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This evening's music features banjo player and jugband leader, Gus Cannon. Enjoy!

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.”

-- Thomas Paine

News and Opinion

Drone Casualty Report Promised as U.S. Airstrike Kills 150 Al Shabaab Members

After years of intense secrecy, the Obama administration on Monday announced that it will for the first time acknowledge the number of people it has killed in drone strikes outside of conventional war zones, including civilians. The report, administration officials said, will be released “in the coming weeks,” and will continue to be released annually. ...

Lisa Monaco, the president’s counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, described the plan in comments made during a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations. ... Monaco said [...] that the operations described in the report would not cover areas of “active hostilities,” such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Human rights groups and legal organizations acknowledged the significance of the move but said more needs to be done. “This is an important step, but it should be part of a broader reconsideration of the secrecy surrounding the drone campaign,” the ACLU’s deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, said in a statement. On Friday, the U.S. government, as part of a long-running legal battle with the ACLU, said it would release a redacted version of the Presidential Policy Guidance, the rules and law it relies on for so-called targeted killing. Jaffer argued such documents must be released in order to have a full accounting of the administration’s drone program.

“The administration should also release the legal memos that supply the purported legal basis for drone strikes — particularly those carried out away from recognized battlefields,” Jaffer said. “The authority to use lethal force should be subject to more stringent oversight by the public, by Congress, and, at least in some contexts, by the courts.”

While the administration’s newly announced drone report would mark a turning point in acknowledging some of its most controversial counterterrorism operations, its full scope was not immediately clear. The Obama administration has overseen so-called targeted killing operations in several countries, including Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. Both the military and the CIA carry out the strikes. The CIA’s drone strikes, however, are classified as covert, meaning they are not officially acknowledged by the administration.

The Intercept posed several questions to the White House regarding the administration’s upcoming drone strike reports, including whether the data will reflect covert operations and strikes in Pakistan and whether it will incorporate the years of data gathered by NGOs. Those questions were not answered.

Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Conventions

As the number of civilian deaths in Iraq continues to grow steadily, so do the demands for the prosecution of those who led the United States and Britain to war: George W. Bush and Tony Blair. ... Recent dissemination of 200 additional photographs showing the torture of prisoners by US military personnel in Iraq (and in Afghanistan) provides an opportunity to conduct such trials. If the tenets of the Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Conventions were applied, both Bush and Blair would most likely be convicted for their responsibility in this terrible war. ...

One of the most serious breaches of international law by the Bush administration was the “preventive war” doctrine allegedly justifying the Iraqi war. It is well known that this war was unleashed without the authorization of the UN Security Council and in violation of the UN Charter, which prohibits, with the exception of self-defense, armed aggression and violations of the sovereignty of any state.

Michael Ratner, President Emeritus of the CDC, says that even though the United States is not a party to the Rome Statute, Bush and other US former officials could be equally processed under the Fourth Geneva Convention and its additional protocols, proscribing attacks against civilians who have no military value. The criminal abuse of prisoners in US military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo are clear evidence of abuse, torture and even murder for which former president George W. Bush, and former Prime Minister Tony Blair should be held accountable. ...

There are many political and legal issues standing in the way to investigate and criminally prosecute a former US president and a British prime minister and their associates. Three countries in Latin America, Argentina, Chile and Peru tried their leaders and sentenced them to prison for crimes of much less magnitude than those committed in the Iraq war. It is time to follow their example.

Pink-Slipping Hillary

In March 2003, just before the US invasion of Iraq, about one hundred CODEPINK women dressed in pink slips weaved in and out of congressional offices demanding to meet with representatives. Those representatives who pledged to oppose going to war with Iraq were given hugs and pink badges of courage; those hell-bent on taking the US to war were given pink slips emblazoned with the words “YOU’RE FIRED.”

When we got to Hillary Clinton’s office, we sat down and refused to leave until we had a meeting with the Senator. ... Having just returned from Iraq, I relayed that the weapons inspectors in Baghdad told us there was no danger of weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraqi women we met were terrified about the pending war and desperate to stop it. “I admire your willingness to speak out on behalf of the women and children of Iraq,” Clinton replied, “but there is a very easy way to prevent anyone from being put into harm’s way and that is for Saddam Hussein to disarm and I have absolutely no belief that he will.”

We thought the easiest way to prevent harming women, children and other living things in Iraq was to stop a war of aggression, a war over weapons of mass destruction that UN inspectors on the ground couldn’t find — which were, in fact, never found because they didn’t exist. Clinton, however, was steadfast in her commitment to war: She said it was our responsibility to disarm Saddam Hussein and even defended George W. Bush’s unilateralism, citing her husband’s go-it-alone intervention in Kosovo.

