18 November 2009

Cloudy, with a chance of stupid

Thursday Nov. 19th, 2009

. . . . ."There's gonna be one speed, mine.. . . .If you can't keep up, don't step up. You'll just die"
- Riddick (Vin Diesel)

. . . .Let's start with a little music break, one of my favorite regional bands, Michael Stanley and the Resonators, with a great tune, Take The Time

. . . .The best program to ever be broadcast was The Wire on HBO. In it's 5 seasons, the writers managed to cover every aspect of human existence and relationship; provide one of the most brutal, raw and honest views ever put on tape or film of what everyday life in the crumbling, decaying inner cities of late 20th century and early 21st century America is like and make two very believable, real characters into cult heros; Omar Little, the drug dealer robbing inner city Robin Hood and Jimmy McNulty, the self-destructive, self aware, street smart detective. Set in the city of Baltimore and written and produced by the same team who had brought Homicide:Life on The Streets to NBC some years earlier, a former newspaper police beat writer and a former detective, it remains the high water mark of a serialized, dramatic television series.

. . . .Via Yglesias, who picked it up from Radley Balko, a compilation of the greatest moments from The Wire:

After The Wire

Via Radley Balko, a compilation of great moments from The Wire, the best television show of all time:

What’s really depressing to me about the current TV landscape isn’t so much that we haven’t seen another Wire-quality show as it is that we haven’t even seen a serious effort to produce another show that’d be as good. The aesthetic message of the The Wire is that it’s possible to create TV shows with much higher aspirations than what you typically see—long, densely structured plot arcs with sprawling casts of characters that allow you to go beyond what’s possible in movies. But the business message is that being near-universally celebrated as the best TV show doesn’t bring with it any particular financial rewards.

Consequently, if you watch Dexter or True Blood you don’t say to yourself “this is every bit is ambitious as The Wire but doesn’t quite hit the mark.” Instead, you’re looking at shows that have constrained their ambitions. It’s sad. Consequently, even though I’ve seen each season at least twice, in recognition of the fact that I don’t own any of the DVD’s I’m going to go buy the complete series box set in hopes of creating better financial incentives for better television in the future.

. . . . . . Back to the financial front. AIG, the bastards that played craps with the Big 5's banks risk, and lost, with of course the complicit approval of those Big 5, and punched a real currency 50 billion dollar hole in the fabric of the American financial universe, got outed in Elizabeth Warren's latest TARP watchdog report, and it's as ugly on their accountability as anyone thinks it is. Krugman, from the New York Times this morning on that report:

The AIG report

At one level, there’s not much news in the SIGTARP (YHTMAAAIYP) report on the AIG bailout: officials asked bankers to take a haircut, bankers said Ni!, and that was that. But the report has renewed the debate over whether officials could have extracted something. I say yes.

Yes, you can make the legal argument: the TARP isn’t a bankruptcy court, so the Feds had only two choices: let AIG go into bankruptcy, with possibly disastrous consequences, or pay up its contracts in full.

But Wall Street doesn’t work like that, and never has.

Big financial institutions are a small club, with a shared interest in sustaining the system. Ever since the days of JP Morgan it has been standard practice, in times of crisis, to get major players together in a room and get them to forgo short-term profit maximization on behalf of the industry interests. It happened in the Panic of 1907; it happened in the Latin American debt crisis of the 80s; it happened in the LTCM bailout, which was financed by private firms, not the feds.

Also, individual banks are in a long-term relationship with the public and the government. They have an interest in preserving that relationship. The Epicurean Dealmaker offers an imaginary speech that ~~Tim Geithner~~ an anonymous government official could have given:

[T]hose people and institutions in this room which did not help us, which put their own narrow personal and corporate interests before the interests of this nation and its people, will be remembered as well.

And let me tell you something, gentlemen, banker to banker: you do not want to be on that list. That list will be a world of pain. That list will be Death.

Indeed. Bear Stearns famously refused to participate in the rescue of LTCM — and it’s widely believed that the lingering bad feelings from that exercise in free riding had a lot to do with the firm’s demise last year.

So could the feds have negotiated a haircut? Yes. It might not have been that much money, but it would have had a lot of symbolic importance. And that matters.

Brad DeLong says that the loss of public trust due to the kid-gloves treatment of bankers has raised the probability of another Great Depression, because the public won’t support another round of bailouts even if it becomes desperately necessary. I agree — but I think the bigger cost is that we’ve greatly increased the chance of a Japanese-style lost decade, with I would now give roughly even odds of happening. Why? Because bank-friendly policies have squandered public trust in all government action: try talking to the general public about stimulus, and it’s all confounded in their minds with the deeply unpopular bailouts.

By itself, the AIG story would be damaging enough. But it’s part of a pattern — and that pattern has ended up undermining the economy’s prospects, big time.

. . . .I write and warn constantly about the corrosive influence of religion when mixed in the one arena that the Founding Fathers clearly wanted it out of, politics and governance, and that witche's brew is bubbling to a boil-over point right now, and it will lead to war in this country, period. The next civil war will be the Christianists, the Christian Taliban, taking to arms to overthrow this Republic's representative democracy, and put their theocracy in place.

. . . . . . .What we are is a nation founded on reason and democratic principle by deists, not the convenient fiction and rewriting of history that the Chrisitian Taliban represented by Republicans and the Right throw out as a meme constantly.

"The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 1800. ME 10:148

. . . .Next to his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson took his greatest pride in the Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom, even though it earned him a reputation as an enemy of religion. His friend, James Madison said of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom that it "extinguised forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind" Jefferson - "the priests indeed have...thought it proper to ascribe to me...anti-religious sentiments...They wished him to be thought atheist deist, or devil, who could advocate freedom from their religious dictations."

. . . .Now, let me make it clear again, I have no problem with anyone, any individual for their free and private expression of religion or faith. I will support them, to the death, in the exercise of their private expression of religious faith. I only ask that it not be pushed down my throat in a public manner or fashion, and that I be given the same respect for my right to religious freedom, whatever form or belief system that may take, and that my right to private expression of that be respected.

. . . . . . .The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America -
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion; or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . ."

. . . .Let me make this simple. It means hands off, mouth shut, no opinion, no place in governance, policy, in public life, period. It's that simple.

. . . .That said, get ready for the Christian Taliban, the fundamentalists and extremists to rear their head as domestic terrorists. Frank Schaeffer, one of the best sources or resources for opinion on fundamentalism there is, as someone who helped found the political arm of the Religious Right, looked in the mirror in horror one day when he realized what he built and has actively worked since then to expose it and dismantle it. From Cesca:

Who Would Jesus Widow?

Rachel Maddow spoke with Frank Schaeffer, a former Christian fundamentalist who is engaged in exposing the extremism of the "American Taliban." The movement, Schaeffer says, is "trawling for assassins." Presidential assassins.

There’s a new slogan making its way onto car bumpers and across the Internet. It reads simply: "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8"
A nice sentiment?

Maybe not.

The psalm reads, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."

Presidential criticism through witty slogans is nothing new. Bumper stickers, t-shirts, and hats with "1/20/09" commemorated President Bush’s last day in office.

But the verse immediately following the psalm referenced is a bit more ominous: "Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

There needs to be a new name for these people. Calling them "Christian" puts too nice a spin on treasonous homicidal maniacs.

. . . .And Chez, over at Deus ExMalcontent, with the entire piece:

Angels of Death

Watch this.

The pertinent information begins about at about 1:25.

. . . And all of the above is why the the Ken and Barbie who are the public faces of that movement, the two rodeo clowns scare the living shit out of me.

Exhibit A:

Quote of the Week

"We are, excuse this analogy but I feel like it's true, we're the young girl saying, 'No, no, help me!' and the government is Roman Polanski. In the end, I think we're all gonna be cowering in France."

-- Glenn Beck comparing Americans in the health care reform battle to a 13-year-old girl about to be raped

Seriously, you have to see this fucking insanity to truly appreciate it.

. . . And the opinions are starting to roll in on Exhibit B:

See What Others Are Saying About "Going Rogue"

"The circle of power, money, loony theology and greed closes. McCain is thrown to the dogs. Oprah cashes in. Welcome to America." - Frank Schaeffer

"Total fiction." - Steve Schmidt

"She represents the exact moment important Republicans gave up on democracy." - Richard Cohen

"I like soup." - John McCain

"Palin is a celebrity in the vapid, celebudoof, Balloon Boy, reality show, new-Hollywood framework." - Bob Cesca

"If it’s one thing I hope to see in the future, if she has to be a part of our discourse, is Sarah Palin telling us what’s really on her mind.... As a (mostly) political blogger, this is like the dealer on the corner telling the junkie he’s getting his supply for free from now on." - Oliver Willis

"The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination -- believe me, it'll never happen." - David Brooks

"What wouldn't Sarah Palin lie about if she felt she had to?" - Andrew Sullivan

"So many people are out to get her. Why would anyone ever do that, considering she's been so inclusive and kind to everyone since she pageant-walked her way into our lives." - The Political Carnival

"She didn't write it on the side of a barn with an AK? Here come the tears..." - Baby Jesus

. . . . .I've written here constantly about the some of the very real problems that we face. First and foremost being the financial system and crisis, which is far from over and will get worse this coming year. When the President takes the time in an address to say so and tell people to expect it, it'll probably be a lot worse than expected. The other major problem that we face is the fact that China holds 80% of our debt, now, just to get it straight, that's debt built from the previous 8 years that former Administration sold, and it's only getting worse, as the debt goes further and deeper and the dollar sinks.

. . . .Matthew Yglesias does a good, simple explanation of why it's so important, and why the largest foreign policy problem that we have right now is the currency exchange rate with the Chinese:

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Renminbi Depreciation?

For an illustration of what I was talking about below, consider that the biggest problem in our foreign policy right now probably isn’t “safe havens” or the Iranian nuclear program, but the Chinese exchange rate. Read economics columnists like Paul Krugman earlier this week or the latest from Martin Wolf and you’ll see that the situation is very grave.

The entire world economy is being held hostage to a dynamic in which China links the value of its currency to the value of the dollar in order to prevent the frictional unemployment and related disruptions that would be involved in letting it right. This is created too much unemployment in China, it’s depriving other poor countries of opportunities to grow, it underlies the Giant Pool of Money phenomenon, and it’s clearly unsustainable.

But nobody seems to have any really great ideas for turning this around. Krugman’s column says “behind the scenes [Obama] better be warning the Chinese that they’re playing a dangerous game” and Wolf frames his column as what Obama should have said to Hu, concluding “Did Mr Obama speak so bluntly? Probably not. Should he have? Yes, I think he should.” But I don’t think there’s any really strong case to be made that Chinese leaders are unaware of the problem here. Two different U.S. administrations have made the point, Dominique Strauss-Kahn from the IMF has made the point, Chinese officials are probably capable of reading major FT and NYT columnists on their own, etc. And that’s fine—the real jobs of a Wolf or a Krugman are to lay out the economic issues, not the diplomatic solutions. But the Obama administration and its colleagues in Tokyo and Brussels do need to figure out a way to make the needed rebalancing of global trade flows happen. That means diplomatic and intelligence resources, staff time at high levels, etc.

. . . .And of course, while we're talking heartless, vampire financial bastards who have engineered every damn thing, own the White House, the Fed and the Treasury and are intent on engineering the plutonomy into place, than we must be talking Goldman-Sachs, and of course, Matt Taibbi always has the most refreshing take:

Blankfein: We Were Dicks, We Admit It

“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” Blankfein, 55, said at a conference in New York hosted by the Directorship magazine. “We apologize.”

via Blankfein Apologizes for Goldman Sachs Role in Crisis (Update1) – Bloomberg.com.

I’m almost beginning to feel sorry for Lloyd “God’s Work” Blankfein. Could it be that the great tapeworm of conscience is beginning to eat its way northward?

Initially I thought the news story about Goldman’s apology read like this:

Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., apologized for the firm’s role in some of the activities leading to the financial crisis.

“We participated in things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret,” Blankfein, 55, said at a conference in New York hosted by Directorship magazine. “We apologize, and in order to make this right we’re going to forgo our entire bonus pool this year and give back about $50 billion of the money we stole.”

Blankfein said that the bank’s mortgage-service subsidiary, Litton Loans, would be forgiving billions in mortgage payments and issuing a freeze on foreclosures during the Christmas season because, as Blankfein put it, “kicking people out of their houses on Christmas makes us look like assholes.”

That’s what I thought the story said. Then I went back and realized I had misread it and that while “God’s Work” had in fact apologized, he was actually keeping all of the money and going ahead with a record year of bonuses while his company went about the business of mass-evicting people during the holidays.

Well, Lloyd, we don’t know what to say. Uh… thanks for saying so? We’re glad you’re sorry?

Man, these people are amazing. Just as theater, they’re impossible to beat. Someone should make a soap opera out of them, maybe call it Billionaires Cry Too or something.

. . . .I miss you Mom, a lot. Thanks for watching over me.

. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.

. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.

. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: 29.52N, 91.57W]

17 November 2009

Down from the valley and up from the hill

Wednesday November 18, 2009

. . . . . .And on and on it goes.

. . . .. . .If you're reading this on the Facebook Notes page, I recommend that you switch to the external site, The Desolation Angel, to catch the videos embedded here today.

. . . . . . I was reflecting this evening on the number of losses in the last year, 13 overall, and the list is well known to the people who read this, and knowing that I'm not alone in that, that there's a large number of people around me, all of us share at least 10 of those, and felt the same way about each and every one.

. . . .And, as always, the universe provides. Saw and heard this one, and it summed it up perfectly, absolutely perfectly. If you don't know the story of Wayman Tisdale, a basketball player, a jazz musician, and one hell of a human being, or don't understand Toby Keith the way I do, the way other tattooed, oil field guys would that's OK, because the message of this song is universal, and applies to each and every one of those I've lost this year, and my Mom, more achingly so.

Toby Keith More CMT Music More CMT Music Videos

. . . . .So, we're right back on the trail of the bastards that are ruining this country, and no it's not Obama, and it's not Sarah Palin, and it's not wingnuts from the Left or the Right, in the end, they're all just rodeo clowns designed to divert people from what's important, and that's the tremendous transfer of wealth occurring in this country as the top 2% get richer, and richer and the shadow play of corporatism comes out into the sunlight and the open, as they are unafraid and far too powerful anymore, and the meaning of the word plutonomy comes more and more real.

. . . .I will not stop hammering away at the bastards over at Goldman-Sachs, they've engineered every crash and depression since the '20's, they own the White House, The Treasury and The Fed, and they don't work for America, or Americans greater good. Les Leopold, on what "God's work" as Goldman CEO Blankfein puts it, really is:

It's going from obscene to disgusting. Each day reveals how we've traded away our sense of decency and the common good in exchange for pure, unadulterated greed.

Unemployment is a statistic. We hear it so often that, unless we are without work, it loses its meaning. Even when we learn that the U6 jobless rate hit 17.5 percent it doesn't really register. After all this isn't the 1930s. We have no bread lines or Hoovervilles. We're not lined up outside of banks praying we can get our savings. We've come a long way...or have we?

We learn today that unemployment still means hunger. The Department of Agriculture reports that 49 million Americans don't have enough food. That's up 13 million over the last year and is highest number ever recorded since the survey began 14 years ago. Next time you hear people blame the crisis on poor people buying houses they couldn't afford, think about skipping meals because you don't have a job.

Meanwhile, unemployment and hunger are rising because the very banks we bailed out are not lending money. As Ben Bernanke put it just yesterday:
"Banks' reluctance to lend will limit the ability of some businesses to expand and hire. Because smaller businesses account for a significant portion of net employment gains during recoveries, limited credit could hinder job growth."

And if that isn't enough, the TARP special inspector general reports that Tim Geithner completely botched the AIG negotiations, thereby showering billions of our dollars onto Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and other large banks. This one is a beauty.

If you recall, AIG was about to go under last fall and take down the global banking system. In response, the NY Fed, under Geithner, arranged for an $85 billion emergency loan. AIG got into trouble by insuring $450 billion dollars of toxic assets held by the largest banks in the worlds. Goldman Sachs alone was due $12.9 billion from AIG. But if AIG folded, Goldman Sachs and the other banks would have received pennies on the dollar, which in financial circles is called a "haircut." Geithner tried to get the big banks to take a voluntary haircut. Credit Suise was willing to take 98 cents on the dollar, which hardly seems like much of a compromise but at least showed some twinge of good faith negotiation. But not Goldman Sachs. No way. Goldman Sachs knew that Geithner was bluffing and didn't have the spine to really let AIG go into bankruptcy. Besides, "voluntary" and "Goldman Sachs" are two words that do not belong in the same sentence. As a result, Goldman Sachs did not have to visit the barber. Instead, we taxpayers got the haircut and the big banks got a "backdoor bailout."Here's how the New York Times put it:

"There have been suggestions that the Fed chose to negotiate weakly, Mr. Barofsky said, to give a "backdoor bailout" to A.I.G.'s banks. He said Mr. Geithner and the Fed's lawyers had denied this, but added that "irrespective of their stated intent," there was no doubt about the result: "Tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled inexorably and directly to A.I.G.'s counterparties."

Now think about this as we head into the holiday season: The big banks that we bailed out (and that are not making loans, which is driving up the unemployment rate and hunger) are making record profits as a direct result of our bailouts, and are about to award themselves record bonuses -- again! This what the chairman of Goldman Sachs calls "doing God's will." He really did say that.

In a just world, Congress and the president would be all over this. They would immediately pass a 90 percent windfall profits tax on the large banks that would go to feed the hungry right now. But we know that our leaders don't have the will or the guts to take on the Wall Street billionaires.

In my own fantasy Christmas pageant, Wall Street would become haunted by the specter of 49 million Americans, mostly kids, going without the food they need. And in that dream, if there is a shred of decency left on Wall Street, they would decide to do God's will by donating their bonus pool to feed the hungry.

But back in the real world, we know that Wall Street doesn't take haircuts even if the entire world economy is collapsing. They will continue to ignore the anguish of our own people until we force them to take notice.

Welcome to the Billionaire Bailout economy.

. . . .Welcome to the plutonomy folks, welcome to the wonderful world of corporatism. You just keep hanging on to that fantasy that if somehow, these demi-gods, these captains of financial industry are allowed to keep going on, that somehow, they will deign to turn and smile and lift every other boat with their tide. Just keep dreaming that shit, and you'll find out fast, you've already drowned and you don't even know it.

. . . .And Elizabeth Warren, who apparently is the only person in this current administration, the TARP watchdog, whom we all listen to, but the White House, which put her in that position, doesn't on the painful reality that no one wants to admit:

Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School who has more recently assumed the role of chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), sat down with The New Yorker's James Surowiecki recently. The topic was Warren's brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act, which is currently being debated in Congress.

The agency would demand transparency in consumer financing, which Warren detailed in her essay, "Unsafe at Any Rate," published in Democracy in the summer of 2007. She lays out how the agency would essentially apply the same logic that is applied to buying a toaster to financing a home or car:

Consumers can enter the market to buy physical products confident that they won't be tricked into buying exploding toasters and other unreasonably dangerous products ... we need ... a new regulatory regime, and even a new regulatory body, to protect consumers who use credit cards, home mortgages, car loans, and a host of other products. The time has come to put scaremongering to rest and to recognize that regulation can often support and advance efficient and more dynamic markets.

Surowiecki pointed out that critics charge that consumer financial protection would restrict consumer credit too much, making it difficult for people to borrow money. Warren's response: "the point is not to say, 'Thou shalt not charge somebody more than X,' which would have restrictive consequences. It's to say, you've got to be really clear about it."

Warren added that last year's historic bailout of the financial sector necessitated a different set of rules regulatory principles:

"...The old rules of regulation just literally don't work anymore. Because now we're under this giant shadow of implicit and explicit government guarantees ... we said in effect ... we will throw as many taxpayers as we need to throw under the bus to keep your business functionally operational in the way that it was functionally operational before without a cost to you personally, and to your shareholders personally. That's a whole new world."

According to Warren, financial institutions need a regulator regime that is both "clear and painful."

WATCH The New Yorker's full interview with Warren:

. . . . . .And why has it gotten this way? How did it happen? Well, the same way the health care debacle happened, the same way that every shady deal, that every deal that benefits those at the top while the rest of us suffer happens. How would you like to meet the top Senators and Representatives that the financial lobby owns? Check the list, yours might be on there. From Open Secrets:

Top 20 Recipients

Rank	Candidate	Office	Amount
1	Gillibrand, Kirsten (D-NY)	Senate	$88,950
2	Portman, Rob (R-OH)		$67,900
3	Blunt, Roy (R-MO)	House	$66,350
4	Lincoln, Blanche (D-AR)	Senate	$61,900
5	Bennett, Robert F (R-UT)	Senate	$58,275
6	Thune, John (R-SD)	Senate	$56,525
7	Foley, Thomas C (R-CT)		$55,850
8	Hensarling, Jeb (R-TX)	House	$53,900
9	Luetkemeyer, Blaine (R-MO)	House	$50,150
10	Shelby, Richard C (R-AL)	Senate	$49,750
11	Schumer, Charles E (D-NY)	Senate	$44,600
12	Crist, Charles J Jr (R-FL)		$42,850
13	Bennet, Michael F (D-CO)	Senate	$40,500
14	Isakson, Johnny (R-GA)	Senate	$40,050
15	Giannoulias, Alexander (D-IL)		$39,985
16	Moran, Jerry (R-KS)	House	$39,550
17	Vitter, David (R-LA)	Senate	$34,650
18	White, Bill (D-TX)		$34,050
18	Reid, Harry (D-NV)	Senate	$34,050
20	Burr, Richard (R-NC)	Senate	$33,700

. . . .Scum, mercenaries, whores, available for sale to the highest bidder, that's what the list really represents. Again, just like health care reform, just like any issue at all, anyone in Congress is available for sale to whomever has the cash, and it isn't American citizens.

. . . .Lastly, Cenk Uygur on why and how this country's deep divisions are getting deeper and worse, and more opinion, at least for me, as to the fact that those divisions will never be healed again, and personally, given the group he's talking about and the level of smarts, civility and insanity they show, I don't want those divisions healed:

I was talking to Frank Mankiewicz recently (he was the press secretary for Bobby Kennedy and campaign manager for George McGovern) and I asked him what's the difference between the right-wing in this country back in the 60s and 70s and right now. Certainly there were crazed conservatives back then, and in many ways they were even more dangerous and vicious back then. But Frank was more concerned about the right-wing of today. Why?

He said it's because back then they were considered the radical fringe and now they're taken seriously as part of the national conversation. Back then there were pockets of these guys in different parts of the country, but now they're national. So, every single issue is nationalized and made more partisan. The fringe is united behind their demagogues (mainly radio and television talk show hosts) and drive every issue into a senseless and fevered ideological battle.

It's as if we're taking the opinions of doctors and the lunatics at the asylum just as seriously. They are not equal and legitimate sources of information.

So, every week there's something else crazy that's discussed as if it's a legitimate issue. This week there are already two such topics, and it's just Tuesday. First, the right-wing is incensed that President Obama showed courtesy to a foreign leader by bowing to the Japanese Emperor. Are you kidding me? Bush practically made out with the Saudi leader at Crawford, but we didn't make that a real issue. You know why? Because it's not a real issue!

It was funny to see Bush walking hand in hand with King Abdullah, but we get why he did it. He was respecting their culture. Now, when Obama does something much less controversial, it's a nationwide debate (including a slight bow to the same Saudi Arabian leader). You can chuckle over Bush or Obama in local outfits or practicing what appears to be strange customs to us, but you can't treat it as if it's something that tells you about their leadership or as if it's a real national security issue.

Let alone what Wesley Pruden, editor emeritus of The Washington Times, had to say about Obama bowing "controversy":

But Mr. Obama, unlike his predecessors, likely knows no better, and many of those around him, true children of the grungy '60s, are contemptuous of custom. Cutting America down to size is what attracts them to "hope" for "change." It's no fault of the president that he has no natural instinct or blood impulse for what the America of "the 57 states" is about. He was sired by a Kenyan father, born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World and reared by grandparents in Hawaii, a paradise far from the American mainstream.

Look at these statements -- "natural instinct or blood impulse"; "sired by a Kenyan father"; "born to a mother attracted to men of the Third World." Again, are you kidding me? We're supposed to take these guys seriously?

