Chris Hedges's Blog, page 298

Thank You, Gavin Newsom, From a Death Row Inmate

Many people believe that taking a human life is a primal exercise of real power, whether on a massive scale through war or the murder of one person by another in a single act of violence. Then there is a system of death that flows in this country’s bloodstream, from the cop who murders an unarmed innocent person to the prison executioner who murders a fellow citizen when his or her time is up.

But real power is not in taking a life, as many people mistakenly think; it is in saving a life. Anyone can take a life; the ease of doing so is proved every day by the number of homicides that occur. But saving or sparing a life, when there is tremendous pressure from powerful forces to not save that life, can be much more difficult.

There is a difference between genuine courage and power, and few politicians in this country and the state of California have shown they can muster both when faced with truly difficult decisions. Courage is having the mind to carry on despite danger, and the moral courage to speak out against injustice when no one else will.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has shown that he has courage, both moral and otherwise, as well as real power, in calling for a moratorium on executions in California.

I am one of the 25 people on death row in this state who have no appeals left, and the political pressure that runs deep in the hearts of pro-death penalty politicians and their supporters to torture and murder people in my situation knows no bounds.

When Newsom showed the courage, the heart and the guts to do what no other governor in the state of California would do in calling for a moratorium, he did so because it is the right thing to do. Every organization that has studied the death penalty in this country, from the Death Penalty Information Center to the Equal Justice Initiative, to governors and legislators in other states and many others in between, have stated that America’s death penalty system is racially biased and unjust.

I have been listening to the responses to Newsom’s action by conservative Republican politicians and some of their supporters. Certain district attorneys have come out hard against what Newsom did, and some victims’ rights organizations have done the same. But none of them has cited any of the real statistics that have proved this system of capital punishment is rigged and flawed.

It’s rigged so non-rich people get the penalty of death, and flawed by its racism, homophobia, religious prejudice and lack of acknowledging mental illness. The system of capital punishment, in which the people with capital don’t get this type of punishment, comes from the slaveholding white supremacist civilization and mentality of yesteryear, in which black people were not even considered to be fully human. Yet these pro-death penalty advocates act as if this is not the truth in present-day America and try to absolve themselves of violating humanity—as their slave master and white supremacist ancestors did.

They say, as former California Gov. Jerry Brown once did, that there are no innocent people on death row. But as Newsom’s order stated: “Since 1973, 164 condemned prisoners nationwide, including five in California, have been freed from death row after they were found to have been wrongfully convicted.”

Proof of just one innocence should throw the whole system into question. A 2014 study said 4.1 percent of death row inmates across the country are innocent. I am confident DNA tests in my case ordered by Newsom—another action strongly opposed by death penalty advocates—will prove my innocence; but consider the others who do not have a team of top pro bono attorneys fighting for them.

In researching the history of the death penalty, the conclusion is inescapable: It is mostly the poor, mentally ill and people of color who are sentenced to death, and black and brown people, especially men, are sentenced disproportionally to white people. More than 60 percent of San Quentin’s death row inmates are people of color. Newsom points out that at least 18 of the 25 people executed in the U.S. in 2018 had significant evidence of mental illness, brain injury, developmental brain damage or an IQ in the intellectually disabled range, chronic serious childhood trauma, neglect and/or abuse.

Newsom now, if nothing else, has begun a conversation that should have taken place a very long time ago, which is the truth about capital punishment in the state of California and the rest of this country.

This will never be a free and open society as long as certain politicians and their supporters continue to ignore the truth about this country’s racist past and present. It is this tortured historical past that has made for this tortured present as it deals with who lives and who dies by the hands of the rich and powerful in this country.

As Newsom once again was sharing the truth about the death penalty, a scandal was breaking about wealthy parents who paid to get their children fraudulently admitted into prestigious, sought-after universities. Some of those parents reportedly paid $1 million or more.

On another side of this issue, there are rich people who can pay millions of dollars in legal fees and such to keep their children out of prison and especially off of death row. Poor people, for the most part, can’t get into any university, but can get into prison; they cannot get into Penn State, but they can get into the state pen. Rich people can get into damn near any university—but don’t make it to death row, even when they have been convicted of murder, which has happened in this country and state.

I thank Newsom for his moral courage and power to stand up and speak truth about this rotten-ass system of death when others, who have also known this truth and even acknowledged it, did not.

Hopefully, this is the beginning of the end of the death penalty in this progressive state of California, which has been in the company of Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and others that still execute people. Since 1978, California has spent $5 billion on a death penalty system that has executed 13 people. The billions of dollars spent on death can now be spent on life, funding health care, education, housing and the other necessities for all Californians.

History will prove Newsom is correct in what he has done, and that same history will not remember the mean-spirited pro-death penalty people who have no morals or moral courage. The only power they have is the power of fear and revenge. That, in my humble opinion, is not real power.

