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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 one of Chicago's most expressive and passionate composers and guitarists Magic Sam. Enjoy!
Magic Sam - All Your Love and Lookin' Good
“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
-- Albert Camus
News and Opinion
'Some Cuts Don't Heal!' Simpson-Bowles Face Protest for Attack on Medicare, Social Security
As influential 'deficit scolds' present new plan, community members speak out
Community activists in Washington, DC on Tuesday took the opportunity of a morning Q&A breakfast with the nation's premiere 'deficit scolds'—former Republican senator from Wyoming Alan Simpson and establishment Democrat Erskine Bowles—to declare that the pair's recommended policies unfairly punish the sick, the elderly and working people in the name of a 'deficit reduction' plan backed by the nation's wealthiest beneficiaries and corporate elite.
Five protestors, rising at intervals, disrupted the Politico-sponsored event held at a Newseum conference room, pressed the two men to defend the inequity and misguided nature of their proposals. Each was removed, in turn, by security officials.
"Some cuts don't heal," the National Journal reports one protester repeating as he was escorted from the room. "How could you entertain the fact that you want to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security?" he asked, before being escorted out by security.
There's a reason why the
top 1% have captured 121% of the income gains roughly since Mr. Obama was installed as President. It's because workers have lost the pricing power to set the price of their labor. A key reason for this is the decline of unions, who support Democrats, but whose support is
largely unrequited.
Twenty Myths About Unions
Indian workers plan nationwide strike against anti-labor policies
Millions of Indian workers were expected to join a two-day nationwide strike starting Wednesday in protest against “anti-labour” economic reforms introduced by the embattled Congress government. ...
A one-day strike against reforms last September cost Asia’s third-largest economy $2.3 billion in lost output and trade, according to the Confederation of Indian Industry. ...
The government’s “big ticket” reforms include opening retail, insurance and aviation sectors to wider foreign investment, hiking prices of subsidised diesel used by farmers and reducing the number of discounted cooking gas cylinders.
The steps aimed at freeing up the still heavily state-controlled economy and lowering India’s ballooning subsidy bill and fiscal deficit have stirred wide public anger, especially among the poor.
Thousands of Greeks rally in anti-austerity strike
"A social explosion is very near."
Beating drums, blowing whistles and chanting "Robbers, robbers!" more than 60,000 people angry at wage cuts and tax rises marched to parliament in the biggest protest for months over austerity policies required by international lenders. ...
The two biggest labor unions brought much of crisis-hit Greece to a standstill with a 24-hour protest strike against policies which they say deepen the hardship of people struggling through the country's worst peacetime downturn. ...
Anger at politicians and the wealthy elite has been boiling during the crisis, with many accusing the government of making deep cuts to wages and pensions while doing too little to spread the burden or go after rich tax evaders. ...
"The strike highlights the growing gap between the plight of ordinary Greeks and the demands of Greece's international creditors," said Martin Koehring, analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, forecasting more social unrest this year. ...
Six years of recession and three of austerity have tripled the rate of unemployment to 27 percent. More than 60 percent of young workers are jobless.
Most business and public sector activity came to a halt with schoolteachers, train drivers and doctors among those joining the strike. Banks pulled down their shutters and ships stayed docked as seamen defied government orders to return to work.
Media and the Keystone March - Little coverage of large climate action
Tens of thousands of climate activists marched in Washington D.C.on February 17. Did the corporate media notice them?
The event brought together religious leaders, climate campaigners and Canadian indigenous rights activists. 350.org's Bill McKibben said they were "the antibodies kicking in as the planet tries to fight its fever."
But television newscasts made just passing references to what the activists were calling the biggest climate change action in many years, perhaps ever. It was not mentioned on any of the Sunday chat shows. ABC World News on February 17 gave the protest all of 43 words and CBS Evening News 49, while NBC Nightly News turned in a more generous 63. The CBS report did find time to assert that "the pipeline would create 20,000 jobs," which is an estimate that pipeline proponents have touted; other estimates, including one by the U.S. State Department, are much lower. ...
