From Matriarch of Mayhem to Pampered Princess

Posted: December 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Banksters, Elections, Elizabeth Warren Campaign | 9 Comments

A recent Boston Herald interview with Scott Brown found the freshman senator from Massachusetts bemoaning the ‘fluffy’ treatment that Elizabeth Warren has received from the press.  This is the same Elizabeth Warren [who has jumped to a 14 point advantage in the MA Senate race] accused of socialist political leanings; called the woman who would throw stones; cited as an elitist who would indoctrinate our children, leading them to violent mayhem; and most recently, smeared as a staunch ‘supporter’ of all things TARP and Wall Street.

Needless to say, the war of accusations launched by Karl Rove and his Crossroads GPA advertising has produced tepid to reverse results.  Despite all the slamming, Warren has not only held her own but gained traction, leaping ahead in the polls.

This sobering news has put Scott Brown into a whiney funk.  According to Brown, Elizabeth Warren is ‘very, very liberal.’

Oh noes!  Say it ain’t true–in the bluest state in the Union.  A liberal?  OMG.

But is Brown’s declaration true?  Elizabeth Warren is a former Republican, who after years of analyzing what was happening to the American middle-class by destructive economic policies, jumped ship and parties.  Does supporting the middle-class make one a liberal?  Does criticizing the unfair advantage of the rentier class transform one into a wild-eyed Commie?  Does speaking on behalf of working men and women label one a radical?

Karl Rove would have the Massachusetts electorate believe so. Although not too successfully.

However, it appears that Scott Brown has bought into the advertising blitz.  Not only is Warren ‘very, very liberal’ but:

when she’s stating that she’s created the intellectual foundation for the Occupy Wall Street — and you know all the problems we had with those folks here. And then the fact that she’s gonna leave blood and teeth in the street, and she’s not gonna compromise and only wants to work on big things. Well you know, we have plenty of ideologues down there, and a lot of partisanship down there already.

Oh yes, the American public really needs to be reminded of ideologues [down there] and all the bitter partisan wrangling over the last 3 years. While virtually nothing has been accomplished to put Americans back to work.  Just yak, yak, yak about protecting the mythical job creators from any and all taxation and the enduring pretense that the 2007-2008 financial meltdown was unforeseeable, thereby rendering Wall St. participants and their horrified handmaidens innocent bystanders, terribly sorry but not accountable.

Oh and btw, Mr. Brown, it was blood and teeth left on the ‘floor,’ not the street.  The reference was citing the fight for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild, a reform agency that Republicans [and sadly Democrats] have attempted to smother in its crib.

This would be almost funny if the fallout of tanked pension funds, bankrupt municipalities, massive unemployment, record numbers of Americans sliding into poverty were merely a morality play, the audience shuffling home after the last, cautionary curtain call.

But it is not.

The recent Census Report stats picked up by the AP indicates that nearly 50% of the American public is considered low income.  That alone should horrify and shame everyone.  Nearly 50%!  In this country, the United States of America.  The financial debacle, politely referred to as a ‘recession,’ has wiped out staggering amounts of wealth from and security for millions of American households, while the upper tiers of the population, the infamous 1%, has reaped mega-bucks.  Not through brilliance and hard work but through accounting tricks and outright fraud [pull up any number of William Black’s essays for the particulars—here’s one to get you started].

And what do we hear?   Whines and endless excuses, obfuscation and diversion; outright lies and numbers that never add up. Btw, this does not let Democrats off the hook.  Personally, I find the unemployment numbers nothing short of obscene.  8.6% my ass!

Scott Brown’s other complaint about Warren is:

“She’s going to have every advantage. … I don’t have a machine behind me like she will, and she does clearly,” Brown said.

Really?  What do you call this from Karl Rove’s wondrous elf workshop?

And why should Scott Brown or Karl Rove be surprised at the public’s reaction to blatant lies countered by a clear and direct answer?

This response isn’t a Machine talking.  It’s a real live person talking to other real live people who are fed up with business as usual and are waking, slowly but surely, to the greatest heist in history.  Elizabeth Warren is speaking the language of ordinary men and women.  Yes, she wants to do ‘big things,’ as in looking out for the public’s interest.  And yes, I believe her when she says she’ll leave blood and teeth on the floor. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Music to my ears and dare I say to many other voters.  In fact, Elizabeth Warren sounds like the real deal.  Better yet, she has a record of standing up, while under intense, obnoxious fire–a record to match the words.

What a concept!  A candidate for our times.