Then there is the issue of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial. Bill O'Reilly had this thoughtful commentary on the KSM trial, "The guy's admitted it, so he shouldn't be going on trial anyway, he should just be shot." We're listening to these guys?

So, under that logic, if the authorities claim someone "admitted" a crime to them, we should just skip the trial and shoot them in the head. How very American!

Imagine if we these right-wing lunatics were around -- and were being taken seriously -- after World War II. We would have never had Nuremberg. They would have gone ballistic; screaming for blood and seething at the idea of bringing Nazis to justice. They would have exacted a terrible political price for trying to bring these guys to trial. So, instead of setting a history making precedent on how victors in war can be just and fair, we would have lynched those detainees, punished the rest of Germany and made the same mistake as almost every other country in history by brutally oppressing the defeated.

You think these guys would have gone for the Marshall Plan? Rebuilding your enemies? Giving tremendous amount of money and US resources to rebuild your two biggest adversaries who just killed millions of people in a terrible war they started? Inconceivable. They would have called the Marshall Plan an act of cowardice and appeasement that showed weakness to your enemies. They would have destroyed the greatest American diplomatic accomplishment. They would have tried to scuttle the very policies that made this country great -- that made it exceptional.

But the current right-wing radicals (which includes nearly every major conservative talk show host in the country; they were unanimous in their agreement that KSM should not be tried in the American justice system) aren't just crazy, they're un-American. They missed the whole point of the country. What makes America great is our justice system. We don't take people out and shoot them in the head without trials. That's what despots and dictators do. We are a country of laws, not men. We are supposed to be exceptional in our justice, fairness and jurisprudence. These people don't believe in any of that. They just want blood. But we might be crazier than they are for taking them seriously.

16 November 2009

Oh, boy, did you hear that one?

Tuesday November 17, 2009

. . . . .OK, here we go, off and running right away

. . . . I am assuming that most of you are literate and bright enough to know and understand Godwin's Law, a long standing law of logic, (since the days of Usenet) on bulletin boards, threads and forums.

. . . .A quick refresher: Godwin's Law is a very, very simple agreed upon mathematical corollary. It states that the longer a discussion goes, the closer the chances of it's subject being compared to Hitler or Nazi's approach unity, (that is, 1), and it's usefulness is over.

. . . Again, long standing, and well-known, and also a perfect example of stupidity, since the other half of the law is that once Hitler is mentioned (a) the argument is automatically lost by the person who introduced the comparison (b) the thread is closed or shut down and (c) it provides proof positive, in recorded form of the brain-dead, moronic, idiocy of the person who uses the Hitler comparison.

. . . .Which, of course, is why I've been pissing my pants laughing since last spring, as the whacked out conservatives immediately sprang to life with Hitler comparisons, images and similes. Not only does it demean the office of the Presidency of the United States, and betray the memory of every soldier who every fought in World War II, it also provides proof positive that most members of the extreme Right are mouth-breathing meat sacks.

. . . .Now, of course, over time, Godwin's Law has spawned a number of useful corollaries and memes, but possibly, absolutely the best set was published by Krugman, in his New York Times column:

Proposed extensions of Godwin’s Law

Godwin’s Law — which says that in any sufficiently long online discussion, someone will compare his opponent to Hitler — is often interpreted to mean that if you do, in fact, start making Nazi comparisons, you’ve lost the argument and can no longer be taken seriously. I’m all for that. (Does this mean that we should no longer take any significant figure in the Republican Party seriously? Yes, it does.)

But there are a lot of moral equivalents of Nazi comparisons, and they should receive the same treatment. I propose that we officially declare that anyone who

1. Responds to calls for more government action in some area — employment creation, health care, whatever — by invoking the example of the Soviet Union

or

2. Responds to suggestions that moderate inflation and/or dollar depreciation is acceptable by invoking the example of Zimbabwe

or

3. Responds to any demonstration that projected debt levels, while high, are within the range advanced countries have successfully dealt with in the past by invoking the example of Argentina

be summarily consigned to the outer darkness.

. . . .Now, on the subject of taking absolutely no one in the Republican party seriously, let us begin with the intellectually deficit, anti-knowledge, publicity slut quitter from Alaska, my favorite political punch line, Sarah Palin, that living, walking, breathing example of the Republican cult of personality, and proof positive that you don't need a brain, a background, a resume, an education, a real position, or the ability to tell the truth to be a Republican masturbatory fantasy.

. . . .Item 1, from her own book, she's a fucking creationist.

. . . Andrew Sullivan, on the Palin problem:

Hitchens slams Continetti's starburst-laden Palin tome:
Sarah Palin appears to have no testable core conviction except the belief (which none of her defenders denies that she holds, or at least has held and not yet repudiated) that the end of days and the Second Coming will occur in her lifetime.
From earlier in the review:

The Palin problem...might be that she cynically incites a crowd that she has no real intention of pleasing. If she were ever to get herself to the nation's capital, the teabaggers would be just as much on the outside as they are now, and would simply have been the instruments that helped get her elected. In my own not-all-that-humble opinion, duping the hicks is a degree or two worse than condescending to them. It's also much more dangerous, because it meanwhile involves giving a sort of respectability to ideas that were discredited when William Jennings Bryan was last on the stump. The Weekly Standard (itself not exactly a prairie-based publication) might want to think twice before flirting with popular delusions and resentments that are as impossible to satisfy as the demand for a silver standard or a ban on the teaching of Darwin, and are for that very reason hard to tamp down.

. . . Marc Ambinder on where this Alaskan pervert fits on the idiocy scale of creationism:

Where Palin Fits On The Creation - Evolution Scale

Much more so than abortion, the issue of life's origins wedges itself between the scientifically literate elite and everyone else. No surprise. This is the Big Question, and it has implications for politics: what is humanity? What do we owe each other? From where do we derive our ethics? How do we solve irreconcilable value claims? As evidence for evolution grows, the number of Americans who accept a literal creationist account of human origins has shrunk. Most of these beliefs have been channeled into the "intelligent design" movement, which shares virtually everything with creationism except the name and the implication that macroevolution didn't happen naturally on at least some level. So -- think of public opinion along a line. Very roughly, between 15 and 25%, believe that evolution is a natural process and either know -- or doubt -- that God directed it, and about 75% are willing to acknowledge God's role. Of that 75%, half accept at least some parts of evolutionary theory. The other half is made up of Biblical creationists.

Palin accepts creationism's critique, which is that there is no way that species share a common lineage, or that humans descended from apes, or that terrestrial creatures descended from aquatic creatures.

"But your dad's a science teacher," Schmidt objected. "Yes." "Then you know that science proves evolution," added Schmidt. "Parts of evolution," I said. "But I believe that God created us and also that He can create an evolutionary process that allows species to change and adapt." Schmidt winced and raised his eyebrows. In the dim light, his sunglasses shifted atop his head. I had just dared to mention the C-word: creationism. But I felt I was on solid factual ground.

No, she is not. Evolution, the change over time of species by various unguided (but not always random) selection pressures, is as close to a fact of science as there is. It is as much of a historical fact as the Holocaust. There is plenty of debate within evolutionary science, but with each successive discovery, each new transitional fossil found, each advance in developmental embryology, the case for evolution grows more and more tight. Macroevolution, microevolution, the evolution of complex cellular structures -- there's a lot we don't know, but not a single scientific discovery in recent years can be deemed evidence against the theory of evolution.

Its acceptance in the years after Charles Darwin popularized the concept fundamentally established science as the foundational text of modernism. Most biological scientists don't believe in God. Those who do, like the new chair of the NIH, Francis S. Collins, are Christian Deists; they accept that "progress" in evolution seems random, but they believe that, somewhere beneath the quarks, the God spark is slowly directing this complicated process - or that God created the laws of the universe in such a way so as to lay favorable conditions for evolution. But they don't reject the evidence.

Polling evolution is a political act, so it's hard to come up with sensible data. Pew tried, and decided that the best available evidence suggests that about 13% of Americans understand what evolution is, believe that it happened, and it was not directed by God. That corresponds, roughly, to the pool of atheists. When "God" is not mentioned in evolution polls, the number of people who endorse a natural selection process doubles, suggesting that there is a still a stigma in affirming to a pollster that God did not do something -- or that "natural selection" leaves room for God in the gaps.

The American people are finicky about their creation/evolution debate. Even though a majority of Americans clearly believe at least a thin form of "intelligent design," about a majority staunchly opposes something called "creationism" -- even though it is, in the real world, indistinguishable from creationism in its animating principles and aims. What this means is that Americans accept the chronology of evolution without accepting the science of evolution. Disproving evolution to scientists would mean finding a rabbit fossil in the Burgess Shale. Disproving "intelligent design" to most Americans would mean disproving the existence of God. And Americans aren't willing to give up God. But they're not willing to ignore at least parts of the evidence. Sarah Palin -- she is.

. . . .Just to get something straight, the woman makes me vomit, and it will be Sarah Palin and her ilk that will bring a Christian Taliban rule to America, give her the chance and she will fuck you, and no matter what your sweaty fantasies may be, you'll never get to fuck her back.

. . . .And just to get it all in one place, Andrew Sullivan has been kind enough to round up all of Sarah Palin's lies, fact-check them, background them and get them in one place:

On the eve of Palin's latest version of reality, the Dish offers a recap of all the demonstrable lies she has told in the public record. We reprint the list as a public service and invite readers to run the new "book" through exactly the same empirical wringer, so we can compile an up-to-date and comprehensive list of the fantasies, delusions, lies and non-facts that Palin is so pathologically and unalterably attached to. Remember: we are not including contested stories that we cannot prove definitively one way or another or the usual spin that politicians use, or even hypocrisy or shading of facts. We are merely including things she has said or written that can be definitively proven as untrue, by incontestable evidence in the public record.
After you have read these, ask yourself: what wouldn't Sarah Palin lie about if she felt she had to?
Palin lied when she said the dismissal of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, had nothing to do with his refusal to fire state trooper Mike Wooten; in fact, the Branchflower Report concluded that she repeatedly abused her power when dealing with both men.
Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed to have said, "Thanks, but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere; in fact, she openly campaigned for the federal project when running for governor.
Palin lied when she denied that Wasilla's police chief and librarian had been fired; in fact, both were given letters of termination the previous day.
Palin lied when she wrote in the NYT that a comprehensive review by Alaska wildlife officials showed that polar bears were not endangered; in fact, email correspondence between those scientists showed the opposite.
Palin lied when she claimed in her convention speech that an oil gas pipeline "began" under her guidance; in fact, the pipeline was years from breaking ground, if at all.
Palin lied when she told Charlie Gibson that she does not pass judgment on gay people; in fact, she opposes all rights between gay spouses and belongs to a church that promotes conversion therapy.
Palin lied when she denied having said that humans do not contribute to climate change; in fact, she had previously proclaimed that human activity was not to blame.
Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska produces 20 percent of the country's domestic energy supply; in fact, the actual figures, based on any interpretation of her words, are much, much lower.
Palin lied when she told voters she improvised her convention speech when her teleprompter stopped working properly; in fact, all reports showed that the machine had functioned perfectly and that her speech had closely followed the script.
Palin lied when she recalled asking her daughters to vote on whether she should accept the VP offer; in fact, her story contradicts details given by her husband, the McCain campaign, and even Palin herself. (She later added another version.)

Palin lied when she claimed to have taken a voluntary pay cut as mayor; in fact, as councilmember she had voted against a raise for the mayor, but subsequent raises had taken effect by the time she was mayor.
Palin lied when she insisted that Wooten's divorce proceedings had caused his confidential records to become public; in fact, court officials confirmed they released no such records.
Palin lied when she suggested to Katie Couric that she was involved in trade missions with Russia; in fact, she has never even met with Russian officials.
Palin lied when she told Shimon Peres that the only flag in her office was the Israeli flag; in fact, she has several flags.
Palin lied when she claimed to have tried to divest government funds from Sudan; in fact, her administration openly opposed a bill that would have done just that.
Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed that troop levels in Iraq were back to pre-surge levels; in fact, even she acknowledged her "misstatements," though she refused to retract or apologize.
Palin lied when she insisted that the Branchflower Report "showed there was no unlawful or unethical activity on my part"; in fact, that report prominently stated, "Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act."
Palin lied when she claimed to have voiced concerns over Wooten fearing he would harm her family; in fact, she actually decreased her security detail during that period.
Palin lied when asked about the $150,000 worth of clothes provided by the RNC; in fact, solid reporting contradicted several parts of her statement.
Palin lied when she suggested that she had offered the media proof of her pregnancy with Trig to "correct the record"; in fact, no reports of her medical records were ever published; and the letter from her doctor testifying to her good health only emerged hours before polling ended on election day, even though there was nothing in it that couldn't have been released two months earlier.
Palin lied when she said that "reported" allegations of her banning Harry Potter as mayor was easily refutable because it had not even been written yet; in fact, the first book in that series was published in 1998 - two years into her first term - and such rumors were never reported by the media, only circulated as emails.
Palin lied when she denied having participated in a clothes audit with campaign laywers; in fact, the Washington Times later confirmed those details.
Palin lied when asked about Couric's question regarding her reading habits; in fact, Couric's words were not, "What do you read up there in Alaska?" or anything close to condescension.
Palin lied when she mischaracterized the "$1200 check" given to Alaskans as the permanent fund dividend check; in fact, that fund had yielded $2,069 per person, and she claimed otherwise to obscure the fact that Alaskans also received a $1200 rebate check from a windfall profits tax on oil companies - a tax widely criticized by Republicans.
Palin lied when she claimed to be unaware of a turkey being slaughtered behind her during a filmed interview; in fact, the cameraman said she had picked the spot herself, while the slaughter was underway.
Palin lied when she denied having rejected federal stimulus money; in fact, she continued to accept and reject the funds several times.
Palin lied when she claimed that legislative leaders had canceled a meeting with her to hold their own press conference; in fact, they only canceled it after being told she would not participate, and the purpose of the press conference was very different from the meeting's.
Palin lied when she announced on the news that she never holds closed-door meetings; in fact, she had just attended a closed-door meeting with the legislature earlier that day.
Palin lied when she said that former aide John Bitney's "amicable" departure was for "personal" reasons; in fact, Bitney said he was fired because of his relationship with the wife of Palin's friend, plus a Palin spokesperson later claimed "poor job performance" for his firing - without elaborating.
Palin lied when she said she kept her running injury a secret on the campaign trail; in fact, her bandaged hand was clearly visible in photographs and the story was widely talked about.
Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska has spent "millions of dollars" on litigation related to her ethics complaints; in fact, that figure is much, much lower, and she had initiated the most expensive inquiry.
Palin lied when she denied that the Alaska Independence Party supports secession and denied that her husband had been a member; in fact, even the McCain campaign noted that the party's very existence is based on secession and that Todd was a member for seven years.

. . . .On to some other grim realities, shall we?

. . . And really, can we get something straight right now? Left wing bloggers didn't force Lou Dobbs off CNN, the White House and President Obama didn't force him off, CNN paid his wrinkled, angry old man ass $8 million dollars to leave.

. . . .Yes, the President is in the Far East, and "the bow" matters not one fucking bit, what does matter is that he's in the same hemisphere as our landlords, the Chinese. They own 80% of our debt, the dollar is sinking like a stone in the ocean, and they are pressuring OPEC to stop trading in petro-dollars, but to start trading in petro-yuan. Once the yuan replaces the dollars as the currency of choice for oil, the world's heroin, it's over. Say hello to post-Margaret Thatcher Great Britain, 'cuz that's what we'll be, by my numbers, about by the end of next year. Yglesias:

China has emerged as pretty clearly the number two country in the world power hierarchy, but as David Schorr observes it’s not really clear that China has any desire to be an important world power:

As President Obma urges China to be a “source of strength for the community of nations” — i.e. help with the heavy lifting on international challenges such as global warming and nuclear proliferation — Chinese leaders prefer to downplay expectations. They’re not witholding their support and assistance, but they are parcelling out their contributions quite cautiously, rather than putting themselves at the forefront of global problem solving. Think of it as a tendency to do positive things for negative reasons. Unfortunately, it may not be enough to deal effectively with 21st century international challenges.

I spent several days in Beijing last week taking part in discussions co-organized by the Stanley Foundation with the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the China Institutes on Contemporary International Relations. This Chinese ambivalence about providing leadership was expressed in a variety of ways, including the description of China as “a global actor, not a global power.” Indeed, the true aim of key Chinese strategic concepts such as peaceful rise or harmonious world seems to be a frictionless foreign policy to conserve every ounce of effort for the challenges of domestic stability and economic growth.

The crux of the matter is that while China’s combination of scale and rapid growth make it, de factor, a big player on the world stage it’s also a profoundly poor Russia. Russia is much poorer than the United States, but it still has a GDP per capita of $16,000 or so. Brazil clocks in at just above the world average of $10,000 and South Africa is just below that number. China, meanwhile, rates as slightly poorer than Angola or Namibia. There’s no real precedent in the modern system of great powers for one of the major countries to be so economically underdeveloped. Combine that with the questionable durability of China’s political system, and you can see why the leadership mostly wants to focus on staying in power and getting richer.

That, however, leads to a bit of a leadership vacuum at the top, especially when you consider that a very sizable portion of the world’s potential wealth and power is tied up in the European Union where lack of institutional capacity makes it impossible to deploy it effectively. The result is to give the United States a more preeminent position than the underlying fundamentals would suggest at first glance. This actually creates some problems for us—seen in Obama’s exhortation—but of course the United States suffers from some schizophrenia on this front. Sometimes we’re seen urging China (or, indeed, the European Union or Japan) to play a bigger role in the world, but other times we’re clearly glad that nobody else is interesting in wielding global power in a manner that checks our own hegemonic aspirations.

. . . .Which brings us squarely back to where we always wind up, the core of things, the economy and the current financial nightmare. Ezra Klein:

Why conservatives should start worrying if Republicans don't learn to love taxes

In his excellent book "The New American Economy," Bruce Bartlett counsels his fellow conservatives to get serious about raising taxes:

The reality is that even before spending exploded to deal with the economic crisis, the government was set to grow by about 50 percent of GDP over the next generation just to pay for Social Security and Medicare benefits under current law. When the crunch comes and the need for a major increase in revenue becomes overwhelming, I expect that Republicans will refuse to participate in the process. If Democrats have to raise taxes with no bipartisan support, then they will have no choice but to cater to the demand of their party's most liberal wing. This will mean higher rates on businesses and entrepreneurs, and soak-the-rich policies that would make Franklin D. Roosevelt blush.

You see this in health-care reform: Harry Reid is looking at a payroll tax hike on the rich, and the House is looking at a straight surtax on the rich paired with a new mandate on employers. But if five Senate Republicans and 15 House Republicans had been willing to trade their votes in exchange for funding mechanisms they preferred (a tax on employer-sponsored health-care plans, for instance), Baucus, backed by Reid and the White House, would have rushed to write it into the bill, and there'd be nothing the AFL-CIO could do to stop it.

That said, I think Bruce underplays the possibility that Democrats will have to raise taxes but will only have 56 votes, and not 60, and so we'll just get a fiscal crisis. And thus does America follow California...

. . . .Which brings us all the way back to where a lot of this insanity started, which is the stupidity demonstrated over and over again this summer around Health Care Reform, but which, in our ADD society, we forget that it all actually started back with Medicare Part D:

The lessons of Medicare Part D

Mathew Yglesias:

John Breaux and Bill Frist have an op-ed in Politico whose exoteric message is that Congress should use the 2003 Medicare bill as a model for bipartisan health reform. The esoteric message is a reminder that the easiest way to get a bipartisan deal passed is to just have bipartisan agreement not to pay for it at all. That was the secret to the 2003 bill. First you take something a bloc of voters want — in this case prescription drugs — then you figure out a way to provide it in a manner that’s very good for the interests of stakeholders in the business community. Easy as pie.

It is insane that the people who voted for the deficit-financed, $700 billion Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit are allowed to scream about fiscal rectitude this year. Just amazing. The occasional defense I've heard is that 2003 wasn't the middle of the most severe recession in memory. That's a defense in much the same way that poking yourself in both eyes so you can't see your assailant is a defense. Deficit spending makes more sense during recessions, not less. Deficit spending is also cheaper during recessions, as interest rates are lower because investors want to buy treasuries.

By the way, for those keeping score, the senators who voted for Medicare Part D and are still in the Senate are:

Lamar Alexander, Max Baucus, Bob Bennett, Kit Bond, Jim Bunning, Tom Carper, Saxby Chambliss, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins, Kent Conrad, John Cornyn, Mike Crapo, Byron Dorgan, Mike Enzi, Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, James Inhofe, Jon Kyl, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Dick Lugar, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Ben Nelson, Pat Roberts, Pete Sessions, Richard Shelby, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, George Voinovich and Ron Wyden. Lieberman did not vote.

None of these people have any authority to complain about the spending in health-care reform. When the CBO scored Medicare Part D, it concludes that the bill "would increase mandatory outlays by $407 billion for fiscal years 2004 to 2013 and would raise federal revenues by $7 billion over that period." In other words, it was a vote to add about $400 billion to the deficit in the first 10 years, and trillions more in the decades after that.
The health-care reform bills currently under consideration in both the Senate and the House actually cut money from the deficit, but they are being criticized as fiscally irresponsible by many of the people who voted for Medicare Part D. It's like watching arsonists calling the fire department reckless.

. . . And tonight's final word comes from Bob Cesca:

One Nation Under Fear

If there's one thing this week has reinforced, it's that Republicans are scared little children who have no respect for the American constitutional system.

The moment when Republican = Coward becomes conventional wisdom can't come soon enough.

15 November 2009

Infrequent, but damn good

Monday November 16, 2009

. . . .The real bitch, sometimes, about this job is something that sometimes happens. In this case, I'll be about 150 miles out to sea for my birthday, which happens almost every year. Next Saturday, thank you very much, the 21st of November.

. . . . .Real remote this time, so my "culture watch" is low. But, I am listening to my 15 CD's of music that you should be listening to, but probably aren't. You can go back in the archives, or do a search, and you'll find that list. It's great music, and personally, I think 2009 has been one of the best music years in a long, long time.

. . . .So, if you're reading this on the Facebook Notes page, you need to switch to the external site, to get the music and soundtrack that normally goes with this.

. . . .So, on with the show, and considering that it's Sunday night, and I'm pretty much recapping the week, here goes, on to the economy, and the vampires that are sucking every dollar out of your wallet and doing their best to make this a two class country (refer to Friday's post on plutonomy and corporatism):
. . .From Chez, over at Deus ExMalcontent:

Enough is (Never) Enough

"People criticize me for being on vacation. I actually started work a week before I was actually supposed to."

-- Robert Benmosche, new CEO of AIG, which was bailed out with taxpayer money to the tune of $182 billion, from his villa and vineyard on the Adriatic where he spent the first few weeks on the job telecommuting in shorts and flip-flops; Benmosche is already threatening to quit because of government oversight which, among other things, will restrict his pay to a mere $3 million a year (not including $7.5 million in stock options and bonuses)

Back in September, AIG's board turned down Benmosche's request to use a company-owned private jet for personal business; the board told him that he'd need an exemption from the Treasury Department.

This caused him to go on a public tirade against U.S. lawmakers.

. . . .Dylan Ratigan, with one of the best ideas I've seen yet:

One thing about doing a two hour show that heavily covers both the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that you notice on a daily basis the shocking juxtaposition between the lucky Wall Streeters and the unlucky soldiers.

We all know at this point that our banking system is being used as an unregulated bonus-seeking mechanism for bankers, now underwritten by taxpayers with $23.7 trillion worth of national wealth.

Bankers lent pretend money to home buyers to award themselves actual money in bonuses -- making home prices balloon and, in the process, bankrupting America's treasury, currency, the states, and many of its citizens.

To simply let the housing market rapidly correct itself (or more likely over-correct) would result in massive societal disruption, possible violence and unnecessary suffering.

So while we slowly attempt to close the taxpayer-funded bank casinos and try to restore the basic rules of investment and lending in our economy, we have difficult decisions to make. Unfortunately, our only choice for a less jarring social transition so far has been to artificially adjust the real prices of our homes via government guarantees to banks (for bad mortgages and losing gambling bets) -- or relatively arbitrary handouts to home buyers.

