Welcome! "The Evening Blues" is a casual community diary (published Monday - Friday, 8:00 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!
This evenings music features Lousiana primitive style bluesman Robert Pete Williams. Enjoy!
Robert Pete Williams - Old Girl At My Door
"The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy."
-- Paul Wellstone
News and Opinion
Overturning Citizens United: Is a Constitutional Amendment the Best Path to Limit Dark Money?
Newly Introduced Constitutional Amendment says: 'Democracy for People, Not Corporations'
New law designed to 'stop corporations and their front groups from using their profits and dark money donations to influence our elections'
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) introduced a joint resolution on Tuesday calling for a constitutional amendment that would undo the damage they say was caused by a Supreme Court ruling that allows "unrestricted, secret campaign spending by corporations and billionaires."
In response to the 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—which critics say has greatly undermined democracy in the US by "opening the campaign spending floodgates"— a national grassroots movement has blossomed around the idea that only through a constitutional amendment can corporations be properly stripped of the court's determination that 'corporate speech' in the form of outsized financial giving is the same as the 'free speech' of individuals.
“What the Supreme Court did in Citizens United," said Sanders, "is to tell billionaires like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, ‘You own and control Wall Street. You own and control coal companies. You own and control oil companies. Now, for a very small percentage of your wealth, we're going to give you the opportunity to own and control the United States government.’ That is the essence of what Citizens United is all about. That is why this disastrous decision must be reversed.”
Amendment fact sheet here. Amendment legal analysis here.
Stand With Rand? Who Will Stand With Elizabeth Warren to Prosecute Criminal Bankers?
Speaking of Elizabeth Warren... Here she is at the Senate Banking Committee nomination hearing for Richard Cordray (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) and Mary Jo White (SEC). I particularly enjoyed her questioning of Mary Jo White,
the prospective fox in charge of the hen house.
Here's my quick transcription of the best parts of that:
"There are still no rules for credit rating agencies that took money to sign off on risky deals that crashed the economy and still operate with big conflicts of interest. There are still no rules from the SEC to deal with derivatives that were right at the heart of the financial crisis. There are still no rules from the SEC to protect the counties and towns that were cheated. There are still no rules from the SEC to require disclosure of CEO pay relative to regular employees pay."
"What are the costs of people being cheated on mortgages and credit cards? What are the costs when money launderers are not prosecuted? What are the costs when big financial institutions crash our economy? What are the costs of underenforcing bank regulations?"
Check it out:
Here's an excerpt from David Sirota's piece on White's nomination hearing:
The sheriff of Wall Street has its back
SEC nominee Mary Jo White reinforces the idea of one system of justice for corporations, and one for the rest of us
In the first exchange, White admitted that “federal prosecutors are instructed by DOJ [that] they have a long line of factors to consider and one of them is the collateral consequences of a criminal indictment to innocent shareholders, employees, or the public.” Unlike Holder, who at least said he was concerned about this radical legal precedent, White insisted that “prosecutors should consider that before proceeding.” In making such an assertion, the prospective head of the SEC was endorsing a radical legal precedent, the one that says justice shouldn’t necessarily be blind, as the venerated axiom goes. Instead, she was arguing that economic consequences for shareholders should be a factor in deciding whether to prosecute lawbreakers.
White then expanded on this view in her subsequent exchange with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. She defended the SEC for “consider(ing) consequences in their remedies,” noting that “a corporate fine that in effect would have grievous impact on innocent shareholders is taken into account” when the SEC decides to fine a lawbreaking company. In other words, no matter how bad the crime may be or how much a punitive penalty may be required to deter future wrongdoing, White is arguing that effects on shareholders still should remain a determinative factor in whether the federal government’s law enforcement agencies opt to mete out that necessary punishment.
If that wasn’t bad enough, White then dropped the biggest bombshell of the whole hearing: She admitted to vetting her own prosecutorial decisions through White House economic appointees when she served as a U.S. attorney. That’s right, she specifically admitted that before deciding to prosecute a financial institution, she contacted Treasury officials Bob Rubin and Larry Summers to find out “whether an indictment of that institution would result in great damage to either the Japanese economy or the world economy.” ...
