Chevron Ecuador: Steve Donziger Tries To Work U.S. Judge To Get Billions

There are reports that Steve Donziger, the now famous plaintiffs lawyer in the Chevron Ecuador case - yeah, the same one who took a back seat to new lawyers led by the Patton Boggs firm - is striking back at U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, saying that Kaplan was biased against Chevron and that is why the New York Judge ruled to block collection of any damage award from an Ecuador court trial that many knew was fixed in Ecuador's favor to start with.   In the process Steve is essentially proving what Kaplan has charged Donziger with doing in Ecuador: namely working to bully the courts.

Donziger's trying to collect his money.   That's all.

The bottom line is that Donziger won a sham trial in Ecuador - a country known for its unequal distribution of income, corrupt government, and curtailment of human rights - and did so in a way that Kaplan said, and did so with evidence, was fraudulent, and now wants to collect his share of the billions he said he expected to make from this case years ago.

Here's a reminder:



What a laugh.

What gets me, and has spurred me to blog about this since late 2007 or so, is that Ecuador gets off scott free from having to change its culture in any real way. President Correa's still corrupt, still trying to make people think he's an environmentalist when he's not. The ruling political party that controls the courts is still in power and waiting for its handout from the Chevron ruling (good luck). Anyone who blogs a view that the President's acting like a thug gets jailed. And Petroecuador, Ecuador's state-owned oil producer is still getting away with major oil spills (some 15 in all) that it then blames on Chevron, even though the American Oil Company isn't even there and hasn't been in Ecuador since 1992. Oh, and there are people, some in the media, who actually believe that garbage!

If you hear someone defend Ecuador, ask them what they know about the country's terribly ran oil production system, corrupt courts, and abysmal human rights record. Then watch them talk; they'd have nothing to say.

Crazy.

Oakland Chief Of Police Should Be Elected, Not Appointed

The position of Chief of Police in Oakland should be an elected one. This blogger's reasons start with how a document announcing the search for a new chief in 2009, which became Tony Batts in 2010, was worded.

There' an old job posting for the position of Chief Of Police For The City of Oakland that's still online, here. It's posted text, repeated below in case the City of Oakland had the original removed, explains, among other things, that the Chief of Police "reports to The City Administrator." Now, of course, many Oakland insiders know this, but the public's generally not aware of such things.  (Also, the Chief's salary was set at "up to $17,615.17 per month.  What Batts does with that 17 cents is anyone's guess.)

But with that, one would agree it was wrong for certain members of the Oakland City Council to openly state that Chief Batts should have come to them regarding his job and working condition issues. The document openly states he reports to the Chief Administrative Officer, or "CAO," so they were essentially encouraging Chief Batts to jump over his boss and talk to them.

A City Manager like the legendary Henry Gardner would not have permitted such behavior. Even in a strong mayor system, Gardner would have figured out a way to send a message to the Council.

It's for that reason, and others, that the Chief Of Police should be elected, and not appointed. The Chief of Police should be able to rise above these political games and act at the will of the Oakland public. That way, if Oaklanders don't like how the Chief and his charges are dealing with crime in Oakland, they can make a change at the top. It would also force the Chief and the Oakland Police Department as a whole to be more responsive to community needs.

Well, here's the entire post, again printed here to escape what the City of Oakland might do to get rid of it:

Agency Director, Police Services
(Chief of Police) Oakland, California

The City of Oakland, California is seeking an exceptional leader to serve as Chief of Po- lice and provide direction and leadership to the Police Department and the community in creating a safe and secure Oakland.

The City. Oakland, with a population over 400,000 in 56 square miles, is the largest urban center in the San Francisco East Bay Area, with a strong history of community activism and involvement in community affairs. It has a rich history, and has long been at the forefront of many of the political movements that have shaped our country. It is one of the most diverse cities in the country, a place where more than 150 languages are spoken daily, reflecting the magnitude of this multicultural nature of the community. The city consists of a large number of individual neighborhoods, each with its own character and economic status. Within these neighborhoods diversity is celebrated by many of its residents and business people and who chose to live in Oakland because they are attracted to its environment, social commitment and strong neighborhood orientation. The City is home to some of the wealthiest neighborhoods and some of the poorest in the Bay Area. The city sits across the bay from San Francisco, is one of the country’s top seaports, and is the commercial heart of the Bay Area. Oakland is the only city in California with three professional sports teams and is the home of important museums, a world-class zoo, major shopping areas and several colleges. It is served by an international airport located within the city.

