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 bluesman Hubert Sumlin. Enjoy!
Hubert Sumlin/ Eric Clapton/ Robert Cray/ Jimmie Vaughan - Killing Floor
“I have no doubt that the nation has suffered more from undue secrecy than from undue disclosure. The government takes good care of itself.”
-- Daniel Schorr
News and Opinion
The CIA’s Poisonous Tree
The old Washington adage that the cover-up is worse than the crime may not apply when it comes to the revelations this week that the Central Intelligence Agency interfered with a Senate torture investigation. It’s not that the cover-up isn’t serious. It is extremely serious—as Senator Dianne Feinstein said, the CIA may have violated the separation of powers, the Fourth Amendment, and a prohibition on spying inside the United States. It’s just that in this case, the underlying crimes are still worse: the dispute arises because the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Feinstein chairs, has written an as-yet-secret 6,300 page report on the CIA’s use of torture and disappearance—among the gravest crimes the world recognizes—against al-Qaeda suspects in the “war on terror.” ...
But the crime that we must never lose sight of is the conduct that led to the investigation in the first place. To recall: in 2002, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration authorized the CIA to establish a series of secret prisons, or “black sites,” into which it disappeared “high-value” al-Qaeda suspects, often for years at a time, without any public acknowledgment, without charges, and cut off from any access to the outside world. The CIA was further authorized to use a range of coercive tactics—borrowed from those used by the Chinese to torture American soldiers during the Korean War—to try to break the suspects’ will. These included depriving suspects of sleep for up to ten days, slamming them against walls, forcing them into painful stress positions, and waterboarding them.
The program was approved by President Bush himself, as well as Vice-President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and CIA Director George Tenet. John Yoo and Jay Bybee, Justice Department lawyers, wrote memos to whitewash the program. These acts were war crimes under the laws of war and grave human rights abuses. Yet no one has yet been held accountable for any of them. And the investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee is until now the only comprehensive effort to review the extensive classified CIA records about the program. ...
In law, we say that torture “taints” an investigation. The legal doctrine that precludes reliance on evidence obtained from torture is called the “fruit of the poisonous tree” rule. But as this latest saga reflects, torture does far more than merely “taint” evidence. It corrupts all who touch it. The CIA’s desperate efforts to hide the details of what the world already knows in general outline—that it subjected human beings to brutal treatment to which no human being should ever be subjected—are only the latest evidence of the poisonous consequences of a program euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation.”
Democracy vs. the CIA
The acrimony that erupted last week between Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) and CIA Director John Brennan has been called a “constitutional crisis” over the oversight responsibilities of Congress versus the prerogatives of the executive branch. Commentators suggest it is a struggle over “checks and balances” and “separation of powers.” But there is much more at stake.
In December 2012 the SSCI adopted its investigative report of CIA torture and extraordinary rendition during the Bush-Cheney years. Yet, the report remains locked up due to objections by the CIA. ...
The presumption of democratic control is thrown into doubt. The CIA, in waging a life-and-death struggle to bury the historical record of its illegal and presidentially authorized torture program, first destroyed the evidence. Then it threatened that a criminal investigation would have catastrophic consequences for national security. Next it launched an ideological campaign proclaiming the successes of its “enhanced interrogation” program. Now it attacks the Senate committee that dares to investigate the Agency.
The life-blood of democracy is limited government, rule of law, and transparency. If lawless government security agencies cannot be held accountable, democracy rots from the inside. The same can be said about presidents who use the CIA--or the NSA-- for unlawful purposes. “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” Nixon notoriously proclaimed. If presidential “findings” (authorizations) for vast secret programs of questionable legality continue to be kept secret, accountability becomes a fiction. ...
The CIA wants to suppress the Senate report because it will be the closest thing to accountability the Agency will face, especially given Obama’s decision not to pursue a criminal investigation or even an independent commission of inquiry—“we need to look forward as opposed to looking backward,” the President urged. The report will likely disclose the extent of CIA torture far beyond the horrific practices already revealed. It will document the harm to the country and the stain on national character. Not least, it will challenge the perpetrators and their supporters’ assertion that torture “works.”
