Duluth City Council Takes Stand Against Corporate Personhood

by Peter Passi, Duluth News Tribune

Duluth made history last week when it became the first city in the state to pass a resolution in support of a constitutional amendment that would essentially overturn a U.S. Supreme Court decision, namely Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission.

The court ruled in 2010 that corporations are entitled to the same constitutional rights as individual U.S. citizens. A majority of justices also concluded that political spending was a form of free speech and that corporations should be able to spend an unlimited sum of money to influence voters, without disclosing financial details of their activities.

Although Duluth is the first Minnesota city to come out against the ruling, other city councils across the nation have already taken a similar stand. The Los Angeles City Council did so Dec. 6. And New York City is slated to follow suit soon, according to Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit dedicated to public advocacy.

Nathan Ness, a statewide organizer for Move to Amend, a group working to blunt the effects of the Citizens United decision, estimated that about 50 similar resolutions have been passed in other cities.

Ness said about 3,000 Minnesotans and about 150,000 people nationwide have signed a petition calling for a constitutional amendment such as the one proposed by the Duluth City Council.

Councilor Jeff Anderson, who is leaving the Duluth City Council in January to run for the 8th District congressional seat now held by Rep. Chip Cravaack, introduced the resolution. It called for an amendment that would “firmly establish that money is not speech, that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights, and that whenever the word ‘person’ is used in the Constitution it means a natural person.”

Occupy the Courts! .99 Commits to the January Protests Against Citizens United

Occupy the Courts! .99 Commits to the January Protests Against Citizens United.

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Dan O'Mahony


Clarence Thomas, one of five justices who ruled in favor of so-called corporate personhood

“Occupy the Courts’ is a phrase, a concept, a suggestion that has bounced around within the uprising that has come to be called the 99% movement almost since its inception. For some it has been a response to the constant call for specificity and focus, an acknowledgement that much of what has created such hideous income disparity in this country is based on laws that have to change. For others Occupy the Courts has been a notion forwarded to suggest class action suits in reaction to police brutality and violation of First Amendment rights within the Occupy movement.

On November 1st progressive author and radio host Thom Hartmann suggested via online video that the Occupiers focus on federal courthouses and on the little known right wing Federalist Society of whom 5 of the 9 justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are members. During the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday this year noted academic, activist and philosopher Dr. Cornel West was arrested during protests on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington D.C..

Earlier this month the activist organization Move to Amend cited Dr. West’s example when it announced its intention to organize a national day of protest at federal courthouses throughout the country on January 20th, 2012. The name of these protests? Occupy the Courts. In the days since this announcement over 100 like-minded organizations have either endorsed, partnered with, or begun their own efforts in support of this planned day of protest.

At Point Nine Nine we have always stressed the notion that the courts, or more specifically the laws governing our elections are where the battle lines are drawn. Essentially the whole ball of wax is the Supreme Court ruling in the case of Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Committee.

Model Community Bill of Rights Template for Occupy Communities

Prepared by Jeff Reifman, Envision Seattle and Thomas Linzey, Esq.

What is this document?

We’re offering the model Community Bill of Rights template (pdf) below for Occupy communities that wish to begin mobilized initiative campaigns in their region. Think of the template as a menu to pick and choose what’s important in your community. It’s meant to provide a framework and a starting point, not necessarily to be used in its entirety. The text is derived from ongoing national and global work by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) such as Ecuador adding Rights for Nature to its Constitution, Pittsburgh stripping drilling corporations of corporate constitutional “rights,” such as corporate “personhood” and Spokane’s Community Bill of Rights initiative which narrowly missed passing by 1,000 votes last month. Those efforts have joined over a hundred other municipal campaigns that have driven into law local bills of rights.

As we wrote in Turning Occupation into Lasting Change, mainstream progressive groups have failed by constraining their activities within legal and regulatory systems purposefully structured to subordinate communities to corporate power. Real movements don’t operate that way. Abolitionists never sought to regulate the slave trade – they sought to transform African-Americans from being property to becoming persons. Suffragists did the same - shifting women from being treated as property to being persons under the law. We face a similar challenge - how to elevate our rights and the rights of our communities above those of a corporate few.

This style of organizing moves away from traditional activism (which is mired in letter writing campaigns and lowest common denominator federal and state legislation) toward a new activism in which communities themselves begin to seize their municipalities and use that municipal structure collectively with other communities to change state and federal constitutional frameworks. It's a realization that the only way substantive change is going to happen - especially change that runs counter to the interests of a relatively small handful of corporations - is a revolt from the bottom, from the municipal level.

The Community Bill of Rights template can be used by Occupy cities to begin using lawmaking activities in cities and towns to build a new legal structure of rights that empowers community majorities over corporate minorities, rather than the other way around.

