Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features boogie-woogie and jump blues pianist Sammy Price. Enjoy!

“Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”

-- George R.R. Martin

News and Opinion

Oh my. Every now and then the curtains part and we get a glimpse of the sausage factory. Damn it stinks.

New Balance accuses Obama administration of reneging on deal over TPP

New Balance is renewing its opposition to the far-reaching Pacific Rim trade deal, saying the Obama administration reneged on a promise to give the sneaker maker a fair shot at military business if it stopped bad-mouthing the agreement.

After several years of resistance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact aimed at making it easier to conduct trade among the United States and 11 other countries, the Boston company had gone quiet last year. New Balance officials say one big reason is that they were told the Department of Defense would give them serious consideration for a contract to outfit recruits with athletic shoes.

But no order has been placed, and New Balance officials say the Pentagon is intentionally delaying any purchase.

New Balance is reviving its fight against the trade deal, which would, in part, gradually phase out tariffs on shoes made in Vietnam. A loss of those tariffs, the company says, would make imports cheaper and jeopardize its factory jobs in New England. ...

“We swallowed the poison pill that is TPP so we could have a chance to bid on these contracts,” said Matt LeBretton, New Balance’s vice president of public affairs. “We were assured this would be a top-down approach at the Department of Defense if we agreed to either support or remain neutral on TPP. [But] the chances of the Department of Defense buying shoes that are made in the USA are slim to none while Obama is president.”

Bob Graham gets call from White House and word that declassification of secret 9/11 documents is underway

After years of pushing to gain public release of 28 secret pages of a report on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham said he got a call from the White House on Tuesday.

Graham told the Tampa Bay Times that Brett Holmgren, a senior policy adviser to the assistant to the president for Homeland Security, told him the declassification review of the documents withheld from a report issued by a Joint Congressional Commission in 2003 will soon be completed. ...

Graham said he believes recent news reports on the secrecy surrounding the 28 pages, including a report Sunday on 60 Minutes, prompted the White House to react.

Ceasefire aimed at ending Yemen's 'forgotten war' disrupted by violence

A shaky truce has stopped the fighting in only some parts of Yemen, as UN-backed efforts get under way to end a civil war that has killed 6,200 Yemenis and enabled al-Qaeda to set up its own mini-state in the south of the country. ... Airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition has inflicted heavy loss of life on civilians, including 97 people, 25 of them children, who died when bombs were dropped on a crowded market place in north western Yemen on 15 March. ...

Despite intervention by Saudi Arabia and its coalition against the Houthis, whom they see as Iranian-backed Shia rebels, the Houthis still hold Sanaa. But, though residents there said they had spent a quiet night, there was continual fighting in the city of Taiz in the south west that is under siege by the Houthis. Peace talks are due to begin under UN auspices in Kuwait on 18 April, but a year of fighting has left Yemen fragmented as different armed groups of uncertain loyalty battle for control of every province.

The outside world has paid limited attention to the war in Yemen because the country is isolated and there has been no mass exodus of refugees and migrants heading for the European Union. So bad are conditions that some Yemenis have fled to Somalia, one of the most impoverished, divided and war-ravaged countries in the world. Even before the war, Yemenis were very poor and many do not have the money to take flight, however bad local conditions.

As in Iraq, Syria and Libya, the greatest beneficiaries of the break-up of Yemen have been salafi-jiahadi movements, in this case al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The group, which the US holds responsible for a series of bomb attacks on American targets, has expanded rapidly over the last year, seizing Mukalla, a city of 500,000 and the third biggest port in Yemen. AQAP makes an estimated $2 million (£1.4m) a day from goods and fuel being passing through the port, in addition to $100 million from raiding the local central bank according to a special report by Reuters titled: “How Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen has made al Qaeda stronger – and richer.”

War in Syria: Polls open for parliamentary elections in government-held areas

Syria peace talks resume in Geneva as regime-held areas hold election

Syrian peace talks resumed in Geneva on Wednesday as residents living in government-held areas went to the polls in parliamentary elections dismissed by the opposition and western backers as a sham.

State media showed a smiling Bashar al-Assad and his wife, Asma, voting near the presidential palace in Damascus. Crowds were filmed pouring into polling stations at the Hejaz railway station in the centre of the capital and close to the border with Lebanon to achieve what one TV correspondent called “constitutional stability.” ...

