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-- Lewis Mumford

News and Opinion

Blackwater Founder Erik Prince Recruited Spies to Infiltrate Progressive Groups with Project Veritas

Erik Prince Recruited Ex-Spies to Help Project Veritas Infiltrate Groups 'Hostile' to Trump Agenda

An explosive New York Times report revealed Saturday that notorious war profiteer Erik Prince recruited former American and British spies to work with the right-wing group Project Veritas to infiltrate at least one Democratic congressional campaign and organizations "considered hostile" to President Donald Trump's agenda.

Prince is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater. Through a spokesperson, he declined the Times' request for comment on the piece, which is based on interviews and documents obtained by the newspaper, including internal Project Veritas emails.

"Both Project Veritas and Mr. Prince have ties to President Trump's aides and family," the Times noted. "Whether any Trump administration officials or advisers to the president were involved in the operations, even tacitly, is unclear. But the effort is a glimpse of a vigorous private campaign to try to undermine political groups or individuals perceived to be in opposition to Mr. Trump's agenda." ...

According to the Times:

One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers' unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union's local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.

Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former CIA officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her.

Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians, and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon's role in the teachers' union operation—detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union—has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince's role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group's activities.

The Times reported that it is unclear whether Seddon was involved in the Spanberger operation and the former British intelligence officer—who is married to American diplomat Alice Seddon—did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment. ...

The Project Veritas operative inside AFT Michigan was Liberty University graduate Marisa Jorge, according to the Times. O'Keefe and Seddon used the code name "LibertyU" for Jorge when discussing the operation over email. Jorge, who also reportedly infiltrated the Spanberger campaign by posing as a volunteer, did not respond to the newspaper's request for comment. The federal lawsuit that AFT Michigan brought against Project Veritas is scheduled to go to trial later this year.

In a statement to the Times, AFT president Randi Weingarten said: "Let's be clear who the wrongdoer is here: Project Veritas used a fake intern to lie her way into our Michigan office, to steal documents and to spy—and they got caught. We're just trying to hold them accountable for this industrial espionage."

Weingarten added on Twitter Saturday, "They didn't succeed in their attempt to hurt our union but note what the right wing will do to try to eliminate workers' voice." ...

Former FBI assistant director and current NBC News national security contributor Frank Figliuzzi shared the Times report on Twitter Saturday and commented that "there are likely numerous criminal violations here."

Another corporate media smear against Bernie Sanders

Continuing the corporate media attacks on Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, the New York Times published a front-page report Friday highlighting a Sanders visit to the Soviet Union in 1988 to establish a “sister city” connection between Burlington, Vermont, where he was mayor, and Yaroslavl, an industrial city on the Volga River.

The headline of the article conveys the impression that Sanders was the gullible tool of nefarious Soviet manipulation: “As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity.” The actual content of the article entirely fails to substantiate the lurid implications of the headline, however. The “opportunity” was nothing more than the promotion of peaceful exchanges of visits by officials, sports teams and ordinary citizens, which was supported by both the Reagan administration and its Soviet counterparts under Mikhail Gorbachev.

The Times article comes only two weeks after a similarly sensationalized and unsubstantiated report in the Washington Post, declaring that US intelligence agencies had concluded that the Russian government was intervening into the US elections in support of Sanders. The Post article was published on the eve of the Nevada primary, in a transparent effort to sabotage the Sanders campaign. The Times article has a similar purpose: it comes only four days before the March 10 primaries in six states, the largest of them Michigan, where the Democratic Party and the corporate media aim to give Sanders a death blow, defeating him in a major industrial state where he won an upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. ...

The diplomatic overtures to Moscow included encouraging the sister city program, which featured city-to-city exchanges to soften the harshness of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Dozens of cities were involved, with Burlington being one of the smallest and most insignificant—Dianne Feinstein, as mayor of San Francisco, sponsored a similar program with Leningrad (now St. Petersburg).

The article is written in the breathless tones of a major political exposé, noting that the Times “examined 89 pages of letters, telegrams and internal Soviet government documents revealing in far greater detail the extent of Mr. Sanders’s personal effort to establish ties between his city and a country many Americans then still considered an enemy …” The article claims that these documents “show how the Kremlin viewed these sister city relationships as vehicles to sway American public opinion about the Soviet Union.” No doubt one could similarly cite documents showing that the US government viewed such programs “as vehicles to sway Soviet public opinion about America.” Nor is it a surprise that such programs were carefully monitored by US and Soviet foreign policy and intelligence agencies in the context of the Cold War.

Excellent. Worth a click and a full read.

Media Malfunction as Sanders Notes Positive Aspects of Latin American Socialism

When 60 Minutes (2/24/20) asked Sen. Bernie Sanders about his past support for aspects of Cuba’s socialist revolution, as well as for Nicaragua’s 1979–90 leftist Sandinista government, Sanders responded by saying he opposes what he described as the “authoritarian” features of the Cuban government, while noting that after the 1959 revolution,  Cuba launched “a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?”

News organizations seemed unable to process that a major national political figure could say something positive about a socialist country, leaving these outlets flailing around in absurd ways.

During a town hall, CNN’s Chris Cuomo (2/24/20) asked Sanders to respond to “the Democrats who say you don’t say good things about Fidel Castro, he destroyed freedoms in that country.” The revolution did not “destroy freedoms” in Cuba: The ruler it overthrew, Fulgencio Batista, ran what the US Library of Congress (4/01) called a “corrupt and brutal dictatorship,” under whose rule there were 20,000 political killings.

