Just a quick post to alert folks to the pending Supreme Court decision involving the Exxon Valdez and punitive damages awarded in that case. “Wait a minute,” you’re telling yourself “the Exxon Valdez disaster was years ago… decades ago!” You’re right. The spill occurred way back in 1989 and the litigation has been going on ever since. Sad, but true. Worst of all, the mess has never really been cleaned up, but that’s another story.

The court heard arguments yesterday involving the punitive damages awarded to the plaintiffs at jury trial back in 1994. In brief, Exxon is arguing that the drunken skipper was not an “agent” of the company per maritime law, and second that maritime law limits the amount of punitive damages that can be awarded. Oh yeah, here’s the beauty part… the laws they’re talking about are archaic and rarely at issue. One of the cases heavily relied on is, oh… about 200 years old.

The original award has already been cut in half; the criminal fines levied were settled, so Exxon didn’t have to pick up the full tab (taxpayers did), and the plaintiffs so far have received only about $15,000 each in settlement money or actual damages – at most even if they get the full punitive damage award of $2.5 billion they only stand to get about $75,000 each. Not enough to make up for lost jobs, whole industries and the wholesale destruction of biodiversity in that area. Finally, to add insult to injury, almost 20% of the original plaintiffs have already died (more than 6,000 people). This is truly a case of “justice delayed, justice denied.”

Don’t worry, though, the case is in good hands. Samuel Alito owns more than 100,000 shares of Exxon stock (he did recuse himself from the case).

I’ve got a longer post on this with links over at Mulish Behavior:

http://mulishbehavior.blogspot…

UPDATE 2: Title changed to reflect reality. Now that the Canadian government has disavowed the story, this is starting to look suspiciously like a smear job…

A-yup. Courtesy of CTV (by way of TPM):

Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama’s campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.

The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.

Don’t fool yourself. If we get this guy in, activists are gonna have to keep on him like stink on a skunk – no different than we’d have to with any other candidate. Eyes wide open, folks.

UPDATE: Obama has denied the account. No less a critic than the much-maligned-by-Obama-supporters David Sirota feels that we should all be taking Obama at his word on this, given that the report is sourced to ideological opponents and that Obama has been consistent in his rhetoric. Fair enough, but its a reminder for us all to keep on our toes with an Obama – or any – presidency.

[Adapted from an earlier post on BureaucracyBlog.com.]

In my 11/24/07 inaugural post on BureaucracyBlog.com (http://bureaucracyblog.com/http:/bureaucracyblog.com/4/it-starts), I wrote the following:

I have seen state bureaucrats possessed of as much ineptitude and malice as anyone in the Bush administration, and what I’ve seen has convinced me that we’ve wound up with something as bad as our present corrupt federal government because of our acceptance of malice and incompetence at local and state levels.

A few days later, I mentioned in another post what two lawyers had told me about cases in the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office of Professional Regulation (OPR), which investigates allegations of misconduct against licensed professionals:

Once they file charges against you, they will convict you. …[T]hey would be embarrassed not to return a conviction in a case in which charges were filed. [Emphasis added.]

There’s a very strong and far more serious echo of that in a story by Russ Tuttle in The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080303/tuttle). Tuttle quotes Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo’s military commissions who resigned last October for ethical reasons, recounting a conversation he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes:

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals. We’ve got to have convictions.‘” [My emphasis.]

So there’s a case in point, of the state and the national levels mirroring each other. I persist in thinking that our tolerance of such abuses at lower levels of government are what channeled the country right into accepting a president who’s so contemptuous of the rule of law that we have the situation we have in Guantánamo, in the DOJ, in the GSA, and on, and on.

Consider, also, that the OPR operating under Secretary of State Deborah Markowitz, who presents herself as an idealistic political liberal, shares this “win and to hell with justice” ethos with the neocon Pentagon under George W. Bush.  

