Tag Archives: justice

Obama Lays Out Plans in His First Post-Presidency Public Appearance

by christoperschone Posted on April 24, 2017

Mother Jones

In his first public appearance since leaving the White House, former President Barack Obama said that empowering young people to take on leadership roles would be the “single most important” issue in his post-presidency life.

“What I’m convinced of is that although there are all kinds of issues I care about, and all kinds of issues I can work on, the single most important thing I can do is to help prepare the next generation of leadership to take up the baton and to take their own crack at changing the world,” Obama said at a panel discussion on civic engagement that he led at the University of Chicago on Monday.

Obama made no direct mention of President Donald Trump or the 2016 presidential election, but he pointed to the divisive nature of US politics as the most significant barrier to progress on a host of problems, from flaws in the criminal justice system to climate change.

Obama’s return to Chicago marked his reemergence in public life following a three-month vacation. His remarks echoed previous statements in which he’s hinted at focusing on community organizing efforts as a private citizen.

The free-form panel discussion featured several moments of levity from the former president, including an acknowledgement that panel members were given questions ahead of the event—a subtle reference to Trump’s complaints that Hillary Clinton had an unfair advantage during the presidential debates.

Aside from a brief statement in support of protesters against Trump’s proposed Muslim ban, Obama has avoided publicly criticizing his successor. Trump, on the other hand, has frequently lashed out at his predecessor. Most notably, in March, he accused Obama of ordering illegal surveillance of him and his associates.

Link – 

Obama Lays Out Plans in His First Post-Presidency Public Appearance

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Obama Lays Out Plans in His First Post-Presidency Public Appearance

Gerrymandering Is Headed Back to the Supreme Court

by MadeleinePresler Posted on April 21, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The New York Times reports that gerrymandering is headed to the Supreme Court again:

A bipartisan group of voting rights advocates says the lower house of the Wisconsin Legislature, the State Assembly, was gerrymandered by its Republican majority before the 2012 election — so artfully, in fact, that Democrats won a third fewer Assembly seats than Republicans despite prevailing in the popular vote. In November, in a 2-to-1 ruling, a panel of federal judges agreed.

….In Supreme Court cases in 1986, 2004 and 2006, justices variously called partisan gerrymanders illegitimate, seriously harmful, incompatible with democratic principles and “manipulation of the electorate.” But they have never struck one down….One participant in the 2004 decision, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, may prove the fulcrum in the court’s deliberations….“The ordered working of our Republic, and of the democratic process, depends on a sense of decorum and restraint in all branches of government, and in the citizenry itself,” he wrote then.

At a time of soaring concern over hyperpartisanship, those words could resonate. That sentence “is the most important line” in the court’s decision, said Edward B. Foley, director of the Election Law Project at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. “He’s going to look at what’s going on in North Carolina as the complete absence of that. I think that helps the plaintiffs in any of these cases.”

Today’s gerrymandering is not your grandfather’s gerrymandering. It’s a practice that’s been around for a long time, but back when it depended on humans it was necessarily limited. There were a few legislative geniuses who could wreak real havoc, and anyone could gerrymander well enough to gain a seat or two. But computers have changed the game fundamentally. Every legislature is now a supergenius at gerrymandering, which is why estimates of the number of congressional seats attributable to gerrymandering have been going up for years.

There’s a point, I think, where the Supreme Court has to recognize that quantitative changes over time have finally produced a qualitative change. Modern gerrymandering is just too good. The silver lining here is that if computers can revolutionize gerrymandering, they also hold out hope of revolutionizing the detection of gerrymandering. You can no longer say that there’s no possible standard for ruling that a particular district map is unconstitutional. In fact, there are several plausible candidates. Hopefully the court will finally recognize this.

Original post – 

Gerrymandering Is Headed Back to the Supreme Court

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Gerrymandering Is Headed Back to the Supreme Court

LAPD Adopts New Policy: De-Escalate First, Shoot Later

by OctavioAranda Posted on April 20, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This is from the LA Times yesterday:

The Los Angeles Police Commission voted Tuesday to require officers to try, whenever possible, to defuse tense encounters before firing their guns — a policy shift that marks a significant milestone in the board’s attempts to curb shootings by police.

Wait. This is new? This hasn’t always been LAPD policy? Apparently not, and apparently not much of anywhere else, either:

As criticism of policing flared across the country, particularly after deadly shootings by officers, law enforcement agencies looked to de-escalation as a way to help restore public trust. Like the LAPD, other departments have emphasized the approach in training and policies.

