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 evening's music features folk and blues musician Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter. Enjoy!
Lead Belly - Goodnight Irene
“To win the people, always cook them some savoury that pleases them.”
-- Aristophanes
News and Opinion
The Parties’ Role Reversal on ‘Interfering’ with the Commander-in-Chief’s Foreign Policy
Senate Republicans, obsessed as always with carrying out the agenda of the Israeli government and leading the U.S. into more militarism and war, yesterday wrote a letter to “the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” designed to derail an international agreement governing that country’s nuclear program. Numerous leading Democrats – in Congress and the media – are today using the language of criminality, sedition and even treason to denounce that letter, insisting that it is a violation of American “norms” and possibly American law for members of Congress to “undermine” the President’s conduct of foreign policy and diplomacy. ...
To see how thoroughly Democrats have adopted the GOP’s Bush-era authoritarian rhetoric about not “undermining the commander-in-chief,” and to see how craven is GOP behavior now on Iran, just look at what was being said in 2007 when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Syria and met with President Bashar Assad. The Bush administration was furious about that meeting because its strategy at the time was to isolate Assad as punishment for his alleged aid to Iraqi insurgents fighting against U.S. occupying forces, and the right-wing media and even mainstream media precincts attacked Pelosi in ways quite redolent of today’s attacks on the Senate Republicans over Iran. ...
Dick Cheney called Pelosi’s trip “bad behavior” and said in an interview with Rush Limbaugh: “The president is the one who conducts foreign policy, not the speaker of the House.” Writing in National Review, then-Minority Whip Eric Cantor complained that “Mrs. Pelosi usurped the executive branch’s time-honored foreign-policy authority”; “at such a critical moment in the volatile Middle East,” he inveighed, “this is no time for the United States to be sending out mixed signals to our enemies.” The right-wing extremist Congressman Steve King actually introduced legislation to bar Pelosi from traveling to “terrorist states.” ...
The GOP reaction was even more strident when then-Congressman Dennis Kucinich criticized the Iraq War on Middle East television in 2007 after meeting with Assad. About that controversy, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that “words like ‘traitor’ and ‘treason’ have been liberally bandied about on television and talk radio,” and it quoted Republican Peter King as saying this on Fox News: “You cannot have American congressmen, American senators going overseas to an enemy, which Syria is, and denouncing our policies.”
For their part, Democrats, needless to say, thought it was perfectly legitimate for members of Congress to act in opposition to Bush’s foreign policy. In Salon, Joe Conason mocked “the screaming critics of the speaker [who] charge her with undermining presidential power [and] freelancing Mideast diplomacy,” insisting that “those furious complaints were all false and, more important, beside the point.” He said that Republicans “can only smear those who, like Speaker Pelosi, are attempting to promote a bipartisan alternative” and concluded: “Let us hope she possesses the courage to continue that crucial mission.”
Still, the reason I so vividly remember the 2007 controversy over the Pelosi trip is because it was part of this constant Bush-era effort to demand that the President was the sole authority on foreign policy, and that attempts by members of Congress to “interfere” with his actions were illegitimate, possibly illegal, and likely treasonous, because few things are worse than, as Joe Lieberman put it, undermining the Commander-in-Chief (and just by the way, if you’re a citizen who is not in the military, the President is not your “Commander-in-Chief”). ... That mentality and rhetoric are no less offensive when used by Democrats today than it was when it was being spewed by Republicans for the entire Bush presidency. And the “treason” rhetoric now being spouted by Democrats is part of a broader embrace by many of them in the Obama era of the worst rhetorical excesses of Bush-era Republicans.
Republican Presidential Candidates Endorse Iran Letter
While controversy continues to swirl violently around the open letter to Iran by 47 Republican senators, the signatures of four of the Senators, Rand Paul (R – KY), Marco Rubio (R – FL), Ted Cruz (R – TX), and Lindsey Graham (R – SC), all presidential hopefuls with eyes on the 2016 primary, has sparked a response.
