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“The mistake our politicians so often make with these industry leaders is in thinking they are interested in, or respectful of, the power of government. All they want is to keep stealing. If you can offer them the government’s seal of approval on that, they’ll take it. But if you can’t, well, they’ll take that too.”

-- Matt Taibbi

News and Opinion

Jesus Horatio Christ! Is there nothing that is not a profit center for Wall Street banksters?

Wall Street Is Making Millions Off Police Brutality

More than 10,000 protesters across the U.S. have been arrested in the wake of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police. Nearly 20 people have died, and many more have suffered permanent injuries. As those numbers rise, so will the lawsuits — and the expensive settlements. For example, New York City issued more than $237 million for NYPD payouts on legal settlements and judgements in 2018 alone.

When faced with big legal bills or settlements, cities have lots of ways to come up with cash. Some have dedicated funds, some have insurance policies. Others finance their legal obligations by selling bonds, just as they would to raise money for infrastructure or public parks. And that’s where Wall Street makes bank, with next to no risk.

Big banks compete to underwrite — or act as the middle men — on these “general obligation bonds” because they pay out millions in fees. Then, they sell the bonds to high-net-worth individuals and hedge funds, which collect interest as high as 7%. These so-called “police brutality bonds,” as they're colloquially known, “quite literally allow banks and wealthy investors to profit from police violence,” according to a 2018 report from the American Center on Race and the Economy.

The bonds are also backed by the “full faith and credit” of the issuing municipality, which means the city can do just about anything to service that debt — including raising taxes. Since cities rarely default, the bonds are nearly risk-free for investors. And although taxpayers normally foot the bill for police settlements, the added interest on the bonds can nearly double the costs. It’s a transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street, and city officials are making it happen with almost no oversight from taxpayers.

Unemployment SURGES for 14th straight week as coronavirus cases spike

Progressives Plan to Push Big Cuts to Defense Spending, Citing Coronavirus Crisis

Sen. Bernie Sanders will propose a sweeping 10 percent cut to Pentagon spending, with the savings redirected as grant money to “high-poverty” areas in the United States, according to the text of a forthcoming amendment his office shared with The Intercept. Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are planning to use Sanders’s amendment as part of an effort to push for drastic cuts to military spending in this year’s budget in response to the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating economic impact. The group of legislators also wants to build support for the idea of reducing the Pentagon’s mammoth expenditures in anticipation of a future Democratic administration and budget rules set to change next year.

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., one of the co-chairs of the caucus, told The Intercept that the caucus planned to focus on a handful of amendments that address spending in the $740 billion National Defense Authorization Act. The caucus discussed its plans on a conference call Tuesday. “I see this as an organizing campaign around the size of the defense budget,” Pocan said. “Next year may be the best chance, with a Democratic president and maybe a Democratic Senate, so we really are going to do everything we can this time.”

Progressives in Congress have long called for reductions to U.S. military spending, which has increased by more than $100 billion annually under Donald Trump, arguing that money would be better spent funding domestic priorities. But within Congress, progressives have limited influence on the size and shape of the Pentagon’s budget, and efforts like Sanders’s are a test of their political clout. According to the draft text of Sanders’s amendment, it would apply a blunt 14 percent cut to all of the accounts authorized by the bill except for Defense Department and military payroll, and the Defense Health Program. The cuts would add up to about 10 percent of the bill’s top line, bringing the total authorized spending down by $74 billion.

The savings would then be used to establish a Treasury Department grant program, which would allow local and county governments to apply for money to be spent in “high-poverty” areas. The text lists building public housing, community health centers, and schools; decontaminating drinking water; and payroll for teachers, among other listed “permissible uses,” and prohibits the money from being spent on prisons.

Repair & Revive: Rev. William Barber on Fighting Racism, Poverty, Climate Change, War & Nationalism

Google says it will no longer save a complete record of every search

Google will no longer save a complete record of every search made by new users, the company says, as it launches a push to promote its privacy credentials against concerted competition from arch-rival Apple.

The company will now automatically delete its saved records of a new user’s activity on the web and in its apps after 18 months, chief executive Sundar Pichai announced on Wednesday. Previously, such information had been kept indefinitely by default, which the company argued was necessary to personalise its services for individual users.

Those people who have opted-in to storing their location history, a record of everywhere they have been with their phone, will also default to automatically deleting it after 18 months. ... The default auto-deletion settings do not apply to services, such as Gmail and Google Photos, which are designed to store personal content. ...