As voting got under way, opposition negotiators in Geneva were preparing to meet the UN envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, just back from talks in Damascus and Tehran in search of what he has called a “critical mass” of support for a political transition to end a conflict that has cost about 470,000 lives and displaced millions.

De Mistura, the third UN envoy since the crisis erupted, has said he wants this second round of talks to focus on concrete steps towards that transition – but the government has insisted that Assad’s continued rule is a red line and that negotiations must be about national unity and fighting terrorism.

Assad’s officials, emphasising the importance of the elections, are due to arrive in Geneva on Thursday and will meet De Mistura on Friday. The two sides have not yet met face to face.

US Plans Massive Syria Weapons Influx if Ceasefire Collapses

While most people are focusing on the Syrian ceasefire, which has held since February, as an opportunity to negotiate a settlement to the civil war, the US and its “vetted rebels” are looking beyond it, making plans for the day when it collapses.

According to officials familiar with the situation, the CIA has been drawing up a “plan B” for the collapse of the peace talks, which will see a massive new influx of US weapons to “moderate” rebel factions, in another attempt to shift the war in favor of those groups.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because the CIA already had programs for arming “vetted” rebel factions earlier in the civil war, programs which ended with those groups no more powerful, and large amounts of US weapons winding up in the hands of ISIS and al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

“Plan B,” then, is really just America’s long-standing plan A, which has already failed, rebranded with a different letter, because nominally the US has to pretend it believes in the peace process it’s so eagerly planning for the collapse of.

'Risks & Weaknesses': EU parliament picks apart Turkey migrant deal

Bono urges Senate to employ weaponized snark against ISIS

Bono: send Amy Schumer and Chris Rock to fight Islamic State

Bono was speaking in front of a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday 12 April, during a wide-ranging discussion on the Middle East and the refugee crisis. He said: “Don’t laugh. I think comedy should be deployed. It’s like, you speak violence, you speak their language. But you laugh at them, when they’re goose-stepping down the street, and it takes away their power. So, I’m suggesting that the Senate send in Amy Schumer, and Chris Rock, and Sacha Baron Cohen, thank you.”

The 55-year-old had to reassure the crowd at the Dirksen Senate Office Building that he was “actually being serious” and in response he received a serious reply.

“Actually, that’s not the first time I’ve heard experts on how do we counter violent extremism talk about that,” said senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat for New Hampshire. “It’s one of the things that we’re looking at.”

Survey Says Most Arab Youth Reject the Islamic State and Think It Will Fail

A new 16 country survey of Arab youth shows that support for the Islamic State is cratering — the majority of Arabs polled from ages 18-24 agree that the group is both a major threat, and will ultimately fail.

The poll was conducted by ASDA'A Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm which has kept tabs on Arab public opinion for the past eight years. Last year, around 60 of those surveyed said they were strongly opposed to the Islamic State — this year, that number's up to 80. A full 78 percent of respondents said they wouldn't support the Islamic State even if the group weren't so violent, and 76 percent predicted the group will fail in its goal to establish a caliphate. Half of those surveyed said the group's rise was the 'biggest obstacle' facing the region. ...

The survey also captured mixed views of the United States. More than 60 percent overall viewed the United States as an "ally." But views differed widely country by country. More than 90 percent of Iraqis, for example, saw the US as an enemy, and more than half of Lebanese youth survey agreed.

The Canadian First Nation suicide epidemic has been generations in the making

The Attawapiskat First Nation, or the people of the parting rocks, as they are known in their indigenous Swampy Cree language, number roughly 2,000 souls. They live on a small Indian reserve 600 miles north of the Canadian capital of Ottawa, at the mouth of James Bay’s Attawapiskat River. This subarctic First Nation declared a state of emergency after 11 community members tried to take their own lives Saturday night. ...

Suicide does not merely roll in like a hurricane to uproot homes and families, and drown out neighborhoods before receding from where it came. No, this has been an emergency generations in the making, tacitly supported by a Canada fully willing to mine natural resources, proselytize and brutalize generations of children in residential schools, and then leave with basic housing, education systems and healthcare in a state of disrepair.