Turning Occupation into Lasting Change

By Thomas Linzey, The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund and Jeff Reifman, Envision Seattle

How Pittsburgh, Spokane and other communities can point the Occupy movement towards elevating rights for people and nature over corporate rights

The history of populist uprisings like Occupy Wall Street isn’t a reassuring one. The last one to have any staying power was the populist farmers revolt of the 1800’s, and it was aggressively dismantled by everyone from the two major political parties to the banks and railroad corporations of its day.

Most revolts are snuffed out well before their efforts impact the political scene – not because their ideas and issues aren’t relevant, but because the major institutional players within the system-that-is rapidly attempt to snag the power and energy for their own. In the eyes of the Democratic Party or the national environmental groups, this revolt is merely seen as an opportunity to assimilate newly emerging troops back into those groups’ own flaccid and ineffective organizing. After all, if those institutional groups have actually been effective all of these years, why the need for a revolt at all?

It’s when these revolts become mainstreamed by their “friends” within existing institutions that they lose their steam, and become just one more footnote in an endless stream of footnotes of revolts that have burned out early. The pundits and “experts” are already trying to put this revolt in its place. A recent New York Times editorial declared that it “isn’t the job of these protesters to write legislation.” That, the editorial argued, was what the national politicians need to do. The Times couldn’t be more wrong.

Corporate Rights Debate Heads Back to Supreme Court

This article is in collaboration with The Dylan Ratigan Show's "Mad As Hell" series.

WASHINGTON -- A multinational oil company will becoming to the Supreme Court this winter to argue that corporations are not "natural persons" and therefore cannot be held liable for committing international human rights violations such as torture, extrajudicial killings and crimes against humanity.

The case, Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum, began far from Washington in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta. About a dozen Nigerians contend that Shell Oil's parent company aided and abetted the Nigerian government in its violent suppression of environmental and human rights protesters resisting Shell's operations there in the 1990s. In September 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit accepted the oil company's argument that as a corporation it's immune from being sued in the United States for the overseas conduct. Since then, three other appeals courts, looking at the same law, have held otherwise -- in cases brought against Exxon, Firestone and Rio Tinto for similar alleged atrocities.

At first blush, the idea that corporations are not people under the law sounds perplexing. Didn't the Supreme Court decide almost two years ago in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that corporations have the same First Amendment right to fund political speech as natural persons? If consistency counts for anything, shouldn't corporations take the same responsibility for their wrongdoings?

At least in theory, they do: Under Anglo-American law, corporations have long been considered legal persons subject to suit. But the 2nd Circuit in Kiobel held that this country's history of corporate liability is irrelevant when it comes to a founding fathers-era statute that allows foreign nationals injured by "a violation of the law of nations" to sue in U.S. courts.

Occupy Resolution circulating widely

LA passed this, unanimously, and supposedly with 1,000 people or so in attendance of that night's GA. The idea is to get basically the same set of proposals to make the rounds across the different Occupations, until some fairly consistent, nationwide message takes shape. Here is LA's resolution (which the County Council approved unanimously):

The General Assembly of Occupy Los Angeles,
Convinced that one critical threat to free and fair elections, and
authentic democratic self-governance comes from the fact that
corporations have been defined as legal persons;

Declaring that persons are rightfully recognized as human beings whose essential needs include clean air, clean water, and safe and secure food;

Deeply disturbed that the granting of Constitutional protections to
corporations has compromised, or resulted in the destruction of our
communities, economy, democracy and natural world in many ways;

Convinced that the solution must be comprehensive, and remembering
that those who believed defining people as property was immoral did
not call for ending one or two parts of slavery, but for abolition of
the institution of slavery;

Recalling that corporations are human-made legal fictions, and that
human citizens are the source of all legitimate power in any
democracy;

Prosecuting Banking Criminals Essential

As economists such as William Black and James Galbraith have repeatedly said, we cannot solve the economic crisis unless we throw the criminals who committed fraud in jail.

And Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof has demonstrated that failure to punish white collar criminals – and instead bailing them out- creates incentives for more economic crimes and further destruction of the economy in the future. See this, this and this.

Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz just agreed. As Stiglitz told Yahoo’s Daily Finance on October 20th:

This is a really important point to understand from the point of view of our society. The legal system is supposed to be the codification of our norms and beliefs, things that we need to make our system work. If the legal system is seen as exploitative, then confidence in our whole system starts eroding.And that’s really the problem that’s going on.

***

A lot of the predatory practices in automobile loans are going to be able to be continued. Why is it OK to engage in bad lending in automobiles and not in the mortgage market?Is there any principle? We all know the answer to that. No, there’s no principle. It’s money. It’s campaign contributions, lobbying, revolving door, all of those kinds of things

***

The system is designed to actually encourage that kind of thing, even with the fines [referring to former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozillo, who recently paid tens of millions of dollars in fines, a small fraction of what he actually earned, because he earned hundreds of millions.].