The long-delayed SSCI report should be released immediately and in its entirety with minimal redactions. The American people and people throughout the world have a right to know.
Edward Snowden: Here's how we take back the Internet
Hmmm... who is more likely lying or making deceptive statements, the NSA or the big US tech companies? Tough choice...
US tech giants knew of NSA data collection, agency's top lawyer insists
NSA general counsel Rajesh De contradicts months of angry denials from big companies like Yahoo and Google
The senior lawyer for the National Security Agency stated unequivocally on Wednesday that US technology companies were fully aware of the surveillance agency’s widespread collection of data, contradicting month of angry denials from the firms.
Rajesh De, the NSA general counsel, said all communications content and associated metadata harvested by the NSA under a 2008 surveillance law occurred with the knowledge of the companies – both for the internet collection program known as Prism and for the so-called “upstream” collection of communications moving across the internet.
Asked during at a Wednesday hearing of the US government’s institutional privacy watchdog if collection under the law, known as Section 702 or the Fisa Amendments Act, occurred with the “full knowledge and assistance of any company from which information is obtained,” De replied: “Yes.” ...
Yahoo, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL – claimed they did not know about a surveillance practice described as giving NSA vast access to their customers’ data. Some, like Apple, said they had “never heard” the term Prism.
De explained: “Prism was an internal government term that as the result of leaks became the public term,” De said. “Collection under this program was a compulsory legal process, that any recipient company would receive.”
After the hearing, De said that the same knowledge, and associated legal processes, also apply when the NSA harvests communications data not from companies directly but in transit across the internet, under Section 702 authority.
States to probe Comcast plan to buy Time Warner Cable
Florida and other U.S. states will join the Justice Department in seeking to determine if Comcast's plan to merge with Time Warner Cable is legal under U.S. antitrust law, Florida officials told Reuters. ...
"We are part of a multistate group reviewing the proposed transaction along with the U.S. DOJ Antitrust Division," the Florida attorney general's office said in an email sent late on Tuesday. ...
The attorneys general group is focused on broadband rather than cable in assessing the $45.2 billion deal, according to a source familiar with the effort who was not authorized to speak on the record. ...
A combined Comcast and Time Warner Cable would also have roughly one-third share of the high-speed Internet market. ...
The deal generated criticism from some lawmakers and consumer groups concerned that there were already too few options for Americans signing up for broadband or cable service.
Imperialist hypocrisy on Crimea
Anticipating that the vote would favor secession from Ukraine and incorporation into the Russian Federation, the US and the European Union declared beforehand that it was illegitimate and “illegal.” A statement released by the White House said the vote was “administered under threats of violence and intimidation from a Russian military intervention that violates international law.”
What hypocrisy! The United States has staged elections in countries it blasted into submission and militarily occupied, with tens of thousands of American guns, tanks, war planes and missiles pointed at the local population—e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan—and hailed the votes as models of democracy.
Following a vote at the UN Security Council Saturday on a resolution condemning the referendum, which was vetoed by Russia, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power declared, “The reason only one country [Russia] voted no today is that the world believes that international borders are more than mere suggestions.”
There is no country that so brazenly violates international borders as the United States. In dealing with regimes it deems a hindrance to its global geostrategic and economic aims, US imperialism treats the principles of national sovereignty and the territorial integrity of nations—which it is presently invoking against Russia—not as suggestions, but as irrelevancies.
More than a decade ago, Washington officially adopted the policy of preemptive war—banned under international law as a form of aggression—and maintains as a matter of state policy that it has the right to launch drones and kill people in any country without the permission of the government—a position that a top UN official declared illegal in 2013. Under Obama, assassinations and mass killings by such means have been vastly expanded, taking thousands of lives, including those of American citizens, in a number of countries.
Biden meets Baltic leaders, pledges support
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met with leaders of Lithuania and Latvia on Wednesday, part of a quick trip to reassure Baltic allies worried about what an emboldened, aggressive Russia might mean for their nations.
