Let Wall Street Pay for Wall Street's Bailout Act of 2009 (Introduced in House)
HR 1068 IH
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 1068
To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose a tax on certain securities transactions to the extent required to recoup the net cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
February 13, 2009
Mr. DEFAZIO (for himself, Mr. WELCH, Ms. SUTTON, Mr. CAPUANO, Mr. WU, Mr. STARK, Ms. DELAURO, and Ms. EDWARDS of Maryland) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means
A BILL
To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose a tax on certain securities transactions to the extent required to recoup the net cost of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Let Wall Street Pay for Wall Street's Bailout Act of 2009'.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) The Bush Administration allocated the first $350 billion of TARP funds in a manner that has outraged the Nation by failing to provide the most basic oversight of the funds.
(2) Congress has declined to block the remaining $350 billion of TARP funds despite the lack of oversight and the record fiscal year 2009 budget deficit estimated at $1.2 trillion.
(3) The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System has committed more than a trillion dollars to stabilize the economy by bailing out various banks deemed `too big to fail'.
(4) The $700 billion TARP fund and the new Federal Reserve lending facilities were created to protect Wall Street investors; therefore, the same Wall Street investors should pay for this infusion of taxpayer money.
(5) The easiest method to raise the money from Wall Street is a securities transfer tax, a tax that has a negligible impact on the average investor.
(6) This transfer tax would be on the sale and purchase of financial instruments such as stock, options, and futures. A quarter percent (0.25 percent) tax on financial transactions could raise approximately $150 billion a year.
(7) The United States had a transfer tax from 1914 to 1966. The Revenue Act of 1914 (Act of Oct. 22, 1914 (ch. 331, 38 Stat. 745)) levied a 0.2 percent tax on all sales or transfers of stock. In 1932, Congress more than doubled the tax to help overcome the budgetary challenges during the Great Depression.
(8) All revenue generated by this transfer tax should be deposited in the general fund of the Treasury of the United States, scaled to meet the net cost of these bailouts, and phase out when the cost of the bailouts are repaid.
SEC. 3. RECOUPMENT OF DEFICIT ARISING FROM FEDERAL BAILOUT.
(a) In General- Chapter 36 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by inserting after subchapter B the following new subchapter:
`Subchapter C--Tax on Securities Transactions
`Sec. 4475. Tax on securities transactions.
`SEC. 4475. TAX ON SECURITIES TRANSACTIONS.
`(a) Imposition of Tax- There is hereby imposed a tax on each covered securities transaction an amount equal to the applicable percentage of the value of the security involved in such transaction.
`(b) By Whom Paid- The tax imposed by this section shall be paid by the trading facility on which the transaction occurs.
`(c) Applicable Percentage- For purposes of this section--
`(1) IN GENERAL- The term `applicable percentage' means the lesser of--
`(A) the specified percentage, or
`(B) 0.25 percent.
`(2) SPECIFIED PERCENTAGE-
`(A) IN GENERAL- The term `specified percentage' means, with respect to any taxable year beginning in a calendar year, the percentage that the Secretary estimates would result in the aggregate revenue to the Treasury under this section for such taxable year and all prior taxable years to equal the Secretary's estimate of the net cost (if any) to the Federal Government of--
`(i) carrying out the Troubled Asset Relief Program established under title 1 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and
`(ii) the exercise of authority by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System under the third undesignated paragraph of section 13 of the Federal Reserve Act (12 U.S.C. 343).
`(B) DETERMINATION OF PERCENTAGE- Such percentage shall be determined by the Secretary not later than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this section, and redetermined for taxable years beginning in each calendar year thereafter. Such percentage shall take into account the Secretary's most recent estimation of such net cost. Any specified percentage determined under this paragraph which is not a multiple of 1/100th of a percentage point shall be rounded to the nearest 1/100th of a percentage point.
`(d) Covered Securities Transaction- The term `covered securities transaction' means--
`(1) any transaction to which subsection (b), (c), or (d) of section 31 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 applies, and
`(2) any transaction subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
`(e) Administration- The Secretary shall carry out this section in consultation with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.'.
(b) Clerical Amendment- The table of subchapters for chapter 36 of such Code is amended by inserting after the item relating to subchapter B the following new item:
`subchapter c. tax on securities transactions'.
(c) Effective Date- The amendments made by this section shall apply to sales occurring more than 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.1068:
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
94th anniversary of labor hero Joe Hill's death by firing squad.
The Man Who Didn't Die
Thursday 19 November 2009
by: Dick Meister, http://www.truthout.org/1119094
It's November 19, 1915, in a courtyard of the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City. Five riflemen take careful aim at a condemned organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Joe Hill, who stands before them straight and stiff and proud.
"Fire!" he shouts defiantly.
The firing squad didn't miss. But Joe Hill, as the folk ballad says, "ain't never died." On this 94th anniversary, he lives on as one of the most enduring and influential of American symbols.
Joe Hill's story is that of a labor martyr framed for murder by viciously anti-labor employer and government forces, a man who never faltered in fighting for the rights of the oppressed, who never faltered in his attempts to bring them together for the collective action essential if they were to overcome their wealthy and powerful oppressors.
His is the story of a man and an organization destroyed by government opposition, yet immensely successful. As historian Joyce Kornbluh noted, the IWW made "an indelible mark on the American labor movement and American society," laying the groundwork for mass unionization, inspiring the formation of groups to protect the civil liberties of dissidents, prompting prison and farm labor reforms, and leaving behind "a genuine heritage ... industrial democracy."
Joe Hill's story is the story of, perhaps, the greatest of all folk poets, whose simple, satirical rhymes set to simple, familiar melodies did so much to focus working people on the common body of ideals needed to forge them into a collective force.
Remember? "You will eat, bye and bye/In that glorious land above the sky/Work and Pray, live on hay/You'll get pie in the sky when you die."
Ralph Chaplain, the IWW bard who wrote "Solidarity Forever," found Hill's songs "as coarse as homespun and as fine as silk; full of laughter and keen-edged satire; full of fine rage and finer tenderness; songs of and for the worker, written in the only language he can understand."
Joe Hill's story is the story of a man who saw with unusual clarity the unjust effects of the political, social and economic system on working people and whose own widely publicized trial and execution alerted people worldwide to the injustices and spurred them into corrective action.
It's the story of a man who told his IWW comrades, just before stepping in front of the firing squad: "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize!"
Hill's comrades aimed at nothing less than organizing all workers into One Big Union regardless of their race, nationality, craft or work skills, calling a general strike and wresting control of the economy from its capitalist masters. The revolutionary message was presented in the simple language of the workplace, in the songs of Hill, Chaplain, and others, in the street corner oratory and in a tremendous outpouring of publications, including a dozen foreign-language newspapers, which were distributed among the many unskilled immigrants from European nations where unions had similar goals.
Workers were told again and again that they all had the same problems, the same needs and faced the same enemy. It was they who did the work, while others got the profit; they were members, all of them, of the working class. To aspire to middle-class status, as the established labor movement advocated, would mean competing against their fellow workers and chaining themselves to a system that enslaved them.
Organized religion also was a tool of enslavement, to keep the worker's eye on that "pie in the sky" while he was being exploited in this world. Patriotism was a ruse to set the workers of one nation against those of another for the profit of capitalist manipulators.
IWW organizers carried the message to factories, mines, mills and lumber camps throughout the country, and to farms in the Midwest and California.
The cause of radical unionism to which Joe Hill devoted his life was lost a long time ago. The call to revolution is scarcely heard in today's clamorously capitalist society. Labor organizations seek not to seize control of the means of production, but rather to share in the fruits of an economic system controlled by others. Yet, Joe Hill's fiery words and fiery deeds, his courage and his sacrifices continue to inspire political, labor, civil rights and civil liberties activists.
They still sing his songs, striking workers, dissident students, and others, on picket lines, in demonstrations, at rallies, on the streets and in auditoriums. They echo his spirit of protest and militancy, his demand for true equality, share his fervent belief in solidarity, even use tactics first employed by Hill and his comrades.
Hill emigrated to the United States from his native Sweden in 1902, changing his name from Joel Haaglund, working as a seaman and as an itinerant wheat harvester, pipe layer, copper miner, and at other jobs as he made his way across the country to San Diego, translating into compelling lyrics the hopes and desires, the frustrations and discontents of his fellow workers.
In San Diego, Hill joined in one of the first of the many "free speech fights" waged by the Industrial Workers of the World against attempts by municipal authorities around the country to silence the street corner oratory that was a key part of the IWW's organizing strategy.
Not long afterward, Hill hopped a freight for Salt Lake City where he helped lead a successful construction workers' strike and began helping organize another free speech fight. But within a month, he was arrested on charges of shooting to death a grocer and his son and was immediately branded guilty by the local newspapers and authorities alike. Ultimately, Hill was convicted on only the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence.
