Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh says that the Bush-Cheney administration ran an "executive assassination ring" -- a team of professional killers that reported directly to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
[ Harper's ]
The UN has concluded that the Bush-Cheney administration's "extraordinary rendition" policy -- "loaning" prisoners to foreign countries known to torture, where they were of course tortured -- is a violation of international law. The UN finding is a mere formality, since anyone with a whit of awareness and common sense already knew this, but it's a necessary formality. Crimes have been committed, and now that's not merely known, but officially known.
[ McClatchy Newspapers ]
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
Thomas Paine
A Canadian lawyer points out, quite correctly, that under his nation's laws, since former President George W. Bush has been "credibly accused" of supporting torture, he should be barred from entering Canada and arrested if he shows up north of the border. And next Tuesday, Bush is scheduled to give a speech in Calgary.
[ ThinkProgess ]
John Yoo, the Bush-Cheney administration's rubber-stamp lawyer who wrote memos backing torture, rejecting the Geneva Conventions, and generally saying "sure, that's legal" to every idea Bush and Cheney and their cohorts came up with, still says he did nothing wrong. A few days ago, in a self-serving op-ed that I couldn't bear to read to the end, he complained that the widely-circulated quotes from his ludicrous legal opinions had been taken out of context, and argued that a fair reading of the full memos would show that his opinions were appropriate and correct and blah blah blah. In this piece, a far better lawyer than Yoo does a fine job eviscerating his malpractice.
[ Salon ]
If you believe a blogger named bmaz at firedoglake,com, the statute of limitations on the Bush-Cheney administration's warrantless wiretapping program expired on Wednesday, because it's been five years since former President Bush last authorized his illegal eavesdropping. I don't know who bmaz is, and maybe he or she's a lawyer and thus knows much more than I do about such things, but I ain't buying it. It's absurd if the clock starts ticking the day a crime is authorized, instead of every day that an illegally authorized crime is committed.
[ firedoglake.com ]
President Obama has issued his first "signing statement", and in the Bush tradition it instructs officials to disregard portions of the omnibus spending bill because he thinks the sections in question are unConstitutional. I don't see what's unConstitutional in the legislation, but Obama's signing statement, like Bush's, seems like an odd interruption of the Constitutional procedures we're all accustomed to. The President is supposed to veto legislation he disapproves of -- America doesn't have a line-item veto -- and questions of Constitutionality or unconstitutionality are traditionally and, to my understanding, Constitutionally settled by the courts, not by the President.
[ New York Times ]
Corporations own the news
Virtually all American media is controlled by corporations and operated solely for profit, so there's no escaping the latest on Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, because that's 'news' that sells. But news that's more important or complex, more expensive or just more controversial, gets minimal coverage that's often shallow, inaccurate, or slanted to favor big business.
The 2010 census won't count married or civil unioned gays with children as families, and gay couples, will be counted as "unmarried partners". I certainly hope there's enough furor over this to change this very 'Republicanesque' counting methodology, pronto.
[ Salon ]
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the gung-ho for Israeli lobby that wields near-absolute control over the US Congress. It was relentlessly against Obama's nomination of Charles "Chas" Freeman Jr. to head the National Intelligence Council, because Freeman, who's very pro-Israel, wasn't deemed to be pro-Israel enough. The point man in smearing Freeman was Steven Rosen, who's under indictment for spying for a foreign government (guess which one). And the alleged spy's smears worked -- Freeman withdrew his name from consideration a few days ago.
[ The Daily Beast ]
Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) points out that there are plenty of Republican-backed earmarks in the stimulus bill, alongside the Democrats' earmarks. What she doesn't say, and I will, is that most of the controversy about earmarks in recent legislation and earmarks in general is a lot of claptrap. Earmarks are a good and necessary tool in legislation. If there's a dam in some remote corner of Tennessee that needs reconstruction, what's a Congressman supposed to do -- introduce a bill specifically funding reconstruction of a dam nobody anywhere else has ever heard of? No, a diligent Congressman adds the funding as an earmark to a bigger piece of legislation, and other Congresscritters add earmarks for a college in California that needs a bigger library, or a pond in Pennsylvania that needs a bridge, etc. Sure, it can be abused, which is why Obama's proposal for a public posting of all earmarks in advance is a pretty smart solution. But earmarks aren't evil or wasteful as a concept, and the current media and Republican (but I repeat myself) fixation on earmarks earmarks earmarks is about as worthwhile and informative as the wall-to-wall celebrity coverage on Entertainment Tonight.
[ St. Louis Post-Dispatch ]
The New York Times wants you to be shocked and offended that Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-California) arranged a meeting at the Treasury Dept last autumn for some troubled banks, including OneUnited, which eventually got $12-million in TARP funds. Waters' husband has served on the board at OneUnited, and "has owned" (past tense) up to $250,000 in stock in the bank. Sounds troubling, at least by pre-Bush standards of corruption, but it's unclear whether Waters' husband still owns any shares in the bank, and he quit the board early last year, so my gut reaction is that this ain't much.
[ New York Times, distilled by Harper's ]
Fools and liars, pundits and politicians
Conservatives dominate the media and discourse in America, so lies, outrageous statements, and general nuttiness from right-wingers are utterly ordinary in mainstream media. And there's no left-wing equivalent in mainstream media, because anyone who criticizes right-wingers even half as harshly -- even when it's warranted and true -- is "outside the mainstream", by definition.
The razor-thin Minnesota Senate election, or at least the Norm Coleman (R) half of that equation, just gets weirder and weirder. Coleman's team leaked the credit card information for almost 5,000 donors, and the personal details (home address, etc.) for another 51,000 -- and the campaign failed to notify donors of its security breach, which seems to be a violation of Minnesota law.