Google has faced growing competitive pressure from Apple over user privacy. The iPhone manufacturer has deliberately chosen a course that relies as little as possible on gathering user data, gambling that consumers will put up with less impressive experiences if they can be convinced their personal data is kept secure.

It’s unconstitutional for cops to force phone unlocking, court rules

Indiana's Supreme Court has ruled that the Fifth Amendment allows a woman accused of stalking to refuse to unlock her iPhone. The court held that the Fifth Amendment's rule against self-incrimination protected Katelin Seo from giving the police access to potentially incriminating data on her phone.

The courts are divided on how to apply the Fifth Amendment in this kind of case. Earlier this year, a Philadelphia man was released from jail after four years of being held in contempt in connection with a child-pornography case. A federal appeals court rejected his argument that the Fifth Amendment gave him the right to refuse to unlock hard drives found in his possession. A Vermont federal court reached the same conclusion in 2009—as did a Colorado federal court in 2012, a Virginia state court in 2014, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2014.

But other courts in Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have reached the opposite conclusion, holding that forcing people to provide computer or smartphone passwords would violate the Fifth Amendment.

Lower courts are divided about this issue because the relevant Supreme Court precedents all predate the smartphone era.

FBI Expands Ability to Collect Cellphone Location Data, Monitor Social Media, Recent Contracts Show

The Federal Bureau of Investigation may be watching what you tweet and where people gather. The federal law enforcement agency’s records show a growing focus on harnessing the latest private sector tools for mass surveillance, including recent contracts with companies that monitor social media posts and collect cellphone location data.

On May 26, as demonstrations around the country erupted over the police killing of George Floyd, the FBI signed an expedited agreement to extend its relationship with Dataminr, a company that monitors social media. A few days later, the agency modified an agreement it signed in February with Venntel, Inc., a Virginia technology firm that maps and sells the movements of millions of Americans. The company purchases bulk location data and sells it largely to government agencies.

The FBI has long pursued advanced technological tools to rapidly predict crime and locate potential suspects, capabilities that have raised concerns that the agency targets lawful forms of protest and free expression. Earlier this year, the agency released a bid proposal for technological solutions to “obtain early alerts on ongoing national security and public safety-related events through lawfully collected/acquired social media data.”

'A Historic Day': Boston City Council Bans Facial Recognition Surveillance

The Boston City Council on Wednesday unanimously voted to ban the city from the use of facial recognition technology, making the Massachusetts capital the ninth city in the country and the second largest to do so. 

"This is a historic day for Boston where the budget conversation is really focused on shifting resources away from police and towards community," civil liberties advocacy group Muslim Justice League tweeted. "And the conversation will not end here! We want community control over budgeting."

The council cited the technology's inaccuracy in correctly identifying people of color as a main reason for rejecting its use by the city.

"Boston should not use racially discriminatory technology that threatens the privacy and basic rights of our residents," council member Michelle Wu said in a statement.

ACLU Demands Lawmakers Act After Michigan Man Wrongfully Arrested 'Because Face Recognition Can't Tell Black People Apart'

The ACLU on Wednesday urged policymakers to end law enforcement use of facial recognition technology and filed an administrative complaint with Detroit police on behalf of Robert Williams, a Black man who was wrongfully arrested in January after software owned by Michigan State Police misidentified him as a shoplifting suspect.

"Lawmakers need to stop allowing law enforcement to test their latest tools on our communities, where real people suffer real-life consequences," declared ACLU senior legislative counsel Neema Singh Guliani. "It's past time for lawmakers to prevent the continued use of this technology. What happened to the Williams family should never happen again."

Robert Williams was wrongfully arrested and locked up for nearly 30 hours. He did nothing wrong, but the cops wouldn't listen. They only cared about what a flawed computer algorithm had to say. https://t.co/33MVBCoBoW

— ACLU (@ACLU) June 24, 2020

The group's call for legislative action came after almost a month of nationwide protests over police mistreatment of Black Americans, which Williams referenced Wednesday in an op-ed for the Washington Post about his experience being arrested on his front lawn while his wife and young daughters watched, then detained for nearly 30 hours.

As Williams wrote:

The ACLU is lodging a complaint against the police department on my behalf, but that likely won't change much. My daughters can't unsee me being handcuffed and put into a police car. But they can see me use this experience to bring some good into the world. That means helping make sure my daughters don't grow up in a world where their driver's license or Facebook photos could be used to target, track, or harm them.

