TODAY'S TOPICS: Fascist Bailout, Disaster Capitalism, Klein, Solomon, Nader, Scheer, Bernie Saunders, Letterman, Theft 08'?
Me: THE FEAR FACTOR – F*** THIS BAILOUT!
Well, the Shock Doctrine is now in absolute, full force. Watching and listening to Bush and McCain, we’ve suddenly gone from “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” to “we have to suspend the campaign and delay the debates in order to deal with the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression” in about a week or it’s over man, game over! (my Aliens impression)
I don’t know about you all, but I’ve been down this god damn road before, and I’m not going to be fooled this time either (though it appears Congress will). Suddenly the sky is falling and we the people are being asked to provide the most money in world history to bailout the corporatists??? And we’re supposed to give that money to the same government that is RESPONSIBLE for this mess??? The same government that has murdered millions, tortured thousands, and shredded our Constitution?
Let me be real clear on what’s going on now and why. This is nothing less than that final nail in the democratic coffin, the ultimate collusion between government (particularly the Executive Branch) and corporations…also known as FASCISM.
Let me leave you with this nugget to nibble on until I can get to it more next week: if we bail out the banks, and they are responsible then to pay us ALL THAT MONEY back, just how do you think they are going to make that extra money? Do you see the contradiction here? To make it back, they will have to incorporate more schemes that hurt the public and the consumer! So to pay us back, they will strip us of even more money and rights. My bet is we’ll see higher credit card interest rates, ANOTHER bubble of some kind, more bad loans, and a host of other tactics that make them their money back - off of us - to supposedly pay us back!
I’ll get a little more into this line of thinking in the video section…now to McCain.
Is it me, or are really, really serious questions being raised about whether McCain is even fully cognizant and aware anymore? Kind of like Reagan from about 1985 through 1988 of his Presidency…but without the charm and charisma (wasn’t charming or charismatic to me, but to some…whereas McCain is a walking tumor).
I mean his campaign has become so erratic it’s hard to know what they’re going to pull out of their hats next. Will he challenge Obama to a cage fight? Maybe to a dance off? Will Sarah Palin’s Witch Doctor put a hex on Biden? Seriously folks, we have a demented old man with war delusions and a running mate that has now been found on camera being exorcised of demons by a witch doctor who has persecuted “witches” in Kenya. Didn’t we kind of settle the witch thing back in Salem over 300 years ago?
Apparently, not so in a McCain/Palin administration…
And what about the fact that suddenly McCain must come to the aid of the economy…the same man that has missed 230 out of 286 votes since Q4-2007. That’s 80% of the votes! Note to McCain: Please, please don’t “help us”…
VIDEO SECTION
I’m getting the sinking feeling that the Dems are going to cave more than they need to on this bailout. As I’ve said so many times on this blog, meeting someone half way to shit is still pretty close to being shit. Or in other words, putting a little sugar on a shit sandwich still will taste like shit!! Maybe it doesn’t smell quite as bad, but it’s the same old crap. Granted, some good changes seem to have been forced by Democrats, but it still falls far short in my mind. On that note, watch the ONE SENATOR that has offered a truly progressive SOLUTION, both short term, and more importantly long term, to this crisis: Bernie Saunders (my favorite politician in the country…Feingold number 2).
And watch him make the obvious case: who are the real socialists these days? And to what ends does this kind of Wall Street Socialism serve? Hint: the corporations and wealthy elite’s profits are private, but their losses are socialized…while the people are kicked out of their homes, can’t afford health care or to send their children to college anymore.
Welcome to the Ownership Society…as in, “we are owned”…or as Obama says, “you’re on your own” (I think mine is even more apt):
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/25/bernie-sanders-calls-larry-kudlow-a-socialist-over-his-support-of-the-wall-street-bail-out/
MUST WATCH!!! As I have said so many times here, the ONLY WAY McCain pulls out a victory is through another (would be the third) stolen election…and boy does Rove and company have a system in place to have a shot at doing it (unless Obama can win by at least over 5 points). Watch Greg Palast breakdown “the coup game”...:
http://www.truthout.org/video/greg-palast-rove-has-already-fixed-2008-election
Debate shouldn’t be cancelled says Obama…meanwhile McCain looks like he's had a minor stroke or seen a ghost...one thing is certain, he DOES NOT want to debate Obama, esp. at a time the economy is in crisis.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/24/obama-responds-to-mccains-time-out-the-debate-should-not-be-cancelled/
CNN’s Campbell Brown calls out the McCain camp as being sexist for hiding Sarah “Beauty Queen’s Got a Gun” Palin from the press:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/24/free-sarah-palin-campbell-brown-goes-off-on-mccain-for-hiding-palin-from-the-press/
Watch McCain a fumble and a bumble on the economy…seriously, this guy shouldn’t be in charge of a checking account let alone the largest economy the world’s ever known:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/25/how-is-john-mccain-going-to-help-solve-the-financial-crisis/
Now watch the “Dumber” of the Dumb and Dumber ticket get stumped again in her second interview. You know there’s a problem when Katie Couric is the person that brings the gravitas to an interview:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/24/ill-get-back-to-you-when-pressed-palin-cant-give-specifics-on-mccains-pro-regulation-record/
Jack Cafferty: Why is McCain running from the debate????
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/24/jack-cafferty-why-is-mccain-running-away-from-the-debate/
Yes, even David Letterman takes it to McCain…for lying to him! One thing though, as Letterman praises him as extraordinary, and says “who else would do that” in regards to him not taking the Vietcong offer to be released unless all the captives were, he leaves out a key fact: ALL CAPTIVES DID THAT! It’s military protocol. Hundreds, even thousands of captives in Vietnam did the very same thing…in fact, every single one of them did. Admirable, but not special or unique…Now watch…you have to wait until the end though when Letterman realizes the lie:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/24/jack-cafferty-why-is-mccain-running-away-from-the-debate/
ARTICLE SECTION: The Best on the Bailout
As usual, Norm Solomon and I are on EXACTLY the same page. Notice how he concludes too:
The insurance industry is too big to fail. A person's health is too small to matter, so - when it fails due to the absence or loopholes of insurance coverage - that's tough luck.
SNIP
Overall, the warfare state is too big to fail. The virtues of peace are too small to matter. Agribusiness is too big to fail. Family farmers are too dirt-small to matter. The leverage for the US Treasury to subsidize Wall Street is too big to fail. The leverage to subsidize mothers and children kicked off welfare is too small to matter.
SNIP
Such priorities and mindsets are in overdrive at the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street. But a basic shift in government priorities is possible. That's what happened three-quarters of a century ago, when a progressive upsurge prevented the re-election of President Herbert Hoover - and then effectively mobilized to pressure the new occupant of the White House.
After campaigning in 1932 on a middle-of-the-road Democratic platform, Franklin Roosevelt went on to become a president who denounced the "economic royalists" and made common cause with working people and the unemployed. People across the country organized for social change. In the process, you might say, the power of progressive movements became too big to fail. Something like that could happen again.
http://www.truthout.org/092308C
Robert Scheer nails this takeover attempt too:
What arrogance for Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson-who the year before President Bush appointed him treasury secretary was paid $16.4 million for heading the company that did as much as any to engineer this financial travesty-to now insist we must blindly trust him to solve the problem. Paulson is demanding the power to act with "absolute impunity," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who admonished the treasury chief: "After reading this proposal, it is not only our economy that is at risk, Mr. Secretary, but our Constitution as well."
