This evening's music features blues, r&b and rock and roll singer and songwriter Billy "The Kid" Emerson.

Here are some stories from today's post:

Still Leading Pack, US Arms Exporters Extract Increasing Profits From Foreign Conflict Zones

As the number-one exporter of major arms world-wide, the United States is extracting ever-increasing profits from the global rise in war and military escalation, a new study by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) finds.

Between 2010 and 2014, global conventional weapons transfers jumped 16 percent as compared to 2005-2009, the researchers found.

The U.S. alone accounted for 31 percent of international weapons exports from 2010 to 2014. During this time the U.S. was the world's top supplier, delivering "major weapons to at least 94 recipients," the study finds.

Researchers note that American weapons exporters are casting a wide net that reaches far beyond the U.S. military.

"The [U.S.] has long seen arms exports as a major foreign policy and security tool, but in recent years exports are increasingly needed to help the U.S. arms industry maintain production levels at a time of decreasing U.S. military expenditure," said Dr. Aude Fleurant, director of the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Program," in a press statement.

As conflict and tensions sweep the Middle East and Asia Pacific regions, these markets are booming.

Hat tip Don midwest. What's good for American business comes at a horrible cost for the rest of the world:

Worse than ISIL: Iraq’s US-caused Public Health Catastrophe

The Iraqi people, once the envy of the Arab world for their outstanding educational and health-care systems, have been reduced to a nation of refugees, flung across the Middle East. U.S.-created thugs are axing Iraq’s historical heritage into pieces. The Iraqi health system continues to disintegrate as doctors flee and supplies dwindle. Maternal-child health, which is an indicator of a nation’s overall health, has plummeted in Iraq and is now among the worst in the world. ...

Decades of U.S. coups, invasions, and debilitating sanctions has brought large sections of the Middle East to the brink of a total collapse. In Iraq after the Gulf War, thirteen years of sanctions killed over half a million Iraqi children while unknown numbers of children suffered irreversible developmental, physical, and mental damage. Recent declassified information reveals that the harmful public health consequences of sanctions were fully known to the American perpetrators. ...

Lesson learned: the U.S. presence in Iraq was synonymous with societal death. As in previous occupations, the U.S. created a power vacuum and spurred opposition to its occupation, thus causing to coalesce the most barbaric forces in the area. The trained killers of al-Qaeda and ISIL have smothered civil society in Iraq and Syria. Public discourse has all but vanished. Through constant battering from the United States and its allies, a growing mass of the Middle East has been transformed into a starving, terrified population. This population is constantly driven from one burning border to the next, from the grip of one brutish gang to the next.

Chicago mayoral debate gets testy over city's finances and public schools

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel aggressively dissected his re-election challenger’s record and platform on Monday in the first head-to-head televised debate before next month’s runoff election, but Cook County commissioner Jesús García came back at the former White House chief of staff with questions about the city’s financial problems and violence. ...

García said Emanuel hasn’t done enough to address crime. While crime overall has dropped, there was spike in homicides during part of Emanuel’s first term. García accused Emanuel of focusing on benefiting companies and campaign donors. “The mayor is out of touch,” said García. ...

During the debate, Emanuel didn’t counter a charge from García – who has enjoyed support from unions and minority voters – that Emanuel had once worked against immigration reform.

Emanuel has worked hard to appeal to voters in minority neighborhoods, particularly around the schools issue. Tense contract negotiations in 2012 led to the city’s first teachers’ strike in 25 years, and the following year he pushed to close nearly 50 neighborhood schools. The vast majority of Chicago public school students are black and Latino.

García’s campaign – built on his contacts from years as a community organizer and local politician – has backing from the Chicago Teachers Union and top African American leaders, including the Rev Jesse Jackson. Minorities – in particular black voters – make up most of Chicago’s population and will be crucial to the outcome.

García has also pushed for an elected school board. Chicago voters supported the idea with a nonbinding referendum last month.

He has said that Emanuel’s focus on downtown, luring businesses and special funds, has left the city’s neighborhoods behind.

An excellent article by David Dayen:

“Not true and they knew it”: What Rahm Emanuel’s Wall Street craze cost Chicago

The city of Chicago and its public school system could recoup potentially billions of dollars in overpayments from complicated, unjust deals inked with Wall Street banks, if they pursued legal action or demanded enforcement from federal regulators. But Rahm Emanuel, the current mayor, has refused to chase this opportunity, despite the city’s drastic fiscal outlook and the effect on citizens. By contrast, his opponent in the April 7 mayoral run-off election, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, appears far more likely to take action against a powerful financial sector Emanuel has relied on for campaign contributions.

Beginning over a decade ago, Wall Street banks sold municipalities, school districts, water systems and public hospitals across the country on obscure financial instruments, pitching them as a way to borrow more cheaply than plain-vanilla municipal bonds. But just as homeowners were swindled into loans they couldn’t afford during the housing bubble, local governments suffered a similar fate. ...

A growing group of public interest activists, lawyers and experts believe that Wall Street violated securities laws by failing to disclose risks on these instruments. ... Chicago was a serial user of this type of exotic borrowing. ... ReFund America estimates that the City of Chicago and Chicago Public Schools have already paid $1.2 billion on swaps, and roughly $106 million annually since 2008. ... Like an underwater homeowner, cities cannot refinance the swaps: the only way out is to pay termination fees, which represent the net present value of all future payments. Wall Street basically lied to Chicago and other cities to trap them, with no escape from the predatory terms.

But advocates list several remedies. First, cities could sue the banks, alleging misrepresentation under state and federal “fair dealing” rules. Illinois state law does not apply any statute of limitations on cities filing claims, so everything Chicago financed would be applicable. Chicago could also file an arbitration claim with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which handles disputes over market integrity rules for public finance. ... Finally, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has authority to enforce fair dealing rules against Wall Street banks, disgorging their ill-gotten gains to affected borrowers. Chicago could pressure the SEC to finally undertake an enforcement action on behalf of borrowers, the same way they have on behalf of investors. ...

Emanuel has publicly stated that it’s simply too late to recoup any money from bad swap deals, because “there’s a thing called a contract.” Of course, ReFund America’s Saqib Bhatti and his colleagues allege there was a breach of contract, which can trigger legal remedies. In addition, “the same administration so quick to say a contract’s a contract was quick to throw the teachers’ contract out the window when they had a chance,” Bhatti said, referring to a bruising 2012 city teacher’s strike and Emanuel’s proposal to cut retirement benefits. “To them, a deal’s a deal except when it’s not.”

Obama's TPP Sales Pitch Echoes Broken NAFTA Promises