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 St. Louis bluesman Peetie Wheatstraw. Enjoy!
Peetie Wheatstraw - Police Station Blues
“Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
-- Thucydides
News and Opinion
Cold War Against Russia - Without Debate
Future historians will note that in April 2014, nearly a quarter-century after the end of the Soviet Union, the White House declared a new Cold War on Russia—and that, in a grave failure of representative democracy, there was scarcely a public word of debate, much less opposition, from the American political or media establishment.
The Obama administration announced its Cold War indirectly, in a front-page New York Times story by Peter Baker on April 20. According to the report, President Obama has resolved, because of the Ukraine crisis, that he can “never have a constructive relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and will instead “ignore the master of the Kremlin” and focus on “isolating…Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world…effectively making it a pariah state.” In short, Baker reports, the White House has adopted “an updated version of the Cold War strategy of containment.” He might have added, a very extreme version. The report has been neither denied nor qualified by the White House.
No modern precedent exists for the shameful complicity of the American political-media elite at this fateful turning point. Considerable congressional and mainstream media debate, even protest, were voiced, for example, during the run-up to the US wars in Vietnam and Iraq and, more recently, proposed wars against Iran and Syria. This Cold War—its epicenter on Russia’s borders; undertaken amid inflammatory American, Russian and Ukrainian media misinformation; and unfolding without the stabilizing practices that prevented disasters during the preceding Cold War—may be even more perilous. It will almost certainly result in a new nuclear arms race, a prospect made worse by Obama’s provocative public assertion that “our conventional forces are significantly superior to the Russians’,” and possibly an actual war with Russia triggered by Ukraine’s looming civil war. (NATO and Russian forces are already mobilizing on the country’s western and eastern borders, while the US-backed Kiev government is warning of a “third world war.”)
And yet, all this has come with the virtually unanimous, bipartisan support, or indifference, of the US political establishment, from left to right, Democrats and Republicans, progressives (whose domestic programs will be gravely endangered) and conservatives.
Ukraine is close to war, warns German minister
Ukraine is close to war, the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, has warned in interviews published in four European newspapers on Tuesday.
Dozens are feared to have died in clashes outside Slavyansk on Monday as Ukrainian troops clashed with pro-Russia separatists.
"The bloody pictures from Odessa have shown us that we are just a few steps away from a military confrontation," Steinmeier told El País, Le Monde, La Repubblica and Gazeta Wyborcza. He added that the conflict had taken on an intensity "that a short time ago we would not have considered possible". ...
"We estimate that the terrorists lost more than 30 people," [acting Ukrainian interior minister, Arsen] Avakov wrote on his Facebook page. The Guardian was unable to confirm the figure.
Is Ukraine Descending into Civil War?
Ukraine’s ‘Dr. Strangelove’ Reality
As much as the coup regime in Ukraine and its supporters want to project an image of Western moderation, there is a “Dr. Strangelove” element that can’t stop the Nazism from popping up from time to time, like when the Peter Sellers character in the classic movie can’t keep his right arm from making a “Heil Hitler” salute.
This brutal Nazism surfaced again on Friday when right-wing toughs in Odessa attacked an encampment of ethnic Russian protesters driving them into a trade union building which was then set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As the building was engulfed in flames, some people who tried to flee were chased and beaten, while those trapped inside heard the Ukrainian nationalists liken them to black-and-red-striped potato beetles called Colorados, because those colors are used in pro-Russian ribbons.
“Burn, Colorado, burn” went the chant.
[quote from article linked above added. - js]
The conflict is hardening hearts on both sides. As the building burned, Ukrainian activists sang the Ukrainian national anthem, witnesses on both sides said. They also hurled a new taunt: “Colorado” for the Colorado potato beetle, striped red and black like the pro-Russian ribbons. Those outside chanted “burn Colorado, burn,” witnesses said. Swastikalike symbols were spray painted on the building, along with graffiti reading “Galician SS,” though it was unclear when it had appeared, or who had painted it.
... The legacy of World War II – especially the bitter fight between Ukrainian nationalists from the west and ethnic Russians from the east seven decades ago – is never far from the surface in Ukrainian politics. One of the heroes celebrated during the Maidan protests in Kiev was Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, whose name was honored in many banners including one on a podium where Sen. John McCain voiced support for the uprising to oust elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was in eastern Ukraine.
