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Multimillionaire Carly Fiorina Took 4 Years to Pay Staffers From Her Last Campaign

by ShellyTurpin Posted on May 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Carly Fiorina, the Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO, is marketing herself as a pragmatic, fiscally responsible businesswoman—the only GOP candidate who knows, as she says, “how the economy actually works.” Yet during her unsuccessful US Senate bid in 2010, her opponents slammed her record at HP. When she led the firm, it laid off 18,000 workers, and its stock declined by 41 percent. Eventually, she was forced out of the company but departed with a $21 million golden parachute. Now she may need to answer for another managerial blunder. For more than four years, she was a deadbeat and didn’t pay the bills she owed for her Senate campaign. She only settled these outstanding debts just before she jumped into the 2016 race.

Until late last year, Fiorina was close to $500,000 in debt from her 2010 run, nearly all of it in unpaid compensation to campaign staffers and outside consultants, according to Federal Election Commission filings. In 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Fiorina owed serious cash to former campaign operatives, several of whom were unsure about when they would be paid for their work. And they complained they were not getting clear information from Fiorina about when she would get them their money. At that time, she owed $60,000 to her 2010 campaign manager, Marty Wilson; $20,500 to Beth Miller, a consultant and former aide to California Gov. Pete Wilson; and $30,000 to the firm of veteran GOP political consultant Joe Shumate.

Shumate, who also worked for former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, died suddenly during Fiorina’s Senate race. John Allan Peschong, another adviser whom the campaign owed money, told the Chronicle, “I would hope that Carly Fiorina would pay his widow the money that was owed him at the time of his death.” Wilson, Fiorina’s campaign manager, said in 2013 that he didn’t recall if he “got that granular” with Fiorina regarding the campaign’s mounting debt near the finish line. Earlier this year, the Washington Post reported that the compensation delay had left her former staffers bitter.

Postcampaign debt is not uncommon, particularly in close and expensive contests. Carly for America press secretary Leslie Shedd, in a statement to Mother Jones, points out that Hillary Clinton owed a substantial amount of money after her 2008 defeat. “There was some leftover debt with Carly Fiorina’s Senate campaign in 2010,” Shedd notes. “However, this issue has been resolved and the campaign debt has been paid off in full.”

But the matter wasn’t settled until Fiorina, who lost her Senate race by 10 points to incumbent Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, was on the cusp of a new political endeavor. In January, Fiorina—whose own wealth is estimated up to $120 million—personally donated $487,000 to her Senate campaign, and then she made good on the back pay, including the money owed to Shumate’s family, according to a February 2015 Federal Election Commission filing. Two months later, she officially entered the presidential race.

The question remains: Why did it take this multimillionaire so long to pay her staffers?

But for Wilson, it’s now water under the bridge. “I’m glad Carly satisfied the debt,” he says. “We’re happy campers.”

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Multimillionaire Carly Fiorina Took 4 Years to Pay Staffers From Her Last Campaign

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Texas official ignores voters’ ban on fracking

by Steven Posted on November 10, 2014

Texas official ignores voters’ ban on fracking

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10 Nov 2014 5:21 PM

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As predicted, mere hours after the first-ever fracking ban passed in Texas, industry reps took to the courts. By 9:09 a.m. on Nov. 5, both the Texas Oil and Gas Association and the Texas General Land Office had filed lawsuits that aim to prevent the city of Denton from enacting its ordinance on Dec. 2 — and Texas legislators are already drawing up plans to make future fracking bans like this one illegal.

The blowback here, of course, is because Denton is sitting on top of the Barnett Shale — one of the country’s largest natural gas fields — and those who’re doing the drilling would like to continue, thank you very much. The lawsuits argue that a city can’t override the state’s authority to regulate the oil and gas industry.

So, in the meantime? Business as usual, according to The Dallas Morning News:

Railroad Commission Chairwoman Christi Craddick came out strongly against a fracking ban passed this week in North Texas, pledging to continue giving permits to companies that seek to drill in Denton. …

“It’s my job to give permits, not Denton’s … We’re going to continue permitting up there because that’s my job,” she said.