Hill had staggered into a doctor's office within an hour after the shootings, bleeding from a chest wound that he said had stemmed from a quarrel over a woman. The prosecutor argued that the wound was inflicted by the grocer in response to an attack by Hill, although he did not introduce into evidence either the grocer's gun or the bullet that allegedly was fired from it. He did not introduce the gun that Hill allegedly used and did not call a single witness who could positively identify Hill as the killer. But he easily convinced the jury that the murders were an example of IWW terrorism and that since Hill was an IWW leader and had been arrested and charged with the crime, he was guilty.
As Hill's futile appeals made their way through the courts, Gov. William Spry of Utah was swamped with thousands of petitions and letters from all over the world asking for a pardon or commutation. But he would not even be swayed by the pleas for mercy from the Swedish ambassador. Not even by the pleas of US President Woodrow Wilson.
The governor paid much greater attention to the views of Utah's powerful Mormon Church leaders and powerful employer interests, particularly those who controlled the state's dominant copper mining industry. They insisted that the man they considered one of the most dangerous radicals in the country be put to death.
Joe Hill's body was shipped to Chicago, where it was cremated after a hero's funeral, the ashes divided up and sent to IWW locals for scattering on the winds in every state except Utah. Hill, with typical grim humor, had declared, "I don't want to be caught dead in Utah."
Even in death, Hill was not safe from the government. One packet of his ashes, sent belatedly to an IWW organizer in 1917 for scattering in Chicago, was seized by postal inspectors. They acted under the Espionage Act, passed after the United States entered World War I that year, which made it illegal to mail any material that advocated "treason, insurrection. or forcible resistance to any law of the United States."
The envelope, containing about a tablespoon of Hill's ashes, was sent to the National Archives in Washington, DC. It remained hidden there until 1988, when it was discovered and turned over in Chicago to the men who presided over what little remained of the Industrial Workers of the World, shrunken to only a few hundred members.
The post office apparently had objected to the caption beneath a photo of Hill on the front of the envelope. "Joe Hill," it said - "murdered by the capitalist class, November 19, 1915."
Thursday 19 November 2009
by: Dick Meister, http://www.truthout.org/1119094
It's November 19, 1915, in a courtyard of the Utah State Penitentiary in Salt Lake City. Five riflemen take careful aim at a condemned organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Joe Hill, who stands before them straight and stiff and proud.
"Fire!" he shouts defiantly.
The firing squad didn't miss. But Joe Hill, as the folk ballad says, "ain't never died." On this 94th anniversary, he lives on as one of the most enduring and influential of American symbols.
Joe Hill's story is that of a labor martyr framed for murder by viciously anti-labor employer and government forces, a man who never faltered in fighting for the rights of the oppressed, who never faltered in his attempts to bring them together for the collective action essential if they were to overcome their wealthy and powerful oppressors.
His is the story of a man and an organization destroyed by government opposition, yet immensely successful. As historian Joyce Kornbluh noted, the IWW made "an indelible mark on the American labor movement and American society," laying the groundwork for mass unionization, inspiring the formation of groups to protect the civil liberties of dissidents, prompting prison and farm labor reforms, and leaving behind "a genuine heritage ... industrial democracy."
Joe Hill's story is the story of, perhaps, the greatest of all folk poets, whose simple, satirical rhymes set to simple, familiar melodies did so much to focus working people on the common body of ideals needed to forge them into a collective force.
Remember? "You will eat, bye and bye/In that glorious land above the sky/Work and Pray, live on hay/You'll get pie in the sky when you die."
Ralph Chaplain, the IWW bard who wrote "Solidarity Forever," found Hill's songs "as coarse as homespun and as fine as silk; full of laughter and keen-edged satire; full of fine rage and finer tenderness; songs of and for the worker, written in the only language he can understand."
Joe Hill's story is the story of a man who saw with unusual clarity the unjust effects of the political, social and economic system on working people and whose own widely publicized trial and execution alerted people worldwide to the injustices and spurred them into corrective action.
It's the story of a man who told his IWW comrades, just before stepping in front of the firing squad: "Don't waste any time in mourning. Organize!"
Hill's comrades aimed at nothing less than organizing all workers into One Big Union regardless of their race, nationality, craft or work skills, calling a general strike and wresting control of the economy from its capitalist masters. The revolutionary message was presented in the simple language of the workplace, in the songs of Hill, Chaplain, and others, in the street corner oratory and in a tremendous outpouring of publications, including a dozen foreign-language newspapers, which were distributed among the many unskilled immigrants from European nations where unions had similar goals.
Workers were told again and again that they all had the same problems, the same needs and faced the same enemy. It was they who did the work, while others got the profit; they were members, all of them, of the working class. To aspire to middle-class status, as the established labor movement advocated, would mean competing against their fellow workers and chaining themselves to a system that enslaved them.
Organized religion also was a tool of enslavement, to keep the worker's eye on that "pie in the sky" while he was being exploited in this world. Patriotism was a ruse to set the workers of one nation against those of another for the profit of capitalist manipulators.
IWW organizers carried the message to factories, mines, mills and lumber camps throughout the country, and to farms in the Midwest and California.
The cause of radical unionism to which Joe Hill devoted his life was lost a long time ago. The call to revolution is scarcely heard in today's clamorously capitalist society. Labor organizations seek not to seize control of the means of production, but rather to share in the fruits of an economic system controlled by others. Yet, Joe Hill's fiery words and fiery deeds, his courage and his sacrifices continue to inspire political, labor, civil rights and civil liberties activists.
They still sing his songs, striking workers, dissident students, and others, on picket lines, in demonstrations, at rallies, on the streets and in auditoriums. They echo his spirit of protest and militancy, his demand for true equality, share his fervent belief in solidarity, even use tactics first employed by Hill and his comrades.
Hill emigrated to the United States from his native Sweden in 1902, changing his name from Joel Haaglund, working as a seaman and as an itinerant wheat harvester, pipe layer, copper miner, and at other jobs as he made his way across the country to San Diego, translating into compelling lyrics the hopes and desires, the frustrations and discontents of his fellow workers.
In San Diego, Hill joined in one of the first of the many "free speech fights" waged by the Industrial Workers of the World against attempts by municipal authorities around the country to silence the street corner oratory that was a key part of the IWW's organizing strategy.
Not long afterward, Hill hopped a freight for Salt Lake City where he helped lead a successful construction workers' strike and began helping organize another free speech fight. But within a month, he was arrested on charges of shooting to death a grocer and his son and was immediately branded guilty by the local newspapers and authorities alike. Ultimately, Hill was convicted on only the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence.
Hill had staggered into a doctor's office within an hour after the shootings, bleeding from a chest wound that he said had stemmed from a quarrel over a woman. The prosecutor argued that the wound was inflicted by the grocer in response to an attack by Hill, although he did not introduce into evidence either the grocer's gun or the bullet that allegedly was fired from it. He did not introduce the gun that Hill allegedly used and did not call a single witness who could positively identify Hill as the killer. But he easily convinced the jury that the murders were an example of IWW terrorism and that since Hill was an IWW leader and had been arrested and charged with the crime, he was guilty.
As Hill's futile appeals made their way through the courts, Gov. William Spry of Utah was swamped with thousands of petitions and letters from all over the world asking for a pardon or commutation. But he would not even be swayed by the pleas for mercy from the Swedish ambassador. Not even by the pleas of US President Woodrow Wilson.
The governor paid much greater attention to the views of Utah's powerful Mormon Church leaders and powerful employer interests, particularly those who controlled the state's dominant copper mining industry. They insisted that the man they considered one of the most dangerous radicals in the country be put to death.
Joe Hill's body was shipped to Chicago, where it was cremated after a hero's funeral, the ashes divided up and sent to IWW locals for scattering on the winds in every state except Utah. Hill, with typical grim humor, had declared, "I don't want to be caught dead in Utah."
Even in death, Hill was not safe from the government. One packet of his ashes, sent belatedly to an IWW organizer in 1917 for scattering in Chicago, was seized by postal inspectors. They acted under the Espionage Act, passed after the United States entered World War I that year, which made it illegal to mail any material that advocated "treason, insurrection. or forcible resistance to any law of the United States."
The envelope, containing about a tablespoon of Hill's ashes, was sent to the National Archives in Washington, DC. It remained hidden there until 1988, when it was discovered and turned over in Chicago to the men who presided over what little remained of the Industrial Workers of the World, shrunken to only a few hundred members.
The post office apparently had objected to the caption beneath a photo of Hill on the front of the envelope. "Joe Hill," it said - "murdered by the capitalist class, November 19, 1915."
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A legacy of incarcerating the innocent
Crusading Calif. D.A. retires, leaves painful wake
By GARANCE BURKE (AP) –
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The molesters drank blood, the children said, and hung them from hooks after forcing them to have sex with their parents. They murdered babies, prosecutors told jurors, and snapped photographs as the horror unfolded.
