Anti-Obama PAC Uses Military Logos Without Permission

By Guest Blogger on Jul 19, 2012 at 5:05 pm

Anti-Obama PAC uses trademarked military logos (photo: Mother Jones)

An anti-Obama political action committee has been caught brandishing military logos on their website without proper authorization.

Adam Weinstein at Mother Jones found that the “Special Operations For America” — a group purporting to speak on behalf of active duty troops and veterans against the Obama administration — is using the trademarked insignia of the Marines, Air Force, Navy, Army, and U.S. Special Operations Command on its website and social media pages.

Mother Jones spoke with military officials who confirmed that SOFA could face legal action if they do not stop using the insignia. According to Jessica O’Haver, the director of the Marine Corps’ trademark licensing program:

They don’t have permission to use the Marine Corps eagle, globe, and anchor in promotion of their service. We can’t appear to endorse them [...] We don’t currently license nonprofits and charities, especially if they’re promoting a political cause.

Mother Jones points out the infraction:

SOFA’s political cause is clear. Their website endorses Mitt Romney, slams Obama over the Osama bin Laden raid, and accuses the president of “apologizing for America.”

– Steven Perlberg

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Climate Progress

Top New York Regulator Promoting Shale Gas Signed A Climate Denial Petition Stating That Increases In CO2 Are ‘Beneficial’

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jul 19, 2012 at 4:48 pm

By Tom Wilber, via Shale Gas Review

As head of the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Division of Mineral Resources, Bradley J. Field is a prominent figure in an agency that has promoted hydraulic fracturing as a risk-free and impeccably regulated technology with a proven track record in New York.

Perhaps it’s relevant that Field also sees global warming as a good thing. Field is listed on the Global Warming Petition Project calling for the U.S. to reject international global warming agreements, while claiming there is “no convincing evidence” that manmade greenhouse gases will disrupt the earth’s climate. On the contrary, the petition cites “substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the earth.”

Field’s support of this global warming refutation was reported in Metroland by Robert H. Boyle, a journalist and activist who criticized Field and his agency for being an industry booster. The article, Field of Distortions, was co-authored by Bruce Ferguson. Given that it lacked comment from Field, I was curious to hear directly from the man who heads the agency that will be in charge of permitting and enforcing shale gas development in New York. I had spoken with Field when I was a reporter for the Press & Sun Bulletin in 2010. At that time, he was defending his agency against assertions by Walter Hang, an activist and head of Toxic Targeting, a firm specializing in documenting pollution. Hang uncovered hundreds of unresolved cases of spills and accidents related to drilling in New York state, contrary to the Mineral Resources Divison’s claim that the state’s record was characterized by “a lack of contamination events” from natural gas development. (More on that further down…) Field, however, is no longer talking to the media, as far as I can tell, and this week he declined an interview with me. I learned from Emily DeSantis, the DEC spokeswoman speaking on Field’s behalf, that “If Mr. Field did sign such a petition, it was in a personal capacity and had no bearings on his professional duties.”

Many will argue, to the contrary, that certain flags go up when a public official who plays a critical role in developing policy on the future of petroleum extraction embraces an ideologically loaded position such as global warming denial. Questions about Field’s pro-industry stance on global warming come as the DEC faces accusations from environmental activists that the agency gave the natural gas industry exclusive and unfair access to draft drilling regulations up to six weeks before they were released to the public or to any other stakeholders. Gas industry representatives purportedly took advantage of this inside information by lobbying to minimize reporting requirements designed to regulate toxic and radioactive runoff from drilling sites. These allegations and other issues will be the focus of a Senate Democratic Conference forum July 18 in New York City, spearheaded by Senator Tony Avella and other elected officials calling for stricter scrutiny of the DEC’s relationship with the oil and gas industry.

So is Bradley J. Field — the person in charge of overseeing and enforcing a new and unprecedented era of on-shore drilling in New York State — a climate change denier? And if so, how much does this matter? I asked DeSantis to ask Field directly if he signed the Global Warming Petition Project in a “personal capacity” as to clear the air. “I did,” she replied: “He does not recall.”

Which brings us to why this matters. The response is exactly the kind of equivocation that has characterized Field’s approach to handling the debate over the merits and risks of shale gas development from the beginning. The agency’s position of record, articulated by Field’s staff at public meetings held throughout the state in the advent of the shale gas development in 2008, is neatly summarized in the following memo to Tom Wilinsky, a resident of Sullivan County. Wilinsky wrote to the department, inquiring about necessary steps to ensure that fracking is done safely. This was in May, 2008, long before any policy had been developed or even proposed to handle shale gas development. Wilinsky received this reply:

NEWS FLASH

Officials: U.S. Whooping Cough Epidemic Worst In 50 Years | U.S. health officials said today that Whooping cough is causing the nation’s worst epidemic in 50 years, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is calling for mass vaccinations of adults to combat it. Nationwide, 18,000 cases have been reported to the CDC. Last year, there were 27,000 cases in the entire year, so, “We may need to go back to 1959 to find as many cases,” said CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat. With 3,000 cases, Washington state has been hit especially hard, and budget cuts have hampered the state’s response. To try to slow the infection rate, Mary Selecky, Washington Department of Health secretary, said the state so far has distributed 27,000 doses of a booster vaccine for uninsured adults and has ordered more.

