May 17 2019

The Russian Connection: McConnell and Deripaska, A Love Story

While everyone has been fixated on the Trump’s current temper tantrum and fight for abortion rights, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Putin’s “favorite industrialist”, Oleg Derispaska are having an affair in Kentucky.

Kentucky might be going into business with the Russian mafia.

Not the rough-and-tumble “Godfather” crowd with the bent noses and such names like Tessio, Barzini and Luca Brasi.

If all goes according to plan, by the middle of the year, we’ll be in business with Oleg Deripaska, a buddy of Vladimir Putin.

He could be sending $200 million — if you believe media reports — in what could very well be mobbed-up money to northeastern Kentucky to build a $1.7 billion aluminum plant on an old strip mine there.

The United States government, according to the New York Times, has long believed that Deripaska has deep ties to Russian organized crime — the Bratva — so much so it has limited his travel here and prohibited him from doing business in this country.

The 51-year-old billionaire emerged as a powerful businessman following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union after a bloody fight for control of Russia’s aluminum industry.

Last November, the New York Times quoted Mikhail Khodorkovsky, another Russian billionaire, saying he stayed out of that battle and urged those he worked with to do the same because of the ruthlessness of the fight. “There were so many murders, I refused to go into this business,” Khodorkovsky said.

According to the Times, many have claimed that Deripaska “engaged in theft, intimidation, bribery and even murder, notably of a Russian banker in 1995,” but that none of those claims has been substantiated.

He was sued in Delaware in 2004 in a case that portrayed him as a “member of a criminal gang that seized control of an iron-ore mining complex in the Ural Mountains in the late 1990s,” the Times wrote.

“The previous manager claimed that at a meeting attended by Mr. Deripaska, a mafia leader and five armed thugs, he was told to transfer a majority share or ‘this is the last time you will leave here alive.’”

Deripaska denied the claims. The Delaware case was dismissed in 2007 because the American court didn’t have jurisdiction.

Now Deripaska could be bringing his aluminum acumen to Kentucky.

That plant in which he and his company is investing is the Braidy Industries aluminum plant that Gov. Matt Bevin poured $15 million of your money into in 2017.

When he announced the planned aluminum mill, Bevin hailed it as possibly the “most singularly transformative economic development decision that has ever been made in the commonwealth of Kentucky.”

But the plant has had trouble getting off the ground, in part because Braidy was forced to move the planned construction site from South Shore to Ashland when it was learned the original location couldn’t support the weight of the plant.

And money was a problem.

Enter Rusal, a Russian aluminum company that until just three months ago was barred from doing business in the United States in part because of its ties to Deripaska.

The Trump administration lifted the sanctions in January after Deripaska agreed to reduce his ownership stake in the Moscow-based company, the world’s second-largest aluminum manufacturer, from 70% to less than 45%.

And that came only after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell backed that decision despite large numbers of Republicans and Democrats who objected to allowing Rusal and its parent company En+ Group into the United States.

The House voted to keep the sanctions 362-53, but the Senate fell three votes short of the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster. McConnell, along with Sen. Rand Paul, voted against the resolution.

Get ready for borscht and vodka in Ashland.

The deal is that Rusal will own 40% of the mill and will supply it with its reserves of  aluminum from a smelter under construction in Siberia. Braidy will roll it flat so it can be used to make car parts here in the United States.

Deripaska is supposed to have been sidelined. But who really believes that? He’s a Russian oligarch. He does what he wants.

So, why would you go into business with a guy like this?

Craig T. Bouchard, the CEO of Braidy Industries, has lagged behind in raising money to build the plant, and has repeatedly extended the fundraising deadline.

And Bouchard and his new best buddy, Matt Bevin, need to get this operation moving, and they could only do that after getting hundreds of millions in loans. And they couldn’t do that until they had private investors putting up approximately $500 million.

The plant, which at 2.5 million square feet — roughly the size of 14 super Walmart stores —would be one of the largest buildings in the world, is supposed to be fully operational in 2021.

There’s not a lot of time left.

But maybe, more importantly, Bevin faces reelection in November, and there has been an air of suspicion surrounding the Braidy project as it has dragged on.

The question being asked: Is this project really going to happen?

Even Bevin’s fellow Republicans have expressed doubt.

