Mr. President, How About Supporting Democracy in the U.S.?

Posted: February 12, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Anti-War, Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Egypt, executive orders, FBI raids, Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Iran, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Yesterday, President Obama hypocrically praised the Egyptian pro-democracy demonstrators and argued forcefully in favor of the Egyptian government listening and responding to the demands of its people.

There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place. This is one of those moments. This is one of those times. The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same.

By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian people’s hunger for change. But this is not the end of Egypt’s transition. It’s a beginning. I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead, and many questions remain unanswered. But I am confident that the people of Egypt can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity that has defined these last few weeks. For Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.

Back here in the U.S., President Obama listens only to the rich and powerful while ignoring a level of inequality higher than that in Egypt and an unemployment rate approximately the same as Egypt’s!

In the speech, Obama quoted a man who really stood for nonviolent protest and the fight for democracy:

As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.

How dare you, Mr. Obama? You are a disgrace. You repeatedly imply comparisons between you and Martin Luther King, while behaving more like Mr. Mubarak.

What happens here in the U.S. when people peacefully protest the government’s policies? If it happens at Democratic or Republican party conventions, protesters are put in cages ironically called “free speech zones” that are far enough from the action to prevent the powerful from being disturbed by democracy-seeking rabble. Peace activists who identify as socialists or dare to support freedom movements in foreign countries are targeted by thuggish FBI raids and secret grand juries.

Mr. President, you and other members of your administration have repeatedly called for the Egyptian government to repeal its emergency laws. What about the emergency laws that have been in place here in the U.S. for many years?

Although most Americans would be surprised to hear it, the United States is technically experiencing more than one ongoing national emergency. In 1979, during the Iran Hostage Crisis, president Jimmy Carter declared a national emergency by executive order, which every president since has renewed. George W. Bush declared a separate state of emergency after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which Barack Obama renewed.

These emergency measures are limited rather than general in nature. The 1976 National Emergencies Act set a two-year term on emergency declarations (although it’s possible to extend a declaration indefinitely), and requires the president to specify what, exactly, the state of emergency empowers him to do. The Sept. 11-related emergency gives the president the right to call retired officers back into active duty (among other powers). The Iran emergency prevents American citizens and companies from entering into oil development contracts with the Islamic Republic.

Those states of emergency have allowed you and your mentor predecessor George W. Bush to gain authoritarian powers for the executive branch through the USA Patriot Act and other unconstitutional laws like the Military Commissions Act. The powers granted by these laws have frequently been abused by government agencies.

Free Speech Zone at Democratic Convention, 2008

The Patriot Act has been reauthorized multiple times and is currently up for renewal.

So, Mr. Obama, what is your position on the latest attempts to keep the most intrusive parts of the Patriot Act from expiring?

When the act was first signed into law, Congress put in some “sunset” provisions to quiet the concerns of civil libertarians, but they were ignored by successive extensions. Unfortunately, those concerns proved to be well founded, and a 2008 Justice Department report confirmed that the FBI regularly abused their ability to obtain personal records of Americans without a warrant.

The answer to that question is that the President wants those provisions extended for three years–two years longer than the Republicans in the House are pushing for!

The Senate is working on an extension also, and one of the leaders in support of that effort is “Democrat” Diane Feinstein (whose investment banker husband has profited handsomely from defense contracts and other government largess related to the financial crisis)

At least one mainstream journalist has called attention to the hypocrisy of your policies this morning, Mr. President–focusing on your disdain for the poor and unemployed in the U.S. In the NYT, Bob Herbert writes:

As the throngs celebrated in Cairo, I couldn’t help wondering about what is happening to democracy here in the United States. I think it’s on the ropes. We’re in serious danger of becoming a democracy in name only.

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.