The Seattle Police Department requires officers to attempt de-escalation strategies, such as trying to calm someone down verbally or calling a mental health unit to the scene. Santa Monica police have similar rules in place, telling officers to try to “slow down, reduce the intensity or stabilize the situation” to minimize the need to use force.

….The focus on de-escalation represents a broader shift in law enforcement, said Samuel Walker, a retired criminal justice professor and expert in police accountability. Now, he said, there’s an understanding that officers can shape how an encounter plays out. “This is absolutely the right thing to do,” he added.

This is especially important in Los Angeles:

African Americans continue to represent a disproportionate number of the people shot at by officers. Nearly a third of the people shot at last year were black — a 7% increase from 2015. Black people make up about 9% of the city’s population but 40% of homicide victims and 43% of violent crime suspects, the report noted.

The LAPD also topped a list of big-city agencies with the highest number of deadly shootings by officers. Police in Los Angeles fatally shot more people than officers in Chicago, New York, Houston and Philadelphia did, the report said. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department came in second, with 15 deadly shootings.

Go ahead and call me naive, but I would have figured that de-escalation was standard protocol everywhere. Not always followed in practice, of course, but at least theoretically what cops are supposed to do. But apparently not. It sounds like it started to catch on after Ferguson, and is only now being adopted as official policy in a few places.

Better late than never, I suppose, but I wonder what’s stopping this from being universally adopted? What’s the downside?

Visit site: 

LAPD Adopts New Policy: De-Escalate First, Shoot Later

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on LAPD Adopts New Policy: De-Escalate First, Shoot Later

A Federal Judge Just Ignored Jeff Sessions and Approved Baltimore’s Police Reforms

by testdonekAQW Posted on April 7, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Despite the opposition of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a federal judge in Baltimore on Friday locked in place a consent decree between the city’s police force and the Department of Justice. While local officials cheered the order, which seeks to reform the troubled Baltimore Police Department after the Obama Justice Department found widespread unconstitutional and discriminatory practices, Sessions issued a blistering statement predicting that crime would rise as a result.

“I have grave concerns that some provisions of this decree will reduce the lawful powers of the police department and result in a less safe city,” Sessions said. “Make no mistake, Baltimore is facing a violent crime crisis.”

The Justice Department opened an investigation into the Baltimore Police Department in 2014 after the Baltimore Sun revealed that the city had paid out millions in more than 100 civil suits alleging police misconduct and brutality. That investigation expanded the following year after the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody.

Under Sessions, the Department of Justice has begun to walk back its commitment to federal oversight of police departments with discriminatory patterns or practices, a priority of the Obama administration. Earlier this week, Sessions ordered a review of all consent decrees between police departments and the Justice Department. Department lawyers asked the US district court in Baltimore to put off approving the consent decree for at least 30 days so the new administration could review it.

But in his opinion Friday, US District Judge James Bredar said the time for reviewing the agreement had passed. “The case is no longer in a phase where any party is unilaterally entitled to reconsider the terms of the settlement; the parties are bound to each other by their prior agreement,” Bredar wrote. “The time for negotiating the agreement is over. The only question now is whether the Court needs more time to consider the proposed decree. It does not.” The 227-page consent decree, which places new rules and limits on how officers can interact with the public and mandates training in de-escalation tactics, among other areas of training, will take effect immediately.

Sessions’ statement suggests he is wary of the comprehensive oversight of the city’s police department mandated by the decree. He even appeared to question the allocation of resources for what he described as a “highly paid monitor,” who will ensure the decree’s provisions are met. This puts Sessions at odds with the Baltimore Police Commissioner and the city’s mayor, both of whom are highly supportive of the consent decree and spoke out against a possible delay in implementing it. The decree “will support and, in fact, accelerate many needed reforms in the areas of training, technology, and internal accountability systems,” Commissioner Kevin Davis said in a statement Friday. Despite Sessions fears, as Mother Jones previously reported, a recent study by police reform expert Samuel Walker at the University of Nebraska in Omaha found that consent decrees are largely effective in achieving long-term reforms.

Sessions claimed the agreement had been hastily put together in the final days of the Obama administration—and indeed it was finalized shortly before President Donald Trump was inaugurated. The Justice Department had issued its final report last summer, but Baltimore officials reportedly hurried the final agreement after Trump’s election. This ultimately prevented Sessions from halting its progress.

