Do You Realize You Sign Away Your Rights to Trial By Jury on a Regular Basis?

Approximately one year ago I blogged about Michael Stamenson - Merrill Lynch's number one salesman, who ended up pushing his county into bankruptcy because of his reckless investment advice - in an effort to illuminate how Binding Mandatory Arbitration heavily favors corporations, by taking away a customer or employee's right to a trial by jury or judge, and legally binds customers/employees into a one-sided, pre-emptive and non-consensual form of arbitration should they suffer the consequences of the corporation's product, service or employee.

The Supreme Court's approval of this method of solving corporate/customer disputes, gave banks and credit card companies their own system of "justice" where the corporation acts as judge and jury - the corporation picks the arbiter who will decide the outcome - in a private forum of the corporation's choice.

In other words, the consumer/employee blindly signs away his right to take legal action (mandatory binding arbitration clauses are hidden in the fine print, normally written with intent to obscure meaning), and this applies, even in the case of serious injury by a product, service, or, as in the case of Halliburton employee, Jamie Leigh Jones, who was brutally raped by several Halliburton employees over in Iraq, by employee. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt sums it up as the Supreme Court's "blind devotion to corporation arbitration schemes".

“A series of United States Supreme Court decisions have changed the meaning of the [Federal Arbitration] Act so that it now extends to disputes between parties of greatly disparate economic power, such as consumer disputes and employment disputes. As a result, a large and rapidly growing number of corporations are requiring millions of consumers and employees to give up their right to have disputes resolved by a judge or a jury, and instead submit their claims to binding arbitration.” -- (1)-S. 1782, Arbitration Fairness Act, Sec. 2 (1), 110th Cong. (2007)

It's impossible to escape the possible ramifications of this Supreme Court decision, which essentially wiped out corporate accountability. If you use credit cards, cell phones, own a house, have a job, have health insurance, have taken out a loan, rented a car, signed a contract with a nursing home, etc., you have agreed to what the National Association of Consumer Advocates call "take it or leave it" conditions. Overall, consumers lost 94 percent of the time.

The Arbitration Fairness Act of 2009, introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), will ensure that the decision to arbitrate be made voluntarily and after the dispute has arisen, so that corporations cannot manipulate the arbitration system in their favor.

The Arbitration Debate Trap How opponents of corporate accountability distort the debate on arbitration

Stop BMA coalition.

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Should We Control Anonymous Propaganda?

After all, it's always good to consider the source, but how can you consider the source when the source is anonymous or assuming a different identity?

The unique characteristics of Internet communications present new challenges to the issue of anonymity, the "concealing of one's identity while communicating, thus enabling the expression of political ideas, participation in the government process, membership in political associations, and the practice of religious belief without fear of government intimidation or public retaliation."

The Internet offers individuals with very little money or political power the vehicle to potentially reach large audiences and make a real impact, thus leveling the playing field. Although the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment guarantee free speech, that does not protect individuals with unpopular opinions from retaliation (loss of job, anonymous threats, etc.). Anonymity is often the only protection in many cases.

As is the case with all personal freedoms, anonymity on the Internet is often used to inflict harm...for example, posting an individual's private information, spreading false or damaging statements, etc. However if whatever is spread causes harm, liability and monetary damages may be awarded.

Proving "harm" is another story. First you must hire an attorney to file for a subpoena to serve upon the ISP in order to reveal the identify of the "defamer", who then has the right to file a "motion to quash." The burden of proof is on the person defamed, so he or sher must present "prima facie" evidence that the accused did inflict harm. The inconvenience and cost can be prohibitive, leaving most of us at the mercy of anonymous evildoers lurking amongst us.

Then, there is the propaganda mill. It's bad enough when we can the "who" behind the information designed to mislead or persuade us, but when the propagandist conceals his identity, the impact could be that much greater. Wikipedia is one example where the "anonymous" go to propagandize. However, as in the case of Wikipedia, most *wikis track the editor's ip address, so, it' fairly simple to see that much of the so-called anonymous editing is coming from Congress, the CIA, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

In addition, large corporations get in on the act: "Someone from Halliburton deleted key information from an entry on war crimes; someone from Diebold, an electronic-voting machine manufacturer, deleted sections of its entry about a lawsuit filed against it. Someone at Pepsi deleted information about health problems caused by the soft drink. Somebody at The New York Times deleted huge chunks of information from the entry on the Wall Street Journal." And of course, the CIA has been editing the entry on the Iraq war.

