(continued from yesterday’s post):<\/p>\n
(…)<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s memorandum states, \u201cAs opposed to preventing this particular defendant from committing further crimes, the sentence should be crafted \u2018to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct\u2019 by others.\u201d\u00a0 Their concern is not the danger that I present, but the danger presented by my ideas and words that might lead others to action.\u00a0 Perhaps Mr Huber is right to be concerned.\u00a0 He represents the United States Government.\u00a0 His job is to protect those currently in power, and by extension, their corporate sponsors.\u00a0 After months of no action after the auction, the way I found out about my indictment was the day before it happened, Pat Shea got a call from an Associated Press reporter who said, \u201cI just wanted to let you know that tomorrow Tim is going to be indicted, and this is what the charges are going to be.\u201d\u00a0 That reporter had gotten that information two weeks earlier from an oil industry lobbyist.\u00a0 Our request for disclosure of what role that lobbyist played in the US Attorney\u2019s office was denied, but we know that she apparently holds sway and that the government feels the need to protect the industry\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n
The things that I\u2019ve been publicly saying may indeed be threatening to that power structure. There have been several references to the speech I gave after the conviction, but I\u2019ve only ever seen half of one sentence of that speech quoted.\u00a0 In the government\u2019s report, they actually had to add their own words to that one sentence to make it sound more threatening. \u00a0 But the speech was about empowerment.\u00a0 It was about recognizing our interconnectedness rather than viewing ourselves as isolated individuals.\u00a0 The message of the speech was that when people stand together, they no longer have to be exploited by powerful corporations.\u00a0 Alienation is perhaps the most effective tool of control in America, and every reminder of our real connectedness weakens that tool.<\/p>\n
But the sentencing guidelines don\u2019t mention the need to protect corporations or politicians from ideas that threaten their control.\u00a0 The guidelines say \u201cprotect the public.\u201d\u00a0 The question is whether the public is helped or harmed by my actions.\u00a0 The easiest way to answer that question is with the direct impacts of my action.\u00a0 As the oil executive stated in his testimony, the parcels I didn\u2019t bid on averaged $12 per acre, but the ones I did bid on averaged $125.\u00a0 Those are the prices paid for public property to the public trust.\u00a0 The industry admits very openly that they were getting those parcels for an order of magnitude less than what they were worth.\u00a0 Not only did those oil companies drive up the prices to $125 during the bidding, they were then given an opportunity to withdraw their bids once my actions were explained.\u00a0 They kept the parcels, presumably because they knew they were still a good deal at $125.\u00a0 The oil companies knew they were getting a steal from the American people, and now they\u2019re crying because they had to pay a little closer to what those parcels were actually worth.\u00a0 The government claims I should be held accountable for the steal the oil companies didn\u2019t get.\u00a0 The government\u2019s report demands $600,000 worth of financial impacts for the amount which the oil industry wasn\u2019t able to steal from the public.<\/p>\n
That extra revenue for the public became almost irrelevant, though, once most of those parcels were revoked by Secretary Salazar.\u00a0 Most of the parcels I won were later deemed inappropriate for drilling.\u00a0 In other words, the highest and best value to the public for those particular lands was not for oil and gas drilling.\u00a0 Had the auction gone\u00a0 off without a hitch, it would have been a loss for the public.\u00a0 The fact that the auction was delayed, extra attention was brought to the process, and the parcels were ultimately revoked was a good thing for the public.<\/p>\n
More generally, the question of whether civil disobedience is good for the public is a matter of perspective.\u00a0 Civil disobedience is inherently an attempt at change.\u00a0 Those in power, whom Mr Huber represents, are those for whom the status quo is working, so they always see civil disobedience as a bad thing.\u00a0 The decision you are making today, your honor, is what segment of the public you are meant to protect.\u00a0 Mr Huber clearly has cast his lot with that segment who wishes to preserve the status quo.\u00a0 But the majority of the public is exploited by the status quo far more than they are benefited by it.\u00a0 The young are the most obvious group who is exploited and condemned to an ugly future by letting the fossil fuel industry call the shots.\u00a0 There is an overwhelming amount of scientific research, some of which you received as part of our proffer on the necessity defense, that reveals the catastrophic consequences which the young will have to deal with over the coming decades.<\/p>\n
