A new poll from Monmouth State University released Monday shows 41 percent of respondents are unsure if the deal should be inked while 32 percent think lawmakers should not support it and 27 percent think they should. And according to The Hill, 35 House Democrats support the deal and 29 are undecided while 18 Senate Democrats support and 20 are undecided.

The Rhode Island congressional delegation is on the fence, too.

“Congressman Langevin continues to review the agreement and consider the options in advance of Congressional action this fall,” said his spokeswoman Meg Geoghegan. “He has not yet made a final decision on how he will vote on the issue.” Rich Luchette, a spokesman for Congressman David Cicilline said simply, “Congressman Cicilline is reviewing the proposed agreement.”

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse “hasn’t announced a position on the Iran deal yet,” according to spokesman Seth Larson. And Chip Unruh, spokesman for Senator Jack Reed, said the ranking member of the RI delegation, and a nationally-regarded foreign policy expert, “continues to thoroughly review.”

As a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Reed has been conducting hearings on the issue with Arizona Sen. John McCain. The Hill lists Reed in the yes column but RIPR coverage from July 16 says Reed “has not decided whether he supports President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.” Unruh said The Hill “must be speculating.”

Speculation or not, The Hill lists noted progressive leaders Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders as supporting the deal.

This agreement is obviously not all that many of us would have liked but it beats the alternative – a war with Iran that could go on for years,” Sanders said, according to The Hill. And quoting her from the Boston Globe, Elizabeth Warren has said, “The question now before Congress — the only question before Congress — is whether the recently announced nuclear agreement represents our best available option for preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. I am convinced that it does.”

Progressives have largely supported the deal with Code Pink calling it “a great victory for peace-loving people around the world.” The New York Times has a 200 word summary of the deal.

The president is also largely at odds with Rhode Island’s congressional delegation on fast-tracking a potential trade compact with 12 Pacific Rim nations. Of the Ocean State’s four elected officials in Congress, three have now spoken out against giving Obama fast track authority. Only Senator Jack Reed is still holding his cards close as the Senate Finance Committee considers granting the president trade promotion authority today.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said he opposes fast track authority for the TPP deal, he told RI Future exclusively today.

“It would be a mistake to provide fast-track authority for trade agreements that could further undermine American wages, manufacturing jobs, and our environment,” he said in an emailed statement. “We need the opportunity carefully review any proposed trade agreements to ensure we’re not repeating the mistakes of past free trade deals.”

In February, Whitehouse gave a speech against trade agreements in general on the Senate floor in February, saying: “I start with a state that has been on the losing end of these trade deals. People say that they are going to enforce the environmental and human rights and labor and safety requirements of these agreements. I haven’t seen it. And I gotta say I don’t like the process very much either. It is secret, we are kept out of it. Who’s in it is a lot of really big corporations and the are up to, I think, a lot of no good in a lot of the deals.”

Congressman David Cicilline is against it, too. He wrote this op/ed in the Providence Journal last month.

“Any agreement that promotes fast-track trade to advance the Trans-Pacific Partnership without thorough review and Congressional input is a bad deal for Rhode Island workers,” he told RI Future yesterday. “Congress should play an important role in making sure trade policies are fair for American workers, businesses, intellectual property holders, and consumers. The fast-track model undercuts oversight of trade agreements and makes it more difficult to protect the interests of working families. We should be working to promote American manufacturing, implement flexible workplace policies that benefit middle-class families, and finally raise the minimum wage so everyone has an opportunity to succeed.”

Also yesterday, Congressman Jim Langevin reaffirmed his opposition to a TPP deal. In February he and Cicilline signed onto a letter opposing it and yesterday he emailed this statement to reporters:

“The United States has been working with TPP negotiating partners for more than three years. This agreement could greatly shift global trading patterns and accordingly deserves the highest level of scrutiny to ensure it does not displace U.S. jobs or undermine our country’s competitiveness. While I favor expanding global trade, it is important that any free trade agreement places American workers and companies on an enforceable level playing field with foreign trading partners when it comes to labor rights, environmental regulation, intellectual property protection and other critical issues. For that reason, I am opposed to passing Trade Promotion Authority legislation with respect to the TPP.

