January, 12 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Coalition Urges White House, Senate to Restore FEC Quorum with Commissioners Committed to Enforcing Anti-Corruption Laws
Groups caution against nominating FEC Commissioners who would use position to prevent enforcement
WASHINGTON
Today, a coalition of good-government groups sent a letter calling on the President and U.S. Senate to restore the Federal Election Commission (FEC) voting quorum - but countering a call from private attorneys to confirm a "full slate" of six new FEC commissioners who would continue the FEC's longstanding dysfunction. The letter from Campaign Legal Center (CLC), Public Citizen, Common Cause, Democracy 21, CREW, and 16 other organizations and individuals describes how the FEC's problems preceded its recent absence of a quorum, resulting in an explosion of secret spending that has increasingly rigged our political system in favor of wealthy special interests. The letter urges the President and U.S. Senate "not to respond to the FEC's lack of a quorum by nominating or confirming any FEC commissioner who would use that position to prevent enforcement of the law," and notes that confirming commissioners opposed to election transparency "would hinder enforcement, not enable it."
"To stop the explosion of secret election spending by wealthy special interests, the practice of nominating FEC Commissioners who carry water for those interests must end," said Adav Noti, senior director and chief of staff at CLC, and former Associate General Counsel of the FEC. "The failure of the FEC is one of the best-kept secrets in Washington, and one of the most shameful. To ensure the 2020 elections are transparent and fair, the President and Senate must prioritize restoration of the FEC's quorum, but that is no excuse to re-stock the FEC with yet another crop of commissioners who oppose campaign finance reform."
"It is imperative to get the campaign finance cop back on the beat as this nation enters what promises to be the most expensive election in history, said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen. "But it is just as important that we get a functional campaign finance cop on the beat. The FEC has long been rendered incapable of performing its mission by the appointment of commissioners opposed to the campaign finance laws. Immediately restore a quorum on the FEC, and then make the appointment of additional commissioners impartial and nonpartisan."
"It is beyond belief that in this presidential year of enormous consequence, the nation's campaign finance enforcement agency is defunct because it does not have enough commissioners for a quorum to take action to enforce the laws," said Fred Wertheimer, founder and president of Democracy 21. "Responsibility for this indefensible state of affairs rests with two people: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who never met a campaign finance law he likes and who is stonewalling the appointment of the commissioners needed for the quorum necessary to act, and President Trump, who is taking his cues from McConnell and not sending any nominations to the Senate. The American people are owed serious enforcement of the nation's campaign finance laws which have been enacted to prevent corruption. If McConnell and Trump continue to keep the FEC moribund, they will be the principal enablers of the criminal activity and corrupt practices that are likely to occur this year."
"As we race headlong into what will undoubtedly be the most expensive election in our nation's history, the American people deserve a functioning regulator willing to enforce and administer our federal campaign finance laws," said Beth Rotman, director, money in politics & ethics program at Common Cause. "It would be reckless and irresponsible to leave the FEC without a quorum to act when Russia and other hostile foreign powers are working to sway our elections and record amounts of money will be flowing not only into congressional and presidential campaign coffers but also to outside groups including super PACs and dark money organizations. We cannot afford to play Russian roulette with our democracy, a quorum willing to enforce the law must be appointed and confirmed at the FEC."
"Now is the time for Democratic and Republican lawmakers to put aside their political differences, and move forward with the FEC commissioner nominating process," said Noah Bookbinder, executive director CREW. "By shirking their responsibility to nominate and confirm FEC commissioners, the President and the Senate are allowing for campaign finance violations to continue unchecked, and for corrupt politicians and organizations to abuse the laws and system designed to ensure fair elections. Quick nomination and confirmation of commissioners committed to the campaign finance law enforcement mission of the FEC will help us start to get back on track."