Governors Bobby Jindal (LA) and Rick Perry (TX), two other potential candidates, are throwing their own support behind the potentially treasonous letter, seemingly so they don’t get left out. ...
Also uncoincidentally, the largest donor to Netanyahu’s reelection campaign, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is also a big target donor for Republican candidates. Adelson’s outspoken opponent to diplomacy with Iran is likely fueling a lot of this effort, as politicians in Israel and the US both court his deep pockets with grandiose efforts to sabotage the Iran talks.
Sanders: Iran Letter Shows GOP Senators Just 'Itching for War'
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has blasted 47 Republicans in the U.S. Senate for sending a letter this week to Iranian leaders and said the incident goes to show that some of his colleagues are simply "itching for war" when it comes to Iran.
"[M]y Republican friends seem to be itching for that war," Sanders told reporters on Tuesday following an event in Washington, D.C. "When you sabotage the effort to reach a peace agreement by the leader of the United States of America — the man who is charged with dealing with foreign policy — that, to me, is really unspeakable."
Making reference to the disastrous and costly wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, he added, "Apparently, some of my Republican colleagues do not believe that two wars are enough... I think that is a very, very tragic position to hold."
Israel elections: rising panic in Likud ranks as opposition gains momentum
Polls indicate growing lead for Zionist Union led by Isaac Herzog over Binyamin Netanyahu’s party with less than a week before vote
Israel’s opposition leader, Isaac Herzog, appears to be gaining momentum in the runup to next week’s general election, triggering a rising sense of panic in Likud, the party of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.
Two new polls suggest a lead of three to four parliamentary seats for the Zionist Union, with internal polling from both parties indicating a wider gap.
A text message sent to Likud activists, imploring them them to get out friends and relatives to vote on Tuesday, reads: “We are in danger of really losing!”
It goes on: “We must save the day and make sure that every single one of our friends/acquaintances/family makes it to the polls on election day and votes for the Likud. Wake up!”
Herzog, the Labour leader who has formed an electoral alliance with former justice minister Tzipi Livni under the Zionist Union banner, has been running neck and neck with Netanyahu, who is campaigning to serve a fourth term as prime minister.
Iraqi forces poised to recapture Tikrit from Isis
Iraqi forces led by Shia militias and backed by the army and Sunni tribal fighters appear poised to recapture the Isis stronghold of Tikrit in northern Iraq, in an offensive that could mark the first major reversal for the militant group in the country.
The pro-government forces have taken control of al-Alam, a strategic town on the eastern outskirts of Tikrit, and inched closer to the centre of Saddam Hussein’s hometown and former government installations west of the Tigris river, now held by Isis.
“The forces want to hold the Friday prayers in the centre of Salahuddin,” said Dr Hisham al-Hashimi, who advises the Iraqi government on Isis, referring to the province whose administrative capital is Tikrit.
The offensive is the largest against the jihadi group since it conquered large areas of the country, including Mosul and Tikrit, in a lightning advance last summer.
Its success would mark the first time Isis has ceded a major city under its control. Two previous attempts to retake it have failed.
A long way from home: Syrians find unlikely refuge in Brazil
Brazil did not loom large in the life of Humam Debas before the war in Syria. As a business manager from the city of Hama with a comfortable income, he had thought about taking his wife to Rio de Janeiro for a holiday. But all he really knew about the distant country was that it had beautiful beaches and a great football team. He assumed everyone there spoke English because it was close to the US.
Today, however, he is taking his first Portuguese class in São Paulo, where he and his family are trying to make a new start as refugees after being wrenched out of their homes by conflict and forced across the world by the reluctance of closer nations to take them in.
The move from a suburban neighbourhood of fellow Muslims to a teeming Latin American megalopolis in the world’s biggest Catholic nation has inevitably been traumatic, but Debas is grateful to be taken in by anyone.
“No other country would give Syrians a visa,” he recalls over a cup of Syrian coffee in the one-room apartment he shares with wife, two-year-old son and brother-in-law, in the Cambuci district of the city. “We could have tried to get to Europe illegally by boat, but that was too dangerous for my family. So Brazil was the only safe choice.”