In the New York Times (2/27/20), David Brooks criticized Sanders because he “excused the Nicaraguan communists when they took away the civil liberties of their citizens.” Yet there were few “civil liberties” for the Sandinistas—the “Nicaraguan communists” to whom Brooks refers—to take away. The Somoza dictatorship, which the Sandinistas overthrew in a popular revolution, was one of “chronic repression” (New York Times, 2/26/78). According to the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) (11/19/84), Somoza left the country with “no democratic tradition,” instead bequeathing a legacy of “militarized politics with rampant human rights violations,” so that the 1984 election that the Sandinistas held—and won fairly, according to the British observer—was the “first experience with participatory democracy” for most Nicaraguans.

Even before the current Cuba kerfuffle, NBC (2/21/20) criticized Sanders because “he denounced what he called a ‘coup’ against Bolivia’s leftist president, Evo Morales, despite findings by independent groups that Morales tried to steal an election.” Less than a week later, the Washington Post (2/27/20) published a report from researchers at the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, saying, “As specialists in election integrity, we find that the statistical evidence does not support the claim of fraud in Bolivia’s October election.” The report bolsters critiques that were made immediately after the (yes) coup (FAIR.org, 11/18/19) that there was no compelling evidence that Morales tried to steal the election. The “independent group” cited in the article the Post linked to, notably, gets 60% of its funding from the US government.

Forced to broadcast qualified praise for some elements of Latin American socialism, several outlets took refuge in the most over-the-top rhetoric  imaginable. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough (2/25/20), for example, listed the Sandinistas and Cuba’s revolutionary government as being “some of the most murderous regimes in the history of our planet.”

The “murderous” Sandinistas conducted “sanitation campaigns, health education, occupational health and safety, and nutrition programs” that LASA found to “have significantly reduced the incidence of communicable diseases, malnutrition and infant mortality.” LASA went on to say that

even though real money wages have not risen appreciably, access to government-subsidized foodstuffs and other products through the basic-commodity rationing system has helped to raise living standards for the bulk of the population.

In Cuba, before 1959,”the greater part of the population had access only to…underfunded, low-quality, public healthcare services,” reported the International Journal of Health Services (2/05); “in rural areas, many people had never seen a doctor.” By 1975, there were “56 rural hospitals and numerous rural medical posts” (Library of Congress, 4/01). It went on to create a health system that, according to the World Health Organization (5/08), is “by many standards one of the world’s most effective.” According to the CIA World Fact Book, Cuba has a lower rate of infant mortality than the United States.

The Nicaraguan and Cuban socialists evidently decided that the best way to murder people was to make them healthier.

The Times’ Brooks said that “every day we find more old quotes from Sanders apologizing for” a “slave regime” such as “Cuba or Nicaragua.” What Brooks called a “slave regime” in Nicaragua was characterized by, as LASA documented, agrarian reform that involved nationalizing the extensive landholdings of the Somoza family and some of its associates, giving nearly two-thirds of these to individual peasants and some 15% to cooperatives, moves that help explain why these campesinos were “staunch supporters of the government”; the remainder of the nationalized land went to government-owned firms, where workers “enjoy[ed] mechanisms for participation in the management of such enterprises.” Brooks did not explain how redistributing land to the poor is akin to owning humans as chattel.

The Sandinistas also carried out a mass literacy campaign that won Nicaragua two awards from UNESCO, which said of the educational initiative:

The illiteracy rate was brought down in five months from 50% to 12%. The National Literacy Crusade is the greatest educational and cultural achievement in the history of Nicaragua. It was a major experience for the young from the cities who taught people to read and, at the same time, discovered the other half of the country with its conditions of neglect and poverty bequeathed by 50 years of dictatorship.

With its massive, participatory and united character, the Crusade became a unique national and international experiment that won the recognition of UNESCO.

As for the “slave regime” in revolutionary Cuba, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) places the country in the “high human development” category. This refers to the Human Development Index, which aggregates key benchmarks for health, longevity, knowledge and  standard of living. The UNDP says Cuba is above average for the countries in the high human development group, and above average for countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. ...

Rather than denouncing Bernie Sanders for noting the accomplishments of Latin American socialists whom the American media deems too authoritarian, a far more urgent task for reporters covering the US election cycle would be asking candidates how they plan to combat US authoritarianism at home and abroad, and questioning why the accomplishments of Latin American socialism aren’t possible in the United States.

“Afghanistan Papers” Reveal How Presidents & Generals Misled the American Public on War’s Progress

US blocks UN statement backing Syria ceasefire: diplomats

The United States blocked the adoption of a UN Security Council statement Friday supporting a Syrian ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey, diplomats said following a closed-door meeting.

"It's premature," the United States said, rejecting the joint statement which Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, had asked the other 14 member states to adopt, according to diplomats.

"Various countries took note and welcome the agreement," said Nebenzia. "But due to a position from one delegation, it was not possible."

Syria's war-ravaged Idlib province woke to relative calm Friday, its skies free of warplanes for the first day in months, following the ceasefire deal reached by Russia's President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. ...

According to diplomats, Moscow signaled that it could oppose endorsement of the US-Taliban peace deal in the Security Council following the US opposition to the Russia-Turkey ceasefire.