What did these people do to deserve the handout?

How do you feel about a Wall Street Banker who has been renting an apartment here in New York and this year combined the bonus money he made on bundling new taxpayer-sponsored Fannie Mae CDS with a first-time home buyers tax credit gift from the taxpayers to buy the penthouse in his building?

Meanwhile, we have already been at war for 8 years with no end in sight. World War II was 5 years. We are fighting these wars with the fewest number of soldiers in modern U.S. History. To avoid incorporating a politically unpopular draft, we deploy the same soldiers five or six times with comparatively minuscule breaks in between.

However, the dire state of the economy has been a boon to military recruitment, but I am not sure if we will ever see the Wall Street bank scammers claim their rightful credit for that.

So instead of using these bad- (Wall Street) to- arbitrary (first time home buyers) ways to pump money into rescuing our housing market, let's give it to those who are truly deserving of handouts: our servicemen and women.

I propose that we immediately enact the following:

Give every single man and woman that is fighting for us a housing credit of $50,000, with the caveat that the credit must be used by someone within two years.
Make it so that the credits are completely fungible, meaning that if the veteran doesn't wish to buy a house, he or she can sell the credit to someone who does -- and keep the money. If the reselling of gift cards on Ebay is any indication, I am sure there will be a thriving market where soldiers could probably get pretty close to 90 cents on the dollar for their credit.

Considering the roughly 2 million veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan so far, this would give a much needed $100 billion boost to the housing market. Just as a template for comparison, Goldman Sachs (albeit it doing "God's work") and the other complicit banks like JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley will pay $29.4 billion in personal bonuses this year.

In reporting on this financial crisis, I have been most surprised by the blatant disregard that our politicians and even some journalists have shown for the most fundamental American notion of fairness. I don't think handing taxpayer trillions to some of the least worthy individuals is something that our country will stand for, regardless of what the current incumbents think.

If we must resort to handouts to save our country, let's at least put them in the hands of the most deserving.

. . . .Why should we talk about handouts? This is why. 33 companies that received TARP monies have not paid their most recent dividend payments. From The Washington Post:

A year ago, the financial system was tottering and government officials arranged a $2.3 billion emergency cash infusion into CIT Group, a troubled lender to small businesses.
Today, CIT is in bankruptcy court, and the taxpayers' investment is on the brink of being wiped out. It would be the largest loss so far from the government's massive rescue of the financial system, but it isn't likely to be the last.

Officials poured about $700 billion into investments in scores of companies, from giants like the automaker General Motors and the insurer American International Group to smaller regional banks. Of them, 33 have failed to make their most recent dividend payments to the government, as required under the bailout, a sign that they are strained for cash.

Last week, United Commercial Bank of San Francisco failed, becoming the first recipient of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, to collapse. The cost to taxpayers: $299 million.

Analysts expect more bailed-out firms to fail in the months ahead. Others may survive but will struggle to repay the government. Steven Rattner, the former head of the government's efforts to bail out the auto industry, said recently that the public investment in GM is unlikely to be repaid. Meanwhile, AIG is dismantling itself, selling healthy subsidiaries at what critics say are bargain prices in an all-out effort to get cash to repay the government. About $400 billion of federal investments remain in the corporate sector, much of it channeled through TARP. Critics of the program say losses were inevitable, in many cases.

. . . . .And why does this mean so much, these defaults and these numbers. Krugman, on the reality behind those numbers:

It’s truly amazing, and depressing, how completely deficit-phobia has swept the field in Washington. The economy remains in deeply dire straits: here’s long-term unemployment:

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Yet the respectable thing, all of a sudden, is to claim that we can’t possibly afford to spend any more money on job creation.

History says differently. Here’s a comparison of debt/GDP levels, actual levels for several countries (OECD for Belgium, IMF for the rest), and projected levels (from the IMF) for the United States. (Note that these are for general government, i.e., including state and local, so they’re higher than the numbers you usually read).

OECD, IMF

Yes, we’re going fairly deep into debt. No, it’s not unprecedented. Other advanced countries have been substantially deeper in debt without either defaulting or having runaway inflation — and some of those countries have historically had weak governments (Belgium because of the linguistic divide, and Italy because it’s Italy).

I’d be a little more forgiving of the nonsense if all the people screaming about the deficit were sincere. And some are. But many, if not most, are perfectly happy to incur huge unfunded liabilities for the wars they want to fight, and/or to eliminate inheritance taxes for the heirs of multimillionaires. It’s only deficits incurred to help working Americans that get them all moralistic.

Anyway, the point is that the economy desperately needs more help — and yes, we can afford to provide it.

. . . . And it's the charlatans on Wall Street who led this country down this path, and are continuing to, as long as everyone keeps listening to them. Ann Pettifor:

Today -- as global trade lies dead, as unemployment rises, as wages and incomes plummet, as US consumption (70% of US GDP) and investment falls -- share prices zoom upwards and commodity prices rock. According to Fortune magazine, the stock market climb of these last few months is the fastest on record. By November, the S&P 500 had surged by 62 percent to 1,093.08 after sinking to a 12-year low in March.

A trade that remains in the shadows -- 'the carry trade' -- roars ahead. (For the uninitiated: it's just another version of 'buying cheap and selling high'. Traders in money borrow e.g. dollars, at the Federal Funds rate of 0.25%- and then lend in countries (and currencies) where rates (or yields) are higher.

Nice work if you can get it -- especially as a banker, with the competition wiped out, the Fed keeping interest rates low, and the risk of gambling with your own capital replaced by taxpayer-backed money.

It's especially nice work if, while playing away, you can short the dollar and so ensure that on returning home to pay your dollar debts, the rate is lower. Fine and dandy of course, until either the dollar or the Fed rate rises. Then all hell will break loose, as traders scramble to repay debts at climbing rates. But until then, the unregulated 'carry trade' carousel will keep spinning round the globe.)

In another corner of the financial forest, and partly financed by the carry trade, the global bubble in equities, commodities and other risky assets is expanding into what Nouriel Roubini calls a 'monster'.

Many economists are helping to pump it up further. Some, like Abby Joseph Cohen at Goldman Sachs gave the bubble a puff by declaring the recession at an end in August. Jim O'Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs is a perma-optimist. He told me in an August 2008 BBC radio interview that this recession was 'just another periodic crisis - I have already lived through five', he remarked.

When a British economist Danny Gabay of Fathom Financial Consulting argued that poor GDP numbers could be explained by the fact that "the UK has some formidable headwinds, not least of which is the over-burdened consumer which is having to cope with a broken banking system, rising unemployment, and falling income growth," his view was dismissed as "baloney" by Kevin Daly at Goldman Sachs, who, according to the FT, put greater weight on more optimistic recent surveys of companies.

These happy (and well-compensated) souls are joined by PhD-trained academic economists who cheered the recent 3.5% growth in US GDP, even though wiser heads declared this analysis a whitewash, and noted that 'cash for clunkers accounted for 1.7%, i.e. half of the increase and the lower liquidation of goods in stock accounted for another 1%. In other words, 80% of this "growth" came from a temporary government boost that is already gone or was essentially technical in nature.'

But the cheerleader that investors should most beware of is one Prof. Frederick Mishkin.

In May, 2006, this American economist and one-time Federal Reserve governor, wrote a report called "Financial Stability in Iceland" commissioned by the Icelandic Chamber of Commerce. (See 'Iceland as Icarus' by Prof. Robert Wade.) In this report he and his Icelandic partner opined thus: "Although Iceland's economy does have imbalances that will eventually be reversed, financial fragility is not high and the likelihood of a financial meltdown is very low". We know that Fred Mishkin (now of Columbia University) was not the only academic economist to act as cheerleader for Iceland's reckless bankers. Prof. Richard Portes, President of Britain's Royal Economic Society, played a similar role. (For more about Professor Portes's role in the Icelandic saga, go here.)

Mishkin's report was published in the same month that the IMF mission to Iceland came to very different conclusions. According to Prof. Wade, Mishkin "pocketed $135,000 for his contribution to the modest report." A modest fee, we might add, for puffing up massive capital gains on behalf of reckless Icelandic bankers.

In the autumn of 2008 Iceland's economy 'debtonated' and the country was quickly bankrupted. Bank failures, unemployment, political upheaval and massive destruction of value followed.

The disastrous bursting of the bubble created by Iceland's bankers, has not punctured the Professor's confidence, nor deterred his sponsors at the Financial Times or in the banking sector. On Tuesday, 10th November, 2009, Mishkin was given a column in the FT. The apparent purpose of the piece is to debate the risk of bubbles. Instead he emphatically puffs up the 'monster bubble' in risky assets. He does so by posing a rhetorical question: "if bubbles are a possibility now, does it look like they are of the dangerous, credit boom variety?"

"The answer" writes this academic purveyor of advice and encouragement to the carousel set, "at least in the US and Europe, is clearly no."
To paraphrase Wordsworth: William Hogarth, thou shouldst be living at this hour: Economics hath need of thee: she is a fen of stagnant waters.

. . . .Because, in the end, I do pay attention to every aspect of culture, and learn to listen to every voice, because some of the most surprising things can come from the most surprising sources. The rapper known as 50 Cent, on self-reliance and independence:

When you work for others, you are at their mercy. They own your work; they own you. Your creative spirit is squashed. What keeps you in such positions is a fear of having to sink or swim on your own. Instead you should have a greater fear of what will happen to you if you remain dependent on others for power. Your goal in every maneuver in life must be ownership, working the corner for yourself. When it is yours, it is yours to lose -- you are more motivated, more creative, more alive. The ultimate power in life is to be completely self-reliant, completely yourself.

You came into this life with the only real possessions that ever matter -- your body, the time that you have to live, your energy, the thoughts and ideas unique to you, and your autonomy. But over the years you tend to give all of this away. You spend years working for others -- they own you during that period. You get needlessly caught up in people's games and battles, wasting energy and time that you will never get back. You come to respect your own ideas less and less, listening to experts, conforming to conventional opinions. Without realizing it you squander your independence, everything that makes you a creative individual.

Before it is too late, you must reassess your entire concept of ownership. It is not about possessing things or money or titles. You can have all of that in abundance but if you are someone who still looks to others for help and guidance, if you depend on your money or resources, then you will eventually lose what you have when people let you down, adversity strikes, or you reach for some foolish scheme out of impatience. True ownership can only come from within. It comes from a disdain for anything or anybody that impinges upon your mobility, from a confidence in your own decisions, and from the use of your time in constant pursuit of education and improvement.

Only from this inner position of strength and self-reliance will you be able to truly work for yourself and never turn back. If situations arise in which you must take in partners or fit within another organization, you are mentally preparing yourself for the moment when you will move beyond these momentary entanglements. If you do not own yourself first, you will continually be at the mercy of people and circumstance, looking outward instead of relying on yourself and your wits.

Understand: We are living through an entrepreneurial revolution, on a global scale. The old power centers are breaking up. Individuals everywhere want more control over their destiny and have much less respect for an authority that is not based on merit but on mere power. We have all naturally come to question why someone should rule over us, why our source of information should depend on the mainstream media, and on and on. We do not accept what we accepted in the past.

Where we are naturally headed with all of this is the right and capacity to run our own enterprise, in whatever shape or form, to experience that freedom. We are all corner hustlers in a new economic environment and to thrive in it we must cultivate the kind of self-reliance that will help push us past all of the dangerous dependencies that threaten us along the way.

Think of it this way: dependency is a habit that is so easy to acquire. We live in a culture that offers you all kinds of crutches -- experts to turn to, drugs to cure any psychological unease, mild pleasures to help pass or kill time, jobs to keep you just above water. It is hard to resist. But once you give in, it is a like prison you enter that you cannot ever leave. You continually look outward for help and this severely limits your options and maneuverability. When the time comes, as it inevitably does, when you must make an important decision, you have nothing inside of yourself to depend on.

Before it is too late, you must move in the opposite direction. You cannot get this requisite inner strength from books or a guru or pills of any kind. It can only come from you. It is a kind of exercise you must practice on a daily basis -- weaning yourself from dependencies, listening less to others' voices and more to your own, cultivating new skills. As you progress on this path, you will find that self- reliance becomes the habit and that anything that smacks of depending on others will horrify you.

. . . .And that my friends, is the best and wisest piece that I've read since Larry Flynt's last August.

. . . .I miss you Mom, a lot. Thanks for watching over me.

. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.

. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.

. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: 29.52N, 91.57W]

14 November 2009

My ride's here

Saturday November 14, 2009

. . . .November's half-gone, and it's only a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving and the holidays.

. . . .So, yes, the movie 2012 opened last night at your local multiplex, which will no doubt, bring an absolute orgy of 2012 prophecy specials to every cable channel; Discovery, Sci-fi, History, National Geographic, all of them.

. . . . .Let me get this off my chest first. If, by some remote goddamn chance, any of it is right, I will be righteously pissed off. December 21, 2012 will be exactly 30 days after I turn 55 years old. Work my whole damn life, and only have 30 days to enjoy senior discounts on stuff? I can't even begin to describe the degree of pissed I'll be.

. . . .And let me get this off my chest as well, for anyone who's completely wrapped up in Tim LaHaye Left Behind stuff too. I'm quite comfortable with where I'm headed, if any of that is right. Personally, I'm looking forward to spending eternity with Doc Holliday and Jim Morrison in a great poker game, with a band made up some of other no name sinners, like, oh say, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Bon Scott, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Duane Allman, John Lennon and John Entwhistle, George Harrison and some others I can think of, playing set after set with a bunch of scantily clad shady ladies surrounding us in some dark, smoky, greasy, blues joint dive somewhere. I can live with that prospect, I really can.

. . . .It's been a while since I did a news of the weird, did any good techie stuff, or spent some time in the physical world, but we've spent enough time in the financial and political world for some time, so, let's do a round-up of nothing but 2012 stuff and all get if off our chests, once and for all, just for grins.

. . . .In case you haven't figured it out, I'm not a great believer in the entire 2012 series of predictions. What I will tell you is this, I've led a fascinating life, met a lot of interesting characters, and yes, I do have some inside info of my own, but, too bad, it's mine, and that's where it stays.

. . . .Anyhow, off to the races, and here we go, courtesy of Disinfo.com:

December 21, 2012 is the end date of the sophisticated Long Count Calendar created by the ancient Maya in Central America. But is it a doomsday that is foretold in the Mayan calendar, the Chinese oracle of the I Ching or in an Internet-based prophetic software program? Is there any truth to these doomsday prophecies? Some theorists believe that on that date, the Earth will experience unprecedented, cataclysmic disasters ranging from massive earthquakes and tsunamis to nuclear reactor meltdowns, while yet others see a coming renewal, a rebirth of consciousness.

To help sort out the information, Gary Baddeley, the writer/producer of 2012: Science or Superstition and president of The Disinformation Company will present the current schools of thought and answer questions from a public not certain if they should prepare for survival or something else entirely.

On the day that Roland Emmerich’s mega-budget disaster film 2012 opens nationally, discover the truth about the “End of Days” and the 2012 phenomenon with the video conference “Everything You Wanted to Know About 2012 But Were Afraid to Ask”, presented by The Disinformation Company, producer to the bestselling documentary 2012: Science or Superstition and it’s companion book. The video conference will be hosted by Justin.tv on Friday, November 13th, from 2 to 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. If you didn’t have a chance to join the chat, here’s the first part below:

The rest of the Justin.tv chat is here, here and here.

Gary discussed the documentary he wrote and produced, 2012: Science or Superstition, the mega-Hollywood motion picture 2012, and all things 2012-related. If you couldn’t make the event, feel free to submit a question by comment below. Here’s the trailer for 2012: Science or Superstition:

. . . .And more 2012 woo-woo

Woo-woo (or just plain woo) is a term used, often in a dismissive way, by skeptics for dealing with phenomena that can’t be verified by independent evidence, but yet, many people strongly believe in. So who better to investigate the “woo-woo” world of the present-day 2012 phenomenon than author Alexandra Bruce (Beyond The Bleep, Beyond The Secret), no stranger to the realm where pop culture and the esoteric collide.

Raymond Wiley and Joe McFall, hosts of our monthly interview series Disinformation: The Podcast, talk with Alexandra about her new book 2012: Science Or Superstition, a companion to the Disinformation documentary of the same name.

Listen to the interview here or on iTunes.

As Alexandra Bruce describes in her introduction:

Here’s a woo-woo story for you. While working on this book late one evening, I read that the Chicxulub impact crater, the scene of the most notorious mass extinction event in history, was named after the small fishing village located near its epicenter in northern Yucatán, Chicxulub, which translates loosely from Mayan into English as “Tail of the Devil.”

Moments after I’d read this factoid, a friend of my colleagues, actor Rudy Youngblood dropped by the studio and we had an impromptu cocktail party. Rudy played the lead role in the film Apocalypto, so I commented to him about how eerie it was that “Chicxulub” means “Tail of the Devil.” He nodded slowly and looked me dead in the eye. He said, “They knew.”

Rudy told me that he’d spent almost a year in the Yucatán filming Apocalypto and during that time he’d befriended some local shamans. They told him about a practice that has existed for ages in Maya culture, where the shamans go into deep states of meditation and as Rudy described it, they would “time travel,” to see the land in the future and in the past, to lead their communities towards the most auspicious areas, for settlement, for planting, for building. The modern-day shamans told Rudy that the ancient shamans of 1,500 years ago had astrally “seen” the cataclysm at Chicxulub and that was how the village had come to be given the name “Tail of the Devil,” in the Mayan language of the Classic period.

The Chicxulub impact was one of the biggest doomsdays in the history of this planet. An object about 6 miles wide came in out of the sky and slammed into the beautiful Caribbean. The impact literally shook the Earth to its core. The massive shock waves generated global earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and megatsunamis thousands of feet high. The super-heated pyroclastic dust fanned out in every direction for millions of miles, broiling Earth’s surface, setting most of the world ablaze. For almost a decade, the sky was blacked-out, with a rain of ash dust and sulfuric acid, accompanied by freezing temperatures. The photosynthesis of plants came to a halt, affecting the entire food chain of whatever survived the initial blast.

Today, the crater is buried beneath a kilometer of sediments. From the ground, no one would guess that such unimaginable devastation could ever have taken place in this tropical paradise, yet the Chicxulub impact is generally viewed to be the cause the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event that wiped out 75% of all Earth’s species and 100% of the dinosaurs — which brings us to the apocalypse at hand …

. . . .Now there are those who refer to 2012 as not a physical event, but a dimensional shift:

Where will you be when the 5,125 year Long Count Calendar of the Classical Maya ends on December, 21, 2012? Will you be hiding in an underground cave from global cataclysm and magnetic polar reversal? Will you be entering a multidimensional realm of hyperspace triggered by mass activation of the pineal gland? Will you be picking up the pieces of a ruined world or dancing the night away at the party at the end of time?

Considering that nobody knows what’s going to happen in 2012, the end of the Mayan Calendar functions as a tremendously intriguing meme upon which we can project our hopes and fears, dreams and desires. Hollywood has now offered up a massive collective shadow projection in the form of a $250 million disaster epic that takes the aesthetics of annihilation to a new pitch of perfection. Paradoxically, this doom-riddled blockbuster could create a great opening to offer an alternative vision of what 2012 could be for our planet. Potentially, 2012 could represent the coming-to-consciousness of the human species, in which we take responsibility for our role as agents of conscious evolution.

A rising grassroots movement now realizes we can no longer expect governments, corporations, or any outside authority to create the beautiful world we long to live in. We have to do it ourselves. This growing network of Evolvers, Burners, Bioneers, Transition Towners, and others are developing new cooperative networks that can help heal our planet while providing sustainable solutions to the disastrously unsustainable economic and political systems that disempower people, keeping them asleep.

. . . .But not to worry, there is a Top 5 list of plans, from Discovery.com, to ensure the continuity of the human species, because we all know, after all, that we are the pinnacle of galactic evolution:

. . . There, now does everyone have it out of their system? I hope so, because next we'll take on something real, when it comes to the physical world, and no, it won't be global cooling or warming, it's something far simpler, far more tangible, and far more threatened and far more vital. Water and dirt. Why? It's only where our food comes from.

. . . .Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

13 November 2009

OK, break's over!

Friday November 13, 2009

. . . . .My apologies for taking such a long break, I do have some other things that get pressing on occasion for me, and need to be taken care of, combine that with the day job that actually pays the bills and sometimes takes me to some pretty remote locations, and it does get to be sometimes a lot like the guy on the old Ed Sullivan show that balanced 16 plates and tried desperately to get the 17th one in the air.

. . . . .Right off into it, and right away. If you read this week's earlier columns, you know my opinion of (a) the current health care reform bill that the House passed last weekend and (b) Ft. Hood, nuff said about both of those, and back to what counts, the smoke, mirrors and house of cards that our entire financial system is right now, and how it poses the greatest threat to our long term stability as a nation, our long term health as a culture and a society and providing more proof that all the damn Tea Partiers and Fox News are so wrong, this is 180 degrees out from socialism and communism, this is the biggest corporatist and proponent of a plutonomy to ever exist that is in the White House right now.

. . . .I don't blame the Tea Baggers for their anger, misplaced though it is. The game is rigged, and they, nor us, nor any future generation can win, the rules have changed significantly since 1979-1982. Ronald Reagan was the start of the march towards the nefarious New Economic World Order, and it's very real. It's not about black helicopters, the U.N. or any of that shit. It's simple, it's about Goldman-Sachs and JP Morgan Chase owning everything, per David Rockefeller's and Zbigniew Brzezinski's well-documented blueprint, and economic superauthority that can oversee the future course and development of human society through the manipulation and accumulation of wealth.

. . . .I can't blame Fox News, after all, they sued all the way back in 2003 in a Florida court for the right to lie, and said then that they had an inherent right to distort or lie about the news, since they were an entertainment station. Their multi-millionaire on-air personalities are so far removed from everyday life, and so disconnected from the particular demographic that is their viewing audience as to be ultimately laughable. Their only job, make Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes more wealthy, so they can quit being the poor kids on the block and let them join the club in the plutonomy. They're doing that quite well.

. . . Corporatist? Plutonomy? Whuzzat? OK, here goes, for they are two extremely important definitions and transcend everything else we've got going on right now, since they are the underpinnings of what's happening right now, and will dictate and decide our future course.

. . . .Corporatist - The economic system of corporatism is a system of economic, social and political organization where various corporate entities (legally recognized as entities by the United States Supreme Court in 1963, by the way) become the overarching authority, and their interests supercede the interests of any or all individuals.

. . . . .Plutonomy -Economic growth that is powered and consumed by the wealthiest upper class of society. Plutonomy refers to a society where the majority of the wealth is controlled by an ever-shrinking minority; as such, the economic growth of that society becomes dependent on the fortunes of that same wealthy minority.

. . . . . Now these are not terms, words or definitions that I invented, they're not just the Angel's terms for things or my personal frame of reference. They're real words and they accurately describe what's happening now.

. . . .As a matter of fact, the word "plutonomy" was first put in use by Citigroup, in a series of reports published internally in 2005.

. . . . .From the Citigroup reports:

- The World is dividing into two blocs - the Plutonomy and the rest.
The U.S., UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies - economies powered by the wealthy. Continental Europe (ex-Italy) and Japan are in the egalitarian bloc.
- Equity risk premium embedded in "global imbalances" are unwarranted.
In plutonomies the rich absorb a disproportionate chunk of the economy and have a massive impact on reported aggregate numbers like savings rates, current account deficits, consumption levels, etc.

This imbalance in inequality expresses itself in the standard scary "global imbalances". We worry less.
- There is no "average consumer" in a Plutonomy.
[...]
Indeed, traditional thinking is likely to have issues with most of it. We will posit that:
the world is dividing into two blocs - the plutonomies, where economic growth is powered by and largely consumed by the wealthy few, and the rest.

Plutonomies have occurred before in sixteenth century Spain, in seventeenth century Holland, the Gilded Age and the Roaring Twenties in the U.S.

What are the common drivers of Plutonomy?

Disruptive technology-driven productivity gains,
creative financial innovation,
capitalist-friendly cooperative governments,
an international dimension of immigrants and
overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation,
the rule of law, and
patenting inventions.

Often these wealth waves involve great complexity, exploited best by the rich and educated of the time.

