California Free Press

Two Cheers for President Obama. Bronx Cheers for Congressional Republicans

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Finally, President Obama has found the balls to stand up to Congress. He signed an historic agreement regarding climate change with the Chinese. He has taken executive action on immigration that will put 5 million people's minds at ease, and he would have but didn't need to veto the Keystone pipeline. He has also taken a stand in favor of internet neutrality. All of this despite howls of protest from Republicans in Congress. He's realized the futility of "cooperating" with Congress because they have done nothing but try to intimidate, bully, humiliate and badger him from Day 1 of his administration. He finally realizes that hoping to cooperate with them to "get something done" is a fool's errand and a wild goose chase.

Instead Obama is proceeding down the road available to him by taking executive action to further his agenda without deigning to ask Congress for their approval. Hooray for him! They have done nothing but disapprove of him since he has been in office and after awhile it becomes obvious that you don't ask for approval from someone or someones who disapprove of you no matter what you do. He has extended his hand to them numerous times only to have it slapped down. And this attitude of disparagemnt towards Obama has been amplified by the hatemonger talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and others. As far as impeachment goes, President Obama is effectively saying, "Bring it on." Let the bloviators and naysayers and bottom feeders scrape together their articles of impeachment. Obama is not letting these guys stand in his way from accomplishing something the last two years of his administration.

Let's consider for a minute his good work on climate change. He has put in place the first-ever carbon pollution standards for power plants in an effort to reduce the nation's biggest source of pollution blamed for global warming - carbon emission from power plants. Almost a third of America's carbon emissions come from electricity generation. A proposed new Environmental Protection Agency rule would reduce such emissions 30% by 2030, compared to the levels in 2005.

In the historic climate change agreement with China, the U.S. pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26 - 28% by 2025, compared with 2005 levels. In turn, China agreed to peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 - and sooner if possible - and to get 20% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.

Bill McKibben of 350.org has said there are ten great things about the agreement with the Chinese. Here are a few of them. 1) It is historic; for the first time a developing nation has agreed to eventually limit its emissions. 2) Renewable energy is ready to go. It just needs a push from government to surpass fossil fuels in price and efficiency. The Chinese have revolutionized the production of solar energy, driving down the cost of panels by 90% or more in the last decade. They'll be using clean sources to get 20% of their energy by 2030.

3) Finally, world leaders are taking climate change seriously. When the two largest world economies sign an agreement, other nations will perk up and hopefully fall in line behind them. 4) Recent advances in renewables have made it less plausible to build more pipelines like Keystone or approve new fracking ventures. 4) The goals set by the US/China agreement are easy ones to meet. The Germans will be getting 60% of their energy from clean sources by the mid-2020s  which represents considerably more progress than the 20% expected of the Chinese. 5) Movements work and public pressure on the climate change agendas has had great results so far, but there is much more that needs to be done.

However, this agreement is merely a first step. The International Energy Agency warned in 2012 that "almost four-fifths of the CO2 emissions allowable by 2035 [in order to keep global temperature rise below 2°C] are already locked-in by existing power plants, factories, buildings, etc. If action to reduce CO2 emissions is not taken before 2017, all the allowable CO2 emissions would be locked-in by energy infrastructure existing at that time."

As for the Keystone pipeline, it would do nothing for American citizens. Its purpose is to transport Canadian tar sands oil, the dirtiest kind of oil, across the whole continental United States to ports in Texas where it would be shipped off to other countries. The number of jobs it would provide would be minimal and temporary. The Rosebud Sioux have said that approval of the pipeline, which would traverse their tribal lands, would be considered an act of war, and they would fight it tooth and nail. President Cyril Scott of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe said, “Did I declare war on the Keystone XL pipeline? Hell yeah, I did. I pledge my life to stop these people from harming our children and grandchildren and way of life. They will not cross our treaty lands. We have so much to lose here.”

Naomi Klein in her new book, This Changes Everything, has placed her hope for fighting climate change in just such efforts which are happening around the world which she calls "Blockadia."

Blockadia also stretches into multiple hot spots in Canada ... For instance, in 2013 ... a remarkable standoff was playing out in the province of New Brunswick , on land claimed by the Elsipogtog First Nation, a Mi'kmaq commuinity whose roots in what is now eastern Canada go back some ten thousand years. The people of Elsipogtog were leading a blockade against SWN Resources, the Canadian subsidiary of a Texas-based company, as it tried to conduct seismic testing ahead of a possible fracking operation. The land in question has not been handed over by war or treaty and Canada's highest court has upheld the Mi'kmaq's right to continue to access the natural resources of those lands and waters - rights the protesters say would be rendered meaningless if the territory becomes poisoned by fracking toxins.

... for months demonstrators camped near the seismic testing area, blocking roads and equipment as hand drums pounded out traditional songs. On several occasions trucks were prevented from working, and at one point a Mi'kacq woman strapped herself to a pile of seismic testing gear to prevent it from being moved.

When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police moved in and attacked the demonstrators, the rural landscape was turned into a war zone. Elders and children were attacked. Many were arrested including the Chief of the Elsipogtog Nation. Many cop cars were burned by the demonstrators. The Rosebud Sioux promise the same type of response if the Keystone pipeline is ever approved.