Fortunately, Wikiscanner and other similar tools allow us to search the millions of edits across the wiki spectrum so that we may consider the source. And, it's never been easier to do our own research for verification purposes.

The idea of government legislating against anonymous Internet posting, editing, etc. is unconstitutional and creates more problems than it solves. Enforcing it alone would be impossible and extraordinarily time consuming and costly. So, since we, the people have the tools to do our own research and check the sources of our information, anonymous propaganda is not all that troublesome . As for the other issues, it's the price we pay for living in a free society.

"Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical, minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights, and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society." -- 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission

The Changing Web and Copyright.

*In a nutshell, a wiki is a collection of collaborative Web pages that allow users to modify entries, thus, a wiki is constantly changing depending on who creates or revises the entries.

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We Must Eliminate Star Chamber Sessions

"Star Chamber" sessions - maybe not quite as extreme as pictured at left, however, the outcome is just as assured - have played a key role in this financial crisis as well as the Iraq war. This type of tribunal also wields its arbitrary power in our every day lives.

We, the people, as consumers and/or employees, are normally unaware that we have signed binding mandatory arbitration (BMA) clauses (a for-profit backroom process of settling disputes), that require us to give up our rights to sue the companies - and the right to a jury trial - we do business with, if these companies cheat or treat us unfairly. Essentially, consumers and employees are railroaded into arbitration. It's a "rigged game in which justice is dealt from a deck stacked against consumers."

Haliburton, and many large corporations force employees to sign this type of contract, and the credit card industry is notorious for trapping consumers into private arbitration.

Public Citizen, a national non-proift public interest organization found that big business is pushing pre-dispute BMA in an effort to substitute the "star chamber", whose sole purpose will the execution of the credit card company's functions, for the open trial justice we're guaranteed access to by the Constitution. This is a deliberate strategy, by big business interests, who are fully aware that the liability will always fall on the consumer.

So, barred from bringing claims to court, victims of abusive lending practices, abusive employers, abusive credit card companies etc., frequently find that their contracts require them to go through arbitration. Not only are these proceedings conducted in secrecy, with very limited evidence and scarce documentation, the victims also pay excessive costs only to receive results guaranteed to benefit the company who has engaged in abusive tactics.

It works much the same way in the legal industry. Negligent, unscrupulous and incompetent attorneys know they have legal consumers at their mercy. In many states, there is virtually no recourse for victimized legal consumers because as a 2006 American Bar Association survey found, out of 123,927 complaints, only 3.5% led to formal discipline and less than 1% resulted in disbarment. I happen to reside in one of the worst states for lawyer and judicial accountability and believe me when I tell you it takes a "Tom Capano" act to get disbarred in this state, and even then, you better have clear video and a dozen eyewitnesses to back you up.

“A series of United States Supreme Court decisions have changed the meaning of the [Federal Arbitration] Act so that it now extends to disputes between parties of greatly disparate economic power, such as consumer disputes and employment disputes. As a result, a large and rapidly growing number of corporations are requiring millions of consumers and employees to give up their right to have disputes resolved by a judge or a jury, and instead submit their claims to binding arbitration.” (1)-S. 1782, Arbitration Fairness Act, Sec. 2 (1), 110th Cong. (2007)

Sen. Russell Feingold [D-WI] introduced the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007.

The bill declares no predispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable if it requires arbitration of: (1) an employment, consumer, or franchise dispute, or (2) a dispute arising under any statute intended to protect civil rights or to regulate contracts or transactions between parties of unequal bargaining power.

Declares, further, that the validity or enforceability of an agreement to arbitrate shall be determined by a court, under federal law, rather than an arbitrator, irrespective of whether the party resisting arbitration challenges the arbitration agreement specifically or in conjunction with other terms of the contract containing such agreement.

Exempts arbitration provisions in collective bargaining agreements from this Act.

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Dick Cheney Has Privatized the Job of Vice President of the United States.