***
I know so many people who say it’s an outrage that we had more accountability in the ’80′s with the S&L crisis than we are having today. Yeah, we fine them, and what is the big lesson? Behave badly, and the government might take 5% or 10% of what you got in your ill-gotten gains, but you’re still sitting home pretty with your several hundred million dollars that you have left over after paying fines that look very large by ordinary standards but look small compared to the amount that you’ve been able to cash in.

So the system is set so that even if you’re caught, the penalty is just a small number relative to what you walk home with.

The fine is just a cost of doing business. It’s like a parking fine. Sometimes you make a decision to park knowing that you might get a fine because going around the corner to the parking lot takes you too much time.

***

I think we ought to go do what we did in the S&L [crisis] and actually put many of these guys in prison. Absolutely. These are not just white-collar crimes or little accidents. There were victims. That’s the point. There were victims all over the world.

***

So do we have any confidence that these guys who got us into the mess have really changed their minds? Actually we have pretty [good] confidence that they have not. I’ve seen some speeches where they said, “Nothing was really wrong. We didn’t get things quite right. But our understanding of the issues is pretty sound.” If they think that, then we really are in a sorry mess.

***

There are many aspects of [deterring people from committing crime]. Economists focus on the whole notion of incentives. People have an incentive sometimes to behave badly, because they can make more money if they can cheat. If our economic system is going to work then we have to make sure that what they gain when they cheat is offset by a system of penalties.

And that’s why, for instance, in our antitrust law, we often don’t catch people when they behave badly, but when we do we say there are treble damages. You pay three times the amount of the damage that you do. That’s a strong deterrent. Unfortunately, what we’ve been doing now, and more recently in these financial crimes, is settling for fractions – fractions! – of the direct damage, and even a smaller fraction of the total societal damage. That is to say, the financial sector really brought down the global economy and if you include all of that collateral damage, it’s really already in the trillions of dollars.

But there’s a broader sense of collateral damage that I think that has not really been taken on board. And that is confidence in our legal system, in our rule of law, in our system of justice. When you say the Pledge of Allegiance you say, with “justice for all.” People aren’t sure that we have justice for all. Somebody is caught for a minor drug offense, they are sent to prison for a very long time. And yet,these so-called white-collar crimes, which are not victimless, almost none of these guys, almost none of them, go to prison.

***

Let me give you another example of where the legal system has gotten very much out of whack, and which contributed to the financial crisis.

In 2005, we passed a bankruptcy reform. It was a reform pushed by the banks. It was designed to allow them to make bad loans to people to who didn’t understand what was going on, and then basically choke them. Squeeze them dry. And we should have called it, “the new indentured servitude law.” Because that’s what it did.

Let me just tell you how bad it is. I don’t think Americans understand how bad it is. It becomes really very difficult for individuals to discharge their debt. The basic principle in the past in America was people should have the right for a fresh start. People make mistakes. Especially when they’re preyed upon. And so you should be able to start afresh again. Get a clean slate. Pay what you can and start again. Now if you do it over and over again that’s a different thing. But at least when there are these lenders preying on you should be able to get a fresh start.

But they [the banks] said, “No, no, you can’t discharge your debt,” or you can’t discharge it very easily.

***

This is indentured servitude. And we criticize other countries for having indentured servitude of this kind, bonded labor. But in America we instituted this in 2005 with almost no discussion of the consequences. But what it did was encourage the banks to engage in even worse lending practices.

***

The banks want to pretend that they did not make bad loans. They don’t want to come into reality. The fact that they were very instrumental in changing the accounting standards, so that loans that are impaired where people are not paying back what they owe, are treated as if they are just as good as a well-performing mortgage.

So the whole strategy of the banks has been to hide the losses, muddle through and get the government to keep interest rates really low.

***

The result of this is, as long as we keep up this strategy, it’s going to be a long time before the economy recovers ….

ILWU update

Support the West Coast Port Blockade

Battle lines have formed as the West Coast Occupy movements, from San Diego to Alaska, flex their collective muscle against the federally coordinated, brutal attacks targeting the Occupy movements across the country. They are organizing for blockades of West Coast ports on Dec. 12 in San Diego; Los Angeles/Long Beach; Port Hueneme, CA (central coast); Oakland; Portland, OR; Seattle; Tacoma, WA; and possibly more. Solidarity actions have been called by OWS in New York and by Occupy movements at inland locations, as well.

The Occupy movement is aligning itself with labor and the working class, as the West Coast Occupy movements organize to support the struggle of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, ILWU, in Longview, Wash. Longshore workers there are waging a ferocious battle against transnational EGT, controlled by Bunge Ltd., of the grain cartel that controls most of the world's trade in food products. EGT is trying to break the ILWU in an attempt to drive down wages and destroy the union.