Will a Corruption Scandal Sink Netanyahu’s Re-Election Bid?

What follows is a conversation between Shir Hever and Charles Lenchner of the Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

CHARLES LENCHNER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Charles Lenchner.

New revelations about the arms deal between Israel and Germany is rocking the Israeli election campaign just two weeks before the elections. The state witness Mickey Ganor, who was the agent of the German Thyssenkrupp arms company in Israel, has been arrested by the police after he suddenly changed his story and violated the terms of the deal he made with Israeli police. At the same time, new evidence emerged that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has sold stocks in the GrafTech international company, which is a steel company providing components for the German company, making a profit of 400 percent, about four and a half million dollars.

It was also revealed that the German government requested Netanyahu’s permission before selling similar submarines to Egypt. Netanyahu claimed before that he never gave such permission, but new evidence has shown that he lied and in fact authorized the German-Egypt arms deal, boosting the profits of GrafTech international, in which he was a stockholder. Major General Benny Gantz heads the party Blue and White, which is trying to unseat Netanyahu in the upcoming election. At a recent press conference, he had the following things to say.

Shir Hever is a correspondent for The Real News Network living in Heidelberg, Germany. His most recent book is The Privatization of Israeli Security, published in 2017 by Pluto Press. Thank you, Shir, for joining us.

SHIR HEVER: Thanks for having me, Charles.

CHARLES LENCHNER: The Israeli media has given codes to all these corruption cases they call it 1000, 2000, 3000, but now the revelations are regarding specifically case 3000, in which no indictment was issued. Help us understand what this case is about and how it’s different than the other three.

SHIR HEVER: Right. So the cases 1000, 2000, and 4000 are the ones that there was an indictment for. And they are quite similar cases, because in all of these three cases, the issue is about billionaires who control media empires who received various, or allegedly received, various benefits from Netanyahu, who used his political power of those media empires in exchange for favorable coverage or for various gifts that he received from that.

Case 3000, which is now dominating the headlines, is very different from that. And the reason is that it’s not about media, but rather about the arms trade. Germany has sold Israel both submarines and heavy warships, which the Israeli navy actually said they don’t need. And they bought them anyway, because two percent of the deal was given as commission, which when we talk about two percent, it already counts as a bribe, actually to Mickey Ganor, who then turned state witness. And Mickey Ganor is a friend of Netanyahu, he was appointed by him to the National Security Council of Israel. His lawyer, David Shimron, is also the lawyer of Netanyahu and also happens to be the cousin of Netanyahu. So the web of connections is very tight.

And Netanyahu kept insisting that he doesn’t know anything about it. And the state attorney at the time, Mandelblit, very strangely announced when he started the investigation of this case 3000, about the arms deal, that Netanyahu was not a suspect, which is a very strange thing to say when you start an investigation, that you’re already excluding the possibility that somebody who’s very much in the middle of this story is even going to be indicted at some point. Now, when all of this evidence is coming out, it of course shows that the decision of Mandelblit not to press charges is challenged, Mandelblit’s reputation is under attack, as this evidence is pretty condemning considering Netanyahu.

CHARLES LENCHNER: So it feels as though there’s a lot of evidence being brought from the past, and all of this is coming out now, two weeks before the election. So I’m wondering, is this coming out now because somewhere in the in the state apparatus there’s a desire to punish Netanyahu before the elections and damage him, or is there another reason why this information is only coming out now?

SHIR HEVER: It all goes to this press conference that we’ve just seen a short segment from. Because in fact, most of the facts regarding this arms deal have been known for years. The German government announced that they’re going to suspend trade until it will be clear that there is no corruption involved. But then, when people started to get arrested and the idea that corruption is involved has become obvious, then the Germans decided they were going to go ahead with the deal anyway because they want the money.

So we’ve already gone through several stages. It was reported in the German media, it was reported in the Israeli media. But a lot of the facts were not put together, for example, the fact that the Germans said, we got approval from the Israeli government to sell submarines to Egypt. And that made a lot of Israelis think well, OK, so the Israeli government approved it. What is new about this story is the fact that in this press conference that we’ve just seen, it was not just Benny Gantz speaking. There was a whole series of people who spoke, and all of these people are senior members of this new party called Blue and White, and they’re all former members of cabinet or commanders of the army, chiefs of staff of the army. So these people have all been in a position to observe all of the malfeasance going on, the bribery, the lying, and they said nothing at the time.

And now, they’re coming up just two weeks before the election to try to change the momentum and get a few votes right when the polls are about to close. But I think what they’re doing is actually also exposing their own incompetence. Because when Moshe Dayan, example was the Minister of Defense, he said he doesn’t want to have the submarine deal because it doesn’t serve Israeli strategic interests and it’s a terrible waste of money. But that’s it, he just said it to Netanyahu. He didn’t resign, he didn’t make a big deal out of it. So now when he’s saying oh, you lied to me, you didn’t give me all the information, that sounds a bit strange. Why didn’t you say something at the time? And I think that actually shows that these politicians who are trying to portray themselves as alternatives to Netanyahu are also not very honest and straight in their politics.

