The Evening Blues - 9-11-18



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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: John Brim

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Chicago blues guitarist and singer John Brim. Enjoy!

John Brim - You Got Me Where You Want Me

"I believe that the root cause of every financial crisis, the root cause, is flawed government policies."

-- Henry Paulson


News and Opinion

An excellent article from Yves over at NC, worth a full read:

Pigs Want To Feed at the Trough Again: Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson Use Crisis Anniversary to Ask for More Bailout Powers

After a decade of writing about the crisis, we are now subjected to an orgy of yet more chatter with not much insight. It speaks volumes that the likes of Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Hank Paulson are deemed fit to say anything about it, let alone pitch the need for the officialdom to have more bank bailout tools in a New York Times op-e titled What We Need to Fight the Next Financial Crisis.

The fact that they blandly depict crises that demand extraordinary interventions as to be expected confirms that greedy technocrats like them are a big part of the problem. Their call for more help for financiers confirms that they have things backwards. How about doing more to make sure that future crises aren’t meteor-killing-the-dinosaurs level events, and foisting more costs and punishments on the financiers who got drunk and rich on too much risk-taking? The first line of defense should be stronger regulations, including prohibition of certain activities.

As the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf pointed out in a recent crisis retrospective, the response of central bankers and financial regulators to the crisis was to restore the status quo ante, and not engage in root and branch reform, as took place in the Great Depression. But as we’ve pointed out, the response to the crisis represented the greatest looting of the public purse in history. The post-crisis era of super-low interest rates represented an additional transfer of income from savers to the financial system. In the US, the so-called “get out of massive mortgage securitization liability for almost free” card otherwise known as the National Mortgage Settlement represented a not-widely recognized second bailout of banks and mortgage servicers. No wonder banksters are seeking a rinse and repeat.

An overfinancialized economy is good for no one save banksters and their paid retainers. Economists in recent years have been describing how larger financial systems hurt growth. For instance, the IMF found that the optimal development of a financial system was roughly where Poland is. The IMF conceded that it might be possible to have a larger banking system not drag down the economy if it were well regulated. Other studies have found that economies with large financial sectors typically have more inequality, and inequality is separately seen as a negative for growth. So there’s no sound policy reason to coddle banks rather than cut them down to size. ...

So the bailer-outers-in-chief are keen to prescribe more of what they foisted on the American public. It should come as no surprise that they didn’t pump for stronger financial reforms, were perfectly content to allow the Fed to authorize banks subject to stress tests to pay dividends and bonuses rather than have them build up much bigger capital cushions, and in Bernanke’s case, call for a resumption of austerity policies in 2012. Each one of this terrible trio has a much longer rap sheet. But the mere fact that they have the temerity to subject the public to their cronyistic blather, and worse, the New York Times dignifies it, shows that, as Talleyrand said of the Bourbons, that policymakers and pundits have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

Chris Hedges: Conjuring Up the Next Depression

During the financial crisis of 2008, the world’s central banks, including the Federal Reserve, injected trillions of dollars of fabricated money into the global financial system. This fabricated money has created a worldwide debt of $325 trillion, more than three times global GDP. The fabricated money was hoarded by banks and corporations, loaned by banks at predatory interest rates, used to service interest on unpayable debt or spent buying back stock, providing millions in compensation for elites. The fabricated money was not invested in the real economy. Products were not manufactured and sold. Workers were not reinstated into the middle class with sustainable incomes, benefits and pensions. Infrastructure projects were not undertaken. The fabricated money reinflated massive financial bubbles built on debt and papered over a fatally diseased financial system destined for collapse.

What will trigger the next crash? The $13.2 trillion in unsustainable U.S. household debt? The $1.5 trillion in unsustainable student debt? The billions Wall Street has invested in a fracking industry that has spent $280 billion more than it generated from its operations? Who knows. What is certain is that a global financial crash, one that will dwarf the meltdown of 2008, is inevitable. And this time, with interest rates near zero, the elites have no escape plan. The financial structure will disintegrate. The global economy will go into a death spiral. The rage of a betrayed and impoverished population will, I fear, further empower right-wing demagogues who promise vengeance on the global elites, moral renewal, a nativist revival heralding a return to a mythical golden age when immigrants, women and people of color knew their place, and a Christianized fascism.

The 2008 financial crisis, as the economist Nomi Prins points out, “converted central banks into a new class of power brokers.” They looted national treasuries and amassed trillions in wealth to become politically and economically omnipotent. In her book “Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World,” she writes that central bankers and the world’s largest financial institutions fraudulently manipulate global markets and use fabricated, or as she writes, “fake money,” to inflate asset bubbles for short-term profit as they drive us toward “a dangerous financial precipice.” ...

