Raskin, J Rep
SEE TWO
primary on corp person nation mag 2012
see SLAPP
bak 10 22
https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/jamie-raskin
97/99%
NOTE BS GOP REBOOT LOUDERMILK
OMFG
AN 9 25
WASHINGTON — At the insistence of President Donald Trump, U.S. House Republicans launched a new Jan. 6 investigation earlier this month. This time, though, the GOP is investigating the investigators, namely the bipartisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, which finished its exhaustive work two years ago.
“I want to see all the docs and find out how many lies were told by the people that were sitting on that committee,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) — who was referred to the Ethics Committee after refusing a request to testify from the first Jan. 6 panel — told Raw Story. “That's what I want.”
While the vote setting up the initial Jan. 6 select committee was bipartisan, earlier this month the new Select Subcommittee on January 6 was approved on a party line vote.
“Trying to rewrite history, that's just kind of clearly what they've done since January 6th, so this all fits the narrative,” Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA), who served on the initial committee, which disbanded before the GOP took the House in 2023, told Raw Story. “It’s dangerous.”
It’s not just Democrats waving warning flags. Moderate Republicans say their leaders are making a mistake.
“I just feel like both sides lost their minds, because having the debate again is kind of bad for the nation,” retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told Raw Story.
Regardless, Trump wants it.
Unlike a GOP-led J6 investigation in the last Congress, this time House Republicans have subpoena power and are promising to use it.
‘What are they looking for?’
Before releasing their 845-page report in 2022, the bipartisan Jan. 6 committee interviewed upwards of 1,000 witnesses and reviewed more than a million pages of documents.
That’s why its chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), and other former members decry the new GOP effort.
“The question is what are they looking for? We have no idea. We stand by the work of the committee. Anybody — whoever — wanted to come talk to us, we invited them,” Thompson told Raw Story before dismissing what he sees as an effort to change the narrative.
“They're trying to, but it doesn't change the facts,” Thompson said.
Republicans beg to differ.
“The sham committee did an injustice,” Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told Raw Story. “The only thing they did is they wanted to blame Trump for everything. They weren't out there to seek the truth. We have an opportunity now to help kind of clear the air and let the American people know.”
On Jan. 6 2021, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in support of his lie that the 2020 election was stolen. They then marched from the White House to the Capitol, most seeking to block certification of Joe Biden’s win.
Nine deaths have been linked to the riot, including law enforcement suicides. After returning to power, Trump issued more than 1,500 pardons or acts of clemency, affecting convictions for offenses as serious as seditious conspiracy.
*Nehls is one of five Republicans on the new J6 subcommittee. He’s already come to many conclusions, as laid out in his 2022 book, The Big Fraud: What Democrats Don’t Want You to Know about January 6, the 2020 Election, and a Whole Lot Else.
“Why was the Capitol so ill prepared that day?” Nehls asked Raw Story. “I tell you why, because the leadership of the Capitol Police and others didn't want to share the intelligence reports, and they were f------ clear.
“It was quite clear that things were going to get stupid up here.”
Nehls isn’t the only Republican pushing a narrative. In December, the new subcommittee chair, Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), released a report recommending former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), a member of the original J6 panel, be investigated by the FBI “for potential criminal witness tampering.”
"Right now, we're casting a pretty broad net trying to bring in any documents that were not preserved or we don't currently have," Loudermilk said. “Basically going out to all the organizations that provided information to the original select committee.”
“How much is your job, as you see it, or your mandate, to investigate the original J6 committee?” Raw Story pressed. “Or how much is your job investigating what happened Jan. 6, 2021?”
“It's both,” Loudermilk said, “because there are decisions being made in some elements based off that report that should not be made. In fact, because that's the official report, they've literally ruined people's lives from that.”
Loudermilk has plenty of questions.
“Did the FBI have actionable intelligence that this was happening? And what did they do with it? Did they pass it to Capitol Police? Was it passed on? Same with Homeland Security. We're investigating there, and we have reason to believe they had intelligence, it wasn't passed on.”
After an 18-month investigation, the bipartisan committee referred Trump to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Loudermilk and other Republicans claim much remained unanswered.
“How did this Capitol get breached? Regardless of who did it, it should have never been breached,” Loudermilk said.
“An unarmed mob was able to get in the Capitol, you can't find anything in their report about that. ‘Pipe bombs’ are mentioned five times only in passing, but ‘Donald Trump’ was mentioned over a thousand. So that's why we're looking into it.”
In fact, court records show rioters were armed with weapons including firearms, tasers and knives, as well as makeshift implements used to attack police.
Loudermilk was investigated by the initial Jan. 6 committee after video surfaced of him giving a Capitol tour the day before the attack. Like other Republicans, he refused to sit for an interview.
‘Run the tape’
Democrats plan to hammer home that Loudermilk and other Republicans repeatedly rebuffed fact-finding efforts.
“We can go back to some of the people who didn't testify before and who blew off their subpoenas to see if they're ready to testify,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Raw Story.
Since serving on the initial Jan. 6 committee, Raskin has become top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, making him an ex-officio member of the GOP’s new panel.
While he dismisses the investigation, Raskin promises to use his perch to highlight the terror of Jan. 6, 2021.
“It's going to be an opportunity for us to talk about the tremendous damage inflicted on the police,” Raskin said.
While Raskin is the only carryover from the initial select committee, other alumni also see Trump’s effort to rehash Jan. 6 as a chance to remind the nation of the attempt to overturn the will of the people that culminated in the brutal attack.
“Ridiculous, but it will give us an opportunity to run the tape over and over again. Why do they want to do this?” Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told Raw Story.
“We found the facts. We posted them. It's terabytes of information. Anyone can get it. They're trying to erase history.”
‘Whitewashing’
Even some in Trump’s own party are questioning his goal.
“Why can't we just say those who hurt cops, they were wrong?” Bacon told Raw Story.
“They deserve to be punished — 140 cops were injured. I don't know why we can't have just some honesty, that there were some bad apples in this whole crowd. They deserve to be punished.”
Not according to Trump, who granted blanket pardons. Democrats see the new committee as an extension of that effort.
“The president, on day one, pardoning 1,500 insurrectionists, criminals — violent criminals — was a whitewashing, an attempt to rewrite history,” Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) told Raw Story. “Most importantly, he was pardoning himself. This is a continuation of that.
“It's so infuriating. Just distraction, that's what the administration wants. A little more whitewashing. Absolutely.”
---
==
180 co sponHouse - 03/04/2021 Referred to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties. (All Actions)
:{https://oversight.house.gov/subcommittees/civil-rights-and-civil-liberties-117th-congress:(style="background-color:#ffffff;"):}:jamie raskin chair, jimbo jordan
Introduced in House (01/04/2021)
This joint resolution proposes a constitutional amendment authorizing Congress and the states to set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.
The amendment grants Congress and the states the power to implement and enforce this amendment by legislation. They are allowed to distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections.
apr 2019
following the historic passage of the For the People Act (H.R. 1), the most extensive and powerful set of pro-democracy reforms to pass the House in decades, People For the American Way and our allies are working to build support for stand-alone reforms that are key to fixing our democracy and creating a political system that works for everyone.
One campaign finance reform that is particularly critical to addressing the influence of big money in politics is a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and other related Supreme Court cases, which have allowed unlimited sums of money to be spent in our elections. The Democracy For All Amendment (H.J.Res. 2) has been introduced by Rep. Ted Deutch , D-Fla., and already has 101 cosponsors. This proposed amendment would allow Congress and the states to regulate and set limits on the raising and spending of money in our elections, as well as legally distinguish between the rights of people and corporations. It also provides the important clarification that nothing in the amendment should be construed to abridge the freedom of the press. Since the Citizens United decision in 2010, this amendment has emerged as a leading solution among reform-minded members of Congress,even getting afloor vote after a week of debate in the Senate, with 54 Senators voting in support during the 113thCongress in 2014.
Importantly, the Democracy For All Amendment also rejects the current Court’s misguided interpretation that the only basis for campaign finance regulation is to address corruption in the form of quid pro quo bribery. In fact, in addition to preventing corruption, there are multiple rationales that justify campaign finance regulation, including but not limited to: leveling the electoral playing field; advancing the fundamental principle of equality for all; and protecting the integrity of the governmental and electoral processes.
There is widespread support for an amendment to address the influence of big money in politics. Since the Citizens United ruling there have been 19 states that have gone on record in support of an amendment, in addition to nearly 800 localities. And earlier this year, through the passage of the For the People Act, the House of Representatives called for an amendment. Likewise, in the Senate, every Democrat has endorsed the H.R. 1 companion bill, which also calls for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.
Tags:
Citizens United v. FEC constitutional amendment Democracy For All Amendment Fighting Big Money in Politics For the People Act
2017 OVERSIGHT
Mr. Raskin. All right. And thank you, Mr. Roy.