Economy

Report: Big Corporations Are Making Huge Profits While Keeping Their Employees Stuck At Minimum Wage

By Pat Garofalo on Jul 19, 2012 at 4:35 pm

The popular conservative response to those who want to increase the nation’s minimum wage, which currently stands at $7.25 per hour, is that doing so will inevitably kill jobs at small businesses. However, studies have shown that raising the minimum wage does not kill jobs, but most certainly helps workers at the low end of the wage scale.

And according to a report from the National Employment Law Project, many of the companies that employ minimum wage workers could certainly afford to increase wages, since, contrary to popular perception, they are the nation’s biggest corporations. Those companies have largely recovered from the recession:

– The majority (66 percent) of low‐wage workers are not employed by small businesses, but rather by large corporations with over 100 employees;

– The 50 largest employers of low‐wage workers have largely recovered from the recession and most are in strong financial positions: 92 percent were profitable last year; 78 percent have been profitable for the last three years; 75 percent have higher revenues now than before the recession; 73 percent have higher cash holdings; and 63 percent have higher operating margins (a measure of profitability);

– Top executive compensation averaged $9.4 million last year at these firms, and they have returned $174.8 billion to shareholders in dividends or share buybacks over the past five years.

The three largest employers of minimum wage workers, Wal‐Mart, Yum! Brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC), and McDonald’s, all are more profitable than they were before the Great Recession:

House Democrats have been circulating a bill to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour, catching the wage up to the purchasing power that it had in the 1960s.

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NEWS FLASH

Steve King Introduces (Another) Marriage Inequality Amendment To Defense Bill | Once again, a Republican is trying to use the Defense Appropriations Bill to stigmatize gay members of the military. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) introduced an amendment today that would interpret the Defense of Marriage Act prohibit the use of military facilities or payment of military chaplains for same-sex marriage ceremonies. DOMA already prevents couples from being recognized or accessing benefits on bases, so the amendment is clearly an overreach meant to further ostracize gay and lesbian servicemembers. It’s also an obvious infringement on the religious freedom of chaplains who recognize same-sex marriages. Last year, the anti-gay amendments were eventually dropped from the Defense bill in conference; hopefully this year’s meet the same fate.

Alyssa

‘The Dark Knight Rises’ And The Limits Of Christopher Nolan’s Batman

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jul 19, 2012 at 4:14 pm

This consideration of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy contains mild spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises.

Halfway through Batman Begins, Alfred (Michael Caine), the Wayne family’s loyal butler, points out to Bruce (Christian Bale) that his anti-social behavior and strange injuries will invite comment, and suggests that he find a way to live a public life to minimize prying. “What does someone like me do?” Bruce asks him. “Drive sports cars. Date movie stars. Buy things that are not for sale. Who knows, Master Wayne?” Alfred tells him. Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, complete this weekend with the release of The Dark Knight Rises, has been an extended meditation on the power of symbols, the juxtaposition between fascism and anarchy, and recovery from trauma. But it’s also intermittently a story about what billionaires are for and what they do, a question The Dark Knight Rises seems to want some credit for posing, but not responsibility for actually answering.

Nolan’s vision of Gotham has always been sharply divided: we see billionaires and the very poor, but with the exception of the prisoners on the Joker’s barges or the ticketholders to the football game that Bane bombs, and the police themselves, there is no visible middle class in the city. The poor and the criminals who prey on them are often literally an underclass. In Batman Begins, district attorney Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes) drives Bruce below an underpass to confront crime boss Carmine Falcone, telling him “They talk about the depression as if it’s over, and it’s not.” Poverty goes unseen because it is physically subterranean. In The Dark Knight Rises, an orphan who lives at the same boys home where Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a young police officer who maintains his faith in Batman even as Gotham has reviled the vigilante as a criminal, grew up tells Blake that the boys who age out of the program, which has cut back on services because the Wayne Foundation’s funding has dried up, are disappearing into the sewers because “they say there’s work down there.”