On public broadcasting, the PBS NewsHour turned in a decent summary of the action on its February 18 newscast, followed by a debate between a spokesperson from the Natural Resources Defense Council and an oil company lobbyist:
Indeed, it was a historic action. And when history looks back on how we responded to the climate change crisis, the fact that most of the corporate media missed its importance will be remembered.
Keystone XL Exec: To Support Dirty Tar Sands Is To Support 'American Values'
Despite 'largest climate rally ever,' industry leader says public opposition, media interest 'going down'
Following comments made at an industry roundtable with reporters on Tuesday, Sierra Club president Michael Brune said that 'no fact or truth' would penetrate the wall of denial put up by the world's oil and pipeline company executives or their lobbyists.
Asked about the 'Forward on Climate' rally in Washington, DC on Sunday that organizers say brought close to 50,000 people out in opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, Alex Pourbaix, president of oil pipelines and energy at TransCanada, said: “My experience is the events over the weekend are not getting nearly the coverage in the media they would have a year, year and a half ago. So I’m of the view that the temperature is going down on this issue.”
In a response garnered by Politico, Sierra Club's Brune said:
That TransCanada would say ‘the temperature is going down’ on dirty and dangerous tar sands that would only cause global temperatures to rise shows just how out of touch they are with reality. Whether they’re denying that Keystone XL is an export pipeline or ignoring the significant international news created by the nearly 50,000 Americans who stood up for climate solutions, it’s clear that no fact or truth is sacred to TransCanada.
Revealing the industry's clear public relations strategy at the roundtable, the oil industry reps pushed the oft-repeated canard about 'job creation' with Pourbaix going even further by saying that supporting the tar sands project was synonymous with supporting 'American values.'
Delaware Riverkeeper Calls For Help Stopping Fracking Pipeline
Pipeline Company Rushes in to Cut the Forest – Citizens Stand in Protest
Less than 24 hours after FERC approval was granted for tree clearing of “Pipeline Loop 323” that would cut through the Delaware River Watershed, Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) chainsaw crews, arriving in trucks with Wisconsin license plates, began invading the forests and cutting thousands of 70-year old trees to make way for the Northeast Upgrade Pipeline project (NEUP). The NEUP is being constructed to carry fracked shale gas from drilling zones in Pennsylvania across into New Jersey and on to other markets.
TGP clearly rushed its tree clearing plans in order to avoid any possibility that they might be stopped by the efforts of citizens to get the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to step in and require a DRBC review and docket before the project could proceed within the boundaries of our watershed.
Why would TGP be so fearful?
The past two weeks the Delaware Riverkeeper Network along with a rising tide of concerned citizens have been demanding their intervention and we are on solid legal and moral footing when doing so.
The DRBC Rules of Practice and Procedure require DRBC review and docketing for pipeline projects that “pass in, on, under or across an existing or proposed reservoir or recreation project area as designated in the Comprehensive Plan.” The NEUP is one such pipeline project -- it passes through the Delaware State Forest and High Point State Park, both Comprehensive Plan areas. Therefore DRBC's obligation to conduct a review that considers impacts on water resources is clear, and mandatory.
DRBC has acknowledged its failure to apply this element of the Rules of Practice and Procedure (i.e. with regards to the passage of pipelines through Comprehensive Plan areas) for two other upriver pipeline projects — namely the TGP 300 Line (of which the NEUP is a part) and the 1278 Columbia Line.
Citizens and organizations from around the region are joining us in our call for the DRBC to act. Please send your email to the DRBC and all its Commissioners today. March 6 is the next meeting of the DRBC Commissioners.