Before I close, for the record I want to introduce four
Exxon internal memoranda, dated June 6, 1978, October 16, 1979,
August 3, 1998, and October 13, 1997, as well as the April 3,
1998, American Petroleum Institute Action Plan. Without
objection, those will be admitted into the record.https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/07/slapp-lawsuits-exxon-chemrisk-dapl-climate-change-raskin/
Emily Sanders
In 2018, Krystal Two Bulls received notice that she was being sued for criminal conspiracy.
Two Bulls, who is Oglala Lakota and North Cheyenne, has been organizing for environmental justice for much of her life. She was raised on the North Cheyenne Indian Reservation of Lame Deer, Montana, part of a community that had resisted coal developments for nearly 40 years. In 2016, she helped defeat Arch Coal’s plans to build a massive strip mining operation on the reservation’s border. The project would’ve been one of the largest coal mines in the United States.
Later that same year, Two Bulls received an urgent call for assistance from land and water protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota, who were working to oppose the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, which transports crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois.
When Two Bulls arrived, the conflict between protestors and local police was escalating. Her auntie, Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, had recently been arrested after standing in the path of a bulldozer set to dig up human remains at an ancestral burial site. Two Bulls spent three-and-a-half months supporting and sustaining the camp — handling basic logistics like providing protestors with food, warm clothing, and other necessities — all in the face of violence by state police. She then helped to launch the No DAPL Solidarity Campaign, a global movement to back the Indigenous opposition to the pipeline.
It wasn’t until a year after camp was shut down that Two Bulls, who came to North Dakota on her own dime and left in debt, found out she was being sued for millions of dollars by the pipeline developer, Energy Transfer Partners. The charges were brought under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Practices (RICO) Act, a law originally designed to prosecute the mafia. The company claimed that through her “calls to action,” including a statement on Greenpeace’s website asking “all people from around the world to take action” and “come stand with us” against the Dakota Access pipeline, Two Bulls and others had conspired to interfere with Energy Transfer’s business operations and engaged in organized crime. The individuals and groups’ opposition, the company claimed, was defamatory and cost key investments in its pipeline.
In 2017, The Intercept reported on documents leaked from former personnel at an international security firm, TigerSwan, revealing that Energy Transfer had paid the firm to use military-style surveillance and infiltration tactics to gather information that could be deployed in a RICO lawsuit against the anti-pipeline activists.
Two Bulls is just one of many victims of the fossil fuel industry’s use of SLAPPs— strategic lawsuits against public participation — to silence and intimidate its critics. A report released last month by legal advocacy nonprofit EarthRights International identified 152 instances of legal and judicial harassment by fossil fuel corporations to suppress dissent in the United States over the past 10 years, including 93 SLAPP lawsuits.
Just this week, a California oil industry trade association paid nearly $650,000 in fees to the city of Los Angeles and several environmental advocacy groups the company had targeted in court for years following the city’s implementation of new environmental safety requirements for drilling applicants. After declaring bankruptcy, the California Independent Petroleum Association was allowed to pay only a fraction of a judgment initially awarded to the city and groups by a trial court that ruled the lawsuit was a SLAPP.
“With the strengthening of our movements, the revelation of how long the fossil fuel industry has been aware of how their practices impact and contribute to climate change, and the rise of legal cases against oil and gas corporations, these companies are becoming more desperate to silence the voices of their critics,” said Deepa Padmanabha, deputy general counsel at Greenpeace USA.
A wide range of concerned groups, from community organizers to members of Congress, are taking up the fight against SLAPPs. Last month, the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing to expose the fossil fuel industry’s use of SLAPPs and its backing of bills to criminalize protest. The committee’s witnesses, including Padmanabha and others, explained that corporations were using these tactics to suppress activists’ ability to freely voice dissent.
The day after the hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the subcommittee chairman, introduced the SLAPP Protection Act of 2022 — the first federal legislation that would “establish a procedure to dismiss, punish, and deter strategic lawsuits against public participation.” Advocates say the bill could create a sorely needed protection for individuals and community groups who speak out against fossil fuel infrastructure, and an important safeguard for free speech at large.
According to EarthRights International, the proposed legislation would provide a federal mechanism for SLAPP suits to be quickly identified and dismissed while balancing the rights of plaintiffs and defendants. The bill would also force those bringing SLAPP suits to pay their opponents’ legal fees if the lawsuit is proven to have abusive intent.
Advocacy organizations are also tackling the issue. EarthRights is a member of the Protect the Protest coalition, an initiative created in response to the rise of SLAPP suits. “If a corporation can sue a nonprofit organization out of business for criticizing its activities, then that’s extremely dangerous,” Kirk Herbertson, senior policy advisor at EarthRights International, said.
About a year after Energy Transfer filed its lawsuit against Two Bulls and others, a district court judge in North Dakota dismissed the case, denying the RICO claims with prejudice — meaning the company could not refile those claims.
RICO claims, which can triple the amount of damages sought in a SLAPP suit, can be financially devastating — even for a larger, well-resourced organization like Greenpeace USA, which was named in the original suit. While Energy Transfer’s RICO claims against the organization have been dismissed, the pipeline company filed a second lawsuit in North Dakota state court, which is scheduled for trial in June 2023. In its current case, which also names Two Bulls as a defendant, Energy Transfer argues that Greenpeace USA conspired with others to defame, trespass, and interfere with business relationships, among many other charges.
Energy Transfer did not respond to a request for comment.
“Companies are becoming more desperate to silence
the voices of their critics”
– Deepa Padmanabha
Fighting these lawsuits not only takes vast amounts of money, but also time and energy. Padmanabha said that since mid-2016, her career has been almost entirely dedicated to advocating against corporate lawfare — corporations’ use of the legal system to attack opponents — preventing her from engaging more in the dire work needed to prevent climate catastrophe.
“The next decade is so critical in our fight against climate change. And if we didn’t have to deal with these lawsuits, we would really be putting every penny and every minute we have into fighting the existential threat of climate change,” Padmanabha said, adding that they are also intended to intimidate and deter individuals and lesser-resourced, smaller groups from speaking out.
Karen Savage was working in Massachusetts as a middle-school math teacher when she got hit with a SLAPP suit. In 2013, she and another environmental activist, Cherri Foytlin, wrote an unpaid article for the Huffington Post about a so-called independent study fromscientific consulting firm ChemRisk. The study had claimed that there was no connection between chemicals released during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the serious health problems reported by cleanup workers and coastal residents in its aftermath.
As their reporting revealed, ChemRisk — a company with a long history of working with polluters, including defendant PG&E in the infamous Erin Brockovich case — produced “science” on behalf of BP that the oil major could use to defend itself from liability in court.
After the article was published, the Huffington Post received an immediate request from the company to retract it, which they forwarded on to Cherri Foytlin. (In a note on her Facebook page, Foytlin told ChemRisk to “kiss my derriere.”)
Foytlin’s Facebook post, along with many other social media posts from the two writers, appeared in a defamation suit filed against them by ChemRisk in New York state. The company claimed their article contained falsehoods — though, according to Savage, ChemRisk couldn’t explain what those falsehoods were — and that as long as it was kept online, the article would “continue to do substantial harm to ChemRisk’s reputation.”
“Basically what they wanted to do was shut us up,” Savage told me. “It was an intimidation tactic.”
With pro-bono representation, Savage and Foytlin were able to get the suit dismissed in New York. Within two weeks, the company refiled in Massachusetts, where Savage lived. At one point, she said, the company’s lawyers even attempted to serve her in her classroom while she was teaching.
Cardno ChemRisk, the parent company of ChemRisk, did not respond to a request for comment.
The case was eventually dismissed under the state’s anti-SLAPP laws, and ChemRisk was forced to pay Savage and Foytlin’s attorney’s fees. Savage said she believes that ChemRisk never sued them in Louisiana, where Foytlin lived, because of the three states, Louisiana’s anti-SLAPP laws were the strongest, and the suit would’ve been dismissed faster and with greater consequences for the company.
That tactic of searching for the most favorable court, called forum shopping, is something Raskin’s anti-SLAPP statute would address by creating a standard applicable across the United States. At present, 32 states and the District of Columbia have anti-SLAPP laws, yet they have varying degrees of efficacy. And while the fate of a federal bill could depend on the outcome of midterm elections, most state anti-SLAPP laws have passed with bipartisan support.
Savage — who has since become a journalist and haswritten for DeSmog about being arrested by pipeline security while reporting — said she hopes Raskin’s bill would help put an end to this tactic. “If you know the truth, and you’ve got factual backup, and someone comes at you, you can’t back down on that,” Savage said. “The whole reason they’re coming at you is because they also know that you have the truth.”
