Jun 17

Today’s News 17th June 2017

  • The Treasonous Secession Of Climate Confederacy States

    Authored by Daniel Greenfield via FrontPageMag.com,

    After President Trump rejected the Paris Climate treaty, which had never been ratified by the Senate, the European Union announced that it would work with a climate confederacy of secessionist US states.

    Scotland and Norway’s environmental ministers have mentioned a focus on individual American states. And the secessionist governments of California, New York and Washington have announced that they will unilaterally and illegally enter into a foreign treaty rejected by the President of the United States.

    The Constitution is very clear about this. “No state shall enter into any treaty.” Governor Cuomo of New York has been equally clear. “New York State is committed to meeting the standards set forth in the Paris Accord regardless of Washington's irresponsible actions.”

    Cuomo’s statement conveniently comes in French, Chinese and Russian translations.

    “It is a little bold to talk about the China-California partnership as though we were a separate nation, but we are a separate nation,” Governor Brown of California announced.

    In an interview with the Huffington Post, the radical leftist described California as “a real nation-state”.

    Brown was taking a swing through China to reassure the Communist dictatorship of California’s loyalty to an illegal treaty at the same time as EU boss Juncker was bashing America and kissing up to Premier Li Keqiang at the EU-China summit. It’s one thing when the EU and China form a united front against America. It’s quite another when California and China form a united front against America.

    The Climate Alliance of California, New York, Washington, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Virginia and Rhode Island looks a lot like the Confederacy’s Montgomery Convention. Both serve as meeting points for a secessionist alliance of states to air their grievances against the Federal government over an issue in which they are out of step with the nation.

    "We’re a powerful state government. We have nine other states that agree with us," Brown boasted.

    Two more and Jim Jones' old pal could have his own confederacy.

    All the bragging and boasting about how much wealth and power the secessionist states of the climate confederacy represent sounds very familiar. But that wealth and power is based around small enclaves, the Bay Area and a few dozen blocks in Manhattan, which wield disproportionate influence.

    Like the slaveowner class, leftist elites are letting the arrogance of their wealth lead them into treason. And as they look out from their mansions and skyscrapers, they should remember that the majority of working class people in California and New York will be far less enthusiastic about fighting a war to protect their dirty investments in solar energy plants and carbon credits funded by taxes seized from many of those same people in these left-wing slave states.

    The declared intention of the Climate Alliance, in words appearing on the New York State government website, is to treasonously “convene U.S. states committed to upholding the Paris Climate Agreement”.

    States cannot and are not allowed to unilaterally choose to “uphold” a treaty rejected by the President. Their leaders are certainly not allowed to travel to enemy nations to inform foreign powers of their treasonous designs and to solicit their aid against the policies of the United States government.

    This is all the more treasonous at a time when the United States is on a collision course with the People’s Republic of China over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and trade agreements.

    “It’s important for the world to know that America is not Washington," Brown declared. "Yes, we’re part of the union, but we’re also a sovereign state that can promote the necessary policies that are required for survival.”

    Governors don’t normally feel the need to declare that their state is still part of the union. But they also don’t announce that they’re a separate nation and then set off to cut separate deals with enemy powers. No state should be issuing, “Yes, we’re part of the union, but” disclaimers before going to China.

    The disclaimer is the first step to leaving the union.

    Governor Brown's trip to China isn't funded by California taxpayers. That might be a relief to that overburdened tribe except that it's partially being paid for by the Energy Foundation. Behind that generic name for a pass through organization are a number of left-wing foundations who have been paying for American politicians to travel to the People’s Republic of China.

    Donors to the energy foundation include Ecocrat billionaire Tom Steyer who has pumped millions into EF. Steyer’s finances are entangled with China and even with members of the Chinese government.

    Steyer has accused President Trump of treason for rejecting the unconstitutional Paris Climate Treaty. But who are the real traitors here?

    Other major EF donors include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bloomberg and George Soros.

    There is something deeply troubling about a governor’s treasonous trip being funded by private interests with business ties to a foreign power. If Democrats were really serious about rooting out influence by foreign powers, they would be taking a very close look at Brown’s backers.

    But the greater outrage is that the governors of secessionist states are using a manufactured crisis to conduct “diplomacy” with foreign governments in defiance of the policies of the United States.

    Washington’s Jay Inslee was recently talking Global Warming in a meeting with Canadian PM Justin Trudeau. “We’re both very strongly engaged on issues of climate change, on issues of openness to trade, on leadership on refugees as well,” Trudeau declared.