[also, for more historical background see: Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret - js]
US Envoy Admits: No Evidence of Russian Involvement in Odessa
The Obama Administration is usually all set to back any hare-brained allegations Ukraine’s interim government comes up with, but when interim PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk claimed Russia was secretly behind Friday’s massacre of pro-Russian protesters in Odessa, that seems to have been too much.
So while Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt centered his CNN comments on insinuations that “someone” has a vested interest in seeing the situation grow more chaotic nationwide, he eventually conceded that there was no evidence of any Russian involvement in Odessa.
[I dug up the CNN transcript of Pyatt's comments, here's the relevant admission. - js]
CROWLEY: Well, Mr. Ambassador, it's probably no time to beat around the bush. Do you believe that Russia and President Putin are behind what turned out to be, I believe, the bloodiest day thus far in this back-and-forth?
PYATT: Well, we certainly believe that Russia is exercising influence across Eastern Ukraine.
We don't have evidence of the Russian role in what - the tragedy that transpired on Friday. Prime Minister Yatsenyuk used some very strong words today, talking about the role that he believes that Russia played.
And this is something that we hope an impartial and systematic investigation will be able to get to the bottom of very quickly.
Fear, frustration & grief grips Odessa
Ukraine Sends Special Forces to Replace Local Police in Odessa
Ukraine’s government continues to fume over the growing protests in Odessa, and yesterday’s release of 67 detainees after protesters marched against the police headquarters.
With the interim government blaming the police for not cracking down on the protesters sooner, they have now deployed special forces to the major port city to “replace” the police with people more willing to move against dissent.
Police prove to be another weak link in Ukraine’s efforts to keep the peace
KIEV, Ukraine — The scene has been repeated again and again across Ukraine in recent weeks: Protesters storm a building or an opposing group, and police, often decked out in full riot gear, stand and watch. ...
But the talk in the capital Monday was about what had gone wrong in Odessa, where police in body armor, helmets and shields refused even to attempt to quell a riot Friday that resulted in more than 40 deaths, mostly pro-Russian protesters who died in a fire in a building they’d broken into to escape Ukrainian nationalists described as soccer hooligans.
The police passivity in Odessa underscores a major problem for the interim Ukrainian government: With Russian propaganda warning that anarchy threatens the security of Russian speakers in Ukraine, those in charge in Kiev have few institutions they can depend on to secure restive cities or separate battling crowds.
The head of Ukraine’s parliamentary anti-corruption and organized crime committee, Viktor Chumak, said that while Ukrainian police clearly performed poorly in Odessa, that was about all that anyone should have expected.
“For the past 20 years, this is how we have trained our police to respond,” he said. “They have been trained to be a repressive mechanism of those in and hoping to retain power.”
Instead of being trained to quash a riot to protect two sides from each other, or one side from another, they are trained “to hassle the little old women who are selling items on the street for a bit of their money, and to kill off the competition of local political and business leaders.”
He noted that polls indicate that among all Ukrainians, only 13 percent trust the police.
Ukraine crisis: Mercenaries, Nato M16 cartridges and US military meals - evidence of Western involvement, or something far less controversial?
“The snipers on that hill were British. People have seen them. You could tell by their uniforms,” Vitali Nelovich said with confidence. “They were by the television tower. But even before they were stationed, there were others who came by helicopter. They were very dark skinned”.
Alexei Viktorovich was also adamant: “The dark-skinned men were very professional, I was in the army myself, so I could tell. They didn’t stay long, flew in and flew out.”
There was other incriminating “evidence”, local people pointed out, of a foreign hand in the shooting which took place between Ukrainian forces and residents, claiming between seven and 10 lives and up to 20 injured in Andrievka, near the militant stronghold of Slovyansk on Friday evening.
There were MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) – a staple of US forces on combat missions, in the brown packets familiar to many of us from Iraq and Afghanistan, clearly marked Made in USA, issued by the Department of Defense.
Also there, lying amid blood stains, body parts and a body yet to be taken away, were Nato 5.56mm cartridges as used in the US military’s M16 rifles. “I am not saying the foreigners did the killings”, but they were here, insisted Mr Velovich, a 45-year-old farmer.
Obama Aides Tell Executives to Skip Forum
The White House has pressured the chief executives of some of America’s largest energy, financial and industrial corporations into canceling plans to attend an international economic forum in Russia to be hosted by President Vladimir V. Putin this month, the latest effort to isolate Moscow in retaliation for its intervention in Ukraine.
