Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 7:00 PM Eastern) where we hang out, share and talk about news, music, photography and other things of interest to the community.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
|
Hey! Good Evening!
Tonight's music is a continuation of last nights country blues theme, hope you enjoyed last night, because tonight there's more!
John Jackson - That Will Never Happen No More
"If we ever pass out as a great nation we ought to put on our tombstone, 'America died from a delusion that she has moral leadership'."
-- Will Rogers
News
Dark Money: Will Secret Spending by a Group of Billionaires Decide the 2012 Election? (Pt. 1)
Torture in U.S. Prisons? Historic Senate Hearing Takes Up Human Toll of Solitary Confinement
The Armed Forces’ response to rape makes ‘military justice’ an oxymoron
Thirty-four women and men appear on camera in the documentary “Invisible War,” which opens in theatres June 22, to discuss being raped in the military. Statistics flash on the screen: 20 percent of women are sexually assaulted while serving in the United States military. An estimated 500,000 women have been assaulted in the last 20 years. In fiscal year 2009, 3,230 women reported sexual assault, and the Department of Defense estimates that 80 percent of women never report — meaning their own numbers indicate 16,150 women were assaulted that year. An estimated one percent of male servicemembers are sexually assaulted in the military each year, or around 20,000 men.
And in 2010, only 175 rapists did time.
With numbers like that, and more than a dozen of current and former investigators, JAG officers and military psychiatrists who appear on camera to detail the utter, sometimes willful inability of commanders or the Department of Defense to address the widespread epidemic of sexual assault in the military, it’s hard to avoid drawing one conclusion: the military would far rather let rapists serve than protect the women who do.
World’s top banks hit with Moody’s downgrade
Some of the biggest names in banking — including Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Citigroup, HSBC and Deutsche Bank — saw their ratings slashed Thursday, spelling increased investor scrutiny and potentially higher borrowing costs.
Moody’s said, in essence, that the banks risked massive losses and that they were exposed to the roiling financial crisis and to each other. ...
The 15 banks downgraded were: Bank of America, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Royal Bank of Scotland, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Societe Generale and UBS.
Supreme Court: U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Undefeated This Term
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is undefeated at the Supreme Court this term, continuing to improve its success in securing business-friendly judgments since Chief Justice John Roberts took the bench in 2005.
The Constitutional Accountability Center, a left-leaning think tank and law firm, reported its findings on Thursday, noting that this term, which began in October and will likely conclude by the end of June, could be the chamber's "first 'perfect' term before the Supreme Court since at least 1994." ...
The chamber, a pro-business lobbying group that supports conservative candidates and causes, formed its modern litigation strategy in 1971, when corporate attorney Lewis Powell wrote a memorandum that urged the group to aggressively pursue its interests in courts, citing the liberal American Civil Liberties Union's success as a model. "Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change," Powell wrote. Then-President Richard Nixon nominated Powell that same year to the Supreme Court, where he wrote the opinion that the Roberts Court relied upon in the Citizens United decision to allow unlimited corporate spending in political campaigns.
Prisons, Privatization, Patronage
So what’s really behind the drive to privatize prisons, and just about everything else?
One answer is that privatization can serve as a stealth form of government borrowing, in which governments avoid recording upfront expenses (or even raise money by selling existing facilities) while raising their long-run costs in ways taxpayers can’t see. We hear a lot about the hidden debts that states have incurred in the form of pension liabilities; we don’t hear much about the hidden debts now being accumulated in the form of long-term contracts with private companies hired to operate prisons, schools and more.
Another answer is that privatization is a way of getting rid of public employees, who do have a habit of unionizing and tend to lean Democratic in any case.
But the main answer, surely, is to follow the money. Never mind what privatization does or doesn’t do to state budgets; think instead of what it does for both the campaign coffers and the personal finances of politicians and their friends. As more and more government functions get privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for getting government business. Are the corporations capturing the politicians, or the politicians capturing the corporations? Does it matter?
With New Burden on Unions, Court Tips the Balance Toward Corporations
The most politically partisan—and politically activist—Supreme Court in modern American history has already assumed that, when it comes to electioneering, corporations have pretty much the same rights as human beings. Indeed, the High Court’s Citizens United ruling has given corporations unprecedented flexibility to act on their own behalf to influence election campaigns and results.
Yet, the same Court has now said that groups of actual human beings—trade unions that have organized public-sector workers—must sacrifice their flexibility in order to meet standards never before demanded of labor organizations.
Do we detect a pattern here?
Of course.
That pattern was on stark display in Thursday’s Supreme Court decision to require that public-employee unions get specific permission from employees in workplaces they represent for special assessments that are used to advance political agendas. Traditionally, unions in the public sector have maintained “opt-out” systems, which allow any worker in an organized shop to indicate that they do not want to support union political action. Those dissenting workers are allowed to avoid contributing to campaigning, even when it is on behalf of their interests.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
4 Things Obama Has in Common With Dick Cheney
What Is Wrong With Our Education System? Almost Half the Population Doesn't Accept Evolution
Transgender rockers interviewed
A Little Night Music
John Jackson - Rag in C
John Cephas and Phil Wiggins - Richmond Blues
Phil Wiggens & John Cephas - Roberta
Mississippi John Hurt - Spike driver blues
Jerry Garcia & John Kahn - Spike Driver Blues
Roy Book Binder - Police Dog Blues
John Cephas - Special Rider Blues
Rev Gary Davis - I Am The Light Of The World
Roy Book Binder - Goin Home Someday