By Axel Caballero

In January 2013, the staff at Cuéntame received a phone call from 9 year old Stephanie Pucheta and her mom María Ortiz. Their request seemed simple and straightforward at the time: Would Cuéntame help in preventing the deportation of Stephanie’s dad, Julio Cesar Pucheta?

María and Stephanie were desperate; they had tried many avenues and contacted different immigration lawyers to no avail. Virtually broke and seemingly with nowhere else to turn to, they made the call after seeing one of our documentary campaign videos on immigration cases. Stephanie’s father had been in detention for over a year after a traffic violation and his removal proceeding was eminent. The Pucheta family story seemed all too common – reflecting precisely the horrors of our broken immigration system: A family on the verge of separation – with no resources, no legal remedies and no access to effective representations.

As with the many stories we receive, we immediately attempted to contact volunteer and human rights’ groups in the state of Georgia – where the family was located – in a last minute effort to help with their case. It was too late; Stephanie’s dad had already been deported. It didn’t come as a surprise, it happens all too often. We contacted Stephanie and María again who by then had enlisted the help of a pro bono lawyer, and asked if they wanted to tell their story. We explained to them that Cuéntame’s (which translates to ‘count me OR tell me your story’) mission was precisely that to tell stories that like theirs so often go unnoticed. Our hope was to create a small interest in the case, knowing that the system is so overwhelmed that they are viewed as another number and another file.

Stephanie was particularly keen in telling us her experience and her perspective. In an effort to capture her thoughts as pure and as best possible we decided to send Stephanie a personal camera and asked her to tell us her account of the events. Over a period of two weeks, Stephanie diligently clicked on the camera every morning and recorded a few minutes every day – a personal video diary of sorts.

Once she was done, she mailed the camera back to us so that we could see, hear and spread the message she had sent. We didn’t know what to expect. We had heard it all and seen it all. Yet, as soon as we turned on her first 9 minute clip, we knew this was different:

After watching the clip, we felt urgency, anger and shed tears. How can all of this happen? How can a Stephanie and thousands of children like her have to go through this? Couldn’t we do something about it? Wasn’t there an immigration reform bill being discussed to address these same issues? Stephanie’s story is emblematic of the over 25,000 immigrants who apply for family unity waivers each year only to be torn apart by an immigration system that emphasizes blind enforcement policies over sensible and human rights’ solutions.

As we move into a very serious, prominent and real immigration debate we see that our legislators once again have put the security industrial complex ahead of individual and human rights. Billions of dollars are being poured into the militarization of our borders, the fueling of private immigrant detention facilities and the continuation of raids and arbitrary deportations that have all but shredded basic and human rights. It is often futile to talk in these terms as the issue of immigration has been so criminalized, and tarnished with hate rhetoric by anti-immigrant groups that the mere discussion of human rights seems like an abomination in it of itself. Our families are facing a humanitarian crisis but our legislators have decided to prioritize talking about how to double up on these efforts?

We hope that our public officials listen to Stephanie and the thousands of migrant children looking for a solution. How about an immigration policy that enforces immigrant rights and deports hate?

Natural gas drilling

On May 16, the Obama Interior Department announced its long-awaited rules governing hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) on federal lands.

As part of its 171-page document of rules, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), part of the U.S. Dept. of Interior (DOI), revealed it will adopt the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) model bill written by ExxonMobil for fracking chemical fluid disclosure on U.S. public lands.

ALEC is a 98-percent corporate-funded bill mill and “dating service” that brings predominantly Republican state legislators and corporate lobbyists together at meetings to craft and vote on “model bills” behind closed doors. Many of these bills end up snaking their way into statehouses and become law in what Bill Moyers referred to as “The United States of ALEC.”

BLM will utilize an iteration of ALEC’s “Disclosure of Hydraulic Fracturing Fluid Composition Act” – a bill The New York Times revealed was written by ExxonMobil - for chemical fluid disclosure of fracking on public lands and will do so by utilizing FracFocus.org‘s voluntary online chemical disclosure database.