The top executives of such giants as Alcoa, Goldman Sachs, PepsiCo, Morgan Stanley, ConocoPhillips and other multinational companies with business in Russia have either pulled out of the conference or plan to do so after an intensive lobbying campaign by President Obama’s advisers. Corporate officials predicted that nearly every American C.E.O. will now skip the forum in St. Petersburg.
The personal telephone calls from White House officials and cabinet secretaries have put the executives in an awkward position because they do not want to run afoul of the Obama administration, but they are acutely aware that Mr. Putin takes attendance at this event, which has become an important showcase for him on the world stage. Hoping to avoid alienating Mr. Putin at the risk of jeopardizing their operations and tens of thousands of employees in Russia, several companies are sending lower-level executives based in Moscow or Europe to the meeting from May 22 to 24.
The St. Petersburg forum, styled as Russia’s answer to the annual economic meeting in Davos, Switzerland, has thus become the latest battleground in the geopolitical contest of wills between Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin over the fate of Ukraine.
Michael Hayden's Unwitting Case Against Secret Surveillance
Is state surveillance a legitimate defense of our freedoms? The question was put to Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, during a debate Friday evening in Toronto. Alan Dershowitz joined him to argue the affirmative. Glenn Greenwald and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian argued against the resolution. ...
"State surveillance is a legitimate defense of our freedoms," [Hayden] said, restating the resolution. "Well, we all know the answer to that. It depends. And it depends on facts."
It depends on the totality of circumstances in which we find ourselves. What kind of surveillance? For what kind of purposes? In what kind of state of danger?
And that's why facts matter.
In having this debate, in trying to decide whether this surveillance is a legitimate defense of our freedoms, we really need to know exactly what this surveillance is.
Hayden was trying to defend the NSA with those remarks. ... But in doing so, he unwittingly echoed a core belief of the national-security state's critics. He's absolutely right: To judge whether a particular kind of surveillance is legitimate, one must know exactly what's being considered and its purpose.
Yet the NSA hid many types of surveillance from the American people. In fact, many members of Congress were unaware of exactly what was being done and why. By Hayden's own logic, neither American citizens nor those members of Congress could meaningfully decide whether the NSA's activities were legitimate!
Chairman of key House committee agrees to proceed with NSA reform bill
The chairman of a key committee in the House of Representatives agreed to move on a major surveillance overhaul on Monday, after months of delay.
The decision, by the Republican chairman of the House judiciary committee, Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, breathes new life back into the USA Freedom Act, a legislative fix favoured by privacy advocates to prevent the US government from collecting domestic data in bulk.
The judiciary committee is expected to take action on an amendment encapsulating the provisions of the USA Freedom Act on Wednesday at 1pm. Congressional aides expected it to pass the committee with bipartisan support, setting up a fight on the House floor.
Goodlatte, who had been hesitant to endorse the bill, written by former committee chairman James Sensenbrenner, will now vote for it personally.
Goodlatte’s decision comes despite pressure by the House Republican leadership, which preferred an alternative bill, written by the House intelligence committee leadership, that would permit the government to acquire Americans’ data without a specific prior judicial order for it. Additional pressure came from a desire on all sides to avoid surveillance-related amendments to unrelated, critical bills slated for floor consideration later this month.
An attempt by the intelligence committee and the House leadership to circumvent Goodlatte’s committee and pass the rival bill is said by observers to have galvanised Goodlatte’s decision to move forward on the USA Freedom Act. Internal committee negotiations on modifying the USA Freedom Act for passage intensified after the House intelligence committee unveiled its bill in March.
US and Germany remain frosty amid awkward visit from Merkel
German chancellor Angela Merkel’s first visit to the White House since the revelation that her calls were bugged by the National Security Agency was never going to be easy.
But Merkel could not have known how quite how awkward her appearance with US president Barack Obama would be. And no one could have anticipated the unfortunate role that, once again, American technology would play in Merkel's public humiliation. ...
[A]s soon as the event began, it was evident that Merkel, who rarely speaks English in public, was placed at a considerable disadvantage by White House headphones provided to reporters – and the world leaders – for simultaneous translation.
Obama’s remarks were clear. But when Merkel spoke, she was barely audible over a suspicious, crackling noise. Bemused reporters tapped their headsets, wondering aloud if they were listening to something they shouldn’t.
