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By summarily rejecting Montana's law banning corporate political spending, the Supreme Court has turned a blind eye to political corruption and the tsunami of special interest money flooding into this year's national elections, Common Cause said today.
"The Court's arrogant move - refusing to even grant a hearing on a Montana law that has served the state well for a century - underscores the need for quick action on a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and allow sensible restrictions on political spending," said Common Cause President Bob Edgar.
"The Court's majority has once again chosen ideology over common sense and left American voters defenseless against the forced sale of our elections to big corporations and billionaires," Edgar added.
The fight to save democracy now moves to the ballot box, with Montana on the front lines of a national populist rebellion. Common Cause and Free Speech for People have teamed up to launch "Stand With Montanans," a campaign for a ballot initiative that would let Montana voters instruct their members of Congress to support and vote for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, establish that corporations are not people, and authorize limits on political spending.
Similar "voter instruction" efforts are underway in Colorado, Salt Lake City, Massachusetts and other cities across the country. The campaign comes on the heels of passage of similar measures by four states and 288 cities and towns calling on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment.
"Putting Citizens United on the ballot in battleground states this fall gives voters a powerful way to make their voices heard now and puts presidential and congressional candidates on notice that Americans are fed up with Supreme Court rulings that have turned our elections into auctions," Edgar said.
Common Cause had hoped that a majority on the high court would grant a full hearing on the Montana law banning corporate political spending and a Montana Supreme Court decision upholding that law. Instead, the justices in a 5-4 vote refused to even set the case for argument, simply rubber-stamping their ruling in Citizens United without considering the facts about the impact of unlimited corporate spending on corruption and the ability of Americans to make their voices heard.
"Thanks to the Roberts Court, this year's campaigns for offices from the courthouse to the White House will be driven by hundreds of millions of dollars in negative political ads, financed by Super PACs and other supposedly 'independent' donors whose identities will remain mostly shielded from the voters," Edgar said. "But the winning candidates likely will know exactly where that money came from, and the people and companies providing it will come calling for legislation, government contracts and all manner of other favors in payment for their support."
In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer agreed. "Thus, Montana's experience, like considerable experience elsewhere since the Court's decision in Citizens United, casts grave doubt on the Court's supposition that independent expenditures do not corrupt or appear to do so," Breyer wrote.
Common Cause was among 14 national organizations that joined in a "friend of the court" brief filed by the Campaign Legal Center urging the justices to uphold the Montana law and reverse Citizens United.
Edgar said today's action strengthens the case that Common Cause and other organizations are making that, given the Court's current rigid stance, a constitutional amendment is needed to authorize campaign spending limits and declare that corporations do not enjoy the same rights as people when it comes to spending money in politics.
Legislatures in four states - Hawaii, California, New Mexico and Rhode Island - have passed resolutions supporting an amendment and the corporate political spending restrictions it would permit. Massachusetts and California are also considering it. In Montana, a campaign called "Stand with Montanans" is circulating petitions to put a measure on the November ballot that would allow that state's voters to instruct their representatives in Congress to support an amendment.
Common Cause has launched a national effort, Amend 2012, to encourage other states and localities to send similar instructions to their representatives. Voter instructions have been used repeatedly in American history to spur changes in the Constitution.
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to upholding the core values of American democracy. We work to create open, honest, and accountable government that serves the public interest; promote equal rights, opportunity, and representation for all; and empower all people to make their voices heard in the political process.
(202) 833-1200"Companies are making false claims and then they're convincing customers that they can fly guilt-free or buy carbon-neutral products when they aren't in any way carbon-neutral," one expert lamented.
For nine months, The Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial analyzed scientific studies of Verra, "the world's leading carbon standard" in a voluntary global offset market worth $2 billion annually and growing. Verra's customers include major multinational corporations, and the analysis' findings cast doubts over the carbon offset credits the companies buy in order to label their products as "carbon neutral" or assure customers that they can consume their products or services without worsening the climate emergency.
"The implications of this analysis are huge," said Barbara Haya, head of the Carbon Trading Project at the University of California, Berkeley. "Companies are making false claims and then they're convincing customers that they can fly guilt-free or buy carbon-neutral products when they aren't in any way carbon-neutral."