Disgusted, CODEPINK cofounder Jodie Evans tore off her pink slip and handed it to Clinton, saying that her support for Bush’s invasion would lead to the death of many innocent people. Making the bogus connection between the September 11, 2001, attacks and Saddam Hussein, Clinton stormed out, saying, “I am the Senator from New York. I will never put my people’s security at risk.”

But that’s just what she did, by supporting the Iraq war, draining our nation of over a trillion dollars that could have been used for supporting women and children here at home, which could have instead been rerouted to the social programs that have been systematically defunded over the last few decades of Clinton’s own political career, and ultimately snuffing out the lives of thousands of US soldiers — for absolutely no just cause.

The FBI Has a New Plan to Spy on High School Students Across the Country

Under new guidelines, the FBI is instructing high schools across the country to report students who criticize government policies and “western corruption” as potential future terrorists, warning that “anarchist extremists” are in the same category as ISIS and young people who are poor, immigrants or travel to “suspicious” countries are more likely to commit horrific violence.

Based on the widely unpopular British “anti-terror” mass surveillance program, the FBI’s “Preventing Violent Extremism in Schools” guidelines, released in January, are almost certainly designed to single out and target Muslim-American communities. However, in its caution to avoid the appearance of discrimination, the agency identifies risk factors that are so broad and vague that virtually any young person could be deemed dangerous and worthy of surveillance, especially if she is socio-economically marginalized or politically outspoken.

This overwhelming threat is then used to justify a massive surveillance apparatus, wherein educators and pupils function as extensions of the FBI by watching and informing on each other.

The FBI’s justification for such surveillance is based on McCarthy-era theories of radicalization, in which authorities monitor thoughts and behaviors that they claim to lead to acts of violent subversion, even if those people being watched have not committed any wrongdoing. This model has been widely discredited as a violence prevention method, including by the U.S. government, but it is now being imported to schools nationwide as official federal policy.

Turkish Shelling, Syrian Airstrikes Raise Concerns About Ceasefire

10 Days Into Truce, Calm Generally Prevails

A Syrian airstrike against a town in the Idlib Province raised a lot of complaints from rebels, though as Idlib is generally held to be under the control of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, not a party to the ceasefire, Syria considers such strikes legal. This has been disputed however, as some of Nusra’s partners in Idlib are parties to the ceasefire.

Further east along the Syria-Turkey border, the Kurdish YPG, themselves parties to the ceasefire, are complaining that have come under attack from the Turkish military, hit by artillery shelling in Aleppo Province, which injured several of their fighters.

If confirmed this would certainly be a violation, even though Turkey claimed beforehand they don’t consider the ceasefire to prevent them attacking the Kurds.

Europe's refugee deal with Turkey: Failing a historic test

Saudi Arabia’s Exploding Christmas Gifts From Hillary Clinton

As Hillary Clinton emerges as the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, she is receiving increased scrutiny for her years as Secretary of State. Many are criticizing her hawkish foreign policy, which is the best indication of what President Hillary’s foreign policy would be, with many focusing on her long relationship with Saudi Arabia.

On Christmas Eve in 2011, Hillary Clinton and her closest aides celebrated a $29.4 billion sale of over 80 F-15 fighter jets, manufactured by US-based Boeing Corporation, to Saudi Arabia. In a chain of enthusiastic emails, an aide exclaimed that it was “not a bad Christmas present.”

These are the very fighter jets the Saudis have been using to intervene in the internal affairs of Yemen since March 2015. A year later, at least 2,800 Yemeni civilians have been killed, mostly by airstrikes – and there is no end in sight. The indiscriminate Saudi strikes have killed journalists and ambulance drivers. They have hit the Chamber of Commerce, facilities supported by Médecins Sans Frontières (also known as Doctors Without Borders), a wedding hall, and a center for the blind. The attacks have also targeted ancient heritage sites in Yemen. International human rights organizations are saying that the Saudi-led strikes on Yemen may amount to war crimes.

During her tenure as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton made weapons transfers to the Saudi government a “top priority,” according to a new report published in The Intercept. While Clinton’s State Department was deeply invested in getting weapons to Saudi Arabia, the Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars in donations from both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the weapons manufacturer Boeing. Christmas presents were being gifted all around.

Turkey Seizes Opposition News Agency, Days After It Takes Over Newspaper

Turkish authorities have seized control of the Cihan news agency, according to a statement from Cihan, less than a week after they took over the country's main opposition newspaper.

Cihan said on its website late on Monday an Istanbul court would appoint an administrator to run the agency at the request of a state prosecutor — a move being seen as the latest attempt to crack down on supporters of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, an influential foe of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The seizure of the leading Gulen-linked newspaper, Zaman, on Friday prompted international alarm about press freedom in Turkey and was discussed at Monday's European Union (EU) summit with Ankara over the migration crisis.

