Category: Government

Earlier, in Pride of Place and Puppy Mills I wrote:

I looked through the literature for the State and the Department of Agriculture—you know, the brag sheets. We export this much corn and soybeans, and we’re number seven for hogs, and so on. But you won’t find puppies among the listed exports, nor will you find any boasting on being the number one large scale commercial dog breeding state in the country.

This week, Missouri’s Department of Agriculture is celebrating National Agriculture Week with all sorts of festivities. Missouri’s agricultural products will be especially touted…except for one.

Nowhere in the festivities will Dr. Jon Hagler brag about Missouri’s position as the state with the most large scale commercial dog breeding operations. He won’t hold up a basket of puppies and suggest we take home a dozen. He’s not going to lead agritourists on tours of some of the larger operations.

What does this say about how we really view large scale commercial dog breeding?

Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources (MoDNR), has been the focus of contention for the last several years. One of the first acts the state’s last governor, Matt Blunt, did when he first came to office back in 2005 was fire most of the DNR’s upper management—including the director, Steve Mahood, who was greatly respected in the environmental community. Mahood eventually went on to a position with the Nature Conservancy.

In Mahood’s place, Blunt appointed Doyle Childers, a long time Republican Missouri State Senator. Childer’s appointment was not without controversy, primarily because of his business focus, and by his lack of natural resource management experience. The controversy around Childers was exacerbated by his own politically motivated actions as regards to two specific events related to the DNR: the Taum Sauk dam break, and the Boonville Bridge.

The Boonville Bridge is an old train bridge outside the town of Boonville that advocates wanted to restore and include as part of the Katy Trail. However, Union Pacific wanted the bridge condemned so it could recover the steel used in its construction. Childers, in his position at DNR, supported the Union Pacific. Governor Jay Nixon, in his role, then, as state Attorney General, filed a lawsuit to stop the Union Pacific, contending that the bridge was deeded to the Katy Trail effort. When I last checked this item, the appeals court had sided with the DNR, the case was headed to the State Supreme court, and bridge supporters were looking for compromises, such as letting the Union Pacific have the steel, but keeping the bridge.

The Boonville Bridge wasn’t the only time that Childers and Nixon clashed. Following the Ameren Taum Sauk dam break, which caused devastating damage to the state’s Johnson’s Shut-Ins state park, both Childers in the DNR and Nixon as state Attorney General fought over who had control over the litigation related to the event. Nixon, as Attorney General should have been the obvious choice, but Childers accused Nixon of taking campaign contributions from Ameren. Of course, we later found out that the money came to Nixon indirectly, from general Democratic campaign organizations; that the campaign contributions were part of Ameren’s stock donations it makes to all political parties. In addition, Matt Blunt and his father, both, also received campaign contributions from Ameren. Regardless, the Childers accusation ended up being one of this state’s uglier events in the last few years, and also formed part of the unsuccessful election campaign against Nixon.

No surprise, then, that when Jay Nixon won the election for Governor that Childers signaled that he would be resigning, taking one last parting shot in the process

Childers said he and Nixon have had an openly contentious relationship and that he would have been able to do more as the director of the DNR had he not been in continuous conflict with Nixon.

He said his time at the department was consumed by fights with Nixon. One confrontation was over a proposal to tear down the Katy Trail railroad bridge that crosses the Missouri River near Boonville, and another involved the cleanup of Johnson Shut-Ins State Park after a dam holding back the Taum Sauk Reservoir burst in Southeast Missouri.

“It made for more complications,” Childers said. “The Boonville bridge, well, we beat him three times in court on that. It took up a lot of our time and effort. After that, Johnson Shut-Ins took a huge amount of time.”

He said it’s “no secret” that he and Nixon had been at odds.

“He’s a good politician — an excellent politician — but I do not have a lot of respect for him as an individual,” Childers said.

Of course, it was a given that Nixon would fire Childers, but Nixon also replaced many of the upper management in the DNR, as well as all DNR ombudsmen. The question on everyone’s mind at that point was: who Nixon would pick to be the new director of the DNR? The farmers had their own idea as to a good candidate, as did the environmental groups.

On January 12th, we had our answer: Mark Templeton. The response was a resounding, “Who?”, as people and organizations scrambled to find what they could about this surprising choice.