Since 2013 when Brazil opened its doors, 1,740 Syrian refugees have been registered in the country - far more than in the US.
Is Venezuela Really an "Extraordinary Threat"? U.S. Sanctions Top Officials as Tensions Grow
PRESIDENT NICOLÁS MADURO: [translated] President Obama has decided to put himself into a box with no way out, a box of failure. And he has decided that he wants to be remembered in the future like Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. President Obama will be remembered in the future for his decision today and the aggression against the Venezuelan people, the noble people, because the people of Venezuela are a peaceful people. President Obama, you don’t have a right to attack us nor to declare that Venezuela is a threat to the people of the United States. You are the threat to the people of the United States, you who decide to invade, to kill, to finance terrorism in the world.
Obama absurdly declares Venezuela a security threat
Channeling Reagan, Obama continues US pressure on Latin American leftist governments
Yesterday the White House took a new step toward the theater of the absurd by “declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela,” as President Barack Obama put it in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner.
It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation’s chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon?
Who do they think they are kidding? Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S. law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it inconvenient. ...
The Venezuelan government has produced some credible evidence of a coup in the making: the recording of a former deputy minister of the interior reading what is obviously a communique to be issued after the military deposes the elected government, the confessions of some accused military officers and a recorded phone conversation between opposition leaders acknowledging that a coup is in the works.
Regardless of whether one thinks this evidence is sufficient (the U.S. press has not reported most of it), it is little wonder that the governments in the region are convinced. Efforts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela have been underway for most of the past 15 years. ... The face of Washington in Latin America is one of extremism. Despite some changes in other areas of foreign policy (e.g., Obama’s engagement with Iran), this face has not changed very much since Reagan warned us that Nicaragua’s Sandinistas “were just two days’ driving time from Harlingen, Texas.” He was ridiculed by Garry Trudeau in “Doonesbury” and other satirists. The Obama White House’s Reagan redux should get the same treatment.
U.S. Sanctions Against Venezuela Denounced by Latin American Leaders
On Ukraine, Will Obama Heed Call for Caution?
Ignoring threat of nuclear war, warhawks on both side of the aisle continue to push to send weapons to Ukraine
Despite mounting pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, sources close to the president say that he appears to be—for the time being—standing by his decision to not send arms to Ukraine.
President Obama is concerned that by arming the Ukrainians he would be "playing to Russia's strength," an argument recently made by Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
The New York Times, speaking with people close to the president, reported on Wednesday that "he has told aides and visitors that arming the Ukrainians would encourage the notion that they could actually defeat the far more powerful Russians, and so it would potentially draw a more forceful response from Moscow." Further, Obama wants to allow the shaky cease-fire, which was agreed on in Minsk last month, a chance to take hold.
"Mr. Obama continues to pose questions indicating his doubts," the Times continues, "'O.K., what happens if we send in equipment—do we have to send in trainers?' said one person paraphrasing the discussion on the condition of anonymity. 'What if it ends up in the hands of thugs? What if Putin escalates?'"
Mearsheimer: US democracy promotion means toppling govts
What Hillary Clinton and the State Department Didn’t Say About Her Emails
The reason Clinton's email use became an issue, as far as transparency advocates are concerned, is because federal regulations adopted by the National Archives and Records Administration require government employees to preserve their work-related communications so it can be sought by Congress and accessed by journalists, historians, and the public through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
During Clinton's time as Secretary of State, the State Department received at least a half-dozen FOIA requests for her emails covering various issues. But Clinton operated a private server out of her home, and her emails were not accessible to the FOIA analysts tasked with processing the requests. The State Department has failed to produce any records responsive to the requests, some of which date back five years. A spokesperson for State did not respond to repeated requests for comment from VICE News about whether any FOIA analyst asked Clinton to review and turn over emails for the purposes of responding to FOIA requests, or whether State issued any legal guidance indicating that her emails were exempt from FOIA.
