It really does say it all:
Month: January 2010
Dances With TSA
I’m sitting in Philadelphia waiting for the flight to Boston, and I thought that I would relate my experience with airport security.
It was a surprisingly smooth experience, despite the fact that they pulled my bag for further inspection.
The 7 day yartzheit (memorial candle) is a 3″ x 14″cylinder, so I can see how the X-ray machine operator flagged it for further scrutiny.
Still, the whole process, show my ID (honest, officer, I look better in person) and bording pass, take off shoes, put shoes, keys, etc. in bin, put bin and bag through the X-ray machine, grab my stuff, put on my shoes, open my case, show the candle, let the TSA guy wipe my stuff with a “sniffer”, and repacking my case only took about 15 minutes.
I can’t complain.
I’m off to Massachusetts for the Weekend
To be with my brothers Daniel and Stephen, and see what I can do to help.
Background here.
I’m about to board my flight.
I have some stuff queued up to post over the weekend, and might find time to post via my mobile.
Posted via mobile
Economics Update (For the Week)
Well, it’s “Jobless Thursday”, as Atrios is wont to say, and it ain’t a good Thursday, with initial claims up 36,000 to 482,000 and hitting a 2 month high, the 4-week moving average up 7,000 to 448,250, though continuing claims fell by 18K to 4,599,000.
Additionally, the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank’s business activity index fell from 22.5 to 15.2, which still indicates growth, positive numbers indicate growth, but might show that the stimulus package is running out of steam.
Also, it looks like finances may be catching up with the bank, with Citi reporting a loss for the year on a horrible 3rd quarter, and Bank of America posted a large loss, largely as a result of its eagerness to pay off the TARP so that it could go back to overpaying its incompetent executives, while Morgan Stanley misses its earning estimate, though it still turned a profit.
I had kind of figured that a lot of the obscene profits earlier in the year were the result of rearranging deck chairs, and I think that the 4th quarter results give credence to this view.
Note that these numbers were turning worse even as consumer defaults were falling.
BTW, in the UK, we are seeing journalists running around like chickens with their heads cut off over the recent spike in consumer prices, up to a 2.9% annual rate.
Kind of silly when you think about it.
US inflation seems well in check, with the
Producer Price Index for up 0.2% in December,
In real estate, home builder confidence fell in January, but the Architecture Billings Index was up slightly, though still below 50, indicating further contraction.
The jump in building applications, would seem to indicate improvements in the real estate market, but the FHA is increasing premiums and tightening loan standards, which may deflate the balloon.
The FHA really does not have a choice. Their balance sheet is a complete mess.
I Can’t Believe That I am Saying This
This is Cindy McCain In a Pro-Gay Marriage AdBut, I offer my support and congratulations to Cindy McCain, yes, that Cindy McCain, John McCain’s wife:
Sen. John McCain’s wife Cindy McCain is the newest face of a pro-gay marriage campaign.
Posing with tape over her mouth and a “NOH8” logo on her face, Cindy McCain was photographed for the NOH8 Campaign, which protests Proposition 8, the California proposition passed in 2008 banning same-sex marriage. The proposition is currently being challenged in federal court.
McCain approached the campaign herself about her participation, the NOH8 Web site says. She has spoken out on behalf of gay rights before, though this is perhaps her most prominent show of support for the issue.
Now that she realizes that John McCain will never be President, she’s doing the right thing.
Better late than never.
(A big of meta: I am not using my “John Sidney McCain III” tag because Cindy is more than just an extension of her husband.)
House of Representatives to Senate: Drop Dead
House Liberals are manning up and have told Nancy Pelosi that they will not vote for the Senate bill. Period, full stop:
In a private meeting in the Capitol just now, a dozen or more House liberals bluntly told Nancy Pelosi that there was no chance that they would vote to pass the Senate bill in its current form — making it all but certain that House Dems won’t opt for this approach, a top House liberal tells me.
“We cannot support the Senate bill — period,” is the message that liberals delivered to the Speaker, Dem Rep Raul Grijalva told me in an interview just now.