CHARLES LENCHNER: There’s a joke, that instead of Israel having an army, it’s an army that has a state, that goes around. And the security establishment is one of the most trusted parts of Israeli society. What is changing here? Is there a sense the either complicity or silence or malfeasance of all of these different parts of the security establishment is changing something about how the Israeli public looks at that?

SHIR HEVER: I think that’s a very deep change in Israeli society. And Israeli society used to be one of the most militaristic societies in the world, and it is quite militaristic today, still more than most countries in the world, but actually, the militarism is going down. The idea that when a general speaks, everyone has to be quiet and listen to them, is indeed the reason for such jokes like you just said. And there is a lot of those jokes. And this idea that Israeli security comes before anything else is now crumbling at the seams.

We’re seeing actually that Netanyahu was able to pull off something that no politician before him was able to do. He decided, for his own reasons, for his own agenda, to go against the security elite, to go against the generals. All the generals said, we don’t want submarines, and he said, no, but I want submarines, and he got his way. And that’s very interesting. And he’s still leading at the polls, which means that the Israeli public is still willing to take his word over the word of all the generals. This party, the Blue and White party is really riding the wake of this dominance or the hegemony of the Israeli security elite, the generals, in the Israeli political sphere. But it’s not such overwhelming as it was before, and today people are not necessarily going to vote for them just because they’re generals.

CHARLES LENCHNER: It makes you wonder who is breaking the covenant between the security establishment and the Israeli public. Both of them seem to be dancing together on this one. Thank you very much, Shir Hever.

SHIR HEVER: Thank you, Charles.

CHARLES LENCHNER: Thank you, Shir. And thank you for joining us at the Real News Network. Thank you sheer.

Michael Avenatti Charged With Extortion and Bank Fraud

LOS ANGELES — U.S. prosecutors on two coasts have charged President Donald Trump critic and attorney Michael Avenatti with extortion and bank and wire fraud.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles said Avenatti was arrested Monday in New York.

Spokesman Ciaran McEvoy says the lawyer best known for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against Trump faces federal charges in New York and California.

In the New York case, he was accused of threatening to use his ability to get publicity to harm the sports apparel giant Nike.

In the California case, Avenatti was accused of embezzling a client’s money to pay his own expenses and debts — as well as those of his coffee business and law firm. The U.S. attorney’s office also said he defrauded a bank by using phony tax returns to obtain millions of dollars in loans.

Prosecutors in both states planned to release more details at news conferences later Monday.

In the New York case, Avenatti was charged with conspiracy to transmit interstate communications with intent to extort, conspiracy to commit extortion, transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort and extortion. The charges carry a potential penalty of 47 years in prison.

A criminal complaint said Avenatti threatened to hold a news conference on the eve of Nike’s quarterly earnings call and the start of the NCAA tournament to announce allegations of misconduct by Nike employees.

Avenatti and a co-conspirator demanded to be paid a minimum of $15 to $25 million and an additional $1.5 million for an Avenatti client to remain silent, the complaint said.

The court papers said the co-conspiracy, who was not identified in court papers, is also an attorney licensed to practice in California. It said the co-conspirator, like Avenatti, represents celebrities and public figures.

The court papers said the client is a coach of an amateur athletic union men’s basketball program in California. The complaint said the AAU program coached by the Avenatti client was sponsored by Nike for $72,000 annually.

Avenatti tweeted that he planned to hold a news conference regarding Nike on Tuesday morning. Less than 45 minutes later, prosecutors announced the extortion charges.

Avenatti represented Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, in a lawsuit to break a confidentiality agreement to speak about her alleged affair with Trump.

Bolsonaro’s Brazen Meeting With the CIA

On March 18, Brazil’s extreme-right President Jair Bolsonaro made history. Outside the official agenda of his first official trip to the United States he paid a visit to CIA Headquarters, becoming the first ever Brazilian President to do so. In contrast, Bolsonaro has never visited ABIN, Brazil’s moribund equivalent of the CIA.

On the agenda, it is assumed, were the ongoing coup attempt in Venezuela, in which the United States wants further Brazilian assistance, unrest in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Bolivia’s coming election. More pertinent is what role, if any, the CIA had in Bolsonaro’s own.

“No Brazilian president had ever paid a visit to the CIA, This is an explicitly submissive position. Nothing compares to this.” remarked former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, one of the world’s most respected diplomats.

In June 2013, the scandal broke that Brazil, President Rousseff, several of her ministries and Oil Giant Petrobras, were all under surveillance by the National Security Agency. Brazil was supposed to be a U.S. ally, and as a result Rousseff cancelled her scheduled official visit to the United States.