Even if this technology does become accurate (at the expense of people like me), I don't want my daughters' faces to be part of some government database. I don't want cops showing up at their door because they were recorded at a protest the government didn't like. I don't want this technology automating and worsening the racist policies we're protesting. I don't want them to have a police record for something they didn't do—like I now do.

I keep thinking about how lucky I was to have spent only one night in jail—as traumatizing as it was. Many black people won't be so lucky. My family and I don't want to live with that fear. I don't want anyone to live with that fear.

Williams and his wife Melissa also recounted their experiences with Detroit police in a video circulated by the ACLU:

The complaint to the Detroit Police Department (DPD) outlines Williams' "harrowing experience" and calls for the case against him to be dismissed with prejudice and a public apology. The document also demands that the DPD stop using facial recognition technology for investigations; remove photos of Williams from any facial recognition database the department uses; expunge the mugshot taken after his arrest from all DPD and state records; and immediately respond to Williams' public records request. ...

NPR reported Wednesday that "the Detroit Police Department said after the Williams case, the department enacted new rules. Now, only still photos, not security footage, can be used for facial recognition. And it is now used only in the case of violent crimes."

However, for critics of the technology, such reforms don't go far enough.

US appeals court orders judge to dismiss case against Michael Flynn

A federal appeals court has ordered the prosecution of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn to be dismissed. In a surprise ruling, the DC circuit court of appeals overruled district judge Emmet Sullivan and has ordered him to accept the justice department’s motion to dismiss the criminal case against Flynn.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in 2017, but the justice department filed a motion last month to dismiss the criminal charges against him, prompting accusations of political bias. ...

Earlier this year, Sullivan had declined to immediately dismiss the case against Flynn, seeking instead to evaluate on his own the departments unusual dismissal request. Sullivan appointed a former federal judge, John Gleeson, to review the justice department’s motion to dismiss the charges. ... Gleeson argued the motion to dismiss should be denied because there was “clear evidence of a gross abuse of prosecutorial power” on the part of the justice department.

A three-judge panel of the DC circuit court of appeals issued Wednesday’s 2-1 decision to overrule Sullivan and order him to dismiss the criminal charges against Flynn. However, that is likely not the end of the former national security adviser’s legal saga. Sullivan could still ask for the full bench of the appeals court to review the issue, which could result in a different ruling.

How U.S. and Brazil Leadership That “Neglects Science” Led to Hemisphere’s Worst Coronavirus Crises

US records highest one-day total in coronavirus cases since April

The US has recorded a one-day total of 34,700 new Covid-19 cases, the highest level since late April, when the number peaked at 36,400, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University. A coronavirus resurgence is wiping out two months of progress in the US and sending infections to dire new levels in southern and western states.

Administrators and health experts warned on Wednesday that politicians and a public that, in many cases, is tired of being cooped up are letting a disaster unfold.

While newly-confirmed infections have been declining steadily in early hot spots such as New York and New Jersey, several other states set single-day records this week, including Arizona, California, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas and Oklahoma. North Carolina and South Carolina joined some other states in breaking hospitalization records.

“People got complacent,” said Marc Boom, CEO of the Houston Methodist hospital system. “And it’s coming back and biting us, quite frankly.”

With the US death toll creeping towards 122,000 on Wednesday, and confirmed cases at almost 2.4 million for the US, a widely-cited University of Washington computer model of the outbreak projected nearly 180,000 deaths by 1 October.

Trump Made a Racist Joke in a Phoenix Megachurch and the Crowd Went Wild

Watching from home, at first it was hard to say which moment in Donald Trump’s rally at a Phoenix megachurch on Tuesday was the ugliest. Was it when the president of the United States repeated the racist joke he told last weekend in Tulsa, calling Covid-19, the viral disease that emerged in China last year, the “Kung Flu;” or was it a spilt second later, when thousands of his young supporters erupted in cheers? The president’s attempt to divert attention away from his botched pandemic response, which has cost tens of thousands of Americans their lives, by inciting racist resentment against the nation where the virus jumped from animals to humans, is deeply ugly. As is the fact that thousands of Republican student activists, packed tightly together inside, ignoring social distancing and mask-wearing, responded with thunderous applause.

But there was something even more disturbing about the incident that was not immediately apparent on the live broadcast. Video recorded from inside the packed Dream City Church by the photojournalist Nick Oza revealed that Trump and his fans had shared a moment of call and response hatred in the build up to the joke.

