Obama Nominates Fossil Fuel Funded Ernest Moniz to Energy

March 5th, 2013 | Posted by The Green Man in Barack Obama | Environment - (2 Comments)

More bad news for environmentalist Democrats came from the Obama Administration yesterday, as President Barack Obama announced that he had nominated Ernest Moniz to become the next Secretary of Energy.

Moniz is currently the head of the MIT Energy Initiative, which promotes the continued use of fossil fuels, and takes money from the following fossil fuels companies:

secretary of energy- Saudi Aramco (an oil company owned by the government of Saudi Arabia)
- BP
- Shell Oil
- Total petroleum company
- Duke Energy
- Eni
- Chevron
- Hess Corporation
- Constellation Energy
- Osaka Gas Company
- Petra Energia

Moniz does not possess the political independence from the fossil fuels industry that we need from our Secretary of Energy. Courtney Abrams, the federal clean energy advocate for Environment America, notes that Moniz “has a history of supporting dirty and dangerous energy sources”. Michael Brune, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, commented that ““We would stress to Mr. Moniz that an ‘all of the above’ energy policy only means ‘more of the same’.” The “All Of The Above” energy policy promoted by Republicans and the Obama Administration has meant extreme increases in drilling for crude oil and natural gas, with small amounts of funding for renewable energy sources as window dressing.

The MIT Energy Initiative operated by Moniz isn’t only financially indebted to fossil fuels companies that profit from pollution and contribute to climate change. The Institute also takes money from Hogan Lovells, a lobbying firm working for oil companies including Anadarko Petroleum, Anschutz Corporation, Denbury Resources, DTE Energy, Occidental Petroleum, SandRidge Energy, and the Tellus Operating Group.

Another lobbying firm that pays money to the MIT Energy Initiative is Steptoe & Johnson. Steptoe & Johnson represents the fossil fuels industry as well, with the American Gas Association, Chemtex International, and the Society of Independent Gasoline Marketers of America on its list of clients.

If Ernest Moniz becomes the head of the U.S. Department of Energy, his financial connections to oil and gas corporations make it highly unlikely that he’ll support any policies that end the political and economic dominance of the fossil fuels industry. Barack Obama’s choice of Moniz as Secretary of Energy suggests that his idealistic comments about fighting climate change, in the State of the Union Address and his inaugural speech this year, were just more empty promises.

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Senator Chuck Grassley Blocks Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight

February 21st, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Liberty | Politics | Republicans - (0 Comments)

On February 14 2013, the Senate Judiciary Committee was poised to consider the confirmation of David Medine as Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). For people who care about the U.S. Constitution and the preservation of constitutional liberty in America, this confirmation is a pretty big deal. It’s sad to say, but since the days when George W. Bush was President the PCLOB has existed in name only. By law, this Board has subpoena power to review the search and surveillance activities of the U.S. Government. By law, this Board is required to make twice-yearly public reports on violations of Americans’ constitutional rights.

But practicality trumps the law: without a Chair, the board cannot hire staff and cannot expend the resources needed for it to actually get to work. Without a Chair, the Board cannot do much of anything.

On February 14 2013, the Senate Judiciary Committee was poised to consider the confirmation of David Medine as Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). But as you can see in a webcast of that hearing, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa blocked consideration of David Medine’s nomination in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Medine’s nomination is on hold until the Judiciary Committee decides to take it up again.

Senator Chuck Grassley Speech Bubble: Ask Me Why I'm Blocking the Constitution!

Why did Chuck Grassley decide to block a watchdog on behalf of constitutional rights? It’s a mystery. Senator Grassley didn’t even bother to explain himself before issuing the block.

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Barack Obama Nominates a Chair for the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

January 25th, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Barack Obama | Liberty | Politics - (0 Comments)

After three and a quarter years of non-existence, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board for the federal government was finally brought into being with the nomination and confirmation of four members in August of 2012. Unfortunately, this board cannot exercise any of its legal powers to investigate and report on unconstitutional activity within the government because it does not have a chair and therefore cannot spend a dime on its activities. The most that the PCLOB has been able to do is convene a single hasty October meeting in which it gathered advice about what it should do if it ever gets a chair. There have been no meetings of the PCLOB since.

