Home, Lost Home

Posted: November 16, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Bailout Blues, Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , , | 41 Comments

The Senate Banking Committee is looking into allegations today about Bank of America’s Foreclosure process.   As you may know, there have been problems with foreclosure documents that have led many to question the legality of many foreclosure actions by banks.  At least seven banking officers will appear before the committee to argue the case that robo-notorization and other means of speeding up the process of making people homeless are not illegitimate.  Retiring Senator Bank-Lobbyist-in-Training Chris Dodd is in charge of that committee.

Bloomberg has this to report about the hearings.

Democrats said they are concerned not only about foreclosures, but also about whether mortgage servicers are properly handling mortgage modifications intended to keep some homeowners from losing their properties.

“If many banks and servicers are not handling even basic foreclosure procedures correctly, it is likely that many are also not correctly evaluating homeowners for mortgage modifications,” Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who is a member of the Banking Committee, said in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner that is scheduled to be sent today.

In the House, lawmakers will also call in overseers and regulators from government agencies, including the OCC and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Consumer advocates have been expressing concern about this process for years and aggressive lobbying is apparently paying off for the financial institutions.  This report on a flurry of FIRE lobbying is from WAPO.

The spotlight on the foreclosure process has anxious financial executives mobilizing on Capitol Hill. A financial lobbyist said senior executives have been meeting with lawmakers and their staffers, and industry groups are planning letter campaigns aimed at preventing aggressive new legislation.

“Everyone’s very nervous about what’s going to happen this week,” said another industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because his firm has a stake in the outcome. “We have all hands on deck.”

It’s unclear what new measure could pass in a politically divided Congress, but some ideas under consideration could broadly reshape the mortgage industry.

Some lawmakers want to resurrect legislation that would give bankruptcy judges the power to order lenders to reduce the principal that homeowners owe. Others are pushing for some big banks to spin off their mortgage-servicing arms to avoid conflicts of interest. There’s also discussion of replacing the industry’s current system for tracking mortgages with one that would be subject to federal regulation.

“The risk is small that a bill gets through,” the financial lobbyist said, but “we are taking it very seriously.”

Meanwhile, Americans for Financial Reform have requested the FED withdraw a Rescission Rule. In real estate transactions, these rules generally offer up a ‘cooling off period’  that give a buyer a chance to nullify a sales contract within a certain period. Most state rescission rules run from five to 15 days.  The FED’s considering tightening the process to favor the lenders.  Here’s some information on the request from AFR to the FED.

In the face of an unparalleled foreclosure crisis, now is the time to reinforce the fundamental importance of TILA rescission. Instead, the Board’s proposal would eviscerate the single most effective tool that homeowners have to stop foreclosures and avoid predatory loans: the extended right of rescission. The FRB Docket R-1390 contains a series of proposed changes to the TILA rules governing mortgage lending.

A few of the proposed changes, including new “material A much greater concern is the proposed decimation of TILA’s right of rescission. At the  depths of the worst foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression, we are surprised that the Federal Reserve Board has proposed rules that would eviscerate the primary protection homeowners currently have to escape abusive loans and avoid foreclosure: the extended right of rescission in 12 CFR § 226.15 and 226.23. disclosures” for home secured credit, would advance consumer protections.

Some changes are neither particularly damaging nor particularly beneficial to consumers. Other parts of the proposal, however, would seriously undermine the reliability of TILA disclosures on home secured credit.  Instead of informing consumers about the terms of their loans as Congress intended, these proposals  would allow broad misstatements of loan terms through new tolerances that are without statutory authority.

The Truth in Lending Act passed by Congress specifically provides consumers the right to unwind an illegal loan through “rescission” for up to three years after the loan was consummated.  The statute – and current Board regulations –both provide that if the proper disclosures were not  provided to the homeowner at the closing, the homeowner can rescind the loan by sending a notice to the creditor. The statute then requires the creditor to cancel the security interest. Only after the  creditor has complied with its obligation to cancel the security interest is the homeowner required to pay back the lender the amount still due on the loan. This order of obligations is the essence of the protection provided by TILA’s extended right of rescission. The cancelling of the security interest means that the homeowner has a defense to a foreclosure. It also means that the homeowner has the means to obtain refinancing so as to be able to tender the amount due. The extended right of rescission does not mean that the homeowner does not have to repay the loan. While the amount due is reduced by the finance charges, fees and amounts the homeowner has already paid, the balance is still due the creditor.