We project that the plutonomies (the U.S., UK, and Canada) will likely see even more income inequality, disproportionately feeding off a further rise in the profit share in their economies, capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity, and globalization.

[...]

In a plutonomy there is no such animal as "the U.S. consumer" or "the UK consumer", or indeed the "Russian consumer".

There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the "non-rich", the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie. [...] i.e., focus on the "average" consumer are flawed from the start.

. . . .And from another part of the reports:

RISKS -- WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Our whole plutonomy thesis is based on the idea that the rich will keep getting richer. This thesis is not without its risks. For example, a policy error leading to asset deflation, would likely damage plutonomy. Furthermore, the rising wealth gap between the rich and poor will probably at some point lead to a political backlash. Whilst the rich are getting a greater share of the wealth, and the poor a lesser share, political enfrachisement remains as was -- one person, one vote (in the plutonomies). At some point it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich. This could be felt through higher taxation on the rich (or indirectly though higher corporate taxes/regulation) or through trying to protect indigenous [home-grown] laborers, in a push-back on globalization -- either anti-mmigration, or protectionism. We don’t see this happening yet, though there are signs of rising political tensions. However we are keeping a close eye on developments.

. . . .Now, combine that, written by Citi all the way back in 2005, with this from this week, by Matt Taibbi, commenting on Blankfein's statement in the London Times last Sunday that Goldman is doing "God's work":

Blankfein Invokes God and Man

Yes, it’s true, Blankfein did tell a reporter for the Sunday Times of London that he’s just a banker “doing God’s work,” a quote the newspaper couldn’t help but use for the headline of its 6,900-word opus about Goldman last weekend. And, no, Blankfein didn’t mean for these words to be taken seriously, according to the bank’s spokesman, Lucas van Praag.

via Blankfein Invokes God and Man at Goldman Sachs: Jonathan Weil – Bloomberg.com.

I just want the numerous people who’ve been writing to me on the subject to know that I definitely did hear Lloyd Blankfein say that he believed Goldman is doing “God’s work.” I’m trying to ignore it for the moment because I’m on a deadline and my editors will chop my balls off if I do a blog post on that right now.

I also have a number of people asking me to comment on Thomas Friedman’s recent use of a broccoli image in a column about the Amazon. I have prepared a ruling on this matter and it is forthcoming. Without getting into it too much, I believe that while it is a very close call, the use of the broccoli image was justified. To use police parlance, it was a “good shoot.”

Anyway, I have to get back to work or I am going to be fired. Apologize for the long absence.

. . . .And this particular one from him, and the picture begins to unfold:

Goldman One-Ups Gordon Gekko, Says Jesus Embraced Greed

“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”

via Profit `Not Satanic,’ Barclays Says, After Goldman Invokes Jesus – Bloomberg.com.

I didn’t believe this story was true at first — thought it had to be a spoof. But it turns out to be true. The great banks of the world have gone on a p.r. counteroffensive in Europe, and are sending spokescrooks in shiny suits into churches to persuade the masses that Christ would have approved of the latest round of obscene bonuses.

Goldman Sachs international adviser Brian Griffiths explains it this way: that Christ’s famous injunction to love others as one would love oneself actually means that one should love oneself as one would love oneself. This seemingly baffling outburst by a Goldman executive in what appears to have been a prepared speech — someone actually wrote this, and thought about it, before saying it out loud — gets even weirder when one tries to figure out what could possibly have motivated this person, and by extension his employer Goldman Sachs, to make such statements in such a place as St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Because there are only a couple of possibilities, and both of them are equally unnerving. One is that they know how preposterous this is and are just saying this shit because they think enough people will fall for it that it will end up being a net plus, optics-wise.

I seriously doubt this and think the converse is much more likely: that they actually believe this to be true, or are trying to believe it is true, and by making the case publicly hope to persuade the world to see the light (and just maybe reaffirm to themselves in the process) and embrace the Orwellian propositions that greed is love and taking is sharing.

It’s not hard to imagine how they could actually believe this stuff. Absolutely the dumbest people in the world, always and without fail, are intellectuals. Anyone who has ever sat in with a bunch of Yalie grad students while they discuss Kafka– they’ve read every book in the world about him, right down to the nineteen different Marxist critical interpretations of The Castle, but it’s somehow eluded them that Kafka’s stories are funny — knows what I mean.

It’s a particular kind of mental disability. This is dumbness that doesn’t know how to connect the information coming in from their other sensory organs, i.e. from the outside world, to whatever flowery kaleidoscope of overwrought horseshit their professors sent hurtling on a permanent lifelong spin-cycle in their empty skulls back when they were eighteen.

We all go through the same phase at the same age and most all of us fall for more than a few dumb ideas in the same way. The difference is that most of us normal people end up having soon after to go out into the world, where we get rudely introduced to the fact that life is mean and unforgiving and confusing as hell and that if you try to go through it leaning on some neat, gift-wrapped package of intellectual theories given to you by some preening old clown in a cardigan, you will very quickly become ridiculous and incompetent to manage your own life.

You’ll notice it, your friends will notice it, the opposite sex will notice it, and certainly the meritocracy known as the capitalist job market will know it.

This is true in every case, with one big exception. If you happen to be a rich dweeb who went to the right schools and hung around with the same group of people your whole life, and those people actually run the world, well, then, you’re in the very happy position of having your own bullshit adolescent belief system become self-reinforcing.

You think that reality coincides with your beliefs because your beliefs are true, whereas in truth it’s because you spend all your time with people who believe the same nonsense you do, and generations of your cultural ancestors just happen to have built very high walls all around you fools to keep reality from getting in and spoiling things.

Nothing else explains people like Alan Greenspan and Megan McArdle and all those other idiotic Ayn Rand devotees, big and small, who continually go out there in public and flog pseudo-religious beliefs about the self-correcting free-market as a cure-all for anything and everything, even as evidence to the contrary rains down from the sky like volcanic ash. These people actually believe this shit and they believe it with the imbecilic ferocity of teenagers, even the ones who are 190 years old like Greenspan (who incidentally finally conceded a “flaw” in his thinking, but only after the entire world exploded and even all the reality-proof friendly data sources he had relied upon for his whole life told him his ideas were fucked), and it’s nearly impossible to get them to let so much as a sliver of their belief systems go.

There are lots of different varieties of evil in the world. On the extreme end of the spectrum you’ve probably got your Ted Bundy-at-Lake-Sammamish brand of evil, torturers and such, people who actually take pleasure in the suffering of others. You look at people like that and they defy rational explanation; you have to just chalk that up to the universe basically being a horrifying place where there’s either no God at at all or a God who’s just incompetent and/or explaining himself really, really badly.

On the other end of the spectrum, not nearly as evil comparably but still pretty bad, are people like this clown from Goldman. They lie to themselves and think up elaborate reasons to do the bad acts they were already hoping to do anyway. Some day, when historians finish peeling back all the different onion-layers of this financial disaster we’re living out right now, they’re going to find at the heart of it all this social Darwinist mantra wherein a very small group of overeducated twerps agreed to believe that stealing every last dime they could get their hands on was something other than what it looks and sounds like to the rest of us. That protective delusion was the first of the many luxuries they bought with all the money they stole, and see if it isn’t the last they agree to give up. What a bunch of assholes!

. . . .Now, where is this driving us? In a very few directions actually. There is one group of people who will fiercely defend what's occurring in the deluded hope that somehow they can join the group at the top, and never realize that they're being used. There's another group that knows that the whole game is rigged, but they will cling to the belief that somehow the Republicans and Conservatives will somehow "save" them, and never realize that there is no difference between the parties in one essential, basic aspect. They are, all of them, each and every Representative and Senator, wholly owned by their lobbyists and campaign contributors. Their entire existence is to carry water for their masters, and delude the voters into believing that somehow they're working for them and listening to them, when in fact, that will never happen, and the inconvenient fact is that the members of the Republic, the citizens, inconveniently are the ones whose votes put them in office. There are the deluded members of the Left, who believe that somehow, things will be different, as long as they keep the members of the Right at bay. Lastly, there are the disenfranchised, the disconnected faithful who believe that Barbie McLipshitz, the dimwit Alaskan attention whore, ignorant, willful and proudly stupid will carry the day for them and return America to some fictional set of "values" that never existed, and not realize that they're empowering The Family, the C Street mafia, who wants their place at the table.

. . . Who is The Family? The Family can trace it's roots to 1935 and Abraham Vereide, who founded The Family to fight the New Deal and labor unions, and to influence Washington politics. Best known now as The C Street Fellowship, The Family very simply, is a fundamentalist Christian secret fellowship whose entire existence and purpose is bent on taking over as the shadows behind the U.S. Government, and now, with so much attention focused on Goldman-Sachs, who for the last 30 years have pulled the strings of U.S. Government, The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund, and so much discontent, see their opportunity. One of the largest stooges is Democratic Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan, who lives at the C Street Fellowship house, and is the author of the amendment that garnered so much attention in last Saturday's House Rules committee meeting, and subsequent passage of the bill.

. . . .To bring The Family into focus, and to put as much attention on them as we've paid to Goldman-Sachs and JP Morgan, we need to start with author Jeff Sharlet's article in Harper's in 2008 that first brought them into focus, from Jesus plus nothing:

Ivanwald, which sits at the end of Twenty-fourth Street North in Arlington, Virginia, is known only to its residents and to the members and friends of the organization that sponsors it, a group of believers who refer to themselves as “the Family.” The Family is, in its own words, an “invisible” association, though its membership has always consisted mostly of public men. Senators Don Nickles (R., Okla.), Charles Grassley (R., Iowa), Pete Domenici (R., N.Mex.), John Ensign (R., Nev.), James Inhofe (R., Okla.), Bill Nelson (D., Fla.), and Conrad Burns (R., Mont.) are referred to as “members,” as are Representatives Jim DeMint (R., S.C.), Frank Wolf (R., Va.), Joseph Pitts (R., Pa.), Zach Wamp (R., Tenn.), and Bart Stupak (D., Mich.). Regular prayer groups have met in the Pentagon and at the Department of Defense, and the Family has traditionally fostered strong ties with businessmen in the oil and aerospace industries. The Family maintains a closely guarded database of its associates, but it issues no cards, collects no official dues. Members are asked not to speak about the group or its activities.
There they forge “relationships” beyond the din of vox populi (the Family's leaders consider democracy a manifestation of ungodly pride) and “throw away religion” in favor of the truths of the Family. Declaring God's covenant with the Jews broken, the group's core members call themselves “the new chosen.”
Doug agreed this could be a problem. But he was more concerned that the focus on labels like “Christian” might get in the way of the congressman's prayers. Religion distracts people from Jesus, Doug said, and allows them to isolate Christ's will from their work in the world.

“People separate it out,” he warned Tiahrt. “'Oh, okay, I got religion, that's private.' As if Jesus doesn't know anything about building highways, or Social Security. We gotta take Jesus out of the religious wrapping.”

“All right, how do we do that?” Tiahrt asked.

“A covenant,” Doug answered. The congressman half-smiled, as if caught between confessing his ignorance and pretending he knew what Doug was talking about. “Like the Mafia,” Doug clarified. “Look at the strength of their bonds.” He made a fist and held it before Tiahrt's face. Tiahrt nodded, squinting. “See, for them it's honor,” Doug said. “For us, it's Jesus.”

Coe listed other men who had changed the world through the strength of the covenants they had forged with their “brothers”: “Look at Hitler,” he said. “Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Bin Laden.” The Family, of course, possessed a weapon those leaders lacked: the “total Jesus” of a brotherhood in Christ.

“That's what you get with a covenant,” said Coe. “Jesus plus nothing.”
Two weeks into my stay, David Coe, Doug's son and the presumptive heir to leadership of the Family, dropped by the house. My brothers and I assembled in the living room, where David had draped his tall frame over a burgundy leather recliner like a frat boy, one leg hanging over a padded arm.
“You guys,” David said, “are here to learn how to rule the world.”
In a document entitled “Our Common Agreement as a Core Group,” members of the Family are instructed to form a “core group,” or a “cell,” which is defined as “a publicly invisible but privately identifiable group of companions.” A document called “Thoughts on a Core Group” explains that “Communists use cells as their basic structure. The mafia operates like this, and the basic unit of the Marine Corps is the four man squad. Hitler, Lenin, and many others understood the power of a small core of people.”

Another document, “Thoughts and Principles of the Family,” sets forth political guidelines, such as

21. We recognize the place and responsibility of national secular leaders in the work of advancing His kingdom.

23. To the world in general we will say that we are “in Christ” rather than “Christian”—“Christian” having become a political term in most of the world and in the United States a meaningless term.

24. We desire to see a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit.
In 1944, Vereide had foreseen what he called “the new world order.” “Upon the termination of the war there will be many men available to carry on,” Vereide wrote in a letter to his wife. “Now the ground-work must be laid and our leadership brought to face God in humility, prayer and obedience.” He began organizing prayer meetings for delegates to the United Nations, at which he would instruct them in God's plan for rebuilding from the wreckage of the war. Donald Stone, a high-ranking administrator of the Marshall Plan, joined the directorship of Vereide's organization. In an undated letter, he wrote Vereide that he would “soon begin a tour around the world for the [Marshall Plan], combining with this a spiritual mission.” In 1946, Vereide, too, toured the world, traveling with letters of introduction from a half dozen senators and representatives, and from Paul G. Hoffman, the director of the Marshall Plan. He traveled also with a mandate from General John Hildring, assistant secretary of state, to oversee the creation of a list of good Germans of “the predictable type” (many of whom, Vereide believed, were being held for having “the faintest connection” with the Nazi regime), who could be released from prison “to be used, according to their ability in the tremendous task of reconstruction.” Vereide met with Jewish survivors and listened to their stories, but he nevertheless considered ex-Nazis well suited for the demands of “strong” government, so long as they were willing to worship Christ as they had Hitler.

. . . .As you can see, it's very real. For a true reality check, how about a list of the people currently living in The Fellowship's houses?

Members currently in the US Congress

Name	Position	Notoriety
Sam Brownback^[1]^[80]	Sen. (R-KS)	Chair of Senate Values Action Team
James Inhofe^[1]^[80]	Sen. (R-OK)
Jim DeMint^[1]^[80]	Sen. (R-SC)	Chairman of Steering Committee
Chuck Grassley^[80]	Sen. (R-IA)	Former Chairman of Finance Committee
Richard Lugar^[4]	Sen. (R-IN)	Former Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee
John Ensign^[1]^[80]	Sen. (R-NV)	Involved in sex scandal
Tom Coburn^[1]^[80]	Sen. (R-OK)
Mark Pryor^[1]^[80]	Sen. (D-AR)
Bill Nelson^[1]^[80]	Sen. (D-FL)
John Thune^[80]	Sen. (R-SD)
Mike Enzi^[80]	Sen. (R-WY)
Joe Pitts^[1]^[80]	Rep. (R-PA)	Chair of House Values Action Team; Member Committees on Energy & Commerce, Sec. & Coop in Europe
Todd Tiahrt^[81]	Rep. (R-KS)
Frank Wolf^[24]	Rep. (R-VA)	Member of House Appropriations Panel^[1]
Zach Wamp^[1]^[24]	Rep. (R-TN)
Mike McIntyre^[24]	Rep.(D-NC)
Bart Stupak^[1]	Rep. (D-MI)	Author of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment for the Affordable Health Care for America Act that would ban federal funding for abortions.^[82]
Michael F. Doyle^[1]	Rep. (D-PA)
Heath Shuler^[1]	Rep.(D-NC)
Jerry Moran^[1]	Rep. (R-KA)

. . . .So like I promised back last July when we started down this road, we're finally getting to all the fundamental pieces of what the hell is happening, and why it's happening. We have the pieces of the puzzle, and they're in our hands now to start putting it together.

. . . .Some things we know, the game is rigged, completely, and we don't stand a chance as we're sitting now. The only thing we can do is be educated, have our eyes open and be aware of what's happening. And hopefully, now you know why I deride Tea Baggers, they're only the tools of The Family, and to my mind, it looks like that bunch will try their damndest to make Caribou Barbie their personal tool in the White House in 2012.

. . . .I miss you Mom, a lot. Thanks for watching over me.

. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.

. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.

. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: Gregory, MI 48137]

10 November 2009

Once more, into the breach

Wednesday November 11, 2009

. . . .Great new music alert. Micky & The Motorcars just released their first live CD, Live at Billy Bob's Texas, available now at their website. (It's available in stores as well, but I'm loath to give my money to Best Buy or Wal-Mart, when it's just as easy to purchase it direct from the artist, and all the money goes back to them.) 22 tracks of absolutely killer music by the younger brothers of Braun clan out of Idaho, of course, you know the two older brothers as Reckless Kelly. It's a great chance to catch some good young artists going deep into their catalog and doing what they do best, playing music.

. . . .And on the same pop culture note, Star Trek is being released on DVD and Blu-Ray on November 17th. If you didn't catch it this last Memorial Day weekend at your cineplex, pick it up immediately and check it out. J.J. Abrams didn't just reboot the franchise, he gave it new life, new blood and whole new possibilities.

. . . .And not a word about Sons of Anarchy until I get the chance to watch it on my DVR.

. . . .As promised, back into the fray. First up, the large piece of elephant shit that was delivered on Saturday night by the House of Representatives. Now a couple of points right off the bat. I know a good number of people, sincere, good people who truly believed that this was the best thing for them to work for, and that it would do some long term good, who are right now really looking like someone has hit them upside the head, hard, with the flat side of a shovel and wondering just what in the blue hell happened. Well, first up, I'm going to re-run a piece that I wrote and published back on October 13th about the legislative process:

. . . .Now, what responses from readers let me know is that a whole lot of people don't know how the legislative process actually works. So today, we're going to do two things, explain how the mechanics of the legislative process works, who the real players are on the field, and how they're being manipulated.

. . . .So, on to the real legislative process, in this case, Baucus's turd will suffice to serve as the guidepost as to how it all goes together. A bill, any bill, House or Senate, first goes through it's committee of jurisdiction, in this case the Senate Finance Committee, for what's called a chairman's mark-up, where the initial framework of the bill is hammered out, with the various and sundry mark-ups, attachments, and riders are put together and it's put to a committee vote, that's what happened today with the Baucus bill. Now, that was public spectacle, and in truth, most committee mark-up votes are the ones you see televised and pundits nodding sagely about and analyzing. In truth, this is only of 4 way stations in a bill's life cycle, and like all hideously, grotesquely hatched entities, when it goes through it's other 3 life cycles, may be a different animal completely. From the committee of jurisdiction, it now goes to the Rules committee, which most of you have never heard of. There's a reason for this. In the Rules committee, the Rules chairperson now lays the bill out for the Rules committee, and it's here, where members of the majority party attach all types of riders, attachments, amendments or take a bunch out, and members of the minority party wail and gnash their teeth together about what's happening. Now the interesting part is that yes, the Finance committee vote was scheduled at 11 AM Eastern time in full view of every media outlet, and Finance committee debates were highly televised. Not so once it hits the Rules Committee, which will most likely schedule it's hearings on it for about 3 AM on a Wednesday morning (really, they will!) and this is quite on purpose, because by the time the Chairman's mark-up leaves the Rules committee as a rule, it will be an entirely different sort of monster altogether, completely rewritten with new amendments, riders, other items taken out. Now, there's been much ado about the "72 hour" rule, about how there's supposed to be 72 hours by the time a "rule" (which is what the mark-up is called once it leaves the Rules Committee) and the floor vote, and much blaming of this newest Democratic Congress. They're only payng back tit for tat. That 72 hour rule has been suspended due to "emergency" since the Republican Congress of 2001, and hasn't been put back in place once since 9/11. Everyone, everyone is using it to their advantage, and has for the last 8 years now. So, this particular bill will leave the Rules committee in the middle of the night, and there will be a general floor vote on it within minutes of it's leaving Rules. Now, at that point, it becomes a bill, but it only came from the Senate, before it ever goes for signature, it has to go through a conference committee of both House and Senate, which has arcane rules all it's own, to hammer out all the differences. The point is, no matter what you heard or saw today, this bill will be completely rewritten 2 more times,and be a totally different animal, that reads entirely differently, before it ever arrives for any signature. So, what you've hearing today is not what it will be.

. . . .And that's precisely what happened to it, it sat in a rules committee all day Saturday, away from the eyes and ears of the press and the public, and it was rushed to the floor for vote on Saturday night.

. . . .The idiocy is that Pelosi and company are absolutely in love with themselves over the process, and completely lost sight of the end product. All I kept hearing was that this is the first time in 60 years of attempted health care reform that a bill was able to pass the House, and that 's what I keep hearing. The second piece of idiocy is the attempt to call it bipartisan, one vote from a lone Republican rep that had to be wined and dined solo by the White House is not bipartisan.

. . . .There's so much that's wrong with this thing, it's impossible to go into it in one day or one column, but suffice to say, from examining it, one whole hell of a lot deals got cut that make the health insurance companies richer, Big Pharma richer, and the doctors are going to love it.

. . .The only good thing that came out of it was Bart Stupak outing himself as a stooge for The Family, the C Street Fundamentalist Christian mafia that he's a tool for, and the people who are trying to array themselves to go up against Goldman-Sachs. We'll start examining The Family and their pervasive influence as deeply as we explored Goldman, and get back to getting all the players straight in the world that runs the world we live in.

. . . .Goldman, you know, those people on Wall Street, whose CEO claims they're doing "God's work". From Charles Gasparino, one of the better financial writers I know:

The only thing worse than Goldman Sachs amassing close to $20 billion in bonus money for its executives based on various government subsidies and bailout measures is listening to senior executives there trying to explain it all away. The spin job has been coming from an unlikely source: The normally media shy Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein has been making the rounds lately, talking to selective reporters, including William Cohan, who recently wrote a book about the fall of Bear Stearns and now has the firm's complete cooperation as to write something on Goldman Sachs, the most prestigious of the Wall Street firms, even if it needed a bailout to survive last year's financial crisis..
Cohan's Bear book, the first of many financial crisis tomes (including my own) wasn't exactly a puff piece, but trading access for information is a time honored journalistic practice, and it's human nature to be nicer to someone who gives you information. So presumably we'll all find out from Cohan how, in the throes of the financial crisis, Goldman really didn't need the $10 billion in bailout money it received from the federal government as its stock cratered; that it was forced to take the cash from then-Treasury Secretary (and former Goldman CEO) Hank Paulson, or how despite its exposure to troubled insurance giant AIG, Goldman was miraculously "hedged," against losses, meaning that the fed's AIG's bailout last year didn't really help Goldman survive last year's panic. No, Goldman survived because it was built for survival.
Forget the absurdity of such claims, Blankfein has been on a roll of late, repeating them time and again, not just presumably to Cohan, but to a growing number of credulous journalists who will stomach just about anything to get a few minutes with the CEO of the Great Goldman Sachs, even if its greatness was put to the test last year.
Blankfein's spinning is reaching epic proportions. Several recent stories about Goldman have cast the firm as the Great Satan of the securities markets, or as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi put it, the "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." No longer is Blankfein simply trying tell the world Goldman isn't the root of all evil; rather, old Lloyd is informing us all that Goldman is a source of goodness in the world. The exact quote, from the Times of London has Blankfein professing that as CEO of the vampire squid he's actually "doing God's work," simply by doing what banks get paid to do: Raising money for clients and investing in businesses.
Oh really, Lloyd? My brother is a doctor who works in the intensive care unit of an inner city hospital; he could have a cushy lucrative practice here in New York, but he likes helping people, and yet he has never once told me he's doing God's work even after he explained one afternoon how he had just saved a homeless man's life by massaging his heart.
Believe it or not, I happen not to fall into the camp of Goldman haters, where people believe the firm is behind every scandal and conspiracy and may have even created the swine flu virus so it could corner the market for drug stocks. (Though Goldman and several other firms did seem to have no problem obtaining for their employees the swine-flu vaccine, which is in short supply.) Indeed, as I show in my new book The Sellout, when it came to risk-taking over the last 30 years on Wall Street, Goldman did it better than any other firm on the Street. The folly that was found at a firm like Bear Stearns, with its CEO caring more about playing bridge and golf (and allegedly smoking marijuana) than tending to the firm's balance sheet, would never happen at Goldman Sachs.
But there is something truly unsettling about the new message coming from the firm, honed I hear from a phalanx of image consultants who are literally trying to re-write history as the firm gets ready to dole out its enormous bonus pool. And that's what all this spinning is about. For the record Goldman Sachs didn't take down the financial system last year -- Citigroup, Merrill, Lehman or Bear are much more responsible for that. And for the record every firm spins -- its called public relations, and Goldman will need all the PR it can muster as it decides in the coming weeks how much of the $20 billion it will hand out to its executives. My sources at Goldman say Blankfein won't be stingy because he needs to prevent top producers from bolting to hedge funds and private equity.
What makes Goldman so contemptible is that its level of spin has almost no basis in reality. We are supposed to believe Goldman wasn't bailed out; it didn't need the government's money when big investors where yanking funds from the firm and its stock was plummeting and now the firm is doing "God's work," even as government bureaucrats continue to subsidize how the firm makes most of its money -- through risk taking and bond trading, all on the backs of the US taxpayer.
Goldman, in case you haven't heard, has been classified as a commercial bank, meaning it can borrow cheaply to finance its risk taking, and can borrow from the Federal Reserve in a pinch. That's why it's amassing such massive profits. And yet not a penny of its massive bonus pool will be lent out to funding-starved small businesses. Think about that: The Federal Government run by the most Liberal Administration in years, is subsidizing big business at the expense to small business.
How did this bizarre scenario develop? Who knows, but it should come as no surprise that Wall Street -- Goldman in particular -- funneled far more money to president Obama than it did to his Republican challenger, John McCain. Maybe that's why the president has been eerily silent on the Goldman Sachs subsidy, even as Lloyd Blankfein tells the world he's doing "God's work."

