operates behind a veil of secrecy, critics charge that any step towards transparency, no matter how small, is a positive one.

"Even this defeat is a victory," said Naiman. "It is the first time in ten years of drone strike policy that there was any congressional vote on anything. Now we can see who is trying to do something and who is blocking. There has been a dramatic increase in transparency just as a result of this vote."

ALEC's Latest "Transparency" Move: Asserting Immunity From Freedom of Information Laws

Tuesday, May 7, 2013 by PRWatch.org

by Brendan Fischer 

 

Shortly after the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) told the press "we really believe in transparency," new documents show the organization directing legislators to hide ALEC meeting agendas and model legislation from the public. This effort to circumvent state freedom of information laws is being called "shocking" and "disturbing" by transparency advocates.

A disclaimer published at the bottom of meeting agendas and model bills from ALEC's most recent meeting in Oklahoma City, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy, reads: "Because this is an internal ALEC document, ALEC believes it is not subject to disclosure under any state Freedom of Information or Public Records Act."

"If you receive a request for disclosure of this or any other ALEC document under your state's Freedom of Information or Public Records Act, please contact Michael Bowman, Senior Director, Policy and Strategic Initiatives," it says.

For a private organization to assert that its interactions with state legislators are not subject to public records laws is "shocking," says Mark Caramanica, Freedom of Information Director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

"Private individuals or organizations cannot simply label a document private and say it is private on their own. It is not their decision to make."

Legislators attend ALEC meetings in their official capacity, and ALEC has claimed that they do so "on behalf of and for the benefit of the state." Under almost every state’s public records law, all documents related to official business are considered public unless there is a specific exemption, defined and passed by the legislature, and embodied in the statutes. "ALEC cannot create exemptions of [its] own imagination," Caramanica told the Center for Media and Democracy.

The disclaimer is "disturbing," says Christa Westerberg, Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council Vice President, particularly because it "suggests legislators will contact ALEC first when they get a request for records and may be advised by ALEC on what to do."

"Courts and other entities with authority to interpret state sunshine laws, and not ALEC, should determine whether ALEC documents are subject to disclosure under any state’s public records law," she told CMD.

ALEC boasts that over 1,000 of its model bills are introduced each year and at least 1 in 5 become law. But despite its significant influence over state law and policy, ALEC conferences are closed to the press and public, and the only way Americans have had any notion of what happens in those meetings is through public records requests for the agendas and model bills.

Even before the "disclaimer" was discovered ALEC and its member legislators had been taking pains to avoid public records requests. Last year, CMD prevailed in a lawsuit against Wisconsin legislators who had tried evading the public records law by shifting their ALEC correspondence to a personal email account (like Gmail or Yahoo), which they erroneously asserted meant the emails were not subject to public records requests. And ALEC has begun sending legislators advance agendas and model bills via a link, which expires within 72 hours, to an Internet drop box where they can access the relevant documents; in many cases, when legislators respond to a request for ALEC records, they only release a scanned copy of the email invitation, rather than the contents of the folder available via the link. It is not known whether legislators refused to release these documents because ALEC asserted its immunity from public records law.

In March, ALEC published some of its model bills online in a move the organization claimed showed its commitment to transparency. "We really believe in transparency," alleged ALEC spokesperson Bill Meierling. But its public records "disclaimer" and other actions indicate the organization is far more interested in maintaining secrecy.

"This certainly raises the question," asks Caramanica, “what are their motives for trying to keep their documents secret?”

ALEC legislators cannot have it both ways. They cannot use public money to attend ALEC meetings -- as the Republican-led South Dakota legislature recently approved -- or claim that accepting corporate-funded flights and hotel rooms for ALEC travel are part of their legitimate work responsibilities, then conspire with ALEC to hide documents and information from their constituents that should be accessible under freedom of information laws.

Google Report Shows 'Disturbing Growth in Government Surveillance'

Wednesday, January 23, 2013 by Common Dreams
Most recent Transparency Report from web giant reveals 136% increase in user data requests from US since 2009
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

Google has released its newest semiannual Transparency Report on Wednesday, which shows a "steady increase in government requests" for user data and marks a "disturbing growth in government surveillance online."

The US made 8,438 user data requests during the second half of 2012, a nearly 136% percent increase since 2009. The report from the web giant, which discloses the number of requests it receives from governments and courts worldwide, shows that user data requests are up 70 percent since 2009, with a total of over 21,000 user data requests from over 33,000 users or accounts in the second half of 2012.

The U.S. made the biggest number of requests by far—8,438 during this period, which marks a nearly 136 percent increase since 2009.

Of those U.S. requests, 68% were from subpoenas, as Richard Salgado writes on Google's blog on the report, and "are requests for user-identifying information, issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), and are the easiest to get because they typically don’t involve judges."

The Guardian's Dominic Rushe points out how the use of EPCA to get user data is dangerous:

The ECPA has been widely criticised by privacy advocates, and was passed in 1986, long before electronic communication became so common. Under the act, email stored on a third party's server for more than 180 days is considered abandoned. To access that information, officials need only a written statement certifying that the information is relevant to an investigation.

But Holmes Wilson, co-founder of online advocacy group Fight For the Future, said the Justice Department had argued that emails are "abandoned" once they are opened. "Ironically, the emails that now have the most protection are the spam that you never open," he said. "ECPA is under dire need of reform. Right now the government can access almost anything that you have online without a warrant and at anytime. Electronic communication should be afforded the same protection as your physical mail or files stores in a cabinet," he said.

Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom, says the report "reveals a disturbing growth in government surveillance online," and adds:

On its own, the growth in number of requests for private information like emails should be alarming, especially after the Petreus case. Even more disturbing is that most requests have not been reviewed by a court to ensure that law enforcement has established probable cause to believe a crime has actually been committed, as the Fourth Amendment generally requires.

Today's report doesn't really tell us the full extent of unconstitutional privacy invasions. Law enforcement officials rightly note that they need subpoena access to subscriber information as the 'building blocks' for establishing probable case. They also insist they're already getting warrants for content information, even when ECPA doesn't require that. But we still don't have hard data on either claim. Worse, while large companies like Google may rightly refuse to turn over user data without a warrant, smaller companies without legal staffs may feel compelled to turn over private data with only a subpoena, or perhaps even without one at all.