SNIP
He's wrong on that last point, for what is proposed is not the nationalization of private corporations but rather a corporate takeover of government. The marriage of highly concentrated corporate power with an authoritarian state that services the politico-economic elite at the expense of the people is more accurately referred to as "financial fascism." After all, even Hitler never nationalized the Mercedes-Benz company but rather entered into a very profitable partnership with the current car company's corporate ancestor, which made out quite well until Hitler's bubble burst. Smell a rat if Congress approves the Paulson plan without severely curtailing CEO pay and putting a freeze on the mortgage foreclosures that are threatening to destroy the homes of millions of Americans.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/24-1
Naomi Klein who is responsible for the most important economic theory of our time – the Shock Doctrine – puts this episode in the Disaster Capitalism context:
I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place...).
The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out 18 policy prescriptions for Congress to take in order to "return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms." In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow "competition" (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling.
SNIP
So let's be absolutely clear: there are no saviors who are going to look out for us in this crisis. Certainly not Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, one of the companies that will benefit most from his proposed bailout (which is actually a stick up). The only hope of preventing another dose of shock politics is loud, organized grassroots pressure on all political parties: they have to know right now that after seven years of Bush, Americans are becoming shock resistant.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/23-1
ELLIOT SPITZER WARNED US: HENCE THE STING OPERATION
If you all remember, I posted this timely op-ed by Elliot Spitzer back in February…its well worth revisiting, as it demonstrates precisely how the Bush administration is RESPONSIBLE for the subprime meltdown:
A few clips:
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government's actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021302783.html
And yes, one more, as Ralph Nader, of all people, must be heard on this issue too, because like him or not, he’s been ABSOLUTELY right on every one of these issues for decades. The bottom line with him remains the same: his policies are what our country needs…if only he was a charismatic Democrat that could win an election!! Because while Obama offers promise, don’t be fooled that he’s any anti-corporate Wall Street reformer. Here Nader offers 12 concrete steps that should be taken now…listen to him Dems!!
A few clips:
1. Congress should hold a series of hearings and invite broad public comment on any proposed bailout. Congress is supposed to be a co-equal branch of our federal government. It needs to stop the stampede to give Bush a $700 billion check. Public hearings should be held to determine what alternatives might exist to the four-page proposal advanced by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson.
SNIP
5. Taxpayers must be protected by having a stake in any recovery. The bailout plan should provide opportunities for taxpayers to recoup funds that are made available to problem financial institutions or to benefit from the financial institutions' rising stock price and increased profitability after being bailed out.
SNIP
9. Congress should pass the Financial Consumers' Information and Representation Act, to permit citizens to form a federally-chartered nonprofit membership organization to strengthen consumer representation in government proceedings that concern the financial services industry. As the savings and loan disasters of the 1980s and the Wall Street debacles of the last few years have demonstrated, there is an overriding need for consumers and taxpayers to have the organized means to enhance their influence on financial issues.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/25-1
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: My Quick Take, New New Deal?, Reagan Revolution, 1980 and 2008, Paulson Plan
MY INITIAL (NO TIME!!!) RESPONSE TO THE WALL STREET MELTDOWN/BAILOUT
Clearly Congress cannot support what I consider to be one of the most egregious and galling power grabs in the history of this country. We shouldn't be shocked by sheer hubris of the Paulson plan, as it represents the epitome of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine theory. Here we go again...we're told the sky is falling (because of something caused by those telling us this) and then we're given their plan that must be passed which not only won't solve the problem, but will exacerbate it while giving the guilty even more (think Katrina, Patriot Act, Iraq)!!
Somehow the idea of me bailing out people who's annual country club memberships cost twice what I make in a year doesn't sit well.
Of course, this debate is about a whole lot more than the Paulson plan itself. As I touched on Monday, this entire debate is over nothing less than the principles and concepts of the New Deal versus those of the Reagan Revolution and the damage it has wrought. This meltdown and the administration plan to bail out the corporations at the expense of the people and the constitution is one of THE most important opportunities - as well as gravest dangers - that the progressive movement has ever had.
It's time to educate the people again about the principles of the right wing philosophy of governance versus that of progressives. In many ways this election - and this debate - is not unlike the election of 1980 AND 1932. This time however, it is our opportunity to begin a long-term progressive resurgence, just as Reagan's victory in 1980 did for conservatism and deregulation and FDR's did in founding what it means to even BE a progressive today.
Obviously Obama has caught on to this larger debate (though the proof will be in the pudding), particularly that of the real effects of rampant deregulation and the assault on the principles of the New Deal (which is the end goal of the conservative movement). This debate gives Obama a huge advantage because the key in all this in terms of the election is that McCain has supported EVERY DEREGULATORY scheme that has led to the current economic meltdown, and in fact, it's his economic advisor, Phil Gramm that wrote the two most important, and horrible laws that directly led to the current crisis than ANY OTHER lawmaker or law.
There's his Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the other being the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000 which was tacked on to H.R. 4577, a budget/appropriations bill.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 "destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies." The Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, made legal "the mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector."
The Nation writes:
"those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community. The mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector were made legal only as a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which former Senator Phil Gramm, R-Texas, pushed through Congress just hours before the 2000 Christmas recess. Gramm, until recently co-chair of the McCain campaign, also had co-authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law in 1999 with President Bill Clinton's signature.
That gem, which Gramm had pushed for years with massive financial industry lobbying...Those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community, and no wonder we have witnessed an even more rapid and severe meltdown in housing values than during the Great Depression.
Not surprisingly, Gramm was rewarded for his service upon retirement as a senator and as head of the Senate Banking Committee with a top position at the Swiss-based UBS bank, which is close to drowning in the subprime mortgage nightmare he helped create. These folks have no shame, as was evidenced when the senator's wife, Wendy, was named a director of Enron, whose roiling of the energy market had been made possible only through yet another provision of Gramm's Commodity Futures Modernization Act."
So, between those two bills, the energy crisis was allowed to flourish because speculators could get into the energy futures market, and the other because it deregulated what was the New Deal separation between investment banks that work Wall Street like a casino versus banks that hold everyday peoples money...a genius idea on Roosevelt's party...now gone thanks to Gramm and McCain...and it was the key reason why all these institutions could start getting into subprime and housing and start betting with our money....
MORE ON MCCAIN'S LOBBYIST TIES
Washington Post:
Senator John McCain's campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.
Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.
Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.
So clearly what Barack Obama and Joe Biden need to do is jump all over this story and keep hammering away until the corporate media can no longer ignore it. The U.S. stands on the brink of the next Great Depression thanks to Bush/McCain deregulation policies and now we find out that the man who runs the McCain campaign was paid handsomely to lobby for these fatal policies on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even as he repeatedly tries to tie Obama to those companies. Voters need to know how we got into this mess and who is responsible.
Of course there is truth that clinton and too many other democrats also get swept up in the "deregulation" fervor of the 90's and 2000s and didn't unite to fight so much of what the republican party has wrought. That's why I say this is all representative of a failure of conservative governing philosophy...which means all Democrats were not immune, and why we need the party to go back to its New Deal roots...and this is THAT OPPORTUNITY.
Too many dems moved too far to the right when it came to wall street regulation...which just adds to our argument for a return to progressive policies...like FDR's...that actually WORKED for the people.
My question is this: will Obama be more persuaded by the Robert Rubin (a wall streeter and also responsible for this mess....though better than repubs) or Robert Reich (the best person in the clinton cabinet...hence his short stay)? Both are his advisors, and both see things differently, with Reich more populist, and Rubin more from the corporate DLC wing.
Let us hope that Obama understands this moment - as FDR did - and the opportunity it provides progressives to re-establish ourselves and take just a little bit of the power back from the corporations.