In a way, it’s all come full circle. As we covered here on DeSmogBlog, the original chemical disclosure standards and the decision to utilize FracFocus’ database came from the Obama Dept. of Energy’s (DOE) industry-stacked Fracking Subcommittee formed in May 2011. DOE gave a $1.5 million grant to FracFocus.

The Texas state legislature soon thereafter adopted the first bill making FracFocus the fracking chemical disclosure database at the state level in June 2011. Since then, it’s been off to the races, with the Council of State Governments adopting the TX bill as model bill in Aug. 2011, ALEC adopting it as a model bill in Oct. 2011, and the bill becoming state law in Colorado, Pennsylvania and other states.

Both the Illinois and Florida state legislatures have also tried to push through this model, but it died dead in its tracks.

FracFocus has been an anemic and failed effort by the Obama Admin. to alter the George W. Bush Admin. “Halliburton Loophole” standards for fracking chemical disclosure, which allowed the recipe of fracking chemicals to remain a “trade secret.” It’s amounted to nothing more than the same game by a different name, with a Harvard study recently giving FracFocus a “failing grade.”

The FracFocus Façade: “Truck-Sized” Disclosure Loopholes

Almost two years after FracFocus‘ debut, it is important to scrutinize its disastrous performance.

“Drilling companies in Texas, the biggest oil-and-natural gas producing state, claimed similar exemptions about 19,000 times this year through August,” explainedBloomberg in a Dec. 2012 investigation. “Trade-secret exemptions block information on more than five ingredients for every well in Texas, undermining the statute’s purpose of informing people about chemicals that are hauled through their communities and injected thousands of feet beneath their homes and farms.”

One representative from Texas – the original FracFocus state – said it allows “truck-sized” loopholes in chemical disclosure. An earlier investigative effort by Bloomberg explained just how big these 18-wheelers are.

“Energy companies failed to list more than two out of every five fracked wells in eight U.S. states from April 11, 2011, when FracFocus began operating, through the end of last year,” wrote Bloomberg. “The gaps reveal shortcomings in the voluntary approach to transparency on the site, which has received funding from oil and gas trade groups and $1.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.”

This moved U.S. Rep. Diane DeGette, author of the FRAC Act – which would mandate actual fracking chemical disclosure, although it’s never garnered more than a handful of co-sponsors - to say FracFocus offers nothing more than the mirage of transparency.

“FracFocus is just a fig leaf for the industry to be able to say they’re doing something in terms of disclosure,” she said.

“Fig leaf” is a generous way of putting it. After all, FracFocus is merely a PR front for the oil and gas industry.

FracFocus‘ domain is registered by Brothers & Company, a public relations firm whose clients include industry lobbying tour de force America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA), Chesapeake Energy, and American Clean Skies Foundation – a front group for Chesapeake Energy.

ALEC Model Bill Gone U.S. Public Lands in BLM Rules

The number of Wisconsin children who are from low-income families has climbed for the ninth straight year, according to a new report from the state’s Department of Public Instruction.

In the 2012-13 school year, 42% of Wisconsin children were eligible for free or reduced-price school lunches. In the 2003-04 school year, just 30% of students qualified for free or reduced-price school lunches. The share of students qualifying has climbed every year since then. This video shows how the share of low-income schoolchildren has changed over time in each school district.

The criteria for qualifying for free or reduced-price lunches have stayed the same during the time period described. Students in families earning less than 130% of the federal poverty level qualify for free school lunches. For the 2013-12 school year, students from a family of four earning less than about $30,000 would qualify for free lunches. A much smaller number of students in families earning between 130% and 185% of the poverty level qualify for reduced-price lunches.

In Wisconsin’s five largest school districts, more than half the students are from low-income families. Eighty-four percent of the students in Milwaukee Public Schools are from low-income families.

The rising number of low-income students presents challenges for Wisconsin schools. Children from low-income families have poorer educational outcomes and lag their peers in educational achievement. They also are less likely to graduate from high school and become well-educated, healthy members of Wisconsin’s skilled workforce.

New policies proposed by state lawmakers may pose additional challenges to schools that serve largely low-income students. In his budget proposal, Governor Walker has recommended setting aside funding for schools that are rated the highest on DPI’s report card system. Schools that score in the lowest category would receive much less money, with the result that schools with relatively small numbers of students from low-income families would receive the most benefit. For more on that proposal, which is scheduled to be voted on next week by the legislature’s budget committee, read this blog post.