Fortunately, there has been a step in the right direction this week. On January 22, President Barack Obama re-nominated David Medine for the chairmanship of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. If the Senate Judiciary committee moves the nomination along, and if the Senate votes to confirm Medine, then finally the PCLOB can begin using its subpoena and reporting powers to expose violations of civil liberty by the United States government. Those are two very big “ifs,” but it is better to move forward than not to move at all.

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Americans Elect Says it Has 400,000 Delegates. Fewer than 500 Delegates Tell AE to Continue.

May 17th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect | Election 2012 | Politics - (14 Comments)

The privatized presidential campaign corporation called Americans Elect has made repeated public claims that it has at least “400,000 delegates” (source | source | source). However, Americans Elect has refused to release a verifiable count of delegates, and there are good reasons to believe that its claim is not true (see here and here). It appears that Americans Elect has been, to put it mildly, speaking untruths about its delegate count. If the Americans Elect corporation cannot be trusted to report accurate counts, it should not be trusted with counting the votes in its own privatized presidential nomination.

If, on the other hand, Americans Elect is accurate and it really does have at least 400,000 delegates, then the events of the past day should be disquieting at the least.

In two places — Get Satisfaction and Facebook but, oddly enough, not on its own website — Americans Elect posted messages yesterday with comments threads attached in which people could say what they think Americans Elect ought to do now. The “now” in that statement is brought on by the fact that its three presidential primary ballot deadlines have passed and not a single candidate has garnered enough votes of support to qualify for any of those ballots. According to the official Americans Elect Rules, there are no more means for presidential contenders to get on the Americans Elect ballot. Americans Elect says it will, in one day’s time, take in all these messages, think about them, come to a decision and announce its decision some time today. That’s an awfully speedy rumination period, suggesting that it’s already been chewing the cud for a spell.

If Americans Elect follows its own rules, it’s done. But what it’s looking for is an affirmation by its delegates that it ought to continue on, change the rules after the completion of ballot-access voting, and preferentially let some candidates on the ballot despite their failure under official rules. What would an affirmation look like?

If Americans Elect is telling the truth, it has more than 400,000 delegates. As of this morning, 327 different people had shared their thoughts via Get Satisfaction and 325 different comments had been left on Facebook. But many people left multiple comments on Facebook. Some of the people leaving comments are presumably not delegates. Many comments had nothing to do with Americans Elect’s question (ex. “I think somebody from AE was on Colbert… albeit a while ago…” And many of the people who left comments were telling Americans Elect it needed to just shut down or try again in 2016.

The bottom line is that fewer than 500 people have told Americans Elect it should change its rules and keep going. If Americans Elect is telling the truth and it has more than 400,000 delegates, then at most 1/800th of its delegates have told Americans Elect to change its rules and continue.

According to the Americans Elect official corporate Bylaws, any change of rules by delegates takes a majority vote of all delegates. 1/800th of all delegates is not a majority. It’s about as far from a majority as you can get. By Americans Elect’s own standard, delegates have refused to endorse changing the rules.

On the other hand, maybe 500 delegates is a majority of all delegates. Maybe Americans Elect actually has been wildly lying to the public about how many delegates it really has. If that’s the case, then there’s no way you should let its paws anywhere near an election, because that behavior would reveal an inclination toward manufacturing the numbers.

Based on its past behavior, you can expect Americans Elect to release an announcement later today declaring that it will change its own rules after it didn’t get the result it wanted, and that certain candidates will be allowed to participate but not others. You can expect Americans Elect to make reference somehow to the will of the people, as if it’s just following some grassroots surge of support.

If there’s one thing we’ve all learned since Americans Elect got started under the name Unity08 way back in 2006, it’s that the leaders of Americans Elect are going to do what they want to do no matter what We The Little People say. But when Americans Elect pushes onward later today and refers to some mandate from “the people”, you’ll know that one way or another it’s not telling the truth.