The Oakland community has a history of strong community involvement, and people are often vocal about expressing their views and perspectives on local issues. To the Oakland community, collaboration with government officials and neighborhoods is of particular importance. Whether relating to policing or other government functions, the Oakland community is active and volunteerism is extensive in all of the city’s neighborhoods.

Oakland has a strong mayor-council form of government. The Mayor is elected for a term of 4 years. The City Council has eight members representing seven districts in the city with one member elected at large. Council members serve staggered 4 year terms. The Mayor appoints a City Administrator, subject to confirmation by City Council, who is the chief administrative officer of the city. Other elected city officials include the City Attorney and City Auditor.
The Position. The Chief of Police reports to the City Administrator, and is responsible for the management of the Police Department and delivery of policing services to the Oakland community. The Chief heads a department with an authorized strength of 803 sworn officers and 358 civilians. During the last year, the department has added a number of officers, and is currently at its highest sworn strength in years. The operating budget for the Police Department is over $200,000,000 from the general fund, special revenue and other sources. The expenditure for policing represents almost 40 percent of general fund expenditures.

Crime in Oakland remains of significant concern to Oakland's residents and its business community with most crime occurring in a discrete number of neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods have little crime; others substantial amounts. The rate of crime has fluctuated from year to year but remains at high levels in some neighborhoods. The Police Department has been faced with a number of difficult challenges, and currently operates under a court-supervised consent decree focused on internal investigations, use of force and other related issues.

The recent death of a young man by a transit police officer in a transit station in Oakland has raised community tensions. Following that, there was in an unrelated incident, the death of four Oakland police officers by an armed felon, to which the City Council, Mayor and community as a whole strongly rallied in support of the department.

Recently the department has moved to implement a geographically based patrol structure, which has generally received high marks from the community, although it remains a work in progress. A number of other important initiatives are underway, such as offender reentry strategies, strengthening of community policing and proposals to strengthen development of performance management through CompStat.

The Chief of Police is a member of the city's senior management team and is expected to work closely with other city department heads. Strong, effective leadership is required to address internal department issues, respond to community concerns and collaborate on policing strategies and to control expenditures in a time of severe fiscal challenges faced by the city.
The ideal candidate will have extensive demonstrable success in implementing crime reduction strategies and implementing the core elements of community policing in a highly diverse community, be passionate about collaboration in decision-making on policing strategy that affects the Oakland community, be an articulate spokesperson for the Department and the community on best practices in community policing and com- munity involvement and be committed to developing trusting relationships between the police and the community they serve. Additionally, the ideal candidate will have extensive experience in reducing crime and disorder in a diverse community in a manner that raises the confidence of that community in the policing effort. He or she will be a charismatic person with energy and commitment that inspires trust in the community and respect within the department, as well as being a 24-7 CEO with high visibility within the department and the city's neighborhoods.

The ideal candidate should reflect the following characteristics:
- Be passionate about policing in a diverse community and recognize the impor- tance to the community of that diversity as something to be celebrated;
- Have a track record of demonstrable success in managing a major police agency in a highly diverse community and have demonstrated the ability to lead the agency toward development of relationships of trust and confidence with all sectors of that community, including those in the city who are currently disengaged;
- Have experience in providing leadership within the police agency that improved police officer performance toward community policing objectives; demonstrated ability to increase sworn and civilian personnel acceptance of modernization, community collaboration and strategic initiatives, as well as employee job satisfaction; and ability to manage department resources and expenditures in a time of severe economic downturn;
- Have developed and articulated a vision and strategic plan for policing in such a community and successfully implemented that plan;
• Have demonstrated the ability to implement a crime reduction and crime preven- tion strategy that effectively reduces crime and gains support of the community;
• Be committed to transparency in all aspects of policing, and supportive of strong collaboration with the diverse community in policy development, police strategy development and neighborhood problem-solving;
• Have at least a Bachelors Degree and preferably a Master's Degree and beyond and have attended a nationally-recognized senior management program such as the PERF Senior Management Institute, one of Harvard University’s Senior Management public policy institutes, the FBI National Executive Institute or comparable program;
• Have a strong knowledge of modern technology and how it can be used to improve police officer access to information, performance management and allocation of resources;
• Have political acumen and the ability to interact successfully with a broad spectrum of political leadership, each having their own perspective on issues important to Oakland and the neighborhood they represent;
• Ability to bring resolution to the consent decree’s "negotiated settlement" by adopting as standard practice the values and best practices agreed to under that settlement;
• Ability to bring national "best practices" in policing to Oakland;
• Understand the impact policing practices, such as the expenditure of overtime, patrol strategies and neighborhood collaboration have on other units of govern- ment and the budget;
• Know how to use crime analysis for predictive policing strategies aimed at preventing future crime occurrences, adopting a sophisticated resource allocation methodology;
• Committed to empowerment of lower - level employees providing them with authorization to manage their area of responsibility, holding them accountable for their decisions and results.
• Have a career that demonstrates the highest level of ethics, standards and per- formance; and willing to be held accountable for his or her own actions and those of the department under his or her guidance.