At this time, Jair Bolsonaro, then a fringe extremist congressman with no realistic presidential chances, dismissed the fully documented revelations of U.S. mass spying on Brazil as a distraction, even suggesting that Dilma was concocting the scandal to distract from her own domestic problems.

During the Snowden reporting, I was repeatedly told/warned that CIA’s largest permanent presence is in Brazil (due to Cold War roots when CIA helped overthrow Brazil’s democratically elected government & then propped up the resulting military regime). It’s worse now: https://t.co/8TTnthrEeL

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 18, 2019

In 2016, immediately following the soft coup which removed Dilma Rousseff, Bolsonaro ally and one of Brazil’s most powerful men, General Sérgio Westphalen Etchegoyen, who was then Brazil’s newly named head of institutional security met with the CIA’s chief in Brasilía. The secret meeting was accidentally revealed when Etchegoyen’s agenda was published.

Bolsonaro’s CIA visit has not only angered steadfast anti-imperialists, who the country should now look to for answers after years of naivety and complacency over the U.S. role in the country’s descent into political distress – it has even left conservative commentators exasperated.

The new Government was already delivering a wish list of demands, both corporate and strategic, including the lease of the long-prized Alcantâra rocket base to the United States Military, the first such presence on Brazilian soil since the second world war. The U.S. has gained enormously since the coup of 2016, advantages which have only expanded and solidified with the election of Bolsonaro.

The Brazilian President was accompanied to the CIA HQ by Sérgio Moro, the US-trained Inquisitor-Judge turned Justice Minister who was responsible for the politically motivated jailing of Bolsonaro’s main competitor in the 2018 election, Lula da Silva, who was certain to win until his forced removal from the race. With this, Moro delivered the election to Bolsonaro, and was immediately rewarded with a ministerial position. The pair met Gina Haspel, the head of the agency who had been removed in 2013 after revelations of her direct role in torture of kidnapped suspects in the wake of 911. Given that Bolsonaro is an enthusiastic supporter of torture and publicly eulogises torturers of Brazil’s dictatorship era, this cannot have caused him any concern.

Sérgio Moro meanwhile has long been accused of being a CIA agent or simply working in some capacity for the United States, and there has long been evidence, albeit inconclusive, to support this hypothesis. Before taking up his ministerial position, Moro headed Lava Jato (Carwash), the internationally promoted and now discredited anti-corruption operation. In recent weeks the Supreme Court has been locked in a battle over an attempt by the Department of Justice to grant the Lava Jato task force, based in the southern city of Curitiba, R$2.5bn to create a privately managed “Anti-Corruption fund”, with money taken from fines paid by the investigated state controlled oil company Petrobras.

Lava Jato was conducted in collaboration with the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice. Some of that collaboration occurred on an informal basis which was in breach of Brazil’s constitution and was the basis of a motion to annul the case against former president Lula. Acting Attorney General Kenneth Blanco even boasted of the DOJ role in Lula’s prosecution during a speech at the NATO think tank Atlantic Council, whose special Latin America office was set up in 2013. AC has been largely supportive of Bolsonaro’s ascendency, and the actions which enabled it including the impeachment of Brazil’s first female President Dilma Rousseff, which the neofascist used as a springboard for his own presidential ambitions.

Moro’s Lava Jato, which was based on his own 2004 study of Italy’s Mani Pulite(Clean Hands), and whose concept and structure was outlined in a 2009 State Department cable, not only created two false pretexts for one President’s removal (corruption and economy), it prevented the election of another (Lula), and also worked during the 2018 election to attack the reputation of his replacement, Fernando Haddad, who was later cleared of the accusations.

Moro has undoubtedly changed the course of Brazilian history with his decapitation of the centre-left Workers Party (PT), and delivered the Presidency to a Neofascist who has said that 30,000 people needed to be killed for Brazil to function, and threatened political opponents with exile, imprisonment, even machine-gunning during his election campaign.

In this context, President Jair Bolsonaro or his Justice and Security Minister Sérgio Moro having any contact with the CIA is even more bewildering and frightening.

Useful idiots

Commentators who have regularly poured professional scorn on any suggestion of U.S. involvement in Brazil are now very quiet. The intellectual gymnastics required to depict Bolsonaro’s CIA visit as normal behaviour is beyond even the usual chorus of Wall Street lobbyists and foreign correspondents. Whilst observers shouldn’t expect actual insight from workaday hacks, it is the journalists and commentators who strongly and consistently refuted any suggestion of a U.S. role who should face scrutiny. They won’t be feeling comfortable today.

The most useful of idiots, who consciously or otherwise are embedded in an asymmetric, unconventional war; Reuters, Bloomberg – in particular those connected to think tanks such as AS/COA and Atlantic Council, will find it very difficult to spin this. These are who boosted the anti Dilma Rousseff narratives of 2013-16, then denied that a coup had taken place, whilst breathlessly promoting Sérgio Moro internationally, pre-judging Lula’s guilt, denying his imprisonment was politically motivated, normalising or even backing Bolsonaro during the 2018 election and behaving as if it was free and fair, business as usual.