Some had hoped Pelosi would push liberals to get in line behind this approach, in hopes of expediting reform, but that didn’t appear to happen in this meeting. Pelosi mostly listened, Grijalva said, adding: “We didn’t get any declarative statement from her.”
You know, coddling Lieberman, Nelson, Lincoln, etc. and sh%$ing on the liberals, in both the House and the Senate can only take you so far.
Notwithstanding the protestations of beltway boyz wannabees like Steve Benen, Matthew Yglesias, and Kevin Drum, it’s not the liberals who are at risk.
They have a coherent system of beliefs, and they can honestly sell their decisions, as opposed to the Blue Dog and New Dems, who keep saying how we have to protect the insurance companies, and the liberals generally come from safer districts anyway.
One of the things that people forget about 1994 is that it was the Conservadems who got voted out.
Damn
At least Rachael Maddow and Ed Schultz still have day jobs.
It’s not the message, as much as it was that management sucked, at least that how it appeared to me, though I was never in a market for the network.
Full statement after the break:
It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.
The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America’s business. This past year has seen a “perfect storm” in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry’s long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.
Those companies that remain are facing audience fragmentation as a result of new media technologies, are often saddled with crushing debt, and have generally found it difficult to obtain operating or investment capital from traditional sources of funding. In this climate, our painstaking search for new investors has come close several times right up into this week, but ultimately fell short of success.
With radio industry ad revenues down for 10 consecutive quarters, and reportedly off 21% in 2009, signs of improvement have consisted of hoping things will be less bad. And though Internet/new media revenues are projected to grow, our expanding online efforts face the same monetization and profitability challenges in the short term confronting the Web operations of most media companies
When Air America Radio launched in April, 2004 with already-known personalities like Al Franken and then-unknown future stars like Rachel Maddow, it was the only full-time progressive voice in the mainstream broadcast media world. At a critical time in our nation’s history — when dissent on issues such as the Iraq war were often denounced as “un-American” — Air America and its talented team helped millions of Americans remember the importance of compelling discussion about the most pivotal events and decisions of our generation.
Through some 100 radio outlets nationwide, Air America helped build a new sense of purpose and determination among American progressives. With this revival, the progressive movement made major gains in the 2006 mid-term elections and, more recently, in the election of President Barack Obama and a strongly Democratic Congress.
Laws have changed for the better thanks to this revival…..but all the same our company cannot escape the laws of economics. So we intend a rapid, orderly closure over the next few days. All current employees will be paid through today, January 21. A severance package will be offered tomorrow to full-time current employees with more than six months of tenure.
We will strive to assist affiliates and partners in achieving a smooth transition. Starting at 6 pm EST today, we will provide our affiliates, listeners and users a selection of encore programming until 9 pm EST on Monday, January 25, at which time Air America programming will end.
We are proud that Air America’s mission lives on through the words and actions of so many former radio hosts who are active today in progressive causes and media nationwide. In the years ahead, as we look back, we should all be proud of our passionate determination to assure that our nation’s progressive voice would be heard loud and clear. Through the hard work and dedication of current staff, and those who preceded you, a lasting legacy was forged which will now continue through other voices and venues.
Thank you.
Supreme Court Eviscerates Campaign Finance Reform
Basically, the Supreme Court just said that corporations can run any sort of ad that they want:
A divided U.S. Supreme Court struck down decades-old restrictions on corporate campaign spending, reversing two of its precedents and freeing companies to conduct advertising campaigns that explicitly try to sway voters.
The 5-4 majority, invoking the Constitution’s free-speech clause, said the government lacks a legitimate basis to restrict independent campaign expenditures by companies. The ruling went well beyond the circumstances in the case before the justices, a dispute over a documentary film attacking then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”
They have just deliberately created a “Wild West” for campaign finance, and they did it because they bought into the myth of Obama small donors (he out-raised from Wall Street fat cats against both Clinton and McCain).
