Just when you thought the economy had hit rock bottom. The Conference Board, a non-profit global business organization has reported that its consumer confidence index has dropped to its lowest point since the last recession in 1992. The New York Times paints the grim picture:
Tuesday’s data suggested a nation struggling with expensive gas and devalued homes, where people are fearful for their jobs and wary about where the economy is headed.
Any positive signs that economists and forecasters may have cited need to be thrown out the window. Even with the consumer confidence index at 50.4%, down a whopping 7.7% from May, the worst may still be yet to come. This report should be a wake up call to legislators across the country on behalf of a nation in desperate need of more help.
As the economy worsens, more and more key players are getting on board with the idea of a second economic recovery package. But not everyone’s where we need them to be to get something done in time to matter. For example Rep. David Obey (D-WI), powerful chairman of the Appropriations Committee free associated to Congress Daily (subscription only) and revealed that he doesn’t quite get how urgent doing something to stave off this recession is:
“People use all kinds of terminology; I don’t care if you call it a second supplemental or a second economic [stimulus] package — to me there are all kinds of things that we need domestically — but we need finish this job [war supplemental] before we can start thinking about the next one”
This pains me. Not only are House Democrats punting on telecom immunity, they’re putting war spending ahead of domestic spending.
Bush’s first economic stimulus package just didn’t work. We didn’t get the big sweeping surge of economic growth we were promised. Even what good news we’ve gotten was drowned out by a chorus of story after story of bad economic news. The costs of living are growing rapidly as employment becomes harder to find. Food is getting more expensive as food bank lines grow longer. The longer Congress waits to act, the worse things will get.
And the states can’t wait for the aid that Democratic leaders say must be included in a second stimulus package either. State spending is the last prop holding up the economy and is at a tipping point. More than half of the states are facing crippling budget shortfalls that total $48 billion for the upcoming fiscal year. In the absence of aid from the federal government, states have been forced to cut vital services for many of our most vulnerable citiznes. The Center on Budget and Policy Prioritiesgives outlines the chopping block:
At least 12 states have implemented or are considering cuts that will affect low-income children’s or families’ eligibility for health insurance or reduce their access to health care services.
At least 10 states are cutting or proposing to cut K-12 education; three of them are proposing cuts that would affect access to child care.
At least 11 states have proposed or implemented reductions their state workforce. Workforce reductions often result in reduced access to services residents need.
And when states are forced to do things like cut their state workforce, the economy suffers even more. According to CNN/Money:
With falling revenue from sales and income taxes, and property-tax declines looming, states, cities and towns have already laid off tens of thousands of government employees. Many expect more job cuts ahead as public officials struggle to balance their budgets.
Economists say that cutbacks in jobs and spending by local governments could be a major drag on the overall economy.
It’s cool that Obey recognizes the need for a second stimulus package. But he also needs to understand that each day he lets pass without doing something means the economic hole we’re in is that much deeper and is going to require that much more federal spending to help us get out of.
I guess this was in the Huffington Post a couple months ago, but I had missed it. Today the New York Times brings the news about a group of satirists in San Francisco with an inspired idea and a dream:
From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.
The plan, naturally hatched in a bar, would place a vote on the November ballot to provide “an appropriate honor for a truly unique president.”
Supporters say that they have plenty of signatures to qualify the initiative and that the renaming would fit in a long and proud American tradition of poking political figures in the eye.
There’s really no more fitting honor for America’s worst President. I would fund this initiative.
Kos has an important post on 2010 marking a pivot for the grassroots and netroots from trying to take back the federal government from Republicans to reforming our Party and holding Democrats accountable.
If your local congresscritter is one of the bad apples, start organizing locally. Plug into existing networks or start your own. Begin looking for primary challengers. Do the groundwork. Don’t expect help from the local party establishment, they’ll close ranks. So tap into alternate infrastructures. Find allies in the progressive movement. If your local shitty Democrat is anti-union, approach the unions. They’d love to send this kind of message. If the Democrat is anti-choice, work with the women’s groups. If the Democrat is anti-environment … you get the idea. If you have access to professional networks and money, start organizing those.