There were chiefs at international news agencies in Brazil who threatened staff with dismissal if they used the word “Coup/Golpe” to describe what was happening on their personal social media, and vehemently denied that Sérgio Moro was a CIA agent, without prompting. Then there are the more “woke” types who acknowledge U.S. involvement in Brazil – but only that which occurred 40 years or more ago and which can be safely filed away under the “Cold War”. “I mean, of course we all know that American intervention is restricted to yesteryear” joked one Latin America historian about this kind of discourse.

Brazil needs and deserves an immediate and complete reappraisal from the media on what has and is being done to the country, namely the United States and allies role in it, without artificial distinction between state and corporate power. This needs to be conducted without whitewashing, without censorship by omission. Brazilians deserve honesty and thorough investigation.

We at Brasil Wire have long maintained that in addition to what was already available, which was ample, much more evidence would become available over the coming months and years that would further underline U.S. involvement in Brazil’s complicated and often perplexing slow motion coup.

We did not expect anything quite so brazen and astonishing as the Brazilian President and the Justice Minister who delivered him that Presidency, visiting the CIA, the agency responsible for many of the worst injustices and atrocities the region has suffered in the modern era.

Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Is the Political Opportunity of a Lifetime

Bernie Sanders wrapped up a weekend campaign swing through California with a Sunday afternoon speech to 16,000 of us a few miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. News coverage seemed unlikely to convey much about the event. The multiracial crowd reflected the latest polling that shows great diversity of support for Bernie, contrary to corporate media spin. High energy for basic social change was in the air.

Speaking from the podium, Bernie 2020 co-chair Nina Turner asked and answered a question about the campaign: “What’s love got to do with it? Everything.”

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Those words made me think of a little-known statement by Martin Luther King Jr., as vitally true in 2019 as in 1967. “Now, we got to get this thing right,” he said. “What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”

And so, Dr. King was saying, love and power need each other. Just one or the other just won’t do. Combining the two is essential. That’s a way to understand what Turner said at the rally in San Francisco: “This is a moment of transcendence.”

The Sanders campaign is a nationwide struggle for the kind of power that Dr. King extolled as “love implementing the demands of justice.” In his words, “Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose.”

The Sanders campaign is a political opportunity unlike any we’ve seen in our lifetimes. With profound purpose, it raises the stakes to fit the magnitude of what is at stake; it challenges in national electoral terms the kind of destructive domination that has ruled with dispiriting and deadly results. “We’re going to have to fight Wall Street, neoliberals, those who don’t want the change to come,” Turner said.

Alone among the candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders has always been part of progressive movements. The only way that the campaign can overcome corporate media, Wall Street and other power centers of the establishment will be with massive bottom-up mobilization in communities across the country. As Bernie said on Sunday, “We are going to put together an unprecedented grassroots campaign.”

A current media meme — ignoring the importance of Bernie’s longstanding record — assumes that he is likely to lose many votes to other candidates who’ve recently endorsed his 2016 campaign proposals.

But it matters greatly that Bernie has unique credibility as someone who has been part of progressive social movements during the last several decades — and who hasn’t waited for opinions to become fashionable before expressing them.

“It’s hard not to be a bit wary of people who know how the wind is blowing and now are blowing with it,” I told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter who quoted me in an article that appeared hours before the rally. “Bernie is part of movements that create the wind. Bernie is not a wind sock.”

For decades, Bernie has been tirelessly advocating for Medicare for All single-payer healthcare. In the last few years or months, some of his opponents have come around to voice often-equivocal support. The credibility of commitment is vastly different. When Sanders declared for the umpteenth time at the San Francisco rally that “healthcare is a human right,” no one could doubt that he really meant it.

Similarly, Bernie has long been calling for drastic new policies to push back against climate change. He voiced concerns about a warming planet as early as the 1980s.

Overall, a vast number of issues fall under a clear approach that Bernie has long stated, as he did on Sunday: “We say no to oligarchy, yes to democracy.”

Bernie’s speech in San Francisco included clarity on some issues that has become sharper than ever, as in his denunciations of the prison-industrial complex, the cruel injustice of cash bail and systemic racism. And at last, as a presidential candidate, he is calling out by name “the military-industrial complex.”

Declaring that he aims for a presidency to challenge the bloated military budget, Bernie said: “We are not going to invest in never-ending wars.” It was a statement that caused some of the loudest cheering of the afternoon, along with chants of “No more wars!” As those chants subsided, he said: “I know it’s not easy, but our job is to lead the world away from war and invest in human needs.”