In the Land of White Ribbons

Posted: December 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: #Occupy and We are the 99 percent!, corruption, Democratic Politics, Elections, Populism, Russia, The Russian Winter | Tags: , , | 6 Comments

First we had the Arab Spring then the European Summer.  The American Autumn manifested itself in the Occupy Wall St. Movement.

Welcome the Russian Winter.

Saturday nearly 35,000 young, mostly university-educated protesters, the new Russian middle class, gathered in Moscow in peaceful demonstration.  Reportedly, a police presence on the order of 50,000 greeted them.  But still they came and marched to voice opposition to Russia’s recent election results.  Vladimir Putin’s party won the parliamentary election after multiple reports of election fraud and ballot box stuffing.  For instance, in Chechnya [hardly a place of Putin-love] the party pulled 94% of the vote.  Putin has announced his plans to run in Russia’s March presidential elections to the dismay of many citizens, who charge that fraud and corruption run rampant throughout the country’s political system.

Demonstrators, donning white ribbons, marched in various cities around the country to say: Enough is enough.

Dismissed by the official Russian press, the white ribbon demonstrators were ignored by state television, which focused on small, flag-waving pro-Putin groups. How did the word get out?  Social media—Facebook and twitter.

In an attempt to disrupt the protests, Russian authorities circulated rumors that young men present at the rallies could be stopped by police and conscripted into the army.  Health officials reportedly warned citizens to stay home for fear of contracting a virulent flu or Sars.  Twitter feeds were jammed and robo-calls flooded phone lines with messages of state propaganda.

Sound vaguely familiar?

How much press is OWS getting today with its West coast port demonstrations?  How many words have been spent denigrating protesters as un-American losers, slackers, even dangerous criminals?  Let’s not forget the MSM’s reluctance to cover OWS, the strange lack of network film footage during police actions, particularly as the encampments were dismantled.  Twitter feeds jammed, cameras turned off.

Still, the world is watching.  The world is pushing back.  Everywhere.

From Marxist to Corporatist, Elizabeth Warren Drives the GOP to Insanity

Posted: December 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, Elections, Elizabeth Warren Campaign, Senate | Tags: , , , | 13 Comments

Anyone who has been following the Elizabeth Warren story, her bid for the Senate seat in Massachusetts, which would put pinup Scott Brown into early retirement, knows the attacks from the Right have become increasingly frantic.  Particularly since Warren’s numbers continue to rise and contributions pile up in surprising amounts.

What’s the Republican machine and Wall Street to do?

They’ve tried the expected smears.  Warren has been painted as a woman prone to violence.  She was the Woman Who Would Throw Rocks.

Okay, that was pretty silly.

Let’s try: Warren is a socialist/Marxist.  Really?  Yet her message that no one becomes a success all on their own resonates with a lot of voters.  Why?  Because many people actually believe in the public/social contract that provides roads, education, police and fire protection etc. , the very things we all rely on, rich or poor.

Back to the drawing boards.

OMG.  Elizabeth Warren has voiced support for the Occupy Wall St. Movement.  She said she’d actually been championing OWS principles for years and that she was the ‘intellectual foundation’ of the Movement.  Now, we’re cooking.  The Republicans have declared the Occupiers hippies, losers, people who want something for nothing and . . . anti-capitalists.  Bring in the cameras of police beating on those vile, violent, dirty protesters and . . .

Oops.  Problem is many Americans agree with OWS positions, believe that Wall St was given a pass, while Main St was left to wither.  In addition, many voters are beginning to realize that unemployment, the housing debacle, the unsustainable debt can be directly linked to financial fraud and malfeasance, and that many politicians in DC are on the lobbyist take.  That’s known as the Washington ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ two-step.

What to do, what to do?

The woman is obviously a problem.  So . . .let’s make her part of the problem and the Big Lie.  Let’s roll out the word TARP.  She was involved in that, yes?

Well, actually no.  Elizabeth Warren headed the oversight panel,  investigating and tracking how those TARP funds had been spent.  TARP itself came right out of the George Bush White House.

But she spoke to those evil bankers, the very ones who stole the country’s wealth?

Well, yes she did.  While creating and then assembling the Consumer Protection Bureau, an organization to prevent consumers from being suckered into confusing, complicated financial instruments, as in home loans and credit cards that only give the bad news in the tiniest of print or in a foreign financial legalese.

Why quibble about the details.  Guilty as charged!

And so, we have the new bewildering ad from GPS Crossroads [Karl Rove’s love child], which declares Elizabeth Warren . . .

A champion of Wall St!

We’re beginning to see GOP flop sweat in action: when you have no good ideas, go with the truly stupid.