Dan Metcalfe, the founding director of the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy (OIP), which is supposed to ensure government agencies are following FOIA guidelines, blasted Clinton and the State Department for allowing her to use personal email during the four years she served as Secretary of State.
Metcalfe told VICE News it is clear to him that Clinton's exclusive use of private email was a "blatant circumvention of the FOIA [in addition to] the Federal Records Act by people on both sides of it who unquestionably knew better." ...
"She should have had a government email account, first and foremost, and then also a personal email account that could be used for official business only occasionally when necessary," he said. "What should have happened is what happens when any agency head takes over an agency: The top career person for administrative matters meets with her to explain the do's and don'ts about the requirements of such things as ethics standards, the Federal Records Act, the FOIA, and the Privacy Act. One can only imagine when that meeting was held, Clinton pushed hard to get such special treatment, given the fact that any use of a personal email account at all is not flatly prohibited. That got turned on its head when she was allowed to use a personal email account exclusively."
CIA Aided Program to Spy on U.S. Cellphones
The Central Intelligence Agency played a crucial role in helping the Justice Department develop technology that scans data from thousands of U.S. cellphones at a time, part of a secret high-tech alliance between the spy agency and domestic law enforcement, according to people familiar with the work.
The CIA and the U.S. Marshals Service, an agency of the Justice Department, developed technology to locate specific cellphones in the U.S. through an airborne device that mimics a cellphone tower, these people said.
The program operates specially equipped planes that fly from five U.S. cities, with a flying range covering most of the U.S. population. Planes are equipped with devices—some past versions were dubbed “dirtboxes” by law-enforcement officials—that trick cellphones into reporting their unique registration information. ...
Some law-enforcement officials are concerned the aerial surveillance of cellphone signals inappropriately mixes traditional police work with the tactics and technology of overseas spy work that is constrained by fewer rules. Civil-liberties groups say the technique amounts to a digital dragnet of innocent Americans’ phones.
New Zealand Targets Trade Partners, Hacks Computers in Spy Operations
New Zealand is conducting covert surveillance operations against some of its strongest trading partners and has obtained sophisticated malware to infect targeted computers and steal data, newly released documents reveal. ...
The documents, revealed on Tuesday by the New Zealand Herald in collaboration with The Intercept, expose more details about the scope of New Zealand’s involvement in the Five Eyes, and show that the agency’s reach extends far beyond its previously reported eavesdropping on at least ten small South Pacific nations and territories.
According to secret files from the National Security Agency, obtained by The Intercept from whistleblower Edward Snowden, GCSB is targeting about 20 different nations and territories in total and sharing the intercepted data with the NSA. A top-secret document dated from April 2013 notes that the New Zealand agency “provides [the NSA with] collection on China, Japanese/North Korean/Vietnamese/South American diplomatic communications, South Pacific Island nations, Pakistan, India, Iran, and Antarctica.”
The surveillance being conducted by the GCSB shines light on a secret variant of New Zealand’s foreign policy that contrasts with its official public foreign policy.
Vietnam, for instance, has friendly relations with New Zealand and is a growing trading partner. The New Zealand government describes its relationship with Vietnam as having “flourished in the last 15 years.” The country poses no security or terrorist threat to New Zealand, the traditional explanation for GCSB operations given to the public. Yet its government is still on the GCSB spying list and its diplomatic communications have been eavsedropped on, likely in violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention of Diplomatic Relations, an international treaty ratified by New Zealand that says diplomats’ correspondence is “inviolable.”
Greece to demand WWII reparations from Germany
Greece announced Tuesday it is moving forward with a demand to seek World War II reparations from Germany, as Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accused Berlin of avoiding repayment of damages stemming from the Nazi occupation.
"Germany has never properly paid reparations for the damage done to Greece by the Nazi occupation," Tsipras told the Greek parliament Tuesday. "The crimes carried out by the Nazis are still vivid, and we have a moral obligation to remember what the forces did to the country."
"After the reunification of Germany in 1990, the legal and political conditions were created for this issue to be solved. But since then, German governments chose silence, legal tricks and delay," Tsipras said. ...