Current momentum to push the laws to protect mortgage loan originators and processors appears aimed at protecting them from the consequences of some really shoddy underwriting practices.  This seems mostly motivated to save them the billions of dollars of costs they–and in turn the Federal Government–would incur should there be zero tolerance of these egregious practices.  Not only are billions of dollars of investors money at risk–including pensions and institutional investment funds–but there’s also that little matter of the bankrupt Fannie and Freddie that sit on tons of the nasty stuff and are currently being propped up by tax payer money.

Oddly enough, there are calls again for the FED or Treasury to do more ‘stress tests’ to see exactly what the potential fall out from this massive stupidity might be.  Will we once again have to fork over our Treasury to pay for the greed of the housing and mortage debacle?  All of this undoubtedly has the markets shaky, I went in search of why so  much Big RED numbers in the major stock indexes today.  The uncertainty inherent in this problem is undoubtedly fueling the equities set back.  We continue to see fall out from the District’s inability to deal with the current systemic risk in our Financial System due to massive  and hasty deregulation.   Here’s some more analysis from WAPO.

At the same time, he said, panel members sympathize with the conundrum facing policymakers as they deal with the issue: On one hand, grinding foreclosures to a halt unnecessarily could harm the economy and slow its recovery. On the other, he said, distressed borrowers are entitled to due process, especially when banks are trying to take their homes.

Administration officials say they are keeping a close watch on the issue.

“We strongly believe that the reported behavior within the mortgage servicer industry is simply unacceptable, and servicers who have failed to follow the law must be held accountable,” said Treasury spokesman Mark Paustenbach. He added that the administration has led an interagency effort to “investigate misconduct, protect homeowners and mitigate any long-term effects on the housing market. The independent regulatory agencies, the Justice Department and [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] are examining servicers’ behavior, and we will continue to monitor the situation closely.”

This loosely means they’re  probably anticipating the need for more bailouts.  Good luck with that given the influx of hostile partisans coming in from the right wing of the Republican Party in January.   What’s a bunch of lame ducks to do?

Tuesday Reads

Posted: November 16, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: just because | 16 Comments

Good Morning!! So far, it has been a pretty slow political news week. I guess we’re at the beginning of the holiday lull. But I did manage to find a few stories worth sharing.

Dakinikat posted this in a comment last night: 2 Dems claim Huffington stole website idea

Two Democratic consultants are accusing Arianna Huffington and her business partner of stealing their idea for the powerhouse liberal website Huffington Post.

Peter Daou and James Boyce charge that Huffington and partner Ken Lerer designed the website from a plan they had presented them, and in doing so, violated a handshake agreement to work together, according to a lawsuit to be filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. [….]

“Huffington has styled herself as a ‘new media’ maven and an expert on the effective deployment of news and celebrity on the Internet in the service of political ends,” says the complaint. “As will be shown at trial, Huffington’s and Lerer’s image with respect to the Huffington Post is founded on false impressions and inaccuracies: They presented the ‘new media’ ideas and plans of Peter Daou and James Boyce as their own in order to raise money for the website and enhance their image, and breached their promises to work with Peter and James to develop the site together.”

Wow! Something tells me Peter Daou won’t be blogging at Huffpo any longer.

In the Washington Post, Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell have a bizarre recommendation for President Obama: they want him to announce that he won’t run again in 2012.

This is a critical moment for the country. From the faltering economy to the burdensome deficit to our foreign policy struggles, America is suffering a widespread sense of crisis and anxiety about the future. Under these circumstances, Obama has the opportunity to seize the high ground and the imagination of the nation once again, and to galvanize the public for the hard decisions that must be made. The only way he can do so, though, is by putting national interests ahead of personal or political ones.

To that end, we believe Obama should announce immediately that he will not be a candidate for reelection in 2012.

If the president goes down the reelection road, we are guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it. But by explicitly saying he will be a one-term president, Obama can deliver on his central campaign promise of 2008, draining the poison from our culture of polarization and ending the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity and common purpose.

We do not come to this conclusion lightly. But it is clear, we believe, that the president has largely lost the consent of the governed. The midterm elections were effectively a referendum on the Obama presidency. And even if it was not an endorsement of a Republican vision for America, the drubbing the Democrats took was certainly a vote of no confidence in Obama and his party.