This is going to be a most interesting year!

Let’s Hear It For the Girls’ Triple Play

Posted: December 6, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Elections, Feminists, House of Representatives, Injustice system, Senate, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , | 13 Comments

We’ve all been following Elizabeth Warren’s bid for the Senate seat in Massachusetts with giddy expectations. And the landscape looks very promising with Warren gaining substantial contributions from small donors, comprised primarily of women and middle-to-low income voters.  No particular surprise.  For moderate to liberal women, she speaks their language regarding equity, education, health care and basic fairness.  For moderate to low-income voters, she is a champion for economic justice and cleaning up a corrupt system stacked against those left behind economically.  She is a woman of the moment and has put Scott Brown and his Wall Street backers into a political scramble.  Brown is reportedly polling below 50%–not a good statistic this far out.

But in addition to Warren, we have a couple of other very attractive female candidates running for the House and Senate in 2012.

One candidate I recently read about is Wenona Benally Baldenegro, a Native American running for the 1st Congressional District in Arizona.  Ms. Baldenegro, having grown up on the Navajo Reservation in northern Arizona., is intimately familiar with the challenges of poverty and low expectations.  She has said quite clearly that current Republican policy would balance the Federal budget on the backs of the middle-class, working class and elderly.  Baldenegro is a role model for all Americans.  Despite her modest beginnings, she is well credentialed, holding a law degree from Harvard as well as a Masters from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy’s  School of Government.  If successful in her 2012 bid, she would replace Tea Party darling, Representative Paul Gosar, who recently suggested opening the Grand Canyon for uranium extraction.

Having been to the Grand Canyon [I can still recall the absolute awe experienced], I’ll say without qualification that this is exactly what we don’t need—another national treasure looted for its resources.  Think BP’s hit job on the Gulf of Mexico.  Or off-shore [because corporate greed and irresponsibility has no boundaries], TEPCO’s response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Enough is enough!

If elected, Ms. Baldenegro would be the first Native American to represent Arizona in DC and the first Native American woman ever to serve in the US Congress.

She’s definitely someone to keep an eye on.

Another promising candidate is Tammy Baldwin [Rep D-Wis], who will be running for Wisconsin’s open senate seat, a spot put into play by sitting Democratic Senator Herb Kohl’s scheduled retirement.  Ms. Baldwin has been a vocal champion of the Wisconsin fight with Governor Scott Walker, his draconian measures against union employees, the shameless tax giveaways as well as the bitter war Walker has stoked against the state’s working class in general.  Baldwin’s announcement early last month made clear that her focus would be on: Wall Street reform, US withdrawal from Afghanistan and economic justice for America’s working class.

Sounds like a winning combo!

Baldwin, holding a law degree from the University of Wisconsin, has served as a US Representative since 1999.  It’s interesting to note that she voted against authorizing the invasion of Iraq [her vote’s actually on record unlike the present occupant of the WH] and she co-sponsored a bill calling for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.  Later, she proposed another bill to impeach Alberto Gonzales.  She’s been a strong defender of women’s health and reproductive rights and has supported measures to strengthen the laws against sexual violence and violence against women.

She also happens to be openly gay, the first openly gay non-incumbent elected to the House of Representatives and the first woman elected to Congress from Wisconsin.

Btw, if Elizabeth Warren wins the 2012 race, she will be the first woman to represent Massachusetts in the US Senate.

Three women–smart, attractive, progressive.  All three candidates hold law degrees, interesting backgrounds and a desire to serve the public, particularly the besieged middle and working-class.  All three will attempt to break ground with a surprising series of ‘firsts.’ We should recall that women represent 51% of the population but are sorely under-represented in the halls of power.

We’ve come a long way but . . . obviously not far enough.

That being said, let’s hear it for the girls and their gutsy triple play!

Tuesday Late Afternoon Blues

Posted: September 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Bailout Blues, Barack Obama, Congress, DADT, Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Economy, Elections, Equity Markets, Federal Budget, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, GLBT Rights, Main Stream Media, Politics as Usual, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Politics, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

Minxy’s out surfing samsara this afternoon.  I’m trying to muster up some good vibes today for her as she faces all the “it’s a short life” kind’ve stuff that goes on with the early passing of a friend. As for me, I seem to be entering my blue period. Maybe it’s because I just get cannot this friggin’ gravity model specified correctly and maybe it’s just my parameters that are tangled up and BLUE.  Okay, you won’t know what BLUE means for a regression estimator (Best Linear Unbiased Estimator  e.g. BLUE) unless you’re as steeped in econometrics as I am but it’s a good play on words.  REALLY. Chuckle sympathetically because I need it today.  I wish I could like football like normal people.  Instead, I follow the bloodsport of politics and its inherent nastiness these days and I have way too many degrees in the dismal science.  The results are bound to get to you one way or another.

