Tag Archives: amendment

After decades of global action, the ozone layer is on the road to recovery

by VanitaKUHqrzodr Posted on November 8, 2018

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This story was originally published by HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In a rare piece of good news about the environment — and proof of what concerted global action can achieve— the United Nations announced in a Monday report that the ozone layer, which was significantly damaged over the course of decades by humans, is on the road to recovery.

Parts of it could even be fully repaired by the 2030s, the report said. And if current rates of recovery continue, the entire protective layer ― even the highly depleted parts over the poles ― could heal completely by 2060.

The ozone layer’s recuperation has been credited to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which mandated that countries phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting chemicals. The treaty, which was signed by 197 nations, has been described as the most successful environmental global action in history.

“If ozone-depleting substances had continued to increase, we would have seen huge effects. We stopped that,” Paul Newman, a NASA scientist and co-chairman of the new U.N. report, told the AP. He noted that if nothing had been done, two-thirds of the ozone layer would have been destroyed by 2065.

“It’s really good news,” Newman said of the protective layer’s recovery.

According to the report, the ozone layer, which protects the Earth from harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun, has been recovering steadily at a rate of 1 to 3 percent since 2000 thanks to the global efforts to reduce ozone-depleting chemicals.

If this rate of recovery continues, the ozone layer over the northern hemisphere and mid-latitudes could heal completely by the 2030s, the report said. Over the southern hemisphere and the polar regions, full recovery of the layer could be expected to occur around 2050 and 2060, respectively.

Despite the promising news, scientists have cautioned against doing a “victory lap” too soon. Recent reports have found that emissions of a banned CFC are increasing in China — something the Chinese government has vowed to crack down on. And the Montreal Protocol is set to be enhanced in early 2019 with the ratification of the Kigali Amendment, which seeks to curb future climate change by targeting powerful greenhouse gases used in refrigeration and air conditioning. Newman said we’ll need to ensure that the replacements for these gases don’t worsen global warming.

Scientists have also noted that the recovery of the ozone layer above Antarctica could slightly worsen the impacts of climate change in that region as the hole in the protective layer there has shielded the area from the full impacts of global warming. It’s unclear, however, how much more warming can be expected once the Antarctic ozone hole heals.

“I don’t think we can do a victory lap until 2060,” Newman told AP. “That will be for our grandchildren to do.”

Still, the U.N. said they were heartened by their findings about the ozone layer ― and what its recovery could mean for future climate action.

“The Montreal Protocol is one of the most successful multilateral agreements in history for a reason,” Erik Solheim, head of U.N. Environment, said in a statement. “The careful mix of authoritative science and collaborative action that has defined the Protocol for more than 30 years and was set to heal our ozone layer is precisely why the Kigali Amendment holds such promise for climate action in future.”

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After decades of global action, the ozone layer is on the road to recovery

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Trump’s new attorney general hates those climate change investigations

by LynneKirton Posted on November 8, 2018

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President Trump fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday. Oops, sorry, Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned at Trump’s request on Wednesday. Session’s resignation letter doesn’t have a date on it, so Trump probably could have dumped this news on us at any time.

Are we surprised that he picked the day after a landmark midterm election to do it? Hell no! Here’s a little-known fact, though. The new acting attorney general, Matthew Whitaker, has a vendetta against those climate investigations into ExxonMobil. State attorneys general have been looking into oil companies and their attempts to cover up and deny climate change. And Whitaker has been looking into those state AGs as a result.

The climate investigations began in earnest in March 2016, when a bunch of state AGs, led by New York, Massachusetts, and the Virgin Islands, started scrutinizing whether Big Oil lied to investors and the public about climate change. Immediately, Exxon and co. hit back with a narrative of their own: The investigations, and then later the slew of climate lawsuits, were part of an “orchestrated campaign” to punish oil companies and cheat them out of their First Amendment rights.

That’s the narrative parroted by Whitaker in a 2016 op-ed. In a Morning Consult piece titled, “The Environmental Left’s Double Standard Game,” he called the investigations “unconstitutional and unethical.” He accused the state AGs of bullying ExxonMobil (yes, he uses the word “bullied”), and labeled the probes an “outright assault on the First Amendment.”