As for immigration, Obama is stepping out on this front as well. In his speech November 20, 2014 he outlined the steps he was taking so that five million parents of American citizen children could legally stay in the US. That's a lot of people. Congressional Republicans including tortoise visaged Mitch McGoonell and ale faced John Boner were up in arms. They vowed retaliation including cutting off funding to the Department of Homeland Security, shutting down the government, blocking the confirmation of the president’s nominees and initiating impeachment proceedings against the president.

They are so upset that Obama won't cooperate with them after proving for six years that they can not be cooperated with. He of the immobile ventriloquist dummy's countenance said with barely his lips moving, "If President Obama acts in defiance of the people and imposes his will on the country, Congress will act." Good luck with that. After rubbing Obama's nose in it for six years (remember he said it was his job to make sure Obama would fail), I hope Obama rubs his nose in it and accomplishes a lot without any input from the useless and problematic Congress. Whatever they say in their interminable bloviations is just a lot of hot air, sound and fury signifying nothing.

Wall Street Criminals Walk Free After Inflicting Enormous Damage on American Citizens

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Wall Street Fraud on a Massive Basis

In an article in Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi lays out the case involving massive fraud on the part of JP Morgan Chase, one of Wall Street's biggest and unfinest banks, considered too big to fail and, evidently, too big to prosecute for the massive criminality it is guilty of. It has been well documented what they and other Wall Street banks did that caused the financial crisis of 2008.

First, their counterparts lured everyone with a beating heart into their offices and gave them a mortgage regardless of their credit score, regardless of whether or not they were working, regardless of whether they could even afford to make a mortgage payment. Countrywide is the prime example of the predatory recruitment of low income people in order to turn them into homeowners despite their inability to pay.

As soon as they had signed on the dotted line and Countrywide had collected their commissions, they offloaded the mortgages to JP Morgan Chase and others so that they could be collectivized with other mortgages, securitized and given triple A ratings by credit rating agencies like Standard and Poor's and Moody's, then sliced and diced into tranches and sold off as Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) to pension funds, retirement funds, insurance companies and other unsuspecting dupes.

People who would have qualified for prime mortgages were pushed into subprime mortgages with all the attendant risks involved because larger commissions were given as incentives to mortgage brokers. Then JP Morgan insured themselves against losses by purchasing Credit Default Swaps (CDSs) from AIG whose purpose was ostensibly to insure the Big Banks against losses that they knew were coming because they knew the CDOs were complete crap. What brought down the whole financial mess was the fact that AIG did not have the money to pay off on the insurance policies when the whole structure started to come tumbling down. They owed JP Morgan Chase and particularly Goldman Sachs huge amounts of money that AIG didn't have.

So it was necessary for the taxpayer to step in and pay AIG money which it should have had backing up their worthless insurance policies so they could pay off Goldman and Chase monies that they were owed on the CDSs. Taxpayer money went to AIG and from there to Chase and Goldman. Meanwhile, Chase and Goldman were foreclosing on houses that Countrywide should never have written mortgages for at a rate to beat the band, actually a rate to beat 100 bands. The foreclosures were illegitimate because of the phony electronic records that had replaced the normal records that had been kept by counties because Wall Street did not want to pay the county recording fees. As a result there were enormous paperwork screwups with the result that in many cases no one could prove who was the legal owner of the properties. So Wall Street hired robo-signers - low level workers who didn't know shit from shinola - to sign documents testifying that the foreclosures were legitimate.

Regulators Asleep at the Switch

Regulators were clueless about the whole mess in part because they were in collusion with the banks and their lobbyists who held out the promise of much better paying jobs than they currently had with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Credit rating agencies rated pure crap as triple A because the banks were paying them for their services and they didn't want to lose business by rating the securities honestly.

Mortgages were foreclosed on after banks had supposedly worked out deals with homeowners to modify them so that payments could continue. In some cases people were foreclosed on that were current on their payments.

Unsuspecting investors were royally screwed by Wall Street. For instance, hedge fund manager John Paulson phoned up Goldman Sachs with an idea. He wanted to handpick the CDOs that would be placed in a new fund called ABACUS. Paulson selected the shittiest subprime mortgages he could find to put in the fund and paid Goldman a substantial fee (about $15 million) for their help in this atrocity. Then Goldman sold off the fund to unsuspecting investors. Meanwhile, Paulson shorted the fund which was designed by him to fail in the first place. When it did, Paulson pocketed $1 billion.

So the American public was screwed four ways to Sunday. 1) Most subprime mortgages, which violated prudent underwriting standards, never should have been written. 2) AIG should have been required by their worthless regulators to have sufficient collateral to pay off on its insurance policies with the big Wall Street banks. 3) Pension funds, retirement funds and other institutional investors were screwed because they were sold worthless junk passed off as triple A rated securities. 4) Taxpayers were screwed by having to bail out Wall Street to the tune of trillions of dollars while being foreclosed on right and left.

The Whistleblower That the Government Wouldn't Let Blow Her Whistle

Whistleblower Alayne Fleischman was an insider at Chase when it was taking part in criminal activities involving knowingly selling crappy funds to an unsuspecting public. Fleischman was akin to a diligence manager, someone who was supposed to verify that the mortgages placed in a fund were sufficient to justify the fund's rating. However, she found that her bosses and managers were condoning putting the crappiest mortgages in triple A rated funds, and they didn't want any back talk from her. Case in point: Fleischmann and her group were asked to evaluate a packet of home loans from a mortgage originator called GreenPoint that was collectively worth about $900 million. Fleischmann smelled a rat almost immediately. The dates on the mortgages were suspiciously old. Normally, mortgages are sold off and securitized at warp speed. These had sat around for awhile or been returmed by other banks who knew they were rotten.

