Today, Monday May 13th, New Yorkers from Occupy the Pipeline, Occupy Sandy, and over twenty partner groups will march and rally to greet President Obama when he attends a fundraiser with members of the 1% at the Waldorf Astoria on Park Avenue.

Carbon dioxide levels have now surpassed 400 parts per million, a long-feared milestone. We must act now.

Join us if you stand against fossil fuel pipelines, against fracking, against tar sands, and FOR a country powered by wind, water and solar.

Gather in Bryant Park starting at 5 (meet near the fountain off 6th avenue at 41st Street). Reverend Billy and his choir will lead us off with a rousing blessing and song. We'll begin to march at 5:30, then rally in front of the Waldorf Astoria at 6:30. Please wear yellow and orange to demonstrate your support for a clean energy future.

RSVP and Share on Facebook!

Event Partners: 350 NYC, 350 NJ, 350.org, 99Rise, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition Against the Rockaway Pipeline (CARP), CREDO, CUNY Divest, Food & Water Watch, Global Kids Inc., Green Party of NY, Human Impacts Institute, NYC Friends of Clearwater, NYU Divest, Occupy the Pipeline, Occupy Sandy, Restore the Rock, Sane Energy Project, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Sierra Club National, United for Action, World Can't Wait, WESPAC, YANA (You Are Never Alone).

-- from the ‘Your Inbox: Occupied’ team

Head Bangers: Your friendly cavemen, Ogg and Uck are back! This time they're explaining the pain of fossil fuels and emissions.

Your morning open thread begins below...

A big Happy Birthday to Stephen Colbert, Stevie Wonder, and Darius Rucker(Hootie & The Blowfish)!

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Hoo boy, if only there was a way to regulate stupidity.

ABC17:

During the opening weekend of the latest 'Iron Man' movie, a man walked into the theater in full tactical gear and carrying a fake gun.

Jefferson City police and witnesses, however, are not pleased with the stunt and are questioning the theater's logic after recent shootings in Aurora, Colo. and Newtown, Conn.

John Molock is a retired Army war veteran and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. He told ABC 17 News this most recent trip to the movies triggered memories he never wanted to relive.

"We had just finished watching Iron Man 3," said Morlock. "We're just getting into the car when I spotted a man in full assault gear, carrying what appeared to be a modified M-4 and 9 mm on his side."

Morlock did not call police, but several other moviegoers did.

"We received a series of 911 calls stating that a man dressed in all black and body armor and a rifle was walking into Capital 8 Theaters," said Capt. Doug Shoemaker.

Officers thought they were responding to an active shooter investigation.

"Everything was in place, it's the opening night of a superhero movie, it's somebody walking in all-dark clothes, everything pointed to bad things about to happen," said Shoemaker. "There's really no good that can come of this."

But the armed man was a paid actor carrying fake weapons, and hired by the theater manager as part of a publicity stunt for the movie opening. Capital 8 Theaters manager Bob Wilkins told ABC 17 News that the stunt was planned "months in advance," and that "only a few" patrons were upset. "Hundreds" were entertained, he explained, and "My job is to entertain people."

Asked if management took into consideration the the mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater, Wilkins responded, "Absolutely. That's my number-one priority every day. It's the safety and security of our guests."

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A spying scandal involving Bloomberg journalists and the financial news giant's information terminals has reached new heights, CNBC reports.

A former Bloomberg employee told CNBC that he accessed information on the terminals of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. The employee didn't say specifically what he was looking at, but that it concerned usage of specific functions.

News of the scandal broke on Friday when it was revealed that Goldman Sachs had complained that employees usage of their terminals were spied on by Bloomberg reporters. Further reports indicated that the spying was more widespread, affecting other companies such as JPMorgan.

Bloomberg News confirmed a breach of ethics and privacy on Friday afternoon. To the financial industry's alarm, Bloomberg journalists have for years been monitoring the company's data terminals -- found in nearly every banking and trading company -- for user activity. They monitored what functions of the service subscribers were using, including corporate bond trades and equities indexes. The dustup came to light after a reporter pointed out to a Goldman Sachs partner that he had not logged into his Bloomberg terminal lately. Oops.

Bloomberg terminals are considered a staple of information in the financial world with over 300,000 customers.

On Saturday, the Federal Reserve announced that it would look into the situation.

Bloomberg CEO Daniel Doctoroff admitted that it was a "mistake" to give journalists access to client data. The company announced Friday that in light of the controversy, journalists would no longer have access to client log-in activity on the terminals.

This is a fun, quick read from Paul Krugman: "Wheee! The Heritage Foundation is engaged in frantic damage control."

Don't forget it's Mother's Day tomorrow, and your morning open thread begins below.

There are some records we'd rather not see broken. Carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time since the U.S. government began recording the concentration of the gas in the air, and likely the first time in millions of years. High levels of carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere and increases global temperatures. The last time it reached 400 parts per million was in the epoch called the Pliocene at least 3 million years ago, when sea levels may have been as much as 60 to 80 feet higher than they are today. For all of human civilization, carbon-dioxide levels have hovered around 280 parts per million.