Continue reading here:

A Federal Judge Just Ignored Jeff Sessions and Approved Baltimore’s Police Reforms

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Federal Judge Just Ignored Jeff Sessions and Approved Baltimore’s Police Reforms

A coal museum in Kentucky is switching to solar power.

by CorazonMcConnel Posted on April 6, 2017

Catherine Flowers has been an environmental justice fighter for as long as she can remember. “I grew up an Alabama country girl,” she says, “so I was part of the environmental movement before I even knew what it was. The natural world was my world.”

In 2001, raw sewage leaked into the yards of poor residents in Lowndes County, Alabama, because they had no access to municipal sewer systems. Local government added insult to injury by threatening 37 families with eviction or arrest because they couldn’t afford septic systems. Flowers, who is from Lowndes County, fought back: She negotiated with state government, including then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, to end unfair enforcement policies, and she enlisted the Environmental Protection Agency’s help to fund septic systems. The effort earned her the nickname “The Erin Brockovich of Sewage.”

Flowers was continuing the long tradition of residents fighting for justice in Lowndes County, an epicenter for the civil rights movement. “My own parents had a rich legacy of fighting for civil rights, which to this day informs my work,” she says. “Even today, people share stories about my parents’ acts of kindness or help, and I feel it’s my duty to carry on their work.”

Years later, untreated and leaking sewage remains a persistent problem in much of Alabama. Flowers advocates for sanitation and environmental rights through the organization she founded, the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community Development Corporation (ACRE, for short). She’s working with the EPA and other federal agencies to design affordable septic systems that will one day eliminate the developing-world conditions that Flowers calls Alabama’s “dirty secret.”

Former Vice President Al Gore counts himself as a big fan of Flowers’ work, calling her “a firm advocate for the poor, who recognizes that the climate crisis disproportionately affects the least wealthy and powerful among us.” Flowers says a soon-to-be-published study, based on evidence she helped collect, suggests that tropical parasites are emerging in Alabama due to poverty, poor sanitation, and climate change. “Our residents can have a bigger voice,” she said, “if the media began reporting how climate change is affecting people living in poor rural communities in 2017.” Assignment editors, pay attention.

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

Source article: 

A coal museum in Kentucky is switching to solar power.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A coal museum in Kentucky is switching to solar power.

Republicans Just Went Nuclear. Neil Gorsuch Is Heading to the Supreme Court.

by MichealOIEB Posted on April 6, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Senate Republicans on Thursday voted to kill the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, invoking the so-called “nuclear option” so that a minority party will no longer have the ability to block a vote for nominees to the nation’s highest court. The rule change cleared the way for the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, President Donald Trump’s nominee to fill the empty seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Gorsuch is expected to be officially confirmed Friday.

Over the past two weeks, Democrats coalesced around a strategy of filibustering Gorsuch when all but three Democratic senators announced they would oppose him—even though it was widely believed that Republicans would respond by changing the rules to prohibit filibusters of Supreme Court nominees. The decision was risky because it means Democrats will now have even less leverage if one of the more liberal justices leaves the court while Trump is in the White House.

Democrats’ actions were in part a result of the party’s activist and donor base, which has been pushing lawmakers to resist Trump and his nominee to the fullest extent possible. Democrats want to keep their base energized, not demoralized. But Democrats had other reasons for filibustering, as well. There was the issue of Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court last year, whom Republicans in the Senate refused to even consider. The Garland episode helped persuade Democrats that temporarily preserving the ability to filibuster would be of little use, since Republicans were already prepared to do whatever it takes to put conservative justices on the court. As a progressive activist explained to Mother Jones, “Any vote that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans take is really just the icing on the cake—this thing has been cooked since Senate Republicans defied any sense of decorum in their treatment of Barack Obama.”

Democrats were also motivated by deep concerns about Gorsuch’s jurisprudence and his performance during his confirmation process. In his confirmation hearings, Gorsuch was so disinclined to reveal anything about his judicial philosophy that it took considerable cajoling to get him to express an opinion on Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark decision that struck down segregation in public education.

What Democrats could ascertain from Gorsuch’s record suggested that he was an ultra-conservative jurist who would go out of his way to issue broad rulings rather than taking a narrow approach to decisions, including in a case that limited aid for special education children in public schools. In remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) suggested that Gorsuch could become the most conservative member of the Supreme Court.