Update, 5:22 PM: Clearly, I was wrong in my prediction at the end of this article. Americans Elect has ended its process…

“The primary process for the Americans Elect nomination has come to an end.”

… but don’t be surprised to see them at it again next election cycle:

“We are continuing the Americans Elect mission of creating more choice in our political system, giving candidates unaffiliated with the nominating process of either major party an authentic way to run for office and giving the American people a greater voice in our political process.”

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NPR Audience Doesn’t Go With the Buddy Roemer Flow

March 27th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect | Election 2012 | Politics | Republicans - (11 Comments)

As week after week after week passes, initial moderate flows of support to Americans Elect candidates have slowed to tepid streams and finally down to a meager trickle.

This past Saturday, AE Transparency compiled statistics on how close drafted and declared candidates in the Americans Elect system have come to reaching the ballot access standards for political insiders (1,000 votes of support in 10 states) or political outsiders (5,000 votes of support in 10 states). AE Transparency’s graph shows how very far they all are from success:

Americans Elect Corporation First Round Voting Progress Graph, Generated by the ever-helpful AE Transparency

The most popular vote-getters, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman, are “draft” candidates, politicians who have made it clear they will not participate in the Americans Elect process. Even these relatively popular options have not received a significant absolute number of votes, and therefore are nowhere near the needed pace to gain ballot access in the Americans Elect system. If they were on pace, they should have reached a 57% threshold by now in their top 10 states, but even the internet(only) juggernaut Ron Paul has drawn less than a third of the necessary Americans Elect votes. The show isn’t opening well.

Actually declared Americans Elect candidates are noted with an asterisk in AE Transparency’s graph, and they’re doing far worse than the draft candidates. How dismal are the results for declared Americans Elect candidates? The 8th most popular Americans Elect declared candidate right now is an avowed White Supremacist, Merlin Miller. #11, David Jon Sponheim, went into blackface a few months back to complain that he couldn’t get sufficient attention as a white man in America:

Let’s restrict our attention to the most popular Americans Elect declared candidates, the ones more popular than Miller and Sponheim. At his current rate, declared candidate Buddy Roemer will gain Americans Elect ballot access for 2012 some time after Election Day in November 2012. Rocky Anderson is on a pace to perhaps gain ballot access for the 2012 elections by 2016. Both Roemer and Anderson are trying the I-hate-big-money line to gain supporters, but it doesn’t seem to play well with voters who notice that Americans Elect is supported and controlled by big money… while making democratic action by us little people practically impossible.

How dismal is Buddy Roemer’s vote total? Let’s put this in perspective. Even though votes in just the top 10 states count for Roemer’s ballot access (sorry, lower 40), we’ll count his votes across all 50 states to give him a bigger total. As of right now, that 50-state total stands at 2,315. By comparison, Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul gained 2,289 votes in New Hampshire alone this year … in the Democratic Party Primary.

Despite his dismal popularity among the non-hedge-fund set, Buddy Roemer keeps plugging away, bless his tax-cut-for-the-rich heart… and the Big Media just can’t get enough of him. MSNBC practically has its own recurring Buddy Roemer Show. This afternoon, NPR gave Buddy Roemer a news story and then his own 5-minute segment to promote his Americans Elect presidential campaign.

How’d it work? Here was Buddy Roemer’s tally of “support” votes for his top 10 states back on March 25 2012, two days ago:

Number of Buddy Roemer Support Votes in the Americans Elect system on March 25 2012

The best state for Roemer is California, where’s two days ago 23.2% of the way to his goal of 1,000 support votes (and 58% of the voting period already expired). In half of his top 10 states, Roemer hadn’t reached even 10% of his needed total.

And here’s the Buddy Roemer tally of “support” votes in his top 10 states as of right now, 8:05 pm Eastern Time, about 4 hours after the big NPR Roemerpalooza:

Buddy Roemer Support Votes as of March 27 2012, a few hours after NPR held a national Roemer for President promotional interview. Results? Tepid at best.