What is known, based on the resume provided by Governor Nixon’s office, and what can be deduced from online searches is that Mark N. Templeton is a 39 year old former Missouri citizen, who attended both Harvard and Yale before getting a degree in law. According to the bio at the DNR

A native of Olivette, Mo., Mr. Templeton developed environmental and sustainability strategies during his tenure with McKinsey & Company, a global management consultancy headquartered in New York. From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Templeton worked with clients to explore new, “green” markets for products and services and develop next-generation jobs in the environmental and energy sectors. While at McKinsey, Mr. Templeton advised major organizations in the public, private and non-profit sectors, including the United Nations Development Programme’s Commission on the Private Sector and Development. In 2005, Mr. Templeton left McKinsey to become associate dean and chief operating office of Yale Law School, his alma mater.

As associate dean and chief operating officer at Yale Law, Mr. Templeton managed more than 200 administrative personnel and an annual budget of $105 million. Among other duties, Mr. Templeton was responsible for approving departmental budgets, monitoring accounts and negotiating with other academic and administrative units.

Prior to joining McKinsey, Mr. Templeton was special assistant and senior adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and an adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. He worked as office director of the Human Rights Documentation Center in Bangkok, Thailand, from 1999 to 2000 and as a research associate with the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center in New Delhi in 1997.

Mr. Templeton, 39, earned his bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in 1994 and his juris doctorate from Yale Law in 1999. He graduated from Horton Watkins High School.

Mr. Templeton and his wife, Kathy Dull, also a Missouri native, have two young children, Paisley and Graham.

An impressive background, but one that left everyone scratching their heads in wonderment as to Templeton’s qualification to running a department related to natural resources. Contrary to conservative opinion, Templeton is just as much an unknown the environmentalists as he is to the farmers.

What we have been able to find, primarily through determined Google searches, is that Mark N. Templeton is not Mark Templeton, the CEO or Citrix Systems. “Our” Mark Templeton has a law degree and is a member of the California Bar. His work with “green” jobs took place with McKinsey & Company, and since McKinsey is infamous for not divulging information about its clients, we may never know who Templeton worked with.

Before the McKinsey consulting gig, Templeton worked for the State Department, as well advising the US delegation to the UN. After his tenure at McKinsey, Templeton took a job as Chief Operating Officer at Yale University.

One other piece of information about our new Director of Missouri’s DNR that was not part of the public resume provided by Governor Nixon or the DNR, is that Mark Templeton is an original founder, and former director, of a company named Cobra Legal Solutions—a firm that specializes in outsourcing legal work for American corporations to India. Templeton is still listed as original founder and early investor, but the reference to his position as Acting Executive Directory has since been removed from the web site.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

I have a request into the DNR about Templeton’s current financial association with Cobra Legal Solutions, and the communications department responded with a note that they would check with him this week, since his first day at work at the DNR was Monday. When I have more information, I’ll provide an update.

Why was Mark Templeton picked to be the new Director of the Department of Natural Resources? It’s obvious that he does not bring with him any background in management of natural resources, or the environment, or even science, in general. According to Governor Nixon, Templeton’s focus within the DNR will be more on alternative energy and jobs, than day to day DNR management (Joplin Globe):

Said Nixon: “Finding new energy solutions and protecting our natural resources are the keys to Missouri’s environmental and economic future. Here in Missouri, we’re perfectly positioned to harness multiple new forms of energy, including wind, solar, nuclear, hydroelectric and biofuels. These energy solutions will lessen our dependence on foreign oil, create next-generation jobs and help turn this economy around.

“Mark Templeton has helped governmental, business and nonprofit groups find the links between environmental stewardship, alternative energy and sound business practices, and he will bring that cutting-edge thinking to our Department of Natural Resources.”

Sometimes the best way to end acrimonious and persistent contention is to surprise all of the players. In this regard, Nixon’s appointment of Mark Templeton is already a success. Whether Templeton will continue to enjoy success in his new role, though, is anyone’s guess.

Hearings to confirm Mark Templeton’s appointment as Director of DNR began on Wednesday. Unfortunately, there’s no public record of this session that I can find.

Mark Templeton was confirmed to the position at the DNR. I must admit to being somewhat surprised at the level of disinterest about Templeton’s involvement with Cobra Legal Solutions, particularly since the only reason he seems to have been hired was to generate jobs.

Mark Templeton’s name has been removed from the Cobra Legal Systems web site, as founder and investor. Surprising, because whatever his association with the group, he’s still an original founder, and investor.

The Consumerist has more on the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007.

People Over Profits has an email campaign but it also helps to contact your Congressional rep directly. A letter of phone call also works wonders.

How important is this bill? There is no bill pending in Congress that scares Corporate America more than this one. There is no bill pending in Congress that could more help the American people than this one.

