VIDEO Watch Elizabeth Warren Slam the GOP for Blocking Unemployment Benefits 4FEB14

SEN Elizabeth Warren D MA continues to champion the American people in the US Senate, much to the consternation of the Obama administration and third way democrats. Here she slams the gop / tea-bagger obstructionist for blocking an extension of emergency unemployment benefits for the long term unemployed. She condemns them for insisting any extension be paid for by funding cuts of other programs while they push for an extension of tax cuts and subsidies for the rich (tax extenders) for corporate America without requiring offsetting cuts to other corporate welfare programs. From Mother Jones.....

—By Erika Eichelberger

| Tue Feb. 4, 2014 8:52 AM GMT

http://youtu.be/S2NYK1YMN6I 

On Monday evening, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) denounced GOP lawmakers for blocking an extension of federal unemployment insurance, which expired at the end of last year, and called on Congress to act immediately on behalf of the roughly 1.6 million Americans who depend on the benefits.
"Unemployment insurance is a critical lifeline for people who are trying their hardest and need a little help—a recognition that Wall Street and Washington caused the financial crisis, but Main Street is still paying the price," Warren said in a speech on the Senate floor.
She added that it's hypocritical for Republicans to push for an extension of a package of mostly corporate tax breaks called "tax extenders" without offsetting the cost, but are demanding that aid for the unemployed be paid for. "Republicans line up to protect billions in tax breaks and subsidies for big corporations with armies of lobbyists," the senator said, "but they can’t find a way to help struggling families trying get back on their feet."
Each year since the onset of the recession in 2008, Congress has re-authorized federal emergency unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, which kick in after state unemployment benefits run out—usually after 26 weeks. The number of extra weeks of federal unemployment insurance has varied over the years, but last stood at 47 weeks.
The long-term unemployment rate—the percentage of those without a job for 27 weeks or longer—remains at record high levels, but Republicans in the House and Senate don't want to extend federal unemployment benefits unless they are offset by savings elsewhere. A Senate plan to renew the benefits failed a couple of weeks ago, because Republicans said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wouldn't allow them to amend the legislation to their liking. The upper chamber is now working on a new proposal that would pay for the $6-billion extension by temporarily increasing taxes on employers. But even if the Senate passes the measure, it is unclear whether House speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) will bring the bill up for a vote, according to Democratic House aides.

Erika Eichelberger

Reporter

Erika Eichelberger is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She has also written for The Nation, The Brooklyn Rail, and TomDispatch. Email her at eeichelberger [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | Twitter

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The Koch Brothers Left a Confidential Document at Their Last Donor Conference—Read It Here 5FEB14

DARK MONEY, the funding of political campaigns and lobbying by the rich and powerful with corporate America, wall street, the bank-financial cabal and the military-industrial complex. They do this to protect the corporate welfare system, to keep their tax breaks and subsidies, to keep America a warfare state. They do it with a propaganda campaign that keeps the 99% fighting among ourselves for the scraps the 1% tosses to us, and too many of us follow their game plan because austerity economics doesn't provide enough for the social safety net, education, economic stimulus programs, infrastructure, the environment, and retirement. They turn attention away from laws and regulations allowing the 1% to keep their money in off shore tax shelters, get tax breaks and credits for sending American jobs overseas, grant tax breaks to huge corporations who don't pay their employees a living wage while their executives receive tens of millions in immoral and obscene pay packages, continue to grant tax breaks and subsidies to big oil and gas companies while they continue to realize increased profits year after year. They target different groups of the 99% by telling us this group or that group of people is trying to take what you have, to deny you what you have earned, to keep you down, to drag you down to their level. They fuel racism, ignorance, fear, insecurity. They prolong poverty and economic inequality. They stimulate social and economic strife. And by believing these lies, these propaganda campaigns, the 99% shares the responsibility for the nation's decline. This is from Mother Jones, and it exposes many of those who are working for and funding the dismantling of the American Republic and the establishment of an American plutocracy.

A list of one-on-one meetings between VIP donors and the Kochs and their operatives offers a revealing look into their mighty political machine.

—By Andy Kroll and Daniel Schulman

| Wed Feb. 5, 2014 8:59 AM GMT

Charles Koch: Bo Rader/ZUMA; David Koch: Sonia Moskowitz/ZUMA

There's one main rule at the conservative donor conclaves held twice a year by Charles and David Koch at luxury resorts: What happens there stays there.
The billionaire industrialists and their political operatives strive to ensure the anonymity of the wealthy conservatives who fund their sprawling political operation—which funneled more than $400 million into the 2012 elections—and to keep their plans private. Attendees of these summits are warned that the seminars, where the Kochs and their allies hatch strategies for electing Republicans and advancing conservative initiatives on the state and national levels, are strictly confidential; they are cautioned to keep a close eye on their meeting notes and materials. But last week, following the Kochs' first donor gathering of 2014, one attendee left behind a sensitive document at the Renaissance Esmeralda resort outside of Palm Springs, California, where the Kochs and their comrades had spent three days focused on winning the 2014 midterm elections and more. The document lists VIP donors—including John Schnatter, the founder of the Papa John's pizza chain—who were scheduled for one-on-one meetings with representatives of the political, corporate, and philanthropic wings of Kochworld. The one-page document, provided to Mother Jones by a hotel guest who discovered it, offers a fascinating glimpse into the Kochs' political machine and shows how closely intertwined it is with Koch Industries, their $115 billion conglomerate.
The more than 40 donors courted by the Kochs include hedge fund and private-equity billionaires, real estate tycoons, and executives of top corporations, including Jockey International and TRT Holdings, owner of Omni Hotels and Gold's Gym. A number of them have never been identified as members of the Koch donor network, including Schnatter, one of the more prominent names on the list. An outspoken opponent of the Affordable Care Act, he is a longtime Republican donor who hosted a fundraiser for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. The document notes that the pizza mogul was scheduled to meet with Ryan Stowers, the director of higher education at the Charles G. Koch Foundation. (Schnatter did not respond to requests for comment.)

The document suggests a close collaboration between officials of Koch Industries, AFP, and Freedom Partners, whose staff and board are stacked with numerous current and former Koch Industries employees.

