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 blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player Iverson "Louisiana Red" Minter. He performed early in his career with Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker and recorded more than 50 albums of his own.
Louisiana Red & Acoustic Wire - Red´s Dream
“A pickpocket is obviously a champion of private enterprise. But it would perhaps be an exaggeration to say that a pickpocket is a champion of private property. The point about Capitalism and Commercialism, as conducted of late, is that they have really preached the extension of business rather than the preservation of belongings; and have at best tried to disguise the pickpocket with some of the virtues of the pirate.”
-- G.K. Chesterton
News and Opinion
Obama's Budget Proposal: Cut Social Security, Medicare Benefits
President Obama's budget proposal to be unveiled next week will include cuts to Social Security and Medicare, according to media reports Friday morning.
Politico reports:
The most controversial element of Obama’s proposal is the inclusion of “chained CPI,” the adjustment that would over time reduce cost-of-living increases to Social Security and other federal benefit programs — effectively, a cut to Social Security benefits by tying them to inflation.
... Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), founder of the Defending Social Security Caucus, offered a reminder that "In 2008, candidate Barack Obama told the American people that he would not cut Social Security."
The Looting Of America
Now It’s Official: Obama Sells Catfood Futures, Um, Social Security and Medicare Cuts
There is no more pretense possible. As we’ve warned for some time, Obama is eager to put a notch on his belt by being the President that rolled back the New Deal programs that helped create broad-based middle-class prosperity and dignity. He’s cast himself as an adult inflicting discipline on profligate Americans. But in reality, the profligacy was most concentrated among elite financiers who used leverage on leverage vehicles to stoke liquidity that led to worldwide underpricing of risk. They paid themselves record bonuses in the years immediately preceding the crisis, and then in a grotesque display of ingratitude, did so again in 2009, able to do so only thanks to massive taxpayer support, alphabet-soup special borrowing programs, and the tax on savers known as ZIRP. And the direct result of their looting exercise that produced the crisis was the explosion in government deficits, due to a collapse in tax revenues and a rise in payments under countercyclical programs such as unemployment insurance and food stamps.
But are the real perps the object of Obama’s disciplinary impulses? No. He seems spectacularly unwilling to take on anyone even remotely approaching his size (as if a President should be cowed by senior banker bullies like Jamie Dimon). The President’s failure to reprimand the financial CEOs who dissed him by refusing to attend his address on the first year anniversary of Lehman was a tacit acknowledgement that they were really in the driver’s seat.
Keep in mind what is happening here. We are not in the realm of Obama kayfabe, where he pretends that those big bad Republicans forced him to do what he wanted to do all along. This is Obama’s budget offer, not the result of pretend hard fought battles over positions that are at most 10 degrees apart. ...
I assume Obama’s flacks understand full well what an extreme porcine maquillage exercise “in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise” is. We now have the absurd spectacle of Paul Ryan’s budget being to the left of Obama’s on the issue of Social Security and Medicare. If the Republicans have an iota of sense, they’ll take full advantage of the weapon Obama has handed them.
Leaks reveal secrets of the rich who hide cash offshore
Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife. ...
In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it.
In Mongolia, the country's former finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have to resign from politics as a result of this investigation. ...
The whistleblowing group WikiLeaks caused a storm of controversy in 2010 when it was able to download almost two gigabytes of leaked US military and diplomatic files.
The new BVI data, by contrast, contains more than 200 gigabytes, covering more than a decade of financial information about the global transactions of BVI private incorporation agencies. It also includes data on their offshoots in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Cook Islands in the Pacific.
Bill Black wins the understatement of the week award:
"Obviously this was not a governmental effort."
Investigation Reveals Trillions Hidden in Tax Havens
Guess What? Tax Dodging by the Rich Cost You $1,026
America’s largest corporations have stashed nearly $1.5 trillion in offshore tax havens like Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, and Ireland — countries where they do little business but claim massive profits due to low tax rates. As a result, corporate tax rates fell to a 40-year lowin 2011 even as profits rose to a 60-year high.
Tax avoidance from corporations and wealthy individuals has a cost for individual taxpayers and small businesses, according to a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. According to U.S. PIRG, tax dodging cost individual taxpayers $1,026 and each small business $3,067 in 2012.
Those costs don’t necessarily come from higher taxes; instead, they often come in the form of higher budget deficits or, as they are now, from substantial cuts to public programs and services that benefit middle- and low-income families. “This is a real loss and it’s putting great pressure on the budget and all kinds of investments and programs that the federal government needs to continue to fund,” Michigan Sen. Carl Levin (D) said on a conference call unveiling the report today. Levin has authored legislation calling for the closure of tax loopholes that incentivize the offshoring of profits. “It’s time to close the loopholes, reduce the deficit to protect these important investments in our future, and to bring some fairness back to the tax code,” Levin said.