“Congress has the responsibility to set trade policy, and ‘fast track’ procedures largely circumvent this important review. There is a better way to make decisions of this magnitude that significantly impact America’s place in the global economy, and that must include robust debate and discussion from all partners, including Congress. I will continue to work to ensure that trade agreements protect American workers and consumers and do not undermine America’s ability to compete in the global market.”

Reed, on the other hand, isn’t as vocal, according to spokesman Chip Unruh, who said Rhode Island’s senior senator “will take a look at the Finance Committee’s proposal, but he wants to ensure any trade agreement benefits Rhode Island consumers, workers, and businesses.” Unruh noted Reed rejected such TPA authority in both 2002 and 2007.

According to the Washington Post “most Congressional Democrats are opposed” but Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is pushing for a deal that he says has benefits for liberals.

In March the New York Times reported the “ambitious 12-nation trade accord pushed by President Obama would allow foreign corporations to sue the United States government for actions that undermine their investment “expectations” and hurt their business, according to a classified document.” The Nation called the TPP proposal “NAFTA on steroids” in 2012.

“Social Security benefits are a solemn promise that our seniors have earned over a lifetime of work,” said Whitehouse, a founding member of the Senate’s Defend Social Security Caucus. “Sadly, Republicans have made it their mission for decades to dismantle that promise, attempting to turn it over to Wall Street and cut benefits through misguided ideas like the so-called ‘chained-CPI.'”

Republican Senator Mike Enzi from Wyoming raised a point of order, calling Wyden’s amendment non germane to the budget resolution being debated. The Democrats rallying 51 senators to vote yea, but 60 votes were required to wave Enzi’s point of order.

Although his attempts to protect Social Security in the Senate budget have thus far failed, Richard Davidson, Whitehouse’s Rhode Island press secretary, tells this columnist that the senator plans to continue his efforts to keep Social Security off the GOP budget chopping block and from being privatized by supporting legislation like the Keeping Our Social Security Promises Act, legislation that would raise the income cap on the payroll tax to ensure the program’s solvency.

The Social Security trust funds are projected to be fully solvent though 2033; there’s no immediate funding crisis, said Davidson. But, in the longer run, Whitehouse believes the program must be bolstered by applying the payroll tax, which currently only applies to income up to $118,500, to higher levels of income, he says.

Protecting SSDI

One month before the Senate budget debate, the GOP-controlled Senate Budget Committee put a spotlight at a hearing on the impending insolvency of the nation’s Social Security Disability Trust Fund (SSDI). The federal government has predicted that SSDI fund reserves will run low by the end of 2016, at which point millions of disabled beneficiaries could see up to a 20 percent cut in benefits.

At the Senate hearing, entitled “The coming crisis: Social Security Disability Trust Fund Insolvency,” Democrats called for an easy quick fix to the problem, specifically the shifting of a small percentage of the Social Security payroll tax from the retirement trust fund to the disability trust fund. No big deal, they say, because these transfers have occurred 11 times in the past with bipartisan support without political bickering. But, from this hearing it seemed clear that GOP senators see things differently and are threatening to block the infusion of funds to SSDI.

Approximately 10.2 million Americans received SSDI benefits in 2013, including roughly 42,000 Rhode Islanders. In order to qualify, beneficiaries are required to have worked in a job covered by Social Security, and must have been unable to work for a year or more due to a disability.

The Plum Line blog, penned by Greg Sargent for the Washington Post, took a closer look a look at this SSDI entitlement debate in February.

In his opinion blog, Sargent says that GOP lawmakers claim that “restricting a fund transfer is all about forcing a necessary discussion on how to improve Social Security’s long term finances, rather than merely ‘kicking the can down the road.'” On the other hand, the Washington Post blogger believes Democrats see the Republicans as “exaggerating the sense of crisis to realize one of two political goals. Either they want to force immediate, and unnecessary, cuts – or they want to hold the disability fund hostage, in order to have another run at cuts to the broader program [Social Security].”

