Jake Johnson at Common Dreams writes—Ripping 'Greedy Wall Street Vulture Funds' Profiting From Misery, Warren and Sanders Introduce Bill to Cancel Puerto Rico's Debt:
As advocacy groups urgently warn that Wall Street firms are moving to capitalize on Puerto Rico's plight in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria by extracting debt payments and pushing for the privatization of public services, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and several other Democratic senators on Wednesday to introduce a bill that would "provide an avenue to comprehensive debt relief" for the island.
"Greedy Wall Street vulture funds must not be allowed to reap huge profits off the suffering and misery of the Puerto Rican people for a second longer," Sanders said in a statement on the new bill, which would also provide debt relief for the U.S. Virgin Islands and other territories ravaged by recent hurricanes. "It is time to end Wall Street's stranglehold on Puerto Rico's future, return control of the island to the people of Puerto Rico, and give the territory the debt relief it so desperately needs to rebuild with dignity."
As reporter David Dayen noted in The Intercept, the senators' new legislation is a striking departure from efforts to address Puerto Rico's debt crisis under President Barack Obama, who in 2016 signed legislation that "led to punishing austerity proposals, mass protests, and a wave of privatization, with assets sold off to finance interest payments." [...]
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QUOTATION
“Who the hell wants to have a police officer put their hand on them or yell and scream at them? It’s an awful experience. Every black man I know has had this experience. Every one of them. It is hard to believe that the world is your oyster if the police can rough you up without punishment. And when I talked to minority youth, almost every single one of them mentions lower-level uses of force as the reason why they believe the world is corrupt.”
~~Roland G. Fryer Jr.
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2004—DNC: Keep it bland:
Kerry's strategy this cycle has been to give Republicans as little material to churn through their Noise Machine as possible, all the while letting Bush beat himself.
It's been a sound strategy thus far, if a bit frustrating at times. Margaret Cho was disinvited from tonight's LGBT Unity event precisely for that reason. Democrats wanted to avoid another "Whoopi" moment. And Margaret is, er, 2000 times spicier than Whoopi at her raunchiest. Stupid move, but it fits Kerry's strategy.
And while they were not disinvited, Dean and Gore are being forced to "tone down" their speeches to strip out most anti-Bush rhetoric.
Democrats are scrambling to tamp down former Vice President Al Gore and firebrand Howard Dean [related, bio] before they step to the convention podium, worried they may embarrass John Kerry with red-meat anger and excessive Bush bashing.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin has a raft of polls to round up, plus the usual: Trump's a traitor & there's a boatload of evidence. Rosenstein impeachment is designed to fail. Engineering a "Dems in disarray" story: Clyburn’s not shooting, and Ocasio-Cortez isn’t cutting.
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