\u201cNEW: Forest carbon offsets approved by the world\u2019s leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and others are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, a new investigation finds.\n\nWith @hannahknuth , @herrfischer & @lukewbarratt \n\n\ud83d\udc47\ud83d\udc47\n\nhttps://t.co/KpKlXqzy0K\u201d— Patrick Greenfield (@Patrick Greenfield) 1674050676
According to The Guardian, key findings of the analysis include:
"I have worked as an auditor on these projects in the Brazilian Amazon and when I started this analysis, I wanted to know if we could trust their predictions about deforestation," Thales West, a lead author on the studies, told The Guardian. "The evidence from the analysis... suggests we cannot. I want this system to work to protect rainforests. For that to happen, we need to acknowledge the scale of problems with the current system."
Co-author Erin Sills said: "I'd like to find that conserving forests, which conserves biodiversity, and conserves local ecosystem services, also has a real effective impact on reducing climate change. If it doesn't, it's scary, because it's a little bit less hope for reducing climate change."
Verra responded to the outlets' analysis by saying the paper's claims are based on "methods that do not account for project-specific factors that cause deforestation."
"As a result, these studies massively miscalculate the impact of REDD+ projects," the organization added, referring to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP) framework "to guide activities in the forest sector that reduces emissions from deforestation and forest degradation."
\u201cThe blue lines show what happened in similar areas at the same time. Everybody is of course entitled to their own opinion. \n\nThe chart is from Thales West's study about carbon offset projects in Brazil, which we have used for further analysis https://t.co/daFSN9GgHr\u201d— Tin Fischer (@Tin Fischer) 1674063927
Die Zeit's Tin Fischer posted a pair of tweets pushing back against Verra's comments with a chart from one of West's studies.
One Scottish National Party leader accused the Tory government of "seeking to stoke a culture war against some of the most marginalized people in society."
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said late Tuesday that her government will "inevitably" challenge the United Kingdom in court after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative government vetoed a recently passed LGBTQ+ rights bill—a move that critics say will harm both the LGBTQ+ community and the state of democracy across the United Kingdom.
The bill would lower the age at which people can apply for a gender recognition certificate, allowing people as young as 16 to do so. People would no longer need to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria in order to apply for a certificate, and people 18 and up would have to live as their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth for only three months in order to be recognized. Sixteen- and 17-year-olds would need to live as their gender identity for six months. Currently, anyone who wishes to apply for a certificate is required to live as their gender for two years, in addition to being officially diagnosed.
Jack claimed the legislation would make fraudulent applications more likely—even though the bill would make lying about one's gender identity on an official application punishable by up to two years in prison. The claim led Stephen Flynn, parliamentary leader of the pro-independence Scottish National Party, to accuse Sunak's government of "seeking to stoke a culture war against some of the most marginalized people in society."
\u201c"Are we not now on a slippery slope from devolution to direct rule?"\n\nSNP leader Stephen Flynn accuses the Tories of "seeking to stoke a culture war" after blocking Scotland's Gender Recognition Reform bill.\u201d— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE) 1674048847
Sturgeon, who leads the SNP, told the BBC that the Tories have made a "profound mistake" and pledged to "vigorously defend this legislation."
"In doing so we will be vigorously defending something else, and that is the institution of the Scottish Parliament and the ability of MSPs, democratically elected, to legislate in areas of our competence," she said. "In short, we'll be defending Scottish democracy."
As The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, the Conservatives have previously taken a relatively liberal position on transgender rights, but the party appears to be fanning the flames of a culture war over the issue, like their Republican counterparts in the United States. Last year Sunak suggested the words "man," "woman," and "mother" are under attack and said he would fight against "woke nonsense."
"The U.K. government cannot be trusted with trans rights, women's rights, or with devolution," said Member of Scottish Parliament (MSP) Monica Lennon, a Labour Party member. "Justice will prevail."
\u201cThe Scottish Parliament passed the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill because trans people deserve to live with dignity.\n\nThe UK government cannot be trusted with trans rights, women\u2019s rights or with devolution. Justice will prevail.\u201d— Monica Lennon MSP (@Monica Lennon MSP) 1673988300
Jo Maugham, director of the Good Law Project in the U.K., called the Tories' decision a "nuclear option" and said the rejection of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill represents "a real deterioration in respect for the ability of people of Scotland to self-determine."
Fifteen rights organizations in Scotland signed a letter opposing the government's blocking of the bill, noting that while Conservatives claimed the legislation could endanger women and girls by making it easier for men to enter single-sex public bathrooms and changing rooms, "there are a number of very real threats to women's rights in Scotland and the U.K." that the Tories have made worse including austerity policies, the cost of living crisis, and low sexual assault conviction rates.