But just as real is the exploitation of the communities where fossil fuels are extracted.\u00a0 As a native of West Virginia, I have seen from a young age that the exploitation of fossil fuels has always gone hand in hand with the exploitation of local people.\u00a0 In West Virginia, we\u2019ve been extracting coal longer than anyone else.\u00a0 And after 150 years of making other people rich, West Virginia is almost dead last among the states in per capita income, education rates and life expectancy.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not an anomaly.\u00a0 The areas with the richest fossil fuel resources, whether coal in West Virginia and Kentucky, or oil in Louisiana and Mississippi, are the areas with the lowest standards of living.\u00a0 In part, this is a necessity of the industry.\u00a0 The only way to convince someone to blow up their backyard or poison their water is to make sure they are so desperate that they have no other option.\u00a0 But it is also the nature of the economic model.\u00a0 Since fossil fuels are a limited resources, whoever controls access to that resource in the beginning\u00a0 gets to set all the terms.\u00a0 They set the terms for their workers, for the local communities, and apparently even for the regulatory agencies.\u00a0 A renewable energy economy is a threat to that model.\u00a0 Since no one can control access to the sun or the wind, the wealth is more likely to flow to whoever does the work of harnessing that energy, and therefore to create a more distributed economic system, which leads to a more distributed political system.\u00a0 It threatens the profits of the handful of corporations for whom the current system works, but our question is which segment of the public are you tasked with protecting.\u00a0 I am here today because I have chosen to protect the people locked out of the system over the profits of the corporations running the system.\u00a0 I say this not because I want your mercy, but because I want you to join me.<\/p>\n
After this difference of political philosophies, the rest of the sentencing debate has been based on the financial loss from my actions.\u00a0 The government has suggested a variety of numbers loosely associated with my actions, but as of yet has yet to establish any causality between my actions and any of those figures.\u00a0 The most commonly discussed figure is perhaps the most easily debunked.\u00a0 This is the figure of roughly $140,000, which is the amount the BLM originally spent to hold the December 2008 auction.\u00a0 By definition, this number is the amount of money the BLM spent before I ever got involved.\u00a0 The relevant question is what the BLM spent because of my actions, but apparently that question has yet to be asked.\u00a0 The only logic that relates the $140,000 figure to my actions is if I caused the entire auction to be null and void and the BLM had to start from scratch to redo the entire auction.\u00a0 But that of course is not the case.\u00a0 First is the prosecution\u2019s on-again-off-again argument that I didn\u2019t have any impact on the auction being overturned.\u00a0 More importantly, the BLM never did redo the auction because it was decided that many of those parcels should never have been auctioned in the first place.\u00a0 Rather than this arbitrary figure of $140,000, it would have been easy to ask the BLM how much money they spent or will spend on redoing the auction.\u00a0 But the government never asked this question, probably because they knew they wouldn\u2019t like the answer.<\/p>\n
The other number suggested in the government\u2019s memorandum is the $166,000 that was the total price of the three parcels I won which were not invalidated.\u00a0 Strangely, the government wants me to pay for these parcels, but has never offered to actually give them to me.\u00a0 When I offered the BLM the money a couple weeks after the auction, they refused to take it.\u00a0 Aside from that history, this figure is still not a valid financial loss from my actions.\u00a0 When we wrote there was no loss from my actions, we actually meant that rather literally.\u00a0 Those three parcels were not evaporated or blasted into space because of my actions, not was the oil underneath them sucked dry by my bid card.\u00a0 They\u2019re still there, and in fact the BLM has already issued public notice of their intent to re-auction those parcels in February of 2012.<\/p>\n
The final figure suggested as a financial loss is the $600,000 that the oil company wasn\u2019t able to steal from the public.\u00a0 That completely unsubstantiated number is supposedly the extra amount the BLM received because of my actions.\u00a0 This is when things get tricky.\u00a0 The government\u2019s report takes that $600,000 positive for the BLM and adds it to that roughly $300,000 negative for the BLM, and comes up with a $900,000 negative.\u00a0 With math like that, it\u2019s obvious that Mr Huber works for the federal government.<\/p>\n
After most of those figures were disputed in the pre-sentence report, the government claimed in their most recent objection that I should be punished according to the intended financial impact that I intended to cause.\u00a0 The government tries to assume my intentions and then claims, \u201cThis is consistent with the testimony that Mr. DeChristopher provided at trial, admitting that his intention was to cause financial harm to others with whom he disagreed.\u201d\u00a0 Now I didn\u2019t get to say a whole lot at the trial, so it was pretty easy to look back through the transcripts.\u00a0 The statement claimed by the government never happened.\u00a0 There was nothing even close enough to make their statement a paraphrase or artistic license.\u00a0 This statement in the government\u2019s objection is a complete fiction.\u00a0 Mr Huber\u2019s inability to judge my intent is revealed in this case by the degree to which he underestimates my ambition.\u00a0 The truth is that my intention, then as now, was to expose, embarrass and hold accountable the oil industry to the extent that it cuts into the $100 billion in annual profits that it makes through exploitation.\u00a0 I actually intended for my actions to play a role in the wide variety of actions that steer the country toward a clean energy economy where those $100 billion in oil profits are completely eliminated.\u00a0 When I read Mr Huber\u2019s new logic, I was terrified to consider that my slightly unrealistic intention to have a $100 billion impact will fetch me several consecutive life sentences.\u00a0 Luckily this reasoning is as unrealistic as it is silly.<\/p>\n
