January 18, 2016

Clinton 'Outraged' By Laquan McDonald Video, But Gives Rahm A Pass

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel can still count Hillary Clinton among his dwindling supporters -- but just barely.

Emanuel's critics allege he tried to cover up damning video of a 2014 incident in which a Chicago cop shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times as the teen walked away.

During a Sunday interview on "Meet The Press," host Chuck Todd asked the Democratic presidential candidate if she felt the embattled mayor still had "credibility" among Chicago's black community in the wake of the video's release.

Clinton said she was "outraged" by what happened to McDonald and noted that she was quick to call for a Department of Justice probe into the city's police department after it was released. Clinton went on to voice tepid support for Emanuel, who was once a top aide in her husband's administration and said that Chicago's policing problems are not unique.

"We've got to do a lot more to deal with the systemic racism and the problems that policing has demonstrated," Clinton said. "Mayor Emanuel has said that he is committed to complete and total reform, and I think he should be held to that standard." .........(more)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-rahm-emanuel_569bfd55e4b0ce496424d903?

January 18, 2016

11 Most Anti-Capitalist Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

11 Most Anti-Capitalist Quotes from Martin Luther King, Jr.

Katie Halper KATIE HALPER
17 JAN 2016 AT 20:39 ET


Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. To be fair, I guess I should wish “Sorry it’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day” to the people who don’t believe it should be a holiday and the politicians who voted against making it one. I’m talking to you, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY), Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).

While both parties attempt to claim Dr. King, the Republicans have a much harder time doing so without distorting history and the truth. But the truth is, most politicians would distance themselves from Dr. King’s stunning (and spot on) indictments of capitalism. There are, of course, a few exceptions, here and there.

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, let’s look at some of the things he said challenged capitalism and are left out of most history books.

• “I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived its usefulness.” – Letter to Coretta Scott, July 18, 1952.

• “In a sense, you could say we’re involved in the class struggle.” –Quote to New York Times reporter, José Igelsias, 1968.

• “And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…” –Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967.

• “Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis.”Speech to Southern Christian Leadership Conference Atlanta, Georgia, August 16, 1967. .................(more)

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/11-most-anti-capitalist-quotes-from-martin-luther-king-jr/

January 18, 2016

'Diplomacy Works': Peace Groups Hail Iran Deal; Clinton Talks Like a Hawk

(Common Dreams) Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) suggested Sunday that the Obama administration's deal struck with Iran would never have happened had Hillary Clinton been president instead of Barack Obama.

Speaking on Meet the Press Sunday morning, Sanders said: “If you think back to, I think it was 2007, during the campaign in which Secretary Clinton ran against Barack Obama, she was critical of him. A question was asked to Obama and said, "Would you sit down and talk to the Iranians?" And he said, "Yeah, I would." Point being that you talk to your adversaries. You don't run away from that. Secretary Clinton, I think, called him naïve. Turns out that Obama was right. So clearly, we have many, many issues and many concerns with Iran. But clearly also, we want to improve our relationships with this very powerful country.”

From the 2008 campaign:



Meanwhile, Democrat Hillary Clinton struck a hawkish tone Sunday saying that if she were elected president in November, her approach to Iran would be "to distrust and verify." Clinton added: "Iran is still violating UN Security Council resolutions with its ballistic missile program, which should be met with new sanctions designations and firm resolve." "We're going to watch Iran like the proverbial hawk," Clinton said on Meet the Press.

Peace groups, however, are applauding President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry for forging the agreement with Iran which successfully shrunk Iran’s nuclear program and led to the Iranian government releasing five US citizens. ............(more)

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/01/17/diplomacy-works-peace-groups-hail-iran-deal-clinton-talks-hawk

January 18, 2016

Chris Hedges: The Mirage of Justice

from truthdig:


The Mirage of Justice

Posted on Jan 17, 2016
By Chris Hedges


If you are poor, you will almost never go to trial—instead you will be forced to accept a plea deal offered by government prosecutors. If you are poor, the word of the police, who are not averse to fabricating or tampering with evidence, manipulating witnesses and planting guns or drugs, will be accepted in a courtroom as if it was the word of God. If you are poor, and especially if you are of color, almost anyone who can verify your innocence will have a police record of some kind and thereby will be invalidated as a witness. If you are poor, you will be railroaded in assembly-line production from a town or city where there are no jobs through the police stations, county jails and courts directly into prison. And if you are poor, because you don’t have money for adequate legal defense, you will serve sentences that are decades longer than those for equivalent crimes anywhere else in the industrialized world.

If you are a poor person of color in America you understand this with a visceral fear. You have no chance. Being poor has become a crime. And this makes mass incarceration the most pressing civil rights issue of our era.