. . . .Why am I so hard on them? Could it be because we're no longer a democracy, a republic, but are instead a corporatocracy run by Goldman? From Felix Salmon, over at Reuters:

First up there was the pairing of Robert Rubin and Stephen Friedman. Both of them attempted to become venerable eminences grises, but neither succeeded, in the end. Friedman became chairman of the New York Fed, ~~where he helped to~~ which put together the deal under which AIG’s CDS counterparties, foremost among them Goldman Sachs, got paid out at 100 cents on the dollar, ~~He was also involved in approving~~ and which also approved Goldman’s request to become a bank holding company. He then inexplicably bought tens of thousands of shares Goldman shares in the open market — a clear conflict of interest given his position at the Fed — resulting in his resignation shortly afterwards.

Rubin, of course, looks even worse. As arguably the most Wall Street-friendly Treasury secretary ever, he helped to inflate the deregulatory financial-services bubble on the basis that big banks were extremely sophisticated and more than capable of looking after their own risk books. He then moved to the ultimate cushy job at Citigroup, where he got paid $10 million a year despite having no employees, no P&L, and no defined responsibilities. In hindsight, his main contribution to the bank was to be the biggest internal cheerleader for the fixed-income group, which he encouraged to take on ever-greater amounts of risk despite the fact that no one in senior management (including himself) really had a clue what they were doing. Result: disaster.

Rubin and Friedman were succeeded by Corzine, whose post-Goldman career has been spent almost entirely in politics. He was pretty ineffective in the Senate, before moving to the governorship of New Jersey. (In a classic case of the squid’s tentacles being everywhere, he there helped oversee the incoherent mess at Ground Zero, due to New Jersey’s 50% stake in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, charged with rebuilding at the site, was former Goldman senior partner John Whitehead.) Never much of a natural politician, he basically bought both jobs, which at least meant that he wasn’t corrupt. But after he was almost killed in a 91 mile-an-hour car crash where he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, he lost a large chunk of whatever leadership ability he had formerly held. His political demise yesterday, at the hands of an oafish opponent, comes as little surprise.

Corzine, in his turn, was replaced (indeed, ousted) by Hank Paulson. Paulson’s post-Goldman career, of course, was spent as the Treasury secretary who oversaw the biggest financial meltdown since the 1929 crash. Reading Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail, which was clearly written with a lot of help from Paulson, he comes across as a man who was always at least one step behind the curve, someone who could never get ahead of the unfolding crisis, who was prone to inconsistent and ad hoc decisionmaking, and who went out of his way, even before getting a waiver allowing himself to talk to Goldman Sachs, to be as helpful to them as he possibly could.

Paulson seems to have spent a large amount of the crisis throwing up in his office bathroom, and even into Nancy Pelosi’s wastebin. Of course, he couldn’t simply go see a doctor, like the rest of us, because he’s a Christian Scientist. Similarly, he hobbled his ability to communicate by refusing to ever touch email: instead, any time he wanted to say anything to anybody he’d have to do so over the phone or in person. No wonder he was semi-permanently hoarse, and his phone records are insane.

Paulson’s biggest failure, of course, was that of Lehman Brothers: he set up an emergency weekend confab at the New York Fed in an attempt to save it, but refused steadfastly to ever consider any public help at all, and also failed to keep British regulators in the loop, despite the fact that their assent would be needed in the event that Barclays were to acquire Lehman. In fact, when the fateful phone call to the Brits was made, it was the hapless Christopher Cox who made it, rather than Paulson. In general, Paulson was more of a bully than a leader, and he managed to be equally unpopular both on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

Looking at the list, it seems to comprise men who are very long on hubris, and who have no doubt that if they can run Goldman Sachs, they can do anything else, with normal rules not really applying to them. All of them, post-Goldman, have been tarnished. If Lloyd Blankfein has any sense, he’ll retire quietly.

. . . . .All of which makes a nice transition to this wonderful piece penned by David A. Love:

Often, people will look at a high-profile example of corruption, and conclude that the egregious act is an exception to the rule. In reality, it might be the tip of the iceberg.

On October 29, 2009, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania did a wonderful thing when it expunged the records of as many as 6,500 juveniles in Luzerne County. That’s not a misprint.

Two judges in that county were sent up the federal river for locking up thousands of innocent children over five years, in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks from private juvenile detention centers. Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan helped the developers secure the county contracts to build the prisons. Moreover, they filled the detention centers with warm bodies— many of whom were first-time offenders with minor infractions— and illegally denied the teens access to an attorney.

In the case of Luzerne, the “cash for kids” scheme was a coldblooded expression of greed, and we should not downplay the seriousness of the crimes committed. Yet, what happened in this rural county in northeastern Pennsylvania is a reflection of what America’s criminal justice system has become— a for-profit, money-making enterprise.

Often, our poorer children, disproportionately of color, are funneled into a cradle-to-prison pipeline through adulthood. With a criminally negligent public school system, and job opportunities outsourced abroad, many children at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are ensured a future of little else than street corners or prison bars. In fact, many urban schools are nothing more than prison prep, complete with police and metal detectors.

Interestingly, the children of Luzerne, a county which is nearly 97% white, did not resemble the “usual suspects” in the criminal justice system. But that really is not the point— when prisons are a capitalistic endeavor, warm bodies are needed as the raw materials, and so they must come from somewhere. And consequently, justice takes a backseat to dollars. From the foodservice industry and the phone companies, to the Wall Street bankers and the investors, many people have a vested interest in filling up those empty prison beds and maximizing their cut. American capitalism made the U.S. prison population the world’s largest at 2.5 million, with mass incarceration for nonviolent drug offenses and victimless crimes.

And American-style capitalism is problematic for the culture of corruption it has enabled, in the absence of an effective regulatory framework. Much attention has been paid to Bernie Madoff, that poster child of the Ponzi schemes, who defrauded investors out of $65 billion. The damage he created is impressive, from the family savings that were forever lost, to the charities that went under. But like the judges in Luzerne County, Madoff was merely a cog in a wheel of corruption that enabled greed.

Madoff himself said he was surprised his scheme lasted so long, and that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigators were so clueless about his fraudulent activities over 16 years. The fact is, some members of the SEC staff were inexperienced or just idiots. Further, Madoff had too much credibility with the SEC and was not properly investigated, with red flags uncovered yet ignored.

With the deregulation of the financial sector and the evisceration of the Glass-Steagall Act came the financial crisis of 2008. The system had become the Ponzi scheme. The economy was built on paper shuffling and no tangible products. Consumers were preyed upon with sketchy, deceptive and destructive subprime mortgages. Banks gambled people’s money in high-risk, high-stakes poker games. And with a revolving door between Wall Street and the Treasury department, the same people with the gambling problem are running the casino, and “monitoring” it as well.

The banks that ruined the country swore by the free market when it suited them. But now, they gladly accept their corporate welfare bailout checks, and scoff at the rest of us. Wall Street has rebounded, business as usual, and Gordon Gekko is smiling. Meanwhile, America’s former middle class is joining the ranks of the poor, and the foreclosed are filling the nation’s homeless shelters. Short of bold government action of Rooseveltian proportions, there will be no economic recovery for everyday people. After all, the unemployed, the homeless, and the soon-to-be unemployed and homeless generally are not big spenders.

The moneyed interests also have corrupted the political process, and a prime example is the behavior of Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and the “Blue Dog” Democrats in the health care reform debate. Lieberman has earned a special place in the hearts and minds of progressives of late for vowing to stand with Republicans, and filibuster any health care bill that contains a public option. He has even said he would rather have no bill at all than a bill with a public option.

In American political folklore, the Senate is presented as an august deliberative body where cooler heads prevail, where genteel statesmen and stateswomen put the brakes on rash and potentially harmful legislation, for the betterment of all. In reality, the Senate is a place where bold legislation for the public good is killed, because industries put a contract out on democratic ideas. And they instruct their employees, the senators, to stop these ideas in their tracks. This is a bipartisan endeavor. The Blue Dog Democrats, who are the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives of their party, distinguish themselves from other Democrats by their greed and hypocrisy. They receive the most corporate money, and have rejected less costly health reform bills that would hurt their benefactors. Ask Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, chair of the Senate Finance committee, and a key player in this year’s health reform debate. Baucus received $3.4 million from health and insurance industry interests between 2003 and 2008, more than any other member of Congress. Judging from the sad excuse for a health reform bill that came out of his committee, the industry got its money’s worth.

And Lieberman, the dirty dog that Democrats love to hate, is a fully-owned subsidiary of the insurance industry. Over the course of his career, he has received $2.6 million from the insurance companies. In addition, his wife is a health care industry lobbyist. Despite the overwhelming popular support in Connecticut for a public option, Lieberman has decided to follow the money. The Democrats must take Lieberman to the woodshed for his double-crossing ways, and relieve him of his coveted chair in the Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee. Not to be outdone, Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN), whose wife has made at least $2 million sitting on the board of a major health insurance company, hinted that he would filibuster the public option as well. Apparently, faced with the prospect of the Democratic leadership opening a big can of whup ass on him, he backed off.

The problem here is not just Senators Lieberman, Baucus, Bayh and a few other unscrupulous politicians. The fact is the entire political game, the link between money and politics, is rancid and is killing democracy. In the case of health care reform, the corrupting influence of money is literally sucking the country’s life blood.

As in the days of old before the 1929 stock market crash and the New Deal, corporations have far more influence in this society than they are entitled. Citibank gleefully proclaimed in a series of reports in 2005 and 2006 that the U.S. is a plutonomy— a system of wealth inequality in which the richest 1% hold a disproportionately large share of wealth. The rich are likely to get even wealthier, at the expense of labor. This rising inequality, Citibank predicts, will lead to a political backlash.

And some backlash is needed now. It is certain that the outrageous displays of greed and corruption deserve our attention and our outrage. But to dismiss them as exceptions to the rule, rather than products of a systemic, vulturous culture that must be attacked, is to choose a perilous path.

. . . .Now, one last one, which I didn't cover over the last few days, the shootings at Ft. Hood in Texas back on Friday, which the media, in it's frenzy, got all wrong.
- First and foremost, this is an Army matter, for it's CID (Criminal Investigative Division), and once that report is finalized for it's investigative commanding officers, what they decide to release of it's particulars will be their business, period. That's how the Army works. Anything else, anything else at all, will be complete and total speculation.
-For comparison's sake, there were 3 other shootings on Army posts this year, which you probably didn't hear about.
- There were 78 other shootings that day across the United States, resulting in fatalities.
- Today, gunmen burst into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and opened fire, killing one, down near El Paso
- In Tualatin, Oregon today, a gunman opened up on a lab that does drug test processing, and killed 2 and injured 2 others.

. . . .In other words, it happens in this country a lot, but because we are obsessed as a nation with having a Darth Vader at all times, with having an identifiable enemy in these times that seem so out of control, it is much easier to point at Hasan, and paint him as a sleeper terrorist, instead of what he was, a jihadist in an American Army uniform who had clearly given signal after signal to his commanding officers that this was something that was coming from him, acting on his own and of his own volition, all of which speaks more to the negligence of his commanding officers and the dereliction of their duty and passing him on continually as "someone else's" problem, than it does to someone, who upon viewing and hearing the body of their work, was so clearly giving those signals.

. . . From Cenk Uygur, one of my favorite commentators:

Predictably, after the Ft. Hood shooting some idiot conservatives are suggesting that we do some sort of loyalty exam for Muslim-Americans before allowing them into the US military. Who is "we"? Who gets to do this exam? What, presumably more American people like whites or Christians?

Why don't Muslim Americans decide which Christians get to enter the US military? Oh, does that sound offensive? Does it sound weird? Why should it sound any different than Christians getting to decide which other Americans they will allow into the US military?

A lot of people are rightfully making the point that you can not generalize about millions of Muslims in this country based on two guys. Just as you cannot generalize about all right-leaning white Christians (let alone all Christians in their entirety) based on what domestic terrorists like Tim McVeigh did, or Terry Nichols, or Eric Rudolph, or Scott Roeder or ...

But there is a more important point here. Muslims Americans don't have to prove a damn thing to you. They are Americans just like anyone else, whether right-wing clowns like it or not. They are not 80% American. They are not 90% as American as you are. You don't get to judge how American they are.

Here is the unalterable fact that the right-wing of this country has to get used to: Muslim-Americans are 100% American. There are no degrees of how American you are. They have the same exact rights, privileges and responsibilities as any other American does. They don't have to answer to you.

I'm agnostic now, but I was born Muslim. My whole family is Muslim. They're all Americans. Not one of them is one percent less of an American than any other race or religion in this country. My family became American by becoming naturalized. If anything, that shows that we are even more loyal to this country. Our citizenship is not an accident of birth, we chose America.

If someone challenges how American I am based on my race, ethnicity or religion (or lack thereof), them's fightin' words. These colors don't run. There is no one in the country more American than I am.

And at least I understand the whole point of the country. We are all created equal. We all have the same rights. We do not judge people based on their race or religion. That is part and parcel of what America is all about. And if you don't understand that, I question how American you are.

. . . How irrelevant is Sarah Palin and how far has she fallen. Well, apparently taking over for Glenn Beck on "conspiracies from thin air" front, she is now claiming an anti-Christian conspiracy in the redesign of U.S. coins. Of course, Sarah points to the nefarious Barack Obama for it. It's so whacked out that Fox News, of all people, took up the fact checking on this one. Brett Baier did the fact-checking on who called the shots on this unholy redesign. It was. . .drumroll. . .George W. Bush. . . .go back to defending Carrie Prejean's tits and homemade sex tape Sarah.

. . . . . Some other round-ups from the end of the day:

Yglesias:

Make it electric:

— Giant piles of garbage are floating around in the oceans.

— Anti-tax movement ponders defeat in Washington and Maine.

— The future of real estate is in walkable urbanism.

— Stupak Amendment is potentially much more far-reaching than its proponents claim.

— Obama says that “instead of claiming God for our side, we remember Lincoln’s words, and always pray to be on the side of God.”

— Snoop Dogg supports entrepreneurship; I’ve got my mind on my money and money on my mind.

— Hezbollah foreign relations chief endorses Oprah.

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, no one gets to dictate the terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't a dress rehearsal, it's the real thing, right here, right now. Make it count.

The Desolation Angel

Does this thing have a reset button?

Tuesday November 10, 2009

. . . . .Alright, where's the reset button on this thing?

. . . .Seriously, between what was absolutely a perfect storm of (a) having to suddenly move from the Twilight Zone house that was a combination of Jurassic Park and the back alley at a Renaissance Faire (b) a completely blown back (c) a wonderful bout of bronchitis (coughing from which blew the back, and wound up with me spending at least 4 nights getting only 2 to 3 hours of sleep at a time from the coughing and culminated in a great Sunday morning spent at urgent care) along with (d) various and sundry of other of life's little dramas and (e) some serious time spent chugging away at a couple more chapters in the book finally winding up in (f) having to head back out to work (yes, there is a hurricane coming in) and (g) refusing to believe that at the very least, the kitchen, living room and bathroom in the new place had to be together since (h) I won't be back until Thanksgiving weekend and will have to turn right back around and do another long stretch at work; this, my passion got put aside for a few days.

. . . .Not to worry, we'll be back on it tomorrow and hammering away at a few topics, which will include;

. . . .First and foremost, that damn health care bill. If the bill that Baucus is working on in the Senate is a feral pig turd; this one that the House passed on Saturday night is a true piece of elephant shit. For a variety of reasons -
- Why was the vote taken on a Saturday night? I'll resurrect a piece from about 60 days ago where I explained why these particular bills are specifically slotted for a Saturday night.
- How the bill is funded - here's a clue, Medicare cuts. Got news, I've paid into Medicare my entire working life, I'll be eligible for it about the time this piece of crap takes effect in 2014, and I don't want it.
- Mandated coverage, it's either get coverage or pay a fine, a steep one.
- How the bill legislatively outlaws abortion. As I've said before, as a columnist, I don't have a position on it. The United States Supreme Court said it's legal, it's legal. The new health care bill from the House legislatively outlaws it.
- How the sponsor of that particular amendment, Bart Stupak, outed himself with that move as a stooge for "The Family", the C Street mafia that is trying to outmuscle Goldman and JP Morgan as the prime mover and shaker of behind the scenes government puppet masters.

. . . .The Fort Hood shootings, and how your "news" media, the infotainment channels; Fox, CNN, MSNBC, all of them, completely blew it.

. . . The CEO of Goldman-Sachs says that they're doing God's work, and performing a lot of social good with their particular well-chronicled shenanigans.

. . .And the beat goes on and on and on. Back in the groove tomorrow evening.

. . .Till then

Kip

05 November 2009

Oh gosh, lookee there. . . .

Thursday November 5, 2009

. . . . ."I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies" Thomas Jefferson

. . . .Before we get into the hot and pertinent topics of the day, first up, the best program on television, Sons of Anarchy, was on with this week's episode on Tuesday night and delivered hot and strong. Consistently, week after week, Kurt Sutter and the cast deliver the best program since Deadwood. If you don't watch it, you're missing a reason to set 1 hour aside a week for yourself. For those of you who do watch (a) Bobby has figured everything out (b) Tig is nervous, and rightfully so, that he's being replaced (c) Chips' brother, Jimmy O, on the scene next week will change everything (d) Darby lived, and that's not good news for Zoebel (e) the pin is absolutely pulled on the two human fragmentation grenades that go by the names of Jax and Hale and finally (f) Gemma will have to tell them all, the final scene in the church was positively moving. The overarching theme this season is about family, and how we have to make our family where it is and with those we've been gifted to have around us, and accept them as they are, and ourselves as we are.

. . . . .As always, what I care about most and first is the group of bastards that are really running the country, and who have screwed it all up, and remain it's biggest threat, and no Righties, it's not Barack Obama and the Left, and no, Progressives, it's not the GOP. Both parties are actually one and the same, and neither side has it right anyhow, as Tuesday's elections and the incredibly inane, banal and completely whacked-out wrong coverage proved, but more on that later on in the post.

. . . . .I can't go too much longer without mentioning this one, JP Morgan Chase, David Rockefeller's baby and Goldman's partner in crime is busy bankrupting the country as well. As this report from the AP shows, JP Morgan went under the table to cut deals in Alabama, and as a result bankrupted Jefferson County:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has agreed to pay $75 million in fines and forfeit $647 million in fees to settle federal regulators' charges that it made unlawful payments to friends of public officials to win municipal bond business in Jefferson County, Ala.
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday announced the settlement with JPMorgan.

The SEC had alleged that JPMorgan and former managing directors Charles LeCroy and Douglas MacFaddin made about $8.2 million in undisclosed payments in 2002 and 2003 to close friends of several Jefferson County commissioners. The money went to local brokerage firms whose principals or employees were friends of the county officials, the SEC said. Starting in July 2002, LeCroy and MacFaddin solicited the county for a $1.4 billion sewer bond deal.

Swayed by the payments, the county commissioners voted to select JPMorgan's securities division as managing underwriter of the bond offerings and its affiliated bank as swap provider for the transactions, the SEC said. The $5 billion in municipal bond business and interest-rate swap agreements awarded to JPMorgan was the largest such deal in its securities division's history, according to the SEC.

JPMorgan failed to disclose any of the unlawful payments or conflicts of interest in the bond offering documents, but passed on the cost of the payments by charging the county higher interest rates on the swap transactions, the SEC said.

"The transactions were complex but the scheme was simple," SEC Enforcement Director Robert Khuzami said in a statement. "Senior JPMorgan bankers made unlawful payments to win business and earn fees."

Under terms of the settlement, the Wall Street bank did not admit or deny the SEC allegations in agreeing to pay a $25 million civil fine and make a $50 million payment to the county, and to forfeit $647 million in termination fees it claims the county owes on the canceled interest-rate swap contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

JPMorgan also was censured and agreed to refrain from future violations of the securities laws.
Regulators have issued warnings for years over so-called "pay-to-play" relationships between investment firms and government officials in the $2.7 trillion municipal bond market, tapped by state and local governments around the country to finance schools, roads, hospitals and public works projects. The Jefferson County scandal has roiled Alabama's most populous county and last week brought the federal bribery conviction and ouster of Birmingham's mayor.

The move lowers Jefferson County's bond debt to about $3.2 billion from $3.9 billion, but officials had no immediate comment on whether that was enough to help the county avoid filing what would be the largest municipal bankruptcy ever.

. . . .Entire piece here.

. . . .Dylan Ratigan, with some solutions for what we can do, right now, to not necessarily fix anything, but at least begin to get some idea about, and transparency around just how bad it all really is right now:

1. Inject transparency, primarily to bring almost $600 trillion of crooked insurance scams to the forefront. Force almost all swaps onto exchanges, not just the 20% as current proposed reform does.

Secretary Geithner, Chairman Frank and Chairman Dodd are protecting the last of the Wall Street secret money-making schemes. They don't want to force transparency on this market because it would disclose the fraud this massive bank scheme is -- a taxpayer subsidized secret insurance market which sells cheap insurance to hedge funds, power and food and energy companies, and makes for huge profits at banks and insurance companies. Insurance and idle speculation in secret is a brilliant way for banks and other financial services companies to make money (who doesn't want to collect insurance premiums every month for something you'll never have to pay for?!) And a great way to make oil, food and electricity company CEOs richer as they pay less for their insurance. One problem -- they are all surfing on the taxpayers back to the tune of $24 trillion at risk last I checked -- and the U.S. government is the one letting them do it. Still. Now bigger than ever.

2. Demand capital to back Wall Street's gambling. As Tyler Durden at Zerohedge.com said about this clip from the show, do this and it is a guarantee that very few firms will have Goldman's trading pattern each and every quarter.

In Vegas, you need to have actual money to gamble. Your own money. It's crazy, but true. Even today, in many cases more than ever, U.S. banks use America's FDIC insured safe deposits to fund their own mad bonus-seeking speculation. Once the banks blow through that -- they borrow from the biggest money printing house in the world, the U.S. Federal Reserve to do the same thing. This is truly insane. The banks and their traders keep the upside. You, the taxpayer, keep the downside. No one else in the world can pay themselves billions to take infinite risk with little or no money down, except a big bank CEO. And we thought they were good at their jobs making all that money, when all they did was rig the game using our government to do it.

3. Enact a tax-code to encourage long-term investment and discourage short-term profit. Fortunes should not be made in minutes but over years through the creation of value to society.

As long as the easiest way for a man or woman to make money is to spend their day clicking for dollars, why would they bother doing all the work of investing in the long-term economic development of private business in America? Tax code in general should encourage investment, jobs, and innovation in America and discourage idle speculation as the easiest way for a college kid to get rich. There are sensible ways to use tax policy to encourage this that do not hamper liquidity.