Bernie called for breaking up the big banks. And he addressed the power of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries: “When we talk about lowering prescription drug costs and moving to Medicare for All, we have got to recognize, we have a battle in front of us. These guys will spend endless amounts of money. Will you stand with me and take on the drug companies and the insurance companies?”

And he went on: “If we’re going to protect family-based agriculture from Vermont to California, we have got to stand up to agribusiness. We have got to stand up to the prison-industrial complex. We’ve got to stand up to the fossil fuel industry. In other words, it’s easy enough for somebody to give you a speech about all the things he or she wants to do. But those changes do not take place unless people stand up and fight back. And that is what this campaign is about.”

When Bernie finished his speech, a woman stepped to the microphone with a guitar and began to play some familiar chords. Bernie returned to the mic to quickly say: “This is Sarah Guthrie, granddaughter of Woody Guthrie.”

And she began to sing:

As I was walking that ribbon of highway

I saw above me that endless skyway

I saw below me the golden valley

This land was made for you and me  

Moments later, Sarah Guthrie sang a version of a verse that has been rarely heard:

There was a great high wall

That tried to stop me

And on the wall said “No Trespassing”

But on the other side

It didn’t say nothing

That side was made for you and me

And:

Oh nobody living could ever stop us

As we go walking on freedom highway

Nobody living can make us turn back

This land was made for you and me

Harris Sends Message to Democratic Old-Guard: Every Era Has Its End

ATLANTA—California Sen. Kamala Harris sent a subtle signal to the old-guard of Democratic politics that every era has its end.

At an Atlanta church service dedicated to youth Sunday, the presidential candidate compared leadership to a relay race in which each generation must ask themselves “what do we do during that period of time when we carry that baton.”

Then she added with a smile that for “the older leaders, it also becomes a question of let’s also know when to pass the baton.”

The 54-year-old senator — one of the younger contenders for the White House in 2020 — did not mention any other presidential hopeful or tie her remarks to the Democratic presidential scramble. Her spokeswoman said she only wanted to encourage the youth at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Her commentary to the congregation once led by Martin Luther King Jr. comes as former Vice President Joe Biden, 76, considers whether to join a field that already includes Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is 77. Both men have run for president before and fallen short.

Biden and Sanders are seen as strong contenders for the Democratic nomination, though other candidates and some voters have emphasized the need for a more youthful approach to try and beat President Donald Trump in the general election. Several other candidates in the race, including two governors, are also in their late 60s.

Harris noted Sunday that King was 26 when he led the Montgomery Bus Boycotts that pushed him to the forefront of the civil rights movement.

Later Sunday, Harris told a rally at Morehouse College in Atlanta that Attorney General William Barr should testify under oath on Capitol Hill, rather than just submit the written summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on the Russia investigation.

The Justice Department said Sunday that Mueller’s team did not find evidence that Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Mueller also investigated whether Trump obstructed justice but did not come to a definitive answer.

Other highlights of Sunday campaigning:

KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND

Democratic presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand assailed President Donald Trump as a coward who is “tearing apart the moral fabric of the vulnerable,” as she officially started her campaign for president.

The senator spoke in New York Sunday, feet away from one of Trump’s signature properties, the Trump International Hotel and Tower.

She said that instead of building walls as Trump wants to do along the U.S.-Mexico border, Americans build bridges, community and hope.

Gillibrand also called for full release of Mueller’s report in the Russia investigation. Attorney General William Barr released a summary Sunday afternoon, but Democrats want to see the full details.

Gillibrand is trying to position herself in the crowded field of Democrats seeking the party’s nomination. While some hopefuls have shied away from mentioning Trump, Gillibrand has not hesitated to do so.

ELIZABETH WARREN

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Sunday the National Rifle Association is holding “Congress hostage” when it comes to stemming gun violence.

The Massachusetts senator and Democratic presidential candidate tells a campaign rally that if seven children were dying from a mysterious virus, “we’d pull out all the stops till we figured out what was wrong.” But in terms of gun violence, she said the NRA “keeps calling the shots in Washington.”

Warren finished a two-day campaign trip to New Hampshire with an event at a middle school in Conway Sunday afternoon.

Warren focused much of her speech on her approach to economics, but paid special attention to unions Sunday. She said more power needs to be put back in the hands of workers.

BETO O’ROURKE

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke told voters in Las Vegas Sunday that President Donald Trump bears blame for the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border but responsibility lies with everyone in the country to fix the situation.

O’Rourke spoke Sunday to more than 200 people packed into and snaking around a taco shop on the city’s north end. He said immigrant families are leaving their home countries and journeying on foot because they have no other choice.

The former Texas congressman said desperate families were broken up in the U.S. when they were at their most vulnerable and desperate moments, and what happened to them “is on every single one of us.”