[ InfoWorld ]
The Obama administration has slightly adjusted the restrictions on travel to Cuba, by allowing Cuban-Americans to apply for a permit allowing once-per-year legal visits to relatives in the dreaded communist island state. It's a tiny improvement over past policies, but of course, people who aren't visiting relatives or don't get this silly permit are still breaking the law if they go to Cuba. It's really just a further extension of the absurdity that's defined America's official hatred of Castro's Cuba for decades. Bottom line: In a free society people are free to travel where they choose, so America remains a nowhere near free society.
[ The Miami Herald ]
A new Gallup poll shows that the approval ratings for Congress have jumped 20% since Obama took office.
[ ThinkProgess ]
The Supreme Court has declined to review an important ballot-access case won by Ralph Nader in a lower court. What it means is that Arizona's early June deadline for independent candidates to present petitions for ballot access, and that state's requirement that petition circulators be state residents, are both rendered unConstitutional. And once again, as has happened so many times over so many years, Ralph Nader has accomplished something important and made America a wee bit better place to live.
[ Associated Press ]
The FBI's Terrorist Watch List now has more than a million entries. These are people who "can be blocked from flying, stopped at borders or subjected to other scrutiny". Does anyone seriously think that there are a million terrorists and terror aiders and abettors we need to worry about to this extent?
[ World Socialist Website ]
The ACLU has prepared a sobering list of the abuses of power brought about by the ghastly PATRIOT Act.
[ American Civil Liberties Union ]
Republicans are pushing for another vote suppression law in Texas, with legislation that requires voters to produce photo IDs. As this article notes, numerous studies have shown that such requirements stifle a small but significant number of minority, Democratic-leaning voters.
[ Talking Points Memo ]
Elizabeth Warren, who's in charge of the oversight panel for the ever-growing Wall Street bailouts, is going public with her increasing skepticism about the way the whole program is being run. "The Treasury Department has not asked, and has not revealed, what it is that's happening with that money", says Warren. And Helen at Unknown News says, I've thought we're being played for billions since this whole boondoggle was first announced, and as the payouts get bigger and the veil of secrecy gets cloudier, I'm more and more certain that we're living through the biggest swindle in American history.
[ TPM Muckraker ]
It made me stop and think
"But the internet is a city and, like any great city, it has monumental libraries and theatres and museums and places in which you can learn and pick up information and there are facilities for you that are astounding - specialized museums, not just general ones. "But there are also slums and there are red light districts and there are really sleazy areas where you wouldn't want your children wandering alone ... "And I think people must understand that about the internet - it is a new city, it's a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don't pull down London because it's got a red light district."
[ Stephen Fry ]
"Finally, there has been a near total absence of discussion of what higher rates will mean in the real world. Say you're a CNBC anchor, or a Washington Post columnist with a seat at the Council on Foreign Relations, or a dentist, and you managed to cobble together $350,000 a year in income. You're doing quite well. If you subtract deductions for state and property taxes, mortgage interest and charitable deductions, and other deductions, the amount on which tax rates are calculated might total $300,000. "What would happen if the marginal rate on the portion of your income above $250,000 were to rise from 33 percent to 36 percent? Under the old regime, you'd pay $16,500 in federal taxes on that amount. Under the new one, you'd pay $18,000. The difference is $1,500 per year, or $4.10 per day. Obviously, the numbers rise as you make more. But is $4.10 a day bleeding the rich, a war on the wealthy, a killer of innovation and enterprise? That dentist eager to slash her income from $320,000 to $250,000 would avoid the pain of paying an extra $2,100 in federal taxes. But she'd also deprive herself of an additional $70,000 in income!"
[ Daniel Gross ]
"Both god and Hitler attempted to create a perfect race by horrifically slaughtering all unworthy people. Hitler is viewed as one of the most evil and sadistic men to ever walk the earth. The god of bible is viewed as a father of 'perfect love'. "Maybe it is because of the mustache. Hitler should have gone with a beard."
[ theBEattitude ]
"In the end, at least one thing is certain: Our present position is unsustainable. The longer we delay fixing the banks, the faster the economy de-leverages, the more credit dries up, the further the stock market falls, the higher the ultimate bank bailout price tag for the American taxpayer, and the more we risk falling into a financial black hole from which escape could take decades."
[ David M. Smick ]
Renters are at real risk in this mortgage mess -- if the landlord goes into foreclosure, the tenants can be evicted. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, renters make up an estimated 40% of families facing eviction because of foreclosure. The article also includes an example of such a place where renters were thrown out, and the place lost 90% of its value over many months sitting vacant, as it was gutted and looted by neighborhood vandals. So in cases like that, foreclosure is a lose-lose-lose situation for everybody involved: The owner, renters, neighborhood, city, and even the bank itself! Sheesh! How stupid can banks be? --JR Mooneyham
[ dollarsandsense.org ]
If the government used the same formula to calculate unemployment rates that was used during the Great Depression, current unemployment nationwide would be 19.1 percent. And of course, that's why the government has tweaked the math bit-by-bit over the decades.
[ Reuters News Agency ]
There's next to nothing that would better invigorate the economy than vastly increased spending for health and education. This article makes sense, but President Obama has so far lacked the courage to do what's needed -- which definitely includes universal single-payer health care and an utter reboot and vast improvement to public education.
[ Business Week ]
Citigroup, which deserves to be bankrupt but is instead flush with bailout billions, cancelled its annual all-expenses-paid vacations for subsidiary Smith-Barney's top brokers, because that would look inappropriate. Instead it handed out thousands of dollars in gift certificates -- "back-door bonuses" -- to the same brokers, an expense totaling about $3.5-million.