France's foreign minister said the decision to seize control of Zaman, the country's largest newspaper by circulation, was "unacceptable" and went against European values. Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the European Parliament's liberal bloc, accused the EU of selling its soul by doing a deal with "a country which imprisons journalists, attacks civil liberties, and with a highly worrying human rights situation."

Turkey’s Largest Paper Intends to Continue, in Exile

The Friday takeover of the Zaman, Turkey’s largest newspaper, by the Turkish government appears to have been far from a total takeover, for while the group’s Turkish office is now pumping out pro-government fluff pieces, the actual, private Zaman is going to continue to publish itself.

Unaffected by the Turkish offices being seized by police, the Zaman Almanya, the paper’s Germany office, says it is still operating privately and will continue with the publication of the daily paper. They already have 14,300 subscribers within Germany, home to a large Turkish expat community.

The future of the English-language Zaman, Today’s Zaman, remains unclear, as the site was last updated Saturday with harsh criticism of the government takeover of their corporation’s main offices. The site has yet to be downed, however, despite talk that government officials intended to “purge” the archives of Zaman’s websites of all pre-takeover content.

Russia warns North Korea over threats of nuclear strike

Russia has warned North Korea that threats to deliver “preventive nuclear strikes” could create a legal basis for the use of military force against the country, suggesting that even Pyongyang’s few remaining friends are growing concerned about its increasingly confrontational stance.

The Russian foreign ministry statement, which follows a North Korean threat to “annihilate” the US and South Korea, also criticises Washington and Seoul for launching the largest joint military drills yet to be held on the peninsula.

“We consider it to be absolutely impermissible to make public statements containing threats to deliver some ‘preventive nuclear strikes’ against opponents,” the Russian foreign ministry said in response to North Korea’s threats.

“Pyongyang should be aware of the fact that in this way the DPRK will become fully opposed to the international community and will create international legal grounds for using military force against itself in accordance with the right of a state to self-defense enshrined in the United Nations Charter,” continued the statement, translated by Itar Tass news agency.

US Contribution to Death of Honduran Activist Goes Unmentioned in US Coverage

Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres was shot and killed in her home in La Esperanza, Intibuca, Wednesday. While the killers’ ID remains unknown, activists, media observers and the Cáceres family pointed to the increasingly reactionary and violent Honduran government, which has frequently clashed with Cáceres over her high-profile activism against land dispossession and mining, and her defense of indigenous rights.

There was widespread outcry and grief over her death, and the story was covered by major media in the United States. But there was a glaring problem with the coverage: Almost none of it mentioned that the brutal regime that likely killed Cáceres came to power in a 2009 coup d’etat supported by the United States, under President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

As Greg Grandin at The Nation explains:

Cáceres was a vocal and brave indigenous leader, an opponent of the 2009 Honduran coup that Hillary Clinton, as secretary of State, made possible. In The Nation, Dana Frank and I covered that coup as it unfolded. Later, as Clinton’s emails were released, others, such as Robert Naiman, Mark Weisbrot and Alex Main, revealed the central role she played in undercutting Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, and undercutting the opposition movement demanding his restoration. In so doing, Clinton allied with the worst sectors of Honduran society.

... One wouldn’t know any of this reading US reports of Cáceres’ death. The coup, and its subsequent purging of environmental, LGBT and indigenous activists, is treated as an entirely local matter, reduced to the “cycle of violence” cliche often employed with destructive governments the United States helped usher into power.

Honduran Activist Berta Cáceres Died in Gustavo Castro Soto's Arms; Now His Life is in Danger

The US Keeps Mistakenly Deporting Its Own Citizens

"Recent data suggests that in 2010 well over 4,000 US citizens were detained or deported as aliens, raising the total since 2003 to more than 20,000, a figure that may strike some as so high as to lack credibility," Jacqueline Stevens, a political science professor at Northwestern University who directs the school's Deportation Research Clinic wrote in a 2011 report. "But the deportation laws and regulations in place since the late 1980s have been mandating detention and deportation for hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people each year without attorneys or, in many cases, administrative hearings. It would be truly shocking if this did not result in the deportation of US citizens."

US immigration courts have recognized some of these errors, adjourning 256 cases between January 2011 and September 2014 after finding that the presumed "aliens" were actually US citizens. Stevens exposed this record after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, and recently obtained case data from October 2014 to February 2016, which she said followed a similar trend.

"Unless you have an unusually thorough immigration judge, which is very rare, or an attorney, you can be a US citizen and not even know you're a US citizen, and abandon claims to be in the United States," said Stevens, who is completing a book about the deportation of citizens. ...