An emergency clause in the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 allows the Fed to provide liquidity to a distressed banking system. But the Federal Reserve did not stop with the creation of a few hundred billion dollars. It flooded the financial markets with absurd levels of fabricated money. This had the effect of making the economy appear as if it had revived. And for the oligarchs, who had access to this fabricated money while we did not, it did. The global financial system is a ticking time bomb. The question is not if it will explode but when it will explode. And once it does, the inability of the global speculators to use fabricated money with zero interest to paper over the debacle will trigger massive unemployment, high prices for imports and basic services, and a devaluation in which the dollar will become nearly worthless as it is abandoned as the world’s reserve currency. ... The elites, in a desperate bid to cling to their unchecked power and obscene wealth, will disembowel what is left of the United States.

Populists are on the rise but this can be a moment for progressives too

There is no denying that western Europe is currently witnessing a “populist moment”. This arises from the multiplication of anti-establishment movements, which signal a crisis of neoliberal hegemony. This crisis might indeed open the way for more authoritarian governments, but it can also provide the opportunity for reclaiming and deepening the democratic institutions that have been weakened by 30 years of neoliberalism.

Our current post-democratic condition is the product of several phenomena. The first one, which I call “post-politics”, is the blurring of frontiers between right and left. It is the result of the consensus established between parties of centre-right and centre-left on the idea that there was no alternative to neoliberal globalisation. Under the imperative of “modernisation”, social democrats have accepted the diktats of globalised financial capitalism and the limits it imposes on state intervention and public policies. Politics has become a mere technical issue of managing the established order, a domain reserved for experts. The sovereignty of the people, a notion at the heart of the democratic ideal, has been declared obsolete. Post-politics only allows for an alternation in power between the centre-right and the centre-left. The confrontation between different political projects, crucial for democracy, has been eliminated. ...

In recent years, various resistance movements have emerged. They embody what Karl Polanyi presented in The Great Transformation as a “countermovement”, by which society reacts against the process of marketisation and pushes for social protection. This countermovement, he pointed out, could take progressive or regressive forms. This ambivalence is also true of today’s populist moment. In several European countries those resistances have been captured by rightwing parties that have articulated, in a nationalistic and xenophobic vocabulary, the demands of those abandoned by the centre-left. Rightwing populists proclaim they will give back to the people the voice that has been captured by the “elites”. They understand that politics is always partisan and requires an us/them confrontation. Furthermore, they recognise the need to mobilise the realm of emotion and sentiment in order to construct collective political identities. Drawing a line between the “people” and the “establishment”, they openly reject the post-political consensus.

Those are precisely the political moves that most parties of the left feel unable to make, owing to their consensual concept of politics and the rationalistic view that passions have to be excluded. For them, only rational debate is acceptable. This explains their hostility to populism, which they associate with demagogy and irrationality. Alas, the challenge of rightwing populism will not be met by stubbornly upholding the post-political consensus and despising the “deplorables”. It is vital to realise that the moral condemnation and demonisation of rightwing populism is totally counterproductive – it merely reinforces anti-establishment feelings among those who lack a vocabulary to formulate what are, at core, genuine grievances. Classifying rightwing populist parties as “extreme right” or “fascist”, presenting them as a kind of moral disease and attributing their appeal to a lack of education is, of course, very convenient for the centre-left. It allows them to dismiss any populists’ demands and to avoid acknowledging responsibility for their rise.

The only way to fight rightwing populism is to give a progressive answer to the demands they are expressing in a xenophobic language. This means recognising the existence of a democratic nucleus in those demands and the possibility, through a different discourse, of articulating those demands in a radical democratic direction.

Thanks to Obama Bailouts and Trump Tax Cuts, Five Largest US Banks Have Raked in $583 Billion Since 2008 Crash

The 2008 financial meltdown inflicted devastating financial and psychological damage upon millions of ordinary Americans, but a new report released by Public Citizen on Tuesday shows the Wall Street banks that caused the crash with their reckless speculation and outright fraud have done phenomenally well in the ten years since the crisis.

Thanks to the Obama administration's decision to rescue collapsing Wall Street banks with taxpayer cash and the Trump administration's massive tax cuts and deregulatory push, America's five largest banks—JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs—have raked in more than $583 billion in combined profits over the past decade, Public Citizen found in its analysis marking the ten-year anniversary of the crisis.

"With no jail time for executives and half a trillion in post-crisis profits," said Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, "the big banks have made out like bandits during the post-crash period. Like bandits." Using data from the Federal Reserve, Public Citizen also calculated that America's the banks now hold a combined $9.7 trillion in assets.

"In the aftermath of the Great Recession, American families continue to struggle. A new report by the Urban Institute finds that nearly 40 percent of Americans had trouble paying for basic needs such as food, housing or utilities in 2017," Public Citizen notes in its report. "The banks, on the other hand—with more than half a trillion dollars in profits over the past decade—are doing just fine."

If recent earnings reports are any indicator, big banks are on track to continue shattering profit records thanks to President Donald Trump's $1.5 trillion in tax cuts. Big banks are also expected to see a boost from a recently passed bipartisan deregulatory bill that analysts argue significantly heightens the risk of another crash. "Wall Street's grip on Washington is painfully evident in the corporate tax giveaways and deregulatory favors that Congress routinely bestows to this bonus-besotted industry," Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate for Public Citizen's Congress Watch division, said in a statement.