Another top conservative contributor on the list is TRT Holdings' cofounder Robert Rowling, whose net worth is estimated at $4.9 billion. During the 2012 election, Rowling directed $3.5 million to American Crossroads, the super-PAC spearheaded by Karl Rove, and he cut a $100,000 check to the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future. According to the document, Rowling was scheduled to sit down with Charles Koch at the "Koch residence"—presumably a reference to the Wichita businessman's vacation home at the Vintage Club, a short drive from the resort where the donor conference was held. Top Koch operatives were expected to participate in this session, including Kevin Gentry, the Koch brothers' fundraising guru; Daniel Garza, the director of the Libre Initiative, a Koch-funded organization dedicated to Latino outreach; and Marc Short, who runs Freedom Partners, the centerpiece of the Kochs' political network, which distributes donor funds to a large web of conservative nonprofit groups. (Rowling did not respond to requests for comment.)
Other heavy hitters slated for meetings with the Koch brothers or their representatives included Carl Berg, a Silicon Valley real estate tycoon worth $1.1 billion; Ken Griffin, who founded the hedge fund Citadel and clocks in at No. 103 on the Forbes 400 (net worth, $4.4 billion); John W. Childs, a top private-equity investor; and Fred Klipsch, the chairman of the headphone and speaker company Klipsch Group.
The meeting list illustrates the interwoven nature of the Koch brothers' corporate, political, and philanthropic activities. The donor meetings featured various senior Koch Industries executives, including the company's chief financial officer, Steve Feilmeier. He was scheduled to join Charles Koch for a sit down with Berg. Charles Koch's 36-year-old son, Chase, the president of Koch Fertilizer, was also scheduled to take part in a meeting with a donor named George Gibbs. (Koch Industries spokesman Rob Tappan would not comment on the conference document, only confirming that company employees attend the donor summits. Freedom Partners spokesman James Davis said he was "uncertain" about the document and did not respond to further questions.)
At least half of the one-on-one sessions involved representatives of Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers and their top political adviser and strategist, Richard Fink, a Koch Industries executive vice president and board member. The AFP officials called to duty for these discussions included AFP's president Tim Phillips, chief operating officer Luke Hilgemann, vice president for state operations Teresa Oelke, and vice president for development Chris Fink (Richard Fink's son). The state directors for AFP's Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida chapters were also slated for tête-à-têtes during the Koch summit. (AFP spokesman Levi Russell declined to comment on the meeting document.)
In the past, Koch Industries has distanced itself from AFP and its political activities. The company has said the group is just one of "hundreds of organizations" that receive funding from the Kochs and that it operates "independently" of Koch Industries. But the document suggests a close collaboration between officials of Koch Industries, AFP, and Freedom Partners, whose staff and board are stacked with numerous current and former Koch Industries employees. Michael Lanzara and Jeff Noble, who transitioned over to Freedom Partners from Koch Companies Public Sector—the company's legal, lobbying, and public affairs branch—were scheduled to meet with donors alongside AFP staffers. The Koch brothers and Richard Fink were also listed as taking part in some of these sessions. (Fink, a man of many hats within the Koch firmament, is also an AFP board member; David Koch chairs the board of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation.)
Heading into the midterm elections, AFP has emerged as one of the right's most active and well-financed political outfits. In recent months, it has spent more than $20 million on ads clobbering congressional Democrats for supporting Obamacare. And the group is merely one piece of the Kochs' massive political operation, which in size, scope, and fundraising prowess has come to resemble a political party in its own right. During the 2012 election cycle, in fact, the Koch network managed to raise as much as the Republican National Committee itself.
After the brothers and their allies failed to win the Senate or unseat Obama in 2012, David Koch told Forbes that this setback would do little to deter them: "We're going to fight the battle as long as we breathe." At the Palm Springs conference, as the left-behind-list of VIP meetings shows, the Kochs are lining up serious financial firepower for the political fights of 2014 and beyond.