Compensation and Benefits

The salary range for this position is currently up to $17,615.17 - month. Salary will depend upon candidate’s experience. The previous Police Chief’s salary was at or near the maximum of the salary range. The City provides an excellent benefits package, including participation in the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). The city will negotiate relocation assistance with the successful candidate.

To Apply

Qualified candidates should submit by e-mail their resume with a cover letter setting forth why they are qualified for the position to either oaklandchief@policy-partners.com or by mail to Oakland Chief Search, Box 577, West Tisbury, MA 02575. This position is open until filled; however the first review of applicants will take place about June 1, 2009.

The City of Oakland is being assisted in this search by the Strategic Policy Partnership. Box 577, West Tisbury, Massachusetts 02575. 617-693-8571.

The City of Oakland is an Equal Opportunity Employer and values diversity at all levels of the workforce.

Hello Kitty Obsession

A vlog that shows this obsession. An update on Nikky Raney the blogger.

Charlie Sheen Twitter Past 1 Million; Can Sheen Catch LadyGaga?

Legendary Actor Charlie Sheen joined Twitter on Tuesday of this week, and already has passed the 1 million mark on twitter. According to the Guinness Book of World Records Sheen hit the mark in record time: 25 hours and 17 minutes after he joined Twitter. Amazing.

Twitter Grader has Sheen with a score of 100, but with the curious ranking of 81,251 out of 8.8 million. Why? the reason is that he just joined Twitter and so has just 21 listed tweets as of the time I checked him against Twitter Grader. So this unusual performance may say something of what's wrong with ranking systems for Twitter. My Twitter Zennie62 ranking was 5,276, out of 8.8 million. So from that measure, I'm ahead of Charlie Sheen, because even with just 24,500 followers, I have 16,949 updates. I've also been on Twitter for 3 years, 11 months, and 22 days; Charlie just two days.

So, with all that, can Sheen catch Lady Gaga, who has a 8.5 million followers on just 629 updates? Lady Gaga is ranked 40,263 out of 8.8 million. So the reasons why Zennie62 ranks higher than either Charlie Sheen or Lady Gaga are also the ways Charlie Sheen can catch Lady Gaga.

Right now, Sheen's ranking is low because not only does he not update a lot, it seems to be that he doesn't have a large number of followers that also have Twitter grades of 100 He need to get more of his friends who have "100" grades to follow him. Also, his tweets have to be more useful for retweeting, another factor in Twitter Grader. Sheen retweeting news items from a blog like Zennie62.com would be a great start.

Sheen needs to produce between 10 and 27 tweets per day to improve his ranking and follower rate. Plus, his offline commentary on television, and radio, as was the case on The Dan Patrick Show here:



As well as celebrities like Gloria Allred talking about him...



Will only help build his follower base. If he keeps this up for a month he could reach 6 million followers by the end of it. Not quite Lady Gaga, but close enough to be of significance.

Supreme Court and Westboro Baptist Church

The Westboro Baptist Church is known for protesting soldier's funerals, praising the Lord for 9/11, professing that God hates fags and other outlandish and crazy things. The First Amendment means a lot to a journalist - but there's also laws about hate and discrimination, but the Supreme Court's majority 8-1 voted that it's okay for these delusional God worshipers to continue to be a disturbance and show their intolerance. They basically think America is terrible and God hates it. The church has only 80 members who are all related, and apparently they are the only ones who understand the bible.

The only member of the Supreme Court who had his head on straight was Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr, as reported by many sources including the Washington Post.

This is a great example of how the majority is NOT always correct.

The article from the Washington Post includes:

"Eight justices of the Supreme Court on Wednesday said that no matter how hurtful the speech employed by members of the Westboro Baptist Church, the First Amendment protected them from having to pay damages to the grieving father they targeted.

Alito said they were all wrong.

Alito's condemnatory dissent said the Constitution's guarantee of free speech did not allow members of the fringe church to protest the funeral of Albert Snyder's fallen Marine son Matthew and "brutalize" the family with their lewd and cruel messages."