So what we get in this democracy of ours are astounding and increasingly obscene tax breaks and other windfall benefits for the wealthiest, while the bought-and-paid-for politicians hack away at essential public services and the social safety net, saying we can’t afford them. One state after another is reporting that it cannot pay its bills. Public employees across the country are walking the plank by the tens of thousands. Camden, N.J., a stricken city with a serious crime problem, laid off nearly half of its police force. Medicaid, the program that provides health benefits to the poor, is under savage assault from nearly all quarters.

The poor, who are suffering from an all-out depression, are never heard from. In terms of their clout, they might as well not exist. The Obama forces reportedly want to raise a billion dollars or more for the president’s re-election bid. Politicians in search of that kind of cash won’t be talking much about the wants and needs of the poor. They’ll be genuflecting before the very rich.

It’s noteworthy that Bob Herbert is saying such things out loud these days, but what we really need is some serious consciousness-raising among the American people as a whole. We could be joining together to fight back against encroachments on our liberties and our economic stability like the people in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. When will Americans wake up and see what is happening right here in the USA and begin to demand the restoration of our freedoms and our living standards? When will we fight back against growing government tyranny right here in the USA?

US Economic Malaise

Posted: February 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economic Develpment, Global Financial Crisis, U.S. Economy, We are so F'd | Tags: , , | 15 Comments

I happened across the latest outlook for the global economy by Dr. Doom–Nouriel Roubini–over at Project Syndicate. We must share the same depressed muse.  His outlook is very similar to mine although he’s crunching numbers in computer models that I can only dream about.  It’s also a similar outlook to what Joseph Stiglitz indicated while in Davos.  You will not need sunglasses while facing the future if you’re in Europe or North America.  This will most likely be the decade of developing nations.  I don’t have the sophisticated programs available to Roubini but his forecasts seem reasonable.

The outlook for the global economy in 2011 is, partly, for a persistence of the trends established in 2010. These are: an anemic, below-trend, U-shaped recovery in advanced economies, as firms and households continue to repair their balance sheets; a stronger, V-shaped recovery in emerging-market countries, owing to stronger macroeconomic, financial, and policy fundamentals. That adds up to close to 4% annual growth for the global economy, with advanced economies growing at around 2% and emerging-market countries growing at about 6%.

The word anemic is never one you want to see when talking economic forecasts.  Roubini does identify a few possible black swan events related to things like the deterioration of the Spanish economy that could make anemic sound like a good thing.   His comments on the US economy indicate more of the same.  None of the same is pleasant.

The United States represents another downside risk for global growth. In 2011, the US faces a likely double dip in the housing market, high unemployment and weak job creation, a persistent credit crunch, gaping budgetary holes at the state and local level, and steeper borrowing costs as a result of the federal government’s lack of fiscal consolidation. Moreover, credit growth on both sides of the Atlantic will be restrained, as many financial institutions in the US and Europe maintain a risk-averse stance toward lending.

There’s some indication of our potential black swans in that paragraph.  Every economist is attuned to the solvency problems in states like Illinois, New Jersey, and California.  There is also no faith in the federal government’s ability to bail out any one but political donors.  The only hope I have for the situation is that it’s an election year and those do tend to be important states electorally for presidential wannabes.

The other trends that worry me are the trends in oil and food prices which could mean that huge countries like China may have to readjust their plans with their sovereign wealth funds.  Countries that import a lot of these items are going to be in for hefty bills. China is already experience inflation and has upped its interest rates.  Roubini is watching for further signs that they recognize the potential problem.  He also believes these tensions will further fuel currency tensions.

Roubini actually sees some upside risks and believes that we will slowly pull out of things.  He believes that all sectors are still engaging in balance sheet repair with the exception of the US government.  This is especially significant for the potential for jobs creation. If  corporations are lean and mean and things do improve, this could create some much needed labor demand.

Joseph Stiglitz wrote a column for the UK Guardian after his Davos trip for the World Economic Forum.  He may actually need to take the Dr Doom title from Robini.  He focused on some systemic things that you might find interesting.   Once again, we see an evaluation of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH).  This is something that should’ve happened years ago.  He also mentions some skepticism of the monetarist (aka Milton Friedman) positions of central banks on inflation.