Already we're seeing the deadly effects of climate change in the form of rising seas, wildfires and extreme weather of all kinds, and passing 400 PPM is an ominous sign of what might come next.

The safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmostphere is 350 parts per million, but the only way to get there is to immediately transition the global economy away from fossil fuels and into into renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainable farming practices in all sectors (agriculture, transport, manufacturing, etc.).

While the level fluctuates seasonally and varies across different latitudes, this is yet another sign that our dependence on fossil fuels is out of control.

What This Means

Bill McKibben, Co-Founder, 350.org: "We're in new territory for human beings--it's been millions of years since there's been this much carbon in the atmosphere. The only question now is whether the relentless rise in carbon can be matched by a relentless rise in the activism necessary to stop it."

Dr. James Hansen, Former NASA Climatologist: "If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced ... to at most 350 ppm."

Payal Parekh, Coordinator, Global Power Shift: "Crossing the 400 ppm threshold is a somber reminder that we haven't taken the action we need. Nevertheless there is good reason for hope -- activists all across the globe are fighting the fossil fuel industry and demanding clean, just and affordable solutions to our energy needs. At Global Power Shift, a convergence in Istanbul this June, 500 mostly young climate activists from 135 countries will come together to plan a global strategy for change. Upon returning home they'll escalate action and create the global power shift our world needs to push for 350 ppm."

Brad Johnson, Campaign Manager, Forecast the Facts: "May 9, 2013, is a historic day in the worst possible sense of the word. For the first time in the history of the human race, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen above 400 parts per million, NOAA reports. During the ice ages as homo sapiens ("wise man") evolved, levels were between 180 and 300 ppm. During the rise of human civilization, CO2 concentrations were only 280 ppm. Hundreds of billions of tons of fossil-fuel pollution have poisoned our climate, bringing to our world increasingly extreme floods, droughts, and wildfires. We must respond with urgent resolve to end this uncontrolled experiment on our only home.

"Yet the Republican Party maintains climate change denial as a central tenet of their party platform, and President Obama refuses to admit the threat projects like the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline pose to our future survival. The scientific observations are not in doubt, and the facts are not negotiable. We are fed up, and we will continue to hold those who are pushing us off the climate cliff accountable."

Deirdre Smith, West Coast Fossil Free Organizer: "My grandmother said that we are always walking toward our goals or away from them. As we reach 400PPM I am thinking about her, and wondering which way the the Board of Trustees from any of the 40 fossil free campus campaigns I work with are walking. Perhaps, this will be the moment we decided to walk toward our common goals, to treat each moment as a chance to invest in our future. That's what my grandmother would hope, that's what I hope, that's what students are fighting for now."

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Update May 11, 2013: This gets even weirder Saturday morning as the Dallas News updates their report from Friday.

- West officials for the first time told the state agency that licenses paramedics that Reed was let go two days after the explosion. A reason wasn’t given.

- According to a post this week on Bryce Reed’s Facebook page, his wife left him sometime after the explosion.

- It’s unclear if Reed knew about his apparent departure. The day after officials said he was let go, he gave an update about small fires at the explosion site to displaced West residents at a local hotel.

- Neighbors said the man and his wife and daughter hadn’t been living in their duplex since the blast. One neighbor, who asked that his name be withheld to protect his family’s safety, said Bryce Reed told him his wife had left him. The man said Bryce Reed also told him that the ATF was investigating him for fraud and that his attorneys had advised him to “get the hell out of Dodge.”

- The same neighbor said that Bryce Reed told him that he had a pipe bomb that had belonged to Cyrus Reed, but that he had given it to a friend to store.

- Reed has also made unverifiable claims about his education and career on his online resúmé on LinkedIn. It is unknown when it was last updated, but the bachelor’s and master’s degrees he claims he earned have been disputed by records and authoritative sources. He also claims to have held management positions with three entities that are now defunct.

- The only thing that seemed constant in his life was his career as a paramedic. As late as last week, Reed admitted feeling emotionally unstable.

- Records also show that two days after the explosion, Reed was “let go” at West’s volunteer EMS department, according to records and interviews.

- Back in West, neighbors who exchanged notes Friday said they quickly realized Reed had woven a different story to each of them. He told one that he was a cop and another that he worked for the government.

- Also, according to WFAA-TV (Channel 8), Reed is a contact person for a fundraiser that’s raised $33,177 in T-shirt sales through the website Tee-Spring.com.

Again, there are still no indications reported of a connection between the blast and Reed's arrest.
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The U.S. Attorney’s Office on Friday afternoon said it “will not speculate” on whether a pipe bomb allegedly belonging to a West paramedic has any connection with the fatal fertilizer plant fire and explosion that he responded to.

Reuters:

U.S. prosecutors charged Bryce Reed, 31, one of the first to respond to a deadly explosion last month in the Texas town of West, with unlawful possession of pipe bomb components, but authorities said no evidence linked the charge to the fertilizer plant disaster.

Reed appeared at federal court in Waco, Texas, on Friday, where he faced one count of unlawfully possessing an unregistered destructive device. He did not enter a plea, said Daryl Fields, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in the Western District of Texas.
...
Reed, who was arrested Thursday, is being held without bail and is due in court on May 15, according to court papers.