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Woodall reported from Conway, New Hampshire. Associated Press writers Juana Summers in New York and Michelle Price in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Russia Inquiry: No Evidence of Collusion, No Ruling on Obstruction

Attorney General WIlliam Barr sent a letter to Congress summarizing the results of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation on possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The text of Barr’s letter is below.

AG March 24 2019 Letter to … by on Scribd

 

Mueller Finds Trump Campaign Did Not Conspire With Russia, DOJ Says

WASHINGTON—The Justice Department said Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation did not find evidence that President Donald Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Mueller also investigated whether Trump obstructed justice but did not come to a definitive answer, Attorney General William Barr said in a letter to Congress summarizing Mueller’s report.

The special counsel “does not exonerate” Trump of obstructing justice, Barr said, and his report “sets out evidence on both sides of the question.”

After consulting with other Justice Department officials, Barr said he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein determined the evidence “is not sufficient to establish that the president committed an obstruction of justice offense.”

Barr released a four-page summary of Mueller’s report Sunday afternoon. Mueller wrapped up his investigation on Friday with no new indictments, bringing to a close a probe that has shadowed Trump for nearly two years.

Barr’s chief of staff called White House counsel Emmet Flood at 3 p.m. Sunday to brief him on the report to Congress. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, about to return to Washington after spending the weekend there.

Mueller’s investigation ensnared nearly three dozen people, senior Trump campaign operatives among them. The probe illuminated Russia’s assault on the American political system, painted the Trump campaign as eager to exploit the release of hacked Democratic emails to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton and exposed lies by Trump aides aimed at covering up their Russia-related contacts.

Mueller submitted his report to Barr instead of directly to Congress and the public because, unlike independent counsels such as Ken Starr in the case of President Bill Clinton, his investigation operated under the close supervision of the Justice Department, which appointed him.

Mueller was assigned to the job in May 2017 by Rosenstein, who oversaw much of his work. Barr and Rosenstein analyzed Mueller’s report on Saturday, laboring to condense it into a summary letter of main conclusions.

Amid the March Madness, a Call to Unionize the NCAA

When Zion Williamson’s foot broke through the sole of his Nike shoe on Feb. 20, the sporting world stood still.

The consensus number one player in college basketball was playing in the biggest game of the season — North Carolina versus Duke — and suffered his startling injury in the opening minute. Williamson’s sprained knee cost Nike $1.1 billion in stock market valuation the next day.

The injury came on the doorstep of March Madness, the NCAA’s most profitable event of the year — to the tune of $900 million in revenue.

Despite the billions riding on his performance, the NCAA insists that athletes like Williamson are “amateurs” — student-athletes there only for the love of the game. It forbids them to make money off their performance, even as they support an industry worth billions. Duke alone makes $31 million off its basketball program.

Williamson has been a force of nature this season, captivating audiences and NBA scouts alike. Enticing those NBA scouts is the only way this 18-year-old can build his own future career — and any sort of injury imperils that future.

High-level “student-athletes,” after all, don’t get to spend much time being students.

They’re supposed to only spend 20 hours a week on sports-related activities. In reality, they spend around 40 hours on practice alone. Schoolwork falls by the wayside, so many schools have outside tutors do the players’ schoolwork and by create classes-in-name-only where the only requirement is to turn in a paper.

A few years ago, some former athletes at the University of North Carolina sued the school and the NCAA, claiming they’d been denied a meaningful education. It’s hard to argue with that.

The athletes, in exchange for scholarships, give these schools their lives and put their health at risk. Concussions of football players have sparked lawsuits, and an injury like Williamson’s could cost a player millions in the professional leagues. If they can’t go pro — and their education didn’t do them any favors — what option do they have?

That risk is where the travesty lies. These thousands of athletes who play in the NCAA are often not allowed to enjoy the benefits of the schools they attend (and enrich). If they’re not able to make use of their education, they should be paid for the work they put in.

When college sports revenues are as high as they’ve ever been, the failure to pay the athletes is absurd — but not surprising.

Inequality of all kinds is on the rise, and the gap between the top and bottom of the pay scale is the highest since the Gilded Age of the early 1900s. The NCAA not allowing athletes to be paid — or even sign autographs for money! — is an extension of an economy where unions are busted and people have to work three jobs to make ends meet.

It needs to change. College basketball players are on average worth $212,080 to their program, much more than the cost of their scholarships.

Schools should pay these athletes a share of the revenue their sport brings in. And the NCAA needs to, at the very least, allow for these people to make money selling autographs or appearing at sports camps.

Just as importantly, athletes should be allowed to unionize their teams and fight for their own rights.

Billions of dollars are going to be spent on betting on March Madness games. CBS and Turner paid around $19 billion for the television rights to the tournament. And over $1 billion in advertising is spent on the tournament.

This event is all about the money. We should spread it around to the people who make it worthwhile.

As Uber Gets Ready to Turn Public, L.A. Drivers Prepare a Strike

As Uber prepares to go public on the New York Stock Exchange, many drivers in the Los Angeles area hope their colleagues will join them in a strike Monday.