The truth is there was very little the German chancellery wanted the press to hear. Berlin had been delaying Merkel’s visit to Washington for months, saying she would not come until trust was restored and demanding the two countries agree a mutual “no-spy agreement”. Merkel also wanted to discover what, exactly, was in her personal NSA file.
Both requests were rebuffed. Instead, Merkel will return home with something called a “cyber dialogue”. In other words: the US won't budge an inch, but has agreed to keep talking.
Occupy Wall Street on Trial: Cecily McMillan Convicted of Assaulting Cop, Faces Up to Seven Years
Cecily McMillan's guilty verdict reveals our mass acceptance of police violence
The verdict in the biggest Occupy related criminal case in New York City, that of Cecily McMillan, came down Monday afternoon. As disturbing as it is that she was found guilty of felony assault against Officer Grantley Bovell, the circumstances of her trial reflect an even more disturbing reality – that of normalized police violence, disproportionately punitive sentences (McMillan faces seven years in prison), and a criminal penal system based on anything but justice. While this is nothing new for the over-policed communities of New York City, what happened to McMillan reveals just how powerful and unrestrained a massive police force can be in fighting back against the very people with whom it is charged to protect.
McMillan was one of roughly 70 protesters arrested on March 17, 2012. She and hundreds of other activists, along with journalists like me, had gathered in Zuccotti Park to mark the six-month anniversary of the start of Occupy Wall Street. It was four months after the New York Police Department had evicted the Occupy encampment from the park in a mass of violent arrests.
When the police moved in to the park that night, in formation and with batons, to arrest a massive number of nonviolent protesters, the chaos was terrifying. Bovell claimed that McMillan elbowed him in the face as he attempted to arrest her, and McMillan and her defense team claim that Bovell grabbed her right breast from behind, causing her to instinctively react.
But the jury didn't hear anything about the police violence that took place in Zuccotti Park that night. They didn't hear about what happened there on November 15, 2011, when the park was first cleared. The violence experienced by Occupy protesters throughout its entirety was excluded from the courtroom. The narrative that the jury did hear was tightly controlled by what the judge allowed – and Judge Ronald Zweibel consistently ruled that any larger context of what was happening around McMillan at the time of the arrest (let alone Bovell's own history of violence) was irrelevant to the scope of the trial.
In the trial, physical evidence was considered suspect but the testimony of the police was cast as infallible. Despite photographs of her bruised body, including her right breast, the prosecution cast doubt upon McMillan's allegations of being injured by the police – all while Officer Bovell repeatedly identified the wrong eye when testifying as to how McMillan injured him. And not only was Officer Bovell's documented history of violent behavior deemed irrelevant by the judge, but so were the allegations of his violent behavior that very same night.
Here's the full Democracy Now interview segment with Cecily McMillan shortly after her sexual assualt and brutal beat down by the NYPD:
OWS Activist Cecily McMillan Describes Seizure, Bodily Injuries in Arrest by NYPD
OWS Activist Found Guilty of 'Assaulting' Cop Who Allegedly Sexually Assaulted Her
Cecily McMillan—the 25-year-old Occupy Wall Street organizer who was allegedly sexually assaulted and brutalized by a police officer at Zuccotti Park, is facing up to seven years in prison after—in what her supporters say is a cruel twist—she was convicted Monday afternoon of "felony assault" of the very police officer she says is her perpetrator.
"This threatens a chilling effect over protest movements going forward," said Stan Williams, media coordinator for Justice for Cecily, in an interview with Common Dreams. "I am so sad and raw right now."
After four weeks of trial and just three hours of jury deliberation, the verdict was issued Monday afternoon, and Judge Ronald Zweibel immediately remanded McMillan into custody pending sentencing, rejecting her lawyer's requests for bail.
The courtroom, which was packed with McMillan's supporters and approximately 50 police officers, erupted into cries of "Shame!" as McMillan was handcuffed. According to Williams, people who stood up were pushed down and told to be quiet, yet the crowd "continued to shout and yell."
"You could see Cecily over the heads of police officers who lined the front of the courtroom," he added. "She looked upset and in shock over the verdict. Then she was whisked away."
Is Net Neutrality Dead?
New Movement Aims to ‘Reset the Net’ Against Mass Surveillance
A coalition of nearly two-dozen tech companies and civil liberties groups is launching a new fight against mass internet surveillance, hoping to battle the NSA in much the same way online campaigners pushed back on bad piracy legislation in 2012.
