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Photos by: joanneleon. September, 2013.
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UPDATE: I'm adding this section for some of the latest updates (newest first) in the Grand Bargain Circus. You'll find more stories on it below, brought over from joe shikspack's Evening Blues last night. But selected latest updates will go here.
11:05am ET: Now being mentioned as part of the short term deal, possibly the "down payment" that some Republicans have mentioned -- repeal of the medical device tax and replacing that revenue with "pension reforms".
U.S. Congress urgently works to end fiscal deadlock
Vice President Joe Biden will join Obama in pressing for fast action, which could come by week's end if a series of new efforts by Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate bear fruit.
[...]
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans were discussing a series of different ideas, including a fast reopening of the government coupled with a debt limit increase and the repeal of an unpopular medical device tax that would raise revenues to help pay for "Obamacare" healthcare subsidies. Under that plan, the revenues would instead be raised through some pension reforms.
The Great Grand Bargain Theater continues and supposedly Boehner's and other Republicans' staffs were still working at midnight last night and intended to work through the night to come up with a deal that could be passed today. Interestingly, the House schedule was changed a few days ago, saying that the House would be in session on Saturday. Congress absolutely hates to work late or on weekends or for work to cut into their recesses. Harry Reid uses it as a threat all the time with the Senate and it moves legislators like seemingly nothing else can. So I think it's kind of amusing that they want to get this deal done today. The word is that they might pass something today and open up the govt by Monday. The part of the deal that nobody has talked about in public is what kind of a mechanism they are going to use to guarantee that the Democrats will come up with a Grand Bargain during this funding/debt limit temporary extension. A Super Committee? Some other gimmick? Will it have an interesting name? -- joanneleon
Sources: Key moment in White House meeting came between the President and Paul Ryan
[...] it was the moment that the president and Paul Ryan began engaging that changed the dynamic. The former GOP vice presidential candidate implored the President to deal with Republicans and find a way to work together, telling him they're not going away.
[...]
CNN is also told that another House GOP leader made the point to the President that they needed to come out with some positive news or else the markets could tumble.
I can't imagine any way in the world that Obama would agree to this condition -- a pledge that the Fed would not use any extraordinary measures. It would be a clear dereliction of duty for him to agree to that and it's a ridiculous request.
Grim-Faced Optimism as Fiscal Talks Continue
That bill had been described by Republicans as a "clean" debt-limit increase that does not ask for any specific policy concessions in return—a strategy not all House conservatives said they agreed with. More informally, in return for passing the bill, Republicans were seeking a verbal agreement from Obama to appoint budget conferees for a working group that will negotiate long-term fiscal issues during that six-week period. Some Republicans said the plan would also have somehow led to a ban—potentially a permanent one—on the Treasury Department using so-called extraordinary measures to avoid default.
[Emphasis added]
All kinds of kabuki language that suggests violence and hostages has been and continues to be thrown around by the White House. Also, note the involvement of Joe Biden now and what is that paragraph about big concessions? Why did they choose Nov. 22? It might be the day that Congress goes into recess for Thanksgiving and the leaders love to use the threat of keeping them in Washington during a recess as a way to force things through and coerce votes. But I think it's really strange to combine the violent language and the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination and there's no way they didn't notice that. I hope that's an unfortunate coincidence and not some way to exploit that. Ugh.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew that this was a “good-faith” effort by Republicans. Ryan said both sides should “put their guns back in their holsters” — a bid to reach an agreement to avoid default, reopen the government and start broader budget talks.
Biden was mostly quiet in the meeting but did say at one point that Obama has made concessions as president that he hasn’t seen in 36 years in the Senate.
[...]
Obama met separately with Senate Democrats and House Republicans at the White House. Senate Republicans will meet with Obama on Friday morning.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/...
Costa is saying that they will have to go to conference to pass a continuing resolution. I hope they don't pull out the Grand Bargain legislation itself and do something with that instead of a temporary extension. I don't think that's possible timewise, but I think the chance of this being a verbal agreement to do a Grand Bargain are slim to none. Something else has to be in this thing.
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'US unchained itself from constitution': Whistleblowers on RT after meeting Snowden
Published on Oct 10, 2013
Edward Snowden's revelations about the activities of NSA forced him to go on the run and seek sanctuary from US intelligence agencies. But it also won him a lot of support and praise. Just yesterday he received the Sam Adams prize for 'Integrity in Intelligence'. RT welcomes whistleblowers and activists Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Andrews Drake, Ray McGovern and Coleen Rowley in the studio. They saw the whistleblower in Moscow and presented him with the award.
