Guest host Mark Thompson, “The War Room” host Michael Shure, Sierra Club Washington representative Lena Moffitt and BuzzFeed contributor Michael Hastings break down the Koch brothers’ involvement in petroleum coke being openly stored on the banks of Detroit River. Petroleum coke is a by-product of the oil refining process and can be harmful to the environment when burned. “This is the dirtiest by-product from the dirtiest source of oil on the planet,” Moffit says, adding that the 42817 ZIP code in Detroit “is one of the most polluted ZIP codes in the country. … This is the unfortunate lab where we can see what it means to bring tar sands to our country.”
Bushnell describes her experience navigating the military justice system after reporting that she had been the victim of sexual assault. “There were systems put in place that appeared to be as if they were support systems, but they’re not empowered to actually help the victim,” Bushnell says. “Currently the way the system works is very perpetrator centric, rather than victim-centric.”
... appeared to blame broader society, noting that 20% of women report they had been sexually assaulted "before they came into the military.""So they come in from a society where this occurs," he said. "Some of it is the hookup mentality of junior high even and high school students now, which my children can tell you about from watching their friends and being frustrated by it."
That's right, a hookup culture of consensual sexual encounters is to blame for high rates of sexual assault in the military coupled with low rates of reporting of said sexual assaults and low rates of conviction in the rare cases that are reported. Also, apparently the fact that sexual assault is too common outside the military is a decent excuse for high rates of sexual assault in the military. If you're Gen. Mark Welsh and you're looking to blame women for the appalling rates of sexual assault taking place under your command.
So we can safely say that the understanding of and concern about sexual assault at the highest levels of the Air Force is ... lacking. Pitifully, offensively lacking. It's not just Welsh and Krusinski, either. Two different three-star generals in the Air Force have overturned sexual assault convictions in recent cases. In one, Lt. Gen. Susan Helms, President Obama's nominee for vice commander of the Air Force's Space Command, overturned a verdict of aggravated sexual assault against a captain; "In a memo that recently came to light, she explained that in reading through the evidence, she found the captain’s defense credible." The jury didn't, but screw that, Lt. Gen. Helms did.
Similarly, Lt. Col. James Wilkerson was sentenced to a year in prison and dismissal by a jury of male Air Force officers. Only then Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin "declined to approve the conviction because he did not think that there was enough evidence to say that he was guilty," according to a spokesman.
All of which raises the question: Who's going to be the three-star general to overturn Krusinski's conviction, should he be convicted? The Air Force is already asserting jurisdiction over his case, so the stage is set.
Former FBI agent Jack Cloonan, psychiatrist Dr. Janet Taylor, and Yahoo! News senior editor Beth Fouhy join “Say Anything!” host Joy Behar to reflect on the aftermath of the bombing at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon.
“We should be concerned because we don’t know if this is the beginning of a new front,” Cloonan says. “We’re 10 years out from 9/11. There’s been 50-odd attempts to bomb the United States. Some would say almost 60. This is the first one that happened. That means the zero-sum game is over. We’re starting a new phase. What went wrong here?”
“We are vulnerable. No matter what we do, this is a war of attrition, and who’s going to blink first and who’s going to blink most often,” Cloonan continues.
Robert Reich, UC Berkeley professor and former U.S. labor secretary, joins Current TV’s John Fugelsang to weigh in on reports that a bipartisan group of Senators — the so-called Gang of Eight — may have reached a deal on immigration reform that includes a guest worker visa program. “I can’t remember the last time the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce got together on anything,” Reich says. “I mean, the Chamber of Commerce is interested in having a supply of guest workers so that basically wages don’t go up if the economy, and when the economy, turns around — particularly in low-wage professions, low-wage occupations. And the AFL-CIO has very different motives. The AFL-CIO sees undocumented workers in the future as potential members of the AFL-CIO and wants to court them. And both Democrats and Republicans obviously want to court Hispanics. So the stars are aligned in a very weird and unusual way here.”
Millions of middle-class Americans lost their homes in the mortgage crisis. Among them is Joseph Keller, 58, a former social worker in Columbus, Ohio. Five years ago, he and his wife fell 10 months behind in their house payments and received a foreclosure notice from JP Morgan Chase. They packed up their belongings and moved. Two months later the bank changed its mind and decided not to foreclose after all, but Keller never found out. Keller’s not the only one in this situation. Michelle Conlin, a reporter for Reuters, joins Jennifer Granholm in “The War Room” to discuss.
No one is keeping track of exactly how many homes out there that owners have abandoned, thinking that the banks have auctioned them off after receiving the foreclosure notice, and in many cases being locked out of the homes. But just as probably all of us know of someone who lost their home to foreclosure during the economic crisis, we'll soon likely know of someone being stalked by a zombie foreclosure.
"The mob learned from Wall Street," comments Eliot Spitzer on the "cartel-style corruption" behind the Libor scam.
On Current TV's "Viewpoint" recently, host Eliot Spitzer, Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone contributing editor, and Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets, analyze the Libor interest rate--rigging scandal engulfing the banking industry.
Barclays CEO Bob Diamond recently resigned after the bank was fined $453 million for its part in the scandal, which involved manipulating the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), a key global benchmark for interest rates, by essentially "faking their credit scores," according to Taibbi. And as Taibbi explains, Barclays couldn't have acted alone.
...
Kelleher argues that the Libor scandal is proof that the financial industry "is corrupt and rotten to its core." "The same executives [using] the same business model that crashed the entire financial system in '08 are still running these banks," he says.
...
"It can't just be Barclays and the Royal Bank of Scotland. In fact, it can't even be four banks or even five banks," Taibbi says. "Really, in the end it's probably going to come out that it's going to be all of them ... involved in this. And that's what's critical for people to understand: that this is a cartel-style corruption."
Last night on Current TV's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Keith discussed the latest smear campaign aimed at Occupy Wall Street demonstrations by Fox News with former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
Spitzer has some excellent ideas on where the movement can go next. Of the crackdown on Occupy Wall Street, he said that it "shouldn't be happening in New York," and that Governor Cuomo should be called "Governor 1 percent."
Sound as if former Gov. Spitzer might have made a fine activist.
Partial transcript follows:
SPITZER: "This is almost exclusively a peaceful, well-thought-out protest by people who care: that's why the public is with them."
OLBERMANN: "And you have written now, many people had made points similar to this, but I think you made it more strongly than others and I want to know why in particular, that they have, that there is already a victory to declare..."
SPITZER: "Oh, absolutely."
OLBERMANN: "...changing the dialogue. How do you sustain that when temperatures are not sustainable. It's a symbol that makes it sustainable, but the symbol involves people staying there."
SPITZER: "Well, well, look, first of all, the frustration at these so-called pundits, and thoughtful people, on major editorial pages saying all they're doing is showing up. Wait a minute, they, being the Occupy Wall Street folks, have done more to change what we're talking about, then all the politicians in Washington who pretend to be progressives or liberal - all of them put together, maybe except Elizabeth Warren.
They've done nothing that comes close to what this group of students and thoughtful young kids has done. So, that's why my hat goes off to them.
Now, what next? It is hard. It's going to be cold. So here are a couple of simple things. One: Every college kid in America goes home over Thanksgiving. Announce the day before Thanksgiving, when kids are getting home, huge rallies. Show the support on college campuses, which, from my sort-of experiential information, is huge. Get big-name musicians. Think back to the '60s, hate to say, you and I can do that, Pete Seeger, get Bruce out there. Get them to say in every spot the day before Thanksgiving, huge rallies to make our, sort of, opening statement as we go into the next chapter.