The FEC currently lacks the authority to pass rules, issue formal guidance to candidates, or punish lawbreakers. But the agency's problems preceded its recent absence of a quorum. Those problems stem largely from the historical practice of nominating and confirming commissioners who are ideologically opposed to the mission of the agency and who intentionally leverage its structural deficiencies to undermine the laws it is charged with enforcing. Increasingly over the last decade, the FEC's law-enforcement activity has been gutted frequently by deadlock on critical enforcement matters. The FEC's own enforcement statistics show that of the enforcement matters the commissioners consider in their official meetings, a majority (approximately 50.6% since 2012) have at least one deadlock and fail to reach the four affirmative votes necessary to pursue the matter.
Voters have an overwhelmingly negative view of the campaign finance system, as they believe it is corrupt, filled with loopholes and rigged in favor of the wealthy, corporations and special interests. Recent polling released by CLC indicates 71% of voters want the FEC to take a more active role in enforcing campaign finance laws.
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Nearly All 600,000 Kids in Rafah 'Injured, Sick, Malnourished,' Says UNICEF
A full-scale Israeli assault on the crowded southern Gaza city "would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children."
May 02, 2024
"The children in Gaza need a cease-fire."
That's how Catherine Russell, executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), concluded a brief video Wednesday about the harrowing conditions across the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, where about 1.5 million of the besieged enclave's 2.3 million residents have sought refuge from Israel's devastating assault.
The video was released nearly seven months into Israel's retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack—which has killed at least 34,596 Palestinians in Gaza, wounded another 77,816, and left thousands more missing—and as a full-scale Israeli assault of Rafah looms.
The war has already taken "an unimaginable toll," and a major military operation against the crowded southern Gaza city "would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children," Russell warned. "Nearly all of the some 600,000 children now crammed into Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities."
"Many have been displaced multiple times and lost homes, parents, and loved ones," the UNICEF chief noted. "There is nowhere safe to go in Gaza. Homes throughout the Gaza Strip lie in ruin. Roads are destroyed and the ground littered with unexploded ordnances."
"Rafah is also the main hub for the humanitarian response, which includes UNICEF, and the city has some of the last functioning healthcare facilities," she explained.
Israeli forces launched at least 435 attacks on health facilities or personnel during the first six months of the war, and just 10 of the enclave's 36 hospitals remain partially functional, according to the World Health Organization. As Common Dreamsreported Wednesday, thousands of Palestinian child amputees are struggling to recover due to the destruction of Gaza's healthcare system.
"UNICEF continues to call for the protection of all women and children in Rafah and throughout the Gaza Strip—and the protection of the infrastructure, services, and humanitarian aid they rely on," said Russell. "We repeat our calls for the unconditional release of all hostages in Gaza who need to be home with their children and families. The violence must end."
The agency's five core demands for Gaza are:
- An immediate and long-lasting humanitarian cease-fire;
- Safe and unrestricted humanitarian access;
- The immediate, safe, and unconditional release of all abducted children, and an end to any grave violations against all children;
- Respect and protection for civilian infrastructure; and
- Allow patients with urgent medical cases to safely access critical health services or leave.
As Russell called for peace in video form, James Elder, UNICEF's global spokesperson, penned a Wednesday opinion piece for The Guardian following his recent trips to Gaza. He began with a startling anecdote:
The war against Gaza's children is forcing many to close their eyes. Nine-year-old Mohamed's eyes were forced shut, first by the bandages that covered a gaping hole in the back of his head, and second by the coma caused by the blast that hit his family home. He is nine. Sorry, he was nine. Mohamed is now dead.
"From looming famine to soaring death tolls, the latest fear is the much-threatened offensive in Rafah in southern Gaza," he wrote. "Can it get any worse? It always seems to."
"Rafah will implode if it is targeted militarily," Elder stressed. "Water is in desperately short supply, not just for drinking but sanitation. In Rafah there is approximately one toilet for every 850 people. The situation is four times worse for showers. That is, around one shower for every 3,500 people. Try to imagine, as a teenage girl, or elderly man, or pregnant woman, queueing for an entire day just to have a shower."
