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Octafish
Octafish's Journal
Octafish's Journal
March 3, 2016
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1404612
Math as in ''Billions and Billions of Dollars.''
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1404612
March 3, 2016
Who Ray McGovern is.
Ray McGovern got ''The Treatment'' protesting Hillary speech in 2011
McGovern just stood and turned his back. For that he was treated with violence.JUAN GONZALEZ: On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a major address calling for internet freedom around the world. Speaking at George Washington University, Clinton condemned the Egyptian and Iranian governments for arresting and beating protesters.
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: What happened in Egypt and what happened in Iran, which this week is once again using violence against protesters seeking basic freedoms, was about a great deal more than the internet. In each case, people protested because of deep frustrations with the political and economic conditions of their lives. They stood and marched and chanted, and the authorities tracked and blocked and arrested them.
AMY GOODMAN: Just moments before Hillary Clinton spoke those words, a 71-year-old man was violently ejected from Clinton’s own event and arrested for turning his back on the Secretary of State. TV cameras caught part of what happened.
JUAN GONZALEZ: The voice you heard screaming was that of Ray McGovern as he was dragged away by security guards who left him bruised and bloodied. He was then arrested. McGovern is a former Army intelligence officer and a 27-year veteran of the CIA. He was one of the CIA’s daily briefers for President George H.W. Bush. He has since become a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy.
CONTINUED...
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/18/ex_cia_analyst_ray_mcgovern_beaten
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: What happened in Egypt and what happened in Iran, which this week is once again using violence against protesters seeking basic freedoms, was about a great deal more than the internet. In each case, people protested because of deep frustrations with the political and economic conditions of their lives. They stood and marched and chanted, and the authorities tracked and blocked and arrested them.
AMY GOODMAN: Just moments before Hillary Clinton spoke those words, a 71-year-old man was violently ejected from Clinton’s own event and arrested for turning his back on the Secretary of State. TV cameras caught part of what happened.
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: Then the government pulled the plug. Cell phone service was cut off. TV satellite signals were jammed, and internet access was blocked for nearly the entire population.
RAY McGOVERN: So, this is America! This is America! Who are you? I’m standing there quietly! You’re breaking my arm!
SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: The government did not want the people to communicate with each other, and it did not want the press to communicate with the public.
JUAN GONZALEZ: The voice you heard screaming was that of Ray McGovern as he was dragged away by security guards who left him bruised and bloodied. He was then arrested. McGovern is a former Army intelligence officer and a 27-year veteran of the CIA. He was one of the CIA’s daily briefers for President George H.W. Bush. He has since become a vocal critic of U.S. foreign policy.
CONTINUED...
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/18/ex_cia_analyst_ray_mcgovern_beaten
Who Ray McGovern is.
March 3, 2016
Bernie Sanders Says Hyde Park Made Him a Socialist, Social Justice Advocate
By Sam Cholke and Kelly Bauer
DNAinfo.com | September 28, 2015
HYDE PARK — Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday returned to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, a day after a poll put him closer to Hillary Clinton than ever.
SNIP...
In front of a packed crowd of about 1,400, Sanders struck a note of an personal battle for social justice that started at the university where he studied English and then political philosophy while earning as much of an education in the neighborhood's tumultuous political climate of the 1960s.
"I will not go down in history as one of the great students in the history of the University of Chicago," Sanders said. "I spent many days in the basement of Harper Library reading everything except the books I was supposed to be reading for class the next day — don’t take that as advice. Do better than I did."
He said Hyde Park was the first place where he met people who had devoted their lives to social justice and civil rights issues.
SNIP...
"No one in that room in 1964 would have thought it was possible, but it happened and we should be proud of it," Sanders said of Obama, whose home is mere blocks from where Sanders spoke Monday. "It is not Barack Obama, it is the American people reached the maturity that they would vote for the best candidate not just the white candidate."
CONTINUED...
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150928/hyde-park/bernie-sanders-university-of-chicago-talk-comes-after-polling-boost
Bernie Sanders Says Hyde Park (UChicago) Made Him a Socialist, Social Justice Advocate
Chicago police arrest college guy Bernie Sanders as he protested for public school desegregation.Bernie Sanders Says Hyde Park Made Him a Socialist, Social Justice Advocate
By Sam Cholke and Kelly Bauer
DNAinfo.com | September 28, 2015
HYDE PARK — Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday returned to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, a day after a poll put him closer to Hillary Clinton than ever.
