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Democracy Is For People Amendment

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We couldn’t be more excited about the new constitutional amendment proposal introduced today by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) to end unlimited and undisclosed corporate financing of American "Democracy Is For People Amendment"elections. The amendment proposal is titled the “Democracy Is For People” Amendment, after Public Citizen’s amendment campaign of the same name.
Public Citizen said that both lawmakers once again are showing their creative leadership in the campaign for a constitutional amendment to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Sanders and Deutch were at the forefront of the campaign immediately following the decision, and they continue their leadership today.

Public Citizen president Robert Weissman, pictured above in front of the U.S. Capitol Building leading a protest on the first anniversary of the Citizens United ruling, said:

“The Democracy is for People Amendment introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ted Deutch to overturn Citizens United will eliminate unaccountable corporate spending in our elections and restore governmental authority over campaign spending to the people. Democracy is rule by the people, after all, not rule by Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”
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Forward on climate!

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Public Citizen and many other organizations helped organize a historic gathering of climate activists in Washington, D.C. this past weekend.

In case you missed Public Citizen Energy Director Tyson Slocum on Up With Chris Hayes discussing new legislation and the amazing momentum of the climate movement here are the three clips: introduction, panel discussion and predictions.

Also, you’ll definitely want to check out below video on YouTube to hear the perspectives of Texans opposed to the Keystone Tar Sands pipeline that traveled up with our Texas office for the big #ForwardOnClimate rally.

 

Finally, quotes from some of these Texans can be read here in this front page Huffington Post hit . Despite harsh conditions, more than double the expected number of activists came out to take a stand against from the largest climate rally in history. Meanwhile, we learned that as this historic rally was happening, the president was actually golfing with executives from Haliburton and other big oil and defense industry representatives. You can read that story here.

Follow our energy director @TysonSlocum and @PublicCitizenTx on Twitter to keep up with the latest on climate change.

Regulations: The gift that keeps on giving

The holidays have come again complete with flashing lights, crowded shopping mall parking lots, strange fruitcakes and brightly colored wrapping"holidays" "value of regulations" paper. However, the things most of us treasure about the season typically aren’t so visible. Seeing relatives pull into the driveway. Watching the smile on a young child’s face as they open their gifts.  The often unseen ways regulations intersect with our day-to-day lives, protecting us and those we love, is the subject of a recent report by the Coalition for Sensible Safegaurds, which Public Citizen coleads.

Sensible Safeguards: The Gift That Keeps on Giving,  Especially During the Holidays offers insights into:

As opponents gear up to push an agenda of deregulation in 2013, it’s important to note that if the 1966 fatality rate of 5.50 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled had continued, some 163,000 people would have been killed in traffic crashes in 2010. Thankfully though, the passage of the  National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act in September of 1966, along with a series of other regulations that forced the autoindustry to start installing airbags, for example, means countless roadtrips to ‘grandmothers’ houses’ have ended more happily.
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THIS WEEK: Derivatives, resolutions, Internet freedom of speech and the 2012 Corporate Power Tool Award

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This week, we’ve got our eyes on Congress, Wall Street, the “#1 Corporate Power Tool,” school districts and more!"Public Citizen Lady Liberty"

For better or worse, Washington D.C. is a city of awash with acronyms. And this week, there are a few capital letters that the medical device industry would rather you not pay any attention to: MDUFA. Literally, MDUFA stands for Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act, but in actuality these letters simply mean danger for consumers.  A lot of the coverage of MDUFA has focused on the prescription drug aspect. However, the story is about more than drugs. Medical device safety is at a crossroads, and Congress could really mess things up. Here is where MDUFA stands now.  We recently wrote a report, which documented the average number of high-risk recalls of medical devices in 2011 was more than double than in recent years. We also documented the keen interest the medical device industry seemed to have in weakening already lax regulations. This week Congress will vote on MDUFA and we urge them to put patient safety ahead of corporate profit.

Today, amid the news coverage of JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion loss in derivatives bets, Public Citizen published a report, many weeks in the making, that expounds on the historical lessons of derivatives deregulation and the urgency to implement the rules called for in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. Read a copy of the press release which links to the report entitled: “Forgotten Lessons of Deregulation: Rolling Back Dodd-Frank’s Derivatives Rules Would Repeat a Mistake that Led to the Financial Crisis.” The report explains how America’s top financial policymakers deregulated the financial derivatives market in the 1990s and provides a detailed account of how deregulation led to the ensuing housing bubble, financial crisis and Great Recession.