Although local residents are concerned about fracking’s effects on air and water quality, the local economy, and human health, Craddick claims the ban passed because the oil and gas industry simply did not do enough in the realm of community education:

“We missed as far as an education process in explaining what fracking is, explaining what was going on. And I think this is the result of that, in a lot of respects, and a lot of misinformation about fracking,” Craddick said.

Misinformation, eh? That’s why 59 percent of Denton voters passed the ban — they just didn’t know how safe and equitable fracking really is! Considering this was Denton’s most expensive political campaign ever, it seems the industry did at least try, before it failed, to give that “education process” a shot.

While this is not the first fracking ban to prompt expensive legal battles over regulatory authority, it’s the first one in oil-rich, oil-powerful Texas, so this is a battle to watch.

Source:
Craddick: Railroad Commission will continue permitting in Denton, not ruling out action against ban

, Dallas Morning News.

Texas Oil Regulator Says It Will Not Honor Town’s Vote To Ban Fracking

, Think Progress.

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Joe Biden’s World Cup Gift to Brazil: A Chilling Torture Memo

by LaraLafferty Posted on July 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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When Vice President Joe Biden visited Brazil for the start of the World Cup soccer tournament last month, he brought along something of an odd gift for President Dilma Rousseff: a collection of State Department cables and reports that included a chilling account of state-sponsored torture. The documents were from 1967 to 1977 and covered assorted human rights abuses conducted by the military dictatorship then ruling Brazil—a government that was supported by the Nixon administration and its foreign policy poobah Henry Kissinger.

Brazil has been examining its dark past through the work of the Brazilian National Truth Commission, and the 43 documents turned over by Biden are meant to help the commission uncover the dirty deeds of the recent past. As the National Security Archive notes, these records report on “secret torture detention centers in Sao Paulo, the military’s counter-subversion operations, and Brazil’s hostile reaction in 1977 to the first State Department human rights report on abuses.”

And one document stands out: a 1973 cable from the US embassy in Brazil to State Department headquarters titled, “Widespread Arrests and Psychophysical Interrogation of Suspected Subversives.” The report noted that arrests by military forces of regime critics—mostly university students—had recently increased, and that “the detainees are being subjected to an intensive psychophysical system of duress designed to extract information without doing visible, lasting harm to the body.” The cable reported that Brazilians suspected of being “hardened terrorists…are still being submitted to the older methods of physical violence”—such as the use of electrical shock devices and being tied to and hung from a suspended bar—”which sometimes cause death.” But the main point of the cable was that the Brazilian military had developed “a newer, more sophisticated and elaborate psychophysical duress system…to intimidate and terrify the suspect.”

The cable then detailed, in a rather clinical fashion, this process:

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State Department Report on Brazilian Interrogation Abuses (PDF)

State Department Report on Brazilian Interrogation Abuses (Text)

The cable noted that detainees with “good connections” inside and outside the government were usually spared this torture.

This document is a rare step-by-step description of government-backed torture. Yet it contained no criticism of the regime or the practice. It reported that public reaction to a recent wave of arrests “has been mild thus far and is likely to continue to be subdued.”

The cable was in sync with the Nixon/Kissinger policy of not getting worked up about torture conducted by military regimes Washington favored. (See Kissinger and Argentina.) And a cable sent to Foggy Bottom a year earlier by William Rountree, then the US ambassador to Brazil, noted that though the US embassy in Brazil had “on appropriate occasion and in appropriate manner” informed the Brazilians that the US government did not condone “excesses in the form practiced in Brazil,” Rountree believed the United States had to make this case without “unduly jeopardizing our relations with this country or causing a counter-productive reaction on the part of the” government of Brazil. In this cable, Rountree said that he strongly supported the State Department’s opposition to legislation then under consideration in Congress that would cut off US funding to Brazil as long as the government engaged in torture.

Rountree explained, “Given Brazilian pride and sensitivity about sovereignty, efforts by any branch of US government or by US political figures to bring pressure on Brazil would not only damage our general relations but, by equating reduction in anti-terror measures with weakness under pressure, could produce opposite of intended result.” In other words, the United States shouldn’t lean too heavily on the torturers of Brazil.