Keiser Report: Reality of Creditor Jubilees

Orbán defiant as EU parliament considers sanctions on Hungary

Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, claimed his country was being condemned for choosing not to be a “country of migrants”, as he conceded that the European parliament was set to trigger the EU’s most serious sanction against his government. Arriving late to a debate in the chamber in Strasbourg on Tuesday on the country’s courts, treatment of its Roma community and media and academic freedoms, Orbán told MEPs that the parliament was “insulting” his nation.

“I know that you have already made up your minds. I know that a majority will approve the report and I know that my speech here today will not manage to change your opinion,” he told MEPs. “But still I have come heretoday because you are not going to condemn a government but a country as well as a nation. You are going to denounce Hungary that has been a member of the family of Christian nations for a thousand years.” The Hungarian populist nationalist, who won landslide general election victory in April, was addressing the parliament before a vote on Wednesday on a report which has advised it to trigger article 7, which can ultimately lead to an EU member state losing its voting rights in the union’s institutions.

Orbán stands accused of undermining the independence of its judiciary and media, waging a propaganda and legal war against the Central European University, founded by the philanthropist George Soros, and mistreating asylum seekers and refugees while limiting the functioning of non-governmental organisations who seek to aid them. ...

Some MEPs spoke in opposition to the report, including Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader who appealed to Hungary to join the “Brexit club”. Conservative MEPs also appeared set to vote against the triggering of article 7, on the grounds that it would be an interference in the country’s domestic politics. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: “Labour MEPs will vote to hold Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary to account. The Conservatives must do the same, and @Theresa_May should condemn his attacks on judicial and media independence, denial of refugee rights, and pandering to antisemitism and Islamophobia.”

But with Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s party (EPP), of which Orbán’s party, Fidesz is a member, signalling that his patience with the Hungarian government had been exhausted, it appeared almost certain that the threshold of two-thirds of MEPs supporting the triggering of the EU’s rule of law procedure would be met. The Hungarian prime minister, who has been in power since 2010, offered no evidence, however, that he was willing to rethink his most contentious policies. Instead, Orbán attacked the leadership of the EPP, describing it as “weak” and claiming it was “dancing to the tune of the socialists and the liberals”.

Saudi-led forces renew push to take key Yemen port from Houthi rebels

Saudi Arabia has responded to the breakdown of UN peace talks by relaunching its offensive to capture the crucial Yemen port city of Hodeidah, claiming to have killed more than 70 Houthi rebels in fighting in recent days. On Sunday, 11 soldiers from the coalition made up of the Saudis, the UAE and local Yemeni fighters were killed, reflecting the intensity of the fighting for the strategic Red Sea port, the entry point for 80% of the aid into the country.

Aid agencies said local UN staff were reporting that the bombardment “is the worst, by far, of any since the [Red Sea] campaign started in early June,” and involves not only airstrikes and shelling but also bombardment from naval ships. Humanitarian staff on the ground reported an “almost continuous presence of Saudi/UAE coalition aircraft” over Hodeidah since Friday night. The coalition aim seemed to be to cut off the main supply road from Hodeidah to the capital, Sana’a.

The UN and Britain had invested heavily in the success of peace talks led by UN special envoy Martin Griffiths, but the talks collapsed before they started when the Houthi negotiating team said it had not received satisfactory guarantees from Saudi Arabia about its safe passage to Switzerland. Griffiths said he would continue to his efforts to relaunch the talks.

John Bolton Threatens International Criminal Court Judges for Probing U.S. Torture in Afghanistan

Brazilian presidential candidate Lula abandons race, source says

Brazil’s jailed former president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has abandoned the long-running prison-cell campaign he has been waging to reclaim his country’s leadership, a source from his leftist Workers’ party said. Lula, who ruled for two terms, until 2011, and was one of the most popular leaders in modern Brazilian history, had shown a convincing lead in polls and was insisting on his candidacy even after an electoral court barred it on 1 September.

But in a widely anticipated move he will now be replaced by Fernando Haddad, a former philosophy lecturer and São Paulo mayor, who had been his vice-presidential candidate. Lula’s Workers’ party (PT) is set to announce the change on Tuesday afternoon in front of the federal police headquarters in the southern city of Curitiba where Lula is serving a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“My voice is the voice of Fernando Haddad and all the comrades in this fearless journey to rescue national dignity,” Lula said in a letter read out by actor Sérgio Mamberti during an event in São Paulo on Monday night. In an official video posted on social media by senior PT figures on Tuesday, Haddad said: “I’ve spoken to Lula and he’s furious at so much injustice … Lula was the best president Brazil ever had – we know he would win this election. But unfortunately they insist on taking him out … [against] the will of the people.” ...