These GreenPoint loans were the bottom of the barrel. Somethng, indeed, was rotten in Denmark or perhaps even closer to home on Wall Street. They reeked. They were not rated as subprime, but were instead sold off as Alt-A to investors who were duped. It was like putting a fresh coat of paint on a junk car and selling it off as top quality merchandise.  "Everything that I thought was bad at the time," Fleischmann says, "turned out to be a million times worse."

When Fleischmann and her team reviewed random samples of the loans, they found that around 40 percent of them were based on overstated incomes. For instance, there was a manicurist who stated her income as $117,000. There was no way on God's green earth that she possibly could have earned that much, but such liar loans were passed off so Chase could make hefty commissions. Fleischman was instructed to put nothing in writing; she could not even e-mail her superiors!

Taibbi reports:

As late as December 11th, 2006, diligence managers had marked a full 33 percent of one loan sample as "stated income unreasonable for profession," meaning that it was nearly inevitable that there would be a high number of defaults. Several high-ranking executives were copied on this report.

Fleischman approached her superiors about these obviously fraudulent securities. She told one that the bank could not sell the high-risk loans as low-risk securities without committing fraud. "You can't securitize these loans without special disclosure about what's wrong with them," Fleischmann told him, "and if you make that disclosure, no one will buy them."

But Chase went ahead and sold them anyway without disclosing how putrid they were. In early 2007, Fleischman sent a long letter to another managing director which warned of the consequences of reselling these bad loans as securities and gave detailed descriptions of breakdowns in Chase's diligence process. She assumed this letter would be enough to force the bank to stop selling the bad loans. But she understimated the depths of fraud that Chase would stoop to. A few months later Fleischman was laid off.

A few months before the GreenPoint deal, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon informed the media that he knew about some of the toxic loans circulating in the industry. But this didn't stop him from greenlighting the sale of the GreenPoint securities anyway. Then later when testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, he told investigators that he had been duped like everybody else. These guys were supposed to be the smartest wizards of the universe, but all of a sudden they were dumber then hell.

Chase Doubles Down on Fraud

But Chase continued to sell worthless securities:

A single lawsuit by a single angry litigant gives some insight. In 2011, Chase was sued over massive losses suffered by a group of credit unions. One of them had invested $135 million in one of the bank's mortgage--backed securities. About 40 percent of the loans in that deal came from the GreenPoint pool.

The lawsuit alleged that in just the first year, the security suffered $51 million in losses, nearly 50 times what had been projected. It's hard to say how much of that was due to the GreenPoint loans. But this was just one security, one year, and the losses were in the tens of millions. And Chase did deal after deal with the same methodology. So did most of the other banks. It's theft on a scale that blows the mind.

In 2012, President Obama, giving in to pressure from the Occupy movement and other reformers, had formed the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group. This seemed like a serious show of force against banks like Chase. The group included noted anti-corruption investigator and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which gave many observers reason to hope that finally something would be done about the crimes that led to the crash. However, investigators at the highest level including Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a whitewash of Chase and gave them a little slap on the wrist without Chase having to admit anything regarding its criminal activities.

The following year, the SEC would fine Chase $297 million for misrepresentations in another deal. "The kid-gloves approach that the DOJ and the SEC take with Wall Street is as inexplicable as it is indefensible," said Dennis Kelleher of the financial reform group Better Markets, which would later file suit challenging the Chase settlement. "They typically charge only one offense when there are dozens. It would be like charging a serial murderer with a single assault and giving them probation.

In 2013 AG Eric Holder was scheduled to hold a press conference at which he would announce civil fraud charges against Chase. Before he could do so, however, CEO Jamie Dimon got on the phone with him and convinced him to open talks for a negotiated settlement for the situation which Holder agreed to. So a criminal calls the highest law enforcement official in the US and persuades him to agree to a negotiated settlement which subsequently amounted to a slap on the wrist with no admission of wrongdoing.

It goes without saying that the ordinary citizen who is the target of a government investigation cannot simply pick up the phone, call up the prosecutor in charge of his case and have a legal proceeding canceled. But Dimon did just that. "And he didn't just call the prosecutor, he called the prosecutor's boss," Fleischmann says. According to The New York Times, after Dimon had already offered $3 billion to settle the case and was turned down, he went to Holder's office and upped the offer, but apparently not by enough.

Fleischman was led to believe that she was the chief witness in the corruption case against Chase. But the fact was that she was being used by the government as motivation to get Jamie Dimon to up the amount he agreed to pay to settle the case. In fact Dimon upped the amount to $9 billion and Fleischman never got a chance to testify in court.

Jamie Dimon Comes Out Smelling Like a Rose

Newspapers announced erroneously that the "$13 billion" deal, which ended Chase's civil liability, was the largest white collar settlement in history, but Chase could still be gone after for criminal liability. It turned out that the government crackdown on Chase was a carefully contrived fiction. $4 billion of the deal was in "consumer relief" which Chase was not even responsible for paying. Chase was allowed to sign a short "statement of facts" which effectively whitewashed their entire involvement in fraud and criminality. The kicker was that some $7 billion dollars of the deal was allowed to be written off Chase's taxes because the settlement monies were not called fines or penalties. Duhhh. So the hapless American taxpayer effectively paid for Chase's crimes. Shortly after the deal was done, Chase announced their innocence.

