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 Chicago blues singer and guitarist "Magic Sam" Maghett. Enjoy!
Magic Sam - All Your Love and Lookin' Good
“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
News and Opinion
Freddie Gray: protests across US as Baltimore forced to free 100 suspects
Marches in New York, Boston, Ferguson and Washington, while authorities in Baltimore back down after holding people for days without charge
Protests over the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray spread across the US overnight as the city at the centre of the storm used national guard troops to help maintain a curfew and authorities were forced into an apparent backdown after holding suspected rioters for days without charge.
Gray died last weekend in Baltimore with a severed spine after apparently being injured in police custody.
Baltimore on Monday had been the scene of widespread rioting and destruction but on Wednesday night the protests, while large, were mostly good-natured. ...
Also on Wednesday, after a flurry of legal challenges, more than 100 people were freed from police custody, having been been held since Monday under what amounted to a suspension by Hogan of the writ of habeas corpus – the right to be released from an arrest made without lawful cause.
Natalie Finegar, the deputy district public defender in Baltimore City, told the Guardian that after 82 habeas corpus petitions were filed to the attorney general’s office, a decision was made to release those who were yet to have charges read against them.
Finegar said the decision to hold so many “without any respect for due process” could “further shake the confidence in the criminal justice system for those arrested”. She said many of those detained had complained of the harsh conditions in jail. Some said they went 18 hours without food and later were given inedible pieces of bread.
History Repeats? Activist Tom Hayden on Police Brutality Protests from the 1960s to Baltimore
Hillary Clinton Condemns Criminal Justice System Her Husband Helped Build
Hillary Clinton distanced herself from her husband’s criminal justice legacy on Wednesday, labeling the system that he actively supported as “profoundly wrong.”
“We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance,” Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a speech at Columbia University. ...
But her call to “end to the era of mass incarceration” comes in stark contrast to the policies that her husband Bill espoused during his presidency.
During Bill Clinton’s eight years in the White House, the number of people imprisoned by the federal government nearly doubled, from 85,565 in 1993 to 156,572 in 2001.
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 he signed into law played a major role in that increase. The former president acknowledged on Tuesday that the system “put too many people in prison” during his two terms in the White House.
Police Commissioner Says No New Evidence of Force-Related Injuries to Freddie Gray
Maryland Legislator Discusses Taking Food Stamps From Parents of Protesting Youth
Maryland State legislator Patrick McDonough, the guest host of a drive-time radio program on Wednesday morning, discussed the possibility of revoking food stamps from the parents of protesting Baltimore youth.
Later during the same broadcast, McDonough called for a “scientific study” of what he called the “thug nation” in the black community. McDounough is a Republican member of the state’s House of Delegates who represents a suburban area northeast of the city. ...
During much of the three hour program, McDonough discussed the “thug community” of Baltimore.
“These young people, they’re violent, they’re brutal, their mindset is dysfunctional to a point of being dangerous,” he said, noting that he does not want to “put them in a test tube or cage.” But, McDonough added, “We have got to study, investigate, and really look at what this is all about,” calling it a problem “that prevails the nation from Los Angeles to Baltimore to Baltimore County.”
McDonough repeated several times during his broadcast that his use of the term “thug” was not a “dog whistle” because President Obama had used the term to describe Baltimore protesters.
How Baltimore’s Police and Poverty Fueled A Youth Revolt
In order to understand the events that followed Gray’s killing — the fires, the looting, the clashes with police that occurred Saturday and Tuesday — one must first understand the relationship between the police and the poor, mostly black residents of this section of the city. In her book, The Hero’s Fight: African Americans in West Baltimore and the Shadow of the State, author Patricia Fernandez-Kelly wrote about “how growing up poor in the richest nation in the world involves daily interactions with agents of the state, an experience that differs significantly from that of more affluent populations.” When Kianda Miller said that her neighbors didn’t have money, she was right. One entity, however, has plenty of resources: the police department. Last summer, The Baltimore Sun reported that “police departments in Maryland have received more than $12 million in excess equipment from the U.S. military through a federal program that has come under bipartisan scrutiny.”
The Baltimore PD has enough of an outsized bank account to rank as the eighth largest department in the country — in a city that’s only the nation’s 27th largest. The bulked up department has developed a reputation for brutal treatment of black residents. Since 2011 alone, the city has paid nearly $6 million to settle police brutality cases. ...