The West Coast Occupy movements are also aligning with the struggle of port truckers, who are fighting for the right to organize for union representation. Twenty-six of them were fired in Los Angeles for wearing Teamster jackets to work. Occupy LA and Long Beach are targeting SSA, an anti-union port terminal operator, majority owned by Goldman Sachs, the notorious Wall Street investment bank. Teamster president, Jimmy Hoffa Jr., has publicly expressed support for the Occupy movement.

MA Attorney General calls for 28th Amendment resolution

AG Martha Coakley Supports Constitutional Amendment to Reverse Citizens United, corporate “rights”

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Jeff Clements

Attorney General Martha Coakley today became the first sitting Attorney General in the nation to call for a Constitutional Amendment to overturn Citizens United v. FEC and the Supreme Court’s fabrication of corporate Constitutional rights to unlimited corporate election spending. Here’s her press release from her office, with a link to her letter to Massachusetts legislative leaders considering a resolution calling for the 28th Amendment.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT:

December 8, 2011 Melissa Karpinsky/Emalie Gainey

(617) 727-2543

AG COAKLEY SUPPORTS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO LIMIT UNLIMITED, UNDISCLOSED CORPORATE SPENDING IN ELECTIONS

In Letter to State Judiciary Chairs, Urges Passage Of Resolution Supporting Federal Constitutional Amendment To Reverse Citizens United Decision

BOSTON – Stating that individual voters are being increasingly disenfranchised by the flow of hundreds of millions of dollars of undisclosed contributions by corporations, Attorney General Martha Coakley today voiced her support for a federal constitutional amendment to make clear that corporate spending is not free speech.

AG Coakley expressed her support in a letter to the Chairpersons of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Senator Cynthia Creem and Representative Eugene O’Flaherty. In the letter, she supports passage of Senate Bill 772, “Restoring Free Speech,” which is a resolution that calls for a federal Constitutional Amendment to reverse the United States Supreme Court Decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Move to Amend's Statement on the Proposed Amendments

While it is exciting to see the flurry of momentum and energy that is finally getting some traction in a small segment of Congress, Move to Amend is very clear that it is important that we not let our goals be diluted by our legislators in Washington, even by those who mean well and want to see reform in our political system.

Passing an amendment will be a tough job, so the language must be commensurate with the effort needed to win, and the amendment must be strong and clear enough to end corporate rule - there's no room here for half solutions or ambiguity.

It is our belief that we need to operate on the assumption that once an Amendment comes out of Congress we won't get another shot. So we MUST get it right!

With many competing proposals, it can be confusing to figure out what is what in terms of what the proposals will actually do. We have prepared a summary of each of the amendments proposed, including what is missing from each one.

We also encourage you to check out our article, Why Abolish All Corporate Constitutional Rights, to explain why we feel so strongly that half-way solutions cannot be accepted.

Click here to read Move to Amend's proposed amendment that will clearly establish that money is not speech, a corporation is not a person, all corporations are subject to regulation, all campaign contributions will be disclosed and allows for no loopholes. Our amendment will put people in charge of our government, and corporations in their proper place.

(This article is located at (http://MoveToAmend.org/other-amendments)

The Proposed Amendments (to date)
Move to Amend's Amendment Proposal
Edwards Amendment Proposal
Schrader Amendment Proposal
Udall Amendment Proposal
McGovern Amendment Proposal
Deutch Amendment Proposal
Sanders Amendment Proposal
Edwards Amendment Proposal
Introduced by Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) on September 12, 2011
Read the text here: H.J.Res. 78
Organizations involved: Free Speech for People

What it does:
Clarifies the authority of Congress and the States to regulate the expenditure of funds for political activity by corporations.

What’s missing:
Does not address corporate constitutional rights (corporate personhood)
Does not address the Supreme Court doctrine of money = free speech. Leaves the door wide open to wealthy individuals continuing to bankroll elections.
Schrader Amendment Proposal
Introduced by Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-OR) on July 13, 2011
Read the text here: H.J.Res. 72
Organizations involved: ?

What it does:
Reverses the Citizens United decision: affirms the power of Congress and the States to regulate contribution of funds to candidates and the expenditure of funds intended to influence the outcome of elections.

What’s missing:
Does not address corporate constitutional rights (corporate personhood)
Udall Amendment Proposal
Introduced by Senators Tom Udall (D-NM), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), and Mark Begich (D-AK) on November 1, 2011
Read the text here: S.J.Res. 29
Organizations involved: People for the American Way

What it does:
Reverses the Citizens United Decision: affirms the power of Congress and the States to regulate contribution of funds to candidates and the expenditure of funds intended to influence the outcome of elections.
Challenges the Buckley Decision (money is free speech) by giving Congress authority to regulate campaign spending and political contributions.