[ New York Post ]
The CEO of Blackstone Group, a private equity firm so well-established and highly-respected that even I've heard of it, says the economic collapse has already destroyed up to ten percent of the world's wealth.
[ Reuters News Agency ] Sesame Street has announced major layoffs.
[ Financial Times ]
The Sudanese government has expelled aid agencies, "effectively holding the entire civilian population of Darfur hostage", in response to charges against Sudanese President Omar al Bashir filed in the International Criminal Court. I'm generally a peacenik who believes in war only as an absolute last resort, but we're past last resorts here. I'm sure it's utterly impractical politically, but I'd like to see an international military force under United Nations control invade Sudan, quell the civil war, end the genocide, arrest or topple Bashir, and set up a benevolent caretaker government until fair elections can be held or until the country can be sanely and safely divided among its peoples.
[ McClatchy Newspapers ]
Muntazer al-Zaidi, the 30-*year-old reporter who threw his shoes at then-President George W. Bush last December, has been sentenced by an Iraqi court to three years in prison. I can't think of a quicker, less expensive, and more effective way to dramatically improve America's world image and signal a real regime change, than if President Obama quietly asks the Iraqis to pardon al-Zaidi and FedExes him a new pair of shoes.
[ The Guardian ]
Diarrhea. It's not a pleasant thought and it kills almost 2,000,000 children every year -- twenty percent of children's deaths worldwide. There's been a cheap and extremely effective treatment available for more than two decades. It costs about 30¢ per dose, but the World Health Organization hasn't been able to find funding to provide this life-saving medicine in the areas and quantities where it's needed.
[ Agence France-Presse ]
President Obama has laid out more of his plans for a "surge" in Afghanistan, and of course, his plans are rather baldly stupid. The only way to "successfully" occupy Afghanistan -- a ludicrous idea -- would be to perhaps triple the number of American troops there, and leave them there to be targets of the Taliban for all eternity.
[ World Socialist Website ]
Another American spy has been booted from Bolivia.
[ intelNews.org ]
US troops have been knowingly exposed to toxic fumes. And no, the article doesn't even mention troops' routine exposure to depleted uranium in ammunition.
[ Raw Story ]
In some situations, the US military holds injured and ill soldiers to the same standards as healthy soldiers, which (of course) is just another way to say soldiers are being punished for being injured or ill.
[ MSNBC News ]
A cache of radioactive materials has reportedly been found in the home of a murdered American millionaire Nazi, along with "literature on how to build 'dirty bombs' and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60. The Nazi in question, one James G. Cummings, wasn't a Muslim, so you won't see several days of round-the-clock headlines about his terrorist plans, though his plans were apparently better planned and further along than the infamous and wildy implausible plots to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge or Sears Tower.
[ Bangor Daily News ]
An Army officer has been charged with pilfering the unknown amounts of un-tracked, insecure cash that was shipped to Iraq by the Bush-Cheney administration. Captain Michael Dung Nguyen is said to have mailed some $700,000 to his home. Of course, there have been no charges against the much, much higher-ranking officials who decided to send planeloads full of $100 bills into a war zone, with no accounting to speak of.
[ BBC News ]
Alleged Nazi guard John Demjanjuk, whose American citizenship was revoked in 2002, has been charged as an accessory to 29,000 murders.
[ Associated Press ]
A guy in a Texas restaurant was ticketed for disorderly conduct when he used vulgarities in talking to his girlfriend. Sounds like a pretty f*cking obvious violation of the First Amendment, so here's hoping that the man ticketed -- who curiously isn't named in the coverage -- wins a million bucks from the Galveston Police Department.
[ Galveston County Daily News ]
The Republican Party chair, Michael Steele, has given an interview to GQ where he's occasionally at odds with the Republican Party's cro magnon political positions. First he says abortion is "an individual choice", then he backpedals and says it's a choice for individual states to make. He also lies that Barack Obama was the only black politician who stumped against him when Steele ran for Congress, and says he's comfortable with having states decide whether gay couples can marry. So I guess Steele is OK with gay marriage in Connecticut and Massachusetts and whatever state is next to enter the 21st century. Steele seems more and more like he's far too much of an independent thinker to be running the Republican Party, and I doubt he'll have that job for long.
[ Gentleman's Quarterly ]
Republican pundit Meghan McCain (yeah, John McCain's daughter) notes that having Ann Coulter's perpetual stupidity in the news as a prominent voice of the Republican Party is quite counterproductive for the Republican Party. Coulter's book sales, by the by, have collapsed dramatically, presumably as the think tanks that have supported her sales with massive bulk buys are feeling the economic collapse.
[ The Daily Beast ]
California Assemblyman Joel Anderson has proposed legislation that would fine Google Earth and similar services $250,000 a day if they don't blur photographic images of churches, government buildings, hospitals, schools. It's not the dumbest proposal I've ever heard, just the dumbest proposal I've heard today.
[ CNet News ]
Montel Williams is done with television, and coming to Air America radio. His show will replace the OK but often off-topic "Lionel". I rarely watched Williams' TV show, and never got a sense for his politics -- is he a progressive?
[ Media Buyer Planner ]
Radio talker Mike Malloy has started syndicating his own radio show in the wake of his former employer Nova-M's collapse. He's planning to eventually offer commercial-free podcasts of his show, but while that's being set up, you can listen to The Mike Malloy Show for free and with only network (not local) commercials, at this web address. Mike's a bit of a nut and perhaps an acquired taste, but he's my favorite cathartic voice on the angry left, and if we're not bankrupt by the time he starts selling subscriptions, we'll pay. Meanwhile, if you'd like a free listen and he's not on the radio in your town, Helen & Harry say click here.