Americans are accustomed to Vice President Dick Cheney’s waiting out a terrorist threat in a “secure undisclosed location.” Now it seems that Mr. Cheney wears the cloak of invisibility in secure disclosed locations.
The Associated Press reported that Mr. Cheney’s office ordered the Secret Service last September to destroy all records of visitors to the official vice presidential mansion — right after The Washington Post sued for access to the logs. That move was made in secret, naturally. It came out only because of another lawsuit, filed by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the names of conservative religious figures who visited the vice president’s residence.

This disdain for accountability is distressing, but not surprising. Mr. Cheney has had it on display from his first days in office, when he refused to name the energy-industry executives who met with him behind closed doors to draft an energy policy.

In a similar way, Mr. Cheney seems unconcerned about little things like checks and balances and traditional American notions of judicial process. At one point, he gave himself the power to selectively declassify documents and selectively leak them to reporters. In a recent commencement address, he declaimed against prisoners who had the gall to “demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States.”

Mr. Cheney is the driving force behind the Bush administration’s theory of the “unitary executive,” which holds that no one, including Congress and the courts, has the power to supervise or regulate the actions of the president. Just as he pays little attention to old-fangled notions of the separation of powers, Mr. Cheney does not overly bother himself about the bright line that should exist between his last job as chief of the energy giant Halliburton and his current one on the public payroll.

From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Cheney received “deferred salary payments” from Halliburton that far exceeded what taxpayers gave him. Mr. Cheney still holds hundreds of thousands of stock options that have ballooned by millions of dollars as Halliburton profited handsomely from the war in Iraq.

Reviewing this record — secrecy, impatience with government regulations, backroom dealings, handsome paydays — it dawned on us that Mr. Cheney is in step with the times. He has privatized the job of vice president of the United States.

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Cheney's Wealth Eclipses Bushs'.

President George W. Bush held assets worth $7.5 million to $20 million last year, but was eclipsed by his vice president's wealth, financial records released on Tuesday showed.

Bush's assets included his 1,600-acre ranch in Texas, valued at $1 million to $5 million, where he usually spends his vacations.

He also reported assets of $775,689 from a limited liability company organized in 2003 to produce trees for commercial sales, which were expected in 2007.

Among his holdings were certificates of deposit, Treasury notes, a qualified diversified trust, and $116,000 assets of the GWB Rangers Corp., which is wholly owned by Bush from when he was co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team.

Cheney reported assets valued at $21 million to around $100 million. Cheney gained much of his wealth from his former role heading oil service firm Halliburton Co..

Cheney's largest holdings included investments in an American Century Investments International Bond Fund and a Vanguard short-term tax-exempt fund. He has 100,000 Halliburton stock options that are unexercised and designated for charity.

The financial disclosure statements only give the value of assets in ranges.

Bush reported gifts totaling $12,364 last year, including three separate sets of fishing equipment.

White House staff gave Bush two benches made of wood taken from the president's ranch, valued at $1,600, and a pair of $185 cuff links.

Cheney gave Bush an exercise trainer and cycle computer valued at $400 for his birthday and a $658 wireless weather station for Christmas.

Bush gave Cheney a $667 instrument to measure temperature, barometric pressure and tides for Christmas.

Bush received an assortment of clothing including shirts, ties, socks, cap and jacket. He received toy figures of explorers and accessories valued at $308, golf clubs and covers valued at $915, and three hand-carved wooden puzzles valued at

$2,378.

The vice president reported receiving $21,674 in gifts, including three fishing rods, a pair of $615 leather hunting boots and a $399 cowboy hat. The gifts were from individuals as well as groups such as the Fraser Institute in Canada and a company, Hatco Inc., of Texas which gave him the cowboy hat.

From senior members of the White House staff, Cheney received a $778 gift of an iPod and a collection of compact discs.

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"Patriotism" Really Means to Promote Interests of the Wealthy.

Today, patriotism in the USA has nothing to do with supporting our troops, our country, or the Constitution. Thomas Paine's version of patriotism no longer applies.

"My country is the world, all men are my brothers and to do good is my religion,"

Our current version of patriotism should read more like,

"My country is the corporate elite, all rich white men are my brothers, and to make the wealthy wealthier is my religion."

With US casualties at an all time high, on average, 80 per month, it makes no sense that injured troops struggle to get health care and military health benefits paid out are at an “all-time low” when taking into consideration troops injured currently number well over 20,000, mostly from severe life-changing injuries.