On October 31, just weeks after the start of what the International Court of Justice has since determined is Israel's plausibly genocidal assault, UNICEF called Gaza a "graveyard" for children.
"Can it get any worse? It always seems to."
"Last month I saw new graveyards in Rafah being constructed. And filled," wrote Elder. "Every day the war brings more violent death and destruction. In my 20 years with the United Nations, I have never seen devastation like that I saw in the Gaza Strip cities of Khan Younis and Gaza City. And now we are told to expect the same via an incursion in Rafah."
Elder recalled that "in the north of the territory, close to where a UNICEF vehicle came under fire last month, a woman clutched my hand and pleaded, over and over, that the world send food, water, and medicine. I will never forget how, as I felt her grasp, I tried to explain we were trying, and she continued to plead."
"Why? Because she assumed the world did not know what was happening in Gaza. Because if the world knew, how could they possibly let this happen?" he continued. "How, indeed. The world has certainly been warned about Rafah. It remains to be seen how many eyes stay, or are forced, shut."
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Biden Condemned for Ahistorical and 'Politically Suicidal' Attack on Campus Protests
"Biden's claim that 'dissent must never lead to disorder' defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice."
May 02, 2024
President Joe Biden faced immediate backlash Thursday for characterizing pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have erupted on university campuses across the country as lawless and violent, a narrative likely to further alienate the thousands of students who have joined peaceful protests against Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza in recent weeks.
In brief, unscheduled remarks delivered from the White House, Biden acknowledged that "peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues."
But he then proceeded to cast recent campus demonstrations as abhorrent, using instances of property damage to broadly paint student protesters as out of control—giving a pass to police forces and pro-Israel mobs that have brutally attacked peaceful encampments.
Biden, who has armed Israel's military to the hilt, also conflated trespassing and disruptions of day-to-day campus activities—including classes and graduations—with violence, saying, "None of this is a peaceful protest."
"Dissent must never lead to disorder," the president said, ignoring the long history of disruptive civil rights and anti-war protests in the U.S. "There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos."
Watch Biden's remarks in full:
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a civil rights attorney and national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Thursday that "President Biden's claim that 'dissent must never lead to disorder' defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice."
"And if President Biden is truly concerned about the conflict on college campuses, he should specifically condemn law enforcement and pro-Israel mobs for attacking students, and stop enabling the genocide in Gaza that has triggered the protests," Mitchell added.
Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wrote following the president's remarks that "the best speech of Biden's campaign was in June 2020, amid the nationwide protests against the murder of George Floyd."
"He could've given a very similar speech today, if only he thought the same rights and principles applied to Palestinians," Duss added. "In June 2020, Biden criticized violence but also refused to paint the protests with that broad brush. He acknowledged the root causes, the pain driving them. He could've made some effort to do the same today, instead he chose to amplify a right-wing caricature."
Countering suggestions that criticism of Biden could harm his reelection chances against former President Donald Trump, Duss pointed to an old social media post in which he explained: "One of my concerns here is that Biden is undermining his re-election. In addition to being morally and strategically awful, I think his Gaza policy is alienating and demobilizing constituencies he will need."
At the end of his speech, a reporter asked Biden whether the mass demonstrations on college campuses have led him to reconsider his approach to Israel's assault on Gaza, which to date has been unconditionally supportive even in the face of horrific Israeli war crimes.
"No," Biden said in response to the reporter's question.
"Apparently Biden is not swayed by the mass killing of children, international law, or an election as a growing number of Americans are appalled by his policies," Assal Rad, an author and Middle East analyst, wrote in reply to the president.
Biden to young people: go fuck yourselves, I’m sticking with Israel and its genocide.
Absolutely surreal, sad, politically suicidal, grotesque. https://t.co/96RIQE2ZO5
— Daniel Denvir (@DanielDenvir) May 2, 2024
Justice Democrats called Biden's speech "shameful," writing that "as campuses have unleashed police on students—he blames protesters as the problem and ignores the violence they've faced."