Many black residents in West Baltimore say all this gear has been used to treat them like enemies on the battlefield. Betty Smith, a young person from the Gilmor Homes, where Freddie Gray once lived, said she’s never been able to walk around without being stopped and harassed by police. “I grew up with him [Gray], he was a fun loving guy … Once the police hopped on me, my daughter, and my two nephews and made us sit down at gun point. We’re kids! They’re one and two!” says Smith. “The police are bullies with badges. They harass us all day long and we can’t even walk down the street. They lock us up for jay-walking. We can’t do nothing.” ...
Speaking with residents in West Baltimore, Baltimore’s most policed and predominantly African-American neighborhood, it seems clear that many view the police surveillance apparatus and Baltimore’s heavily armed guards as enemy forces, there to suppress rather than protect them. “Who’s policing the police? They’re their own gang, they stick together, help each other, and never tell on each other,” said Rob Gordon, a 48-year-old West Baltimore resident.
Iraq War a War Crime - Pushed by Cheney Over Objections of Joint Chiefs and CIA - John Kiriakou
US Poised to Expand ISIS Fight Worldwide
The war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria isn’t exactly making headway, indeed it seems destined to be the latest open-ended military boondoggle in a long line for the US in that region.
Still, that doesn’t mean the mess can’t get even bigger, and that’s exactly what’s likely to happen, according to officials familiar with the situation who say that the US is likely to agree to expand the ISIS warto include its assorted affiliates across the planet.
Certain nations within the US coalition, primarily Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are demanding the war be expanded to other countries with ISIS presences as well, and US officials say that keeping those nations satisfied will virtually oblige the administration to accept the demands.
The ISIS war isn’t going particularly well to start with, however, and the White House still hasn’t gotten it authorized by Congress. It seems like this would be a particularly difficult time to sell the idea of expanding it from two countries to a dozen or more.
Iraqi Shiite cleric threatens US over budget provision
An influential Shiite cleric threatened Wednesday to attack U.S. interests in Iraq and abroad over a congressional provision to send arms directly to Sunni and Kurdish fighters.
The proposed measure in the House Republicans' defense authorization bill for next year would distribute a quarter of the $715 million authorized to train and equip the Iraqi army outside the government's control. It's unclear if the provision will survive the months-long legislative process.
"In the event of approving this bill by the U.S. Congress, we will find ourselves obliged to unfreeze the military wing and start targeting the American interests in Iraq — even abroad, which is doable," said the statement on Muqtada al-Sadr's website.
Neocons bang the war drums: Here’s how they’ll try to sink the Iran agreement
The White House hates that Congress wants to get its paws on its carefully crafted, would-be multilateral deal restraining the Iranian nuclear program. That it’s agreed to sign this bill should tell you something: It’s been amended to be relatively pain-free. It still includes a review period required before the president can waive any sanctions on Iran, but now it’s 30 days instead of 60. The extraneous provision requiring the administration to certify that Iran has not sanctioned any acts of terrorism against U.S. interest is withdrawn. And Congress would essentially need a veto-proof majority on a resolution of disapproval to block the deal from going through.
“Toothless” is another word to describe this review act, and anti-deal hawks have taken notice. That’s the descriptor offered by neoconservative editorialist Bill Kristol, who’s explicitly called on Congress to use whatever means it has at its disposable to kill a deal. In his most recent Weekly Standard column, Kristol tells GOP senators that Corker-Cardin, as it is, won’t fly:
There is no reason to think that passage of this bill, as it now stands, significantly increases the chance of reversing such a deal once it is agreed to. There is every reason to think, if the bill passes without serious debate, that it will have the opposite effect—of giving the illusion that Congress is really doing something to stop or slow down a bad deal when it is not.
As with most Bill Kristol articles, the first few paragraphs are about Munich, 1938, and how current events are analogous to it. Eventually he gets to the point, though, urging Republican senators to offer a bunch of amendments on the floor next week.
Sen. Marco Rubio has already filed seven amendments, Roll Call reports. ... Sen. Ron Johnson has an amendment to treat the deal like a treaty — i.e., one that would requiring a two-thirds Senate vote to approve. ... Lest you thought Sen. Ted Cruz would be left out of the mix, he “has drafted an amendment with Republican Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania designed to require lawmakers to approve any final deal reached with Tehran, rather than establish a process for expressing disapproval, as currently drafted.” So, similar to the Johnson amendment.
