Month: March 2011

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. First National Bank of Davis, Davis, OK
  2. Legacy Bank, Milwaukee, WI

Full FDIC list

And here are the credit union closings:

  1. Land of Enchantment Federal Credit Union, Santa Fe, NM

Full NCUA list

I don’t have much to add, except that it looks a lot like 2010, and the “Land of Enchantement Federal Credit Union” is a really trippy name. 

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

And since it’s early in the year, here is a detail of the first few weeks:

The Term for this is Bureaucratic Seppuku

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It is also courageous and so if anyone knows of a new job for State Department spokesman PJ Crowley, drop him a line.

You see, Crowley called the torture treatment of Private Bradley Manning by our military “Stupid.”

If there is anything that pisses off Barack Obama, it’s whistle blowers.  His administration has prosecuted them more aggressively than any other administration in  history, and the torture of Manning is delibrate:  They want to extract false testimony from him to implicate assange, and, more importantly, they want to terrify any would-be whistle blowers out of telling the truth:

Mr Crowley made the remarks about Bradley Manning to an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Nonetheless Bradley Manning is in the right place,” Mr Crowley said.

Private Manning is being held in solitary confinement at a maximum security US military jail.

He is shackled at all times and has been on suicide watch at the Quantico marine base in Virginia.

Mr Crowley was asked whether his comments were on the record and replied, “sure”.

President Barack Obama was questioned about whether he agreed with Mr Crowley’s comments at a news conference on Friday.

He responded by saying he had asked the Pentagon directly if the terms of Pte Manning’s confinement were “appropriate” and received assurances that they were.

Mr Obama added that some aspects of Pte Manning’s treatment “has to do with his safety as well”.

Obama’s response is pure, unadulterated bullsh%$.  You asked, and were told that they were appropriate, and that “some” aspects have to do with his safety.

So, you just stated that you know, and that you chose to look the other way.

I am so glad that I live in Maryland, and so I never have to vote for this contemptible ratf%$# ever again.

That being said, now that the dirty laundry is out, how much do you want to bet that the treatment gets better?

Shoot Me. I’m Thinking that Ron Paul is Right

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The Federal Reserve’s Consumer Advisory Council just released a report saying that there have been no wrongful foreclosures by banks:

A months-long investigation into abusive mortgage practices by the Federal Reserve found no wrongful foreclosures, members of the Fed’s Consumer Advisory Council said Thursday.

During a public meeting attended by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and other regulators, consumer advocates on the panel criticized federal bank regulators for narrowly defining what constitutes a “wrongful foreclosure.” At least one member of the panel voiced concerns that the public would not take the Fed’s findings of improper practices seriously, since the wide-ranging review did not find a single homeowner who was wrongfully foreclosed upon.

The Fed’s findings seem to support claims from the banking industry, which has admitted to sloppy practices but has maintained that the homeowners whose homes have been repossessed were substantially behind on their payments. The Fed’s report has not been released to the public.

This is crap.  Even if you argue that fraudulent statements to the court are not “wrongful foreclosure”, you have to note that banks have foreclosed on people who had mortgages with other people, and foreclosed on people who paid cash for their homes.

Well, with regard to the Federal Reserve, I used to take the middle ground, Alan Grayson’s position for audits and more transparency, while eschewing Ron Paul’s suggestion that we close down the Federal Reserve.

I thought that Paul was loony, and that it was a loony suggestion.

Now I’m beginning to think that the Federal Reserve is so thoroughly captured by the banks, and so thoroughly corrupt, that closing it down might be the only sane option.

The Rude Pundit Asks the Right Question

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You should read his whole post about what is going on in Wisconsin, but in the last paragraph, he asks the important question:

Where the f%$# is the President? Where the f%$# is the President? Where the f%$# is the President?

(%$# mine)

The answer, of course is that the President is busy, “Winning the Future,” because pursuing a lame ass slogan in order to be reelected in 2008 is more important than defending the rights of the ordinary working man.

Scott Walker’s Kill the Unions Bill Heads for His Desk

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The lower house of the legislature passed it today.

There are some real questions as to whether this is is legal, so the Wisconsin Supreme Court, currently 4-3 Republican, may very well have the final word.

The reason that this is important is that Wisconsin elects its supreme court justices in partisan elections, and there is an election on  is April 5 with Democrat JoAnne Kloppenburg facing incumbent Republican David Prosser.