The Workers’ party now has less than a month to transfer Lula’s support to Haddad – who doubled his support for the first round vote on 7 October in a poll from the Datafolha polling institute published on Monday.

A million attend rally in Barcelona to call for Catalan independence

About a million people have gathered in Barcelona to renew their calls for Catalan independence and to demand the release of jailed political leaders almost a year after the unilateral referendum that triggered Spain’s worst political crisis since its return to democracy.

The annual Diada celebrations commemorate the fall of the city at the end of the Spanish war of succession in 1714, but in recent years they have been used by pro-independence groups as a show of strength.

The issue of independence remains divisive in the region, with polls suggesting Catalans are almost evenly split on whether to stay part of Spain. Organisers said 460,000 people registered to take part in the rally, while police in Barcelona put attendance at about 1 million, making it roughly the same size as last year’s event.

Once again, the independence movement demonstrated its extraordinary capacity to mobilise its base, filling about four miles of Diagonal, the city’s broadest street, with hundreds of thousands of flag-waving supporters dressed in T-shirts bearing the slogan: “We’re making the Catalan republic”. With chants of “the streets will always be ours” and “independence”, the massive crowd assembled rather than marched in their allotted sections along the street.

Then at 17:14 – to correspond with the year that Barcelona fell – there was silence, followed by a wave of sound that roared from one end of Diagonal to the other, where it symbolically toppled a wall representing direct rule that Madrid imposed for several months after the independence declaration last October was ruled unlawful.

Leaked Clips from Censored Documentary on Israel Lobby Reveal Attacks on US Activists

With Hundreds of Children Still Detained, Sessions Instructs Judges to Show Less 'Sympathy' for Immigrants

With around 500 families still separated and hundreds of children still in detention as a result of the Trump administration's cruel "zero tolerance" policy and as the White House moves ahead with a proposal one critic called "Gitmo for children," Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday lectured incoming immigration lawyers to show less "sympathy" for immigrants trapped in President Donald Trump's mass deportation dragnet.

"When we depart from the law and create nebulous legal standards out of a sense of sympathy for the personal circumstances of a respondent in our immigration courts, we do violence to the rule of law and constitutional fabric that bind this great nation," Sessions declared in a speech delivered to 44 new judges in Virginia. "Your job is to apply the law—even in tough cases."

Sessions' comments, which come as the Trump administration continues to face international condemnation over its family separation policies, immediately provoked backlash from the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ)—the union that represents U.S. immigration judges—as well as former judges, who characterized the attorney general's instructions as politically motivated, legally baseless, and morally bankrupt. ...

Sessions' speech was delivered just hours after new United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet denounced the Trump administration's family separation policy—which was devised and implemented by Sessions' Justice Department—as "unconscionable" in her first speech on Monday and ripped the White House for not doing nearly enough to reunite the families it forcibly ripped apart.

Medical marijuana users are being shut out of public housing

Cancer patients and other people with debilitating conditions are being forced to choose between medical marijuana and federal public housing assistance. Even though some of the most conservative states are passing laws legalizing medical weed, marijuana is still a Schedule I controlled substance on a federal level, along with heroin and ecstasy, which can make users ineligible for programs like rental assistance or public housing.

Lily Fisher, a 55-year-old breast cancer survivor in Montana, learned that first-hand when she saw her application for a Section 8 rental assistance voucher rejected in August after revealing that she was using medical marijuana to treat her pain, according to the Billings Gazette. Section 8 is a federal program that subsidizes rent for low-income Americans.

In August, another woman seeking Section 8 assistance in Pennsylvania learned the same about the marijuana she uses to treat her back pain and post-traumatic stress disorder. And a third woman, in Arcata, California, was evicted from her federally-subsidized apartment in July after a maintenance worker spotted her legal stash of medicinal edibles, according to the local Times-Standard. These women are facing homelessness due to the conflict between state and federal law on pot. ...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released a memorandum in 2011 saying new admission applications revealing legal marijuana use would be denied, no matter the circumstance. However, the memorandum gave local landlords and public housing authorities the right to determine whether they should evict existing residents for medical marijuana use.

It’s not clear how many public housing authorities have sided with tenants on the local level, nor how many applicants have been rejected due to federal marijuana laws. But as more states normalize marijuana locally, it can make users ineligible for federal programs, like housing assistance.



the horse race



In Wake of Bombshell Op-Ed, Watchdog Calls for Congress to Investigate 'Erratic' Trump—Starting with Subpoenas for Cabinet

An anonymous op-ed detailing President Donald Trump's erratic behavior, printed in the New York Times last week, set off speculation regarding which Trump administration senior official may have penned the piece—but a government watchdog on Monday said the op-ed is mainly noteworthy not for the palace intrigue described within but because it gives lawmakers more than enough reason to investigate Trump's alleged abdication of his duty to preside over the country. ...


