Secretive US Senate Amendment Would Weaken Biotech Oversight

Tuesday, March 19, 2013 by Inter Press Service by Carey L Biron


Food safety advocates, environmentalists and health professionals here are engaging in a fervent last-minute campaign to highlight a controversial legislative amendment they say would gut the ability of both the judiciary and the federal government to regulate genetically modified agricultural products.

The U.S. Senate is slated to vote early this week on amendments to a massive, “must pass” bill that would fund the U.S. government’s operations beyond Mar. 27 to the end of this fiscal year. That bill – a piece of stopgap legislation known as a continuing resolution – is so important that leaders in the U.S. Senate had previously suggested that they would not include any potentially controversial amendments.

Yet late last week, reports arose that a legislative “rider” had been anonymously proposed that would allow the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to overrule a judge’s decision to outlaw a genetically modified product. (The amendment can be found here, on page 80.)

As such, even if the courts were to rule that the USDA had illegally approved a particular genetically modified crop, the agency would be allowed to continue telling farmers to use the seed in question. Yet while this would seem to maintain at least the government’s oversight responsibilities, critics say the rider’s impact would go still farther.

“This provision also forces the hand of the USDA, forcing the agency to immediately approve any permits for deregulation of these crops,” Colin O’Neil, a researcher with the Center for Food Safety, a Washington advocacy group, told IPS. “Basically, it takes these oversight responsibilities away from the courts and government and gives them directly to the biotech companies themselves.”

In fact, almost identical language was used in an amendment proposed last year in the House of Representatives, likewise attached to a large, unrelated bill. That attempt, dubbed the “biotech rider”, failed at the time.

“Those behind these provisions have the interests of short-term profits at heart,” O’Neil continues. “We feel that based on the federal court decisions and government reports that have criticised the USDA’s approval of certain biotech products, we need to think long term about better safeguards that will adequately protect all farmers and the environment.”

This time around, critics were tipped off when Jon Tester, a Democratic senator, sounded an alarm on the floor of the Senate, strongly denouncing what he called a “corporate giveaway”.

“Its supporters are calling it the ‘farmer assurance’ provision, but all it really assures is a lack of corporate liability,” Tester stated.

“The provision says that when a judge finds that the USDA approved a crop illegally, the department must re-approve the crop and allow it to continue to be planted – regardless of what the judge says. Think about that.”

Tester is an organic farmer, described as one of the few in the U.S. Congress who continues to farm. He has now sponsored a counter-amendment that would strip away the “biotech rider”.

“These provisions are giveaways worth millions of dollars to a handful of the biggest corporations in this country and deserve no place in this bill,” he added.

“Not only does this ignore the Constitution’s idea of separation of powers, but it also lets genetically modified crops take hold across the country – even when a judge finds it violates the law … the ultimate loser will be our family farmers going about their business and feeding America the right way.”

Herbicide drift

The new rider could also harm U.S. farmers’ attempts to sell their products abroad. In January, for instance, the European Union temporarily froze the approvals process for new genetically modified foods, and dozens of other countries have similarly moved to more tightly regulate their markets.

Yet if the current legislation were to pass, the USDA would be hamstrung from preventing “contamination” of U.S. foodstocks by genetically modified products.

The continued appearance of the “biotech rider” is most likely a reaction to scepticism that has repeatedly been voiced by the federal courts over approval of genetically engineer crops, in addition to the prospect of a new, “next generation” of biotech crops.

The industry has experienced a number of setbacks, including findings that the use of genetically modified crops has increased the use of pesticides, as well as accusations that these crops pose an economic threat to organic and even conventional farmers.

Further, it has become increasingly apparent that genetically modified agricultural material does not necessarily stay on the farms where it is used. In this regard, environmentalists have expressed particular concern over genetically modified crops engineered to withstand stronger and stronger herbicides.

“‘Herbicide drift’ is one of many harms from industrial agriculture – farmers are experiencing economic loss when their crops are killed or damaged when herbicides become volatile and drift in from neighbouring farms,” the Center for Food Safety’s O’Neil says.

“We already have around 64 million acres infested with herbicide-resistant weeds in this country. Yet the next generation of these products appears to be simply moving towards genetically modified crops that are resistant to the older herbicides – what we call the ‘pesticide treadmill’.”

The federal government, he says, has been unable to make headway on the issue.

“So far, the USDA has failed to address issues like the proliferation of herbicide-resistant weeds,” O’Neil says. “We now worry that herbicide drift could be the next issue that the USDA fails to adequately address.”

Amendments to the continuing resolution were to be accepted until late Tuesday, with a vote on all riders expected thereafter. Senate leaders have said a vote would be held on the full bill by the end of the week.