While the trilogy is clear that threats to Gotham rise from that underworld, Nolan also appears significantly pessimistic about the ability of charity to permanently ameliorate the conditions that contribute to crime. “Gotham’s been good to our family. But people less fortunate than us are suffering,” Bruce’s father tells him as the family rides the monorail to their fateful night at the opera. “So we built a new, cheap public transportation system to unite the city.” That same monorail becomes the delivery weapon for Ra’s al Ghul’s weapons later in Batman Begins. In that same movie, Alfred reflects on the elder Wayne’s strategy after Bruce decides to return to Gotham, noting that “In the depression, your father nearly bankrupted Wayne Enterprises combatting poverty. He believed that his example could inspire the wealthy of Gotham to save their city.” When Bruce wants to know if the strategy worked, Alfred tells him “In a way. Their murder shocked the wealthy and the powerful into action.” When Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent have dinner during The Dark Knight, Bruce promises Dent that “you’ll never need another cent,” after Wayne throws Dent a fundraiser. But it’s not enough to secure the fortunes of a promising politician if he goes bad. Reform is a process, not a dinner party. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce is bitterly critical of the approaches of those who emulated his father, complaining that the proceeds of a charity function sponsored by the investor Miranda Tate will only go to pay for a lavish spread, rather than reaching their intended recipients. “It’s about feeding the ego of whatever society hag put it on,” he tells her.
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Security

DHS Secretary Blasts GOP Rep For Peddling Bachmann’s Anti-Muslim Conspiracy Theories

By Ali Gharib on Jul 19, 2012 at 4:01 pm

A media storm ensued after accusations made by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) that a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was working to push Muslim Brotherhood interests in the U.S. government. But the attention often omits a host of other players in the affair: Bachmann’s four Republican House colleagues that co-signed her letters to the Inspectors General of several U.S. government agencies and the other victims of the smears. One from each cohort came into stark focus today during a Homeland Security Department (DHS) oversight hearing.

During the hearing, Bachmann letter co-signer Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) furiously questioned Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. Gohmert’s interrogation focused on Mohamed Elibiary, a member of DHS’s Combatting Violent Extremism Working Group (CVE), who was named in the letter to DHS.

Gohmert asked Napolitano about his previous request for information on accusations made by all the usual Isamophobic bloggers that Elibiary leaked classified information to the media. Napolitano called Gohmert’s claim “inaccurate,” adding, “What bothers me, quite frankly, are the allegations that are made against anyone that happens to be Muslim”:

NAPOLITANO: I found out that the statements that have been made in that regard are false. They are misleading and objectionable, and I think they’re wrong.

GOHMERT: You need to know that you have people who are lying in your department. … Are you saying …it is a lie that Mohammed Elbiary downloaded material from a classified website using the secret security clearance you gave him? Are you saying that is a lie?

NAPOLITANO: I’m saying that is inaccurate. That is incorrect. … I’m saying that he as far as I know did not download classified documents. [...]

GOHMERT: It did not bother you that he accessed some information?

NAPOLITANO: He accessed some information. What bothers me, quite frankly, are the allegations that are made against anyone that happens to be Muslim.

Gohmert insists he’s not singling out Muslims because of their religion. “You see me hugging Muslims around the world, because the ones I hug are our friends.” The exchange went further down hill from there, with Gohmert repeatedly interrupting and yelling at Napolitano. Watch the video:

The letter Gohmert co-signed with Bachmann to DHS’s Inspector General names Elibiary as having “extensive ties to the Muslim Brotherhood” and that he has “sympathy for Islamist causes.” It accuses him of “gain(ing) access to classified documents” and cited other “undue, and potentially dangerous, exercised by such individuals.”

The potential danger posed by Elibiary might come as a shock to the F.B.I., which gave Elibiary an award last fall for “his extraordinary contributions to specific cases in support of the FBI’s counterterrorism mission.”

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Justice

Supreme Court Blocks DNA Ruling

By Guest Blogger on Jul 19, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts. Jr., has stayed a Maryland high court ruling that prohibits DNA collections from suspects charged but not yet convicted in violent crimes. The stay has been granted until at least July 25.

The appeal to the Supreme Court was made by Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler after Maryland’s Court of Appeals refused to reverse its decision in Alonzo Jay King Jr. v. State of Maryland.

The case centers on Maryland legislation, which, starting in 2009, allowed police to collect DNA from suspects after they were charged with violent crimes or burglaries. Before then, police had been able to collect DNA only from convicted criminals.

Alonzo Jay King Jr. challenged the law after he was arrested in Wicomico County in April 2009 on first- and second-degree assault charges. Prosecutors used a DNA swab stemming from that case to connect him to a 2003 rape. He was eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the rape.

But in a 5 to 2 ruling, the Maryland Court of Appeals sent King’s case back to the Wicomico County Circuit Court and threw out the DNA evidence against him, saying investigators violated his Fourth Amendment rights in taking his genetic material and comparing it with old crime scene samples. The ruling was condemned by prosecutors and police chiefs, who said it would hamper detectives’ ability to solve cold cases and jeopardize the convictions of 34 robbers, burglars and rapists whose genetic samples were taken after they were charged in separate cases.