While the op-ed argued that Americans should feel secure in the fact that there are "adults in the room," Common Cause argued that nothing in the piece should be comforting to the public. "Americans deserve to know the truth behind these accusations that the president poses a severe enough threat to our nation that the cabinet weighed invoking the 25th Amendment in order to remove him from office, and that those same unelected officials are in effect running the nation to mitigate the damage that would be done by the president," said Common Cause president Karen Hobert Flynn in a statement.

A transparent exchange of information about what is taking place behind the scenes at the White House could be extremely useful to the public, the group wrote in its letter to the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the House Oversight Committee—but not if details of a chaotic presidency are only hinted at in an anonymous letter. "Whistleblowers have been important throughout history," wrote Hobert Flynn. "They are often the only way that the public learns about fraud or abuse, and they serve an important watchdog function...But the fact that 'Anonymous' proudly proclaims there are 'adults in the room' holding the line against the president's worst impulses moves us from whistleblower to an unelected and unaccountable shadow presidency by committee."

NY Democrats Smear Progressive Cynthia Nixon As Anti-Semite

Real Estate Tycoon Dumps Money Into Super PAC to Stop Zephyr Teachout’s Bid for New York Attorney General

A super PAC has jumped into the New York state attorney general’s race with a last-minute infusion of support for Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, who is surging late in the race on the back of a torrent of corporate-fueled spending. Maloney is heavily funded by Wall Street and New York real estate interests, over which he would have jurisdiction as attorney general.

On September 7, a vehicle calling itself the Committee for Justice and Fairness political action committee reported $100,000 in independent expenditures on digital ads attacking Zephyr Teachout, one of Maloney’s opponents. A little over a week earlier, the New York-based real estate firm Related Companies LP gave $100,000 to the PAC. Two days after that, the founder and chair of the firm, Stephen Ross, gave $21,000 to Maloney’s campaign. This suggests that the ad buy is for the benefit of Maloney, not New York City Public Advocate Tish James, another major candidate in primary contest. James, however, stands to benefit as her progressive opponent is pummeled.

Fresh off a surprise endorsement from the New York Times and other newspapers around the state, Teachout’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for New York attorney general has wind at its back, but a Monday poll found her in third place, closely behind James and front-runner Maloney.

Maloney is friendly to the finance and real estate sector — which has a keen interest in who becomes New York’s top cop, given the heavy presence of industry in the state. Earlier this year, over the protests of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., he voted to roll back certain regulations for large banks. Maloney has quickly become the preferred candidate of that sector. The Financial Times reported on September 3 that “senior figures from Wall Street are lining up” to support the congressman, citing backing from Wall Street lawyers like Martin Lipton of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Rodgin Cohen of Sullivan & Cromwell.



the evening greens


'Major Victory': Landowner's Legal Challenge Halts Construction of Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana

In a "major victory" for local landowners and pipeline activists who are fighting to block the Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana, the company behind the project agreed to halt construction on a patch of private property just ahead of a court hearing that was scheduled for Monday morning. The path of the 163-mile pipeline runs through Atchafalaya Basin, the nation's largest wetland and swamp. Local landowners and activists have raised alarm about the threat the pipeline poses to regional water resources, wildlife, and communities.

Peter Aaslestad, one of several co-owners of undeveloped marshland, filed an injunction in July alleging that the Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) was clearing trees and trenching on his property without permission. ETP—which is also behind the hotly contested Dakota Access Pipeline—claims it has the right to the use property through expropriation, a process used to take private land for public benefit.

Monday's agreement "essentially gives us everything we would have asked for with [the injunction] request and argued for in our hearing," Misha Mitchell, a lawyer for Aaslestad and Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, explained in a Facebook video. "The company has voluntarily agreed to cease entering onto the property and to stop all construction activities on the property."

A court hearing for the expropriation battle is scheduled for Nov. 27, meaning the company will not meet its initial deadline of completing construction by October. "This represents a significant victory for the conservation of the Atchafalaya Basin and for the rights of private landowners who lawfully resist their property being seized for private gain," Aaslestad said in a statement.

A collective of activists fighting against the pipeline—who have created the L'eau Est La Vie (Water Is Life) floating resistance camp—celebrated the agreement as validation of their ongoing efforts to kill the project. "We have been tased, pepper sprayed, put into choke holds, and beaten with batons to stop this illegal construction that ETP was carrying out despite not having an easement for the land," the group wrote on Facebook Monday. "While this is a major victory, construction of the Bayou Bridge Pipeline continues in other parts of the Atchafalaya Basin. We won't stop until completely shut down the Bayou Bridge Pipeline."

Amid Demands California Goes Beyond 'Climate Capitalism,' Gov. Brown Signs 100% Renewables by 2045 Into Law

Climate groups are praising the work of local organizers after California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law on Monday legislation committing the state to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045—a move that coincided with a direct action in San Francsico where frontline communites rallied to demand an end to "climate capitalism." ...

The action by the world's fifth-largest economy, said Environment America's chairman Doug Phelps, showed that "California is lighting a path for decision makers from around the world." President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord made such "subnational action... crucial," he added. ...