"I get these types of cases all the time," she said.

The government often makes such mistakes for two main reasons: establishing one's citizenship can be a complex process, and officials can overlook critical facts when working through an enormous backlog of such cases.

California Democrats endorse former LA officer sued for beating black motorist

The California Democratic party has endorsed a former LAPD officer, who was previously sued for allegedly beating a black man following a traffic stop, in a race for a congressional seat.

According to the complaint, which was filed against him in 2001, Lou Vince, a former lieutenant in the Los Angeles police department, stopped Cecil Miller, who was driving with his pregnant wife and three young children in the car.

Vince then accused Miller of running over his foot, the complaint alleges, continuing that he and his partner Doug Gallick then pulled him from the car and “proceeded to slam plaintiff against his vehicle over and over”.

They then threw him to the sidewalk, the complaint states, and “as the plaintiff was falling one officer held him up and the other began to punch him in the face.”

Miller suffered serious contusions to the side of his face.

Miller was charged with assaulting a police officer, but was acquitted. He then filed a lawsuit against Vince in federal court, which was settled for $150,000 in damages.

Vince is running in the Democratic primary for California’s 25th district, in the northern part of Los Angeles County. The seat is currently held by a Republican, Steve Knight, but is considered a “tough, yet winnable” target seat for Democrats in 2016, according to a campaign memo by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He was endorsed by the state Democratic party on 29 February.

Harvard Law School Wants to Remove Slaveholder’s Crest From Logo

After months of student protests, Harvard Law School could soon stop using its official symbol, a shield based on the crest of an 18th-century slaveholder whose donation paid for the first professorship of law at the university.

In a letter to the university’s president and fellows released on Friday, the dean of the law school, Martha L. Minow, argued that the time had come to dissociate the school from the legacy of Isaac Royall, who left Harvard part of a fortune acquired through the labor of slaves at his father’s sugar plantation in Antigua. ...

The law school’s request to drop the shield is not binding on the university. The final decision will be made by the president and fellows of the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body. Harvard’s president, Drew Faust, told The Harvard Crimson in January that she was opposed to changing the names of buildings on campus built named for benefactors who were slaveholders, and was unsure about the law school’s shield.

“I think if you erase the whole past, it’s too easy to feel innocent,” Faust, a Civil War historian, said. “It’s too easy to not learn from it and to think that you’re not going to make any mistakes in the present—you’re better than those mistakes. We’re not better than those mistakes.”

Feminism and class: Is it just the preserve of wealthy, white women?

The Most Horrendous Lie on Wall Street

There’s a horrendous lie being told by the brokerage industry and its army of lobbying groups. It goes something like this:

“Middle-class Americans are not worth serving if we can’t charge them egregious fees and sell them products that they do not need.”

They’re not using that exact language, but this is precisely what they’re saying. This message disgusts me personally and I’m in a unique position to comment on it professionally. As I documented in my book Backstage Wall Street, the business model of selling investment products to investors is hopelessly rife with conflicts. ...

Under the current compensation regime, even the best intentioned brokers are continually put in a situation where what’s best for their own paycheck is not always what’s in their clients’ best interest. Brokers are routinely compensated the most heavily for selling the products that cost their clients the most in fees and lost performance.

In other industries, higher-priced products are typically superior in both quality and efficacy—think luxury watches and cars, or the difference between a roadside motel and the Ritz-Carlton. With financial services products, however, it works in exactly the opposite way. Virtually every single piece of academic research ever produced on the topic says that the less you pay for an investment product, and the simpler it is, the better off you’ll be over the long-term.

Wall Street knows this for a fact. It’s undeniable that high fees and excessive trading costs damage the long-term potential of a retirement account and work against investors. Unfortunately, the brokerage business is predicated on selling the higher cost solutions because that’s where the profit margins are. The incentives paid by fund companies to brokerage firm sales forces across the country are a cancer that must be rooted out. This built-in conflict between advisor and client is partially responsible for the nation’s looming retirement crisis. It also plays a role in the finance industry’s almost universally negative perception among Americans.

Thousands of Boston Students Just Walked Out of Class to Save Their Schools

Thousands of Boston high school students have descended onto the Boston Common and the Massachusetts State House in an unprecedented citywide walkout. Students are demanding the city rescind a controversial property tax break to General Electric and cease all budget cuts.

Lot of kids #bpswalkout pic.twitter.com/5pSKyz4DOb

— Adam Gaffin (@universalhub) March 7, 2016

... BPS Superintendent Tommy Chang estimates the budget deficit is approximately $50 million, but Mayor Walsh estimates the figure to be $10 million.