In 2011, Attawapiskat declared a state of emergency due to a “severe housing shortage”. In 2014, the community opened the first proper elementary school to serve Attawapiskat’s children in 14 years. At the same time, the De Beers mining company pulled $392m worth of diamonds out of their Victor Lake mine on lands taken from the Attawapiskat First Nation through an extension of Treaty 9 in 1930.

This is how First Nations live in the Bantustans of Canada’s north. Broke and broken people with little to no opportunities live in cold, run-down homes and suffer from generations of sexual, physical and psychological abuse. They look on as hundreds of millions of dollars worth of resources are mined from their ancestral homelands. This is not an emergency – a catastrophe for which Canada was unprepared and never saw coming. No, this is and always has been part of the design and devastation that colonization wrought.

Serious deficiencies found at jail where Sandra Bland died, says new report

The jail where Sandra Bland died is a seriously deficient facility where some staff persistently dehumanize inmates, according to a new report commissioned after her death.

Bland was found hanged in her cell at the Waller County, Texas, jail last July, three days after being arrested when a routine traffic stop escalated into a confrontation with a state trooper. ...

The report calls for a new jail and says that some members of the department “persisted in name-calling and dehumanization towards some suspects. Epithets such as ‘turd’, ‘thug’, ‘gangbanger’ and ‘piece of shit’ were sometimes used to describe suspects.”

The eleven-page report makes nine recommendations, including using medical professionals to screen inmates for health problems, purchasing body cameras, zero tolerance for disrespect towards the public, a digital booking process and anger management and psychological evaluations for deputies.

FBI paid professional hackers to gain access to San Bernardino iPhone

The FBI reportedly bought a previously unknown security bug from a group of professional hackers to gain entry to the San Bernardino iPhone 5C, according to the Washington Post.

The report suggests hackers supplied at least one so-called zero-day flaw in the iPhone 5C’s security that allowed the FBI to circumvent the lockscreen and automatic wipe feature that kicks in after 10 wrong passcode entries. ...

The hackers are said to be professional security experts who probe software, devices and services to find vulnerabilities that they can exploit. They then sell the bugs to governments and third-parties, including those who make surveillance tools similar to the software exposed during a data breach of Italian firm Hacking Team.

Apple Bug Exposed Chat History With a Single Click

In the middle of intense public debate over whether Apple should be forced to help the government decrypt iPhones for criminal investigations, the company quietly closed a six-month-old security vulnerability in its Messages app. Newly published details reveal just how severe that vulnerability was, allowing the exfiltration of chat history, including photos and videos, if the user could be tricked into clicking a single malicious link.

The bug, which affected Apple’s laptop and desktop computers from September through March, highlights just how hard it is for companies like Apple to effectively secure sensitive data — even before those companies begin fielding requests from the government for special access. Tech companies like Apple are nearly unanimous in their agreement that creating “backdoors” through which the government may access protected data undermines even the most basic security measures, including those designed to protect against vulnerabilities like the Messages bug.

Thousands of Verizon workers strike on east coast amid contract dispute

About 39,000 Verizon landline and cable workers on the east coast walked off the job Wednesday morning after little progress in negotiations since their contract expired nearly eight months ago.

The workers, members of two unions – the Communications Workers of America and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers – represent installers, customer service employees, repairmen and other service workers in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC, for Verizon’s wireline business, which provides fixed-line phone services and FiOS internet service.

“We’re on strike to maintain good jobs and maintain our standard of living,” said Keith Purce, president of CWA Local 1101, which represents about 3,500 workers in Manhattan and the Bronx. ...

The unions say Verizon wants to freeze pensions, make layoffs easier and rely more on contract workers. The telecom giant has said there are health care issues that need to be addressed for retirees and current workers because medical costs have grown and the company also wants “greater flexibility” to manage its workers.

Verizon also is pushing to eliminate a rule that would prevent employees from working away from home for extended periods of time. In a television ad, the unions said the company was trying to “force employees to accept a contract sending their jobs to other parts of the country and even overseas”.

Government Settlement With Goldman Sachs Is No Real Punishment

This is a $5 billion settlement to resolve wrongdoing that cost the national economy $20 trillion. Goldman Sachs has admitted it was a key link in the chain of wrongdoing that led to the 2008 crash and the Great Recession. But eight years after the crash, there are still no criminal prosecutions of either the Big Banks themselves or their executives.