Two full days and one NPR national Roemer promotional event later, how many more votes had Buddy Roemer soaked up in his top 10 states?

1. California: 7 more votes
2. Texas: 7 more votes
3. New York: 5 more votes
4. Louisiana: 3 more votes
5. Florida: no gain
6. Illinois: 3 more votes
7. Massachusetts: 3 more votes
8. Washington State: 5 more votes
9. North Carolina: 2 more votes
10. Ohio: 5 more votes

Despite considerable media promotion of Americans Elect and Buddy Roemer’s role within it (with 59 news stories in the past week alone), the Buddy Train is headed for nowhere… and it is Americans Elect’s most popular vehicle.

The bottom line: The vast majority of Americans, despite being exposed (or perhaps because they’ve been exposed) to the Americans Elect pitch, are just not interested in Americans Elect or its candidates. If Americans Elect wants to find itself a nominee, it’ll have to change its rules to accommodate a very, very small number of voters. Look for that change, or an utter capitulation, to emerge within the next few weeks.

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Mike Bloomberg Handing Over $80 Million to Peter Ackerman of Americans Elect

March 6th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect | Economy | Election 2012 | Ethics | Mysteries | Politics - (16 Comments)

Peter Ackerman is the Founder, Chairman, apparent primary Funder and President of Americans Elect.

Americans Elect is the first-ever privatized online presidential nomination with heavy control over nominee selection by a Board of Directors.

That Board of Directors was appointed by Peter Ackerman and his surrogates.

Peter Ackerman is a co-founder, Director and the majority shareholder in New York City grocery distributor FreshDirect.

Jason Ackerman, co-founder and CEO of FreshDirect, is Peter Ackerman’s nephew.

FreshDirect pays its warehouse and delivery drivers less than $9 an hour.

When workers tried to unionize, FreshDirect fought against it.

Michael Bloomberg is the Mayor of New York City, the founder and majority shareholder of Bloomberg LP, and a billionaire — the 12th wealthiest person in America and 30th wealthiest person in the entire world.

Mike Bloomberg on his relationship with Peter Ackerman: “Well, I’ve always been a big supporter of Peter Ackerman and I’ve known him forever, and I put his wife on the board of Johns Hopkins, which she may still be on, as a matter of fact.”

Michael Bloomberg just announced a package of state and city tax incentives and subsidies for the FreshDirect corporation. The total size of the gift arranged by Bloomberg is roughly $129 million. New York City will pay FreshDirect $81 million.

Michael Bloomberg is a Draft Candidate for President of the United States in the Americans Elect privatized nomination.

In an ethically-minded world, this week’s giveaway of public funds by Michael Bloomberg to Peter Ackerman would seem to preclude the possibility of Michael Bloomberg running for President under the Americans Elect banner. If you believe our leaders are ethical, then you should believe that Michael Bloomberg will refuse to accept an Americans Elect nomination should it comes his way.

Postscript: Through his spokesman, Michael Bloomberg has denied contributing money directly to Americans Elect with his own personal funds. The $81 million in funds funneled from New York City taxpayers to Ackerman’s FreshDirect, on the other hand, is undisputed.

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With 2 Weeks in and 13 Weeks Left, No Americans Elect Candidate is on Target to Make the Ballot.

February 14th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect | Election 2012 | Politics | Republicans - (7 Comments)

In a press release last week, Americans Elect decried the “low turnout” in the Republican party nomination process to date, citing it as the evidence of democracy in failure. You see, “only” 3,028,354 Americans in 9 states have voted so far in the Republican nomination process. Many more are set to vote in the weeks to come in a presidential race that is not by any means settled.

Two weeks ago today, Americans Elect started up its own presidential nomination voting process, a process in which any registered voter in any party in any state of the union can participate — not just Republicans, and not just residents of 9 states. They can vote whenever they want, too, not just on one day. This Americans Elect process has gotten coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Huffington Post, Politico, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Denver Post, and the Los Angeles Times. These are just a few of many outlets where the Americans Elect process has received publicity.