W.E.B. Du Bois vs Booker T. Washington - Then and Now
Throwaways: Recruited by Police & Thrown into Danger, Young Informants are Drug War’s Latest Victims
Supreme Court on Monsanto Tests Limitations of Patent Law
Monsanto Recieves Warm Reception in High Court
Observations from Tuesday's Supreme Court hearing between the Monsanto corporation and Indiana soybean farmer Hugh Bowman, indicate that the sympathy of the nine justices leaned heavily towards the agro-chemical giant while heaping skepticism on the arguments made on behalf of the small farmer. ...
Anticipating a corporate-friendly reception in the high court, representatives from sustainability advocacy groups the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and Save our Seeds (SOS)—who are supporting Bowman's appeal—wrote in an op-edTuesday that this particular logic is troubling because "it is the nature of seeds and all living things, whether patented or not, to replicate." They continue:
Monsanto's claim that it has rights over a self-replicating natural product should raise concern. Seeds, unlike computer chips, for example, are essential to life. If people are denied a computer chip, they don't go hungry. If people are denied seeds, the potential consequences are much more threatening.
According to the New York Times, Monsanto's attorney received a far warmer reception, saying that Seth P. Waxman, a former United States solicitor general, "was allowed to talk uninterrupted for long stretches, which is usually a sign of impending victory."
The Financialization of Food
Aided by Wall Street Shale Gas Bubble Looms
Two long-awaited reports were published today at ShaleBubble.org by the Post Carbon Institute (PCI) [Drill, Baby, Drill] and the Energy Policy Forum (EPF) [Shale Gas and Wall Street].
Together, the reports conclude that the hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) boom could lead to a “bubble burst” akin to the housing bubble burst of 2008. ...
In President Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address, he repeated the fracking industry’s favorite mantra: there are “100 years” of natural gas sitting beneath us.
“We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy,” he stated.
Hughes concludes that the “100 years” trope serves as a disinformation smokescreen and at current production rates, there are – at best – 25 years under the surface. ...
[The Shale Gas and Wall Street report states]:
“The recent natural gas market glut was largely effected through overproduction of natural gas in order to meet financial analyst’s production targets,” she wrote. “Further, leases were bundled and flipped on unproved shale fields in much the same way as mortgage-backed securities had been bundled and sold on questionable underlying mortgage assets prior to the economic downturn of 2007.”
Protest Shuts Down Fracking Wastewater Facility
Anti-fracking activists in Ohio shut down operations at a wastewater storage facility Tuesday after one demonstrator ascended a 30 foot pole anchored to a truck in the process of unloading frack wastewater, hindering all other trucks from entering the site.
While Nate Ebert—a 33-year-old Ohio resident and member of Appalachia Resist!—clung to the 'monopod', more than one hundred supporters gathered at its base at the Greenhunter Water hydraulic fracturing waste storage facility in the town of Matamoros, protesting the company's plans to increase capacity for toxic frack wastewater dumping in Ohio.
Part of Greenwater's proposal includes an outstanding request to the US Coast Guard to permit frack wastewater to be shipped across essential drinking water source, the Ohio River, via barge. ...
Ohio has become a popular dumping ground for toxic frack waste. According to Appalachia Resist!, the waste is injected underground into over 170 wells statewide, contaminating water and causing numerous earthquakes across the state. Resistance, however, has been growing since the discovery of the intentional dumping of hundreds of thousands of gallons waste into the Mahoning River.
Other groups participating in Tuesday’s action include Tar Sands Blockade, Radical Action for Mountain Peoples’ Survival (RAMPS), a coalition of indigenous leaders including representatives from No Line 9 and the Unis’tot’en Camp, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, and Earth First!.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
What a Targeted Killing in the US Would Look Like
Pres. Obama's Big Oil weekend host's history of war profiteering, discrimination
Another Bailout Since Dodd Frank Debunks the Lies
A Little Night Music
Magic Sam - I Don't Want No Woman
Magic Sam - I Have The Same Old Blues
Magic Sam - 21 Days in Jail
Magic Sam - High Heel Sneakers
Magic Sam - I Need You So Bad
Magic Sam - She Belongs To Me
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
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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