Gathering the Troops

At a March 23rd panel discussion hosted by the Providence-based Headquarters of Community Action Partnership , Whitehouse and Congressman Jim Langevin with Rhode Island Senator Donna Nesselbush, a disability attorney, along with SSDI recipients, disability groups, and the Social Security Administration, came to discuss the solvency of SSDI and its impact on the Ocean State. The lawmakers called for shifting Social Security payroll taxes to financially shore up the ailing SSDI program. Both lawmakers also supported a long-term solution, fully funding the federal retirement and disability programs by lifting the cap on the amount of income that is subject to the payroll taxes that fund the program.

“Right now, a millionaire hedge-fund manager pays the same amount of taxes into the Social Security system as someone who makes $118,500,” said Whitehouse. He called for “wealthiest Americans to pay a fair share into the program, so that it’s not funded disproportionately on the backs of middle-class workers.”

Congressman Langevin stressed “SSDI is not only a critical safety-net for disabled workers, their children and spouses, it is also a promise we make to everyone who pays into the Social Security trust fund that they won’t be impoverished if they are left with a debilitating condition or disability.”

Although Whitehouse’s efforts to protect the nation’s Social Security and disability programs were derailed in the Senate budget debate because of a GOP procedural call, it’s only the first of many political skirmishes to come. The upcoming 2016 presidential elections will firmly put this entitlement issue on the nation’s radar screen, hopefully to address once and for all.

But, here’s my message to Whitehouse: Even if you lose a skirmish, or battle, you can always win the war. Keep pushing.

During Whitehouse’s keynote address at Yale University’s “New Directions in Environmental Law” conference, members of the Connecticut-based climate justice collective Capitalism vs. the Climate interrupted Whitehouse with an action they called a “laugh riot.”

Each time the Senator suggested he was a climate champion, the demonstrators roared with hearty laughter.

“It’s a joke that Senator Whitehouse is an environmentalist,” said a protester when asked by an audience member what they found so funny. “He needs to stop supporting Spectra’s fracked gas pipeline expansion. He’s not a climate champion. He’s a climate clown.”

Activists then walked to the stage and held a banner reading “Fracked Gas Kills” in front of the Senator. Asked to leave by police, the protesters left the auditorium chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, ha ha, ha ha!”

Apparently, after Yale campus police had cleared the room of laughing rioters, Senator Whitehouse joked that he was glad that open debate was alive and well at Yale.  Police-moderated debate in the time of free speech zones! There you have it.

Prior to the senator’s speech, about 30 demonstrators from 350-Connecticut and Capitalism vs. the Climate protested outside the conference in opposition to his support of fracking.  Capitalism vs the Climate quoted several examples illustrate Senator Whitehouse’s record as a fracking champion:

• Spectra Energy’s website lists Senator Whitehouse as a supporter of their so-called “Algonquin” pipeline expansion in the Northeast states.
• Senator Whitehouse praised fracking as a “blessing” in a 2014 interview: “I think it’s been an economic and environmental blessing to have gas as a bridge.”
• Senator Whitehouse’s third largest campaign contributor in 2012 was Goldberg, Lindsay & Co., an investment firm that owns several natural gas distribution and pipeline companies. Goldberg, Lindsay & Co. also contributed $20,000 to the Senator’s “OCEANSPAC” that distributes money to candidates who support “ocean and environmental issues.”

Indeed, Senator Whitehouse —in the dedicated company of the other environmentalists of our congressional delegation— has consistently supported fracked gas a bridge fuel.

Early in January, I wrote to Lynsey Gaudioso, the `New Directions’ conference chair, to convey my dismay that Senator Whitehouse would be an honoree and keynote speaker at the conference.  Not that I ever received a reply, or expected to, but one of my arguments was:

A plaintiff in one of the suits brought by Our Children’s Trust sued the federal government “for making decisions that threaten our right to a safe and healthy planet.”  This right is enshrined in public trust law and demands that government act as a trustee in the management of essential natural assets. Building more fossil fuel infrastructure will delay developing a green power sector, while fracked gas has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than coal and oil. In other words, the policies Senator Whitehouse supports clash with his duty to protect the common good.

Regarding this last point, Bill Moyers recently interviewed Mary Christina Wood.  She argued that it is the responsibility of government to hold in trust the health of earth’s environment for present and future generations:

If this nation relies on a stable climate system, and the very habitability of this nation and all of the liberties of young people and their survival interests are at stake, the courts need to force the agencies and the legislatures to simply do their job.