$18.6 million of the budget deficit comes from the district being forced to pay for charter schools that enroll BPS students. While the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is supposed to reimburse BPS for the charter school costs, it didn’t even cover half of the expenses last year.

A recent city-approved property tax break for General Electric is to blame for another $25 million that could’ve gone toward plugging the BPS budget gap. GE also receives an additional $151 million in city and state tax incentives. In return for all of these tax breaks, GE is only directly employing 600 people, which the commonwealth estimates will result in an additional 590 indirect jobs.

This is an excellent article which will probably raise your blood pressure.

Democrats and Republicans Are Quietly Planning a Corporate Giveaway — to the Tune of $400 Billion

... Big hitters back in Washington politics are working on an ugly surprise [...] for all of us — another monster tax break for US multinational corporations. Key leaders of the Democratic Party — including the president — are getting on board with Republicans, despite some talk about confronting income inequality. Influential Democrats intend to negotiate with Republican counterparts on the size and terms of post-facto tax “forgiveness” for America’s globalized companies. This is real money they’re talking about — a giveaway of hundreds of billions.

Why haven’t voters heard about this from candidates? Because Republicans and Democrats both know it would make angry voters even angrier.

The major multinationals complain about a tax problem that most citizens would love to have for themselves: Thanks to a loophole in the tax code, the companies do not have to pay US taxes on profits they have earned in foreign countries until they bring the money home to American shores. Altogether, the globalized US companies have accumulated $2.1 trillion in untaxed profits, most of it parked in overseas tax havens. ...

US companies insist they won’t bring the money home and pay the taxes they owe until Washington pols steeply reduce the rate to bargain-basement levels. That’s tax “forgiveness” on a grand scale. What the companies also demand is a permanently lowered tax rate on their future earnings. ...

For cynical politicians, the deal looks like a “twofer.” You can please constituents with infrastructure projects and reward corporate patrons in the same stroke. In reality, of course, the revenue loss from the giveaway will inevitably be dumped on other taxpayers, either by cutting domestic programs or running up the national debt.

To put it plainly, this trade-off is certain to worsen income inequality.

The Hillary Clinton-Bernie Sanders clash over the auto bailout, explained

In Sunday's Democratic debate in Flint, Mich., Clinton underscored her support for [the auto] bailout and -- somewhat disingenuously -- suggested that Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) didn't support it.

"I voted to save the auto industry," she said. "He voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry. I think that is a pretty big difference."

What Clinton said is technically true, but it glosses over a lot of important nuance, including the fact that Sanders is actually on the record as supporting the auto bailout. He even voted for it.

Clinton clearly figures the auto bailout may prove to a big factor going into Tuesday's primary in Michigan and the one next week in Ohio, where both candidates are hoping to do well and where the auto industry is big. So it seems like she's willing to take the gamble that fact checkers may call her out for her tactic Sunday -- but that voters won't. ...

Sanders argued that letting the auto industry go under was too big of a risk for middle-class workers -- it could lower wages across all sectors of the economy and have a ripple effect on states like Vermont that were fairly far removed from the auto industry. ... But Sanders was vehemently against the larger $700 billion bailout to prop up the banks. (As evidenced by his presidential campaign, Sanders is no fan of Wall Street.) So he voted against the bank bailout. ...

Clinton is technically correct that Sanders voted against releasing the money that went to the auto bailout, but Sanders can also correctly argue that he supported the auto bailout when it wasn't tied to the Wall Street one.

Clinton Misleads Voters on Sanders' Support for the Auto Bailout Ahead of Michigan Primary

Sanders and Clinton clash on campaign trail ahead of crucial Michigan primary

Sanders and Clinton crisscrossed the state on Monday, battling for every last vote ahead of Tuesday’s crucial primary. Michigan, the first major industrial state to vote, is considered a bellwether for the November election. ...

At each rally, Sanders accused Clinton of “mischaracterizing” his 2009 vote to release funds as part of a financing package to save the auto industry and called her contention in one of the sharpest exchanges from Sunday’s debate “absolutely untrue”.

“Secretary Clinton went out of her way to mischaracterize my history as it relates to the 2008 auto industry bailout,” Sanders said in Kalamazoo. “Let me be as clear as I can: there was one vote in the United States Senate on whether or not to support the auto bailout and protect jobs in Michigan and around this country. I voted for the auto bailout.” ...

The debate spilled over into an hourlong town hall hosted by Fox News in downtown Detroit, during which the candidates took turns speaking to prospective Michigan voters. There, they both struck a cooler tone having fiercely debated trade and the auto industry bailout during Sunday night’s CNN debate.

Sanders, the Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist, first answered questions from Fox News anchor Bret Baier over his comments in Sunday’s debate that white people “don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto”. The remark had drawn swift condemnation on social media.