Snowden's father interview after arrival in Moscow (FULL VIDEO)
Denims Put-Down: Iranians taunt Netanyahu over jeans blunder
LOL, they're surprised about this? This is Obama. And were they telling him the truth about the programs? Plus, they expect him to defend them when one of the whistleblowers has revealed that one of the NSA spying targets starting ~ 2004 (IIRC) was... Obama. Man, these guys just amaze me. The part about how "this has not gone unnoticed" sounds a little threatening to me. I'm not at all comfortable knowing that the NSA higher ups are pissed off at the White House. That sounds like a recipe for something ungood.
I also think it's interesting that the former NSA general counsel seems to be aware of what's being written about this in the "blogs on the left". Alexander is a Rumsfeld guy. Didn't Rumsfeld assign a team to collect everything that was written about the Pentagon in the media and create a report for him? I guess it wouldn't be too far out there to imagine Keith Alexander doing the same. If so, hello Keith Alexander. Stop spying on us. And Michael Hayden is throwing you under the bus, irony of ironies.
NSA Veterans: The White House Is Hanging Us Out to Dry
'There has been no support for the agency from the President, and this has not gone unnoticed.'
Gen. Keith Alexander and his senior leadership team at the National Security Agency are angry and dispirited by what they see as the White House's failure to defend the spy agency against criticism of its surveillance programs, according to four people familiar with the NSA chiefs' thinking. The top brass of the country's biggest spy agency feels they've been left twisting in the wind, abandoned by the White House and left largely to defend themselves in public and in Congress against allegations of unconstitutional spying on Americans.
[...]
"There has been no support for the agency from the President or his staff or senior administration officials, and this has not gone unnoticed by both senior officials and the rank and file at the Fort," said Joel Brenner, the NSA's one-time inspector general, referring to the agency's headquarters at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
[...]
Stewart Baker, the NSA's former general counsel, said he had not discussed the administration's response to the NSA scandal with officials in government, but that it was the "general perception" that it had been weak.
"The President is uncomfortable defending this. Maybe he spends too much time reading blogs on the left," Baker said. "That's fatal in cases like this. You have to make the case because nobody else will."
[...]
An NSA spokesperson downplayed any rift between the agency and the administration. "National security is a team sport. For us, collaboration is built into the very fabric of who we are," said Vanee Vines. "There is no truth to rumors of dissension between NSA and the administration regarding the Agency's mission to help defend the nation and save lives. Together, we all prevail."
England prevails.
Interesting. The sentence that jumped out at me is the one that struck emptywheel too, and she used it in the title of her post about the FP article.
“Together, we all prevail”
For a 1,500-word Shane Harris piece that could be part of Lawfare’s Empathy for Wiretappersseries (brought to you by NSA contractor Northrop Grumman!), Stewart Baker blames the White House failure to mount a vocal defense of NSA on John Brennan’s departure.
“I think actually this is the first signal that John Brennan is gone,” said Baker, the former NSA general counsel. “I think that if Brennan had still been there he would have immediately appreciated the importance, and communicated that to the president, of defending the program.”
[...]
Ah well. The NSA spokesperson is issuing slogans, so all is well in the national security world.
Everyone thought that Malala would win the Nobel Peace Prize. But instead, they must have decided at the last minute to give it to the OPCW, which is drawing a lot of WTFs from the public, based on waht I've seen on Twitter. Ironically, by giving the Peace Prize to OPCW, I think they're kind of giving it to Putin and Lavrov, who engineered the deal to prevent bombing of Syria and perhaps the triggering of WWIII. It's great that the OPCW is doing the chemical weapons seizure and clean up, but really if the creation of a peace option and the prevention of bombing Syria and creating a regional war was the prize-worthy result, the prize should have gone to Putin, the British House of Commons (or maybe Miliband) and the American people because that's who really stopped the bombing of Syria and led to the peaceful solution of removing chemical weapons from Syria.
And it's really a shame that there was so much expectation that Malala would get it and then she didn't. She is, of course, young and just beginning her work really, so there will be other opportunities for her later. But still. This seems like another controversial choice and a strange one.
Nobel highlights Syria with Peace Prize to chemical weapons watchdog
The prize committee in Oslo, Norway, awarded it Friday to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the international chemical weapons watchdog helping to eliminate the Syrian army's stockpiles of poison gas.