SNIP...
In front of a packed crowd of about 1,400, Sanders struck a note of an personal battle for social justice that started at the university where he studied English and then political philosophy while earning as much of an education in the neighborhood's tumultuous political climate of the 1960s.
"I will not go down in history as one of the great students in the history of the University of Chicago," Sanders said. "I spent many days in the basement of Harper Library reading everything except the books I was supposed to be reading for class the next day — don’t take that as advice. Do better than I did."
He said Hyde Park was the first place where he met people who had devoted their lives to social justice and civil rights issues.
SNIP...
"No one in that room in 1964 would have thought it was possible, but it happened and we should be proud of it," Sanders said of Obama, whose home is mere blocks from where Sanders spoke Monday. "It is not Barack Obama, it is the American people reached the maturity that they would vote for the best candidate not just the white candidate."
CONTINUED...
https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20150928/hyde-park/bernie-sanders-university-of-chicago-talk-comes-after-polling-boost
March 2, 2016
The Turtle Whistles
What and whom McConnell has supported:
http://votesmart.org/candidate/evaluations/53298/mitch-mcconnell#.Vtbs-5wrJaU
March 2, 2016
How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World
A trove of secret documents details the US government's global push for shale gas.
—By Mariah Blake
MotherJones | September/October 2014 Issue
EXCERPT...
As part of its expanded energy mandate, the State Department hosted conferences on fracking from Thailand to Botswana. It sent US experts to work alongside foreign officials as they developed shale gas programs. And it arranged for dozens of foreign delegations to visit the United States to attend workshops and meet with industry consultants—as well as with environmental groups, in some cases.
US oil giants, meanwhile, were snapping up natural gas leases in far-flung places. By 2012, Chevron had large shale concessions in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, and South Africa, as well as in Eastern Europe, which was in the midst of a claim-staking spree; Poland alone had granted more than 100 shale concessions covering nearly a third of its territory. When the nation lit its first shale gas flare atop a Halliburton-drilled well that fall, the state-owned gas company ran full-page ads in the country's largest newspapers showing a spindly rig rising above the hills in the tiny village of Lubocino, alongside the tagline: "Don't put out the flame of hope." Politicians promised that Poland would soon break free of its nemesis, Russia, which supplies the lion's share of its gas. "After years of dependence on our large neighbor, today we can say that my generation will see the day when we will be independent in the area of natural gas," Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared. "And we will be setting terms."
But shale was not the godsend that industry leaders and foreign governments had hoped it would be. For one, new research from the US Geological Survey suggested that the EIA assessments had grossly overestimated shale deposits: The recoverable shale gas estimate for Poland shrank from 187 trillion cubic feet to 1.3 trillion cubic feet, a 99 percent drop. Geological conditions and other factors in Europe and Asia also made fracking more arduous and expensive; one industry study estimated that drilling shale gas in Poland would cost three times what it does in the United States.
By 2013, US oil giants were abandoning their Polish shale plays. "The expectations for global shale gas were extremely high," says the State Department's Hueper. "But the geological limitations and aboveground challenges are immense. A handful of countries have the potential for a boom, but there may never be a global shale gas revolution."
The politics of fracking overseas were also fraught. According to Susan Sakmar, a visiting law professor at the University of Houston who has studied fracking regulation, the United States is one of the only nations where individual landowners own the mineral rights. "In most, perhaps all, other countries of the world, the underground resources belong to the crown or the government," she explains. The fact that property owners didn't stand to profit from drilling on their land ignited public outrage in some parts of the world, especially Eastern Europe. US officials speculate that Russia also had a hand in fomenting protests there. "The perception among diplomats in the region was that Russia was protecting its interests," says Mark Gitenstein, the former US ambassador to Romania. "It didn't want shale gas for obvious reasons."
CONTINUED KISSINGER...
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/hillary-clinton-fracking-shale-state-department-chevron?page=2
It's like a book.
"They're desperate," says Antoine Simon of Friends of the Earth Europe. "It's the last push to continue their fossil fuel development."How Hillary Clinton's State Department Sold Fracking to the World
A trove of secret documents details the US government's global push for shale gas.