About the only bright spot on this is that Sotomayor has given indications that she opposes she is dubious of the according of “person” status to corporations, which was done by a court clerk in the footnotes (no, I am not joking) in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. (see Sotomayor’s comments here)
There is a decent chance that Obama will get another opportunity to appoint another Supreme Court justice before 2012, and it’s very important to counterbalance the nut-jobs that Bush put in.
Deep Thought
Click for full size
Reminds Me of a Certain Super Bowl Ad
Hillary Clinton has just announced that it’s now official US policy for countries to allow their internet access to be free and uncensored:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled on Thursday a new U.S. policy that encourages the world’s governments to ensure their citizens have open access to the Internet.
The speech comes a little more than a week after Google’s blunt declaration about Chinese censorship and illegal electronic intrusions, and the company’s assertion that it will pull out of China if it can’t reach a reasonable understanding with the Beijing government.
9:54 a.m. EST Clinton took the stage here at the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the news industry, and appealed to the audience to think of the communications networks that have been destroyed in last week’s massive earthquake in Haiti. She also noted how a mother and daughter in Haiti enabled their rescue by sending a text message. Clinton called communication networks a “new nervous system” for the world.
“In many respects, information has never been so free,” Clinton said. She referred to the way that virtually anyone can broadcast information to the Internet at any time. But governments can also use Internet and communications technologies to repress their people, she said, “just as steel can be used to build hospitals or machine guns.”
My first thought was, “Good for her,” and by extension, Barack Obama.
My one, and the the one that falls into the “Deep Thought” category, is that picture really looks like that “1984” ad that an Obamanite put out during the primaries.
So Not a Surprise
Rush Limbaugh just went off on Jewish Bankers.
It’s not a surprise, if you are a member of a minority group, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, or people who served in Vietnam as opposed to dodging the draft, you can be certain that Rush Limbaugh will get to you eventually.
Obama Proposes a Return to Glass Steagall
Click for full size
First Photo of Volker and Obama Together in Months
Or something very much like that.
The changes proposed are very significant, or at least they appear to be significant.
Among snap shot of the provisions are:
- Commercial banks would be prohibited from trading on their own behalf, so called proprietary trading.
- The question here is how will this be implimented so that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* Goldman Sachs won’t avoid these restrictions,† for example Yves Smith suggests that this can be done by moving the prop trading desks overseas, for example.
- Commercial banks would, “would no longer be allowed to engage in trading unrelated to their customers’ interests.”
- Commercial banks would be prohibited from investing in or advising hedge funds or private-equity firms.
- Extending the current cap of 10% of US federally insured deposits to non-insured assets.
I think that the first thing to note here is that Barack Obama has had this in his back pocket for some time, not because he wanted to do this, but because there might come a time where he needed to, and following the Coakley debacle in Massachusetts, he felt that he had to do this
A majority of Obama voters who switched to Brown said that, “Democratic policies were doing more to help Wall Street than Main Street.” A full 95 percent said the economy was important or very important when it came to deciding their vote.
I don’t think that until Tuesday, Obama understood how tremendously pissed off the voters are about the bank bailout, and the bonuses, so chalk one up for my hope that if Coakley lost, Obama would get a clue.
Of course, it still has to go through the banking committees, where the Republicans will be unified against it, and where many of the Blue Dog and New Dem corporatist pukes sit, because it’s a good place to raise money from.
His proposals will only work if Obama kicks ass and takes name in Congress, otherwise, they will remain in committee for a long time, or be watered down to the point on meaninglessness.
*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.
†Or perhaps leaving a loophole for the Calamari bankers is considered to be a feature, rather than a bug. Summers and Geithner still work for him after all.
Full text of statement after break:
The Obama-Volcker remarks in full:
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
SUBJECT: ADDITIONAL REFORMS TO THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM
THE DIPLOMATIC RECEPTION ROOM, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
11:39 A.M. EST, THURSDAY, JANUARY 21, 2010PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good morning, everybody. I just had a very productive meeting with two members of my Economic Recovery Advisory Board: Paul Volcker, who is the former chair of the Federal Reserve Board, and Bill Donaldson, previously the head of the SEC. And I deeply appreciate the counsel of these two leaders and the board, that they’ve offered as we have dealt with a broad array of very difficult economic challenges.