Given that this is generally a low turnout sort of election, and that liberal groups are flooding the zone generally right now, the Dem has a real chance of winning, particularly because Prosser was one of the people who chose to ignore the US Supreme Court ruling and let a fellow state Supreme Court judge off for not recusing himself when a major donor to his campaign appeared before him.

Why Yes, Muslim Baiting Congressman Peter King Does Support Terrorism

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Only Jon Stewart can make eating cheese this funny

This time, he notes the conflict between Representative Peter King’s full throated support for the IRA, and his the New York Congressman’s concerns about terrorism when the people blowing up school children and the occasional American are not white.

You know, I can think of no better way to encourage a 15 year old to consider making war against the United States than to have to hear Peter King talk about his religion in this way.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?!?!?

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Recall time!

So, the Wisconsin State Senate just pulled the anti-union provisions out of the budget bill, and then, since they did not require a quorum, since they were non-budgetary, they passed it with an 18-1 vote.

I will note that the motion appears to be in violation of the state constitution:

The measure approved Wednesday forbids most government workers from collectively bargaining for wage increases beyond the rate of inflation. It also requires public workers to pay more toward their pensions and double their health insurance contribution, a combination equivalent to an 8 percent pay cut for the average worker.

Those savings would appear to be budgetary to me, and hence subject to the state constitution’s quorum requirement.

Firedog Lake’s invaluable David Dayen has some more of the finer points, and it appears that this is definitely headed to court, though the Wisconsin State Supreme Court is heavily Republican.

If you want to donate to the recall efforts, you can go to my Act Blue Page. There is a link there for donations.

Also note that in the middle of the most important fight for ordinary working Americans in decades, the Obama administration has decided that they don’t want to be involved:

Similarly, the White House mostly has sought to stay out of the fray in Madison, Wis., and other state capitals where Republican governors are battling public employee unions and Democratic lawmakers over collective bargaining rights. When West Wing officials discovered that the Democratic National Committee had mobilized Mr. Obama’s national network to support the protests, they angrily reined in the staff at the party headquarters.

Administration officials said they saw the events beyond Washington as distractions from the optimistic “win the future” message that Mr. Obama introduced in his State of the Union address, in which he exhorted the country to increase spending for some programs even as it cuts others so that America can “out-innovate and out-educate” its global rivals.

I guess that someone in the administration finds unions, and ordinary working people to be icky. After all, they expect to spend a billion dollars in 2012 on the Presidential election, and the working man just does not have that kind of money.

Barack Obama is very lucky that the Republicans are as awful as they are, because otherwise, as awful as he is, he’d have a serious primary challenger right now.

What can I say, when Mitt Romney is the class act in the room, you have a very scary political party.

No, 11 Year Old Girls Are Not Asking for It!

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The New York Times times reported on a horrific rape of an 11 year old girl in Texas, and saw fit to blame the victim for the crime.

Some selected quotes:

The video led the police to an abandoned trailer, more evidence and, eventually, to a roundup over the last month of 18 young men and teenage boys on charges of participating in the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl in the abandoned trailer home, the authorities said.

………

The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?

“It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.”

Drawn into the act?

The alleged Rapists have to live with this for the rest of their life?

But it gets even better:

Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said.

“Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”

You see, she hung out with the wrong crowd, and she wore slutty clothes, so she deserves to be raped.

By comparison, the Houston Chronicle doesn’t go out of their way to portray an 11 year old girl as something akin to Jezebel.

Why reporter James C. McKinley Jr. and whoever his editor is are still employed at the Times is completely beyond me.

Yes, This is Fascism

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Rachel Maddow and Naomi Klein on the “Emergency Manager” Bill

In Michigan, the governor is pushing a bill through that would grant Governor Rick Snyder the powers of a dictator.

Basically, he can declare a financial emergency for any municipal government or school district, and then he can assign an “Emergency Manager”, who could, without any review cancel any contracts (including labor contracts), dismiss elected officials, disincorporate towns, and dismantle school districts.

What’s more, the Senate version of the bill allows the emergency manager to be assigned to a corporation, like Blackwater (now Xe) or Halliburton.

There is no criteria for such a declaration, but even if there were, they are also gutting local aid, which pretty much means that they are creating fiscal crises anyway.

Basically, any elected official, and any semblance of due process is to be wiped away, in a bill that really does resemble the Emergency Laws that Mubarak used to rule Egypt with an iron fist for all these years.

This is about a corporate takeover of civil society, and the vesting of near absolute power in the executive.

When Are These F%$#s Going to Stop Listening to James O’Keefe

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This is Not Star Trek. In Startrek, the Evil Spock has a goatee. In our world the evil James O’Keefe is clean shaven.