So with this wide media coverage, and with this open window for voting, how many people from all parties across the 50 states have participated in the Americans Elect nomination to date?

The frustrating answer is that we don’t know, because the only piece of information Americans Elect shares is the number of votes of support obtained by a draft candidate — and in an odd methodological twist, it turns out that Americans Elect voters can vote for as many draft candidates as they like. As of this morning, when the Americans Elect effort finished its 14th day and entered into it’s 15th day, a total of 8,456 votes of support for Americans Elect draft candidates had been tallied up. That at least gives us a range of possibilities. If each Americans Elect voter voted for one and only one candidate, that makes for 8,456 people participating (only 0.28% of the participation level in the Republican primaries). If the average Americans Elect voter voted to support two candidates, that means there were 4,228 people participating (only 0.14% of the participation level in the Republican primaries). No matter how you slice it, the participation level in Americans Elect is some three orders of magnitude smaller than the participation in Republican primaries. If Americans Elect thinks levels of participation in the Republican presidential nomination is too low, it must really have a problem with its own participation levels.

Practically speaking, it’s clear that Americans Elect actually does have a problem with its participation levels: considering the rate of voting over the last two weeks, there are no Americans Elect candidates who are on pace to qualify for a space on the ballot. Under current Americans Elect rules, insider politicians must obtain 1,000 votes from each of 10 states, and outsider contenders must obtain 5,000 votes of support from each of 10 states, if they wish to appear on the final Americans Elect nomination ballot. In an additional standard, only the first 1,000 (for insiders) or 5,000 (for outsiders) votes from each of the 10 most supportive states are counted toward these totals, making it even more difficult for contenders to qualify.

But look at the biggest vote-getter, the effort to draft Ron Paul onto an Americans Elect ballot. This morning, when the Americans Elect voting period reached the two-week mark, Paul had attracted the following votes in his 10 best performing states:

California: 187
Texas: 138
Florida: 116
New York: 88
Virginia: 71
Ohio: 69
Pennsylvania: 67
Michigan: 61
Washington: 61
Colorado: 50

Now, Ron Paul counts as an insider in the Americans Elect process, because he’s a long-term member of the House of Representatives in Washington, DC. In that respect, Ron Paul is lucky. The Americans Elect voting period is 13.3% done — and only in California and Texas has Ron Paul reached the needed pace of 13.3% of 1,000 votes. Ron Paul is far off-pace to make the ballot in his ten best states — and he’s the one contender who’s closest to getting on the Americans elect ballot.

If even a hundredth as many people had participated in Americans Elect nomination process so far as have participated in the Republican nomination process so far, there would be a chance for . But Americans Elect is proving even less popular than that. Despite the repeated efforts of public relations consultants, the Americans Elect nomination is just not catching fire on its own.

There was a time when Americans Elect could have won wide support by giving voters democratic control; because Americans Elect doesn’t do that, people have walked away and aren’t liable to return. Having lost confidence, there’s not much that even a well-funded corporation like Americans Elect can do at this point to bring people into the process.

Well, now that I think about it, there is one possibility, one in line with its identity as a 501c4 corporation funded by anonymous Wall Street private wealth managers. Americans Elect could pay people to vote. That could work.

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9 Days In, No Americans Elect Presidential Candidates are on Pace to Get on the Ballot

February 9th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Alternative Parties | Americans Elect | Election 2012 | Politics | Republicans | State and Local - (9 Comments)

In a publicity release sent out on January 17 2012, Americans Elect declared the GOP presidential nomination race to be sadly all wrapped up after Iowa and New Hampshire. Americans in other states wanting to express their presidential choice would have to look to (and donate money to) Americans Elect:

Americans Elect Publicity Release of January 17 2012, complaining that the GOP Race was over after Iowa and New Hampshire.

Actually, two different GOP presidential candidates won the Iowa and New Hampshire contests, and events proved Americans Elect wrong just four days later when a third GOP candidate won the South Carolina primary, tossing the GOP race up for grabs.