While the fossil fuel industry works to stamp out the speech of environmental advocates on the one hand, it is now arguing that its climate denial is protected speech on the other. At the same time that Raskin held his hearing into the fossil fuel industry’s assault on the First Amendment, the House Natural Resources Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a separate hearing to examine how public relations firms market climate disinformation and delay action on behalf of Big Oil. In that hearing, chaired by Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), Republicans and their witness argued that the committee was attacking the corporations’ right to free speech.
“Taken together, the two [hearings] are a perfect illustration of the industry’s First Amendment strategy: expand free speech for corporations, curb it for citizens,” Amy Westervelt recently wrote in The Intercept. The fossil fuel industry, she explained, has been developing the argument that its public statements on climate policy are protected speech since the late 1960s, all while working to expand the right of corporations to buy influence over politics behind the scenes.
In a paradoxical twist, fossil fuel companies are even attempting to wield existing anti-SLAPP laws to shield themselves from legal accountability. After a Massachusetts court ruled that Attorney General Maura Healey’s climate fraud lawsuit against Exxon could proceed in state court, the oil giant told the state’s supreme court that the case was actually a conspiracy to silence Exxon’s views on climate policy in violation of the state’s anti-SLAPP statute.But so far, the idea that Exxon’s fraud is protected free speech has not gone over well with judges.
“We have seen that the industry is trying to build up this argument around a conspiracy against them, and it’s coming up in things like anti-SLAPP motions in courts. But they have continued to fail in that effort so far,” Herbertson of EarthRights International said. Raskin’s newly proposed federal legislation, he said, is clearly and explicitly designed to be used by real peopleand organizations that have been victim to SLAPP suits,and will be harder for corporations to use in their own defense.
But if you ask Padmanabha of Greenpeace, the industry’s tactics are on thin ice. “There is this recognition and an increasing awareness that speech should not be bought,” she said. “And I think that the [Oversight Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] hearing and the bill that followed it are really just emblematic examples of how these attempts to control the narrative are crumbling.”
Emily Sanders writes ExxonKnews, a newsletter covering climate accountability and the oil and gas industry. She is editorial lead at the Center for Climate Integrity, and is based in New York City. This piece was co-published by DeSmog and ExxonKnews, a project of the Center for Climate Integrity.
https://theintercept.com/**2022/09/**16/fossil-fuel-industry-climate-free-speech/
REPS. JAMIE RASKIN, D-Md., and Katie Porter, D-Calif., probably didn’t plan for their committee hearings to run at the exact same time this week, but the hearings sure were talking to each other.
In her Committee on Natural Resources hearing, Porter highlighted the role PR firms play in blocking climate policy. Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah, and his selected witness, Amy Cooke, CEO of the conservative John Locke Foundation, expressed concern that preventing companies and their hired PR firms from spreading misinformation about climate change would have a chilling effect on free speech.
Meanwhile, the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, chaired by Raskin, focused on free speech attacks against environmentalists, digging into the fossil fuel industry’s attempts to curb citizens’ speech rights via strategic litigation and laws that criminalize protest. Taken together, the two are a perfect illustration of the industry’s First Amendment strategy: expand free speech for corporations, curb it for citizens.
raskin’s free speech hearing focused on two key tactics: the increased filing of strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs— defamation suits aimed at penalizing citizens or citizen groups for exercising their First Amendment rights — and theproliferation of so-calledcritical infrastructure bills, which pile on fines and criminal sentences for those caught trespassing or vandalizing near pipelines, power plants, railroads, or other infrastructure. These anti-protest bills were a direct industry backlash to the Standing Rock protests in 2016 and 2017. Starting with a law passed in Oklahoma in 2017, they proliferated with the help of the industry group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which drafts and disseminates pro-corporate model legislation for adoption by state governments. Seventeen states now have critical infrastructure laws on the books, with several more considering proposals.
####
“SLAPPs and anti-protest bills are really two sides of the same coin,” said Deepa Padmanabha, deputy general counsel for Greenpeace and a witness at Raskin’s hearing. “They’re tactics used by the same corporate actors to quash dissent. They’re pushing legislation to silence us, to criminalize our critiques through anti-protest bills. And they’re also filing SLAPP suits to silence dissent.”
Greenpeace has dealt with both. Greenpeace USA activists were arrested in 2019 under Texas’s felony critical infrastructure law for unfurling banners on a bridge, which temporarily blocked shipping. The goal of the action was to highlight the connection between the oil industry and climate change.
Greenpeace is engaged in active litigation in a couple of SLAPP suits too. In one, Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, sued the organization for its role in the Standing Rock protests. The suit was initially filed in federal court and invoked the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, orRICO, a law designed to prosecute organized crime. “Energy Transfer was alleging that our advocacy work to uplift Indigenous voices at Standing Rock constituted organized crime,” Padmanabha said.
Because RICO allows for damages to be tripled if a defendant is found guilty, Greenpeace faced a $1 billion fine. Losing that suit would have had a truly chilling effect on free speech. A federal judge threw out the case, but Energy Transfer filed again in North Dakota (minus the RICO charge), a state that doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP law on the books.”
Anti-SLAPP laws allow defendants a quick way to get SLAPP suits dismissed, minimizing the time and money spent on meritless cases. Currently, 31 states and the District of Columbia have adopted anti-SLAPP statutes, which makes it fairly easy for corporate entities to go venue shopping for a court in a state without such a law. To address that gap, Raskin proposed new legislation this week to create federal anti-SLAPP protection. While some players in the fossil fuel industry may oppose Raskin’s bill, others have actually sought to avail themselves of anti-SLAPP protections. Exxon Mobil, for example, in its final attempt to thwart the fraud case against it in Massachusetts, argued that the suit was a SLAPP.
The oil company’s attorney Justin Anderson maintained that Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s fraud complaint against Exxon was not valid because the company’s public statements on climate policy should be considered political opinion (“petitioning activity,” in legal parlance), not misleading advertising — even when Exxon falsely claimed that climate change wasn’t real and overstated the company’s investments in low-carbon technology.
When one judge asked why Exxon would file an anti-SLAPP complaint rather than make a First Amendment argument in court, Anderson made clear that the point was to avoid discovery, when the corporation would be asked to hand over files and make its executives available for depositions. “The anti-SLAPP statute provides a mechanism to have a case that is brought against someone for petitioning activity dismissed at the outset before burdensome discovery is imposedon the party,” he argued.
The “petitioning activity” argument is one that the industry and its allies have trotted out repeatedly, both in court and in congressional hearings like those held this week. It’s a broad interpretation of free speech rights for corporations, the very sort of protection these same companies are opposed to extending to individuals. In his testimony before Raskin’s subcommittee, Daren Bakst, a senior research fellow on environmental policy and regulation for the Heritage Foundation, said, “The chilling effects are states bringing lawsuits against people for their speech.” It’s hard to tell because he said “people,” but he meant oil companies. Which he made clear by immediately referencing “what municipalities are doing, the government is doing against these fossil fuel companies. And I also see that Massachusetts is doing.”
This view of an oil company as a person who is being silenced for simply sharing their views on climate policy is the basic argument oil companies are making in dozens of cases across the country. These cases, brought by both municipalities and states, hinge either on fraud or nuisance claims and effectively ask that fossil fuel companies pay up for delaying action on climate, which increased both the impacts of the climate crisis and the price of adapting to a warming world. In all of them, the corporate defendants make some version of a free speech argument. They maintain that their public speech about global warming differed from their internal knowledge because their public statements were “petitioning speech,” related to their political views and desires and thus, protected. The industry has been building the foundation for such an argument for about as long as it has known about climate change — since the late 1960s.
The argument arose out of a situation not unlike the one playing out today, with war driving up prices at the pump and oil companies desperate to control public perception.
According to documents from Mobil’s corporate archive at the University of Texas at Austin, the company’s longtime PR whiz Herbert Schmertz and then-CEO, Rawleigh Warner, came up with an idea to help wrestle back control of the narrative. Using Mobil’s PR and advertising budget, they would create “idea advertising” to push the company’s take on key issues of the day and create the sense of Mobil as a citizen with a distinct personality.
They ran weekly :{advertorial:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:s in the New York Times as well as regular placements in a wide range of other publications, from the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal to Time and Fortune. Then Schmertz proposed TV and radio too. Why not?
In the early 1970s, Mobil took their TV and radio advertorials to all the big broadcast stations and only one, NBC, agreed to run them. CBS and ABC said they preferred to have their journalists cover energy issues. For Schmertz and Warner, it was a battle they had to win. What if the newspapers, or PBS, started to rethink playing nice with Mobil? In a media blitz, the two blasted CBS and ABC from every angle, in their NYT spot, on radio and TV programs, at events. Warner went to various business clubs to talk about the importance of protecting corporate free speech. Schmertz testified before Congress in 1978, urging First Amendment protection for Mobil’s ads and arguing that there was no difference between Mobil advertorials and New York Times editorials, because after all the Times was a business too.