The nations have condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for moving to annex Ukraine's Crimea, and the White House has said it is preparing a fresh round of sanctions in response.
Biden's visit is intended to reassure nations like Poland and the Baltics that the United States will live up to its NATO pledge to protect allies under attack. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are all members of both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - unlike Ukraine.
Biden told Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves on Monday that the United States may rotate U.S. forces into the region to conduct ground and naval exercises and training missions. Washington also has added more fighter jets to help patrol airspace over the Baltics.
Should Ukraine and West Accept De Facto Crimea Joining Russia?
Market reaction suggests sanctions over Crimea are slap on the wrist for Putin
The reaction of the financial markets to the west's sanctions over Crimea spoke volumes. Up went the rouble and shares on the Moscow stock market, down went the price of crude oil.
Conclusion: the steps announced by the US and the EU were seen as a slap on the wrist for Vladimir Putin, the very least that could be delivered without Barack Obama, Angela Merkel et al all losing face.
True, the door was left open for a ratcheting up of sanctions in the event that the Kremlin continues to "destabilise" the situation in Ukraine. But this was a weaker response than the markets had been expecting, not just in the number of people targeted by sanctions (21), but in their second-rank status and the limited nature of the visa restrictions and asset freezes.
Significantly, the west did not target Putin and his immediate entourage. Neither did the sanctions include the oligarchs who have their wealth salted away in London, New York and other financial centres in the west. ...
There are two possible explanations for this approach.
The first is that the west thinks that a modest package of measures is the best way to defuse the crisis, and hopes that Putin will back down at the first whiff of grapeshot.
The second is that there is no real appetite for a tougher approach: London and Manhattan are awash with Russian money; Germany's need for Russian gas is stronger than ever now that nuclear power is on its way out; the struggling French economy can ill-afford the loss of lucrative defence contracts with the Kremlin.
Pentagon chief to meet top U.S. business leaders amid Ukraine crisis
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will speak to chief executives of major U.S. companies on Wednesday to explain the Pentagon's 2015 budget proposal and to field possible questions about the economic impact of rising tensions with Russia.
Hagel will address members of the Business Roundtable on Wednesday afternoon, filling in for Vice President Joe Biden who was originally scheduled to speak to the group but is traveling, said Rear Admiral John Kirby, a top Pentagon spokesman. ...
Asked whether Hagel would address the subject of rising tensions with Russia following its attempt to annex the Crimean region of Ukraine, Kirby said the defense secretary expected the issue to be raised.
"No doubt in the context of the discussion, current events will come up," he said.
Russia Eyes Crimea’s Oil and Gas Reserves
According to Reuters, Crimea may nationalize oil and gas assets within its borders belonging to Ukraine, and sell them off to Russia. Crimea’s Deputy Prime Minister hinted at the possibility that it would take control of Chornomorneftegaz, a Ukrainian state-owned enterprise, and then “privatize” it by selling it to Gazprom. “After nationalisation of the company we would openly take a decision – if a large investor, like Gazprom or others emerges – to carry out (privatisation),” Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliev said. ...
The ongoing political standoff in Crimea has already halted Ukraine’s oil and gas ambitions. Ukraine came close to inking a deal with a consortium of international oil companies that would have led to an initial $735 million investment to drill two offshore wells. The consortium led by ExxonMobil – with stakes held by Shell, Romania’s OMV Petrom, and Ukraine’s Nadra Ukrainy – had been particularly interested in the Skifska field in the Black Sea, which holds an estimated 200 to 250 billion cubic meters of natural gas. ... Obviously, once Yanukovych was ousted, ExxonMobil had to put those plans on hold until further notice.
Exxon’s plans for Skifska may not have a future if Russia simply takes Ukraine’s assets. ... Exxon is in a bit of a pickle, as it has billions of dollars of investments in the Russia Arctic in a co-venture with Rosneft, its largest non-U.S. ... Exxon likely doesn’t see much upside in getting into a tiff with Russia over the Black Sea, especially since it hadn’t even agreed on a production sharing agreement with Kiev yet. Exxon’s plans for the Russian Arctic are too important. ... The U.S. has promised tougher sanctions over what it argues as an illegal annexation of Crimea. Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s energy resources will only add fuel to the fire.