Yet while it represents "a goal worth celebrating," Oakland-based Miya Yoshitani, executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, said, "The critical question now is whether the transition to 100 percent renewable energy will be a just transition that benefits everyone, especially workers and communities most impacted by pollution and climate change." Yoshitani made the remarks in San Francisco, where the grassroots-led alliance It Takes Roots staged a direction action to make sure the upcoming Global Climate Action Summit, spearheaded by Brown, puts the needs of communities above the profits of corporations, and to demand that the "climate profiteers" present for the gathering of the Brown's Task Force on Climate take their cues from those most affected by climate crisis, not a small group of power-wielders.

A call-to-action for the event—which came just two days after a 30,000-strong #RiseForClimate action in San Francisco—asserted that the governor's:

promotion of carbon trading markets and other perverse subsidies to oil, gas, and other polluting corporations only perpetuates climate change, and decimates Indigenous communities and Native nations, communities of color and other working class peoples throughout California and around the world.

Such incentives for "climate capitalism" will turn frontline communities into sacrifice zones for decades to come, and despite Brown's attempts to prove he is different from Trump and the dark forces of climate denial, his "climate leadership" promotes the same corporate agenda—aimed at expanding the dig, burn, drive, dump industries destroying our communities and the air, land, and water we depend on.

Climate Change Supercharges Hurricane Florence as 1.5 Million Evacuate in Carolinas & Virginia

A Million Told to Flee S. Carolina Coast as Florence Menaces

Florence exploded into a potentially catastrophic Category 4 hurricane Monday as it closed in on North and South Carolina, carrying winds up to 130 mph and water that could wreak havoc over a wide stretch of the eastern United States later this week.

Communities along a stretch of coastline that’s vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change prepared to evacuate. The South Carolina governor ordered the state’s entire coastline to be evacuated starting at noon Tuesday and predicted that 1 million people would flee. And Virginia’s governor ordered a mandatory evacuation for some residents of low-lying coastal areas.

The storm’s first effects were already apparent on barrier islands as dangerous rip currents hit beaches and seawater flowed over a state highway.

For many people, the challenge could be finding a safe refuge: If Florence slows to a crawl just off the coast, it could bring torrential rains to the Appalachian mountains and as far away as West Virginia, causing flash floods, mudslides and other dangerous conditions.

The storm’s potential path also includes half a dozen nuclear power plants, pits holding coal-ash and other industrial waste, and numerous hog farms that store animal waste in massive open-air lagoons.


Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

I thought democracy in Chile was safe. Now I see America falling into the same trap

Henry Giroux: Neoliberal Fascism and the Twilight of the Social

Holding the Line on Torture

Bombing Yemeni School Children for Profit

As Things Heat Up In Idlib, Remember: The US Empire Has A History With False Flags

Establishment Democrats Are Pouring Millions Into Rhode Island to Save an Unpopular Governor From an Insurgent Challenge

Lehman Brothers collapse: where are the key figures now?

Fascist fight clubs: how white nationalists use MMA as a recruiting tool


A Little Night Music

John Brim, Eddie Taylor - Ice Cream Man

John Brim - Tough Times

John Brim - Gary Stomp

John Brim - Rattlesnake

John Brim - I Would Hate To See You Go

John Brim & His Gary Kings - Go Away

John Brim And His Gary Kings - That Ain't Right

John Brim - It Was A Dream

John Brim and Big Maceo - Bus Driver

John Brim and His Trio - Drinking Woman


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Raggedy Ann's picture

It’s getting hot in the kitchen! The oligarchs are starting to panic and seem to be trying to institute laws to protect themselves. Not surprising. Paulson is a root cause of our troubles - of course he doesn’t seem to recognize his role in it, or maybe he does. We are definitely in decline.

Times like this I’m glad I live in a rural area. Maybe it will take them longer to root me out.

Have a beautiful day, everyone! Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

joe shikspack's picture

@Raggedy Ann

heh, i don't think that they are so much protecting themselves as tightening up their grip on their government flunkies, so that when they foment the next crisis profit opportunity, everything goes smoothly.

have a great evening out there in rural land.

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ggersh's picture

NYT call Cuomo sleazy appalling lying and then
endorses him, what a fucking country

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_UgsuOh9ZA]

I found this piece earlier at Jesse Americain Cafe
jTc has it on the side bar, you might want to check
it out, always a good read and spot on analysis

Pigs Want To Feed at the Trough Again: Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson Use Crisis Anniversary to Ask for More Bailout Powers

and the piece was a total BS, cya, propaganda piece of
shit article as on how they saved the world, makes me
wanna puke

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Azazello's picture

@ggersh
that joe linked above ? 'Cuz I read it differently.

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

ggersh's picture

@Azazello https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/opinion/sunday/bernanke-lehman-annive...