Instead, our legislators support policies that are manifestly inconsistent with their fiduciary duties as trustees of Nature’s Trust.  In addition, the executive is in bed with the “stakeholders” it should be overseeing.  As a case in point, just think of the agency whose “oversight” was responsible of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster. Yes, that’s the famous Mineral Management Service of an ethics scandal, involving sex, drugs and graft.  Finally, we have a complicit judiciary that fails to enforce the general requirement that legislative trustees avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety.

Oh, oops, I forgot; a $20,000 donation is free speech!

He and Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn, both former state attorneys general, announced yesterday the CORRECTIONS Act, or the Corrections Oversight, Recidivism Reduction, and Eliminating Costs for Taxpayers in Our National System Act. This bill the, two senators say, will reduce both the cost of prisons and recidivism for inmate all over America.

“Our bill is built on the simple premise that when inmates are better prepared to re-enter communities, they are less likely to commit crimes after they are released – and that is in all of our interests,” Whitehouse said in a press release. This bill will be formally introduced today.

And what’s even better – the bill is based on a successful program run right here in Rhode Island.

“As a former state and federal prosecutor, I recognize that there are no easy solutions to overflowing prison populations and skyrocketing corrections spending,” said Whitehouse. “But states like Rhode Island have shown that it is possible to cut prison costs while making the public safer.”

The Whitehouse/Cornyn bill would allow some inmates to earn time off their sentences for participating in programs that reduce recidivism. Whitehouse staff says the concept is based on successful programs implemented by A.T. Wall, director of the department of corrections in Rhode Island, and shared this op/ed authored by Whitehouse and this article authored by A.T. Wall.

That’s the language of an amendment Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse squeezed into a bill on the Keystone Pipeline, which was overwhelmingly approved – and even co-sponsored by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe. No small feet, considering Inhofe, an infamous climate change denier, once wrote a book called, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.”

Whitehouse chalked it up as a victory. “This resolution marks a historic shift for many of my Republican colleagues,” he said in a statement. “While a number of Republicans have long acknowledged that climate change is real, including Senator Graham who spoke once again today, many others either denied the science or refused to discuss it.”

But the beltway media suggests the idea may have backfired.

“Senate Republicans head-faked Democrats on climate change Wednesday, agreeing in a floor vote that the planet’s climate was changing, but blocking language that would have blamed human activity,” wrote Politico.

Inhofe countered that there exists “Biblical evidence” of climate change and blocked a vote on whether or not humans are contributing.

“It was a nifty, if insincere, bit of politics,” . “There’s no question that a vote against a flat statement that climate change is real could have been problematic for candidates down the road — especially for those various Republican senators quietly preparing for the big election in 2016. With Inhofe’s re-framing the question, the Democrats, trying to engineer a gotcha moment, ended up empty-handed on the vote, with neither the satisfaction of nailing down opposition to scientific consensus and without a point of leverage for future discussions of addressing the warming planet.”

Whitehouse was pleased to have at least gained some consensus. “I was glad to see almost every Republican, including Senator Inhofe, acknowledge the reality of climate change today,” he said, “and I hope this means we can move on to discussing not just whether climate change is real, but what we should do about it.”

“I think the pressure is on to do something on tax reform,” Whitehouse said. “Now that the Republicans are in the majority they need to prove to the American people they can govern, that they are not just a bomb-throwing obstructive minority, so that changes their motivation on something like tax reform.”

Whitehouse has introduced the first two bills before. He inherits the third piece of legislation from former Michigan Senator Carl Levin the so-called “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act” that would prevent corporations from shielding profits from tax responsibility.

“It would help us here in Rhode Island because here’s CVS, which like most of the retail industry pays the full freight, they pay the full 35 percent tax rate,” explained Whitehouse. “Meanwhile here’s Carnival Cruise Lines pays virtually zero because they pretend they exist only in offshore Caribbean destinations.”

The three bills would net more than $300 billion in ten years, Whitehouse said.