The Brazilian Truth Commission, which has posted the documents Biden handed over, has been at work for two years, and Biden, when he was in Brazil, promised that the Obama administration would mount a broader review of top-secret CIA and Defense Department documents that might be useful to the commission. So the World Cup has given Brazil more than just a soccer tournament; it has highlighted the nation’s effort to come to terms with its recent past of government abuse and violence—and Washington’s own effort to acknowledge its support of that regime.

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Joe Biden’s World Cup Gift to Brazil: A Chilling Torture Memo

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Target Officially Rejects Assault Weapons in Its Stores

by Latosha27M Posted on July 2, 2014

Mother Jones

A month after images first surfaced of pro-gun activists flaunting semiautomatic rifles at Target stores, the retailer has become the latest US company to officially reject firearms in its outlets.

“Our approach has always been to follow local laws, and of course, we will continue to do so,” Target said in a statement Wednesday. “But starting today we will also respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target—even in communities where it is permitted by law.”

The move follows weeks of pressure from Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which used social media, online petitions, and protests at Target stores to call for such a change.

Still reeling from its disastrous failure to secure customers’ personal data, Target leaders “were really nervous” after the gun issue emerged, a person with direct knowledge of the company’s discussions about it told me. “This was the last thing they needed.” Still, the company endured weeks of negative attention on the issue, even as Texas authorities and one of Target’s corporate strategic partners made clear that Target was trying to stop the guns from coming in.

Target joins a growing list of corporations—including Starbucks, Jack in the Box, Chipotle, Sonic, and Chili’s—that have reacted to demonstrations by open-carry activists by announcing that they don’t want people carrying guns on their premises.

Whether open-carry activists will comply with Target’s request appears to be an open question. One of the first to comment on Target’s posted statement was Kory Watkins—a leader of a Texas open-carry group that’s conducted provocative demonstrations, used disturbing intimidation tactics against women, and harassed a Marine veteran—who said he plans to pack heat at Target “today and tomorrow and whatever days I want.”

Carrying rifles on display in public is legal in Texas, although regulations governing Target’s sale of alcoholic beverages forbid guns on their premises, and armed patrons who don’t leave upon request could be subject to criminal trespassing charges, according to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

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Don’t Believe Anything You Read About Pomegranate Juice

by ShawnVHVUu Posted on June 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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In ancient Greek mythology, pomegranates symbolized death. They were certainly a source of grief for Coca-Cola on Thursday morning, when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the pomegranate juice company POM Wonderful can sue Coke for marketing a product that contains 99.4 percent apple and grape juice as “Blueberry Pomegranate.”

And like many Greek myths, the Supreme Court decision is also rich with irony: POM is currently locked in a separate court battle over allegations that its own pomegranate juice marketing misleads consumers.

Both companies have relied on some pretty questionable rhetoric. Coke claimed that because the Food and Drug Administration had approved its juice label, it couldn’t be sued under other trademark laws for misleading consumers. “We don’t think that consumers are quite as unintelligent as POM must think they are,” Coke’s lawyer Kathleen Sullivan told the Court in April—an argument that fell flat when Justice Anthony Kennedy responded, “Don’t make me feel bad because I thought that this was pomegranate juice.”

But as HBO’s John Oliver has pointed out, POM isn’t exactly a hero here. In September 2010, the Federal Trade Commission charged POM with falsely claiming that its products could prevent or treat a variety of medical conditions. According to the FTC, claims that POM juice has “SUPER HEALTH POWERS!… Backed by $25 million in medical research and proven to fight for cardiovascular, prostate and erectile health” have no basis in reality.

POM has contested the FDA’s complaint, but so far, judges have sided with the federal agency. The case has made its way to federal appeals court in Washington, where the judges don’t seem particularly sympathetic. At a hearing in May, Judge Merrick Garland read one of POM’s ads aloud and said, “I don’t understand if you look at those two paragraphs how you can say that it’s not misleading.”

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Don’t Believe Anything You Read About Pomegranate Juice

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San Francisco considers banning exports of coal and petcoke

by FrancinXYAO Posted on May 19, 2014

San Francisco considers banning exports of coal and petcoke

By

Chris Chabot

The city that kicked off a gay-marriage revolution, cracked down on Happy Meal toys, and battled bottled water is gunning for a new first. San Francisco wants to lead the nation in limiting fossil fuel exports.