    “We share an incredible commitment to defeating climate change,” Inslee flattered him. “And it is a great pleasure we have a national leader on the North American continent who is committed to that.”

    And he didn’t mean the President of the United States.

    Inslee’s fondness for the illegal Paris Climate treaty is unsurprising as his own efforts on Global Warming similarly depended on unilateral moves that lacked legislative support. But that is a problem for Washington’s Constitution. His participation in a secessionist pact is a problem for our Constitution.

    And the problem isn’t limited to the Climate Alliance.

    California and many of the other entities declaring that they will enforce an illegal treaty are also sanctuary states and cities. They are choosing not to follow Federal law while implementing foreign treaties that they have no right to unilaterally participate in.

    This is a treasonous situation that is more troubling in some ways than the original Civil War because it involves states making open alliance with enemy powers such as China and welcoming them in. State governments are undermining the united front of the national government in the face of the enemy.

    "California will resist this misguided and insane course of action," Governor Brown ranted. The logic of “resistance” has inevitably turned into treason.

    A civil war is underway. In the last election the territorial majority of Americans rejected the rule of a minority of wealthy and powerful urban enclaves. Outside of their bicoastal bases, the political power of the Democrat faction has been shattered. And so it has retreated into subversion and secessionism.

    “China is moving forward in a very serious way, and so is California,” Brown declared. “And we're going in the opposite direction of Donald Trump.”

    While Democrats have spent the better part of the previous week waving their arms in the air over a back channel with Russia, one of their faction’s leading governors is openly allying with China against the President of the United States. And the treasonous Democrat media is cheering this betrayal.

    Brown and his colleagues are in blatant violation of the Logan Act. Their actions are in violation of the United States Constitution. And all this is another dark step on the road to another civil war.

    If the climate confederacy is not held accountable for its treason, the crisis will only grow.

  • Republicans Go On Offensive Against Mueller; Call For 'Special Counsel' To Investigate AG Lynch

    Last night, after Trump launched yet another furious tweetstorm intended to expose the double standard applied in the Hillary investigation compared to the Russia probe, we noted that Republicans might be well served to stop sitting around twiddling their thumbs and actually go on the offensive against an investigation that has obviously morphed into mass hysteria courtesy of free-flowing leaks from a conflicted “intelligence community” intent upon bringing down a presidency.  Here’s what we said:

    Of course, until someone within the Trump administration or Republican Party smartens up and calls for the appointment of a ‘Special Counsel’ to look into Hillary’s email scandal, something that should have been done long ago, and not for retaliatory reasons but simply due to Comey’s and AG Lynch’s blatant mishandling of the investigation (a point which Deputy AG Rosenstein obviously agreed with), the Democrats have no reason to calm their mass hysteria.  Then, and only then, do we suspect that Hillary might just be able to ‘convince’ her party to exercise some form of reasonable judgement.

    Now, according to a note this morning from The Hill, Republicans seem to be doing just that with several members of the GOP calling on the Special Counsel to look into whether former Attorney General Loretta Lynch illegally meddled in the Hillary investigation when she met with Bill Clinton on the tarmac in Phoenix and/or instructed Comey to refer to his case as a “matter” rather than an “investigation.”

    Rather than wasting resources on investigating Trump, the GOP says the special counsel must look into whether former attorney general Loretta Lynch meddled with the FBI’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server. Comey testified that Lynch told him to downplay the seriousness of the FBI’s email server investigation.

    For those who missed it, here is Comey’s testimony in which he confirms that Lynch “directed” him to refer to the Hillary email case as a “matter” rather than an ‘investigation”…not to mention that ill-advised meeting with Bill Clinton on the Phoenix tarmac just days before the Justice Department was set to announce the results of their investigation.

     

    Now, and perhaps because of a recent attack which targeted Republicans and in which the shooter seemed to be fueled by rage from largely fake, anonymously-sourced new stories, it appears that the GOP is finally starting to push back.

    “These special counsels have a way of going off the rails,” Rep. Trent Franks (R-Az.) told The Hill. “And the ostensible purpose of the special counsel has now been essentially vitiated and everybody knows that. And so they’ve got to try to find something to do. In this case, it was almost the intent from the beginning to try to create something out of nothing. And it doesn’t work in physics, but in politics it seems to be pretty effective.”

     

    “This is the most coordinated communications effort on behalf of the president that we’ve seen in a long time,” said Barry Bennett, a former adviser to Trump. “They need it — it’s tough to fight nameless, faceless quotes from people purposefully twisting these stories on you.”