China worried US cyber strategy 'ups the ante on the internet arms race'
China’s defence ministry expressed concern on Thursday over the Pentagon’s updated cyber strategy, which stresses the US military’s ability to retaliate with cyber weapons, saying this would only worsen tension over internet security. ...
The Pentagon’s new cyber strategy presents a potentially far more muscular role for the US military’s cyber warriors than the Pentagon was willing to acknowledge in its last strategy rollouts in 2011, and singles out threats from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
China is frequently accused by the US and its allies of engaged in widespread hacking attacks, charges Beijing always vociferously denies.
Defence ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said that as the world’s most technologically advanced nation when it came to the internet, the US was only worsening tension over cybersecurity with its new strategy.
“This will further exacerbate contradictions and up the ante on the internet arms race. We are concerned and worried about this,” Geng said.
The US should stop blackening China’s name when it came to cybersecurity, and was in any case hypocritical in its criticism because of the US National Security Agency’s Prism snooping programme, he added.
"History Is Finally Moving On": Tom Hayden on Thawing of U.S.-Cuba Relations Despite GOP Opposition
Supreme court asks if execution drugs are like being 'burned alive at the stake'
The prospect of death row inmates being “burned alive at the stake from inside” in the absence of effective anesthesia was invoked at the US supreme court on Wednesday as the justices wrestled with the nationwide crisis caused by the European-led boycott of lethal injection drugs.
Anger spilled from the nine justices from both sides of the court’s ideological divide. The more conservative wing vented their disapproval at those they called “abolitionists” who they accused of trying to overturn the death penalty by stealth, while the more liberal judges attacked states such as Oklahoma for using a new drug protocol that had left prisoners “writhing in pain” in executions that took up to two hours to complete. ...
In Glossip v Gross, the court is being asked to decide whether the use of a new drug in executions, midazolam, fell within the boundaries of the US constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. A string of recent procedures have shown prisoners displaying visible signs of prolonged distress – most notoriously the execution of Clayton Lockett almost exactly one year ago, in which he thrashed and groaned on the gurney in full view of witnesses, taking 43 minutes to die. ...
“There is huge uncertainty about what happens when somebody is given [midazolam]. The evidence is that nobody can tell – that nobody knows for sure whether midazolam will work,” Kagan said.
If that were the case, she argued, then what would happen when a prisoner is administered the third drug in the triple lethal injection protocol – potassium chloride, which stops the heart? “People say that potassium chloride is like being burned alive – they talk about being burned at the stake, which everyone agrees is cruel and unusual.”
'Expose the Slaveholders': Activists Disrupt For-Profit Prison Corp. Meeting
As the for-profit prison corporation GEO Group held its annual shareholder meeting in Boca Raton, Florida on Wednesday, human rights organizations calling for an end to incarceration converged on the company's headquarters to demand accountability and divestment from the prison industry.
Documenting the action on Twitter, organizers made clear how they see GEO Group's role in the industry, adding #Slaveholders to numerous posts. The action itself was dubbed, "Expose the Slaveholders."
"Opportunities for Black and Brown communities have been intentionally thwarted through intergenerationally maintained oppression. What drives this? The same institution that has fueled this country since its birth—slavery," reads a blog post by the civil rights group Dream Defenders. "Through the proliferation of prisons for profit, the United States is a slaveholder, and private prisons are the cruel overseers who go through extreme means, including documented physical and sexual abuse, lobbying for increased mandatory minimums and fraudulent reporting, to maximize profit."
Fraud, Waste, and Lies: Charter Schools Cheating Communities Out of Millions of Dollars
Accepting and soliciting bribes. Diverting public funds for personal profit. Lying about the number of students. These are just a few examples of the fraud and malfeasance committed by charter school officials—cheating communities out of millions dollars that were supposed to go to education, a new report finds.
The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse (pdf) was released Tuesday by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) and the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD).
It concludes that, in 15 states alone—a third of states with charter schools—such waste cost more than $200 million. ...
However, the report warns, "The number of instances of serious fraud uncovered by whistleblowers, reporters, and investigations suggests that the fraud problem extends well beyond the cases we know about. According to standard forensic auditing methodologies, the deficiencies in charter oversight throughout the country suggest that federal, state, and local governments stand to lose more than $1.4 billion in 2015."