Senate Republicans Kill Disclose Act in Blow to Campaign Transparency

Tuesday, July 17, 2012 by Common Dreams

Citizens United Remains Unscathed as GOP Senators 'keep public in the dark'

Senate Republicans blocked the Disclose Act Monday night, effectively killing a bid for campaign donor transparency in the post-Citizens United world. The Disclose Act, which was defeated 51-44, would have required independent groups to release the names of campaign donors who give more than $10,000 for political ads and other campaign tactics.

The Act was drafted in response to the 2010 Citizens United ruling, which allows limitless corporate donations to be given to outside political campaigners, known as super PACs, in secret.

"The DISCLOSE Act would help the American people understand who is behind the political messages we’re bombarded with every day,” said Michael Keegan, President of People For the American Way. “Apparently, GOP senators would rather keep the public in the dark about who is bankrolling their campaigns. What do they have to hide?"

"Today, the Senate had a chance to protect the American people’s right to know who is trying to sway their vote. Unfortunately, Senate Republicans chose to protect the anonymity of the wealthy few at the expense of the American public."

The Republican filibuster of the bill was led by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) one of several republican senators who once supported campaign finance disclosure but have recently favored increased secrecy in Washington, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), and Scott Brown (R-Mass.).

"These same politicians were for the disclosure measure for years, until there was a chance it might actually pass. Now they are filibustering it," said Michael Waldman, at the Brennan Center at NYU.

As a result, corporations will continue to spend large sums of money to influence elections and subsequent policy while remaining anonymous.

* * *

Question: On Cloture on the Motion to Proceed (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Motion to Proceed to S.3369 )
Vote Number:	179	Vote Date:	July 16, 2012, 06:08 PM
Required For Majority:	3/5	Vote Result:	Cloture on the Motion to Proceed Rejected
Measure Number:	S. 3369
Measure Title:	A bill to amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to provide for additional disclosure requirements for corporations, labor organizations, Super PACs and other entities, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts:	YEAs	51
	NAYs	44
	Not Voting	5

# # #

US government takedown requests more than triple in 12 months, says Google Report

By Jeff Blagdon on June 18, 2012

In its new Transparency Report, Google presents a look at the number and nature of the takedown requests it received from governments and copyright holders during the second half of 2011. In an accompanying blog post, the company states that current trends are "troubling," before stating that it complies with 65 percent of court orders and 47 percent of "more informal requests" to remove material from its search results (e.g., requests from police and executive branches of government). 

The report indicates that the number of US court and government requests to remove material more than doubled over the previous 6-month period — from 92 to 187. The number for the same period (July to December) in 2010 was 54.

Since May, the report now includes takedown requests from copyright holders and reporting organizations like Marketly. Also present are notes on specific removal requests by governments, including a gem from Passport Canada concerning video footage of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet (Google didn’t comply).

The UK makes the highest number of information requests per capita
 
Statistics on the user data requests that Google receives from courts and government agencies are also available in the report, broken down by country. The top spot once again goes to the US, with 6,321 requests and a 93 percent rate of full or partial compliance on Google’s part. The country with the highest number of information requests per capita might surprise you, however — the United Kingdom makes 23 for every million citizens (the US is slightly lower, at just over 20), and gets compliance 64 percent of the time. In comparison, Canada posted a more restrained 1.18 per million.

Why Is the TPP Such a Big Secret?

 by Tim Robertson, Huffington Post

This week in Dallas, negotiations for what's likely to be the largest Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in U.S. history will continue in near total secrecy, despite growing demands for an open process. The darkness surrounding the talks isn't surprising, considering the American public's increasing disapproval of FTAs and the laundry list of corporate handouts under discussion. What is surprising is United States trade representative Ron Kirk's growing crackdown on public involvement, despite claims of "unprecedented transparency."

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP) is being negotiated as a nine country FTA between the U.S., Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Canada, Japan and Mexico are all expected to join talks, and many see more Pacific Rim countries including China and Russia eventually signing on. With floundering WTO talks, the TPP could very well establish U.S. trade policy for the next generation, yet all talks are happening behind closed doors and public influence has been increasingly suppressed.

Just this February, during unannounced TPP meetings in Los Angeles, the USTR apparently strong-armed the host hotel into canceling a health group-sponsored luncheon seeking to expose how Big Pharma's patent rights demands challenge AIDS treatment worldwide. Meanwhile, 20th Century Fox, itself lobbying for severe copyright measures, were permitted to give trade negotiators a multi-hour tour of their film-production facilities.

This lopsided allocation of influence has been standard for the TPP. Corporations and their lobbyists have seen consistent access to the negotiations -- about 600 corporate advisors can review and comment on working TPP texts -- and trade negotiators from partner countries.

The Washington International Trade Association's "World Trade Reception" for Trans-Pacific FTA negotiators featured the A-Team of corporate lobby groups and some of the most powerful corporations in the U.S. hobnobbing amongst trade ministers, with nary a voice for the public, unions, environmental or public health groups.

So, what exactly is the USTR hiding? Well, there are quite a few damning secrets:

Secret No. 1: The TPP is covertly attacking the same internet freedom rights that spurred online protests over ACTA and SOPA.
Secret No. 2: The TPP would make it more enticing for corporations to offshore jobs by opening our market to Vietnamese labor, which has significantly lower average wages than China.
Secret No. 3: The TPP could be a death sentence to patients with AIDS, tuberculosis, and other treatable diseases around the world.
Secret No. 4: The TPP would ban capital controls and impose limits on financial regulation, including post-recession checks on firm size and risky investments.
Secret No. 5: Americans hate FTAs! Recent polls have found more than twice as many Americans think FTAs hurt than help, and 69 percent of Americans think they cost jobs, which they do.

The list goes on, as there are 26 separate negotiating chapters, covering issues as diverse as labor, environmental, and procurement rules, which just drew the ire of 69 Members of Congress.

Congress has also lamented the continued secrecy of the negotiations. After proposing Senate amendments forcing TPP transparency, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore) told Kirk, "I feel very strongly with respect to TPP about getting the proposals that you're looking at... online so that the public can have a chance to be heard on it," during a March Senate Finance Committee hearing.