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning
Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government. ...
The current budget brinkmanship is just the latest development in a well-financed, broad-based assault on the health law, Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. Groups like Tea Party Patriots, Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are all immersed in the fight, as is Club for Growth, a business-backed nonprofit organization. Some, like Generation Opportunity and Young Americans for Liberty, both aimed at young adults, are upstarts. Heritage Action is new, too, founded in 2010 to advance the policy prescriptions of its sister group, the Heritage Foundation.
The billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, have been deeply involved with financing the overall effort. A group linked to the Kochs, Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, disbursed more than $200 million last year to nonprofit organizations involved in the fight.
Koch Industries deflects blame on government shutdown
Koch Industries, the multibillion-dollar company led by David and Charles Koch, tried to distance itself Wednesday from any blame for the government shutdown and congressional quagmire.
But doing so requires some explaining given the long track record that the Koch brothers have of supporting conservative Republican causes.
In a letter sent to Senate offices Wednesday, the company’s president of government and public affairs, Philip Ellender, said claims that Koch Industries pushed for a shutdown are “erroneous or misleading.” ...
Ellender, seeking to separate the company controlled by the Koch brothers from the Koch brothers themselves, wrote that Koch Industries is focused on “educating the public about reducing our nation’s debt and controlling runaway government spending.”
Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said that Ellender was technically correct in his effort to distinguish the company from the brothers.
But, she said, “it’s a distinction without a difference.”
Some longtime Republican donors are unnerved by the GOP’s shutdown strategy
Veteran Republican fundraisers are increasingly alarmed by the defiant stance of hard-line conservatives amid the federal government shutdown, prompting fears that many key donors may be restrained in their giving going into the 2014 midterms.
The growing unhappiness among longtime GOP check-writers and party elders underscores the deepening divisions over the ascendant tea party wing, which fueled this past week’s shutdown and is demanding Democratic concessions in exchange for reopening the government and raising the nation’s debt limit.
The tensions bubbled up this past week at a three-day gathering in Washington for backers of American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, the GOP-allied groups founded with the help of strategist Karl Rove that pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the past two elections. ...
One top party fundraiser said the Wall Street financiers and corporate executives he counts on for support are “having fits” over the GOP’s brinkmanship strategy, especially related to a potential default if Congress does not agree to raise the debt ceiling later this month.
“The donors I raise money from understand the vital importance of credit markets and are upset that the U.S. credit system is being put at risk,” said the fundraiser, who requested anonymity because of his position in the business world.
Handicapping the outcomes, this author argues that since the Fed used the emergency, "exigent circumstances" clause in the Fed Act to save Bear Stearns, the Fed is quite likely to invoke that authority again to save the larger economy from the idiocy of the politicians: --joe shikspack
The Most Likely Debt Ceiling Outcome
The US government will not default because, if the Congress can’t come to its senses, then the adults at the Fed and Treasury will simply circumvent their authority in an effort to avoid calamity. They have no choice because they either have to break the 14th amendment or the Fed Act (which is arguable to begin with given that the exigent circumstances clause is extremely vague).
[Explanation in the comment section:]
What the Fed did with Bear Stearns was highly controversial. They utilized the same clause without technically breaking any laws. Are we saying that we will bailout a stupid investment bank, but we won’t bailout the US Treasury using the same clause? That would be madness.
The point is, we’re going to break a law here no matter what. So we might as well put the pressure on the Fed instead of forcing the Tsy to break the law by breaching the debt ceiling. Instead, you actually have the Fed issue the loans so the Tsy breaks the debt ceiling, but it’s the Fed who’s really in the driver’s seat here. So all the attention will be on the fed breaking the Fed Act. It’s as clean a way around all this mess as there is.
'Gestapo' tactics meet senior citizens at Yellowstone
Pat Vaillancourt went on a trip last week that was intended to showcase some of America’s greatest treasures.
Instead, the Salisbury resident said she and others on her tour bus witnessed an ugly spectacle that made her embarrassed, angry and heartbroken for her country.
Vaillancourt was one of thousands of people who found themselves in a national park as the federal government shutdown went into effect on Oct. 1. For many hours her tour group, which included senior citizen visitors from Japan, Australia, Canada and the United States, were locked in a Yellowstone National Park hotel under armed guard.