The 1990 settlement, Tsipras said, "does not include a forced loan given to the Nazis by Greece's central bank or the destruction of the country's infrastructure and economy at the time."
Greece is seeking 160 billion euros in compensation to
cover the loan and damages resulting from the occupation.
Greek PM pressures Germany over Nazi occupation debt, Berlin dismisses demands
Athens threatens to seize German assets over WWII reparations
Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos has said he is ready to sign an older court ruling that will enable the foreclosure of German assets in Greece in order to compensate the relatives of victims of Nazi crimes during the Second World War. ...
During the same debate, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras expressed his government’s firm intention to seek war reparations from Germany, noting that Athens would show sensitivity that it hoped to see reciprocated from Berlin.
Tsipras told MPs that the matter of war reparations was “very technical and sensitive” but one he has a duty to pursue. He also seemed to indirectly connect the matter to talks between Greece and its international creditors on the country’s loan program. “The Greek government will strive to honor its commitments to the full,” he said. “But it will also strive to ensure all unfulfilled obligations toward Greece and the Greek people are fulfilled,” he added. “You cannot pick and choose on ethical issues.”
Tsipras noted that Germany got support “despite the crimes of the Third Reich” chiefly thanks to the London Debt Agreement of 1953. Since reunification, German governments have used “silence, legal tricks and delays” to avoid solving the problem, he said. “We are not giving morality lessons but we will not accept morality lessons either,” Tsipras said.
Germany brushes off Greek calls for World War Two reparations
Germany dismissed Greek demands to pay World War Two reparations after leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accused Berlin of using legal tricks to avoid paying compensation for the Nazi occupation of his country. ...
Compounding tensions, a Greek minister said he was ready to endorse a court ruling allowing Athens to seize German state-owned property to compensate victims of a World War Two Nazi massacre of 218 Greek civilians in the village of Distomo..
Berlin is keen to draw a line under the issue and officials argued on Wednesday that Germany has honored its obligations, including a 115-million deutsche mark payment to Greece in 1960.
"It is our firm belief that questions of reparations and compensation have been legally and politically resolved," Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Wednesday.
Quantitative Easing for Whom?
HUDSON: ... The pretense is that banks lend money to companies to invest and build equipment and hire people. But that's not what banks do. Banks lend money to real estate. They lend money to corporate raiders. They lend money to buy assets. They don't lend money for companies to invest in equipment and hire. Just the opposite. They do lend money to corporate raiders, and when they take over companies, they outsource labor, they downsize labor, and they try to squeeze out more from the labor force, and they try to grab the pensions.
So the Fed was pretty open in what quantitative easing is supposed to do since 2008. It's supposed to lower the interest rates, which raises bond prices, and it inflates the stock market. And since 2008, they've had the largest monetary inflation history--$4 trillion of quantitative easing by the Fed. But it's all gone into the stock market and the bond market.
So what has this done? Well, it's helped stock and bond holders get richer. And who are the stock and bond holders? They're the 1 percent and they're the 10 percent. And people are wringing their hands and saying, why isn't the economy getting richer? Why is it since 2008 economic inequality and the distribution of wealth have worsened instead of gotten closer together? Well, it's because of quantitative easing. It's because quantitative easing has increased the value of the stocks and the bonds that the 1 percent or the 10 percent hold, and it hasn't helped the economy at all, because the Fed is really concerned with its constituency, which are the banks.
Homan Square detentions become major issue in Chicago mayoral race
Rahm Emanuel’s challenger in a runoff election that has the Chicago mayor fighting for his political life called allegations of incommunicado detention at the police facility Homan Square “troubling” and suggested an independent investigation was under way.
In his first public remarks about the secretive Chicago police warehouse, exposed by the Guardian two weeks ago, the Cook County commissioner, Jesús “Chuy” García, described an ongoing effort to do what hundreds of protesters have called for: an independent investigation from city hall.