That’s no small admission because that notion of political officials not having prosecutorial input is supposed to be sacrosanct. Indeed, one of the reasons U.S. attorneys are appointed to set terms is to deliberately insulate their prosecutorial decisions from interference by political officials and, therefore, allow those prosecutorial decisions to be made without fear or favor. White’s admission yesterday shows she made a mockery of that whole system.
The Power of Finance and a New, New Deal
"What we're seeing now is a convergence of folks on the progressive left and the right with an interest in breaking up the banks. It's not every day where you have people like Simon Johnson speaking at an AFL-CIO event talking about a George Will column that he agrees with. And so there you have Richard Fisher from the Dallas Fed, Tom Hoenig, who's now at the FDIC board, and many others in academia and in policy and, you know, asking for and recognizing that these banks are too big, that they have an implicit guarantee, and that they're interfering with democracy."
How Deadbeat Banks Pushed Detroit To The Brink
Detroit faced major challenges even before the Great Recession, with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the auto industry and the hollowing out of the urban core (“white flight” into the ring suburbs robbed Detroit of its tax base going back several decades). The financial crisis and subsequent economic crash sent these problems into overdrive. But lately a new meme has arisen from supporters of the emergency manager ruling: Scapegoating the citizens of Detroit by characterizing them as a bunch of tax cheats. A report in the Detroit News asserted that only half of city property owners pay their property taxes, leaving $246.5 million uncollected annually. This figure represents the highest rate of unpaid property tax among major U.S. cities.
Rather than demonizing “deadbeat” homeowners, however, we should examine who actually evades responsibility for paying taxes on those properties. Detroit has been ravaged by an unending foreclosure crisis. Predatory loans trapped borrowers into monthly mortgage rates they couldn’t pay, with lenders particularly targeting lower-income minority areas like Detroit. Many of those homeowners are gone now, evicted from their properties. It is a pattern that has sunk property values, making the high property tax rates in Detroit even more unsustainable. But it also has turned banks into the real deadbeats, depriving the city of revenue.
In a foreclosure, the property reverts back to the bank, which then becomes responsible for all maintenance and upkeep, as well as any fees. Some banks simply ignore these responsibilities and refuse to pay taxes or keep the vacant property in good order. The more clever banks stick evicted homeowners with the bill.
Across the country and particularly in Detroit, banks have engaged in “walkaways,” where they start foreclosure proceedings but then find them too costly to complete. They choose not to finish the legal steps to foreclosure, leaving the properties vacant. Banks that walk away from homes do not have to notify the city, or even the borrower, that they have abandoned the foreclosure process. Borrowers kicked out of their homes then find themselves still responsible for property tax payments.
Over 100 Guantánamo Hunger Strikers Protest Cruelty of Indefinite Detention
Over 100 prisoners in Guantánamo Bay's Camp 6 have reportedly joined in a hunger strike in protest of the worsening conditions amidst the "crushing reality" of indefinite detention. ...
Reacting to the worsening "humanitarian crisis" at the prison, members from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) testified at a hearing Tuesday before the international human rights body, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), "marking the first time since President Obama’s re-election that U.S. officials were confronted with questions about Guantánamo and its future in a formal public setting."
"In light of the humanitarian crisis unfolding at Guantanamo, it is indefensible that the U.S. government failed to answer the Commission’s simple questions about how it plans to close the prison camp," CCR said in a statement released Tuesday. Representatives before the IACHR testified on issues including the "grave psychological impact of indefinite detention, the deaths of men at Guantánamo, the lack of access to fair trials, and illegitimate U.S. policies that restrict the closure of the prison, including the blanket ban on repatriating Yemeni men."
As Gitmo Prisoners Revolt, Obama Admin Challenged on Indefinite Detention at OAS Hearing
WSJ: CIA 'Ramping Up' Role in Iraq
As US military role in Iraq's counterterrorism unit dwindles, CIA reportedly steps in to thwart Syria conflict spillover
As the U.S. military's role in Iraq's Counterterrorism Service (CTS) dwindles, the CIA is stepping in and "ramping up" its role with the unit, The Wall Street Journal reports on Tuesday.
Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the WSJ reports that the increased CIA role is in an effort to prevent spillover from the war in Syria by helping CTS fight al-Qaeda in Iraq, which reportedly has ties to Syria-based Jabhat al Nusra, described in media reports as an "Islamist extremist group."
Bradley Manning Speaks: In Leaked Court Recording, Army Whistleblower Tells His Story for First Time
”Progressives In Name Only?
Every member of Congress has chosen whether to sign a letter making a crucial commitment: “We will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits -- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need." ...
Twenty-eight members of the House of Representatives have signed the letter.
Here are their names: Brown, Cartwright, Castor, Clay, Conyers, D. Davis, DeFazio, Ellison, Faleomavaega, Grayson, G. Green, Grijalva, Gutierrez, A. Hastings, Honda, Kaptur, Lee, Lynch, C. Maloney, Markey, McGovern, Nadler, Napolitano, Nolan, Serrano, Takano, Velazquez and Waters.
If you don’t see the name of your Congress member on that list, you live in a House district without a representative standing up for economic decency.
Especially noteworthy are 49 members of the House who belong to the Congressional Progressive Caucus but have refused to sign the Grayson-Takano letter. In most cases, they represent districts with a largely progressive electorate. In effect, their message is: We like to call ourselves “progressive” but we refuse to clearly stand up to an Obama White House that’s pushing to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits. To see the names of those 49 members of Congress, click here.
Peril in the Pacific: No to the TPP
K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents
An education technology conference this week in Austin, Texas, will clang with bells and whistles as startups eagerly show off their latest wares. But the most influential new product may be the least flashy: a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.
In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school - even homework completion. ...
The database is a joint project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided most of the funding, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from several states. Amplify Education, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, built the infrastructure over the past 18 months. When it was ready, the Gates Foundation turned the database over to a newly created nonprofit, inBloom Inc, which will run it. ....
Federal officials say the database project complies with privacy laws. Schools do not need parental consent to share student records with any "school official" who has a "legitimate educational interest," according to the Department of Education. The department defines "school official" to include private companies hired by the school, so long as they use the data only for the purposes spelled out in their contracts.
Inequality and the Environment
Warming World Is Stripping the Future of 'Four Seasons'
Winters are already significantly warmer and shorter than just 30 years ago. The temperature regimes and plant life of the south have marched more than 700 kilometres northward, new research shows. ...
By 2091, the north will have seasons, temperatures and possibly vegetation comparable to those found today 20 to 25 degrees of latitude further south, said Ranga Myneni of the Department of Earth and Environment, Boston University.
“If we don’t curb carbon emissions, Arctic Sweden might be more like the south of France by the end of the century,” Myneni, co-author of the Nature Climate Change study published Sunday, told IPS.
Canada, Northern Eurasia and the Arctic are warming faster than elsewhere as a result of the loss of snow and ice, he said. In 90 years, Alaska or Canada’s Baffin Island in the Arctic may have seasons and temperatures comparable to those in today’s Oregon and southern Ontario.
James Hansen on Climate Tipping Points
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Our Better Angels
Begging Obama to Turn on His Banker Friends
The facts behind skyrocketing tuition
For "Grand Bargain" Potluck, President Obama Brings the Democrats Seed Corn
Cuz the Blues don't Wait Til Sundown, and the Blues Doesn't Work on Daylight Savings Time
A Little Night Music
Robert Pete Williams - Grown So Ugly
Black Keys- Grown So Ugly
Robert Pete Williams & Robert "Guitar" J. Welch - Mississippi Heavy Water Blues
Robert Pete Williams - High As I Want To Be
Robert Pete Williams - Pardon Denied Again
Robert Pete Williams - Free Again
Robert Pete Williams - Freight Train Blues
It's National Pie Day!
The election is over, it's a new year and it's time to work on real change in new ways... and it's National Pie Day. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to tell you a little more about our new site and to start getting people signed up.
Come on over and sign up so that we can send you announcements about the site, the launch, and information about participating in our public beta testing.
Why is National Pie Day the perfect opportunity to tell you more about us? Well you'll see why very soon. So what are you waiting for?! Head on over now and be one of the first!
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