Last week, Uber slashed per-mile pay from 80 cents to 60 cents in Los Angeles County and parts of Orange County. In response, the group Rideshare Drivers United is seeking a 25-hour strike against both Uber and Lyft.

The group, which now numbers nearly 3,000, has made a list of demands in what it calls “A Drivers’ Bill of Rights.” Their demands include a 10 percent commission cap for Uber and Lyft, a minimum wage per trip that corresponds to the one recently established in New York City, and a recognition of a driver-led organization that allows it to negotiate on the behalf of drivers without fear of retaliation.

In January, New York City enacted a $17.22 minimum wage (after expenses) for all rideshare drivers. The first such pay policy in the U.S. came after a report by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission found that almost 20 percent of all rideshare drivers receive food stamps, 40 percent receive Medicaid and 16 percent have no health insurance.

The demonstrators face significant obstacles in organizing, primarily due to the individual nature of the work since drivers only interact with apps and not each other. This has fueled concerns that drivers as well as passengers could end up completely unaware of the protest.

Bryan Menegus from Gizmodo reports:

Like other changes to the labor conditions of Uber’s core workforce—who are categorized as independent contractors and not employees—unilateral announcements are sent through alerts in the app or Terms of Service changes with little or no warning. According to Drivers United organizer and current Uber driver Esterphanie St. Juste, “essentially, if you don’t accept what they say, you’re fired.” With the illusion of consent, you can go from having a job to being unemployed, and you’re let go with all the dignity of a pop-up ad.

The 25 percent reduction has roiled drivers in the area who were already struggling to make a living wage. “No joke, 80 cents per mile [the approximate previous rate] is not enough either. And folks who’ve been on for a long time remember when it was more than a dollar per mile,” another Drivers United organizer, Nicole Moore, told Gizmodo. She describes the competitive environment between Uber, Lyft, and others as “a mad rush to the bottom,” one which mostly hurts drivers themselves—and points out that she knows several colleagues who sleep in their cars to make ends meet. She added, “I’m mad. I’m not gonna take it anymore. It’s not right.”

“Drivers told us that they value promotion opportunities, so we’re introducing a new Quest promotion feature, while also changing the per minute, per mile and minimum fare rates,” an Uber spokesperson told Gizmodo via email. “These changes will make rates comparable to where they were in September while giving drivers more control over how they earn by allowing them to build a model that fits their schedule best.”

Rob Mead, an Uber driver in Reno, Nevada, shared a story with The Guardian about how he made a measly $3.75 in an hour after expenses. Nicole Moore, who drove in the past for Uber and currently drives for Lyft, said “some days we’re lucky after expenses to make $8 an hour.”

Uber Technologies expects to publicly file for its offering on the New York Stock Exchange in April with a kickoff listing that could value the company at as much as $120 billion. Lyft will start trading this week on the Nasdaq. Going public potentially could be spurring the two companies to try to cut wages for their drivers in order to increase their revenue, a move that would most likely lead to a wider range of interest and investment in their stock.

Although Uber looks to kick off the strongest NYSE listing of the year, the company faces a host of problems.

Uber generated $11.4 billion in revenue in 2018 but the company still has been unable to show a profit since its inception. The firm lost $1.07 billion in three months ending September 2018. In 2018, it was only able to make 74 percent of its costs. The year before, it was roughly 64 percent. According to New York Magazine, that 10 percentage point increase came almost entirely by cutting driver pay.

Uber is also facing multiple lawsuits in the United Kingdom. These include a suit in which drivers are hoping to be acknowledged as employees and therefore entitled to rights such as paid holidays and a minimum wage. Another includes allegations against the company that it continues to break European data protection laws. In the latter case, four drivers allege Uber withholds GPS data that shows “dead mileage” they accrue on the job, which they say makes it impossible for them to accurately calculate their hourly wage.

Actual data on what Uber drivers make after expenses and fees varies according to different reports. A May 2018 report by the Economic Policy Institute found the median wage for Uber drivers in the U.S. after expenses and fees is $9.21 an hour. This puts them in roughly the 10th percentile of all wage and salary workers’ pay, meaning Uber drivers earn less than what 90 percent of other workers earn. And drivers who transport people (Uber or Lyft) or things (Uber Eats or Postmates) made 53 percent less in 2017 than in 2013, according to a study by the JP Morgan Chase Institute. It should be noted that this shift is also attributed to an increase in the number of drivers driving fewer hours.

There are currently an estimated 900,000 active Uber drivers in the U.S. and close to 3 million globally. As the company prepares itself to go on the stock market, many drivers remain skeptical they will reap any of the benefits and will be put on the wayside as Uber tries to look good for its potential investors. With the demonstration Monday and other actions, they hope they can at least begin to have their voices heard.