Federal prosecutors said in court papers they had responded to a home in Abbott, Texas, where they found a section of pipe 3-1/2 inches long and 1-1/2 inches in diameter, end caps, fuses and explosive powder. The resident of that home, whom they did not identify, told police the components came from Reed.
...
The state fire marshal's office has said that ammonium nitrate stored at the plant detonated in the explosion but it has not been able to pin down the cause of the fire and blast.

State officials on Friday ordered the Texas Rangers to join McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara in a criminal investigation into the blast.

The move to conduct a criminal investigation comes after weeks of largely treating the blast as an industrial accident.

Divergent portraits of Bryce Reed emerge as he remains in federal custody. The Dallas News reports:

After answering the door at his Rockwall home Friday, Gary Nelson said he couldn’t believe the charges against his stepson. He said there is “not a chance” that Reed was involved in the deadly explosion.

“He's been tore up about it,” Nelson said, adding that the family is “100 percent behind him.”

But the sister of a firefighter Reed eulogized at a public memorial last month said she had to ask police to guard her deceased brother’s apartment because she feared Reed had been stealing from it since the blast.

“Instead of grieving my brother's death, we're dealing with all of this,” said Sarah Reed, who is not related to Bryce Reed.

Bryce Reed’s wife, Brittany Reed, declined to comment when reached by phone early Friday.

“I can’t. No comment, no comment, no comment right now,” she said before hanging up the phone.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw and McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara released a joint statement Friday morning about the criminal investigation. Neither mentioned Reed’s arrest.

“The citizens of McLennan County and Texas must have confidence that this incident has been looked at from every angle and professionally handled – they deserve nothing less,” McNamara said.

Bryce Reed’s neighbors on Main Street north of downtown West on Friday said that ATF agents were at the man’s home for several hours late Thursday afternoon. The neighbors declined to give their names but said Bryce Reed had a young daughter and that he hadn’t been staying at the home since the explosion.

At last month’s public memorial for the 12 people killed responding to the fire, Reed gave the eulogy for Cyrus Reed, who was a volunteer firefighter in nearby Abbott. The two men weren’t related, though they shared the same last name and Bryce Reed often referred to Cyrus Reed as his brother.

But Sarah Reed, who is Cyrus Reed’s biological sister, said her family had been “fooled by Bryce Reed.” She said that her family let Bryce Reed eulogize their relative because he led them to believe that he and Cyrus Reed were very close.

Sarah Reed said she and her family have gone through Cyrus Reed's computer and cellphone records and have found that the two first responders might not have been as close as the suspect led the public to believe, she said.

“He convinced us that he and Cyrus were very close, like brothers," she said. "But I want people to know they are not brothers, and he is not part of our family."

Continue reading »

Wendell Potter, senior analyst for the Center for Public Integrity and former head of public relations for CIGNA, joins Current TV’s John Fugelsang to weigh in on recently released Medicare data that reveals drastic disparities in what different hospitals charge for the same procedure.

“Medicare probably pays what is a reasonable amount of money for some of these procedures,” Potter says. “Hospitals have gone into debt, they get the latest bells and whistles that they don’t really need because the hospital across town has it so you’ve had kind of an arms race among hospitals to have all the equipment that in many cases is just a surplus of equipment, it’s a duplication of services.”

A bit of good news for a change for some of the victims of wrongful foreclosures:

Some 96,000 borrowers who received checks to compensate them for wrongful foreclosures on their mortgages will be getting an additional check to correct for errors in the initial payment, the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday.

The Fed said the affected borrowers received initial compensation amounts that were too low because of errors made by Rust Consulting, the company handling the payments.

The new checks will make up the difference between the amounts that should have been paid and the lower amount paid by Rust. Borrowers are being told to cash both the original check and the new checks, which will be mailed around May 17. The borrowers affected had loans serviced by former subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

About 96,000 of the 217,000 checks that were mailed to Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley borrowers had incorrect amounts, according to the Fed.

The payments were part of a settlement reached with the government by 13 of the nation's largest banks in January of this year. The banks agreed to pay a total of $9.3 billion in cash and mortgage balance reductions to borrowers who either lost their homes or were at risk of foreclosure.

Banks settled complaints from regulators that they had wrongfully foreclosed on borrowers through "robo-signing," automatically signing off on foreclosures without properly reviewing documents.

The settlement covers borrowers whose homes were in various stages of the foreclosure process in 2009 or 2010.

The Fed said that borrowers with questions should call Rust at 1-888-952-9105 to confirm eligibility, update their contact information or get answers to other questions.

Amazing, after 17 days a woman was rescued alive from beneath the rubble of the collapsed garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday. However, the death toll has officially risen from 15 to 1,034 -- making the accident the worst the garment industry has ever seen. The collapse, and the fire that took place at a sweater factory in Dhaka earlier this week, highlight the increasing concerns about the dangerous conditions for garment workers, an industry that brings in $20 billion for the small South Asian nation by providing clothing at a low cost to retailers worldwide.