The new coalition, organized by Fight for the Future, is planning a Reset the Net day of action on June 5, the anniversary of the date the first Edward Snowden story broke detailing the government’s PRISM program, based on documents leaked by the former NSA contractor.
“Government spies have a weakness: they can hack anybody, but they can’t hack everybody,” the organizers behind the Reset the Net movement say in their video (above). “Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fiber. They depend on our mistakes, mistakes we can fix.”
To that end, the groups are calling on developers to add at least one NSA resistant feature to mobile apps, and on websites to add security features like SSL (Secure Socket Layer), HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), and Perfect Forward Secrecy to better secure the communication of users and thwart government man-in-the-middle attacks.
They also want mobile apps and websites to post a Reset the Net splash screen on June 5 and are distributing a privacy packet for users that contains a bundle of various free software tools, like Adium and Pidgin (for encrypted chat), Textsecure, and Redphone (encrypted phone calls and text messaging) and GPG (for encrypted email).
Members of the coalition so far include Reddit, Imgur, DuckDuckGo, the Free Software Foundation, and CREDO Mobile, along with a number of civil liberties groups. CREDO Mobile is believed to be the anonymous telecom behind a constitutional battle over the government’s use of National Security Letters to obtain data from telecoms and other companies.
Someone tell Alan Dershowitz that surveillance cameras don't do what he thinks they do
[In] the Munk debate on the surveillance state, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz—who is arguing in favor of mass surveillance—says that the phone metadata dragnet is not unlike another kind of surveillance: CCTV monitoring.
Among the new primitive technologies, we now have silent cameras on street corners. That has had a major impact on reducing street crime. Now, those cameras capture the images of innocent people—all of us, walking along the street, and doing our own thing. It doesn’t capture what we say, but it watches us. It’s Big Brother—it’s Big Brother writ small, perhaps. And it doesn’t focus only on guilty, because criminals don’t walk around with big C’s on their heads. We have to have these cameras in order to make, send a message to criminals, that if you commit a crime, there will be a video, and you will be captured. That has a big impact.
So you don’t have to be guilty in order to surrender a little bit of your autonomy and privacy in the interest of preventing major crimes.
There’s a lot to deconstruct in Dershowitz’s argument here, but I'll focus on the glaring problem: he is completely wrong when he says that surveillance cameras have "a major impact on reducing street crime."
That claim is oft repeated by surveillance state advocates and police, but it simply isn’t true.
Dershowitz argues that even innocent people should willingly give up our rights "in the interest of preventing major crimes." While there is some evidence to suggest cameras help deter minor crimes like vandalism, there is absolutely zero evidence to support the conclusion that cameras stop murders, rapes, or terrorism. Cameras also aren’t as useful as you might think in terms of solving crimes, after the fact.
In a way, Dershowitz’s comparison of bulk phone records spying to ubiquitous CCTV surveillance is therefore apt. After all, the metadata program never stopped a major crime, either.
Obama Blasted for Lumping Critics of Trade Deal Secrecy with 'Conspiracy Theorists'
Critics of the highly-secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations responded with outrage after U.S. President Barack Obama charged they have a "lack of knowledge of what is going on in the negotiations" and dismissed their concerns as "conspiracy theories."
The president made the comments this week during a press conference in Malaysia—one of the stops on his Asia-Pacific tour, aimed at advancing the TPP and the U.S. military "pivot" to the region. His tour has been met with region-wide protests against the economic and military agenda of the U.S. ...
Kian Frederick, national field director of Public Citzen's Global Trade Watch, told Common Dreams, "If the president is concerned that people don't know what's going on in the negotiations then the president should release the text and remove it from being a state secret. The TPP is protected in such a way that even members of Congress can only see bits and pieces and are not allowed to talk about it."
Enron-style price gouging is making a comeback
The price of electricity would soar under the latest scheme by Wall Street financial engineers to game the electricity markets.
If regulators side with Wall Street — and indications are that they will — expect the cost of electricity to rise from Maine to California as others duplicate this scheme to manipulate the markets, as Enron did on the West Coast 14 years ago, before the electricity-trading company collapsed under allegations of accounting fraud and corruption.
The test case is playing out in New England. Energy Capital Partners, an investment group that uses tax-avoiding offshore investing techniques and has deep ties to Goldman Sachs, paid $650 million last year to acquire three generating plant complexes, including the second largest electric power plant in New England, Brayton Point in Massachusetts.