A more serious look at my intentions is found in Mr Huber\u2019s attempt to find contradictions in my statements.\u00a0 Mr Huber points out that in public I acted proud of my actions and treated it like a success, while in our sentencing memorandum we claimed that my actions led to \u201cno loss.\u201d\u00a0 On the one hand I think it was a success, and yet I claim it there was no loss.\u00a0 Success, but no loss.\u00a0 Mr Huber presents these ideas as mutually contradictory and obvious proof that I was either dishonest or backing down from my convictions.\u00a0 But for success to be contradictory to no loss, there has to be another assumption.\u00a0 One has to assume that my intent was to cause a loss.\u00a0 But the only loss that I intended to cause was the loss of secrecy by which the government gave\u00a0 away public property for private profit.\u00a0 As I actually stated in the trial, my intent was to shine a light on a corrupt process and get the government to take a second look at how this auction was conducted.\u00a0 The success of that intent is not dependent on any loss.\u00a0 I knew that if I was completely off base, and the government took that second look and decided that nothing was wrong with that auction, the cost of my action would be another day\u2019s salary for the auctioneer and some minor costs of re-auctioning the parcels.\u00a0 But if I was right about the irregularities of the auction, I knew that allowing the auction to proceed would mean the permanent loss of lands better suited for other purposes and the permanent loss of a safe climate.\u00a0 The intent was to prevent loss, but again that is a matter of perspective.<\/p>\n
Mr Huber wants you to weigh the loss for the corporations that expected to get public property for pennies on the dollar, but I believe the important factor is the loss to the public which I helped prevent.\u00a0 Again, we come back to this philosophical difference.\u00a0 From any perspective, this is a case about the right of citizens to challenge the government.\u00a0 The US Attorney\u2019s office makes clear that their interest is not only to punish me for doing so, but to discourage others from challenging the government, even when the government is acting inappropriately.\u00a0 Their memorandum states, \u201cTo be sure, a federal prison term here will deter others from entering a path of criminal behavior.\u201d\u00a0 The certainty of this statement not only ignores the history of political prisoners, it ignores the severity of the present situation.\u00a0 Those who are inspired to follow my actions are those who understand that we are on a path toward catastrophic consequences of climate change.\u00a0 They know their future, and the future of their loved\u00a0 ones, is on the line.\u00a0 And they know were are running out of time to turn things around.\u00a0 The closer we get to that point where it\u2019s too late, the less people have to lose by fighting back.\u00a0 The power of the Justice Department is based on its ability to take things away from people.\u00a0 The more that people feel that they have nothing to lose, the\u00a0 more that power begins to shrivel.\u00a0 The people who are committed to fighting for a livable future will not be discouraged or intimidated by anything that happens here today.\u00a0 And neither will I.\u00a0 I will continue to confront the system that threatens our future.\u00a0 Given the destruction of our democratic institutions that once gave citizens access to power, my future will likely involve civil disobedience.\u00a0 Nothing that happens\u00a0 here today will change that.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean that in any sort of disrespectful way at all, but you don\u2019t have that authority. \u00a0 You have authority over my life, but not my principles.\u00a0 Those are mine alone.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not saying any of this to ask you for mercy, but to ask you to join me.\u00a0 If you side with Mr Huber and believe that your role is to discourage citizens from holding their government accountable, then you should follow his recommendations and lock me away.\u00a0 I certainly don\u2019t want that.\u00a0 I have no desire to go to prison, and any assertion that I want to be even a temporary martyr is false.\u00a0 I want you to join me in standing up for the right and responsibility of citizens to challenge their government.\u00a0 I want you to join me in valuing this country\u2019s rich history of nonviolent civil disobedience.\u00a0 If you share those values but think my tactics are mistaken, you have the power to redirect them.\u00a0 You can sentence me to a wide range of community service efforts that would point my commitment to a healthy and just world down a different path.\u00a0 You can have me work with troubled teens, as I spent most of my career doing.\u00a0 You can have me help disadvantaged communities or even just pull weeds for the BLM.\u00a0 You can steer that commitment if you agree with it, but you can\u2019t kill it.\u00a0 This is not going away. \u00a0 At this point of unimaginable threats on the horizon, this is what hope looks like.\u00a0 In these times of a morally bankrupt government that has sold out its principles, this is what patriotism looks like.\u00a0 With countless lives on the line, this is what love looks like, and it will only grow.\u00a0 The choice you are making today is what side are you on.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(continued from yesterday’s post): (…) The government\u2019s memorandum states, \u201cAs opposed to preventing this particular defendant from committing further crimes, the sentence should be crafted \u2018to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct\u2019 by others.\u201d\u00a0...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,27,31,1],"tags":[1035],"class_list":["post-6695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agitprop","category-capitalism","category-climate-change","category-uncategorized","tag-tim-dechristopher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6695"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6702,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6695\/revisions\/6702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}