Now, according to the New York Times reporting, some House Democrats in charge of some strategic committees, have requested that the Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin review the deal.

A group of Democratic lawmakers with top roles on committees overseeing the Treasury Department sent a letter on Thursday to Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, saying they were “deeply alarmed” by Rusal’s investment in the Kentucky mill.

“Given that EN+ is a company substantially owned by individuals and entities with close ties to the Russian government, we believe the proposed transaction warrants immediate review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States is an interagency panel led by the Treasury Department that can block foreign investments in American companies on national security grounds.

The panel rarely discloses the existence of reviews, and a spokesman for Mr. Mnuchin declined to comment on the potential Rusal investment. The companies say the deal is expected to close before the end of June, and the plant is expected to be operational by 2021.

Craig Bouchard, the chairman and chief executive of Braidy Industries, rejected the notion that the deal could be blocked by the committee, citing a provision in the regulations excluding from review start-ups or so-called greenfield investments, such as building a plant.

Rusal’s investment is only in the new mill, he said in a statement. “It is not an investment at the parent company level.”

And you thought that it was just the Trump crime family that was deep into the  Russian mob.

 

 

May 17 2019

Cartnoon

New York, New York

May 17 2019

The Breakfast Club (Missing)

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 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) 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.

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This Day in History

Brown vs. Board of Education ends separate but equal; Watergate hearings begin; NYSE is born; First Kentucky Derby.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

That’s what we’re missing. We’re missing argument. We’re missing debate. We’re missing colloquy. We’re missing all sorts of things. Instead, we’re accepting. Studs Terkel

Continue reading

May 17 2019

Six In The Morning Friday 17 May 2019

Taiwan parliament becomes first in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage

Supporters celebrate as legislation passed giving gay couples right to marry

 in Beijing

Taiwan’s parliament has become the first in Asia to recognise same-sex marriage with the passage of legislation giving gay couples the right to marry.

Lawmakers on Friday comfortably passed part of a bill that would allow gay couples to enter into “exclusive permanent unions” and apply for marriage registration with government agencies.

Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, who campaigned on a platform of marriage equality, tweeted after the vote: “We took a big step towards true equality, and made Taiwan a better country.”

Austria bans Muslim headscarf in primary schools

Austria has passed a law intended to ban Muslim girls from wearing a headscarf in primary schools. The Jewish yarmulke and Sikh patka are not included in the new measure.

Austria’s parliament has passed a law intended to ban Muslim girls from wearing the headscarf in primary schools, a measure that is likely to be challenged as discriminatory in the constitutional court.

The bill passed with the support of the governing center-right People’s Party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ). Almost all of the opposition voted against it.

With Sudan talks suspended, protesters vow to continue sit-in

Sudanese protesters voiced regret Thursday at an army decision to suspend crucial talks on installing civilian rule but vowed to press on with a sit-in despite being targeted in fresh violence.

Army generals and protest leaders had been expected to come to an agreement on Wednesday over the make-up of a new body to govern Sudanfor three years.

The issue is the thorniest to have come up in ongoing talks on reinstating civilian rule after the generals took over following the ouster of longtime autocratic president Omar al-Bashir last month.

414 million pieces of plastic found on remote Australian islands: Study

By Julia Hollingsworth, CNN

Updated 0303 GMT (1103 HKT) May 17, 2019

Almost one million shoes and over 370,000 toothbrushes — they’re among the 414 million pieces of plastic found washed ashore on the remote Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean, according to new research.

The study, which was published in the journal Scientific Reports Thursday, found that the Australian territory was littered with 238 tonnes of plastic, despite being home to around 500 people.
The group of mostly uninhabited 27 islands — which are 2,750 km (1,708 miles) from Perth — are marketed to tourists as “Australia’s last unspoilt paradise.”

America’s long, rich history of pretending systemic racism doesn’t exist

Even in the face of undeniable evidence.

By Elaine Frantz 

White-on-black violence is everywhere recently, but also nowhere.

On the one hand, white nationalist groups have been marching publicly; seemingly every month brings a new report of a police shooting of an unarmed black man; and white terrorists like the Charleston church shooter are armed and emboldened. Just last week, cellphone footage was released of the 2015 traffic stop that led to the arrest of Sandra Bland, a black woman who died by apparent suicide in custody, triggering widespread Black Lives Matter protests. The release of the video, by the Dallas news station WFAA, raises questions about if police are withholding video evidence of Bland’s arrest.