Whitaker promised that the organization he led at the time, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust, would “continue to press its investigation into these 17 attorneys general for more information and answers regarding the true motivation and the real agenda behind this reprehensible campaign.” His organization was funded through a secretive website frequently used by conservatives like Charles Koch to make anonymous donations.

So, is the climate fraud investigation screwed with Whitaker in office? Can the biggest AG in the land crush the smaller state AGs?

“The U.S. Department of Justice does not have jurisdiction to stop state attorneys general from investigating things. They’re separate,” says Sean Hecht, who co-directs the Emmet Climate Change Institute at UCLA’s law school.

But that doesn’t mean the U.S. attorney general doesn’t have any effect on the way state AGs operate. “It’s pretty clear from this and some of [Whitaker’s] other statements on climate that he sees government officials who are trying to address climate change as some kind of enemy,” Hecht says. “Having somebody like Whitaker in that position seems likely to chill federal enforcement efforts on a host of environmental problems,” he adds.

And apart from the potential Whitaker effect on federal enforcement, there’s something else worth knowing about the acting attorney general: He’s a climate skeptic. “You know, I think that I’m not a climate denier,” he said in an interview with a publication called Caffeinated Thoughts in 2014). “It may be warming, I think the evidence is inconclusive.” And then he added: “I don’t believe in big government solutions to a problem that doesn’t appear to be that significant or quite possibly isn’t man made.”

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Trump’s new attorney general hates those climate change investigations

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EPA science adviser says clearing board of experts leaves “huge void.”

by EWMJewell57520 Posted on June 23, 2017

The nation’s largest privately owned coal company, Murray Energy, just filed a lawsuit against the Last Week Tonight host over the show’s recent segment. Oliver had criticized the company’s CEO, Robert Murray, for acting carelessly toward miners’ safety.

Murray Energy’s complaint stated that the segment was a “meticulously planned attempt to assassinate the character and reputation” of Murray by broadcasting “false, injurious, and defamatory comments.”

Oliver shouldn’t be too concerned, according to Ken White, a First Amendment litigator at Los Angeles firm, who told the Daily Beast that the complaint was “frivolous and vexatious.”

The lawsuit is hardly a shocking development. Before the show aired, Oliver received a cease-and-desist letter from the company. He noted that Murray has a history of filing defamation suits against news outlets (most recently, the New York Times).

Oliver said in the episode, “I know that you are probably going to sue me, but you know what, I stand by everything I said.”

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EPA science adviser says clearing board of experts leaves “huge void.”

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This Policeman Says He Was Fired for Not Shooting a Man

by SherrilBaskin Posted on May 11, 2017

Mother Jones

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Police reform advocates have demanded in recent years that officers face consequences for using excessive force, especially in shootings. But a new lawsuit alleges that a former Weirton, West Virginia, police officer was disciplined for doing the opposite. During an incident last May, Officer Stephen Mader decided not to shoot an armed suicidal man. Police brass determined he showed poor judgment during the encounter. Soon after, Mader was fired from the town’s police force. Now he is suing the city for wrongful termination.

The lawsuit, filed May 10 against the city of Weirton by Mader’s attorney along with the ACLU of West Virginia, accuses the department of firing Mader to buttress its defense of another officer who did shoot the man. In an emailed statement to Mother Jones, Weirton’s mayor’s office declined to comment on the suit, adding that the “the city hasn’t received a copy of the lawsuit or been made aware of any allegations.”

According to the lawsuit, on the evening of May 6, 2016, Mader responded to a 911 call from a woman who reported that her ex-boyfriend was at her home and had threatened to kill himself. Mader—a veteran of the Marines—was a rookie officer at the time. When he arrived at the scene, he encountered Ronald Williams, a 21-year-old African American man, standing outside the home with his hands behind his back. After initially refusing to show his hands, Williams brought them to his side and revealed that he was holding a handgun. Mader demanded that Williams drop it, but he refused and told Mader to shoot him.

During the encounter, Williams was visibly despondent but not aggressive, the lawsuit says. Mader says he determined that Williams was attempting to commit suicide-by-cop and—believing that he was not a threat—decided not to shoot him. As Mader tried to talk him down, two other officers arrived on the scene. Williams then raised his gun, and one of the officers shot him in the head, killing him. The officers later determined that Williams’ gun was unloaded.