Sanders said he knows “about white poverty” from living in Vermont, and added the US has “too many people living in poverty” for being “the richest country in the history of the world”.

“We have got to change our national priorities,” he told the crowd of 250 in Detroit’s Gem Theatre. “We have got to deal with those issues.”

Washington Post Ran 16 Negative Stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 Hours

In what has to be some kind of record, the Washington Post ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours, between roughly 10:20 PM EST Sunday, March 6, to 3:54 PM EST Monday, March 7—a window that includes the crucial Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, and the next morning’s spin:

• March 6, 10:20 PM: Bernie Sanders Pledges the US Won’t Be No. 1 in Incarceration. He’ll Need to Release Lots of Criminals
• March 7, 12:39 AM: Clinton Is Running for President. Sanders Is Doing Something Else
• March 7, 4:04 AM: This Is Huge: Trump, Sanders Both Using Same Catchphrase
• March 7, 4:49 AM: Mental Health Patients to Bernie Sanders: Don’t Compare Us to the GOP Candidates
• March 7, 6:00 AM: ‘Excuse Me, I’m Talking’: Bernie Sanders Shuts Down Hillary Clinton, Repeatedly
• March 7, 9:24 AM:  Bernie Sanders’s Two Big Lies About the Global Economy
• March 7, 8:25 AM: Five Reasons Bernie Sanders Lost Last Night’s Democratic Debate
• March 7, 8:44 AM: An Awkward Reality for Bernie Sanders: A Strategy Focused on Whiter States
• March 7, 8:44 AM: Bernie Sanders Says White People Don’t Know What It’s Like to Live in a ‘Ghetto.’ About That…
• March 7, 11:49 AM: The NRA Just Praised Bernie Sanders — and Did Him No Favors in Doing So
• March 7, 12:55 PM: Even Bernie Sanders Can Beat Donald Trump
• March 7, 1:08 PM: What Bernie Sanders Still Doesn’t Get About Arguing With Hillary Clinton
• March 7, 1:44 PM: Why Obama Says Bank Reform Is a Success but Bernie Sanders Says It’s a Failure
• March 7,  2:16 PM: Here’s Something Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders Have in Common: And the Piece of the Argument That Bernie Doesn’t Get Quite Right.
• March 7, 3:31 PM: ‘Excuse Me!’: Bernie Sanders Doesn’t Know How to Talk About Black People
• March 7, 3:54 PM: And the Most Partisan Senator of 2015 Is … Bernie Sanders!

All of these posts paint his candidacy in a negative light, mainly by advancing the narrative that he’s a clueless white man incapable of winning over people of color or speaking to women. ... While the headlines don’t necessarily reflect all the nuances of the text, as I’ve noted before, only 40 percent of the public reads past the headlines, so how a story is labeled is just as important, if not more so, than the substance of the story itself.

This is an excellent article worth reading in full:

Thomas Frank: Millions of ordinary Americans support Donald Trump. Here's why

Let us now address the greatest American mystery at the moment: what motivates the supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump?

I call it a “mystery” because the working-class white people who make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base show up in amazing numbers for the candidate, filling stadiums and airport hangars, but their views, by and large, do not appear in our prestige newspapers. On their opinion pages, these publications take care to represent demographic categories of nearly every kind, but “blue-collar” is one they persistently overlook. The views of working-class people are so foreign to that universe that when New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wanted to “engage” a Trump supporter last week, he made one up, along with this imaginary person’s responses to his questions.

When members of the professional class wish to understand the working-class Other, they traditionally consult experts on the subject. And when these authorities are asked to explain the Trump movement, they always seem to zero in on one main accusation: bigotry. Only racism, they tell us, is capable of powering a movement like Trump’s, which is blowing through the inherited structure of the Republican party like a tornado through a cluster of McMansions. ...

Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. ... In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called left-wing. Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. ... Trump embellished this vision with another favorite left-wing idea: under his leadership, the government would “start competitive bidding in the drug industry.”

Trade is an issue that polarizes Americans by socio-economic status. To the professional class, which encompasses the vast majority of our media figures, economists, Washington officials and Democratic power brokers, what they call “free trade” is something so obviously good and noble it doesn’t require explanation or inquiry or even thought. Republican and Democratic leaders alike agree on this, and no amount of facts can move them from their Econ 101 dream.

To the remaining 80 or 90% of America, trade means something very different. There’s a video going around on the internet these days that shows a room full of workers at a Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana being told by an officer of the company that the factory is being moved to Monterrey, Mexico and that they’re all going to lose their jobs.