The 10-part online documentary “Making a Murderer,” by writer-directors Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, chronicles the endemic corruption of the judicial system. The film focuses on the case of Steven Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, who were given life sentences for murder without any tangible evidence linking them to the crime. As admirable as the documentary was, however, it focused on a case where the main defendant, Avery, had competent defense. He was also white. The blatant corruption of, and probable conspiracy by, the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin and then-Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz is nothing compared with what goes on in the well-oiled and deeply cynical system in place in inner-city courts. The accused in poor urban centers are lined up daily like sheep in a chute and shipped to prison with a startling alacrity. The attempts by those who put Avery and Dassey behind bars to vilify them further after the release of the film misses the point: The two men, like most of the rest of the poor behind bars in the United States, did not receive a fair trial. Whether they did or did not murder Teresa Halbach—and the film makes a strong case that they did not—is a moot point.

Once you are charged in America, whether you did the crime or not, you are almost always found guilty. Because of this, as many activists have discovered, the courts already are being used as a fundamental weapon of repression, and this abuse will explode in size should there be widespread unrest and dissent. Our civil liberties have been transformed into privileges—what Matt Taibbi in “The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap” calls “conditional rights and conditional citizenship”—that are, especially in poor communities, routinely revoked. Once rights become privileges, none of us are safe.

In any totalitarian society, including an American society ruled by its own species of inverted totalitarianism, the state invests tremendous amounts of energy into making the judicial system appear as if it functions impartially. And the harsher the totalitarian system becomes, the more effort it puts into disclaiming its identity. The Nazis, as did the Soviet Union under Stalin, broke the accused down in grueling and psychologically crippling interrogations—much the same way the hapless and confused Dassey is manipulated and lied to by interrogators in the film—to make them sign false confessions. Totalitarian states need the facade of justice to keep the public passive. ................(more)

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_mirage_of_justice_20160117

January 17, 2016

ESPN: The three men who changed tennis

(ESPN) With Novak Djokovic's US Open title last year, he became the third player of this generation to reach at least 10 Grand Slam victories, joining Roger Federer (17) and Rafael Nadal (14). To put that in perspective, just two other men have won double-digit Slams, all of which have come since the start of the Open era (since 1968): Bjorn Borg (11) and Pete Sampras (14). And they didn't overlap.

Borg started winning majors in 1974 and was done by 1981. Sampras won his first in 1990 and culminated his career at the 2002 US Open with his 14th major trophy. It should be noted that Rod Laver won 11 majors, but six came before the Open era.

Federer's 17 Slam wins are the most of all time. But Nadal has won two-thirds of his head-to-head encounters with Federer (23-11). And now Djokovic, though with seven fewer Slams than Federer, has dominated both his rivals, winning nine of his past 10 matches against Nadal and beating Federer in two major finals last season. ..............(more)

http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14543363/australian-open-greatest-era-tennis-history

January 17, 2016

AFGE member: Why Did My Union Give an Early Endorsement to Hillary Clinton Over Bernie Sanders?

from In These Times:


Why Did My Union Give an Early Endorsement to Hillary Clinton Over Bernie Sanders?
BY JOHN E. MCELHENNY II


The leadership of my union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), officially endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president on December 10. The endorsement came after union leadership had informed its members on November 17 that they would not make a presidential endorsement for at least two more months and without holding a membership vote.

Fifty-five rank-and-file union members from over 50 different AFGE locals signed on to a letter sent to AFGE leaders on November 16 that urged the union “to oppose an early primary endorsement for Hillary Clinton” and expressed support for Senator Bernie Sanders.

In response to the petition and the demand that the union refrain from issuing an early endorsement, National Vice President Gerald Swanke, from District 11, responded via email: "We're not. I don't expect an endorsement until at least the legislative conference."

.....(snip).....

AFGE leadership appeared to pursue two paths to determine its endorsement. First, they sent out a questionnaire to all presidential candidates. Second, they conducted a poll of 800 members, which they refer to as the "gold standard" (it's not clear if this is 800 out of its 300,000 members or out of the 670,000 federal workers AFGE represents). Based on these results, AFGE’s National Executive Committee (NEC) then voted to endorse Hillary Clinton for president.

.....(snip).....

Breaking down the polling numbers, out of over 300,000 dues-paying members, assuming these are who were polled, AFGE contacted 800 members. Out of these 800 members, 424 said conclusively that they would vote for a Democrat. Of those 424, 178 said they would vote for Clinton while 106 said they would vote for Sanders—not at all the “2 to 1 margin” AFGE claimed in their initial release. The AFGE leadership apparently believes that a poll of 800 people with only 22% supporting Hillary Clinton is enough to make an endorsement for their entire union. ................(more)

http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18766/afge-union-endorsement-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders-labor

January 16, 2016

Mother Nature's Invisible Hand Strikes Back Against the Carbon Economy

Mother Nature's Invisible Hand Strikes Back Against the Carbon Economy

Saturday, 16 January 2016 00:00
By JP Sottile, Truthout | News Analysis


Is the hydrocarbon economy too big to fail?