What’s missing:
Does not address corporate constitutional rights (corporate personhood)
McGovern Amendment Proposal
Introduced by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) on November 15, 2011
Read the text here: H.J.Res. 88
Organizations involved: Free Speech for People

What it does:
Asserts that corporations are not people.

What’s missing:
Does not address the Supreme Court doctrine of money = free speech. Leaves the door wide open to wealthy individuals continuing to bankroll elections.
Deutch Amendment Proposal
Introduced by Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) on November 18, 2011
Read the text here (pdf)
Organizations involved: Public Citizen

What it does:
Asserts that for-profit and business corporations are not people.
Gives Congress the authority to regulate corporations (unclear whether this is specific to for-profit/business corporations only).
Overturns Citizens United in part: prohibits for-profit corporations and entities serving business interests from making political contributions or expenditures.
Gives Congress the authority to regulate campaign contributions and expenditures and to institute disclosure requirements.

What’s missing:
Personhood section only addresses for-profit corporations and “business corporations”. Does not address not-for-profit corporations/entities such as PACs (including Citizens United) or unions. Implies by omission that these entities may claim personhood rights under the Constitution.
Unclear whether subsequent sections (regarding regulation of corporations and corporate campaign contributions/expenditures) also only apply to for-profit corporations. Wording seems to indicate that these sections do not apply to entities other than for-profit corporations or "business entities."
Sanders Amendment Proposal
Introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) on December 8, 2011
Exactly the same as Deutch amendment - see above

What it does:
Asserts that for-profit and business corporations are not people.
Gives Congress the authority to regulate corporations (unclear whether this is specific to for-profit/business corporations only).
Overturns Citizens United in part: prohibits for-profit corporations and entities serving business interests from making political contributions or expenditures.
Gives Congress the authority to regulate campaign contributions and expenditures and to institute disclosure requirements.

What’s missing:
Personhood section only addresses for-profit corporations and “business corporations”. Does not address not-for-profit corporations/entities such as PACs (including Citizens United) or unions. Implies by omission that these entities may claim personhood rights under the Constitution.
Unclear whether subsequent sections (regarding regulation of corporations and corporate campaign contributions/expenditures) also only apply to for-profit corporations. Wording seems to indicate that these sections do not apply to entities other than for-profit corporations or "business entities."Click here to read Move to Amend's proposed amendment that will clearly establish that money is not speech, a corporation is not a person, all corporations are subject to regulation, all campaign contributions will be disclosed and allows for no loopholes. Our amendment will put people in charge of our government, and corporations in their proper place.

The Marcellus Shale Gas Play Players - Part 1

Thanks, Susan Mackey for this source: https://mail.google.com/mail/?tab=wm#inbox/13423b9e8a92e03b

You Can’t Tell the Players Without a Scorecard!

The Beginning: Terry Pegula

One Sunday afternoon in the summer of 2009, there was a knock at our door. It was a landman from Encana. He wanted us to sign a gas drilling lease; we agreed to look it over.

We didn’t know much about gas drilling and what it would mean to our area. Although we have only 3/4 of an acre, this was our little piece of heaven, from the woods behind our home to the view of the Endless Mountains.

I began searching the internet to learn about the Marcellus Shale Formation and gas leases. Much of what I found were industry talking points promising a lot of money for leases in the form of signing bonuses and royalties. The money would be nice, but what was the real cost? The industry talking points didn’t say.

A local group, Gas Drilling Awareness Coalition of Luzerne County, began holding informational meetings and we went to learn the other side of the issue, the risks, and the potential hazards.

I am naturally skeptical of what I am told by any group or corporation. My rule of thumb is to disregard half, and verify the rest – so back to Google I went and did my own digging. This resulted in my becoming more involved with GDAC and going back to Google to check out the various Gas Corporations operating in Marcellus Shale.

As I researched Gas Corporations, I found certain names appearing in conjunction with other Gas Corporations. I soon realized that jotting down names was not the way to go, and the Marcellus Gas Play Players spreadsheet was born.

Connect the Dots

The Marcellus Gas Play Players spreadsheet is very much a work in progress. To date, it contains over 3,800 names of gas corporations, their leadership, boards of directors, lobbyists, astro-turf groups, industry organizations and politicians. One dot leads to another and creates a very interesting picture of how gas drilling and politics mix.

If anyone tells me that corporate money does not influence politics, please let me know where you live, because it sure isn’t in America. The amount of money pouring into Pennsylvania from the gas corporations is outrageous. Pennsylvania does not have campaign donation limits for state offices – it’s unlimited and its power is enormous.

Marcellus Money.org :

Excerpt:

The natural gas industry gave $7,175,234 to Pennsylvania candidates and Political Action Committees (PACs) from 2000 through the end of 2010, according to a Common Cause/Pennsylvania (CCPA) analysis released today. $3,442,212 was donated to elected officials currently in office.