#PresidentTrump speaks in front of supporters @dreamcitychurch in #PhoenixTrumpRally @realDonaldTrump’s rally this afternoon. @azcentral @USATODAY @usatodayvideo pic.twitter.com/XgPqabNoHT

— Nick Oza (@nickoza1) June 23, 2020

Trump began by observing that the pandemic illness he has spent the past two months downplaying is known by a confusing array of terms. He then paused to ask the assembled student activists if they had seen his speech in Tulsa where he made the same point. When they cheered in response, he started to list some of what he said were the “19 or 20 names” for the disease, most of which referred in some way to its origins in China.

As soon as Trump said, “Wuhan — Wuhan was catching on,” the crowd began to murmur with excitement, clearly anticipating that the president was about to repeat the slur his aides had spent the previous day denying was racist. When Trump drew out the tension by offering “Coronavirus” as the next name in his list, one excited voice after another shouted from the crowd: “Kung Flu!” “Kung Flu!” “Kung Flu!” The president completed the call-and-response by saying, “Kung Flu, yeah,” and was met with frenzied applause. Oza’s footage shows that several young men leaped to their feet, pumping their fists in the air in exultation, apparently thrilled to see their hero transgress all bounds of common decency right in front of them.

Krystal Ball DISMANTLES MSNBC's hilarious spin of progressive victories

'Too early to call': why it's unlikely we'll have a winner on US election night

As Kentucky voters wait to see which Democrat will challenge Mitch McConnell this fall, Americans are quickly realizing there’s a new normal for elections during the pandemic: we’re not going to know the winner on election night.

Over the last few months, states across the US have seen record numbers of their voters cast their votes by mail as states expand and encourage its use during Covid-19. It’s a change that means election officials are going to need more time to count votes as ballots flood election offices on election day and afterwards – some states count ballots postmarked by election day if they arrive in the days after the election.

There are worries about how the US will react to delayed results during November’s hotly contested presidential election. Americans are used to the spectacle of election night – anchors on major networks breathlessly analyze and call races and the evening culminates in a late night speech from victorious candidates. That’s very unlikely to happen this year – Americans are going to be waiting a while to find out whether or not Donald Trump will be president for another four years. ...

In Kentucky, the state’s top election official projected turnout in the primary would exceed 1.1m votes. But that total includes just 271,000 who voted in person either early or on election day. Around 868,090 people requested absentee ballots in the state and as of Wednesday, 604,984 had been returned.

Many local clerks in Kentucky are waiting until 30 June to release full results because the state is allowing ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by the day of the election and arrive by Saturday. In New York, which also held a primary Tuesday, valid absentee ballots will probably continue to arrive over the next several days and officials won’t start counting them until next week.

Bayer agrees to $10.9bn settlement over Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup

German pharmaceutical company Bayer says it’s paying up to $10.9bn to settle a lawsuit over subsidiary Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, which has faced numerous lawsuits over claims it causes cancer. Bayer said it was also paying up $1.22bn to settle two further cases, one involving polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) in water. Bayer said the Roundup settlement would “bring closure to approximately 75%” of the current 125,000 filed and unfiled claims. The resolution also puts in place a mechanism to resolve potential future claims, the company said. ... Bayer said the agreement is subject to approval by judge Vince Chhabria of the US district court for the northern district of California.

Three Roundup cases that have gone to trial in recent years are not covered by the settlement and will continue through the appeals process, Bayer said. A California jury ordered Monsanto in May 2019 to pay more than $2bn to Alva and Alberta Pilliod, a couple that got cancer after using Roundup.

The victory for the Pilliods was the latest in a series of trial wins taking on Monsanto over Roundup. Dewayne Johnson, a former school groundskeeper with terminal cancer, won a $289m victory in a California court in 2018, and Edwin Hardeman, who sprayed Roundup on his properties, was awarded $80m in the first federal trial in 2019. Bayer has appealed all three rulings.

Bayer said it would also pay up to $400m to settle cases involving the weedkiller dicamba having drifted onto plants that weren’t bred to resist it, killing them.

US moves to exempt companies from reporting harmful chemical releases

Federal regulators are crafting an exemption for polluters releasing harmful perfluorinated chemicals (PFAS) into the environment in a way that environmental advocates say circumvents a new law meant to address widespread contamination.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a rule Monday adding 172 PFAS chemicals to a list of those that are required to report when they release them into the air or water, or on land.

Dubbed ‘forever chemicals,’ PFAS have been found in drinking water around the country. They are used in weatherproof fabrics, nonstick cookware and firefighting foam, and they are linked with cancer, low infant birth weights, immune issues and thyroid disruptions.