DONORS
Carl Berg: Ranking No. 308 on the Forbes 400, Berg is a Silicon Valley real estate titan with an estimated fortune of $1.1 billion.
Ronnie Cameron: He runs agribusiness giant Mountaire Corporation. During a meeting of the Kochs' donor network in 2011, Charles Koch recognized Cameron (and other donors) for donating at least $1 million to their cause.
Charles Chandler: Based in the Kochs' hometown of Wichita, Kansas, Chandler is the CEO of Intrust Bank.
John Childs: He runs the Boston-based private equity firm J.W. Childs & Associates.
Jamie Coulter: Haling from Wichita, Coulter is the former CEO of the Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon restaurant chain.
Bob and Steve Fettig: The Fettigs run the metal fabrication company Tankcraft, based in Darien, Wisconsin. Steve is the company's CFO; Bob is CEO.
Richard and Leslie Gilliam: Richard founded Virginia-based coal mining company Cumberland Resources Corporation, which he sold to Massey Energy for nearly a billion dollars in 2010.
Ken Griffin: A major conservative donor, the Chicago-based businessman founded the hedge fund Citadel and is worth an estimated $4.4 billion.  
John Griffin: He's the founder of Blue Ridge Capital, a New York hedge fund.
Dick Haworth: He's the chairman emeritus of Holland, Michigan-based office furniture company Haworth.
Richard "Ric" Kayne: He's the founder and chairman of Los Angeles-based investment firm Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors.
Dan Kirby: He's president of Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Kirby Financial.
Fred Klipsch: He's the chairman of Klipsch Group, a speaker and headphone manufacturer.
Frank Kozel: He's the principal of Pittsburgh-based Keystone Energy Oil & Gas Inc.
Francis "Franc" Lee: He's the president and CEO of Flowood, Mississippi-based lender First Tower, LLC.
Robert "Bob" Luddy: He's president of CativeAire Systems Inc. in Raleigh, North Carolina. 
Hugh Maclellan: He's the executive chairman of Chattanooga, Tennessee's Maclellan Foundation, which make grants to Christian causes.
Cecil O'Brate: He's the CEO of Garden City, Kansas-based Palmer Manufacturing & Tank.
Verl Purdy: He's the chairman and CEO of Charlotte, North Carolina-based AGDATA Inc.
Tom Rastin: He's a director and vice chairman of the Mount Vernon, Ohio-based Ariel Foundation, started by his wife, Karen Buchwald Wright, the CEO of Ariel Corporation. Rastin is the company's vice president of engineering, sales, and marketing.
George Records: A member of the Hoover Institution's board of overseers, Records is the retired chairman of Oklahoma City's Midland Group.
Robert Rowling: Ranking No. 93 on the Forbes 400 with an estimated fortune of $4.9 billion, Rowling is the cofounder of TRT Holdings, which owns Gold's Gym and Omni Hotels.
John Schnatter: He's the founder and CEO of Papa John's International.
Tina and Craig Snider: They are the children of Ed Snider, a founding contributor of the Ayn Rand Institute and chairman of Comcast Spectacor, a sports and entertainment company that owns the Philadelphia Flyers.
Dian Stai: Based in Texas, Stai cofounded Owen Healthcare Inc. with her late husband. She's a top conservative donor who gave $125,000 to the pro-Mitt Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future during the 2012 election cycle.
Jim Stephenson: He's the president and CEO of Georgia-based Yancey Bros. Co., "which provides Caterpillar, AGCO, and Blue Bird Bus Co. products and services throughout the state of Georgia." Stephenson is also an Americans for Prosperity board member.
Jim Von Ehr: He's the CEO and founder of Richardson, Texas-based Zyvex Labs.
Debra Waller: Since 2001, she's been the chairman and CEO of Jockey International Inc. 
Lew Ward: He's the founder of Oklahoma-based Ward Petroleum Corporation.
Dick Weiss: He's the Core Equity senior portfolio manager at Wells Capital Management.
Karen Wright: She's the founder and CEO of the Ariel Foundation, a private philanthropy group based in Mount Vernon, Ohio. She's also CEO of the Ariel Corporation, a natural gas compression company.
*Mother Jones was unable to confirm the identities of some donors on the list, including Steve Clark, Paul Foster, George Gibbs, George Jenkins, Jerry Hayden, Kent McCarthy, Andrew Miller, Ted Saunders, Tom Smith, Jaime Snider, and Dean Williams.
"PLAYERS"
Charles Koch: He's the chairman and CEO of Koch Industries.
David Koch: He's Koch Industries' executive vice president and a board member.
Michael Lanzara: A former director for special projects at Koch Companies Public Sector, Lanzara now works for Freedom Partners.
Steve Feilmeier: He's chief financial officer and executive vice president of Koch Industries.
Kevin Gentry: A vice president at Koch Companies Public Sector, Gentry is the Koch brothers' top fundraiser. He also serves on the board of Freedom Partners.
Jeff Noble: A former senior development associate at Koch Companies Public Sector, Noble currently works for Freedom Partners.
Tim Phillips: He's the president of Americans for Prosperity, the political advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers and Richard Fink.
Chris Fink: He's Americans for Prosperity's vice president of development and the son of Richard Fink.
Teresa Oelke: She's Americans for Prosperity's vice president for state operations.
David Fladeboe: He's the state director for Americans for Prosperity-Wisconsin.
Brett Hinkey: A former senior development associate at Koch Companies Public Sector, Hinkey now works for Freedom Partners.
Daniel Garza: He's the executive director of the Libre Initiative, a Koch-funded nonprofit focused on Hispanic outreach.
Chase Koch: He's Charles' son and the president of Koch Fertilizer.
Richard Fink: He's the chairman and CEO of Koch Companies Public Sector and a board member of Koch Industries. A founder of the Mercatus Center and Americans for Prosperity, Fink is the Koch' top strategist and political adviser.
Ryan Stowers: He's the director for higher education at the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
Brian Hooks: He's the executive director and chief operating officer of the Mercatus Center.
Marc Short: Short heads Freedom Partners, the centerpiece of the Koch brothers' political operation. Short is a former chief of staff of the House Republican Conference.
Scott Hagerstrom: He's the state director of Americans for Prosperity-Michigan.
Jennifer Stefano: She's the state director for Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania.
Tommy Von der Heydt: He's a former regional development officer for Americans for Prosperity. 
Corey Lewandowski: He's the East Coast regional director for Americans for Prosperity.
Slade O'Brien: He's state director of Americans for Prosperity-Florida.
John Hardin: He's a program manager at the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
Michael Palmer: He is the president of i360, which bills itself as the "leading data and technology resource for the pro-free-market political and advocacy community." Palmer's firm has worked closely with the Kochs' voter microtargeting operation, Themis.
Derek Johnson: He's a program officer for higher education at the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
Nathan Nascimento: He's an employee of Freedom Partners.
James Davis: He's the vice president of strategic communications at Freedom Partners.
Luke Hilgemann: He's Americans for Prosperity's chief operating officer.

Andy Kroll

Reporter

Andy Kroll is a reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips and insights at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. Follow him on Twitter here. RSS | Twitter

Daniel Schulman

Senior Editor

Daniel Schulman is Mother Jones' Washington-based senior editor. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Email him at dschulman (at) motherjones.com. RSS | Twitter

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Former CIA director: In order to spy on domestic dissidents, just call them terrorists 5FEB14

THIS is not what democracy looks like. Sadly IT is what America looks like. From the ACLU.....
 

By Kade Crockford, Director, ACLU of Massachusetts Technology for Liberty Project at 5:01pm

This was originally posted on Privacy SOS.
Back in 2012, the ACLU of Massachusetts published a report called 'Policing Dissent', exposing the Boston Police Department's 'red squad' surveillance operations, directed at antiwar and economic justice organizers. Among thedocuments we obtained through a public records lawsuit were so-called 'intelligence reports' from the Boston police fusion center, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC). These documents shocked the public. In files labeled "HOMESEC-DOMESTIC", "GROUPS-CIVIL DISTURBANCE", and "GROUPS-EXTREMISTS",  detectives described the entirely peaceful activities of groups and individuals ranging from Veterans for Peace and CodePink to Howard Zinn and a former city council member.
While the BPD files didn't explicitly call these non-violent activists 'terrorists', detectives working at a so-called 'counterterrorism fusion center' came about as close as they could get to doing so without spelling out the T word in black and white. But it's no secret that other law enforcement agencies jumped that shark long ago. In recent years, undercover informants have infiltrated antiwar movements targeted as "domestic terrorists". While the past decade's terror wars have given local, state, and federal law enforcement seemingly endless funds to pursue activists simply for challenging government policy, the US government's conflation of peaceful dissent with terrorism has a long history in the United States, dating back at least to the 1970s.
Betty Medsger's new book on the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI, "The Burglary", contains some relevant and largely suppressed history. In the wake of the Media, PA burglary and the subsequent newspaper articles exposing J. Edgar Hoover's red squad surveillance programs, some CIA officers began to voice dissent internally about their own agency's troubling domestic operations, codenamed MHCHAOS. In 1972, Medsger writes, CIA director Richard Helms

called his top aides together and said he was adamant that MHCHAOS would not be "stopped simply because some members of the organization [the CIA] do not like this activity." He made changes in order to protect the program more now that the [dissident officers were] so determined to have it end. To the maximum extent possible, within the agency, the program and the agent then in charge of it, Richard Ober, would be identified with terrorism and not with American dissidents. The massive program would in fact have the same functions it always had, including the monitoring and destruction of the more than five hundred alternative newspapers staffs it had under surveillance. (At the same time, the FBI also monitored alternative and campus newspapers, sometimes suppressing them.)