     

    Trump’s lead outside counsel, Mark Kasowitz responded to the Post story by decrying the “illegal” leaks, which he said had come directly from the FBI.

     

    Jay Sekulow, a new member of Trump’s legal team, went on Fox News Channel to say that the leaks may have come from inside Mueller’s special counsel. Sekulow asked why the FBI is “not sending agents to people’s houses” to put an end to it.

     

    Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee, which chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has described as the “political arm” of the White House, has led the effort to cast doubt on the special counsel investigation.

    Of course, Trump has been fairly direct and open with his feelings about the ongoing “witch hunt.”

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    Meanwhile, as we noted earlier this morning, even Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has grown weary of the constant leaks and what they mean for the credibility of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation….which seems to have prompted him to release the following statement:

    “Americans should exercise caution before accepting as true any stories attributed to anonymous ‘officials,’ particularly when they do not identify the country — let alone the branch or agency of government — with which the alleged sources supposedly are affiliated. Americans should be skeptical about anonymous allegations. The Department of Justice has a long-established policy to neither confirm nor deny such allegations.

    Of course, it’s only a matter of time until the Washington Post uses to the Republican fury to allege guilt…afterall, why would they attempt to fight back if they’re innocent?  Surely it can’t have anything to do with the barrage of anonymously-sourced, fake news stories released daily with the sole intent of bringing down a Republican President while never producing a shred of actual evidence. 

  • Netflix Now Has More Subscribers Than Cable

    Despite going all-in on Adam Sandler content – a bizarre choice – Netflix has managed to continue growing its subscriber base, recently reaching a new milestone: It now has more paying customers than Comcast Corp., Charter Communications and all other US cable companies combined.

    As Forbes reports, Netflix now has 50.85 million subscribers, surpassing cable's 48.61 million. There is one caveat, though: Cable’s total doesn’t include minor cable networks, which could amount to 5% of total customers.

    Over the past five years, Netflix has managed to more than double its subscriber base from 23.4 million in the first quarter of 2012. But growth has slowed recently due to intensifying competition from a host of rival streaming services, causing Netflix to miss both its domestic and foreign subscriber targets for the first quarter.

    Here’s a summary of Netflix's Q1 results:

    1Q revenue $2.64b vs est. $2.65b

    1Q GAAP EPS 40c vs 37c

    1Q domestic streaming net adds 1.42 million, vs consensus est. 1.59MM vs company forecast 1.5MM

    1Q international streaming net adds 3.53MM consensus est. 3.90m vs company forecast 3.7MM

    2Q GAAP EPS forecast 15c vs est. 23c

    2Q revenue forecast 2.755BN  vs est. $2.76BN

    Luckily for American cable companies, the battle for subscribers isn’t a zero-sum game. Here's Forbes:

    While cable subs are down by 4 million in the same five years that Netflix has seen huge growth, that's not a massive drop off. It's also worth bearing in mind that cable TV makes up only 50% of total TV viewership in pay TV. That said, Q1 2017 shows a net loss in subscriptions while Q1 2016 saw cable grow a little.

     

    Satellite TV is doing okay, with around 38 million subscribers. Dish Network added 318,000 customers in Q1 with Direct TV stalling with gains that didn't outpace customer loses. Satellite is still growing faster than cable though.

     

    Faster still though are the internet-delivered services like Sling TV and Direct TV now which have added 350,000 in Q1. These services now have 1.7 million customers between them, and it's likely that this segment will continue to see growth as customers move away from cable TV.

    Cable, satellite and internet streaming services in the US have a combined 93.3 million subscribers. Even as Netflix expands into more foreign markets, it likely won’t match that total any time.

    To be sure, the Netflix to cable comparison isn’t really fair to the cable companies: While the exact cost depends on the specific package, monthly fees associated with cable are typically many times more expensive than Netflix's $10 fee.

    Which brings us to our next, and final topic: Slowing subscriber growth isn’t the only metric that makes Netflix's critics uncomfortable. The company’s unprecedented cash burn is another major red flag. In Q1, the company burned $422 million, which while less than the record $640 million burned in Q4 (over $1 billion in the last 6 months) was $160 million than its cash burn from a year ago. The company still expects to burn a total of $2 billion for the full year.

    Here’s how the company explains it:

    Free cash flow in Q1’17 was -$423 million vs. -$261 million in the year ago quarter and an improvement from -$639 million in Q4’16. The growth in our original content means we continue to plan to have around $2B in negative FCF this year.