None of this has dissuaded the USTR from the non-democratic nature of the talks. Starting in Dallas, he's actually doubling down by eliminating the day-long stakeholder presentation program, leaving civil society just a side tabling session.

The only way the corporate shopping list that is the TPP can get past public scrutiny is if no one ever hears about it. Fortunately, activists are fighting back May 8 to 18 in Dallas, and an online petition has already garnered thousands of signatures calling on Kirk to release TPP proposals.

We've learned from past FTAs that exposure to the light of democracy can stop them in their tracks. The TPP is no different. Please help return democracy to trade talks by signing the petition and sharing this article.

Patent Office Exploring Keeping Patents Secret If They're 'Economically Significant'

by Mike Masnick - TechDirt
Fri, Apr 27th 2012

from the wasn't-disclosure-the-point? dept

We're told, repeatedly, by some patent system supporters that the whole point of the patent system is really about "disclosure." Of course, this is a myth for a variety of reasons. The biggest, of course, is that in many industries, patents are both completely useless to learn anything from and are never used to learn how things are done. This is especially true in software, where you will never hear about anyone learning how to do anything from a patent.

A few years back, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) started publishing nearly all patent applications 18 months after the application came in. This is a pretty common practice around the globe. If a patent system is about disclosure, this makes sense -- and in theory, allows for people to point out prior art or protest certain patents before they're issued. There is a current exception for patents deemed in the interest of national security to keep secret (such as patents on nuclear energy).

However, Francisco George points us to the news that the USPTO is now considering also keeping "economically significant" patents secret too (pdf and embedded below). They're exploring this after being directed by Congress -- and it's not hard to see the lobbyists' fingerprints on the specific request:

By statute, patent applications are published no earlier than 18 months after the filing date, but it takes an average of about three years for a patent application to be processed. This period of time between publication and patent award provides worldwide access to the information included in those applications. In some circumstances, this information allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies and seize markets before the U.S. inventor is able to raise financing and secure a market.

As far as can be told, this directive seems to be saying that because patent applications might do what the patent system is supposed to do -- help disclose ideas -- we should keep the applications secret. The problem, of course, is that pretty much every patent applicant is going to think their patent is economically significant. The reality is that pretty much no one knows if their patents are economically meaningful until years later when a product is actually on the market. This proposal seems to serve no purpose other than helping companies not to disclose ideas while still letting them get patents.


2012-09503_PI

Meet the Media Companies Lobbying Against Transparency

Friday, April 20, 2012 by ProPublica

by Justin Elliott, ProPublica 

 

News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.

But now many of the country's biggest media companies — which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations — are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.

The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism — NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and dozens of local TV news outlets — are lobbying against a Federal Communications Commission measure to require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Internet.

As we have recently detailed, political ad data is public by law but is not widely accessible because it is currently kept only in paper files at individual stations. The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to post on the Internet details of political ad purchases including the identity of the buyer and the price.

(ProPublica has been inviting readers and other journalists to send in the files to be posted as part of our Free the Files project.)

Over the past few months, several major media companies have dispatched top executives or outside lobbyists to the FCC to oppose the proposed rule or to push a watered down version, disclosure filings show. (The FCC is voting on the issue April 27.)

In a speech this week at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski excoriated the broadcasters as working "against transparency and against journalism."

The industry's opposition to the transparency proposal has sometimes been heated. In filings submitted to the FCC in January and March, Allbritton Senior Vice President Jerald Fritz raised the specter of "'Soviet-style' standardization" of ad sales if political ad files are required to be put online in a single format.

In a February meeting with the FCC, Walt Disney executives complained about the "logistics and burden" of putting the political ad information online.

That same month, executives from Disney along with NBC and News Corp argued in a meeting with FCC officials that posting the political ad file would allow "competitors in the market and commercial advertisers [to] anonymously glean highly sensitive pricing data."

Television stations must by law must offer political candidates the lowest rates on ads. Broadcasters have argued that by making this information available online and not just at stations, it would hurt their ability to negotiate with other advertisers.

Advocates for the online disclosure rule have countered that the political ad information is already public by law and the measure would simply make the existing disclosure rules relevant for the Internet age. They have also pointed out that keeping paper files in electronic form should actually be more efficient for stations.

Albritton, NBC, and Walt Disney did not respond to requests for comment on the FCC chairman's charge that they have positioned themselves "against transparency and against journalism." News Corp. declined to comment.

Some media companies have also pushed a watered down proposal to post only some of the public political ad data, and to put it up on individual station websites instead of on a central FCC website.
Washington lawyers representing the other companies fighting the rule — Barrington Broadcasting, Belo, Cox, Dispatch, E.W. Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Meredith Broadcasting, Post-Newsweek Stations, Raycom Media, and Schurz Communications — lobbied FCC officials in February, March, and again this week.

The group suggested that instead of putting the full, itemized political ad data online, stations would post aggregate data once a week.

"What we were saying is, if you want the public to be informed about what's being bought at what price, maybe there's a simpler way to do it,"Mary Jo Manning, an attorney representing the group, told ProPublica. "Transparency is giving people information that is useful."

But when the FCC pressed the group for details on its plan, the stations said they opposed posting even the aggregate data in a single format prescribed by the FCC. They also opposed posting the data on a central FCC website, saying they wanted to post the limited data only on the stations' own websites. If enacted, both of those stances would make it more difficult to get and analyze the data.

Since there is a one-week sunshine period ahead of FCC votes, today is the last day that interested parties will be able to lobby the commission before its public meeting April 27.