But this time, as business leaders shared their experiences, one could almost feel the clouds darkening. The spirit was captured by one speaker who suggested that we had gone from “boom and bust” to “boom and Armageddon”. The emerging consensus was that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast for 2009, issued as the meeting convened, of global stagnation – the lowest growth in the post-war period – was optimistic. The only upbeat note was struck by someone who remarked that Davos consensus forecasts are almost always wrong, so perhaps this time it would prove excessively pessimistic.

Equally striking was the loss of faith in markets. In a widely attended brainstorming session at which participants were asked what single failure accounted for the crisis, there was a resounding answer: the belief that markets were self-correcting.

The so-called “efficient markets” model, which holds that prices fully and efficiently reflect all available information, also came in for a trashing. So did inflation targeting: the excessive focus on inflation had diverted attention from the more fundamental question of financial stability. Central bankers’ belief that controlling inflation was necessary and almost sufficient for growth and prosperity had never been based on sound economic theory; now, the crisis provided further scepticism.

Read the rest of this entry »

Suez Canal Pipeline Attacked

Posted: February 5, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Egypt, Foreign Affairs, Israel, Jordan, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , | 29 Comments

From Al Jazeera:

Unknown attackers have blown up a pipeline that runs through El-Arish area of Egypt’s north Sinai area and supplies gas to Jordan and Israel, according to Egypt’s state television.

[….]

The explosive material was placed inside or adjacent to the control station of the gas supply line. There were no immediate reports of any casualties as a result of the blast.

“Saboteurs took advantage of the security situation and blew up the gas pipeline,” a state television correspondent reported, saying there was a big explosion.

State TV quoted an official as saying that the “situation is very dangerous and explosions were continuing from one spot to another” along the pipeline.

Forbes reports that Egypt has been forced to cut off gas supplies to Israel and Jordan.

There were conflicting reports out of Egypt as to the cause of the explosion, with the state-run Middle East News Agency saying the work was done by “subversive elements.” Oil Minister Samah Fahmy reportedly said it could take up to two weeks to repair the damage.

The pipeline is the third most strategically important piece of energy infrastructure in Egypt after the Suez Canal and the Sumed Pipeline. But it is the most important one to Israel, delivering 40% of Israeli natural gas supplies. The Israeli government said this afternoon that it did not expect any interruption of electricity supplies as the country has gas in storage and can also switch to other fuels like oil and diesel. Israel started receiving gas from the pipeline in 2008.

Assuming for a moment that this was not an accident, it represents a serious escalation of the crisis in Egypt.

From the Independent UK:

Jitters about the impact of the unrest on the economy of both Egypt and the region were not eased yesterday when an explosion ripped through a gas terminal in Egypt’s northern Sinai Peninsula, setting off a massive fire that was contained by shutting off the flow of gas to neighbouring Jordan and Israel. Supplies are expected to be hit for at least a week. While Israel has other sources of power, and Jordan is believed to have substantial reserves, the sense that Egypt’s fragility can reach beyond its borders will add to the anxieties.

Traders are worried that the unrest might spread to oil-producing countries in the region and even affect shipments through the Suez Canal. Egypt is not a major oil producer, but it controls the canal and a nearby pipeline. Together these carry about two million barrels of oil a day from the Middle East to customers in Europe and the United States. Several large Egyptian refineries near the canal have been the site of recent protests.

We can use this as a live blog to discuss the situation in Egypt. I’ll continue to add updates if I learn any more about the cause of the pipeline blast.

Friday Reads

Posted: February 4, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Feminists, Festivities, fetus fetishists, Food, morning reads, Reproductive Rights, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Good Morning and Happy Lunar New Year

The Egyptian revolution continues to be the top story around the world. We will continue to run live blog updates to give you the latest reliable news sources on the subject.  There’s a few stories on the economy that I’d like to share this morning beyond that topic.

First, Happy Lunar New Year!!

2011 is the Year of the Metal Rabbit.