     

    We have a large market opportunity ahead of us and we’re optimizing long-term FCF by growing our original content aggressively. Negative near-term FCF is the result of the big increases in our original content, combined with small but growing operating margins. Since we want our operating margins to grow slowly so we can spend enough to quickly grow revenue and original content, we anticipate negative FCF to accompany our rapid growth for many years.

     

    Our operating margins are our key indicator of improving global profitability; they are already growing and we plan to keep them growing for many years ahead. Eventually, at a much larger revenue base, original content and revenue growth will be slower, and we anticipate substantial positive FCF, like our media peers.

    It remains to be seen if the transition from massive cash burn to cash flow positive is as simple as the company expects it to be.

  • How Much Do People Actually Make From "Gigs" Like Uber And Airbnb

    Via Priceonomics.com,

    Coined shortly after the financial crisis in 2009, the so-called “gig economy” or “sharing economy” refers to the growing cadre of companies like Airbnb, Lyft, and TaskRabbit—platforms that employ temporary workers who provide a wide variety of services: delivery, ridesharing, rentals, and odd jobs. A recent Pew study estimated that nearly a quarter of all Americans earn some money through these platforms.

    But how much money are the service providers in the sharing economy actually making from their "side-gigs"?

    We analyzed anonymized data from Priceonomics customer Earnest, a loan provider, and examined tens of thousands of loan applicants to see how much people are earning on side-gig platforms and how these platforms stack up against each other.

    We looked at a span of data accounting for just over two years, and for each worker, we analyzed a pay period of between one and 27 months. We do not know how many hours of work the income represents for each platform, as each one has a unique pricing and commission structure. 

    Furthermore, this data is just reflective of the Earnest user base, who are typically refinancing college loans and therefore may be more likely to be treating these services as a “side-gig” than the typical service provider who may be more likely to treat it as a fulltime job and have different earning levels.

    We found that 85% of side-gig workers make less than $500 a month. And of all the side-gig platforms we examined, Airbnb hosts earn the most by far.

    In our data, on all but Lyft and Uber, we excluded any worker who made a total $10 or less from a platform to eliminate data points that could simply represent a refund from the company. For Lyft and Uber, we excluded anyone with a total income of $50 or less. Then we tallied the average monthly incomes made by workers at each company.

    Data source: Earnest

    Making an average of $924 off their platform each month, Airbnb hosts make nearly three times as much as other workers. Workers at the general task-service platform, TaskRabbit, rank second at $380 per month. Overall, Lyft and Uber drivers make roughly the same average per month at $377 and $364 respectively. We also observed that nearly a quarter of Lyft drivers also earned income from Uber—and of that subset, we saw that the average income was actually higher for Uber ($481 vs $396.)

    Of course, on all of these platforms, there is a wide range of earners. Several Airbnb hosts in our records, for instance, made over $10,000 per month, while others made less than $200.

    To really understand these averages above, we took a deeper look at these ranges. Below, we’ve charted out the income distribution for each company. The figures represent the percentage of workers who fall into each month income bracket.

    Data source: Earnest

    Airbnb hosts enjoy the highest average monthly earnings because there is a much wider range of income distribution on that platform than at other companies: Nearly half of all hosts make more than $500 per month.

    Conversely, the majority of workers at some other companies (Etsy, Uber, Fiverr) fall into the $100 or under per month bracket.

    Tallying all of these companies up, the overall distribution tilts strongly toward the lower end.

    Data source: Earnest

    Some 84% of all gig economy workers make less than $500 per month—but in particular, workers at Getaround (98.3% under $500 per month), Fiverr (96.3%), and Etsy (95%) have especially high percentages of low-earners.

    Reasons for the low income could vary—some workers may be simply trying the platform, or put in very few hours.

    Lyft, Taskrabbit, and Airbnb seem to beat this “84% under $500” average.

    Data source: Earnest

    It might be easy to look at this data and assume that gig economy workers are working at below market rates. After all, $500 per month is hardly a livable wage. For the industry, the key question is how many of these workers are utilizing these platforms to make a little extra cash as a side-gig versus trying to forage a full-time living.

  • What Housing Recovery? Real Home Prices Still 16% Below 2007 Peak

    Since the financial crisis, home equity has gone from being America’s biggest driver of (illusory) wealth to one of the biggest sources of economic inequality.

    And while the post-crisis recovery has returned the national home price index to its highs from early 2007, most of this rise was generated by a handful of urban markets like New York City and San Francisco, leaving most Americans behind.