Among them are:

• News Corporation, which owns the Wall Street Journal and Fox News
• Walt Disney, which owns ABC News and ESPN
• NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast and includes NBC News
• Allbritton, which owns several TV stations and Politico
• Gannett Broadcasting, a division of Gannett, which owns USA Today
• Post-Newsweek Stations, the broadcast division of the Washington Post Company
• Belo Corp, which owns 20 TV stations
• Cox Media Group, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Austin American-Statesman, and other newspapers and TV stations
• Dispatch Broadcast Group, which owns Ohio and Indiana TV stations
• Barrington Broadcasting Co., which owns several television stations around the country
• The E.W. Scripps Company, which owns TV stations and newspapers including the Commercial Appeal in Memphis
• Hearst Television Inc., which owns 29 TV stations
• Raycom Media, which owns TV stations
• Schurz Communications, which owns TV Stations and newspapers around the country

US Attack on Transparency Continues: CIA Whistleblower Indicted

Among others, Obama campaigned on the issues of increased government transparency and protection for whistleblowers, whom he claimed were heroes. Once in office, Obama's administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any president in US history, and more than all the presidents since Truman, combined. He has also blocked every effort to make government transparent while unconstitutionally increasing executive powers. An argument can be made that Obama is worse than Bush because we knew what we were getting with Bush. He sucked, but we knew he would suck. He didn't make and break campaign promises even close to the number Obama has. Obama lied during his campaign about many things (11 distinct campaign promises I tallied in a blog post here within the past couple of years). He has not even come close to being the president he claimed he would be during his campaign, but in fact he's almost the polar opposite of his campaign image. He ran as a progressive, and rules as a fascist authoritarian, taking away as many, or more, of our constitutional rights than Bush did. Obviously, Romney is not any better. The 2012 election may feature the two worst presidential candidates--definitely the two biggest "say anything to get elected" liars-- in US history.--jef

++++

Friday, April 6, 2012 by Common Dreams
Former CIA officer, Kiriakou, faces years in prison

Washington continues its attack on whistle-blowers today as CIA whistle-blower, John Kiriakou, has been indicted in court for charges of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and three counts of violating the Espionage Act.

Former CIA officer, Kiriakou, allegedly leaked information to journalists about classified CIA operations and included classified information in his 2010 book, The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror.

Kiriakou had become a well know whistle-blower after he became the first US official to reveal the use of waterboarding, a torture technique used by the US.

Kiriakou's indictment allows the case to proceed to trial without an evidentiary hearing.

* * *

'Reluctant Spy' indicted for leaking US secrets (Agence France-Presse):

A CIA intelligence officer between 1990 and 2004, Kiriakou was accused in the indictment of leaking information to reporters anonymously identified as "Journalist A" and "Journalist B." 

The charges stem from an investigation into classified information, including photographs of a CIA official, that found its way into classified filings by defense lawyers representing detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, the US naval base in southern Cuba. 

The indictment claims Kiriakou was a source of information for a June 2008 New York Times article that identified a CIA operative and revealed other classified information. 

Kiriakou also was alleged to have lied to a CIA review board while he was seeking permission to publish a book about his experience. 

In the book, Kiriakou sought to include information about a "magic box," which was said to be a CIA scanning device allowing the agency to track Al-Qaeda suspects in Pakistan through their mobile phones.

Waging Another Unconstitutional War

Saturday, June 18, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Ralph Nader

 

The meticulous Harvard Law Review editors should be rolling over in their footnotes. The recidivist violations of constitutional and statutory requirements by their celebrated predecessor at that journal – Barack Obama has reached Orwellian dimensions in the war against Libya.

You see, the widespread daily bombing of Libya, the strict naval blockade of Muammar Gadhafi-controlled Libya, the destruction of Gadhafi's family compound and tent encampment in the desert--killing his son and three grandchildren--and the deployment of special forces inside Libya is not a "War." It is in the Obama White House's evasive nomenclature just a "time-limited, scope-limited military action" Can you find that phrase in the Constitution?

If Obama used the word "War," he would have a more difficult time explaining to Congress and the American people (three out of four oppose this war) why he did not (1) seek a declaration of war under Article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution, or (2) seek Congressional authorization for appropriated funds to further the war with our NATO co-warriors, or (3) comply with the deadlines of the War Powers Resolution. He threw all three lawful restraints on his Presidential unilateralism overboard.

So, in the invidious tradition of George W. Bush and his indentured confessor, Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo, now comfortably ensconced on the law faculty of the University of California Berkeley, Mr. Obama is blithely claiming as authority for taking our country into another war "the inherent powers of the President under Article II of the Constitution." This wouldn't pass the laugh test by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin Mason or even Hamilton. James Madison believed placing the war-declaring power in the exclusive hands of Congress was the most significant achievement during the convention in Philadelphia that summer of 1787. No more King George substitutes for America's future, they demanded.

Note that Libya did not attack the U.S. or its appendages, and did not attack a member of NATO. Obama admits these points. Libya's trusting government sovereign fund even left $37 billion in the U.S. which Obama promptly froze. Lacking even the prevaricatory pretenses for Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Obama and Hillary Clinton now say the U.S. is militarily involved "to protect our interests and advance our values" in the region and, of course, to protect the "universal rights" of the Libyan people. (Opportunities abound for this Obama doctrine around the world from the Congo to Syria, to Burma, to occupied Palestine and many other areas.)

Desperately seeking legitimacy, Mr. Obama cites the UN resolution, NATO, and the Arab League instead of seeking it from Congress. For all treaties with foreign countries, including the UN Charter, are trumped by the U.S. Constitution (Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1 (1957)). As a former teacher of constitutional law, the President knows this basic principle but then, as Lord Acton declared: "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Congress, rendered a rubber stamp by President George W. Bush, is bestirring itself. On June 3, 2011, the House of Representatives passed H.R. Res 292 declaring that the President shall not deploy, establish, or maintain the presence of units and members of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Libya. On this matter, Obama pleads state secrets.

On June 16, 2011, ten members of the House – five conservative Republicans (including Walter B. Jones (Rep. N.C.) and Ron Paul (Rep. Texas) and five Democrats (including Dennis Kucinich (Dem. Ohio) and John Conyers (Dem. Mich.) filed suit against President Obama in federal district court for an order declaring the U.S. war in Libya "without a declaration of Congress with the use of funds never approved for such a war" to be unconstitutional. Given past judicial decisions declaring members of Congress to have "no standing to sue" on what they call "political matters," this suit is facing an uphill barrier.

Congress has appropriated no money for this war, already costing nearly a billion dollars, nor has the lawless Obama asked for it because he knows there will be strong bi-partisan resistance.

So where is the Congress to go but to the courts to decide this internal, domestic issue affecting the separation of powers provoked by a clearly lawless President? The degraded, politicized, formerly professional, Office of Legal Counsel is a sleazy apologist for presidential overreaching for over two decades.