(If Secretary Markowitz would like to prove that wrong, all it would take would be OPR statistics showing a charge/conviction ratio that approximates charge/conviction ratios in the courts.  I don’t think we’ll see those stats anytime soon.)

We need to change our consciousness about the business of justice.  We need to institute restorative justice systems everywhere feasible, and we need new models to be cost-effective alternatives in those situations where restorative justice models aren’t adequate.  We need to separate funding for state agencies and departments from numbers of cases won, and base it instead on new measures of how well justice is served.  

What the average Vermont citizen can do to bring about transparency and accountability in federal government is pretty limited.  But the average Vermont citizen can do a lot to bring transparency and accountability to state and local governments, starting with talking with neighbors and co-workers and legislators and selectmen and selectwomen.

Transparency and accountability. Transparency and accountability. Transparency and accountability. How, in this day and age and place, can anyone claim to be on the side of principled government without working, given one’s personal limitations,  to institute transparency and accountability?

These things are true:

   * No lawyer or law enforcement person who has participated in such abuses in local and state bureaucracies has a right to shake their head and decry Bush’s trampling of the Constitution, and that includes all the lawyers in the state who handle OPR and similar cases without agitating for transparency and accountability in those offices.

   * The same goes for every state legislator, county commissioner or city council person who has failed to take action to institute transparency and accountability measures for reasons of (an assumed) high cost, or because “not that many people are affected,” or for any other “reason.” (There are cost effective means to be had.)

   * The same goes for those in insurance companies and law offices who push innocent people to accept an outcome that’s short of justice, in any case in which justice isn’t absolutely precluded.

In short, anyone who participates in the problem in local and state realms is part of the problem at the national level.  

May we find in Vermont state government our counterparts to Col. Morris Davis.

It’s dry and very un-sexy, but Rep. Peter Welch’s recent initiative on the issue of reining in credit card companies and supporting consumers has “signature issue” potential all over it, and is just the kind of issue that could further insulate him from the threat of facing a serious GOP challenger in the Fall. Welch has signed his name onto an effort by Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY) to institute a “Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights”, and is lining up the right people to back him up, politically. From Welch’s website:

Welch was joined at the roundtable by John Adams of Fair Haven, Eliot Burg from the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, Chris D’Elia with the Vermont Bankers Association, Scott Falzo from Rockingham Shell, Jim Harrison from the Vermont Grocers’ Association, and Representative Warren Kitzmiller of Montpelier, chairman of the House Commerce Committee and former owner of Onion River Sports in Montpelier…

Welch added, “At a time when Vermonters are already feeling a financial pinch, it’s time to require fair play and transparency, and put an end to these gouging tactics.  The Cardholders’ Bill of Rights requires simple fairness all consumers deserve.”

Adams, a victim of unexpected credit card rate hikes, commented “Like most Vermonters, I pay my bills and use a credit card for convenience.  I had no idea my rate changed from 7.99 to 26 percent until it had passed the point at which I could pay off the balance under the terms.  I don’t want other Vermonters to go through what I experienced.”

Try and tell me you can’t see the campaign commercial in that line.

The proposal, like all such legislative “bills of rights” is structured as a statement of principles with a set of policy proposals distributed within. It is also, honestly, a pretty modest bill. Among it’s provisions, would be requirements that companies give 45 days notice of interest rate increases, give cardholders the right to cancel their card and pay off their existing balance at the existing interest rate and repayment schedule if they get hit with an interest hike, preventing card companies from retroactively increasing interest rates on an existing balance for reasons unrelated to the cardholder’s behavior with that card, prohibiting card companies from arbitrarily changing the their cardholder contracts, and banning “any-time, any-reason repricing.” It would also mandate far longer periods between billing and and the billing due date, and cardholders would have protection from misleading terms such as “fixed rate” and “prime rate.” There’s also some more pro-active bits, such as requiring card companies to offer consumers the option of having a fixed credit limit that cannot be exceeded (while being prevented from charging over-the-limit fees on a cardholder who opts for such a fixed limit). It limits the overall amount of “over-the-limit” fees card companies are allowed to charge to 3, and – particularly relevant to our current economic woes – companies will face restrictions on giving cards to consumers who can clearly not afford them.