I thought the headline was the same, this is an oped
written by the 3 criminals in action

What I read was the link at the bottom of this para

Pigs Want To Feed at the Trough Again: Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson Use Crisis Anniversary to Ask for More Bailout Powers
After a decade of writing about the crisis, we are now subjected to an orgy of yet more chatter with not much insight. It speaks volumes that the likes of Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Hank Paulson are deemed fit to say anything about it, let alone pitch the need for the officialdom to have more bank bailout tools in a New York Times op-e titled What We Need to Fight the Next Financial Crisis.

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

joe shikspack's picture

@ggersh

i do occasionally check out jesse's cafe americain, it's linked pretty much daily from wall street on parade which i check from time to time, too.

anyway, yep, the piece at the nyt where the architects of wall street's looting of america (after the market collapse that banksters engineered) ask for more power to quickly enrich and reward the bankster theives when they create another crash is pretty sickening. poor fellas are going to wear out their arms from patting themselves on the back so heartily.

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WoodsDweller's picture

I started reading Weather Underground today about Florence.

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6

Predicting a hurricane is always a crap shoot. Will the storm weaken before it makes landfall? Will it's forward speed slow down? Will it hit during low tide or high tide?

the range between low and high tide along much of the coast of North Carolina is 4 – 5 feet

If Florence hits the coast of North or South Carolina as a Category 3 or stronger hurricane, we should expect to see record storm surge heights, with a 15 – 20’ surge very possible

The models are calling for it to slow down after landfall. Will it stall like Harvey? Return to the ocean to reform and dump more rain?

Satellite imagery shows that Florence has developed two upper-level outflow channels, one to the NW and one to the east, and this configuration should allow the hurricane to steadily intensify until Thursday.

Florence is expected to stall and wander near or over the coast for as many as four days, dumping prodigious amounts of rain. If a significant portion of the storm’s circulation remains over water, as occurred last year with Hurricane Harvey’s stall over Southeast Texas—or even if Florence were to move into the higher terrain of western North Carolina and then stall—the rain from Florence may break all-time state records for rainfall from a hurricane or tropical storm. North Carolina’s state rainfall record from a hurricane is 24.06” from Hurricane Floyd of 1999, South Carolina’s is 18.51” from Tropical Storm Jerry of 1995, Virginia’s is 27.00” from Hurricane Camille of 1969, and West Virginia’s is 7.94” from Hurricane Agnes of 1972. As we discussed in yesterday’s post, soils are near saturation in some areas of Florence’s likely heavy rain zone, thanks to a record-wet summer. Heavy rains run off of wet soils and create bigger floods. There is also the danger that Florence could make landfall, then emerge back over water and re-intensify, increasing its rainfall potential.

At least the states are calling for evacuation. Let's hope people comply. We can hope that this will fizzle, but that's a poor chance to take. For any of our folks down that way, get to high ground and stay safe.

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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone

joe shikspack's picture

@WoodsDweller

yep, here at chez shikspack we are battening down the hatches and laying in some extra supplies in anticipation of some serious rain and windstorm action.

as ms. shikspack was saying earlier, it's been years since we took a trip to the beach, but it looks like the beach might come to us this week.

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snoopydawg's picture

@joe shikspack

and will you be in the line of fire? This storm is supposed to be very dangerous with lots of flooding because it might stall and just keep dumping rain.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

i'm not in the direct line of fire, i live in maryland north of d.c. which is on the edge of most of the representations of the center of the storm.

i expect to get a lot of rain and wind, though. it has been raining here for about a week now. the ground is saturated the trees are soaked and a major storm means trees coming down, probably power lines down and erosion and flooding in low lying areas.

i am fortunate to live at the highest point for miles around, so i don't expect flooding to be a problem here.

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

so will leave you Guys with a couple of interesting or funny animal Tweets.

I've seen this scenario more than a few times--guessing he's just left the vet's office, or, had a rough day at the groomer's. Wink

and,

thought this Kookaburra was super cool,

Thanks for all your hard work, turning out another excellent compilation of News & Blues, Joe.

Everyone have a nice evening. Hope none of our 99'ers are in the path of Florence.

Bye

Blue Onyx

"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong."
~~W. R. Purche

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

joe shikspack's picture

@Unabashed Liberal

thanks for the dawg pix. have a great evening!

heh, here's some dawg music:

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Unabashed Liberal's picture

@joe shikspack

Blue Onyx

"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong."
~~W. R. Purche

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

Unabashed Liberal's picture

Blue Onyx

"Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong."
~~W. R. Purche

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Everyone thinks they have the best dog, and none of them are wrong.

snoopydawg's picture

Not only this

The elites, in a desperate bid to cling to their unchecked power and obscene wealth, will disembowel what is left of the United States

And when that happens they will also release the crackens and the country will be put under declared martial law. The police state is already here, it just that people haven't noticed it. Yet. But they will ....

Battlefield America: The Ongoing War on the American People

“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.”—John Salter

This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough.

This isn’t just happening in crime-ridden inner cities.

It’s happening all across the country.

America has been locked down.