The expanding immunities of the Executive branch, now increasingly embracing the military contractors of the corporate state, is destroying the remaining pretensions that we are a nation under law. When he was inaugurated as President in January 2009, President Obama said he wanted his Administration to be known as one of "transparency and the rule of law." You'll recall during his 2008 campaign he trumpeted that he would obey the Constitution, inferring the the Republican regime was trampling the Rule of Law.

Indeed in 2007, then Senator Barack Obama stated that "the president does not have any power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation." Vice President Biden was even more vehement on this issue. And Secretary of Defense Robert Gates originally opposed the attack on Libya before falling in line.

Gadhafi's dictatorship is a brutal one. Civil wars are brutal. People are dying and suffering. The country is being torn apart. Obama and NATO are not adequately testing offers for a truce and supervised elections. Top level officials are defecting from Gadhafi and hoping to help lead any successor government.

Regimes brutalize their people whether as dictatorships, authoritarian rulers, connected with dominant oligarchies, or through racial, religious or other sectarian repressions. Is the U.S., mired in deep recession, debt and its own kleptocracy, going to continue to police the world with bases, interventions, subversions or occupation?

The cause of human rights everywhere, needs a permanent, well-quipped professional United Nations peace-keeping force and effective international courts to prevent mass massacres and mass brutalities. That time is not near but it should be at the top of the agenda of civilized nations.

The U.S., as the number one military superpower, provoking antagonisms by its penchant for control throughout the world, should not imperially advance our empire. It is that belief which is bringing Right and Left together, not just in Congress, but around the country.

Transparency Or Transparently Corrupt: What Kind Of Government Do We Want?

(I was extremely under the weather most of last week, so I'm catching up on blogging the many articles I wasn't able to post. Sorry if it gets overwhelming.--jef)

What Kind Of Government Do We Want?
By Cliff Schecter | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at May 13, 2011

I had a client a few years back named Onvia. Onvia provided better and more timely information than the federal government, regarding where stimulus dollars were going and how they were being used:

The Obama administration promised openness regarding stimulus spending because many critics said the $787 billion package won congressional approval in February too quickly, and with too few safeguards.

Ryan Alexander, president of the Washington-nonprofit Taxpayers for Common Sense, thinks a free, private-sector Web site with a similar name — Recovery.org — does a better job of listing bid-ready federally funded projects that government entities are advertising or awarding nationwide.

People can log onto Recovery.org and learn, for example, that as of Sept. 5, Allegheny County was scheduled to receive the most stimulus-related money of any county in Pennsylvania — $775.8 million for 154 projects that include stimulus funding.

A few more clicks and that Web site reports that, as of Sept. 5, contractors could bid on 123 projects in Pittsburgh and two in Greensburg. The site lists each project's location; estimated cost; owner and type, such as PennDOT construction; and number of affiliated jobs.

As you can imagine, Recovery.org pressured Recovery.gov to get better, to be more open and complete in the information the site provided. Because transparency begets more transparency, and open information is the only antidote to the instincts of both corporate and government entities to hide it behind walls, or firewalls.

Another open-data program with which I have worked is called City Forward. What are they doing? Simply allowing you to access, through "explorations," all sorts of data that lets you know how cities are spending their money, how they compare to other urban centers, and interact with reams of data to get a picture of how green they might be or how many jobs they might have lost. Do you want to know whether Baltimore or St. Louis is doing a more effective job fighting crime? Or whether landing the Olympics actually helps employment? Or what the impact of the recession has been on the "collar counties" of Chicago? Yup, as the kids say, there's an ap...or exploration, for that. And this can only be another positive development for honest and open government.

Yet, progress never comes without a fight. Data.gov, Apps.gov, USAspending.gov, and Paymentaccuracy.gov are sites that help the government operate more effectively and efficiently, saving taxpayer money and helping public oversight. They increase citizen knowledge of and involvement in the democratic process. Data.gov launched a few years ago, then a few months later both New York and San Francisco introduced their own sites for detailed, city-specific data, and Data.gov.uk launched not too long after. A movement for open government was clearly been building momentum, and the popularity of data itself in other sectors continues to rise.

However, in the next few months, these open data sites are slated to be shut down due to budget cuts under consideration – the current annual budget of $37 million will be reduced to $2 million.

You know what happens when you do this. As The Sunlight Foundation (a non-profit, nonpartisan organization committed to improving access to government information by making it available online and by creating new tools and websites to enable individuals and communities to better access that information and put it to use) points out, this is what happens:

As the chairman of AAN, [former Senator Norm] Coleman knows who donated money to ad campaigns that favored conservative candidates. The public doesn’t.

As a non-lobbyist lobbyist, Coleman knows whose interests he represents before Congress. The public doesn’t. He can encourage his corporate clients at his new firm to contribute to ANN. He can decide the political races in which ANN will run ads. He can let his former Senate colleagues know that, either as a favor or as a threat, AAN will spend heavily for or against their re-election campaigns.

Efforts to uncover dark money contributions to elections through legislation failed. Even a modest effort by the Obama administration to require disclosure of dark money by government contractors is being met with vigorous opposition by groups representing corporate donors.

In an open letter to Congress last week, the Sunlight Foundation – offered this plea to lawmakers to not slash funding for the federal government’s transparency programs:

"An open and accountable government is a prerequisite for democracy. Keeping these programs alive would cost a mere pittance when compared to the value of bringing the federal government into the sunlight. As you consider the budget for the remainder of this year, please sustain funding for these vital transparency programs."

Will you sign the Sunlight pledge? I hope you will, because as Winston Churchill once said, democracy is the worst form of government...except for all the others."

Corporate America's War on Political Transparency

Friday, April 29, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by Robert Weissman

Companies that bid for government contracts should disclose their campaign spending, in order to diminish the likelihood that contracts are a payoff for political expenditures.

The Obama administration has indicated that it plans to impose such a rule, through an executive order. Ideally, the rule would prohibit contractors and lobbyists from campaign spending, but a disclosure standard is a very positive if modest step.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the trade association for big business, however, takes a somewhat different view.