IEDs (improvised explosive devices) account for most of the injuries. The average IED wound requires five surgeries, and it's estimated the Iraq war caused an estimated 28,000 to 30,000 surgeries, including more than 350 amputations. They are buried in the road, in dead animals or humans. The enemy triggers the IED by cell phone normally. These shells are often combined with shrapnel, such as steel nuts, bolts, or nails, cell phones, and many other items easily found in anyone's home, normally presenting no threat. The worst bombs are those with shrapnel covered in feces or decaying flesh, increasing the chance of secondary infections, which require many more surgeries and even more limb loss.

Iraq is the first war where military doctors have performed craniotomies — opening a person’s head and performing brain surgery — in the combat field. The Army's 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, the only U.S. medical facility in Iraq with CT-scan capability and neurosurgeons, regularly performs craniotomies. Back in 2004, surgeon, Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Poffenbarger said. "We've done more (craniotomy) in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery team did in eight months."

In August of 2003, the Pentagon tried to cut the combat pay from $220 a month to $150,while at the same time designing a plan for the richest Americans to become "hyper-rich" Americans and conspire to maximize Halliburton and other similar corporation's profits.

Veteran disability benefits paid out today (April 2007) are less than before the Iraq War started. As Lieutenant Colonel, Michael Parker said,

"It went from 102,000 and change in 2001... and now it's down to 89,500," says Parker. "

How can this be? Military disability benefits have to be much more expensive taking into account the ever increasing severe injuries sustained during this war and the toll it takes on the soldiers and their families.

Retired Lt. Gen. James Terry Scott, chairman of the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission studied veterans' disability benefits. At a Senate hearing last week, Scott said that his commission had compared the way the Pentagon and the VA rated the same soldiers. Scott said there could be an effort to keep costs down by rating the severity of soldiers' disabilities much less severe than they actually are. Scott said the Pentagon "has strong incentive to assign ratings less than 30 percent," the typical cutoff to determine whether a person can get lifetime retirement payments and health care.

"The Department of Defense records were matched with VA records on 2.6 million veterans receiving disability compensation," Scott said. "Those rated zero, 10 or 20 percent [disabled] by the Department of Defense were rated in the 30 to 100 percent range by VA more than half the time."

By assigning ratings of less than 30% the Pentagon can save, only having to cut checks for severance pay therefore avoiding paying out for full medical care for the soldier and his family.

Disregarding that this war was started and continues under false pretenses, one can buy all the yellow ribbons and "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers one wants but the soldier who sacrificed everything including what most of us take for granted, the ability to walk, talk, think, and enjoy a fairly decent quality of life will not benefit at all. I don't know how we can live with ourselves as we watch those that live in luxury gain so much at the expense of those who have sacrificed their lives and the lives of their families for this country.

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Doubts About Halliburton's Move to the Middle East.

Congress has some doubts about Halliburton's move to Dubai. Democratic leaders are saying Halliburton is trying to dodge taxes and avoid investigations into its contracting practices in Iraq.

Halliburton responded that it will remain legally incorporated in the US and they will not receive any tax benefits. Analysts are not so sure saying tax benefits are still unclear and some lawmakers are calling for hearings.

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Halliburton Moves Corporate Headquarters to Dubai

Halliburton (CEO and top executives) is moving to the United Arab Emirates - Dubai, which should come as no surprise to anyone. Halliburton also plans on selling off KBR, who provide services to the military, but that is only a small part of Halliburton's business, not to mention, Halliburton may see the end is near regarding military contracting. After all, they have already "serviced" the Iraq war and military experts are not exactly praising their work.

Federal investigators last month alleged Halliburton was responsible for $2.7 billion of the $10 billion in contractor waste and overcharging in Iraq.

Halliburton wants to focus on where it makes most of its money, selling the massive machines to make oil fields work and providing the man power to work those fields.

The United Arab Emirates has become a central hub of global business; as Jim Krane, Associated Press Writer, says, "an Arab boomtown where free-market capitalism has been paired with some of the world's most liberal tax, investment and residency laws". Most major American businesses have offices in Dubai, but Halliburton is the first to relocate its corporate leadership there. Halliburton's main reason for relocating is potential new customers...there are more opportunities in the Middle East, Africa and Asia than in the Americas.

It's such a good feeling to know so many lives have been sacrificed, all in the name of Halliburton.

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