Mobil helped rally support and funding for the first big Supreme Court case on the matter, First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the precursor to Citizens United. The court ruled that corporations could spend whatever money they wanted to influence politics, overruling a Massachusetts statute that said otherwise. “If the restricted view of corporate speech taken by the Massachusetts court were accepted,” Justice Lewis A. Powell wrote, “government would have the power to deprive society of the views of corporations.”
Related
How the Media Launders Fossil Fuel Industry Propaganda Through Branded Content
“I don’t think people really appreciate how big of a deal that was in shifting the rules of speech in the public space,” environmental sociologist Robert Brulle said. “Now, suddenly, corporations could use their budgets — which are enormous, you know, much larger than individuals — to advocate their position in the public space. … It allowed for a systematic distortion of the public space that gives corporations basically a loudspeaker to amplify their voice above everybody else’s.”
The 2010 Citizens United ruling, of course, intensified that dynamic. Whereas Bellotti allowed corporations to publicly campaign for particular ballot initiatives or candidates, Citizens United allowed political speech of any sort without disclosure of who was paying, who was actually speaking. Oil companies have been working to broaden corporate free speech rights even more in recent years, as their arguments in climate litigation and before Congress show.
“They will try to defend their misinformation efforts as political speech covered by the First Amendment and not subject to false advertising laws,” said Brulle, who has co-authored briefs in some of these cases.
Robert Kerr, who’s researched Mobil’s role in the corporate free speech movement for years, said to side with the oil companies’ arguments in these cases, the Supreme Court would have to turn its back on about a century’s worth of legal precedent. “It’s really deeply established even by some of the members of the current Supreme Court that the First Amendment will never protect expression that is fraud,” he said. “The worry now is that with this court there seems to be a majority that wants to say yes to almost any question the corporate interests raise.”
It makes sense then, that the industry and its allies would be working hard to rebrand climate denialism as simply a difference of opinion, to put some distance between greenwashing and fraud, to collectively gasp about the “chilling effect” (a phrase that came up so often in minority witness testimony this week that it’s hard to believe someone somewhere wasn’t disseminating talking points) that tackling misinformation might have on free speech. The fact that those efforts are happening alongside coordinated attempts to criminalize protest is more of the same: corporations drowning out the public.
no lnx an 922
'Hero' and 'national treasure': Jamie Raskin lauded for fiery rebuke of GOP hostility to January 6th panel
David Badash and The New Civil Rights Movement September 22, 2022
U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has once again achieved “national treasure” and “hero” status to the many Americans who watched his unrelenting destruction of Republican talking points and conspiracy theories about the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, on which he serves.
Congressman Raskin, a former constitutional law professor, was the lead impeachment manager for the second impeachment of Donald Trump, and has repeatedly been the subject of praise for his passionate defense of democracy.
On Wednesday, as many were focused on the New York Attorney General’s announcement of a civil fraud lawsuit against Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump, other Trump associates and several of the former president’s businesses, and still others focused on President Joe Biden’s historic speech before the United Nations,Congressman Raskin was sitting in a House Judiciary Committee hearing fielding a conspiratorial question from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), as Mediaite reported.
[READ MORE: In Scathing Rebuke DOJ Wins Stay of Trump Judge’s Ruling in National Security Appeal Over Classified Documents
Massie is perhaps best known for his conspiracy theories, along with his Christmas photo he posted of him, his wife, and their children, all photographed holding assault rifles.
Raskin’s destruction of GOP conspiracy theories and talking points started with Massie dredging up Ray Epps. Mediate explains the background:
:{
}:
“The theory holds that Epps was acting as an agent provocateur working for the deep state who was at the Capitol to rile up supporters of Donald Trump and get them to cause mayhem. Trump himself held a rally that morning and encouraged his supporters to march to the Capitol as the 2020 presidential election was being certified by members of Congress. The former president falsely claimed the election was stolen from him.”
Raskin wasn’t having it.
Massie claimed they “were told” a transcript of the January 6 Committee’s interview with Epps “would be released, but it’s never been released.”
Raskin blasted Massie in response.
[READ MORE: ‘Lacks Courage’: Experts Question Why Alvin Bragg ‘Stood Down’ on Trump Criminal Case After Bombshells in Civil Suit
“None of the transcripts have been released so you don’t need a conspiracy theory about that,” he replied. “We’ve done more than a thousand interviews. You guys are trying to make this poor schmuck who showed up to your protest into something a lot bigger than he is. He’s just trying to survive and he’s on your side. You don’t have many voters left, you might want to try to hang on to them without demonizing and vilifying your own people.”
Raskin was unrelenting.
“That’s the Donald Trump way. Sell everybody else down the road. Unless you can get a pardon,” Raskin continued. “Most people have opened their eyes about what he’s done to our country. What he’s done to his family.”
But the back-and-forth did not end there.
Congressman Raskin took Massie on a walk through recent history over the creation of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack.
Blasting House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Raskin said, “After we went back and conveyed our agreement to the GOP proposal,” about the formation of a committee to investigate the January 6 attack, “it was vetoed by the fourth branch of government,” meaning Donald Trump, who Raskin has previously referred to in that manner.
“It was vetoed by the cult leader, Donald Trump, who said he wanted no investigation at all! That’s your guy! Donald Trump, he said he wanted no investigation. And so, you pulled the plug on the investigation you originally advocated because Donald Trump didn’t want it. Let’s tell some truth! You’re talking about the truth? I’m giving you the truth! I’m giving you the facts about it!”
[READ MORE: NY AG Referring Criminal Charges Against Trump to the Feds, Alleges He ‘Grossly Inflated’ Net Worth by ‘Billions’
“And then when Speaker Pelosi said, ‘well in that case the House of Representatives will conduct our own investigation,’ then, again, you guys boycotted because you wanted to put pro-insurrection members on the committee. And so, we ended up with a bipartisan committee of people really interested in getting the facts,” Raskin reminded Massie.
“And you know what? This is what you guys can’t stand: America listened to it because we had real congressional hearings,” he said proudly, noting that “25, 30 million Americans [were] watching because we told the truth about Donald Trump’s assault on democratic institutions and the right to vote in America.”
Raskin launched in to a near-rendition of the courtroom scene in “A Few Good Men,” declaring, “maybe you can’t handle the truth, but that’s the reality and nobody’s laid a glove on any of the testimony that has come out during those hearings.”
“So, we hear this absurd whining about ‘Ray Epps,’ who has absolutely nothing to do with any of it. And all of these conspiracy theory allegations have been debunked – up and down. Up and down! You think you’ve got something? Bring him in and talk to him or send us a letter. But why don’t you deal with the reality of the situation?”
Once again, Raskin is receiving high praise for his defense of democracy.
Noted political scientist Norm Ornstein declared Raskin a “national treasure.”
Journalist, author, Emmy-Award winning producer Maria Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family, responded to the video by saying, “Damn, I love this. It’s so good.” Rep. Raskin is “speaking truth to power and the other side can’t handle it.”
Podcaster and political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen called it an “absolute masterclass by Jamie Raskin.”
Mary Trump, also a podcaster and relative of the former president called Raskin “the best congressman we have.”
Journalist, CEO, and foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst David Rothkopf said he’s “Always so grateful” that Raskin “is a member of our Congress.”
Award-winning screenwriter, film-and-television producer and director Mark Frost says “Raskin is an American hero. This is thrilling stuff; you couldn’t WRITE a better speech and he’s winging it.”
Social media influencer and former NBA player Rex Chapman called Rep. Raskin “a superstar.”
Van Badham, Australian writer and columnist for The Guardian (Australia), pointing to a clip of Raskin offered this summation: “If you’re unfamiliar with Jamie Raskin; this is a man who has survived cancer, January 6 and the tragic death of his adult son. He’s someone whose shown a strength of character and personal resilience that puts him far beyond anything the Republicans could try to lay on him.”
Watch the videos above or at this link.
6 22
united States Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) appeared on a recent edition of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia)'s podcast and suggested that Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) is unable to do his job because his son committed suicide.
Raskin served as the House of Representatives' manager of former President Donald Trump's second impeachment for inciting the January 6th, 2021 Capitol insurrection. Raskin also sits on the Select Committee investigating the attack, which was triggered (at least in part) by Republican lawmakers refusing at Trump's behest to acknowledge President Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election.
Now, with just 24 hours remaining before public hearings revealing what the bipartisan congressional commission has found begin, Gaetz and Greene have launched a new and unusually cruel offensive against Raskin.
"When people encounter trauma, they often associate a lot of the other things around that trauma with it, even if they don't naturally or even rationally associate. And what I worry about for the Congress and for Jamie Raskin, you know, no one would ever want to lose a child, particularly to suicide," said Gaetz.
"As human beings, our hearts go out to him. But I think that he takes that trauma and he associates it now with his work in the Congress to such an interwoven way that he's unable to do the congressional experience outside of just the dungeon of that personal trauma," Gaetz continued, "and I think it makes him look at everything in these very like, dark and severe ways."