Okay, Pat Caddell is a complete crackpot, and that is not going to happen, but still it’s funny to imagine Obama reading the article and trying to figure out how he can “compromise” even more than ever with the Republicans in hopes they will finally like him.

The New York Times reports that the House Ethics Committee has found Charlie Rangel guilty of “13 counts of misconduct,” even though Rangel walked out of the proceedings because he didn’t have an attorney representing him.

The ruling came after a dramatic and puzzling appearance by Mr. Rangel, 80, in which he protested that he could no longer afford to pay his lawyers, and indignantly walked out of the proceedings, calling them unfair.

Committee members were unmoved. Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, noted dryly that Mr. Rangel, a Harlem Democrat, was responsible for paying his lawyers and that he had been advised by the committee beginning in 2008 to form a legal defense fund to do so.

With Mr. Rangel absent, the panel listened to its chief counsel as he methodically presented the evidence against Mr. Rangel, which was based on 549 exhibits, dozens of witness interviews and thousands of pages of financial documents. Members then met in executive session and later announced they had found the facts in the charges against Mr. Rangel to be “uncontested.”

Those charges included accusations that Mr. Rangel had accepted rent-stabilized apartments from a Manhattan developer, failed to pay income taxes on rent from a Dominican villa and solicited charitable donations from individuals with business before Congress.

I’m sorry, those charges sound like pretty small potatoes to me compared to the corruption I read about every day. I continue to believe that Rangel is being railroaded, perhaps because he didn’t support Obama during the primaries and didn’t come around until the bitter end.

There have been a couple of crime stories that I’ve found really disturbing in the past week or so. The first one took place in the town I grew up in (and where I am right now), Muncie, Indiana. A girl reported being raped at a local high school, and school administrators refused to report the crime to police.

When a Central High School student went to the principal’s office about noon Tuesday to report she had just been raped in a school restroom, administrators didn’t notify police — not even the Muncie Police Department detective working in the school that day as a security officer.

Instead, the 16-year-old girl was asked to provide a written account of the assault, then apparently sat in the office for 21/2 hours until a Youth Opportunity Center staff member arrived to take the teen back to that westside facility.

That woman said she wasn’t informed of the rape allegation until she arrived at Central to pick the girl up. The YOC employee responded by taking the girl to Ball Memorial Hospital.

At that point, city police finally became involved — about four hours after the girl initially reported she had been assaulted.

A veteran Muncie Police Department detective said Wednesday that the delay had created “too big a chance of losing critical evidence” and could hamper his department’s investigation.

The school Superintendent, Eric King, claimed the rape report was “vague” and the story needed to be “validated” before he could report it to authorities.

WTF?! Aren’t school teachers and administrators required to report any abuse of a minor immediately? Here’s what local victims’ advocates had to say: “Rape claims should prompt immediate calls to police.”

Your friend, your daughter, co-worker or employee comes to you — someone they trust — and tells you they’ve been raped.

You might be taken aback, surprised by what they’re saying, perhaps even wondering what they’re talking about and what you’re supposed to do.

But, according to victim’s advocates, your role is actually quite simple.

“Call the police,” said Teresa Clemmons, executive director of A Better Way, a local agency that handles sexual assault and domestic violence issues in the area. “If the person is an adult, you ask them what they want to do, let them make the choice. Otherwise, you call the police. And more importantly, you get in contact with someone trained to handle this situation as soon as possible.”

Believe it or not, school authorities are still claiming to be “investigating” this situation, even though it is now a police matter. The School Superintendent and the principal of Central High School should be fired!

The other crime story that has disturbed me a great deal took place in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. You’ve probably heard about it. A 13-year old girl named Sarah Maynard disappeared along with her mother, brother, and her mother’s friend. Sarah has been found in the home of a 30-year-old man, but the others are still missing and presumed dead.

Sarah Maynard was found bound and gagged in the basement of a home just outside Mount Vernon city limits around 8am local time yesterday. She had been missing since Wednesday, along with her mother Tina Hermann, her brother Kody Maynard, 11, and her mother’s friend, Stephanie Sprang, 41, who remain unaccounted for.

“Unfortunately as of right now, we have not located Tina, Stephanie or Sarah’s little brother Kody,” Sheriff David Barber said at the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. [….]