U.S. natural gas to Europe? Not so fast...
European nations are begging the United States to send them natural gas to blunt dependence on Russia, but a lack of infrastructure and market realities are calling into question America’s ability to flex its new muscles as the world’s leading energy power. ...
But while calls for such a Berlin-airlift-style approach to rush American natural gas to Europe and liberate it from the Russians makes for a good political sound bite, such a move isn’t practical and vastly oversimplifies the issue. It would take years to build the necessary facilities on both sides of the Atlantic for shipping and receiving the liquefied natural gas. The countries most reliant on Russian energy, including Ukraine, have no terminals for receiving LNG tankers. They get their natural gas from pipelines.
“The potential in the short term is nothing,” said Edward Chow, an energy and security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
There are also the realities of the free market. The U.S. Department of Energy has so far approved six applications for natural gas export terminals, but most of that gas is destined for Asia, where prices are far higher and companies can make more money than selling it in Europe. ...
Coal, much of it from America, also is growing in favor in Europe. European power plants could upgrade their technology and install dual-use boilers that would allow them to generate electricity from imported coal as well as natural gas. That would be attractive to coal exporters in both the United States and its rival coal-mining nation, Australia.
“It’s a much more polluting product, and it will make the Europeans nervous, but that is the only readily available alternative over the next few years,” said Patrick Clawson, a sanctions and energy expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Peace.
Pro-Russian forces seize Ukraine's naval headquarters in Sevastopol
Pro-Russian forces seized the Ukrainian naval headquarters in Sevastopol on Wednesday, a day after a Ukrainian soldier was shot dead, the first casualty of Russia's annexation of Crimea.
After Vladimir Putin announced on Tuesday that Russia would absorb Crimea into its fold, attention now turns to the remaining Ukrainian military facilities on the peninsula.
On Wednesday morning, irregular local militia members entered the naval headquarters, which was then paid a visit by the head of Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Shortly afterwards, a number of Ukrainian soldiers walked out looking solemn, carrying their belongings in plastic bags. ...
A large number of Ukrainian soldiers have defected or deserted but there are some who say they will fight rather than leave their posts. However, the situation in Sevastopol on Wednesday was further confirmation that few soldiers have any desire to engage in a firefight with the Russians.
Kiev announces plans to withdraw Ukrainian troops from Crimea
Ukrainian servicemen at bases around Crimea are gradually being smoked out by Russian troops and local self-defence forces using a mixture of attrition and threats, as well as the dawning realisation that Kiev has lost control over the peninsula and has no way of fighting to regain it.
On Wednesday, the day after Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would absorb Crimea and a Ukrainian soldier was shot dead by a sniper at a base in Simferopol, a Kiev official announced that Ukraine was making plans to withdraw its troops from the peninsula. Andriy Parubiy said Ukraine would seek UN support to turn Crimea into a demilitarised zone, though it is unlikely Russia will withdraw troops from a region it considers home turf. ...
Tough decisions lie ahead for all the troops in the Crimea region who have remained loyal to Ukraine. Russian and Crimean officials have issued an ultimatum to the Ukrainian troopsthem either to join the Russian army or take the option of a safe passage out of the peninsula.
The Ukrainian navy commander, Serhiy Haiduk, was captured during the storming of the headquarters and was believed to have been taken into Russian detention. On Wednesday evening, acting Ukrainian president Oleksandr Turchynov gave the Russians and Crimean authorities three hours to free him or face "adequate responses, including of a technical and technological nature", without clarifying further.
Ukrainian politician Vitali Klitschko had earlier said Ukraine should not recognise Russian rule over Crimea, but at the same time called for safe passage to be granted so Ukrainian troops on the peninsula could withdraw to "temporary bases" elsewhere in Ukraine, to prevent further bloodshed.
Libya Three Years Later - Chaos and Partition
Crisis for Golden Dawn as MP leaves, claiming ignorance of criminal activities
Greece's far-right Golden Dawn party has been thrown into crisis after one of its MPs broke ranks before a crucial vote by the Athens parliament that is likely to pave the way for criminal charges to be brought against the group's 18 MPs.