END
MOYERS POINTS OUT JUST HOW OUT OF BALANCE OUR ECONOMY HAS BECOME
During the last five years of his tenure as CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld's total take was $354 million. John Thain, the current chairman of Merrill Lynch, taken over this week by Bank of America, has been on the job for just nine months. He pocketed a $15 million signing bonus. His predecessor, Stan O'Neal, retired with a package valued at $161 million, after the company reported an $8 billion loss in a single quarter. And remember Bear Stearns's Chairman James Cayne? After the company collapsed earlier this year and was up for sale at bargain basement prices, he sold his stake for more than $60 million.
Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the former heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - aka the gods who failed - are fighting to keep severance packages of close to $24 million combined - on top of the millions in salary each earned last year while slaughtering the golden calf. As it is written in the Gospel According to Me, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
-- Bill Moyers yesterday
DODD'S BETTER ALTERNATIVE PLAN (BERNIE SAUNDERS'S IS SUPERIOR THOUGH)...
Lobbyists are rallying to defeat Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) alternative bailout proposal, with the banking industry particularly up in arms about a provision allowing bankruptcy judges to lower mortgages for distressed homeowners. "We are vigorously opposing that," said Steve Verdier, a lobbyist for the Independent Community Bankers Association (ICBA).
VIDEO SECTION
Meanwhile Obama gives a press conference that indicates he's generally on the right track regarding this bailout and the larger debate...using the term a welfare program for Wall Street Executives...the exact kind of re-framing that is needed:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/23/obamas-press-conference-this-plan-cannot-be-a-welfare-program-for-wall-st-executives/
Powell on Georgia/Russia...gee, sounds like yet another person disputed the McCain version of what happened:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/22/colin-powell-says-georgia-provoked-russian-crisis-hints-mccains-response-was-hasty-reckless/
The Simpsons parody McCain…classic!
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/99826/mcbain_for_america_%28a_simpsons_parody%29/
Obama on the surge in 60 minutes interview (we'll be hearing about this in Friday's debate):
Kroft: The McCain campaign, the last day or two, has been running nothing but ads talking about you and the surge…that you were opposed to the surge.
Obama: That’s all they had to talk about. You notice that, according to the McCain mythology, I guess the Iraq war started with the surge. They seem to forget that there were five years before that where they got everything wrong, where they anticipated that we would be greeted as liberators. Where they said this would be easy.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/22/obama-on-60-minutes-according-to-the-mccain-mythology-i-guess-the-iraq-war-started-with-the-surge/
Bill Moyers on the CEO disgrace…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/21/bill-moyers-journal-moguls-steal-home-while-companies-strike-out/
Obama speaks out on McCain as the great deregulator:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/21/obama-on-mccain-the-great-deregulator-wants-to-turn-his-attention-to-health-care/
And this was truly amazing, the conservative ABC panel literally takes McCain apart for seeming, well, almost panicked and confused by nearly everything. And a stone cold liar:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/99758/abc_panel_tears_into_mccain_on_the_economy/
And more on McCain, as he commits yet another blunder and says that deregulation of the banking industry HAS HELPED the economy...he's just the gift that keeps on giving:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/22/john-mccain-has-no-regrets-being-mr-deregulator-on-wall-street-no-i-think-the-deregulation-was-probably-helpful-to-the-growth-of-our-economy/
And Mccain's role in the keating 5 FINALLY covered...a little...but not by a major network:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/23/why-the-media-silence-over-john-mccains-involvement-in-the-keating-5/
ARTICLE SECTION
The progressive David Sirota on the 700 billion bailout...
A few clips:
Other than a top-line limit of $700 billion, the White House proposal includes not a single reference to how much taxpayers can be forced to pay private investment firms for their worthless mortgages. To the untrained eye, the omission may seem like a minor oversight, but it is almost certainly deliberate not just as a power grab, but in its potential to convert the Treasury Department into a Tammany Hall graft machine with international reach.
Paulson came directly to government from Goldman Sachs, and with these new powers, he could posture as the 21st century's Boss Tweed, completely free to pay inflated prices for those mortgages as a means of financially rewarding his former Wall Street colleagues who created this mess. And in his initial round of interviews this weekend, he made barely any effort to stem concerns that this is precisely his plan of action. When asked how he would "decide what to buy and what to pay," he stumbled through an evasive answer, saying "Well, we're going to have some professional asset managers and some real experts working with us, and we'll use a - you know, we're working through the processes."
Everyone agrees that something major must be done. But Mr. Paulson is demanding extraordinary power for himself - and for his successor - to deploy taxpayers' money on behalf of a plan that, as far as I can see, doesn't make sense. Some are saying that we should simply trust Mr. Paulson, because he's a smart guy who knows what he's doing. But that's only half true: he is a smart guy, but what, exactly, in the experience of the past year and a half - a period during which Mr. Paulson repeatedly declared the financial crisis "contained," and then offered a series of unsuccessful fixes - justifies the belief that he knows what he's doing? He's making it up as he goes along, just like the rest of us.
In the midst of the current credit crisis, Americans are "cutting back on health care, a sector once thought to be invulnerable to recession." Spending on doctor's appointments and preventive tests is down while "the number of prescriptions filled in the U.S. fell 0.5% in the first quarter and a steeper 1.97% in the second," compared with 2007 -- the first negative quarters in the last decade.
According to 2007 data released by the U.S. Census Bureau today, more than 7.5 million people "are spending half of their income or more on housing costs." The government considers "a homeowner spending 30 percent or more of their income on housing costs to be financially burdened," a definition that now covers almost 38 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage.
The White House said yesterday that it opposed the Credit Card Bill of Rights, a bill currently being debated in the House, "saying it would constrain banks' ability to price risk." The proposal would end double-billing and would force companies to mail bills 25 days before payment is due, rather than the current 14 days. Read more about why the bill is so important here.
McCain camp criticism rife with errors -- Senator John McCain’s top aides convened a conference call today to complain of being called “liars.” They pressed the media to scrutinize specific elements of Senator Barack Obama’s record. But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: Deepening the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.
--Ben Smith Politico -- 9/22/08
MY INITIAL (NO TIME!!!) RESPONSE TO THE WALL STREET MELTDOWN/BAILOUT
Clearly Congress cannot support what I consider to be one of the most egregious and galling power grabs in the history of this country. We shouldn't be shocked by sheer hubris of the Paulson plan, as it represents the epitome of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine theory. Here we go again...we're told the sky is falling (because of something caused by those telling us this) and then we're given their plan that must be passed which not only won't solve the problem, but will exacerbate it while giving the guilty even more (think Katrina, Patriot Act, Iraq)!!
Somehow the idea of me bailing out people who's annual country club memberships cost twice what I make in a year doesn't sit well.
Of course, this debate is about a whole lot more than the Paulson plan itself. As I touched on Monday, this entire debate is over nothing less than the principles and concepts of the New Deal versus those of the Reagan Revolution and the damage it has wrought. This meltdown and the administration plan to bail out the corporations at the expense of the people and the constitution is one of THE most important opportunities - as well as gravest dangers - that the progressive movement has ever had.
It's time to educate the people again about the principles of the right wing philosophy of governance versus that of progressives. In many ways this election - and this debate - is not unlike the election of 1980 AND 1932. This time however, it is our opportunity to begin a long-term progressive resurgence, just as Reagan's victory in 1980 did for conservatism and deregulation and FDR's did in founding what it means to even BE a progressive today.
Obviously Obama has caught on to this larger debate (though the proof will be in the pudding), particularly that of the real effects of rampant deregulation and the assault on the principles of the New Deal (which is the end goal of the conservative movement). This debate gives Obama a huge advantage because the key in all this in terms of the election is that McCain has supported EVERY DEREGULATORY scheme that has led to the current economic meltdown, and in fact, it's his economic advisor, Phil Gramm that wrote the two most important, and horrible laws that directly led to the current crisis than ANY OTHER lawmaker or law.