Sheriff Barber said it was unknown if the accused, 30-year-old Matthew J Hoffman of Mount Vernon, Ohio, had any connection to the family– though he said Mr Hoffman was not an ex-boyfriend of either Hermann or Sprang – or if he worked alone. Mr Hoffman has a previous conviction for arson in Colorado, for which he served prison time.

Police are searching for Sarah’s missing family members and family friend, but they don’t expect to find them alive.

Police called Sarah, 13, the “epitome of bravery” after surviving a five-day ordeal in which she was allegedly kept tied up in Hoffman’s basement.

Sarah was rescued by a police SWAT team Sunday. Police found the girl alone. Hoffman, 31, and a convicted arsonist ,was arrested and charged with kidnapping.

Despite the girl’s efforts to help police in their investigation, they fear Sarah’s little brother, mother and a family friend who disappeared at the same time may be dead.

“We still would like to retain a hopeful attitude, but we have to be realistic,” Knox County Sheriff David Barber said.

Sometimes I read a story that I just can’t get out of my mind, and this is one of them. I just can’t stand thinking of this poor child going through this ordeal and losing her mother and brother because some monster wanted her for god knows what sick purpose.

I’ll finish on a more cheerful note. Here’s a story to make you smile (or smirk): Westboro’s Tires Slashed at Funeral

When members of the Westboro Baptist Church finished protesting the funeral of a fallen Army sergeant Saturday, they returned to their car only to find their tires slashed.

The protesters were unable to find anyone in McAlester, Okla., where the protest took place, who would repair the front and back passenger-side tires that were damaged, according to the Tulsa World. Eventually, a truck from AAA was called to tow the van to a nearby Walmart for repairs.

The Westboro Baptist Church, you’ll recall, is the sick fundamentalist outfit run by Fred Phelps. These creeps travel around picketing funerals and making the lives of mourners a little bit more miserable. From Wikipedia:

The group carries out daily picketing in Topeka (purportedly six per day with fifteen on Sunday[13]) and travels nationally to picket the funerals of gay victims of murder, gay-bashing or people who have died from complications relating to AIDS; other events related or peripherally related to gay people; Kansas City Chiefs football games; and live pop concerts. As of March 2009 the church claims to have participated in over 41,000 protests in over 650 cities since 1991.[14] One of Westboro’s followers estimated that the church spends $250,000 a year on picketing.

Now there’s a little bit of justice we can celebrate.

What stories or blog posts do you recommend today?

What Devil Did Obama Make a Deal With?

Posted: November 15, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Black Agenda Report, just because, Team Obama, The Bonus Class | Tags: , , , , , , | 67 Comments

Barack Obama speaking at 2007 fundraiser in New York

As Dakinikat pointed out in her latest post, Paul Krugman used his column today to describe (and bemoan) Barack Obama’s negotiating style and his apparent lack of ideology. Krugman argues that the problem we face now (emphasis added) is:

…the contrast between the administration’s current whipped-dog demeanor and Mr. Obama’s soaring rhetoric as a candidate. How did we get from “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” to here?

But the bitter irony goes deeper than that: the main reason Mr. Obama finds himself in this situation is that two years ago he was not, in fact, prepared to deal with the world as he was going to find it. And it seems as if he still isn’t.

In retrospect, the roots of current Democratic despond go all the way back to the way Mr. Obama ran for president. Again and again, he defined America’s problem as one of process, not substance — we were in trouble not because we had been governed by people with the wrong ideas, but because partisan divisions and politics as usual had prevented men and women of good will from coming together to solve our problems. And he promised to transcend those partisan divisions….the real question was whether Mr. Obama could change his tune when he ran into the partisan firestorm everyone who remembered the 1990s knew was coming. He could do uplift — but could he fight?

So far the answer has been no.

Although Krugman has come a long way from the days when he defended Obama’s health care “reform” bill, he is still clinging to the notion that Obama is a well-meaning, although hopelessly weak and gullible liberal. But what if Obama never intended to keep his campaign promises? What if he always planned to help cover up the Bush administration’s crimes and continue their wars?

In a recent post, I linked to this article at Common Dreams: Obama Was Used, And Is Now Used Up, by Robert Freeman. Freeman writes:

Barack Obama was used. Of course, he knew he was being used when he made the deal. But what he didn’t know was how quickly he would be used up. Now he has to face two years of humiliation knowing that he betrayed the people and the country he claimed to champion – and knowing that everyone else knows it as well – but also knowing that he’s gotten what’s coming to him.