[ The Mike Malloy Show ]
Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston have broken up. Their shotgun wedding never took place, and the claim that they would marry was probably a campaign lie all along. Gotta feel sorry for that girl -- it's unfortunate that her parents didn't put her on the pill or hand her a 48-pack of Trojans. The moral of the story is that the silly, sad "just say no to sex" philosophy of Republicans like Sarah Palin is as bankrupt as Lehman Brothers.
[ Radar ]
"Do you know who I am?", fumed Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) as he threw a temper tantrum at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC.
[ Roll Call, distilled by Raw Story ]
#Blue Dogs: Rachel Maddow on 3/12 told us that 15 "Blue Dog" senators have decided to form a voting bloc in opposition to Obama's Big Spend policies. She ripped 'em new arseholes for going along with Bush for so many years and spending a trillion in Iraq/Afghanistan: "Really? You just now found your courage?"
See in 24 hours (Saturday) for a transcript of Rachel's 3/12 show.
According to Rachel, the Democratic Party's majorities exceed the Repuglican majorities when Newt G. took out his Contract On America. She further explained that if the Democrats had a plan and unified they could, in theory, ram through a complete agenda -- if necessary changing the "cloture" rule to limit debate in the Senate with fewer than 60 votes. But according to Rachel, the Democrats are not interested in bold agendas (that fits my perception of the way they lined up and saluted Bush for eight years.)
From the dramatic, upward "action" in pharmaceutical stocks it appears certain now that the Obama healthcare plans will be squashed, thanks to these traitorous, cowardly, piss-ant Blue Dogs and the reactionary Repuglicans. Stocks like JNJ, MRK and LLY were hammered brutally when the likelihood of an Obama healthcare revolution appeared to actually be greater than zero. Now I think that the chance of anything happening requiring spending without a rip-off revamp of Soc-Sec and Medicare has zero probability...and redoing those programs to, again, benefit the wealthy, is not something that can happen quickly.
In essence, betrayed again folks. No healthcare for you but Senators and Representatives will continue to receive gold-plated medical care for the rest of their natural lives...
Makes no sense at all, unless the school district has somehow lost 264,000 students (30x8800).
H&HH
== == ==
Alabama shooting follow-up: the gunman 'cleaned his family out' in rampage
Now I have no idea if this man had lost his medical insurance when he was fired, or if he had some other form of
insurance through his wife or the state -- BUT -- if he was unmedicated and lost his reason, you
will be seeing a lot more of this in the near future.
Funny but not funny: My first thought was: "YA THINK?"
Sherri B.
#
Obama is apparently out of touch with financial reality, notwithstanding 3/10's ginormous stock market rally. He is behaving in a very Bushian manner -- he is objectively speaking, either Clueless or frozen like a deer in the headlights.
He really needs to drop the Million Pound Sh*thammer on the entire Credit Default Swaps market before this $500 trillion fiasco *really* gets ugly!
Obama needs to summon his inner Rage to make some people Very Afraid. There are hundreds of people working in finance and government who ought to be in prison right now. The sooner Obama puts the Fear of God into them, the sooner we start getting some cooperation. Like the Chinese saying, "Kill the chicken to frighten the monkey."
Here is a threefer of articles, this time about Obama and his Failure To Launch:
Excerpt: Surfer that he is, President Obama should know a riptide when he's in one. The center usually is the safest, most productive place in politics, but perhaps not now, not in a once-in-a-century economic crisis.
Swimming in the middle, he's denounced as a socialist by conservatives, criticized as a polite accommodationist by government-is-the-answer liberals, and increasingly, dismissed as being in over his head by technocrats. ...
They have some reasons to be concerned. I trace them to a central trait of the president's character: he's not really an in-your-face guy. By recent standards -- and that includes Bill Clinton as well as George Bush -- Obama for the most part is seeking to govern from the left, looking to solidify and rely on his own party more than woo Republicans. And yet he is by temperament judicious, even judicial. He'd have made a fine judge. But we don't need a judge. We need a blunt-spoken coach.
Obama may be mistaking motion for progress, calling signals for a game plan. A busy, industrious overachiever, he likes to check off boxes on a long to-do list. A genial, amenable guy, he likes to appeal to every constituency, or at least not write off any. A beau ideal of Harvard Law, he can't wait to tackle extra-credit answers on the exam.
But there is only one question on this great test of American fate: can he lead us away from plunging into another Depression? ...
Excerpt: There are now three big questions about economic policy. First, does the administration realize that it isn't doing enough? Second, is it prepared to do more? Third, will Congress go along with stronger policies?
On the first two questions, I found Mr. Obama's latest interview with The Times anything but reassuring.
"Our belief and expectation is that we will get all the pillars in place for recovery this year," the President declared -- a belief and expectation that isn't backed by any data or model I'm aware of. To be sure, leaders are supposed to sound calm and in control. But in the face of the dismal data, this remark sounded out of touch.
And there was no hint in the interview of readiness to do more.
A real fix for the troubles of the banking system might help make up for the inadequate size of the stimulus plan, so it was good to hear that Mr. Obama spends at least an hour each day with his economic advisors, "talking through how we are approaching the financial markets." But he went on to dismiss calls for decisive action as coming from "blogs" (actually, they're coming from many other places, including at least one president of a Federal Reserve bank), and suggested that critics want to "nationalize all the banks" (something nobody is proposing).