The Buffett Rule bill, or the Paying A Fair Share Act, would tax at 30 percent all annual income over $2 million and would net $70 million over ten years of missing revenue for the American people. The Offshore Prevention Act would end the corporate practice of deferring tax payments when a company moves jobs overseas and would net $20 million in 10 years. The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act would net $220 billion over 10 years and prevents corporations from creating overseas tax shelters.

Despite the GOP’s reluctance to help level the tax-paying field, Whitehouse thinks he’s in a good position because he envisions Republicans having to make some concessions with Democrats if they hope to get tax legislation passed this year.

“I don’t think they have 60 votes for their plan and I’m sure they don’t have 67 votes for their plan so if they want to actually have something that gets signed into law by the president and actually changes the tax code they are going to have to work with Democrats,” he said.

Whitehouse handed out this one-pager to reporters to explain the three bills.

Here’s the contents:

THE PROBLEM

Right now America’s tax code is riddled with costly loopholes that benefit some of the highest earners and largest corporations. These special interest provisions have created two sets of tax rules: one for middle-class families and small businesses, and one for wealthy interests and multi-national corporations. With President Obama and Republican Leaders in Congress indicating that they plan to make tax reform a priority in the 114th Congress, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is introducing a package of bills that would make the current system fairer while also raising billions of dollars in new revenue. This revenue could provide substantial resources for investments in infrastructure and education, or could serve as a fairer way to fund new Republican initiatives than cuts to benefits that people rely on.

SHELDON’S PLAN

Implement the Buffett Rule.

• Thanks to a number of tax loopholes, America’s top earners often pay a lower effective tax rate than middle-class workers. Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has famously lamented he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.
• Senator Whitehouse’s Paying a Fair Share Act would require multi-million-dollar earners to pay a minimum 30 percent effective federal tax rate, regardless of the number of special credits, deduction, and rates they claim.
• The bill would generate an estimated $71 billion over ten years.

End tax giveaway for sending jobs offshore.

• Currently, U.S. companies that manufacture goods abroad for sale here at home are allowed to defer payment of federal income tax – waiting to pay taxes on foreign income in years that minimize their tax liability.
• Senator Whitehouse’s Offshoring Prevention Act would require companies that send factories and jobs overseas to play by the same rules as ones supporting jobs in the U.S., removing an offshoring incentive and helping local businesses compete.
• The bill would generate an estimated $19.5 billion in revenue over ten years.

Close loopholes that allow multi-national corporations to avoid taxes.

• Some of America’s biggest corporations are able to dramatically reduce their taxes by funneling assets and profits through complex networks of offshore corporations.
• The Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which was originally championed by former-Senator Carl Levin, closes these loopholes and requires large multinational corporations to pay a fair share in taxes.
• The bill would generate at least $220 billion in revenue over ten years.

You are the people I voted for to represent me at the federal level of government. And because I participate in this democracy, I authorize the federal government’s actions. I bear some responsibility, one vote’s worth, for everything done by the United States.

Therefore, I must say to you, in the strongest terms possible, don’t torture in my name.

I have felt shame and remorse for years now at the torture perpetrated during the Bush administration. I greeted Obama’s directive to end torture with relief. However, we now have the official report on torture from the Senate and we also have the reactions to that report from streams of torture apologists. It has become clear that much more must be done. Just because the monkey is off your back, it doesn’t mean the circus has left town. There is a culture of torture that must be dealt with.

Here are some things I’d like you to do. Phrased another way, here are some things you will do if you want me to keep voting for you. (Barack, in your case, here are some things you will do if you want me to donate to your post-presidency foundation.)