Personally surprising was Sarah Palin's support for those in opposition. Here is her tweet:

The whole Westboro Congregation is known for being outlandish and crazy - and should be stopped. How unAmerican, really. Supreme Court - there's disappointment in you from all over - there's protesting for good cause and then there's just being disrespectful jerks that are delusional. There are many videos and the great interview Fox had with Shirley Phelps titled "Crazy Lady on Fox News." Go search for it.

Expect a follow up post on this!

Rodney King Anniversary: Still Police Beatings 20 Years Later

This is the 20th Anniversary of the Rodney King beating and the riots that happened afterward, bringing Los Angeles to a standstill. The officers captured on that nine minutes of video made by George Holliday had the Los Angeles Police Department beating and kicking King, even in the head. Now, the LAPD wants you to know it's a changed operation, but in the age of YouTube, it seems that , more often than not, police departments try to operate above the law.

Just a search for "police beating" on YouTube (click here) shows a large number of disturbing videos and titles. For example: "Video Allegedly Shows Md. Police Beating Student," "Philadelphia Police Beating Caught On Tape," "Police beat down an old man...," "Minneapolis Police Beat Man," "Seattle Police Beating." And the last one, where a Seattle Police officer beat a 16-year-old black girl two years ago, is the most disturbing one I've seen to date, and all because she kicked her own shoes off while in jail:



The overall message that police send in this day and age of new media is that they are white men who hate black people, and especially black girls. Girls, not women. That's an awful image to allow to be formed, but that's what's happened.

And to add all that, the fact that Oscar Grant was killed by a BART police officer two years ago, and that was captured on video, and you have an awful national police image.

This has had terrible results for police departments just and a time when they need more funding. In Oakland, not a place where such beatings have been part of the news, thankfully, the Oakland police relationship with the overall community is still poor. All of this was evident at an Oakland City Council meeting last year, when person and after person expressed their lack of support for the OPD.

Police departments need to change. They need to hire people who are of various backgrounds, make sure the police force is at least 40 percent female (that's right), and help to rebuild the poor communities they patrol by hosting fundraisers, youth club organizations, and economic development initiatives. Police must become friends with their communities and stop being at war with them.

99ers Better Watch, Listen & LEARN from Union Solidarity to Survive

99ers better watch, listen and learn from Union Solidarity examples playing out across America, if they want to Survive - but mostly YOU MUST ACT NOW!

Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman called Madison protestors “SLOBS” just for exercising their 1st amendment rights. If that does not tell you what the “RICH HAVES” think about the American masses, I do not know what would.

Watch the 12-minute video (below) of the crowd surrounding and loudly heckling Grothman with chants of "You suck!" and "Shame!" during the ongoing union protests in Wisconsin - sparking colorful reaction nationwide, and see for yourself the "deep hatred growing" in America Glenn Beck is so afraid of he rants daily about. (after all Beck is one of the Haves... be afraid Glenn.... Be VERY AFRAID)

The thing I cannot understand is WHY more of the millions in the 99er Nation are NOT actively banding together in solidarity. It costs NOTHING but a little time and effort to join the action group U-Cubed and connect with fellow unemployed in your own state to take action - but not even one state so far has even reached the 1,000 member threshold. PATHETIC!

The sad truth of the matter is: The 99er Nation Has Not Because they refuse to band together and DEMAND their rights, so eloquently stated by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Bill of Rights” :

1. The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
2. The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
3. The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return that will give him and his family a decent living;
4. The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
5. The right of every family to a decent home;
6. The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
7. The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.
8. The right to a good education.

Today it is more obvious than ever before how the Rich politicians in this country are eroding the rights of the Have Nots and it disgusts me how apathetic Americans continue to be on this tragedy playing out in every state in our Union. (Remember when you feel yourselves hating the word UNION that America is a UNION of STATES!)

So get involved and spread the word everywhere to everyone. Social networkers must post these links and Tweet out to all friends and followers - strongly suggesting they do the same and so on.

It is unacceptable how with a minimum of 6 million UI exhaustees suffering so bad in this country that a FREE Union designed for the specific purpose of Strength and Unity to speak in ONE LOUD VOICE that Washington cannot ignore - has a membership of less that 5,000. What is WRONG with YOU?????

You have not because you ask not. Start by joining and participating in the U-Cubed Union for the Unemployed experience.

If you are not yet engaged in U-Cubed Please DO SO TODAY:

U-Cubed on:

FACEBOOK: http://www.facebook.com/ucubed

TWITTER: @U_Cubed

WEBSITE: http://www.unionofunemployed.com

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? Your Government has FAILED YOU BADLY! MAKE them HEAR YOU NOW!!!!

The video below is Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman being chased and trapped by hecklers outside of the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. on Mar. 1, 2011