Greene agreed.
"You know, we try to come to the job to uplift people," Gaetz resumed.
"We're here to serve the people," Greene interjected.
"Well and we love this country," Gaetz added.
"Absolutely," said Greene.
"We're not here out of a sense of grievance or hatred. We love America," Gaetz said.
"No we love it," Greene chimed in again.
"And we want to vindicate the rights of our citizens and we want to champion their causes and battle their dislikes," Gaetz remarked.
"Yes that's right," Greene said.
"But I think for Jamie Raskin, it's really like, his service in the Congress has almost become like inextricably attached to this sad personal trauma he's had," Gaetz proclaimed. "And I do think it clouds his judgment and you could see that, that very darkness and that pain manifest on Thursday in a way that's not particularly relevant to the challenges that we've talked about, but it might be deeply relevant to what he's going through. And the country shouldn't have to go through all that with him."
Greene then stated the quiet part out loud.
"Well my goodness, it's a horrible thing, what he went through, but it doesn't change the fact of, uh, his political beliefs," she said, "and I believe he's a communist and I believe what he's doing on the January 6th Committee is completely wrong."
Watch below via PatriotTakes:
https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/jamie-raskin/
john stauber edit bd
Guy Reschenthaler’s face looked beat up. I almost felt sorry for him. The Pennsylvania congressman was forced to explain Thursday what he and his conference were doing in the House after Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, in short order, tore three of them down.
By the time Raskin was finished with Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, the carnage was so bad Reschenthaler demanded that Raskin’s word “be taken down.” That’s a House rule disciplining members who use “inappropriate words in debate.”
(In this case it was over passage of the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend Lease Act, a $33 billion aid package requested by the president to continue helping Ukraine fight and repel the invading Russian army.)
Raskin conceded that he used “unparliamentary language to make my point.” Though Raskin was scolded, it was Reschenthaler who looked warmed over. Before moving on, he explained that his conference wasn’t debating the substance of the bill. (It has majority support, he said.) His conference was merely debating the rule leading to passage.
OK then.
In truth, Elise Stefanik of New York, James Comer of Kentucky and Greene of Georgia were following a play devised by colleague Jim Jordan. The idea, according to a leaked memo, was making everything about immigration for the benefit of the viewers of rightwing media. So they were long on “open border policy” and the “invasion of the southern border” and short on anything having to do with Ukraine.
It was like Raskin saw that bullshit coming.
In what looked like a masterclass on defusing and dismantling rightwingers and their fascist rhetoric, Raskin 1) put the Republicans in a broad context with the highest of stakes, in this case Ukrainian democracy against Russian autocracy; and 2) found a Republican, in this case Marjorie Talyor Greene, who has said things you say only when your love of democracy is subordinate to your lust for power.
Raskin boxed them in.
Then he stomped the box.
The following is a lightly edited transcript of Raskin's response to statements made by Stafanik, Comer and Greene, in that order.
Responding to Elise Stefanik
I think that all of these efforts to distract us from the issue at hand are meant to cover up the very clear pro-Russian and pro-Putin faction at the heart of their side of the aisle.
Last month, the very distinguished gentlelady fromGeorgia went on a radio show called The Voice of Rural America. She followed Donald Trump’s sickening appeasement of Vladimir Putin and blamed Ukraine for the situation.
She said, “You see, Ukraine just kept poking the bear and poking the bear, which is Russia, and Russia invaded. There is no win for Ukraine here. Russia is successful in this invasion.
When members of Congress, who are cheerleaders for Vladimir Putin, and are voices have nothing but defeatism, fatalism and pessimism for democracy in Europe – so they try to distract us with a lot of phony rhetoric about other issues.
She also said, “NATO has been supplying the neo-Nazis in Ukraine with powerful weapons and extensive training on how to use them. What the hell is going on with these NATO Nazis?”
My friends, we got to decide which side we're on.
When Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt looked at what was happening in Europe during World War Two and they saw Nazis marching down the street, they did not see very fine people on both sides of the street.
They did not start cheerleading for Mussolini and Hitler and Franco.
Yet we have people here who speak on the side of Vladimir Putin and on the side of Russia. Let's pass this Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend Lease Actto show where America is.
We are not cheerleaders for Vladimir Putin.
We are not going to follow the Trump-Putin axis down the road towards autocracy and kleptocracy and sedition and insurrection and corruption and coups in the United States.
That's not where we're going.
This is the land of the free, the home of the brave.
We stand for democracy here.
Not Vladimir Putin.
Responding to James Comer
We're here to talk about aid to Ukraine, how to streamline and expedite aid to defend the people of Ukraine. And they will talk about anything but.
I was willing to believe the distinguished gentlelady from Georgia, and several other members, were isolated in their conference.
Now I'm starting to think maybe they're speaking for the whole conference.
I wonder if my good friend from Pennsylvania would explicitly repudiate some of these statements made by the gentlelady from Georgia.
Does the minority conference agree that NATO has been supplying “neo-Nazis in Ukraine” with powerful weapons?
Does the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania support or dissociate himself from the argument that the aid that we sent to Ukraine falls “into the hands of Nazis”? – a statement made by the gentlelady from Georgia echoing Putin’s filthy claim that his war on the sovereign democracy of Ukraine is in fact an attempt to de-Nazify the country.
We hear distinct echoes in everything that we get from the erudite gentlelady from Georgia.
Does the minority agree that Putin invaded because Ukraine repeatedly poked the bear?
I can't understand why they won't talk about defending Ukraine. That's what this legislation is about. That's what this rule is about.
They want to talk about anything other than that. We can debate all of those other important issues in other contexts at the right time. This is how the House of Representatives works.
But why are they covering up for the pro-Putin faction within their conference? I would like them to dissociate themselves from the people who were blaming Ukraine for Russia's bloody imperial invasion and war of human rights violations and atrocities against the people.
Responding to Marjorie Taylor Greene
Mr. Speaker, the United States of America just witnessed the most astonishing spectacle.
We are here to debate aid to the people of Ukraine defending themselves against a massive invasion by Vladimir Putin and his army.
Then, the minority puts up the distinguished gentlelady from Georgia who does not mention Ukraine once. She does not mention the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who’ve been slaughtered by Putin's army.
She does not mention more than 100 Ukrainian children who've been shot and killed by the [Russian] army.
Instead, she talks about a massive invasion at the border, a massive invasion which their own speakers have said today hundreds of thousands of people have been apprehended in.
That's very different from a military invasion.
The one in Ukraine, of course, the gentlelady is not going to talk about that.
She had a lot to say the other day when she heckled me continuously. When I came to the floor, it was like the Rocky Horror Picture Show in here with her chanting about the Russia hoax and Russia this and Russia that.
Now she has the opportunity to tell the world what her views about Russia are. I put them out there, exactly what she said.
She said that the aid that the taxpayers of America are sending to the people of Ukraine to defend themselves against Vladimir Putin and the Russian Army falls into the hands of Nazis.
I want to see her proof.
Where's her evidence?
She talks about NATO Nazis.
Does the minority believe our allies in NATO, who are trying to defend the people of Ukraine, are Nazis?
Has it come to this?
Gentlelady talks about a massive invasion – we had a massive invasion of our own chamber.
She continued to be a cheerleader for the insurrection.
biden beat by oil corps:
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/oil-lobbying-powerhouse-api-notes-concerns-with-fed-pick-raskin
Oil Lobby Powerhouse API Voices Concerns on Fed Pick Raskin
Jan. 31, 2022,
The top U.S. oil and gas trade group expressed concerns aboutSarah Bloom Raskin’s nomination for vice chair for supervision of the Federal Reservebut stopped short of opposing her candidacy, in a break with some industry leaders.
American Petroleum Institute senior vice president of policy Frank Macchiarola said Monday that the group has concerns over some of Raskin’s comments on addressing climate-related financial risk
“We believe that climate-related stress testing and restrictions on capital could undermine our industry’s efforts to deliver affordable and reliable energy while addressing the climate challenge,” Macchiarola said in an emailed statement
Macchiarola said ...
To read the full article log in.
an 3 22 tom b raw story
According to a report from Politico, attorney John Eastman -- who was leading the charge to overturn 2020 presidential election results that ousted Donald Trump from the White House -- is receiving new scrutiny over his relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas.
In light of revelations about texts being exchanged between Ginni Thomas and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, where the wife of the Supreme Court justice was passing on conspiracy theories and urging the Trump's inner circle to do what they could to remain in power, one member of the House select committee investigating the Jan 6th insurrection said he has some questions for Eastman.