There are also stricter oversight regulations and mandates for other scenarios, particularly for customers who are never late (you know, the ones who need that help the least… ah well…). It’s limited, but it is progress – and electorally, its potentially creating something that he hasn’t been able to create yet, as a freshman in the shadow of political giants Leahy and Sanders – an issue that gets all his constituent’s heads nodding in agreement, and that they they will come to associate with him specifically. Smart.

If successful, he should keep it going beyond Rep. Maloney’s ideas. As I was informed just the other day, Credit Card companies predation isn’t limited to cardholders, but to merchants as well. In many cases, business owners are charged a fee of a dollar or more when a customer’s card is rejected. It’s such practices that cause many small business that have to count every penny to quietly impose minimum charge amounts, even though such minimums are usually prohibited by their agreements with the companies. There’s a lot of hands-on governing needing to be done with this industry, both out of general principle and for the good of the economy as a whole, recession bound as we are.

Look, this is bread and butter liberalism; protecting the little guy from big corporations using the lack of regulation not to innovate, but to exploit – and the fact that it impacts small businesses is even better. It’s an issue virtually everybody in the middle and working classes can relate to, and sticking his shingle in the media-ready phrase “Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights” gives him a leg up with the casual or unengaged voter, whatever the actual merits of his initiative. It may not be high on many bloggers’ lists, but in an election year, this may be the savviest of Welch’s many attempts to stamp his imprimatur on an issue – and if he can get it picked up over the next few months by the Vermont media, it could do as much to scare off Skip Vallee, or whoever else the GOP faithful are hoping to take the plunge, as his war chest and its steady creep towards a cool million bucks.

(“Stunning?” Not so much, assuming the question labelled Galbraith as a Democrat. Thanks for posting this, homespun. – promoted by odum)

A recently released (and stunning) WCAX poll reveals that Peter Galbraith out-polls Anthony Pollina in the gubernatorial race, despite the fact that Mr. Galbraith has yet to officially enter the race. 

53 percent say they support Douglas– 22 percent would vote for Democrat Peter Galbraith– and 15 percent for Progressive Anthony Pollina. 10 percent are still unsure.

These numbers clearly refute Mr. Pollina’s suggestion that he is best positioned to challenge Governor Douglas this fall. The fact that Peter Galbraith leads Anthony Pollina, despite having yet to declare his candidacy (as Pollina has done), raise money (as Pollina has done), hold press conferences (as Pollina has done), place newspaper ads (as Pollina has done), or park an ugly vehicle promoting his campaign in parking reserved for state legislators (as Pollina has done), suggests that if the Vermont left is going to rally around a consensus candidate in an effort to unseat Jim Douglas, it had better not be Anthony Pollina.

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Perhaps one of the most under-reported stories of the decade is the deliberate, illegal destruction of White House and RNC-routed emails for a time period between 473 to over 1000 days. And you thought 17 minutes of missing tape in Nixon's office was a big deal? Of course, the real story isn't about how the National Archives is pressing forward to retrieve documents which should be legally recorded. The story is about the Mother Lode of criminal evidence against the White House regarding Iraq, the Wilson-Plame Leak Gate, and lord knows what else went on in the Rove-Cheney West Wing from January 2003 to August 2005.

Today's WaPo article, GOP Halts Efforts to Retrieve White House Emails, is almost as lost as the emails it reports on, buried somewhere deep in the Politics section under all of the Obama/Clinton drama.  It was visible first thing this morning, but by mid-day I had to find it again by searching “White House emails” on the WaPo site.