There's his Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the other being the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000 which was tacked on to H.R. 4577, a budget/appropriations bill.
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 "destroyed the Depression-era barrier to the merger of stockbrokers, banks and insurance companies." The Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, made legal "the mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector."
The Nation writes:
"those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community. The mortgage swaps distancing the originator of the loan from the ultimate collector were made legal only as a result of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which former Senator Phil Gramm, R-Texas, pushed through Congress just hours before the 2000 Christmas recess. Gramm, until recently co-chair of the McCain campaign, also had co-authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law in 1999 with President Bill Clinton's signature.
That gem, which Gramm had pushed for years with massive financial industry lobbying...Those two acts effectively ended significant regulation of the financial community, and no wonder we have witnessed an even more rapid and severe meltdown in housing values than during the Great Depression.
Not surprisingly, Gramm was rewarded for his service upon retirement as a senator and as head of the Senate Banking Committee with a top position at the Swiss-based UBS bank, which is close to drowning in the subprime mortgage nightmare he helped create. These folks have no shame, as was evidenced when the senator's wife, Wendy, was named a director of Enron, whose roiling of the energy market had been made possible only through yet another provision of Gramm's Commodity Futures Modernization Act."
So, between those two bills, the energy crisis was allowed to flourish because speculators could get into the energy futures market, and the other because it deregulated what was the New Deal separation between investment banks that work Wall Street like a casino versus banks that hold everyday peoples money...a genius idea on Roosevelt's party...now gone thanks to Gramm and McCain...and it was the key reason why all these institutions could start getting into subprime and housing and start betting with our money....
MORE ON MCCAIN'S LOBBYIST TIES
Washington Post:
Senator John McCain's campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.
Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.
Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.
So clearly what Barack Obama and Joe Biden need to do is jump all over this story and keep hammering away until the corporate media can no longer ignore it. The U.S. stands on the brink of the next Great Depression thanks to Bush/McCain deregulation policies and now we find out that the man who runs the McCain campaign was paid handsomely to lobby for these fatal policies on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even as he repeatedly tries to tie Obama to those companies. Voters need to know how we got into this mess and who is responsible.
Of course there is truth that clinton and too many other democrats also get swept up in the "deregulation" fervor of the 90's and 2000s and didn't unite to fight so much of what the republican party has wrought. That's why I say this is all representative of a failure of conservative governing philosophy...which means all Democrats were not immune, and why we need the party to go back to its New Deal roots...and this is THAT OPPORTUNITY.
Too many dems moved too far to the right when it came to wall street regulation...which just adds to our argument for a return to progressive policies...like FDR's...that actually WORKED for the people.
My question is this: will Obama be more persuaded by the Robert Rubin (a wall streeter and also responsible for this mess....though better than repubs) or Robert Reich (the best person in the clinton cabinet...hence his short stay)? Both are his advisors, and both see things differently, with Reich more populist, and Rubin more from the corporate DLC wing.
Let us hope that Obama understands this moment - as FDR did - and the opportunity it provides progressives to re-establish ourselves and take just a little bit of the power back from the corporations.
END
MOYERS POINTS OUT JUST HOW OUT OF BALANCE OUR ECONOMY HAS BECOME
During the last five years of his tenure as CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld's total take was $354 million. John Thain, the current chairman of Merrill Lynch, taken over this week by Bank of America, has been on the job for just nine months. He pocketed a $15 million signing bonus. His predecessor, Stan O'Neal, retired with a package valued at $161 million, after the company reported an $8 billion loss in a single quarter. And remember Bear Stearns's Chairman James Cayne? After the company collapsed earlier this year and was up for sale at bargain basement prices, he sold his stake for more than $60 million.
Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the former heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - aka the gods who failed - are fighting to keep severance packages of close to $24 million combined - on top of the millions in salary each earned last year while slaughtering the golden calf. As it is written in the Gospel According to Me, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
-- Bill Moyers yesterday
DODD'S BETTER ALTERNATIVE PLAN (BERNIE SAUNDERS'S IS SUPERIOR THOUGH)...
Lobbyists are rallying to defeat Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) alternative bailout proposal, with the banking industry particularly up in arms about a provision allowing bankruptcy judges to lower mortgages for distressed homeowners. "We are vigorously opposing that," said Steve Verdier, a lobbyist for the Independent Community Bankers Association (ICBA).
VIDEO SECTION
McCain has a number of lobbyists from freddie and fannie ON HIS STAFF...and one was getting paid all the way up to last month!!:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/24/blockbuster-mccain-campaign-manager-took-freddie-money-up-until-last-month/Meanwhile Obama gives a press conference that indicates he's generally on the right track regarding this bailout and the larger debate...using the term a welfare program for Wall Street Executives...the exact kind of re-framing that is needed:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/23/obamas-press-conference-this-plan-cannot-be-a-welfare-program-for-wall-st-executives/
Powell on Georgia/Russia...gee, sounds like yet another person disputed the McCain version of what happened:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/22/colin-powell-says-georgia-provoked-russian-crisis-hints-mccains-response-was-hasty-reckless/
The Simpsons parody McCain…classic!
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/99826/mcbain_for_america_%28a_simpsons_parody%29/
Obama on the surge in 60 minutes interview (we'll be hearing about this in Friday's debate):
Kroft: The McCain campaign, the last day or two, has been running nothing but ads talking about you and the surge…that you were opposed to the surge.
Obama: That’s all they had to talk about. You notice that, according to the McCain mythology, I guess the Iraq war started with the surge. They seem to forget that there were five years before that where they got everything wrong, where they anticipated that we would be greeted as liberators. Where they said this would be easy.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/22/obama-on-60-minutes-according-to-the-mccain-mythology-i-guess-the-iraq-war-started-with-the-surge/
Bill Moyers on the CEO disgrace…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/21/bill-moyers-journal-moguls-steal-home-while-companies-strike-out/
Obama speaks out on McCain as the great deregulator:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/21/obama-on-mccain-the-great-deregulator-wants-to-turn-his-attention-to-health-care/
And this was truly amazing, the conservative ABC panel literally takes McCain apart for seeming, well, almost panicked and confused by nearly everything. And a stone cold liar:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/99758/abc_panel_tears_into_mccain_on_the_economy/
And more on McCain, as he commits yet another blunder and says that deregulation of the banking industry HAS HELPED the economy...he's just the gift that keeps on giving:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/22/john-mccain-has-no-regrets-being-mr-deregulator-on-wall-street-no-i-think-the-deregulation-was-probably-helpful-to-the-growth-of-our-economy/
And Mccain's role in the keating 5 FINALLY covered...a little...but not by a major network:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/23/why-the-media-silence-over-john-mccains-involvement-in-the-keating-5/
ARTICLE SECTION
The progressive David Sirota on the 700 billion bailout...
A few clips:
Other than a top-line limit of $700 billion, the White House proposal includes not a single reference to how much taxpayers can be forced to pay private investment firms for their worthless mortgages. To the untrained eye, the omission may seem like a minor oversight, but it is almost certainly deliberate not just as a power grab, but in its potential to convert the Treasury Department into a Tammany Hall graft machine with international reach.
Paulson came directly to government from Goldman Sachs, and with these new powers, he could posture as the 21st century's Boss Tweed, completely free to pay inflated prices for those mortgages as a means of financially rewarding his former Wall Street colleagues who created this mess. And in his initial round of interviews this weekend, he made barely any effort to stem concerns that this is precisely his plan of action. When asked how he would "decide what to buy and what to pay," he stumbled through an evasive answer, saying "Well, we're going to have some professional asset managers and some real experts working with us, and we'll use a - you know, we're working through the processes."
