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Massive Protests in Portland Continue After Judge Denies State Request for Restraining Order Against Federal Agencies
https://citizentruth.org/massive-protests-in-portland-continue-after-judge-denies-state-request-for-restraining-order-against-federal-agencies/
“If the state of Oregon does not have standing to prevent this unconstitutional conduct by unidentified federal agents running roughshod over her citizens, who does?”
(By: Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams) After a U.S. district judge on Friday denied the Oregon attorney general’s request for a temporary restraining order against federal agencies, officers deployed to Portland by President Donald Trump dispensed tear gas and fired impact munitions as the thousands of protesters gathered in the city until early Saturday for ongoing demonstrations against police brutality.
Friday night featured one of the largest crowds since the Portland protests kicked off in late May, with at least 4,000 people in the streets, according to The Oregonian.
The night started with a rally on the steps of the downtown jail next to the federal courthouse on Southwest Third Avenue. A parade of vehicles, many adorned with Black Lives Matter decorations, circled around the area. The drivers honked the car horns in rhythm with the crowd’s “Black Lives Matter” chant.
…
The large crowd expanded after 9 p.m. when a march from the waterfront arrived. Many marchers wore distinct colors tied to specific professions or community groups. Social workers wore green. Dining industry workers wore chef coats. Healthcare workers wore blue. Groups of parents, who started the collective attire trend nearly a week ago, wore yellow and orange.
Participants in the city’s Friday night events included members of the groups Healthcare Workers Protest, Teachers Against Tyrants, Lawyers for Black Lives, the “Wall of Moms,” and a new “Wall of Vets.” Backed by the beat of drums, the demonstrators chanted “Black Lives Matter” and “Feds go home.”
Early Saturday, The Oregonian reported, fireworks were set off from a crowd near the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse, “the site of repeated overnight confrontations between federal officers embedded inside and demonstrators gathered outside.”
In recent days, as President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy federal agents to other major U.S. cities and actually sent a tactical team to Seattle, the conduct of the president’s “secret police” in Portland has drawn intense condemnation on a national scale and provoked multiple lawsuits.
U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman weighed in on one of those cases late Friday, denying Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum’s request for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Protection Service and their agents.
In response to reports of unidentified federal agents in unmarked vehicles snatching people off the streets of Portland, the state’s suit asked the judge to force the federal officers to identify themselves and their agencies before arresting or detaining anyone in the city, and to prohibit detentions or arrests without a warrant or probable cause.
Mosman wrote in a 14-page ruling (pdf) that although the suit “involves allegations of harm done to protesters by law enforcement, no protester is a plaintiff here,” and “it is not seeking redress for any harm that has been done to protesters. Instead, it seeks an injunction against future conduct, which is also an extraordinary form of relief.”
The judge ultimately determined that the state failed to show that it has standing to bring the case and denied the TRO request.
According to The Associated Press:
Legal experts who reviewed the case before the decision warned that the judge could reject it on those grounds. A lawsuit from a person accusing federal agents of violating their rights to free speech or against unconstitutional search and seizure would have a much higher chance of success, Michael Dorf, a constitutional law professor at Cornell University, said ahead of the ruling.
“The federal government acted in violation of those individuals’ rights and probably acted in violation of the Constitution in the sense of exercising powers that are reserved to the states, but just because the federal government acts in ways that overstep its authority doesn’t mean the state has an injury,” he said.
Rosenblum responded in a statement Friday that expressed her disappointment with the decision but also noted that “in last Wednesday’s two-hour hearing, the judge expressed concern with the legality of the federal law enforcement tactics we are seeking to stop.”
“While today the court declined to issue an immediate order putting a stop to those tactics, we are, nevertheless, hopeful these abuses will stop and no other Oregonians will be subject to them or to the chilling effect they have on the right to engage in peaceful protest,” Rosenblum said.
The attorney general added that while she respects Mosman, “I would ask this question: If the state of Oregon does not have standing to prevent this unconstitutional conduct by unidentified federal agents running roughshod over her citizens, who does?”
