North Carolina Republicans Want Felony Charges for Those Who Disclose Fracking Chemicals

Brandon Baker

http://ecowatch.com/2014/05/20/north-carolina-republicans-fracking/

Transparency is the least you could hope for if you’re against fracking for energy. If North Carolina Republicans get their way, such transparency could result in a felony.

Three state senators introduced a bill late last week that would charge people with a felony if they disclose what chemicals companies are using to extract dirty energy from shale formations. That might even include the officials who respond to the explosions and other emergencies caused by the dangerous process.

“The felony provision is far stricter than most states’ provisions in terms of the penalty for violating trade secrets,” Hannah Wiseman, a Florida State University assistant law professor who studies fracking regulations, told Mother Jones.

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“I think the only penalties to fire chiefs and doctors, if they talked about it at their annual conference, would be the penalties contained in the confidentiality agreement. But [the bill] is so poorly worded, I cannot confirm that if an emergency responder or fire chief discloses that confidential information, they too would not be subject to a felony.”

However, Wiseman believes “that appears to be the case” in some sections of the potential legislation.

“It allows for trade secrets to remain trade secrets, it provides only limited exceptions for reasons of emergency and health problems, and provides penalties for failure to honor the trade secret,” Wiseman continued.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is exploring requiring companies to the exact opposite of the North Carolina state senators’ wishes—disclose those trade secrets to the government and the public. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy signed a prepublication of a proposed law that would not protect the secrets.

“We want to be sure that there is some agency that actually is collecting this information about what is being used in these shale plays across the country,” Deborah Goldberg, a lawyer at Earthjustice, told Salon. “The disclosure we are getting right now is spotty.”

interview

The Worst Ruling Since Citizens United

By Daniel I. Weiner May 13, 2014

http://news.yahoo.com/worst-ruling-since-citizens-united-094500798--politics.html

Whatever one thinks about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his policies, the decision last week by federal judge Rudolph T. Randa to summarily halt an investigation into alleged campaign finance violations by Walker’s campaign and supporters—and to order prosecutors to destroy all the evidence they collected—was a striking instance of judicial chutzpah. The accompanying opinion (PDF) is laced with ideological rhetoric seeking to undermine many of the remaining campaign finance laws on the books. Even following the Supreme Court’s evisceration of campaign finance law in the Citizens United and McCutcheon decisions, 

Randa’s ruling is a bridge too far. It should not stand.

2012’s Wisconsin recall election was a $137 million affair. Groups claiming to act independently of any candidate spent more than half of this total, roughly $70 million. Many of them drew their funding from out-of-state “dark money” organizations, which can raise unlimited funds and keep their contributors secret. Under state law, such spending could not be “coordinated” with Walker or another candidate. Whether some of this spending was in fact coordinated—steered at the candidate’s suggestion or with his cooperation—was the question at the heart of the Wisconsin investigation.

Coordination, once the obscure preserve of election lawyers, has become a hot topic. 

In Citizens United, a narrow majority of the Supreme Court took away from federal, state, and local authorities the ability to place limits on how much corporations, unions and other deep-pocketed interests can spend on elections, as long as they don’t coordinate with candidates—based on the fanciful theory that such “independent” spending cannot corrupt politicians. But the Citizens United majority did reaffirm that it’s perfectly constitutional for the government to limit non-independent spending.

Enter Judge Randa. According to him, only spending on ads containing an unmistakable call to vote for or against someone may be subject to restrictions on coordination. In other words, an advertisement a few weeks before the election saying “Defeat Senator Jones because he won’t stand with the troops,” cannot be coordinated with a candidate. But one saying “Tell Senator Jones to stop hurting the troops,” can be conceived, directed, and promoted by Senator Jones’s political opponent.

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Climate Change Is Turning Your Produce into Junk Food

by Tom Philpott

Wed May 14, 2014

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/05/climate-change-will-eat-your-lunch

Higher CO2 levels caused a "significant decrease in the concentrations of zinc, iron, and protein" for wheat and rice.

[...]

The results: a "significant decrease in the concentrations of zinc, iron, and protein" for wheat and rice, a Harvard press release on the study reports. For legumes like soybeans and peas, protein didn’t change much, but zinc and iron levels dropped. For wheat, the treated crops saw zinc, iron, and protein fell by 9.3 percent, 5.1 percent, and 6.3 percent, respectively.

These are potentially grave findings, because a large swath of humanity relies on rice, wheat, and legumes for these very nutrients, the authors note. They report that two billion people already suffer from zinc and iron deficiencies, "causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually." 

According to the Harvard press release, the "reduction in these nutrients represents the most significant health threat ever shown to be associated with climate change." Symptoms of zinc deficiency include stunted growth, appetite loss, impaired immune function, hair loss, diarrhea, delayed sexual maturation, impotence, hypogonadism (for males), and eye and skin lesions; while iron deficiency brings on fatigue, shortness of breath, dizziness, and headache.

[...]