Obama made a deal to get the job in the first place. The deal was that he would carry on with Bush’s bailout of the banks, with Bush’s two wars, with Bush’s suppression of civil liberties, that he wouldn’t prosecute or even investigate any of the enormous fraud that had brought down the country, or the lies that had railroaded it into war.

I haven’t been able to learn very much about Freeman. According to the description on one of his earlier Common Dreams pieces,

he teaches history and economics at Los Altos High School in Los Altos, CA. He is the founder of One Dollar For Life, a national non-profit that helps American students build schools in the developing world through contributions of one dollar.

He has been contributing to Common Dreams since at least 2004. Freeman doesn’t say with whom Obama supposedly made a deal, or why that entity would want the U.S. to continue the Bush administration’s policies. For all I know, Freeman could be just talking through his hat when he makes this unsourced claim; but isn’t it something many of us have wondered about for the past several years? I know I have.

Still, Why would Obama do that? Why would he campaign on high-minded generalities, leading gullible “progressives” and even well-meaning liberals to believe he would transform Washington DC and reverse Bush policies like torture, indefinite detention, and concentration of power in the executive branch?

Why did the financial community back him so strongly? Wasn’t it most likely their desire to get their hands on the Social Security trust fund? Perhaps they made a deal with Obama to engineer an assault on Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs, but would the financial community also demand that Obama continue the Bush policies of torture, detention, and endless war?

Now let’s look at the latest article by Bruce Dixon at The Black Agenda Report: Barack Obama, Social Security and the Final Irrelevance of the Black Misleadership Class. Dixon also claims that Obama’s betrayal of all that is liberal was foreordained because of a deal to make him President.

The masters of corporate media proclaim that their raid on social security, is a done deal. “Entitlements,” their code word for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, will be cut in the lame duck session of Congress, with Democratic president Barack Obama taking the lead. Though the outlines of this raid have been clear for months, what passes for black America’s political leadership class have been silent. As far as we know, they have not been ordered to shut up. They have silenced themselves, in abject deference to the corporate black Democrat in the White House.

It took a Republican Richard Nixon to open relations with China in the seventies. It took Democrat Bill Clinton to impose draconian cuts in welfare and end college courses for prisoners in the nineties. And today, only a black Democratic president can sufficiently disarm Democrats, only a black Democrat can demobilize the black polity completely enough for the raid on “entitlements” to be successful.

Dixon then points out a fact that many white “progressives” are missing:

Many among the current Congressional Black Caucus are utterly unprepared to stand against the corporate onslaught to gut social security because it is backed by the same forces who have made their political careers possible, and spearheaded by a black Democrat in the White House. The NAACP and similar advocacy organizations too have neutered themselves with a generation of corporate financing and the “reward” of regular meetings with White House officials

Some “progressives” are discussing as possibilities for a primary challenger to Obama in 2012 or, alternatively, a third party challenger. Both of these efforts will fail, because any challenger to Obama will not win the black vote. Dixon implies that Obama’s “deal with the devil” was a sellout to corporate interests.

Inflicting a fatal wound on social security has been the aim of America’s business class for generations. It is a project upon which some of them have spent billions. Thanks to our lack of a functioning black press, or electronic media that address black audiences, most African Americans don’t know who billionaire Pete Peterson is.

Peterson is a billionaire who announced his intention almost 20 years ago to spend every last dime of his net worth to kill social security…. [Peterson has] push[…] the fraudulent notion that social security is “a Ponzi scheme,” unsustainable, a drain on the nation’s finances, and won’t be there when people currently in their thirties and forties get old anyhow. A decades-long campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt has been waged against the American people to prepare for the final undoing of the New Deal and Great Society programs of social security, Medicaid and Medicare. But it’s a campaign most of us are barely aware of.

Is Dixon right? Did Obama sell out in order to destroy social security? Then who demanded that Obama continue all of the Bush policies and block any close examination of Bush administration crimes?

I’m not suggesting any vast, all-encompassing conspiracy–clearly Obama’s corporate and political backers had differing goals in mind when they gave him their money. They probably didn’t all gather in a large room and deliberately plan to make Obama President. Some, like Teddy Kennedy, probably believed that Obama would really follow in JFK’s footsteps, inspiring a new generation to enter politics and change the system in radical ways. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a Democratic Adviser?