Five weeks after the deal closed, Energy partners moved to shutter Brayton Point. Why would anyone spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy the second largest electric power plant in New England and then quickly take steps to shut it down?
Energy partners says in regulatory filings that the plant is so old and prone to breakdowns that it is not worth operating, raising the question of why such sophisticated energy-industry investors bought it.
The real answer is simple: Under the rules of the electricity markets, the best way to earn huge profits is by reducing the supply of power. That creates a shortage during peak demand periods, such as hot summer evenings and cold winter days, causing prices to rise. Under the rules of the electricity markets, even a tiny shortfall between the available supply of electricity and the demand from customers results in enormous price spikes.
With Brayton Point closed, New England consumers and businesses will spend as much as $2.6 billion more per year for electricity, critics of the deal suggest in documents filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
That estimate will turn out to be conservative, I expect, based on what Enron traders did to California, Oregon and Washington electricity customers starting in 2000. In California alone the short-term market manipulations cost each resident more than $1,300, a total burden of about $45 billion.
LEAKED: Docs obtained by Pando show how a Wall Street giant is guaranteed huge fees from taxpayers on risky pension investments
An increasing number of those pension funds are being stealthily diverted into high-fee, high-risk “alternative investments” that deliver spectacular rewards for the Wall Street firms paid to manage them – but not such great returns for pensioners and taxpayers.
Citing data from the National Association of State Retirement Administrators, Al Jazeera America recently reported that “the average portion of pension dollars devoted to real estate and alternative investments has more than tripled over the last 12 years, growing from 7 percent to around 22 percent today.” With public pensions now reporting $3 trillion in total assets, that’s up to $660 billion of public money in these high-fee, high-risk investments. ...
Thanks to confidential documents exclusively obtained by Pando, we can now see some of the language and fee structures in the agreements between the “alternative investment” industry and major public pension funds. ... The documents, which were involved in a recent SEC inquiry into the $14.5 billion Kentucky Retirement Systems (KRS), were handed to us by SEC whistleblower Chris Tobe, an investment consultant and former trustee of the KRS. ...
The documents provided by Tobe (embedded below) specifically detail Kentucky’s dealings with Blackstone – a giant Wall Street investment firm which has deployed a platoon of registered lobbyists in Kentucky and whose employees are major financial backers of Kentucky U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R).
The Blackstone-related documents, though, don’t just tell a story about public pensions in Kentucky. The firm, which just reported record earnings, does business with states and localities across the country. The Wall Street Journal reports that “about $37 of every $100 of Blackstone’s $111 billion investment pool comes from state and local pension plans.”
In one set of documents provided by Tobe, Blackstone’s payment structure is outlined, with language guaranteeing that Blackstone will receive its hefty annual management fees from the taxpayer – regardless of the fund’s performance.
In other documents, public pension money is exempted from some of the most basic protections usually guaranteed under federal law. Other contract language appears to license Blackstone to engage in financial conflicts of interests that could harm investors.
The Evening Greens
Beyond Honeybees: Now Wild Bees and Butterflies May Be in Trouble
By now you probably know about the plight of America’s honeybees: the collapsed colonies and dying hives, threatening pollination services to crops and the future of a much-beloved insect.
But it’s not just honeybees that are in trouble. Many wild pollinators—thousands of species of bees and butterflies and moths—are also threatened. Their decline would affect not only our food supply, but our landscapes, too. Most honeybees live in commercially managed agricultural colonies; wild pollinators are caretakers of our everyday surroundings. ...
Compared to honeybees, wild pollinators are not well studied, and their condition has received relatively little public attention. Most people don’t realize that there are thousands of bee species in the United States. Even many butterflies are overlooked, with the plight of just a few species, particularly monarchs, widely recognized. ...
According to a recent survey organized by the Xerces Society, an invertebrate conservation group, nearly one-third of North American bumblebee species are declining. Other studies have reported similar trends, documenting dramatic declines in once-common species such as the American bumblebee. If that’s happening to bumblebees, says Xerces Society executive director Scott Black, it’s quite possible, even likely, that others are hurting, too. ...
Among other pollinators, iconic monarch butterfly declines are well documented: Their numbers are now at a small fraction of historical levels. And entomologist Art Shapiro of the University of California, Davis spent most of the last four decades counting butterflies across central California, and found declines in every region. These declines don’t just involve butterflies that require very specific habitats or food sources, and might be expected to be fragile, but so-called generalist species thought to be highly adaptable. Many other entomologists have told Black the same thing.
