June, 01 2022, 04:04pm EDT
In Ominous Sign for Country, Big Oil Attempts to Hijack Democracy in Central California County
Industry pours $8 million into brazen attempt to revoke common-sense environmental law
WASHINGTON
Big Oil is investing millions of dollars to overturn democracy in a small county on California's Central Coast. The matter will come to a head in a monumental but so-far largely ignored Ballot Measure vote on June 7.
This hyperlocal but nationally relevent fight is over Measures A and B, two ordinances passed by Ventura County's Board of Supervisors in 2020. Those measures aimed to close a loophole that allows oil and gas operators to drill new wells under the rules of antiquated permits that do not require the environmental reviews or safety measures that apply to new permits.
Within days of the Board of Supervisors' decision, Aera Energy - jointly owned and operated by Shell and ExxonMobil - contributed nearly $1.5 million to a new political action committee, Working Families for Jobs and Energy Independence, to fight the ordinances. The PAC gathered enough signatures to put the loophole closures back on the ballot in January 2021, essentially shutting down the Supervisors' regulations until the voters decide the issue.
Since then, Aera and other oil giants have flooded Ventura County with $8 million worth of advertisements, roadside signs and billboards. The Western States Petroleum Association has become the de facto mouthpiece for the oil industry's Ventura County campaign, framing the local election in international terms: Stop the Energy Shutdown.
That misleading narrative is bad enough, but the risk is that the industry money will constitute a democracy shutdown. As UC San Diego political scientist Thad Kousser put it, "Direct democracy, like our representative government, is...vulnerable. We have unequal access to the ballot right now. It's no longer the people's process."
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Green, Indigenous Groups Warns Arctic Still at Grave Drilling Risk When Trump Returns
"Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward," said one advocate.
Dec 09, 2024
Wildlife protection groups and Indigenous leaders in Alaska said Monday that they would push to discourage bidding in an oil and gas lease sale just announced by the U.S. Interior Department for part of the Arctc National Wildlife Refuge.
Under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which opened the refuge for oil and gas drilling, the Biden administration announced the second of two lease sales, set to be held on January 9, 2025.
The first Trump administration held the initial lease sale in 2021, but with banks and insurance companies increasingly reticent to back drilling projects in the area, it generated little interest and led to less than 1% of the projected sale revenue.
Releasing its final record of decision, the Interior Department said Monday that 400,000 acres of wilderness in the refuge's 1.6-million-acre northwest Coastal Plain would be put up for bidding at a minimum price of $30 per acre—despite vocal opposition from the Gwich'in Nation and the Iñupiat Alaska Natives.
The land supports local communities as well as porcupine caribou herds and polar bears.
"Our way of life, our food security, and our spiritual well-being is directly tied to the health of the caribou and the health of this irreplaceable landscape," Kristen Moreland, executive director of Gwich'in Steering Committee, toldBloomberg News. "Every oil company stayed away from the first lease sale, and we expect them to do the same during the second."
The record of decision concludes the Bureau of Land Management's process for developing a supplemental environmental impact statement, which was required after President-elect Donald Trump's first administration completed an analysis with "fundamental flaws and legal errors," as the Sierra Club said Monday.
Selling the drilling rights just before Trump takes office could complicate the GOP's plans to hold a more expansive sale later on, but Dan Ritzman, director of Sierra Club's Conservation Campaign, emphasized that regardless of who is in office when the sale takes place, "oil and gas development in the Arctic Refuge is a direct threat to some of the last untouched landscapes on Alaska's North Slope and to the caribou herds that the Gwich'in people rely on."
"The 2017 tax act, forced through Congress by Donald Trump and his Big Oil CEO allies, opened up the Coastal Plain to oil and gas leasing," said Ritzman. "Letting him oversee a lease sale over these pristine lands would be beyond irresponsible. In the meantime, President [Joe] Biden should listen to the Gwich'in and do all that he can to preserve these lands and waters. His legacy is on the line."
Erik Grafe, an attorney at environmental law firm Earthjustice, said the group is "committed to going to court as often as necessary to defend the Arctic Refuge from oil drilling and will work toward a more sustainable future that does not depend on ever-expanding oil extraction."
"Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is all risk with no reward," said Grafe. "Oil drilling would destroy this beautiful land, held sacred by Gwich'in people, and would further destabilize the global climate, but it offers zero benefit to taxpayers or consumers."
Defenders of Wildlife called on Congress to repeal the 2017 tax law's mandate for leasing sales in the "iconic American landscape" of the Arctic Refuge.
"Turning the coastal plain into an oilfield will obliterate the pristine wilderness of the Arctic Refuge," said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska senior program director for the group, "directly threatening the future of the Porcupine caribou herd and the physical, cultural, and spiritual existence of the Gwich'in people who depend on them."
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To Thwart Trump Killing Spree, Biden Urged to Commute Death Penalty Cases
The former president, warned a broad rights coalition, "executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined."
Dec 09, 2024
A large and diverse coalition of broad coalition of rights organizations on Monday sent a letter to U.S. President Biden Monday, urging him to commute the sentences of all 40 individuals who are on federal death row.