The top recipient remains Governor Tom Corbett, with a total $1,634,096 in contributions from the natural gas industry. Corbett raised $1,083,315 of that total in 2009-2010 from 216 donations. He is followed by Senate President Pro Tempore Joseph Scarnati, with $293,333.

Giving by the industry doubled from the 2008 election cycle ($1,004,757) to the 2010 election cycle ($2,608,187).

Let’s take a look at one of the donors and the recipient.

Hockey, Gas and Political Campaigns (Click here for Chart) In February 2011, Bloomberg reports Billionaire Terry Pegula bought the National Hockey League’s Buffalo Sabres. What does hockey have to do with gas drilling? Maybe nothing, and maybe in the case of Terry Pegula – a lot.

On February 23, 2011 the Buffalo News reported:

Excerpt:

Pegula drew violations as gas driller

In the course of making his fortune, the Florida billionaire, negotiating to buy the Buffalo Sabres, contributed heavily to politicians in a position to advance his business interests and established a less-than-stellar track record in the environmentally dicey business of drilling for natural gas, The Buffalo News has found.

A news review of compliance records found East Resources, the company Terrence M. Pegula sold last summer for $4.7 billion, had a middling record of complying with environmental regulations in Pennsylvania, his base of operations. The company last year paid the largest regulatory fine in its history and was involved in a spill of toxic wastewater that resulted in the first quarantine of cattle in the history of natural gas drilling in the state.

(See: A Fracking First in Pennsylvania: Cattle Quarantine – by Nicholas Kusnetz – ProPublica, July 2, 2010)

From CollegianOnline September 24, 2010 article:

Excerpt:

On Sept. 17, Pegula announced his donation of $88 million — the largest philanthropic act in university history — to help fund a state-of-the-art ice arena, as well as the addition of men’s and women’s NCAA Division I hockey programs to his alma mater (Penn State).Buying a Hockey Team, big donation to Penn State .

Where did the money come from?

Royal Dutch Shell Scoops Up East Resources for $4.7 Billion By Tom Taulli Posted 10:57AM 05/28/10 Energy, Company News Excerpt: About a year ago, private-equity firm KKR struck a $350 million deal to invest in East Resources, a natural gas exploration and development company focused on an area called the Marcellus Shale, which stretches from Ohio and Virginia to New York. At the time, the transaction got little fanfare.

Well, now it’s getting lots of attention. On Friday, Royal Dutch Shell (RDS) announced it had agreed to pay $4.7 billion in cash for most of the assets of East Resources.

In Pennsylvania the subject of gas drilling was beginning to heat up, and it was also mid-term elections. The future of gas drilling would depend heavily on who would be governor.

There is no campaign donation limit in Pennsylvania. Anyone can give any amount to any candidate. Corporate wallets and political campaigns are wide open.

Approximately in September 2010:

Pegula: Marcellus Shale Development Good for Us EXCERPT: “If you could tell students here at Penn State one thing, what would it be?”

He (Pegula) paused for just a millisecond before saying,

” I would tell students that this contribution could be just the tip of the iceberg, the first of many such gifts, if the development of the Marcellus Shale is allowed to proceed.”

Penn State wasn’t the only beneficiary of the Pegula’s fortunes.

Kim Pegula (Terry’s wife) donated $180,000 to Tom Corbett’s campaign for governor.

Terry Pegula donated $100,000 to Tom Corbett’s Campaign for governor

Kim and Terry both list their employer as Royal Dutch Shell:

PEGULA, KIM

Total Given to Date: $180,500 (4 records)

Contributor Type: Individual

Address: BOCA RATON, FL

Employer: EAST RESOURCES INC

Occupations Listed: HOMEMAKER, EXECUTIVE

Parent Organization: ROYAL DUTCH SHELL


PEGULA, TERRENCE

Total Given to Date: $100,500 (2 records)

Contributor Type: Individual

Address: BOCA RATON, FL

Employer: EAST RESOURCES INC

Employers Listed: EAST RESOURCES, SELF

Occupations Listed: PRESIDENT & CEO, RETIRED

Parent Organization: ROYAL DUTCH SHELL

Per Source Watch : Pegula and his wife, Kim’s, donations to lobbying groups and candidates accounted for 15 percent of all donations by the fracking industry.

Political Donations by Company Execs

Senior management has donated large amounts of money to politicians, front group PACs and the Republican National Committee.

Pegula and his wife, Kim, were frequent funders of pro-drilling politicians. Kim Pegula donated the most money in 2010 to a single candidate: $360,000 to Tom Corbett. Pegula and his wife are also major contributors at the federal level, with donations of $106,350 since 2006 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and national and state Republican committees.

Pegula has also donated to his alma mater. In September 2010, he gave $88 million to build a Division I arena for Penn State’s hockey team. Penn State is also the home of The Penn State Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research. The center funds research for the advancement of methane drilling technology and procedures in the Marcellus Shale area. They are currently conducting a study on the safety of tap water in the homes surrounding the wells and fracking sites owned by East Resources and Shell.