“It’s a Real Mess”: Afghan Rivals Both Claim Presidency as Ongoing Attacks Could Derail Peace Deal

The Costs of Spying

Privacy advocates were right all along: The costs of one of the most controversial spy programs revealed by Edward Snowden far outweighed its benefits. That’s obvious from a 103-page study of recent efforts to log, store, and search phone metadata––e.g., the time a call was made, its duration, and the phone numbers involved––about most calls that Americans made or received.

Researchers at the congressionally created Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board found that from 2015 to 2019, the NSA’s call-metadata program cost taxpayers $100 million. “Only twice during that four-year period did the program generate unique information that the F.B.I. did not already possess,” reported Charlie Savage of The New York Times, who read a copy of the findings and went on to quote a passage characterizing those two pieces of unique information: “Based on one report, F.B.I. vetted an individual, but, after vetting, determined that no further action was warranted. The second report provided unique information about a telephone number, previously known to U.S. authorities, which led to the opening of a foreign intelligence investigation.”

The NSA shuttered the program in 2019, due in part to the fact that it repeatedly collected more data than was legally permissible. The law that allows the NSA to search the data trove, moreover, expires next month, on March 15. But the Trump administration wants Congress to reauthorize the metadata program permanently, giving the NSA the discretion to restart it at any time and run it indefinitely.

That’s a bad idea for reasons beyond its dismal return on investment. Fundamentally, the program is impossible to responsibly oversee—even after a 2015 reform that required judges to sign off on spy-agency queries. Savage explained that in 2018, “the N.S.A. obtained 14 court orders, but gathered 434 million call detail records involving 19 million phone numbers.” At that scale, the need to get a judge’s okay doesn’t offer much protection to citizens.

After Alabama Executes Nathaniel Woods, Ayanna Pressley Leads Fresh Calls for US to Abolish Death Penalty

After the state of Alabama on Thursday night executed 44-year-old Nathaniel Woods despite serious concerns about injustices in his case, Rep. Ayanna Pressley and other lawmakers and civil rights advocates implored Congress to abolish the death penalty nationwide.

The Massachusetts Democrat took to Twitter Friday morning to call out the trauma inflicted on Woods' family, condemn the nation's "INJUSTICE" system, and demand significant reforms. As Pressley put it: "We need a system that centers shared power, freedom, equality, safety, and dignity."

The congresswoman specifically highlighted her proposed People's Justice Guarantee legislation and a bill (H.R. 4052) she introduced in July 2019 that would "prohibit the imposition of the death penalty for any violation of federal law, and for other purposes."

Abolish the death penalty. https://t.co/qePaBAPXcI

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 6, 2020

As Its Workers Fight for Better Wages, AT&T Announces Another $4 Billion in Stock Buybacks

The union representing AT&T workers expressed outrage this week after the company announced it will buy back an additional $4 billion in stock from shareholders in the upcoming quarter. The company's announcement, said Communications Workers of America (CWA) District 9 vice president Frank Arce, "is an affront to the thousands of workers going through contract negotiations because it shows the company's primary concern is pandering to wealthy hedge fund managers."

John Stankey, president and chief operating officer of AT&T, revealed on Tuesday the plan for the "additional accelerated share repurchase."

The buybacks, which "give a company's stock price a manipulative boost," fulfill the wishes of hedge fund Elliot Management, which owns a $3 billion stake in the company; piggyback on AT&T's $4 billion in buybacks in the current quarter; and come as the workers' bargaining team is trying to hammer out a better contract for the wireline technicians and customer service representatives in California and Nevada.

In an upate on the contract to begin next month for union workers, the bargaining team said Wednesday that the compnay had put forth a "retrogressive proposal" and wants "to eliminate some very important Memorandums of Agreement (MOA) and Letters of Agreement (LOA) that effect [sic] all of our members working conditions."

CWA and other critics of buybacks say they're an anti-worker maneuver.

In testimony before Congress last November, Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Eileen Appelbaum called buybacks "a favorite hedge fund tactic for raising share prices" and said they "allow the hedge fund to cash in and sell its shares at a profit." Essentially, she explained, they "enrich hedge funds, but they force companies to cut back on investment, research and development, and job creation."

Lee Camp on Bernie smears, media censorship, and how Russiagate hurt comedy

Trump campaign sues CNN over 'false reporting' in op-ed

Donald Trump’s re-election campaign is suing CNN for publishing an opinion piece that argued Trump did not stop Russia from helping the campaign during the presidential election.

The libel lawsuit, filed in the US district court for the northern district of Georgia, argues that CNN published the story on the campaign’s Russia ties despite “an extensive record of statements from the campaign and the administration expressly disavowing any intention to seek Russian assistance”. ...

The CNN article was written by Larry Noble, a CNN contributor and former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission. It was published in the opinion section of CNN’s website. It argued that Trump’s campaign “assessed the potential risks and benefits of again seeking Russia’s help in 2020 and has decided to leave that option on the table”. ... Trump’s legal team demanded CNN retract the op-ed and issue a correction but the network declined. The article is still up on CNN’s website.

Global markets tank amid Saudi-Russia oil price war

Putin Dumps MBS to Start a War on America’s Shale Oil Industry

At 10:16 a.m. on a wet and dreary Friday morning, Russia’s energy minister walked into OPEC’s headquarters in central Vienna knowing his boss was ready to turn the global oil market upside down.