Meanwhile, Fleischman was waiting to be interviewed by the goverment's criminal investigators. The meeting never happened. It seemed that a tacit part of the government's deal was that the case for criminal fraud would not be pursued.

Taibbi reports:

As Fleischmann was waiting for the Justice Department to call, Chase and its lawyers had been going to tremendous lengths to keep her muzzled. A number of major institutional investors had sued the bank in an effort to recover money lost in investing in Chase's fraud-ridden home loans. In October 2013, one of those investors – the Fort Worth Employees' Retirement Fund – asked a federal judge to force Chase to grant access to a series of current and former employees, including Fleischmann, whose status as a key cooperator in the federal investigation had made headlines in The Wall Street Journal and other major media outlets. 

Other investors sued to gain access to Fleischman and her inditement of Chase's top executives. In each case Chase did an end run to keep what Fleischman had to say out of the spotlight. Nevertheless, she has the proof for all the elements of the crime as defined by federal law – the bank made material misrepresentations, it made material omissions, and it did so willfully and with specific intent, consciously ignoring warnings from inside the firm and out.

Eric Holder in a speech hemmed and hawed about how you couldn't really blame any executive for the things that happened which blew up the economy. Responsibility was too diffuse, and besides is it worth really undermining the whole world's banking system to punish a few wrongdoers? I guess not because the government hasn't put one of them in jail. During the Savings & Loan crisis they prosecuted over 600 individuals, but now fraud is completely acceptable as long as it is done at a high enough level. But don't try stealing a few candy bars from 7-11; you'll surely go to jail. Matt Taibbi makes this point abundantly clear in his latest book, The Divide and as reported by us here.

Fleischman is still waiting for the opportunity to get what she saw and experienced off her chest even though she has no financial incentive for doing so. "The assumption they make is that I won't blow up my life to do it," Fleischmann says. "But they're wrong about that."

For an interview wth Alayne and Matt by Democracy Now!, check this out.

Lobbyists are also going after states' Attorney Generals and getting them to ignore the American people in favor of the banksters. This is from the New York Times, October 28, 2014:

Our leaders are self-congratulating after every new “settlement” the government reaches with the financial institutions – like they scored the biggest prize of their lives. The hypocrisy that they can claim to have executed justice over the banks, while not criminally prosecuting a single person who was responsible for the crimes that these multi-billion-dollar settlements are now addressing, is something we, as a nation, should not accept or forget.

The facts are clear: those who perpetrated enormous fraud are being let free with a small price tag to pay in compensation, while the victims of their crimes remain left out in the cold, many years later, without any rectification for their losses.

The National Mortgage Settlement was supposed to get $5 billion from the banks. In reality it only allocated $1.5 billion for compensation to homeowners who lost their homes to unlawful foreclosures between 2008-2011. The rest of the settlement money went to the states. Some states used this money to balance their budgets, and some, like Florida, used it to fund even more speedy foreclosures that gave homeowners no chance of due process in court.

Just a few days ago the media announced another fraud perpetrated by the big banks including JP Morgan Chase and Citibank and the obligatory slap on the wrist fines. This time it was rigging foreign exchange markets. Oh well, another day, another Wall Street fraud and no one jailed. Ho Hum.

The Choice of the Century

by Robert Reich
Monday, November 10, 2014

The President blames himself for the Democrat’s big losses Election Day. “We have not been successful in going out there and letting people know what it is that we’re trying to do and why this is the right direction,” he said Sunday.

In other words, he didn’t sufficiently tout the Administration’s accomplishments.

I respectfully disagree.

If you want a single reason for why Democrats lost big on Election Day 2014 it’s this: Median household income continues to drop. This is the first “recovery” in memory when this has happened.

Jobs are coming back but wages aren’t. Every month the job numbers grow but the wage numbers go nowhere.

Most new jobs are in part-time or low-paying positions. They pay less than the jobs lost in the Great Recession.

This wageless recovery has been made all the worse because pay is less predictable than ever. Most Americans don’t know what they’ll be earning next year or even next month. Two-thirds are now living paycheck to paycheck.

So why is this called a “recovery” at all? Because, technically, the economy is growing. But almost all the gains from that growth are going to a small minority at the top.

In fact, 100 percent of the gains have gone to the best-off 10 percent. Ninety-five percent have gone to the top 1 percent.

The stock market has boomed. Corporate profits are through the roof. CEO pay, in the stratosphere. Yet most Americans feel like they’re still in a recession.

And they’re convinced the game is rigged against them.

Fifty years ago, just 29 percent of voters believed government is “run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.” Now, 79 percent think so.

According to Pew, the percentage of Americans who believe most people who want to get ahead can do so through hard work has plummeted 14 points since 2000.

What the President and other Democrats failed to communicate wasn’t their accomplishments. It was their understanding that the economy is failing most Americans and big money is overrunning our democracy.

And they failed to convey their commitment to an economy and a democracy that serve the vast majority rather than a minority at the top.

Some Democrats even ran on not being Barack Obama. That’s no way to win. Americans want someone fighting for them, not running away from the President.

The midterm elections should have been about jobs and wages, and how to reform a system where nearly all the gains go to the top. It was an opportunity for Democrats to shine. Instead, they hid.

Consider that in four “red” states — South Dakota, Arkansas, Alaska, and Nebraska — the same voters who sent Republicans to the Senate voted by wide margins to raise their state’s minimum wage. Democratic candidates in these states barely mentioned the minimum wage.