So this little piece is about the U.S. and blue to match my mood.   I’m going to start out with some blue estimators of a different sort.

There was a bit of poll that showed a glimmer of true hope instead of the manufactured sort out today.  Recent entrant into the Massachusetts Senate Race, Elizabeth Warren, is polling ahead of glamor boy Republican Scott Brown who replaced the late Ted Kennedy.

Elizabeth Warren has had an incredibly successful launch to her Senate campaign and actually leads Scott Brown now by a 46-44 margin, erasing what was a 15 point deficit the last time we polled the state in early June.

Warren’s gone from 38% name recognition to 62% over the last three months and she’s made a good first impression on pretty much everyone who’s developed an opinion about her during that period of time.  What was a 21/17 favorability rating in June is now 40/22- in other words she’s increased the voters with a positive opinion of her by 19% while her negatives have risen only 5%.

The surprising movement toward Warren has a lot to do with her but it also has a lot to do with Scott Brown.  We now find a slight plurality of voters in the state disapproving of him- 45%, compared to only 44% approving.  We have seen a steady decline in Brown’s numbers over the last 9 months.  In early December his approval was a +24 spread at 53/29.  By June it had declined to a +12 spread at a 48/36.  And now it’s continued that fall to its current place.

Meanwhile, the mixed up mess of Republican presidential candidates is shaking up to a two white man race.  Gallup reports that Perry has a better chance than Romney of sealing the nomination at this point, but Romney has a better chance than Perry to beat Obama.  No surprises there.

Rick Perry leads Mitt Romney by 31% to 24% in a new USA Today/Gallup poll of Republican presidential nomination preferences. The two are well ahead of the rest of the GOP field, with Ron Paul the only other candidate in double figures.

…

Perry seems to have momentum, but that could be slowed in the coming weeks if Republicans start to perceive that Romney is more electable in the general election. The new poll finds the slight majority of Republicans, 53%, prefer to see their party nominate the person who has the best chance of beating Obama, even if that person does not agree with them on almost all of the issues they care about. Forty-three percent would prefer a candidate who does agree with them on almost all of the issues, even if that person does not have the best chance of winning in November 2012.

Romney currently edges out President Barack Obama by 49% to 47% in national registered-voter preferences for the November election, while Perry trails Obama by 45% to 50%. However, neither Romney nor Obama is ahead by a statistically significant margin.

It’s no wonder Perry wants out of Texas.  This poll should direct Perry into the Even Cowgirls get the Blues line.  Texans do not like Governor Goodhair if you believe PPP’s numbers.

The poll, released Tuesday, showed Perry with a negative approval in Texas: while 45 percent of the state’s voters approve of Perry’s job performance, 48 percent of Texas voters say they don’t approve.

Obama should have The Blues over this poll from Marist.  Will this lead to calls for a primary challenger on calls on him to pull an LBJ?

President Barack Obama faces a litany of bad news.  The president’s job approval rating, his favorability, and his rating on the economy have hit all-time lows.  To compound matters, three in four Americans still believe the nation is in a recession and the proportion who thinks the country is moving in the wrong direction is at its highest point in more than a decade.

According to this McClatchy-Marist Poll, the president’s approval rating is at 39% among registered voters nationally, an all-time low for Mr. Obama.  For the first time a majority — 52% — disapproves of the job he is doing in office, and 9% are unsure.

You’ve always known that Wall Street is only True Blue to profits and not the country right?  Grok this headline at Politico via the WSJ.  It looks like a lot of hedge funds were betting the US to lose its AAA standing with S&P.  The SEC is launching insider trading probes.  Can we please get some perp walks now, please?

Securities and Exchange Commission officials have sent subpoenas to financial firms in a probe of whether there was insider trading — betting on a market crash — before the United States’ long-term credit rating was cut by S&P last month, reports The Wall Street Journal.

At issue are trades that were made by hedge funds and other firms shortly before the rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded U.S. debt from triple-A to double-A-plus on Aug. 5 and cited the dysfunctional political climate in Washington as one of the reasons.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 635 points, or 5.5 percent, on Aug. 8, the first day of trading after the downgrade. This was the sharpest one-day decline since the financial crisis in 2008, but it also made bets against the market very profitable.

Securities regulators are looking for firms that bet the stock market would drop — in particular, bearish trades that seem unusually large or were made by firms that typically do not make them.