The tourists were treated harshly by armed park employees, she said, so much so that some of the foreign tourists with limited English skills thought they were under arrest.
When finally allowed to leave, the bus was not allowed to halt at all along the 2.5-hour trip out of the park, not even to stop at private bathrooms that were open along the route.
“We’ve become a country of fear, guns and control,” said Vaillancourt, who grew up in Lawrence. “It was like they brought out the armed forces. Nobody was saying, ‘we’re sorry,’ it was all like — ” as she clenched her fist and banged it against her forearm.
Report Finds Police Worldwide Criminalize Dissent, Assert New Powers in Crackdown on Protests
In a major new report, the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations details a global crackdown on peaceful protests through excessive police force and the criminalization of dissent. The report, "Take Back the Streets: Repression and Criminalization of Protest Around the World," warns of a growing tendency to perceive individuals exercising a fundamental democratic right — the right to protest — as a threat requiring a forceful government response. The case studies detailed in this report show how governments have reacted to peaceful protests in the United States, Israel, Canada, Argentina, Egypt, Hungary, Kenya, South Africa and Britain.
Obama's efforts to control leaks 'most aggressive since Nixon', report finds
Barack Obama has pursued the most aggressive "war on leaks" since the Nixon administration, according to a report published on Thursday that says the administration's attempts to control the flow of information is hampering the ability of journalists to do their jobs.
The author of the study, the former Washington Post executive editor Leonard Downie, says the administration's actions have severely hindered the release of information that could be used to hold it to account. ...
"Those suspected of discussing with reporters anything that the government has classified as secret are subject to investigation, including lie detector tests and scrutiny of their telephone and email records," the report says.
This had a chilling effect on government accountability, even on matters that were less sensitive, it said.
David Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times and one of 30 journalists interviewed by Downie, says in the report: "This is the most closed, control-freak administration I've ever covered."
FBI pushed Lavabit founder to provide information they were not entitled to under court order
Lavabit’s founder offered to work with the American authorities if they would pay him $3,500 for his time, according to documents unsealed by the US courts. ...
The order only covered email metadata, and so content and passwords would not have been provided. “The headers I currently plan to collect are: To, Cc, From, Date, Reply-To, Sender, Received, Return-Path, Apparently-To and Alternate-Recipient.” ...
Levison also explained that his motivations were driven by the knowledge that the FBI had tried to get him to reveal information not covered by the court order.
In his 28 June meeting with the FBI, where he was served with the trap and trace order, he said he was told that “they would be collecting content and passwords, which really caused a lot of friction with me. If they had been more honest and said that at that point they were only trying to collect metadata, the situation may have developed differently.
“It was a textbook example of the FBI lying to me in order to get more information, and it ended up backfiring… I think they really wanted that information, I just know, retroactively, that they didn’t have authorisation from the court to collect it.”
Glenn Greenwald to publish Snowden leaks on France and Spain
Testifying before a Brazilian congressional panel, Greenwald accused Washington and its allies of waging a “war against journalism and the process of transparency.”
“I am learning now that the United States is using this surveillance system to punish the journalistic process,” said Greenwald, who, without elaborating, added he was working on material relating to France and Spain.
“We are undertaking high-risk journalism. We shall continue doing so until we publish the last document I have,” Greenwald told senators investigating allegations that Washington spied on Brasilia.
“I am not holding onto relevant documents nor hiding information. All that I had regarding surveillance against Brazil, and now France — I am working with French and Spanish newspapers — I publish. I don’t hold onto it,” he said in Portuguese.
New York Fed fired examiner who refused to go soft on Goldman Sachs: report
In the spring of 2012, a senior examiner with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York determined that Goldman Sachs had a problem. ...
That finding by the examiner, Carmen Segarra, potentially had serious implications for Goldman, which was already under fire for advising clients on both sides of several multibillion-dollar deals and allegedly putting the bank’s own interests above those of its customers. It could have led to closer scrutiny of Goldman by regulators or changes to its business practices.
Before she could formalize her findings, Segarra said, the senior New York Fed official who oversees Goldman pressured her to change them. When she refused, Segarra said she was called to a meeting where her bosses told her they no longer trusted her judgment. Her phone was confiscated, and security officers marched her out of the Fed’s fortress-like building in lower Manhattan, just 7 months after being hired.
“They wanted me to falsify my findings,” Segarra said in a recent interview, “and when I wouldn’t, they fired me.” ...