This is what it’s like to be a citizen of the American police state.

This is what it’s like to be an enemy combatant in your own country.

This is what it feels like to be a conquered people.

This is what it feels like to be an occupied nation.

This is what it feels like to live in fear of armed men crashing through your door in the middle of the night, or to be accused of doing something you never even knew was a crime, or to be watched all the time, your movements tracked, your motives questioned.

Excerpting the article can't do it justice, but this sentence says a lot doesn't it?

“We the people” have now come full circle, from being held captive by the British police state to being held captive by the American police state.

The marijuana laws are ridiculous! Kicking people out of public housing for using it instead of getting hooked on opioids has got to be one of the biggest brain dead thing I have heard about.

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joe shikspack's picture

@snoopydawg

yep, the future is not looking so bright at the moment. on the other hand, this article, which i sneaked in after hedges' piece does offer some somewhat more hopeful suggestions of what might be. it's worth consideration, i reckon.

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divineorder's picture

Drank too much wine celebrating jb's birthday and kind of draggy today.

But some are surely celebrating this day and the profitable bonanza that followed:

In a recent interview with Common Dreams, Lindsay Koshgarian, research director at the National Priorities Project, concluded that the "United States has wasted $5.6 trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with nothing to show for it."

Based on the Watson Institute's findings, the NPP operates running counts of spending on post-9/11 care for veterans, homeland security, interest on war debt, and the military—as well as a trade-offs tool that details how the government could otherwise spend the money, such as by paying teachers more, generating clean energy jobs, and providing millions of low-income Americans with healthcare.

Although, throughout three presidential administrations, the federal government has poured trillions of dollars into war, shipped thousands of soldiers overseas to never return, and left hundreds of thousands of civilian dead and wounded, Harvard economist Linda Bilmes wrote in a 2016 column for the Boston Globe that "the cost seems invisible to politicians and the public alike."

The reason, she argued, is that unlike with past wars, when "the government routinely raised taxes, slashed nonmilitary spending, and sold war bonds...[as] part of an explicit strategy of engaging the American public in the war efforts," with the War on Terror, "almost all of the spending has been financed through borrowing—selling U.S. Treasury Bonds around the world—leaving our children to pick up the tab."

Despite the burdens on current and future generations—and Defense Secretary James Mattis' optimistic remarks to reporters ahead of his unannounced trip to Kabul last week—nearly 17 years after the United States invaded Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history "continues without relent or purpose," with approximately 14,000 American troops currently on the ground.

As Afghan civilians demand peace and the International Criminal Court seeks a probe of alleged war crimes committed by U.S. forces and the CIA, warmongers like Blackwater founder Erik Prince continue to pressure President Donald Trump to pursue policies that will line the pockets of mercenaries and Americans weapons manufacturers.

(Lots of links in the article which includes interesting graphs as well.)

What a country!

Hope the big storm near the East Coast leaves you okay.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

joe shikspack's picture

@divineorder

and, happy birthday jb! Smile

yep, 9/11 sure turn out to be a profit-making opportunity for the mic. no wonder the military keeps allying with al qaeda in syria.

heh, we are probably (crosses fingers) a little north of the storm center where i am, so we will likely be spared the worst of the winds and rain, but we could get dumped on pretty good. hoping for the best for everybody.

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@joe shikspack Spent part of the evening on the balcony with a glass of wine and enjoying the fading light looking toward the mountains.

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Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

snoopydawg's picture

@divineorder

Hope you were somewhere fun while you celebrated. Are you guys coming through Utah perchance? Would love to meet up if you are.

wasted $5.6 trillion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with nothing to show for it."

The American people have nothing to show from spending that much to be sure, but lots of assholes have certainly gotten stinking rich off the wars. I always imagine what what we could have done with this country if they had spent it here instead.

I have one of the big 0's coming up and I can not believe it. How the Hell can I be this old?

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@snoopydawg No, we are home and it is a good space to celebrate!

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Life is what you make it, so make it something worthwhile.

This ain't no dress rehearsal!

Azazello's picture

I have a confession, joe. I didn't read all of Giroux's piece. I quit in the middle.
Damn, that guy needs an editor.
9/11, Syrian gas. False flags ? Nah, couldn't be.
Here's a list: Washington's Blog
Hedges' interview with Nomi Prins is here, if you haven't seen it: RT
Here's some Jimmy Dore:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0i4TTBbNtk width:500 height:300]

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We wanted decent healthcare, a living wage and free college.
The Democrats gave us Biden and war instead.

joe shikspack's picture

@Azazello

i wish giroux was better at writing for a general audience, but i understand that once a fella is ensconced in academia, well, he tends to write like an academic. i frequently feel like i am slogging through his material, due to both the wordiness and his repetition of certain concepts. an editor might really help extend the reach of his prose into much broader audiences.

thanks for the links and the video!

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enhydra lutris's picture

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

joe shikspack's picture

@enhydra lutris

you have a great evening, too!

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