Mader was fired the next month following an investigation into the incident. Weirton’s city manager told local media after Mader’s dismissal that he was fired because of two other incidents that took place earlier in the year. In the termination letter, the Weirton police chief wrote that Mader displayed “difficulties in critical incident reasoning” and had failed “to meet probationary standards of an officer.” The letter does not refer to Mader’s encounter with Williams or other incidents. But in an accompanying memo, a police captain accused Mader of “negligence” during the May 6 incident because he “failed to engage the suspect” and eliminate a threat, forcing another officer to shoot Williams in order to protect his ex-girlfriend, her child, and other officers on the scene. A prosecutor also determined that the officer who shot Williams—and who remains on the force—was justified in doing so.

According to his lawsuit, it was Mader’s responsibility to decide for himself what kind of force to use based on his own assessment of whether Williams posed an imminent threat. Department protocol—and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution—barred him from using deadly force in any other circumstance. The suit also argues that the department’s decision to fire him encourages other Weirton Police Department officers to use force in incidents where it may not be necessary by sending the message that they could lose their jobs if they don’t. “What I think it shows—and this is a problem I think we have throughout the country—is that because you can use deadly force, you should use deadly force,” Mader’s attorney Tim O’Brien told me. “And what this case is about is that an officer should be entitled to exercise that discretion based on facts known to that officer.” The same can be said of officers who choose to shoot, O’Brien noted, but the same Fourth Amendment standard applies.

General de-escalation training for police and more precise training on dealing with individuals in a mental health crisis have been increasingly adopted by police departments around the country in recent years, but the training is still not widespread. Just 16 states mandate de-escalation training for police officers, according to a recent investigation by AMP Reports. West Virginia is not one of them. Among those states that do require it, some require as little as one hour of training per year.

Mader says he received some de-escalation training in the Weirton police academy, but he mostly drew on his military training during his encounter with Williams. There is little research on whether military veterans—which account for nearly 20 percent of of all police officers nationwide, according to a recent Marshall Project investigation—are more or less likely to use force. A recent Pew Research survey found that cops who were veterans were slightly more likely to say they had used force than their non-veteran peers.

Mader told me he believes Williams might still be alive if he had had more time to talk to him before other officers arrived on the scene. O’Brien agreed, and said that while the case is about a single officer, it has implications for policing nationwide “and the context in which we have arrived in this society where it has become almost second nature to accept the fact that a first option is to shoot and kill a citizen. It’s become much more the norm than perhaps it should be and that’s what we need to evaluate.”

You can read the full lawsuit here.

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This Policeman Says He Was Fired for Not Shooting a Man

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Here’s Why Donald Trump Can’t Defund “Out-of-Control” California

by WendyWWQHcs Posted on February 9, 2017

Mother Jones

One of President Donald Trump’s favorite threats is cutting federal government funding to states, cities, and other entities that refuse to cooperate with his policies. On January 25, he issued an executive order titled “Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States,” which warns “sanctuary cities” that they could lose federal funds if they continue to protect undocumented residents from deportation. After an appearance by Breitbart‘s Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California-Berkeley was canceled amid violent protests, Trump tapped out the following tweet:

And during a pre-Super Bowl interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, Trump doubled down on California: “If we have to, we’ll defund…We give tremendous amounts of money to California. California in many ways is out of control, as you know.”

Here’s the thing: Trump can’t just yank funding from states or cities or universities that upset him. Yet the matter is far from resolved: Several cities and one state have already filed lawsuits against the Trump administration over its threats, all but ensuring a battle that could end up before the Supreme Court. Here’s what you need to know about the legal issues behind this fight.

Why can’t the president withhold federal money from states or cities?

The short answer is that Congress, not the White House, has ultimate power over the federal purse. The president’s budget requests may direct Congress how to allocate federal spending, but the matter is not entirely in his hands. And he has no authority to withhold or rescind spending that’s already been authorized.

So couldn’t Congress defund a state or city if the president asked it to?