There is another way to interpret the Trump phenomenon. A map of his support may coordinate with racist Google searches, but it coordinates even better with deindustrialization and despair, with the zones of economic misery that 30 years of Washington’s free-market consensus have brought the rest of America.

Jimmy Carter: I'd pick Trump over Cruz

Jimmy Carter would pick Donald Trump over Ted Cruz, but he doesn't think Trump will make it that far.

“I think I would choose Trump, which may surprise some of you,” the former Democratic president said during an appearance at Britain’s House of Lords on Wednesday afternoon. He was asked who he would pick for the GOP nomination.

“The reason is, Trump has proven already he’s completely malleable,” Carter explained. “I don’t think he has any fixed [positions] he’d go the White House and fight for. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is not malleable. He has far-right wing policies he’d pursue if he became president.”

But Carter also said he doesn’t think Trump will make that far.

Trump to GOP: Unite behind me, or else

Donald Trump demanded that Republicans unify behind his campaign on Saturday night, arguing that conservatives who don’t back his campaign should fear the consequences of a third-party bid.

In another boisterous victory speech-press conference combo, Trump called on Sen. Marco Rubio to leave the race and suggested that he might not even bother to campaign if the “#NeverTrump” movement challenges him in the general election. Such a move, he warned, would guarantee Hillary Clinton a chance to replace the late conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

“If they run a third party or an independent party, if they do that, it will make it impossible for the Republican candidate, on the assumption it’s me, to win,” Trump said. “The Democrats would have an absolute free run. Probably you wouldn’t even campaign because it would be impossible to win.”

Michael Bloomberg won't mount a presidential bid

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Monday that he will not mount a presidential run this year, saying he doesn't want to pave the way for Donald Trump or Ted Cruz to win the White House.

Bloomberg's decision to back away from an independent bid is a relief for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, who could have seen support bleed over to Bloomberg in a three-way race.

In an editorial he posted on Monday, Bloomberg said that if he had run, it was unlikely that any candidate would win a majority of electoral votes and that the responsibility of choosing the next president would be kicked to Congress.

"As the race stands now, with Republicans in charge of both Houses, there is a good chance that my candidacy could lead to the election of Donald Trump or Senator Ted Cruz. That is not a risk I can take in good conscience," Bloomberg said.

Hillary Clinton, Who Used to Sell Fracking Around the World, Denounces Fracking at Debate

For Hillary Clinton, [Sunday night’s Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan] was an opportunity to try to separate her policy agenda from Bernie Sanders’ on the environment, an issue where she’s long been playing catch-up. Unfortunately, she failed spectacularly.

Take her long response to the short question “Do you support fracking?” for example:

“I don’t support it when any locality or any state is against it, number one. I don’t support it when the release of methane or contamination of water is present. I don’t support it, number three, unless we can require that anybody who fracks has to tell us exactly what chemicals they are using,” Clinton offered. “By the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”

Immediately, Bernie Sanders replied with a zinger: “My answer is a lot shorter. No. I do not support fracking.”

As Grist’s Rebecca Leber explains, that answer from Clinton is a significant shift from even her recent views on the topic—a sign she’s continuing to move further in Sanders’ direction on the environment. Such an equivocal answer from Clinton hides an important part of her environmental legacy: As President Obama’s secretary of state, she often served as fracking’s personal ambassador to the world.

The Noxious Legacy of Fracking King Aubrey McClendon

When fracking billionaire Aubrey McClendon died after crashing his Chevy Tahoe into a bridge last week, the federal investigation into his alleged bid-rigging came to an end. ... His most enduring legacy may be his role in convincing policymakers and the public that natural gas could be an environmental boon and a solution to global warming. More than any other individual, McClendon personified the excesses of the fracking boom, gobbling up land so quickly and spinning the boom’s story so effectively that regulators, environmentalists, and even Wall Street struggled to keep pace.

McClendon was not only the founder of Chesapeake Energy, the most important fracking company in the technique’s history, but he also co-founded one of the gas industry’s most important lobbying arms, America’s Natural Gas Alliance. In creating both, McClendon became an architect of the energy market’s reorientation around a product whose climate-warming emissions rival those of coal. ...

“I am not ashamed whatsoever to be the No. 1 pitchman for my product,” McClendon told ClimateWire in 2008. “I believe in it with my heart and soul.”

Convincing the Sierra Club to believe in it, too, was one of his greatest public relations coups. Between 2007 and 2010, the organization collected $26 million dollars from the gas industry, most of it reportedly from McClendon. He and Sierra Club director Carl Pope at times traveled side by side to promote natural gas’s disputed environmental benefits. The Sierra Club later broke ties with the gas industry and now runs a campaign called “Beyond Natural Gas,” which argues that “total greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas are nearly identical to coal.”