So what now?

Republicans, soon to be in charge of Congress, will push their same old supply-side, trickle-down, austerity economics.

They’ll want policies that further enrich those who are already rich. That lower taxes on big corporations and deliver trade agreements written in secret by big corporations. That further water down Wall Street regulations so the big banks can become even bigger – too big to fail, or jail, or curtail.

They’ll exploit the public’s prevailing cynicism by delivering just what the cynics expect.

And the Democrats? They have a choice.

They can refill their campaign coffers for 2016 by trying to raise even more money from big corporations, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals. And hold their tongues about the economic slide of the majority, and the drowning of our democracy.

Or they can come out swinging. Not just for a higher minimum wage but also for better schools, paid family and medical leave, and child care for working families.

For resurrecting the Glass-Steagall Act and limiting the size of Wall Street banks.

For saving Social Security by lifting the cap on income subject to payroll taxes.

For rebuilding the nation’s roads, bridges, and ports.

For increasing taxes on corporations with high ratios of CEO pay to the pay of average workers.

And for getting big money out of politics, and thereby saving our democracy.

It’s the choice of the century.

Democrats have less than two years to make it.

Extreme Weather Watch: October 2014 - Drought in Australia and Brazil

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

Australia experienced its second warmest October on record. A number of records were set during the month in particular for the warmest October day on record for Australia as a whole. Nationally-averaged rainfall during October was 59% below the long-term mean which made October 2014 Australia's seventh-driest October on record.

Large parts of Australia continue to be affected by drought. Drier than normal conditions from October to December are forecast for broad areas of Eastern, Central and Northern Coastal areas of Australia. Temperatures over 50C or 120F are forecast as Australia heads into its summer.

Australian farmers are feeling less confident as prices for wool, grains, dairy products and beef go down. A quarter of farmers expect conditions to deteriorate, around 20% expect the performance of their farm business to worsen and 25% expect their farm income to fall.

Bloomberg reports that cotton exports for the world's third largest exporter were cut by 29% as dry conditions lowered yields. The harvest is predicted to total 580,000 metric tons in 2014-2015, compared with a total of 890,000 for last year. That would be the smallest harvest in five years.

A total of 38 shires in Queensland have now been declared as drought zones, the most widespread the state has ever experienced according to Queensland Agriculture Minister John McVeigh. Farmers in drought declared shires are eligible for Queensland's Drought Relief Assistance Scheme, including fodder and water assistance.

In Victoria, farmers affected by drought who have been farming for a minimum of five years can now apply for loans through the Farm Finance Scheme which offers farmers up to $650,000 to refinance their debt.

A farmer from Queensland reported that her family has left their farm after 25 years. "We have no property now, due to drought. We had to walk away from 25 years of farming, taking only our clothes and furniture. Leaving behind all our beautiful cows, farm machinery and a beautiful grazing and cropping property, to be sold up by the bank for best price they could get, at a fire sale. They are still chasing us for an outstanding balance and will bankrupt us at their own leisure."

Extreme Hail and Drought in Brazil

An extreme hail storm hit Lages, Brazil on October 20. A state of emergency was decreed after this intense and rare hailstorm. According to officials, more than 60% of the city was affected. Many people were injured. The large hail - the size of golf balls - destroyed roofs, windows, cars and trees.

The Amazon rainforest has degraded to the point where it is losing its ability to  regulate weather systems, according to a stark new warning from one of Brazil’s leading scientists.

In a new report, Antonio Nobre, researcher in the government’s space institute, Earth System Science Centre, says the logging and burning of the world’s greatest forest might be connected to worsening droughts – such as the one currently plaguing Sao Paulo – and is likely to lead eventually to more extreme weather events.

There is extreme drought in southeastern Brazil. Sao Paulo has had water rationed after usually abundant supplies run dry. Brazil has 12% of the world's freshwater and less than 3% of the world population. Apart from the arid northeastern Cerrado, its cities are normally more likely to be plagued with floods than droughts. With big rivers like the Amazon and Paraná, the country generally meets 80% of energy needs with hydropower.

But this year, the rain fronts that are normally carried south from the humid Amazon have largely failed to materialise and temperatures have been higher than usual, prompting the authorities to scrabble to tap new sources and reduce demand.

Tensions have emerged between cities, and between those who want water for energy and those who need it for drinking, food and sanitation. Sao Paulo has tussled with Rio de Janeiro over the use of the Rio Jaguari, a river that runs across state borders and is used by the latter for hydropower plants and to dilute sewage in the absence of adequate treatment plants. Sao Paulo, which is downstream, has tapped this river to partially recuperate the Paraiba reservoir system despite the protests of its neighbour and admonitions from the federal government.

Global Warming Causing Harsh Winters in Europe and Asia

The risk of severe winters in Europe and northern Asia has been doubled by global warming, according to new research. The counter-intuitive finding is the result of climate change melting the Arctic ice cap and causing new wind patterns that push freezing air and snow southwards.

Severe winters over the last decade have been associated with those years in which the melting of Arctic sea ice was greatest. But the new work is the most comprehensive computer modelling study to date and indicates the frozen winters are being caused by climate change, not simply by natural variations in weather.

“The origin of frequent Eurasian severe winters is global warming,” said Prof Masato Mori, at the University of Tokyo, who led the new research. Climate change is heating the Arctic much faster than lower regions, and the impacts of this are not just a future threat but are happening now. Melting Arctic ice has also been implicated in recent wet summers in the UK.