Of course, this takes more than just bitching about your frustrations on a blog, damning a whole party for the actions of a minority more scared of Mr. 28% than of protecting the Constitution they swore to protect. This takes hard work. But now is the time to start.
Indeed. The activists that meet campaigning this fall will form the core of next cycle’s primary efforts. Kos suggests looking at The Capitulation Caucus with emphasis on those who are also Blue Dogs. In California, that means:
Joe Baca, Dennis Cardoza, Jim Costa, Jane Harman, and Adam Schiff
Kos also praises Loretta Sanchez as one of only four Blue Dogs who didn’t cave on defending the Constitution from retroactive immunity. And remember, Ellen Tauscher was a member of the Blue Dogs until she saw the successful primarying of Joe Lieberman and occupies a district designed for a challenge from the left (and west).
California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today sued Countrywide Financial, its chief executive Angelo Mozilo, and president David Sambol, for engaging in deceptive advertising and unfair competition by pushing homeowners into mass-produced, risky loans for the sole purpose of reselling the mortgages on the secondary market.
“Countrywide exploited the American dream of homeownership and then sold its mortgages for huge profits on the secondary market,” Attorney General Brown said. “The company sold ever-increasing numbers of complex and risky home loans, as quickly as possible. Countrywide was, in essence, a mass-production loan factory, producing ever-increasing streams of debt without regard for borrowers. Today’s lawsuit seeks relief for Californians who were ripped off by Countrywide’s deceptive scheme.”
It is certainly true that lenders like Countrywide had to feed the beast of mortgage-backed securities, which investors were gobbling up at the height of the housing boom. They absolutely valued getting a mortgage into the secondary market over securing a mortgage that the buyer could actually pay back. The question is the level of criminality here. Atrios, an economist who’s been following “Big Shitpile” for quite a while, isn’t fully convinced:
We do know that at some point the product that mortgage companies were selling essentially flipped. They went from providing mortgages to people, to providing bundled mortgage securities to Wall Street. While it’s quite possible that there was actual fraud going on with respect to mortgage borrowers, the greater fraud might have been perpetrated against the investors which eagerly bought up their chunks of big shitpile. Obviously I sympathize less with the latter who are paid big money to, you know, have some idea what they’re doing.
Tanta at Calculated Risk is similarly unimpressed with a similar lawsuit out of Illinois, saying that it it trying to sue over established industry practice.
Volume-based compensation structures? There have been volume-based compensation structures in this business since long before Tanta got into it. Does it create perverse incentives? Sure. Do we have to like it? No. Has it operated all these years in plain sight of regulators, investors, and the public? Yes. Is CFC’s pay structure all that different from anyone else’s? I profoundly doubt it.
And if anyone who has ever underwritten a loan in 30 minutes has to go to jail, the jails will be full indeed. I wonder if they’ll let me take my new Kindle. Jesus H. Christ on a Process Re-engineering Consultant Binge, folks, anybody who didn’t tell the analysts on the conference calls that they’d got their average underwriting time down to 30 minutes was Nobody back in 2000. Not to mention the AUS side of the business where underwriting had gotten down to 30 seconds.
The problem with Countrywide valuing volume over quality is that they appear not to have to pay the price for that. In a traditional system, Countrywide getting stuck with a lot of bad loans would hurt them, creating a disincentive. Now, they’re passing on that pain to investors, and the feds are swooping in to bail the financial institutions out anyway, so it’s guilt-free. I don’t know that the remedy here is a lawsuit, other than allowing the market to punish bad actors, something we never do in this country, because for decades we have socialized risk and privatized profits.
Yesterday, the Assembly Public Safety Committee, save Asm. Mark Leno, overwhelmingly voted down SB 1019, Sen. Gloria Romero’s measure to make police misconduct records public. Here is the logic direct from the police union:
Tim Sands, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, told the committee that the court ruling recognizes that the city and the Police Department have evolved since the old access rules were enacted decades ago.