How Corporations Buy Access to Power

By BooMan, BooMan Tribune
Posted on June 29, 2011

I think you can imagine how a major bank/investment firm like Goldman Sachs can gain access to power. They obviously can make or withhold campaign contributions. They can throw money into political action committees that go after politicians who want to mess with them. They also can offer politicians lucrative six or seven figure jobs should they ever fail to win reelection or want to retire from public service. They can use their pull to get their employees hired by the government.

They can hire their regulators. There are many ways that rich Wall Street bankers can assure that Washington DC will let them do pretty much anything they want to do, even if it's harmful to the country. But, sometimes, they don't need to do anything.

Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) raised hell last year to stop the federal government from investigating Goldman Sachs regarding allegations that the company defrauded investors. In April 2010, shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a civil suit against Goldman Sachs, Issa sent a letter to SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro demanding to know if there was “any sort of prearrangement, coordination, direction from, or advance notice” between the SEC and the Obama administration or congressional Democrats over the timing of the lawsuit.

Issa’s investigation of the SEC’s investigation into Goldman Sachs stole the headlines and reinforced Goldman Sach’s claim that they had done nothing wrong. Explaining his defense of Goldman Sachs, Issa said he was representing the views of ordinary Americans who are worried about the “growth of government and the growth of government wanting to become more complex, with more agencies and more control over our lives.”

However, recent personal finance disclosures reviewed by ThinkProgress paint a different picture of Issa’s motivations. According to documents filed recently with the House Clerk, Issa went on a buying spree of high yield Goldman Sachs bonds at the same time he was running defense for the investment bank in Congress. From February to December of 2010, Issa bought 12 Goldman Sachs High Yield Fund Class A bonds, each worth up to $50,000 (view page 10 the disclosure here). Many of the bonds were purchased in the months after he filed his letter to the SEC. The $600,000 in new Goldman Sachs investments added to Issa’s already multimillion dollar stake in the company, valued from $5.1 to $15.5 million.

I'm not going to harp on Rep. Darrell Issa. He's merely one of the more obvious examples of politicians who use their insider knowledge and power to enrich themselves. Any political system is going to have more than a handful of characters like Darrell Issa. It's human nature.

This problem extends well into the Democratic Party as well (see, for example, Evan Bayh). The problem we have in this country is that, unlike in Greece, the people are not inclined to threaten to string Darrell Issa and his Goldman Sachs benefactors up by the balls. The lack of any credible counter-pressure allows our politicians to rip us off on a daily basis. In fact, people are getting ripped off in Greece despite their more active protestations. This is the way the world is structured.

Money talks, and the rest can usually be safely treated as bullshit. The Supreme Court has been on a rampage over the last two years in solidifying this situation by gutting all efforts to rein in the influence of corporate money on our governments.

At this point, progressivism is under assault and is being weakened steadily. It's enough to discourage almost anyone. But there is a backlash growing. We have to nurture that backlash.

Obama Asserts FBI Can Get Phone Records Without Oversight

Saturday, February 12, 2011 by the McClatchy Newspapers
by Marisa Taylor
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's Justice Department has asserted that the FBI can obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process or court oversight, according to a document obtained by McClatchy.

That assertion was revealed — perhaps inadvertently — by the department in its response to a McClatchy request for a copy of a secret Justice Department memo.

Critics say the legal position is flawed and creates a potential loophole that could lead to a repeat of FBI abuses that were supposed to have been stopped in 2006.

The controversy over the telephone records is a legacy of the Bush administration's war on terror. Critics say the Obama administration appears to be continuing many of the most controversial tactics of that strategy, including the assertion of sweeping executive powers.

For years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the FBI sought and obtained thousands of telephone records for international calls in an attempt to thwart potential terrorists.

The bureau devised an informal system of requesting the records from three telecommunications firms to create what one agent called a "phone database on steroids" that included names, addresses, length of service and billing information.

A federal watchdog later said a "casual" environment developed in which FBI agents and employees of the telecom companies treated Americans' telephone records so cavalierly that one senior FBI counter-terrorism official said getting access to them was as easy as "having an ATM in your living room."

In January 2010, McClatchy asked for a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel memo under open records laws after a reference to it appeared in a heavily excised section of a report on how the FBI abused its powers when seeking telephone records.

In the report, the Justice Department's inspector general said "the OLC agreed with the FBI that under certain circumstances (word or words redacted) allows the FBI to ask for and obtain these records on a voluntary basis from the providers, without legal process or a qualifying emergency."

In its cover letter to McClatchy, however, the OLC disclosed more detail about its legal position, specifying a section of a 1978 federal wiretapping law that the Justice Department believes gives the FBI the authority. That section of the law appears to be what was redacted from the inspector general's report and reveals the type of records the FBI would be seeking, experts said.