The new research, published in Nature Geoscience, shows that the increased risk of icy winters will persist for the next few decades. But beyond that continued global warming overwhelms the colder winter weather. The Arctic is expected to be ice-free in late summer by the 2030s, halting the changes to wind patterns, while climate change will continue to increase average temperatures.

Hurricane Gonzalo Makes Direct Hit on Bermuda

The storm made landfall with rain and 110 mph winds. Only minor injuries were reported in what was the strongest storm to hit the island in a decade. It was the second storm in a week to hit the island. Gonzalo caused power outages to 31,200 homes. The hurricane also caused flooding, felled trees and damaged buildings.

Super Typhoon Vongfong

The strongest tropical cyclone of the year, equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane affected Japan and one of the U.S. military’s largest concentrations of manpower and firepower on the islands of Kadena and Okinawa. The cyclone had maximum winds of 165 mph.

“It’s safe to say Vongfong is the strongest storm on earth since Haiyan last year,” said Michael Lowry, a storm specialist for The Weather Channel, referring to the super typhoon that killed more than 6,000 people in the Philippines last November. Kadena Air Base — home to 24,000 U.S. and Japanese military personnel and contractors — and the cluster of U.S. bases on Okinawa stocked up on food, water supplies and fuel, the Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said, reporting that ocean waves were as high as 50 feet.

Vongfong was classified as a super typhoon as it moved through an area of low wind shear and very warm ocean temperatures. The tropical system had reached the equivalent strength of a Category 5 hurricane, featuring wind speeds greater than 160 mph.

"Vongfong became the strongest tropical cyclone we've had all year anywhere on Earth," AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jim Andrews said.

The strength of Vongfong earlier surpassed that of Super Typhoon Genevieve which, at its most powerful, had sustained winds of 160 mph in the West Pacific.

The Associated Press reported that at least 75 people were injured and one killed in Japan as the cyclone brought torrential rain and locally damaging winds to the region.

As the storm moved across Japan, Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) took precautions to prevent problems at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station.

 

How Sallie Mae and the Privatization of Student Loans is Eroding America

Sallie Mae has a stunning record of mistreating its patrons. And the corporate war on public education has been ripping off young Americans and reaping the benefits. It's time we end this corporate rule.

Published: November 5, 2014 | Authors: Laura Bonham Keyan Bliss | Occupy.com | News Report

Originally known as the Student Loan Financing Association – which started four decades ago as a government-sponsored enterprise to support the guaranteed student loan program under the 1965 Higher Education Act – Sallie Mae has today been privatized into a for-profit corporation as a result of bipartisan deregulation of the big banks.

Since its privatization, Sallie Mae has earned a stunning record of mistreating its patrons, including cheating military service-members on their student loans. Without admitting or denying guilt, the Justice Department ordered Sallie Mae to pay $97 million in fines, restitution, refunds and penalties in a settlement agreement still awaiting court approval. Such criminal conduct would generally warrant a suspension or termination of Sallie Mae’s contract with the Department of Education, which requires the corporation to comply with federal laws at all times.

But despite the corporation’s record, this summer the Education Department renewed its contract with Sallie Mae, extending service for another five years under the loan giant’s new name: Navient Corporation. For students who had been paying their loans in a timely manner but were forced into default by Sallie Mae after their co-signers died, this development came as a shock.

But if we’re looking closely at the trends that got us here, it shouldn’t be so shocking. Years of corporate influence inside the DC beltway have created a government that behaves like a corporation, more concerned about its bottom line than the people it is supposed to defend and protect.

Under the federal student loan system, the Education Department is expected to reap more than $127 billion in profit from student borrowers over the next decade. The larger problem of student loan debt (high tuition and interest rates) is explained well in Matt Taibbi’s article, Ripping Off Young America: The College-Loan Scandal. In his words, the current system is a “sociopathic marriage of private-sector greed and government force,” preying upon the aspirations of young Americans.

College students are not the only people under attack. The whole public education system is facing a coup under the guise of corporate education reform. Vouchers, charter schools, school choice and high stakes testing are all code words in a theater of operation to privatize public education. Investors are already lining up behind private corporations aiming to capture contracts from states willing to sell out their students’ education rather than rejigger their budget priorities to eliminate corporate subsidies.

The most famous of these investors is Bill Gates, through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which exerted considerable influence and funds to create the Common Core State Standards. Jesse Hagopian writes,”The Gates Foundation has used its immense wealth to circumvent the democratic process to create the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with very little input from educators.”

Since the CCSS adoption in 2010, 43 states have implemented the standards. But “Operation High Stakes Testing” is on shaky ground. In a June 10 press release, the Gates Foundation announced that “assessment results should not be taken into account in high-stakes decisions on teacher evaluation or student promotion for the next two years, during this transition.” Even the creator of the high-stakes testing program thinks that the program is not up to snuff – now that it has been implemented at a combined cost of $1.7 billion per year.

More importantly, an insurgency is growing – a movement comprised of teachers, parents and students – that is determined to preserve public education as the basis upon which democracy is built. It is chalking up victories of its own through test boycotts, rallies, marches, and student walk-outs. In addition, Rethinking Schools, I am an Educator and Diane Ravitch’s blog provide information and resources to anyone interested in saving and improving public education.