1. Dianne Feinstein is a national hero and every one of you should go out of your way to state so publicly. Get your picture taken with her at every possible opportunity.
2. Never use the phrase enhanced interrogation techniques. The person who controls the language of the debate wins. Here is what happened: some kid got picked up in the desert and taken to a secret prison. He was not charged with anything. He did not go to trial. There was a one in five chance that even his captors would admit to having taken him in error. He refused to eat his dinner. His captors put his food through a blender, anally raped him, and squirted puréed humus and crackers up his rectum. This was done to “exert total control over the detainee” and induce a condition of “learned helplessness.” This ain’t enhanced nothing. Never use that phrase again.
3. Don’t engage in the debate about whether torture produced good information. It doesn’t matter! I don’t want some guy water boarded in my name even if he gives up Bin Laden’s home address. If evil people get you to be evil, they win.
4. Identify anyone who thought up, authorized, signed off on, contracted for, wrote memos in support of, opined on the legality of, or in any other way brought about the culture of torture. Give them a chance to come clean and admit their culpability. If they don’t, prosecute them. I’m talking about a Truth and Reconciliation type procedure. Propose it, sponsor it, push for it.
5. Bruce Jessen and Jim Mitchell are the two “psychologists” who had the major contract for interrogations during which detainees were tortured. They were paid $80 million of my dollars! Get it back. They took it under false pretenses. Denounce them as sick bastards and war profiteers. Do this loudly and frequently.
6. Fire John O. Brennan. Hey Barack, Joe, doesn’t this guy work for you? Did you see him go on TV from inside CIA headquarters and totally contradict your anti-torture stance? Didn’t you feel a little disrespected? How come you’re letting him keep his job? How can the culture of torture be ended at the CIA when the director is a torture apologist? Wait a minute… When you say you are anti-torture, you mean it, don’t you?
7. Identify and acknowledge all the people who resisted torture in the middle of this despicable situation. They are national heroes. Give them the Medal of Honor.

There is a guy named John Kiriakou who is currently serving time for bringing torture to the attention of the press back in 2007. He was prosecuted in 2013 and sent to prison. Ah… excuse me… Barack and Joe, weren’t you guys in office in 2013? Are you sure you mean it when you say you’re anti-torture? Pardon John Kiriakou. Apologize to him. Compensate him. Is one to laugh or cry at the irony of this man, who has five kids, being locked up while Dick Cheney is free to rant and rave on Fox News?

So, Barack, Joe, Jack, Sheldon, James, that is my to do list for you. I know you got a lot on your plates, but, in terms of the soul of this country, there are few things more important than making sure nothing like this ever happens again.

See you at the polls.

Your constituent,

John Kotula

P.S. Obama, Nice job on Cuba!

I’m a 67 year-old physics professor at the University of Rhode Island. I have a wife, four kids, five grandchildren and sixth on the way. I would claim to be a respectable citizen, and yet, earlier this week Senator Sheldon Whitehouse had me arrested for caring about the global climate.

About ten friends from the multi-state NOPE (No Pipeline Expansion) Coalition and I set up a sit-in at Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s downtown Providence office that ended with my arrest by a Providence police officer when the senator’s staff was about to close the office.

I understand that Senator Whitehouse is well-regarded as a climate champion and a realist who understands the constraints imposed by political reality. Senator Whitehouse might understand politics, but I know something about physics. The problem is that the Earth’s climate does not obey the rules of that reality; it evolves according to the laws of nature.

Knowing that the lives of many millions are being put at risk, and that the impact would be distributed according to the same old rules of colonialism, racism, and patriarchy, I refused to leave the Senator’s office. All of us were there to make it clear that with his image of climate champion, he had become a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

After attending the PUC hearing about National Grid’s proposed 23.3% rate hike, RI members of the NOPE Coalition started out on our mission to occupy Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s office in downtown Providence. The action was coordinated with a similar action at his DC office.  On our way, we picked up a couple friends from Burrillville. We made our way into the Providence office, and announced the purpose of our visit.  We also made it known that some of us were willing to risk arrest to accomplish our goal, namely to convince the senator to do the right thing: to withdraw his support for fracked gas as a substitute for coal and oil.

That plan is being sold as a step in process of kicking the nation’s fossil fuel addiction, but in reality it will simply continue business as usual at best.  As usual, the profits will going to Wall Street both as the shale bubble is being inflated and once again as it will pop.

We came equipped with sleeping bags and settled in comfortably for the duration.

We peacefully took over the space and started filling it up with our signs.

Our message was a follow-up of another NOPE action: on the previous day, police arrested two of our friends of Capitalism vs. the Climate, who had chained themselves to a mock “bridge to nowhere” and blocked the driveway to Spectra Energy’s methane gas compressor station in Cromwell, CT.