4. Break up the Too Big To Fail banking institutions. Start with Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Right Now.

How do you expect any other business to compete with the chosen few who are guaranteed profits? The more risk they take, the more they make. Why do you think they invented a fake $600 Trillion secret derivative market in the first place? Bigger bonuses baby. All upside. No downside. Thank you Uncle Sam. Thank you Secretary Geithner.

. . . . .If you're not at least catching on to the fact that these financial institutions, the select few, namely two of them; Goldman-Sachs and JP Morgan Chase are the biggest long-term threats to this country and it's middle class, and long term real prosperity, I don't know what else to tell you.

. . . .Yet another one from Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, on how Wall Street is stealing any wealth in this country

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — "like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets," according to one financial analyst.

But what's even crazier is that the bet paid.

At the close of business that afternoon, Bear Stearns was trading at $62.97. At that point, whoever made the gamble owned the right to sell huge bundles of Bear stock, at $30 and $25, on or before March 20th. In order for the bet to pay, Bear would have to fall harder and faster than any Wall Street brokerage in history.

The very next day, March 12th, Bear went into free fall. By the end of the week, the firm had lost virtually all of its cash and was clinging to promises of state aid; by the weekend, it was being knocked to its knees by the Fed and the Treasury, and forced at the barrel of a shotgun to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase (which had been given $29 billion in public money to marry its hunchbacked new bride) at the humiliating price of … $2 a share. Whoever bought those options on March 11th woke up on the morning of March 17th having made 159 times his money, or roughly $270 million. This trader was either the luckiest guy in the world, the smartest son of a bitch ever or…
. . . . .
The counterfeit nature of our economy is troubling enough, given that financial power is concentrated in the hands of a few key players — "300 white guys in Manhattan," as a former high-placed executive puts it. But over the course of the past year, that group of insiders has also proved itself brilliantly capable of enlisting the power of the state to help along the process of concentrating economic might — making it less and less likely that the financial markets will ever be policed, since the state is increasingly the captive of these interests.

The new president for whom we all had such high hopes went and hired Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive who accepted a $2.2 million bonus after he joined the White House, to serve on his economic transition team — at the same time the government was giving Citigroup a massive bailout. Then, after promising to curb the influence of lobbyists, Obama hired a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as chief of staff at the Treasury. He hired another Goldmanite, Gary Gensler, to police the commodities markets. He handed control of the Treasury and Federal Reserve over to Geithner and Bernanke, a pair of stooges who spent their whole careers being bellhops for New York bankers. And on the first anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, when he finally came to Wall Street to promote "serious financial reform," his plan proved to be so completely absent of balls that the share prices of the major banks soared at the news.

The nation's largest financial players are able to write the rules for own their businesses and brazenly steal billions under the noses of regulators, and nothing is done about it. A thing so fundamental to civilized society as the integrity of a stock, or a mortgage note, or even a U.S. Treasury bond, can no longer be protected, not even in a crisis, and a crime as vulgar and conspicuous as counterfeiting can take place on a systematic level for years without being stopped, even after it begins to affect the modern-day equivalents of the Rockefellers and the Carnegies. What 10 years ago was a cheap stock-fraud scheme for second-rate grifters in Brooklyn has become a major profit center for Wall Street. Our burglar class now rules the national economy. And no one is trying to stop them.

. . . .Entire piece here.

. . . .How deep does this shit go?
- From the Wall Street Journal -

One of Russia's most powerful tycoons -- barred entry to the U.S. for years due to U.S. government concerns about possible ties to organized crime -- visited the country twice this year under secret arrangements made by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska met with FBI agents in August and earlier this month as part of a continuing criminal probe, according to two administration officials. The focus of that probe couldn't be learned.

Mr. Deripaska used the opportunity of his recent U.S. visits to meet with top executives of U.S. investment banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The aluminum giant he controls, UC Rusal, is preparing for an initial public offering, a vital part of Mr. Deripaska's efforts to save his debt-burdened business.

. . . .That's how deep this shit goes. And you spend all your time worrying that somehow the guy in the White House, who is the ultimate capitalist, the man who received the largest campaign contribution in the history of U.S. politics from Goldman-Sachs is a "socialist". . . . sometimes I am completely astounded as to how stupid people can be.

. . . .Now, on Tuesday's elections and the incredibly mundane, banal, inane amount of analysis, punditry and airtime spent on them. It's not nearly as complex as anyone wants to make it, it's not nearly the signal or the stirring of the tea leaves that anyone wants it to be, and it sure as hell better not be a "portent" to any politician for next year.

. . . .Unfortunately, it will be, and here's how it will play out. Democrats are, for the most part, spineless pussies, who, most likely have spent all day today wetting their finger and putting it up to see which way the wind is blowing, so they know which way they should face. Republicans automatically assume that they are right, have always been right and cannot possibly be wrong, since by genetic heritage and birthright, they're born to rule and sure as hell wish that we could get back to that two class system in the country so they can have servants again, and will charge off half-cocked, headlong, continuing to lead their party over the edge, into the maw of destruction that it's now headed into.

. . . It played out very simply. The vast majority of voters in this country, in the space of less than 2 years, have dropped their party identification, since neither party is worth hyena crap anymore, and are no registered independents. In an economy this bad, with more and more people waking up to the fact that "their" politician, regardless of party, is a bought and paid for dancing monkey for their campaign contributors and lobbyists, are getting into the habit of voting out the incumbent. In the cases of the governors of Virginia and New Jersey, it was simple, in both cases, it was a case of the people electing the guy they disliked less. In Upstate New York 23, where the Republican Party went on it's ideological purge and ate it's own young, the Conservative teabagger from out-of-district who was so breathlessly endorsed by the Republican Party's de facto leader Rush Limbaugh and his floozy Sarah, got trounced by a Democrat. Now think on that and let it sink in. A district that hadn't elected a Democrat since 1852, when faced with a choice between a teabagger and a Dem, elected a Dem.

. . .That's the portent that's being missed, and it's being missed big. Instead of taking a step back to realize just how badly the extremists have marginalized their party, have made it now an ideology, a dogma, a religion; the teabaggers, who live backwards anyhow, are rushing to challenge all over as of today, in what apparently is an effort to drive that party's bus right off the cliff.

. . . And if the remaining members of the party of Lincoln, Eisenhower and Goldwater allow it and want it to go that way, I say good riddance.

. . . .Why do I hate teabaggers, wingnuts and extremists? These very same people criticized, and called un-American, and unpatriotic anyone who criticized George W. Bush while he was in office and while troops were in harm's way during two wars, the same two wars that continue today.

"Today, thousands will pour into Washington to tell Nancy Pelosi and the Congress to send Obama to a death panel..." —Wingnut stereotype Erick Erickson

Sending the president to a death panel, eh? So much for not undermining the commander in chief while the troops are in harm's way.

. . . .Let me be the first to say it, Erick Erickson isn't a patriot, I doubt he's an American, and he is a traitor, sowing treason and sedition. Ditto that for Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Anoka, Minnesota.

. . . At least one member of that party grew a set on Wednesday. RNC chairman Michael Steele:
Rogue warfare, perhaps? RNC Chairman Michael Steele issued a stern rebuke to conservatives like Sarah Palin and Tim Pawlenty, who immersed themselves in Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman’s losing House campaign. “If you don't live in the district, you don't vote there, your opinion doesn't matter very much,” Steele said. "It serves as an important lesson on how we manage an opportunity to win a seat. And how not to mismanage by putting in a botched process.” Steele went on, “I don't see a victory in losing seats.
- Rush will probably call him out on the radio on Thursday, and Steele will have to tuck his tail between his legs, take his punishment and cave in to the Repubs real leader.

. . . .Damn those pesky homemade sex tapes! The Right wing bimbo-of-the-moment from a few months ago, Carrie Prejean, who was being sued the Miss Universe California pageant for the cost of her plastic surgery (it was either that or they wanted their tits back) had countersued the pageant. Seems they let her know they had a copy of a tape that she'd made a while back that had found it's way onto the Internet, yes, those amateur sites. She dropped her suit rather quickly.

. . .Absolutely great article by Anna Quindlen in Newsweek that I highly recommend for anyone, no matter your political stripe or leaning.

From time to time the American people participate in a mass delusion about how their government works. Such a delusion took place exactly a year ago, when a 47-year-old African-American who had once been accorded little chance of prevailing was elected president of the United States.
History will judge Barack Obama over the long haul. But we've learned something in the short term that is simple, obvious, and has less to do with him than with the Founding Fathers. This is a country that often has transformational ambitions but is saddled with an incremental system, a nation built on revolution, then engineered so the revolutionary can rarely take hold.

Checks and balances: that's how we learn about it in social-studies class, and in theory it is meant to guard against a despotic executive, a wild-eyed legislature, an overweening judiciary. And it's also meant to safeguard the rights of the individual; as James Madison, president and father of the Constitution, once said, "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." But what our system has meant during the poisonous partisan civil war that has paralyzed Washington in recent years is that very little of the big stuff gets done. It simply can't.
That's really how our government works, by inches. In our long history it seems that the decision to wage war is the most sweeping act of the executive and legislative branches, although the British would likely argue that Franklin Roosevelt even brought an incremental approach to that in the run-up to World War II. In modern times, most true transformation has come through the judiciary: Brown, Roe, Miranda. Perhaps that is because consensus on the court is manageable, with only five of nine required, or because justices have life tenure, and need not spend their days looking to the next election, the focus group, the polls. Although we view the past through a lens of misty historical romanticism, there's no question that the calculus of elected office at the moment is startlingly cynical. Henry Paulson, the last Treasury secretary in the last Bush administration, told Todd Purdum of Vanity Fair that he was most shocked by the perfidy of official Washington, in which members of Congress would tell him privately that they supported policies that they would oppose, even vigorously trash, in public. "I didn't understand the system," Paulson concluded, the system in which men and women have their consciences excised in the course of government service. The small steps an incremental system guarantees become even smaller in the face of pitched partisan rancor, until eventually nothing moves at all.

. . . . .Entire piece here.

. . . .Now, very seriously, I recommend reading the entire piece, balanced, well-thought out and the very least a cool breath of rationality and sense, and an excellent treatise on how government really works.

. . .That said, I absolutely fell over myself laughing at the painful truths exposed in this one, which is a perfect storm of Bob Cesca and Matt Taibbi, melded together:

While the leftnutbaggers devour Barack Obama for not firing an organic utopia of free marijuana and health care out of his armpits on Day 1, they should be aware that the moron bullet the nation dodged in 2008 is waiting in the wings for a presidential run. Of course, any sane person would assume quitting her gubernatorial position to cash in on book deals would've doomed Sarah Palin's political career, but never underestimate the American propensity for dumb. Via Matt Taibbi:

Palin’s paranoid ramblings and self-pitying tantrums on the way out of office not only didn’t injure her chances for national office, they actually appeared to help, as polls taken in the week after her resignation showed that 71% of Republicans were now prepared to vote for her for president in 2012. Just as she had during the campaign last fall, Palin defied rational analysis by making a primal connection with the subterranean resentments of white middle America, which is apparently so pissed off now at the rest of the planet for not coddling its hurt feelings in the multicultural age that it is willing to embrace any politician who validates its insane sense of fucked-overness.

Granted, this is from an unpublished piece just after her resignation it still rings true among the xenophobic, crazier-by-the-minute GOP base. Also, Shannyn Moore points out that Sarah Palin is out there robocalling and waiting to take credit for any teabagger wins today like some sort of undying, lowest common denominator Terminator.

Could a divided Democratic Party and an increasing testicle-themed grip on the GOP be the perfect storm for a Palin presidency? It's hard to say until today's election results are in, but should Obama continue to be attacked for not being the Ultra-Progressive John Rambo he never promised to be, we might be looking at a "Battle of the Fringes" come 2012 which could easily digress into a coin-toss for the White House. That said, let me know how health care reform thrives under an administration who thinks the King James and a Tylenol should replace Medicare.

[Redmond's Note: This post is not meant as a tacit Obama love-fest - I've got my pet causes, too *cough*Geithner*cough*. It's more of a reminder that a ticking timebomb of winking jingoism is primed to detonate our asses back into the Dark Ages at a moment's notice. An FYI if you will.]

Adding... You could also file this post under "Why Voting for Kucinich in 2012 is a HORRIBLE Idea." Don't get me wrong, I agree with the guy on a majority of issues but realistically he's just not electable and I prefer casting votes that won't land the GOP back in the White House.

. . . . .And this last one, by Chez Pazienza, over at Deus ExMalcontent, snarky, smart-ass and dead-on, and why I fear the current incarnation of the Republican Party and the religious whackos and wingnuts that have taken it over:

One of the most pervasive themes in right-wing discourse throughout the years has been a fear of infestation -- the notion that non-whites, gays, immigrants, godless humanists, basically anyone deemed "not us" are replicating like the vermin they are and, if left unchecked, will eventually eviscerate the values of "traditional America" via their sheer unholy numbers. It's this amusingly irrational brand of paranoia that haunts the dreams of not only your average semi-literate, Keystone Light-drinking lummox, but equally scares the hell out of ostensibly educated folk who you'd think would know better.

People like Pat Boone.

Sure, Boone's little more than an irrelevant caricature -- admittedly the biggest WASP who's ever walked the face of the earth and Anita Bryant's only slightly more masculine counterpart in espousing the Gospel of Whitey -- but it's still tough to imagine him dabbling in eliminationist fantasies aimed at, of all places, the White House. And yet that's exactly what he's now doing. In a move that's even more painfully embarrassing than that ridiculous metal album he recorded back in the early 90s, Boone's penned a column for Newsmax in which he claims that the home of the president of the United States needs to be tented and fumigated to kill off the "social and political voracious varmints" who've overrun it.

Boone writes, "Experts come in, actually envelope the whole dwelling in a giant tent -- and send a very powerful fumigant, lethal to the varmints and unwelcome creatures, into every nook and cranny of the house. Done thoroughly, every last destructive insect or rodent is sent to varmint hell -- and in a day or two, the grand house is habitable again."

And no doubt Pat's willing to donate his own personal supply of Zyklon B gas to the proceedings. Either way, feel free to take a minute to stop laughing.

Yes, of course this is (no pun intended) the most rat-shit absurd thing you've ever heard, dreamed up by a guy who likely longs for the good old days when "coloreds" couldn't use the same bathroom as him, much less occupy the highest office in his beloved country. But this kind of horseshit is just the latest example of something I've mentioned a couple of times here before: the utter dehumanization of Barack Obama by his political adversaries.

Back in September, I wrote this:

"That's really what it's all about, though -- the fact that Barack Obama's political enemies don't actually accept him as president. They consider him an illegitimate -- his presidency some kind of sham, regardless of the overwhelming majority he won back in November of 2008. They've demonized and marginalized him -- called him a foreigner, a socialist, a threat to the American way of life, a cult leader intent on indoctrinating and enslaving our children through sheer force of personality. They bring guns to places he's speaking; they have so little respect for the man or the fact that he won the office he now holds that they intimate that they're willing to cause physical harm to him and his supporters."

And now, not surprisingly, they refer to him and his family as insects -- "unwelcome creatures" infesting the White House that require quick and absolute extermination so that the natural order of things can be restored.

Newsmax should be wary of printing this kind of crap right now, given that just a few weeks ago they rushed, uncharacteristically red-faced, to take down a post which seemed to advocate a military coup against the president of the United States. I'd have to assume its only Pat Boone's status as a walking punchline that's leading them to leave his own bit of eliminationist wishful thinking up on their site for the moment. Regardless of who says it, though, it's wrong to beat the drum this loudly against a sitting president, to show the office -- not simply the man and his family, but the office -- so little respect.

Not only is it wrong -- and stop me if you've heard this one before -- it's flat-out dangerous given the current political climate.

All the way back in August of last year -- long before the Tea Baggers, the Birthers, the death panel rumors, fears of the encroaching socialist menace, conspiracist lunacy about the indoctrination of our children, even the presidential election itself -- I wrote this in response to the rise in right-wing, eliminationist rhetoric and violence:

"It's an agenda which has, admittedly, been proclaimed and perpetuated -- whether in jest or not -- by people like Limbaugh, Coulter and Savage for some time. These three and others like them have honed their talk of zero-tolerance for the people across the aisle to a knife's edge. For years, they've blanketed the airwaves, bookshelves and internet with ultra-nationalist agitprop which asserts that those who don't think like them are not simply to be argued with and voted down, they must be utterly crushed underfoot by any means necessary -- even if it involves, as Coulter once said, taking a baseball bat to them -- because they are nothing less than the enemy of the United States of America. In the words, if not actually the minds, of these seemingly fascist demagogues, liberals are as dangerous and absolute a threat to our way of life as the terrorists they supposedly coddle.

...Whether they mean it to or not, the invective of clowns like Limbaugh does have an impact. Listen long enough to right-wing propaganda and your eyes eventually glaze over, your brain shuts down and you begin to subscribe completely to the alternate reality that it's constructed out of thin air: an America where your new non-white neighbors are terrorists, immigrants are stealing your job, homosexuals want to lure your children into a life of sodomy, and treasonous liberals are plotting against you and your god at every turn. Believe this paranoid fantasy completely and who knows what you'll be capable of doing to defend your way of life."

I have no doubt that Boone's piece is supposed to be a joke -- but it's one that, in context, isn't all that funny.

Which is surprising given that Pat Boone's entire existence is one of the funniest fucking things imaginable.

03 November 2009

One more time, by the numbers, let's get it. . . . .

Tuesday November 4, 2009

. . . . . .So, I got a lot of stuff to do today, dispensing with the normal pleasantries and diving right in. It's Tuesday, I'm moving again, and getting ready for a very long run out at work, and so we'll get all wonky and deep into numbers, but that's what's important, I don't have paid sponsors or advertisers to drive me into a 24 hour news cycle, and actual numbers and data drive the real world around. Keeping our eye on the ball, and keeping it focused where it needs to be, looking back one year exactly; and I think Bill Maher captures my mood and thoughts exactly.

Maher:

Yeah, I'm disappointed, too. I thought we were sweeping into power; I thought change meant Change. I believed all that talk about another First 100 Days, a la Roosevelt. Well, that didn't happen. The question is, is this as good as it gets from Obama, or is he pacing himself? He may have a four and eight-year plan and they included a first year of just gettin' to know you and not gonna rock the boat too much. Well, Mission Accomplished on that.

It's still to early to lose hope in a guy as smart and talented as Barack Obama. But I would counsel him to remember: If you're going undercover to infiltrate how Washington works, so you become one of them for a while, to gain their confidence, well, it can be just like all those movies where a cop goes deep, deep, DEEP undercover with drug people and -- fuck, he's a drug addict, too!

Logic tells me that really smart guys like Obama and Rahm Emanuel know better what they're doing than I do. They certainly know things I don't know. I think we have the same general goals and beliefs. And this is what they do for a living -- I wouldn't even try it. But I will never stop having this doubt: that maybe if they had really charged in there riding the forceful energy of the historic election, and acted like it was an emergency moment -- which it was -- they could have gotten some big victories right up front, and there really could have been an historic "first hundred days" for this administration and the country. Instead of what happened, which is the Obamas got a dog. It could have worked -- the country had given its endorsement to "...and now for something completely different." There might have been a way to knock the Republicans back on their heels right away, with the argument that "The American people demanded we make these changes, and you are unpatriotic to stand in their way."

We'll never know. Because that moment passed, and now it could follow the pattern of World War I and devolve into boring, static trench warfare where nothing really gamechanging happens while both sides slowly bleed to death.

That said, I do not forget that if the election had gone the other way, we'd right now have a barter economy and be at war with Honduras.

. . . . .A good friend of mine got caught by this very next thing, as did a lot of you, (c'mon admit it. You know you wanted it to be true!) as Cesca points out.

Super Stupid

Here's the rundown of the prominent wingnuts who seriously thought Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers visited the White House this year. Ed Morrissey actually wrote that they visited more often "than Petraeus and McChrystal combined."

It goes without saying that Drudge was smack in the middle of the kneejerk bonanza.

They're smart!

. . . . . .I'm not going to waste time reading tea leaves and scrying on two governor's elections in East Coast states and one congressional district election in upstate New York on the Canadian border, all in an off-year. Let's stay focused on a couple of things. Focus here, people, focus!!

. . . .Ezra Klein, with a good one:

Budget context

A good, well, tweet from Chris Hayes:

Anyone notice that the pres signed a $680 BILLION defense approp bill in the midst of our debates about $90b a yr for hc?

That $680 billion, incidentally, doesn't count the cost of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

You could say a lot about this juxtaposition, but among other things, it's a reminder that there's real rhetorical power in the time frame that gets chosen for a given policy. The stimulus, for instance, was explained as a two-year cost, so it was $800 billion, rather than $400 billion a year. Health-care reform is being sold as a 10-year cost, so it's $900 billion, rather than $90 billion a year. The defense appropriation is explained in terms of single-year cost, so it's $680 billion, as opposed to the $10 trillion or so that it would cost if you took into account expected growth.

There are reasons for all this. The stimulus was going to be spent over two years. Health-care reform is being balanced in the 10-year budget window. The defense bill is a single-year appropriation. Washington's professional wonk set knows all that. But most people just hear the numbers, and they don't necessarily know that the "trillion dollar health-care bill" the GOP keeps talking about will actually cost $90 billion a year, and it will cut the deficit. Standardizing all costs to an annual cost would do a lot to help people figure this out. And explaining things in terms of the federal budget -- how much is $90 billion as a percent of what we'll spend this year? How about $680 billion? -- would do a lot to help people put it all in context.

. . . .And, as long as we're getting all crazy with numbers and such, two of my favorite brains together in one post, Yglesias on Krugman:

Stimulus and the Future

Paul Krugman makes the important point that those who claim fiscal restraint amidst a depression is a favor to young people don’t know what they’re talking about:

Deficit hawks like to complain that today’s young people will end up having to pay higher taxes to service the debt we’re running up right now. But anyone who really cared about the prospects of young Americans would be pushing for much more job creation, since the burden of high unemployment falls disproportionately on young workers — and those who enter the work force in years of high unemployment suffer permanent career damage, never catching up with those who graduated in better times.

Even the claim that we’ll have to pay for stimulus spending now with higher taxes later is mostly wrong. Spending more on recovery will lead to a stronger economy, both now and in the future — and a stronger economy means more government revenue. Stimulus spending probably doesn’t pay for itself, but its true cost, even in a narrow fiscal sense, is only a fraction of the headline number.

The objective correlation of interests actually goes the other way around. A deflationary situation is good for retired people. They’re not impacted by the labor market situation, and flat-or-falling consumer prices make their revenue from Social Security or bonds go further. Young people, by contrast, would be much better off getting a job and paying taxes later than being unemployed out of school and suffering for it indefinitely.

. . . .And while we're doing numbers this morning, we'll go back to Ezra Klein, who tackles one of the fundamentals underlying the health care reform screaming matches, that of numbers, prices and costs:

An insurance industry CEO explains why American health care costs so much

On Friday, I sat down with Kaiser Permanente CEO George Halvorson to talk about health-care reform. The conversation was long and ranging and will take a while to transcribe. But before we really got into the weeds, Halvorson handed me an astonishing packet of charts. The material was put together by the International Federation of Health Plans, which is pretty much what it sounds like: an association of insurance plans in different countries. But it showed something I've never seen before, at least not at this level of detail: prices.

The packet's 36 pages are mostly graphs showing the average prices paid in different countries for different procedures, diagnostics and drugs. There is a thudding consistency to the pages: a series of crude bars, with the block representing the prices paid by American health-insurance plans looming over the others like a New York skyscraper that got lost in downtown Des Moines.

There is a simple explanation for why American health care costs so much more than health care in any other country: because we pay so much more for each unit of care. As Halvorson explained, and academics and consultancies have repeatedly confirmed, if you leave everything else the same -- the volume of procedures, the days we spend in the hospital, the number of surgeries we need -- but plug in the prices Canadians pay, our health-care spending falls by about 50 percent.

In other countries, governments set the rates that will be paid for different treatments and drugs, even when private insurers are doing the actual purchasing. In our country, the government doesn't set those rates for private insurers, which is why the prices paid by Medicare, as you'll see on some of these graphs, are much lower than those paid by private insurers. You'll also notice that the bit showing American prices is separated into blue and yellow: That shows the spread between the average price (the top of the blue) and the 90th percentile (the top of the yellow). Other countries don't have nearly that much variation, again because their pricing is standard.