Now over the past two years more than 7 million Americans have lost their jobs in the deepest recession our country has known in generations. Rarely does a day go by that I don’t hear from folks who are hurting. And every day we are working to put our economy back on track and put America back to work.
But even as we dig our way out of this deep hole, it’s important that we not lose sight of what led us into this mess in the first place. This economic crisis began as a financial crisis when banks and financial institutions took huge, reckless risks in pursuit of quick profits and massive bonuses. When the dust settled and this binge of irresponsibility was over, several of the world’s oldest and largest financial institutions had collapsed or were on the verge of doing so. Markets plummeted, credit dried up, and jobs were vanishing by hundreds of thousands each month. We were on the precipice — precipice of a second Great Depression.
And to avoid this calamity, the American people, who were already struggling in their own right, were forced to rescue financial firms facing crisis largely of their own creation. And that rescue, undertaken by the previous administration, was deeply offensive, but it was a necessary thing to do, and it succeeded in stabilizing financial systems and helping to avert that depression.
Since that time, over the past year, my administration has recovered most of what the federal government provided the banks. And last week I proposed a fee to be paid by the largest financial firms in order to recover every last dime.
But that’s not all we have to do. We have to enact common-sense reforms that will protect American taxpayers and the American economy from future crises as well.
For while the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it’s still operating under the same rules that led to its near collapse.
These are rules that allowed firms to act contrary to the interests of customers, to conceal their exposure to debt through complex financial dealings, to benefit from taxpayer-insured deposits while making speculative investments, and to take on risks so vast that they posed threats to the entire system. That’s why we are seeking reforms to protect consumers.
We intend to close loopholes that allowed big financial firms to trade risky financial products, like credit-default swaps and other derivatives, without oversight; to identify system-wide risks that could cause a meltdown; to strengthen capital and liquidity requirements, to make the system more stable, and to ensure that the failure of any large firm does not take the entire economy down with it.
Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail.
Now, limits on the risks major financial firms can take are central to the reforms that I have proposed. They are central to the legislation that has passed the House, under the leadership of Chairman Barney Frank, and that we’re working to pass in the Senate, under the leadership of Chairman Chris Dodd.
As part of these efforts, today, I’m proposing two additional reforms that I believe will strengthen the financial system while preventing future crises.
First, we should no longer allow banks to stray too far from their central mission of serving their customers. In recent years, too many financial firms have put taxpayer money at risk by operating hedge funds and private equity funds and making riskier investments, to reap a quick reward.
And these firms have taken these risks while benefitting from special financial privileges that are reserved only for banks. Our government provides deposit insurance and other safeguards and guarantees to firms that operate banks.
We do so because a stable and reliable banking system promotes sustained growth and because we learned how dangerous the failure of that system can be during the Great Depression. But these privileges were not created to bestow banks operating hedge funds or private equity funds with an unfair advantage.
When banks benefit from the safety net that taxpayers provide, which includes lower-cost capital, it is not appropriate for them to turn around and use that cheap money to trade for profit. And that is especially true when this kind of trading often puts banks in direct conflict with their customers’ interests.
The fact is, these kinds of trading operations can create enormous and costly risks, endangering the entire bank if things go wrong.
We simply cannot accept a system in which hedge funds or private- equity firms inside banks can place huge, risky bets that are subsidized by taxpayers and that could pose a conflict of interest. And we cannot accept a system in which shareholders make money on these operations if a bank wins, but taxpayers foot the bill if a bank loses.
It’s for these reasons that I’m proposing a simple and common- sense reform, which we’re calling the Volcker rule, after this tall guy behind me. Banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest or sponsor hedge funds, private-equity funds or proprietary trading operations for their own profit, unrelated to serving their customers. If financial firms want to trade for profit, that’s something they’re free to do. Indeed, doing so responsibly is a good thing for the markets and the economy. But these firms should not be allowed to run these hedge funds and private equities — funds while running a bank backed by the American people.