“Individuals mistreated by these federal agents can sue for damages, but they can’t get a judge to restrain this unlawful conduct more generally,” she said. “Today’s ruling suggests that there may be no recourse on behalf of our state, and if so that is extremely troubling.”
The ACLU, which was not part of the state case but is involved in multiple other legal challenges related to the conditions in Portland, also expressed disappointment with Mosman’s denial.
“While the decision in the state’s lawsuit is disappointing, federal agents should not for a minute think their unconstitutional actions will go unanswered,” said Jann Carson, interim executive director of the ACLU of Oregon. “The ACLU will be in court again to hold federal agents accountable for their unconstitutional attacks on the right to protest.”
Trump Is Daring Us to Stop Him
Sonali Kolhatkar July 25, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/trump-is-daring-us-to-stop-him/
Trump’s deployment of federal officers to Democratic-run cities is extreme even for him.
President Donald Trump’s recent reelection campaign advertisement is straight out of the plot of a horror movie. Just days after he deployed federal officers to the streets of Portland, Oregon, his campaign released a 30-second television spot featuring an elderly white woman watching on her television the news of activists demanding a defunding of police. The woman shakes her head in disapproval as she notices a figure at her door trying to enter her house. She nervously calls 911, but apparently the activists she disapproves of have been so effective in their nefarious demands that the universal emergency hotline Americans rely on now goes unanswered. The vulnerable woman drops her remote control as the intruder enters her home, and we are only left to imagine the horror of what he does to her as the words “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America” appear on the screen. In this dystopian version of America, only Trump promises law and order.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, supports the defunding of American police. He does not, and in fact, in keeping with his historic support for police, Biden has demanded increased funding for law enforcement. But Trump has already proven that he will not let truth get in the way of his desires, and therefore a little more digging on the part of voters and a little more forthright reporting on the part of journalists is necessary to understand exactly who is breaking American laws.
The paramilitary units from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that Trump has deployed to Portland have engaged in disturbing violations of human rights. They have used munitions to injure people, and acted like “thugs and goons” in the words of a Navy Veteran who was beaten with batons and pepper-sprayed in the face. They have arrested and detained people without documentation. Trump has defended their tactics saying the targets “are anarchists. These are not protesters… These are people that hate our country.”
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Director Chad Wolf took Trump’s characterization of protesters as “anarchists” to comical extremes in his public record of how and why his officers engaged with protesters. Saying that he “Condemns The Rampant Long-Lasting Violence In Portland,” Wolf used the words “violent” 76 times to describe what protesters have done to justify arrests and repression. Wolf’s definition of violence seems to almost entirely encompass property damage such as vandalism and graffiti. The closest that Portland protesters came to actual violence, it seems, was when they apparently, “attempted to cause eye damage to officers with commercial grade lasers,” and in another instance, “proceeded to launch aerial fireworks at federal property.”
The DHS records used the term “violent anarchists” 70 times and the term “protesters” only once, without making any effort to explain how exactly they distinguished “violent anarchists” from protesters, journalists or passersby. Nowhere in the document was there any documented behavior by protesters that came close to an attack on vulnerable elderly white women like the fictitious one in Trump’s ad. In not a single instance reported in the DHS account did a protester—or in Wolf’s words, violent anarchist—actually commit intentional violence against a human being.
Trump’s policy violates an idea that Republicans have long supported—that states ought to have the right to set their own laws and rules and that the federal government ought to respect that right. It also goes against the warnings that pro-gun Republicans have echoed for years—that mass gun ownership is necessary so that vigilant citizens can counter federal government tyranny of the sort that Trump has unleashed. Now that the kind of federal government overreach they have warned against for years is actually unfolding, there is nary a peep from the “gun rights” crowd.
It isn’t just Republicans who have embraced the march toward authoritarianism. Eighteen years ago Congress passed the Homeland Security Act to create the DHS—an agency with an Orwellian name—with 88 Democrats joining more than 200 Republicans in voting yes. The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks prompted a reconfiguring of American society and government that reverberates today, unleashing excessive surveillance and harsh immigration enforcement, while doing little to address the factors that provoked the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in the first place.