As Kyle Cheney reports, "Eastman spent the final weeks of Trump’s presidency driving a strategy to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory, a plan that relied on legal theories so extreme the Jan. 6 select committee says they could amount to criminal conspiracy and fraud," before adding, "The select committee has evidence that when a top Pence aide challenged Eastman’s plan on Jan. 4, 2021, Eastman initially told him he believed two Supreme Court justices would back him up. One of them was Ginni Thomas’ husband, Justice Clarence Thomas."
Politico is reporting that Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) is raising concerns about Eastman and Justice Thomas.
"Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told POLITICO that the new details raise important questions about whether Eastman had a specific reason to believe Justice Thomas would support his radical gambit, or if he was simply voicing a hunch," Cheney wrote before noting, "Eastman’s attorney Charles Burnham did not respond to questions about whether Eastman maintained ties to the Thomases or communicated with either of them in the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 defeat. There’s no known evidence that Eastman was directly in touch with either of the Thomases during his campaign to pressure Pence to subvert the results."
According to Politico, "Eastman had reason to know Thomas’ views well: He clerked for the George H.W. Bush appointee in the 1990s before becoming a mainstay in deeply conservative legal circles."
The report goes to note that when investigators asked Eastman if he had any reason to believe that the Supreme Court would support his plan to have former vice president Mike Pence refuse to certify the election and throw it back to the states, his response was to plead the 5th Amendment.
What has raised red flags was testimony from Pence lawyer Greg Jacob who told the committee that Eastman had told him that at least two Supreme Court justices might support his plan, with Jacob saying he couldn't recall if Eastman named the other justice.
You can read more here.
an ah 321 no lnx twt
republicans and Democrats have been having heated debates for generations, but in recent years, the divide between the United States' two major political parties has grown much more ugly and bitter than it was during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. And on Thursday, March 11, reporter Kyle Cheney stresses in an article published by Politico later that day, a two-hour hearing showed just how nasty that divide has become.
The March 11 hearing was held by members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which Cheney describes as "an academic review of lawmakers' ability to punish or expel one another under House rules." The hearing, Cheney notes, "quickly devolved into a tidal wave of outrage, a snapshot of the increasingly toxic environment that has enveloped Capitol Hill since a mob of pro-Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and sent them fleeing for their lives."
Cheney is not exaggerating when he uses the word "toxic" to describe the environment on Capitol Hill following the victory of President Joe Biden in 2020's presidential election. Trump and many of his GOP sycophants in Congress refused to accept the democratic election results, making bogus, totally debunked claims of widespread voter fraud. And on January 6, a violent mob of pro-Trump extremists — including QAnon supporters, members of the Proud Boys, White nationalists and militia members — stormed the U.S. Capitol Building in the hope of stopping Congress from certifying Biden's Electoral College victory.
NEW: Post-Jan. 6 tensions flared today at a Judiciary hearing, where Democrats accused some Republican colleagues o… https://t.co/N5YRvAycqq
— Kyle Cheney (@Kyle Cheney) 1615509644.0
Cheney explains, "Democrats continue to seethe over their GOP colleagues who countenanced Trump's efforts to discredit the election, and blame them for contributing to the atmosphere that inspired the mob. Republicans have largely sidestepped that debate, but as Democrats have begun ramping up tactics to marginalize the 138 House Republicans who voted to reject some of the 2020 results, some are beginning to bristle more vocally. And at Thursday's hearing, the dam broke."
The Politico reporter goes on to describe some examples of how contentious things became during that hearing. Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who served as lead impeachment manager during Trump's second impeachment trial, slammed Republicans for their "waterfall of counterfeit outrage and indignation" and described Republicans as a "religious cult" devoted to mindlessly worshipping Trump.
Raskin declared, "You invented cancel culture. This right-wing cancel culture has run amok." And he denounced the former president as a "snowflake," using a derogatory term that conservatives often used to attack liberals and progressives they view as hypersensitive. And Rep. Mike Johnson, a far-right Louisiana Republican, indignantly told Raskin, "The name-calling of the former president…. obviously violates the rules."
"The exchanges were emblematic of the whole hearing, where the testimony of four witnesses was largely an afterthought," Cheney observes. "The witnesses largely agreed that the House has the power to punish and even expel its own members under the Constitution, but that the process should be deployed only in exceedingly rare and clear-cut cases when a supermajority — and not just one political faction — deems it necessary. Republicans, though, viewed the hearing itself as part of an increasingly clear effort by Democrats to begin seeking ways to punish those they view as responsible for the January 6 insurrection."
From Your Site Articles
GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy is a 'weak' and spineless servant of ... ›
Conservative explains how GOP became a cult of 'victimhood' and ... ›
Can America escape the GOP's Ayn Rand death cult? - Alternet.org ›
720 an portland
...Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Wednesday led 116 of his colleagues in a letter (pdf) demanding Barr and Wolf answer their questions on the ongoing Portland deployment and any planned expansion of federal law enforcement programs in U.S. cities.
“This is not legitimate law enforcement under our Constitution but a shocking slide into authoritarianism and police state tactics,” the letter reads, adding that “these new tactics are an outrageous assault on the liberties of the people and the police powers and political sovereignty of the states.”...
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/citizens-united-and-corporate-court/
raskin 9/12
no lnx
“And may the odds be ever in your favor.”
—Effie Trinket, announcer for the corporate state in The Hunger Games
We live in what will surely come to be called the Citizens United era, a period in which a runaway corporatist ideology has overtaken Supreme Court jurisprudence. No longer content just to pick a president, as five conservative Republicans on the Rehnquist Court did in 2000, five conservative Republicans on the Roberts Court a decade later voted to tilt the nation’s entire political process toward the views of moneyed corporate power.
In Citizens United (2010), the Court held that private corporations, which are nowhere mentioned in the Constitution and are not political membership organizations, enjoy the same political free speech rights as people under the First Amendment and may draw on the wealth of their treasuries to spend unlimited sums promoting or disparaging candidates for public office. The billions of dollars thus turned loose for campaign purposes at the direction of corporate managers not only can be but—under the terms of corporate law—must be spent to increase profits.If businesses choose to exercise their newly minted political “money speech” rights, they must work to install officials who will act as corporate tools.
The Court, transformed by the addition of Chief Justice Roberts and Samuel Alito, who were nominated by that lucky winner in Bush v. Gore, took this giant step to the right of all prior Courts without even being asked to do so. The petitioner, Citizens United, sought only a ruling that the electioneering provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (better known as McCain-Feingold) didn’t apply to its on-demand movie about Hillary Clinton. But the conservatives sent the parties back to brief and argue the paradigm-shifting constitutional question they were so keen to decide. As dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens observed, the justices in the majority “changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”
Before Citizens United came down, corporations were already spending billions of dollars lobbying, running “issue ads,” launching political action committees and soliciting PAC contributions. Moreover, CEOs, top executives and board directors—the people whose income and wealth have soared over the past several decades in relation to the rest of America—have always contributed robustly to candidates. But there was one crucial thing that CEOs could not do before Citizens United: reach into their corporate treasuries to bankroll campaigns promoting or opposing the election of candidates for Congress or president. This prohibition essentially established a wall of separation—not especially thick or tall, but a wall nonetheless—between corporate treasury wealth and campaigns for federal office.
The Roberts Court’s 5-4 decision to demolish most of this wall also bulldozed the foundational understanding of the corporation that had governed American law for two centuries. The Court had always regarded the corporation not as a citizen with constitutional rights but as an “artificial entity” chartered by the states and endowed with extraordinary privileges in order to serve society’s economic purposes. The great conservative Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), “A corporation ?is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those ?properties which the charter of creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence.”
This “artificial entity” understanding of corporate law prevailed until Big Tobacco lawyer and corporate-state visionary Lewis Powell, of Richmond, Virginia, joined the Court. In First National Bank of Boston v.Bellotti (1978), the key forerunner to Citizens United, Powell assembled a bare majority to give corporations and banks the right to spend without limit to influence public opinion in ballot issue campaigns. The decision, which approved the desire of banks in Massachusetts to campaign against progressive tax measures, unveiled the key doctrinal move of what would later become the Citizens United era: “If the speakers here were not corporations, no one would suggest that the State could silence their proposed speech,” Justice Powell wrote. “The inherent worth of the speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source.”
The Bellotti decision cracked open the door of campaign finance law, and the Citizens United majority blew that door off its hinges. The Court announced that, when it comes to campaign spending rights, the “identity of the speaker” is irrelevant and an impermissible basis upon which to repress the flow of money speech. What matters is the “speech” itself, never the speaker—a doctrine that would have come in handy for the public employees, public school students, whistleblowers, prisoners and minor-party candidates whose free-speech rights have been crushed by the conservative Court because of their identity as (disfavored) speakers.
Taken seriously, the Citizens United doctrine has astonishing implications for campaign finance.If it’s true that the “identity of the speaker” is irrelevant, the City of New York—a municipal corporation, after all—should have a right to spend money telling residents for whom to vote in mayoral races. Maryland could spend tax dollars urging citizens to vote for marriage equality in November, and President Obama could order the Government Printing Office to produce a book advocating his re-election. Surely the Supreme Court would never ban a book containing campaign speech!