This is our bridge to nowhere:

The sign on the right reads:

• HOW MANY KATRINAS, SANDYS AND SUPER TYPHOONS WILL IT TAKE, SENATOR WHITEHOUSE?
• MOTHER NATURE IS NOT OUR KINDLY GRANNY
• SHE’S NOT MOVED BY POLITICAL COMPROMISES
• NOR ARE THE MILLIONS WHO WILL DIE ON THE FRACKED-GAS BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
• SENATOR:

  DRILL, BABY, DRILL
  =
  KILL, BABY, KILL!

On the left is a sign that identifies the problem with the President’s Climate Action Plan, which features natural gas a the bridge fuel between us and a green future:

…both shale gas and conventional natural gas have a larger GHG [greenhouse gas footprint] than do coal or oil, for any possible use…
A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas
RobertW.Howarth
Energy Science and Engineering 2014
http://tinyurl.com/meth-bridge

Of course, we made sure that we identified the central problem with what we still call a democracy for lack of a better word.
You might wonder how all of this ended.  Well, it has not ended.  I have a court date for January 8 and we’ll see how that goes, but I was back out on the streets of Providence and on my way home within an hour after arrest.  One member of our group had picked up my car and was waiting outside.  I was released without ever having seen the inside of a cell.

In fact, I may have made some friends among the Providence police.  We had a pleasant conversation during the ride to the station, as I sat with with my hands shackled behind my back.  (One of the unknown advantages of yoga is that this pose is quite comfortable compared to the more extreme positions I tend to favor.)  The officer who drove us to the station told me that he respected me for standing up for my convictions.  He asked me if I wanted to be processed quickly so I would be out within an hour.  Who’d say no to that?  I heard the other officer, the one who wrote up the incident report, say to one of his colleagues that I was the nicest protester he had ever arrested.  That really made my day as I thought of the motto of the People’s Climate Movement: “To change everything we need everybody.”  And, yes, that includes not only the police, but also Senator Whitehouse, his staff, and all of those whom we hope to welcome in our midst once they will have freed themselves of the chains of predator capitalism.   Please help us to make that happen, but remember that time is running out: we are in Decade Zero of the climate crisis.

The Senate report, more than five years in the making, details how CIA agents tortured suspects in the so-called war on terror to little or no avail and systematically lied to Congress and the American public about the efficacy of such techniques.

Reed, a senior member of the Armed Services Committee who is often on the short list for a high-level position in the Pentagon, said in a statement: “The use of torture is abhorrent and stands in stark contrast to our constitution and values.  It is not an effective tool to obtain reliable intelligence. As we continue to confront the threat of terrorism at home and abroad, we are reminded that we are stronger as a nation when we remain true to our democratic principles.”

Senator Sheldon Whithouse was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the early stages of developing the report. He’s taken an active role in opposing torture, such as chairing a 2009 Judiciary Committee hearing on torture during the Bush Administration.

Whitehouse said of the report in a statement sent out yesterday, “After years of effort and millions of documents reviewed, the Senate report at last lays out in painstaking detail how the CIA under President Bush and Vice President Cheney turned down the dark path to torture, and then to cover its tracks misled Congress and executive officials about the efficacy of the torture program.  These are hard facts to face as Americans, but it’s important that the facts be known.  Chairman Feinstein and our Intelligence Committee staff deserve our country’s deep appreciation for their extraordinary efforts.”

Congressman David Cicilline, a member of the House Foreign Intelligence Committee, said in a statement: “The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report is deeply disturbing. Among the many findings, this report reveals that the CIA employed more brutal interrogation techniques than had been previously detailed publicly, deliberately misled Congress and the White House about the program’s effectiveness, and damaged the United States’ reputation around the world. These abuses are a violation of basic human rights and are in stark contrast to our values as a nation, and this report provides further confirmation that these techniques simply fail to provide results that strengthen our national security. I applaud the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee for their efforts to provide the American people with an account of the actions carried out in their name. It is now our duty as elected officials, and American citizens who believe in the values upon which our nation was founded, to ensure serious violations such as this never occur again.”

And said Congressman Jim Langevin in a statement: “I am deeply concerned by the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The tactics detailed in the report are contrary to American values, and these programs have been rightly ended. Human rights must be preserved in times of peace and war, and I sincerely hope we can learn from this dark moment in our history.”