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The day's news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Robert Gordon

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Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features rockabilly singer Robert Gordon. Enjoy!

^{Robert Gordon - Drivin' Wheel}

"The first rule of business is: Do other men for they would do you."

-- Charles Dickens

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News and Opinion

Manchin Admits Getting His Bill Passed and Then Tanking Progressive Package Was Always the Plan

Sen. Joe Manchin admitted Thursday, ahead of a scheduled House vote on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, that it had been corporate Democrats' plan all along to first secure passage of their fossil fuel-friendly legislation and then undermine the party's more ambitious reconciliation package that proposes investing up to $3.5 trillion over a decade in clean energy and the social safety net.

The conservative West Virginia Democrat told reporters Thursday that on July 28, he secured a signed agreement (pdf) from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) outlining his conditions for voting on the final reconciliation bill.

A spokesperson for Schumer, meanwhile, told Politico that "Schumer never agreed to any of the conditions Sen. Manchin laid out; he merely acknowledged where Sen. Manchin was on the subject at the time."

In addition to demanding a topline figure no higher than $1.5 trillion, something he reiterated on Thursday, Manchin said in July that he wanted to delay debate on the reconciliation package until October 1.

Meanwhile, a small group of corporate-funded House Democrats—led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (N.J.) and supported by Manchin and fellow right-wing Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)—in August pressured Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to bring the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF) to the floor by September 27 in exchange for their votes on the $3.5 trillion budget resolution that enabled lawmakers to draft the Build Back Better Act, as the reconciliation package has since been named.

Critics were quick to point out the significance of Manchin's revelation.

"It sure feeds the idea that their goal is to pass BIF then bail on reconciliation," noted former Senate staffer Adam Jentleson, now executive director of the Battle Born Collective, a progressive messaging firm.

Pelosi delays infrastructure vote as Democrats struggle to reach deal

Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed off a planned vote on a bipartisan infrastructure bill late Thursday after top Democrats in the House, Senate and the White House failed to reach a deal to pass the legislation. Pelosi and other top Democrats engaged in hours of frenetic negotiations, hoping to produce a bicameral deal on President Joe Biden’s broader social spending package, which progressives had demanded in exchange for their votes on the Senate-passed infrastructure bill.

But after the daylong frenzy, in which senior aides for Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the White House failed to convince centrist Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to agree to a public framework, Democratic leaders punted the issue to Friday. The move also means at least a temporary lapse in funding for surface transportation programs, which needed to be renewed at midnight. ...

Democrats with knowledge of the discussions said party leaders had hoped to convince Manchin and Sinema to agree to a $2.1 trillion topline target for the broader package, without success. Earlier in the day, Manchin declared he wouldn’t support a bill that cost more than $1.5 trillion. ...

In several meetings Thursday, Pelosi clambered to nail down a deal on legislative framework for the broader spending deal between the party’s two factions, according to Democrats with knowledge of her thinking. By late Thursday night, those talks evolved into in-person discussions among Manchin, Sinema, Schumer and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as they scrambled to reach a deal on a total price tag for the broader bill. White House officials, including National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice, also took part in talks on both sides of the Capitol. ...

Pelosi has also called in outside reinforcements to encourage members to vote for the infrastructure bill, including influential labor groups who are sending letters to members of Congress. ... When the bill does come to the floor, multiple Democrats said part of the plan would be to hold the vote open until Pelosi can corral enough members for passage, whether that be from the progressive wing of the caucus or from Republicans who support the infrastructure bill. One member described it as a "staredown" strategy.

Despite setback, Democrats try to save Biden $3.5T plan

Democrats return to Capitol for crunch talks on Biden agenda after setback

Democrats returned to the Capitol on Friday deeply divided but determined to make progress on Joe Biden’s ambitious economic vision, after an embarrassing setback delayed a planned vote on a related $1tn measure to improve the nation’s infrastructure. ...

The wrangling resumed in the House on Friday morning, which, due to a quirk of process, remained in the legislative day of 30 September even as the calendar turned to October.

Huddled together in an hours-long caucus meeting, Pelosi tried to steer the feuding factions within her party toward common ground after Thursday’s marathon negotiating session generated deepening acrimony and no deal.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, emerged from the morning gathering optimistic that Democrats would eventually pass both bills. But she remained firm in her position – and confident in her members – that there the infrastructure bill would not move forward without an ironclad commitment that the Senate would pass Biden’s larger bill.

