By Sarah N. Lynch/Reuters

WASHINGTON – Wells Fargo, Advanced Micro Devices and Fifth Third Bank have in recent years agreed to settlement deals that seek to muzzle former employees in ways that some lawyers said could violate U.S. whistleblower protection laws.
Five lawyers, including three who represent whistleblowers, said that the settlements appear aimed at blocking workers from airing their concerns and contain similarities to those used by other companies that ran afoul of government rules.
The deals by Wells Fargo, AMD, and Fifth Third Bank were among a dozen such corporate settlements reached between 2012 and 2015 that were reviewed by Reuters.

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Posted on August 29, 2016

By Suzanne Barlyn/Reuters

DOVER, Delaware – In 2009, a global coalition was pressing governments to lift the veil on corporate secrecy. Its members – U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, influential senators, international law enforcement agencies, anti-corruption activists and major American allies – presented a formidable front in their campaign against money laundering and tax evasion.
The United States, championing the cause abroad, was also pursuing legislation for stronger disclosure rules at home.
Then along came Jeffrey Bullock, the newly appointed secretary of state for Delaware.

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Posted on August 24, 2016

By The Young Turks

“Some environmental law experts say the national attention on Flint may have finally ignited action in East Chicago, Indiana, where residents finally learned the scope of the issues with their soil just two weeks ago. The EPA office responsible for East Chicago, Region 5, is the same one that oversaw Flint, Michigan’s contaminated water system.”
Assignment Desk: EPA Region 5 is based in Chicago. Perhaps a full review is warranted.

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Posted on August 23, 2016

By Adolph Reed Jr./Common Dreams

In 1991, former Klansman and American Nazi Party functionary David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana and made the runoff election against Democrat Edwin Edwards, the popular but scandal-plagued three-term former governor. Duke had made the runoff between the two top vote-getters since no one received a majority in the first primary. Duke had received just over 31% of the vote in the first primary, and Edwards had just over 33% in a twelve-person field.
The stage was set for a bitter, intense campaign between a Republican with a history of open advocacy of virulent racism and nativism and a deeply flawed corporate Democrat. The many different dangers that a Duke victory augured for the state provided the basis for a broad and bipartisan business-center-left electoral alliance that condensed around a least common denominator slogan that no doubt every Louisianan who was sentient at the time recalls: “Vote for the Crook: It’s Important.” Edwards won, with more than 61% of the vote, and a potential political and economic disaster for the state was avoided. (In 2001 Edwards, who had boasted during an earlier investigation that the only way Louisianans would turn on him would be if he were “caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy,” was convicted of racketeering and spent the next decade in prison.)
I assume readers get the allegorical point of that story.

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Posted on August 19, 2016

By Joe Sexton/ProPublica

In the 1990s, cop reporting was not a strength of the New York Times, and I’d often get calls from the Metro desk asking if I could help match something or other that had been in the tabs. I was Irish and Catholic and had grown up in Brooklyn along with other kids who wound up “on the job.” Oh, and I was an ex-sportswriter, too. I guess I had the pedigree of a cop reporter, if not any demonstrated talent.
I got a call at home one night in March of 1996. Earlier that day, John Timoney, the outgoing first deputy commissioner of the New York Police Department, had been given a hero’s reception during a promotion ceremony at Police Headquarters. It amounted to an act of collective insubordination, for Timoney was exiting the department after having been passed over by Mayor Rudy Giuliani to succeed Bill Bratton as commissioner.
The Times, I guess, hadn’t had anyone at the ceremony, and now we needed to catch up. No one had a number for Timoney, and the next edition closed in 40 minutes. It so happened that I’d once been introduced to Timoney, by Mike McAlary of the Daily News (Irish, Catholic, a former sportswriter, and a great cop reporter). I managed to track down Timoney’s home number.
Timoney took my call.