The health-care reform debate has done a good job avoiding the subject of prices. The argument over the Medicare-attached public plan was, in a way that most people didn't understand, an argument about prices, but it quickly became an argument about a public option without a pricing dimension, and never really looked back. The administration has been very interested in the finding that some states are better at providing cost-effective care than other states, but not in the finding that some countries are better at purchasing care than other countries. "A health-care debate in this country that isn't aware of the price differential is not an informed debate," says Halvorson. By that measure, we have not had a very informed debate. But download this pack of charts (pdf), and you'll be a bit more informed.

. . . .Like I said waaayyy up above, I agree with Bill Maher, I'm disappointed in this President, but 30 years of watching Congress and the White House, and 5 years of writing about it, I should know better, I suppose. And I'm in full agreement with the good Mr. Maher on one thing else, as well, should the oppostion have won a year ago today; we'd all be eating kibbles and bits, with a higher unemployment rate, be at mandatory snake-handling classes every Tuesday and already have launched an all-out nuclear strike against everybody that isn't Uh-Murican, you betcha!

. . . .And given that thought, Andrew Sullivan provides the quote for the day, uttered by none other than Bush1 about that most deified (and lied about) father figure of the utter mess that we're in today:
“Reagan is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads and dummies are for him, and when he says that something is necessary, they trust him. But if some Democrat had proposed what Reagan did, with you, they might not have trusted him,” - George H W. Bush, according to Mikhail Gorbachev.

. . . .And it's important to capture that thought, the off-the-cuff remark, that Bush1 made, because it's truth and reality. Reagan is deified, and the upstate New York events this weekend, as a Republican candidate was purged because she wasn't ideologically "pure" enough, point to the very fact that dogma, myth and conservatism as religion have all taken their corrosive place in the corruption of political thought that the Republican party has become. Sullivan :

Conservatism As Doctrine

It's hard to find a more sublime version of it than Laura Ingraham's email:

Conservatism is the most influential political philosophy of the past 100 years because it's built upon essential truths.

The past 100 years? I don't know any Hooverites who think the last century was a triumph for small government and individual liberty. Look at the size of government since 1909. Look at the level of taxation. Look at the welfare state. Look at racial civil rights. Look at the role of women. The West is immeasurably more statist than it was a hundred years ago, and even the most dramatic counter-revolutionaries, such as Reagan and Thatcher, did very little to alter the contours of the state. The Bush Republicans implemented the biggest expansion of government power, debt and spending since LBJ.

But, look, Ingraham isn't really thinking here. This is a statement of doctrine, not politics, and all religions require a certain mythology (the idea that a conservative movement that began in the late 1950s extends backward to the earliest part of the century is truly religious thinking). So one can forgive the thoughtless hyperbole.

What worries me is the slow transformation of what was a vital pragmatic adjustment to liberalism's policy failures in the 1980s into a kind of eternal dogma. But tax cuts are not always the solution to every emergent problem; global warfare may not be the best way to exercize American power in the multi-polar world we now live in; social change - a multi-racial society where women and gays seek and deserve full equality - should be imaginatively shaped by the right, not outright rejected on religious or nostalgic grounds.

. . . .And John Batchelor, over at The Daily Beast with his take on the killing field that upstate New York 23 has bizarrely become as the GOP eats it's own young:

The news arrived this morning like the report of a mugging that the Republican Party choice for the 23rd, the sturdy, dull, dutiful Dede Scozzafava, was quitting the campaign for Congress and releasing her supporters without a recommendation. Scozzafava’s late decision, with less than 66 hours until the polls open, hints at backstairs deals, whispered pay-offs, promises from Albany, all of which is likely untrue and romantic rubbish.

Scozzafava leaves the race and returns to her New York Assembly seat as a Republican. Not a Club for Growth libertarian "Too Big to Fail!" Republican; not a Tea Party “Mad as Hell!” Republican; not a Fox News or talk radio "We report!" Republican. Just a Republican like me and a few others who pay mind to the fact that the party comes from a philosophy that is tolerant, obedient, respectful, curious, generous, kind, liberty-loving, and not much in fashion just now.

The most melodramatic turn in the fairy tale of “conservative financial expert” Doug Hoffman rising up on the shoulders of Republican celebrities such as Fred Thompson, Steve Forbes, and Dick Armey to contest the special election in the 23rd New York Congressional district against the regular Republican incumbent is that this is not a simple story about winning on Tuesday. No, this is a story about the sneaky takeover of the shabby GOP remnant by the most arrogant creatures in American politics, the Club for Growth and their fair-weather companions, the hungry Republican zombies.

All together, these potentates constitute a right-wing nihilism made up of charming or churlish older males who come down from their gated neighborhoods in Olympus now and again to preach their giddy “I’ve got mine!” libertarian cant to the meek of the Earth and threaten mayhem against the Republican Party if it does not obey a Busby Berkeley kick-line of billionaire cranks.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who is pre-selling her book, and Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who is selling his obscure presidential candidacy, leaped late into the parade for Hoffman with no interest whatsoever in the candidate or the cause. Palin and Pawlenty look to be needy creatures controlled by their appetites for headlines and hooey and seem out of their depth here, like puppies on the Adirondack Northway. Former New York Governor George Pataki’s late-in-the-day endorsement of Hoffman against his own predilection for Scozzafava (reportedly she was Pataki’s posse’s pick to start with, a hard-slogging minority assemblywoman) is not explicable except that, in the end, most successful politicians learn to walk upright without a spine.

The New York 23rd remains a cautionary tale about the Club for Growth and its snooty deviousness during the last days of the GOP. The national polls show a Republican Party withered to just 20 percent of respondents, and now there is a possibility of single digits before someone turns off the creepy movie, I, Zombie. The talk radio choir and their Fox News pantomimes have seized on the Hoffman boom as a demonstration of the potential strength of the Tea Party conservatives. Rush Limbaugh has called Dede Scozzafava a “pretender” and an “extreme liberal Republican” who “might as well be a Democrat.” Limbaugh has twisted himself and logic into explaining how Hoffman is not a third-party candidate in order to fend off the chilling possibility that the Republican Taliban is slouching to a new low and into a third-party cave.

The enthusiasms of the New York 23rd will swiftly fade as the Republican right-wing rallies for next year’s Apocalypse-lite mid-term elections, though the footnote may read that this special election was a marker when the party of Ike, Nixon, Ford, and the Bushes began its autumnal stroll into the oblivion of a bootless cult.

. . . .And while we're at the business of myths and debunking them with good solid data this morning. I've heard ad nauseum from people that the housing bubble burst, not because a bunch of idiots went out and bought homes they couldn't afford with mortgages larger than their monthly income, but instead the myth, that perpetual American desire for good, solid, middle class white people not be at fault for anything, the myth that somehow HUD, Fannie Mae, ACORN, well they pushed loans through to certain people based on the CRA. Krugman puts a pin in that one, and echoes something I've been saying all year long. You think 09 was bad? Wait until '10 when the commercial mortgages all crash baby.

CRE and the CRA

Zombies, zombies, everywhere. One of the enduring myths of the financial crisis has been the claim that it was the result of (a) Fannie and Freddie (b) the Community Reinvestment Act, which forced poor, helpless bankers to make loans to you-know-who. It’s a myth that won’t go away — I get asked about it almost every time I give a public lecture — even though it has been extensively debunked. (See, e.g., here.)

But reading this scary piece about commercial real estate, I realized that CRE offers yet another debunking. After all, there was no federal act driving banks to lend money for office parks and shopping malls; Fannie and Freddie weren’t in the CRE loan business; yet 55 percent — 55 percent! — of commercial mortgages that will come due before 2014 are underwater.

The lenders didn’t need government urging to dive deep into a property bubble, and drown.

. . . .And Krugman, one more time, on just how close we came:

The story so far, in one picture

World industrial production in the Great Depression and now:

Data for the Depression courtesy of Eichengreen and O’Rourke. Data for the Great Recession (starting April 2008) from Netherlands Bureau for Cyclical Economic Analysis.

Basically, we started out with a year that matched the Great Depression, but have since pulled back a bit from the edge of the abyss.

02 November 2009

On the whole, I'd much rather be in Louisiana

Monday November 3, 2009

. . . . "For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor-other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

The brave and clear platform adopted by this Convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that Government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.

But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them….

We are poor indeed if this Nation cannot afford to lift from every recess of American life the dread fear of the unemployed that they are not needed in the world. We cannot afford to accumulate a deficit in the books of human fortitude….

Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference…."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt June 1936

. . . .The playlist has changed up quite a bit, and my own dulcet tones are back on the airwaves after a week of silence observed for my Mother.

. . . .I was reading over at Kurt Sutter's blog, SutterInk, and he promised, and tweeted, that Gemma will have tell all to Clay and Jax by Week 10, which is next week, so the big set-up for that should be this week on SoA.

. . . .Was reading today, that one of the finest shows ever put on television, The Wire, now has a class at Harvard based on it. Cool beans, it was, and remains, one of the best examples yet of being able to capture metathemes of modern urban life in America contained within the capsules and constraints of a character driven weekly drama. Well, that and the fact that Jimmy McNulty remains one of my fictional soul mates and doppelgangers.

. . . . .Welcome back to the start of another week, and the Halloween chills just haven't stopping coming at you. Yes, finance, money and the banks remain the top priority. We are getting screwed, and everyone wants to talk about everything else, and there is a prime suspect, out of the line-up of the usuals, Timothy Geithner, our illustrious Goldman alum, and protege at Goldman of Hank Paulson, who, (shock, awe and surprise) was Geithner's predecessor as Treasury Sec.

. . . .As promised from yesterday, a continuation of the wheelings and dealings of the most predatory, blood-sucking parasites in this galaxy, Goldman-Sachs, and how they're continuing to eviscerate middle-class America, from McClatchy:

Joining other Wall Street firms that bought millions of subprime mortgages, Goldman companies have gone to courts from California to Florida seeking approval to foreclose on the homes of middle- and lower-income Americans who couldn't keep up with their loans' soaring monthly payments.

Some borrowers were speculators or homebuyers who exaggerated their incomes on loan applications, thinking they'd always have an escape hatch because housing prices would keep rising. Others, however, were victims of fast-talking mortgage brokers who didn't explain that the loans' interest rates could rise to as high as 15 percent. Many borrowers who defaulted on their mortgages may never qualify for a home loan again.

In court encounters, Goldman and other Wall Street firms have faced the impact of their own wheeling and dealing. Many of the families being put on the street never would've gotten their big mortgages if investment banks hadn't provided a seemingly insatiable secondary market for millions of loans to marginally qualified buyers.

Subprime borrowers were supposed to provide a safe income stream for investors who bought mostly high-grade, triple-A-rated bonds from Goldman and bigger subprime players, such as now-defunct Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch.

Now, millions of these borrowers have defaulted on mortgage payments, contributing to a historic slump in home prices and depressing the bonds' value. Half the homes in some California neighborhoods have been subject to foreclosures or short sales, in which a home is sold for less than the mortgage balance, and either the seller or the lender takes a loss.

. . . . .Entire story here.

. . . . On the man who is suspect Number 1 behind the complete lack of transparency on Wall Street, Dylan Ratigan:

A year ago it was revealed to the American people that our banking system was a legalized Ponzi scheme in which bank and insurance CEOs paid themselves billions of dollars in personal compensation to lend and insure assets with money they didn't have to customers who couldn't pay back the loans.

In those dark days between the fall of Lehman Brothers and before the presidential election, we were often carried through that time by the small glimmer of hope in that at least we would soon have a new leader who would hopefully fix this mess and punish those responsible.

Yet in the past 9 months, not only has the administration not fixed anything, they have made things much worse for anyone who isn't a Wall Street banker. Therefore, we are past the point where anyone in power still gets the benefit of the doubt and the process of taking back our country for all citizens must begin now.

This is why I think we must ask if U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is still the right person for the job. It has become clear recently that back in his previous role as New York Federal Reserve Governor, he unnecessarily gave billions of dollars of US tax money to banks and insurance companies with few strings attached. And it is now becoming clear that his lack of meaningful action is helping many of these same banks steal more by legalizing their most economically dangerous, socially destructive and self-enriching practices.

Yesterday on NBC's Meet the Press, Secretary Geithner again endorsed House bank reform legislation that would allow, by my calculations, as much as 80%, or $475 trillion, of the bank's $600 trillion in crooked insurance schemes to still be held in secret. It was and is the secret risks held in this very market that led to our collapse in the first place and continue to pose massive future risk to the global economy.

He also continued to employ the bankers' favorite, and most ludicrous, lie : that the taxpayer must somehow continue to pay executives at companies like AIG ungodly sums of money under the threat that if we don't, somehow the taxpayer will never make their money back. Well let me tell you something, the taxpayer and our nation, will never get back the lost wealth taken under these false circumstances and this colossal breach of fiduciary duty. The idea that we must somehow perpetuate this system with our tax money and the future wealth of our children goes against the very American ideal of failure, adaptation and innovation, not to mention of our democracy.

Also last week, the Treasury Secretary endorsed a piece of legislation that instead of stopping a select few companies from profiting from the implicit taxpayer-guarantee of Too Big Too Fail seeks to officially condone it. If the most prized skill in our society economically is a competition to see who can lend and insure the most money without consequences, you have doomed our nation's people to lose everything in the world's largest ever betting parlor; and that is precisely the system this Treasury Secretary -- Tim Geithner -- is seeking to legalize in America today.

However, the smoking gun for Secretary Geithner comes from a recent Bloomberg FOIA disclosure regarding events from last November. It was then that New York Federal Reserve Governor Tim Geithner decided to deliver 100 cents on the dollar, in secret no less, to pay off the counter parties to the world's largest (and still un-investigated) insurance fraud -- AIG. This full payoff with taxpayer dollars was carried out by Geithner after AIG's bank customers, such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale, had already previously agreed to taking as little as 40 cents on the dollar. Even after the GM autoworkers, bondholders and vendors all received a government-enforced haircut on their contracts, he still had the audacity to claim the "sanctity of contracts" in the dealings with these companies like AIG.

None of us were in the rooms when these decisions were made, so I don't pretend to know if Mr. Geithner was the one lone, sane voice of reason fighting against mysterious forces or the primary proponent. However, I fail to see the reasoning for why we continue to rely on those who were in the room when these horrendous decisions took place to be the same people that we choose to deal with their aftermath. There are just certain situations that are not suited for continuity. The best analogy I can think of is that it would be like asking Al Cowlings to spearhead the Nicole Brown Simpson murder investigation under the premise that he knows the layout and the "players" best.

The fact is that there are people who understand all of the intricacies of finance and policy as well as Secretary Geithner, but whose allegiances to the taxpayer are much clearer. People like Elizabeth Warren, Neil Barofsky, Rob Johnson, and Senator Maria Cantwell just to name a few.

To stop the theft from continuing, it requires that the most basic rules of capitalism be applied to our banks and that our future national wealth be safeguarded by the US Government. The current custodian of America's wealth, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is not doing a good job of either. The time for corrective action is now.

. . . .From over at the Daily Beast, Nomi Prins on just how badly he's doing his job, and the particulars behind how these banks are screwing you and I on a daily basis:

Too big to fail means big enough to screw taxpayers twice.

That’s my conclusion after a few weeks of combing through FDIC databases, trying to calculate the price to consumers following the decade of bank consolidation—following the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act—that reached a government-sponsored peak during last fall’s economic crisis. As banks keep merging, so does their share of our deposits. In 1998, the five largest U.S. commercial banks held 19 percent of total domestic deposits. In 2004, they held 27 percent. And since the Federal Reserve brokered marriages of the largest banks last fall, it is now 40 percent.
n layman’s terms, this means that the biggest banks enjoy increasingly captive power over their customers—the opposite of competition in the so-called free markets. That dominance provides the inner-circle banks every incentive to do everything they can to profit from their newly acquired customers (and old standby ones). After all, our deposits, plus fees and charges, represent the highest quality of real money for them to work with. That’s aside from the backing we’ve involuntarily provided through various federal sustenance programs.
Captive customers are very lucrative. Nearly three-quarters of banks’ total service charges of $34.3 billion in 2008 came from overdraft or NSF (not sufficient funds) fees.

That’s our money. It’s not like banks don’t require payment for their services in order to sustain them, but the problem with the biggest banks is that they extort disproportionate sums from customers relative to the smaller banks, in almost every way.

In general, not only do big banks charge higher service fees for the luxury of taking your checking deposits and using them as capital for other ventures, but the interest they provide on these, and savings accounts, are comparatively abysmal relative to smaller banks. Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and J.P. Morgan Chase don’t even make the top 25 in highest savings interest rates provided.

Yet the rates bigger banks charge to lend money are higher than smaller ones. Big banks like Wells Fargo charge an average annual rate of 14.2 percent for its credit cards, Citibank (the consumer-banking arm of Citigroup) charges an average of 15.99 percent, whereas smaller banks like First Command Bank or CNB Bank charge just 4.5 and 5.25 percent, respectively.
Media and congressional noise about these egregious practices prompted Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) to unveil the Fairness and Accountability in Receiving Overdraft Coverage Act, which would force banks to rethink them. Among other suggestions, Dodd’s act requires banks to gain customers’ "opt-in" approval for their overdraft programs. Less than a week after Dodd announced drafting the legislation, J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo responded by voluntarily announcing changes to their overdraft programs—in the hope of thwarting Dodd from going through with it, but that didn’t work.
There are other regulatory concerns. The Riegle-Neal Act, which is supposed to be enforced by the Federal Reserve Board, holds that no bank hold more than 10 percent of national deposits. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and J.P. Morgan Chase sit at 13 percent, 11 percent, and 9 percent of national deposits held, respectively, accordingly to my calculations.
As long as mega banks remain intertwined along lines of commercial banking and consumer oriented services, vs. investment banking and speculative activities that count on federal, deposit, and fee capital in order to operate—our money is doubly on the table—through government support and fee extraction.

If Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury Department continue to address the problem of "too big to fail" and "systemically important" with so called reforms that keep these banks big while asking them to put aside more capital for risk mitigation purposes, that capital will likely come from their most solid source—us.

. . . .Read the entire piece here.

. . . .And just because I have to do this, and am assuming that you all are intelligent enough to understand the background behind it, yesterday's quote of the century:

"Well, the truth is that nothing is better than that..." —Joe Lieberman on healthcare reform with a public option, on Sunday's Face the Nation

Such an attention whore.

. . . .And Andrew Sullivan provides my smart, intelligent, snarky quote of week so far:

"Neoconservatism has become a set of attitudes that might be summed up as, 'somewhere, shaggy kids might be having sex or smoking dope—so let’s cut interest rates and invade Iraq!'” - Daniel McCarthy, TAC.

. . . .Even more competitors for quotes of the week. On State of the Union with John King on CNN yesterday morning, Senate Minority Leader John Boehner was asked point-blank to articulate for viewers and voters exactly what the Republican counter-proposal to the Democratic health care reform bills were. His response was to direct views to the GOP website where there were "8 or 9 ideas about reforming health care". Seriously, my WTF? factor raises on a daily basis.

. . . . . .And the point of all this? Well, the McCain campaign's own economic advisor makes the point eloquently himself. A point that asshats like Lieberman, Boehner and Cantor are missing completely. Douglas Holtz-Eakins is out of extensions on his health care insurance, and will not be able to get anymore due to a pre-existing condition. Holtz-Eakins said on Monday that unless the Republicans can put together a comprehensive, alternative plan instead of just standing in opposition to the current proposed plans from an ideological standpoint, they absolutely will be the ultimate losers in the health care reform debate. All anyone will remember as premiums skyrocket, as more people lose their jobs and their coverage, as more people cannot afford health care coverage and go bankrupt is the people who stood in the way of an effort to change the system.

. . . . . .It's not often that I find myself in agreement with either Robert Reich or Michael Moore, either one, but in this case, at least partially, I do. First up Reich, who stays focused on the same thing that I'm staying focused on; the economy, the financial crisis and the increasing number of jobs lost and homes foreclosed on:

Barack Obama came to the White House intent on not repeating Clinton's failure to enact universal health care. Did he over-learn the Clinton lesson? Obama seems to have made all the right moves to enact something he can credibly label health-care reform: Rather than spend his political capital elsewhere, he reserved most of it for health care.

I sincerely hope America gets genuine health reform and I hope it's stronger than what's emerging in the Senate. (Whoever voted for Joe Lieberman last time around ought to pray for continued good health.) I worry, though, that Obama's strategy may turn out to be a mistake comparable to Clinton's overemphasis on deficit reduction. Obama's focus on health care rather than jobs, when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits, could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused. While affordable health care is critically important to Americans, making a living is more urgent. Yet the administration's efforts to date on this more basic concern have been neither particularly visible nor coherent.

The current rate of unemployment would have been even higher were it not for the federal stimulus package, but the stimulus should have been much larger. Especially with the states still cutting back on spending and raising taxes, the federal stimulus will be barely enough to keep unemployment from hitting 11 percent by the middle of 2010. Yet as the rate of unemployment continued to rise faster and higher than the White House anticipated, Obama could not return to Congress to seek a larger stimulus. He was spending political capital on health care.

The Wall Street bailout, meanwhile, has saved Wall Street but left most regional banks in deep distress. Almost nothing has trickled down. Small businesses still can't get loans. Foreclosures continue to mount largely because jobs continue to vanish and homeowners can't pay their mortgages. Yet at this point, on the eve of a health care bill, it would be difficult for Obama to return to Congress seeking billions more to aid distressed homeowners and small businesses. . . . . .
. . . . . .The Obama White House bought off the medical-industrial complex by promising it fatter profits, bolstered by tens of millions of new paying customers.
That and other deals cut with industry -- including promises to Big Pharma that Medicare wouldn't use its bargaining clout to reduce drug prices, to the AMA that doctors wouldn't have to face larger cuts in Medicare reimbursement rates, and to private insurers that the White House wouldn't fight hard for a public insurance option -- are likely to make the resulting reform far more costly than it would be otherwise. These extra costs will be borne by those Americans who will be required to buy insurance but won't qualify for federal assistance, along with Medicare beneficiaries who will be paying more and receiving less. These people may not know they're indirectly paying the costs of buying off these industries, but they'll know they're getting shafted (Republicans will be sure to make them aware, even though the GOP has a much longer record of shafting the middle class for the benefit of big business).. . . . . .
. . . . . .If Obama and the Democrats lose one or both houses of Congress in the midterms, it will be because the president learned only the most superficial lesson of the Clinton years. Health-care reform is critically important. But when one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, getting the nation back to work is more so.

. . . . .Read the entire piece here at Robert Reich's blog.

. . . . .And this one, where I actually find myself agreeing with Michael Moore on 12 of his 15 things in an Action Plan for every American:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:
1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people's homes are now truly worth -- and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.
2.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.
4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies -- and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies -- you name it. If a company's primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by -- and the first rule is "Do no harm." The second rule: The question must always be asked -- "Is this for the common good?" (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)
5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin's socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don't contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here's a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors' de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete's sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!
FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:
1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent -- or even a candidate from another party -- if they don't do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!
2.

3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year -- or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don't have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don't believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on -- and you should be on it!
4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there's more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place "Capitalism Did This" signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)
5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth -- so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here's an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don't fill that void, who will?
FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:
1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.
2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one -- the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.
3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.
4.

5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she's right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, "Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants"). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I've turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny -- she's fit, she's rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don't put our own "oxygen mask" on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!

. . . . And since I had so much fun with the folks over at StrangeMaps, here's another one that speaks volumes about who we are as a culture, and how we've gotten ourselves into this mess, and if you don't get the significance of it, there's no hope for you. Let me spell it out for you, the furthest anyone in the United States has to go to get a Big Mac is 145 miles, and that's out in the middle of South Dakota (I can testify to it, I've been there):
mcd_us_high_9_25

. . . . .Each light represents a McDonald's location in the continental United States. Altogether, there are over 13,000 McDonalds restaurants in the U.S. of A. 'Nuff said.