Ed Jagels, renowned as one of California's toughest district attorneys, built his career on the Kern County child molestation cases of the 1980s, putting more than two dozen men and women behind bars to serve decades-long sentences for abusing children.
Appellate judges now say most of those crimes never happened.
Still, generations of voters have embraced the crusading prosecutor's tough-on-crime agenda in this blue-collar basin just a mountain range north of Los Angeles.
Now, as Jagels prepares to retire, the get-tough laws he championed are being criticized in a state crippled by soaring prison costs. And some of those he put away are going public with stories of wrongful conviction in a documentary film narrated by Sean Penn, one of his most ardent critics.
The Bakersfield trials — and half a dozen similar cases that rippled across America during the hysteria of that period — are widely acknowledged to have punished the innocent. Most convictions relied solely on children's testimony, and the state attorney general ultimately found county investigators coerced their young witnesses into lying on the stand and that the probe "floundered in a sea of unproven allegations."
But the silver-haired prosecutor maintains that justice was done in the cases that made him a darling of California's conservative movement.
"Innocent people may have been accused at one point or another, but what I really fear is that perfectly legitimate convictions have been overturned," Jagels said, sitting in his wood-panelled office among portraits of himself with Ronald Reagan and other Republican leaders. "How the people of Kern County feel about what I've done is much more important than what anyone else might think."
Such stunning setbacks might have derailed other elected officials, but Jagels, 60, has thrived amid the oil fields and orchards surrounding Bakersfield. He holds fast that he was right to form a special task force to investigate alleged molestation rings, right to assign his young attorneys to the cases and he has fought the release of those convicted.
He has been re-elected six times, is leaving office on his own terms and hopes to leave the reins next year to a handpicked successor.
That brings little comfort to Brandon Smith, who grew up without his parents after they were sentenced to prison for gruesome sex crimes he and his younger brother described on the witness stand. Smith said he only repeated what he heard during weeks of group therapy, and had no inkling his false statements would mean he would be separated from his family and assigned to live in foster homes for nearly a decade.
"They basically coached me through my whole testimony, and told me that I had to say that my parents had sexually abused me," said Smith, whose parents Scott and Brenda Kniffen served 12 years on molestation convictions before they were reversed by an appeals court. "We've all put it behind us, but the one thing I would love is a verbal apology from Ed Jagels for tearing my family apart."
Since the late 1980s, all but one of 26 convictions Jagels secured have been reversed. Kern County has paid $9.56 million to settle state and federal suits brought by former defendants and their children.
Penn, who met Smith through the film, says the Bakersfield cases struck a chord because he did a short stay in a Los Angeles County jail cell next to a man accused in a major Southern California child abuse case.
Raymond Buckey and his mother, who ran the McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach, ultimately were acquitted of 52 child molestation charges in 1990.
"There is no question that we have to take these kinds of questions very seriously, but in these cases a pretty good system was used really corruptly," said Penn, who also executive produced the film "Witch Hunt," which has been airing nationally on MSNBC. "Jagels orchestrated the rape of these children emotionally, not to mention the illegitimate prosecution of the adults."
Jackie Cummings fled Bakersfield with her husband and two sons in October 1984, when plainclothes police started casing their house looking for members of molestation rings. The family moved from campsite to campsite for a year, terrified that sheriff's deputies would arrest them because they knew a couple on trial for alleged child abuse.
When investigators tracked down the Cummings at a motel, they seized the children, arguing the couple were devil-worshipping molesters. After a year in foster care, their sons were pressured to testify against them in custody hearings.
"He's destroyed hundreds of people's lives," said Cummings, who was never charged with a crime, and whose custody case ultimately was thrown out. "We came back to Bakersfield and the jails were just filling up with people. We knew all those people were innocent, because we were innocent, too."
Since the 1980s, Jagels and county law enforcement officials have made major reforms to their investigative procedures, and now assure all interviews with child witnesses are videotaped and do not include suggestive questioning.
Jagels also has cut a wide swath through California politics in the last 30 years, leading a voter-driven campaign that unseated three liberal justices from the state Supreme Court, and fighting for California's stringent three-strikes law. He was once contemplated a run for state attorney general, but now says he plans to spend his retirement hunting elk. Conservatives praise Jagels' persuasive advocacy for victims' rights and tough sentencing laws, and his record of putting more people behind bars per capita than almost all other California counties.
"Anybody who has spent any time as a prosecutor knows Ed Jagels because he's had such a massive impact on the criminal justice system in California," said Steve Baric, secretary of the California Republican Party.
Now, however as California and other cash-strapped states face dire budget crises and prisons bursting at the seams, officials are rethinking whether it makes fiscal sense to keep locking up so many people for so long.
"As the economy has tightened, policymakers from both parties are asking much tougher questions about whether this tough-on-crime agenda is producing enough of a return for public safety," said Adam Gelb, a public safety policy expert at the Pew Center on the States in Washington.
Scott Thorpe, who leads the California District Attorneys Association in Sacramento, called Jagels a "prosecutor's prosecutor" who helped to popularize support for the death penalty.
Jagels remains adamant that putting more criminals in prison has kept a tight lid on crime in his rural pocket of the Central Valley, and says he'll retire assured that he used his power to keep his constituents safe.
"One thing we know for sure is criminals can't commit felonies when they're locked up," Jagels said. "If California prisons are overcrowded it's not because we have too many people in prison. It's because we don't have enough prisons."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
By GARANCE BURKE (AP) –
BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — The molesters drank blood, the children said, and hung them from hooks after forcing them to have sex with their parents. They murdered babies, prosecutors told jurors, and snapped photographs as the horror unfolded.
Ed Jagels, renowned as one of California's toughest district attorneys, built his career on the Kern County child molestation cases of the 1980s, putting more than two dozen men and women behind bars to serve decades-long sentences for abusing children.
Appellate judges now say most of those crimes never happened.
Still, generations of voters have embraced the crusading prosecutor's tough-on-crime agenda in this blue-collar basin just a mountain range north of Los Angeles.
Now, as Jagels prepares to retire, the get-tough laws he championed are being criticized in a state crippled by soaring prison costs. And some of those he put away are going public with stories of wrongful conviction in a documentary film narrated by Sean Penn, one of his most ardent critics.
The Bakersfield trials — and half a dozen similar cases that rippled across America during the hysteria of that period — are widely acknowledged to have punished the innocent. Most convictions relied solely on children's testimony, and the state attorney general ultimately found county investigators coerced their young witnesses into lying on the stand and that the probe "floundered in a sea of unproven allegations."
But the silver-haired prosecutor maintains that justice was done in the cases that made him a darling of California's conservative movement.
"Innocent people may have been accused at one point or another, but what I really fear is that perfectly legitimate convictions have been overturned," Jagels said, sitting in his wood-panelled office among portraits of himself with Ronald Reagan and other Republican leaders. "How the people of Kern County feel about what I've done is much more important than what anyone else might think."
Such stunning setbacks might have derailed other elected officials, but Jagels, 60, has thrived amid the oil fields and orchards surrounding Bakersfield. He holds fast that he was right to form a special task force to investigate alleged molestation rings, right to assign his young attorneys to the cases and he has fought the release of those convicted.
He has been re-elected six times, is leaving office on his own terms and hopes to leave the reins next year to a handpicked successor.
That brings little comfort to Brandon Smith, who grew up without his parents after they were sentenced to prison for gruesome sex crimes he and his younger brother described on the witness stand. Smith said he only repeated what he heard during weeks of group therapy, and had no inkling his false statements would mean he would be separated from his family and assigned to live in foster homes for nearly a decade.
"They basically coached me through my whole testimony, and told me that I had to say that my parents had sexually abused me," said Smith, whose parents Scott and Brenda Kniffen served 12 years on molestation convictions before they were reversed by an appeals court. "We've all put it behind us, but the one thing I would love is a verbal apology from Ed Jagels for tearing my family apart."
Since the late 1980s, all but one of 26 convictions Jagels secured have been reversed. Kern County has paid $9.56 million to settle state and federal suits brought by former defendants and their children.
Penn, who met Smith through the film, says the Bakersfield cases struck a chord because he did a short stay in a Los Angeles County jail cell next to a man accused in a major Southern California child abuse case.
Raymond Buckey and his mother, who ran the McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach, ultimately were acquitted of 52 child molestation charges in 1990.
"There is no question that we have to take these kinds of questions very seriously, but in these cases a pretty good system was used really corruptly," said Penn, who also executive produced the film "Witch Hunt," which has been airing nationally on MSNBC. "Jagels orchestrated the rape of these children emotionally, not to mention the illegitimate prosecution of the adults."
Jackie Cummings fled Bakersfield with her husband and two sons in October 1984, when plainclothes police started casing their house looking for members of molestation rings. The family moved from campsite to campsite for a year, terrified that sheriff's deputies would arrest them because they knew a couple on trial for alleged child abuse.
When investigators tracked down the Cummings at a motel, they seized the children, arguing the couple were devil-worshipping molesters. After a year in foster care, their sons were pressured to testify against them in custody hearings.