—By Mariah Blake
MotherJones | September/October 2014 Issue
EXCERPT...
As part of its expanded energy mandate, the State Department hosted conferences on fracking from Thailand to Botswana. It sent US experts to work alongside foreign officials as they developed shale gas programs. And it arranged for dozens of foreign delegations to visit the United States to attend workshops and meet with industry consultants—as well as with environmental groups, in some cases.
US oil giants, meanwhile, were snapping up natural gas leases in far-flung places. By 2012, Chevron had large shale concessions in Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, and South Africa, as well as in Eastern Europe, which was in the midst of a claim-staking spree; Poland alone had granted more than 100 shale concessions covering nearly a third of its territory. When the nation lit its first shale gas flare atop a Halliburton-drilled well that fall, the state-owned gas company ran full-page ads in the country's largest newspapers showing a spindly rig rising above the hills in the tiny village of Lubocino, alongside the tagline: "Don't put out the flame of hope." Politicians promised that Poland would soon break free of its nemesis, Russia, which supplies the lion's share of its gas. "After years of dependence on our large neighbor, today we can say that my generation will see the day when we will be independent in the area of natural gas," Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared. "And we will be setting terms."
But shale was not the godsend that industry leaders and foreign governments had hoped it would be. For one, new research from the US Geological Survey suggested that the EIA assessments had grossly overestimated shale deposits: The recoverable shale gas estimate for Poland shrank from 187 trillion cubic feet to 1.3 trillion cubic feet, a 99 percent drop. Geological conditions and other factors in Europe and Asia also made fracking more arduous and expensive; one industry study estimated that drilling shale gas in Poland would cost three times what it does in the United States.
By 2013, US oil giants were abandoning their Polish shale plays. "The expectations for global shale gas were extremely high," says the State Department's Hueper. "But the geological limitations and aboveground challenges are immense. A handful of countries have the potential for a boom, but there may never be a global shale gas revolution."
The politics of fracking overseas were also fraught. According to Susan Sakmar, a visiting law professor at the University of Houston who has studied fracking regulation, the United States is one of the only nations where individual landowners own the mineral rights. "In most, perhaps all, other countries of the world, the underground resources belong to the crown or the government," she explains. The fact that property owners didn't stand to profit from drilling on their land ignited public outrage in some parts of the world, especially Eastern Europe. US officials speculate that Russia also had a hand in fomenting protests there. "The perception among diplomats in the region was that Russia was protecting its interests," says Mark Gitenstein, the former US ambassador to Romania. "It didn't want shale gas for obvious reasons."
CONTINUED KISSINGER...
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/hillary-clinton-fracking-shale-state-department-chevron?page=2
March 1, 2016
In this excerpt from Warren and Tyagi's 2003 book The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, the authors lay out their arguments against the "predatory" lending practices of the mortgage and credit card industries and their effect on American families. The authors maintain that re-regulation of consumer lending is needed to level the playing field between creditors and families and reverse a disturbing trend: the transfer of wealth away from lower- and middle-income families, "directly into the pockets of giant lenders and their shareholders." Read Elizabeth Warren's interview with FRONTLINE elsewhere on this site.
EXCERPT...
Mrs. Clinton's newfound opposition to the bankruptcy bill surprised me. Given her legal training and her devotion to women's causes, I had certainly expected her to grasp the importance of the issue. But President Clinton's staff had been quietly supporting the bankruptcy bill for several months. Bill Clinton wanted to show that he and other "New Democrats" could play ball with business interests, and the major banks were lobbying hard for changes in the bankruptcy laws. I had expected that it would take a lot more than thirty minutes to convince Hillary Clinton to depart from the position widely rumored to be supported by her husband.
But Mrs. Clinton stayed firm in her fight against "that awful bill." She was convinced that the bill was "unfair to women and children," and she intended to stand by her principles, even if it cost some Democratic party candidates campaign contributions. Over the ensuing months, she was true to her word. With her strong support, the Democrats slowed the bill's passage through Congress. When Congress finally passed the bill in October 2000, President Clinton vetoed it. The following summer, an aide explained to me the abrupt about-face: "A couple of days after Mrs. Clinton met with you, we changed sides (on the bankruptcy bill) so fast that you could see skid marks in the hallways of the White House." Thanks to Mrs. Clinton, families still had one financial refuge left -- at least for the moment.