Alexander Novak told his Saudi Arabian counterpart Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman that Russia was unwilling to cut oil production further. The Kremlin had decided that propping up prices as the coronavirus ravaged energy demand would be a gift to the U.S. shale industry. The frackers had added millions of barrels of oil to the global market while Russian companies kept wells idle. Now it was time to squeeze the Americans.

After five hours of polite but fruitless negotiation, in which Russia clearly laid out its strategy, the talks broke down. Oil prices fell more than 10%. It wasn’t just traders who were caught out: Ministers were so shocked, they didn’t know what to say, according to a person in the room. The gathering suddenly had the atmosphere of a wake, said another.

For over three years, President Vladimir Putin had kept Russia inside the OPEC+ coalition, allying with Saudi Arabia and the other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to curb oil production and support prices. On top of helping Russia’s treasury – energy exports are the largest source of state revenue – the alliance brought foreign policy gains, creating a bond with Saudi Arabia’s new leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But the OPEC+ deal also aided America’s shale industry and Russia was increasingly angry with the Trump administration’s willingness to employ energy as a political and economic tool. It was especially irked by the U.S.’s use of sanctions to prevent the completion of a pipeline linking Siberia’s gas fields with Germany, known as Nord Stream 2. The White House has also targeted the Venezuelan business of Russia’s state-oil producer Rosneft.

“The Kremlin has decided to sacrifice OPEC+ to stop U.S. shale producers and punish the U.S. for messing with Nord Stream 2,” said Alexander Dynkin, president of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, a state-run think tank. “Of course, to upset Saudi Arabia could be a risky thing, but this is Russia’s strategy at the moment – flexible geometry of interests.”

Trump's immigration policies may put people at risk of coronavirus

Since 2017, Donald Trump has pushed a hardline immigration agenda that has sown confusion, fear and distrust among immigrant communities. Now, as the world deals with a public health emergency in the shape of the coronavirus outbreak, experts worry his immigration policies may put everyone at risk.

There is a widespread fear that the president’s policies have sown such fear of deportation and wariness of any contact with US authorities among immigrants – who also have greater difficulty getting healthcare – that many of them will not seek help if they fall sick with the virus.

“If you continue to discourage people from seeking services under normal circumstances, you cannot expect them necessarily to seek those services just because you as the racist, anti-immigrant president have decided that now it’s a good idea. That’s not gonna work,” said Max Hadler, director of health policy at the New York Immigration Coalition.

Even as coronavirus spreads across the US, the Trump administration is ramping up surveillance in so-called sanctuary cities, places where local police don’t always work with federal immigration enforcement. The operation’s goal is to “arrest as many undocumented immigrants as possible”, the New York Times reported, and it is being executed as prominent sanctuary cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles and New York stare down a potential coronavirus public health crisis. ...

Medical treatment and healthcare facilities are supposed to be “sensitive locations”, exempt from most immigration enforcement actions. But that has been undermined as reports from around the country have indicated Ice officers arrested or questioned people at or near hospitals. Last month, Ice brought a man in handcuffs out of a Brooklyn hospital after agents tasered and shot another person who tried to intervene in his arrest. ...

An expanded public charge rule targeting immigrants’ use of public benefits could also impact how people approach coronavirus as fears over their citizenship status – or that of their relatives – discourages many from seeking help from the state, even when it comes to healthcare.

America's EMT Shortage Has Left Communities Relying on Unpaid Volunteers

In West Virginia, more than half of the population lives in rural areas. The number of emergency personnel dropped by nearly 20% in the state from 2015 to 2018, according to numbers obtained by VICE News. Across the country, shrinking rural communities like Oceana, which tend to be poorer and sicker than urban areas, face a similar EMT shortage.

In 1981 when President Reagan cut taxes, he eliminated federal funding for emergency medical services, leaving states and cities to figure out how to pay for them on their own. Cities were able to come up with the money, but often small towns couldn’t collect enough taxes to keep professional EMTs on the payroll. Volunteers picked up the slack.

Even if an EMT or paramedic can respond to a call, there might not be anywhere to take patients. 166 hospitals have closed in rural areas since 2005, according to North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. There’s already been six closures just since the beginning of the year.

Worth a full read. There's too much detail to fairly extract.

Biden Wants to Expand the ACA. Blue States Can’t Figure Out How to Run It in the First Place.

Joe Biden's plan to “build” on the ACA is mainly to further subsidize it while leaving the basic structure unchanged: to increase subsidies and put a cap on premiums, to extend subsidy eligibility, and to add a public option. That, argues Biden, is the soundest and most fiscally prudent approach. Yet when it comes to actually making the system operate well, there’s a record that can be reviewed to gauge how reasonable a promise Biden is making. Across the country, Democrat-controlled states have had over a decade to work on improving the law, relying on existing authorities or ones they could acquire legislatively or through administrative waiver.

The record is clear. Even without the partisan obstacles of a nihilistic Republican opposition, Democrats have failed to build on the Affordable Care Act — not from a lack of good intentions, but because of the fatal complexity of the law itself. That same complexity has kept the media from reporting on Democratic failures to build on its own law, which has created the space for Biden to be able to pretend that he’ll be able to do so. But ultimately, it’s as if the party still hasn’t figured out how to get the lights to work in the house, but are confident the answer is an expensive addition.

