Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast Tune: Folsom Prison Blues (Banjo), James Stiltner
Today in History
Women’s rights activists meet at Seneca Falls; The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy on gays in the U.S. military; Apollo 11 enters lunar orbit; Baseball’s Pete Rose gets jail time; Moscow Olympics begins. (July 19)
Breakfast News & Blogs Below
Clinton Challenged to Break Up-and Break Up With-Wall Street Banks
Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams
Faced with the possibility of yet another Wall Street crony taking over the Oval Office next year, progressive lawmakers are directly challenging Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton to break up-and break up with-the big banks.
Speaking at an annual meeting for progressive organizers and advocacy groups on Friday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called on presidential hopefuls to support recently introduced legislation that would stem the ever-turning revolving door between government and the financial industry.
“We have a presidential election coming up. I think anyone running for that job-anyone who wants the power to make every key economic appointment and nomination across the federal government-should say loud and clear that they agree: we don’t run this country for Wall Street and mega corporations. We run it for people,” Warren said, according to her prepared remarks, during the keynote address. …
Comcast Sued For Robocalling Woman 153 Times Over A Bill She’d Already Paid
Timothy Geigner, techdirt
from the if-you’re-annoyed,-press-1 dept
Techdirt’s very own Karl Bode had just written about Time Warner being forced to pay over $200k for robocalling a woman 153 times about an overdue balance that actually was owed by a completely different person. What with all the complaints that ISPs these days aren’t forced to actually compete with one another, Comcast, in its infinite wisdom, decided to prove to the public that it will in fact directly compete with Time Warner on the battlefield of robocalling people about stuff when they shouldn’t. Comcast’s entry into the competition concerns the company robocalling Kia Elder about an overdue balance…that she’d already paid four years ago.
According to the lawsuit, Comcast customer Kia Elder was robocalled repeatedly by Comcast for an overdue balance of $527 she said she paid way back in 2011. Yet Comcast repeatedly called Elder “once or twice a day” between September 2014 and “at least through” June 18, and was incapable of updating its systems to show the bill had been paid despite repeated complaints. Elder and her attorney are now seeking $500 to $1,500 for each alleged Comcast violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. “Defendant acknowledged plaintiff’s instructions to stop calling her phone but did not stop,” states the complaint.
Yes, Comcast apparently called Kia regarding a bill that had already been paid more often than a high school kid calls his ex to try to win her back. Kia reportedly complained about the calls, but they still kept coming. She tried to get Comcast to update its records to reflect the paid bill, but the calls kept coming. And now, thanks to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which essentially requires companies not plug up the public’s cell phones with robotic corpo-vomit, she’s seeking anywhere between $200k and half-a-mil-do as punishment. …
Hacking Team and Boeing Subsidiary Envisioned Drones Deploying Spyware
Cora Currier, The Intercept
There are lots of ways that government spies can attack your computer, but a U.S. drone company is scheming to offer them one more. Boeing subsidiary Insitu would like to be able to deliver spyware via drone.
The plan is described in internal emails from the Italian company Hacking Team, which makes off-the-shelf software that can remotely infect a suspect’s computer or smartphone, accessing files and recording calls, chats, emails and more. A hacker attacked the Milan-based firm earlier this month and released hundreds of gigabytes of company information online.
Among the emails is a recap of a meeting in June of this year, which gives a “roadmap” of projects that Hacking Team’s engineers have underway.
On the list: Develop a way to infect computers via drone. One engineer is assigned the task of developing a “mini” infection device, which could be “ruggedized” and “transportable by drone (!)” the write-up notes enthusiastically in Italian. …
Blood, sweat and sugar: Trade deal fails Haitian workers on DR plantations
Amy Bracken, Al Jazeera
This is the first story in a two-part series. Look for the second story, about the Fanjul brothers’ political donations in the U.S., next week.
BATEY LOS PELAO, Dominican Republic – When night falls on the sugarcane fields, only a few lights come on in the cane cutters’ homes. Most don’t have electricity. Some workers don’t even light a candle. Moonlight catches their still, seated figures, recovering from long hours of swinging a machete under a boiling hot sun before going to bed, getting up and doing it all over again. They are part of an army of Haitian laborers who for decades have made up the backbone of the Dominican sugar industry. And from the start, much of that sugar has gone to the United States. The DR is consistently among the top suppliers to American markets, with more than 100,000 tons of sugar shipped to U.S. ports last year.
Haitians in the DR have faced harsh conditions for over a century. They were the targets of a massacre ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1937, and they endured periodic mass deportations throughout the 20th century. Today there is a renewed threat of expulsion for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and their descendants who were not able to meet a June 17 deadline to register for legal papers. The Dominican foreign minister says tens of thousands have returned to Haiti voluntarily, but according to media reports and the New York-based nonprofit Human Rights Watch, people are being forced out, including some born in the DR.
And then there’s the treatment of cane workers. Conditions have improved from a hundred years ago, when physical force and indebtedness were the norm, but many observers are shocked by how bad things still are on the plantations. A transnational free-trade agreement, the DR-CAFTA, which went into effect here in 2007, was supposed to improve all of that. The Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement encourages trade and investment between the United States, Dominican Republic and five Central American countries and was promoted as a tool to improve worker conditions. It would be “tough, effective” and “the best ever” on enforcement of labor laws, said the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. But “the best ever” hasn’t changed the day-to-day for Jonas Pierre, a Haitian immigrant and cane cutter in Batey Los Pelao. “Life here should be better than in Haiti,” he says, “but the work isn’t good. They don’t treat us well in this country. Sometimes you go a week without enough to eat.” …
- Suffragettes, Sanders, and When to Vote
Mary Petiet - Charter schools’ worst nightmare: A pro-union movement may change charters forever
Elias Isquith - The Chattanooga Shootings: Can Attacking Military Sites of a Nation at War be “Terrorism”?
Glenn Greenwald - Want to know how to curse like a proper American? Have a look at these maps
Mahita Gajanan
Vegas weddings decline; officials consider more advertising
AP
LAS VEGAS (AP) – At its peak, Las Vegas was home to one out of every 20 weddings in the United States. That number, however, has been dropping.
The Las Vegas Sun reports that nearly 47,000 fewer couples were married in the city’s little white chapels than a decade ago, despite record numbers of tourists flooding the city.
The city’s multimillion-dollar industry for providing easy, quick marriages has noticed increased competition as the numbers declined. Clark County Clerk Lynn Goya looked at 30 years of data and noted the steady decline. …
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac:
Are you tall? Are you strong? How big are your hands? You must be honest with yourself or you will end up using the wrong bat.
Pete Rose
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