The Department of Justice says this settlement will hold Goldman Sachs accountable. Unfortunately, that’s not so. Without criminal prosecution, there’s not even the illusion of accountability. This settlement, like others involving Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Wall Street perpetrators of the wrongdoing that led to the Great Recession, does virtually nothing to advance the objectives of deterrence, punishment or compensation for victims. The real message is, whether due to size, complexity or privileged access to politicians, Goldman Sachs and Wall Street remain above the law.

In Settlement’s Fine Print, Goldman May Save $1 Billion

State and federal officials said on Monday that Goldman Sachs would pay $5.1 billion to settle accusations of wrongdoing before the financial crisis.

But that is just on paper. Buried in the fine print are provisions that allow Goldman to pay hundreds of millions of dollars less — perhaps as much as $1 billion less — than that headline figure. And that is before the tax benefits of the deal are included.

The bank will be able to reduce its bill substantially through a combination of government incentives and tax credits. For example, the settlement calls for Goldman to spend $240 million on affordable housing. But a chart attached to the settlement explains that the bank will have to pay at most only 30 percent of that money to fulfill the deal. That is because it will receive a particularly large credit for each dollar it spends on affordable housing. ...

“They appear to have grossly inflated the settlement amount for P.R. purposes to mislead the public, while in the fine print, enabling Goldman Sachs to pay 50 to 75 percent less,” said Dennis Kelleher, the founder of the advocacy organization Better Markets, referring to the government announcement. “The problem all along, with all of these settlements — and this one highlights it even more — is that they are carefully crafted more to conceal than reveal to the American public what really happened here — and what the so-called penalty is.”

Five Big Banks Flunk Key Test, Proving They're Still "Too Big To Fail"

Federal regulators Wednesday confirmed what watchdogs have been warning for years—the biggest banks in the United States are still "too big to fail."

The Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) found that five major U.S. banks failed to offer credible strategies for how they would enter bankruptcy in an "orderly fashion," without taking the whole economy down with with them. The so-called "living wills" rejected by the banking agencies were submitted by Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., State Street Corp., and Wells Fargo.

"The goal to end too big to fail and protect the American taxpayer by ending bailouts remains just that: only a goal,"

The banks have until October 1 to resubmit their plans with serious "deficiencies" corrected, or face "more stringent" regulations, the agencies said. ...

Earlier this year, former Goldman Sachs executive and current president of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, Neel Kashkari—who is credited as an architect of the 2008 bailout—channeled Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren when he said the country's largest financial institutions are "still too big to fail and continue to pose a significant, ongoing risk to our economy."

This is an excellent article, rich in details worth taking a good look at if the sort of stuff bankers get away with because of corrupt, industry-captured regulators pisses you off as much as it does me.

Elizabeth Warren Is Why JPMorgan Has a Living Will Problem

A serious dust-up occurred on July 15, 2014 during a Senate Banking hearing between Senator Elizabeth Warren and Fed Chair Janet Yellen on the matter of these living wills. Warren told Yellen that at the time of its collapse in 2008, Lehman Brothers had $639 billion in assets and 209 subsidiaries and it took three years to unwind the bank in bankruptcy. Warren singled out JPMorgan Chase for comparison, saying that it has $2.5 trillion in assets and 3,391 subsidiaries.

Dodd-Frank specifically states that these wind-down plans must be “credible” each year or the Fed and FDIC must reject them and force the banks to take remedial steps such as simplifying their structure or selling off assets.

Yellen was clearly not prepared for this line of questioning and stumbled badly in her answers to Warren. She said the Fed was pursuing a “process,” that the plans are “complex” with some banks submitting plans that are “tens of thousands of pages.” Yellen then summed up with this:

“I think what was intended is this interpretation you’re talking about, whether they’re credible, in other words, do they facilitate an orderly resolution, and I think we need to give these firms feedback.”