Posted: November 15, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Surreality, Team Obama, The DNC, The Great Recession, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , , , | 39 Comments

I have to admit to being with Digby on this one.   It’s getting more obvious to me that this Democratic Administration is going after our Social Security benefits with gusto.  You may recall that Peter Orzag was the Obama Budget Director and is now one of the major economic advisers to the President.  This contribution to the NYT is not the first flare to be fired, but it is a distinctly blinding one.

So, first Orzag admits that Social Security is not a federal deficit problem. You would think he’d end with that.  Social Security is an off budget program and it’s self funding and managing.  That’s the deal.  People pay for the benefits and they expect them.  It’s a third rail of politics and you’d think after Dubya’s adventures into handing the trust fund to Wall Street that would be all she wrote.  But, it’s not.  (Emphasis is mine on this.)

So it would be desirable to put the system on sounder financial footing. And that is precisely what the co-chairmen of President Obama’s bipartisan commission on reducing the national debt have bravely proposed to do. It’s too bad their proposal has been greeted with so much criticism, especially from progressives — who really should look at it as an opportunity to fix Social Security without privatizing it. Although the plan leans too much on future benefit reductions and not enough on revenue increases, it still offers a good starting point for reform.

…

The main flaw in the proposed Social Security plan is that it relies too little on revenue increases and too much on future benefit reductions. A reasonable objective would be a 50-50 balance between changes in benefits and changes in revenues. But the way to bring reform into better proportion is to adjust the components of this proposal, not to fundamentally remodel it.

Alrighty, so let’s first IGNORE the fact that the cat food commission had no real business sticking its nose into Social Security because it’s charter said it was to go after the Federal Deficit.  And, as Orzag has stated, Social Security is NO contributor to that deficit.

So, here’s where I agree with Digby.

I can hardly believe anyone of his stature could argue this nonsense. Orszag agrees that SS does not contribute to the long term deficit and yet is trying to convince us that that the Deficit Commission draft just put it on the table anyway, apparently out of a surfeit of progressive idealism. Huh? Moreover, he also thinks it makes sense to jump right on the third rail in American politics because it would be desirable” to do something about a potential future problem — when we are in the middle of an epic economic shitstorm with stubborn 10% unemployment and a banking and housing crisis that shows no sign of abating.

Is he ignorant of the fact that most people in this country are convinced — mainly because they’re being told it every single day by every politician, talking head and gasbag — that “entitlements” are destroying the economy and the future of the United States? The idea that social security cuts could buy the administration a chance for more stimulus is delusional.

Yup, delusional. And get this closer …

The White House has been handed a highly progressive reform plan for Social Security that could attract Republican support as well.

If this is progressive, I want to be known as something completely different.

This just seems to be the start of the swansong for the program.  BostonBoomer sent me this call for liberals to get on board with similar clarion calls today. It’s from USN and John Farrell.

Okay, my liberal friends. On Friday I explained why the proposals of the Simpson-Bowles commission should be welcomed, and put on the bargaining table by conservatives. Today I will argue, despite what Paul Krugman says, that there’s good stuff for liberals too.

Remember, first and foremost, that this is a starting point. You don’t have to buy into everything to keep the conversation going. And beware misinformation.

You know, this all seems to assume that we don’t have Democratic pols that make Faustian bargains with themselves before they even start dealing with the Republicans.  I have to admit that I’m with Krugman on this one too.

Right at the beginning of his administration, what Mr. Obama needed to do, above all, was fight for an economic plan commensurate with the scale of the crisis. Instead, he negotiated with himself before he ever got around to negotiating with Congress, proposing a plan that was clearly, grossly inadequate — then allowed that plan to be scaled back even further without protest. And the failure to act forcefully on the economy, more than anything else, accounts for the midterm “shellacking.”

You expect any one to fight for what’s right in Social Security given recent history like Krugman identifies?  I don’t. No hope or expectation of it at all.  After all, a major Presidential Advisor just call Allan Simpson brave instead of being labeled the crazy old coot he is.

Monday Reads

Posted: November 15, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , , , | 23 Comments

'Cup and sauce and newspaper'by Anthony Ulinski

Good Morning!