Chinese astrologer Alvin Ang of Bazi Destiny foresees “the global situation may be affected by serious political change and global calamities.”

Hong Kong-based feng shui master Joseph Wong gives a different take. “This coming year everything will be better than last year,” he told CNN’s Pauline Chiou. “They will see business go upwards mostly, but take care with the shares and stocks. There will be some fluctuations in August and September.”

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke gave a speech at the National Press Club yesterday that indicated continuing concern about the ability of the current recovery to sustain any reasonable decrease in the unemployment rate.  He also indicated the need for a long term plan to deal with the Federal deficit.  There were a few mentions of the continuing need for QE and statements that the monetary policy to date had worked given the recovery of the equity markets.  He did sound a bit more upbeat than the last time we heard from him and while he acted like the recovery was slower than any one would wish, he did state that he felt it was becoming ‘self-sustaining’.

Here’s some analysis on our unemployment vis a vis the Bernanke Statements from The Economist.

The Fed’s forecast range for the unemployment rate in 2012 is 7.7% to 8.2%, and the Congressional Budget Office  forecasts an unemployment rate of 8.4% (this forecast dates to after the announcement of QE2, but isn’t meaningfully different from its forecasts from the summer of 2010). This would suggest that with QE2 in place, American unemployment is likely to be between 6% and 7% in 2012. That’s not full employment, but it’s pretty close. You can argue that more needs to be done (indeed, I think the Fed itself could do more). But it is worth noting that the Fed has put the American economy on a substantially better recovery path than it faced before (Scott Sumner would say it has returned the economy to the path off which it previously led it).A big risk is that the Fed will back away from its policy too quickly, thinking all is going well and worrying premptively about inflation. As Karl Smith says, today’s speech is somewhat reassuring on that front.

The NYT had an op ed up on Trade indicating that Republicans are trying to remove some provisions that now help workers retrain should they lose their jobs to overseas locations.  It’s worth reading just to see how truly Dickensian the Republicans seem to be these days.

Most Republican lawmakers claim they are pro-trade. Their principled position is evidently no match for parochialism and politics. Last month, a conflict over imported sleeping bags between a company in Alabama and a rival in Kentucky led Senate Republicans to block the extension of the Generalized System of Preferences, or G.S.P., which has granted preferential access to some $20 billion worth of imports from developing countries.

Now Senator Jon Kyl and his colleagues in the Finance Committee are threatening to block the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which provides income and training for American workers whose employers can’t compete with rising imports. It is due to expire on Feb. 12, and Mr. Kyl and company are refusing to extend it unless the White House promises to advance the long-pending trade deal with Colombia.

Speaking of Dickensian Republican policy, the GOP dropped the ‘forcible rape’ language from HR3.  The Hyde Amendment has long entertained the idiocy of letting one loud and obnoxious group of zealots deny Federal  funding of their personal pet peeve while the rest of us continue to fund all kinds of abominable projects. Tops on my opt out list  are renditions for torture and bail outs of Investment banks.  But, American Fetus Fetishists get special treatment.  At least this attempt at narrowing rape definitions is gone now.

House Republicans plan to sidestep a charged debate over the distinction between “forcible rape” and “rape” by altering the language of a bill banning taxpayer subsidies for abortions.

The provision in question, written as an exemption from the ban for women who become pregnant as a result of “forcible rape,” touched off a firestorm of criticism from women’s groups, and it gained enough attention to become the subject of a satirical segment on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”

But a spokesman for the bill’s author, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), says the modifier “forcible” will be dropped so that the exemption covers all forms of rape, as well as cases of incest and the endangerment of the life of the mother.“The word forcible will be replaced with the original language from the Hyde Amendment,” Smith spokesman Jeff Sagnip told POLITICO, referring to the long-standing ban on direct use of taxpayer dollars for abortion services.

A real Democratic congress and president would’ve gotten rid of this stupid provision by now. However, here is something that if true will make me do the Snoopy dance.