That didn’t stop Americans Elect from trying the same line again. In a news release dated February 2, just two days after Mitt Romney won his second primary victory, Americans Elect seemed to be eager to declare him the GOP winner already so it could recast itself as the democratic alternative:

Only four states have had a chance to vote in the GOP primaries, but experts are saying the process is over. Are voters happy?

But actual democracy soon intervened again to counter the Americans Elect narrative. On February 7, voters in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri handed election victories to Rick Santorum, not Mitt Romney. Now Mitt Romney has won the majority of delegates, Rick Santorum has won the majority of states, while Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich are continuing to campaign through the Super Tuesday primaries of March 6. By the end of that night Republican voters in 21 states will have cast their votes. In short, the GOP nomination looks to be an actual election involving large numbers of voters.

Whatever number of people have voted in the Republican presidential nomination process, it seems to not be enough to meet Americans Elect’s standards. Back in January, Americans Elect complained about “Only 369,448 Votes” in Iowa and New Hampshire. But with the addition of South Carolina, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, there have now been 3,022,769 votes cast.

In contrast, Americans Elect has had its own online presidential nomination ballot qualification vote going on around the clock for nine full days now. How many cumulative votes has it attracted over those 9 days, and what has the cumulative vote count in the Republican race been? Results as of this morning:

Cumulative Number of Votes cast in the Republican nominating process and the Americans Elect nominating process, as of the morning of February 9 2012

Only 6,429 votes had been cast in the Americans Elect process, just two-tenths of one percent of the participation in the Republican process. If 369,448 votes are meager, what does that make 6,429 votes? The disparity is cast in starker terms when one realizes that in the Americans Elect process, one person can vote many times. The actual number of people participating in the Americans Elect process, despite media coverage in every major TV network and newspaper, is even smaller than the number of votes.

The vote totals for particular Americans Elect contenders tell an even bleaker picture: unless Americans Elect changes its voting procedure in the middle of the voting — a highly irregular move — it doesn’t look as though anyone will qualify for the Americans Elect ballot at all. According to the rules published during the first day of the ballot qualification vote, political insiders will have to obtain 10,000 votes of support and political outsiders will have to obtain 50,000 votes of support by May 15. By that standard, with 9 days gone and 96 days left to go, only Ron Paul (with 1,372 votes of support as of this morning) is on pace to obtain 10,000 votes by May 15.

But wait, there’s more. Even Ron Paul isn’t actually on pace to get on the Americans Elect ballot, because there’s a second standard he has to meet. For reasons that aren’t immediately clear, only the first thousand votes for a candidate in a state will be counted toward the 10,000 vote total, and only the ten states with the most votes will count have their votes counted toward that 10,000 vote total. The 10,000 votes have to consist of 1,000 votes in each of 10 and only 10 states. As of now, these are the top ten states from which Ron Paul has received support in the Americans Elect vote:

California: 144 votes
Texas: 107 votes
Florida: 97 votes
New York: 73 votes
Virginia: 58 votes
Pennsylvania: 54 votes
Ohio: 48 votes
Michigan: 44 votes
Washington: 43 votes
Illinois: 42 votes

Did you notice that these are the most populous states of the United States? That’s not a coincidence; for all its talk of democracy, the Americans Elect process effectively disenfranchises small states, which with smaller populations are unlikely to scrape together 1,000 votes for anybody. It’s the big states that will either qualify or not qualify a candidate for the Americans Elect nomination. At this rate, with 9 days gone and 96 left to go, Ron Paul will only get 1,000 votes in California, Texas and Florida by May 15.

And the other Americans Elect draft candidates? Insider or outsider, they aren’t on pace to get 1,000 votes of support in any state at all.

The bottom line is that while Americans Elect corporate leaders complain about lack of participation in the Republican nomination, the Americans Elect vote is far, far less popular. To deal with its lack of support, Americans Elect will have to mount a huge publicity campaign very soon, or it will have to change the rules of its voting in the middle of its vote, or it will have to benefit from a well-funded candidate who decides to invest significant funds, or it will have to leave its ballot empty in 2012.

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