As the legislature prepared to cancel politicians' immunity from prosecution in the coming days – following charges that the MPs ran the neofascist force as a criminal organisation – Chrysovalantis Alexopoulos abandoned the party, citing ignorance of its activities. The extremists, whose emblem bears a resemblance to the swastika and whose leadership is prone to giving Nazi salutes, are seen as Europe's most violent political force. ...
His desertion threw the once water-tight Golden Dawn into disarray, with insiders speaking of a "civil war atmosphere" in its ranks. Recent polls show support for the party – until last week austerity-whipped Greece's third biggest force – dropping precipitously. ...
Judicial sources said the MP's implicit recognition of the group's illegal activities would add credibility to the array of charges the party faces. Since the extremists were catapulted into parliament with 7% of the vote on the back of widespread fury with the political establishment almost two years ago, immigrants, leftists and gay people have been attacked, often brutally, by black-clad Golden Dawn supporters.
There is no meritocracy: It’s just the 1 percent, and the game is rigged
The big news after President Obama’s State of the Union address in January was that he didn’t really talk about the issues of inequality that everyone expected him to talk about. Instead, he shifted the “conversation,” as we call it, toward the subject of opportunity. He shied away from the extremely disturbing fact that when you work these days only your boss prospers, and brought us back to the infinitely less disturbing fact that sometimes poor people do get ahead despite it all. In a clever oratorical maneuver, Obama illustrated this comforting idea by referencing the success stories of both himself—“the son of a single mom”—and his arch-foe, Republican House Speaker John Boehner—“the son of a barkeep.” He spoke of building “new ladders of opportunity into the middle class,” a phrase that has become a trademark for his administration. ...
The switcheroo was subtle, but if you’ve been paying attention you couldn’t miss it: These were almost precisely the words Obama had used the month before (“The defining challenge of our time”) to describe inequality itself. ... If you’re in the right mood, you might well agree with him. In the distant past, “opportunity” used to be something of a liberal buzzword, a way of selling welfare-state inventions of every description. The reason was simple: true equality of opportunity is not possible without achieving, well, greater equality, period. ...
But that was what the word meant long ago. It’s different today. When people talk about opportunity nowadays, they’re often not trying to refine the debate over inequality, they’re trying to negate it. The social function of mobility-talk is usually to excuse inequality, not to change it; to persuade us that the system we have now is fair and even natural—or that it can be made so with a few more charter schools or student loans or something. Because everyone has a chance at making it into the One Percent, this version of “opportunity” tells us, there’s nothing wrong with letting the One Percent hog every dish at the banquet. ...
Why should Americans work to ensure that everyone has a fair chance to join the ruling class, if the great principle of that ruling class is unfairness? Why should Americans compete on the level if what we’re trying to win is admission to a fraternity of thieves?
The rich strike back
Just a few months ago, it looked like 2014 would be the year of the populist, with Democrats running on economic inequality, tea party Republicans bashing banks and newly minted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio pledging to soak the rich with higher taxes.
That was so January. The terrain is now shifting fast as the 1 percent fights back hard and the effectiveness of the populist approach comes into question.
Fresh off a bruising loss in Florida, the Democratic playbook for the midterms appears in need of a major rewrite — and the pro-business wing of the party is ready to draw up new plans. President Barack Obama in his budget once again floated a plan to raise taxes on Wall Street, but no one took it seriously. And just days later, the president was raising money at the home of one of the wealthiest private equity executives in New York. Mayor de Blasio’s hopes to increase taxes on the wealthiest got blown out by Wall Street’s newest hero, New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And de Blasio is facing major heat from the rich over his opposition to charter schools. ...
The Democratic power elite now believe that appeals to raise the minimum wage and extend unemployment insurance are not enough to overcome Obama’s deep unpopularity and frustration with the president’s signature health care law. They fear that unless Democrats shift footing to a more hopeful, growth-based message, the party could lose the Senate and drop double-digit seats in the House. ...