"He's destroyed hundreds of people's lives," said Cummings, who was never charged with a crime, and whose custody case ultimately was thrown out. "We came back to Bakersfield and the jails were just filling up with people. We knew all those people were innocent, because we were innocent, too."
Since the 1980s, Jagels and county law enforcement officials have made major reforms to their investigative procedures, and now assure all interviews with child witnesses are videotaped and do not include suggestive questioning.
Jagels also has cut a wide swath through California politics in the last 30 years, leading a voter-driven campaign that unseated three liberal justices from the state Supreme Court, and fighting for California's stringent three-strikes law. He was once contemplated a run for state attorney general, but now says he plans to spend his retirement hunting elk. Conservatives praise Jagels' persuasive advocacy for victims' rights and tough sentencing laws, and his record of putting more people behind bars per capita than almost all other California counties.
"Anybody who has spent any time as a prosecutor knows Ed Jagels because he's had such a massive impact on the criminal justice system in California," said Steve Baric, secretary of the California Republican Party.
Now, however as California and other cash-strapped states face dire budget crises and prisons bursting at the seams, officials are rethinking whether it makes fiscal sense to keep locking up so many people for so long.
"As the economy has tightened, policymakers from both parties are asking much tougher questions about whether this tough-on-crime agenda is producing enough of a return for public safety," said Adam Gelb, a public safety policy expert at the Pew Center on the States in Washington.
Scott Thorpe, who leads the California District Attorneys Association in Sacramento, called Jagels a "prosecutor's prosecutor" who helped to popularize support for the death penalty.
Jagels remains adamant that putting more criminals in prison has kept a tight lid on crime in his rural pocket of the Central Valley, and says he'll retire assured that he used his power to keep his constituents safe.
"One thing we know for sure is criminals can't commit felonies when they're locked up," Jagels said. "If California prisons are overcrowded it's not because we have too many people in prison. It's because we don't have enough prisons."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Friday, November 13, 2009
"Going Rouge" Takes On the Palin Nightmare
"Going Rouge" Takes On the Palin Nightmare
Thursday 12 November 2009
by: Maya Schenwar, t r u t h o u t | Interview http://www.truthout.org/1112097
Next Tuesday, when Sarah Palin's already-bestselling memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," hits shelves, another much-anticipated look at the Palin phenomenon will also debut: "Going Rouge: Sarah Palin - An American Nightmare" (available exclusively at orbooks.com). The book includes both new and classic essays by the likes of Max Blumenthal, Eve Ensler, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jessica Valenti, Juan Cole, Jim Hightower, Robert Reich, Naomi Klein and many more.
I interviewed Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, the editors of "Going Rouge," about Palin's place in the American political landscape, her influence on the tenor of Republican politics, and why they did not choose to make Levi Johnston a focal point of their anthology.
MS: Although your book is being released the same day as "Going Rogue" and has a similar cover, it doesn't seem like you intend to trick readers into buying the book when they mean to buy "Going Rogue." What was your aim in compiling this anthology?
Betsy Reed: We want to emphasize that although the cover has an element of satire, the book is not a parody. Our goal was to present a serious appraisal of Sarah Palin's record and an assessment of her role in American politics - and her future in American politics. She is a very well-packaged celebrity at this point, so we felt it was important to show her beneath the gloss.
Richard Kim: "Going Rogue" has already printed 1.5 million copies, and it has been number one on Amazon for weeks. We can assume that it's going to be painting her in the most generous and heroic light, and it's really important to tell the other side of her story, about her record in Alaska as governor, what she did on the campaign trail and what her politics are, and not to fall prey to the Sarah Palin branding machine.
BR: We're seeing this argument take shape where anyone who's critical of Sarah Palin is portrayed as launching unfair personal attacks on her. Our book is not personal at all; it's about who she is politically. There's really nothing about Levi Johnston in the book.
MS: That's refreshing.
RK: He only enters in there once or twice. There's no full-frontal nudity in the book, either.
MS: I'd like to know how you settled on the title of "Going Rouge," besides the play on words?
BR: Well, we can readily admit the play on words was a large part of the appeal, although we suggest in a cheeky way in our introduction that any similarities are purely coincidental.
But we also argue in our introduction that Sarah Palin represents something interesting and new in Republican politics, in that she is very much presented as a woman - a mother, a hockey mom - and her pedigree as a beauty queen was a very explicit part of her marketing as a vice-presidential candidate. This is highly suspect coming from a party that's been against every major agenda item for the women's movement. The title allows us to comment on that phenomenon: the Republican Party "going rouge."
Why do you think Sarah Palin remains so widely accepted by conservatives as a viable national politician, despite her obvious shortcomings?
RK: A part of that is definitely the narrative she sells; being a mom from Alaska. Also, she also does share the views of 20 percent of the electorate: the far right. And it's clear that they are not actually thinking in this moment of winning national elections. They're not even trying to hold onto a seat in New York's 23rd district, which has been in Republican hands since the 1850s. That was the race where Sarah Palin intervened and hacked out the moderate Republican. So that's a big question that's unknown: Is the Republican Party going to follow Palin into basically suicidal territory in terms of a national election?
BR: I think she does have quite a strong following among a certain cohort of Christian, conservative, white, married women. The Republican party is a mostly male phenomenon, but I think Republicans recognized that they needed to do better with women when they picked her.
RK: Going back to what Betsy said earlier, the narrative that she sends out of being persecuted is actually deeply resonant now with that portion of the Republican Party, which is out of power in the White House, out of power in Congress, and seeing the policies of the Bush years being rolled back. She constantly says, "I'm not being recognized by the national media, so I'm going to go rogue and tell you the story directly." In that way she can bypass Washington and bypass the media world.
BR: It's nothing new - The American right has always felt itself to be aggrieved. They always present themselves as fighting against a liberal elite. During the Bush years, obviously, they controlled everything. But now with Obama, there's a receptive audience for Sarah Palin's line of being the victim of this liberal conspiracy.
MS: That sense of victimhood can make it difficult for the media to cover Sarah Palin at all. If you had to map out a strategy for the progressive media in confronting the phenomenon of Sarah Palin over the next couple of years, what would you include?
RK: The best thing progressives did during the election was stick to record record record; facts facts facts. When you line those up, you see what a disaster she was as governor and what a disaster she would be as vice president.
That should be the strategy going forward. When she posts on Facebook that Obama's going to have "death panels" that execute her Downs Syndrome baby, we have to point to where he actually talks about optional end-of-life consultations. When she talks about how "In God We Trust" has been taken off the dollar coin, implying that it was an Obama plot, progressives have to point out that in fact, this was passed by a Republican Congress and George W. Bush.
So, there's going to be a portion of the electorate that believes whatever she says, but the results of the election and the results of the summer health care debate have shown that if we stick to the facts and the record, she's usually debunked.
MS: So, what kind of impact do you hope the book will have on Palin's probable presidential campaign?
BR: In some ways, Sarah Palin represents very bad news for the Republican Party. So part of us just wants to say, "Go for it!"
RK: But then, look at what she did with Betsy McCaughey's "death panels," which were just a little thing in the New York Post and no one on the national stage was paying attention to it. Then Sarah Palin blasted it on her Facebook page, and for the entire month of August, instead of discussing the public option or single payer or any of the other health care proposals out there, we were stuck fighting that garbage.
BR: So, we're probably not going to see President Palin in 2012. The larger effect we're looking at is that Sarah Palin is warping our political debate.
MS: Criticisms of Sarah Palin always seem to contain this combination of outrage and humor. That's a hard balance to strike, and I'm interested in how you dealt with that balance in compiling the anthology.
RK: Some of the humor in the book just comes from quoting Sarah Palin. She's funny enough just on her own. There's a piece in the book that puts Sarah Palin's own words into verse, in haiku form.
So, some of the writers have a lot of fun with her. She has a sort of comic element, but then there are also terrifying elements to her, like the ignorance that she exposed in her interviews with Katie Couric or with Charlie Gibson.
That balance is represented in the book. The appeal of her youth, her wardrobe, her charm has been used to evade the hard political questions of her record and her knowledge.
MS: Is Sarah Palin a "rogue" phenomenon, or does she represent a trend in the Republican Party?
RK: What we see in Sarah Palin's continued political relevance, even though she holds no office, is that in some ways she's doing what Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and all these other former Republican politicians are doing - using their status as media figures to push an agenda. They don't have to actually govern, or face the consequences of their actions at the polls. So, what she represents is actually the takeover of the Republican Party by these non-governmental actors - and you can throw Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck in there - this cabal of people who are not beholden to any electorate. Those are the people in the driver's seat.
BR: There's not anything inherently wrong with a person who's a media personality being influential in politics. We have that on the left, too. But Paul Krugman makes a good point in his [Nov. 9] column: These people don't have to worry about governing, so they can be as irresponsible as they want in their rhetoric, and could potentially make the country ungovernable for Democrats.