    To wit: home prices in the 10 most expensive metro areas have risen 63% since 2000, while home prices in the 10 cheapest areas have gained just 3.6%, according to Harvard’s annual State of the Nation’s Housing report. And while nominal prices may have returned to their pre-recession levels, when you adjust for inflation, real prices are as much as 16 percent below past peaks.

    Despite seven years of rock-bottom interest rates, valuations in 3 out of 5 metropolitan areas remain below their pre-recession peak. Outside, of a few rich coastal cities, the only advantage that this “housing recovery” has brought is that some homes remain affordable for some Americans. However, thanks to the disproportionate rise in home valuations in certain densely populated areas, the number of Americans paying more than 50% of their income in rent is near a record high.

    US house prices rose 5.6 percent in 2016, finally surpassing the high reached nearly a decade earlier. Achieving this milestone reduced the number of homeowners underwater on their mortgages to 3.2 million by year’s end, a remarkable drop from the 12.1 million peak in 2011.But as Bloomberg reports, nationally, just 1 in 3 homes has recovered peak value. Meanwhile, in the country’s most densely-populated markets, housing supplies are incredibly tight following nearly a decade of historically low construction.

    The lack of inventory for sale is evident in both the new and existing segments of the market. In 2016, the typical new home for sale was on the market for 3.3 months, well below the 5.1 months averaged since recordkeeping began in 1988. Meanwhile, only 1.65 million existing homes were for sale in 2016, the lowest count in 16 years. And with sales volumes picking up, the inventory represented just 3.6 months of supply, an 11-year low.

    Conditions are particularly tight at the lower end of the market, likely reflecting both the slower price recovery in this segment and the fact that fewer entry-level homes are being built. Between 2004 and 2015, completions of smaller single-family homes (under 1,800 square feet) fell from nearly 500,000 units to only 136,000. Similarly, the number of townhouses started in 2016 (98,000) was less than half the number started in 2005.

    Renters, it seems, are bearing the brunt of the US housing stock crunch. Despite a relatively strong pickup in multi-family housing, rental markets are tighter than they’ve been in more than 30 years, though there has been some softening on the high end.

    According to the Housing Vacancy Survey, the rental vacancy rate fell for the seventh straight year in 2016, dipping to 6.9 percent—its lowest level in more than three decades. MPF Research reports that the vacancy rate for professionally managed apartments was also just 4.4 percent. While some rental markets showed signs of softening in early 2017—most notably in San Francisco and New York—there is generally little indication that increases in supply are outstripping demand.

    Meanwhile, the number of Americans exceeding the 30%-of-income “affordability threshold” has declined for five straight years, but while homeowners have enjoyed greater financial freedom, rates for renters have barely budged.

    Indeed, 11.1 million renter households were severely cost burdened in 2015, a 3.7 million increase from 2001. By comparison, 7.6 million owners were severely burdened in 2015, up 1.1 million from 2001. The share of renters with severe burdens varies widely across the nation’s 100 largest metros, ranging from a high of 35.4 percent in Miami to a low of 18.4 percent in El Paso. While most common in high-cost markets, renter cost burdens are also widespread in areas with moderate rents but relatively low incomes. Augusta is a case in point, where the severely cost-burdened share of renters was at 30.3 percent in 2015.

    In summary, the US housing market's gains since the crisis have disproportionately benefited certain cities, which creates two problems:

    Renters in markets that have seen the strongest comebacks are being squeezed as wages fail to keep up with runaway rents; and,

     

    Cities in the south and midwest, typically post-industrial towns, are filled with homeowners who might still be struggling with an underwater mortgage, and with only tepid gains in housing prices, many are trapped in their homes.

  • Special Prosecutor Mueller Is a Political Hack

    The New York Times characterizes special prosecutor Robert Mueller as being independent and fair:

    Robert S. Mueller III managed in a dozen years as F.B.I. director to stay above the partisan fray, carefully cultivating a rare reputation for independence and fairness.

    Let’s fact-check the Times …

    Anthrax Frame-Up

    Mueller presided over the incredibly flawed anthrax investigation.

    The U.S. Government Accountability Office says the FBI’s investigation was “flawed and inaccurate”.  The investigation was so bogus that a senator called for an “independent review and assessment of how the FBI handled its investigation in the anthrax case.”

    The head of the FBI’s anthrax investigation says the whole thing was a sham. He says that the FBI higher-ups “greatly obstructed and impeded the investigation”, that there were “politically motivated communication embargos from FBI Headquarters”.