"The vast majority of the fraud perpetrated by charter officials will go undetected because the federal government, the states, and local charter authorizers lack the oversight necessary to detect the fraud," the report adds.
Hellraiser Preview
Sherman, set the time machine for tomorrow's Hellraisers Journal which will feature a happy birthday wish to Mother Jones who says on this day: “I have spent one birthday in jail and missed spending the last one by only a few hours, but I’d be willing to spend all of them in prison if it would be of any help to my boys."
Tune in at 2pm!
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Obama’s “No Growth, No Jobs, No Recovery” Economy Gives Up The Ghost
The world’s biggest economy ground to a standstill in the first quarter of 2015 wracked by massive job losses in the oil sector, falling personal consumption, weak exports and droopy fixed investment. Real gross domestic product (GDP), the value of the production of goods and services in the US, increased at an abysmal annual rate of just 0.2 percent in Q1 ’15 according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis demonstrating conclusively that 6 years of zero rates and Large-Scale Asset Purchases (LSAP)– which have enriched stock speculators, inflated the largest asset-price bubble in history, and exacerbated inequality to levels not seen since the Gilded Age– have done nothing to improve the real economy, boost demand or reduce unemployment. As the BEA data illustrates, the US economy is basically DOA, a victim of criminal congressional negligence and Central Bank chicanery. ...
The economy is in the shitter. Consumers aren’t spending because the crap-ass jobs they landed after the crisis pay half as much as the jobs they lost when Wall Street blew up the financial system. Personal savings are up and spending is down because households face an uncertain future where pensions are being trimmed and Social Security is under attack. Also, spending is impacted by the historic low (employment) participation rate which indicates that joblessness is much higher than the government’s phony numbers suggest. When workers are unemployed they don’t spend, activity drops, and the economy tanks. It’s that simple. Today’s data just confirms what most people already know, that the economy stinks and that they’re being ripped off by a voracious oligarchy that’s stacked the deck in their favor.
The US economy is stuck in the mud because our bought-and-paid-for congress has relinquished all authority and handed over the management of the economy to the industry-controlled Federal Reserve. Whereas our current budget deficits are in the range of 2 percent per annum, the government should be spending a lot more to compensate for the slowdown in private sector spending and investment. In the past, the congress and president would initiate sensible Keynesian fiscal stimulus programs to keep the economy sputtering along while households repaired their balance sheets or businesses struggled with weak demand. Those tried-and-true remedies have been jettisoned for the new monetarist orthodoxy that requires that all the nation’s wealth be filtered through the Wall Street casino so that the pampered thieves who destroyed the country with their mortgage-securities-Ponzi-scam be further rewarded for their insatiable greed.
Rise of progressive policies signals Democrats' embrace of Bernie Sanders' ideals
The independent senator from Vermont is typically dismissed as a “self-described socialist” by those who doubt America’s appetite for policies seen as mainstream in much of the world but long-regarded as almost unmentionable in the land of the free.
But while even his biggest fans don’t necessarily expect to see the 73-year-old maverick waltzing into the oval office anytime soon, his decision to challenge Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic nomination coincides with rising optimism that their focus on income inequality and campaign finance reform is catching the national mood. ...
“It’s a real stretch to say [Sanders] is out of the mainstream; he is very much ahead of the curve when it comes to a lot of politicians in Washington,” argues Charles Chamberlain of Democracy for America. “It is Washington DC that is out of touch with where the average American is really at.” ...
Adam Green, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee argues that the surprise decision of Clinton to champion many of the same themes as Warren and Sanders shows such views are now mainstream among Democrats, and the only question is how forcefully Clinton will follow through with policy.
“The shift in direction of the Democratic party is now coming to a close with the victory of the Warren wing,” claims Green. “It is now about a scale – do we go big or settle for smaller changes?”
In presidential bid, Sanders warns not to underestimate him
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is running for the Democratic nomination for president, says he will do more than simply raise progressive issues or nudge Hillary Rodham Clinton to the left.
"People should not underestimate me," Sanders told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday confirming his presidential bid. "I've run outside of the two-party system, defeating Democrats and Republicans, taking on big-money candidates and, you know, I think the message that has resonated in Vermont is a message that can resonate all over this country." ...