Hypothetically, Congress could pass a law or budget bill that puts conditions on the federal funding provided to, say, out-of-control California. But numerous Supreme Court decisions protect state and local governments against this type of vindictive policymaking. When the federal government raised the national minimum drinking age to 21 in 1984, it prodded states into enforcing the new law by stipulating that any state that didn’t comply would lose 5 percent of its federal highway construction funds. South Dakota wasn’t happy about this and filed a lawsuit against the federal government. South Dakota v. Dole worked its way up to the Supreme Court, which found that the federal government can apply conditions to funding—with a few limits. One of those limits is the stipulation that any conditional spending must not be “coercive.” As Justice William Rehnquist wrote, there is a point when “pressure turns into compulsion,” and a state might unconstitutionally be forced to comply because it needs the federal money to operate. Additionally, conditional funding can only apply to new money, not funding that’s already been committed.

As a practical matter, states and cities receive federal money through hundreds of different appropriations bills and programs. If Trump and congressional Republicans wanted to effectively defund California, they would have to modify each federal spending provision that affects the state. Conceivably, they could pass a bill that instructs the Department of the Treasury to stop sending money to Sacramento, but that would spark an enormous constitutional crisis.

But aren’t states and cities required to follow federal laws whether they like it or not?

Yes—but again there are limits. When the Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of Obamacare in 2012, it also considered the law’s expansion of state Medicaid programs. The Affordable Care Act had threatened to cut off all Medicaid funding to states should they fail to expand the program in accordance with its standards. Citing South Dakota v. Dole, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his opinion that this ultimatum was “a gun to the head” of the states. For many states, federal Medicaid money comprises more than 10 percent of total revenue, and losing that money would effectively cripple them. Six other justices agreed with Roberts on this point, and Medicaid expansion was left to the states.

What about the 10th Amendment?

The 10th Amendment of the Constitution says that any power not delegated to the federal government becomes the responsibility of the states. This is the basis of America’s federal system, whereby states have the freedom to pass laws that are distinct from those passed by Congress.

The Supreme Court has long interpreted the 10th Amendment as the foundation for a check on federal power. Take the case of Printz v. United States. After Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993, a Montana sheriff named Jay Printz challenged its requirement that local law enforcement agencies conduct background checks on gun buyers. He argued that Congress was acting outside of its authority to compel state-level officials to enforce federal law. In 1997, five Supreme Court justices, led by Antonin Scalia, agreed.

The Printz decision underscores what Duke University law professor Matthew Adler calls “an external constraint upon congressional power—analogous to the constraints set forth in the Bill of Rights—but one that lacks an explicit textual basis.” In other words, decades of Supreme Court rulings on the 10th Amendment have formed an effective check on federal power by the states. And that could mean that just as Printz was allowed to resist conducting federally mandated background checks, a court could find that officials in sanctuary states and cities are allowed to avoid enforcing federal immigration law.

Don’t conservatives like the 10th Amendment more than progressives?

In the past, the 10th Amendment has provided cover for advocates of states’ rights and efforts to resist federal civil rights efforts such as integrating schools. More recently, the 10th Amendment became a rallying cry for the Obama administration’s opponents. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is a big fan of the 10th, and tea partiers and “Tenthers” invoked the amendment to push back against Obamacare and even call for secession.

Now it’s liberals who are warming to the promise of the 10th Amendment. San Francisco’s recently filed federal lawsuit against the Trump administration argues that, defunding aside, the anti-sanctuary-city executive order violates the 10th Amendment. The city claims that it is within its rights to not cooperate with federal authorities under the “anti-commandeering” precedent set in Printz, which says higher jurisdictions may not “commandeer” local resources to enforce federal rules. Likewise, Massachusetts has also invoked the 10th amendment against Trump’s “Muslim ban” executive order. Several Boston suburbs have also cited the 10th in their lawsuits against the administration’s sanctuary city order, as has Santa Clara County, California, the home of Silicon Valley. Last week, Portland’s mayor issued a statement that the 10th Amendment protects its sanctuary city policies too.

How could this battle play out?

The feds depend on state and local officials to enforce their policies. The federal system is set up to encourage cooperation between state and federal officials. If that falls apart, Trump will have difficulty enacting his agenda. As Yale law professor Heather Gerken recently argued on Vox, “Even if President Trump spends enough political capital to win this or that battle against blue cities and states, he cannot win the war. The federal government doesn’t have the resources to carry out Trump’s policies.”