RK: Even Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman and Michele Bachmann have to come home and face their constituency. Sarah Palin doesn't need to do that anymore, and that's one of the things that makes her a great danger in the next few years.
"Going Rouge: Sarah Palin - An American Nightmare" can be purchased at orbooks.com.
Thursday 12 November 2009
by: Maya Schenwar, t r u t h o u t | Interview http://www.truthout.org/1112097
Next Tuesday, when Sarah Palin's already-bestselling memoir, "Going Rogue: An American Life," hits shelves, another much-anticipated look at the Palin phenomenon will also debut: "Going Rouge: Sarah Palin - An American Nightmare" (available exclusively at orbooks.com). The book includes both new and classic essays by the likes of Max Blumenthal, Eve Ensler, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Jessica Valenti, Juan Cole, Jim Hightower, Robert Reich, Naomi Klein and many more.
I interviewed Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, the editors of "Going Rouge," about Palin's place in the American political landscape, her influence on the tenor of Republican politics, and why they did not choose to make Levi Johnston a focal point of their anthology.
MS: Although your book is being released the same day as "Going Rogue" and has a similar cover, it doesn't seem like you intend to trick readers into buying the book when they mean to buy "Going Rogue." What was your aim in compiling this anthology?
Betsy Reed: We want to emphasize that although the cover has an element of satire, the book is not a parody. Our goal was to present a serious appraisal of Sarah Palin's record and an assessment of her role in American politics - and her future in American politics. She is a very well-packaged celebrity at this point, so we felt it was important to show her beneath the gloss.
Richard Kim: "Going Rogue" has already printed 1.5 million copies, and it has been number one on Amazon for weeks. We can assume that it's going to be painting her in the most generous and heroic light, and it's really important to tell the other side of her story, about her record in Alaska as governor, what she did on the campaign trail and what her politics are, and not to fall prey to the Sarah Palin branding machine.
BR: We're seeing this argument take shape where anyone who's critical of Sarah Palin is portrayed as launching unfair personal attacks on her. Our book is not personal at all; it's about who she is politically. There's really nothing about Levi Johnston in the book.
MS: That's refreshing.
RK: He only enters in there once or twice. There's no full-frontal nudity in the book, either.
MS: I'd like to know how you settled on the title of "Going Rouge," besides the play on words?
BR: Well, we can readily admit the play on words was a large part of the appeal, although we suggest in a cheeky way in our introduction that any similarities are purely coincidental.
But we also argue in our introduction that Sarah Palin represents something interesting and new in Republican politics, in that she is very much presented as a woman - a mother, a hockey mom - and her pedigree as a beauty queen was a very explicit part of her marketing as a vice-presidential candidate. This is highly suspect coming from a party that's been against every major agenda item for the women's movement. The title allows us to comment on that phenomenon: the Republican Party "going rouge."
Why do you think Sarah Palin remains so widely accepted by conservatives as a viable national politician, despite her obvious shortcomings?
RK: A part of that is definitely the narrative she sells; being a mom from Alaska. Also, she also does share the views of 20 percent of the electorate: the far right. And it's clear that they are not actually thinking in this moment of winning national elections. They're not even trying to hold onto a seat in New York's 23rd district, which has been in Republican hands since the 1850s. That was the race where Sarah Palin intervened and hacked out the moderate Republican. So that's a big question that's unknown: Is the Republican Party going to follow Palin into basically suicidal territory in terms of a national election?
BR: I think she does have quite a strong following among a certain cohort of Christian, conservative, white, married women. The Republican party is a mostly male phenomenon, but I think Republicans recognized that they needed to do better with women when they picked her.
RK: Going back to what Betsy said earlier, the narrative that she sends out of being persecuted is actually deeply resonant now with that portion of the Republican Party, which is out of power in the White House, out of power in Congress, and seeing the policies of the Bush years being rolled back. She constantly says, "I'm not being recognized by the national media, so I'm going to go rogue and tell you the story directly." In that way she can bypass Washington and bypass the media world.
BR: It's nothing new - The American right has always felt itself to be aggrieved. They always present themselves as fighting against a liberal elite. During the Bush years, obviously, they controlled everything. But now with Obama, there's a receptive audience for Sarah Palin's line of being the victim of this liberal conspiracy.
MS: That sense of victimhood can make it difficult for the media to cover Sarah Palin at all. If you had to map out a strategy for the progressive media in confronting the phenomenon of Sarah Palin over the next couple of years, what would you include?
RK: The best thing progressives did during the election was stick to record record record; facts facts facts. When you line those up, you see what a disaster she was as governor and what a disaster she would be as vice president.
That should be the strategy going forward. When she posts on Facebook that Obama's going to have "death panels" that execute her Downs Syndrome baby, we have to point to where he actually talks about optional end-of-life consultations. When she talks about how "In God We Trust" has been taken off the dollar coin, implying that it was an Obama plot, progressives have to point out that in fact, this was passed by a Republican Congress and George W. Bush.
So, there's going to be a portion of the electorate that believes whatever she says, but the results of the election and the results of the summer health care debate have shown that if we stick to the facts and the record, she's usually debunked.
MS: So, what kind of impact do you hope the book will have on Palin's probable presidential campaign?
BR: In some ways, Sarah Palin represents very bad news for the Republican Party. So part of us just wants to say, "Go for it!"
RK: But then, look at what she did with Betsy McCaughey's "death panels," which were just a little thing in the New York Post and no one on the national stage was paying attention to it. Then Sarah Palin blasted it on her Facebook page, and for the entire month of August, instead of discussing the public option or single payer or any of the other health care proposals out there, we were stuck fighting that garbage.
BR: So, we're probably not going to see President Palin in 2012. The larger effect we're looking at is that Sarah Palin is warping our political debate.
MS: Criticisms of Sarah Palin always seem to contain this combination of outrage and humor. That's a hard balance to strike, and I'm interested in how you dealt with that balance in compiling the anthology.
RK: Some of the humor in the book just comes from quoting Sarah Palin. She's funny enough just on her own. There's a piece in the book that puts Sarah Palin's own words into verse, in haiku form.
So, some of the writers have a lot of fun with her. She has a sort of comic element, but then there are also terrifying elements to her, like the ignorance that she exposed in her interviews with Katie Couric or with Charlie Gibson.
That balance is represented in the book. The appeal of her youth, her wardrobe, her charm has been used to evade the hard political questions of her record and her knowledge.
MS: Is Sarah Palin a "rogue" phenomenon, or does she represent a trend in the Republican Party?
RK: What we see in Sarah Palin's continued political relevance, even though she holds no office, is that in some ways she's doing what Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and all these other former Republican politicians are doing - using their status as media figures to push an agenda. They don't have to actually govern, or face the consequences of their actions at the polls. So, what she represents is actually the takeover of the Republican Party by these non-governmental actors - and you can throw Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck in there - this cabal of people who are not beholden to any electorate. Those are the people in the driver's seat.
BR: There's not anything inherently wrong with a person who's a media personality being influential in politics. We have that on the left, too. But Paul Krugman makes a good point in his [Nov. 9] column: These people don't have to worry about governing, so they can be as irresponsible as they want in their rhetoric, and could potentially make the country ungovernable for Democrats.
RK: Even Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman and Michele Bachmann have to come home and face their constituency. Sarah Palin doesn't need to do that anymore, and that's one of the things that makes her a great danger in the next few years.
"Going Rouge: Sarah Palin - An American Nightmare" can be purchased at orbooks.com.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Twittering while American
Thousands of angry citizens, who fear a "government take over" of the world's resources by powerful governments and the corporations they harbor, took to the streets of Pittsburgh PA.. on Sept 23rd and 24th to protest and disrupt the G20 summit. And while these thousands of protester apparently did not merit even five minutes, of the 24/7 media coverage awarded the few dozens who protested and disrupted our recent congressional town hall meetings, Law enforcement may just end up making some news for having arrested an Elliot Madison for TWITTERING (it's like sending out a mass email, or text message) about the locations of the riot squads and where other police were assembling. Information, by the way, which he found posted on the internet.
You may have heard or read that we have a constitutional right to assemble, and to petition our government, but keep in mind that in most in most jurisdictions, those assemblies must be permitted (unlike guns, at a tea party protest in Arizona or New Hampshire.), and no such permits were going to be issued anywhere near where the the governments met, or from any location where the citizens could actually be heard by these governments' representatives. So Pittsburgh locked down. They brought in and deputized 1000 additional personal as "police", just for the event and they even used an experimental pain complicate technique, called a "sound" cannon to disperse crowds, as well as firing rubber bullets and tear gas at them. Many of these protesters (and a few innocent by standers) were deemed to be committing the crime of protesting with out a permit and were subject to mass arrests, very much like what happen in New York City during the National Republican Convention in 2004. Most were detained until the end of the summit and released with out charges, so short of hiring a lawyer and bringing civil charges against the police, the violation of their civil rights will never be determined. Elliot Madison however, will be getting his day in court.