“We’ve seen more progress in the last 48 hours than we’ve seen in a long time on reconciliation,” she said, crediting progressives’ infrastructure revolt for forcing Manchin and Sinema to the negotiating table.

Taliban: ‘Consequences’ if US drones enter Afghan airspace

The Taliban has warned of consequences if the United States did not stop flying drones over Afghan airspace. The statement on Wednesday, released on the Taliban’s Twitter account, said the “US has violated all international rights and laws as well as its commitments made to the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, with the operation of these drones in Afghanistan”.

“We call on all countries, especially United States, to treat Afghanistan in light of international rights, laws and commitments … in order to prevent any negative consequences,” the Taliban said.

US officials did not immediately respond to the request, which could have implications for the fragile relationship between Washington and the Taliban in the wake of Washington’s complete military withdrawal from the country on August 30.

Don't Pursue War, Pursue War Crimes: Michael Ratner's Decades-Long Battle to Close Guantánamo

US senators call on Biden to end lethal force outside war zones

Two top US senators are demanding President Joe Biden put an end to Washington's use of lethal force outside of armed conflict zones, weeks after the Pentagon admitted to killing 10 Afghan civilians in a drone strike last month.

In a letter sent to the president on Monday, Senators Dick Durbin and Patrick Leahy said that it "is long past time to make a decisive shift away from lethal force policies and legal interpretations that erode fundamental human rights and America's moral standing, perpetuate endless conflict, and routinely cause tragedies".

"As your administration rightfully seeks to end the endless wars of the last two decades and restore American leadership on human rights, it should take immediate steps to end war-based lethal force policies outside of armed conflict," the lawmakers wrote.

The letter specifically asks the administration to provide an outline on how it will shift away from war-based lethal force policies, an assessment on the civilian toll of the past two decades of these policies, and provide transparency in the investigation of the 29 August Kabul drone strike that killed 10 Afghan civilians.

The senators wrote that they want an answer to their questions by 12 October.

U.S. sanctions spur China and Russia to build up cross-border links

A 2,200 meter rail bridge across the Amur River, between China and Russia, was completed in August this year, part of a push to deepen economic ties between the two countries facing U.S. sanctions.

The new bridge is a boon for companies that move goods across the China-Russia border.

"We'll be able to slash shipping times once the rail bridge opens up," said an employee at one trading company based in China's northeastern Heilongjiang Province.

Her company currently uses ships to move shipments across the river, then loads them onto trucks on the other side. But the once the bridge begins operations -- sometime between January and March -- according to Russian media, shipping will become much faster.

Beijing and Moscow have historically not always been close. But their shared rivalry with Washington has spurred greater cooperation between the neighboring powers, which aim to nearly double bilateral trade by 2024.

Greenwald Targeted by CIA!

Inside the CIA plot to kidnap, kill Julian Assange

'Eye-Popping Rip-Off': Americans Pay Nearly Double Rest of World Combined for Top Meds

As public health advocates fumed over efforts by right-wing congressional Democrats to water down prescription drug pricing reforms proposed in their own party's flagship Build Back Better package, a report published Thursday by a leading progressive advocacy group revealed that Americans are paying nearly twice as much for the 20 bestselling medications as the rest of the world combined.

The Public Citizen report, entitled United We Spend, compares U.S. revenue from the top 20 "blockbuster" drugs to global sales figures as reported by pharmaceutical companies in their annual U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, or foreign equivalents.

The report found that "drugs with significant sales revenue disparities include Gilead Sciences' HIV medication Biktarvy, which had U.S. sales revenue five times greater than the rest of the world; AbbVie's autoimmune disease drug Humira, which had U.S. sales revenue four times greater than the rest of the world; and Eli Lily's Type 2 diabetes drug Trulicity, Roche's multiple sclerosis drug Ocrevus, and Amgen and Pfizer's autoimmune disease drug Enbrel, all three of which had U.S. sales revenue more than triple the rest of the world."

Rick Claypool, a Public Citizen research director and co-author of the report, said Thursday that "this eye-popping rip-off Big Pharma is getting away with is an insult to the American people."

"Empowering Medicare to push back against inflated drug prices is the responsible and commonsense way to stand up to the industry's greed—which, certain members of Congress should be reminded, lawmakers in both parties have been promising to do for years," Claypool added.

A survey published Thursday by Invest in America and Data for Progress revealed that 73% of likely U.S. voters support allowing Medicare to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs.