Politicians who received contributions: Governor Tom Corbett (R-Pa.), Gubernatorial Candidate Lynn Swann (R-Pa.), Senator Don White (R-Pa.), Senator Joseph Scarnati (R-Pa.), Congressman Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) and Senator Patrick Toomey (R-Pa.).

Below is a list of East Resources employee contributions between 2002-2010:

Terrence and Kim Pegula – CEO and President – $630,000

Robert Long – Executive Vice President – $50,000

William Fustos – Chief Operating Officer – $7,000

Jack Showers – Director of Community Relations and Regional Affairs

for East and Shell – $1,500

Paul Dudenas – Engineer – $1,000

Lobbying

According to Common Cause’s “Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets”, Pegula and his wife, Kim’s, donations to lobbying groups and candidates accounted for 15 percent of all donations by the fracking industry.

In November 2010 Tom Corbett became Governor Tom Corbett. The gas drilling issue is a priority for the new governor, so he decides to form a committee to make recommendations.

March 2011 – Governor Corbett announces the formation of the Marcellus Shale Advisory Committee.

One of the newly appointed committee members is none other than Terry Pegula.

I’m so surprised. NOT.

November 2011 – The Penn State Sandusky Scandal breaks

Pegula silent on Penn State

November 9, 2011, 11:49 PM

Excerpt:

What does Western New York’s most prominent Penn State alum and booster think of the sex-abuse scandal allegedly involving former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky that has rocked the university? So far, he’s silent.

Buffalo Sabres owner Terry Pegula has declined to make any comment on the chaotic situation at his alma mater that resulted in Wednesday night’s firings of football coach Joe Paterno and president Graham Spanier.

Pegula addresses Penn State situation

Business First by James Fink, Buffalo Business First reporter

Friday, November 11, 2011, 12:20am EST

Excerpt:

Cliff Benson, Pegula’s close friend who helped broker the deal to buy the Sabres and is now a team executive, is listed as a board member of the The Second Mile, an agency founded by Sandusky in 1997, that aids at-risk youth in Pennsylvania.

Terry Pegula stands by $88M donation to Penn State, but demands school officials ‘come clean’

Published: Friday, November 18, 2011, 3:42 PM Updated: Friday, November 18, 2011, 10:27 PM

Excerpt:

Terry Pegula, the Penn State alumnus whose $88 million gift funded two Division I ice hockey programs, said this week he’s “standing behind the university” in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal, but also had candid words for university officials in an interview with Canadian sports network TSN.

Pegula also told TSN he intends to be more active in university affairs in the wake of the scandal to make sure “the right things are done.”

Is Terry pushing for the big chair as President of Penn State, or a seat at the Trustee’s table? And will Marcellus Gas Drilling take even more control over Penn State and other institutions of higher education?

Money talks and money controls.

Getting to know Richard Grossman, post humous

Thanks to Paul Cienfuegos for posting many reflections on the powerful legacy of Richard Grossman.   A friend, Mike Ferner, shares his reflections:

It is indeed astonishing how stars will align.

Just yesterday, I sat down to try and put my thoughts of joy, thanks and congratulations for the "occupy" movement respectfully within a historical context that might help explain its ancestry, what it shares, what mighty accomplishments appear possible at this shining moment in time.

Conditions for writing were perfect. Downed phone lines put off the usual email temptations. But I was stumped for a beginning.

"In the old days ... What we used to do ... When I was young ... " will rightfully cast any essay into the dark abyss where nothing will be read. So I left the screen blank for later in the day when insights might bubble closer to the surface.

When I returned, the Internet was back up! Being a fan of Oscar Wilde's motto, "I can resist anything but temptation," I first opened the email, where one subject line caught my attention: "Sad News."

"Richard Grossman died of cancer last night," it began.

You may likely be unaware of that name and therefore think the typical rejoinder, "and a bright light was extinguished" would be just so much cliche. But if you will suffer a few paragraphs with me, I believe you'll not only agree about Richard but see how the occupy movement is a fitting continuation of his vision.

For perhaps the last five years, I've not been able to have a conversation with someone at a demonstration against the war or for health care without hearing someone say something very close to, "Well, you know what's at the bottom of the whole mess -- it's that corporate personhood business!"

That was Richard Grossman's life's work.

By the early '90's, Richard had established a considerable body of work as a writer, researcher, intellectual and activist in various branches of the environmental and economic justice movements: nuclear power, toxic pollution of poverty-stricken districts in the rural south, the employment potential of safe energy industries, exploding the myth that environmental protection caused job loss, explaining why environmentalists should make common cause with union members.

His first article that caught my eye was a one-page essay in some obscure publication, reproduced on a mimeograph machine, in 1976. "Being Right Is Not Enough," was an analysis of the drubbing the electric utility industry and unions gave to a California citizen initiative to restrict nuclear power plants.