Henceforth, Colby wrote in a memorandum after that meeting, the label "international terrorist" would replace "political dissident" as the target of the CIA's illegal domestic operations. As part of this image transformation, Helms did what Hoover had done many times—and would do again in April 1971 to protect COINTELPRO when he thought it was about to be revealed—to minimize the possibility that secret operations would be exposed. Helms ended MHCHAOS in name, but continued it in reality with a new name: International Terrorism Group. It would be much easier for people, including people within the CIA, to accept the domestic operations if they thought they were aimed primarily at stopping terrorism rather than at stopping dissent.

It's common to hear law enforcement officials describe non-violent activists as terrorists today. History suggests we can thank former CIA director Richard Helms for that, at least in part. Years after his agency's assassinations, anti-dissent programs, antidemocratic coups, and other dirty tricks were exposed to the public in congressional hearings during the 1970s, Helms reportedly said that all of it was "just a congressional firestorm over nothing," Medsger writes.
The CIA's domestic operations offices are currently based in Denver, Colorado. Per an executive order signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, the CIA is allowed to collect information about Americans. The details of the order are classified, so we can't be sure, but it's a safe bet to assume that if the agency wants to spy on American dissidents, it just calls them Terrorists.
This was originally posted on Privacy SOS.
 https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/former-cia-director-order-spy-domestic-dissidents-just-call-them-terrorists

The loss of freedom in enforcing new rules for food stamps & An argument about regulation & 50 billionaires received $11.3 million in farm welfare, could get more in new farm bill 5&4FEB14 & 7NOV13

THIS is an insightful piece on the cuts to SNAP (food stamps) in the Farm Bill passed on Tuesday 4FEB14 outlining not only the harm that is being done to the 6th of our population dependent on SNAP, but the new humiliation and degradation they will suffer when applying for the program, and societies willingness to believe the least among us are the worst among us. I wish people in this Christian nation had a more charitable, Christian attitude about the social safety net and those who benefit from it. I also wish people would open their ears and eyes and realize that our nation's corporate welfare policies are more corrupt, more unjust and not subject to review and justification because of a well managed propaganda campaign funded by corporate America and the rich and powerful who feel they are entitled to tax cuts and subsidies at the expense of the rest of us. This is actually a "negative income tax" for the 1%. Austerity economics will be the destruction of the middle class and (literally) the death of some of our most needy fellow Americans. This is not what a Christian nation should look like. From the Washington Post and Bleeding Heart Libertarians....

Under the new farm bill:

USDA will need to ensure that illegal immigrants, lottery winners, college students and the dead cannot receive food stamps and that people cannot collect benefits in multiple states.

I’m sure that some of those exclusions (lottery winners, the dead) will seem unobjectionable to many readers, and the others (college students, illegal immigrants) will seem unobjectionable to a smaller subset of readers. However, in an insightful post, Jacob Levy argues that freedom-loving people should be skeptical of the new exclusions — even if they are hostile to food stamps in the first place:

A lot of people a lot of the time underestimate how burdensome, onerous, and intrusive complicated bureaucratic rules and regulations are. . . .
I think this is a case in which our biases between groups we like and groups we don’t is especially strong. We are mainly honest competent adults trying our best to do what we’re supposed to do, and they keep getting in our way with these insulting burdensome rules; they don’t take seriously the cost to our time and energy of having to prove compliance constantly, both by paperwork and by subordination to the administrative officials who monitor all of us in order to detect wrongdoing by a tiny few. You are basically suspect characters to begin with, and if we let you get away with it you’d all be running wild, and the other ways you were going to spend your time we don’t really like anyways, and we’re dubious enough about you that monitoring you closely is a good idea anyway even if some of you aren’t technically violating the rules, and the moral cost of even one of you getting away with this terrible thing is so great that we simply have to prevent it, and anyway what are you complaining about, if you obey the rules like you supposed to, there’s no harm to you. . . .
And so poor people will be subjected to another set of forms, another set of inspections, another set of surveillance and monitoring, another set of insults, another risk of false findings of guilt, for trivial financial savings. Someone gets to posture as having zero tolerance for some unacceptable outcome; that’s what the zero tolerance policies are for. And life for a sixth of the country’s population gets worse, more unfree, more subject to the burdens and intrusions of micromanaging regulation.

It’s worth reading the whole thing.
Levy also observes that this is another good reason for Milton Friedman’s proposal that we replace our ad hoc poverty programs with a “negative income tax,” which would just give the poor money (using our existing bureaucratic apparatus) and let them to decide what to do with it.

Will Baude is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School, where he teaches constitutional law and federal courts. His recent articles include Rethinking the Federal Eminent Domain Power, (Yale Law Journal, 2013), and Beyond DOMA: State Choice of Law in Federal Statutes, (Stanford Law Review, 2012). You can follow him on Twitter as @crescat.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/05/the-loss-of-freedom-in-enforcing-new-rules-for-food-stamps/?wprss=rss_national&clsrd 

