News Dump Saturday: God Bless Us Rich People

Submitted by gjohnsit on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 1:20pm

Wells fargo pays $1.2 Billion fine

Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) admitted to deceiving the U.S. government into insuring thousands of risky mortgages, as it formally reached a record $1.2 billion settlement of a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit.
The settlement with Wells Fargo, the largest U.S. mortgage lender and third-largest U.S. bank by assets, was filed on Friday in Manhattan federal court. It also resolves claims against Kurt Lofrano, a former Wells Fargo vice president.
According to the settlement, Wells Fargo "admits, acknowledges, and accepts responsibility" for having from 2001 to 2008 falsely certified that many of its home loans qualified for Federal Housing Administration insurance.

Guns for Dirtbags Program #1

Four years after asserting executive privilege to block Congress from obtaining documents relating to a controversial federal gun trafficking investigation, President Barack Obama relented Friday, turning over to lawmakers thousands of pages of records that led to unusual House votes holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt in 2012.
In January, a federal district court judge rejected Obama's executive privilege claim over records detailing the Justice Department and White House's response to Operation Fast and Furious, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigation that may have allowed as many as 2,000 firearms to pass into the hands of Mexican drug cartels.

Guns for Dirtbags Program #2

The United States via its Central Intelligence Agency is still delivering thousands of tons of additional weapons to al-Qaeda and others in Syria.
The British military information service Janes found the transport solicitation for the shipment on the U.S. government website FedBizOps.gov.

Mosul offensive collapses again

As has so often been the case, the Iraqi troops didn’t handle coming under fire particularly well, and fled en masse as soon as the shooting started in earnest, with analysts warning that the Iraqi troops simply aren’t combat ready, and lost what little ground they took almost immediately.
Having ISIS drastically outnumbered by most estimates, Iraqi officials have been talking up the idea that the entire war would be won by year’s end, only to have this preliminary offensive put on indefinite hiatus, as they wait for reinforcements to replace the deserters.
It’s unsurprising, given how poorly the military has done, that Iraq is again turning to Shi”ite militias to try to turn the tide of battle, but many Shi’ites oppose sending their fighters so deep into Sunni country, to fight against Sunni Islamists.

Bank emergency in Puerto Rico

Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla says he is moving to protect Puerto Rico's residents through an executive order that declares a state of emergency at the Government Development Bank.
The governor issued an executive order that protects the bank's dwindling liquidity by only allowing withdrawals that fund the delivery of essential public services. It does not call for a moratorium on the government bank principal or interest payments.

House may finally address the emergency

Legislative staff members in Washington were said to be close on Friday to completing a revised bill that would give Puerto Rico extraordinary powers to wipe out debt under close federal supervision.
Aides at the House Natural Resources Committee, working through the spring recess, were still grappling with sensitive constitutional issues raised by the rescue package, even after lawmakers in San Juan took matters into their own hands on Wednesday by suddenly authorizing a unilateral debt moratorium for the island.
The Puerto Rican lawmakers said they were forced to act because Congress was taking too long. Their island’s Government Development Bank has a debt payment of about $422 million due May 1, and only $562 million in available cash; the law they enacted would let the bank delay the payment lawfully — at least as far as Puerto Rico is concerned.
Puerto Rico owes even bigger debt payments, totaling about $2 billion, on July 1.
The House’s draft bill still contains certain provisions that creditor groups have been fighting, and Natural Resources Committee aides said further refinements were likely. The committee is scheduled to take testimony on the rescue package on Wednesday, and aides said they hoped to send a finished bill to the House on Thursday.
The package still calls for Puerto Rico’s financial affairs to come under the supervision of a federal oversight board and to shed debt in a bankruptcylike federal court proceding after meeting certain requirements.
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Submitted by FreakFlagFly on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 2:00pm
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Bill Clinton's shameless answer to Black Lives Matter protesters by Alicia Garza (co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.)

The Clintons are notorious for finger wagging, particularly as it relates to black people. Ultimately, what Bill Clinton said Thursday in Philadelphia was that black people are problems to be solved, and that black protest is egregious because it supports black people who act badly, while people in the audience cheered and chanted "HRC! HRC!"

Michelle Alexander Just Responded to Bill Clinton

Prominent law professor, author, and civil rights activist Michelle Alexander isn’t buying Bill Clinton’s “almost” apology for his reaction to protesters yesterday.

...

Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, took the former president to task in a scathing Facebook post on Friday, starting off by thanking Clinton for revealing his true colors.

“Thank you, Bill, for giving the nation a ten-minute tutorial on everything that was wrong (and apparently remains wrong) with the ‘New Democrats’ and their approach to racial politics,” Alexander wrote.

https://www.facebook.com/Michelle-Alexander-168304409924191/

The young people challenging Bill Clinton yesterday were asking these very same questions. You may not agree with their tactics, but they were, in their own way, fighting for the soul of the Democratic party and American democracy itself. Whether our nation can be redeemed in the long run remains to be seen.