Finally, Democrats were put off by how Gorsuch conducted himself in the meetings he held with senators. Three senators, all women of color, claimed Gorsuch had failed to meet with them after their offices had tried to schedule a meeting.

As Ian Millhiser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, explained to the Washington Post, Gorsuch hurt his chances with Democrats throughout the process: “He mansplained fairly basic concepts to women senators. He pushed way too hard on the ‘I’m not going to express a view about anything, ever’ fallback—much harder than previous nominees. And then, after the Supreme Court unanimously overturned one of his opinions, he defended himself by misrepresenting his own opinion.” On the third day of Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court handed down a unanimous opinion overturning Gorsuch’s approach to enforcement of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a piece of Gorsuch’s record that had particularly irked Democrats.

Gorsuch will soon be a Supreme Court justice, but his confirmation will go down as a major moment in the continued breakdown of the US Senate.

Read More:

Republicans Just Went Nuclear. Neil Gorsuch Is Heading to the Supreme Court.

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Republicans Just Went Nuclear. Neil Gorsuch Is Heading to the Supreme Court.

A coal company just abandoned plans to ruin a river and a bunch of people’s lives in Alaska.

by AmberSuttor Posted on April 5, 2017

Catherine Flowers has been an environmental justice fighter for as long as she can remember. “I grew up an Alabama country girl,” she says, “so I was part of the environmental movement before I even knew what it was. The natural world was my world.”

In 2001, raw sewage leaked into the yards of poor residents in Lowndes County, Alabama, because they had no access to municipal sewer systems. Local government added insult to injury by threatening 37 families with eviction or arrest because they couldn’t afford septic systems. Flowers, who is from Lowndes County, fought back: She negotiated with state government, including then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, to end unfair enforcement policies, and she enlisted the Environmental Protection Agency’s help to fund septic systems. The effort earned her the nickname “The Erin Brockovich of Sewage.”

Flowers was continuing the long tradition of residents fighting for justice in Lowndes County, an epicenter for the civil rights movement. “My own parents had a rich legacy of fighting for civil rights, which to this day informs my work,” she says. “Even today, people share stories about my parents’ acts of kindness or help, and I feel it’s my duty to carry on their work.”

Years later, untreated and leaking sewage remains a persistent problem in much of Alabama. Flowers advocates for sanitation and environmental rights through the organization she founded, the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community Development Corporation (ACRE, for short). She’s working with the EPA and other federal agencies to design affordable septic systems that will one day eliminate the developing-world conditions that Flowers calls Alabama’s “dirty secret.”

Former Vice President Al Gore counts himself as a big fan of Flowers’ work, calling her “a firm advocate for the poor, who recognizes that the climate crisis disproportionately affects the least wealthy and powerful among us.” Flowers says a soon-to-be-published study, based on evidence she helped collect, suggests that tropical parasites are emerging in Alabama due to poverty, poor sanitation, and climate change. “Our residents can have a bigger voice,” she said, “if the media began reporting how climate change is affecting people living in poor rural communities in 2017.” Assignment editors, pay attention.

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

Continued:

A coal company just abandoned plans to ruin a river and a bunch of people’s lives in Alaska.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A coal company just abandoned plans to ruin a river and a bunch of people’s lives in Alaska.

A Republican governor has nixed fracking in Maryland.

by vaterus Posted on April 5, 2017

Catherine Flowers has been an environmental justice fighter for as long as she can remember. “I grew up an Alabama country girl,” she says, “so I was part of the environmental movement before I even knew what it was. The natural world was my world.”

In 2001, raw sewage leaked into the yards of poor residents in Lowndes County, Alabama, because they had no access to municipal sewer systems. Local government added insult to injury by threatening 37 families with eviction or arrest because they couldn’t afford septic systems. Flowers, who is from Lowndes County, fought back: She negotiated with state government, including then-Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, to end unfair enforcement policies, and she enlisted the Environmental Protection Agency’s help to fund septic systems. The effort earned her the nickname “The Erin Brockovich of Sewage.”

Flowers was continuing the long tradition of residents fighting for justice in Lowndes County, an epicenter for the civil rights movement. “My own parents had a rich legacy of fighting for civil rights, which to this day informs my work,” she says. “Even today, people share stories about my parents’ acts of kindness or help, and I feel it’s my duty to carry on their work.”