It has been 10 years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law and six years since the exchanges started, but many Democratic states still aren’t effectively managing their marketplaces. This has not been due to malice, budget constraints, or industry opposition. It is mainly because the system creates such a complex series of counterintuitive provisions that most state policymakers don’t understand the law or how to maximize every lever at their disposal.

Collectively, these regulatory decisions made in blue states have cost low-income individuals billions, and needlessly caused tens of thousands to go uninsured. The fact that Democratic states currently have the power to make the ACA noticeably better, but simply haven’t because they don’t understand their own law, shouldn’t fill one with confidence about the party’s ability to build on it by just adding more money. ...

The big fix to the ACA that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing is HR 5155. While it increases the size of the subsidies and removes the income cliff to qualify for subsidies, it does nothing to address the problems with how the subsidies are calculated or how insurers game the system. The same is true of Biden’s health care plan, which increases the current subsidies but says nothing about changing the rules to end insurers gaming the system, the generational inequality the rules currently cause, or the massive incentive it would give states to game the rules.

'All You Need to Know': Biden Reportedly Weighing Billionaires Michael Bloomberg and Jamie Dimon for Cabinet Posts

Joe Biden is reportedly considering appointing businessman Michael Bloomberg and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, both billionaires, to powerful leadership positions should Biden win the Democratic presidential nomination and defeat President Donald Trump in November.

Axios reported Monday that the former vice president and his campaign advisers are weighing Dimon for treasury secretary, a cabinet position tasked with overseeing the U.S. financial system. Biden is also considering Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bank of America vice chair Anne Finucane for the top Treasury post.

Bloomberg, who dropped out of the presidential race last week and immediately endorsed Biden, "would be top possibility to head the World Bank" under a Biden administration, according to Axios.

Progressive observers were appalled, if not surprised, by the preliminary list of potential Biden appointees, which Axios reported just 24 hours before Democratic primary contests in six states.

"This shouldn't surprise anyone. This is who the Dem Party is," tweeted Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept. "The establishment wing of the party didn't fall into line behind Biden despite the fact that he'd put Bloomberg and Jamie Dimon in his cabinet. They did it because of that. This is who they are, their ideology."

Two years after Roe v. Wade was decided Joe Biden said: "I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body." pic.twitter.com/6fWBGKBm2H

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 7, 2020

Trump Is a Disaster for Abortion Rights — but Joe Biden Can’t Be Trusted to Fight for Choice

The Supreme Court is currently deliberating a case that threatens to further retrench already imperiled abortion rights in the U.S. ... Despite the fact that the court struck down a nearly identical Texas law in 2016, the presence of misogynist Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — both President Donald Trump appointments — on today’s conservative bench could see the established legal precedent rejected in favor of anti-abortion ideology. ...

Abortion rights will likely not survive another term under Trump. Even under a Democratic president, the current makeup of the Supreme Court will continue to pose a grave threat. That is the bleak terrain in which voters who care about reproductive rights need to consider the Democratic presidential nominees. ... And that is what’s so concerning about the frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his record on abortion rights. He is worse than inconsistent — and his rise should concern anyone who believes that reproductive rights and choice are essential to social justice.

During a February Democratic primary debate, Biden aligned himself with the other candidates on stage by calling for the protection of abortion rights. ... “If they ruled it to be unconstitutional, I will send to the United States Congress, and it will pass I believe, a bill that legislates Roe v. Wade adjusted by Casey,” Biden said, referring to a later Supreme Court case that prohibited undue burdens on abortion rights. “It’s a woman’s right to do that. Period.” That “period,” however, has for much of Biden’s career been a comma — a qualified and compromised support of abortion’s legality at best, and a commitment to limit funding for abortions at worse. Up until last summer, Biden supported the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion under programs like Medicaid, enforcing a hideous denial of affordable care to poor people.

One might generously frame Biden’s changing stance on abortion as a righteous journey, navigating his Catholic faith with a willingness to learn and change in the interest of women’s rights. As vice president, Biden actively worked to undermine reproductive rights by trying to cut mandated coverage for contraception from the Affordable Care Act. His reversal on the Hyde Amendment last year, meanwhile, smacked of electoral expediency: On June 5, Biden’s campaign said that he continued to support the law. He received immediate censure from activists, other lawmakers, and his opponents for the Democratic nomination. The very next night, at a Democratic National Committee gala in Atlanta, Biden said he no longer supported the ban on federal funding for abortions.

Biden claimed that recent Republican anti-abortion efforts around the country prompted his change of position. But widespread abortion restriction laws have hacked away at abortion access for years — including throughout President Barack Obama’s tenure — and Biden’s support of the Hyde Amendment did not shift. “I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code,” Biden later said, explaining his about-face. He had, however, managed to support such legislation for nearly a decade after the Center for Constitutional Rights reported in 2010 that, since the Hyde Amendment passed in 1976, more than a million women have been unable to afford abortions and had to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Of his many years supporting the dangerous and discriminatory law, Biden said he made “no apologies for the last position.”

Establishment Hacks Deny Establishment Colluding Against Bernie

Ryan Grim: What Jesse Jackson's Bernie endorsement means to AOC.

An interesting piece:

Rainbow Coalition Comes Full Circle as Jesse Jackson Endorses Bernie Sanders

Michigan holds a special place in the memory of Jesse Jackson and the supporters of his insurgent 1988 presidential campaign. It was Jackson’s Nevada, the moment that the party establishment realized this campaign it had long written off might just seize the nomination. At a rally in Michigan on Sunday, Jackson will endorse Sanders ahead of a do-or-die primary for the Vermont senator.