On the national level, the shift away from a focus on income inequality and reining in Wall Street stems both from the economy, which is slowly improving, and the dominant issue of the day, which is now the crisis in Ukraine.
The aggressive actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin have eased the anxieties of Wall Streeters sick of being portrayed as the enemy. “We obviously see other things driving the news cycle,” a top industry executive said. “Ukraine keeps the focus off the evil 1 percent, so I guess we have Putin to thank for that. The improving economy helps as well.”
Chained-CPI May Be Dead, But Austerity Lives On in Obama’s 2015 Budget Request
After nearly two years of hard campaigning, progressives were relieved to find the Social Security benefit cut known as ‘Chained CPI’ absent from President Obama’s 2015 budget request. But it’s too early to rejoice in what the Washington Post erroneously called an ‘end to the era of austerity.’
That’s because the president’s $3.9 trillion budget request includes other benefit cuts that would be just as senseless and damaging as Chained-CPI — if not more.
The budget proposal calls for further means-testing Medicare, a perennially rejected idea that would essentially raise Medicare premiums for middle-income seniors in exchange for paltry savings for the program. The budget request also proposes ending Social Security disability benefits for anyone collecting unemployment, or so-called “double dipping,” that has been thoroughly debunked as a terrible idea as well.
What’s troubling is that, by including these benefit cuts in his request, President Obama is telling his negotiating partners in Congress that he’s not giving up on the foolish pursuit for a so-called ‘Grand Bargain.’ He may be backing off of Chained CPI, but he’s introduced two more potential cuts in its place.
Hat tip to CroneWit...
New 'Southern Strategy'? Waves of Liberal Protest Ripple Across South
Thirty-nine protesters were arrested at the capitol building in Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday during a raucous protest against the GOP-led effort to prohibit Medicaid expansion in the state. In South Carolina, 17 demonstrators were also arrested at the Columbia state house in the third weekly demonstration against lawmakers' refusal to accept federal health care funding.
"The movements are rare stirrings of impassioned, liberal political action," writes Herbert Buchsbaum at the New York Times, "in a region where conservative control of government is as solid as cold grits and Democrats are struggling for survival more than influence."
The focus of these demonstrations was health care, but the rhetoric of those protesting touched upon a wide swath of issues, from education to voting rights to women's health. Spinning off from the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina—which organizes weekly demonstrations and grew into a massive march of more than 80,000 people last month—the demonstrators are borrowing the notion of morality- and agenda-based protests, including issues that resonate with the poor and minority populations in the South.
“We are at the beginning of a new Southern strategy,” said Tim Franzen, the lead organizer behind Moral Monday Georgia, which held its first protest in early January. “The changes we need to make in Georgia to transform the state are going to take years. But with the changing demographics of the South, our victory is inevitable. This train has left the station.”
How private buses became a symbol of San Francisco's divide
Wells Fargo foreclosure manual under fire
Wells Fargo created an elaborate guide for how to produce missing documents to foreclose on homeowners, according to a lawsuit that has caught the attention of state and federal regulators.
The bank denies wrongdoing, but the allegations rekindle claims that lenders, including Wells Fargo, used forged and shoddy paperwork during the recession to quickly foreclose on struggling homeowners, a practice known as “robo-signing.” ... In the course of defending a New York homeowner facing foreclosure, [bankruptcy lawyer Linda] Tirelli said she found a 150-page manual instructing Wells Fargo lawyers how to process foreclosures when a key document, known as an endorsement, is missing. Lenders need endorsements to prove that they own the mortgage, before they can foreclose on a homeowner. ...
“This is a blueprint for fraud,” said Tirelli, who attached a copy of the manual as evidence in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y. “The idea that this bank is instructing people how to produce these documents is appalling.” ...
Within days of Tirelli filing suit last week, the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the New York State Department of Financial Services requested a copy of the manual. Neither office has launched a formal investigation, but they are reviewing the document, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
Tirelli said she was also contacted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the monitor for the national mortgage settlement, both of which declined to comment for this article. A fifth agency, the Justice Department’s U.S. Trustee Program, which oversees bankruptcies, could not be reached for comment.