Yet year after year, Democrats have voted to reauthorize the USA Patriot Act and other aspects of the post-9/11 authoritarian architecture. Now even as DHS officers are being deployed by a president they strongly criticize, Democratic lawmakers are trying to tie up funding for the DHS with that of the Department of Health and Human Services, which, according to the Intercept’s Ryan Grim, is “making it more difficult for progressive Democrats to oppose.”
But Trump has abused the infrastructure of the post-9/11 state repression to a far greater extent than either Presidents George W. Bush or President Barack Obama. The Washington Post reported that Tom Ridge, the notorious DHS secretary under Bush, denounced Trump’s move saying the agency was formed to counter “global terrorism,” and that, “It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.” A former Bush-era DHS official, Paul Rosenzweig, characterized the deployment as “lawful but awful,” while seeing the phenomenon as clearly unconstitutional. Michael Chertoff, another Bush-era DHS secretary, told a Washington Post columnist, “While it’s appropriate for DHS to protect federal property, that is not an excuse to range more widely in a city and to conduct police operations, particularly if local authorities have not requested federal assistance.” Chertoff added that Trump’s move is “very problematic,” and “very unsettling.” If those GOP officials who served under Bush—who were considered the political villains of their time—are disturbed, Trump has indeed crossed a line.
But another figure from the Bush years is rearing his head under Trump and encouraging his authoritarianism. John Yoo, the infamous lawyer who helped craft the “torture memos” during the Bush administration’s “war on terror” to justify the CIA’s use of torture during interrogations, is apparently advising the Trump administration on how best to use his executive power to skirt congressional authority, the Guardian reports. In June, Yoo wrote in an article in the National Review, “Even if Trump knew that his scheme lacked legal authority, he could get away with it for the length of his presidency.”
Trump has made clear that norms, ethics, laws, and even the U.S. Constitution are merely suggestions that mildly constrain him and that can be tossed aside when needed. His modus operandi is to push the limits of what he can do and dare the nation to stop him. Will we?
Many Terms That Are Frequently Used to Describe Capitalism Simply Don’t Hold Up Under Scrutiny
Richard Wolff July 24, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/many-terms-that-are-frequently-used-to-describe-capitalism-simply-dont-hold-up-under-scrutiny/
“Free” and “unregulated” markets simply do not define capitalism, and are not marked by anything like “liberty.”
Capitalism is not, as its defenders like to claim, defined by “free” or “private” enterprises. Likewise, “free” or “unregulated” markets do not define capitalism. Politics and ideology drive its defenders to choose those definitions over clearly better, different definitions. The causes and consequences of conflicts over definition are part of today’s mounting battles over capitalism.
The task of any definition is to separate its object from others, to expose its uniqueness so all can recognize it and distinguish it from other, similar objects. We define “dog” to differentiate it from other animals, “chair” from other furniture, and “Mary” from other people. We should then define capitalism to differentiate it from other economic systems (the organized production and distribution of goods and services in a community) around qualities unique to it.
A key unique quality of capitalism is the employer/employee relationship between two different groups of the people engaged together in the economic system. That relationship entails an exchange of wages or salaries for labor power (the ability of an employee to work). A contract between employer and employee covers that exchange plus the employee’s exertion of brains and muscles over lengths of time and to ends specified by the employer. Capitalism’s unique employer/employee relationship distinguishes it, for example, from slavery, feudalism, and communism as alternative economic systems.
In slave economic systems, the key relationship is one of master and slave, where the slave is the property of the master or a third person. This differs clearly from capitalism, where no person is another’s property. Capitalism contrasts equally clearly with feudalism, where the key relationship links lord and serf by their sworn acceptance of specific obligations, loyalties, and duties to one another. Wages do not exist in either slave or feudal economic systems. Marx’s gestures toward communism entail a key relationship radically different from that of the capitalist, feudal, or slave economic systems. In communism, no split or division occurs between two different groups of participants in production (no masters and slaves, lords and serfs, or employers and employees). Instead one and the same community designs, directs, and performs the work of an enterprise such that each community member has one vote and enterprise decisions are made democratically. Worker coops are the form in which that economic system is most often encountered in the modern world.