“They (the state Supreme Court) realized there was no Internet 30 years ago,” Sands said. “There weren’t Web sites where you could get massive amounts of information on individuals.” (SD U-T 6/25/08)
So, it was ok to make the information public when it was, in fact, inaccessible, but now that it is accessible, it can’t be public. Strange logic there. Information is power these days, and privacy is an important matter. So, we are viewing competing interests here: the privacy of police officers versus the trust and reputation of those same police officers.
Solorio, for his part, promised to find some “middle ground”, but Romero, and Leno in a previous bill, have worked extensively to try to bring some sunshine to the police departments of the state. SB 1019 was approved by a bipartisan majority in the Senate, and represented the “middle ground.” SB 1019 allowed for the protection of privacy when necessary.
Here’s hoping that some sort of legislation can get passed soon.
Well, John W. McCain had a great couple of days in the Golden State. First he went to Santa Barbara, site of a huge 1969 oil spill, to promote his plan to cancel the moratorium on offshore drilling, and he ran into an expert who rebutted his entire premise.
Feeney also took issue with McCain’s controversial proposal to lift the moratorium on offshore oil exploration: “It makes me nervous to think about those who are proposing to drain America’s offshore oil and gas reserves as quickly as possible in the hopes of driving down the price of gasoline, because I think when you look at the good sources of information, were we to open up the California coast or the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, it would be 12, 15, maybe 20 years before those resources came online and got to full productions.”
Adding that some research shows that drilling in ANWR would only “reduce our dependence on foreign oil from 70% to 67%,” Feeney added, “I’m not sure most Americans would think that’s really worth the price of admission.”
That Charlie Black comment wasn’t McCain’s only off-message moment yesterday. At a town hall in Fresno, CA, McCain admitted that the offshore drilling proposal he unveiled last week would probably have mostly “psychological” benefits, NBC/NJ’s Adam Aigner-Treworgy notes. “Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial.” Uh oh.
Later, at a fundraiser, an attendee very nicely called him an idiot:
“We’re really kind of goosey here about oil spills, and we’re goosey here about federal drilling and oil lands, which are abundant offshore,” the attendee said. “So we ask you to look out there to the south and the southeast and remember the greatest environmental catastrophe that’s hit this state and then balance that with the notion of winning California.”
I also want to make sure that we will take concrete steps towards eliminating our dependence on foreign oil.
And I am confident that uh, the, the conflicts that we are in in both Iraq and Afghanistan have also a bearing on that.
(Incidentally, is there anyone in America who doesn’t know this? We’ve been going to war for oil since oil became profitable. Before that the world used a lot of whale oil, and if we still did America would be at war with Sea World.)
Thanks for coming, Big John! Please stop by again sometime and further ruin your candidacy!
Monterey County still hasn’t yet finished its final tally of votes from the June primary election, but from the returns it has so far, and the results from the other four counties in SD-15, the Monterey Herald is reporting that Dennis Morris’ write-in campaign will fall short of the 3,689 votes needed to qualify for the November ballot as the Democratic nominee.
Abel Maldonado, the Republican incumbent, used a loophole in state law to file as a write-in candidate to block Morris and appears to have been successful in doing so, although he didn’t get enough votes to win the Democratic nomination either:
A check by The Herald on Tuesday showed the following county-by-county tallies in the write-in race: San Luis Obispo County, Morris, 1,239-Maldonado, 485; Santa Cruz County, Morris, 188-Maldonado, 117; and Santa Barbara County, Morris, 51-Maldonado, 54…
Monterey County elections chief Linda Tulett said her office is about halfway done processing ballots with possible write-in votes. But many of them don’t have votes for valid write-in candidates, she said, so the total count will be well below the 1,200 raw ballots.
“It’s very difficult for a write-in candidate to get on the next ballot,” she said.