This hearing came more than six years after the greatest Wall Street banking collapse since the Great Depression and Warren was visibly agitated by these stonewalling answers from Yellen. Warren responded:

“I have to say, Chair Yellen, I think the language in the statute is pretty clear, that you are required, the Fed is required, to call it every year on whether these institutions have a credible plan — and I remind you, there are very effective tools that you have available to you that you can use if those plans are not credible, including forcing these financial institutions to simplify their structure or forcing them to liquidate some of their assets — in other words, break them up."

If the Wall Street Journal is correct and the Fed and FDIC have finally rejected JPMorgan’s tricked up version of global banking reality, the real question will be what happens next. Will the regulators come clean with the public as to why JPMorgan’s plan is not credible or will they continue to hide behind the veil of supervisory confidentiality. ... Senator Warren has opened an important window. Whether sunshine comes through is another matter.

'Seriously Sinister': Foremost Bank Whistleblower Says CIA Behind Panama Papers

While many observers have questioned why the Panama Papers leak has seemingly only revealed the economic corruption of notable U.S. adversaries, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a notable tax evasion whistleblower has come forward with what he believes is the answer.

"The CIA I'm sure is behind this, in my opinion," said former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld, who in 2005 blew the whistle on the Swiss banking giant, which lead to a U.S. government investigation into massive fraud and bank-enabled tax evasion.

"The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States—Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina—and we don't see one U.S. name. Why is that?" Birkenfeld asked during an exclusive interview with CNBC on Tuesday. "Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation."

The so-called Panama Papers, which were made public on April 3rd, exposed massive, international tax evasion by some of the world's most powerful people. And while popular anger led to the resignation of at least one world leader, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, and spurred a global investigation, the United States has remained remarkably unscathed.

"If you've got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this," Birkenfeld said, referring to the global firm Mossack Fonseca, from which the 11.5 million documents were taken. "But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn't hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That's wrong. And there's something seriously sinister here behind this.

Panamanian Police Have Raided the Headquarters of Mossack Fonseca

Panama's attorney general raided the offices of the Mossack Fonseca law firm late on Tuesday to search for any evidence of illegal activities, authorities said in a statement.

The firm at the center of the Panama Papers scandal has been accused of tax evasion and fraud. The national police, in an earlier statement, said they were searching for documentation that "would establish the possible use of the firm for illicit activities." ...

The firm's offices in El Salvador were also raided by authorities last Friday.

Who writes these headlines?

Dilma Rousseff Is Close to Being Impeached, but Not All Brazilians Hate Her

Claudete da Costa has never been anywhere close to Brazil's privileged elite. As a former street child who survived a massacre by police in 1993, the 36-year-old has been on the wrong side of country's social inequality and abuse of power many times.

Yet Da Costa, who is now one of 11 million people who lives in the favelas, or slums, is not happy about the possibility that President Dilma Rousseff could be impeached and her government brought down over allegations of fiddling public finances.

"I never thought I would live to see a coup up close. What they are doing with Dilma is cowardice," she said of the move to oust Rousseff, which is expected to be voted on by congress on Sunday. "We received the dignity of being recognised as workers. The standard of living improved. Are you going to reject a government like this?" ...

The research institute Datafolha found that well-educated men aged 36 or over were disproportionately represented at the biggest demonstration, in São Paulo. From more than 2,000 interviews, researchers found three quarters of the demonstrators had reached higher education while half had an income that was five to 20 times higher than the minimum salary of 880 Brazilian reals, or 245 dollars.

Working class voters, meanwhile, have been far more present in the smaller but also vocal rallies for the governing PT. Da Costa, who spoke on stage at one such demonstration in Rio, said opposition to impeachment goes beyond party politics to the heart of Brazil's class conflict.

"We're not fighting for the Workers' Party," she said. "For many of us, it's about a government that brought dignity to those people who were excluded their whole life by society."

Da Costa's story is a testament to Brazil's rapid transformation in the past 20 years, in which millions have been lifted from poverty thanks to welfare programmes launched by leftist former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Rousseff on the brink: Coalition partner pulls out as impeachment vote looms

Cable News Devotes 30 Seconds to Mass Arrests Protesting Political Corruption

The Democracy Spring, a protest movement calling on Congress to “end the corruption of big money in our politics” and “ensure free and fair elections,” converged on Capitol Hill on Monday, staging a nonviolent sit-in that resulted in over 400 arrests — a massive number by Washington sit-in standards.