At a hearing scheduled for Thursday, the San Francisco Environment Commission will consider a proposal to ban the bulk transportation of “hazardous fossil fuel materials,” such as coal and petroleum coke, within city limits. If the commission agrees, the proposal will be passed up to city and/or port leaders for further consideration. The proposed ban would also apply to crude oil, though crude exports are currently banned nationally — a ban that industry is fighting to overturn.

San Francisco isn’t acting alone in trying to stymie exports of coal and other fossil fuels to Asia. In February, the city’s lower-income neighbor, Oakland, rejected a bid by Bowie Resource Partners to use its port as a coal export terminal. And residents throughout the Pacific Northwest have been successfully campaigning against proposals to build hulking new coal terminals along their waterfronts.

Joshua Arce, president of the San Francisco Environment Commission, which advises city lawmakers, said West Coast cities and ports can work together to help bottle up the nation’s coal supplies and keep them in the ground, where they can do the climate and the environment no harm. He said they can also work to prevent petcoke, which is left behind after tar-sands oil from Canada is refined, from reaching export markets, where it can be burned to produce a filthy form of energy.

“There’s a widespread consensus that this is the right thing to do — to lay down a marker for the environment, and ban these hazardous fossil fuel materials forever in the City and County of San Francisco,” Arce said. “It’s not like we’re saying anything that’s not already the practice informally. Our port staff has said, time and time again, ‘no’ to coal. It’s time to make it an official policy.”

San Francisco’s port is perhaps best known for its cruise ship terminal along the city’s Disney Land-like northern waterfront, but the city’s southeastern waterfront has a long and heavy industrial history. A new bulk marine cargo terminal is included in southeastern neighborhood redevelopment plans. And the city is just a bay away from Richmond, which is home to Chevron’s explosion- and pollution-prone oil refinery. All of which makes city leaders nervous that their waterfront assets could one day be exploited by the nation’s fossil fuel merchants.

“The fossil fuel industry is never sleeping,” Arce said. “We never want there to be a day when a company that’s engaged in this aspect of the carbon economy makes an offer here that someone can’t refuse.”

—–

[Correction: This post originally reported that the Port of Oakland rejected a coal export proposal last week. In fact, it rejected it in February.]

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45

by StarlaODoherty Posted on April 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Apparently net neutrality is officially dead. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the FCC has given up on finding a legal avenue to enforce equal access and will instead propose rules that explicitly allow broadband suppliers to favor companies that pay them for faster pipes:

The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal.

The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on “commercially reasonable” terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.

….The FCC’s proposal would allow some forms of discrimination while preventing companies from slowing down or blocking specific websites, which likely won’t satisfy all proponents of net neutrality, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The Commission has also decided for now against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation. However, the Commission has left the reclassification option on the table at present.

So Google and Microsoft and Netflix and other large, well-capitalized incumbents will pay for speedy service. Smaller companies that can’t—or that ISPs just aren’t interested in dealing with—will get whatever plodding service is left for everyone else. ISPs won’t be allowed to deliberately slow down traffic from specific sites, but that’s about all that’s left of net neutrality. Once you’ve approved the notion of two-tier service, it hardly matters whether you’re speeding up some of the sites or slowing down others.

This might have been inevitable, for both legal and commercial reasons. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

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Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45

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Critics Say Chevron Flouted Pay-to-Play Law. FEC Says It’s All Good.

by FeliciaFoutch Posted on March 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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A recent decision from the Federal Elections Commission could overturn 70 years of precedent and defang a long-standing law that bars companies from buying favorable election results to gain federal contracts. Goodbye anti-pay-to-play laws, hello corporate America profiting off lucrative government deals based on campaign donations.

The trouble all stems from a single contribution made during the 2012 election. On October 7, 2012, oil giant Chevron donated $2.5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), a super PAC tied to John Boehner and House Republicans that spent almost $10 million in 2012, largely on ads attacking Democratic House candidates.