An argument about regulation

By Jacob T. Levy On February 4, 2014

A lot of people a lot of the time underestimate how burdensome, onerous, and intrusive complicated bureaucratic rules and regulations are. They casually treat the only cost of a rule as the cost to bad people of not doing whatever the rule prohibits, which isn’t a cost at all. But in order to have effect, rules have to be enforced; efforts have to be made to detect violations and monitor performance on an ongoing basis. This is a burden on the whole class subject to the rule, not only those who were going to break it. They have to devote themselves, at some margin, not to the thing they’re actually trying to do, but to proving that they’re not doing it in the prohibited way. They have to prove it through paperwork, which either they’re inexpert in compared to the official reviewing it or they have to (expensively) hire professionals to handle; and even people who had no intention of violating the underlying rule are put in perpetual jeopardy of wrongdoing-by-paperwork-mistake. They have to prove it in person to the various spot inspectors, administrative auditors, and other bureaucrats put in charge of monitoring and detection; and even people who had no intention of violating the underlying rule are made to feel like perpetual suspects or distrusted children instead of honest trustworthy adults.
I think that everyone recognizes this about themselves and groups to which they’re sympathetic. Politically we associate this kind of talk with business owners and managers complaining about government regulation, and that’s not a class to which academics are (as an overall pattern) especially warmly inclined– but goodness knows that academics understand these dynamics when it comes to the administrative micromanagement of our own professional lives. Time that we should be spending researching or teaching is instead spent asking for permission to do so, by humbly seeking to prove ourselves innocent of all sorts of potential malfeasance. No, I didn’t buy a glass of wine with that grant money. No, I haven’t given an in-class exam during the two weeks before finals. No, my study of Plato does not involve potential harm to human subjects or laboratory animals. No, I haven’t made up publications to include on my CV for my performance review. Yes, here’s the proof in triplicate.
I think this is a case in which our biases between groups we like and groups we don’t is especially strong. We are mainly honest competent adults trying our best to do what we’re supposed to do, and they keep getting in our way with these insulting burdensome rules; they don’t take seriously the cost to our time and energy of having to prove compliance constantly, both by paperwork and by subordination to the administrative officials who monitor all of us in order to detect wrongdoing by a tiny few. You are basically suspect characters to begin with, and if we let you get away with it you’d all be running wild, and the other ways you were going to spend your time we don’t really like anyways, and we’re dubious enough about you that monitoring you closely is a good idea anyway even if some of you aren’t technically violating the rules, and the moral cost of even one of you getting away with this terrible thing is so great that we simply have to prevent it, and anyway what are you complaining about, if you obey the rules like you supposed to, there’s no harm to you.
The point being, the new farm bill:

USDA will need to ensure that illegal immigrants, lottery winners, college students and the dead cannot receive food stamps and that people cannot collect benefits in multiple states.

Let’s start with the easy case: lottery winners. Let’s be wildly implausibly generous and say that there are five big-money winners per state per week. (Not all states offer lotteries, some lotteries are combined across states, some states offer multiple games, and not all lotteries pay out every week; but only “big money,” since presumably no one thinks that the $10 or $100 payout should affect eligibility.) 250 per week; about 12,000 per year. Say that half of those people were on food stamps to begin with (lottery players are disproportionately poor). Say that a third of those winners were inclined to cheat and keep drawing food stamps for which they’re no longer income-eligible, and to keep doing so for the whole year until their income is assessed again; 2000 would-be cheaters. Food stamps for a family of four max out at about $600 per month. So we’re looking at something like $14 million per year total in fraud prevented, if we can manage to detect 2000 would-be cheaters from a population of 47 million food stamp recipients.
Even the financial costs of any detection and enforcement mechanism serious enough to even try to get these false negatives (people who aren’t caught and thrown out of SNAP) down to 0 will be high; it wouldn’t surprise me for those costs alone to exceed $14 million (and I don’t for a second believe there will be $14 million in savings). As conservatives know when it comes to business, environmental, and health regulation, trying to turn one-in-20,000 events to 0-in-20,000 events is hard and expensive and complicated. Moreover (and as they also know) it generates errors in the other direction. “Zero-tolerance” policies are a plague on the American political and legal climate right now. The effort to make sure that no American child ever brings a narcotic or firearm to school is doomed to fail to begin with, and also results in stupid expulsions of children carrying aspirin or squirt guns. What we have here isn’t a new substantive rule (big-money lottery winners are already income-inelgiible for SNAP) but a zero-tolerance mindset applied to the existing rule, an effort to move from trivially-few to zero offenses; and innocent people will get caught in the net. (Something everyone could stand to remember: the lower frequency an offense is, the worse the ratio is likely to be between the false negatives you’re trying to prevent and the false positives you’re going to create.)
On top of all that: the process of proving one’s innocence all the time is a demoralizing, degrading one that subjects you to inspection, supervision, paperwork, and the will and whim of the enforcers. How can states ensure that no one is collecting food stamps for a dead household member? The answer has to involve paperwork and bureaucratic supervision or in-person monitoring by social workers or, in all likelihood, both. Illegal immigrants? Well, by definition they already lead a life of evading some kinds of bureaucratic surveillance. There’s no way to squeeze them our of the system harder without squeezing everyone else, too. (In a related vein, think of the proposals for drug testing as a condition of receiving welfare. That’s a lot of degradation to put a lot of non-drug-using people through for the sake, not of saving money (the cost of enforcement in this case is clearly higher than the money saved), but for the sake of a zero-tolerance regulatory insistence about welfare recipients not using drugs.)
And so poor people will be subjected to another set of forms, another set of inspections, another set of surveillance and monitoring, another set of insults, another risk of false findings of guilt, for trivial financial savings. Someone gets to posture as having zero tolerance for some unacceptable outcome; that’s what the zero tolerance policies are for. And life for a sixth of the country’s population gets worse, more unfree, more subject to the burdens and intrusions of micromanaging regulation.
This kind of thing is, famously, among Milton Friedman’s reasons for advocating a negative income tax in place of the complex array of partial-coverage welfare policies in America. (It’s also among the reasons called upon today by supporters of basic income guarantees.) I think Friedman understood, not only that regulations are administratively expensive to enforce, but that they’re also sources of unfreedom for the many people who don’t violate them. And the effort to make sure that income support only ever goes to the deserving poor however conceived, to regulate their behavior to stop them from doing whatever it is the undeserving do, is regulation, and requires the same costs, sacrifices, and burdens regulation always requires. The bureaucratic state that governs poor people (or would-be immigrants) is the same bureaucratic state that governs taxpayers and businesses and people holding bank accounts and people travelling in airplanes and so on. The arguments about regulation’s costs for the latter groups are good arguments! But they’re arguments that it’s wicked to selectively forget when it comes to regulating the former groups.
A few of our readers here will say: well, food stamps are already theft, so the people receiving them are already not innocent, so they have nothing to complain about. I’m not here defending the existence of food stamps (though neither are the Republicans making the principled argument against them.) For reasons I discussed here, I think that once states exist they just do act redistributively and that there’s sound responsible reason for them to do so in a way that staves off disastrous material deprivation (e.g. hunger). The new food stamp regulations tilt me some little bit closer toward the negative income tax/ basic income guarantee strategies for how that should be organized. For those who don’t share my views about this, I’ll say: you probably also oppose the existence of public schools. I’ll bet that you additionally recognize the stupidity, indignity, costliness, and loss of freedom involved in the wave of zero-tolerance regulations within them. If so, extend the thought here: as long as the state is doing this thing, it ought to do so in a way that is more rather than less compatible with Hayek’s rule of law, with freedom from supervision and surveillance by the bureaucracy, with the ability to get on with living their lives rather than having to waste them proving their innocence.
Update:
Since a couple of people have pointed this out in this context, I’ll link it here: Milton Friedman argues with William F. Buckley on these questions.
And one more:
This is neither an argument against regulation as such, nor limited to cases of state regulation. Bureaucratization is part of the iron cage and we’re stuck with it, across a variety of institutional settings. But there are very important questions of degree when it comes to monitoring, compliance, and enforcement, and costs associated with the whole enterprise that don’t go away when shifting from a regulated class one likes to a regulated class one doesn’t…
http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2014/02/an-argument-about-regulation/