The Michigan contest in 1988 fell on March 27. After more than three dozen primaries and caucuses, a crowded presidential field had been winnowed down to three serious contenders: Michael Dukakis, the Massachusetts governor and presumed frontrunner; Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt; and the Rev. Jackson, a former close aide to Martin Luther King Jr. and the public bearer of the torch of the civil rights movement. Joe Biden, then a senator from Delaware, had dropped out of the race following a plagiarism scandal and dismal polling numbers. Given Gephardt’s hard-hat, working-class brand, he badly needed a win in Michigan. He threw everything he had left into the state. Dukakis, too, wanted Michigan — to show that his appeal extended beyond the liberal confines of Harvard Square, and that he could win back those Reagan Democrats whose defection had cost Jimmy Carter reelection.

Jackson spent that election day touring Detroit, hitting black churches and five different housing projects. The New York Times’ legendary political reporter, R.W. Apple, was on hand for the last minute push. ... The energy of the moment comes through in the Times dispatch. “So dramatically did [Jackson] seize the public imagination that he was able to counter successfully the notion that Mr. Dukakis was the Democrat with the best chance of nomination,” the Times wrote. ... The victory generated two polar opposite responses in Washington, D.C., and Burlington, Vermont, both of which would have profound implications for the future of the party. In Burlington, the city’s independent mayor, an outspoken supporter of Jackson, had to decide if he would engage directly with the Democratic Party in order to help Jackson win. After the Michigan victory, Bernie Sanders went all in, calling a local press conference and announcing that he would be participating in the April Democratic caucus to back Jackson. ... Jackson, he argued, could remake the Democratic Party in an image of social justice. “So while in fact, he may end up losing some conservative white votes, some racist white votes, I think there is a real chance that he could do what [Walter] Mondale couldn’t do in a million years. That is to bring millions and millions of poor people and working people into the political arena who in the past never participated.”

In Washington, though, the reaction was pandemonium. Just as party leaders melted down publicly after Sanders’s win in the Nevada caucuses, they did so after Jackson’s triumph in Michigan. Talk in the top echelons of the Democratic Party turned to panic, with David Espo of the Associated Press reporting that the establishment feared a general-election blowout if Jackson was the nominee. Plans were being drawn up, he reported, to draft New York Governor Mario Cuomo to challenge Jackson at the convention if Dukakis couldn’t stop the reverend. ... Jackson, the Democratic political class argued, was simply unelectable, so the party should go with a winner like Dukakis. ...

Jackson’s endorsement comes in the wake of Elizabeth Warren’s departure from the race. “I will not go against Bernie, but I’ve not made a decision to endorse anybody,” Jackson said in a February episode of Intercepted. ... But Jackson was clear on who he would not be supporting. “I think the idea that somehow Biden has largely inherited the black vote in South Carolina is not sound judgment,” he said. “We were saying no to Clarence Thomas, he said, yes, to Clarence Thomas. We were saying no to the Crime Bill. He said yes to the Crime Bill. No to the Iraq War. He said yes to the Iraq war. He’s on a different side of history. It’s his right to be there but he might as well own up to his side of history.”

Bernie Needs a Big Win, and He's Betting It All on Michigan

Four years ago, Bernie Sanders pulled off a dramatic upset win in Michigan’s primary to revive his flagging presidential campaign. Now, he needs to recreate that magic. After a brutal Super Tuesday where he lost 10 of 14 states and looks to have fallen behind Joe Biden in the delegate count, Sanders badly needs a major victory to show he can compete one-on-one with Biden. And Michigan looks like his best chance.

A win there on Tuesday could put him back on firm footing and set up a long, drawn-out delegate fight. But if he loses a state he carried in 2016 — and one where Biden’s record on trade, entitlements, and Iraq could be particularly problematic — it becomes much harder to see Sanders’ path to the Democratic nomination. ...

Sanders’ team recognizes the state’s importance. The senator canceled a Mississippi rally to add stops to his swing through Michigan, and now has events there every day from Friday through Monday — a huge time investment since the state is just one of 10 which will vote in the next 10 days. Biden will be in the state Monday as well. And Sanders has gone hard on the attack with a trio of ads ripping into Biden for his votes for free trade agreements and the war in Iraq as well as his flirtations with cutting Social Security.

Those blows could hit particularly hard in Michigan. NAFTA is a four-letter word in a state that has been devastated by globalization and free trade. Michigan also has one of the country’s oldest populations, with 2.2 million residents on Social Security — almost a quarter of the state population. And it has one of the country’s largest Arab American populations.

“Michigan will show how potent our contrast message is,” Sanders spokesman Bill Neidhardt said. “We’re going to see exactly how outraged voters are when they see Joe Biden has spent decades trying to cut Social Security and championing trade deals like NAFTA.”

Saagar Enjeti: Media says Joe Biden's 'cognitive decline' is Russian conspiracy theory

After weeks of Bernie Sanders supporters being hit over the head with questions of voting blue no matter who, a @JoeBiden delegate tells @mehdirhasan that she *will not* vote for the nominee if it is Bernie Sanders.pic.twitter.com/Q2qtMJwSa4

— jordan (@JordanUhl) March 7, 2020

I got a kick out of the concept of a "broletariat."