For more information, go to www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org.

Digby’s latest Post Stock market highs — and high unemployment: the new normal? struck me today because of a comment that Thurbers made on my post last night.

“We the People” are closer to the abused employees and/or the defrauded customers of Amy’s Baking Company. We are the real victims, but despite our numbers we are the ones with the least recourse and the least power to change the narrative.

- Thurbers comment 8 Firedoglake

It reminds me of the spot on Onion story, American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist To Push Interests In Congress.

I’m really sick of how “the economy” is the stock market. It. Is. NOT. I also know that the constituents of unemployed and underemployed aren’t out there putting pressure on congress or the President.  (I’m thinking of paraphrasing SF Writer Harlan Ellison,  ”Dear Obama and Congress. Fuck you. Hire me!”)

When I was traveling cross country to see my sick mother two years ago unemployment was the real issue on people minds, I asked them why they thought the media was writing about the deficit. They didn’t have an answer. I asked if they had heard of Pete Peterson. Nobody had. “Would it surprise you to know that he is a billionaire and is making sure the media cover the deficit and ignore unemployment? Did you know that he is spending at least 500 million dollars to make sure the press cover this?” Nobody had heard of him.

One guy (an owner of a Popeye’s chicken franchise) said that there was probably some billionaire (he suggested George Soros) spending lobbying money to demand more government jobs. Or maybe the Unions were. I said, “Soros isn’t spending his money on this. The unemployed aren’t spending their money on this, they think it should be obvious. I don’t know what the Unions are doing, but they aren’t the force they once were.”

So my question is, if our elected representatives aren’t pushing for jobs, our liberal billionaires aren’t pushing for jobs, and we don’t have any highly paid lobbyists pushing for jobs, is there anyone who “counts” pushing for jobs? (And by that I mean someone who could get the attention of our congress, President or media.)

The media don’t want to write about the lack of jobs because “Stock market!” and frankly those stories are boring, nobody wants to write them and nobody wants to read them. Gawker is having a series on them and it’s like reading the sad stories on “Queen for a day” that women would tell so they could get a washing machine.

It feels like the unemployed have no leverage, no voice and nobody who is going to be their voice since they don’t have anything to give to the people who should be listening and who can make changes.

There is no sense of urgency about this problem in DC. Remember the urgency during the airlines slowdown? Inconvenience the politicians it’s, HAIR ON FIRE TIME. Millions unemployed year after year? They quote Jesus, “The unemployed will always be with us.”

The media need deadlines. Where is the ticking time bomb of this issue? Where is the disaster coverage of this disaster?

And why the hell aren’t the conservatives trying to hang unemployment around Obama’s neck?  Because it might help unemployed people get government jobs? How many jobs are the trumped up Benghazi scandal creating?

I didn’t mean this to be yet another long-winded Vulcan post, but Digby’s blog still doesn’t have a place to comment and so I’m bringing it to you.

I’d like to think that DC responds to events, but after new gun laws following Newtown got voted down, even though the majority of the voters wanted them, I’m thinking we need more than an event,  you need a goddamn money canon to shoot cash down the halls of Congress.

People sometimes talk about the people marching on Washington to get their attention. (“This time let’s bring real pitchforks!” They don’t care, only the hotels and restaurants in DC care. What will get their attention is if we jam more money down their throat than the other people bribing them. Since we can’t do that, then we need to cut off their money streams so that votes actual count for something again.  The reason that everyone is talking about getting money out of politics is that until that happens my voice is drowned out.

Speaking of money. I want something good to come out of the IRS scandal. Something the right doesn’t want.

I want Congress to rewrite the 501 c code laws. People are complaining about the IRS? Well the IRS is complaining too. “Give us better bright lines so we can define what “social welfare groups” can and can’t do.