"We will fight it through all available means," Bruce Josten, the chief lobbyist for the Chamber, told the New York Times. "To quote what they say every day on Libya, all options are on the table."

Other business lobbyists use less charged rhetoric* but echo Josten's stridency. "The President and his administration seem to be using the executive order powers for political purposes," says John Engler, president of the Business Roundtable, an association of major company CEOs. "The suggestion that federal procurement choices are the result of contributions is being seen as discouraging free speech by intimidating business donors."

Gosh, is it really a stretch to suggest that contractors think political donations help them obtain contracts? Did Lockheed really spend $16 million on campaign contributions over the last two decades -- divided fairly evenly between the two major parties (55-45 split for Republicans) -- for any other reason? Heck, the company spent $60 million over just the last five years on lobbying, primarily to affect how the government spends money.

This is a case -- there have been precious few -- where the President is going head to head with the Big Business lobby. It's up to us to help him stand strong for what's right. Go here to sign a petition urging President Obama to ignore the business pressure and issue the executive order requiring disclosure of contractors' election expenditures.

The need for such action is directly traceable to the Supreme Court's decision Citizens United v. FEC, which lifted restrictions on political spending by corporations, and paved the way for companies to make massive expenditures from their general treasuries to influence election outcomes. While companies are prohibited from making direct contributions to federal candidates, and while direct contributions from individual managers and employees of companies and their political action committees are publicly reported, it remains nearly impossible to trace most of the corporate political spending designed to curry favor and access with government officials. After Citizens United, corporations can now easily make secret and unlimited donations directly out of their corporate treasuries to "front" organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that then use the money for campaign expenditures.

Not only did Citizens United badly damage the functioning of our democracy, it invited a major uptick in corruption narrowly defined.

While government corruption comes in many forms, nowhere is it more prevalent than in government contracting. "Pay-to-play" deals are a form of government contracting abuse in which a business entity makes campaign contributions or expenditures on behalf of a public official in order to obtain preferential treatment in receiving government contracts. Occasionally, pay-to-play constitutes outright bribery for a government contract. More often, pay-to-play involves a contractor buying favoritism. The practice is widespread in local, state, and federal contracting but is usually kept well hidden due to inadequate monitoring of government contracting procedures. The pay-to-play system encourages fraud and abuse of power, prevents contracts from being awarded to businesses based on merit, wastes taxpayer dollars, and facilitates privatization and contracting out of services that otherwise could or should be provided by government agencies.

An example of pay-to-play abuse is the scandal surrounding impeached former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. Charges against Blagojevich included a pay-to-play scheme in which he allegedly provided a lucrative highway contract to a contributor in exchange for a donation.

Short of a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, the best way to prevent pay-to-play abuses is to bar contractors and lobbyists from political expenditures. Eight states, the Securities Exchange Commission and several local jurisdictions currently restrict government contractors from making campaign contributions to those responsible for issuing government contracts.

President Obama has proposed not restrictions on contractor spending, but mandatory disclosure, something many states already do. Under the proposed executive order, government contractors would have to report all bundled contributions from their executives and PACs, as well as any direct campaign expenditures or donations to front groups used for campaign expenditures.

For the Big Business lobby, even simple disclosure of contractor political spending is too much. If the public knows about corporate campaign expenditures, fears the U.S. Chamber and its allies, they may seek to hold companies accountable. Then, the argument goes, those companies might be deterred from making political expenditures and expressing their views. Welcome to the next step of illogic in a post-Citizens United world.

Even under Citizens United, however, disclosure rules, and rules aimed at prohibiting narrowly defined corruption, remain permissible.

The President's proposed executive order would not turn back the clock on Citizens United. That's going to take a constitutional amendment.

But deterring contractor corruption is a worthy goal in its own right.

--

* Imagine for just a moment if a prominent political player from the left used language that could be interpreted as calling for drone attacks on a Republican president. This is of course not to say that Josten really means to urge violence, but his words are what they are. A firestorm would erupt if the script were flipped.

Victory Lapse - Obama Transparency Award

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Victory Lapse - Obama Transparency Award

Ron Paul to lead House Federal Reserve oversight

Iconoclastic Texas Republican defends WikiLeaks again, says US response 'an example of killing the messenger'

By Stephen C. Webster
Friday, December 10th, 2010 

The greatest critic of fiat currency perhaps anywhere in the world is about to take control of a congressional panel that would conduct oversight on the US Federal Reserve bank.

This could get interesting.

After November's Republican electoral wave crashed a Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives, Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) was one of several ardent critics of status-quo thought that GOP leadership thought about empowering.

To stifle Democratic efforts toward meaningful climate change legislation, they vowed to shut down funding for the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. To block new regulations of greenhouse gases, Republicans picked Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who called "poisonous" any attempt at regulation, to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And now, to feed their libertarian-leaning base of supporters, Ron Paul is headed to the Fed.

The nomination was made by Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who will lead the House Financial Services Committee in the next Congress. A prior report by Bloomberg noted discussion by aides to incoming House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on how they might be able to prevent Paul's chairmanship.

Rep. Bachus dispelled any questions as to Paul's viability for the seat in a Thursday afternoon statement, promising "aggressive oversight" and an audit of the Fed.

"This is the leadership team that crafted the first comprehensive financial reform bill to put an end to the bailouts, wind down the taxpayer funding of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and enforce a strong audit of the Federal Reserve," he wrote. "By working together, we will honor our commitment to aggressive oversight, reform of the [government-sponsored enterprises], and monitoring the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act to ensure more jobs aren’t lost to unnecessary regulations on community banks and businesses. We are ready to hit the ground running, and I look forward to continuing our work in the next Congress."

Rep. Paul is one of the few elected Republicans to openly defend secrets outlet WikiLeaks in the wake of secret US diplomatic cables being passed along to the media. "What we need is more WikiLeaks," he suggested during a recent interview, suggesting that the Fed be targeted by whistleblowers. He's also a longtime critic of the Fed's manipulation of America's fiat currency, arguing that monetary value based on gold markets makes for a more stable economic system.

He's joined by Florida Republican Rep. Connie Mack, who told Napolitano that focusing on WikiLeaks and not the actions of the government is "a head-fake."