50 billionaires received $11.3 million in farm welfare, could get more in new farm bill

by Joan McCarter

This is not Paul Allen.

Gee, where could we come up with some of the money need to replace that food stamp funding that was lost this week? Maybe from these people who are all collecting farm subsidies?

• Paul Allen (Net worth: $15.8 billion)
  Co-founder of Microsoft
• Charles Ergen (Net worth: $12.5 billion)
  Co-founder of DISH Network
• Philip Anschutz (Net worth: $10 billion)
  Owner of Anschutz Entertainment Group and co-founder of Major League Soccer
• Leonard Lauder (Net worth: $7.6 billion)
  Son of Estee Lauder and former CEO of the Estee Lauder Companies Inc.
• Richard DeVos (Net worth: $6.8 billion)
  Co-founder of Amway and Republican candidate for governor of Michigan in 2006
• Jim Kennedy (Net worth: $6.7 billion)
  Chairman of Cox Enterprises
• S. Truett Cathy (Net worth: $6 billion)
  Founder of Chick-fil-A [...]

And many, many more. That's a list composed by the Environmental Working Group, using their database of farm subsidy recipients compared to Forbes 400 list of the country's richest people. Between 1995 and 2012, these 50 people—who have have a collective net worth of $316 billion—received $11.3 million in farm subsidy payments. They've probably have even received more in crop insurance payments, but we don't know because the law doesn't allow prohibits the disclosure of the identities of crop insurance policyholders.
While a congressional conference committee meets to decide if they're going to cut $40 billion (House bill) or $10 billion (Senate bill) from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, they are probably going to give billionaires even more!

[P]roposed changes adopted in both the House and Senate versions of the bill will likely allow these billionaires to bank millions more in premium subsidies. Both bills would shift subsidies from programs currently subject to means testing to the more generous crop insurance program. Unlike traditional farm subsidies, crop insurance premium subsidies are not currently subject to means testing, payment limits or conservation requirements. In 2008, Congress created a means test that was designed to deny some subsidies to individuals with annual off-farm income of more than $500,000. The year before, Bloomberg News published a report highlighting some of the billionaires who had been receiving subsidies. But, lawmakers specifically declined to apply it to crop insurance, which has become the primary government support for farm business income.

The system is already skewed for, of course, the largest one percent of farm businesses. They received about $227,000 a year in crop insurance premium support in 2011, according to EWG's analysis from USDA data. Meanwhile, the bottom 80 percent of farmers received only about $5,000 apiece. There is no reason on earth taxpayers should be subsidizing what are already nothing more than tax write-offs for the nation's wealthiest people. And we particularly should not be subsidizing them when millions are in danger of going hungry because the austerity fetishists in Congress think they're getting too much food.

Originally posted to Joan McCarter on Thu Nov 07, 2013 at 09:09 AM PST.

Also republished by Daily Kos. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/07/1253828/-50-billionaires-received-11-3-million-in-farm-welfare-could-get-more-in-new-farm-bill?detail=email 

Требуйте, чтобы Белый Сфера падает свой ​​план, чтобы отобразить косаток в Сочи 2014 21JAN & 4FEB14

 
Два диких косаток были захвачены охотников, и будет отображаться на Олимпиаде в Сочи.
Подпишите петицию в Белый сфере

Петиция текст:

Не показывать диких косаток - выпустить их обратно в океан, где они принадлежат "!
http://action.sumofus.org/a/sochi-orca-whales/3/2/?rd=1&sub=fwd&t=1&referring_akid=3803.216835.3B690B 
 
Так трогательно , но не удивительно, учитывая Россия Путина не заботится о правах человека, почему они заботятся о правах животных и окружающей среды ? Присоединяйтесь сотни тысяч и подписать петицию, призывающую на белом сфере отменить свои планы просмотров эти Orcas и вместо возвращают их к себе домой. До сих пор более 450 000 подписали . Держите эту петицию в живых, и, возможно, МОК будет осудить дельфинарий и правительство России должны будут предотвратить его открытия и освободить Orcas .....Удивительный - уже более 450 тысяч человек подписали нашу петицию призывая белый шар не отображать диких косаток на Олимпиаде в Сочи ! Нажмите сюда, чтобы присоединиться к ним сейчас .- ХаннаДва диких косаток были захвачены в плен российскими охотниками , и находятся на пути , который будет отображаться для человеческого развлечений в дельфинарии в Сочи зимних Олимпийских игр .Белый Сфера , русская компания, которая за это, просто ищет , чтобы сделать быстрый самец от туристов , которые будут по убыванию на Сочи во время Игр . Это не мог заботиться меньше , что косатки были украдены из их океана дома.Млекопитающие , которые могут вырасти до 22ft долгой и плавать 100 миль в день , устанавливаются получать в «маленькой бетонный резервуар " после 4614 -мильной полета с Дальнего Востока России . Эксперты животных говорят, что транспортировать косаток вызывает у них стресс, что держать их в неволе сокращает их жизнь и может даже превратить их опасно " психотическое " .Расскажи белый шар не показывать диких косаток для развлечения, и освободить их обратно в океан , где они принадлежат .Это не первый раз , что к Олимпиаде в Сочи встретился споры. За 400 тысяч из нас уже ходатайствовал Coca Cola , в качестве спонсора зимних Олимпийских игр , высказаться по жестоких анти-гей законов России.В центре внимания находится теперь на президента России Владимира Путина и Международного олимпийского комитета - ни один из которых может позволить себе больше смущения. Путин ставит свою личную репутацию на линии , принимая у себя Олимпиаду в Сочи , но он этого не сделал большую работу по ним до сих пор . Если мы обращаем внимание на презренного поведения белый шар теперь , всего за 2 недели до начала Игр , есть больше шансов, что Путин и МОК будет принимать уведомления и что мы выиграем это .Требуйте, чтобы Белый Сфера падает свой ​​план , чтобы отобразить косаток , и вернуть их в дикую природу .Спасибо за все, что вы делаете ,Ханна , а остальные из нас в SumOfUs.org