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Posted on August 17, 2016

By Andre Perry/The Hechinger Report

Black school systems are treated like black men and women in America. Urban schools are broken up, experimented upon and policed in efforts to improve them. The reformers expect students, teachers and parents to be grateful and accept test score growth in return, just as black communities were expected to be grateful when crime dropped even as incarceration rates rose.
But finally, the same voices decrying the unequal treatment of black communities by the criminal justice system are turning to the unequal treatment of black communities in school reform.
The Black Lives Matter collective – representing approximately 50 organizations – has now released an official platform titled A Vision for Black Lives. Its education section called for an end to the privatization of education and petitioned for more community control of schools. A list of demands included “a moratorium on charter schools and school closures.” The NAACP also took a stand against charters at their annual national convention by approving a resolution that calls for a moratorium on the expansion of privately managed charters. It has yet to be approved by the national board.

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Posted on August 16, 2016

‘A Catastrophic Turning Point’

“Civilians are trapped in Aleppo, Syria’s most populated city, as fighting escalates. Samer Attar, a Chicago doctor who recently volunteered in a hospital there, says conditions are deteriorating.”

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Posted on August 15, 2016

By Saskia Sassen/The Conversation

The term “gentrification” does not quite capture the massive changes that have been happening in a growing number of cities worldwide in the last few years. In mid-2014 to 2015 alone, more than a trillion dollars was invested in real estate, in just 100 cities across North America, Europe and Asia; this is excluding properties priced under $5 million and sites available for development.
Something else is happening. Urban land – not just buildings, but also undeveloped lots – is considered a good investment at a time when financial markets are shaky. As a result, worldwide investment in urban land is increasing rapidly.
There are diverse indications of this, which I explore in depth in my book, Expulsions. For one, the top 100 cities – as ranked by level of property investment – account for 10% of the world population, but 30% of the world’s GDP (its overall economic output) and 76% of the world’s property investment. So wealth is clearly being concentrated into a select group of urban areas.

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Posted on August 10, 2016

By Amnesty International

In response to Saturday’s release of the Presidential Policy Guidance – a document setting out U.S. standards that appears to apply to some drone and other air strikes overseas – Amnesty International USA’s Security & Human Rights Program Director Naureen Shah issued the following statement:

While this policy guidance appears to set an important precedent for protecting civilians and limiting killings, it is impossible to assess whether and how it’s been followed. The Obama Administration has still never provided basic information needed to assess the drone program, including the names and identities of people killed in the strikes.
“The Obama administration’s disclosures are welcome but they only tell part of the story, and obscure disturbing practices. We still know extremely little about the standards that would govern signature strikes and so-called rescuer strikes, which have involved potentially unlawful killings.

Last month, following the Administration’s release of remarkably low civilian casualty figures, Amnesty International USA wrote the CIA to urge it to finally acknowledge responsibility for the death of Mamana Bibi, a woman who was killed in a drone strike witnessed by her grandchildren.
Amnesty International reported on this strike in its 2013 report, Will I Be Next? U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan. Despite extensive documentation as well as worldwide media attention, the U.S. government has neither confirmed or denied Amnesty’s findings, or explained Bibi’s death.

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Posted on August 8, 2016

By The Roderick And Solange MacArthur Justice Center

Attorneys representing the coalition that petitioned for the appointment of a special prosecutor to take over the prosecution of Chicago Police Officer Jason D. Van Dyke released the following statement in reaction to the selection of Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon:

Given the high number of qualified attorneys in Cook County who have the experience, resources and who are fully independent from law enforcement we’re surprised and disappointed that all of them have been passed over in favor of the Kane County state’s attorney and his team, which includes a former Cook County assistant state’s attorney.
This appointment made by Judge Gaughan stands in stark contrast to the appointment last week of former judge Patricia Brown Holmes as a special prosecutor to investigate whether there was a cover-up by other police officers at the scene of the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald.
Cook County Judge LeRoy Martin Jr., chief of the criminal court, selected Holmes, an African-American with extensive experience in Cook County and a reputation for fairness and commitment to discovering the truth.
Judge Gaughan could have chosen Judge Holmes for this assignment, or he could have selected someone with similar understanding of Chicago and its most affected communities.

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Posted on August 5, 2016