As I read it, this dismissal -- together with the continuing failure to announce any broad plans for bank restructuring - means that the White House has decided to muddle through on the financial front, relying on economic recovery to rescue the banks rather than the other way around. And with the stimulus plan too small to deliver an economic recovery ... well, you get the picture.
Excerpt: Pity Barack Obama's economic advisers. The blogs are now demanding their scalps, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and his colleagues face a nasty dilemma: There are no solutions to the banking crisis without extraordinary political and financial risks. Thus, they have adopted a three-pronged approach, delay, delay, delay, in the hope that somebody comes up with a breakthrough.
Here's the problem: Today's true market value of the US banks' toxic assets (that ugly stuff that needs to be removed from bank balance sheets before the economy can recover) amounts to between 5 and 30 cents on the dollar. To remain solvent, however, the banks say they need a valuation of 50 to 60 cents on the dollar. Translation: as much as another $2 trillion taxpayer bailout.
That kind of expensive solution could send the president's approval rating into a nose dive. Consider: $2 trillion is about two-thirds of the tax revenue the federal government collects each year.
The logical alternative -- talk show hosts' solution du jour -- is to temporarily restructure or nationalize the banks and leave taxpayers alone. Remove the toxic assets, replace management and cut the too-big-to-fail financial dinosaurs into smaller, nimbler entities. Then re-privatize these smaller banks and let the recovery begin. ...
In the end, at least one thing is certain: Our present position is unsustainable. The longer we delay fixing the banks, the faster the economy de-leverages, the more credit dries up, the further the stock market falls, the higher the ultimate bank bailout price tag for the American taxpayer, and the more we risk falling into a financial black hole from which escape could take decades.
On the stock market rally -- my guess is that it is a bear market rally. Once the first quarter earnings reports start dribbling out in April, perhaps preceded by more earnings shortfall warnings later in this month, things will get scary again.
Willow
P.S. To ponder: "Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones, whose table earth, whose dice were bones". Lord Byron
Excerpt: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";
"A dollar picked up in the road is more satisfaction to us than the 99 which we had to work for, and the money won at Faro or in the stock market snuggles into our hearts in the same way."
Mark Twain
"The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling."
Ambrose Bierce
In other words, the US government is busily replacing the lost wealth of the millionaires and bazillionaires ... for the good of the country ... while distributing JACK SH*T to the poor. 10% of Americans rely on food stamps and 1.5 million children are homeless in America each year, but Bush-Obama can squander $10 trillion to try to make the stock market go up ...
Excerpt: Private equity company Blackstone Group LP CEO Stephen Schwarzman said on Tuesday that up to 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed by the global credit crisis.
"Between 40 and 45 percent of the world's wealth has been destroyed in little less than a year and a half," Schwarzman told an audience at the Japan Society. "This is absolutely unprecedented in our lifetime."
But the US government is committed to the preservation of financial institutions, he said, and will do whatever it takes to restart the economy.
Chuck Norris is justifiably outraged at what has transpired. The last time a government so thoroughly swindled its citizens and looted the peoples treasury -- via John Law -- the French Revolution resulted, and Madame le Guillotine had to work day and night to clean up the mess :-)
Which just goes to show that people won't get angry about the Constitution or torture or phony wars, but take their money and they're ready to revolt ... or at least to drink lots of beer and talk-talk...
You write: "Which just goes to show that people won't get angry about the Constitution or torture or phony wars, but take their money and they're ready to revolt ... or at least to drink lots of beer and talk-talk..." And I just think, it's true, but how sad.
Like anybody, I like money and wish I had more, but money is nothing compared to civil rights and the citizens' power to criticize and control one's government. Yet so long as we let corporate entities control our media, we the people will be outraged by what the corporate spokespeople tell us to be outraged about.
Not that the collapsing world economy isn't something to be outraged about. It is, definitely. It's a fraud of enormous and almost unfathomable scope, sponsored by criminals who control business and government.
But to my thinking -- correct me if I'm wrong -- the economic collapse is an engineered crisis that could have been prevented and scaled down to a much less catastrophic level, if only the media had told the truth about the myriad criminalities of the Bush-Cheney era and yes, the Clinton and earlier Bush eras. If we the people had been well-informed by media, instead of hoodwinked to believe that Britney matters and all else is well and ordinary and news like "extraordinary rendition" and global climate change and all the myriad scandals of the Bush-Cheney era warrant only the most minimal mention in media, if we'd been told the truth and the scale of the corruption as it happened and as it became known, we the people would have been angry years or decades ago, and we the people would have demanded real regulation and government not so blatantly in bed with the criminals. And we the people wouldn't be where we are today.
With no exaggeration, the collapse of the world's economy could have been prevented, if the mainstream media had presented the utterly mainstream opinions of, say, Dennis Kucinich, Barney Frank, Bernie Sanders, etc., instead of falsely burying their words as irrelevant. For this crisis and all the other crises we're swimming against, even if they're addressed and plausibly overcome (which seems unlikely) it doesn't matter -- big picture, we remain frickin' doomed so long as major corporations motivated solely by the quest for profit control the public discourse.
Helen & Harry Highwater
The media -- part of the Military Industrial Entertainment Complex, aka "Big Media" -- is partly to blame, of course. Their honesty and due diligence would not have prevented all of this, I think. But determined, resourceful sociopathic criminal minds will always find a way. And in this case we have a profoundly criminal government, dating back decades... in effect, the government has set up "The System" so that the government polices itself; it has no natural predators or constraints outside of foreign sovereign nations and guerrilla groups. Here is some recent stuff backing up my viewpoint:
The government is soooooo deeply insulated against popular responses that there is a) no way to communicate with them as individuals without bribing them; b) they are set up in "democracy free zones" engineered by gerrymandering by the two political parties and re-elections are guaranteed UNLESS the politician goes against the Establishment; c) they have no part in the "free market" and vote themselves lavish salaries and pensions, so it does not matter what they do, they are guaranteed comfort for life; d) they have passed laws against protesting in groups larger than 1 (e.g. their permission is required for a demonstration against them...); e) their crimes are rarely punished or even investigated, but the crimes of individuals draw the most extreme sanctions (1% of Americans are in prison or other parts of the "justice" system.)