**********Дополнительная информация:Глюк " Blackfish ' : ? Ли план летать косаток в Сочи к Олимпиаде увязнуть в Москве , Сырье история , 16 январяКосатки жестоко попал в сеть, охотников будут выставлены на обозрение в России к Олимпиаде в Сочи , Зеркало , 12 январяSumOfUs является всемирное движение людей , как вы, работая вместе , чтобы держать корпорации ответственность за свои действия и создать новую , устойчивый путь для нашей глобальной экономики .

Demand that White Sphere drops its plan to display the orcas at Sochi 2014 21JAN & 4FEB14

 
SO pathetic, but not surprising, considering the putin's Russia doesn't care about human rights, why would they care about animal rights and the environment? Join hundreds of thousands and sign the petition calling on white sphere to cancel their plans to display these Orcas and instead return them to their home. So far over 450,000 have signed. Keep this petition alive, and maybe the IOC will condemn the dolphinarium and the Russian government will have to prevent it from opening and free the Orcas.....
Amazing -- already over 450,000 people have signed our petition urging White Sphere not to display wild orcas at the Sochi Olympics! Click here to join them now.
-Hanna
Two wild orcas have been captured by Russian hunters, and are on their way to be displayed for human entertainment in a dolphinarium at the Sochi Winter Olympics.
White Sphere, the Russian company behind this, is just looking to make a fast buck from the tourists who will be descending on to Sochi during the Games. It couldn't care less that the orcas were stolen from their ocean home.
The mammals, which can grow up to 22ft long and swim 100 miles a day, are set to be kept in a “small concrete tank” after a 4,614-mile flight from the far east of Russia. Animal experts say that transporting orcas causes them stress, that keeping them in ­captivity shortens their life and can even turn them dangerously “psychotic”.
Tell White Sphere not to display the wild orcas for entertainment, and release them back into the ocean where they belong.
This isn’t the first time that the Sochi Winter Olympics has met controversy. Over 400,000 of us have already petitioned Coca Cola, as a sponsor of the Winter Olympics, to speak out on Russia’s brutal anti-gay laws.
The spotlight is now on Russian President Putin and the International Olympic Committee -- neither of whom can afford more embarrassment. Putin is putting his personal reputation on the line by hosting the Sochi Olympics, but he hasn’t done a great job of it so far. If we draw attention to White Sphere’s despicable behaviour now, just 2 weeks before the Games begin, there’s more chance that Putin and the IOC will take notice and that we win this.
Demand that White Sphere drops its plan to display the orcas, and return them to the wild.
Thanks for all that you do,
Hanna, and the rest of us at SumOfUs.org

**********
More information:
‘Blackfish’ glitch: Did plan to fly orcas to Sochi for the Olympics get caught up in Moscow?, Raw Story, 16 January
Killer whales cruelly snared by hunters will be put on display at Russia's Sochi Winter Olympics, Mirror, 12 January
SumOfUs is a worldwide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy.

Первый узник совести Сочи 2014 3FEB14

РОССИЯ имеет свой первый узник совести в Сочи зимних Олимпийских игр. Эти игры напоминают мне о Берлин летних Олимпийских игр Гитлера в 1936 году и в Пекине летних Олимпийских игр 2008 года. Жестокие, недемократические, репрессивные, регрессивные, авторитарные правительства не имеют ничего напоминающего истинный дух Олимпийских игр и Международный олимпийский комитет должен рассмотреть ситуацию с правами человека выше всего на свете, до предоставления любой стране честь принимать игры. Это от Amnesty International ....
 
Евгений Vitishko был арестован 3 февраля в Туапсе, части района Сочи , где игры пройдут . © Amnesty InternationalПо Эмиля Affolter , пресс-атташе в Amnesty International Нидерландов, в настоящее время в СочиБуквально за пару дней до зимних Олимпийских игр начнется в Сочи , активист был арестован . К сожалению, такие аресты не являются чем-то необычным в России , но сроки этого конкретного ареста отправлен сковывающий сообщение через российского гражданского общества .Эколог Евгений Vitishko планировал поехать в Сочи сегодня, но был остановлен полицией , осужден за "мелкое хулиганство" и приговорен к 15 суткам административного ареста . Его преступление ? По мнению российских властей он проклял , стоя на автобусной остановке .Когда я услышал эту новость об аресте Vitishko , я был в середине разговора с Семеном Симонов . Адвокат правозащитной организации Мемориал в Сочи , он защищает права трудящихся-мигрантов.Многие из людей, вовлеченных в строительство в Сочи олимпийских стадионов и отелей не были оплачены за их напряженную работу . После того, как строительство закончилось , многие из них были вынуждены покинуть Россию , а другие были насильно депортированы . Симонов выступил перед членами Международного олимпийского комитета ( МОК ) около четырех месяцев назад по поводу нарушений прав трудящихся-мигрантов и вручил делегации МОК список с 700 имен людей , чьи права были грубо нарушены . С тех пор , Симонов не писали МОК. Только дюжина людей в списке были выплачены .Симонов также рассказал о том, как трудно это должно организовывать демонстрации в Сочи даже вне контекста Олимпийских игр." Вы спрашиваете, [ для ] одобрение для демонстрации ( в соответствии с требованиями российского законодательства ) , за которым следует приглашение к мэрии , где местные власти пытаются убедить вас в несостоявшемся ваше мероприятие . Если это не работает, это нередко оказывается, что местная школа организует праздник или спортивный день на этой конкретной даты и времени в том самом месте. Тогдадругое место для протеста предлагается властями . И это только, случается, парк на окраине города, где вы вряд ли может быть слышали или видели никем " .Вместо того, чтобы в Сочи во время зимних Олимпийских игр , Vitishko будет проводить в ближайшие 15 дней под административным арестом и Сочи 2014 появился первый узником совести.В течение этих 15 дней он не может говорить о экологического ущерба, причиненного во время построений олимпийской инфраструктуры или других вопросов, которые не вписываются в олимпийском шоу Путина. Случай Vitishko является еще одним ярким примером преследования гражданского общества активизма в преддверии Олимпиады. Это простой и ужасающая сообщение от российских властей к гражданскому обществу страны : Если вы не попали в линии , вы будете рядом .Примите меры :Экологический активист задержан за ругань : Евгений Vitishko ( срочные действия , 3 февраля 2014 г.)Подробнее :Россия : Другой эколог под стражей в качестве его НПО вынуждены отказаться запуск отчета Сочи ( Новости история , 4 февраля 2014 г.)Россия : Гражданский активист арестован впереди начала Олимпиады в Сочи ( Новости история , 3 февраля 2014 г.)Активисты нагревали наши сердца в ужасно холодной Москве ( Блог , 3 февраля 2014 г.)Сотни тысяч петиций Путина , чтобы положить конец репрессиям в России ( Новости история , 31 января 2014 г.)http://livewire.amnesty.org/2014/02/04/the-first-prisoner-of-conscience-of-sochi2014/