In hours of interviews with ProPublica, the 41-year-old lawyer gave a detailed account of the events that preceded her dismissal and provided numerous documents, meeting minutes and contemporaneous notes that support her claims. ... Segarra is an expert in legal and regulatory compliance whose previous work included jobs at Citigroup and the French bank Société Générale. She was part of a wave of new examiners hired by the New York Fed to monitor systemically important banks after passage in July 2010 of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, which gave the Fed new oversight responsibilities.
Janet Yellen pledges to help hardest-hit Americans
Barack Obama’s choice for chairman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, pledged to help those hardest hit by the recession and safeguard the financial system, at the official announcement of her nomination on Wednesday. ...
Yellen said she was “honored and humbled” by the appointment. If she is approved by the Senate, Yellen will be the first woman to head the Fed in its 100-year history.
“The past six years have been tumultuous,” she said. “While I think we will agree that more needs to be done to help those hardest hit by the recession, we have made progress,” she said. However, she added that “many Americans still can’t find a job and worry that they can’t pay their bills.”
Yellen also highlighted the Fed’s regulatory role. “We can and must safeguard the financial system,” she said.
Austerity pushing Europe into social and economic decline
Europe is sinking into a protracted period of deepening poverty, mass unemployment, social exclusion, greater inequality, and collective despair as a result of austerity policies adopted in response to the debt and currency crisis of the past four years, according to an extensive study being published on Thursday.
"Whilst other continents successfully reduce poverty, Europe adds to it," says the 68-page report from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. "The long-term consequences of this crisis have yet to surface. The problems caused will be felt for decades even if the economy turns for the better in the near future … We wonder if we as a continent really understand what has hit us."
The damning critique, obtained exclusively by the Guardian, of the policy response to the debt crisis that surfaced in Greece in late 2009 and raised fundamental questions about the viability of the euro single currency, foresees extremely gloomy prospects for tens of millions of Europeans.
Mass unemployment – especially among the young, 120 million Europeans living in or at risk of poverty – increased waves of illegal immigration clashing with rising xenophobia in the host countries, growing risks of social unrest and political instability estimated to be two to three times higher than most other parts of the world, greater levels of insecurity among the traditional middle classes – all combine to make a European future more uncertain than at any time in the postwar era.
3 Months After Morsi Coup & Hundreds of Deaths, U.S. Scales Back Military Aid to Egypt
Are Utility Companies Out to Destroy Solar's 'Rooftop Revolution'?
In the nation's largest state, California, the major utility companies are trying to limit growth.
Of rooftop solar panels, that is.
According to reporting by Bloomberg, the state's three largest utilities—Edison International, PG&E Corp. and Sempra Energy—are "putting up hurdles" to homeowners who have installed sun-powered energy systems, especially those with "battery backups wired to solar panels," in order to slow the spread of what has become a threat to their dominant business model.
Bloomberg reports:
Matthew Sperling, a Santa Barbara, California, resident, installed eight panels and eight batteries at his home in April.
“We wanted to have an alternative in case of a blackout to keep the refrigerator running,” he said in an interview. Southern California Edison rejected his application to link the system to the grid even though city inspectors said “it was one of the nicest they’d ever seen,” he said.
The utilities argue that customers with solar energy-storing batteries might be rigging the system by fraudulently storing conventional energy sent in from the utility grid, storing it in the batteries, and then sending it back to the grid for credit. ... What environmentalists and solar energy advocates see is the utility companies putting barriers up to a decentralized system they will not no longer be able to control or profit from.
Shift to a new climate likely by middle of the century, study finds
Billions of people could be living in regions where temperatures are hotter than their historical ranges by mid-century, creating a "new normal" that could force profound changes on nature and society, scientists said on Wednesday.
Temperatures in an average year would be hotter by 2047, give or take 14 years, than those in the warmest year from 1860-2005 if the greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, with the tropics the first affected area, a new index indicated.
"The results shocked us. Regardless of the scenario, changes will be coming soon," lead author Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii said. "Within my generation whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past." ...
In all, the scientists found that between 1 and 5 billion people would be living in regions outside such limits of historical variability, underscoring the impact already under way from a build-up of man-made greenhouse gases.
"Unprecedented climates will occur earliest in the tropics and among low-income countries," according to the study in the journal Nature that urged cuts in greenhouse gases to limit damage to human society and wildlife.
Action
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
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Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
The Evening Blues
I love this idea.
Double jeopardy?
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