    Moreover, the anthrax investigation head said that the FBI framed scientist Bruce Ivins.  On July 6, 2006, the FBI’s anthrax investigation FBI Plaintiff provided a whistleblower report of mismanagement to the FBI’s Deputy Director pursuant to Title 5, United States Code, Section 2303, which noted:

    (j) the FBI’s fingering of Bruce Ivins as the anthrax mailer; and, (k) the FBI’s subsequent efforts to railroad the prosecution of Ivins in the face of daunting exculpatory evidence.

     

    Following the announcement of its circumstantial case against Ivins, Defendants DOJ and FBI crafted an elaborate perception management campaign to bolster their assertion of Ivins’ guilt. These efforts included press conferences and highly selective evidentiary presentations which were replete with material omissions.

    In other words, Mueller presided over the attempt to frame an innocent man (and see this).

    Unsure About Assassination of U.S. Citizens Living On U.S. Soil

    Rather than saying “of course not!”, Mueller said that he wasn’t sure whether Obama had the right to assassinate Americans living on American soil.

    Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley commented at the time:

    One would hope that the FBI Director would have a handle on a few details guiding his responsibilities, including whether he can kill citizens without a charge or court order.

     

    ***

     

    He appeared unclear whether he had the power under the Obama Kill Doctrine or, in the very least, was unwilling to discuss that power. For civil libertarians, the answer should be easy: “Of course, I do not have that power under the Constitution.”

    Spying on Americans

    Mueller participated in one of the greatest expansions of mass surveillance in human history.  As we noted in 2013:

    NBC News reports:

    NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act, the government has been collecting records on every phone call made in the U.S.

    On March 2011, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee:

    We put in place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.

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    Remember, the FBI – unlike the CIA – deals with internal matters within the borders of the United States.

     

    On May 1st of this year, former FBI agent Tim Clemente told CNN’s Erin Burnett that all present and past phone calls were recorded:

    BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a conversation. There’s no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

     

    CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It’s not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the ainvestigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

     

    BURNETT: “So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

     

    CLEMENTE: “No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

    The next day, Clemente again appeared on CNN, this time with host Carol Costello, and she asked him about those remarks. He reiterated what he said the night before but added expressly that “all digital communications in the past” are recorded and stored:

    NSA whistleblowers say that this means that the NSA collects “word for word” all of our communications.

    FBI special agent – and a 2002 Time Person of the Year – Colleen Rowley writes:

    Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the lhttp://www.washingtonsblog.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=68066&action=edita… improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”

    Torture

    FBI special agent Colleen Rowley points out:

    Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

    Iraq War

    Rowley notes:

    When you had the lead-up to the Iraq War … Mueller and, of course, the CIA and all the other directors, saluted smartly and went along with what Bush wanted, which was to gin up the intelligence to make a pretext for the Iraq War. For instance, in the case of the FBI, they actually had a receipt, and other documentary proof, that one of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had not been in Prague, as Dick Cheney was alleging. And yet those directors more or less kept quiet. That included … CIA, FBI, Mueller, and it included also the deputy attorney general at the time, James Comey.

    Post 9/11 Round-Up

    FBI special agent Rowley also notes:

    Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.

    9/11 Cover Up

    Rowley points out:

    The FBI and all the other officials claimed that there were no clues, that they had no warning [about 9/11] etc., and that was not the case. There had been all kinds of memos and intelligence coming in. I actually had a chance to meet Director Mueller personally the night before I testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee … [he was] trying to get us on his side, on the FBI side, so that we wouldn’t say anything terribly embarrassing. …

    But overwhelming evidence shows that 9/11 was foreseeable. Indeed, Al Qaeda crashing planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was itself foreseeable. Even the chair of the 9/11 Commission said that the attack was preventable.

    Rowley also said says:

    TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11.

    In addition, Rowley says that the FBI sent Soviet-style “minders” to her interviews with the Joint Intelligence Committee investigation of 9/11, to make sure that she didn’t say anything the FBI didn’t like.  The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 confirmed that government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses (and see this).

    Mueller’s FBI also obstructed the 9/11 investigation in many other ways. For example,  an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location.  And see this.

    And Kristen Breitweiser – one of the four 9/11 widows instrumental in forcing the government to form the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 2001 attacks – points out:

    Mueller and other FBI officials had purposely tried to keep any incriminating information specifically surrounding the Saudis out of the Inquiry’s investigative hands. To repeat, there was a concerted effort by the FBI and the Bush Administration to keep incriminating Saudi evidence out of the Inquiry’s investigation. And for the exception of the 29 full pages, they succeeded in their effort.