The employer/employee relationship structuring enterprises thus serves nicely and neatly to define capitalism as distinct from alternative economic systems. In contrast, other current definitions of capitalism fail to make such distinctions. Mainstream media, politicians, and most professional economists in the United States define capitalism above all in terms of “private” or “free” enterprises and “free” or “unregulated” markets. But those definitions are inadequate and inappropriate; they do not distinguish capitalist from other economic systems.
That is because private enterprises exist in them all. An enterprise is private if the individuals who own and operate it hold no positions within any governmental apparatus or agency. A state enterprise would then be one owned and/or operated by officials or other persons holding positions within state apparatuses or agencies.
In today’s U.S. capitalism, state capitalist enterprises include the Post Office, Amtrak, the Tennessee Valley Authority, countless municipal transport systems, state schools, and so on. These coexist with private capitalist enterprises. Both are capitalist because both embody the same basic employer/employee relationship. Slave systems likewise display both private and state slave enterprises, and feudal systems include both private and state feudal enterprises. In modern socialist systems ranging from Scandinavia to the USSR and the People’s Republic of China, both private and state enterprises have coexisted. Because of their shared employer/employee relationships, they deserve to be called private and state capitalist enterprises notwithstanding their “socialist” labels. Indeed, those labels reveal that some socialist critics of capitalism did not question its defenders’ definitions. In my view, that weakened their critiques. Lastly, instances of communist enterprises, where the worker coop relationship displaces the employer/employee relationship, have been scattered but are relatively rare across the modern world.
The proportions of private versus state enterprises have varied from system to system. They have also varied within each system from time to time and region to region. Private enterprise is thus not an effective definition of capitalism. Its presence does not distinguish capitalism from the other systems.
Much the same analysis applies to free markets where buyers and sellers exchange with minimal outside interference. Free markets have almost always coexisted in varying proportions with planned state interventions to limit or regulate exchanges: free markets versus planning. Markets have existed for a long time in human history, not just during the times of capitalism. In slavery, for example, slaves and what slaves produced, such as cotton, passed through markets; they were distributed via market exchanges. Sometimes those markets were relatively free; sometimes states intervened to control them. Lords and serfs interacted in markets where many products of feudal economies were exchanged. Those markets were also sometimes free and sometimes not. Socialist societies, whatever their mix of capitalist and worker coop-type enterprises, have likewise combined free markets and state planning.
In short, all the systems under discussion here display mixtures of free markets and planning. We cannot definitionally distinguish capitalism from them along the lines of free markets versus state planning.
Why then did an inadequate definition prevail in mainstream discussions and popular usage over an available, better one? The answer hinges on ideology. The defenders of capitalism preferred the inadequate definition because it was far easier to defend capitalism if and when it was defined that way. The defenders had the resources—supportive capitalists’ wealth, power, and cultural influence—to make their preferences prevail.
The definition of capitalism in terms of the employer/employee relationship is difficult to defend for several reasons. First of all, it renders capitalism as patently undemocratic. In capitalist workplaces (factories, offices, and stores) an unaccountable minority (owners, boards of directors, top executives) wield nearly absolute power over the enterprise. They decide what, how, and where to produce and what to do with the net revenues produced by the employees. The latter are the majority inside enterprises. Yet the employees must live with the results of enterprise decisions from which they are excluded. Especially in countries with some democratic traditions or aspirations, defending so undemocratic a workplace structure—and the capitalism it grounds—would be difficult.