I want them to change the rules so big corporations and rich individuals can’t give anonymous money.  I want to chase away the people who want to hide behind  front groups.  ”But that will hurt liberal groups too! Yeah right, as if George Soro is trying to hide. You don’t hide unless you are afraid that people will use that information against you. If they aren’t doing anything wrong what are they afraid of? I’m looking at you Ham Rove. Sure they will find another way, 527′s, laundering money through belief tanks and dead people foundations, but if they want to cry about the IRS thwarting them, let’s really give them something to cry about.

 Photos top: Shane Gorski bottom: RhonsTopModel Creative Commons Attribution license

http://player.vimeo.com/video/66463890

Cross dressed at Spocko’s Brain

Institutional Investors Defend the Bridge for Jamie Dimon

Jamie Dimon easily beat back a non-binding shareholders proposal to split the jobs of Chairman and CEO at JPMorgan Chase, winning 68% of the vote. Institutional investors own over 73% of the stock of JPM. That means that many if not most mutual fund managers and plenty of pension fund managers and endowment managers voted to keep in office a man who has presided over a string of law-skirting but money-making operations. JPMorgan’s list of offenses, described here, have earned the bank tens of billions at the cost of only billions in fines, penalties and put-backs from bad mortgages. And the bank estimates that there is more coming, maybe $6 billion more than it has set aside in reserves. JPM’s earnings are up, boosted by release of some $1.5 billion from reserves, but with a bit of luck, the hit will come later, now that Dimon is safe.

Mutual fund managers and other money managers think that the only important thing is the bottom line, and it’s a fact that ignoring the law delivers truckloads of money to the bottom line. That’s especially true for banks that are too big to prosecute. Eventually law enforcement shows up, in the form of bank fetishists like Lannie Breuer and his faint-hearted boss, Eric Holder, but what can they do? A minor fine, requiring the bank to give up some of its gains? An unpleasant press release? Maybe a grilling before some mild Senators, more impressed by the possibility of a campaign contribution than any interest in locking up wrong-doers?

I particularly like the coverage in the Washington Post, under the title, How Washington Humbled JP Morgan Chase Chief Jamie Dimon, in which we learn that Washington didn’t humble Dimon at all. Legal troubles, like those reported by Senator Carl Levin of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, are irrelevant to Dimon, who wasn’t at the hearing to take any of the responsibility for the London Whale Trade losses or misstatements.

And I just love the coverage given to the Capo di tutti Capi by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Steven Davidoff in the New York Times Dealbook blog. To read their praise of JPM and its Great Man, you’d never know that the bank might have side-stepped a few legal rules on its way to being the Greatest Bank Ever! They were aided in their efforts by the lobbying of such privileged rich white old men as Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, and Hank Paulson.

I don’t know how much difference it made,though. For money managers, the only important issue is earnings. For that you need a top banker who is utterly indifferent to legal matters, willing to ignore the Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferators Sanctions Regulations and the Iranian Transactions Regulations. And you need a Chairman/CEO who can fast talk his way out of trouble, like Dimon with his Fortress Balance Sheet and his presidential cuff-links. Isn’t it wonderful that people’s retirement is in part dependent of the ability of Jamie Dimon and his sleazy bank to make money?

But the real message these institutional investors and the privileged white rich old menare sending is that Dimon is their guy, and that politicians and regulators should do as he says. Right now, Dimon wants to defeat Brown-Vitter, which would force JPM to raise equity. Higher equity reduces the amount of money Dimon and his lieutenants can borrow, and it’s borrowing that increases the amount they can gamble for their profit and the taxpayers’ loss. That might mean lower compensation for the banksters. Gasp! But the win restores any political strength Dimon may have lost, and increases his ability to stop Brown-Vitter. That hurts everybody by leaving the mega-banks with their Obama/Holder/Breuer/Congressional approved status as Too Big To Fail.

Thanks a lot, institutional investors. We salute your willingness to subordinate basic law-abiding competence to sleazy money-grubbing. How very 21st Century of you.

An oversized puppet of the Wendy's mascot, provided by the People's Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, took part in silent street theater to convince the fast food giant to sign onto the Fast Food campaign. (Coalition of Immokalee Workers)

Originally posted at In These Times.