SNIP
In the Bush age of unending deficits, even considering affordability strikes some as silly and old fashioned. But we're talking about adding $700 billion to the national debt-or $2,000 for every man, woman and child in America. Moreover, if, as bailout proponents say, the ultimate goal of a bank rescue is to keep the credit markets liquid and interest rates under control, then adding $700 billion to the interest-rate-exacerbating national debt seems an odd economic analgesic, to say the least. This is to say nothing about the insanity of responding to what is inherently a debt crisis by simply firing up the national credit card and incurring more debt.
To date, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is the only lawmaker who has laid out a specific plan to both re-regulate the financial markets and responsibly finance a bailout. He proposes to impose a 10 percent surtax on those making over $500,000 a year, raising roughly $300 billion. "The people who can best afford to pay and the people who have benefited most from Bush's economic policies are the people who should provide the funds for the bailout," he said.
http://www.truthout.org/article/the-700-billion-questions
And Paul Krugman's take on it too. A few clips:Everyone agrees that something major must be done. But Mr. Paulson is demanding extraordinary power for himself - and for his successor - to deploy taxpayers' money on behalf of a plan that, as far as I can see, doesn't make sense. Some are saying that we should simply trust Mr. Paulson, because he's a smart guy who knows what he's doing. But that's only half true: he is a smart guy, but what, exactly, in the experience of the past year and a half - a period during which Mr. Paulson repeatedly declared the financial crisis "contained," and then offered a series of unsuccessful fixes - justifies the belief that he knows what he's doing? He's making it up as he goes along, just like the rest of us.
SNIP
I'm aware that Congress is under enormous pressure to agree to the Paulson plan in the next few days, with at most a few modifications that make it slightly less bad. Basically, after having spent a year and a half telling everyone that things were under control, the Bush administration says that the sky is falling, and that to save the world we have to do exactly what it says now now now. But I'd urge Congress to pause for a minute, take a deep breath, and try to seriously rework the structure of the plan, making it a plan that addresses the real problem. Don't let yourself be railroaded - if this plan goes through in anything like its current form, we'll all be very sorry in the not-too-distant future.
http://www.truthout.org/article/cash-trashNEWS CLIPS
BUSH'S LEGACY OF SQUANDERING TAXPAYER MONEY: This weekend, President Bush proposed a massive, $700 billion buyout of troubled financial institutions, in a plan that "would place no restrictions on the administration" and stipulates that actions by the Treasury Secretary "are non-reviewable...and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." The proposal also would grant the Treasury the power to hire outside firms "to help manage its purchases." Given Bush's history of fiscal mismanagement -- particularly when it comes to hiring contractors -- Americans should be skeptical of his new plan. In Iraq, $142 million was wasted on projects that were either terminated or canceled, a "significant" amount of U.S. funds have been funneled to Sunni and Shiite militia groups, $5.1 billion in expenses has been charged without proper documentation, and another $10 billion has been wasted or poorly tracked, to name just a few examples. Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina was equally mismanaged. An estimated $2 billion was spent in fraud and waste, nearly 11 percent of the total spent by FEMA in the first year following the hurricane. In the area of defense spending, the Pentagon reported $1 trillion it could not account for in 2003. It also paid $1.7 billion in excessive fees to the Interior Department, and another $50 million Air Force contract was awarded in a process "fraught with improper influence, irregular procedures, and glaring conflicts of interest." It's no wonder that Princeton economist Paul Krugman called the Treasury's demand for "dictatorial authority" "an unacceptable proposal."
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley "will transform themselves into bank holding companies subject to far greater regulation," the Federal Reserve announced last night. The New York Times describes the change at the last big independent investment banks on Wall Street as "a move that fundamentally reshapes an era of high finance that defined the modern Gilded Age."In the midst of the current credit crisis, Americans are "cutting back on health care, a sector once thought to be invulnerable to recession." Spending on doctor's appointments and preventive tests is down while "the number of prescriptions filled in the U.S. fell 0.5% in the first quarter and a steeper 1.97% in the second," compared with 2007 -- the first negative quarters in the last decade.
According to 2007 data released by the U.S. Census Bureau today, more than 7.5 million people "are spending half of their income or more on housing costs." The government considers "a homeowner spending 30 percent or more of their income on housing costs to be financially burdened," a definition that now covers almost 38 percent of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage.
The White House said yesterday that it opposed the Credit Card Bill of Rights, a bill currently being debated in the House, "saying it would constrain banks' ability to price risk." The proposal would end double-billing and would force companies to mail bills 25 days before payment is due, rather than the current 14 days. Read more about why the bill is so important here.
McCain camp criticism rife with errors -- Senator John McCain’s top aides convened a conference call today to complain of being called “liars.” They pressed the media to scrutinize specific elements of Senator Barack Obama’s record. But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: Deepening the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.
--Ben Smith Politico -- 9/22/08
Monday, September 22, 2008
TODAY'S TOPICS: Wall Street Socialism, Progressive Solutions, Feingold, Conyers, Colbert, Daily Show, Liberal Media Myth (study)
COMING TOMORROW: I will go deep into the Bailout Plan...and how important it is to the campaign and the future of our nation. Nothing less than the principles and concepts of the New Deal are at stake. This meltdown and the administration plan to bail out the corporations at the expense of the people and the constitution is one of THE most important opportunities - as well as gravest dangers - that the progressive movement has ever had. It's time to educate the people again about the principles of the right wing philosophy of governance versus that of progressives. More tomorrow...
She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything….I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States,"
--Republican Senator Hagel on Sarah Palin
CONSERVATIVES ARE MORE FEAR BASED...SHOCKER!
And finally: "People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative political positions on many hot-button issues," according to a study published yesterday. It concludes that people "who adopt political views you disagree with are not be stupid or irrational. Rather, they may arrive at their positions in part because they are predisposed to be more or less worried about risk."
VIDEO SECTION
Daily Show lambasts McCain for his ludicrous flip flopping on offshore oil drilling…and of course the orgies, bribes and drug parties going on between administration regulators and the oil industry…no joke…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/18/jon-stewart-rips-mccain-gop-duplicity-on-off-shore-drilling/
Colbert on McCain:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/stephen-colbert-gives-john-mccain-the-mccain-treatment/
And have you seen anything more pathetic than little ole’ Sean Hannity with his tail between his legs and is ears all back in their submissive position as he interviews Sarah Palin. I will say this again, as a peace activist and someone that strives to be as good and non-violent a human being as I can, I would beat the living tar out of that man if I ever come across him. I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t true, but sadly, it is…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/jon-stewart-slams-hannitys-hard-hitting-palin-interview/
Biden sounds off…amen brother (warning: short commercial first):
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/biden-i-am-so-sick-and-tired-of-this-phoniness/
more good stuff from biden…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/paying-taxes-is-patriotic/
Again, the scariest thing that has occurred this past year is the incredible Gestapo actions taken by the police state in St. Paul. The Constitution was literally made into a joke…and this is a sign of things to come…
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/99433/incredible_documentary_footage_of_mass_arrest_in_st._paul/
John McCain…one of the Keating 5…people seem to have forgotten this fact. Now we can remind them:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/premiere-new-film-third-term-john-mccains-repeat-performance-of-the-keating-5/
Stephen Colbert on Bush’s powerlessness to catch Bin Laden…nice
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/18/colberts-word-president-bush-is-powerless-to-catch-bin-laden/
Line of the week from Obama! “McCain can’t figure out if he’s Barry Goldwater or Dennis Kucinich!” Classic! Watch him…he’s in a groove lately…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/18/barack-obama-john-mccain-cant-decide-whether-hes-barry-goldwater-or-dennis-kucinich/
ARTICLE SECTION
Russ Feingold - a real Senate Hero - begins the fight to restore the constitution!