McClendon largely succeeded in his war on coal, but his campaign generated blowback as well. Coal plants have closed all across the United States, cracking open new markets for natural gas, but fracking has become synonymous with environmental crime: earthquakes, bad air, and fouled water.

"Here's to Flint": A Look at the Battle for Clean Water in Flint From the ACLU

Fed Up with Inaction, Peruvian Tribe Takes Hostages Following Amazon Oil Spills

After learning that they would be excluded from an official state of emergency declared in the wake of two catastrophic oil spills in the Peruvian Amazon, members of the Wampis community of Mayuriaga stopped a helicopter from taking off late Sunday evening and held 8 officials hostage to force the government to respond to their desperate pleas for help.

More than a month after the spills devastated many Indigenous communities' water supplies, there is little end in sight to the suffering of those most affected.

"Though officials refer to the second leak as 'the Mayuriaga spill' because it took place in Mayuriaga," Reuters reported, "the government did not include the community in an official list of affected groups that would receive emergency supplies and attention."

The official state of emergency was declared by the central government on February 29th. The spills contaminated the food and water supplies of 20 communities, a local Indigenous group reported, but the central government initially offered emergency assistance to only 16.

"This oil spill has already resulted in severe and irreparable harm to the community lands of Mayuriaga and to our collective territory as a people. Responsibility lies squarely with [the oil company] Petroperu, who have acted with complete negligence," Wrays Perez Ramirez, who was elected president of the Wampis after they formed a government last November, told RT. "Over more than 40 years they have failed to maintain and repair their pipeline knowing full well that it needs constant maintenance and replacement every 10-15 years."

Green Climate Fund: Where Big Banks Profit Again from Crisis They Helped Create

As the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the financial mechanism for the UN climate agency, meets this week in South Korea, more than 170 civil society groups are calling on the international body to reject bids from big banks HSBC and Crédit Agricole to receive and manage funds to help poorer nations tackle climate change.

Given their role in financing climate pollution and their poor records on human and environmental rights, approving the financial giants' applications would run counter to the Fund's goals, the groups say.

"Creating new business for big banks with large fossil fuel portfolios and poor records on human rights and financial scandal would undermine the very purpose of the Fund," said Karen Orenstein of Friends of the Earth U.S. on Monday.

What's more, "accrediting HSBC and Crédit Agricole would be inconsistent with...the Paris Agreement," said Annaka Peterson of Oxfam, referring to the deal hammered out at the COP21 climate talks. "Any private sector partner of the GCF must have a credible strategy in place to make its entire portfolio and operations consistent with keeping global temperature rise to no more than 2 °C, let alone well below 1.5 °C."

Cuomo: Radioactive Water Leak At Indian Point Increased By 80 Percent Since Last Week

The radioactive water leak at the Indian Point Nuclear power plant is getting worse.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement Wednesday that the level of radioactive tritium-contaminated water that leaked into the groundwater at the nuclear facility has increased by 80 percent since last week’s initial report from Entergy.

Cuomo called it “extremely disconcerting.”

“Today, I have further directed that the three agencies integrate their investigations to thoroughly explore whether the operational problems that are suspected to have caused the uptick in unexpected outages of the plant may also be causing the leak of radioactive water into the environment. Representatives from the Department of Health, Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Public Service will be onsite as part of these investigations,” the New York governor said.

Officials at Indian Point in Buchanan reported on Friday that water contaminated by tritium leaked into the groundwater under the facility. Nuclear regulators said the public wasn’t at risk. ...

There has been a history of groundwater contamination at Indian Point. A federal oversight agency issued a report after about 100,000 gallons of tritium-tainted water entered the groundwater supply in 2009, and elevated levels of tritium also were found in two monitoring wells at the plant in 2014. Officials said then the contamination likely stemmed from an earlier maintenance shutdown.

Also of Interest

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

President Obama Calls Surprise Meeting With Financial Stability Oversight Council

It’s Now Sexist to Ask Hillary Clinton Not to Interrupt During a Debate

Hillary Clinton’s Dehumanizing Appropriation of “Intersectionality”

Foreign diplomats voicing alarm to U.S. officials about Trump

What the Koch Brothers Have to Do With the Flint Water Crisis

Hotter planet spells harder rains to come – study

Astronomers just released a new, 187-million-pixel map of the Milky Way

A Little Night Music

Gus Cannon - Viola Lee Blues

Gus Cannon - Gonna Raise a Ruckus Tonight

Gus Cannon - Minglewood Blues

Gus Cannon - Hollywood Rag

Gus Cannon - Big Railroad Blues

Gus Cannon - Bring It With You When You Come

Gus Cannon - Come on Down to My House

Gus Cannon - Can You Blame The Colored Man