“I did some checking through staff about the assertions made in that article,” García said in an interview with Windy City Times, the local LGBT newspaper. “We spoke with some experts in the field and we continue to investigate.” ...
García’s brief remarks were the first from a Chicago mayoral candidate since Emanuel’s dismissal of the Homan Square revelation on public television in February – “That’s not true,” the mayor said – and suggested he was addressing protesters’ demands.
Details of Chuy’s investigation remained unclear, but for weeks, community organizers and activists have taken to the west-side compound, the plaza outside Emanuel’s office and social media to call for an independent investigation by the mayor.
Ferguson removes city manager after damning justice department report
The city manager of Ferguson, Missouri, was removed from his job on Tuesday evening as the fallout grew from a damning report by the US justice department on the town’s administration. ...
Shaw, 39, said in a statement that with a “with a heavy heart” he had decided “it is in the community’s best interest that I step aside” from his $120,000-a-year job as chief executive. ...
Last week two senior police commanders resigned, and the court clerk was fired, over racist emails uncovered by the federal investigators. On Monday Ronald J Brockmeyer resigned as Ferguson’s municipal judge. The justice department’s report accused Brockmeyer of fixing traffic tickets for associates while implementing an aggressive court fees policy.
Shaw was singled out by investigators as a driving force behind the controversial strategy, which has seen the city sued in a class-action lawsuit that accuses it of running a modern-day “debtors’ prison”. The report found emails in which Shaw responded to news of record-breaking court revenues with messages such as “Wonderful!” and “Awesome!”
His relative obscurity belied his position as a more authoritative figure than James Knowles III, Ferguson’s part-time mayor, who has appeared frequently before the media since the death of Michael Brown on 9 August last year.
Wisconsin police shooting: young witnesses denied access to lawyers, friends say
Two young men were denied access to lawyers when they were taken in for questioning by police as witnesses to the police killing of Tony “Terrell” Robinson on Friday evening, according to friends and community activists.
Javier and Anthony Limon were questioned at the City County building in Madison, Wisconsin, after Robinson was shot and killed by police officer Matt Kenny last Wednesday.
The Limon brothers rent the apartment where the killing took place and are reported to have been with Robinson earlier in the day. The Rev Everett Mitchell, a former local prosecutor, told the Guardian that Limon called him to ask for support while he was being taken for questioning.
Craig Spaulding was one of those present Friday evening while the young people were being held. “We’re like a family,” Spaulding said, explaining that he considers himself a “surrogate father” to the young men, who are close to his son.
“We were denied access to them,” Spaulding said. “We were told that they were told they could have legal representation but [we were told] they’d said they were fine talking to the Department of Criminal Investigation with Justice Department, state Justice Department, and Madison police officers.” ...
Spaulding posted two videos to YouTube documenting the interactions with the officers. In one video, an officer explains to Spaulding [holding the camera] that “they have to request an attorney”.
Later in the same video, the Rev Mitchell explains to the two officials that they young men called him. “They called me up. That’s how I got down here.”
Cruel and Inhuman: UN Slams US as Only Nation that Sentences Children to Die In Prison
A United Nations human rights expert strongly condemned the U.S. on Tuesday for being the "only State in the world that still sentences children to life imprisonment without the opportunity for parole," thereby imposing cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment.
Juan Méndez, the Special Rapporteur on torture, made the comments in a report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva—building from his previous censure of cruel incarceration practices in a nation that locks up more people than any other country in the world.
Méndez noted that the U.S. practice of imposing life sentences on children in cases of homicide violates international law on numerous fronts, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. ...
Such prison sentences are widespread.
Approximately 2,500 people in the U.S. are currently serving life sentences without parole for crimes allegedly committed as juveniles, the Sentencing Project finds (pdf).
Gateway to Freedom: Historian Eric Foner on the Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a bit of "The Jungle" a few poems from the Appeal to Reason.
Tune in at 2pm!
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The White House’s $100M, H-1B funded tech job plan comes under fire
The White House has established a $100 million program that endorses fast-track, boot camp IT training efforts and other four-year degree alternatives. But this plan is drawing criticism because of the underlying message it sends in the H-1B battle.
