Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions
TheGuardian | Matthew Taylor and Jonathan Watts | older 10/09/19

The Guardian today reveals the 20 fossil fuel companies whose relentless exploitation of the world's oil, gas and coal reserves can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era.

New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry's devastating impact on the planet.

The analysis, by Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in the US, the world's leading authority on big oil's role in the escalating climate emergency, evaluates what the global corporations have extracted from the ground, and the subsequent emissions these fossil fuels are responsible for since 1965 -- the point at which experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by both industry leaders and politicians. ... Read more

Conservative leaders to send White House letter in support of Mulvaney
Axios | Jonathan Swan | date

A group of conservative leaders plan to send a letter to the White House and Capitol Hill on Thursday expressing support for acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, who has come under fire in the wake of a chaotic press conference last week, according to a source who shared the draft letter with Axios.

Why it matters: Mulvaney's friends and allies have recently grown worried about his job security. They've been hearing reports that he's being cut out of some decisions and deprived of information by White House counsel Pat Cipollone. Mulvaney's mishap of a press conference last week -- in which he conceded, then retracted, that there was a politically motivated "quid pro quo" involved in Ukrainian aid -- armed his internal critics with additional weapons. ... Read more

'Anonymous' to expose private Trump conversations | MSNBC & Axios | 10/25/19 | 3:06

A Warning by anonymous

In the op-ed, which was published Sep. 5, 2018, the author wrote of Trump, "The dilemma -- which he does not fully grasp -- is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them. To be clear, ours is not the popular 'resistance' of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous. But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic."

Trump Is Going Ballistic Because the Walls Are Closing In
MotherJones | Monika Bauerlein | 10/14/19

From the day Donald Trump assumed the presidency, it's been clear that he planned to burn it down. Not the office itself, but the system on which it is built: the credibility of the electoral system by which that formidable power is attained. The norms, customs, and processes that constrain it. And, perhaps most importantly, the idea that the people who bestow that power are entitled to know how it is being used.

The impeachment fight goes to the heart of this last point-- the same point that's also the core of what we are about as journalists, and what you are about as people engaged with our democracy. So we wanted to take a step back and look at the big picture of what this growing constitutional crisis means, and how we at Mother Jones should think about our work in this context.

Politicians who lie, obfuscate, or dodge the rules for strategic reasons are nothing new for us, or for you. (Our Washington bureau chief, David Corn, literally wrote the book -- okay, a book -- on this.) But Trump is a different story. Not only does he crash through the guardrails of law and common sense, he may no longer understand what they are. As David pointed out recently, the most telling part of the infamous call with the Ukrainian president came when Trump demanded that Volodymyr Zelensky look into an utterly bizarre conspiracy theory that holds that Russia did not hack the DNC's servers. David wrote: ... Read more