"This is the answer to a mystery that has puzzled us for more than a year now," said Kevin Bankston, a senior staff attorney and expert on electronic surveillance and national security laws for the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"Now, 30 years later, the FBI has looked at this provision again and decided that it is an enormous loophole that allows them to ask for, and the phone companies to hand over, records related to international or foreign communications," he said. "Apparently, they've decided that this provision means that your international communications are a privacy-free zone and that they can get records of those communications without any legal process."

That interpretation could be stretched to apply to e-mails as well, he said.

However, Bankston said, even if the law allows the FBI to ask for the records — an assertion he disagrees with — it would prohibit the telecommunication companies from handing them over.

Meanwhile, the refusal to provide to McClatchy a copy of the memo is noteworthy because the Obama administration — in particular the OLC — has sought to portray itself as more open than the Bush administration. The decision not to release the memo means the details of the Justice Department's legal arguments in support of the FBI's controversial and discredited efforts to obtain telephone records will be kept from the public.

The FBI and Justice Department have refused to comment on the matter.

For years, the Bush administration had refused to release the memos that provided the legal underpinning for harsh interrogations of overseas terror suspects, citing national security, attorney-client privilege and the need to protect the government's deliberative process.

In April 2009, the Obama administration released four of the Bush-era memos that detailed many of the controversial interrogation methods secretly authorized by the Bush administration — from waterboarding to confining prisoners in boxes with insects.

Experts that track government spying and the Freedom of Information Act said the refusal to release the FBI memo to McClatchy appears to be improper and contrary to the intent of FOIA.

Since the memo appears to be exclusively on the OLC's legal justification for getting the phone records, the Justice Department should be able to release at least portions of it, experts said.

"It's wrong that they're withholding a legal rationale that has to do with the authorities of the FBI to collect information that affects the rights of American citizens here and abroad," said Michael German, a former FBI agent of 16 years who now works for the American Civil Liberties Union. "The law should never be secret. We should all understand what rules we're operating under and particularly when it comes to an agency that has a long history of abuse in its collection activities."

Sens. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., demanded more than a year ago that Attorney General Eric Holder release a copy of the memo.

The Justice Department has responded, Wyden said this week, but he declined to elaborate on the exchange.

"I do think the level of secrecy that surrounds the executive branch's interpretation of important surveillance law is a serious problem," he told McClatchy, "and I am continuing to press the executive branch to disclose more information to the public about what their government thinks the law means."

When President Barack Obama authorized the release of the interrogation memos, he said at the time that he was compelled to release them in part because of an open records lawsuit by the ACLU.

"While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security," he said.

Obama said he'd concluded the documents could be released because they wouldn't jeopardize national security and because the interrogation techniques described in the memos had been widely reported. By then, the practices were no longer in use.

The FBI's activities discussed in the most recent and still secret OLC memo also have been widely publicized. An inspector general report that revealed the existence of the FBI memo was one in a series on the FBI's informal handling of telephone records and it concluded the bureau had committed egregious violations of the law.

When revealing the existence of the OLC memo, the inspector general described it as having "significant policy implications that need to be considered by the FBI, the Department, and the Congress."

Since 2006, it appears the bureau has refrained from using the authority it continues to assert, according to another heavily redacted section of the inspector general's report.

"However, that could change, and we believe appropriate controls on such authority should be considered now, in light of the FBI's past practices and the OLC opinion," the inspector general warned.

Senior Senate Dem to unveil plans to overhaul offshore drilling

By Ben Geman - 06/19/10

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) plans to unveil legislation next week that would overhaul federal oversight of offshore oil-and-gas drilling and impose new safety standards.

Bingaman is readying the bill ahead of plans by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to bring wide-ranging energy legislation to the floor as soon as July.

Bingaman spokesman Bill Wicker declined Friday to provide details about Bingaman’s bill, but suggested it will be expansive. “It will address all the things which are in the scope of our committee's jurisdiction,” Wicker said.
He said it would be released some time ahead of a Thursday hearing that will explore several pieces of legislation in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Various lawmakers are exploring plans that would require stronger blowout prevention safeguards, improve response to spills and ensure that Interior Department regulators maintain an arm's-length relationship with oil company officials.

At least two other bills will be discussed at the Thursday Senate hearing. Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a bill June 16 that requires companies drilling offshore to have peer-reviewed response plans in their leases that describe the “means and timeline” to contain and end oil spills, among other provisions.

The committee will also review a bill by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) that would codify several ethics requirements for federal drilling regulators.