Years later, untreated and leaking sewage remains a persistent problem in much of Alabama. Flowers advocates for sanitation and environmental rights through the organization she founded, the Alabama Center for Rural Enterprise Community Development Corporation (ACRE, for short). She’s working with the EPA and other federal agencies to design affordable septic systems that will one day eliminate the developing-world conditions that Flowers calls Alabama’s “dirty secret.”

Former Vice President Al Gore counts himself as a big fan of Flowers’ work, calling her “a firm advocate for the poor, who recognizes that the climate crisis disproportionately affects the least wealthy and powerful among us.” Flowers says a soon-to-be-published study, based on evidence she helped collect, suggests that tropical parasites are emerging in Alabama due to poverty, poor sanitation, and climate change. “Our residents can have a bigger voice,” she said, “if the media began reporting how climate change is affecting people living in poor rural communities in 2017.” Assignment editors, pay attention.

Meet all the fixers on this year’s Grist 50.

Source – 

A Republican governor has nixed fracking in Maryland.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, Northeastern, ONA, organic, Ringer, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Republican governor has nixed fracking in Maryland.

The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

by DarrellBarreiro Posted on April 3, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In a significant rebuke of the Trump administration Monday, a federal judge in Texas rejected the Department of Justice’s request to halt a major voting rights case that had been filed during Obama administration.

The case in question dates back to 2013, when the Obama DOJ joined voting rights advocates, Democratic lawmakers, and a group of Texas residents in suing to block a draconian voter ID law in Texas. This coalition scored a major victory last year when a federal appeals court ruled that the law discriminated against minorities and needed to be softened. The Texas legislature is currently working on amending the law.

However, the appeals court left open a key question in the case: whether the discrimination was intentional. It sent the case back to federal district court for a determination on that issue. The question of intent is significant. The finding of a discriminatory effect necessitates altering the law. But if the court finds that Texas acted with a discriminatory intent, the judge could throw the law out entirely. What’s more, if Texas is found to have engaged in intentional voting discrimination, a judge could require the state to seek federal approval for future changes to its voting laws. In arguing that Texas lawmakers indeed sought to discriminate against minorities, critics of the law pointed out that it allows voters to prove their identifies with concealed carry permits, which are disproportionately held by white people, but excludes IDs issued to state employees and state university students, which minorities are more likely to have.

But after Trump was sworn in and Jeff Sessions became attorney general, the federal government changed course. In February, the DOJ requested to withdraw its claim that the law was enacted with discriminatory intent, arguing that the Fifth Circuit’s instructions were to let the legislature amend the law before the courts decided whether to resolve to the intent question. In March, the government urged the court not to issue any opinion until after the legislature had acted. On Monday, the court allowed the US government to withdraw from the case—but rejected its reasoning for trying to halt the case.

United States District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos took issue with the idea that the state legislature’s action would remove the need to litigate the intent issue. “It is well-settled that new legislation does not ipso facto eliminate the discriminatory intent behind older legislation and moot a dispute regarding the violation of law,” the judge wrote. In her eight page order, she went on to dispute the logic the government’s lawyers presented in their briefs and cited multiple cases to explain why the case should proceed. The judge indicated she will issue a ruling on the discriminatory intent question this spring, without waiting on Texas lawmakers to act.

In a series of tweets, Gerry Hebert, an attorney representing the plaintiffs fighting this law, celebrated the judge’s order as “good news for voters seeking relief” and an “important victory.”

Follow this link:

The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Trump Administration Just Suffered a Defeat on Voting Rights

Why Trump’s Antitrust Pick Is Great News for Pesticide Companies

by NorbertoXPF Posted on March 31, 2017

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Trump administration appears ready to bless a pair of megamergers that will dramatically reshape the markets for seeds and pesticides. First, before he even took office, the president met with the CEOs of German chemical giant Bayer and US seed titan Monsanto, and boasted of the flimsy jobs plan they promised if their proposed merger goes through. Trump has also had chummy relations with chemical giant Dow, in the middle of its pending merger with erstwhile rival DuPont. This week, Trump announced his choice to lead the Department of Justice’s antitrust division: a lawyer/lobbyist who, for nearly three decades, has been shuffling through the revolving door between large corporations and the government agencies that shape and execute merger policy.