There is far more, but those pop out instantly.
Hazel Burke
"Damn, that's pessimistic," says Harry.
"Well, yeah," says Helen, "but 'pessimistic' ain't quite the right word when everything Hazel says is just plain true."
I've watched CNBC for years. While they've always been heavily pro-corporate, pro-Republican, pro-rich, and anti-regulations and anti-taxation (for the rich that is; they don't mind taxes on the poor), in recent months they've ratcheted up their rhetoric to the point that at times they might be indistinguishable from Fox News.
Note I said from the beginning we need new laws forcing big media to be more accurate in their reporting, and clearly differentiate between factual news and outright lying opinions or gossip. Right now things are going in the exact opposite direction of that. And sooner or later we'll suffer for it, as it adversely affects government policies under Obama, much the same as it did before him.
I wrote about this years ago. Here's just a few excerpts:
"But there's a whole other bunch of wrong doers who might never have to launder their money in such a way, as their profits are generated from 'inside' the system to start with, rather than outside: the white collar bunch who exploit secrecy, weaknesses in government regulations and law enforcement, the lag of policy updates behind technological advances, and plain old political corruption to wrongfully endanger or steal from their employees, investors, customers, or tax payers, leaving the rest of us facing the fallout for years or decades to come in environmental degradation, higher deficits and taxes, fewer public services, deteriorating infrastructure, looted pensions and benefits, higher prices, fewer good paying jobs, and slower innovation due to less honest competition."
"Clearly our priorities are perverse...Our government punishes the good guys and lets, in some cases, the really bad guys help run the show and set the agendas."
-- Danielle Brian, director of Project On Government Oversight in Washington
"The political influence of bankers tops all other sectors, I learned as a young reporter. Regardless of party or ideology, politicians seek their friendship. So the United States has created a truly bizarre banking code that legalizes--and keeps secret--vast flows of ill-gotten gains. For what purpose? Terrorist financing, yes, but that business is dwarfed by the drug trade profits, insider looting of corporations, offshore tax evasion, securities fraud, plain-vanilla fraud, and other uses."
--Dirty Money by William Greider, citing The Nation of June 24, 2006
I've seen some of the first couple videos when they originally aired on TV. And they were some of the very best hard-hitting journalism America has seen in a while. Which of course is why CNBC, etc. (the corporate propaganda networks) got so worked up over it. 'HOW DARE COMEDIANS SPEAK THE TRUTH ABOUT US, and point out what MUST be either malevolent deception, or gross incompetence on our part!'
I'm way behind on my video-watching, and I've only seen episode one of the Jon Stewart critique of CNBC, but it was pretty good and I'm looking forward to more. Stewart, of course, is the man whose criticism of Crossfire led to that once-fine but by then abominable show's cancellation on CNN. I get the impression it might be a good thing if CNBC suffered a similar fate.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#The bailout -- what I understand is ACTUALLY happening:
Where I live the current economic chain of events is openly and extensively discussed along with the measures being taken to improve matters for EACH "link" in the chain -- especially those measures that slow or prevent job cuts/create jobs. However, it seems that in the US OBSCURING the actual chain of events and the actual measures taken or NOT TAKEN is the order of the day.
Thus, my own method of trying to understand events in the US is to attempt to set out that chain of events (or some of it) and check out what's being done to deal with each link. I see it as something like this: First off, there were the years of moving US manufacturing and money, too, off-shore. This left We the People scrambling to get lower paid service sector jobs and paying more and more of the taxes collected as businesses evaded paying theirs. This left most people spending based on debt given various scams/created trends to keep them spending.
Meanwhile the off-shore tax evasion money schemes increased probably enabling the rapid growth of the financial sector which developed all of its debt related instruments SURE to be risky if debts could not be paid off. Of course, with manufacturing off-shore (and a lot of "invisible" money, too), by 2007 US imports were twice the level of exports and the US deficit was still increasing hugely. The spending on needless warring, more than the total of most other countries' military budgets COMBINED, did NOT and does NOT help since it further increases the deficits -- as do, in my opinion, today's needless financial sector bailouts for the rich.
Then, in early 2007 the dollar declined in value more sharply than it had already been declining causing more price rises. We'd also had the creation of adjustable-rate mortgages. With them set to reset and with the extreme commodity speculation that occurred in 2008 raising prices on essentials dramatically, those on tight budgets were unable to keep up with their mortgage payments. This or maybe just the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15, 2008 upset the unregulated and pretty much out of control derivatives market that had grown so large. With the credit default swaps (CDSs) HUGELY oversold and the (so-called) investment companies that created them unable to pay their debts given their highly leveraged 90 to 95% loans, all of the banks expecting to be paid off WEREN'T.
This started the failure of the banks many of which actually became and still ARE bankrupt, such as the ones being bailed out. Although we aren't having runs on the banks, the bailouts themselves seem to be hurting the economy.
So what exactly are the bailouts doing? First, it seems the very PRIVATE Federal Reserve (FED) through the US Treasury has used the taxpayers' money (plus the tax monies they hope to collect in the future) so that the FED/Treasury can hand it or "guaranteed" Treasury bonds over to the banks to purchase their preferred stock (which enables NO control) and earlier on hand it to the financial institutions that created the unpaid "toxic" derivatives in order to buy them up.