While rain pattered gently on the concrete steps of Manhattan’s Union Square last Saturday, a group of workers were giving the assembled crowd a tour of the sun-scorched fields of Florida’s tomato farms. The performers had turned the urban square into a stage for a street theater performance, depicting backbreaking labor and tussles with industry goons emblazoned with corporate food brand logos.

By dramatizing a farm scene amid the bustle of Greenwich Village, Chelsea and the surrounding neighborhoods, the activists of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers highlighted the connection between farmworkers’ daily struggles and the villain of the drama: Wendy’s restaurants, which are the primary target of the group’s Fair Food campaign for decent labor standards in an industry built on modern-day serfdom.

The Union Square rally-–featuring a brass band adorned with Wendy’s trademark red pigtails and tomato-shaped placards proclaiming “Justice” and “Derechos” for farmworkers–-was part of a nationwide series of Fair Food demonstrations that are helping bridge the conceptual gap between food consumerism and farm labor, a sector replete with poverty wages and brutally exploitative conditions in the fields. The Coalition has been campaigning for months to push Wendy’s and theFlorida supermarket giant Publix to sign a Fair Food agreement like the agreements brands like Chipotle and Trader Joe’s have already signed.

The Fair Food Program mandates about an additional penny in wages for each pound of tomatoes picked by Florida workers. That seemingly trivial amount, when multiplied by the massive scale of tomato agriculture, adds up to a meaningful difference in the lives of thousands of farmworkers who typically lack a living wage and basic labor protections: Since January 2011, the penny-per-pound premium has put some $10 million in their pockets, which could mean a raise of more than 60 percent for some low-wage laborers.

CIW activist Oscar Otzoy told Working In These Times in Spanish that, by spreading the word through rallies across the country, “We take action directly against the corporations that are responsible for the conditions that we’re facing. Because in the market context that exists, it’s these big companies that profit the most from the work that we as farmworkers are doing. And as they continue profiting, we continue facing the conditions that have existed for so long.”

Otzoy, who has been working in the United States for seven years, noted that although immigrant workers are at the center of their campaign, the exploitative conditions have affected all farmworkers–those with and without papers and even U.S. citizens, because the production structure is inherently exploitative. “Our goal with this program is to get to a day when everyone, regardless of their status, is treated with dignity and respect on the job,” he said.

To prevent abuses like wage theft and forced labor, the Fair Food Program sets a broad code of conduct that ensures compliance with labor laws, “including zero tolerance for forced labor and systemic child labor,” a binding commitment to an auditing process for growers, and a system for workers to file complaints against employers. The program also deploys health and safety monitors to help protect workers from the many hazards lurking in hot, pesticide-laden fields.

The agreement is anchored by the 2010 commitment by Florida’s major growers’ association, Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing about 90 percent of the state’s producers. Since then, the Coalition’s program has attracted massive support from consumers, community groups and upscale foodies, and pressured numerous industry purchasers to sign on. The Coalition’s unique, worker-led organizing model fuses consumer education and outreach with grassroots labor mobilization, and in the process reveals interlinked systems of consumption and production. In effect, their movement envisions “food justice” as structural change within a massively consolidated industry.

Wendy’s is seen as the “last holdout” among major fast food chains. However, advocates notethat, ironically, CEO Emil Brolick was something of a fast-food pioneer in 2005, when the company he led then, Taco Bell, became the first corporate buyer to sign the Fair Food Agreement.

According to statistics released by the US Department of Agriculture earlier this month, 31 percent of the managed honeybee colonies died in the winter. Since fruiting is dependent on fertilization, a result of pollination, honeybee decline can impact agriculture. We can directly link honeybees to one out of every three bites of food that we put on our table.

The Plight of the Honeybee
Billions of dollars—and a way of life—ride on saving pollinators.

Western nations rely heavily on managed honeybees—the “moveable force” of bees that ride in trucks from farm to farm—to keep commercial agriculture productive. About a third of our foods (some 100 key crops) rely on these insects, including apples, nuts, all the favorite summer fruits (like blueberries and strawberries), alfalfa (which cows eat), and guar bean (used in all kinds of products). In total, bees contribute more than $15 billion to U.S. crop production, hardly small potatoes.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) explains that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is a hive condition where “very low or no adult honey bees present in the hive but with a live queen and no dead honey bee bodies present.” According to interviews of beekeepers in the documentaries, this condition can occur within a matter of a few hours.