Lawrence Lessig: We the People, and the Republic we must reclaim
Has Obama's Do-Nothing DOJ Dropped The Ball On Review of NYPD Spying?
n early 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder promised members of Congress that the Justice Department was "actively looking at" the New York Police Department's spying on American Muslims. Now, more than a year later, advocates—and two top Democrats—are still wondering what happened.
"I have patiently waited for the Department of Justice to complete its review of the situation, but it has been nearly two years since the story broke and over a year since the Department of Justice committed to doing a review of NYPD's actions," Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif), who was detained in an internment camp during World War II, told Mother Jones. Honda said that the Justice Department should "conduct a full investigation, not a simple review, of the NYPD's numerous constitutionally questionable actions immediately."
Muslim advocacy groups have regular interagency meetings with the federal government but have also received no official response on the matter. Nor has Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), who says he "first requested that the department conduct an investigation in response to news reports in September of 2011." Since then, Holt adds, "I have received no substantive updates from the Justice Department, despite many follow-up inquiries. To my knowledge, no investigation has been conducted."
Judge overrules Obama to protect women’s health
Crucial victory had to come from Reagan-appointed judge
Today, a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan did for women’s health what the Obama administration was too politically cowardly to do: Make safe, time-sensitive emergency contraception available to everyone, regardless of age. The shameful thing is that it had to come to this.
The administration, said 2nd Circuit District Judge Edward Korman, acted in “bad faith” — a phrase that arises again and again in the stinging decision. And Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius acted in a fashion that “was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent.”
Some context: Women under 17 have been required to obtain a prescription to get emergency contraception (the effectiveness of which diminishes with time), a jump through hoops that may prevent them from taking it at all — despite the fact that there is no medical reason to deny them the same access as older women. In other words, it’s about a short-sighted panic about teenage sex. These politicized rules began under George W. Bush’s FDA, which is when the Center for Reproductive Rights initially filed suit, but Barack Obama promised science would prevail in his administration. In December 2011, however, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius overruled the recommendations of the FDA for trumped-up reasons that Korman ridicules, line by line. The only reason that made sense: Fear that, in the impending election, hay would be made out of what the right falsely calls “the morning after pill” being given freely to young teens behind their parents’ backs.
To add insult to injury, President Obama himself endorsed the decision by paternalistically announcing, “As the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine.”
New WikiLeaks cable reveals US embassy strategy to destabilize Chavez government
In a secret US cable published online by WikiLeaks, former ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to infiltrate and destabilize former President Hugo Chavez' government.
Dispatched in November of 2006 by Brownfield -- now an Assistant Secretary of State -- the document outlined his embassy’s five core objectives in Venezuela since 2004, which included: “penetrating Chavez’ political base,” “dividing Chavismo,” “protecting vital US business” and “isolating Chavez internationally.”
The memo, which appears to be totally un-redacted, is plain in its language of involvement in these core objectives by the US embassy, as well as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), two of the most prestigious agencies working abroad on behalf of the US.
According to Brownfield, who prepared the cable specifically for US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the “majority” of both USAID and OTI activities in Venezuela were concerned with assisting the embassy in accomplishing its core objectives of infiltrating and subduing Chavez’ political party:
Torture Shamer: UK army in spotlight as Iraq war vets blow whistle
Should A Torturer Run The CIA Clandestine Service?
Google Fights U.S. National Security Probe Data Demand
Google Inc, operator of the world’s largest search engine, is challenging a demand by the U.S. government for private user information in a national security probe, according to a court filing.
It “appears” to be the first time a major communications company is pushing back after getting a so-called National Security Letter, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet privacy group. The challenge comes three weeks after a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that NSLs, which are issued without a warrant, are unconstitutional.
“The people who are in the best position to challenge the practice are people like Google,” said EFF attorney Matt Zimmerman, who represented an unidentified service provider that won the March 14 ruling. “So far no one has really stood up for their users” among large Internet service providers.
The government has issued 300,000 NSLs since 2000, and only four or five recipients have challenged the letters, Zimmerman said.
Chris Hedges: Why I Resigned from PEN
Former EPA Climate Adviser Rips Obama Over Environmental Regulations
In a stinging critique at the Yale Journal on Regulation, one of the EPA's former top officials on climate change argues that the Obama White House has been the biggest impediment to tough regulations. Lisa Heinzerling served as the senior climate policy counsel at the EPA from January to July 2009 and as the associate administrator of the Office of Policy from July 2009 to December 2010. Heinzerling brought serious climate chops to the EPA; before joining the administration, she was one of the lead authors in the plaintiffs' briefs in Massachusetts v. EPA, the settled court case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. She has since returned to her job as a law professor at Georgetown University.