In other words, the bailouts ARE primarily geared to attempting to save the financial sector and the wealthiest people while ignoring the earlier links in the chain of events -- important for all of the rest of us. Thus, all of the changes in laws that have made some of the tax evasion and the very risky derivatives legal/unregulated remain on the books. The manufacturing sector is also being pretty much ignored except for the 3 car manufacturers who will be using whatever they get off-shore. Also, today's inflation indicates that money is getting created, such as for those derivatives, that wreaks the balance required between money created and the creation of real products and trade. As for actually seeing that new jobs are created or NOT cut and that manufacturing is reinvigorated, little or nothing is being done.
So, I do agree with those articles that point out that the shadiest parties with their rather "unexplained wealth" (a crime) must be controlling the US. Not only that but with the government hiding so much info. from We the People, it is clear that something underhanded is going on. Some good articles ARE now coming out that actually do clarify the situation and provide details about what was said above. They also reveal some of the extent of earlier lying and now President Obama's lying. I plan to mention some as I continue to write more about the bailouts and the 2010 budget.
Marie K.
P.S. Meanwhile, this is the latest public announcement from GEAB, GEAB No. 32 (Feb. 16, 2009). It is now predicting the breakup of the current international system. I can already see signs of it as countries start using other currencies BESIDES the dollar and the euro, too, for trade. The longer this goes on and the more comfortable the world becomes with sidelining the US and some of the EU countries, too, the less powerful they will become INCLUDING all of the greedy US/EU rich people whose wealth has obviously gone to their heads. Also, all over the world, their nasty financial schemes along with their neoliberal and even colonial adventures remain UNFORGOTTEN.
#
Interesting stuff about the economic debacle ... which is apparently heading into the terminal vertical descent phase. Three article excerpts here should give you a great appreciation of what is about to occur!!!
Excerpt: The continued secrecy around the destination of bailout funds continues. The Federal Reserve clammed up and wouldn't reveal any names this week in congress. Taxpayers have no idea where their money is going. But I can tell you when a large bankrupt insurer receives bailout money as one has recently, the money flows out the back door to the counter-party.
I like to try and keep things simple...maybe to simple, but here is my explanation of the process. Let's use my home as an example.
1. Only I can take out insurance on it. If my mortgage were like the structured products used on wall street today as many people that wanted to could purchase insurance on my home.
2. With thousands of people having insurance on my home they decide they want to collect, hence they burn down my home.
3. They collect the insurance money and take a vacation.
That is as simple as I can put it. The many people buying insurance are only buying it to make money and must force an entity or product into bankruptcy basically to collect the insurance. Taxpayer money goes to the many people/counter-parties who have insurance on something that they don't own. And then we can't even find out who is collecting the money. It's fraud pure and simple and destroying everything in it's path.
Excerpt: Our Washington policymakers have too belatedly recognized the perils associated with unregulated Credit and speculative finance. They now come down hard on our Federal Reserve and Treasury Department officials, quickly losing sight of the Mountains of Blame to be spread around. Let us not forget that Congress repealed the Depression era Glass-Steagall Act back in 1999. And it is fair to remind leaders from both parties and both Houses that they are directly culpable for the spectacular rise and unfolding fall of the Government- Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). I get no sense that a coherent understanding of the Credit Bubble is manifesting in Washington. ...
Today, those on the wrong side of the CDS market (having written Credit insurance) are getting killed and this dynamic is seemingly taking the entire system down with it. Corporate bond (bear) market liquidity is scarce, while the viability of scores of participants on all sides of the market is very much up in the air. This means that the hundreds of billions of default protection sold against troubled debt issuers (i.e. GMAC, Ford Motor Credit, GE Capital, AIG, etc.) today confront a serious dilemma when it comes to hedging rapidly escalating losses (and unwieldy "books" of derivatives and counter-party exposures). ...
I'll surmise that the CDS market is now in complete dislocation. I'll also assume the sellers of CDS (and various Credit insurance) have resorted to shorting equities (individual stocks, ETFs and futures) in a desperate attempt to hedge escalating losses. This has likely placed additional pressure on sickly equities markets -- and it goes without saying that it is especially damaging to market confidence when the stocks of our nation's (and the world's) major borrowers and financial institutions are all locked together in a death spiral. This dynamic has surely led to another round of forced de-leveraging.
Anyone who understands Catastrophe Theory will, looking at the above chart for the Philadelphia bank index, instantly recognize that we are fast closing in on a cuspal catastrophe. The crisis is already well into the acute phase and getting worse by the day, and the worse it gets the greater is the demand for resolution, and the more drastic and fundamental the measures that will be required to end it. Since the big banks and other major corporations and institutions at the heart of the crisis do not have the financial wherewithal to survive it and are deemed by society, or at least by the elites running the world, to be "too big to fail", there can only be one outcome -- massive across the board full or near-full nationalization of the afflicted entities, possibly involving mega-mergers, such as Bank of America merging with Citibank. This means in effect a "super bailout" that makes what we have seen to date look decidedly modest, and also means that the taxpayer will end up footing the bill for the misadventures of these companies for years to come. What about the derivatives mountain, which Bob Chapman has famously labeled the "Quadrillion Dollar Derivative Death Star" -- won't that bring the system crashing down anyway? The derivatives problem is so astronomic in scale that there is only one solution to it -- you simply tell all the counterparties involved to get lost and that they are not getting their money. Most of it is fictional anyway -- there is not that much money in the world, so these contracts can never be honored in any event. So you wipe the slate clean and it's "tough luck" for anyone who doesn't like it. This is not just what will probably happen -- it is the ONLY solution. The interesting thing is that our chart makes clear that resolution of this crisis is imminent, for the sector is accelerating on the downside into vertical freefall -- meaning that we must see either mass bankruptcy or super bailout within about 2 months. As mass bankruptcy would result in societal breakdown that only leaves super bailout as an option, which is the outcome that the action in the copper and oil markets points to. ...