While the action, dubbed #DemocracySpring, garnered wide coverage on social media and over 136,000 tweets, cable news programs found little time to cover the political protests, instead focusing largely on horse-race coverage of the presidential candidates for most of the day.

During daytime and afternoon news segments, CNN did not devote any coverage to the actions. MSNBC mentioned the protests for approximately 12 seconds, while Fox News mentioned the arrests and discussed the protests for about 17 seconds.

MSNBC and Fox News not only provided minimal coverage, but hosts on both networks misrepresented the protests, claiming they were narrowly focused only on “voting rights issues.” The focus on systemic political corruption, an issue that was widely criticized during the rally yesterday, was ignored.

Hillary Helps a Bank—and Then It Funnels Millions to the Clintons

The Swiss bank UBS is one of the biggest, most powerful financial institutions in the world. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton intervened to help it out with the IRS. And after that, the Swiss bank paid Bill Clinton $1.5 million for speaking gigs. The Wall Street Journal reported all that and more Thursday in an article that highlights huge conflicts of interest that the Clintons have created in the recent past. ...

The article adds that “there is no evidence of any link between Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the case and the bank’s donations to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, or its hiring of Mr. Clinton.” Maybe it’s all a mere coincidence, and when UBS agreed to pay Bill Clinton $1.5 million the relevant decision-maker wasn’t even aware of the vast sum his wife may have saved the bank or the power that she will potentially wield after the 2016 presidential election.

But even that wouldn’t make accepting the $1.5 million excusable.

If you’re Bill Clinton and your wife has recently intervened, in her capacity as a cabinet secretary, to help a giant corporation avert a significant threat to its bottom-line, the very least you could do, if only to avoid the appearance of impropriety, is to avoid negotiating seven-figure paydays with that same corporation. This is particularly jaw-dropping because ultra-wealthy Bill Clinton has virtually unlimited opportunities to give lucrative speeches to any number of audiences not directly implicated by decisions that his wife made as secretary of state. ...

“Any suggestions that Hillary Clinton was driven by anything but what’s in America’s best interest would be false. Period,” a campaign spokesman told The Guardian. Oh, come on. ...

But this campaign flak cannot possibly know––or expect us to take on faith––that Clinton was not at all influenced by knowledge that acting to benefit the bank could mean seven figures for her family and more for their foundation, whereas advocating against the bank would more than likely eliminate the chance of either. Any normal person would be influenced, if only in spite of themselves, unless they resolved from the beginning that having made a decision in government that directly affected a corporation, they’d never take money from it later even if it offered.

It is a discredit to Bill and Hillary Clinton that they behave as if they believe otherwise.

Why are they indulged in doing so?

The Clintons are using 5 shell companies to save on taxes in Delaware

The Clintons and their family foundation have at least five shell companies registered to the address 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware — which is also home to some 280,000 other companies who use the location to take advantage of the state's low taxes, limited disclosure requirements, and other business incentives. ...

There is nothing illegal about the Clintons' decision to take advantage of Delaware's tax laws. However, on the campaign trail last week, Hillary Clinton criticized the "super-rich" who use "outrageous tax havens and loopholes" to pay fewer taxes.

Here's a snippet of Rania Khalek's argument for Bernie or Bust:

We Asked 4 Prominent Bernie Supporters if They’d Vote for Hillary in November. Here’s What They Told Us.

As a millennial still struggling under the weight of student debt and an Arab-American with loved ones scattered across the Middle East, I’ve got plenty of “skin in the game” this election season. That’s why I cannot in good conscience vote for Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination, even if it means the Republican front-runner, Donald Trump, becomes the next president of the United States.

It has become accepted orthodoxy in establishment circles to view Trump as an authoritarian race-baiter who poses a uniquely grave danger to the United States and the world. While he is all of those things, this characterization obscures the fact that Clinton is also a threat to world stability, and that, unlike Trump, she already has the blood on her hands to prove it.

Sure, Trump has demonized Mexicans, Muslims, and women. But Clinton called black children “superpredators” and referred to welfare recipients as “deadbeats.” She routinely accuses Palestinians of teaching their children to hate while closely aligning herself with Israel’s right-wing, Holocaust-revising Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a man whose demagoguery rivals Trump’s. She also likened Russian president Vladimir Putin to Hitler and expressed pride in making an enemy of “the Iranians” whose country she once threatened to “obliterate.” ...