Right wing videographer hack James O’Keefe* has secured yet another scalp, the president of NPR has resigned.

This guy has been proven to be a serial liar, but he releases his crap, Fox News picks it up, and suddenly, people are freaking out.

This just makes it worse for NPR, because they just capitulated to a terrorist.

*Who is not to be confused with my former classmate, founder of the Massachusetts Pirate Party, former Green Party candidate for Massachusetts Treasure, and all around good guy, James “Jamie” O’Keefe.

Pirate Party Founded in Massachusetts

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And I know the guy who did it, James “Jamie” O’Keefe:

The Massachusetts Election Division has approved the Massachusetts Pirate Party as a political designation, allowing voters in the state to register as a “Pirate.”

The party strives to increase government transparency, promote personal privacy, reinforce the spread of knowledge through copyright reform, and abolish patents.

“We live in a country founded on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Massachusetts Pirate Party said in a statement. “For many people, those ideals are not real. The Supreme Court and Congress have expanded the power of corporations and made them more powerful than people. Increasingly government officials ignore open meeting laws, make deals favorable to corporations behind closed doors and sell off our public information to private interests.”

I went to UMass with him.

Note, as the article does, that Jamie is not the criminal asshole who cooks up fraudulent videos.

Note that my inclinations on IP are very similar, though perhaps a bit more moderate, than those of the Pirate Party.

If You Want to Go Postal at Work, Follow the Example of the Indians

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And I mean East Indians, not American Indians.

You see, they don’t go after their cow-orkers, they go after their boss, as in this case where they fired a member of senior management:

Indian police have detained two people after an angry mob of sacked steel workers burned to death a senior executive.

After learning they were laid off, about a dozen workers attacked a 4×4 vehicle carrying Radhey Shyam Roy as he was leaving the factory in eastern Orissa state on Thursday.

They doused it with petrol and set it ablaze, said police Superintendent Ajay Kumar Sarangi.

Needless to say, I do not endors violence against employers, even senior managers, but the fear of such violence does appear to be the only way to restrain their behavior, given that the moneyed class is pretty much above the law in most of the world, including the good old USA.

H/t JR at Stellar Parthenon.

Well, Here’s a Surprise

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Warning, listening to Rush Limbaugh may cause substance abuse, impotence, failed marriages, and hypocricy

We had a report that right wing radio talk shows were hiring actors to juice up their phone callers:

But what exactly was the work? The question popped up during the audition and was explained, the actor said, clearly and simply: If he passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio. He would never be identified as an actor, and his scenarios would never be identified as fabricated—which they always were.

“I was surprised that it seemed so open,” the actor told me in an interview. “There was really no pretense of covering it up.”

Curious, the actor did some snooping and learned that Premiere On Call was a service offered by Premiere Radio Networks, the largest syndication company in the United States and a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, the entertainment and advertising giant. Premiere syndicates some of the more sterling names in radio, including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity. But a great radio show depends as much on great callers as it does on great hosts: Enter Premiere On Call.

, as the CJR notes, it’s Ensuring the authenticity of your programming… with paid, planted callers.

Well, we now have confirmation, because Rush “Drugs are bad, marriage is sacred, I did not f%$# little boys in the Dominican Republic” Limbaugh has now officially denied that he used actors as phoney call-ins.

I consider this to be confirmation because Rush lies about everything, and the story is nearly a month old, and any innocent person would have let it slip beneath the waves.

More Evidence that the Wall Street Journal is Going to Rupert Murdoch in a Handbasket

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They were reporting that the Wisconsin State Democratic Senators were returning to the capitol shortly, which was emphatically denied by the state Senators in question.

This was clearly planted because as time goes on the Republicans are losing ground. For example, one of the more prominent teabagger PACs is begging for money because they are losing this fight, and a counter protest, complete with Koch brothers free bus service, could only muster 700 attendees.

The lesson to be learned here is that when you make nice, no one notices who was on what side, but when you fight back people do notice, and if you are on the sane side of the argument, you win.

Is Bradley Manning in Quantico, or Abu Ghraib?

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Representative Dennis Kucinich is asking this question, and considering the extended isolation, the enforced nudity, etc. He’s right.

What is particularly telling is the fact that he has asked to speak to Manning, and it’s being deliberately slow walked.

That being said, Kucinich is being far to circumspect in his statement. It is clear that this behavior has been authorized at the very highest levels, and Barack Obama needs to be named, and shamed, over this.