The funding question remains up in the air since Trump hasn’t given any indication to how, exactly, he would defund cities and states. However, given that California is in the process of passing legislation that effectively makes the entire state a sanctuary for undocumented immigrants, and given that its elected officials have been vocal about their opposition to Trump, we could see a California v. U.S. case in the near future if Trump tries to follow through. On Monday, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra reiterated his commitment to pushing back against Trump’s defunding threat. “We will fight anyone who wants to take away dollars that we have earned and are qualified for simply because we are unwilling to violate the Constitution under these defective executive orders,” he said.

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Here’s Why Donald Trump Can’t Defund “Out-of-Control” California

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Lawyers told House Science Chair Lamar Smith his subpoenas are trash.

by ora0exacta5F7 Posted on September 14, 2016

Smith will spend Wednesday morning leading a hearing that “may as well be sponsored by ExxonMobil,” according to 350’s executive director May Boeve.

Smith hopes to affirm his power to subpoena the Union of Concerned Scientists, environmental groups, and the New York and Massachusetts attorneys general, who have criticized Exxon for allegedly misleading the public on climate science. He claims investigations into Exxon are “a political agenda at the expense of scientists’ right to free speech.”

Legal scholars happen to disagree with Smith’s interpretation of the constitution.

“The Subpoenas, and the threat of future sanctions, themselves threaten the First Amendment—directly inhibiting the rights of their recipients to speak,” 14 lawyers and legal organizations wrote in a letter published Monday. “These Subpoenas violate the separation of powers, exceed the committee’s delegated authority, abridge the First Amendment, and undermine fundamental principles of Federalism.”

Ouch.

In July, Smith issued subpoenas to green organizations and the AGs of Massachusetts, and New York because of their investigations into Exxon. A total of 15 AGs are considering action against the oil company.

As for Wednesday’s hearing, it will probably look similar to all other House Science hearings that focus on so-called important issues.

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Lawyers told House Science Chair Lamar Smith his subpoenas are trash.

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CNN: Secret Service Has Spoken to Trump About "Second Amendment People"

by RicoFeltscu Posted on August 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here is today’s Twitterized version of the Trump Daily News:

This should make Trump’s Secret Service detail eager to take a bullet for him if the need arises. I sure hope they’re more professional than he is.

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CNN: Secret Service Has Spoken to Trump About "Second Amendment People"

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Should We Allow Nonprofits to Endorse Candidates?

by TheodorBurrough Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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I work for a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so I’m keenly aware that I’m not allowed to endorse candidates. That mean y’all will just have to guess who I’m voting for in November. I apologize for having to keep you in such suspense.

Until recently, though, I had no idea why non-profits weren’t allowed to endorse candidates. Then I began hearing about the “Johnson Amendment” from Donald Trump. Obviously someone put a bug in his ear, and he’s been repeating it like a mantra for weeks now. So what’s this all about?

The “Johnson Amendment,” as the 1954 law is often called, is a U.S. tax code rule preventing tax-exempt organizations, such as churches and educational institutions, from endorsing political candidates. At the time, then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson was running for re-election, and he and other members of Congress pushed the amendment to stop support for their political opponents’ campaigns, George Washington University law professor Robert Tuttle has explained. Many have also argued the amendment served to stop black churches from organizing to support the civil rights movement.

“All section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office,” the IRS explains of the rule on its website. “Violating this prohibition may result in denial or revocation of tax-exempt status and the imposition of certain excise taxes.”

There you go. So why has Trump suddenly decided this is a threat to democracy? You can probably guess: because conservative churches want to endorse Republican candidates and give them lots of money without losing their tax-exempt status. Jerry Falwell Jr. explains:

In recent years, religious liberty group the Alliance Defending Freedom has advocated for its repeal, arguing that the law is unconstitutional and lets the IRS “tell pastors what they can and cannot preach,” and “aims to censor your sermon.”…“This is something that could make a difference with Christian voters in the fall,” Falwell says. “It is almost as important for Christians as the appointment of Supreme Court justices.”

My first thought about this is that it would provide yet another avenue for big money in politics. I can imagine rich donors setting up, say, the Church of the Divine Supply Siders and then funneling millions of dollars in dark money through it. Fun!

On the other hand, in a world of Super PACs and Citizens United, why bother? They can already do this easily enough, just as churches can set up “action committees” that are legally separate and can endorse away.