The USDA further suggests that possible causes of colony decline could be due to unusually warm winter, bee diet (ie: protein, in particular), or cyclic disease, but also states that scientific connections are lacking for the theories. While the European Commission (EU) has ” has banned the pesticides associated with colony collapse disorder in bees,” the US has not done so yet. Oddly, the report contains this statement:

A comprehensive and sensitive analytical survey was done for the presence of 200 pesticides in bee, comb, and pollen samples from 23 states. No specific pattern of pesticide residues emerged that correlates with honey bee deaths March 2010

To be precise, the study linked in the statement says this:

Conclusions/Significance

The 98 pesticides and metabolites detected in mixtures up to 214 ppm in bee pollen alone represents a remarkably high level for toxicants in the brood and adult food of this primary pollinator. This represents over half of the maximum individual pesticide incidences ever reported for apiaries. While exposure to many of these neurotoxicants elicits acute and sublethal reductions in honey bee fitness, the effects of these materials in combinations and their direct association with CCD or declining bee health remains to be determined.

Will we fund or ignore the “remains to be determined” part? Would it surprise you at all to learn that yesterday, three large agrichemical pesticide companies came forward with plans to fund research for bee decline?

Monsanto, Bayer, Sygenta Fund Bee Research

Bayer and Sygenta “produce neonicotinoids,” and Monsanto uses the pesticides to coat seeds. These pesticides have been banned in Europe, as mentioned above. From wiki: “Neonicotinoids are a class of neuro-active insecticides chemically related to nicotine. The development of this class of insecticides began with work in the 1980s by Shell and the 1990s by Bayer.[1]”

Leo Tolstoy said, “The closer we examine the honeybee, the more we realize the workings of a beehive encompass territories beyond our comprehension.” USDA bee laboratory scientist Dr. Jeffrey Pettis explains in Vanishing of the Bees that CCD is difficult to study because there are no bee corpses to examine when a colony literally vanishes. (video at 15:30). So far, scientists have investigated, and eliminated as possibilities, several microbial and viral suspects. Haunting how accurate Tolstoy’s quote really was. But what is maybe even more haunting is that the beehive workings will be studied with funds that have direct interest in the outcome of the research.

One of the scientists in the documentary reveals other suggestions for honeybee decline, that he has received in his email, including cell phones, the Rapture, Outer Space, and the ‘Russians-have-implanted-genes-and-they-are-beaming-them-from-satellite.’ While the scientist is confident that the persistent cell phone tower rumor is now known nonsense, he does say that the issue of genetically modified crops, while scientists have observed no direct evidence, deserves a bit more attention.

What saddens in the documentary is that we have exploited the honeybee, with factory farming practices such as feeding the bees empty sugar calories, killing the queens and replacing them with younger queens introduced in cages, and artificial insemination, with the likes of a scientist’s backward after-remark, “She looks a little rough, but she’ll come around.” There have been only too few, it seems, efforts at returning the bees to their natural state. When bees disappear, it’s wrong- surely some basic humanity instinct still exists in all of us.

Vanishing of the Bees full documentary:

BBC Documentary titled Who Killed the Honeybee?

Related:

One-Third of U.S. Honeybee Colonies Died Last Winter, Threatening Food Supply

Bees and the European neonicotinoids pesticide ban: Q&A

The US rejects Europe’s banning of these chemicals:

US rejects EU claim of insecticide as prime reason for bee colony collapse
“Government study points to a combination of factors for decline in population, breaking away from singling out pesticides”

Beepocalypse Redux: Honeybees Are Still Dying — and We Still Don’t Know Why

Monsanto stung by drop in bee population

Monsanto, Bayer seek answers to bee losses

“This is a difficult, high stakes battle,” said Peter Jenkins, a lawyer with the Center for Food Safety, which sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in March on behalf of a group of U.S. beekeepers and environmental and consumer groups over what they say is a lack of sound regulation of the pesticides in question.

“They may have a lot of money. But… we’re going to win,” Jenkins said.