Under pressure from health experts and states, Congress late last year directed the EPA to require better reporting on some of the thousands of PFAS chemicals. Specifically, lawmakers said manufacturers should be required to report to the government if they release 100 pounds or more of the chemicals annually into a waterway. But EPA’s new regulation would allow them to bypass that requirement, as long as no single PFAS chemical in a mixture released exceeded 1% of the total. ...

Eve Gartner, managing attorney for toxic exposure at Earthjustice, said that “it’s pretty clear that Congress set a 100 pound threshold because they’re concerned about very small amounts of these chemicals being released without people knowing about it”. “We know that PFAS at 1 teaspoon in an Olympic size swimming pool can have health effects,” she added.

In Minnesota, Ellison Announces Climate Lawsuit Against Exxon, Koch, and API

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed a lawsuit Wednesday against ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and the American Petroleum Institute for mounting a 30-year "campaign of deception" related to the climate crisis.

"There are no more worthy targets of a climate fraud lawsuit than Exxon, Koch Industries, and API: the unholy trinity of climate denial," said Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, in a statement.

The lawsuit, based on the state's consumer protection laws, targets the companies "for deliberately undermining the science of climate change, purposefully downplaying the role that the purchase and consumption of their products played in causing climate change and the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change, and for failing to fully inform the consumers and the public of their understanding that without swift action, it would be too late to ward off the devastation"—actions they took while reaping billions in profits.

According to Ellison, "The fraud, deceptive advertising, and other violations of Minnesota state law and common law that the lawsuit shows they perpetrated have harmed Minnesotans' health and our state's environment, infrastructure, and economy."

To "remedy the great harm and injury" Minnesotans have suffered as a result of the companies' actions, the lawsuit is asking for the companies to disclose all their climate-related documents; "fund a corrective public education campaign in Minnesota relating to the issue of climate change, administered and controlled by an independent third party"; pay restitution to the state for harms incurred; and for the companies to "disgorge all profits made as a result of their unlawful conduct."

The consequences of the climate crisis, the attorney general said, have not been felt equally.

"Impacts from climate change hurt our low-income residents and communities of color first and worst," said Ellison. "The impacts on farmers in our agricultural state are widespread as well."

"Holding these companies accountable for the climate deception they've spread and continue to spread is essential to helping families to afford their lives and live with dignity and respect. It's only fair that, as our complaint states, 'the parties who have profited from avoiding the consequences and costs of dealing with global warming and its physical, environmental, social, and economic consequences, bear the costs of those impacts, rather than Minnesota taxpayers, residents, or broader segments of the public.'"

Also of Interest

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

Intercepted Podcast: The Rebellion Against Racial Capitalism

D.C.’s Bad Cops List Is Shrouded in Secrecy—and Could Be Impacting Criminal Cases

America Sits on Its Hands as Covid-19 Cases Rise

Bolton’s Memoir Undercuts Hype as Impeachment’s Would-Be Star Witness

Assange Hit With New Superseding Indictment Broadening Computer Intrusion Charges

Saharan Dust Storm Expected To Cause Dangerous Air Pollution in U.S. This Week

California weighs overturning 24-year ban on affirmative action

Protests Propel Charles Booker in Close Kentucky Senate Race Against Establishment-Backed Amy McGrath

'What Voter Suppression Looks Like': Do NY and Kentucky Primary Issues Foretell a Disaster for November?

Kosovo president Hashim Thaci indicted on war crimes charges

Keiser Report | Paper Uprising, Fiat Spring

Jimmy Dore: Reminder Why Amy Klobuchar Should Never Be In Power

Nina Turner: How new progressives MUST get into face of Dem establishment

Krystal and Saagar: Obama erases Bush's Iraqi invasion in Biden fundraiser

Saagar Enjeti: New Obamagate docs show Biden LIED about Flynn investigation

A Little Night Music

Jimmy McGriff - Blues for a Broken Down Funky Old Bus

Jimmy McGriff - Funky Junk

Jimmy McGriff & Junior Parker - Workin'

Jimmy McGriff - A Thing To Come By (part 1)

Illinois Jacquet, George Freeman & Jimmy McGriff - How Long

Jimmy McGriff & Junior Parker - In The Heat Of The Night

Jimmy McGriff - The Worm

Jimmy McGriff - Black Pearl

Jimmy McGriff & Junior Parker - Drownin' On Dry Land

Jimmy McGriff - All About My Girl