The Obama administration is examining whether the new health care law can be used to require insurance plans to offer contraceptives and other family planning services to women free of charge.

Such a requirement could remove cost as a barrier to birth control, a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health. But it is likely to reignite debate over the federal role in health care, especially reproductive health, at a time when Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the law or dismantle it piece by piece. It is also raising objections from the Roman Catholic Church and is expected to generate a robust debate about privacy.

The law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them. The administration has asked a panel of outside experts to help identify the specific preventive services that must be covered for women.

Administration officials said they expected the list to include contraception and family planning because a large body of scientific evidence showed the effectiveness of those services. But the officials said they preferred to have the panel of independent experts make the initial recommendations so the public would see them as based on science, not politics.

Many obstetricians, gynecologists, pediatricians and public health experts have called for coverage of family planning services, including contraceptives, without co-payments, deductibles or other cost-sharing requirements.

Will the Cult of the Angry Sky God get the ultimate veto on this too?

Well, back to the exercise equipment folks!  Bloomberg.com says ‘American Waistlines Expand Fastest Among Rich Nations’,

Americans grew fatter at a faster pace than residents of any other wealthy nation since 1980, during a period when obesity worldwide nearly doubled, researchers found.

Almost 10 percent of the world’s population was obese in 2008, according to studies published today by the medical journal The Lancet. The percentage of people with uncontrolled hypertension, or high blood pressure, fell, with high-income countries showing a larger drop. Cholesterol levels declined in North America, Australia and Europe, but increased in East and Southeast Asia as well as the Pacific region, researchers said.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Happy New Year!!!

Normalizing Poverty

Posted: January 31, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: poverty, U.S. Economy | Tags: , , , | 16 Comments

A very disturbing article from The Economist caught my eyes over the weekend.  It seems like about as good of a time as any to share this with you.  It’s one of those articles you probably won’t see in the US media because it basically decries the notion that we’re the exceptional nation of opportunity and chance and that all that politically motivated and packaged hope and change has really brought neither to most of us.

It’s about Sarasota, Florida which has the been named meanest city in America by the National Coalition for the Homeless.  There are some amazing trends that we don’t hear too much about here.  For example, do you know that “Arizona now has the second highest poverty rate in the nation, after Mississippi”?  How about this?  Poverty is growing fastest in suburbs and especially sunbelt suburbs.   A third of America’s poor now live in suburban areas according to the article that cites Elizabeth Kneebone of the Brookings Institution.

Here are the poverty statistics for Sarasota which joins Bakersfield, California; Boise, Idaho; Greenville, South Carolina; Lakeland, Florida and Tucson, Arizona as having the fastest climbing poverty in the country.

THE statistics are worthy of Detroit or Newark: almost half the children in the local schools are from families poor enough to be eligible for free or cut-price lunches; a tenth of households qualify for food stamps; one in eight residents gets free meals from soup kitchens or food banks; perhaps one in 12 has suffered a recent spell of homelessness. Yet the spot in question is not a benighted rust-belt city, but Sarasota, Florida—a balmy, palm-studded resort town on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Sarasota-Bradenton metropolitan area, a two-county sprawl of condominiums, marinas and retirement homes, saw the proportion of people living below the poverty line rise by more between 2007 and 2009 than any other big city in America, from 9.2% to 13.7%, according to the Census Bureau.

The story is filled with tales of citizens surviving in a tent and shed city run by the Catholic Church called Pinellas Hope. The picture you see above shows one of the sheds and a resident.  A small tent city that was supposed to be a six month temporary situation is booming.

Between 200 and 300 people live there at a time, large by shelter standards, but they are just a slice of Pinellas County’s overall homeless population, estimated at nearly 7,000.

Thousands of potential candidates are disqualified by a no-booze, no- drugs policy. Families with children aren’t allowed. Background checks seek to weed out sex offenders and those with violent pasts.

Even among those who do get in, dysfunction can run high.

Before background and sobriety checks improved, Tent City managers twice asked sheriff’s deputies to pose as residents to investigate drug dealing. Dozens were arrested.