If the woefully inadequate outcome of the Paris climate conference is any indication, the answer is still a resounding "Yes!" That's because the overly optimistic agreement conspicuously ignored the core issue driving up the earth's temperature and warping the world's already misshaped markets.

The problem is Big Oil.

Simply put, Big Oil is a bad investment fueled by irrational exuberance, chronic cronyism and an increasingly indefensible misallocation of capital. And decades of throwing good money after bad has produced a distorted economic system that socializes risk, privatizes profits, externalizes costs and misallocates capital. This continues because policy makers sustain it with taxpayer-funded subsidies, costly tax breaks and low-overhead access to publicly held resources.

By failing to institute much-needed cost internalization mechanisms and by completely avoiding the key problem of government subsidization, the cork-popping cadre of COP21 tacitly admitted what most cynics already knew - policy makers still believe "Big Oil" is far too big to fail. But, like other distorted markets in history, the correction is coming. The growing impact of climate change is exposing the key fallacy at the heart of the hydrocarbon economy: Big Oil cannot simply exempt itself from the natural economy governing all things in this closed system called planet Earth.

It's Only Natural

Since Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, few ideas have captured the capitalist imagination like the notion that "an invisible hand" directs enterprising, self-interested individuals to produce a widely distributed wealth of social goods in spite of their self-serving intentions. ....................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34409-mother-nature-s-invisible-hand-strikes-back-against-the-carbon-economy

January 16, 2016

Black Homes Matter: San Francisco's Vanishing Black Population

Black Homes Matter: San Francisco's Vanishing Black Population

Saturday, 16 January 2016 00:00
By Carl Finamore, BeyondChron | News Analysis


This story is prompted by a picket sign I saw at a recent anti-police brutality protest sponsored by two San Francisco families, one Latino and one Black, whose sons were shot dead in separate incidents following a barrage of police bullets.

Among the crowd of 150 activists standing in the pouring rain in front of the police-barricaded Bayview police station, were four young people holding a sign that simply read, "The Last 3 Percent."

I thought their message was both powerful and poignant.

The words refer not directly to police violence but to the broader problem of the mass exodus of African Americans from San Francisco. Thousands have left their city of birth not because of any personal preference but because of political decisions and economic policies, many set into motion several decades ago.

Certainly, being one of the most expensive places to live in the entire world poses a challenge to the budgets of all working-class residents. ..................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34400-black-homes-matter-san-francisco-s-vanishing-black-population

January 16, 2016

What’s behind the Fed’s interest rate hike? A desire to keep workers insecure and wages depressed.

from Jacobin magazine:


The Fed Doesn’t Work For You
What’s behind the Fed’s recent interest rate hike? A desire to keep workers insecure and wages depressed.

by J. W. Mason


To the surprise of no one, the Federal Reserve recently raised the federal funds rate — the interest rate under its direct control — from 0–0.25 percent to 0.25–0.5 percent, ending seven years of a federal funds rate of zero.

But while widely anticipated, the decision still clashes with the Fed’s supposed mandate to maintain full employment and price stability. Inflation remains well shy of the Fed’s 2 percent benchmark (its interpretation of its legal mandate to promote “price stability”) — 1.4 percent in 2015, according to the Fed’s preferred personal consumption expenditure measure, and a mere 0.4 percent using the consumer price index — and shows no sign of rising.

US GDP remains roughly 10 percent below the pre-2008 trend, so it’s hard to argue that the economy is approaching any kind of supply constraints. And setting aside the incoherent notion of “price stability” (let alone of a single metric to measure it), according to the Fed’s professed rulebook, the case for a rate increase is no stronger today than a year or two ago. Even the business press, for the most part, fails to see the logic for raising rates now.

Yet from another perspective, the decision to raise the federal funds rate makes perfect sense. While the consensus view considers the main job of central banks to be maintaining price stability by adjusting the short-term interest rate, this has never been the whole story. (Lower interest rates are supposed to raise private spending when inflation falls short of the central bank’s target, and higher interest rates are supposed to restrain spending when inflation rises above the target.)

More importantly, the central bank helps paper over the gap between ideals and reality — the distance between the ideological vision of the economy as a system of market exchanges of real goods, and the concrete reality of production in pursuit of money profits. ....................(more)

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/federal-reserve-interest-rate-increase-janet-yellen-inflation-unemployment/

January 16, 2016

Keiser Report: 'Post-Traumatic Debt Disorder'

Published on Jan 14, 2016

Check Keiser Report websitefor more: http://www.maxkeiser.com/

In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss ‘post-traumatic debt disorder’ - which is seen as workers refuse to ask for wage increases, no matter how tight the labor market gets. They discuss the intentional Federal Reserve policy of repeatedly traumatising workers for decades in order to achieve this state of what their ideology sees as ‘perfection’ or ‘utopia.’