Despite reinventing herself as a social-justice warrior in recent months, Clinton more closely resembles a neoconservative hawk. Her fingerprints are all over the regime-change disasters that fueled the rise of ISIS in Libya and state-sanctioned death squads in Honduras. Yet she remains confident in the righteousness of foreign intervention. During her tenure as secretary of state, she acted as a weapons dealer to her tyrant donors, thereby strengthening the military prowess of despots with abysmal human-rights records. ...

Fortunately, Clinton’s coronation isn’t inevitable. Bernie Sanders is still in the race and has a record of consistently opposing regime change, military belligerence, and austerity. And he’s mainstreaming socialist ideas that are vital to combating the fascism coalescing around Trump. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Another four or even eight years of Clintonian economics and military adventurism will lead to the rise of an even more bellicose demagogue than Trump. For me, the choice is clear: It’s Bernie or bust.

Days of Revolt - Beyond the Vote

The Problem Isn't That Sanders Doesn't Know How to Break Up the Banks; It's That He Does

I've been wanting to write for a while about all the reasons the bipartisan Establishment — the people at the top running the "big game" that makes them all rich and keeps them in power — can't ever let Bernie Sanders get control of the Executive Branch of government. There are quite a few reasons, including the fact that people like Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, would certainly be prosecuted and most likely jailed for fraud.

But one story that's been making the ginned-up news rounds lately is that Sanders, in an interview with the NY Daily News, seemed in the Clinton camp's telling not to know how to go about executing one of his own policies, breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks.

The problem with that framing — which every news outlet, including the so-called leftie outlets — immediately jumped to support — is that it's exactly backwards. Sanders knows exactly how to break up the big banks, and he will.

And that's the problem Bernie Sanders presents. The problem isn't that he doesn't know how. The problem is that he does know how, and he will.

Merkley of Oregon becomes the first Senator to endorse Bernie Sanders.

Senator Jeff Merkley: Why I’m Supporting Bernie Sanders

No decision we make as Americans more dramatically affects the direction of our country than our choice for president. He or she is more than the manager of the executive branch, commander in chief or appointer of judges. The president reflects, but also helps define, our national values, priorities and direction.

After considering the biggest challenges facing our nation and the future I want for my children and our country, I have decided to become the first member of the Senate to support my colleague Bernie Sanders for president. ...

It has been noted that Bernie has an uphill battle ahead of him to win the Democratic nomination. But his leadership on these issues and his willingness to fearlessly stand up to the powers that be have galvanized a grass-roots movement. People know that we don’t just need better policies, we need a wholesale rethinking of how our economy and our politics work, and for whom they work. ...

It is time to recommit ourselves to that vision of a country that measures our nation’s success not at the boardroom table, but at kitchen tables across America. Bernie Sanders stands for that America, and so I stand with Bernie Sanders for president.

Bernie Sanders Lands Punk-Rock, Feminist Endorsement From Pussy Riot

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, the feminist punk-rock member of Pussy Riot, has come out strong for Bernie Sanders, and plans to write a love song to the Vermont senator’s message. The Russian singer even received some boos for her support, not as if she seems to care much.

According to the Daily Beast, Tolokonnikova, also known as Nadya Tolokno, got off of a flight early Friday morning in Washington, D.C. and tweeted “my a** just landed in Washington, and I urgently need a t-shirt with Bernie. could i pick it up somewhere tomorrow morning?”

The Bernie Sanders team was more than happy to comply.

just visited Bernie campaign office in Washington

thank u guys for an inspiration!

I love what u stands for! pic.twitter.com/h286rAn3e4

— Pussy Riot (@pussyrrriot) February 26, 2016

'The Biggest Coal Giant Has Fallen': Peabody Files for Bankruptcy

Coal giant Peabody Energy Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday, signaling what climate advocates hope is a death knell for dirty energy.

"Peabody Energy's bankruptcy is a harbinger of the end of the fossil fuel era," said Jenny Marienau, divestment campaign manager with the climate advocacy group 350.org. ...