Biden's 'Bernie brothers' remark lights up social media

It took Joe Biden all of 10 minutes to unleash a social media phenomenon Friday. In a brief phone address to donors, the Democratic presidential candidate warned of the potential for a nasty primary against Bernie Sanders. But then Biden riffed on the name for a hardline group of Sanders supporters: the “Bernie brothers.” ...

“What we can’t let happen is let this primary become a negative bloodbath," Biden told more than 100 donors gathered at a private residence in Bethesda. "I know I’m going to get a lot of suggestions on how to respond to what I suspect will be an increasingly negative campaign that the Bernie brothers will run. But we can’t tear this party apart and reelect Trump. We have to keep our eyes on the ball, in my view.”

My name is Peter.

I'm Lebanese-American.

I'm fighting for the kids in cages and people without healthcare.

I stand with #NotMeUs.

Does that make me one of the #BernieBrothers? https://t.co/ivnTBv7RXW

— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) March 7, 2020

Twitter had a field day with the remark from Biden, who is renowned for his verbal flubs. There was talk of trademarking the former vice president's creation and printing t-shirts. The term #berniebrothers soon was trending on Twitter as well as an alternative, #bernardbrothers, with users poking fun at the formality behind Biden's description.

How much of my autonomy do I have to give up when I join the Broletariat? #bernardbrothers

— Geraldo of Rivera (@of_geraldo) March 8, 2020

Bernie Sanders asks Elizabeth Warren and her supporters for backing

Bernie Sanders made a pitch for the backing of Senator Elizabeth Warren and her supporters on Sunday in an attempt to reverse his rival Joe Biden’s surging momentum towards the Democratic party’s presidential nomination.

n a series of appearances on political talk shows two days before crucial primary votes in Michigan, Missouri and four other key states, Sanders highlighted the alignment of his progressive policies on a range of issues to those of the liberal Massachusetts senator, who dropped out of the race on Thursday and who has yet to announce an endorsement.

His move came on the same day as another former rival, the California senator Kamala Harris, announced that she was backing Biden to win the nomination and beat Donald Trump in November, adding to other candidates who have dropped from the race and swung their support to the former vice-president, including Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Mike Bloomberg.

“We would love to have Senator Warren’s support, we would love to have the millions of people who supported Senator Warren,” Sanders said on CNN’s State of the Union. ... “We’ve reached out, we’re looking and asking for the support of Senator Warren’s supporters, and hope they come on board.”

Insulting and cursing at voters for seeing what is completely visible to the naked eye about Biden, and then topping it off with accusations of bigotry, is definitely a winning strategy against Trump.

The only thing missing is to call anyone who notices this a "deplorable." https://t.co/7TgV2YWVtd

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 7, 2020

World Bank accused over ExxonMobil plans to tap Guyana oil rush

The World Bank is to pay for Guyana’s oil laws to be rewritten by a legal firm that has regularly worked for ExxonMobil, just as the US producer prepares to extract as much as 8bn barrels of oil off the country’s coast.

The World Bank has pledged not to fund fossil fuel extraction directly, but it is giving Guyana millions of dollars to develop governance in its burgeoning oil sector, as the south American country prepares for an oil rush led by ExxonMobil and its partners.

Guyana’s government was in charge of hiring US law firm Hunton Andrews Kurth to revise its Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Act, the environment and rights campaign group Urgewald found. ... Hunton Andrews Kurth has acted for ExxonMobil for 40 years, including multiple cases involved in climate impacts, such as an action by native Americans in the Alaskan village of Kivalina who argued that the climate crisis was threatening their way of life.

“The World Bank claims to be striving for ‘good governance’ in revising Guyana’s legal framework for oil development,” said Heike Mainhardt, senior advisor on multilateral financial institutions at Urgewald. “However, they are hiring the law firm who counts among their major clients ExxonMobil – the company leading the oilfield development in Guyana.

“This is ‘good governance’ for the oil companies, not for the people of Guyana or the global climate. The World Bank is causing a conflict of interest, in effect undermining good governance.”

Exxon Lobbyists Pushed European Officials to Water Down Green Deal With Carbon Pricing Plan for Vehicles

Climate lobbying watchdog InfluenceMap revealed Friday that ExxonMobil met with European Commission officials who were finalizing the European Green Deal last fall, pushing the commission to take steps to ensure that drivers in Europe will continue driving cars that run on fossil fuels instead of transitioning to electric vehicles.

According to a report released Friday by InfluenceMap, Exxon met with commission officials in November 2019 to request an extension of the Green Deal's carbon pricing policy, known as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), to tailpipe emissions.

The policy currently only applies to "stationary" carbon emissions sources such as power plants, requiring a cap on emissions for those sources.

"Give serious consideration to extending ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) beyond stationary sources," read the meeting notes, which were obtained by InfluenceMap through a FOIA request. "Tailpipe emission legislation should be substituted with power plant to wheel emission regulation."

Applying the scheme to tailpipe emissions would remove existing strict regulations on road emissions and could stall the rollout of electric cars, as drivers' costs would be capped if they still drive cars that run on fossil fuels. The European Commission is still determining whether it will include tailpipe emissions in the ETS, according to The Guardian.

The Green Deal, which was released Wednesday and was denounced as a "surrender" by climate action leader Greta Thunberg, stops short of phasing out combustion engines for vehicles. The plan demands that European countries reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which many climate scientists and advocates say is too late to stem the climate crisis.