But the story doesn't end there. The banking lobbyists were persistent. President Clinton was on his way out, and credit card giant MBNA emerged as the single biggest contributors to President Bush's campaign. In the spring of 2001, the bankruptcy bill was reintroduced in the Senate, essentially unchanged from the version President Clinton had vetoed the previous year.
This time freshman Senator Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the bill.
Had the bill been transformed to get rid of all those awful provisions that had so concerned First Lady Hillary Clinton? No. The bill was essentially the same, but Hillary Rodham Clinton was not. As First Lady, Mrs. Clinton had been persuaded that the bill was bad for families, and she was willing to fight for her beliefs. Her husband was a lame duck at the time he vetoed the bill; he could afford to forgo future campaign contributions. As New York's newest senator, however, it seems that Hillary Clinton could not afford such a principled position. Campaigns cost money, and that money wasn't coming from families in financial trouble. Senator Clinton received $140,000 in campaign contributions from banking industry executives in a single year, making her one of the top two recipients in the Senate. Big banks were now part of Senator Clinton's constituency. She wanted their support, and they wanted hers -- including a vote in favor of "that awful bill."
CONTINUED...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/more/cement.html
Money.
The Cement Life Raft - Prof. Elizabeth Warren briefs First Lady Clinton on Bankruptcy Bill
Elizabeth Warren describes briefing First Lady Hillary Clinton about a bankruptcy bill that would hurt single mothers and children:
In this excerpt from Warren and Tyagi's 2003 book The Two Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke, the authors lay out their arguments against the "predatory" lending practices of the mortgage and credit card industries and their effect on American families. The authors maintain that re-regulation of consumer lending is needed to level the playing field between creditors and families and reverse a disturbing trend: the transfer of wealth away from lower- and middle-income families, "directly into the pockets of giant lenders and their shareholders." Read Elizabeth Warren's interview with FRONTLINE elsewhere on this site.
EXCERPT...
Mrs. Clinton's newfound opposition to the bankruptcy bill surprised me. Given her legal training and her devotion to women's causes, I had certainly expected her to grasp the importance of the issue. But President Clinton's staff had been quietly supporting the bankruptcy bill for several months. Bill Clinton wanted to show that he and other "New Democrats" could play ball with business interests, and the major banks were lobbying hard for changes in the bankruptcy laws. I had expected that it would take a lot more than thirty minutes to convince Hillary Clinton to depart from the position widely rumored to be supported by her husband.
But Mrs. Clinton stayed firm in her fight against "that awful bill." She was convinced that the bill was "unfair to women and children," and she intended to stand by her principles, even if it cost some Democratic party candidates campaign contributions. Over the ensuing months, she was true to her word. With her strong support, the Democrats slowed the bill's passage through Congress. When Congress finally passed the bill in October 2000, President Clinton vetoed it. The following summer, an aide explained to me the abrupt about-face: "A couple of days after Mrs. Clinton met with you, we changed sides (on the bankruptcy bill) so fast that you could see skid marks in the hallways of the White House." Thanks to Mrs. Clinton, families still had one financial refuge left -- at least for the moment.
But the story doesn't end there. The banking lobbyists were persistent. President Clinton was on his way out, and credit card giant MBNA emerged as the single biggest contributors to President Bush's campaign. In the spring of 2001, the bankruptcy bill was reintroduced in the Senate, essentially unchanged from the version President Clinton had vetoed the previous year.
This time freshman Senator Hillary Clinton voted in favor of the bill.
Had the bill been transformed to get rid of all those awful provisions that had so concerned First Lady Hillary Clinton? No. The bill was essentially the same, but Hillary Rodham Clinton was not. As First Lady, Mrs. Clinton had been persuaded that the bill was bad for families, and she was willing to fight for her beliefs. Her husband was a lame duck at the time he vetoed the bill; he could afford to forgo future campaign contributions. As New York's newest senator, however, it seems that Hillary Clinton could not afford such a principled position. Campaigns cost money, and that money wasn't coming from families in financial trouble. Senator Clinton received $140,000 in campaign contributions from banking industry executives in a single year, making her one of the top two recipients in the Senate. Big banks were now part of Senator Clinton's constituency. She wanted their support, and they wanted hers -- including a vote in favor of "that awful bill."
CONTINUED...
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/more/cement.html
Money.
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