What has become obvious to many is the clear connection between corporate rule and the oppression of civil and human rights. Teachers understand that a good education is the foundation of a vibrant democracy, and that the privatization of education is doing irreparable harm to this foundation. That is why we invite educators, students and parents to sign the Motion to Amend petition in support of the We the People Amendment, and help grow the national movement to get money out of politics. Once ratified, corporate constitutional rights would be eliminated and replaced by revocable privileges granted by states. Money would be a form of barter, not speech.

We can win the corporate war on public education and build an education system to serve our young people in this technological age, but only if we come together as a united front and demand it. Those demands begin with a campaign to legalize democracy and end corporate rule.

The Time to Act is Now: IPCC Issues 'Final Word' on Climate Change

Published on

Sunday, November 02, 2014

by Common Dreams

'In the starkest terms ever used, the scientific community is looking world leaders directly in the eye and demanding that they wake up.'

by

Lauren McCauley, staff writer

 

Over 400,000 people took to the streets of New York in September in the People's Climate March demanding immediate and global climate action. (Photo: South Bend Voice/cc/flickr)

We must reduce global carbon emissions and we must do it now, concludes a landmark report released in Copenhagen on Sunday by the United Nations climate science body, the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Said to be the official word on climate change from the world's top climate scientists, the final summary report (pdf) underscores three major facts about climate change: it’s man-made and already having dangerous impacts across the globe; if the world community acts now, warming can still be kept below the politically agreed upon "safe" limit of 2 degrees Celsius; the ability to secure a safe climate future is not only possible but also economically viable.

"In the starkest terms ever used, the scientific community is looking world leaders directly in the eye and demanding that they wake up," said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune in a statement following the report's release.

The Synthesis Report, the last installment of the UN body's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), builds on a series of recent IPCC reports that have been released over the last 12 months and have detailed the science, impacts and solutions for climate change. It is expected to provide a foundation for international negotiations at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Paris next year.

The report states decisively that global warming is "unequivocal" and that humanity’s role in causing it is "clear," adding that recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history with "widespread impacts on human and natural systems."

Further, without "substantial and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions," the scientists warn that it is very likely that heat waves and extreme precipitation events will become more frequent and intense, that the ocean will continue to warm and acidify, while the global mean sea level will also continue to rise.

"Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems," the summary states.

The IPCC report also notes that human populations in developing countries "that lack the resources for planned migration" will likely experience "higher exposure to extreme weather events." And overall, climate change impacts are projected to "make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hotspots of hunger."

Despite these dire warnings, the IPCC report says that such a fate can be mitigated if the world community can commit to dramatic carbon reduction so that global greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2020 and fall to zero later this century.

Climate campaigners welcomed the report, namely the scientists' call for zero global emissions, agreeing that the only way to reach such a goal is with reduced consumption coupled with a complete switch to renewable energy.

"This landmark report makes it absolutely clear: we must rapidly transition to a clean energy economy free from dirty fossil fuels, and we must do it now."
—Michael Brune, Sierra Club
"This landmark report makes it absolutely clear: we must rapidly transition to a clean energy economy free from dirty fossil fuels, and we must do it now," said Brune. "The silver lining to the report is that it recognizes clean energy climate solutions are affordable and ready to deploy."

 "We do not need any more reports," Brune added. "We need action."

And Martin Kaiser, Greenpeace head of international climate politics, added:  "For scientists, there is nothing vague about how to deal with climate change. Governments need to pay attention and phase out coal and oil now or end up doing it later at a much higher cost. However, those who seize the potential of renewable energy will leap ahead to a sustainable future."

"The scientific community across the world is sounding the alarm," said Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in a statement ahead of the report's release. "Climate change is real and it will have devastating consequences around the globe unless we act boldly and decisively."

One key aspect on which the IPCC and leading environmental groups differ is the UN panel's promotion of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology, which permits the continued use of fossil fuels by burying carbon underground, as a recommendation for curbing global emissions. "Using any technology which 'handles' emissions rather than replaces fossil fuels is like smoking crack to solve an alcohol addiction," said Greenpeace Nordic climate policy advisor Kaisa Kosonen.

Going forward, the panel concludes that both adaptation and mitigation are essential to manage the risks of climate change and that only with "cooperative responses, including international cooperation" can we effectively mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and address the already-present global warming impacts.

Emission cuts coupled with adaption measures "raise issues of equity, justice, and fairness," says the report. "The evidence suggests that outcomes seen as equitable can lead to more effective [international] cooperation."

Governments of the world's richest countries have faced harsh criticism at recent international climate meetings for their failure to recognize and address their outsized role in contributing to global carbon emissions.

Now, as leading environmentalists note, this politically sanctioned report leaves little room for leading governments, namely the United States, to avoid taking direct action.

"The U.S. played a leading role in shaping this report, which says we must stop developing unconventional fossil fuel reserves like tar sands," said 350.org Executive Director May Boeve. Boeve adds that it would be "deeply hypocritical" if the U.S. government now should continue to develop fossil fuel infrastructure, for instance "a carbon bomb like Keystone XL."

"The scientists have done their job and then some," said Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientists director of strategy and policy and a 20-year veteran of UN climate talks. "The risks are clear. Politicians can either dramatically reduce emissions or they can spend the rest of their careers running from climate disaster to climate disaster."
"The risks are clear. Politicians can either dramatically reduce emissions or they can spend the rest of their careers running from climate disaster to climate disaster."
—Alden Meyer, Union of Concerned Scientist

As Rajendra Pachauri, chairperson of the IPCC said in an opening statement on Monday, "A great deal of work and tall hurdles lie ahead. But it can be done. We still have time to build a better, more sustainable world. We still have time to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change." However, he added, "But we have precious little of that time."