Maldonado’s sleazy aide Brandon Gesicki is already claiming victory, though Morris is refusing to concede. But the numbers do not look good for Morris. Gesicki claims that in Santa Clara County Maldonado has a 53-37 lead, and even if that isn’t accurate, it is clear that there aren’t enough write-in votes to even potentially give Morris a victory.
The author of this failure, Don Perata, is leaving his leadership post on August 21, which cannot come quickly enough. But Democrats need to remember the lesson. It is unconscionable to leave a seat uncontested, especially a seat where there’s a Democratic registration majority, especially when it is one of the keys to getting a 2/3 majority in the legislature.
Dems have been playing “let’s make a deal” with Republicans for a long time now, and hopefully they’re starting to realize how those deals work: Republicans demand, and Dems give in. If Democrats are to advance their agenda and finally solve this ongoing budget crisis they will need a 2/3 majority to do it. Democrats need to make that a priority, and never again repeat the failure to draft a candidate that we saw in SD-15.
Dennis Morris did a great job, stepping up when nobody else – myself included – would. But he has also shown the difficulty of a write-in campaign, and reminded us that Democrats need to be smarter about how they campaign in California.
Across the nation, the realization is taking hold that rising energy prices are less a momentary blip than a change with lasting consequences. The shift to costlier fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities, while exacerbating the housing downturn by diminishing the appeal of larger homes set far from urban jobs.
In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com….
Basic household arithmetic appears to be furthering the trend: In 2003, the average suburban household spent $1,422 a year on gasoline, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By April of this year – when gas prices were about $3.60 a gallon- the same household was spending $3,196 a year, more than doubling consumption in dollar terms in less than five years.
Which is exactly what we witnessed here in California. The housing bubble began to burst here in CA in mid to late 2006, when gas prices first broke $3 for a sustained period of time. And the areas first and hardest hit were those dependent on long commuters – Riverside County, Stockton, Modesto.
It’s a phenomenon we’re witnessing here in Monterey County. Home prices have held fairly steady here on the peninsula, but in the new suburbs such as Marina and Greenfield sprawl has ceased. Several major developments have been put on hiatus or canceled outright, even though the cities have already built the roads.
The deeper problem is that California has spent far too much time and money promoting a failed urban model. The time has come to Redefine the California Dream for the 21st Century. We need to reinvest in our city centers and provide the infrastructure – especially the mass transit infrastructure – to bring folks into the urban centers. But we must also provide the housing capacity for them. The 20th century homeowner aristocracy has to give way to a 21st century middle class that will be fundamentally urban, not suburban.
Just to update on the EPA’s denial of a waiver to California to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions – the White House is now refusing thousands of documents on the matter to Henry Waxman’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee, citing executive privilege.
“I don’t think we’ve had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was president,” said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is conducting the investigation.
An EPA official, Jason Burnett, has told committee investigators that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson had favored granting the waiver but denied it after meeting with White House officials. In testimony last month, Johnson refused to say whether he’d discussed the waiver request with Bush.
The White House waited until the very day that the Oversight Committee was going to rule on contempt citations for failing to respond on this issue. And the OMB and the EPA basically answered by saying “we’ve given you enough documents, no more documents for you.”
It’s clear that the EPA and the Bush Administration will stonewall until the day they leave office on this front, and so it’s up to the next President to make a determination on the waiver. And all you need to know about California’s chances of being able to regulate emissions is that Obama supports the waiver, and McCain has been vague and evasive about it (not to mention he’s taken more money from oil companies than any other Presidential candidate).
Meanwhile, California is offering another regulatory solution: they’re adding a Global Warming score to the sticker of every car for sale in the state.
The California Air Resources Board said Thursday the window sticker will give consumers the information they need to choose a cleaner-burning car or light truck.
“This label will arm consumers with the information they need to choose a vehicle that saves gas, reduces greenhouse gas emissions and helps fight smog all at once,” board chairman Mary Nichols said in a statement. “Consumer choice is an especially powerful tool in our fight against climate change. We look forward to seeing these stickers on 2009 model cars as they start hitting the showrooms in the coming months.”