-----
http://bullets?storyId=113513780
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
We've reported here on the use of texting, blogging and tweeting by all sorts of protest movements abroad. But the most recent case, and the arrest of someone tweeting live about protests, took place in the not-so-exotic confines of Pittsburgh.
A self-described anarchist, who was tweeting at the G-20 summit, was arrested. Elliot Madison was accused of directing others to avoid arrest. Madison's home in New York City was searched. He was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime.
We asked law professor and former prosecutor Paul Butler about this today. We wondered, is telling protesters that there's a cop up ahead arresting protesters any different from blinking your headlights on the highway to signal there's a cop up ahead with a radar gun?
Professor PAUL BUTLER (Law, George Washington University): There's no universal agreement about whether when you do that you're committing a crime. So, in a few jurisdictions, people have actually been charged with traffic offenses for warning about police. So, in a sense, this is a glorified version of that.
SIEGEL: And that would include busting people for communicating logistics to other demonstrators about where to go?
Prof. BUTLER: Well, that's the very difficult decision the judge will have to make. So these cases present difficult First Amendment issues. It's perfectly legal to protest, but it's not legal to help the bad guy run away. So, it's a thin line, not a thick line, between those two.
SIEGEL: Although the bad guy in this case - we understand the bad guy when he is purveying child pornography or selling drugs - in this case, the bad guy would be the protester who might be arrested by a cop if he goes down First Street instead of running down Second Street.
Prof. BUTLER: And it's tough because the police have to make these difficult, on the spot determinations about where the protesters can go. This information may not be transmitted to the protesters. And so, often, they're arrested for conduct that they didn't even know was illegal. It wasn't illegal five minutes ago. And so, in a sense, all of these tweets and Twitterers are just designed to get the message out about what's legal now.
SIEGEL: The New York Times has some of the messages that were exchanged during the protest against the G-20, some of the tweets. SWAT teams rolling down 5th Avenue - that would be one. Another one was: Report received that police are nabbing anyone that looks like a protester. Black block: Stay alert, watch your friends.
Prof. BUTLER: Yeah.
SIEGEL: What does it sound like to you?
Prof. BUTLER: Well, you know, some of it sounds like pure journalism, just reporting what's going on on the scene, not unlike what I heard when I watch some protest on the local news.
You know, the part about watch out for your friend, that's a little bit more ambiguous. But one concern is that sometimes the police have arrested innocent people. So, if I were the defense attorney, I'd say they're just trying to give people information so that they can conform their conduct to the law.
SIEGEL: Now, but let's say if I were a journalist Tweeting about protests, and I sent out a message: SWAT teams rolling down 5th Avenue, my intent is to inform. It's not necessarily to direct people's conduct. On the other hand, when people are informed of something, they decide what to do on the basis of that information. Is there any bright line in law between when you're just giving somebody the facts of the situation or when the fact of the situation, that is, I see cops who are about to beat down your door, flush it, quick, when that information really is part of a - trying to thwart the law?
Prof. BUTLER: Yeah. Well, intent or motive is key. So if the government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the idea was to help the protesters evade the police and to prevent the protesters' illegal activities from being discovered, then they've broken the law. But that's a lot that the government will have to prove and, you know, it may be difficult based on the evidence.
SIEGEL: New law will be made in these cases in the coming months.
Prof. BUTLER: And the law is used to adapting to new technology, you know, for - there was a time when the telephone was new. And then there was another time when computers were new. And people used these new instruments for both legal activity and for political organizing and sometimes for illegal activity. And what law has to do is to figure out the difference.
SIEGEL: Professor Butler, thank you very much.
Prof. BUTLER: It's great to be here.
SIEGEL: Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, is a professor of law at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
---
More on G20:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/06/G20.tweeters/
for photos click here
You may have heard or read that we have a constitutional right to assemble, and to petition our government, but keep in mind that in most in most jurisdictions, those assemblies must be permitted (unlike guns, at a tea party protest in Arizona or New Hampshire.), and no such permits were going to be issued anywhere near where the the governments met, or from any location where the citizens could actually be heard by these governments' representatives. So Pittsburgh locked down. They brought in and deputized 1000 additional personal as "police", just for the event and they even used an experimental pain complicate technique, called a "sound" cannon to disperse crowds, as well as firing rubber bullets and tear gas at them. Many of these protesters (and a few innocent by standers) were deemed to be committing the crime of protesting with out a permit and were subject to mass arrests, very much like what happen in New York City during the National Republican Convention in 2004. Most were detained until the end of the summit and released with out charges, so short of hiring a lawyer and bringing civil charges against the police, the violation of their civil rights will never be determined. Elliot Madison however, will be getting his day in court.
-----
http://bullets?storyId=113513780
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
We've reported here on the use of texting, blogging and tweeting by all sorts of protest movements abroad. But the most recent case, and the arrest of someone tweeting live about protests, took place in the not-so-exotic confines of Pittsburgh.
A self-described anarchist, who was tweeting at the G-20 summit, was arrested. Elliot Madison was accused of directing others to avoid arrest. Madison's home in New York City was searched. He was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime.
We asked law professor and former prosecutor Paul Butler about this today. We wondered, is telling protesters that there's a cop up ahead arresting protesters any different from blinking your headlights on the highway to signal there's a cop up ahead with a radar gun?
Professor PAUL BUTLER (Law, George Washington University): There's no universal agreement about whether when you do that you're committing a crime. So, in a few jurisdictions, people have actually been charged with traffic offenses for warning about police. So, in a sense, this is a glorified version of that.
SIEGEL: And that would include busting people for communicating logistics to other demonstrators about where to go?
Prof. BUTLER: Well, that's the very difficult decision the judge will have to make. So these cases present difficult First Amendment issues. It's perfectly legal to protest, but it's not legal to help the bad guy run away. So, it's a thin line, not a thick line, between those two.
SIEGEL: Although the bad guy in this case - we understand the bad guy when he is purveying child pornography or selling drugs - in this case, the bad guy would be the protester who might be arrested by a cop if he goes down First Street instead of running down Second Street.
Prof. BUTLER: And it's tough because the police have to make these difficult, on the spot determinations about where the protesters can go. This information may not be transmitted to the protesters. And so, often, they're arrested for conduct that they didn't even know was illegal. It wasn't illegal five minutes ago. And so, in a sense, all of these tweets and Twitterers are just designed to get the message out about what's legal now.
SIEGEL: The New York Times has some of the messages that were exchanged during the protest against the G-20, some of the tweets. SWAT teams rolling down 5th Avenue - that would be one. Another one was: Report received that police are nabbing anyone that looks like a protester. Black block: Stay alert, watch your friends.
Prof. BUTLER: Yeah.
SIEGEL: What does it sound like to you?
Prof. BUTLER: Well, you know, some of it sounds like pure journalism, just reporting what's going on on the scene, not unlike what I heard when I watch some protest on the local news.
You know, the part about watch out for your friend, that's a little bit more ambiguous. But one concern is that sometimes the police have arrested innocent people. So, if I were the defense attorney, I'd say they're just trying to give people information so that they can conform their conduct to the law.
SIEGEL: Now, but let's say if I were a journalist Tweeting about protests, and I sent out a message: SWAT teams rolling down 5th Avenue, my intent is to inform. It's not necessarily to direct people's conduct. On the other hand, when people are informed of something, they decide what to do on the basis of that information. Is there any bright line in law between when you're just giving somebody the facts of the situation or when the fact of the situation, that is, I see cops who are about to beat down your door, flush it, quick, when that information really is part of a - trying to thwart the law?
Prof. BUTLER: Yeah. Well, intent or motive is key. So if the government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the idea was to help the protesters evade the police and to prevent the protesters' illegal activities from being discovered, then they've broken the law. But that's a lot that the government will have to prove and, you know, it may be difficult based on the evidence.
SIEGEL: New law will be made in these cases in the coming months.
Prof. BUTLER: And the law is used to adapting to new technology, you know, for - there was a time when the telephone was new. And then there was another time when computers were new. And people used these new instruments for both legal activity and for political organizing and sometimes for illegal activity. And what law has to do is to figure out the difference.
SIEGEL: Professor Butler, thank you very much.
Prof. BUTLER: It's great to be here.
SIEGEL: Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor, is a professor of law at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
---
More on G20:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/06/G20.tweeters/
for photos click here
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Thousands at G20 no match for dozens at Town Hall Meeting
Thousand march in Pittsburgh, with little to no news coverage, in stark contrast to the none stop coverage of a few dozen who disrupted some of the Congressional Town Hall Meetings in August.
--
http://www.truthout.org/092809R
Street Report From the G20
Monday 28 September 2009
by: Bill Quigley, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
The G20 in Pittsburgh showed us how pitifully fearful our leaders have become.
What no terrorist could do to us, our own leaders did.