Second, the dualistic employer/employee definition of capitalism suggests affinities with the parallel dualisms of slavery (master/slave) and feudalism (lord/serf). The history of the revolutionary breaks of capitalism from feudalism and slavery (French and American revolutions, U.S. Civil War, and so on) illustrates that revolutionaries then thought their breaks were deep and dramatic. Liberty, equality, fraternity, and democracy were the slogans and banners of those breaking to capitalism. Those who favor capitalism have always nurtured and reaffirmed its association with those slogans. In contrast, the employer/employee definition suggests rather that the master/slave and lord/serf dualisms have a modern-day parallel or equivalent in the employer/employee dualism. Using that definition, one might infer that perhaps some further break—say beyond any dualism—belongs on history’s agenda.
Third, defining capitalism in terms of “free” or “private” enterprises and markets foregrounds and celebrates certain citizens enjoying “liberty” from an oppressive state. That definition is often extended to include individual initiative, as in “freedom” to establish one’s own business enterprise, and an “incentive system” where profit rewards successful business ventures. This definition of capitalism identifies its uniqueness in its enabling, protecting, and guaranteeing all individuals the freedom to start and grow their own enterprises to earn profits without state interference. In this definition, all other systems (and especially socialism) constrict and constrain those freedoms. In historical fact, individuals in various slave, feudal, and other economic systems have sometimes faced quite parallel incentives to start new enterprises. Capitalism has also, to varying degrees in various times and places, stifled incentives and blocked enterprise freedoms, for example via its patent and trademark laws, tendencies to monopoly, inequality, business cycle downturns, and so on.
Definitions are shaped by and react back upon the contexts and conflicts of their times and places. The old, conservative definition of capitalism is now contested, as is everything else about that system. By articulating now an overdue refutation of its prevailing definition, the critique of capitalism deepens.
‘Disturbing—and Dangerous’: Journalists Denounce Judge’s Order for Outlets to Turn Over Protest Footage to Seattle Police
https://citizentruth.org/disturbing-and-dangerous-journalists-denounce-judges-order-for-outlets-to-turn-over-protest-footage-to-seattle-police/
(By: Eoin Higgins, Common Dreams)
Journalists and civil liberties advocates alike condemned a ruling Thursday by a county judge in Seattle, Washington instructing a number of city media outlets to give police photographs and video footage taken during a May 30 Black Lives Matter demonstration against police brutality.
“This turns journalists into an arm of the government,” tweeted journalist Matt Pearce. “We are not here to do surveillance for police.”
The “extremely troubling” ruling applies to the Seattle Times and local stations KIRO, KOMO, KING, and KCPQ. The five outlets were subpoenaed by the Seattle Police Department for a 90-minute span of footage that shows demonstrators police say were responsible for property destruction and the theft of some guns during the protest.
“This ruling is disturbing—and dangerous,” the paper’s Metro editor Benjamin Woodard said on Twitter. “Our newsroom does not work in concert with law enforcement.”
Times executive editor Michele Matassa Flores told her paper that the ruling “puts our independence, and even our staff’s physical safety, at risk.”
“The media exist in large part to hold governments, including law enforcement agencies, accountable to the public,” Matassa Flores said. “We don’t work in concert with government, and it’s important to our credibility and effectiveness to retain our independence from those we cover.”
In his ruling, King County Superior Court Judge Nelson Lee rejected the outlets’ argument that the content was protected by Washington state’s shield law.
According to the Times:
Lee ruled that the SPD had met its burden to overcome the shield law: that the images were “highly material and relevant” and “critical or necessary” to prove an issue that has a compelling public interest for its disclosure. Getting the stolen weapons off the street was one compelling public interest, Lee found.
“This should alarm readers and viewers,” tweeted CNN national correspondent Ed Lavandera. “Journalists must be allowed to work independently!”
“This turns journalists into an arm of the government,” tweeted journalist Matt Pearce. “We are not here to do surveillance for police.”
The “extremely troubling” ruling applies to the Seattle Times and local stations KIRO, KOMO, KING, and KCPQ. The five outlets were subpoenaed by the Seattle Police Department for a 90-minute span of footage that shows demonstrators police say were responsible for property destruction and the theft of some guns during the protest.
“This ruling is disturbing—and dangerous,” the paper’s Metro editor Benjamin Woodard said on Twitter. “Our newsroom does not work in concert with law enforcement.”