We’ll see if this affects consumer choice in the coming months, although the fuel economy portion of the sticker is already driving demand. To say nothing of those 5 hydrogen fuel cell cars turning up on Southern California roads.
The great statement by Senator Barbara Boxer on how those who vote for retroactive immunity, “are perpetuating a cover-up” is good news for everyone who defends the Constitution. While Sen. Boxer has yet to vow to join the Feingold/Dodd filibuster, the thinking by many seems to be that Boxer will fight hard for what she believes in so many activists I’ve talked to are excited by anticipated aggressive maneuvering by Boxer to stop retroactive immunity.
As for the other senator…there is a great deal of concern that Senator Dianne Feinstein will capitulate. While defending Senator Feinstein against the push to have her formally censured by the California Democratic Party, Chair Art Torres said:
I said I think it’s important that you hear this from me because there’s also concern about the telecom immunity issue which will come before the senate judiciary committee. Don’t believe me, ask my friend Senator Dodd, who will tell you that she led the effort along with him to make sure that that wasn’t in the FISA bill that emerged from the senate judiciary committee. That bill as you know does not include the telecom immunity issue, which was a very important issue for me, and I’m proud that she listened, because she does.
Does she? (202) 224-3841
If not, she is likely to again face a censure push by CDP activists seeking to hold her to account.
We are writing with great concern regarding reports the Democratic leadership has struck a deal which will further erode civil liberties by circumventing the original FISA laws, and we ask that you not only oppose this new FISA bill but that you filibuster its advancement in the Senate.
We are deeply disappointed in our Party and its leadership for capitulating to the Bush administration with this utterly unnecessary legislation–but you are our Senator, from the great and progressive state of California, and as your constituents we have a right to expect better leadership from you.
We wish to note that in an official statement regarding a previous FISA bill, you defended the telecom industry, stating they had no choice but to break the law–but in this you were incorrect: They did have a choice, proven by the fact Qwest chose to obey the Constitution rather than wiretap without proper FISA warrants. We would also remind you the telecoms’ illegal activity began well before the attacks of 9/11.
We need better answers and better representation from our senior Senator. It was with great pain that, last year, we moved several California Democratic Party caucuses to censure you for your approval of an Attorney General who condoned torture, and for your previous support for telecom immunity. We would prefer not to censure you again, but to instead applaud you for doing what is right and protecting our Constitution rather than protecting corporations and the Bush administration. We ask you to stand with the vast bulk of your constituents who side with the rule of law.
Thank you,
Yours,
Michael Jay, Delegate, California Democratic Party, 42nd Assembly District
Ricco Ross, California Democratic Party, 42nd Assembly District
Co-Chairs, Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles
Linda Sutton, CDP Delegate, 41st AD, Vice Chair of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles
Last time, the push for censure united an amazing array of organizations in less than a week, including:
Endorsed by the Courage Campaign, MoveOn.org Political Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Progressive Caucus of the California Democratic Party, Women’s Caucus of the California Democratic Party, Irish-American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, Steering Committee of the East Bay for Democracy Democratic Club, Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee, Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club, the Coordinating Committee of SoCal Grassroots, San Diego Democracy for America, the Steering Committee of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, Sacramento for Democracy, DFA-Orange County, Santa Cruz County for Democracy, Trinity County Democratic Central Committee, Diablo Valley Democratic Club, Ventura County Committee to Stop the War, Progressive Democrats Sonoma County, the Inyo County Democratic Central Committee, the Torrance Democratic Club, San Mateo County Democracy for America, Castro Valley Progressives, the Whittier Area Peace & Justice Coalition, Santa Barbara Impeach Cheney & Bush Meetup Group, Democracy for America – Marin (DFA-Marin), Valley Democrats United, the Executive Board of the West LA Democratic Club, Progressive Democrats – San Francisco, Greenwood Earth Alliance, Hammering the Issues, Westchester Democratic Club Executive Board, Young Democrats of UCI, the North (San Fernando) Valley Democratic Club, Lassen Progressives, Castro Valley Democratic Club Executive Board, Progressive Democrats of Marin, Progressive Democrats of America – Metro San Diego Chapter, Sonoma County Democracy for America, Progressive Democrats of America Orange County, and Progressive Democrats of America Ventura County.