Makan Delrahim now serves as deputy counsel to Trump, helping shepherd the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch through the Senate. He moved to the White House from his perch as a partner at lobbying powerhouse Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. There, his recent clients include pharma giant Pfizer, the tobacco and real estate conglomerate Vector group, and casino player Caesars Entertainment. As International Business Times‘ David Sirota reported last week, Delrahim also recently lobbied on behalf of heath insurer Anthem as the company beseeched the Justice Department to approve its now-stalled proposal to merge with erstwhile rival Cigna. (If he’s confirmed, Delrahim will lead the very office he lobbied on retainer for Anthem—though he’ll likely have to recuse himself from any decision involving Anthem.)

Before his stint as a lobbyist, Delrahim served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division under President George W. Bush in the early 2000s, and of Bush’s Antitrust Modernization Commission until 2007.

Delrahim is by all accounts a devoted conservative who jumped on the Trump train relatively early. In a March 2016 New York Post, he noted that Trump was not his first choice for president, but urged voters to “coalesce” around Trump as he began to dominate the Republican primaries. “I’m willing to take my chances with The Donald,” he declared, citing the death of right-wing Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and the need for a like-minded replacement.

Like Scalia, Delrahim is widely viewed as friendly to mergers. In a memorandum to clients, the corporate law firm Davis Polk characterized him as “in line with previous Republican-appointed” DOJ antitrust enforcers, hewing to a “pragmatic, economically based approach to antitrust enforcement,” wary of “over-zealous enforcers and courts,” and attuned to the “need to promote and preserve efficiency-maximizing collaborations” among corporations. Such views mark a “significant shift from the view expressed” by President Barack Obama’s antitrust enforcers, who, the law firm noted, expressed skepticism about “proclaimed benefits and efficiencies” of mergers.

Over the next several months, the Trump DOJ will have to vet a slew of proposed corporate megamergers, including two that involve the agribusiness space: the planned marriage of two US chemical behemoths, and the German chemical giant Bayer’s takeover of US seed titan Monsanto.

The ag deals Delrahim will be charged with vetting—Dow-DuPont and Bayer-Monsanto—have been shrouded in regulatory uncertainty since they were first announced, because they would lead to an extraordinary concentration in seeds, genetically modified traits, and pesticides. If the deals go through, three companies—Dow-DuPont, Bayer-Monsanto, plus Syngenta (itself recently taken over by a Chinese chemical conglomerate)—would sell about 59 percent of the entire globe’s seeds and 64 percent of its pesticides. Here in the United States, the consolidation would be even more severe. Bayer-Monsanto alone would own nearly 60 percent of the US cottonseed market; between them, Bayer-Monsanto and Dow-DuPont would sell 75 percent of the corn seeds planted by US farmers and 64 percent of soybean seeds.

As I noted here, these companies are all hotly marketing “precision agriculture” services, where they crunch data picked up from farmers’ field equipment and provide them with advice on what seed varieties to plant and pesticides to apply. Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant laid out the strategy in a conference call with investors a few months before the Bayer deal. Monsanto, he said, is pursuing an “integrated solution strategy” that creates a one-stop shop for “seeds, traits, chemistry, and data science tools to farmers around the world.” Dow, DuPont, and Syngenta have all rolled out their own, similarly closed-loop precision-ag arms. These arrangements give the tiny field of players even incentive to create, say, crop varieties that work only with one of their own proprietary pesticides.

One possibility is that the Department of Justice could approve the deals, on condition that the companies sell off overlapping business segments. The European Union recently signed off on the Dow-DuPont merger, after the companies agreed to what Bloomberg called “hefty concessions, including the sale of large parts of DuPont’s global pesticide business.” But such divestitures don’t automatically reduce consolidation. German chemical titan BASF, itself a large player in pesticides, has “expressed interest in snapping up some of the companies’ divested assets,” reports the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, if Bayer and Monsanto are forced to sell off some business lines to push their deal through, both BASF and Syngenta are ready to pounce on those juicy morsels, Bloomberg reports.

Also, such sell-offs don’t address the fact if the deals go through, what had been four R&D programs will be reduced to two, giving “short shrift to innovation competition,” says Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute. Moss argues that such hyperconsolidation limits farmers’ choices in the seed and chemical markets, driving up prices. Eventually, higher costs for these vital farm inputs will be passed on to consumers.

Link:  

Why Trump’s Antitrust Pick Is Great News for Pesticide Companies

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Trump’s Antitrust Pick Is Great News for Pesticide Companies