    Conclusion

    Rather than being “above the fray”, Mueller is an authoritarian and water-carrier for the status quo and the powers-that-be.

    As Coleen Rowley puts it:

    It seems clear that based on his history and close “partnership” with Comey, called “one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,” Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.

     

    Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”

    And:

    While not the worst of the bunch, neither Comey nor Mueller deserve their Jimmy Stewart ‘G-man’ reputations for absolute integrity but have merely been, along the lines of George ‘Slam Dunk’ Tenet, capable and flexible politicized sycophants to power, that enmeshed them in numerous wrongful abuses of power along with presiding over plain official incompetence. It’s sad that political partisanship is so blinding and that so few people remember the actual sordid history.

  • Beware The Collapsing Social Contract

    Authored by Gaius Publius via Down With Tyranny blog,

    "[T]he super-rich are absconding with our wealth, and the plague of inequality continues to grow. An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of June 8, 2017, the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people."
         —Paul Buchheit, Alternet

     

    "Congressman Steve Scalise, Three Others Shot at Alexandria, Virginia, Baseball Field"
         —NBC News, June 14, 2017

     

    "4 killed, including gunman, in shooting at UPS facility in San Francisco"
         —ABC7News, June 14, 2017

     

    "Seriously? Another multiple shooting? So many guns. So many nut-bars. So many angry nut-bars with guns."
         —MarianneW via Twitter

     

    "We live in a world where "multiple dead" in San Francisco shooting can't cut through the news of another shooting in the same day."
         —SamT via Twitter

     

    "If the rich are determined to extract the last drop of blood, expect the victims to put up a fuss. And don't expect that fuss to be pretty. I'm not arguing for social war; I'm arguing for justice and peace."
         —Yours truly

    When the social contract breaks from above, it breaks from below as well.

    Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze, expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for "profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era, there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to entirely suppress it.

    As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure – the storm that kills this year, the hurricane that kills the next – but I'm also concerned about the longer term as well. If the beatings from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the rich" policies improves, the beatings will never stop, and both sides will take up the cudgel.

    Then where will we be?

    America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain

    I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably more than last year and the year before. And they're noticeably scruffier, less "kemp,"? if that makes sense to you (it does if you live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as neighbors).

    The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society have nowhere to drain to but down — physically, economically, emotionally. The Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?

    The pot isn't boiling yet — these shootings are random, individualized — but they seem to be piling on top of each other. A hard-boiling, over-flowing pot may not be far behind. That's concerning as well, much moreso than even the random horrid events we recoil at today.

    Many More Ways Than One to Be a Denier

    My comparison above to the climate problem was deliberate. It's not just the occasional storms we see that matter. It's also that, seen over time, those storms are increasing, marking a trend that matters even more. As with climate, the whole can indeed be greater than its parts. There's more than one way to be a denier of change.

    These are not just metaphors. The country is already in a pre-revolutionary state; that's one huge reason people chose Trump over Clinton, and would have chosen Sanders over Trump.

    The Big Squeeze has to stop, or this will be just the beginning of a long and painful path. We're on a track that nations we have watched – tightly "ordered" states, highly chaotic ones – have trod already. While we look at them in pity, their example stares back at us.

    Mes petits sous, mon petit cri de coeur.

  • US Navy Destroyer Collides With Merchant Vessel Off Japan

    The USS Fitzgerald, a guided missile destroyer, collided with a merchant vessel southwest of Yokosuka, Japan, the U.S. Navy said in a statement on Friday afternoon. The crash happened at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time on June 17, and the Navy requested Japan’s Coast Guard’s assistance.

    Aerial footage of the destroyer after the collision

    The Navy said the Fitzgerald collided with a merchant vessel 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka and the extent of injuries to U.S. personnel “is being determined.” It added that the Navy had requested the assistance of the Japanese Coast Guard.

    According to Reuters, Japan’s NHK public television website reported that the commercial vessel is a Philippines container ship and that the destroyer had suffered some flooding and was “unable to operate”.

    Full navy statement below:

    USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) was involved in a collision with a merchant vessel at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time, June 17, while operating about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka, Japan.

     

    The U.S. Navy has requested Japanese Coast Guard assistance in responding to the collision.

     

    The extent of damage is being determined. The extent of personnel injuries is being determined. The incident will be investigated.