Court asked to stop dolphin hunts in Wakayama town

By Yuri Kageyama

A court in Wakayama Prefecture began hearing arguments Friday over whether dolphin hunting violates animal cruelty laws. The plaintiffs are asking the district court to stop the permits from being issued.

Wakayama Gov Yoshinobu Nisaka issues the permits for the village of Taiji, where the hunts have drawn protests.

The 2009 Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove” showed the village’s hunts, where dolphins were chased into a cove and bludgeoned to death, turning the waters blood red. In recent years, they changed their hunting method to suffocation.

May 16 2019

Inherent Contempt

My feeling is mutual and could easily be extended.

Democrats are badly blowing it against Trump. A brutal new TV ad shows how.
By Greg Sargent, Washington Post
Opinion writer
May 16 at 10:12 AM

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has succeeded in stifling impeachment talk. The Post reports that the speaker privately told Democrats to stick to policy and forget about an impeachment inquiry, and not a single Democrat uttered a word in protest.

This is meant to illustrate the iron grip that Pelosi often successfully maintains on her caucus. But, whether you support an impeachment inquiry right now, there’s no way to describe the broader strategy that Democrats have adopted on the impeachment question as a success. It’s been a muddled mess.

A new ad that impeachment proponent Tom Steyer is set to launch illustrates this well. Notably, rather than merely making the case for an inquiry, the ad trains its fire at Democrats for failing to initiate one.
…
The ad — a $1 million buy on national cable and in Iowa and New Hampshire — takes aim at what might be called the Democrats’ “Wait For Mueller” strategy, referring to the investigation conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Stringing together quotes from ordinary Americans, it says:

This is a message for leaders of the Democratic Party. For over two years, this president has broken the law, and nothing happened. You told us to wait for the Mueller investigation. And when he showed obstruction of justice, nothing happened.

Numerous Democrats did claim there was no need to decide on an impeachment inquiry until we saw Mueller’s findings.

In retrospect, this was a serious strategic failure. If it was intended as a stalling tactic — a way to delay the moment at which Democrats would reveal their real intention not to act — it only created a situation in which Mueller’s extraordinarily serious revelations made it more difficult to definitively close the door on it.

If it was sincere — i.e., Democrats really wanted Mueller’s findings before making the call — then they were not prepared for the possibility that those revelations would be severe enough to overwhelmingly warrant an inquiry, setting them up to look feckless and weak at a moment of extraordinary challenge to the country.

Whichever it was, the result has been that Democrats have been forced by the seriousness of the revelations not to close the door on impeachment, but rather to again defer the decision, by claiming that they must first do more fact-finding.

This, Democrats said, will happen via more investigations, getting the unredacted Mueller report, and hearing from key players — including former White House counsel Donald McGahn, who witnessed extensive obstruction of justice, and Mueller, who may clarify that he declined to exonerate Trump because he saw criminality.

In some ways, this is defensible. One can envision Democrats using multiple committee hearings to develop a fuller picture of Mueller’s findings (along with other aspects of Trump’s corruption and misconduct), before launching an inquiry.

But if this posture is underpinned by a secret intention to never pull that trigger, that creates yet another problem.

Pat Cipollone, Trump’s White House counsel, just announced that he will stiff-arm House oversight requests across the board, in effect declaring any further fleshing out of Mueller’s findings to be illegitimate. The administration is also unlawfully refusing to release the president’s tax returns, and will fight “all” subpoenas, a sweeping effort to place Trump beyond accountability entirely.

This means Democrats may be hamstrung from doing the very fact-finding they say is necessary to decide whether to launch an impeachment inquiry. Even if Democrats can fight in court, the battles could last months, and if Democrats lose on many fronts, and then see the looming election as a reason not to act, they will have been effectively neutered.

Steyer’s ad gets at this, noting that when Trump “blocked the release of his tax returns, nothing happened,” adding:

Now you tell us to wait for the next election? Really? Really? Really? This is why we volunteered. Raised money. Went door to door. And voted in the last election. Our founding fathers expected you — Congress — to hold a lawless president accountable. And you’re doing nothing. Nothing. Nothing. He broke his oath of office. He’s defying you. Laughing at you. And he’s getting away with it.