And Rick Jacobs made the teevee (I do so work for Courage Campaign):
As the focus intensifies over this bill, here are some of the emails I’ve received as of late.
The House passed a version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) last week that included retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that conspired in Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. And now, as the bill heads to the Senate, it looks like we have one last chance to stop this massive erosion of the rule of law.
Thankfully, we have a few champions, like Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd, who look poised to fight this to the very end, but they can’t do it alone. They need both strong support from progressive senators and the vote of those senators currently sitting on the fence. This is where you come in.
Sen. Feinstein could be the deciding voice and vote on stopping retroactive immunity. Please take a minute right now to give her a call and ask her to strip the retroactive immunity provision of FISA.
Senator Feingold effectively summed up the insanity of retroactive immunity yesterday by saying, “It doesn’t simply have the impact of potentially allowing telephone companies to break the law. It may prevent us from ever getting to the core issue…which is the president ran an illegal program that could’ve been an impeachable offense.”
I hope that you’ll join me and do what you can to help prevent this from happening.
Over the last 8 months, you and I have stopped Congress from granting retroactive immunity to telecommunication companies who illegally spied on Americans for the Bush administration — at least three times.
On Friday, Democratic Leadership in the House of Representatives decided to stand with President Bush instead of with America. They voted for a so-called “compromise” to let AT&T, Verizon and the entire Bush administration off the hook for lying to America and illegally tapping our phone calls.
If this bill passes the Senate, then Americans will never be able to hold President Bush accountable for warrantless wiretapping.
We need to take action to stop this horrible bill. Last time immunity came up for a Senate vote, Senators Dodd, Feingold and Obama each said they would filibuster to stop it from passing. They will need 60 votes to keep a filibuster going and stop the Senate from caving to pressure to support this fake “compromise”.
Call your Senators right now and demand they support a filibuster of any Senate bill that will ultimately grant retroactive immunity to telecoms who spied on innocent Americans.
Barbara Boxer
(202) 224-3553
Dianne Feinstein
(202) 224-3841
Suggested Text:
“I calling to demand Senator (Boxer or Feinstein) support a filibuster of any bill that will ultimately grant immunity to telecommunications companies who spied on innocent Americans. Can I count on the Senator to stand up to President Bush and his fear mongering?”
Let’s call a spade a spade. This bill is a complete capitulation to Bush and the telecom lobby. We need all the support we can get in this fight to uphold the constitution.
The vote is scheduled to happen this week. We need to act today. Please make your call right now.
No Immunity for Telecoms that Illegally Spy on US!
Last Friday, the House of Representatives granted de facto amnesty to the phone companies who cooperated with the Bush administration’s illegal spying on American citizens. Our final opportunity to prevent this from becoming law lies with the Senate. We must stop the Senate from making the same terrible decision, a decision that chips away at one of our most fundamental and progressive values-the right to privacy.
Please call your senators right now and tell them to vote against any bill that lets the Bush administration and these telecom companies off the hook for shredding the constitution.
We cannot let the Senate give the phone companies and the Bush administration a free ride for past and future violations of our basic civil liberties. If we join together and ask our Senators to stop this bill by supporting a filibuster and voting NO against a bill that gives the phone companies amnesty, we can protect our privacy rights from this assault by conservative forces in Congress.
Call Your Senators Today.
The Senate switchboard is (202) 224-3121 (see below for a list of direct numbers). Tell them your state and ask them to connect you to your senator. Be sure to speak with both senators from your state. When you complete your calls, let us know what happened using this report form.
In addition to giving phone companies a free pass, this bill fails to restore adequate judicial review for future surveillance, which will continue to put our privacy rights at risk. Protecting our privacy rights is a core progressive value. Don’t let them slip away. Take action by calling your senator today. And don’t forget to report back to us.