The federal program, called TechHire, will get its money from H-1B visa fees, and the major users of this visa are IT services firms that outsource jobs.
Southern California Edison, for instance, is in the final phase of cutting 500 IT jobs as it shifts work to two India-based offshore providers. Many of the IT workers at the utility have had to train their visa-holding replacements.
Another source of controversy will be the White House's assertion that there are 545,000 unfilled IT jobs. It has not explained how it arrived at this number, but the estimate will likely be used as a talking point by lawmakers seeking to raise the H-1B cap.
Norm Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University of California-Davis who has long challenged the idea that there's a shortage of technical talent, said "the subtext of the White House announcement is to justify expanding the H-1B program." ...
"Just look at all the cases, including the recent Southern California Edison incident, in which Americans are laid off and forced to train their foreign-worker replacements; Clearly, it's the foreign workers who need the training, not the Americans," said Matloff. "The fact is that employers don't want to hire Americans; they want cheap, immobile labor."
Why does America continue to subsidize housing for the wealthy?
Many people in the US have given up on the American dream of owning a house: US homeownership rates have now dropped to the lowest point in almost 20 years. But the government shouldn’t be focusing on trying to raise that rate - for now, their priorities should lie with increasing affordable housing.
For too long, well-off, high-income homeowners have benefited from generous government support. All the while, ordinary Americans are struggling to pay the rising rent. It is time to stop prioritizing home sales – increasingly out of reach for many Americans – and help everyday people attain a much more basic, and pressing need: affordable housing. ...
Homeowners receive tax benefits for their housing expenses, mostly because of the enormously expensive mortgage interest deductions, which disproportionately benefits higher-income taxpayers. But no such support is offered to lower-income renters. The government should consider introducing housing tax credits or other tax benefits that would help those who are struggling to pay the rent.
The Evening Greens
Booming U.S. Renewable Energy Sector Growing Faster Than Expected
The mainstreaming of renewable energy is happening even faster than projected.
According to the latest “Electric Power Monthly” report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, which includes data through the end of 2014, some 13.91% of electricity generation in the U.S. last year was from renewable sources.
“Given current growth rates, especially for solar and wind, it is quite possible that renewable energy sources will reach, or exceed, 14% of the nation's electrical supply by the end of 2015,” noted Ken Bossong, executive director of the SUN DAY Campaign. “That is a level that EIA, only a few years ago, was forecasting would not be achieved until the year 2040.”
Wind energy continues to be the biggest clean energy source by far, supplying some 4.45% of 2014 electricity generation in the U.S. versus .45% from solar and .41% from geothermal. But solar is making great strides, seeing more than 100% growth last year while wind grew just 8.3% and geothermal by just 5.4%.
Coal and nuclear energy grew by .3% and 1%, respectively, while natural gas actually dropped, as did hydropower.
The EIA does not fully track rooftop solar energy generation, so these numbers understate solar’s contribution to the U.S. energy mix. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, there are nearly 600,000 homes and businesses generating their own energy through solar
America's First Offshore Wind Farm to Start Construction This Summer
A small wind project in New England just made history. Deepwater Wind announced Monday that its Block Island wind farm is fully financed and on track to become the nation's first offshore wind project.
Set to go online toward the end of 2016, the more than $290 million project involves constructing five wind turbines off the southwestern coast of Block Island, which lies about 13 miles off the coast of Rhode Island.
"In the minds of the general public and policymakers [offshore wind] is a very theoretical thing. That's the importance of Block Island: it will take offshore wind from theory to reality" in the United States, said Jeffrey Grybowksi, CEO of Providence-based Deepwater Wind. ...
At full capacity, the so-called "demonstration" project is expected to supply enough power for 17,200 homes in Rhode Island. The plant will supply energy to Block Island, which has about 1,000 people, and excess power will be sent to the mainland via underwater transmission lines.