Crime Bill & Super Predators Discussion on CNN 4/8/16

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

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Submitted by Pat K California on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 2:19pm
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... was riveting. And heated. Go watch. I give Lemon credit for allowing it to run extra long.

Can't figure out why they included the white guy though. He certainly contributed much "noise", little of value.

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"Long term: first the rich get mean, then the poor get mean, and the rest is history." My brother Rob.

Submitted by Martha Pearce-Smith on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 3:44pm
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And he really pisses off the tourists...


New Yorker Trump visits 9/11 Museum for first time — and gets trashed for 30-minute campaign stop

Here's a couple of the tweets...

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Submitted by FreakFlagFly on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 3:59pm
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Bernie Sanders

We've always been the underdogs, we've come a very long way and we have absolutely no intention of letting up. But make no mistake about it: this is YOUR movement. So here is a brand new ad titled "Make History," featuring footage shot by the people powering this movement: YOU. Check it out. #MakeHistory

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yok9J1NaDEE]

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Submitted by FreakFlagFly on Sun, 04/10/2016 - 12:38pm
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Clinton vs. Sanders: A New York Proxy Debate

Scheduled for Apr 9, 2016

Prominent supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders—NOT the candidates themselves—will debate the crucial issues at stake in the upcoming New York primary.

Moderated by Brian Lehrer, Host of The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC radio.

The panel will feature:

TEAM CLINTON: Gale Brewer, Manhattan Borough President; C. Virginia Fields, President and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, Inc. (NBLCA), former Borough President of Manhattan; and Michelle Goldberg, columnist at Slate magazine

TEAM SANDERS: Jonathan Tasini, President of the Economic Future Group, labor activist, author of The Essential Bernie Sanders; Kshama Sawant, Socialist Alternative Member of the Seattle City Council; Sarah Leonard, Senior Editor at The Nation magazine

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Submitted by Dallasdoc on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 5:21pm

Turned on MSHRC last evening to catch up on the latest oppo research, and saw a couple of ads from banksters hiding behind some anodyne 501(c) bemoaning the idea that Washington could let Puerto Rico get bailed out. They seemed especially scared that other "free-spending" entities like Illinois could get the same treatment. There was a confused scare argument that put both "taxpayers" and "retirees" (widows and orphans) on the hook for the cost.

I hadn't followed these talks closely, but the ad's stereotypical lies clearly indicate that banksters are going to be asked to take a haircut. If only.....

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Submitted by gjohnsit on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 5:26pm

Puerto Rico is about to be screwed one way or another.
What the creditors are doing is having to take losses on loans they should never have made, and can never be paid back.

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Submitted by Dallasdoc on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 5:43pm

But it'll be interesting if Congress doesn't take as hard a line as Angela Merkel took with Greece, and forced the banksters to eat some losses. They're so used to having politicians at their beck and call I honestly don't think they're expecting that sort of thing anymore.

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Submitted by rmwarnick on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 7:17pm

I'm not a regular reader of Rolling Stone, although I like the articles by brilliant investigative reporter Matt Taibbi. In 2010, Taibbi famously described Goldman Sachs as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

Well, today I picked up a copy of Rolling Stone in the barbershop. Imagine my surprise in finding a prominent editorial by publisher (and founder, back in 1967) Jann Wenner titled: "Hillary Clinton for President." Say what??? (emphasis added)

I've been watching the debates and town halls for the past two months, and Sanders' righteousness knocks me out. My heart is with him. He has brought the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations to the ballot box.

... I believe that extreme economic inequality, the vast redistribution of wealth to the top one percent — indeed, to the top one percent of the one percent — is the defining issue of our times. Within that issue, almost all issues of social injustice can be seen, none more so than climate change, which can be boiled down to the rights of mankind against the oligarchy that owns oil, coal and vast holdings of dirty energy, and those who profit from their use.

So why is Wenner backing Hillary, the candidate of Wall Street?

Every time Sanders is challenged on how he plans to get his agenda through Congress and past the special interests, he responds that the "political revolution" that sweeps him into office will somehow be the magical instrument of the monumental changes he describes. This is a vague, deeply disingenuous idea that ignores the reality of modern America. With the narrow power base and limited political alliances that Sanders had built in his years as the democratic socialist senator from Vermont, how does he possibly have a chance of fighting such entrenched power?

I have been to the revolution before. It ain't happening.

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified candidates for the presidency in modern times, as was Al Gore. We cannot forget what happened when Gore lost and George W. Bush was elected and became arguably one of the worst presidents in American history. The votes cast for the fantasy of Ralph Nader were enough to cost Gore the presidency.

Oh, because he thinks Ralph Nader defeated Al Gore in 2000. Which actually did not happen.

Check out the comments online, for example:

Apparently Rolling Stone's editor does not read The Rolling Stone. Get a clue. Your readers are voting for Bernie.

JANN WENNER is RS's super-rich OWNER -- not editor. All other RS staff support Bernie.

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Submitted by Martha Pearce-Smith on Sat, 04/09/2016 - 7:11pm
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