Thanks,
Alan and the CAPAF advocacy team
P.S. We are excited to tell you that we will soon be launching our new advocacy website, IAmProgress.org. IAmProgress.org will be the home to all future CAPAF advocacy campaigns. So look out for the announcement and help us make IAmProgress.org a success.
Direct Phone Numbers to Senators (Listed by State)
[…]
California
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) (202) 224-3553; (202)228-2382
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) (202) 224-3841; 228-3954
On Friday, House Democrats caved to the Bush administration and passed a bill giving a get-out-of-jail-free card to phone companies that helped Bush illegally spy on innocent Americans.1
This Monday, the fight moves to the Senate. Senator Russ Feingold says the “deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation.”2 Barack Obama announced his partial support for the bill, but said, “It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.”3
Last year, after phone calls from MoveOn members and others, Obama went so far as to vow to “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”4 We need him to honor that promise.
Can you call Senator Obama today and tell him you’re counting on him to keep his word? Ask him to block any compromise that includes immunity for phone companies that helped Bush break the law.
Obama’s presidential campaign: (866) 675-2008
Then, help us track our progress by clicking here:
These companies helped the Bush Administration illegally spy on the emails and phone calls of innocent Americans. By giving “immunity” to these companies, all lawsuits brought against them by civil liberties groups would be thrown out of court. That means we may never find out how far Bush went in breaking the law. And once it’s done, it can’t be undone. That’s why we need Obama to promise to block any bill that has immunity.
Supporters of the House bill say it doesn’t guarantee immunity-it just kicks the issue to a court to decide. But that’s deceptive. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) points out:
“It gives [Bush’s] attorney general the power to decide if cases against telecommunications companies will proceed. The AG only has to certify to the FISA court that the company didn’t spy or did so with a permission slip from the president. A note from the president is not a legal defense. Allowing phone companies to avoid litigation by simply presenting a ‘permission slip’ from the president is not court review.”5
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group working with the ACLU to hold these companies accountable, adds, “whatever gloss might be put on it, the so-called ‘compromise’ on immunity for phone companies that broke the law is anything but a compromise…no matter how they spin it, this is still immunity, period.”6
President Bush and the phone companies know that the facts are against them. A judge appointed by President Bush’s father already wrote one opinion finding that “AT&T cannot seriously contend that a reasonable entity in its position could have believed that the alleged domestic dragnet was legal.”7
But we’ll never know how far their illegal actions went unless we fight back now. Can you tell Barack Obama you’re counting on him to keep his word and block any compromise that gives immunity to lawbreaking phone companies?
Obama’s presidential campaign: (866) 675-2008
Then, help us track our progress by clicking here:
Despite the outrage coming from a broad coalition of concerned citizens, by tomorrow night the House of Representatives will vote on whether or not to gut the Constitution and give immunity to phone companies who broke the law and spied on Americans.
We have to act now. Even if you’ve emailed, called or visited your members of Congress about FISA, we need you to contact them again today.
Congress is moving so fast and so secretively that we only got a copy of this bill this morning. I can tell you it’s horrible. It contains vacuum cleaner style surveillance that sweeps up the phone calls and emails of Americans. And it’s blatantly unconstitutional.
The bottom line is that this is legislation that benefits a few of our country’s largest corporations while taking away basic rights from the rest of us. And it is unacceptable.
I’m going to spend the rest of the day on the phone calling Capitol Hill trying to stop this bill. I hope you will spend whatever time you can to make the voice of freedom heard in Congress — make calls, ask your friends and family to call — please do whatever you can.
Put Congress on notice that the American people don’t want a “compromise” that sells out our rights. Act now. We’re hearing the vote is tomorrow, so we could have less than 24 hours.
Believe me, no matter what happens, the ACLU will continue fighting this — if necessary, in the courts.
Thank you for all you have done through this fight. Your dedication has truly inspired me and all of us at the ACLU. Now, let’s hit the phones!
