Room for a view

Views & News-Short takes, updates and calls to action

“I” on Campaign Advertising

Who owns the candidates? Issue ads that appear to focus on an issue but actually dismantle an opposing candidate are the major tool of campaign finance abuse. End-running the strict legal limits on campaign contributions, billions are spent on these ads, mainly on TV. (Does this glut of money explain why television networks lobby against campaign finance reform?) The Public i, an online investigative project staffed by credentialed reporters, reports on “Issue advocacy groups, their true agendas and secret donors.” Check out “Issue Ad Watch,” on Public i, www.public-i.org.
—Gail McGowan Mellor

Setback for Monsanto

More evidence that big biotech corporations are in trouble: Investment services reported in late May the impending “spinoff” of biotech company Monsanto from its parent company, Pharmacia. Monsanto became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pharmacia just this year, but according to Hoover’s Weekly, an investment services newsletter, Pharmacia was prompted to shed Monsanto due to “consumer apprehension over so-called ‘Frankenfoods’ and the like.” Monsanto’s flagship product, Roundup, is the world’s number one herbicide; but the company has made headlines recently due to protests against its genetically altered seeds and pesticide-laden, laboratory-derived strains of vegetables. Monsanto estimates it is responsible for more than 70 percent of the world’s insect- and herbicide-resistant crops.
—Todd Paul

US Major Human Rights Abuser

The United States has become the major human rights abuser in the Western Hemisphere, according to Amnesty International, and is in contravention to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, according to the United Nations. Both point not only to increasing reports of police brutality in the United States, but to growing use of torture in US prisons. The United Nations particularly flags the use of electro-shock and restraint chairs, while Amnesty cites such documented examples as Perry Conner of Virginia, “who was beaten in the genital area and repeatedly electro-shocked until he lost control of his bowels, [then] was not allowed to shower for six days.” Amnesty and the UN further cite the uneven use of the death penalty—the US has geographic “death penalty zones” with states in the Deep South handing down more death sentences than the rest of the US combined. Racial discrimination appears to be a factor. Although African Americans are only 12% of the population, they make up 36% of death row inmates. Most sentenced to death moreover receive a “poverty defense.” Less than two percent of California’s 513 death row inmates were represented by retained counsel. Finally, the organizations note that the American prison population is two million, the highest in American history and climbing swiftly. See www.amesty.org or phone 212-807-8400. For a copy of the UN report, contact www.un.org/Pubs/Sales.
—GMM

Citizen Alert!

The lifeblood of democracy is accurate information. Three US government services keep it flowing to us. Yet or therefore, some elements in the US Congress seek to incapacitate these services. The three crucial, endangered services are the Government Accounting Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the Government Printing Office.
The General Accounting Office is the government’s internal watchdog, charged with ferreting out government waste, abuse, and fraud. The Legislative Appropriations bill now in the House would slash the GAO staff by 25%—by 700 people. The Congressional Research Service for its part furnishes lawmakers with objective, nonpartisan research. This service cuts through the ideological cant of the parties, making for better laws. Yet the CRS is being hit by cuts in both funding and staff.
Perhaps the greatest threat is to the Government Printing Office, a revolutionary outfit with a sleepy name. The GPO does the printing for Congress, but it also works directly for citizens. Since 1813, the GPO has distributed all major government documents (the Congressional Record, including committee testimony, the budget) to main US libraries. Documents can be ordered from the GPO by individual citizens at a nominal price. The GPO’s website moreover is the government’s most heavily used web service, with 30 million government documents downloaded by citizens each month. For free.
The proposed bill would cut funding by 60%, effectively dismantling the GPO library service, and cutting the overall GPO staff by 435 people.
The GPO would suddenly be left with Internet capacity only. The loss of all printed material would leave GPO information more vulnerable to hackers, since the GPO citizen-services would exist only on the Internet. It would also greatly increase the “Digital Divide”—the knowledge gap between those who use the Internet and those who don’t.
Legislative Appropriations Bill proponents say that all that’s going on is a little budget-cutting. Yet the proposed cuts are huge: 17,000 people. They are hypocritical: ABC News reports that Congress has given itself a 40% raise in the last decade. They are broad (hitting everything from the Capitol police to the Budget Office), and most importantly to citizens, they are hitting particularly hard at those services most concerned with giving the public—us—control over our government.
Concerned? There are three ways to help:
To stop the Legislative Appropriations bill from getting to the floor of the Senate, write, phone or email (see below) the Chair of the Senate Legislative Branch Committee, Robert Bennett, Utah; and the Chair for the Full Senate Appropriations Committee, Ted Stevens, Oklahoma.
There is a companion bill, just out of committee in the House. Contact your representatives, ask them to vote no.
Write President Clinton and tell him to veto any bill that hurts the GPO, the GAO, or the CRS.
If you need to identify your representatives, a Congressional address, or the status of a bill, go to: http://www.loc.gov/global/legislative/congress.html
The GAO site is http://www.gao.gov/ or call 202-512-4800.
The invaluable GPO site is http://www.access.gpo.gov/.
—GMM

Juvenile Injustice Legislation

Thousands who participated nationwide in the May 19th Million Mom March sought to bring a message to our nation’s lawmakers to push for sensible gun control legislation. Supporters of the march feel strongly that such legislation would work to protect children from violence. Yet others caution that juvenile “injustice” legislation attached to the gun control provisions would actually harm many “at-risk” children rather help them.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the “tough on crime” legislation would allow children as young as 14 years of age to be prosecuted as adults. It would abandon attempts to rehabilitate youthful offenders (one of the fundamental underpinnings of our juvenile justice system) and instead apply strict punitive measures. The ACLU cites a recent case in Palm Beach, Florida in which a mentally disabled 15 year-old who stole $2 from a classmate for food was charged as an adult: with strong-arm robbery—punishable by life in prison; and extortion—punishable by 30 years behind bars.
In addition, the legislation would allow these “tried-as-adult” children to be incarcerated in prisons cells with adult felons. This type of placement not only diminishes the child’s chances of obtaining an education or appropriate therapy, but also leaves them open to physical or sexual assault by the older inmates. According to the ACLU, statistics show that children placed in adult prisons are one-third more likely to commit another crime that those sentenced to serve time in juvenile facilities where rehabilitation through education and therapy is stressed.
Other provisions attached to the gun control legislation would open juvenile records and court proceedings making them available to schools and future employers; would give “unfettered power” to prosecutors allowing them to charge juveniles as adults without review by judges (as the law stands now federal judges, not prosecutors, decide whether a child can be tried as an adult); and they would “remove the requirement that states receiving federal funds seek solutions to the disproportionate” number of minority children in confinement (while children of color represent 32 percent of the population, they make up 68 percent of the juvenile population residing in detention centers.)
Write, fax or email Congress and President Clinton urging opposition to these pending bills. Also, see http://aclu.org/action/juvenile106.html to send a free fax through the ACLU’s Action Alert Network.
—Lorna Tychostup