Of course, Democrats aren’t doing “nothing.” But there is the risk that if their oversight is neutered and they don’t act, this picture of fecklessness will be the reigning one.

Is there a better way to handle this? Perhaps not. Because, at bottom, the core question is whether it is acceptable for Democrats to refrain from an impeachment inquiry in the face of corruption and misconduct they plainly believe merits one.

In a media environment rendered deeply unbalanced by one side’s full-saturation propaganda about “total exoneration,” refraining from impeachment risks misleading the country into believing that Mueller’s findings aren’t as damning as they really are.

What’s more, as Brian Beutler and Quinta Jurecic argue, refraining inescapably validates Trump’s corruption as a kind of new normal. With Trump urging his attorney general to investigate the investigators, it incentivizes the president to expand his lawlessness, since he can do so with impunity.

The better arguments against acting are that the Senate won’t convict, so full accountability is impossible anyway, or that impeachment is a political decision, so Congress isn’t obliged to do it. Or maybe it really would help Trump get reelected (though that idea is baseless).

But none of those arguments reckons seriously with the downsides of not acting, which are considerable. And none takes seriously what it would mean if Democratic oversight is neutered and it’s too late to act. Or, even worse, what it would mean if Trump won reelection after all that happened.

If Democrats do believe an impeachment inquiry is merited, it’s not clear there’s any magic key to credibly arguing their way out of not launching one. Perhaps there is a way, but they certainly haven’t hit on it yet.

May 16 2019

Pondering the Pundits

Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from> around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Dahlia Lithwick: Alabama’s Extremist Abortion Bill Ruins John Roberts’ Roe Plan

SCOTUS was all teed up to quietly gut America’s abortion rights. Then Alabama happened.

One could feel sorry for Chief Justice John Roberts. He is, after all, caught in an unsightly squeeze play between anti-abortion zealots in Alabama, and slightly less wild-eyed anti-abortion zealots in Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, and Indiana (the court seems unable to make a decision on whether to grant the Indiana petition it has been sitting on for months now). There’s finally a five-justice majority within striking distance of a decades-long dream to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the anti-choice activists are getting ahead of themselves like slurring drunks at a frat party and making everything more transparently nasty than it need be.

There are easy and near invisible ways for the high court to end Roe. That has always been, and remains, the logical trajectory. As Mark Joseph Stern has shown, when Brett Kavanaugh came onto the court, with his dog whistles and signaling around reproductive rights, it became clear that he would guide the court to simply allow states to erect more and more barriers to abortion access (dolphin-skin window coverings on every clinic!). The five justices in the majority would do it all while finding ways to say that such regulations were not an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to choose. The courts and state legislatures could continue their lilting love songs to the need for the states to protect maternal health and to help confused mommies make good choices, and nobody need dirty their hands by acknowledging that the real goal of three decades’ worth of cumbersome clinic regulations and admitting privileges laws were just pretexts for closing clinics and ending abortion altogether.

 Stacey Abrams: Why I Am Determined to End Voter Suppression

As more people of color claim political power, efforts to block them will accelerate — unless we act.

In the mid-1960s, when my father was a teenager, he was arrested. His crime? Registering black voters in Mississippi. He and my mother had joined the civil rights movement well before they were even old enough to vote themselves.

They braved this dangerous work, which all too often created martyrs of marchers. In doing so, my parents ingrained in their six children a deep and permanent reverence for the franchise. We were taught that the right to vote undergirds all other rights, that free and fair elections are necessary for social progress.

That is why I am determined to end voter suppression and empower all people to participate in our democracy.

True voter access means that every person has the right to register, cast a ballot and have that ballot counted — without undue hardship. Unfortunately, the forces my parents battled 50 years ago continue to stifle democracy.

Continue reading

May 16 2019

Birds and Samanthas

When a Senator loves a Page very, very much.

A man becomes preeminent, he’s expected to have enthusiasms. Enthusiasms… Enthusiasms… What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? Baseball! A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team. Teamwork…. Looks, throws, catches, hustles – part of one big team. Bats himself the live-long day, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and so on. If his team don’t field… what is he? You follow me? No one! Sunny day, the stands are full of fans. What does he have to say? “I’m goin’ out there for myself. But… I get nowhere unless the team wins.”