Times executive editor Michele Matassa Flores told her paper that the ruling “puts our independence, and even our staff’s physical safety, at risk.”
“The media exist in large part to hold governments, including law enforcement agencies, accountable to the public,” Matassa Flores said. “We don’t work in concert with government, and it’s important to our credibility and effectiveness to retain our independence from those we cover.”
In his ruling, King County Superior Court Judge Nelson Lee rejected the outlets’ argument that the content was protected by Washington state’s shield law.
According to the Times:
Lee ruled that the SPD had met its burden to overcome the shield law: that the images were “highly material and relevant” and “critical or necessary” to prove an issue that has a compelling public interest for its disclosure. Getting the stolen weapons off the street was one compelling public interest, Lee found.
“This should alarm readers and viewers,” tweeted CNN national correspondent Ed Lavandera. “Journalists must be allowed to work independently!”
Leaked FBI Memo Warns Private Equity And Hedge Funds Are Threats For Money Laundering
Peter Castagno July 23, 2020
https://citizentruth.org/hospitals-got-bailouts-while-furloughing-thousands-and-paying-c-e-o-s-millions/
“With private debt funds, there is no bank involvement and no involvement with any institution subject to regulatory review. No information seeps out of this black hole.”
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned in a leaked memo from May that the almost $10-trillion private investment funds industry is an ample target for large-scale money laundering, citing at least four cases of reported laundering schemes involving hundreds of millions of dollars in the largely opaque private equity and hedge fund industries.
“Hedge funds and private equity firms have been used to facilitate transactions in support of fraud, transnational organized crime, and sanctions evasion,” noted the bulletin, adding that shell companies are often used to obfuscate money flows and evade regulatory detection.
Money laundering is the process of concealing the origins of money generated by illegal activity, generally through a complex series of financial transactions, to make it appear as if it came from a legitimate source. Eileen Appelbaum, co-director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Private Equity at Work: When Wall Street Manages Main Street, explained to Citizen Truth that the private equity industry is particularly susceptible to money laundering because of its opacity and lack of oversight.
“Private equity funds are famous for the lack of transparency about where the money that they invest comes from, where they invest it, and how they extract profits from the portfolio companies they acquire. This secrecy makes the private equity industry a tempting target for money laundering. There is little regulatory oversight and no rules requiring PE funds to adopt anti-money laundering programs.”
“We do learn something about PE funds’ activities when they borrow from banks or from the public, as these activities are regulated,” Appelbaum told Citizen Truth. “But PE funds are able to avoid even this level of disclosure. A recent development has been the growth of private debt funds. If this FBI report is current, they are behind the times. These new PE sponsored debt funds are more opaque and more susceptible to dirty deeds than traditional buyout funds that use investors money to buy companies. With private debt funds, there is no bank involvement and no involvement with any institution subject to regulatory review. No information seeps out of this black hole.”
Private equity firms and hedge funds have sustained heavy scrutiny in recent years for fraud, predatory behavior, and inaction against money laundering threats. Yet despite the F.B.I.’s warning that government regulators are failing to provide oversight of these investment funds, no serious action has been taken to rein in their worst practices. Notably, the hedge fund and private equity industries contain some of the biggest donors to both of the major political parties.
The Trump administration’s consistent efforts to deregulate the financial sector, as well as potential future president Joe Biden’s recent pledge to his Wall Street donors that he’s not proposing any legislative change to corporate behavior, lend little hope that top-down policies will illuminate this black hole. However, a landmark intervention by Kentucky’s Attorney General on Wednesday in a suit against private equity firms Blackstone and KKR could “tear open the veil of secrecy surrounding the private equity and hedge fund industries”, according to journalist David Sirota.
Another issue that could bring systemic financial malfeasance to public attention, notes Pam and Russ Martens of Wall Street on Parade, is the Ghislaine Maxwell case. Jeffrey Epstein was a hedge fund manager who operated a litany of shady, opaque investment companies, and whose former Wall Street business partner referred to him as a “criminal mastermind” that helped him run a “criminal investment enterprise.”
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