Further, under the new doctrine, churches—?religious corporations—would have a First Amendment right not only to promote candidates from the pulpit but to spend freely on television ads advocating their election or trashing their opponents. The claim that churches surrender their right to engage in electioneering when they accept 501(c)(3) status is obsolete after Citizens United, which rejected the view that groups can be divested of their right to participate in politics when they receive incorporated status and special legal and financial privileges. If the identity of the speaker is truly irrelevant, there should be nothing to stop the Church of Latter-Day Saints or Harvard University from bankrolling political campaigns.
In the real world, the claim that the identity of the speaker is irrelevant cannot be taken seriously, and it is already being disregarded by the justices who signed on to it. The Court has so far declined to strike down the ban on foreign spending in American politics and the century-old ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates, laws that the new doctrine logically should invalidate. A total wipeout of campaign finance law appears to be just a step too far—at least right now—for a Court already facing plummeting public legitimacy.
But even if this incoherent doctrine goes no further, the surging stream of corporate and billionaire spending has already made a sweet difference for the Republican Party, which despairs of the nation’s demographic and cultural changes and depends on a mix of right-wing propaganda and voter suppression to confuse and shrink the electorate. Indeed, the potency of Citizens United became clear in the same year the decision was released.
The 2010 election should have been framed by three recent corporate catastrophes: the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which inflicted billions of dollars in damage; Massey Energy’s collapsing coal mines in West Virginia, which cost twenty-nine people their lives and were enabled by the corporation’s aggressive lobbying and corruption of government; and the subprime mortgage meltdown brought on by the misconduct and power plays of AIG and Wall Street, which cost the American people trillions of dollars in lost homes and home values, ravaged pension and retirement funds, and destroyed stock equity.
But the infusion into the campaign of hundreds of millions of dollars from corporate and personal sources through secretive 501(c)(4) advocacy groups, 501(c)(6) trade associations and eighty-three new Super PACs completely changed the subject. The theme of the propaganda-soaked campaign became, remarkably, the urgent importance of deregulating corporations. The Republicans and the Koch brothers–funded Tea Party captured control of the House, bringing near paralysis to the government.
Citizens United did not accomplish this feat alone; it had a junior partner in SpeechNow.org v. FEC. This decision came from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which struck down limits on what individuals can give to independent expenditure campaigns, a ruling that turbo-charged the Super PACs. While Citizens United freed the corporations, SpeechNow.org emancipated billionaires like Sheldon Adelson, the casino king who bets large on right-wing causes. Adelson’s millions kept the floundering Newt Gingrich afloat for the Dixie primaries. After Gingrich’s campaign went craps, Adelson sent $10 million to a pro-Romney Super PAC and vowed to spend as much as ?$100 million to defeat Obama as president.
Today there are 844 Super PACs and countless 501(c) vehicles; experts say billions of dollars, much of it untraceable, will flood the 2012 election. We will never know for sure whose money is paying for the show, because the front groups easily conceal their donors, including foreign corporations. Moreover, right-wing lawyers are now challenging campaign finance disclosure requirements as unconstitutional compelled speech, like making Jehovah’s Witness schoolchildren pledge allegiance to the flag. They argue that corporations should be free to keep their political spending secret because they may face intimidation and even—God forbid—boycotts from consumers who dislike their politics. In other words, corporations have a right to speak because they are like people, but they should be completely insulated from the speech reactions of natural people. This is some “marketplace of ideas” the champions of corporate power have in mind for us.
Support for a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United is growing because, as Justice Stevens objected, ?”A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold.” An amendment to allow for reasonable regulation of campaign expenditures and contributions would empower Congress to return corporations to the economic sphere. It would also solidify the public’s interest in campaign disclosure and, as Harvard professor Laurence Tribe has observed, the much-eroded interest in building a public financing system that makes participating candidates at least minimally competitive with privately financed candidates. This is an interest that the Roberts Court has trashed, in cases like Davis v. FEC (2008) and Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett (2011).
In these decisions, the Court, in essence, ruled that privately financed candidates backed by wealthy interests not only have a right to spend to the heavens to win office but also a right, in states with public financing laws, to lock in their massive financial advantage over publicly financed candidates, whose campaign speech may not be even modestly amplified by public funding when they get outspent. Here, as distorted beyond recognition by the Roberts Court, the First Amendment becomes not the guardian of democratic discussion but the guarantee of unequal protection for well-born and wealth-backed politicians. Today, corporations can saturate the airwaves and billionaires can spend to their hearts’ content, but government cannot create even a modest megaphone to help poorer candidates be heard.
A constitutional amendment to correct these distortions may seem impossible now, but all amendments seem impossible until they become inevitable. Most amendments since the Bill of Rights have expanded democracy or, like the Twenty-Fourth Amendment banning poll taxes, removed obstacles to democracy authorized by the Supreme Court. President Obama’s recent statement of support for mobilizing a campaign to amend the Constitution suggests a coming surge of political engagement on the issue. FIND THIS]
Defenders of our new plutocracy point out that there are many thousands of corporations in America, most of them small, but this bit of faux small-business populism is an irrelevant distraction from how the corporate “wealth primary” works in the real world.Major industries that have an “extractive” character and a parasitic relationship with government—Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex—have cultivated a pervasive financial dependency on elected officials that permits them to continue the exploitative symbiosis that economists call “rent-seeking.” Avoiding the hazardous risks of innovation, investment and competition, many conglomerates prefer playing power politics in Washington. They don’t increase the pie; they just grab ever larger slices of it.
These arrangements operate on a simple return-on-investment basis: corporations devote millions to electing and lobbying politicians and then collect hundreds of millions in tax breaks, corporate welfare, sweetheart contracts, bailouts, deregulation and inside deals. This squalid form of “public policy,” which even Republicans call “crony capitalism” (in the primaries anyway), works splendidly for those involved but dismally for everyone else, including businesses that lack the finance capital to invest in the political system.A plutocratic state denies us both political justice and a fair economy.
When a bristling Justice Antonin Scalia went on CNN in July and defended Citizens United, which is considered a recipe for corruption by nearly 70 percent of Americans, he enlisted everyone’s favorite founder. “I think Thomas Jefferson would have said, ‘The more speech, the better,’” Scalia opined.
One must charitably assume Scalia’s utter ignorance of Jefferson’s political philosophy and how much the Sage of Monticello feared the rise of a “single and splendid government of an aristocracy, founded on banking institutions, and moneyed incorporations,” which he foresaw “riding and ruling over the plundered ploughmen and beggared yeomanry.” The Citizens United era bears a disturbing resemblance to Jefferson’s nightmare vision of what might happen if corporate power swallowed the government. But Justice Scalia and the other juriscorporatists managing our scales of justice know just what good wishes to offer the “plundered ploughmen and beggared yeomanry” of our day, and the rest of the people we call the 99 percent: “May the odds be ever in your favor.”
ALSO IN THIS FORUM
Bill Moyers and Bernard A. Weisberger: “The 1 Percent Court”
William Yeomans: “How the Right Packed the Court”
Dahlia Lithwick: “One Nation by and for the Corporations”
Michael Greenberger: “The Roberts Court and Wall Street”
Craig Becker and Judith Scott: “Isolating America’s Workers”
Herman Schwartz: “Rewriting Antitrust Law”
Sherrilyn Ifill: “A Court Out of Touch”
Nan Aron: “The Way Forward”
Jamie Raskin, a professor of constitutional law at American University, is a member of the Maryland State Senate, where he serves as majority whip. He recently led the successful floor fight in the Senate to repeal the death penalty in his state.
420 random grab drilled
fossil Fuel Companies Try Again to Shake Baltimore’s Climate Liability Suit
ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP, along with nearly two dozen other fossil fuel defendants named in a climate liability suit by the city of Baltimore, have asked a state court to dismiss the case, in part because they maintain it is a violation of their First Amendment right to free speech. Story coming soon!
==
==
https://www.climateliabilitynews.org/2018/07/20/baltimore-climate-damages-liability-lawsuit/
Baltimore became the second East Coast city to file a climate liability lawsuit against fossil fuel companies. Its suit, announced Friday, becomes the 12th suit filed across the country aiming to hold the industry accountable for flooding and other harms caused by climate change.
The mayor and city council of Baltimore filed a complaint in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City that ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and 23 other fossil fuel producers and distributors violated Maryland laws, including its consumer protection law.
“These oil and gas companies knew for decades that their products would harm communities like ours, and we’re going to hold them accountable,” Baltimore City Solicitor Andre M. Davis said. “Baltimore’s residents, workers, and businesses shouldn’t have to pay for the damage knowingly caused by these companies.”