"If dissent was crucial to our democracy," the progressive group added, "you would spend more time listening to their demands than lying about their tactics."
Biden's address came hours after Los Angeles police launched a violent attack on pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA, where a pro-Israel mob brutally assaulted student protesters just a day earlier.
In a statement earlier this week, College Democrats of America endorsed the Gaza solidarity protests that have swept the nation and warned Democratic leaders that each day they "fail to stand united for a permanent cease-fire, two-state solution, and recognition of a Palestinian state, more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party."
"We condemn those politicians, like MAGA Republicans and many other lawmakers, for smearing all protesters as hateful when, according to reports, the overwhelming majority of protests are peaceful," said the College Democrats.
In a floor speech on Wednesday, Sanders called out his colleagues who "are spending their time attacking the protesters rather than the Netanyahu government, which has caused and has created this horrific situation."
Sanders noted that the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) "was arrested 45 times for sit-ins and protests, 45 times for protesting segregation and racism."
"Protesting injustice and expressing our opinions is part of our American tradition," said the Vermont senator. "And when you talk about America being a free country, well, you know what, whether you like it or not, the right to protest is what American freedom is all about."
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Fossil Fuel Companies Use Enclosures to Hide Planet-Heating Methane Flares
"If you enclose the flare, people don't see it, so they don't complain about it," said one expert. "But it also means it's not visible from space by most of the methods used to track flare volume."
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Fossil fuel companies are using a technology known as enclosed flaring to conceal dangerous methane emitted during the production of fossil gas, a report published Thursday revealed.
The Guardian's Tom Brown and Christina Last reported that fossil fuel producers in countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway "appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions, and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas."
As the World Bank, European Union, and others have been using satellites to track flaring—the burning of unwanted fossil gas—in an effort to reduce the harmful practice, fossil fuel producers have been adopting enclosed combustion technology to eliminate unwanted methane.
While the industry promotes enclosed combustors as a clean, safe, and efficient solution for eliminating unwanted emissions and ensuring regulatory compliance, critics claim they're a way for gas producers to conceal flaring—which releases five times more methane than previously believed, as Common Dreamsreported in 2022.
"Enclosed combustors are basically a flare with an internal flare tip that you don't see."
"Enclosed combustors are basically a flare with an internal flare tip that you don't see," Tim Doty, a former regulator at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, told The Guardian. "Enclosed flaring is still flaring. It's just different infrastructure that they're allowing."
"Enclosed flaring is, in truth, probably less efficient than a typical flare," Doty added. "It's better than venting, but going from a flare to an enclosed flare... is not an improvement in reducing emissions."
Eric Kort, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, told The Guardianthat "if you enclose the flare, people don't see it, so they don't complain about it."
"But it also means it's not visible from space by most of the methods used to track flare volumes," he added.
According to a March 2023 report published by the World Bank and Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership, an estimated 140 billion cubic meters of gas was flared globally in 2022, a 3% decrease from the previous year. The top 10 countries by flare volume that year were Russia, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Venezuela, the United States, Mexico, Libya, Nigeria, and China.
Flaring releases carbon dioxide and toxic pollutants including carcinogenic chemicals. Despite these dangers, energy and environmental regulators allow the venting of fossil gas, which is up to 90% methane, into the atmosphere.
Methane—which has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere—is emitted during the production and transportation of oil, gas, and coal, as well as from municipal landfills and livestock.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) published a report last October warning that immediate cuts to methane gas pollution caused by fossil fuel production are critical for limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C, the more ambitious objective of the Paris agreement.
The need is urgent. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the three most critical heat-trapping gases in Earth's atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—once again reached record levels last year, with methane increasing by 10 parts per billion to 1,922.6 ppb.
Responding to The Guardian's reporting, U.K. Green parliamentary candidate Catherine Read said that "oil and gas companies are hiding their 'flaring' operations because laws are being brought in to reduce emissions of [greenhouse gases] from waste gas that can't be sold at a profit."
"They don't care about us, our children, or nature," she added, "only profit above all else."
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