While the stay is only valid for a week, because lower state and federal courts have been divided on the issue, it is likely that the stay will be extended and the case will be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Twenty-five states and the federal government have similar laws allowing DNA collection after someone has been charged with a violent crime but before conviction, and disputes over their constitutionality have erupted across the country. The main constitutional argument in the case is whether people charged with violent crimes have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their DNA that is higher than that of those who have been convicted.

In their decision that DNA collection after charging but before conviction was unconstitutional, the Maryland Court of Appeals said that its “analysis is influenced by the precept that the government must overcome a presumption that warrantless, suspicionless searches are per se unreasonable….The state bears the burden of overcoming the arrestee’s presumption of innocence and his expectation to be free from biological searches….”

–Alex Brown

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LGBT

Chick-fil-A Seeks To Distance Itself From Anti-Gay Owner

By Josh Israel on Jul 19, 2012 at 3:39 pm

Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy

On Monday, a Baptist Press story quoted Chick-fil-A’s president Dan Cathy admitting his company’s anti-gay ideology — a stance the company previously attempted to deny. But after two days of Cathy boasting about the story, the company’s Facebook page now features a message flatly contradicting its head.

In his interview with the Baptist Press, Cathy admitted that the company indeed has an anti-gay political agenda. When asked about reports that the company was against same-sex marriage, he told the paper “Well, guilty as charged,” adding:

We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit … We intend to stay the course. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.

Cathy reinforced his views in a radio interview, in which he asked “God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about.” He continued his anti-LGBT campaign Wednesday on Twitter, twice bragging that the Baptist Press interview had “lit up the gay community.”

Today’s statement on the the Chick-fil-a Facebook page takes the exact opposite view. The company now claims:

The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect – regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender. We will continue this tradition in the over 1,600 Restaurants run by independent Owner/Operators. Going forward, our intent is to leave the policy debate over same-sex marriage to the government and political arena.

The Chick-fil-A corporation has long funded anti-gay organizations. According to an Equality Matters analysis of public records, in 2010 the company’s foundation distributed nearly $2 million to anti-LGBT groups including the Marriage & Family Foundation, the Family Research Council, and Exodus International — and millions more in previous years. But this past March, when Northeastern University rejected a proposed contract to bring a Chick-fil-A restaurant on campus, a Cathy bizarrely claimed that the company had “no political agenda.” He said in a media statement “we are not anti-anybody and Chick-fil-A have [sic] no agenda, policy or position against anyone as some reports continue to represent.”

Chick-fil-A is one of a very small number of major national companies that refuses to offer any employment protections to LGBT employees. In fact, the company received a 0 rating from the Human Rights Campaign and has a record of firing employees it believes engage in “sinful” behavior. This is hardly a tradition of treating everyone “with honor, dignity, and respect.”

Either the company is once again trying to conceal its anti-LGBT activism or Cathy’s intention to “stay the course” lasted just three days.

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Climate Progress

U.S. Military Pioneers Mobile Clean Energy Technologies

By Climate Guest Blogger on Jul 19, 2012 at 3:23 pm

SunDial 28.2 kW mobile solar energy system in Afghanistan

By Gordon Scott and Anusha Narayanan, via the Sierra Club

Over the course of the past half-century, the U.S. military has proven prescient when it comes to developing and implementing new technology. From satellites to microwave technology to the internet to cellular phones, the military has taken the lead on nearly every significant technological advance that has later swept the private and consumer markets.

Now, the military is getting a leg-up on another technology that is poised to lead the next major private-sector revolution – not weapons or communications, but large-scale mobile solar-powered energy systems.

Through a contract with SunDial Capital Partners, the Department of Defense has been implementing a new interface for mobile solar technology. Founded in 2009, SunDial pioneered a system custom-made for on-the-move military operations, harnessing renewable solar energy into a highly mobile unit. With deep military roots, SunDial President Dan Rice, Vice President Keegan Cotton, and Partner Lee Van Arsdale – all three West Point graduates and combat veterans – recognized a unique market for mobile power supply. As energy prices from traditional fuels rise and the military’s dependence on energy continually grows, SunDial envisioned a new application for existing solar technologies for remote locations.

The Department of Defense and U.S. Special Operations Forces saw strong potential in SunDial’s system, and purchased the company’s first operational models. In 2010, Special Operations Forces began the Mobile Solar Power Initiative, testing the SunDial system at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, and later successfully testing models in the field in Afghanistan.

Testifying before the U.S. Congress about the mobile solar initiative, Admiral Eric Olson, then-Commander of Special Operations Command, said the Special Operations Forces community, “inherently joint in all it does, is in a unique position to leverage and apply Service and Department Science and Technology efforts to rapidly field new technologies on the battlefield.” Often located in the most remote areas where fuel must be airlifted to the point of consumption, Special Operations Forces had the greatest need for renewable energy solutions.

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