Richard showed how the industry and unions had successfully frightened voters with a host of economic nightmares sure to happen if fuzzyheaded environmentalists got their way. To me, the key of it was that if environmentalists were concerned about pollution in the air and water, how much more should we be concerned about pollution inside the workplaces killing workers every day?

He made the obvious political point that an alliance among unions and environmentalists would increase each other's political clout. Then 32 years old, he went on to say much more, explaining how the work of environmentalists wasn't just to preserve the environment and that the work of unionists wasn't just to improve wages and conditions, but how both were somehow working for something more fundamental, something simply described as "a better world."

I lit up and I pledged to meet this person, doing so within the year. With his counsel, I began proselytizing among anti-nuclear activists about the need to join with labor for this better world, which would include the end of nuclear power among its benefits. Over the years, that strategy waxed and waned in popularity but never disappeared, reaching perhaps its most colorful and powerful manifestation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle, in late 1999, when "Teamsters and Turtles" became a popular image.

By then, the collective that Grossman gathered in 1994, the Program On Corporations, Law and Democracy, was holding hundreds of weekend-long "Rethinking Corporations/Rethinking Democracy" retreats with activists across the country, exploring much hidden history Richard unearthed, including "corporate personhood" -- bestowing on legal fictions called corporations the same constitutional rights as human beings.

Simultaneously, the struggle against what we now call globalization grew rapidly, with teamsters, turtles, autoworkers, human rights campaigners and many others joining forces under new, youthful leadership in a most promising way. The battle was joined in several countries at meetings of the WTO, World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Something was happening.

And then came September 11, 2001.

I believe it is fair to say that the self-serving hysteria and repression that quickly emanated from Washington halted the forward progress movements were making on many fronts. We went on the defensive, doing our best to stop wars and invasions, but failing. People from several movements put aside their work to re-create yet another generation's antiwar movement.

Full of a real sense of purpose -- to stop the massive suffering and death unleashed by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan -- the movement grew in great strides. Throughout it, however, I kept thinking of Chris Hedges' book, "War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning." I couldn't get out of my mind the question, "Was anti-war also a force that gave us meaning?"

Grossman specialized in vexing his friends with provocative, critical questions; such as this one I rhetorically asked and answered at the 2009 convention of Veterans For Peace.

No, what we need is a peace movement that is true to our chant in the streets: "No justice, no peace!" Peace with justice means stopping the few from making policy for the many; from robbing us blind; denying our right to health care; destroying Earth's life support systems as well as sending us to war.

Peace with justice needs a foundation. That foundation is democracy... Imagine a peace movement that is part of a larger democracy movement ... what would be that movement's vision? Stopping the F-22 fighter or trading an aircraft carrier for a housing program? It has to be more than that! What we need is to govern ourselves so we can create the kind of life we have an indisputable, inalienable right to ...

We need to get our minds right so we can see ourselves not as mere workers and consumers but as human beings with an absolute right to define what kind of life we need -- and then take it!

There is a hunger for self-governance and democracy in America and that hunger is the fundamental link between the peace movement and every other movement working to address human needs.

That's why many old hearts leapt with joy when Occupy Wall Street activists in New York and Occupy Washington activists in Freedom Plaza steadfastly refused to answer reporters' old-paradigm questions of "What's your issue?" and "Shouldn't you have a focus?" with traditional responses that would inevitably allow their movement to be pigeon-holed by single issues!

To our collective amazement, even some reporters and newscasters began to get the point, recognizing the wisdom of keeping the focus broadly on the whole system.

Two articles in Rolling Stone, one by Jeff Sharlet, the other by Matt Taibbi, sum it up well.

The question of demands, in all their variety ... is a peculiar one in that it's at the heart of national occupation debate and yet mostly irrelevant to the occupiers ... Their demand is simply for a better world, which as far as they're concerned, they've already started building.

__________________________

Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but of everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society ...."

They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different. We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place ... that ... chokes the life out of that built-in desire.

One bit of Richard's advice I heeded was to learn more about the Populists of the late 19th Century. Sure enough, theirs was an astonishing movement, able to grasp the most fundamental questions of American society in a way that only the civil rights movement of the 20th Century has come close to equaling -- until this very moment in the 21st Century.

Lawrence Goodwyn, author of "The Populist Moment," the seminal book on that era, explains with brief eloquence that they "...created the psychological space to dare to aspire grandly."  [ed. note:  Now Obama is speaking to the Populist movement from same town TR gave his speech...very clever.]

Many people, including prophets like my dear friend, Richard Grossman, worked a very long time, hoping once more to see Americans dare to aspire grandly for a better life. I'm glad he stayed around long enough to catch Act One. And Bravo! to all who are making it happen.

Mike Ferner