Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Jeffrey Epstein Shipped Himself a 53-pound Shredder and a Carpet and Tile Extractor, Maritime Records Show
TheIntercept | Ryan Grim | 07/11/19

JEFFREY EPSTEIN SHIPPED a shredder from the U.S. Virgin Islands to his Palm Beach home in July 2008, shortly after reaching a non-prosecution agreement with then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, maritime records show. Then, in March of this year, shortly after a Florida federal judge invalidated that agreement, Epstein shipped a tile and carpet extractor from the Virgin Islands to his Manhattan townhouse, the records show.

Epstein, a billionaire financier, was arrested in New Jersey last Saturday on charges of running a sex trafficking ring that involved luring underage girls to his New York and Florida residences, and taking them on global flights on his airplane, dubbed the "Lolita Express." Epstein was first accused of abusing underage girls, some of them as young as 14, more than a decade ago, and he evaded prosecution potentially due to his high-profile connections. ... Read more

Sin, Sex and Subversion: How What Was Taboo in 1950s New York Became America's New Normal by David Rosen

During the tumultuous 1950s in America, sex was as threatening to the nation's moral order as communism. New York was the capital of the post-World War II world and the epicenter of a fierce culture war over music, theatre, movies, fashion, and literature, as well as birth control, homosexuality, adolescent sex, pornography, and prostitution. Over the last half-century, America's social life - especially notions of culture, sexuality, and politics - has fundamentally changed, and what were once sinful or subversive sexual practices have been integrated into the marketplace, irreversibly changing American moral values; the once illicit has become an industry of more than $50 billion.

Drawing on first-person interviews, unpublished memoirs, newspaper accounts, contemporary studies, government documents, and recent scholarship, Sin, Sex & Subversion argues that "deviant" sexuality was subversive, and that unique New York "outsiders" of the 1950s set the stage for the following decades and the world we know today. In each chapter, author David Rosen examines a critical moral issue through an in-depth profile of figures such as Liberace, Samuel Roth, Bettie Page, the Rosenbergs, and others. Through these individuals, Rosen shows how those who operated outside the law or who challenged popular values, even if they were silenced in their time, ended up paving the way for a new normal.

Developing hurricane threatens New Orleans levees
Axios | Andrew Freedman | 07/11/19

A developing storm in the north-central Gulf of Mexico, which is expected to become a hurricane by Saturday, threatens to unleash one of the worst flood events in New Orleans' history this weekend.

The big picture: Because the storm, to be named Barry, is lumbering off the coast, it's pulling copious amounts of moisture from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and is poised to direct it like a firehose at Louisiana and Mississippi. The Mississippi River is already so high in the New Orleans area that heavy rain plus a storm surge could overtop the cities' river levees for the first time, flooding large parts of the city. ... Read more

There's An Environmental Disaster Unfolding In The Gulf of Mexico
HP | Rocky Kistner | 07/11/19

As fishermen deep in the Louisiana bayou, Kindra Arnesen and her family have faced their share of life-altering challenges in recent years.

First came Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 monster storm that devastated her small fishing community in Plaquemines Parish before roaring up the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 people and destroying $125 billion in property. Five years later, BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded 40 miles offshore, spewing nearly 200 million gallons of crude. The fisheries have not fully recovered more than nine years later, nor has her family.

But this year may be worse. A historic slow-moving flood of polluted Mississippi River water loaded with chemicals, pesticides and human waste from 31 states and two Canadian provinces is draining straight into the marshes and bayous of the Gulf of Mexico -- the nurseries of Arnesen's fishing grounds -- upsetting the delicate balance of salinity and destroying the fragile ecosystem in the process. As the Gulf waters warm this summer, algae feed on the freshwater brew, smothering oxygen-starved marine life. ... Read more

Acosta digs a deeper hole
Axios | Jonathan Swan | 07/11/19

Trump insiders tell Axios that Labor Secretary Alex Acosta did little to help himself at his high-stakes news conference defending his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case when he was a federal prosecutor in Florida.

The state of play: Trump hates being goaded into action by media outcries, and a source close to the president said there was "zero" chance he fires Acosta right away. "Zero," the source repeated -- but allowing for Trump's impetuousness, another close source said: "I wouldn't say zero."

In part, this is Trump as theater critic, making decisions almost as a detached observer of his own administration. ... Read more