In addition, as part of our efforts to protect against future crises, I’m also proposing that we prevent the further consolidation of our financial system. There has long been a deposit cap in place to guard against too much risk being concentrated in a single bank. The same principle should apply to wider forms of funding employed by large financial institutions in today’s economy. The American people will not be served by a financial system that comprises just a few massive firms. That’s not good for consumers; it’s not good for the economy. And through this policy, that is an outcome we will avoid.
And my message to members of Congress of both parties is that we have to get this done. And my message to leaders of the financial industry is to work with us, and not against us, on needed reforms. I welcome constructive input from folks in the financial sector. But what we’ve seen so far in recent weeks is an army of industry lobbyists from Wall Street descending on Capitol Hill to try and block basic and common-sense rules of the road that would protect our economy and the American people.
So if these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have. And my resolve is only strengthened when I see a return to old practices in some of the very firms fighting reform; when I see soaring profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms claiming that they can’t lend more to small businesses, they can’t keep credit- card rates low, they can’t pay a fee to refund taxpayers for the bailout without passing on the cost to shareholders or customers. That’s the claims they’re making.
It’s exactly this kind of irresponsibility that makes clear reform is necessary.
Now, we’ve come through a terrible crisis. The American people have paid a very high price. We simply cannot return to business as usual. That’s why we’re going to ensure that Wall Street pays back the American people for the bailout. That’s why we’re going to rein in the excess and abuse that nearly brought down our financial system. That’s why we’re going to pass these reforms into law.
This Should Scare the Crap Out of You
Josh Marshall got a letter from an anonymous staffer, and while the whole letter is profoundly disturbing, the excerpt that Mr. Marshall put before the break is f%$#ing terrifying:
The worst is that I can’t help but feel like the main emotion people in the caucus are feeling is relief at this turn of events. Now they have a ready excuse for not getting anything done. While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas. They’re afraid to actually implement them and face the judgement of the voters. That’s the scariest dynamic and what makes me think this will all come crashing down around us in November.
This is a recipe for disaster for the Democratic party, and by extension, for the country, because people want politicians to stand for something, even if it’s wrong, and the Republicans waiting in the wings are far less moderate than Bush/Cheney/Rove.
Think about that: Republicans in power who would make us fondly remember the moderation of George W. Bush.
You may change your underwear now.
Best, Satan
A letter to the editor from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher.
The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle.
Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”?
If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style.
Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll.
You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad.
Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.
Best, Satan
(line breaks are mine, the LTE had none)
Josh Marshall is Right, and Was Right in 2004
In the aftermath of the Massachusetts debacle, a lot of people are wondering what the hell happened.
The talking heads inside the Beltway are sure that it’s because Obama is too Librul™, of course, but I think that Josh Marshall talked about the core problem in August of 2004.
He was talking about the Bush-Kerry campaign, and he characterized it as follows:
Let’s call it the Republicans’ Bitch-Slap theory of electoral politics.
It goes something like this.
………
Consider for a moment what the big game is here. This is a battle between two candidates to demonstrate toughness on national security. Toughness is a unitary quality, really — a personal, characterological quality rather than one rooted in policy or divisible in any real way. So both sides are trying to prove to undecided voters either that they’re tougher than the other guy or at least tough enough for the job.
………
One way — perhaps the best way — to demonstrate someone’s lack of toughness or strength is to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves — thus the rough slang I used above. And that I think is a big part of what is happening here. Someone who can’t or won’t defend themselves certainly isn’t someone you can depend upon to defend you.
………
Hitting someone and not having them hit back hurts the morale of that person’s supporters, buoys the confidence of your own backers (particularly if many tend toward an authoritarian mindset) and tends to make the person who’s receiving the hits into an object of contempt (even if also possibly also one of sympathy) in the eyes of the uncommitted.
………
Only now, it isn’t the Republicans bitch slapping anyone. It’s the Democrats who bitch slap themselves.