Due to rulings in the Supreme Court, mandatory arbitration agreements now trump the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when it comes to employment discrimination lawsuits. This means that an arbitrator can make decisions based on civil rights, can do so without following the law, can do so without following the arbitration rules themselves, and can do so without any transparency into the decision process.

…after Sherri Warner lost her discrimination and wrongful firing suit in mandatory arbitration, a San Francisco arbitrator not only charged her nearly $16,000 for his time, he ordered her to pay her opponent’s legal fees of more than $207,000.

The fee award would probably not have been allowed in court, and it forced Warner into bankruptcy. But after her lawyer, Stephen Gorski, asked the arbitrator to explain his decision, the arbitrator refused when reminded no rules required him to do so.

Arbitrators rarely issue written opinions, making requests for review virtually impossible.

What’s scarier is that this case was ten years ago, and since then, the Supreme Court has given even more power to arbitration, including giving it power overruling on employment discrimination that now supersedes that of the EEOC. The Supremes have even given it power over the law, itself. I a recent case, one of my favorites, Buckeye Check Cashing vs. Cardenga, a man sued a check cashing company claiming that the conditions of the loan were illegal. The company, which had a mandatory arbitration clause, demanded that the claim be taken to arbitration. The state of Florida disagreed, saying that an arbitration clause that was in a contract deemed to be illegal is not enforceable.

However, our Scalia controlled Supreme Court doesn’t allow a little thing like an illegal contract deter it. It decided that it wasn’t up to the courts to determine the validity of an arbitration clause just because it happened to be in an illegal contract — the only item the courts could determine is whether the arbitration clause is, in and of itself, legal. The rest of the contract was then up to the arbitrator.

Question

Under the Federal Arbitration Act, may a party avoid arbitration by arguing that the contract in which the arbitration clause is contained is illegal?

Conclusion

No. The 7-1 majority (Justice Samuel Alito not participating) ruled that challenges to the legality of a contract as a whole must be argued before the arbitrator rather than a court. The opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia explained that “unless the challenge is to the arbitration clause itself, the issue of the contract’s validity is considered by the arbitrator in the first instance.” The Court held that the Florida Supreme Court had been wrong to rely on a distinction between void and merely voidable contracts, because the word “contract” in the Federal Arbitration Act includes contracts later found to be void. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented due to his long-held view that the FAA does not apply in state courts.

This is a frustrating topic for me, because I’ve watched over the years now as arbitration has eroded all of our judicial rights, as granted by the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution. It’s frustrating because I can’t seem to convey, in this weblog, how serious this can get.

A legal expert in Texas once said that he felt in ten years, there would no longer be a civil court system because of how much it is being eroded by an act that was basically put into law in 1925, as a way for businesses to come to ‘gentlemanly agreements’ in regards to a dispute. It was never intended to be used by corporations against the common citizen.

This is also a case of the breakdown of the system of checks and balances built into our government. The Supreme Court has empowered arbitration and supported mandatory arbitration to the point that it now is undermining the very nature of civil rights in our country, and was allowed to do so, unchecked, in the Republican controlled Congress.

Now we have a Democratic controlled congress. More than that, we have a congress where even many Republicans are beginning to look askance at the miscarriage of justice that occurs under the auspices of ‘arbitration’.

American Corporations do not want this Bill. American Corporations, who have delivered shoddy equipment, surly service, and bad faith consumerism.

Who supports this bill?

The Feingold-Johnson bill is supported by a host of consumer advocate organizations including Consumers Union, Public Citizen, American Association for Justice, Center for Responsible Lending, Consumer Federation of America, Homeowners Against Deficient Dwellings, Home Owners for Better Building, National Association of Consumer Advocates, National Consumer Law Center (on behalf of its low income clients), National Consumer Coalition for Nursing Home Reform, the National Employment Lawyers Association and Public Justice.

The list is only growing, as word of this Bill slowly trickles out.

Support the Arbitration Fairness Act of 2007. Please.

Sheila points to a good story on the recent Boston ‘terror’ alert, with bomb squad folks blowing up electronic boards with characters flipping the bird. She also has a good comment of her own:

Get a grip and admit you jumped straight to the doomsday scenario without investigating more plausible explanations. It’s not the kids’ fault that Boston — alone — spent $750,000 to defuse cartoon characters that had been decorating ten cities for three weeks.

I’m with the young people on this one. Boston acted like an ass. I liked Portland, Oregon’s take on the boards: the city checked them out, determined they weren’t harmful, and then left them alone if they weren’t on municipal property.