Out of fear of the possibility of a terrorist attack, authorities militarize our towns, scare our people away, stop daily life and quash our constitutional rights.
For days, downtown Pittsburgh, home to the G20, was a turned into a militarized, people-free ghost town. Sirens screamed day and night.
Helicopters crisscrossed the skies. Gunboats sat in the rivers. The skies were defended by Air Force jets. Streets were barricaded by huge cement blocks and fencing. Bridges were closed with National Guard across the entrances. Public transportation was stopped downtown. Amtrak train service was suspended for days.
In many areas, there were armed police every 100 feet. Businesses closed. Schools closed. Tens of thousands were unable to work.
Four thousand police were on duty, plus 2,500 National Guard, plus Coast Guard and Air Force and dozens of other security agencies. A thousand volunteers from other police forces were sworn in to help out.
Police were dressed in battle gear, bulky, black ninja-turtle outfits - helmets with clear visors, strapped on body armor, shin guards, big boots, batons and long guns.
In addition to helicopters, the police had hundreds of cars and motorcycles, armored vehicles, monster trucks, small electric go-karts. There were even passenger vans screaming through town so stuffed with heavily armed ninja turtles that the side and rear doors remained open.
No terrorists showed up at the G20.
Since no terrorists showed up, those in charge of the heavily armed security forces chose to deploy their forces around those who were protesting.
Not everyone is delighted that 20 countries control 80 percent of the world's resources. Several thousand of them chose to express their displeasure by protesting.
Unfortunately, the officials in charge thought that it was more important to create a militarized people-free zone around the G20 people than to allow freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or the freedom to protest.
It took a lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU to get any major protest permitted anywhere near downtown Pittsburgh. Even then, the police "forgot" what was permitted and turned people away from areas of town. Hundreds of police also harassed a bus full of people who were giving away free food - repeatedly detaining the bus and searching it and its passengers without warrants.
Then, a group of young people decided that they did not need a permit to express their human and constitutional rights to freedom. They announced they were going to hold their own gathering at a city park and go down the deserted city streets to protest the G20. Maybe 200 of these young people were self-described anarchists, dressed in black, many with bandannas across their faces. The police warned everyone these people were very scary. My cab driver said the anarchist spokesperson looked like Harry Potter in a black hoodie. The anarchists were joined in the park by hundreds of other activists of all ages, ultimately one thousand strong, all insisting on exercising their right to protest.
This drove the authorities crazy.
Battle dressed ninja turtles showed up at the park and formed a line across one entrance. Helicopters buzzed overhead. Armored vehicles gathered.
The crowd surged out of the park and up a side street yelling, chanting, drumming and holding signs. As they exited the park, everyone passed an ice cream truck that was playing "It's a small world after all." Indeed.
Any remaining doubts about the militarization of the police were dispelled shortly after the crowd left the park. A few blocks away, the police unveiled their latest high tech anti-protester toy. It was mounted on the back of a huge black truck. The Pittsburgh-Gazette described it as Long Range Acoustic Device designed to break up crowds with piercing noise. Similar devices have been used in Fallujah, Mosul and Basra, Iraq. The police backed the truck up, told people not to go any further down the street and then blasted them with piercing noise.
The crowd then moved to other streets. Now, they were being tracked by helicopters. The police repeatedly tried to block them from regrouping, ultimately firing tear gas into the crowd, injuring hundreds, including people in the residential neighborhood where the police decided to confront the marchers. I was treated to some of the tear gas myself and I found the Pittsburgh brand to be spiced with a hint of kielbasa. Fortunately, I was handed some paper towels soaked in apple cider vinegar, which helped fight the tears and cough a bit. Who would have thought?
After the large group broke and ran from the tear gas, smaller groups went into commercial neighborhoods and broke glass at a bank and a couple of other businesses. The police chased and the glass breakers ran. And the police chased and the people ran. For a few hours.
By day, the police were menacing, but at night they lost their cool. Around a park by the University of Pittsburgh, the ninja turtles pushed and shoved and beat and arrested not just protesters, but people passing by. One young woman reported she and her friend had watched "Grey's Anatomy" and were on their way back to their dorm when they were cornered by police. One was bruised by a police baton and her friend was arrested. Police shot tear gas, pepper spray, smoke canisters and rubber bullets. They pushed with big plastic shields and struck with batons.
The biggest march was Friday. Thousands of people from Pittsburgh and other places protested the G20. Since the court had ruled on this march, the police did not confront the marchers. Ninja-turtled police showed up in formation sometimes and the helicopters hovered, but no confrontations occurred.
Again, Friday night, riot-clad police fought with students outside of the University of Pittsburgh. To what end was just as unclear as the night before.
Ultimately about 200 were arrested, mostly in clashes with the police around the University.
The G20 leaders left by helicopter and limousine.
Pittsburgh now belongs again to the people of Pittsburgh. The cement barricades were removed; the fences were taken down; the bridges and roads were opened. The gunboats packed up and left. The police packed away their ninja-turtle outfits and tear gas and rubber bullets. They don't look like military commandos anymore. No more gunboats on the river. No more sirens all the time. No more armored vehicles and ear-splitting machines used in Iraq. On Monday, the businesses will open and kids will have to go back to school. Civil society has returned.
It is now probably even safe to exercise constitutional rights in Pittsburgh once again.
The USA really showed those terrorists didn't we?
--
http://www.truthout.org/092909D?n
Police Use Painful New Weapon on G20 Protesters
Monday 28 September 2009
by: Allison Kilkenny | AlterNet
Police used "sound cannons" to break up G-20 protest groups demonstrating in Pittsburgh.
This technology has been deployed in Iraq as an "anti-insurgent weapon" - it could easily be used as a torture tool.
Pittsburgh police demonstrated the latest in crowd control techniques on protesters when they used "sound cannons" to blast the ears of citizens near the G-20 meeting of world economic leaders. City officials said this was the first time such sound blasters, also known as "sound weapons," were used publicly.
Lavonnie Bickerstaff of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police uses benign language like "sound amplifiers," and "long-range acoustic device" to explain the new weapons in an attempt to sanitize what is essentially a painful weapon that leaves no visible marks on its victims. The mob utilized a similar tactic on snitches when they would beat everywhere except the face. If victims have no outward bruises to show, the world is less likely to believe their stories of assault and harassment.
Unlike aerosol hand-grenades, pepper spray, and rubber bullets (all traditional methods of protest suppression also used at the G-20 protests,) the damage from sound cannons is entirely internal, and can only be preserved on video, but even then, the deafening noise cannot be fully appreciated unless one hears it in person.
(Footage of the sound cannons in action can be seen/heard below. It's clear from these videos that the extremely loud, high-pitched noise causes pain.)
The "long range acoustic device (LRAD)" is designed for long-range communication and acts as an "unmistakable warning," according to the American Technology Corporation (ATC,) which develops the instruments. "The LRAD basically is the ability to communicate clearly from 300 meters to 3 kilometers" (nearly 2 miles), said Robert Putnam of American Technology's media and investor relations during an interview with MSNBC. "It's a focused output. What distinguishes it from other communications tools out there is its ability to be heard clearly and intelligibly at a distance, unlike bullhorns."
Except, police aren't trying to send a distress call to allies 2 miles away. They're literally blasting this extreme decibel of noise directly into the ears of protesters (or any unwitting citizens) standing mere feet from the cannons. Depending on the mode of LRAD, it can blast a maximum sound of 145 to 151 decibels - equal to a gunshot - within a 3-foot (one meter) range, according to ATC. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that permanent hearing loss can result from sounds at about 110 to 120 decibels in short bursts or even just 75 decibels if exposure lasts for long periods.
But there is a volume knob, Putnam notes, so its output can be less than max, purportedly to give us comfort in the knowledge that deafening citizens is left to the discretion of power-hungry police. On the decibel scale, an increase of 10 (say, from 70 to 80) means that a sound is 10 times more intense. Normal traffic noise can reach 85 decibels, reports MSNBC, but these sound cannons cannot be compared to standing beside a busy New York City road.
The BBC reported in 2005 that the "shrill sound of an LRAD at its loudest sounds something like a domestic smoke alarm, ATC says, but at 150 decibels, it is the aural equivalent to standing 30m away from a roaring jet engine and can cause major hearing damage if misused."
This technology has been deployed in Iraq as an "anti-insurgent weapon," and the sonic weaponry is also being used on protesters in Honduras. Seattle Weekly reports that this weapon could easily be used as a torture tool if one doesn't already think this is its only use.
Sonic weaponry is now being deployed domestically to put a chill on free speech. We're told this is the "humane" way to deal with protesters, but it's really just a convenient way to suppress citizens without the messy aftereffects of having to explain bullet holes to reporters. A bunch of protesters complaining about ruptured ear drums doesn't make for dramatic news.
--
http://www.truthout.org/092809R
Street Report From the G20
Monday 28 September 2009
by: Bill Quigley, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
The G20 in Pittsburgh showed us how pitifully fearful our leaders have become.