Koch Industries Won't Comply With Dems' Probe into Fossil Fuel Money in Climate Research
The industrial conglomerate run by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch is refusing to provide Democratic lawmakers with information on whether it has paid for climate change research.
Last month, three Democratic senators sent 100 letters to an assortment of fossil-fuel companies and organizations seeking information on whether they have backed research into global warming and other environmental topics.
Koch Industries Inc., which includes refining, chemical and pipeline companies, was among the recipients.
But in a March 5 letter obtained by The Associated Press, Mark V. Holden, Koch's senior vice president and general counsel, wrote that such information treads on First Amendment rights.
Applauding Themselves to Death
If you visit the website of the UN body that oversees the world’s climate negotiations, you will find dozens of pictures, taken across 20 years, of people clapping. These photos should be of interest to anthropologists and psychologists. For they show hundreds of intelligent, educated, well-paid and elegantly-dressed people wasting their lives.
The celebratory nature of the images testifies to the world of make-believe these people inhabit. They are surrounded by objectives, principles, commitments, instruments and protocols, which create a reassuring phantasm of progress while the ship on which they travel slowly founders. Leafing through these photos, I imagine I can almost hear what the delegates are saying through their expensive dentistry. “Darling you’ve re-arranged the deckchairs beautifully. It’s a breakthrough! We’ll have to invent a mechanism for holding them in place, as the deck has developed a bit of a tilt, but we’ll do that at the next conference.”
This process is futile because they have addressed the problem only from one end, and it happens to be the wrong end. They have sought to prevent climate breakdown by limiting the amount of greenhouse gases that are released; in other words, by constraining the consumption of fossil fuels. But, throughout the 23 years since the world’s governments decided to begin this process, the delegates have uttered not one coherent word about constraining production.
Compare this to any other treaty-making process. Imagine, for example, that the Biological Weapons Convention made no attempt to restrain the production or possession of weaponised smallpox and anthrax, but only to prohibit their use. How effective do you reckon it would be? (You don’t have to guess: look at the US gun laws, which prohibit the lethal use of guns but not their sale and carriage. You can see the results in the news every week). Imagine trying to protect elephants and rhinos only by banning the purchase of their tusks and horns, without limiting killing, export or sale. Imagine trying to bring slavery to an end not by stopping the transatlantic trade, but by seeking only to discourage people from buying slaves once they had arrived in the Americas. If you want to discourage a harmful trade, you must address it at both ends: production and consumption. Of the two, production is the most important.
The extraction of fossil fuels is a hard fact. The rules governments have developed to prevent their use are weak, inconsistent and negotiable. In other words, when coal, oil and gas are produced, they will be used. Continued production will overwhelm attempts to restrict consumption. Even if efforts to restrict consumption temporarily succeed, they are likely to be self-defeating. A reduction in demand when supply is unconstrained lowers the price, favouring carbon-intensive industry.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
French Prime Minister Says He Is “Afraid” Of National Front
Capitalism was supposed to reduce red tape. Why is bureaucracy worse than ever?
A Little Night Music
Leadbelly - Black Betty
The Lost Fingers - Black Betty
Ram Jam - Black Betty
Lead Belly- Pick A Bale Of Cotton
Leadbelly - The Gallows Pole
Led Zeppelin - Gallows Pole
Alvin Youngblood Hart - Gallows Pole
Lead Belly - Take A Whiff On Me
Mission Mountain Wood Band - Take a Whiff on Me
Flying Burrito Brothers - Take a Whiff on Me
Leadbelly - John Hardy
Leadbelly - When I Was a Cowboy
Wayfaring Strangers - When I Was a Cowboy
Leadbelly - Good Mornin' Blues
Lead Belly - In The Pines
Leadbelly - House of the Rising Sun
Leadbelly - Mr. Hitler
Leadbelly - Take this hammer
Harry Manx - Take This Hammer
Lead Belly - Rock Island Line
Leadbelly - The Bourgeois Blues
Leadbelly - Jim Crow Blues
Leadbelly - Midnight Special (With The Golden Gate Quartet)
John Fogerty - Midnight Special
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