It bars them from accepting gifts from energy companies developing federal resources and holding stock in the companies. The bill also aims to close the “revolving door” by preventing regulators from working for these companies for two years after leaving their jobs.

The plan is co-sponsored by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). It applies to employees of the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service or successor agencies.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently announced plans to carve up MMS into three separate agencies, citing “conflicting missions” at the agency that currently fosters offshore development, collects billions of dollars in royalty revenues and oversees safety and environmental rules.

Bingaman, at a June 9 hearing on offshore safety, said the fatal April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig laid bare the need for major reforms.

“The challenge for regulators, and for Congress in enacting statutory responsibilities and authorities to those regulators, is to put appropriate requirements in place ensuring that this horrible price is not paid again,” he said.

Bills in response to the oil spill are under construction on both sides of Capitol Hill.

Top members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee allege BP used risky procedures in designing and crafting its ill-fated Macondo well to save money, such as use of well casing methods with insufficient barriers to gas flow.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) outlined various House plans at a Thursday press conference.

“BP has represented that they had the capacity to drill safely, that they had the capacity to stop a blowout should one occur, and that they had the adequacy for cleanup. In all three cases, they really betrayed the American people with their comments,” Pelosi said.

“We cannot leave it to taking their word for it. So you will see some legislation come forth from the hearings that are happening in the Energy and Commerce Committee,” she said.

She noted that several committees are working on plans that change rules governing industry liability and damages from spills, clamp down on industry royalty holidays, improve the response to oil spills and safeguard the health of cleanup workers.

Dodd Bill Gives Fed New Oversight Powers

Fed gets new oversight powers under Dodd bill
Kevin Drawbaugh and Rachelle Younglai
WASHINGTON
Sun Mar 14, 2010

(Reuters) - The Federal Reserve would win sweeping new powers over nonbank financial firms and keep much of its authority over banks, under revised legislation to be unveiled on Monday by the chief architect of financial reform in the Senate.

In a remarkable recovery by the U.S. central bank after a steep drop in its political popularity, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd was poised to release a bill that leans heavily on the Fed, sources said on Sunday.

Not only would a new government watchdog for financial consumers be housed within the Fed, but it would also retain much of its present authority over large bank holding companies and gain new authority over selected nonbank financial firms.

Dodd's bill would give the Fed authority to supervise bank holding companies with more than $50 billion in assets, down from an earlier threshold of $100 billion, sources said.

The bill may also preserve the Fed's power over state-chartered banks with less than $50 billion in assets that are already in the Federal Reserve system, a source said. An earlier proposal had called for transferring responsibility for supervising such banks to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

That would put hundred of banks under the Fed's purview, including such giants as Bank of America and Citigroup, as well as branches of foreign banks, a source said.

The bill from Dodd, a Democrat, would also empower the central bank to supervise nonbank firms designated as "systemically important" by a council of regulators.

Before it became the poster-child for bailouts, former insurance giant American International Group (AIG) would have fit into that category, for instance.

Revamping how the financial system is supervised is one of the Obama administration's top priorities. Since the worst financial crisis in decades tipped the U.S. economy into a deep recession and sent shock waves across world markets, the United States and the European Union have been pursuing reforms.

The White House unveiled a sweeping package of proposals in mid-2009. The House of Representatives approved most of them in December in a massive piece of legislation that passed without a single Republican vote of support.

But with lobbyists for banks and Wall Street working hard to block or weaken reforms, the Senate has yet to act. With congressional elections approaching in November, Dodd is under intense pressure to push a bill through his committee and onto the Senate floor before political campaigns take center stage.

TURNAROUND BY DODD ON FED

Dodd sharply criticized the Fed last year for regulatory failures. In an early draft of his own reform plan, he proposed stripping the central bank of bank supervision and consumer protection duties, leaving it focused almost exclusively on its role as a monetary policy center.

But Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, other Fed insiders and some banking interests have pushed back hard in recent months to shield the institution, and it appears to have worked.

At the same time that he is proposing new powers for the Fed, Dodd is also considering changes to how regional Federal Reserve bank directors are chosen, a source said.

He also plans to put President Barack Obama's proposed financial consumer watchdog in the Fed. To win support among Democrats for the idea, he will give the watchdog considerable power and autonomy, sources said.

Dodd wants the banking committee to work on his new bill before April, but Republicans have already told him they want sufficient time to consider the legislation.

Dodd's bill will attempt to put an end to a market perception that some financial firms are too big to fail after the government used billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to rescue firms such as AIG.

There is agreement that a fund of about $50 billion should be created to help pay for the cost of unwinding large troubled firms.

Dodd is also expected to give market regulators the authority to regulate the $450 trillion over-the-counter derivatives market with some narrow exemptions.