An SEC spokesman declined to tell The Wall Street Journal which investment firms have received subpoenas.

My guess is it’s the usual vampire squid suspects and all the rest of the guys whose blue balls we pulled out of the bankruptcy fire with TARP and tax dollars. Bets any one?

So here’s the a nifty chart from Paul Krugman–with blue bars–that will make you scream until you’re blue in the face.  Look whose been winning the class war since 1979.  So the deal is not only is their share of income and assets way up, but their after tax income has gone way up too.

Changes in tax rates have strongly favored the very, very rich.

Now, they’re only a fairly small part of the huge growth in the after-tax inequality of income. But tax policy has very much leaned into that growing inequality, not against it — and anyone who says otherwise should not be trusted on this issue, or any other.

So, of course the moment we get a whiff of anything slightly Democratic coming from the President we experience blue dogs howling at the blue moon and the beltway press.

Centrist Democrats, a dwindling breed on Capitol Hill, were quickly faced with another rough choice once Obama went public with his plans: Reject their president or back what Republicans are already calling the largest tax increase in the nation’s history.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, who is up for reelection in 2012, has supported raising taxes on millionaires but was still weighing whether he’d support higher taxes on those who make more than $200,000 a year, said spokesman Dan McLaughlin.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), a key moderate who’s up for reelection next year, didn’t mince words: “There’s too much discussion about raising taxes right now, not enough focus on cutting spending.”

But Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who likely will face GOP Rep. Denny Rehberg in next year’s reelection bid, hedged a bit, saying he backs provisions in Obama’s plan that call for closing tax loopholes that benefit millionaires and corporations

“This plan isn’t the one I would have written, nor is it the one that will end up passing Congress,” Tester said. “But I welcome all ideas to the table so Congress can work together to create jobs, cut debt and cut spending.”

Blue blooded villager David Brooks admits to being an Obama sap and refers to Beltway Bob as “appreciative”.  I prefer the term deep-throating, but hey, there’s a glint of recognition, right? It’s a two for one villager idiot piece! Look! I’ve managed to use some blue language.

Yes, I’m a sap. I believed Obama when he said he wanted to move beyond the stale ideological debates that have paralyzed this country. I always believe that Obama is on the verge of breaking out of the conventional categories and embracing one of the many bipartisan reform packages that are floating around.

But remember, I’m a sap. The White House has clearly decided that in a town of intransigent Republicans and mean ideologues, it has to be mean and intransigent too. The president was stung by the liberal charge that he was outmaneuvered during the debt-ceiling fight. So the White House has moved away from the Reasonable Man approach or the centrist Clinton approach.

It has gone back, as an appreciative Ezra Klein of The Washington Post conceded, to politics as usual. The president is sounding like the Al Gore for President campaign, but without the earth tones. Tax increases for the rich! Protect entitlements! People versus the powerful! I was hoping the president would give a cynical nation something unconventional, but, as you know, I’m a sap.

Being a sap, I still believe that the president’s soul would like to do something about the country’s structural problems. I keep thinking he’s a few weeks away from proposing serious tax reform and entitlement reform. But each time he gets close, he rips the football away. He whispered about seriously reforming Medicare but then opted for changes that are worthy but small. He talks about fundamental tax reform, but I keep forgetting that he has promised never to raise taxes on people in the bottom 98 percent of the income scale.

I nearly had to stop reading the damned thing since I was about to pass out from putting my palm to my forehead just a few too many times.  Yes, it’s turning black and blue. How are we supposed to get grown up discussions about policy when the two largest newspapers in the country insist posting self serving drivel on a near daily basis.

Okay, here’s my last offering which really does show the best of the Red, White and Blue.  Today is the formal removal of DADT.  0penly Gay and lesbian members of our military no longer have to live double lives or be subject to dismissal.

With Tuesday’s repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, gays and lesbians are now free to serve openly in the U.S. armed services.

The U.S. military has spent months preparing for the repeal, updating regulations and training to reflect the impending change, and the Pentagon has already begun accepting applications from openly gay men and women.

It’s events like this that give you a sense that in some way, it’s still

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity

I’m going to get some iced tea and head back to my trade and foreign direct investment research. But, here’s two of my favorites: Dylan’s Tangled up and Blue done by the Indigo Girls for you on this afternoon in New Orleans under a blue sky.

and every one of them words rang true

and glowed like a burning coal

pourin off every page

Like it was written in my soul from me to you

Tangled up and Blue

I lived with them on Montague Street

In a basement down the stairs

There was music in the cafes at night

And revolution in the air …

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