Court-forced arbitration

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supremecourt
No wonder they hate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau! Via The Nation:

For more than forty years, the Supreme Court’s conservatives have been engaged in a campaign to shut the courthouse door to consumers, working people, small businesses and others seeking redress for corporate wrongdoing.

In recent years, and especially since Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito joined the Court, a major weapon in this campaign has been the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) of 1925. The conservatives have used the act to prevent victims of such abuses from seeking redress in the courts, forcing them into pre-dispute arbitration instead. In doing so, they lose a public trial, a jury and a neutral judge, as well as an appeal to a higher court; in many cases they may also have to give up discovery rights. It is not uncommon for them to wind up before an arbitrator who is dependent upon the defendant’s business community for work and fees, and who may not even be legally trained. Not surprisingly, those forced into arbitration almost always fare much worse than they would in court.

This past term the Court paused in its campaign to keep ordinary people—but no for-profit corporation “persons”—out of the courts, though it did make it harder to bring class actions by victims of securities fraud. Instead, it concentrated on overturning or undercutting long-established rulings protecting women’s reproductive rights, unions, affirmative action and church-state separation.

The Court didn’t need to issue any more arbitration decisions. Two reports issued at the end of last year show how effective the Court’s arbitration rulings have been. Last December, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a preliminary report, which found that contract clauses mandating pre-dispute arbitration are a “common feature of consumer financial contracts”; a final report is due by year’s end. The agency found such clauses in over 50 percent of credit card loans, 81 percent of prepaid charge cards and in checking accounts covering 44 percent of all insured deposits.

The CFPB found further that about 90 percent of such contracts, including almost all credit card loans, insured deposits and prepaid cards, also prohibit participation in current or future class or other joint actions in both judicial and arbitration proceedings. This usually forces consumers who have been injured in small amounts to drop the matter entirely, even though the defendant may have harmed many others the same way, for too little is at stake for each individual to justify the time, trouble and expense of individual arbitration.

Thanks to Nicole Naum.

Obstacles

~ susie ~ 7 Comments

I spilled a bowl of rice crispies and milk onto my ergonomic keyboard this morning. I’m using an old one, so it’s painfully slow. Blogging will be minimal until the new one comes tomorrow.

FISA abuse

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So the new Greenwald story is out, and it involves spying on prominent Muslim-Americans, apparently for no other reason than that they’re Muslims. One of them even worked for the Bush administration and held a security clearance:

But a three-month investigation by The Intercept—including interviews with more than a dozen current and former federal law enforcement officials involved in the FISA process—reveals that in practice, the system for authorizing NSA surveillance affords the government wide latitude in spying on U.S. citizens.

The five Americans whose email accounts were monitored by the NSA and FBI have all led highly public, outwardly exemplary lives. All five vehemently deny any involvement in terrorism or espionage, and none advocates violent jihad or is known to have been implicated in any crime, despite years of intense scrutiny by the government and the press. Some have even climbed the ranks of the U.S. national security and foreign policy establishments.

“I just don’t know why,” says Gill, whose AOL and Yahoo! email accounts were monitored while he was a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates. “I’ve done everything in my life to be patriotic. I served in the Navy, served in the government, was active in my community—I’ve done everything that a good citizen, in my opinion, should do.”

H/t Steve Duckett Attorney at Law.

Some ‘pundits’ are quite reliably wrong

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ralphwiggums

And Jeffrey Goldberg is one of them:

Then the UN did this:

Bunker #13 and # 41 were closed by sealing all entrances before the end of CDG [Chemical Destruction Group] mission. Each seal consisted of two brick walls with a 5cm layer of tar between them. Then a third brick wall at a distance of one metre from the second wall was built and the space between them was filled with reinforced concrete. Altogether, such a seal was over 1.5 m thick. The hole in the roof of the bunker #13 was also sealed with reinforced concrete.

So yes, there were still chemical weapons in Iraq when we invaded in 2003. But no, today’s news doesn’t prove “Iraq had WMD.” Everyone on earth had known what was in these bunkers for 20 years, and Saddam had no way of accessing it.

Moreover, even if Saddam had gotten his hands on it everything had likely decayed so quickly that by the mid-nineties or earlier it would have been useless. By now it’s certainly more of a danger to ISIS than anyone else, and then probably only if they drink it.

All of this information is available to anyone with an internet connection and the slightest interest in this subject. That apparently does not include Jeffrey “I’ve Had My Entire Cerebrum Removed” Goldberg.

A view from Gaza: This is a brutal attack, not a ‘military operation’

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Via Common Dreams:

by Mona El-Farra

(Image: Middle East Children’s Alliance)
In Gaza last night, while Israeli army forces launched military attacks against Gaza, by sea, air and via artillery shells, hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children were unable to sleep inside their roof- tinned homes, clinging to their parents, crying, and terrified. The shelling last night was earth shattering, and went through the entirety of the Gaza strip- at least 100 attacks have already taken place .

In Gaza, we do not have bomb shelters to escape and hide.

In Gaza, these bombs fall on top of our deteriorating economic situation. Unemployment because of the Israeli blockade against civilians is almost 40%. It is Ramadan, making it more difficult to get basic foods, and thousands of government employees cannot reach banks to access their salaries. I know there are internal problems between Fatah and Hamas, but the outcome is hardship, while the bombs keep dropping on top of our heads.

In Gaza, the feeling of insecurity throws its shadow against all of the population, and the military operation continues. With threats of expansion in the coming few days, there is no news about any ceasefire.

Prior to the attack, the local authorities warned the population against swimming in the Mediterranean sea (the only recreational outlet for 1.7 million people). The sea around Gaza has become overly polluted with sewage and wastewater, that the authority, due to lack of fuel, had to pump untreated into the sea.

In Gaza, over 90% of water is unsuitable for drinking.

Through my work at the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), we continue to implement the water purification systems at schools and kindergartens, to provide over 50,000 Palestinian children with clean water. Even though it is the summer holiday, the community had accessibility to our water units in schools, but the attacks make travel dangerous.

In Gaza today, imagine choosing between your child’s thirst and your child’s safety.

Also, at MECA, because of our deep understanding of the poor recreational facilities for Palestinian children, we continue our educational, entertainment and recreational activities, inside our partners’ community centres. It will be even more important during the difficult times ahead, to help the children and attract their attention away of the night shelling. Let the Children Play & Heal is an ongoing program, and I fear that there will be the need for more psycho-social programming, like we did in 2009 and 2012. While we help these children, we take care of the mothers too, via psycho-social trainings that aim to educate women about trauma, and how to deal with family and children during times of crises.

Today, different health facilities announced a need for more emergency supplies, which were already lacking because of the closure of the borders and the ongoing Israeli siege of Gaza. Just before the attacks, MECA managed to send some highly needed emergency medications to the Red Crescent Society, but more is needed.

In Gaza, MECA’s team, along with the many humanitarian and health organisations are going through a very difficult situation. We are physically unsafe, and we cannot sleep. But we work hard to support people at this very difficult times.

The streets of Gaza are empty, few cars are here and there, and Israel continues a collective punishment assassination policy demolishing homes by aerial bombardment.

These air raids fall on the majority of the population living in very crowded areas, so while they hit their targets, civilians pay a big price- we have many causalities and the numbers are rising every hour.

In Gaza, it is not a war or a military operation though it may look so. It is collective punishment and it is a brutal attack against all Palestinian people, and mainly civilians are paying the price.

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