Most economists consider the position archaic and unwieldy, but he's not alone in the belief. Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, recently called for a renewed debate on what a global gold standard would mean. He suggested that gold markets were already being used as an alternative currency in the wake of severe financial instability seen across the industrialized world in recent years.

Speaking on the floor of the House yesterday, Paul again defended WikiLeaks to his colleagues.

"The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news," he said, adding that the leaks had caused "no known harm to any individual."
Paul's same iconoclastic take on the Fed could cause serious divisions between Republicans, who've often defended the nation's central bank. “I think you’re going to see a significant dispute within the Republican Party," Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told Bloomberg. Frank is the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee and a Paul ally in the push to see an audit of the Fed. "I do not believe that Ron Paul’s views on the Fed represent the views of most Republicans."

Paul's "Audit the Fed" bill, HR 1207, passed the House but was side-tracked into committee and had its language stripped out of the Senate's financial reform legislation. Paul's bill would have put the Fed's complete balance sheet under the US Comptroller General's microscope, but leading Senate Democrats bucked Paul's bipartisan alliance and effectively let the bank "keep its secrets," the Texas Congressman said.

Paul's son Rand was elected last November to become the next Republican US Senator from Kentucky.

This video is from C-Span, broadcast Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010, as snipped by MoxNews.

Message Control

An unsettling trend of limiting press at major events shows that the Obama White House has regressed on transparency, limiting news access more severely than Bush.
BY CLINT HENDLER | COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW | JULY 2010

In March 4, President Obama sat behind his stout oak desk, flanked by beaming lawmakers, and, wielding a pen for the cameras, signed the Travel Promotion Act into law. Just a routine White House moment, right?

Maybe not. The images from which I — and others in the press — recreated that scene were captured by government employees. The White House released a photo to the world and produced a slick video that would have looked right at home on the evening news. No journalist was present for the bill signing because none were invited.

The bill, which passed Congress with overwhelming bipartisan support, had the anodyne goal of luring foreign tourist dollars to these shores. Not so controversial. But the ceremony was just one recent example of an unsettling trend of limiting press access to major events at the White House, from the Dalai Lama's visit to the odd do-over of Obama's flubbed attempt to take the oath of office.

Despite the administration's trumpeting of its record on transparency — not to mention its use of the issue as a campaign cudgel — on the whole reporters have found this White House to be no different than the Bush administration (or any other recent administration) when it comes to providing information or being accessible to the press. "By and large, they're just like all of their predecessors," says CBS Radio correspondent Mark Knoller, who has covered every president since Gerald Ford. "They give us information that serves their interests more than our interests."

Message control is central to every administration, and it would have been naïve to expect much else. But the Obama White House has actually regressed in some troubling ways. For instance, Obama has been far less available for questioning by journalists than even President Bush, who was openly contemptuous of the press. And accommodations on off-the-record background briefings and White House photo releases — both forged in the wake of significant press failures in the run-up to the Iraq war — have eroded since Obama took office.

Photo releases, where shots taken by the official White House photographer are offered to news outlets, are nothing new. But photojournalists have long been irked when such photos are the only images of an event that could have easily been made public. In 2005, after an increase in presidential events from which they were excluded, the White House News Photographers Association allied with other press organizations and successfully pressed the Bush White House to routinely allow photographers back in. "We won the access under the Bush administration, and it has been taken away under the Obama administration," says Ron Sachs, who chairs the association's advocacy committee. He pointed to a series of recent incidents, including the decision to bar photographers from Obama's February 18 meeting with the Dalai Lama in favor of releasing a single, no-smiles still taken by Pete Souza, the official White House photographer.

It wouldn't take much to let the photographic pool into the room for half a minute, thereby producing dozens of shots for editors to choose from. Instead, the only record of official White House business is often a single frame, curated by the president's staff in accordance with the administration's message of the day.

Message control is enhanced by eliminating instances when the president is forced to answer inconvenient questions — and possibly provide inconvenient answers. Remember the very real national distraction that ensued after Obama suggested at a July 2009 press conference that the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police had "stupidly" arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. at his home? That was Obama's last formal press conference after a remarkable opening string. In February, shortly after The Washington Post and The New York Times published pieces pointing out the drought, Obama made a surprise half-hour visit to the briefing room. Besides that, he went without a White House press conference until late May — 309 days.

For White House reporters the absence of informal opportunities to question the president is at least as galling as the dearth of formal sessions. Richard Stevenson, who covered the Bush administration for The New York Times, says it was routine for reporters to be allowed to ask the president questions — often several times a week — when they were ushered into the Oval Office for quick pool sprays or in other less regimented settings. "It wasn't an extensive give-and-take, but he did take questions quite frequently," says Stevenson, now the paper's deputy Washington bureau chief. "Obama has almost completely stopped doing that."

Some reporters credit the Obama administration with increasing access to certain subject-area experts. But often these background briefings — and others with White House staffers — come on the condition that the briefers can only be quoted as a "senior administration official" or some equally vague attribution. Here again, progress under the Bush administration has been rolled back under Obama. Controversy surrounding off-the-record sourcing before the Iraq war prompted news organizations to protest to the Bush administration about the frequent demands that background briefings be anonymous, and the innocuousness of some of the information conveyed this way. "They got the message, and for most of the briefings we would be able to quote people by name," says Caren Bohan, an officer in the White House Correspondents Association who has covered both administrations.

But Obama's handlers discarded the Bush-era détente. Print reporters have been particularly outraged by incidents in which background briefers went on cable news to deliver the same information, faces before the world, minutes after the background sessions.

To protest the White House's briefing policy, Stevenson and Ron Fournier of The Associated Press organized a sign-on letter from many Washington editors and bureau chiefs in May 2009. The White House responded and agreed to put more of the sessions on the record. While the situation has improved from the journalists' point of view, readers still regularly find the administration's line coming from unnamed sources. "There's at least movement in the right direction," says Stevenson. "It still is a problem. But the blatant instances where the only person who doesn't know the identity of the briefer is the reader have been reduced — but not anywhere close to eliminated."

None of this is the stuff of Nixon's Enemies List. But the changes have to be understood in the context of the administration's increasing use of online media to effectively create the White House's own internal news organization. It is a matter of evolution and degree. This is not the first White House to e-mail its press releases to the public. But it is the first to press back against news articles on its blog and via its press officials' Twitter feeds, to use such venues to break news, and to regularly broadcast its own video Q&A sessions, moderated by government employees, on its own Web sites.