Sanders starts his campaign as an undisputed underdog against Clinton. ... He noted he has "never run a negative ad in my life," but still drew a distinction with Clinton, promising to talk "very strongly about the need not to get involved in perpetual warfare in the Middle East."
"I voted against the war in Iraq," he said. "Secretary Clinton voted for it when she was in the Senate."
Clinton is hosting a series of fundraisers this week, starting what could be an effort that raises more than $1 billion. Sanders said he will make money and politics a central theme of his campaign, including a call for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision, which he blames for unleashing a torrent of money from wealthy donors into politics.
"What you're looking at here is a real disgrace," he said. "It is an undermining of American democracy. But can we raise the hundreds of millions of dollars that we need, primarily through small campaign contributions to run a strong campaign? And I have concluded that I think there is a real chance that we can do that."
This is an interesting examination of both Bernie's record and the internal politics of the party that he has chosen to run for nomination in.
The Problem With Bernie
So, Bernie Sanders made his call. He is going to run for President of the United States and he is going to do so as a Democrat. Even if he wins the nomination, one can be quite certain that the reactionary forces of US capitalism will oppose him in every way they can. Additionally, and more insidiously, so will a fair number of liberal champions of US capitalism to his right in the Democratic Party. Yet, he has made his claim and it is one he will have to live with, no matter what price he ends up paying. Given the nature of national electoral politics in the United States, his chances of winning the party nomination are small, much less the presidency itself.
Who is Bernie Sanders and what does he stand for? Now that he is a candidate, it’s fair to assume that his biography will be dissected across the media spectrum. To much of the US population, he is still the most radical politician from the Left they have ever seen. This is especially true for anyone who came of age politically since Ronald Reagan’s first term in the White House. What interests me more is the gradual transition he has made politically from socialist (more or less) to social democrat and from that to liberal Democrat. ...
[Discussion of Bernie's record at link above. - js]
In a recent interview I conducted with Left progressive authors William Grover and Joseph Peschek regarding their book The Unsustainable Presidency, I asked them if Sanders could actually move the US leftward and institute policies for working people and other disenfranchised. The key part of their answer was “(No.) He would be among the first to admit that. Indeed, in an interview last week he did just that: “We can elect the best in the world to be president, but that person will get swallowed up unless there is an unprecedented level of activism at the grassroots level.” The question I have for Mr. Sanders is this: How does he expect to create radical change in the US if this radical grassroots activism he correctly states is needed is hijacked by the Democratic Party–a political entity that is owned lock, stock and barrel by the very same banks and corporations he claims to oppose. After all, it’s been many years since the progressive George McGovern was the Democratic candidate for President. It’s been almost as long since the conservative wing of that party formed the Democratic Leadership Council and changed their rules so that no one with politics like McGovern’s would ever be their nominee again. Ask Bill Clinton about that. After all he was the first candidate chosen by that council to win the White House. His wife may be the next. There are those who say Sanders will “at least move the discussion leftward.” That is not enough. Conversations are meaningless without bold, concrete action. The Democratic Party has proven over the past six and a half years that not only is it incapable of bold action in favor of the vast majority of working people in this country, it is barely capable of concrete action. How else does one explain the disastrous austerity policies taking place in the United States?
The majority of Vermonters still like Bernie Sanders. In fact, he wins election with a substantial majority every time he runs. After all, as the summary above of his voting record suggests, Bernie Sanders is if nothing else a shrewd politician. Like his colleague currently in the White House, Sanders campaigns on progressive and populist themes. Unlike Mr. Obama, however, Sanders usually sticks to his positions on issues relating to labor, veterans, children, corporate cheats, and certain social issues (marriage equality, for example.) However, when it comes to matters of war and peace, his record is at best a mixed bag and, more likely, representative of his ideas on how the United States can maintain its imperial role forever (or at least for a long, long time.) Remember, all US wars involve a defense of the capitalist economy and, consequently, a belief in that economy’s superiority. Bernie Sanders actions make it clear he shares that belief. ...
He’s more of an ally than a foe, isn’t he? My answer to these challenges is that I’m not sure. So called progressive politicians who do not draw the link between corporate America’s wars and its attack on social security, health care, the minimum wage, forty- hour work week, and other issues working people consider important are doing us a disservice. The wars fought by the US military are ultimately fought for one reason only–to maintain and expand the power of corporate America at the expense of workers and the poor around the world.