I’d genuinely like to hear more about this. Within whatever framework of campaign finance law we happen to have, is there any special reason that nonprofits shouldn’t be able to endorse, organize, and spend money on behalf of a candidate? I have to admit that no really good reason comes to mind. Am I missing something?

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Should We Allow Nonprofits to Endorse Candidates?

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There’s an important ballot fight in Florida between big power companies and the solar industry

by VitoBadgett Posted on March 7, 2016

There’s an important ballot fight in Florida between big power companies and the solar industry

By on 7 Mar 2016commentsShare

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Florida Supreme Court is set to weigh in on a controversial ballot measure that environmentalists warn could erect a new obstacle for the state’s struggling renewable-energy industry.

On Monday, the court is expected to begin hearing oral arguments over Amendment 1, a proposed ballot initiative that purports to strengthen the legal rights of homeowners who have rooftop solar panels. But critics in the solar industry and environmental groups claim that if the measure passes in November, it would actually deal a major blow to rooftop solar by undermining one of the key state policies supporting it.

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Amendment 1 was created by an organization with a grassroots-sounding name: Consumers for Smart Solar. In reality, though, the organization is financed by the state’s major electric utility companies as well as by conservative groups with ties to the Koch brothers. The measure qualified for the ballot in late January, after nabbing nearly 700,000 signatures from Floridians. A competing measure — pushed by Floridians for Solar Choice, a group backed by the solar industry — did not get enough signatures to make the ballot.

In Florida, the Supreme Court is commonly asked by the attorney general to review ballot initiatives to ensure that what voters will read on the ballot accurately characterizes the legal effects of the measure. And in this case, it does not, according to a legal brief filed by the environmental group Earthjustice:

If passed by the voters, the utility-sponsored amendment would be a constitutional endorsement of the idea that rooftop solar users should pay higher utility bills than other customers. Solar users could end up paying twice as much as other customers pay to buy power from the utilities. This utility-sponsored amendment pretends to be pro-solar but is actually a disguised attempt to derail rooftop solar in Florida.

“This is really shrewd, cynical deception,” said David Guest, the Earthjustice attorney who will argue the group’s position to the court on Monday.

A spokesperson for the utility-backed Consumers for Smart Solar countered in an email that “our amendment is not misleading” and that its opponents “are manufacturing false arguments and using scare tactics.”

The court battle over the ballot measure is just the latest episode in a long and brutal fight in Florida pitting solar companies and their environmentalist allies against power companies that fear losing their customers to rooftop solar power. Despite being one of the country’s sunniest (and largest) states, Florida ranks just 15th for solar installations. As Tim Dickinson recently explained in a great feature for Rolling Stone:

Key policies that have spurred a rooftop solar revolution elsewhere in America are absent or actually illegal in Florida. Unlike the majority of states, even Texas, Florida has no mandate to generate any portion of its electricity from renewable power. Worse, the state’s restrictive monopoly utility law forbids anyone but the power companies from buying and selling electricity. Landlords cannot sell power from solar panels to tenants. Popular solar leasing programs like those offered by SolarCity and Sunrun are outlawed. Rooftop solar is limited to those who can afford the upfront expense; as a result, fewer than 9,000 Florida homes have panels installed.

The controversial ballot measure would amend the Florida constitution to guarantee that “electricity consumers have the right to own or lease solar equipment installed on their property to generate electricity for their own use.” Sounds great, right?

Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that. For one thing, Floridians already have that right, even though it’s not explicitly mentioned in the state’s Constitution.

“There already is a right to own or lease solar,” explained Hannah Wiseman, a professor of energy law at Florida State University. In this area, she said, Amendment 1 “is entrenching existing laws.”

What the amendment won’t do, however, is legalize the type of solar lease offered by SolarCity, which is currently banned in Florida. “Third-party ownership” is a business model in which a contractor such as SolarCity installs solar panels on your roof free of charge, retains ownership of those panels, and then sells you the electricity they produce at less than the cost of buying electricity from the grid. That model has been extremely successful for SolarCity in California and other leading solar states, since it’s simple and allows homeowners to avoid the big up-front costs of installing and maintaining their own panels. In Florida, only electric utilities have the right to sell electricity to homeowners; you can buy or lease your own solar panels, but you can’t arrange to buy power from a third-party solar contractor. The failed ballot measure backed by Floridians for Solar Choice would have changed that, but Amendment 1 will not.