A few clips:
Warrantless wiretapping and data mining projects developed and implemented by the current administration in violation of laws explicitly designed to prevent abuses make a mockery of privacy protections outlined in the 4th amendment. Torture and extraordinary rendition, as practiced in U.S. operated detention centers and carried out by U.S. authorities, in an aggressive affront the 8th amendment bar on cruel and unusual punishment of those in the country's custody.
Presidential signing statements and the refusal of current and former White House aides to cooperate with congressional inquiries, have created a dramatic imbalance between a super-powerful executive branch and a disempowered legislative branch. This undermining of the system of checks and balances that has been at the heart of the constitutional project upsets the rule of law and creates a monarchical circumstance similar to that against which the colonials revolted.
SNIP
To that end, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold -- who with his lonely vote against the Patriot act in 2001 and his consistent battles against executive excess since then has established himself as the most diligent defender of the Constitution in the current Congress -- will be as busy this week as were James Madison, George Mason, Ben Franklin and their fellow framers 221 years ago.
SNIP
On Tuesday, Feingold will chair a Constitution Subcommittee hearing on "Restoring the Rule of Law." Legal scholars, historians and advocates will testify as part of what Feingold's office describes as "an effort to provide the next president with a full range of recommendations for reestablishing appropriate checks and balances in a variety of areas, including warrantless wiretapping, interrogation standards, detention policy, abuse of executive privilege, excessive government secrecy, violations of privacy and misleading Congress." The point of this intensive activity by Feingold and his allies is to get the media, the presidential candidates and Congress focused on the work of reestablishing the rule of law.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/16-2
Amy goodman on the truth between the lines in the GIANT government bailouts of corporations...with nothing left for the people. Or as she calls it: Wall Street Socialists.
This should put an end to conservatives EVER again claiming they are for free market capitalism...they are for corporatism. Period.
A few clips:
The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver's seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.
SNIP
As these high-rolling gamblers are losing all their banks' money, it comes to the taxpayer to bail them out. A better use of the money, says Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an economic adviser to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would be to "save these 4 million homeowners from defaulting and being kicked out of their houses. Now they're going to be kicked out of the houses. The houses will be vacant. The cities are going to [lose] property taxes, they're going to have to cut back local expenditures, local infrastructure. The economy is being sacrificed to pay the gamblers."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/18-5
And more on what is driving our country to the brink of insolvency. Remember what I've been saying for years on this blog...we are approaching a Banana Republic. Key cogs in this corporate machinery are the tax speculators.
But more importantly, here are PROGRESSIVE SOLUTIONS to our economic problems and a way to raise the kinds of revenue our country needs to rebuild itself and take care of its people.
A few clips:
With the specter of financial Armageddon raised in headlines everywhere, two questions keep occurring to me. Where will the government find the $85 billon to bail out AIG and other Wall Street giants? And how will we pay for the proposed Main Street recovery, including federal aid to states, relief to homeowners, and public works projects for the unemployed?
The Bush administration plans to add to the $400 billion projected deficit and our $9 trillion national debt. But it's irresponsible to shift the bill entirely to the next generation. The corporations that rigged the casino economy and the wealthy CEOs and investors that profited at everyone else's expense should bear the recovery costs, not our kids and grandchildren.
SNIP
Institute a Financial Transactions Tax. Congress should levy a tax on financial transactions such as sale and purchase of stock and more exotic transactions such as credit default swaps, options, and futures. The UK has a modest financial transaction tax of 0.25 percent, a penny on every $4 invested. This is negligible for a long-term investor, but imposes a cost on the fast-buck flippers. Estimated annual revenue: $100 billion.
Eliminate Taxpayer Subsidies for Excessive CEO Pay. Five loopholes that benefit top executives should be abolished. These include eliminating offshore deferred compensation, capping the tax deductibility of excessive pay, and eliminating double standards for stock option accounting. Closing these tax loopholes would generate $20 billion a year. (Read more about this in this recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.)
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/19-3
GOOD NEWS SECTION
CONYERS DEMANDS 'IMMEDIATE HALT TO GOP SUPPRESSION EFFORTS'
U.S. House Judiciary Chair Announces Hearings, Requests DoJ Investigation Into Recent Reports of GOP 'Vote Caging' Schemes...
The U.S. House Judiciary chairman has sent a letter to John McCain demanding he immediately cease recent voter suppression efforts such as the reported GOP scheme to use home foreclosure lists to challenge voters in Michigan, and apparent "caging" letters akin to those sent to Democratic voters in Florida. He has also called on AG Mukasey to begin an investigation into these activities and has announced hearings on the matters in a statement released today...
CONYERS STATEMENT, LETTERS TO MCCAIN & MUKASKEY:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6406
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit yesterday against Bush administration officials, "seeking to halt what it describes as illegal surveillance of Americans’ telephone and Internet traffic." The lawsuit parallels legal action EFF sought against AT&T in 2006 that was derailed this year when Congress granted immunity to telecom companies that had assisted the surveillance program.
BAD NEWS...
Progressive Silence On Television - THE GREAT "LIBERAL MEDIA" MYTH
Last week, MSNBC debuted a new prime-time political show hosted by Rachel Maddow, a progressive radio host on Air America. The debut attracted more viewers than both Larry King and Glenn Beck's programs, on CNN and CNN Headline News, respectively. After one week on air, Maddow's was MSNBC's highest-rated show on Tuesday, with Keith Olbermann's Countdown in second place. When Olbermann announced Maddow's new show last month on the progressive blog Daily Kos, he wrote to its readers, "Yes, you had something to do with it." Maddow's show is one of the few success stories of the efforts by progressives to see more progressive voices on TV. In fact, the day before Maddow's debut, MSNBC announced it was pulling Olbermann and Chris Matthews from its election coverage -- a move the New York Times said was a "direct result of tensions associated with the channel's perceived shift to the political left." Despite Olbermann and Maddow's rating successes, MSNBC and the other networks still don't seem to be getting the message: Americans want to hear progressive voices on television.
ANTI-WAR VOICES SHUT OUT: After 9/11, and particularly in the lead-up to the Iraq war, news programs purged their ranks of several voices seen as remotely hesitant about President Bush's foreign policy. After political commenter Bill Maher criticized the war in Afghanistan, "he was quickly alerted that he had gone beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse -- even though that's his job. (Remember, his show is called 'Politically Incorrect.')," David Talbot at Salon.com noted. In fact, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer declared ominously, "Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." At MSNBC, progressive host Phil Donahue was fired in February 2003 for his anti-war views, despite the fact that his show was the network's highest-rated program. An internal NBC memo said Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. ... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The memo outlined a possible nightmare scenario in which the show would become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." The same week Donahue was fired, the network brought on Jesse Ventura and right-wing shock jock Michael Savage.'
IF IT'S SUNDAY, ITS CONSERVATIVE': In early 2006, Media Matters for America published a study showing the overwhelming dominance of conservative voices on the most influential Sunday political talk shows. Analyzing guests on the shows between 1997 and 2005, Media Matters found that -- though the balance between progressives and conservatives was relatively equal during President Clinton's second term -- "conservatives held a dramatic advantage" during Bush's first term, "outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent." Counting only elected officials, the conservative advantage during Bush's first term was 61 percent to 39 percent; in the late 1990s, by contrast, the progressive advantage was only 53 percent to 45 percent. What's more, during both the Clinton and Bush years, journalists who appeared as guests were far more likely to be conservative: "In Clinton's second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent." Finally, the study found that "congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began." These shows often "define the people and arguments that represent 'reasonable debate' in the nation's capital," and so the conservative bent affects a far wider audience than those who are watching the programs.
