November, 06 2008, 03:02pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Who is Rahm Emanuel?
WASHINGTON
CHRISTINE CEGELIS
An IT professional in the Chicago area, Cegelis ran as the Democratic nominee for Congress against longtime incumbent Henry Hyde in 2004, winning an unexpected 44 percent of the vote. After Hyde announced he would be retiring, she attempted to run again in 2006, but Emanuel -- then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee -- backed a Democrat less critical of the Iraq war, Tammy Duckworth, who defeated Cegelis in the primary. Duckworth ended up losing in the general election.
Cegelis said today: "Emanuel has never backed off from his initial support of the invasion of Iraq; he says even knowing everything we know now, he'd still back it. I fear that slating Rahm Emanuel for chief of staff in a sense cancels out the message from Barack Obama that the Iraq war was something we should not have fought in the first place." See "Democratic House Officials Recruited Wealthy Conservatives."
ALI ABUNIMAH
Currently traveling and available for a limited number of interviews, Abunimah just wrote the piece "Obama picks pro-Israel hardliner for top post."
Abunimah is author of the book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
More Information
DAVID SWANSON
Swanson is co-founder of After Downing Street and Washington director of Democrats.com, which is not affiliated with the Democratic Party. He said today: "Reuters quoted Republican strategist John Feehery happily predicting that Emanuel 'is going to spend most of his time cracking Democratic heads, getting them to move from the left to the middle.' It's a reasonable prediction, because Emanuel has spent the past two years doing that on various issues, most notably Iraq. As chair of the DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] in 2006, Emanuel directed campaign funding overwhelmingly to the more pro-war Democratic candidates and recruited opponents to run against promising anti-war candidates like Christine Cegelis and Jerry McNerney.
"In January 2007, as chair of the Democratic Caucus when the 110th Congress took office with the clearest anti-war mandate in national history, Emanuel spoke to the Washington Post, which reported: 'Don't look to Emanuel's Democrats for solutions on Iraq. It's Bush's war, and as it splinters the structure of GOP power, the Democrats are waiting to pick up the pieces.' For two full years, 'Emanuel's Democrats' maintained that ending the war on Iraq would require passing legislation, when in truth they could have simply stopped funding it, a conclusion reached by a hearing chaired by Senator Russ Feingold. Their pretense that legislation was needed, allowed the Democrats to blame the war on Republican senators' filibuster power and presidential vetoes. Those excuse may be gone now, but my concern is what we've learned about Emanuel's priorities."
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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"We urge the commission to continue to focus on its vital work preserving market integrity and protecting the public, uphold the letter and spirit of the Dodd-Frank Act, and withdraw the proposed rule."
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A trio of Democratic U.S. senators on Monday wrote to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Rostin Behnam expressing their "serious reservations" with the agency's proposed rule on seeded funds and money market funds, a policy the lawmakers warned would "undermine the goals of Dodd-Frank" by rolling back the already weakened financial oversight law.
Passed in the wake of the 2008 global financial meltdown, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act—which was partially rolled back during the Trump administration—overhauled federal financial regulation. In a letter to Behnam, Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), and Tina Smith (Minn.) assert that the CFTC's proposed rule is a "step in the wrong direction" that would increase market instability by decreasing collateral requirements for certain transactions.
The Global Markets Advisory Committee, largely made up of finance industry insiders, recommended the proposed rule in 2020 during the Trump administration.
As the letter explains:
The proposed rule would reduce or eliminate initial margin requirements for up to three years for a subset of swap market participants. "Initial margin" is the collateral that participants must set aside when entering swap agreements. Initial margin requirements, along with "variation margin" and other capital requirements, protect counterparties to a swap in the event of a default. Dodd-Frank set up comprehensive rules for swap agreements after they significantly contributed to the 2008 financial crisis and the federal government was forced to bail out Wall Street.
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The collapse earlier this year of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank—both of which benefited from regulatory relief thanks to the 2018 rollback—brought renewed scrutiny on Dodd-Frank's Republican-engineered shortcomings. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who wrote the 2018 banking deregulation law, insisted in March that "there is no need for regulatory reform" in the wake of the banks' failures.
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Guterres stressed Monday that "what happens in Antarctica doesn't stay in Antarctica. We live in an interconnected world. Melting sea ice means rising seas. And that directly endangers lives and livelihoods in coastal communities across the globe. Floods and saltwater intrusion imperil crops and drinking water—threatening food and water security."
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"The cause of all this destruction is clear: the fossil fuel pollution coating the Earth and heating the planet," he stressed. "Without changing course, we're heading towards a calamitous 3°C temperature rise by the end of the century."
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More than 100 climate defenders were charged Monday in New South Wales, Australia after using kayaks or swimming to blockade the coal port at Newcastle—the world's largest—to demand an end to fossil fuels as petrostate United Arab Emirates prepares to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference later this week.
New South Wales police said 109 people were arrested after paddling kayaks or swimming into the shipping lane servicing coal cargo at the Port of Newcastle during a 30-hour protest on Saturday and Sunday. The arrested activists were all charged with operating a vessel so as to interfere with others' use of waters.
The climate action group Rising Tide Australia, which led the action, said it would keep holding protests until federal and state governments take meaningful climate action.
"That's the choice we are giving government, either do your job and take on the industry that's causing the crisis, or people will continue to put themselves in situations like this," Rising Tide spokesperson Zack Schofield toldABC Newcastle.
Among those arrested was 97-year-old church minister Alan Stuart, who toldSBS News that he engaged in civil disobedience "for my grandchildren and for future generations because I don't want to leave them with a world full of increasingly severe, frequent national disasters because of climate change."
Anjali Beames, an activist with the School Strike for Climate movement started in Sweden by Greta Thunberg, was also arrested.
"My future is getting sold by the fossil fuel industry for profit, and I'm not going to sit idly by while that happens, it's the Australian government's failure to act," Beames told SBS News.
"We know that the climate crisis is here and now, and if there's any hope of mitigating the consequences and saving people's lives, we have to stop new fossil fuel projects, and that includes new coal," she added.
The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) said several of the group's legal observers were arrested and charged along with the protesters. The group said its personnel "were easily identifiable by wearing pink high-visibility jackets with 'Legal Observers' written across the vest in large black letters."
NSWCCL president Lydia Shelly said that "the charges against the legal observers should be immediately withdrawn."
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New South Wales Premier Chris Minns of the center-left Labor Party dismissed the protesters' climate concerns, noting on Monday that "not only is the extraction and sale and export of minerals in NSW legal, it's our single biggest export."
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