But according to Guest, there’s an even more insidious provision in Amendment 1’s fine print. The amendment says state and local governments have the authority “to ensure that consumers who do not choose to install solar are not required to subsidize the costs of backup power and electric grid access to those who do.”

The issue here is net metering, a policy that exists in almost every state (including Florida) that requires electric utilities to purchase excess electricity from solar homes. In effect, the extra power your panels produce in the afternoon offsets the cost of power you take from the grid at night. The policy is widely loathed by power companies because they not only lose a paying customer to solar but also have to pay that customer and take the customer’s extra power off their hands. Electric utilities across the country have waged a variety of wars against net metering over the last several years; one of their biggest wins was in Nevada this year.

Often the fight comes down to a complicated, sometimes esoteric debate about whether net metering forces utilities to raise their rates for nonsolar homes to cover the cost of solar homes. (In addition to having to buy the excess power, utilities say solar homes still make use of transmission lines and other grid infrastructure without paying their fair share for it.)

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That brings us back to the amendment: If passed, Wiseman said, it would allow utilities to argue that net metering is a “subsidy” for solar and that lawmakers have the authority to prohibit it.

“It could open the door for utilities charging solar users high fixed fees and potentially getting rid of net metering,” Wiseman said.

Guest was more blunt: “They’re trying to kill net metering, is really what it is.”

All of this seems to be pretty confusing for Floridians, who appear to hold conflicting views on the controversy. According to the solar-industry-backed Floridians for Solar Choice, 82 percent of the state’s voters said they would support changing the law to permit third-party ownership of solar. But a recent poll from the utility-backed Consumers for Smart Solar found that 73 percent of voters support their ballot measure.

One of the amendment’s opponents is Debbie Dooley, a Georgia-based Tea Party activist who has rallied conservative opposition to this measure and other potentially anti-solar policies around the country. Consumers for Smart Solar is engaged in “a campaign of lies and deception,” she said. The group “claims to support a free-market principle, but they are taking an anti-free-market position by siding with monopolies to stop competition from solar.”

Now it’s up to the court to determine if Amendment 1’s wording is, in fact, deceptive. If they decide it is, they could throw the measure out. The case is much more ambiguous than the ballot measure language the court normally reviews, Wiseman said. But she added it’s rare for the court to remove initiatives from the ballot.

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There’s an important ballot fight in Florida between big power companies and the solar industry

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Apple Challenges "Dangerous" Request to Help FBI Break Into iPhone

by KentOFarrell Posted on February 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Responding a federal judge’s order last week that Apple help the FBI unlock the iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, the company shot back on Thursday with a challenge that accused the government of seeking a fix that is “too dangerous to build.”

The judge’s order mandated that Apple write new code allowing the FBI to enter an unlimited number of passwords on the phone’s lock screen without triggering the phone’s auto-erase feature. That request sparked a firestorm among people who felt the needs of the government were superseding the privacy and security rights of citizens.

Apple CEO Tim Cook insisted from the start of the controversy that complying with the FBI’s request would set a dangerous precedent, allowing the government to order companies to provide essentially any service needed to aid an investigation. The company repeated that argument in its challenge to the court order:

This is not a case about one isolated iPhone. Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. The government demands that Apple create a back door to defeat the encryption on the iPhone, making its users’ most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identity thieves, hostile foreign agents, and unwarranted government surveillance. The All Writs Act, first enacted in 1789 and on which the government bases its entire case, “does not give the district court a roving commission” to conscript and commandeer Apple in this manner.

Apple says the demand for new code, which it’s calling “GovOS,” violates its First Amendment right to free speech. Courts have previously ruled that computer code is free speech, and Apple executives told reporters on a conference call that the company views an order to rewrite its code as coercion to adopt the government’s views on privacy and security. The company is also challenging the court order on the basis of the Fifth Amendment right to due process.

You can read Apple’s complete challenge below:

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Apple-Motion-to-Vacate (PDF)

Apple-Motion-to-Vacate (Text)

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Apple Challenges "Dangerous" Request to Help FBI Break Into iPhone

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