That raised the ire of Public Citizen, a liberal consumer advocate group. In a complaint sent to the FEC last year, Public Citizen and a handful of other groups claimed that Chevron and CLF violated a federal law (referred to as pay-to-play) that bans any corporation that holds a contract with the federal government from contributing to a political campaign. The complaint was sent after Public Citizen checked a public database of federal contractors and noticed that Chevron was listed as working with the government. Last week the FEC dismissed those complaints with an argument that could create a loophole a million dollars wide for other companies to exploit.

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Critics Say Chevron Flouted Pay-to-Play Law. FEC Says It’s All Good.

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Texans want frackers to stop causing earthquakes

by HalleyR55yl Posted on January 22, 2014

Texans want frackers to stop causing earthquakes

By

Shutterstock

Some North Texans who have been enduring a months-long flurry of earthquakes want the shaking to stop — and they believe that means putting an end to a controversial fracking practice.

“Is somebody going to help us?” one resident asked the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates gas and oil drilling, during a hearing on Tuesday. “I’ve heard of tornado alley. I’ve never heard of earthquake alley.”

The dozens of residents who traveled to Austin for the hearing want frackers barred from injecting their wastewater underground at high pressure. Scientists have linked the practice to earthquakes in other regions.

The commission says operations at one injection well in the area were suspended in November after it was found to be operating at unusually high pressure. But the commission says it doesn’t have the power to stop frackers from operating injection wells just because of earthquake risks. Here’s more from the local CBS affiliate:

[G]eneral counsel for the commission Wendell Fowler said inspectors can only start the two to three month process of shutting down a well if there is polluted water, fluid escaping, a change in conditions or the rules. Seismic activity is not one of the criteria.

RRC Chairman Barry Smitherman said injection activity at the wells in question has been less than it was back in 2010. He also made note of a recent paper where some researchers cast doubt on the connection between injection wells and quakes.

The commission said it would hire a seismologist in the coming weeks to investigate the residents’ complaints. But it appears that any real solution would require new state legislation.


Source
North Texans Protest Fracking, Earthquakes At Railroad Commission Meeting, CBS
Railroad Commission reports injection well near Azle shut down, The Dallas Morning News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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North Dakota’s top oil regulator is also its top oil promoter

by UrsulaSRPK Posted on January 15, 2014

North Dakota’s top oil regulator is also its top oil promoter

By

Shutterstock

In North Dakota, where an oil boom is leading to spills and explosions, the top oil regulator also serves as a cheerleader for the oil industry. And some Democrats think it’s time for the pom-poms to change hands.

The Forum News Service reports that state’s Senate and House minority leaders have asked the North Dakota Industrial Commission, which oversees industries including oil and gas, to separate the oil regulation and promotion responsibilities of the Department of Mineral Resources’s boss.

In a letter to the commission sent Tuesday, the Democrats pointed to recent accidents involving crude that was fracked from the state’s Bakken formation. The accidents included the spill of 20,000 barrels of oil from a pipeline into a wheat field, and the derailment and explosion two weeks ago of an oil-hauling train near the town of Casselton. The Casselton fire prompted warnings from the federal government that Bakken crude poses a “significant fire risk.” Here’s more from the Forum News Service:

“Recent, high-profile incidents across the state confirm the public is ill-served by a director who is charged with regulating the development he is duty-bound to promote,” write Sen. Mac Schneider, D-Grand Forks, and Rep. Kent Onstad, D-Parshall.

The Democrats cite a portion of the North Dakota Century Code that says it’s the state’s policy “to foster, to encourage, and to promote the development, production, and utilization of natural resources of oil and gas.” The Industrial Commission is charged with regulating oil and gas development and delegates much of that authority to the director of Mineral Resources.

Schneider and Onstad announced they will introduce legislation in the 2015 legislative session that would permanently separate responsibilities of regulation and promotion.

In the near term, the North Dakota Democrats ask the Industrial Commission to use its authority to “establish a firewall” between the promotion and regulation roles, Schneider said.

But it sounds like Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R) is happy with things just the way they are. “I really feel that it’s clear that regulation is [the department director’s] essential job,” he told the paper, having not yet read the letter. “I think he does his job.”


Source
ND Democrats propose splitting regulation, promotion duties, Inforum

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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