Baltimore, the largest city in Maryland and the fifth-largest on the East Coast, is already experiencing the effects of sea level rise and extreme weather driven by climate change. The city absorbed a 7 ½-foot storm surge from Hurricane Isabel in 2003, causing a devastating flood, and had Superstorm Sandy’s track changed slightly, a 20-foot storm surge could have inundated the city in 2012. The city’s Inner Harbor, a tourist hub and a key economic driver for Baltimore, faces frequent flooding even without storms of that size. Nearby Ellicott City, 12 miles to the west, has been devastated by flash flooding twice in the last three years, with 1,000-year floods striking that community after extreme downpours in 2016 and earlier this year.
Baltimore needs to upgrade infrastructure to be ready for future flooding, although city officials are not yet certain what that will cost. “The City is in the final stages of its latest Disaster Preparedness and Planning Project, which be out for public comment in August and will have more details about the kinds of projects that Baltimore will have to undertake to address rising seas and other consequences of climate change,” Suzanne Sangree, chief of the Baltimore City Law Department’s public safety practice group, wrote in an email.
“All cities are behind in this kind of preparation, in large part because the fossil fuel industry has been burying information and preventing meaningful regulation and preparation,” Sangree said.
The city filed its suit in state court, where most legal experts say it has a better chance for success. New York City, the first East Coast city to sue the oil industry for climate damages, had its case dismissed by a federal judge on Thursday. San Francisco and Oakland also had their cases thrown out of U.S. District Court. All are expected to appeal those decisions, but have not yet done so.
Those roadblocks have not deterred other communities from joining the wave of suits, however. Rhode Island recently became the first state to file a suit. And now Baltimore joins the list of cities that believe the industry should pay for the damages it says have been overwhelmingly driven by its products.
...
==
https://www.ecowatch.com/off-act-tulsi-gabbard-2479880368.html
9/17
Rep.Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) introduced the Off Fossil Fuels for a Better Future Act (OFF Act) last week. This visionary bill comes as the nation bears witness to the devastation being brought by the climate change-super charged storm Harvey to Texas and Louisiana and braces for Irma's impacts. Storms like this and other extreme weather events will become all the more frequent and intense unless bold action is taken. Gabbard's bill—the strongest yet introduced in Congress—will put us on a path towards avoiding increased climate chaos: It will place a moratorium on new fossil fuel projects and move the country to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, with a focus on a rapid transition in the next ten years. The bill is co-sponsored by Representatives Nanette Barragan (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Ted Lieu (D-CA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL).
==
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Raskin
Jamin Ben "Jamie" Raskin (born December 13, 1962) is an American author and politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Maryland's 8th congressional districtsince 2017. The district is located in Montgomery County, an affluent suburban county northwest of Washington, D.C., and extends through rural Frederick County to the Pennsylvania border.
Prior to his election to Congress, he was a law professor who taught constitutional law at American University Washington College of Law, where he co-founded and directed of the LL.M. program on Law and Government and co-founded the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project.[1][2]
- :{1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Early life:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Maryland legislature:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{U.S. House of Representatives:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{3.1:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{2016 campaign:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{3.2:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Tenure:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{3.3:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Committee assignments:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{3.4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Party leadership and caucus membership:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{4:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Electoral history:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{5:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Personal life:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{6:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{Publications:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{7:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{See also:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{8:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{References:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
- :{9:(style="display:table-cell;padding-left:0px;padding-right:0.5em"):}::{External links:(style="display:table-cell"):}:
Early life[
Raskin was born in Washington, D.C. on December 13, 1962 to a Jewish family.[3][4][5] He is the son of progressive activist Marcus Raskin—a former staff aide to President John F. Kennedy on the National Security Council and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies—and Barbara (née Bellman) Raskin, a journalist and novelist. He graduated from Georgetown Day School in 1979, and received a B.A. from Harvard College (magna cum laude) in 1983 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School (magna cum laude) in 1987. He is a past editor of the Harvard Law Review.[6] He represented Ross Perot in 1996 when Perot sued over being excluded from the Presidential Debates and Raskin also wrote a Washington Post op-ed which strongly condemned the Federal Election Commission and the Commission on Presidential Debates.[7]
Maryland legislature[
In November 2006, he was elected as a Maryland State Senator for District 20, representing parts of Silver Spring and Takoma Park in Montgomery County.[8] In 2012, he was named the Majority Whip for the Senate and was the Chairman of the Montgomery County Senate Delegation, Chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics Reform, and a Member of the Judicial Proceedings Committee.[4]
Raskin was a strong proponent of liberal issues in the Maryland Senate and worked well with Republicans and moderate Democrats.[9]
He was the sponsor of bills advocating the repeal of the death penalty in Maryland, the expansion of the state ignition interlock device program, and the establishment of the legal guidelines for benefit corporations, a type of for-profit corporation that include a material societal benefit in their bylaws and decision-making processes.[10][11][12][13]
Raskin helped lead the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in Maryland.[9] On March 1, 2006, during a Maryland State Senate hearing regarding same-sex marriage, Raskin was noted for his response to an opposing lawmaker: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."[14][15][16][17]
Raskin long championed efforts to reform marijuana laws and legalize medical marijuana in Maryland.[18][19] Raskin introduced a medical marijuana bill in 2014 that was signed by Martin O'Malley and went into effect in January 2015.[20]
A former board member of FairVote, Raskin introduced and sponsored the first bill in the country for the National Popular Vote, a plan for an interstate compact to provide for the first popular presidential election in American history.[21]
U.S. House of Representatives[
Raskin speaking at the 2017Tax March
2016 campaign[
On April 19, 2015, The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post reported that Raskin announced his campaign for Congress and stated, "My ambition is not to be in the political center, it is to be in the moral center." The district's seven-term incumbent, fellow Democrat Chris Van Hollen, gave up the seat to make an ultimately successful run for the United States Senate.[22][23]
Raskin won the crowded seven-way Democratic primary—the real contest in this heavily Democratic district—with 33 percent of the vote.[24] He was viewed as the most liberal candidate in the race.[9] The primary election was the most expensive House race in 2016, and Raskin was heavily outspent.[25] He went on to win the general election, defeating Republican Dan Cox with 60 percent of the vote.[26]
Tenure[
As his first action in Congress, Raskin and several other members of House of Representatives objected to certifying the election of Donald Trump as President because of Russian interference in the election and voter suppression efforts. Vice President Joseph Biden ruled the objection out of order because it had to be sponsored by at least one member of each chamber, and it had no Senate sponsor.[27]
In late June 2017, Raskin was the chief sponsor of legislation to establish a congressional "oversight" commission with the authority to declare a President "incapacitated" and removed from office under the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution.[28]
In April 2018, Raskin, along with Jared Huffman, Jerry McNerney, and Dan Kildee, launched the Congressional Freethought Caucus. Its stated goals include "pushing public policy formed on the basis of reason, science, and moral values," promoting the "separation of church and state," and opposing discrimination against "atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious and nonreligious persons."[29] Huffman and Raskin are co-chairs.
Raskin supports banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. In 2019, he voted in favor of the Equality Act and urged Congress members to do the same.[30][31]
Committee assignments[
- Committee on House Administration (Vice Chair)
- Committee on the Judiciary
- Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Party leadership and caucus membership[
- House Democratic Caucus, Senior Whip
- House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, Freshman Representative
- Congressional Progressive Caucus,[33] Vice Chair and Liaison to New Members
- Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus
- House Pro-Choice Caucus
- House Public Education Caucus
- House Quiet Skies Caucus
- House 115th Class Caucus
- House Baltic Caucus[34]
- Congressional Freethought Caucus
- Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus[35]
- Congressional NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus[36]
- **Congressional Solar Caucus**[37]
...
Raskin is married to Sarah Bloom Raskin, who served as the Maryland Commissioner of Financial Regulation from 2007–2010, and was nominated by President Barack Obama to the Federal Reserve Board on April 28, 2010.[38] On October 4, 2010, she was sworn in as a governor of the Federal Reserve Board by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.[39] She served as the United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from March 19, 2014 to January 20, 2017.[40]
Raskin has been vegetarian since 2009.[41] He is a colon cancer survivor, having been diagnosed in May 2010. Raskin received six weeks of radiation and chemotherapy, and surgery to remove part of his colon, followed by more chemotherapy through early 2011.[42]
Publications[
Raskin is the author of We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for and about Students[43] and Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People.[44] Raskin co-authored Youth Justice in America with Maryam Ahranjani and Andrew G. Ferguson.[45] In 1994, Raskin and John Bonifaz co-authored The Wealth Primary: Campaign Fundraising and the Constitution.[46]
See also[
Julie Tagen. Chief of Staff Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD-08) T: 202-225-5341 E: julie.tagen@mail.house.gov
:{
}:
Chief of StaffJulie Tagen
SchedulerJames Montfort
Legislative DirectorLauren Doney
Press SecretaryJacob Wilson