The company's collapse comes on the heels of Arch Coal's bankruptcy, which was filed in January. Peabody announced in March it would possibly have to seek bankruptcy.

"The biggest coal giant has fallen, and Peabody Energy's bankruptcy should serve as a wake-up call to anyone promising that coal's glory days will return," said Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign.

The group said it would monitor the bankruptcy proceedings to safeguard against Peabody scapegoating its workers or dumping responsibilities on communities near mines, noting that the company "has more than $2 billion in mine cleanup liabilities, nearly $1.5 billion of which are unfunded, including nearly $900 million in Wyoming alone."

Clinton Foundation Called On to Cut Ties with Fossil Fuels Sector

Citing big-dollar donations from three fossil fuel giants—Chevron, Conoco Philips, and Exxon—a leading climate justice group is calling on the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative to stop investing in or accepting money from the industry that's driving the global climate crisis. 

Specifically, the public demands from 350 Action—directed toward Foundation president Donna E. Shalala, founder and chair President Bill Clinton, and vice chair Chelsea Clinton—are that the Clinton Foundation:

1. Stop any new investments in the top 200 fossil fuel companies.
2. Drop coal, oil and gas from your investment portfolio (by divesting from the top 200 fossil fuel companies).
3. Invest at least 5 percent of your portfolio into climate solutions defined as renewable energy, energy efficiency, clean technology and clean energy access.
4. Direct the Clinton Global Initiative to no longer accept donations or pledges from the top 200 fossil fuel companies.

Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign ties to the fossil fuel industry have come under increasing scrutiny in the wake of her hostile interaction at the end of March with a Greenpeace climate activist, and another a week later in Pittsburgh.

Put simply, Greenpeace's Kelly Mitchell wrote earlier this month: "We need to sever the ties between those who wield power and those who would risk our collective future for a few dollars."

Regulators Pin Uncontrolled Oil Sands Leaks on Company's Mining Methods, Geohazards

Canadian regulators quietly released a major report blaming four uncontrollable leaks in the heart of Alberta's tar sands patch on an energy company's injection of too much steam underground, while seeking to tap ever-deeper reserves.

Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) pushed the limit of how much steam it could reasonably inject underground at high pressures to release bitumen deep below the surface, concluded officials at Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). The report, published last month, also noted the area's complex local geology as a critical contributing role. For one leak, officials partly blamed well-related failures. The combination of factors caused some of the crude to bubble up to the surface by way of natural or man-made cracks or faults in the bedrock, instead of through wells. ...

"It's concerning that things like this are coming to light long after the company has gone through its regulatory approval process," Chris Severson-Baker, director of the Pembina Institute, told InsideClimate News. Pembina is a nonprofit dedicated to sustainability.

This AER investigation highlights how "there may be other really critical things that aren't known about how these technologies can be safely applied," he added. ...

CNRL's investigation had blamed the events largely on well-related failures. The company report, published in 2014, does acknowledge the possibility of other contributing factors, including its extraction process and local geology.

Regulators firmly disagreed, almost entirely blaming the company's extraction process and other geological factors.

Also of Interest

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

I am on the Kill List. This is what it feels like to be hunted by drones

They Don’t Just Hide Their Money. Economist Says Most of Billionaire Wealth is Unearned.

Wall Street’s Fraud of the Week Club

Republicans to wealthy: We just can’t quit you

Hillary Clinton’s claim that the ‘highest per capita number’ of crime guns in New York come from Vermont gets 3 Pinocchios

Hillary Clinton Says Honduras Coup Not Illegal In Daily News Editorial Board Interview

Candidates, Here’s Your Iraq/Syria/Libya Mess To Fix

Two ways the war in Yemen is turning into a disaster for the U.S.

The hidden: how Chicago police kept thousands isolated at Homan Square

A Little Night Music

Sammy Price Septet - One O'Clock Jump

Sammy Price And The Rock Band - Rib Joint

Sammy Price & his Rocking Rhythm - Ain't Nobody's Business

Sammy Price - The King Of Boogie

Red Allen + Sammy Price - Patrol Wagon Blues

Sammy Price & His Texas Blusicians - Do You Dig My Jive

Sammy Price And The Rock Band - Bar-B-Q-Sauce