I guess the big news today really is about Roger Clemens, and not Steven McDevitt, former techie in the White House.  Richard Martin at Information Week pens: 

Taking a break from grilling pro baseball players, Congress on Tuesday held a hearing to try to get to the bottom of the growing scandal of the missing White House e-mail archives.

Fortunately, our man over at The Carpetbagger is covering the subject today.   You've got my vote for this year's “Best Political Blog” Daysie Award, Steve.

A PDF file copy of yesterday's Memorandum to the Oversight Committee is available, too.  ZDNet's Richard Koman provided the link in his article.

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Last spring when the word IMPEACH began to circulate widely in the grassroots and the press, it was the issue of missing emails that finally broke the camel's back for me.  A case for criminality in the Iraq War, in my opinion, could never be made conclusively, no matter how tragic it continues to be. 

But missing documents?  Documents withheld from legal inspection?  An invisibly managed Executive Branch?  Here we have clear cut violations of federal law.

And not enough political will or media interest to pursue it.

Nate

One of the reasons Clinton was doing well in earlier debates was that she was able to sort of jump in and take charge, and did some good push back against Wolf Blitzer’s stupid questions, making her look like a leader.

She could have done that last night, and blew it.  

Quite simply: when Russert started going after Obama about anti-Semitism and Farrakhan, etc., she could have stopped it.  She could have done the classy thing and said “you know, this is ridiculous.  Let’s debate actual issues, and not pull this sort of nonsense with one another.”

But that’s not what happened.

I made the mistake of, just for a moment, thinking that she was about to do that but, not so much so.  When she was given an opportunity to respond, she instead piled on, trying to draw an obscure lexical distinction.   Instead, this is what happened (including much of Russert’s original race-baiting questioning):

The very worst part of this is that Clinton seems to think she’s achieved a victory here.  At the end, when she’s smirking about it, she looks like she thinks she won because she got Obama to agree with here.

I was an Edwards supporter and when he dropped out, I was truly undecided.  Both candidates had done things to earn my respect, and both had presented issues of concern for me.  At this point, though, I think either one would make a decent president, and either one would be far better than McCain.

So for me, this boils down to two things:

• who’s got the better chance of winning in November;
• who is conducting their campaign in the fashion which I find to be the most ethical and moral.

Generally when faced with those two items, I an presented with a choice between two candidates, one of whom I would think of as being the most ethical and one of whom I think of as the most electable.  This happened in this cycle when I was stuck between Edwards (most ethical) and Obama or Clinton (more electable).  

I no longer have to concern myself with choosing between the two.  Obama has demonstrated himself to be conducting his campaign in a fashion which is civil, acceptable to me and appropriate, and he’s also doing so in a fashion which is clearly a winning strategy.  

I don’t mean this to pile on to Clinton.  I think, in a lot of ways, she’s run a very strong campaign and has done well despite a serious disadvantage in funding.  I think she is, overall, a good Senator and would make a great Secretary of State if the next President were inclined to offer it to her.

But she’s really lost this one, and this sort of petty squabbling over minor definitions makes her seem smaller than she is.  It makes her seem immature and vindictive.  It does not serve her, and it does not serve the country for her to pull this crap.

And really, that’s it for me: if she can’t figure out how to criticize a candidate who is generally liked and respected, without just attacking him, she’s not going to do any better against McCain.  Obama’s figured out how to respond to Clinton’s attacks with geniality and humor.  

It’s over.  It was mostly over before this debate, but last night sealed it.  Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont will just confirm it.  

And I really can’t see how her campaign doesn’t get that.

Try:

http://www.cleveland.com/live/…

Msnbc.com is not cutting it, or perhaps it’s Comcast.

Doggy

Too much stuff to write about today. Oy.

Progressivepunch.org is the brainchild of Joshua Grossman, an activist and green entrepeneur. It’s an attempt to build a database of “progressive” votes by category, and create ratings for the different members of Congress. It’s a great idea, and his system is worth a look. It’s clearly Grossman’s baby, so these are progressive priorities captured and weighted through a single set of eyes – and eyes that are somewhat unknown, at that. Still, it’s an expansively comprehensive database. The operation is a bit rough around the edges, as visually demonstrated by both his press releases and the funky-ish website, but he deserves alot of credit nonetheless.