The Evening Greens
Fukushima Fallout: Ailing U.S. Sailors Sue TEPCO After Exposure to Radiation 30x Higher Than Normal
California officials prepare for worst as historic drought deepens wildfire risk
California is facing wildfires "outside of any normal bounds" as a historic drought turns drying brush and trees into a perfect tinderbox, officials have warned. The state recorded 665 wildfires from 1 January, about three times the average of 225 for this time of year, according to figures compiled by Cal Fire, the state's department of forestry and fire protection.
Each day without heavy rain deepened the risks of a catastrophic fire season and made it hard to deal with more wildfires if and when they broke out, officials warned. John Laird, the secretary for natural resources, told the Guardian: "This is going to be a fire season outside any normal bounds. Anything could happen at any time." ...
Even before this year's drought, forest officials were reporting a longer fire season, and more catastrophic mega-fires, in California and other western states. Half of the worst fires in recorded Californian history have occurred since 2002.
Climate change and land-use patterns are adding fuel to those fires. Higher temperatures, with recurring and intensifying droughts are drying out landscapes. Pest invasions, such as the pine bark beetle, have killed off stands of trees.
High Stakes Fracking Ban Fails in Illinois
A bid to ban the controversial drilling practice known as fracking from an Illinois county, which drew widespread attention from the fracking industry across the country, failed Tuesday night in a referendum vote.
The ballot measure, which sought to ban fracking "as a violation of their rights to health and safety," was defeated by a 600-vote margin, with 2,220 people voting against the provision and 1,600 supporting it.
In the lead up to the referendum vote, out of state fracking interests as well as instate conservative groups poured money into the campaign against the ban, including The Illinois Chamber of Commerce who spent $23,500 alone to promote fracking in the county "where less than 3,000 people cast ballots in the last primary election," the Huffington Post reported.
The Great Lakes: 'Liquid Pipeline' for World's Dirtiest Fuels?
One of the most precious sources of freshwater on the planet, the Great Lakes, is at risk of becoming a "liquid pipeline" for the dirtiest forms of oil and gas available, according to a report published Monday by water champion Maude Barlow.
The report, Liquid Pipeline: Extreme Energy’s Threat to the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway (pdf), details how the extraction of "extreme" new forms of energy and plans to transport those fuels—as well as waste from more traditional sources—under and across the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River threaten these vital resources. ...
"Extreme energy" is defined as the extraction of fossil fuels by methods that grow more intensive over time and that strongly correlate with damage to both the environment and society—such as tar sands open pit mining and hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for shale oil and gas—according to the Extreme Energy Initiative, a project of the Human Rights Consortium at the University of London.
In the report, Barlow takes an accounting of the myriad proposals and projects in development in the Great Lakes region and their threat to the ecosystem—from spill and extraction pollution to large-scale water consumption. Further, Barlow highlights how this "frenzy" has been fueled by North American trade agreements, which often provide protection from liability for the energy and transport companies.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Still Not Over: CPC Budget Update
David Graeber: Money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it
Feds accused of steering funding to anti-pot researchers
Budding Liberal Protest Movements Begin to Take Root in South
A Little Night Music
Hubert Sumlin - Come On In My House
Hubert Sumlin w/Billy Branch - You Can't Change Me
Hubert Sumlin - Sometimes I'm Right
Hubert Sumlin with Sunnyland Slim - Come On Home Baby
Hubert Sumlin - Down the Dusty Road
Hubert Sumlin & Mighty Sam McClain - A soul that's been abused
Hubert Sumlin - I'm Your Baby
Hubert Sumlin & David Johansen - Walkin' Thru The Park + The Same Thing
Hubert Sumlin, James Cotton & BHTM - Wang Dang Doodle
Hubert Sumlin, David Johansen, Charlie Musselwhite - Smokestack Lightning
The Nighthawks with Hubert Sumlin - Spoonful
Hubert Sumlin - Chunky
Hubert Sumlin - You Got to Help Me
Hubert Sumlin - I Love
Hubert Sumlin - Being a musician
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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