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.
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Hey! Good Evening!
Tonight's music features Otis Rush a fine, Chicago blues guitarist whom I can't believe it has taken me this long to get around to featuring.
Otis Rush - I`Cant Quit You Baby
"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance."
--James Madison
News
This is a very interesting discussion about banking, the banking crisis, alternative currencies and alternatives to the current form of banking. The discussion is conducted in plain english without excessive banking/financial jargon, it's a well spent 25 minutes:
Counting the Cost - Money for nothing
WikiLeaks in Latin America: Online Whistleblower’s Wide Impact in Region Where Assange Seeks Asylum
Interest Rate-Fixing Scandal Swindles Baltimore, Other Municipalities out of Millions of Dollars
Amidst the financial crisis of 2008 and resultant recession, cities and states around the country lost millions of dollars on investments tied to the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor).
Wall Street lenders want bankrupt city to pay them before own retirees
The city of Stockton, California declared bankruptcy a month ago and is in the process of sorting out its financial affairs. Now it has been hit with a fresh indignity in the form of a threatened lawsuit from Assured Guaranty, a company based in Bermuda which provides insurance against defaults on municipal bonds.
In 2007, Stockton borrowed $125 million in the bond market to pay for enhanced pension benefits and invested the money in its California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) acount, where it lost about one-third of its value in the economic crash. Stockton still owes $124 million in payments on the bonds, but its bankruptcy plan calls for it to pay only $21 million.
Assured Guaranty finds it unacceptable that Stockton is giving top priority to paying its own employees’ pensions. It calls this “a contortion of the bankruptcy process” and insists that it is unacceptable for the city to “prefer one class of similarly situated creditor over another.”
The “similarly situation” part is what’s in question, though. According to the general counsel of CalPERS, under California law “the obligations owed to the public workers of the city have priority over those of general unsecured creditors.”
Robert Stolarik, New York Times Photographer, Arrested After Alleged Assault By NYPD
Robert Stolarik, a freelance photographer for the New York Times, was arrested on Saturday night after an alleged assault by the NYPD.
The conflict arose when Stolarik was on the job covering stop and frisk, a practice that has been controversial for the NYPD. He was photographing a street fight in the Bronx, and an officer told him to stop.
He said that he showed his press credentials and continued to take pictures. Stolarik alleged that another officer then approached and "slammed" his camera into his face. According to his account to the Times, the officers "dragged him to the ground" and Stolarik was "kicked in the back," resulting in "scrapes and bruises to his arms, legs and face."
Tax court burns entire U.S. medical marijuana industry
Medical marijuana dispensaries that have taken federal tax deductions are about to be gut-checked by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), thanks to a recent ruling by the U.S. Tax Court in Washington, D.C.
In Olive v. Commissioner (PDF), judges unanimously found that the owner of the Vapor Room Herbal Center, one of San Francisco’s largest and most profitable dispensaries, was not allowed to take business deductions because the business was trafficking in a controlled substance.
The tactic has been increasingly favored by the IRS since 2008, when the U.S. tax agency began conducting audits of major California dispensaries. One of the first businesses targeted by the IRS was the Martin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, which was forced to shut its doors after the IRS cited § 280E of the federal tax code, which prohibits deductions on sales of controlled substances, and demanded millions of dollars in back taxes.
From the: "Whatever happened to those comfortable shoes?" department:
Despite Promises, Colombia FTA Does Little to End Abuse of Labor Activists - Assurances by both governments fail to end violence against workers
"We ask President (Barack) Obama to push for more guarantees for Colombian workers," Miguel Conde, with Sintrainagro, a union representing workers on palm-oil plantations, said at at press event held at AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington. "In Colombia, it is easier to form an armed group than a trade union… because we still have no guarantees from the government."
The U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (Colombia FTA) was originally negotiated by the George W. Bush administration. Colombia—a country that for decades has been the most dangerous place in the world for trade union organizers— promsied to curtail the culture of murder and abuse, but human rights groups both inside and outside of Colombia warned against the deal. After several years, the US Congress ultimately approved the pact in October 2011, but only after the inclusion of a 37-point Labour Action Plan (LAP), designed to improving the conditions for Colombian workers and organizers.
The problem, according to activists interviewed by Al-Jazeera and a report recently released by the AFL-CIO, is that the protections are either not being implemented at all, or are insufficient to address the ongoing abuses.
One Billion Already Hungry as Deeper Food Crises Loom - Enough food exists for all, but shortcomings of global capitalism and industrial food system thwart new approaches to problem
Despite growing enough food to feed to entire world, almost a billion people are now hungry – one in seven of the global population – and, according to Oxfam International, conditions are getting worse and the number of acutely malnourished children has risen for the first time this decade.
Reporting by The Independent reveals that for the first time in recent history, humanitarian organizations like Oxfam have had to respond to three serious regional food crises – in West Africa, Yemen and East Africa – while also witnessing an "unparalleled number of severe food shortages" that have added 43 million to the number of people going hungry worldwide this year.
James Hansen: Extreme Heat Events Connected to Climate Change
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
The Sh*t Train's A-Comin
Nothing Can Be Done
Obama the Pioneer
A Little Night Music
Otis Rush - Three Times a Fool
Otis Rush - Homework
Otis Rush - Hold That Train
Otis Rush - Natural Ball
Otis Rush - My Own Fault (Sweet Black Angel)
Otis Rush - As The Years Go Passing By
Otis Rush - All Your Love I Miss Loving
Otis Rush feat. Eric Clapton & Luther Allison - Every Day I Have The Blues
Otis Rush - Crosscut Saw
Otis Rush and Eric Clapton - Double Trouble
Otis Rush - My Love Will Never Die
Otis Rush - It Takes Time
Otis Rush - Whole Lotta Lovin'
Otis Rush - Tore Up
Otis Rush - So Many Roads
Otis Rush : So Many Roads
Otis RUSH with Luther Allison- Let Me Love You
We are ready for some serious change. We are ready to take up the tools of a free and analytic press to peacefully undermine the stranglehold of the kleptocrats on our battered democracy. We are ready to expose and publicize their greed, lies and illegal machinations and hold their enablers in government and the media to account. Are you in?
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
~ Margaret Mead
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