Her piece points to the White House Office of Management of Budget —and its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in particular—as the place where tough regulations go to die. ... It's often impossible to tell what happens to new environmental rules once they go into the OMB, which means the Obama administration is breaking its promises of transparency, Heinzerling argues. The problems at OMB also stem, she says, from an overemphasis on cost-benefit analysis for all new regulations. Cass Sunstein, the legal scholar who headed OIRA for most of Obama's first term before leaving last August, was a major proponent of this process of comparing the monetary costs and benefits of any proposed regulation. Using this to evaluate environmental regulations is a source of controversy, particularly for cases where the benefit of, say, not filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases can be difficult to quantify.
Greece austerity fuels illegal logging
Five Six Oil Spills in One Week: 'Accidents' or Business as Usual?
Let's review the record over the last week:
• This past friday, ExxonMobil's Pegasus Pipeline coated the streets of Mayflower, Arkansas, with what CNN describes as a "smelly, asphalt-like crude."
• Enbridge was back at it again last week, with the fourth recorded spill in two months along its Norman Wells Pipeline through the Northwest Territories. The company has leaked an estimated million litres of oil since February, 2011, from this one pipeline, prompting the National Energy Board to order an engineering assessment of the chronically malfunctioning line.
• Meanwhile, back at the Alberta Tar Sands, Suncor was dealing with (and furiously downplaying) a leak from one of its massive waste ponds into the Athabasca River. This comes on the heels of a leaked memo to Conservative Resources Minister Joe Oliver, which acknowledged routine spillage from these ponds throughout the Tar Sands.
• Over the weekend, Michigan was hit with another spill - this time up to 500 gallons of hydraulic oil spilled into the Lansing Grand River during an equipment malfunction at a local utility.
• For those who would look to rail as an alternative to pipelines for transporting oil, there was the derailment last week of a CP Rail train, spilling an estimated 30,000 gallons of its crude cargo in western Minnesota.
Yet another oil spill has come across the wire - a CP Rail spill from a derailment in northern Ontario - raising the total of spills this past week to SIX.
Media Grounded: No-fly zone over Arkansas oil spill to censor news coverage?
Obama Hints at Approval of Keystone XL Pipeline at SF Fundraiser, Blames Middle Class Priorities
While President Obama didn't address the Keystone XL Pipeline directly at a San Francisco fundraiser on Wednesday, he did give a hint that political reality – or his perception of it -- will compel him to approve it. ...
He said, "The politics of this are tough."
“[T]he thing that I’m going to have to try to work to persuade the American people a little more convincingly on is this notion that there’s a contradiction between our economy and our environment is just a false choice,” Obama said at a San Francisco fundraiser.
“If we invest now, we will create jobs, we will create entire new industries; other countries will be looking to catch up, they will be looking to import what we do,” Obama said at one of two fundraisers supporting Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee efforts to retake the House next year.
Obama’s remarks came at the home of billionaire Tom Steyer, a major supporter of green energy and climate initiatives who is planning to play an active role in the 2014 elections.
Obama said earth’s temperature probably isn’t the “number one concern” for workers who haven’t seen a raise in a decade; have an underwater mortgage; are spending $40 to fill their gas tank, can’t afford a hybrid car, and face other challenges.
The remarks of the president didn't mention Keystone, but given the recent State Department Report -- written with input from pipeline consultants -- that gave the project a green light, Obama appears to be preparing even a billionaire opponent for the inevitable: approval of the southern leg of the Keystone XL Pipeline because of "the politics."
Action Center
Add Your Keystone XL Comment During The State Department's Public Comment Period
The State Department's official public comment period on the Keystone XL Pipeline is now open -- and it's a crucial opportunity for us to flood them with comments.
Click Here To Participate
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Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin'
Dolphin, turtle deaths a sign of sick Gulf: Obama Classified Gag Order Is Bullshit
DEA iMessage Memo: Agency Document Says Apple's Encrypted Messages 'Impossible To Intercept'
"Liberals": Partisan or Principled?
Obama Budget: From Bad to Worse
Forced sterilization is necessary because...THREE!
A Little Night Music
Louisiana Red - I'm Too Poor To Die
Louisiana Red - Midnight Rambler
Louisiana Red/Carey Bell - Mosquito and the Bumble Bee
Louisiana Red - Bring It On Home To Me
Louisiana Red - Alabama Train
Louisiana Red - I Been Down So Long
Louisiana Red - Parole Blues
Louisiana Red - You Got To Move
Louisiana Red/Peg Leg Sam - Poor Boy
Louisiana Red - What Is That She Got
Louisiana Red - Nothing But A Gypsy Man
Louisiana Red - Millennium 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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