Russell Brand interviews Ed Milliband
The Evening Greens
California governor calls for drastic reduction in gas emissions by 2030
California would aggressively reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 under a plan announced on Wednesday that steps up the state’s previously established target, which has cut emissions partly by forcing companies to pay for their carbon pollution.
Governor Jerry Brown’s executive order is loftier than a federal goal that also aims to curb global warming, but it gives the state more time to achieve it. Brown’s plan lacks specifics, but he previously has cited increasing renewable electricity sources, reducing petroleum use in vehicles, doubling the energy efficiency of existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner as ways to reduce emissions.
Brown set a target of reducing emissions to 40% below 1990 levels over the next 15 years and called it the most aggressive benchmark enacted by a government in North America.
“With this order, California sets a very high bar for itself and other states and nations, but it’s one that must be reached – for this generation and generations to come,” Brown said in a statement.
Canadian Government Trying to Buy First Nations Support for Tar Sands
The government of Alberta, Canada is trying to buy the approval of First Nations opposed to tar sands development by offering them royalties or possible investor-shares in the fossil fuel project profits.
According to a draft proposal of an agreement seen by Canada-based Guardian reporter Martin Lukacs, the provincial government is seeking to create a task force that includes representatives from First Nations who would meet regularly with energy companies TransCanada, Enbridge, and Kinder Morgan, charged with the task of persuading other First Nations groups to support pipelines such as the Energy East project in exchange for oil royalties and "opportunities to become investors or owners of oil enterprises or projects." ...
Alberta First Nations have largely led the opposition to the development of tar sands and, as Lukacs notes, several tribes have launched legal challenges against the government for violating treaty rights in their "management and rapid development" of what environmentalists consider the world's dirtiest form of fossil fuels.
According to the draft, the tribes that signed onto the endeavor would be committed to "urge others engaged in litigation against Alberta to withdraw their legal challenges."
New Report Warns of West Coast Tar Sands Oil Invasion
The West Coast of the United States and Canada is facing an imminent tar sands oil invasion, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). ...
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) forecasts that tar sands supply will increase from 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2013 to 6.2 million bpd by 2030. To achieve those volumes, a significant portion of that oil would have to go to the West Coast by a combination of pipelines, rail and tanker.
The new report notes that if current plans for infrastructure to handle tar sands oil transportation proceed, “tar sands refining on the West Coast could increase eightfold, from about 100,000 bpd in 2013 to nearly 800,000 bpd in coming decades.” To put this in perspective, this is approximately the amount the proposed TransCanada KXL pipeline would transport to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
And while 800,000 bpd would be refined in the U.S., much of the tar sands oil headed to the West Coast would likely be exported to Asian markets where producers can receive higher prices. This point is currently made on the Markets page of Oil Sands Today, which states, “The West Coast is a critical outlet for Canadian oil to reach customers in Asian markets.”
While there is currently a ban in the U.S. on exporting crude oil, the ban only applies to oil that is produced in the U.S. and thus Canadian tar sands oil can be exported from U.S. ports.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Egypt gets a revolution, Baltimore a riot: Why hasn’t radical empathy started at home?
A Tale of Two Cities: How Baltimore Reached Its Boiling Point
We need racial justice and economic justice. We can’t breathe if we can’t eat
The truth about adverts: selling the White Woman™
“The personification of neoliberalism”: Doug Henwood explains why he’s still not ready for Hillary
Give 'Em Hell, Bernie
Data diving at Pew
A Little Night Music
Magic Sam - Easy Baby
Magic Sam - I Don't Want No Woman
Magic Sam - My Love Will Never Die
Magic Sam - San-Ho-Zay
Magic Sam - I Have The Same Old Blues
Magic Sam - 21 Days in Jail
Magic Sam - She Belongs To Me
Magic Sam - You Belong to Me
Magic Sam - I Found A New Love
Magic Sam - You Don't Have to Work
Magic Sam - I Need You So Bad
Magic Sam - What Have I Done Wrong?
Magic Sam - Mole's Blues
Magic Sam - Every night about this time
Magic Sam - Do the camel walk
Magic Sam - Love me with a feeling
Magic Sam - Look watcha' done
Magic Sam - All Night Long
Magic Sam - I'm so glad
Magic Sam - I Just Want a Little Bit
Magic Sam - (I Feel So Good) I Wanna Boogie
Magic Sam - Mandrake's, 1969
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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