The report comes on the heels of the People's Climate March in New York, when over 400,000 marched the streets in a massive call for government's to take decisive action in the face of the growing climate crisis.

Added Brune: "The alarm bells ringing from the streets of New York to the halls of the U.N. are too loud to sleep through, and time is of the essence."

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

What's Not to Like: Gas Prices Down. Solar Energy Production Up.

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press and OB Rag

Gas prices have dropped below $4.00 a gallon for the first time in several years. Every one-cent drop in gas prices means a $1 billion annual decline in energy spending by Americans. Consumers can use the savings to eat out more often, buy more goods or pay down debt. That's good for US motorists and consumers, but that's not the whole story. Part of the story has to do with the fact that solar energy is getting as cheap as coal and natural gas for the production of electricity. As solar prices drop even further, electricity costs for homeowners should come down. That would mean that electric cars powered off of home outlets should have a greater comparative advantage over gas powered vehicles. These developments, which could phase out the use of fossil fuels in general, will reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses (GHGs)

Another reason that prices at the pump are coming down is that US oil production, which is currently at 8.7 million barrels a day, has increased dramatically in recent years so that there is a glut of oil on the market. US oil production is the highest it's been in 27 years. OPEC, in an attempt to maintain its market share, has lowered prices. Gas will become even cheaper as competition between the US and other oil producing nations drives down prices. As gas becomes cheaper, so will solar. Decreasing costs for the purchase and fueling of electric vehicles will provide an even greater incentive for switching from oil powered to electric powered vehicles. This will drive oil prices down even further. A gas tax with the proceeds going to provide incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles could facilitate the lessening of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere.

An article in Bloomberg, While You Were Getting Worked Up Over Oil Prices, This Just Happened to Solar, says it all. As solar becomes cheaper, solar will replace coal, gas and oil in the production of electricity. Solar will be the world’s biggest single source of electricity by 2050, according to a recent estimate by the International Energy Agency. More than a quarter of the world's electricity demand could be met with solar power by midcentury, surpassing generation from any other single source, including coal, natural gas, oil, wind, hydro and nuclear, the International Energy Agency has determined. So there will be competition between solar and fossil fuels for the production of electricity which means that in order to preserve market share OPEC will lower their prices even more.

Going all out to maintain production is not good for the environment because fossil fuels really need to be left in the ground, but neither the Saudis nor other oil producing nations including the US are going to sit idly by and let solar take over the market. They will try to outcompete solar based on price alone regardless of what this portends for carbon dioxide emissions and global warming.

There are several solar projects in the Mojave Desert which are already supplying energy to southern California homes. These new solar developments could also be supplying energy to electric vehicles as well. As the US converts from gas powered to electric powered vehicles, the need for oil and gas will diminish. A solar thermal system is operating at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California’s Mojave Desert. The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility is a 370 MW facility which consists of three separate solar thermal power plants just off interstate highway 15 on the Nevada-California border.

Ivanpah, which began commercial operation in 2013, is delivering power to PG&E and Southern California Edison. The project is currently the largest solar thermal power plant in the world and it doubled US production of energy from solar when it went online. Ivanpah was constructed by Bechtel and is operated by NRG Energy of Carlsbad, CA, one of the project's equity investors. Google is also a partner in the project.

Unlike photovoltaic technology, which converts solar radiation directly into electricity, the Ivanpah facility generates heat. More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high, raising temperatures to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and producing steam that spins turbines that generate electricity. The desert region—thanks to its elevation and clear, dry air—receives reliable sunlight 330 to 350 days per year. The complex will reduce carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by more than 400,000 tons per year. We can thank the Obama administration for subsidizing these projects when Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress. Since Republicans took over the House, there have been no more infrastructure projects such as these.

The Ivanpah plant is not without controversy however. Birds flying through the area have been killed by the intense heat. A proposed plant is on a flight path for birds between the Colorado River and California's largest lake, the Salton Sea - an area that is richer in avian life than the Ivanpah plant, with protected golden eagles and peregrine falcons and more than 100 other species of birds recorded there. The toll on birds has been surprising, said Robert Weisenmiller, chairman of the California Energy Commission. "We didn't see a lot of impact" on birds at the first, smaller power towers in the U.S. and Europe, Weisenmiller said.

If we really want to maintain a livable climate, and prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2˚ Celsius, then no nation, anywhere, can burn any oil, gas, or coal at all after 2050, according to a striking new analysis of the latest climate science. Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson has a detailed state-by-state roadmap for 100 percent replacement of coal, oil and natural gas with wind, water and solar energy by 2050. This transformation would dramatically reduce air pollution, preventing an estimated 59,000 deaths a year and saving the country billions of dollars, Jacobson says.

These developments - increased oil production in the US, increased competition between the US and OPEC, and increased competition between solar and oil - should drive down all energy prices, both for homes and vehicles. As long as this increases the use of gas and oil for transportation, cheap gas prices will be bad for the environment. If a gas tax were implemented with the proceeds going to build out solar and give incentives for the conversion from gas to electric vehicles, this would ultimately be a good thing.

See Comments here.

The Technology Is There Now To Meet 100% of World Energy Needs With Renewables