However, Republican and some Democratic lawmakers have been fighting efforts to reduce prescription drug prices, and other reforms. For example, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)—who campaigned on a promise to "lower prescription drug prices"— has been one of the staunchest congressional opponents of allowing Medicare to leverage its tremendous purchasing power to negotiate lower medication prices.

David Sirota: 2018 Campaign Ad Spotlights Sinema FLIP-FLOP On RX Pricing, PROOF She Serves Donors

California Beach to be returned to Black family 100 years after city ‘used the law to steal it’

A beachfront property seized from a Black family in southern California nearly a century ago will be returned to the family’s descendants, in a move hailed as a milestone in the fight for reparations and the return of lands stolen from people of color.

In 1912 Willa and Charles Bruce bought land in Manhattan Beach, a Los Angeles seaside suburb, turning it into a thriving resort run for and by Black residents despite harassment and violence from white neighbors.

But in the 1920s the Manhattan Beach city council used eminent domain to take the land from the Bruces, purportedly for use as a park. Yet the land lay unused for years until was transferred to the state in 1948.

This week the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce, including the couple’s great-great-grandson, watched California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, sign a law that allows ownership of the property known as Bruce’s Beach to be transferred back to the family.

With a half-dozen descendants of the couple present, Newsom apologized for how the land was taken before signing the bill during a ceremony at the property on Thursday.

Zillow Accused Of MONKEYING With Housing Market, Berlin Votes To SMASH Big Landlords

Judges criticise Met police after woman wins spy cop case

Police have been been severely criticised by judges who ruled that they grossly violated the human rights of a woman who was deceived into a long-term intimate relationship by an undercover officer. The judges ruled overwhelmingly in favour of Kate Wilson, an environmental and social justice activist, who has pursued a decade-long campaign to uncover the truth.

In their landmark judgment on Thursday, the three judges in the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT) ruled that the Metropolitan police had violated Wilson’s human rights in five ways, including inflicting degrading treatment on her.

Mark Kennedy, an undercover officer who infiltrated leftwing groups for seven years, had a sexual relationship with Wilson lasting more than a year, without telling her that he was a police officer who had been sent to spy on her and the political groups she supported.

The judges ruled that senior officers in charge of Kennedy “either knew of the relationship, chose not to know of its existence, or were incompetent and negligent in not following up” clear and obvious signs. In their 158-page ruling, they said the senior officers appeared to have a policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” towards their spies who were deceiving women into sexual relationships. They said the managers probably had “a lack of interest” in protecting women’s human rights.

After the ruling, Wilson said: “The events in my case happened years ago. However, the failure of the police to protect women from sexual predators within their own ranks, and police attempts to criminalise protesters are both still very live issues today. The tribunal has gone some way towards recognising how deep the abuses run.”

More than half of US police killings are mislabelled or not reported, study finds

More than half of all police-involved killings in the US go unreported with the majority of victims being Black, according to a new study published in the Lancet, a peer reviewed journal. Research at the University of Washington School of Medicine’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that in the US between 1980 and 2018, more than 55% of deaths, over 17,000 in total, from police violence were either misclassified or went unreported.

The study also discovered that Black Americans are more likely than any other group to die from police violence and are 3.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans. ...

To fully understand the unerreporting of police-involved killings, researchers compared data from the US National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), a government database for tracking the US population, with non-governmental, open-source databases that track police brutality. Open-source databases aggregate information from news reports and public record requests, capturing a wider range of fatal police-involved incidents. ...

In total, the NVSS database misclassified nearly 60% of all fatal police encounters involving Black Americans. NVSS also missed approximately 50% of all police-involved deaths of Hispanic people, 56% of all police-involved deaths of non-Hispanic white people, and 33% of deaths involving non-Hispanic people across other races. ...

Past studies have analyzed underreporting of fatal police incidents and how Black Americans disproportionately die from police violence, but previous research was conducted over much shorter time periods.

Long Beach school officer shoots 18-year-old, leaving her on life support

An 18-year-old woman is on life support after a school safety officer shot her near a high school in Long Beach, California, this week, sparking outrage and renewing calls for armed officers to be removed from schools.

The victim, identified by her family as Manuela Rodriguez, was shot while in a moving vehicle on Monday afternoon. The Long Beach police department (LBPD) said an officer for the school district was driving when he observed an altercation between Rodriguez and a 15-year-old girl taking place down the street from Millikan high school and attempted to intervene.