I’ve had to dig around to find some things to read.  It seems most of the MSM has had a post-midterm elections let down or something.  So, it’s Monday and here we go!

Myanmar’s Suu Kyi has given her first speech since her release from house arrest.   She has indicated her willingness to work with whomever she can on bringing democracy and freedom to the region. This is from Bloomberg.

“I am prepared to talk with anyone,” Suu Kyi said in Yangon, Myanmar’s former capital, according to The Irrawaddy, an online magazine run by Myanmar exiles that’s based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. “I have no personal grudge toward anybody.”

The speech sets the tone for Suu Kyi, 65, to re-engage with her supporters after spending 15 of the past 21 years in detention. She plans to listen to the views of her fellow citizens and push for national reconciliation in the country formerly known as Burma, where 2,200 political prisoners are still behind bars, according to the Irrawaddy.

“I think we will have to sort out our differences across the table, talking to each other, agreeing to disagree, or finding out why we disagree and trying to remove the sources of our disagreement,” Suu Kyi told BBC World Service radio in an yesterday. “There are so many things that we have to talk about.”

I’ve been trying to follow Obama’s upcoming decision on letting 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stay in that perpetual state of jail with no trial.  There’s several good articles that have come up this week.  First, there’s been the Salon piece by Dahlia Lithwick that headlines the idea that the U.S. has gone from decrying torture to celebrating it.

President Barack Obama decided long ago that he would “turn the page” on prisoner abuse and other illegality connected to the Bush administration’s war on terror. What he didn’t seem to understand, what he still seems not to appreciate, is that what was on that page would bleed through onto the next page and the page after that. There’s no getting past torture. There is only getting comfortable with it. The U.S. flirtation with torture is not locked in the past or in the black sites or prisons at which it occurred. Now more than ever, it’s feted on network television and held in reserve for the next president who persuades himself that it’s not illegal after all.

Today, Emptywheel has laid out the U.S. strategy for a never ending war based on never releasing these prisoners-in-limbo.  It’s one of those reads that makes you tingle.

Obviously, it’s a further spineless capitulation on Obama’s part. It’s a concession, too, that all you have to do to eliminate the rule of law in this country is squawk in Congress and on Fox News.

It also serves as a guarantee that the 2001 AUMF declaring war against the now-50 al Qaeda members who had something to do with 9/11 will last forever–or at least for the rest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s life.

Mind you, the government has been planning on making this a forever war since 2001, precisely so it could hold people like KSM forever.

Now, with the decision to just let KSM rot, it seems to me, that plan gains a new anchor (and none too soon! given that only a handful of al Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan, that justification was getting rather dicey). After all, the very decision not to try KSM in a military commission is an admission that it would not work for him–it might rule out the death penalty for him in any case, but a military commission judge actually has leeway to adjust any sentence on account of the extreme torture KSM underwent, meaning our torture of KSM might become a central issue in a military commission.

But any further delay in charging KSM in civilian court make it less likely they’ll be able to charge him in the future, because this current delay almost certainly violates any interpretation of speedy trial rights. You can’t just wait to charge someone until such a time as the political winds make it easier to do.

There’s an astounding article up on UK’s The Independent’s website about the future without birds called ‘None flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”

According to Henk Tennekes, a researcher at the Experimental Toxicology Services in Zutphen, the Netherlands, the threat of DDT has been superseded by a relatively new class of insecticide, known as the neonicotinoids. In his book The Systemic Insecticides: A Disaster in the Making, published this month, Tennekes draws all the evidence together, to make the case that neonicotinoids are causing a catastrophe in the insect world, which is having a knock-on effect for many of our birds.

Already, in many areas, the skies are much quieter than they used to be. All over Europe, many species of bird have suffered a population crash. Spotting a house sparrow, common swift or a flock of starlings used to be unremarkable, but today they are a more of an unusual sight. Since 1977, Britain’s house-sparrow population has shrunk by 68 per cent.

The common swift has suffered a 41 per cent fall in numbers since 1994, and the starling 26 per cent. The story is similar for woodland birds (such as the spotted flycatcher, willow tit and wood warbler), and farmland birds (including the northern lapwing, snipe, curlew, redshank and song thrush

Ornithologists have been trying desperately to work out what is behind these rapid declines. Urban development, hermetically sealed houses and barns, designer gardens and changing farming practices have all been blamed, but exactly why these birds have fallen from the skies is still largely unexplained.