Or as Zaid Jilani’s southern ConservaDem friend says:
And can I say this? F*ck the Democrats. They couldn’t get s%$# done with 60 seats, why the hell would I care if they have 59? F%$# them seriously we deserve to lose Congress this year. And don’t bitch and whine about it either how much has changed since we took over in 2006? Ain’t s%$# as far as I can tell. We capitulated to Bush, then capitulated to Republicans and now are just capitulating to ourselves.
F%$# it dude, I mean Republicans get whatever the f%$# they want with 50 seats and we can’t do f%$# all we deserve to lose
(“%$#” mine, “*” original)
Fundamentally, when we look at what is going on in DC, it looks like no one in the Senate or the White House is even trying to make substantive change. (Pelosi, at least, creates the appearance that she is trying to do something)
What’s more, among the DC Dems, there has been near constant bitch slapping of the Party Base, whether it’s the capitulation on the public option, the labor union insurance surtax, or the constant drum beat of how “the left” hates the Democratic Party because they want to primary DINOs (Democrat In Name Only) who have safe seats.
The central campaign platform of the Republican Party is that government can’t do anything. The Democratic Party seems to try very hard to prove them right.
Because It’s Not a War on Islam
Well, they have just discovered that sniper scopes purchased for the Marine Corps contain verses from the Christian bible:
Following an ABC News report that thousands of gun sights used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan are inscribed with secret Bible references, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps said the Corps is ‘concerned’ and will discuss the matter with the weapons manufacturer.
“We are aware of the issue and are concerned with how this may be perceived,” Capt. Geraldine Carey, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, said in a statement to ABC News. “We will meet with the vendor to discuss future sight procurements.” Carey said that when the initial deal was made in 2005 it was the only product that met the Corps needs.
However, a spokesperson for CentCom, the U.S. military’s overall command in Iraq and Aghanistan, said he did not understand why the issue was any different from U.S. money with religious inscriptions on it.
(emphasis mine)
Ummm………Because inscribing Christian verses on weapons that you kill Muslims with will make it that much more difficult for US troops to train with Muslim troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and because it’s likely to inspire more violence against American troops, because it is another piece of evidence that Islamic radicals will use to show that this is a war against Islam?
That kind of fits the definition of, “Contrary to good order and discipline,” doesn’t it.
The Marines get it, the US Army doesn’t.
Interestingly enough, it’s the the Army, along with the US Air Force in which the bulk of complaints about discrimination by aggressive Evangelicals have been reported.
It appears that this has been common knowledge among gun enthusiasts for about 4 years, but the military never noticed what the Trijicon corporation was doing.
41
The Boston Globe calls it for Scott Brown, so he will be the 41st Republican in the Senate.
I was right with my prediction, and that sucks. Normally I’m wrong.
For the optimists, refer to my earlier take on potential positives of Coakley losing, (the bullet points toward the end of the post) but for me, this just sucks.
Two words: Budget Reconciliation.
Jon Stewart captures the essence of what is wrong with both candidate Coakley (first 5½ minutes), and the Democratic Party (after).
Not Enough Bullets
It looks like the fat cat Wall Street Bankers are looking at a legal challenge to Obama’s proposed bank tax:
Wall Street’s main lobbying arm has hired a top Supreme Court litigator to study a possible legal battle against a bank tax proposed by the Obama administration, on the theory that it would be unconstitutional, according to three industry officials briefed on the matter.
Ummm ……… Despite the fact that these guys destroy £7 of wealth for each dollar that they are paid, and the fact that this is intended to collect money to replace those spent under the TARP law, which required such a levy, they still believe themselves to be the masters of the universe, and they are outraged at that Obama has unveiled a modest tax on their liabilities and spoken about them with less than glowing terms.
It’s really kind of whiny, since the tax is modest, and largely geared toward forestalling more punitive measures floating around Congress.