It should come as no surprise that the accelerating parabolic collapse in the banking and financial sectors is leading to exactly the same phenomenon in the broad stock market, where a similar parabolic downtrend is leading the market into the abyss. The market is already extremely oversold so that when the drastic measures are announced that mark the onset of the resolution phase a massive rally is to be expected that will be given a huge boost by panic short covering. This rally will be coincident with a recovery in the banking and financial sectors with the chart similarly suggesting that it will occur within 2 months, possibly much less. Once this happens base metal stocks and the oil sector will soar. We will later be examining the impact of these developments on the Precious Metals sector.
Me -- I doubt Mr. Maund would be so optimistic if his primary interest were not in precious metals. So many companies are being destroyed that it is very hard to imagine the majestic rebound he predicts for stocks... Or, rather, put it this way: his is predicting a directional movement and a timeframe, which is rarely possible to achieve; so he may be right about the directional movement but be wrong about the timeframe, or vice-versa ...
On another topic, Americans have every right to be furious at Washington DC. $10 TRILLION has been allocated and nearly all of the money has been directed to the wealthiest corporations and their share/bond holders, leaving average Americans with zero bailout and the prospect of joblessness, homelessness, and complete and utter lifestyle destruction through no fault of their own. Americans have a right to be fully enraged at both the Clinton Regime AND the Bush Regime for the deregulation and lack of oversight during their watch. The Federal Reserve and the chowderheads in Congress like Barney Franks should be in prison, or at least unemployed for cause (i.e. not allowed to collect unemployment pay.)
And on top of that, the government is further allocating scarce billions to stiffen the police/military response in case starving citizens decide to riot --- or even gather in large masses to protest (as is their Constitutional right.) That just adds insult to injury as the money delivered to the police and military could be used to directly to assist the people so that they wouldn't *need* to riot and protest... So basically, the government is doing EVERYTHING to benefit itself and nothing to benefit the people (regardless of what they say they are doing.)
Sven Goldstein
#
You guys not only perform a valuable public service ... and you get me through my work
day! You should probably see this blog post from "Studies in Crap" at a Kansas City paper ... he reads The O'Reilly Factor for Kids and tears it up. Lots of funny quotes and jabs, probably perfect for one of those long, helpful, argumentative link updates you guys specialize in!
Keep the good fight going!
G.D.
I flipped through The O'Reilly Factor for Kids at a rummage sale several years ago, and since we don't have cable and thus never watch Bill O'Reilly, it really helped me understand the dangers to democracy presented by that blowhard and others of his ilk. Anyway, yeah, the "Studies in Crap" entry is great and I've added that Pitch blog to my once-weekly surf cycle. So thanks for the verbal hug, and for the link.
Helen & Harry Highwater
#
Re Helen & Harry's comment, As the evidence of Bush-Cheney's crimes keeps leaking out, bit by outrageous bit -- and it will -- the public groundswell for prosecution could eventually grow large enough that Congress and the Justice Department can't ignore it, even if they'd like to.
Dream on. This is America. That's not how things work.
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Like America's right-wingers, we believe in
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But unlike most left-wing leaders, we mean it.
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But unlike many libertarians, we're not obsessed with the gold standard, we don't believe incorporation is humanity's highest achievement, and we don't believe everything in life comes down to dollars and cents. We've read and enjoyed Ayn Rand's novels, but we understand that they're works of fiction.
We're skeptical, and we're sick of so-called 'journalists' who aren't skeptical at all.
A reader asks, what are our solutions?
We propose no solutions except common sense, which is never common. We like the principles of democracy, and the ideals broadly described as 'American'. The US Constitution is a fine and workable framework for solutions, when it's actually read and thoughtfully understood by intelligent statesmen and women. So, no manifestos from us. We don't dream that big, and if there's one thing the world doesn't need it's yet another manifesto.
Our suggestion is: think.
A fact-based instead of faith-based approach leads to solutions for most of the recurring issues of our time, from abortion to global climate change, pollution to universal health care, careful but real regulation of industry and economy, hunger, war, terror, human rights for humans not for corporations, science not religious doctrine in public schools, equal protection and prosecution under law, etc. Approach problems without glorifying stupidity, without demonizing intelligence, and answers usually come into focus.
These pages are published by Harry and Helen Highwater, happily married low-income nom de plumes and rabble-rousers from Madison, Wisconsin (with a few friends scattered around the world helping out).
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Congress of the United States begun and held at the City of New York, on Wednesday the fourth of March, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution expressed a desire in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, two thirds of both Houses concurring that the following Articles be proposed to the Legislatures of the several states as Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, all or any of which articles, when ratified by three fourths of the said Legislatures to be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the said Constitution. viz: Articles in addition to, and Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, proposed by Congress and Ratified by the Legislatures of the several States, pursuant to the fifth Article of the original Constitution. The First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Second Amendment
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
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No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
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In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
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The Eighth Amendment
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The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
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Of course not. Nobody will know the answers until there's an open and honest investigation.
But anyone courageous enough to think can see that the pertinent questions for any serious "investigation" were never asked, let alone answered, by the official investigators.