However, Tennekes thinks there may be a simple reason. “The evidence shows that the bird species suffering massive decline since the 1990s rely on insects for their diet,” he says. He believes that the insect world is no longer thriving, and that birds that feed on insects are short on food.

Here’s two interesting ways to get involved with the Federal Debt issue.  The first is to go to the NYT and use their widget to balance the budget yourself.  BTD tired it here and came up with these suggestions to replace the cat food commission.

How I did it – 71% in revenue increases and 29% in spending cuts. What I raised – the estate tax to Clinton era levels (raised $50 billion), added a bank tax (raised $73 billion), added a millionaire’s tax (raised $50 billion), let the Bush tax cuts expire (raised $226 billion), raised the FICA ceiling (raised $50 billion). For spending cuts I adopted these proposals – reduced Social Security benefits for high earners (saved $6 billion), enacted medical malpractice reform (saved $8 billion), reduced the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to 30,000 by 2013 (saved $86 billion), made defense spending cuts (saving $57 billion), eliminated farm subsidies (saved $14 billion) and “earmarks” (saved $14 billion.)

Swiss Economist Hans Gersbach suggests a that governments employ a thing called “vote-share” bonds.  That’s kind of like those revenue bond votes that your school board and municipalities have to get you to vote on.  These things, however, would be be given seniority status by how much buy in they got from voters.  Interesting concept that and it’s explored at VOXEU.

  • Each government bond is tied to the share of the votes that its underlying budget deficit adoption has received in parliament.
  • A government bond that has a higher vote-share than another is senior. This creates a ladder of relative seniority for which the vote-share is the organising principle. At the top of the ladder are the bonds with the highest vote-share.
  • Any government funds available for servicing and repaying government debt will always be turned first to the top of the ladder to satisfy the claims of the bond-holders with the highest seniority. The other bond-holders are served sequentially by moving down the ladder.

U.S. Economist Dean Baker takes the NYT to task for ignorance of unemployment over at FDL.  Like other economists–me included–Baker is appalled that so many are obsessed with a deficit at at time when so many people aren’t working, aren’t paying taxes, and are in need of government services.  That’s a signal that we’re going to continue running a deficit until that’s solved.  Here’s Baker’s call to wake up.

We have more than 25 million people unemployed, underemployed, or who have given up work altogether. This is a real crisis. Furthermore, it is worth noting that these people are largely suffering as a result of the incompetence of the budget balancers. (The budget balancers were the same people who dominated economic debate in the years before the crash and could did not see the $8 trillion housing bubble that wrecked the economy and gave us the huge deficits that now have them so obsessed.)

Obviously it is politically popular in Washington to be obssesed by the deficit, but we are supposed to have an independent press in this country. It is utterly loony to be focused on the projected deficit in 2030, when we have tens of millions of people who are seeing their lives ruined today by the downturn. This is like debating the colors to paint the classrooms when the school is on fire with the students still inside. Given economic reality, it would make far more sense to use the effort devoted to construct an elaborate game like this to designing a route toward restoring full employment.

BostonBoomer pointed me over to this Secret Justice Department Report on the NYT that details how the U.S. State Department help NAZIs after World War 2.  It’s been redacted but it’s still got some gripping narrative.  Sections about Congresswoman Holtzman and stories from the 1970s on the realization that a lot of NAZIs got into the U.S are just amazing reads.

Raw Story describes the report in an equally gripping way.

A report the Justice Department has been trying to hide for the past four years offers the most detailed account yet of the CIA’s efforts to protect known Nazi war criminals in the United States.

The report, obtained by the New York Times, may be the most concrete account yet of the role that prominent members of Germany’s Nazi party played in the early, formative years of the CIA, following World War II. It alleges the CIA created a “safe haven” for Nazis believed to be of use to the US’s Cold War efforts.

One last thing!!!  If you have been the recipient of a cartoon viral video that’s really just gold bug libertarian propaganda, please wait before passing it on!  I’ve had so many people link to this factually-impaired thing that I’m going to spend a post this afternoon debunking it.  Yes, it’s cute and uses cute language, but it has so much misinformation in it that I can’t just let it go viral without point out all the factual errors.   So, that’s on my to do list today.

What’s on your reading and blog list today?
← Older Entries
Newer Entries →