The tax is nominally 15 basis points (0.15%) on liabilities over $50 billion, and it appears to weigh more heavily on investment banks than depositor banks, though the legal distinction was erased when the brokers all became bank holding companies. (See the FAQ from the Treasury Department)
What’s more the tax is profoundly weak tea, as the effective tax is halved, yielding a tax of 7½ basis points, which is well under the 78 basis point advantage in cost of funds that the “too big to fail banks” have over their smaller brethren.
Note also that this only covers the $117 billion or so of the TARP, but when other bailouts are considered, we are approaching $30 trillion in money handed to banks, without a thought of clawing that back.
So they are getting a sweetheart deal, and they are screaming like stuck pigs.
They do not realize how angry people are, and they won’t until people literally start burning down their houses with torches.
There is a Point Where Obama Moves Beyond “Looking Ahead,” and Becomes a Co-Conspirator
Scott Horton at Harper’s Magazine looks at the deaths of three detainees in detention at Guantánamo, and concludes that it is likely that they were tortured to death, and almost certain that there is a pervasive and ongoing coverup of the details of their deaths:
……… Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006.
The law, both US and international, is clear here: covering up a war crime is a war crime.
Late in the evening on June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.
As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guantánamo to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion.
Two years later, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which has primary investigative jurisdiction within the naval base, issued a report supporting the account originally advanced by Harris, now a vice-admiral in command of the Sixth Fleet. The Pentagon declined to make the NCIS report public, and only when pressed with Freedom of Information Act demands did it disclose parts of the report, some 1,700 pages of documents so heavily redacted as to be nearly incomprehensible. The NCIS report was carefully cross-referenced and deciphered by students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and their findings, released in November 2009, made clear why the Pentagon had been unwilling to make its conclusions public. The official story of the prisoners’ deaths was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centerpiece of the report—a reconstruction of the events—was simply unbelievable.
According to the NCIS, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.
(emphasis mine)
This is well into the territory of the SNL phony news report that anti-Apartheid activist Stephen Biko had died in custody as the result of his hunger strike, and please ignore the skull fracture, which was a result of a good faith effort by the authorities attempt to force feed him roast beef through his skull.
It is clear that there is a pervasive and ongoing cover-up of this affair within the military. It’s also clear that it is large enough that political appointees within the Department of Defense have to be giving their tacit approval of a continuing deception.
Whoever this individual is, they are, as I noted earlier, guilty of war crimes.
With the appearance of Horton’s story on the web, and Keith Olbermann’s show, everyone in the military and civilian chains of command at the Pentagon and the White House has to be aware of these issues.
If immediate action, by which I mean an independent investigation, is not taken to uncover the facts, and then these individuals, including Barack Obama, are war criminals.
I understand that the Obama administration finds investigating what appears to be a multiple cases of torturing people to death to be politically inconvenient, but political inconvenience does not excuse law breaking.
More Ass Covering by the Fed
It’s clear that Bernanke does not want the rock turned over to see what slimy things live underneath, and so we have some more measures taken by the Federal Reserve to try to mute calls for an audit, and perhaps a re-evaluation of the role and powers of the institution.
They have implemented more consumer friendly credit card rules (also here and here), and now Bernanke is saying that the central bank would welcome an audit of their dealings with AIG by the GAO.
In the latter quote, the pertinent quote is this:
The invitation does not represent any procedural changes, as GAO could have reviewed the issue without such an invitation. But the does letter highlight the Fed’s sensitivity to mounting criticism to the events leading up to the bailout.
So, if the Federal Reserve has no choice, then they will write a nice letter saying, “Okily dokily, neighbor.”
I expect that if the GAO conducts an audit, it will take crowbars and explosives to actually extract any meaningful information though.
Bad Day for Lowbrow Literature
Robert B. Parker, author of the Spencer detective novels, and Erich Segal, author of Love Story have both died.
I don’t mean to imply that they were bad authors, I rather enjoyed reading the Spencer books, and I have never read Segal, and so cannot comment on his work at all, but rather I am saying that their books were decidedly mass market, as opposed to the more erudite stuff that you see reviewed in gushing tones on NPR.