DOUBLE STANDARD FOR FOX NEWS: MSNBC's decision to pull its outspoken progressive host Keith Olbermann from its election coverage received wide play throughout the media and the blogosphere; Fox News and right-wing blogs celebrated the silencing of Olbermann's "disgraceful," "hard-left views." But for the last 12 years, since its inception in 1996, Fox News has presented a strong and unabashed right-wing perspective -- with hardly a peep of protest from the rest of the mainstream media. It's no secret that Fox News both caters to and generates a hard-right, conservative audience. An August poll showed that 67 percent of Fox News viewers planned to vote for the Republican candidate for president, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). The poll "lines up neatly with a poll that showed that in the 2004 election, 88 percent of those who watched FNC supported George W. Bush over John Kerry" -- making Fox News viewers Bush's most loyal demographic. A 2003 New Yorker piece described the network as "opinionated and conservative, and its news is delivered by people who themselves are often unabashedly opinionated and conservative." With dominion over Fox News, conservatives own an entire third of the cable news programs, and yet CNN and MSNBC are perpetually concerned about being perceivedeven slightly to the left -- or they ignore their success when they do present progressive views. Conservative views are consistently accepted as being mainstream. Progressive opinions are therefore outside of the norm and more risky. As the New Yorker's Ken Auletta noted, "Fox found its niche; MSNBC hasn't, and CNN seems to have lost the one it had."
BUSH TAX CUTS LOOK EVEN MORE RECKLESS IN LIGHT OF FEDERAL BAILOUTS: On Tuesday evening, the Federal Reserve announced that it would lend troubled insurer AIG $85 billion in return for a 79.9 percent stake in the company. This move comes on the heels of the bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and just months after the bailout of Bear Stearns. CNBC has put the total tab for the recent government rescues by the Fed and the Treasury Department at $900 billion. The rescues, while necessary to prevent a wider financial meltdown, will cause the already near-record federal deficit of $407 billion to explode. Before the bailouts, the projected federal deficit for 2009 was $546 billion. When President George Bush came to office eight years ago, it was projected that America would have a budget surplus next year of $710 billion. So what happened? As an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows, 42 percent of the "fiscal deterioration" was due to the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. For FY2009, roughly $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation's fiscal finances stems from policy actions. Tax cuts account for 42 percent of this $1 trillion deterioration.
COMING TOMORROW: I will go deep into the Bailout Plan...and how important it is to the campaign and the future of our nation. Nothing less than the principles and concepts of the New Deal are at stake. This meltdown and the administration plan to bail out the corporations at the expense of the people and the constitution is one of THE most important opportunities - as well as gravest dangers - that the progressive movement has ever had. It's time to educate the people again about the principles of the right wing philosophy of governance versus that of progressives. More tomorrow...
She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything….I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States,"
--Republican Senator Hagel on Sarah Palin
CONSERVATIVES ARE MORE FEAR BASED...SHOCKER!
And finally: "People who startle easily in response to threatening images or loud sounds seem to have a biological predisposition to adopt conservative political positions on many hot-button issues," according to a study published yesterday. It concludes that people "who adopt political views you disagree with are not be stupid or irrational. Rather, they may arrive at their positions in part because they are predisposed to be more or less worried about risk."
VIDEO SECTION
Daily Show lambasts McCain for his ludicrous flip flopping on offshore oil drilling…and of course the orgies, bribes and drug parties going on between administration regulators and the oil industry…no joke…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/18/jon-stewart-rips-mccain-gop-duplicity-on-off-shore-drilling/
Colbert on McCain:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/stephen-colbert-gives-john-mccain-the-mccain-treatment/
And have you seen anything more pathetic than little ole’ Sean Hannity with his tail between his legs and is ears all back in their submissive position as he interviews Sarah Palin. I will say this again, as a peace activist and someone that strives to be as good and non-violent a human being as I can, I would beat the living tar out of that man if I ever come across him. I’m sorry, I wish it wasn’t true, but sadly, it is…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/jon-stewart-slams-hannitys-hard-hitting-palin-interview/
Biden sounds off…amen brother (warning: short commercial first):
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/biden-i-am-so-sick-and-tired-of-this-phoniness/
more good stuff from biden…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/paying-taxes-is-patriotic/
Again, the scariest thing that has occurred this past year is the incredible Gestapo actions taken by the police state in St. Paul. The Constitution was literally made into a joke…and this is a sign of things to come…
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/99433/incredible_documentary_footage_of_mass_arrest_in_st._paul/
John McCain…one of the Keating 5…people seem to have forgotten this fact. Now we can remind them:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/19/premiere-new-film-third-term-john-mccains-repeat-performance-of-the-keating-5/
Stephen Colbert on Bush’s powerlessness to catch Bin Laden…nice
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/18/colberts-word-president-bush-is-powerless-to-catch-bin-laden/
Line of the week from Obama! “McCain can’t figure out if he’s Barry Goldwater or Dennis Kucinich!” Classic! Watch him…he’s in a groove lately…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/18/barack-obama-john-mccain-cant-decide-whether-hes-barry-goldwater-or-dennis-kucinich/
ARTICLE SECTION
Russ Feingold - a real Senate Hero - begins the fight to restore the constitution!
A few clips:
Warrantless wiretapping and data mining projects developed and implemented by the current administration in violation of laws explicitly designed to prevent abuses make a mockery of privacy protections outlined in the 4th amendment. Torture and extraordinary rendition, as practiced in U.S. operated detention centers and carried out by U.S. authorities, in an aggressive affront the 8th amendment bar on cruel and unusual punishment of those in the country's custody.
Presidential signing statements and the refusal of current and former White House aides to cooperate with congressional inquiries, have created a dramatic imbalance between a super-powerful executive branch and a disempowered legislative branch. This undermining of the system of checks and balances that has been at the heart of the constitutional project upsets the rule of law and creates a monarchical circumstance similar to that against which the colonials revolted.
SNIP
To that end, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold -- who with his lonely vote against the Patriot act in 2001 and his consistent battles against executive excess since then has established himself as the most diligent defender of the Constitution in the current Congress -- will be as busy this week as were James Madison, George Mason, Ben Franklin and their fellow framers 221 years ago.
SNIP
On Tuesday, Feingold will chair a Constitution Subcommittee hearing on "Restoring the Rule of Law." Legal scholars, historians and advocates will testify as part of what Feingold's office describes as "an effort to provide the next president with a full range of recommendations for reestablishing appropriate checks and balances in a variety of areas, including warrantless wiretapping, interrogation standards, detention policy, abuse of executive privilege, excessive government secrecy, violations of privacy and misleading Congress." The point of this intensive activity by Feingold and his allies is to get the media, the presidential candidates and Congress focused on the work of reestablishing the rule of law.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/16-2
Amy goodman on the truth between the lines in the GIANT government bailouts of corporations...with nothing left for the people. Or as she calls it: Wall Street Socialists.
This should put an end to conservatives EVER again claiming they are for free market capitalism...they are for corporatism. Period.
A few clips:
The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver's seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.
SNIP
As these high-rolling gamblers are losing all their banks' money, it comes to the taxpayer to bail them out. A better use of the money, says Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an economic adviser to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, would be to "save these 4 million homeowners from defaulting and being kicked out of their houses. Now they're going to be kicked out of the houses. The houses will be vacant. The cities are going to [lose] property taxes, they're going to have to cut back local expenditures, local infrastructure. The economy is being sacrificed to pay the gamblers."
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/18-5
And more on what is driving our country to the brink of insolvency. Remember what I've been saying for years on this blog...we are approaching a Banana Republic. Key cogs in this corporate machinery are the tax speculators.