    The Fitzgerald recently made a port call to the US Navy’s Subic Bay base in the Philippines and conducted patrols in the South China Sea. The destroyer maintains constant contact with Japan as it is forward-based in Yokosuka.

    The latest weekly summary of US naval asset around the world is shown in the map below. It shows that the the Nimitz carrier group is headed for the Middle East, via Hawaii, while the Vinson is also leaving the Korean peninsula. Meanwhile, the Persian Gulf is lightly attended, following the departure of the USS Bush which recently was headed west in the Med, only to make an unexpected 180 and is now parked off the coast of Israel.

  • Tennessee Counties Sue Opioid Makers Using Local "Crack Tax" Law

    The US opioid epidemic has continued to worsen in 2017 as super-powerful synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil taint the nation’s heroin supply. While the FBI’s final tally has yet to arrive, preliminary data suggest that overdose deaths last year eclipsed the 50,000 recorded nationally in 2015 – the most ever. And the body count is expected to be even higher in 2017. As the death toll in some of the hardest-hit areas of the country skyrockets – in some cases forcing county coroners to build larger freezers to store the bodies – states have begun filing lawsuits against the pharmaceutical companies responsible for making and marketing opioid painkillers, in hopes of offsetting the ballooning public-health costs that have been a byproduct of the crisis.

    Three Tennessee district attorneys are the latest prosecutors to file suit against the drug makers, joining a group that includes the attorneys general of Ohio, Illinois, Mississippi, New York and Santa Clara and Orange County in California – not to mention the Cherokee Nation. But the Tennessee prosecutors' approach differs from their peers in one unique way:

    They are suing under the state’s long-ridiculed and rarely used “crack tax” law, which would hold Big Pharma liable for damages as if they were street-level drug dealers, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.

    While the companies targeted by individual states differ, prosecutors are all alleging similar misconduct: That the pharmaceutical companies leaned on researchers to play down the drugs’ addictive qualities, while spending millions on marketing them to both patients and doctors.

    Another lawsuit filed in Washington in January alleged that Purdue Pharma, maker of OxyContin, was aware of the drug’s immense popularity on the streets, but did nothing to curb its distribution.

    The suit also names a “Baby Doe” as a plaintiff. “Baby Doe,” the News Sentinel reports, is a boy born in March 2015 addicted to opiates because his mother, identified as “Mary Doe,” was an opiate addict and bought her drugs in Sullivan County, one of the three judicial districts represented in the legal action.

    Filed on behalf of the three prosecutors and Baby Doe by Nashville law firm Branstetter, Stranch and Jennings, the lawsuit spends dozens of pages detailing publicly available accounts of alleged fraud and deceptive marketing practices by opiate manufacturers.

    “It is now beyond reasonable question that the manufacturer defendants’ fraud caused Mary Doe and thousands of others in Tennessee to become addicted to opioids — an addiction that, thanks to their fraudulent conduct, was all but certain to occur,” the lawsuit stated.

    Tennessee logs more opiate prescriptions per capita than every state in the nation except West Virginia, the News Sentinel reported. Sullivan County is considered an epicenter, so much so its law enforcement agencies snared their own reality television shows. Shelby County in West Tennessee is also considering joining the lawsuit.

    Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery III issued a statement Tuesday in which he said his office is investigating the state's options in pursuing its own legal action.

    "Our objective is to identify and hold accountable the parties responsible for this opioid epidemic," the statement read.

    That “crack tax” – otherwise known as the drug dealer liability statute – was passed in 2005 to allow for civil action against street drug dealers, many of whom were peddling crack.

    However, since police typically seize convicted drug dealers’ profits under criminal and civil forfeiture laws – and since most drug dealers go to prison after they’re arrested – there was rarely anything left to be claimed in civil court.

    But unlike street dealers, pharma firms are flush with cash. Purdue has annual sales of nearly $3 billion, while Mallinckrodt and Endo also rack up billions each year from sales of opiate drugs.

    Many legal experts have said that the current batch of lawsuits resembles the 1998 settlement between the four largest US tobacco companies – Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard – and 46 states attorneys general. In accordance with that judgment, the tobacco companies agreed to pay out more than $200 billion through 2025, with payments to be made in perpetuity.

    While states are no doubt in need of financial resources to offset the public-health costs they’re forced to absorb because of the epidemic, pharmaceutical companies have at least one strategy to legally deflect blame: If the showdown ever makes it to trial, defense attorneys will try to slough off as much blame as possible on the overprescribing doctors, like one elderly physician who was arrested earlier this month in New York City and charged with needlessly prescribing millions of pills. 

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