Through April, deputies have been called to Tent City 102 times, though serious crimes like assault, drug dealing and grand theft have diminished noticeably over the past year.

Four out of 10 residents get kicked out, land in jail, or simply leave.

Who are American’s poor?  What will happen as the US austerity program pushes more and more people over the edge?  The official poverty rate in the US for 2009 was 14.5% .   You can compare our country with other countries at the CIA World Factbook. The countries with the worst poverty statistics are on the Continent of  Africa. For example, Cameroon has a 48% poverty level.  Canada’s poverty rate is just under 11% as is the poverty rate in Germany.

More information on poverty can be found at the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. The 2009 poverty threshold for a family of four was $ 21,756. For a single person under 65 it was $ 11,161.

The poverty rate for all persons masks considerable variation between racial/ethnic subgroups. Poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics greatly exceed the national average. In 2009, 25.8 percent of blacks and 25.3 percent of Hispanics were poor, compared to 9.4 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 12.5 percent of Asians.

Poverty rates are highest for families headed by single women, particularly if they are black or Hispanic. In 2009, 29.9 percent of households headed by single women were poor, while 16.9 percent of households headed by single men and 5.8 percent of married-couple households lived in poverty.

There are also differences between native-born and foreign-born residents. In 2009, 19.0 percent of foreign-born residents lived in poverty, compared to 13.7 percent of residents born in the United States. Foreign-born, non-citizens had an even higher incidence of poverty, at a rate of 25.1 percent.

I think that it’s important we put these numbers out there. The President and Congress are clearly putting ‘entitlements’ on the table.  Any changes will effect these numbers.  There is also a link between unemployment and Poverty.  There is no indication that there are any programs or there is a will in this country to deal with the high unemployment rate that we are now experiencing.  Forecasted GDP growth is not high enough to bring it down any time soon. This article is actually a year old.  See much difference now?

The response of state and local governments to this social catastrophe is drastic reductions in social services and job cuts, under conditions where the Obama administration refuses to provide emergency aid to help cover budget deficits.

The total deficit of the states from 2009 to 2012 is now estimated at $460 billion, a figure that is likely to grow as more state capitals adjust estimates for rapidly declining tax revenue.

”Anything and everything’s on the table,” said Todd Haggerty, a policy associate with the National Conference of State Legislators. States have “cut the fat, cut the muscle and are now cutting bone. The easy decisions have already been made.”

The fiscal situation confronting the states is expected to deteriorate sharply next year when funds from the federal economic stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, are exhausted.

Like the states, the federal government faces a fiscal catastrophe, with cumulative US budget deficits expected to top $10 trillion by the end of the new decade, according to the Obama administration’s rather optimistic forecast. Cuts in spending must be put in place, in part, to convince creditors, especially China, that the US “can get its finances back in order,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Monday in a feature on the annual gathering of the American Economic Association.

The response of the Obama administration is to call for an unprecedented program of fiscal austerity and sharp cuts in social spending, to be announced in his State of the Union address early next month and outlined in the new federal budget proposal shortly thereafter. Obama’s repeated insistence on the need for Americans to reduce their consumption—even as trillions more are allocated for the banks and for ever-expanding wars in Central Asia and the Middle East—is code language for a deepening of the assault on the working class.

The discussion of possible deficit reduction measures includes regressive taxes such as a national sales tax and sweeping cuts in entitlement programs on which millions of people rely, such as Medicare and Social Security.

If this continues, we will see civil unrest.  I am reminded of the tweet from Robert Reich posted by Zaladonis yesterday and another one that I had read earlier.

30 Jan
Robert Reich
RBReich Robert Reich 3.5% ec growth pitiful. We’re in so deep a hole that we need twice that to get jobs back. Don’t believe the Wall St cheerleaders.
30 Jan

RBReich Robert Reich

If you think revolts in Tunis, Egypt, and Yemen are big, wait for coming food and energy shortages around world. US shld take lead now.

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