Exxon met with European officials as it faces litigation in the U.S. regarding allegations that the company knew its carbon emissions could have a "catastrophic" effect on the planet as early as 1977. The meeting in November was just one example of Exxon's attempt to influence climate policy in Europe; since 2010, The Guardian reported last year, Exxon has spent more than $42 million on lobbying European officials.

Exxon's attempt to further weaken the European Green Deal represents "a shift from the propagation of climate science denial towards a range of more subtle tactics and narratives to distract policymakers and the public away from an urgent and robust policy intervention on climate on the scale recommended by the IPCC's 2018 special report on 1.5° warming," said InfluenceMap.

Green New Deal Champion Romanoff Claims Victory Over Ex-Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper in Senate Caucuses

U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff, who is backed by various progressive and climate groups, claimed a grassroots victory over former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and "the political establishment" late Saturday following the state's Democratic caucuses.

Both Romanoff and Hickenlooper—a former White House hopeful endorsed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC)—are working to oust Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) in November. Romanoff, a former Colorado state House speaker, garnered national attention in December for an apocalypse-themed campaign ad.

In a pair of tweets Saturday night, Romanoff declared: "Our grassroots campaign just crushed the D.C. machine and won today's caucuses! The powerbrokers and party bosses in Washington didn't get the memo, but it turns out a lot of people in CO want to replace Cory Gardner with a progressive champion. Thank you!" ...

The Denver Post reported:

Romanoff, a progressive favorite, won 55% of the raw vote and Hickenlooper won 31% with 55 of 64 counties, including Denver, reporting late Saturday, according to the Colorado Democratic Party. However, several counties will not report their results or the number of delegates won by candidates until Sunday.

Precinct caucus results will determine the number of delegates that candidates have at upcoming county caucuses. Results there will determine delegate counts at an April 18 state assembly, where candidates will need at least 30% support to have their names placed on June 30 primary ballots.

The caucus is one of two ways to get on the Senate primary ballot—candidates also can do so by gathering signatures—and only about half attempted the caucus route. Low turnout at Saturday's precinct gatherings amid the coronavirus outbreak had some Democrats discussing whether the tradition should continue.

While Romanoff's platform includes a wide range of progressive priorities, he has campaigned as a champion of the Green New Deal and emphasized the importance of tackling the climate crisis. As the candidate's website explains: "A catastrophic rise in greenhouse gases. An administration consumed by chaos and scandal. An economy that leaves millions of us behind. We're running out of time to rescue our planet, repair our democracy, and restore the American Dream. That's why I'm running for the U.S. Senate."

Also of Interest

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

Joint Chiefs Chair Retires, Immediately Becomes Paid F-35 Cheerleader

As in Afghanistan, Ending Our Endless Wars Will Not Be Painless

Oil plunges most since 2008 on unraveling Saudi-Russia alliance

'Outrageous,' Says Bernie Sanders as Filings Show Top Healthcare CEOs Raked in Combined $300 Million in 2019

Coronavirus Alarm Blends Yellow Peril and Red Scare

'Absolutely Chilling': Reports From Frontlines of Coronavirus Outbreak Reveal Roadblocks to Testing, Lack of Safety Protocols

‘We still have darkness’: the town where an HIV outbreak occurred under Mike Pence

This:

Coronavirus Matters, the Stock Market Doesn’t, and Thinking It Does May Literally Kill Us

Two Charts Explain Why Wall Street Banks Are Under So Much Selling Pressure

Dear America, Please Stop This Nonsense Immediately. Love, The Rest Of The World.

Ryan Grim articulates a powerful appeal to Warren's cynical self-interest:

Elizabeth Warren Should Endorse Bernie Sanders — Not for Him, but for Herself and Her Mission

Biden warns against primary bloodbath as Sanders sharpens attacks ahead of key contests

'This Is Unacceptable': Sanders Calls On Biden to Disavow Surrogate's Racist Attack on Nina Turner

Chris Cuomo Is A Fucking Shitbag

Sanders Unveils Plan to Address GOP Attacks on Reproductive Rights and the Black Maternal Mortality Crisis

Coalition Urges Everyone to Join Movement Supporting Sanders to Secure a 'Feminist Future'

Paul Steinhauser: Elizabeth Warren unlikely to endorse Bernie Sanders when it counts

Nomiki Konst: Will there be convention fireworks between Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden?

Aaron Maté: Why I wish Bernie had hit Biden on Hunter

Rising: Hillary Clinton accidentally reveals why Joe Biden might lose

Rising: Can Bernie Sanders stage a comeback in Michigan?

Saagar and Ryan: Is DNC rigging debate rules so Joe Biden can sit down?

New York Times profiles Rising

China Could Start A New Solar Price War

Marxist marsupial: Germany’s left draws hope from an unlikely hero

Dog finds home after nearly six years in Kansas City shelter

A Little Night Music

Irma Thomas - Don't Mess With My Man

Irma Thomas - A Woman Will Do Wrong

Irma Thomas - Moments To Remember

Irma Thomas - Cry On

Irma Thomas - I May Be Wrong

Irma Thomas - Straight From The Heart / Without Love

Irma Thomas - I Done Got Over

Irma Thomas - Hip Shakin' Mama

Irma Thomas - A Good Man

Irma Thomas - Time Is On My Side