But more importantly, here are PROGRESSIVE SOLUTIONS to our economic problems and a way to raise the kinds of revenue our country needs to rebuild itself and take care of its people.
A few clips:
With the specter of financial Armageddon raised in headlines everywhere, two questions keep occurring to me. Where will the government find the $85 billon to bail out AIG and other Wall Street giants? And how will we pay for the proposed Main Street recovery, including federal aid to states, relief to homeowners, and public works projects for the unemployed?
The Bush administration plans to add to the $400 billion projected deficit and our $9 trillion national debt. But it's irresponsible to shift the bill entirely to the next generation. The corporations that rigged the casino economy and the wealthy CEOs and investors that profited at everyone else's expense should bear the recovery costs, not our kids and grandchildren.
SNIP
Institute a Financial Transactions Tax. Congress should levy a tax on financial transactions such as sale and purchase of stock and more exotic transactions such as credit default swaps, options, and futures. The UK has a modest financial transaction tax of 0.25 percent, a penny on every $4 invested. This is negligible for a long-term investor, but imposes a cost on the fast-buck flippers. Estimated annual revenue: $100 billion.
Eliminate Taxpayer Subsidies for Excessive CEO Pay. Five loopholes that benefit top executives should be abolished. These include eliminating offshore deferred compensation, capping the tax deductibility of excessive pay, and eliminating double standards for stock option accounting. Closing these tax loopholes would generate $20 billion a year. (Read more about this in this recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy.)
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/19-3
GOOD NEWS SECTION
CONYERS DEMANDS 'IMMEDIATE HALT TO GOP SUPPRESSION EFFORTS'
U.S. House Judiciary Chair Announces Hearings, Requests DoJ Investigation Into Recent Reports of GOP 'Vote Caging' Schemes...
The U.S. House Judiciary chairman has sent a letter to John McCain demanding he immediately cease recent voter suppression efforts such as the reported GOP scheme to use home foreclosure lists to challenge voters in Michigan, and apparent "caging" letters akin to those sent to Democratic voters in Florida. He has also called on AG Mukasey to begin an investigation into these activities and has announced hearings on the matters in a statement released today...
CONYERS STATEMENT, LETTERS TO MCCAIN & MUKASKEY:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6406
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a class-action lawsuit yesterday against Bush administration officials, "seeking to halt what it describes as illegal surveillance of Americans’ telephone and Internet traffic." The lawsuit parallels legal action EFF sought against AT&T in 2006 that was derailed this year when Congress granted immunity to telecom companies that had assisted the surveillance program.
BAD NEWS...
Progressive Silence On Television - THE GREAT "LIBERAL MEDIA" MYTH
Last week, MSNBC debuted a new prime-time political show hosted by Rachel Maddow, a progressive radio host on Air America. The debut attracted more viewers than both Larry King and Glenn Beck's programs, on CNN and CNN Headline News, respectively. After one week on air, Maddow's was MSNBC's highest-rated show on Tuesday, with Keith Olbermann's Countdown in second place. When Olbermann announced Maddow's new show last month on the progressive blog Daily Kos, he wrote to its readers, "Yes, you had something to do with it." Maddow's show is one of the few success stories of the efforts by progressives to see more progressive voices on TV. In fact, the day before Maddow's debut, MSNBC announced it was pulling Olbermann and Chris Matthews from its election coverage -- a move the New York Times said was a "direct result of tensions associated with the channel's perceived shift to the political left." Despite Olbermann and Maddow's rating successes, MSNBC and the other networks still don't seem to be getting the message: Americans want to hear progressive voices on television.
ANTI-WAR VOICES SHUT OUT: After 9/11, and particularly in the lead-up to the Iraq war, news programs purged their ranks of several voices seen as remotely hesitant about President Bush's foreign policy. After political commenter Bill Maher criticized the war in Afghanistan, "he was quickly alerted that he had gone beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse -- even though that's his job. (Remember, his show is called 'Politically Incorrect.')," David Talbot at Salon.com noted. In fact, then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer declared ominously, "Americans need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." At MSNBC, progressive host Phil Donahue was fired in February 2003 for his anti-war views, despite the fact that his show was the network's highest-rated program. An internal NBC memo said Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. ... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The memo outlined a possible nightmare scenario in which the show would become "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity." The same week Donahue was fired, the network brought on Jesse Ventura and right-wing shock jock Michael Savage.'
IF IT'S SUNDAY, ITS CONSERVATIVE': In early 2006, Media Matters for America published a study showing the overwhelming dominance of conservative voices on the most influential Sunday political talk shows. Analyzing guests on the shows between 1997 and 2005, Media Matters found that -- though the balance between progressives and conservatives was relatively equal during President Clinton's second term -- "conservatives held a dramatic advantage" during Bush's first term, "outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent." Counting only elected officials, the conservative advantage during Bush's first term was 61 percent to 39 percent; in the late 1990s, by contrast, the progressive advantage was only 53 percent to 45 percent. What's more, during both the Clinton and Bush years, journalists who appeared as guests were far more likely to be conservative: "In Clinton's second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush's first term, that figure rose to 69 percent." Finally, the study found that "congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began." These shows often "define the people and arguments that represent 'reasonable debate' in the nation's capital," and so the conservative bent affects a far wider audience than those who are watching the programs.
DOUBLE STANDARD FOR FOX NEWS: MSNBC's decision to pull its outspoken progressive host Keith Olbermann from its election coverage received wide play throughout the media and the blogosphere; Fox News and right-wing blogs celebrated the silencing of Olbermann's "disgraceful," "hard-left views." But for the last 12 years, since its inception in 1996, Fox News has presented a strong and unabashed right-wing perspective -- with hardly a peep of protest from the rest of the mainstream media. It's no secret that Fox News both caters to and generates a hard-right, conservative audience. An August poll showed that 67 percent of Fox News viewers planned to vote for the Republican candidate for president, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). The poll "lines up neatly with a poll that showed that in the 2004 election, 88 percent of those who watched FNC supported George W. Bush over John Kerry" -- making Fox News viewers Bush's most loyal demographic. A 2003 New Yorker piece described the network as "opinionated and conservative, and its news is delivered by people who themselves are often unabashedly opinionated and conservative." With dominion over Fox News, conservatives own an entire third of the cable news programs, and yet CNN and MSNBC are perpetually concerned about being perceivedeven slightly to the left -- or they ignore their success when they do present progressive views. Conservative views are consistently accepted as being mainstream. Progressive opinions are therefore outside of the norm and more risky. As the New Yorker's Ken Auletta noted, "Fox found its niche; MSNBC hasn't, and CNN seems to have lost the one it had."
BUSH TAX CUTS LOOK EVEN MORE RECKLESS IN LIGHT OF FEDERAL BAILOUTS: On Tuesday evening, the Federal Reserve announced that it would lend troubled insurer AIG $85 billion in return for a 79.9 percent stake in the company. This move comes on the heels of the bailouts of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and just months after the bailout of Bear Stearns. CNBC has put the total tab for the recent government rescues by the Fed and the Treasury Department at $900 billion. The rescues, while necessary to prevent a wider financial meltdown, will cause the already near-record federal deficit of $407 billion to explode. Before the bailouts, the projected federal deficit for 2009 was $546 billion. When President George Bush came to office eight years ago, it was projected that America would have a budget surplus next year of $710 billion. So what happened? As an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows, 42 percent of the "fiscal deterioration" was due to the Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003. For FY2009, roughly $1 trillion of the $1.3 trillion deterioration in the nation's fiscal finances stems from policy actions. Tax cuts account for 42 percent of this $1 trillion deterioration.
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