Brazil's 'chainsaw queen' takes on environmentalists
Outside the political hothouse of Brasilia, there are probably few who can name the head of Brazil's powerful agricultural lobby, yet the woman in question, Kátia Abreu, is rapidly becoming the country's most interesting, important – and dangerous – politician.
The senator and rancher from Goiás was an influential force in the weakening of Brazil's forest code blamed by many for the recent rise in Amazon deforestation. Her support – in parliament and in an acerbic newspaper column – for more roads through the Amazon, congressional control over demarcation of indigenous reserves, more efficient monocultures and genetically modified "terminator seeds" has earned her the wrath of environmentalists who have called her "Miss Deforestation", "chainsaw queen" and the "face of evil".
Abreu, however, is defiant, saying she is preparing to run for president one day and wants to help Brazil overtake the US as the world's biggest food producer. "Running for president is not a plan – it is fate. I'm getting ready for that, preparing in case it is my destiny," she said in an interview at her office in Brasilia. "Criticism from radical environmentalists is the best form of endorsement. It gives me satisfaction. It shows I am on the right track and playing the right role." ...
Her bullish business message is underpinned by flag-waving nationalism and attacks on any group accused of trying to slow the growth of Brazilian agriculture. This include environmentalists, indigenous groups and landless peasants, all of whom she alleged – without evidence – were working for foreign interests. "I don't have concrete proof of this but I get a very strong impression that this is the case," she said.
Abreu's uncompromising rhetoric and style are reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher. When I mention the comparison, the congresswoman lights up.
"Thank you! Margaret Thatcher had one of the greatest liberal political minds. She built a set of principles that changed the world. I'm only sorry that I didn't have the opportunity to meet her."
Mary Landrieu. Idiot. Sorry for the redundancy.
Senator says Ukraine instability makes case for Keystone XL pipeline
The head of the Senate energy and natural resources committee said Tuesday that instability in Ukraine makes the case for building the Keystone XL oil pipeline in the United States.
"Progress has been too slow," said senator Mary Landrieu. She said the proposed pipeline from Canada to the United States would contribute only marginally to air quality problems.
Landrieu sidestepped a question about President Barack Obama's hesitance to proceed with the pipeline. "I think he has some serious questions about how much it would contribute to the deteriorating climate situation," she said.
But Landrieu also argued that the need for energy independence in the United States is greater than ever.
"Americans look at what's happening in Russia and Ukraine – I think it sends shivers up their spine and it should," said Landrieu, who accused European countries of being "timid" in confronting President Vladimir Putin over Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine, a former Soviet bloc state.
White House unveils dire warning, calls for action on climate
The Obama administration on Tuesday released an updated report on how climate change requires urgent action to counter impacts that touch every corner of the country, from oyster growers in Washington State to maple syrup producers in Vermont.
"Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present," the report said.
Some environmental and public health groups hailed the National Climate Assessment as a possible "game changer" for efforts to address climate change, in part because it makes the impact less abstract to many Americans.
"It will help put their own experiences in context, and we think that is important in generating interest and action on the issue," said Lyndsay Moseley, director of the American Lung Association's Healthy Air campaign.
The extensive report detailed how consequences of climate change are hitting on several fronts, including health, infrastructure, water supply, agriculture and especially in more frequent severe weather such as floods and droughts. ...
The entire report can be viewed at www.globalchange.gov.
Blog Posts of Interest
Here are diaries and selected blog posts of interest on DailyKos and other blogs.
What's Happenin' Is On Hiatus
Seven Decades of Nazi Collaboration: America’s Dirty Little Ukraine Secret
Obama’s New Ukraine
Dear Senate, Demand to Read Drone Memos Before Voting on Barron Nomination
Federal judge rules transwoman prisoner must receive hormone therapy
A Little Night Music
Peetie Wheatstraw - Stomp
Peetie Wheatstraw - You Can't Stop Me From Drinking
Peetie Wheatstraw - More Good Whiskey Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw - Kidnapper's Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw - A Working Man's Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw - Gangster's Blues
Peetie Wheatstraw - Cake Alley
Peetie Wheatstraw - Mama's Advice
Peetie Wheatstraw - Working On The Project
Peetie Wheatstraw - Four O' Clock In The Morning
Peetie Wheatstraw - When I Get My Bonus
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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