Tim DeChristopher goes on trial Monday. He faces 10 years in prison and $750,000 in fines for punking the last-minute auction of federal oil and gas leases in southern Utah in the last days of the Bush administration. The auctions were later determined to be illegal. He will not be allowed to use a “necessity” defense, or even mention his reasons for disrupting the auction. If found guilty, he should be pardoned.
Tag: law
Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?
Nobody from Wall St. but Bernie Madoff is going to jail. No wonder the banksters continue their trillion dollar white collar crime spree. They and their regulators are one in the same. Favorite quote from a congressional staffer: “You put Lloyd Blankfein in pound-me-in-the-ass prison for one six-month term, and all this bullshit would stop, all over Wall Street. That’s all it would take. Just once.” Meanwhile we jail a mom in Ohio for trying to send her kid to a better school across town.
The Rise of the New Global Elite
A nice long-form piece from The Atlantic on the phenomenon and dangers of the New Plutocrats… not just Lloyd Blankfein and his parasitic bankster ilk, but nearly everyone who stands at the so-called Commanding Heights of industry, including productive innovators. The developed world was all to hot to globalize the economy when we thought we’d always stay on top. But that was ridiculous of course. Now “on top” is just a few people scattered all over, and most of us will slide toward the very large bottom if we’re not careful.
Reckless Driving in the Netherlands
In the US we wouldn’t think twice about a young testosterone laden driver endangering the lives of four cyclists with his “monster truck”. If anything, we’d probably blame the cyclists — especially if they weren’t wearing helmets. But how is it different from someone carelessly brandishing a gun in your face? That’s how seriously they seem to take it in the Netherlands:
From David Hembrow via Streetfilms.
Retrofits pick up the pace
A look at the current state of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing across the US. Legislation enabling this financing mechanism has been passed in half the country, and implemented at the city or county level in Berkeley and Boulder among others, but because the Federal Housing Finance Administration (Fannie and Freddie’s boss) chose to treat this particular property assessment as a lien, all the programs have been frozen since last July. Lawsuits and legislative fixes abound, but in the meantime, people are struggling to find other financing mechanisms for these financially (as well as ecologically) worthwhile investments. More background available at Pace Now.
Etech International and Crude
Etech International is a non-profit geotechnical company that works with various NGOs on environmental defense projects, mostly in Latin America. They’ve been doing analysis for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against ChevronTexaco in Ecuador that was partially chronicled in the documentary Crude.
Undercover anti-protest cop in UK goes native?
The Guardian is reporting that an undercover police officer who infiltrated the group of protesters that conspired to shut down the Ratcliffe on Soar coal fired power plant may have “gone native” after seven years with the group, taking part in, providing logistical support for, partially financing, and eventually playing a central role in planning their actions. The prospect of the officer aiding the legal defense of protesters who remain to be tried, or at the least, having the role he played in the organization exposed, has apparently led to the collapse of the case. The only really surprising part about all this is his apparent remorse.
Nationalist accounting tricks
Nationalist accounting tricks – from The Economist:
The only reason to make the within-borders population of a nation-state our analytical touchstone is a prior commitment to the idea that the nation-state is the correct unit of normative evaluation.
You can make your national income distribution whatever you like if you’re willing to ship all your poor people overseas, which is in no small part what the western world has done since the 1970s — not by moving actual people, but rather by relocating those portions of our economies which tend to be occupied by the poor. Nation state boundaries become more and more irrelevant every year, economically, informationally, environmentally. What kind jurisdictional authority will replace them?
UN statement on WikiLeaks
UN Joint Statement on WikiLeaks – A pretty unequivocal statement from the UN to the effect that WikiLeaks’ activity is legal, and that the extrajudicial sanctions which have been applied to it are not.
Links for the week of December 9th, 2010
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Continue reading Links for the week of December 9th, 2010