Rodriguez then entered a vehicle, which began to drive away. In cellphone video footage circulating on social media, it appeared that the officer fired at the car as it was fleeing.

The officer’s bullet hit the 18-year-old, who is also the mother of a five-month-old boy. Rodriguez, who police say was hit in the upper body, was taken to the hospital in critical condition. As of Thursday morning, doctors had declared her braindead and were moving to take her off of life support, according to an attorney for the family.

The officer, who has not been identified, is employed by the school district and on paid administrative leave.

Much more info at the link.

Top Republicans rub shoulders with extremists in secretive rightwing group, leak reveals

A leaked document has revealed the membership list of the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP), showing how it provides opportunities for elite Republicans, wealthy entrepreneurs, media proprietors and pillars of the US conservative movement to rub shoulders with anti-abortion and anti-Islamic extremists.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors rightwing hate groups, describes the CNP as “a shadowy and intensely secretive group [which] has operated behind the scenes” in its efforts to “build the conservative movement”.

The leaked membership list dates from September last year, and reveals the 40-year-old CNP put influential Trump administration figures alongside leaders of organizations that have been categorized as hate groups.

The group was founded in 1981 by activists influential in the Christian right, including Tim LaHaye, Howard Phillips and Paul Weyrich, who had also been involved in founding and leading the Moral Majority. Initially they were seeking to maximize their influence on the new Reagan administration. In subsequent years, CNP meetings have played host to presidential aspirants like George W Bush in 1999 and Mitt Romney in 2007, and sitting presidents including Donald Trump in 2020. ...

Heidi Beirich, of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said in an email that “this new CNP list makes clear that the group still serves as a key venue where mainstream conservatives and extremists mix”, adding that CNP “clearly remains a critical nexus for mainstreaming extremism from the far right into conservative circles”.

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Arizona’s recount didn’t find more Trump votes. But Republicans got what they wanted

Last week, the Arizona Republicans’ sham election “audit” ended with a whimper rather than a bang. Launched in April to help Donald Trump legitimize his false claims of voter fraud, the review of Phoenix-area ballots was – even by its own low standards – an incompetent mess. For months, would-be sleuths chased bizarre conspiracy theories, wasted taxpayer dollars and compromised private voter information. When the results were finally announced last week, they revealed that Joe Biden had not only won Arizona, but had in fact won it by an even larger margin than previously reported.

Not exactly what big lie believers were hoping for.

But the majority of Americans, those who reject the big lie, shouldn’t celebrate just yet. While the sham audit failed to substantiate Trump’s false fraud claims, Arizona Republicans’ goal was never really to overturn the last election – it was to lay the groundwork for overturning the next one. And it still may do just that.

To understand why the Arizona “audit” remains so dangerous to American democracy despite its lackluster results, it’s important to recognize that after leaving office, Trump and his fellow big liars have been far less interested in looking for evidence of non-existent fraud than in sowing doubt about our general system of elections. By that standard, the audit was far from a failure. Nearly a year after their state’s vote was first counted, Arizona Republicans were able to use the pretext of protecting “election integrity” to avoid fully conceding defeat. In doing so, they undermined a central element of the peaceful transfer of power – the idea that the losers of elections acknowledge the winners’ legitimacy. ...

Impartially conducted recounts play a similarly important role in extremely close elections – and historically, the votes initially left uncounted are disproportionately cast by younger or more sporadic voters, who tend to support Democrats. If a close race results in a recount in 2022, or if a Trump-affiliated election official commits fraud on Republicans’ behalf, the Republican party will probably point to Democrats’ condemnation of the Arizona “audit” to attempt to delegitimize any genuine effort to protect the integrity of elections.

Finally, the Arizona audit has revealed that yet another norm of American democracy is supported by nothing more than both parties’ good faith. A year ago, despite then President Trump’s barrage of false fraud claims, it would have been hard to imagine that one of our two political parties could spend millions of taxpayer dollars attacking its own election and face no consequences whatsoever. Yet that’s where we are today.

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Steven Donziger gets six-month sentence for contempt in Chevron battle

Steven Donziger, the US indigenous rights campaigner and lawyer who spent decades battling the energy firm Chevron over pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest, was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment on Friday for criminal contempt charges arising from a lawsuit brought by the oil giant.

Donziger, who was disbarred from practicing law in New York last year, was found guilty in May of defying court orders, including by failing to turn over his computer and other electronic devices.