No one expects the White House to ignore these new tools for communicating with the country. And there's nothing inherently wrong with the White House setting up online interactions between the president and the American people — it is this very digital intimacy that fueled Obama's successful grassroots campaign, and it was predicted that, once in office, it would help the president explain his policies and rally the nation.

But from the perspective of ensuring that an independent press can do its job, it's important to understand what these new communication strategies have allowed the White House to do. Take the matter of who gets to photograph official White House events. In 2005, when the issue came to a head, the AP could refuse to distribute the official White House photo of an event, giving the press considerable leverage with the Bush administration in making its case for access.

But that leverage is gone. The Obama White House has its own Flickr feed — a de facto wire service — from which anyone can pull Pete Souza's official photos. (The economic crisis facing journalism isn't helping the situation, as Newsweek, for instance, has left the White House photo pool, and relies more and more on the White House handout photos.)

Or consider how, when pressed by journalists on the diminished opportunities to question the president, the administration points to the array of Q&A sessions available online in which the president has interacted with citizens.

Though he meant it pejoratively, George W. Bush was right: the press does filter the administration's message on its way to the American people. At its best — and let's stipulate that both the White House and Washington press corps often fall short of our ideals — that press filter knocks down egregious spin and outright falsehoods, challenges the administration narrative, and provides important context.

That crucial job is made more difficult when the White House can bypass the press corps and at the same time limit its access to the president and other decision-makers. Finding new ways for our government to communicate with citizens is laudable, and even good for democracy. But it should not — and need not — come at the expense of a free and unfettered fourth estate.

Keep the Fed Away From the Consumer

Why We Should Keep the Fed Away From the Consumer: the Hurt Incident
By ANDREW COCKBURN

Buoyed by the thrill of seeing Goldman Sachs squirm just a little at the witness table it may be that a financial “reform” bill emerges from congress some time this summer. Without a doubt, human wave assaults by Wall Street’s famously effective lobbyists will produce many amendments and alterations to the draft legislation currently under debate. Some of these may be momentous in effect yet scarcely visible to anyone but a securities lawyer – think the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, slipped through congress without debate in December 2000, that unleashed credit default swaps on a defenseless world. Other compromises congenial to the financial industry have already been incorporated in Senator Chris Dodd’s Senate Banking Committee bill, with little prospect of reversal. Chief among these is the internment of the proposed Consumer Finance Protection Agency within the Federal Reserve – an early Dodd concession to the Republicans.

There are a lot of good reasons why the Federal Reserve should not be allowed anywhere near the consumer, not least its prior record in consumer financial protection. Consider the experience of Adrienne Hurt, a career staff attorney at the fed. In 2003, Hurt was Associate Director of the bank’s Division of Consumer and Community Affairs and a potent influence in the arcane but vital field of consumer-related financial regulation, where the Fed plays a commanding role. It is thanks to her, for example that car and truck leasing agreements must set out clearly what we will have to pay. “Adrienne Hurt was by far the most talented and responsible person on the Fed’s consumer affairs staff,” says Professor Patricia McCoy, of the University of Connecticut Law School, herself a recognized authority on consumer finance law.

Among the Fed’s responsibilities are the administration of various consumer-finance laws such as the Truth in Lending Act, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, etc. These laws generally require that disclosures to the borrower be “clear and conspicuous.” But the regulations implementing several of these laws differed in the way they defined “clear” and “conspicuous.”

In 2003 Hurt thought it would be a fine idea if all these regulations were to be standardized, a concept on which she thought all reasonable people would agree. So she crafted a regulation defining “clear and conspicuous.” Credit card companies, for example, would have to spell out card charges, fees and penalties “in clear, concise sentences, paragraphs, and sections,” while avoiding “legal or highly technical business terminology whenever possible.” Conspicuous would mean using “a typeface and type size,” such as 12 point type, “that are easy to read.” Banks would have similarly to clarify such important matters as overdraft fees.

As Hurt told me recently, “I was hoping to get people using mouseprint to stop using mouseprint.” And so the proposed regulation changes were drawn up and duly published for review and comment in a highly technical 19-page press release on November 26, 2003.

The financial services industry – banks large and small, credit card companies, mortgage lenders, in her words, “went crazy.” Written protests poured in, mostly via the industry’s politically muscular trade associations. The regulations would require “costly compliance.” They would be “litigation bait” for unscrupulous tort lawyers. Credit card companies argued that their customers could better understand how an account operates “when required disclosures are interspersed among other contract terms.” Some advanced the bizarre claim that printing disclosures in larger type with wider margins would be actually be a disservice for the consumers because “they would be less inclined to read them.” Meanwhile the board of governors, chaired at the time by Alan Greenspan, were deluged with personal calls from senior financial services industry executives.

Normal procedure in such matters calls for such proposals to be reviewed by a three-person committee drawn from the seven federal reserve governors. In January 2004, the relevant committee, Consumer Affairs, was chaired by the late Edward Gramlich, now remembered for having warned Greenspan of the perils lurking in the subprime lending boom. One of the other two members was a Tennessee banker, Susan Bies, quoted after the crash (when she had left the board) as saying that regulators had been caught by surprise by the subprime boom, and that she regretted there was not quicker action taken to protect borrowers. The third member was a mild mannered academic economist soon to leave the Fed to serve as Chairman of George Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, Ben Bernanke.

Though the committee did not meet until January 2004, the writing was already on the wall. The offical notice withdrawing the proposal did not appear for another six months, but in a cruel irony, Hurt had had to write a formal memo to the board recommending withdrawal.

At the end of a recent long conversation in her current small, bare office at Federal Reserve headquarters, – on the same floor but a long, long way from the grand chamber where the Board of Governors meet -- I asked Hurt about the episode’s impact on her career. “I am no longer involved in consumer affairs,” she answered drily. She is instead an “adviser” to the Staff Director for Management Affairs.

“The fed board caved to the banking industry and Hurt was exiled,” says McCoy. “That’s all you need to know.”

Paul v. Bernanke Smackdown