The report comes as members of Congress have introduced nine bills that would weaken the derivatives provisions of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.

All seven bills moving in the U.S. House of Representatives have been approved by committees, and three have passed the full House. Two bills that would exempt overseas transactions from Dodd-Frank’s derivatives provisions may be voted on as soon as Thursday in the House Agriculture Committee. Other bills would exempt trades by supposedly “small” players, reduce transparency requirements and strike down a provision to ban derivatives trading by federally insured banks. At least three other bills would impose impediments for agencies to promulgate rules concerning financial services in general.
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THIS WEEK: Medical devices, scary poultry, trade, the Freeze Act & stand-up comedy?!

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We are, literally, throughout the world this week (though we plan to call it a wrap with some laughs in Los Angeles this weekend). “Laughs?” you say? We know. We are policy nerds. How could we possibly be funny?! The answer is: We can’t. Luckily though, we have some ALL-STAR comedians to help us out. But more on that later!

Right now, let’s refocus on Melinda St. Louis of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. Melinda is currently participating in the 13th Quadrennial Conference of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Doha, Qatar. There, St. Louis will be featured on a panel ce"Public Citizen Lady Liberty"ntered on state’s rights. Trade agreements should not undermine trading countries own laws. For example, the U.S. should have the right to pass laws banning clove cigarettes that pose significant health threats and are disproportionately targeting American youth, undermining years of work on curbing teen smoking.

In addition to this, Public Citizen is also sponsoring two symposia at Doha. The title of the first, “Safeguarding development and the public interest from investment provisions in trade and investment agreements,” had this Lady Liberty rushing to find a translation. Turns out, this symposium is focused on investor-state clauses, (shorter but still unclear, right?). Take two: Investor-state clauses in trade deals are troubling aspects of trade pacts that essentially give corporations special rights and their own private judicial system. These “investment provisions” are used by companies to sue governments and challenge all sorts of regulations from environmental, to health and even financial regulations  … and that brings us to symposium No. two: “Safeguarding stability: Ensuring coherence between financial re-regulation and global trade rules.” In essence, you know all the Wall Street reform legislation that was enacted by Congress? Well, it appears that U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) may not be the only barrier we may run into in getting these reforms enacted and working so that we can protect ourselves from the next economic crash. Gretchen Morgenson of the The New York Times writes of the sad reality that Public Citizen’s Lori Wallach has been ringing an alarm about for some time: “According to the W.T.O., 125 of its 153 member countries have made varying degrees of commitments to the financial services agreement. Now, these pledges could easily be used to undermine new rules intended to make financial systems safer.” For more on this issue please see this portal.

Today, Public Citizen sent a letter to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, urging lawmakers to pass the “Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections” or DISCLOSE Act. The letter was signed by several dozen groups, ranging from campaign finance reform advocates, and transparency organizations to business ethics and investor groups. The need for disclosure of campaign expenditures is more important than ever following the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) ruling that opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate spending to influence elections. When it comes to campaign finance law, the cardinal rule is that citizens are entitled to know the names of donors who are financing campaigns and trying to influence their votes, and the amounts they give. We are pushing for disclosure both on a legislative level and through the unique work of the Corporate Reform Coalition, which has put a spotlight on the role the Securities and Exchange Commission, as the protectors of shareholder interests, ought to be playing in forcing corporations to disclose their political spending.

Of course, the other half of this story is stopping this outrageous spending! With major victories last week both on Capitol Hill and in the state of Vermont, Public Citizen’s Democracy Is For People campaign is plowing forward on the fight for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling and get our elections and democracy taken off the auction block. In this week’s California Progress Report, Jonah Minkoff-Zern, senior organizer with our Democracy Is For People campaign writes, “Vermont Was Third. Will California Be Next?” Thanks to Jonah’s work alongside Public Citizen activists and allies the answer is likely, yes! Stay tuned to CitizenVox for more in the coming weeks on California.
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