What no terrorist could do to us, our own leaders did.
Out of fear of the possibility of a terrorist attack, authorities militarize our towns, scare our people away, stop daily life and quash our constitutional rights.
For days, downtown Pittsburgh, home to the G20, was a turned into a militarized, people-free ghost town. Sirens screamed day and night.
Helicopters crisscrossed the skies. Gunboats sat in the rivers. The skies were defended by Air Force jets. Streets were barricaded by huge cement blocks and fencing. Bridges were closed with National Guard across the entrances. Public transportation was stopped downtown. Amtrak train service was suspended for days.
In many areas, there were armed police every 100 feet. Businesses closed. Schools closed. Tens of thousands were unable to work.
Four thousand police were on duty, plus 2,500 National Guard, plus Coast Guard and Air Force and dozens of other security agencies. A thousand volunteers from other police forces were sworn in to help out.
Police were dressed in battle gear, bulky, black ninja-turtle outfits - helmets with clear visors, strapped on body armor, shin guards, big boots, batons and long guns.
In addition to helicopters, the police had hundreds of cars and motorcycles, armored vehicles, monster trucks, small electric go-karts. There were even passenger vans screaming through town so stuffed with heavily armed ninja turtles that the side and rear doors remained open.
No terrorists showed up at the G20.
Since no terrorists showed up, those in charge of the heavily armed security forces chose to deploy their forces around those who were protesting.
Not everyone is delighted that 20 countries control 80 percent of the world's resources. Several thousand of them chose to express their displeasure by protesting.
Unfortunately, the officials in charge thought that it was more important to create a militarized people-free zone around the G20 people than to allow freedom of speech, freedom of assembly or the freedom to protest.
It took a lawsuit by the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU to get any major protest permitted anywhere near downtown Pittsburgh. Even then, the police "forgot" what was permitted and turned people away from areas of town. Hundreds of police also harassed a bus full of people who were giving away free food - repeatedly detaining the bus and searching it and its passengers without warrants.
Then, a group of young people decided that they did not need a permit to express their human and constitutional rights to freedom. They announced they were going to hold their own gathering at a city park and go down the deserted city streets to protest the G20. Maybe 200 of these young people were self-described anarchists, dressed in black, many with bandannas across their faces. The police warned everyone these people were very scary. My cab driver said the anarchist spokesperson looked like Harry Potter in a black hoodie. The anarchists were joined in the park by hundreds of other activists of all ages, ultimately one thousand strong, all insisting on exercising their right to protest.
This drove the authorities crazy.
Battle dressed ninja turtles showed up at the park and formed a line across one entrance. Helicopters buzzed overhead. Armored vehicles gathered.
The crowd surged out of the park and up a side street yelling, chanting, drumming and holding signs. As they exited the park, everyone passed an ice cream truck that was playing "It's a small world after all." Indeed.
Any remaining doubts about the militarization of the police were dispelled shortly after the crowd left the park. A few blocks away, the police unveiled their latest high tech anti-protester toy. It was mounted on the back of a huge black truck. The Pittsburgh-Gazette described it as Long Range Acoustic Device designed to break up crowds with piercing noise. Similar devices have been used in Fallujah, Mosul and Basra, Iraq. The police backed the truck up, told people not to go any further down the street and then blasted them with piercing noise.
The crowd then moved to other streets. Now, they were being tracked by helicopters. The police repeatedly tried to block them from regrouping, ultimately firing tear gas into the crowd, injuring hundreds, including people in the residential neighborhood where the police decided to confront the marchers. I was treated to some of the tear gas myself and I found the Pittsburgh brand to be spiced with a hint of kielbasa. Fortunately, I was handed some paper towels soaked in apple cider vinegar, which helped fight the tears and cough a bit. Who would have thought?
After the large group broke and ran from the tear gas, smaller groups went into commercial neighborhoods and broke glass at a bank and a couple of other businesses. The police chased and the glass breakers ran. And the police chased and the people ran. For a few hours.
By day, the police were menacing, but at night they lost their cool. Around a park by the University of Pittsburgh, the ninja turtles pushed and shoved and beat and arrested not just protesters, but people passing by. One young woman reported she and her friend had watched "Grey's Anatomy" and were on their way back to their dorm when they were cornered by police. One was bruised by a police baton and her friend was arrested. Police shot tear gas, pepper spray, smoke canisters and rubber bullets. They pushed with big plastic shields and struck with batons.
The biggest march was Friday. Thousands of people from Pittsburgh and other places protested the G20. Since the court had ruled on this march, the police did not confront the marchers. Ninja-turtled police showed up in formation sometimes and the helicopters hovered, but no confrontations occurred.
Again, Friday night, riot-clad police fought with students outside of the University of Pittsburgh. To what end was just as unclear as the night before.
Ultimately about 200 were arrested, mostly in clashes with the police around the University.
The G20 leaders left by helicopter and limousine.
Pittsburgh now belongs again to the people of Pittsburgh. The cement barricades were removed; the fences were taken down; the bridges and roads were opened. The gunboats packed up and left. The police packed away their ninja-turtle outfits and tear gas and rubber bullets. They don't look like military commandos anymore. No more gunboats on the river. No more sirens all the time. No more armored vehicles and ear-splitting machines used in Iraq. On Monday, the businesses will open and kids will have to go back to school. Civil society has returned.
It is now probably even safe to exercise constitutional rights in Pittsburgh once again.
The USA really showed those terrorists didn't we?
--
http://www.truthout.org/092909D?n
Police Use Painful New Weapon on G20 Protesters
Monday 28 September 2009
by: Allison Kilkenny | AlterNet
Police used "sound cannons" to break up G-20 protest groups demonstrating in Pittsburgh.
This technology has been deployed in Iraq as an "anti-insurgent weapon" - it could easily be used as a torture tool.
Pittsburgh police demonstrated the latest in crowd control techniques on protesters when they used "sound cannons" to blast the ears of citizens near the G-20 meeting of world economic leaders. City officials said this was the first time such sound blasters, also known as "sound weapons," were used publicly.
Lavonnie Bickerstaff of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police uses benign language like "sound amplifiers," and "long-range acoustic device" to explain the new weapons in an attempt to sanitize what is essentially a painful weapon that leaves no visible marks on its victims. The mob utilized a similar tactic on snitches when they would beat everywhere except the face. If victims have no outward bruises to show, the world is less likely to believe their stories of assault and harassment.
Unlike aerosol hand-grenades, pepper spray, and rubber bullets (all traditional methods of protest suppression also used at the G-20 protests,) the damage from sound cannons is entirely internal, and can only be preserved on video, but even then, the deafening noise cannot be fully appreciated unless one hears it in person.
(Footage of the sound cannons in action can be seen/heard below. It's clear from these videos that the extremely loud, high-pitched noise causes pain.)
The "long range acoustic device (LRAD)" is designed for long-range communication and acts as an "unmistakable warning," according to the American Technology Corporation (ATC,) which develops the instruments. "The LRAD basically is the ability to communicate clearly from 300 meters to 3 kilometers" (nearly 2 miles), said Robert Putnam of American Technology's media and investor relations during an interview with MSNBC. "It's a focused output. What distinguishes it from other communications tools out there is its ability to be heard clearly and intelligibly at a distance, unlike bullhorns."
Except, police aren't trying to send a distress call to allies 2 miles away. They're literally blasting this extreme decibel of noise directly into the ears of protesters (or any unwitting citizens) standing mere feet from the cannons. Depending on the mode of LRAD, it can blast a maximum sound of 145 to 151 decibels - equal to a gunshot - within a 3-foot (one meter) range, according to ATC. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that permanent hearing loss can result from sounds at about 110 to 120 decibels in short bursts or even just 75 decibels if exposure lasts for long periods.
But there is a volume knob, Putnam notes, so its output can be less than max, purportedly to give us comfort in the knowledge that deafening citizens is left to the discretion of power-hungry police. On the decibel scale, an increase of 10 (say, from 70 to 80) means that a sound is 10 times more intense. Normal traffic noise can reach 85 decibels, reports MSNBC, but these sound cannons cannot be compared to standing beside a busy New York City road.
The BBC reported in 2005 that the "shrill sound of an LRAD at its loudest sounds something like a domestic smoke alarm, ATC says, but at 150 decibels, it is the aural equivalent to standing 30m away from a roaring jet engine and can cause major hearing damage if misused."
This technology has been deployed in Iraq as an "anti-insurgent weapon," and the sonic weaponry is also being used on protesters in Honduras. Seattle Weekly reports that this weapon could easily be used as a torture tool if one doesn't already think this is its only use.
Sonic weaponry is now being deployed domestically to put a chill on free speech. We're told this is the "humane" way to deal with protesters, but it's really just a convenient way to suppress citizens without the messy aftereffects of having to explain bullet holes to reporters. A bunch of protesters complaining about ruptured ear drums doesn't make for dramatic news.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
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