. . . .I've held off on the inviting target that the Republican party has made of itself up in New York in the 23rd District, where they purged themselves of their candidate because she couldn't pass their ideology test, and Newt Gingrich and Michael Steele have found themselves faced off against Alaskan Barbie, Tim "Anyway the wind blows and the dollars are flowing" Pawlenty and Caribou Barbie's crony Flab Limbaugh over the candidate, the election is tomorrow, and the results will be telling. But, that doesn't mean that Frank Rich, over at the New York Times doesn't have an interesting perspective, and some insight:
BARACK OBAMA’S most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army. This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

The governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia were once billed as the marquee events of Election Day 2009 — a referendum on the Obama presidency and a possible Republican “comeback.” But preposterous as it sounds, the real action migrated to New York’s 23rd, a rural Congressional district abutting Canada. That this pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field, attracting an all-star cast of combatants led by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Kristol and Newt Gingrich, is a premise out of a Depression-era screwball comedy. But such farces have become the norm for the conservative movement — whether the participants are dressing up in full “tea party” drag or not.

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the “actual responsibilities” of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true.

The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P. On Saturday, the battered Scozzafava suspended her campaign, further scrambling the race. It’s still conceivable that the Democratic candidate could capture a seat the Republicans should own. But it’s even better for Democrats if Hoffman wins. Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure. That’s bad news for even a Republican as conservative as Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose primary opponent in the Texas governor’s race, the incumbent Rick Perry, floated the possibility of secession at a teabagger rally in April and hastily endorsed Hoffman on Thursday.

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes. Writing in 1964 of that era’s equivalent to today’s tea party cells, the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that the John Birch Society’s “ruthless prosecution” of its own ideological war often mimicked the tactics of its Communist enemies.

The same could be said of Beck, Palin and their acolytes. Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. They drove out Arlen Specter, and now want to “melt Snowe” (as the blog Red State put it). The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp.

These conservatives’ whiny cries of victimization also parrot a tic they once condemned in liberals. After Rush Limbaugh was booted from an ownership group bidding on the St. Louis Rams, he moaned about being done in by the “race card.” What actually did him in, of course, was the free-market American capitalism he claims to champion. Limbaugh didn’t understand that in an increasingly diverse nation, profit-seeking N.F.L. franchises actually want to court black ticket buyers, not drive them away.

This same note of self-martyrdom was sounded in a much-noticed recent column by the former Nixon hand Pat Buchanan. Ol’ Pat sounded like the dispossessed antebellum grandees in “Gone With the Wind” when lamenting the plight of white working-class voters. “America was once their country,” he wrote. “They sense they are losing it. And they are right.”

They are right. That America was lost years ago, and no national political party can thrive if it lives in denial of that truth. The right still may want to believe, as Palin said during the campaign, that Alaska, with its small black and Hispanic populations, is a “microcosm of America.” (New York’s 23rd also has few blacks or Hispanics.) But most Americans like their country’s 21st-century profile.

That changing complexion is part of why the McCain-Palin ticket lost every demographic group by large margins in 2008 except white senior citizens and the dwindling fifth of America that’s still rural. It’s also why the G.O.P. has been in a nosedive since the inauguration, whatever Obama’s ups and downs. In the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, only 17 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans (as opposed to 30 percent for the Democrats, and 44 for independents).

No wonder even the very conservative Republican contenders in the two big gubernatorial contests this week have frantically tried to disguise their own convictions. The candidate in Virginia, Bob McDonnell, is a graduate of Pat Robertson’s university whose career has been devoted to curbing abortion rights, gay civil rights and even birth control. But in this campaign he ditched those issues, disinvited Palin for a campaign appearance, praised Obama’s Nobel Prize, and ran a closing campaign ad trumpeting “Hope.” Chris Christie, McDonnell’s counterpart in New Jersey, posted a campaign video celebrating “Change” in which Obama’s face and most stirring campaign sound bites so dominate you’d think the president had endorsed the Republican over his Democratic opponent, Jon Corzine.

Only in the alternative universe of the far right is Obama a pariah and Palin the great white hope. It’s become a Beltway truism that the White House’s (mild) spat with Fox News is counterproductive because it drives up the network’s numbers. But if curious moderate and independent voters are now tempted to surf there and encounter Beck’s histrionics for the first time, the president’s numbers will benefit as well. To the uninitiated, the tea party crowd comes across like the barflies in “Star Wars.”

There is only one political opponent whom Obama really has to worry about at this moment: Hamid Karzai. It’s Afghanistan and joblessness, not the Stalinists of the right, that have the power to bring this president down.

. . . .I miss you Mom, a lot. Thanks for watching over me.

. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.

. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.

. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: Gregory, MI 48137]

01 November 2009

Awesome, just awesome

Monday November 2, 2009

. . . . .You need to get yourself ready for a week that will be chockful of just absolutely awesome levels of stupid and crazy. Three things are going to happen this week that will change your life forever.

. . . .On a note that I find vital from a pop culture standpoint, this week, ABC Network premieres V, the remake of the specials, miniseries and series from the 80's. Actually, it was a damn good series for the times, and as far as I'm concerned, had some pretty good portents and messages in it. Suffice to say, I've never in my life been someone who anticipated a visit from anyone else from "someplace else", I've always been paranoid of that. Considering what a bad job we've done caretaking this planet, and just what an awesomely shitty job we've done as a species in terms of coexisting and helping one another, anyone with advanced enough technology would wipe us out the second they got here. On top of that, just using some simple math and the realization that our broadcasts; radio, television and such are the very first hint of our society that someone else would get to gain some knowledge about us. Well, the following map, from Strange Maps speaks for itself:

starmap

. . . . .Personally, I think it's pretty damn presumptuous and arrogant of us to believe that anyone at all would want to come here. Me, I come from the Independence Day, Predator, Aliens and V crowd, I wouldn't trust 'em.

. . . .So, like I said, 3 things that are just monumentally in-your-face stupid will or are happening this week.

. . . .Item 1, I spent all last week zeroing in on my favorite bloodsucking bastards over at Goldman-Sachs, with plenty of data to back it all up, (read the previous posts below) and, lo and behold, up they crop on a Sunday. Now, let's start with something simple, like the diatribe that I posted up yesterday on Citigroup and Goldman. Well, on Sunday night, the CIT group filed bankruptcy in a Federal Court. The bottom line; The U.S. Taxpayer, you and I, will lose $2.4 billion on this bankruptcy, and Goldman will profit $1 billion on the bankruptcy.From the AP on Sunday night:

WASHINGTON -- Lender CIT Group has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, in an effort to restructure its debt while trying to keep loans flowing to the thousands of mid-sized and small businesses.

CIT's move will wipe out current holders of its common and preferred stock, likely meaning the U.S. government and taxpayers will lose the $2.3 billion sunk into CIT last year to prop up the ailing company. Goldman Sachs however, will gain $1 billion because of CIT's bankruptcy, according to a report published Oct. 4 by theFinancial Times:

The payment stems from the structure of a $3bn rescue finance package that Goldman extended to CIT on June 6 2008, about five months before the Treasury bought $2.3bn in CIT preferred shares to prop it up at the height of the crisis...
While Goldman is entitled to demand the full amount, it is likely to agree to postpone payment on a part of that sum, these people added. A CIT filing last week said that it was in negotiations with Goldman "concerning an amendment to this facility".

The $2.3 billion lost in taxpayer funds is the largest amount lost since the government began infusing banks with capital, according to the Financial Times.

CIT made the filing in New York bankruptcy court Sunday, after a debt-exchange offer to bondholders failed. CIT said in a statement that its bondholders have overwhelmingly approved a prepackaged reorganization plan which will reduce total debt by $10 billion while allowing the company to continue to do business.

"The decision to proceed with our plan of reorganization will allow CIT to continue to provide funding to our small business and middle market customers, two sectors that remain vitally important to the U.S. economy," said Jeffrey M. Peek, chairman and CEO. Peek has said he plans to step down at the end of the year.

The Chapter 11 filing is one of the biggest in U.S. corporate history. CIT's bankruptcy filing shows $71 billion in finance and leasing assets against total debt of $64.9 billion. Its collapse is the latest in a string of huge cases driven by the financial crisis over the past two years, as bailed out industry heavyweights like General Motors and Chrysler both entered bankruptcy court.

CIT has been trying to fend off disaster for several months and narrowly avoided collapse in July. It has struggled to find funding as sources it previously relied on, such as short-term debt, evaporated during the credit crisis.

It received $4.5 billion in credit from its own lenders and bondholders last week, reportedly made a deal with Goldman Sachs to lower debt payments, and negotiated a $1 billion line of credit from billionaire investor and bondholder Carl Icahn. But the company failed to convince bondholders to support a debt-exchange offer, a step that would have trimmed at least $5.7 billion from its debt burden and given CIT more time to pay off what it owes.

It is unclear what the filing will mean for the nation's small businesses, many of which look to CIT for loans to cover expenses like buying materials at a time when other credit is hard to come by.

Analysts have warned that already ailing sectors, like retailers, could be hit especially hard, since CIT serves as the short-term financier for about 2,000 vendors that supply merchandise to more than 300,000 stores.

. . . .Now, let's contrast this little morsel, released on Sunday night, with what our earnest Treasury Secretary (and Goldman alum) Timothy Geithner (who by the way was the protege of former Treasury Secretary and Goldman alum Hank Paulson) had to say on Sunday morning on NBC's Meet The Press:
"The banking system is dramatically more stable now that it was . . . .a year ago."
"The big risk we face now is big banks are not going to take enough risk"
"Unemployment is worse than anyone expected, but growth is back more quickly and stronger than anyone expected" (WTF??)
On unemployment "It's probably going to rise further before it comes down again" (Unh-huh)
And I've saved the best for last -
"Wall Street has changed"

. . . .Like I said, awesome levels of stupid and crazy.

. . . .Now, I wrote about this earlier last week, but this week marks Item 2 of crap that will change your life forever. Back on Wednesday September 9th (yes, it was the President's health-care speech to the joint session, but that wasn't the headline event that day, in terms of long-term political effect) Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. This is the most important case in ages, and it is flying completely under the radar, with Tuesday Nov. 3 marked out for the decision, which has already been broadcast in that code that Supreme Court Justices have, as being already decided. What it will mean, if the rulings go the way the tea leaves are scrying out, is that essentially, the American citizen will forever be locked out of the American political scene, and it will be a Supreme Court ruling that gives corporations free rein in lobbying money, campaign contributions and outright gifts. From the Washington Post:

The full impact of what the court could do in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has only begun to receive the attention it deserves. Even the word "radical" does not capture the extent to which the justices could turn our political system upside down. Will it use a case originally brought on a narrow issue to bring our politics back to the corruption of the Gilded Age?

Citizens United, a conservative group, brought suit arguing that it should be exempt from the restrictions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law for a movie it made that was sharply critical of Hillary Clinton. The organization said it should not have to disclose who financed the film.

Instead of deciding the case before it, the court engaged in a remarkable act of overreach. On June 29, it postponed a decision and called for new briefs and a highly unusual new hearing, which is Wednesday's big event. The court chose to consider an issue only tangentially raised by the case. It threatens to overrule a 1990 decision that upheld the long-standing ban on corporate money in campaigns.

I don't have the space to cite all the precedents, dating to the 1976 Buckley campaign finance ruling, that the court would set aside if it were to throw out the prohibition on corporate money. Suffice it to say that there is one member of the court who has spoken eloquently about the dangers of ignoring precedents.

"I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent," he said. "Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and evenhandedness. It is not enough -- and the court has emphasized this on several occasions -- it is not enough that you may think the prior decision was wrongly decided. That really doesn't answer the question, it just poses the question."

This careful jurist continued: "And you do look at these other factors, like settled expectations, like the legitimacy of the court, like whether a particular precedent is workable or not, whether a precedent has been eroded by subsequent developments." He paraphrased Alexander Hamilton as saying in Federalist 78, "To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and precedents."

Chief Justice John Roberts, the likely swing vote in this case, was exactly right when he said these things during his 2005 confirmation hearings. If he uses his own standards, it is impossible to see how he can justify the use of "arbitrary discretion" to discard a well-established system whose construction began with the Tillman Act of 1907.

Were the courts that set the earlier precedents "legitimate"? This ban was upheld over many years by justices of various philosophical leanings. We are not talking about overturning a single decision by a bunch of activists in robes seizing a temporary court majority.

Are the precedents "workable"? The answer is clearly yes, which is why there is absolutely no popular demand to let corporate cash loose into our politics. Our system would be less "workable" if the court abruptly changed the law.

Has the precedent been "eroded"? Absolutely not. In case after case, no matter where particular court majorities stood on particular campaign finance provisions, the ban on corporate contributions was taken for granted. As the court stated just six years ago, Congress's power to prohibit direct corporate and union contributions "has been firmly embedded in our law." That's what you call "settled expectations."

This case is the clearest test that Roberts has faced so far as to whether he meant what he said to Congress in 2005. I truly hope he passes it. If he doesn't, he will unleash havoc in our political system and greatly undermine the legitimacy of the court he leads.

. . . .This will be the ulimate test for Chief Justice John Roberts. Pay close attention to the ruling this week.

. . . . . Now, on that same subject of lobbying corruption. Let's move on to Net Neutrality. Now, very simply, Net Neutrality is the concept that all content in the United States should move at the same speed, regardless of source, and regardless of the telecom or ISP it's being carried on. In other words, the carriers should care only about the speed of the bits and bytes, and not what is contained within those bits and bytes. Consumer Reports, some of the most trustworthy people around have a very simple explanation for it:

Network neutrality is a fancy way of saying the networks that deliver the Internet should treat all content, sites, and applications equally and shouldn’t discriminate against certain traffic based on its source, destination or message. The basic idea is the Internet should be open so consumers have unrestricted access to lawful Web sites and online businesses can compete freely.

Some Internet service providers want to give preferential treatment to certain network traffic –for example, their own content or that of those willing to pay extra fees. Without network neutrality Internet service providers could block or slow down traffic to any Web sites or services they choose. Services, such as making free or cheap phone calls over the Internet, or streaming video, could be blocked. So could the sharing of lawful media content or access to certain political content.

. . . .Now, here's the rub, and the problem, and item #3 that will change your life forever, and you'll bitch later, but you could have done something now, like contact your legislator. Representative Markey has brought to the floor of the House, H.R. 3458 the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which would enforce Net Neutrality. Now, here we go with the normal circus of corruption, graft and greed. The original "maverick", Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona has received $1.9 million dollars from telecom lobbyists (courtesy of OpenSecrets) to introduce an amendment to Senate version that would completely eliminate net neutrality. AT&T, Charter, Comcast, BellSouth, Knology et al, through their lobbying group have asked McCain to put the vote through for them that would eliminate net neutrality and allow the telecoms and ISP's to decide which content is delivered at which speeds, if delivered at all. In other words, they'll speed up their own content and slow down anyone who doesn't pay them a fee, and guess where and to whom those increased fees will get passed down to? Hell, we're already 15th in the world in broadband communications, maybe we can get ourselves down to where we are in health care. 37th.

. . . .The best part of it is his blatant, out in the open hypocrisy about things. He's on record as being for Net Neutrality long before his current stance of being against it:

So, John McCain wants the internet to be a terrifying user experience for everybody, and is pimping the ironically named, net neutrality-killing "Internet Freedom Act" as a means of satisfying the telecoms that have so devotedly lobbied him for favor. The thing is, if it seems like not too long ago, McCain was singing an entirely different tune on the issue, well, there's a reason for that: not too long ago, McCain was singing an entirely different tune on the issue. Don't believe me? Well, here's what McCain economic advisor Douglas Holtz-Eakin had to say on the matter when he was interviewed on C-SPAN by Amy Schatz, telecommunications reporter from the Wall Street Journal:

SCHATZ: Let's switch to everyone's favorite telecom topic: net neutrality. Can you explain to us what Senator McCain's position is on net neutrality?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: His position is that aggressive and prescriptive legislation on net neutrality is not desirable at this time. It's premature. There is yet no demonstrable damage from a practice that a net neutrality legislation would solve. His preferred way of addressing issues like this is let the marketplace develop, watch for and be aggressive about monitoring for abuse of practices, for monopoly power, for unfair representation to consumers, and if you find such behavior, apply a remedy and get damages. But that's an approach that doesn't pretend to know in advance what's the business model of tomorrow, what's the product line of tomorrow, and who will be providing that product.

Now of course, McCain has telecom lobbyists telling him that about the damage that a piece of net neutrality legislation could wreak on their ability to accrue wealth, so his tune has changed. But there's another interesting quirk, here: McCain's strange new take on "internet freedom" doesn't square, at all, with another telecommunications issue he's spoken out about -- a la carte cable television packages. In the case of cable television, McCain supports the open-source, pro-consumer model of content packaging that he now wants to destroy on the internet.

. . . .So, we know a couple of things. John McCain hates him some Net Neutrality these days, and if he has his way, well, the good folks over at Gizmodo have put together this sample chart for what the worst-case scenario will probably look like once this legislation with McCain's amendment passes, and if you think it's unlikely, take a look at your cable or satellite tiers, and get ready.

Losing Net Neutrality: The Worst Case Scenario

It's alarmist, over-the-top pro-net-neutrality propaganda, sure, but this chart goes a long way to explaining why the IT dude at the office wears that "All Packets are Created Equal" shirt to work every Thursday: because tiered ISPs are scary.

And before you dismiss the chart outright, check out your cable company's channel packages. Replace content provider fees with new network backbone charges, and cable packages with traffic or website packages, and hey, look, shit—this doesn't seem so crazy, does it? Click here for the full version. [Reddit via Crunchgear]

. . . .I'm telling you, absolutely awesome levels of stupid, crazy and corrupt. I can hardly wait to see what Monday morning brings.

. . . .I miss you Mom, a lot. Thanks for watching over me.

. . . .. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.

. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.

. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: Gregory, MI 48137]

Halloween aftermath

Sunday November 1st, 2009

. . . .Just a couple of quick items here on a Sunday morning, in my continued pursuit of exposing the bastards behind the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression, and these assholes are intent on continuing it and profiting from it, bottomfeeders that they are.

. . . .Well, that and the fact that I'm sick as hell and have a blown-out back.

. . . .All, I'm gonna say about the following is "I told you so", from McClatchy this morning.

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.
Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.
"The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion," said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who's proposed a massive overhaul of the nation's banks. "This is fraud and should be prosecuted."
John Coffee, a Columbia University law professor who served on an advisory committee to the New York Stock Exchange, said that investment banks have wide latitude to manage their assets, and so the legality of Goldman's maneuvers depends on what its executives knew at the time.
"It would look much more damaging," Coffee said, "if it appeared that the firm was dumping these investments because it saw them as toxic waste and virtually worthless."
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chairman and chief executive, declined to be interviewed for this article.
A Goldman spokesman, Michael DuVally, said that the firm decided in December 2006 to reduce its mortgage risks and did so by selling off subprime-related securities and making myriad insurance-like bets, called credit-default swaps, to "hedge" against a housing downturn.
DuVally told McClatchy that Goldman "had no obligation to disclose how it was managing its risk, nor would investors have expected us to do so ... other market participants had access to the same information we did."
For the past year, Goldman has been on the defensive over its Washington connections and the billions in federal bailout funds it received. Scant attention has been paid, however, to how it became the only major Wall Street player to extricate itself from the subprime securities market before the housing bubble burst.
Goldman remains, along with Morgan Stanley, one of two venerable Wall Street investment banks still standing. Their grievously wounded peers Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch fell into the arms of retail banks, while another, Lehman Brothers, folded.
To piece together Goldman's role in the subprime meltdown, McClatchy reviewed hundreds of documents, SEC filings, copies of secret investment circulars, lawsuits and interviewed numerous people familiar with the firm's activities.
McClatchy's inquiry found that Goldman Sachs:
Bought and converted into high-yield bonds tens of thousands of mortgages from subprime lenders that became the subjects of FBI investigations into whether they'd misled borrowers or exaggerated applicants' incomes to justify making hefty loans.
Used offshore tax havens to shuffle its mortgage-backed securities to institutions worldwide, including European and Asian banks, often in secret deals run through the Cayman Islands, a British territory in the Caribbean that companies use to bypass U.S. disclosure requirements.
Has dispatched lawyers across the country to repossess homes from bankrupt or financially struggling individuals, many of whom lacked sufficient credit or income but got subprime mortgages anyway because Wall Street made it easy for them to qualify.
Was buoyed last fall by key federal bailout decisions, at least two of which involved then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, a former Goldman chief executive whose staff at Treasury included several other Goldman alumni.
The firm benefited when Paulson elected not to save rival Lehman Brothers from collapse, and when he organized a massive rescue of tottering global insurer American International Group while in constant telephone contact with Goldman chief Blankfein. With the Federal Reserve Board's blessing, AIG later used $12.9 billion in taxpayers' dollars to pay off every penny it owed Goldman.
These decisions preserved billions of dollars in value for Goldman's executives and shareholders. For example, Blankfein held 1.6 million shares in the company in September 2008, and he could have lost more than $150 million if his firm had gone bankrupt.
With the help of more than $23 billion in direct and indirect federal aid, Goldman appears to have emerged intact from the economic implosion, limiting its subprime losses to $1.5 billion. By repaying $10 billion in direct federal bailout money — a 23 percent taxpayer return that exceeded federal officials' demand — the firm has escaped tough federal limits on 2009 bonuses to executives of firms that received bailout money.
Goldman announced record earnings in July, and the firm is on course to surpass $50 billion in revenue in 2009 and to pay its employees more than $20 billion in year-end bonuses.

. . . . . .Read the entire article here.

. . . . . .And I'll put the bottom tag line of the article here.

COMING TOMORROW
Since the economic collapse that swept millions of Americans out of their jobs and homes, Goldman Sachs has moved aggressively to recover its losses. The firm is pursuing marginally qualified borrowers into state courts federal and bankruptcy across the country and seeking to seize their homes. McClatchy examines one couple's multi-year attempt to get Goldman to admit that it had purchased their mortgage.

. . . . .And this from the New York Times on Citibank, this morning:

OVER the past 80 years, the United States government has engineered not one, not two, not three, but at least four rescues of the institution now known as Citigroup. In previous instances, the bank came back from the crisis and prospered.
Will Citigroup rise again from its recent near-death experience?
The answer to that question concerns not only the 276,000 employees who work at what was once the world’s largest bank, but the nation’s taxpayers as well. Even as Citigroup’s stock has soared from a low of $1.02 to its current $4.09 — and the company has eked out a $101 million profit in the third quarter along the way — it’s still unclear whether it can climb out of the hole that its former leaders dug before and during the mortgage mania. If Citigroup remains stuck, taxpayers will be on the hook for outsize losses.
Citigroup remains a sprawling, complex enterprise, with 200 million customer accounts and operations in more than 100 countries. And when people talk about institutions that have grown so large and entwined in the economy that regulators have deemed them too big to be allowed to fail, Citigroup is the premier example.
As a result, the government has handed Citigroup $45 billion under the Troubled Asset Relief Program over the last year. Through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a major bank regulator, the government has also agreed to back roughly $300 billion in soured assets that sit on Citigroup’s books. Even as other troubled institutions recently curtailed their use of another F.D.I.C. program that backs new debt issued by banks, Citigroup has continued to tap the arrangement.
Citigroup is also one of only two TARP recipients so desperate for capital that they’ve swapped government-issued shares into common stock, diluting existing shareholders. (GMAC, the troubled auto lender that may receive another government infusion, is the other.)
While Citigroup has written down tens of billions of dollars’ worth of mortgages on its books, there are looming problems in its huge credit card portfolio. Of the company’s $1.2 trillion in credit commitments outstanding in the second quarter, $873 billion were credit card lines. A measure of the bank’s efforts to wrestle that problem to the ground is the interest it charges customers: in October, Citigroup raised interest rates on some credit card holders to 29.99 percent.

. . . .Read the entire piece here.

. . . .We are so far beyond capitalism and free-market enterprise, there isn't even a word to describe this economic and political shell game. We truly have become a corporatist society, in which the personal, economic well-being of the singular entity known as the "corporation" comes first and foremost. And most of you spent your summer calling him a "socialist", or a "communist", or a "fascist". This guy is the ultimate corporate, capitalist tool.

. . . .I'm re-running the one from Larry Flynt from earlier in the summer:

The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."

But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change?

"A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street."
There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: "And a regulatory regime basically crafted

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