The first prisoner of conscience of Sochi2014 3FEB14

RUSSIA has it's first prisoner of conscience of the Sochi Olympic Winter Games. These games remind me of hitler's Berlin Summer Olympic Games in 1936 and the Beijing Summer Olympic Games of 2008. Brutal, undemocratic, repressive, regressive, authoritarian governments have nothing resembling the true spirit of the Olympic games and the International Olympic Committee should consider the human rights record above anything else before granting any country the honor of hosting the games. This from Amnesty International....

Yevgeny Vitishko was arrested on 3 February in Tuapse, part of the Sochi area where the Games will take place. © Amnesty International

By Emile Affolter, Press Officer at Amnesty International Netherlands, currently in Sochi
Just a couple of days before the Winter Olympic Games start in Sochi, an activist was arrested. Sadly, such arrests are not unusual in Russia, but the timing of this particular arrest sent a chilling message across Russian civil society.
The environmentalist Yevgeny Vitishko was planning on traveling to Sochi today but was stopped by police, convicted of “petty hooliganism” and sentenced to 15 days in administrative detention. His crime? According to Russian authorities he cursed while standing at a bus stop.
When I heard the news about Vitishko’s arrest I was in the middle of a conversation with Semyon Simonov. A lawyer for the human rights organization Memorial in Sochi, he defends the rights of migrant workers.
Many of the people involved in the construction of the Sochi Olympic stadiums and hotels have not been paid for their hard work. After the construction ended, many of them were pressured to leave Russia, while others were forcibly deported. Simonov spoke to members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) about four months ago about the violations of migrant workers’ rights and handed the IOC delegation a list with 700 names of people whose rights were seriously violated. Since then, Simonov has not been contacted by the IOC. Only a dozen of the people on the list have been paid.
Simonov also spoke about how hard is it to organize demonstrations in Sochi even outside the context of the Olympic Games.
“You ask [for] an approval for a demonstration (as required by Russian law), that is followed by an invitation to the mayor’s office, where the local authorities try to persuade you into calling off your event. If that does not work it quite often turns out that a local school is organizing a festivity or sports day on that specific date and time at that very location. Then a different location for the protest is proposed by the authorities. And it just happens to be a park on the outskirts of the town, where you can hardly be heard or seen by anyone.”
Instead of being in Sochi during the Winter Olympics, Vitishko will be spending the next 15 days in administrative detention and Sochi2014 has its first prisoner of conscience.
During these 15 days he cannot talk about the environmental damage caused by during the constructions of the Olympic infrastructure or other issues that don’t fit into Putin’s Olympic show. Vitishko’s case is another clear example of the harassment against civil society activism in the run-up to the Olympics. It’s a simple and horrifying message from the Russian authorities to the country’s civil society: If you don’t fall in line, you will be next.
Take action:
Environmental activist detained for swearing: Yevgeny Vitishko (Urgent action, 3 February 2014)
Read more: 
Russia: Another environmentalist in custody as his NGO forced to scrap Sochi report launch (News story, 4 February 2014)
Russia: Civil society activist arrested ahead of start of Sochi Olympics (News story, 3 February 2014)
Activists warmed our hearts in a frightfully cold Moscow (Blog, 3 February 2014)
Hundreds of thousands petition Putin to end repression in Russia (News story, 31 January 2014)
http://livewire.amnesty.org/2014/02/04/the-first-prisoner-of-conscience-of-sochi2014/

BREAKING NEWS: Victory for Idaho Wolves 27JAN14

JUST a few weeks ago I posted an appeal and call to action from EarthJustice to stop the kill off of two wolf packs in Idaho. EarthJustice and the wolves won in Federal Court thanks to all who donated, good lawyers and good science. Here's the update and to see the original post or other post on wolves in peril and videos of wolves just search for wolves on this blog.....

We just had a huge victory for Idaho wolves! Thanks to the support of people like you, Earthjustice went to court to stop Idaho from exterminating the Golden and Monumental wolf packs in central Idaho’s Frank Church—River of No Return Wilderness. And we won! The Idaho Department of Fish and Game announced that it is halting its wolf extermination program as of today. This will stop the wolf killings and restore the natural balance between predator and prey in the Idaho wilderness area. This fight in Idaho is just the latest battle in our efforts to protect wolves across the country. Our work is far from over. We are still fighting to stop the brutal wolf killings in Wyoming, oppose the elimination of Endangered Species Act protections for wolves across nearly the entire United States, and secure laws governing wolf management that will ensure real wolf recovery. And none of this work is possible without you! Thank you for continuing to stand by us as we fight to protect our wildlife and our wildlands. Sincerely, Tim Preso Managing Attorney Northern Rockies Office

©2014 Earthjustice | 50 California Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94111 | 415-217-2000 | info@earthjustice.org

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Photo Credit:   A howling wolf in the snow. (Judilen / istockphoto)

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