It’s an interesting system he’s set up, and he’s clearly put it through some rigorous testing. The algorithm is based, not on an external progressive ideal, but by the limits of progressivism and conservatism within the legislative bodies themselves, making it like an issue group’s scorecard. Overall scores are contrasted against what he calls “chips are down” scores, described as “votes where either progressives lost or where the progressive victory was narrow and could have been changed by a small group of Democrats voting differently.”

Curious how he rates Vermont’s delegation? So was I… check the flip for the scoop…

Rep. Welch’s overall progressive score is quite good, a 97.03 – but interestingly, that puts him way down at 59th in the House rankings (surprisingly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is rated number 5 in this category at 98.78, right after Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.)

Welch’s “chips are down” value is a good chunk lower, at 87.66, but leaving him a bit higher on the list at a tie for 54th.

On the Senate side… brace yourselves Sanderistas…. Bernie is not number 1. Or number 2. Or 3, or 4. the godfather of Vermont’s Progressive Party comes in at number 10 with a score of 95.70 – trailing nearly 20% of the Democratic Party Senate caucus, falling between number 9 (Barbara Boxer) and number 11 (Patty Murray), with number 12 Patrick Leahy coming up next with an even 95 score.

And when the “chips are down,” our Senators each drop one ranking – Sanders to 11 and Leahy to 13 – with 93.37 and 92.22, respectively.

It’s truly an impressive piece of work – although a smidgin buggy – allowing users to break out the overall vote into thematic categories and look at more issue-specific ratings, all linked to the members’ voting records. I tell ya, it’s easy to get lost playing around with it. Do yourself a favor and check it out. I have little doubt that I’ll be referencing it frequently.

And if your curious (and you know you are)… Hillary Clinton comes in with an overall score of 91.42, putting her at number 27 on the list. Obama? Wayyyyy down at number 41 (after number 40, Chris Dodd) with a score of 83.64. The “chips are down” ranking are similar, with scores of 86.90 (number 27) and 76.87 (number 37) for Clinton and Obama respectively.

Ouch.

… and before you all leap to the tinfoil, I checked him out on opensecrets.org, and although he has given to a couple campaigns, he has not given to either Presidential campaign (or at least, not enough to trigger reporting).

Enjoy!

Iraq is front and center on a couple fronts today:

In Washington, Senators Leahy and Sanders are co-sponsors of the Feingold bill that would cut off funding in four months (well.. most funding.. There are exceptions for training of Iraqi troops and counterterrorism – Welch has supported companion legislation in the House).

The bill, surprisingly, was not squashed this afternoon, moving past a procedural roadblock 70-24. GOP leader McConnell’s green light likely means they’ll try to make a show to continue embarassing Dems when the vote comes up for real later in the week, but the more we talk about the War, the better, so McConnell isn’t doing himself any favors.  Stay tuned (but don’t hold your breath for passage).

In Vermont, From 5:30-7:30 this (Tuesday) evening, The Senate Economic Development, Housing and General Affairs Committee is hearing testimony on S.362, a bill that reins in “the constitutional and statutory authority of the President to federalize and deploy the Vermont National Guard in Iraq; declares that the authority for that deployment has terminated; requests that actions be taken to terminate federalization and bring troops back to Vermont as members of the Vermont national guard; and reaffirms that Vermont national guard members be limited to service on behalf of the state of Vermont, unless properly and lawfully called into federal service.” It is sponsored by much of the Senate Democratic leadership, and nearly half of the whole caucus.

To listen to the VPR stream, go to http://www.vpr.net/vpr_files/l…

(Note: Click on the “House” link, as they’re taking the testimony in the House Chamber)