Summer School

Oh, Billy Boy. The Pipes, the pipes are calling.

Amazing Grace is the most boring Bagpipe song of all time.

May 16 2019

Cartnoon

Windpower

May 16 2019

The Breakfast Club (Certain Death)

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 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) 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.

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This Day in History

President Andrew Johnson survives a key vote at his Senate trial after his impeachment; First Oscars are presented; Actor Henry Fonda born; Singer Sammy Davis, Jr. and Muppets creator Jim Henson die.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. George Carlin

Continue reading

May 16 2019

Six In The Morning Thursday 16 May 2019

Water every 10 days: The families on the front line of India’s environmental crisis

By Helen Regan and Omar Khan, CNN

Updated 0740 GMT (1540 HKT) May 16, 2019

Hundreds of empty plastic jugs wait in rows on the cracked, dry, dusty earth. Hovering expectantly nearby, the residents of Vasant Kunj slum in South Delhi, one of the city’s largest and poorest, stand waiting for a government water tanker to arrive.

It’s been 10 days.

Ten days since they last received a drop of water. For many families, their containers ran out days ago. They are thirsty and dirty.

Fugitive ex-leader of Eta, Josu Ternera, detained in France

Basque terrorist group’s former leader tracked down after 16 years on the run

Agence France-Presse in Madrid

A former leader of the Basque terrorist group Eta has been arrested in France, Spain’s interior ministry has said, after more than 16 years on the run.

Jose Antonio Urrutikoetxea Bengoetxea, better known as Josu Ternera, was once Eta’s political chief. He was detained “in the early hours of the morning in Sallanches in the French Alps,” the ministry said.

Eta killed more than 800 people in more than four decades of violence aimed at establishing an independent Basque state.

Sudan military suspends talks until Khartoum roadblocks removed, protest leaders say

Sudan’s military rulers on Wednesday suspended crucial talks with protesters on installing civilian rule, insisting that negotiations will resume only after demonstrators remove roadblocks put up in parts of Khartoum, protest leaders said.

The suspension came after at least eight people were reported wounded by gunshots near a sit-in in the capital, shortly before decisive talks were to be held between the ruling military council and the protest leaders on a transitional governing body.

Army generals and protest leaders were expected to finalise the make-up of a new body to govern Sudan for three years, the thorniest issue in installing civilian rule.

How women in Mexico used a whistle to catch a serial rapist

They caught their rapist in 2016. Now, Guardia Ciudadana continue to protect, develop their northeast Mexico community.

by

 One whistle means an outsider has been spotted; two means be on the lookout for suspicious activity; and three, danger, get the equipment and join the group in the nearby meeting point.

On the night a man, who has confessed to 10 rapes and is suspected of sexually assaulting dozens of others in the town of Juarez, Mexico, was caught, a woman blew the whistle three times.

A group of dozens of residents from the community had been on the search since one of their neighbours, Lucero, a single mother, ended up in the hospital after being sexually assaulted, stabbed and had parts of her genitals cut with a knife in March 2015.

2019 election: Why politics is toxic for Australia’s women

By Frances MaoBBC News, Sydney

Australian women in politics have had enough.

A slew of allegations of sexist bullying and misogyny have emerged in recent years, while at the same time the country has steadily tumbled down the global rankings for female political representation.

Australia has tended to favour “larrikin” and “aggressor” MPs who thrive in the “rough-and-tumble” atmosphere of Canberra. But women MPs are increasingly saying that’s a culture in dire need of change.

As the country prepares to go to the polls on Saturday, the BBC looks at what’s come to be known as the “women problem” in Australian politics.

Osaka red light district to be closed during G-20 summit

A major red light district in Osaka will be closed during the Group of 20 summit in late June, the first such decision in 30 years, the local restaurant association said Thursday.

All 159 members of the Tobita Shinchi association will not operate during the June 28-29 gathering as the association sought to “avoid causing disruption in the area,” one of its officials said.

The association also deemed that workers at member businesses would have problems commuting as large-scale traffic restrictions will be in place during the two-day gathering of world leaders.

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