The letter adds to a chorus of voices—including prosecutors and law enforcement officials—advocating for Biden to use his clemency powers to issue such commutations before he departs office.
The calls for Biden to issue pardons and commutations have only grown since the president issued a pardon for his son, clearing Hunter Biden of wrongdoing in any federal crimes he committed or may have committed in the last 11 years.
The joint letter to Biden was backed by over 130 organizations, including the ACLU, Brennan Center for Justice, and The Sentencing Project, commends his administration's "actions to repudiate capital punishment, including imposing a moratorium on executions for those sentenced to death, and for publicly calling for an end to the use of the death penalty during your 2020 campaign. In the face of a second Trump administration, more is necessary."
"President Trump executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined. Of those he executed, over half were people of color: six Black men and one Native American. The only irreversible action you can take to prevent President-elect Trump from renewing his execution spree, as he has vowed to do, is commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row now," the letter states.
The letter cites additional reasons that Biden ought to commute the sentences, including that the death penalty "has been rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism."
A separate letter to Biden—sent in November by group of attorneys general, law enforcement officials, and others—argues that "condemning people to death by the state does not advance public safety. The death penalty fails as an effective deterrent and does not reduce crime. As an outdated, error-riddled, and racially-biased practice, its continued use—and the potential for its abuse—erodes public trust in the criminal legal system and undermines the legitimacy of the entire criminal legal system."
Matt Bruenig, president of the People's Policy Project think tank, directly tied Biden's inaction on this issue to the pardon he issued for his son in a blog post last week, writing that "if Biden does not act, there is little doubt that Trump will aggressively schedule executions in his next term. Their blood will primarily be on Trump's hands, but, if Biden does not act to prevent it, his hands will be bloody too."
The call for commutations for death row prisoners aligns with a wider push for the President to use his clemency powers before he leaves office.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who has been particularly vocal on this issue, said Sunday on social media that President Biden "must use his clemency power to change lives for the better. And we have some ideas on who he can target: Folks in custody with unjustified sentencing disparities, the elderly and chronically ill, people on death row, women punished for crimes of their abusers, and more."
Pressley was one of over 60 members of Congress who sent a letter to Biden last month, encouraging Biden to intervene to help these groups.
Several lawmakers have specific pardons or commutations in mind, according to Axios. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has urged Biden to pardon Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has called for a pardon of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, per Axios.
So far, Biden has granted far fewer clemency petitions (161 total) than former President Barrack Obama, according to the Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney, and a few dozen less than President-elect Trump did during his entire first presidency. However, in 2022, Biden did grant full and unconditional pardons to all U.S. citizens convicted of simple federal marijuana possession—a move that was cheered by advocates.
According to The New York Times, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that Biden was expected to make more clemency announcements "at the end of his term."
"He's thinking through that process very thoroughly," she said.
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62% of Americans Agree US Government Should Ensure Everyone Has Health Coverage
The new poll shows the highest level of support in a decade for the government ensuring all Americans have healthcare.
Dec 09, 2024
Public sentiment regarding the nation's for-profit healthcare system—an outlier among wealthy nations—has dominated the national news in recent days following last week's killing of an insurance executive in New York.
On Monday, just hours before a suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was arrested by police, a new Gallup poll found a 62% majority in the U.S. believe the government should ensure all Americans have healthcare coverage—the highest percentage in more than a decade.
Just 42% of people in 2013 believed it was the government's responsibility to make sure everyone in the country had health coverage—a low since the beginning of this century.
The poll found that a majority of Republicans still believe ensuring health coverage is not the government's job, but the majority has shrunk since 2020.
That year, only 22% of Republican voters believed the government should ensure everyone in the country has healthcare, but that number has now grown to 32%.
The percentage of Independents who think the issue is in the government's purview has also gone up by six points since 2020, and Democratic support remains high, currently at 90%.
Americans have vented their frustrations about the current for-profit health insurance system in recent days as police searched for a suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, before arresting Luigi Mangione in Pennsylvania on Monday. Mangione, according to claims by police, was found with a manifesto that railed against the insurance industry.
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield last week also faced public outcry and was forced to reverse a decision to slash coverage for anesthesia care, with U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) saying the move indicated that "the current system is broken."
"Democrats will regain trust by standing up to special interest insurance companies and fighting for Medicare for All," he said.
President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans, who are set to control both chambers of Congress starting in January, have indicated that they would go in the opposite direction, working to weaken the popular, government-run Medicare program by promoting Medicare Advantage, which is administered by for-profit companies like United and is already used by half of Medicare beneficiaries.
But one of Trump's top allies, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, waded into the debate last week about the current healthcare system, questioning why the U.S. pays far more in administrative healthcare costs than other wealthy countries and suggesting Americans don't "get their money's worth."
Another poll released last Friday found Americans' positive opinion of the nation's healthcare quality has declined to its lowest point since 2001, with most agreeing the U.S. system dominated by private insurers has "major problems."
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