"We find it particularly concerning that so much political and media attention has been devoted to the debate around this bill in place of tackling these genuine barriers to women's equality," said the groups, including Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women's Aid, and Amnesty International. "The paths to equality for women and trans people [are] deeply interconnected and dependent on our shared efforts to dismantle patriarchal systems that impose barriers to full equality for us all."
"Opening a coal mine in a region that is already disproportionately affected by the climate crisis with floods increasing and unprecedented rainfall is complete madness," said one activist.
Climate activists with Extinction Rebellion on Wednesday gathered in canary costumes and doused a U.K. government building with black paint to protest the recent approval of the country's first new deep coal mine in three decades.
"As police hurried to block access to the doors, protesters lit smoke bombs," according toThe Guardian, which noted that the Tory government "is pressing ahead with moves to crack down on disruptive protests" by giving law enforcement new powers.
Michael Gove, the Conservative secretary of state at the Department for Leveling Up, Housing, and Communities, last month greenlighted the mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria. The coal will be extracted for steelmaking versus energy, and 85% of it is expected to be exported to mainland Europe.
"Where is the government's ambition to act on this climate and ecological emergency? How dare they even think of opening a coal mine now?"
"Opening a coal mine today means the U.K. can't argue that China and India should decrease their own coal emissions," declared Dorothea Hackman, a 70-year-old grandmother from Camden, in a statement from Extinction Rebellion (XR). "Whitehaven coal isn't even wanted by British steelworks, it's going to be exported, there is no argument for domestic production."
Gove's decision has been widely criticized by campaigners, scientists, and some politicians, due to estimated planet-heating emissions from mining and the coal. Climate groups have launched two legal challenges to the project.
"2022 saw record global greenhouse gas emissions, and record global temperatures," said Sarah Hart, a mother from Farnborough and one of the two XR protesters who laid down in front of the department office on Wednesday with one arm in a lock-on tube featuring the message "End Coal."
"Where is the government's ambition to act on this climate and ecological emergency? How dare they even think of opening a coal mine now?" she continued, blasting Gove's claims about the mine and demanding an end to all new fossil fuel projects.
Members of Extinction Rebellion protested coal mining at the U.K. Department for Leveling Up, Housing, and Communities in London on January 18, 2023. (Photo: Extinction Rebellion)
Wednesday's demonstration was part of XR's "Cut the Ties" actions, which launched in November at 13 sites across London and led to 17 arrests, according to the group. Hart highlighted at the time that "behind incomprehensible government decisions to double down on fossil fuel development, sign off new oil exploration licenses, and allow the big energy companies to rake in record profits, lies a network of companies and organizations that are profiting from this destructive path."
"While the rest of us worry about the cost of turning the heating on our government is prioritizing the profits of the very companies that are jeopardizing our climate and environment," Hart argued, adding that XR is "sending the message that it's time to cut the ties with fossil fuels or lose the social license to operate in the U.K."
The new action notably comes after Extinction Rebellion's U.K. arm announced at the beginning of the year that it will no longer use "public disruption as a primary tactic," explaining that "this year, we prioritize attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks, as we stand together and become impossible to ignore."
As part of that aim, XR is planning a nonviolent mass direct action for April 21. Because "100,000 is the number of signatories on a petition that gets a question raised in Parliament," the group hopes to bring together at least that many people in London "to demand a fair society and a citizen-led end to the fossil fuel era."
\u201cWE QUIT! \n\nOur #NewYearsResolution is to halt our tactics of public disruption. Instead, we call on everyone to help us disrupt our corrupt government.\n\n#ChooseYourFuture & join us: 21 April, Parliament.\u201d— Extinction Rebellion UK \ud83c\udf0d (@Extinction Rebellion UK \ud83c\udf0d) 1672531230
Marijn Van Der Geer of Extinction Rebellion U.K. said Wednesday that the group "wants a citizen-led transition away from fossil fuels via a citizens' assembly on climate and ecological justice."
"Providing unstable jobs in the coal sector during a climate crisis in a region where there are limited economic opportunities is not justice," Van Der Geer stressed. "Opening a coal mine in a region that is already disproportionately affected by the climate crisis with floods increasing and unprecedented rainfall is complete madness."
The BBCpoints out that "West Cumbria Mining, the firm behind the project, promised to create 500 direct jobs and 1,500 in the wider community," but "critics questioned those figures."
Due to rising sea levels, swaths of Cumbria could be underwater by 2040, according to an analysis published last year by Climate Central, which noted that "our maps are not based on physical storm and flood simulations and do not take into account factors such as erosion, future changes in the frequency or intensity of storms, inland flooding, or contributions from rainfall or rivers."