Friday’s sentence, handed down by federal judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan, came a day after he asked the court to consider an opinion by independent United Nations experts that found his court-ordered home confinement of more than two years was a violation of international human rights law. ...

Amnesty International also petitioned US authorities “to promptly implement the decision by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention calling for the immediate release of Steven Donziger”.

While Preska was not bound to consider the UN experts’ testimony that Donziger had been unlawfully confined, she imposed an unexpectedly tough sentence. “It seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law,” she said from the bench.

Utilities Took $1.25 Billion in Pandemic Aid Then Shut Off Power to Households Nearly 1 Million Times: Report

Over a dozen leading U.S. utility companies took more than a billion dollars of publicly-funded pandemic bailout money while pulling the plug on power to vulnerable households nearly a million times, according to a new report out Thursday.

The Center for Biological Diversity and BailoutWatch report—entitled Powerless in the Pandemic: After Bailouts, Electric Utilities Choose Profits Over People—details how utilities used their political power "to secure bailouts that cost taxpayers $1.25 billion, cushioning them from the pandemic economy," while disconnecting vital services from some of the most vulnerable U.S. households.

As they successfully lobbied for tax-code changes in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the utilities highlighted in the report defied calls from progressive advocates to shield their customers from devastating shut-offs.

"Already a national embarrassment, the practice of disconnecting household electric service for unpaid bills... became a lethal threat to poor families last year after Covid-19 hit," the report states. "By rendering homes uninhabitable, electric companies made social distancing impossible and increased transience, leading to higher infection and death rates, according to recent research."

"The harm caused by electric shutoffs is indisputable," the report continues. "Less discussed is the nexus of utilities' political influence, predatory collection tactics, and climate impacts... Their profits-over-people collections practices heap further harm onto the poor communities and communities of color already suffering disproportionate climate harm and energy burdens."

Among the report's key findings:

• Nine companies received tax bailouts totaling $1.25 billion. It would have cost just 8.5% of that bailout total to prevent every shutoff reported.
• For what taxpayers spent bailing them out, 15 companies... could have forgiven all unpaid accounts—hundreds of times over in some cases.
• A six-member Hall of Shame—NextEra Energy (parent of Florida Power & Light and others), Duke Energy, Southern Company, Dominion Energy, Exelon, and DTE Energy—perpetrated 94% of all shutoffs documented. NextEra alone accounted for nearly half.
• Duke Energy and DTE Energy together received $845 million, more than 75% of the tax bailout money the report identified in the utility sector. They cut off customers' power more than 203,000 times. Their tax bailouts provided enough unexpected revenue to forgive the underlying unpaid bills more than 150 times.

"From the data we analyzed, it is clear that private utilities prioritize profits and shareholder satisfaction over all else, including customer health and the climate," Chris Kuveke, a data analyst with BailoutWatch, said in a statement.

"These companies took bailout dollars from taxpayers and turned around to lobby against shutoff moratoria proven to save lives," Kuveke added. "Investor-owned utilities' incentives are misaligned if they're not providing people with the basic need of electricity during a crisis. They need stricter regulation."

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Also of Interest

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

America faces supply-chain disruption and shortages. Here’s why

A New Water Source That Could Make Drought a Thing of the Past

Joe Manchin, America’s climate decider-in-chief, is a coal baron

Arms biz cash swirls around House votes blocking Pentagon cuts

60 Hours After Publishing A Fake News Report On Afghanistan The New York Times Still Spreads The Story

How Autonomous Weapons Could Be More Destabilizing Than Nukes

Dallas Fed President Kaplan Was Making Bold, Market-Moving Statements to Media During 2020 Crisis; the Same Year He Traded Tens of Millions of Dollars in Stocks and S&P 500 Futures

After the German elections: What now for Germany and for Europe?

Israeli Officials, Member Of Congress Enact PRESSURE CAMPAIGN To CANCEL A UNC Grad Student

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A Little Night Music

Robert Gordon - Rock Billy Boogie

Robert Gordon and Danny Gatton - Red Hot

Robert Gordon w/Link Wray - The Way I Walk

Robert Gordon w/Chris Spedding - Bertha Lou

Robert Gordon w/Link Wray - Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache

Robert Gordon with Link Wray - Lonesone Train

Robert Gordon w/Link Wray - Summertime Blues

Robert Gordon w/Link Wray - Twenty Flight Rock

Robert Gordon w/Link Wray - Boppin' the Blues

Robert Gordon - Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die

Robert Gordon with Danny Gatton - Love My Baby

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