Thursday Reads

Posted: January 20, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments

Good Morning!! Let’s see what’s going on out there in the world.

A federal grand jury has indicted Tucson shooter Jerad Loughner.

Jared Loughner was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday in Tucson on a three-count indictment for attempting to kill U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and two of her aides, Pamela Simon and Ron Barber. The announcement came from U.S. attorney Dennis K. Burke’s office.

Burke said, “This case also involves potential death-penalty charges, and Department rules require us to pursue a deliberate and thorough process. [Wednesday]’s charges are just the beginning of our legal action. We are working diligently to ensure that our investigation is thorough and that justice is done for the victims and their families.”

According to the indictment, Loughner, 22, attempted to assassinate Gabrielle Giffords, a member of Congress, and attempted to murder two federal employees, Ron Barber and Pamela Simon.

A conviction for attempted assassination of member of Congress carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, a $250,000 fine or both, according to Burke’s office.

That happened really quickly, didn’t it?

Have you heard there’s more snow coming for the Midwest and Northeast? Oh joy. Right now they are saying 3-5 inches for Boston. That’s not too bad, except for the fact that we already about about 2-1/2 feet piled up everywhere. Oh well… check the story to see what might be coming your way.

According to the Wall Street Journal, poor poor Goldman Sachs is hurting.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s profit slide of 52% in the fourth quarter showed the securities giant’s size and swagger aren’t enough for it to escape the tightening squeeze of a regulatory overhaul and jittery clients and investors.

The New York company suffered its third quarterly profit decline in a row, hurt by lower revenue from its vaunted trading and investment-banking businesses. Fourth-quarter net income fell to $2.39 billion, or $3.79 a share, from $4.95 billion, or $8.20 a share, a year earlier.

Oh those nasty regulations! Is anything like that really happening? I’m confused. Oh wait. It’s not really regulations, it’s just the Wall Streeters’ fears of risk or something.

Like its rivals, Goldman is being hurt by the reluctance of many institutional investors, wealthy individuals, companies and other clients to take risks because they still are reeling from losses during the crisis. Hedge funds are weaning themselves from some of the leverage used to make big bets, and U.S. companies are holding more than $2 trillion in stagnant cash.

As a result, demand for the vast inventory of stocks, bonds and other investments that Goldman buys and sells on behalf of customers, generating commissions and other fees for the firm, fell in the latest quarter. Trading-related revenue shrank 31% to $3.64 billion from $5.25 billion in 2009’s fourth quarter.

Whatever… A bunch of rich people whining. Just what you wanted to hear about with your morning coffee, I’ll bet.

The Governor of Alabama doesn’t consider me among his brothers and sisters. Shock!

Alabama Republican Governor Robert Bentley said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day message Monday that he does not consider Americans who do not accept Jesus Christ as their savior to be his brothers and sisters.

“There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit,” Bentley said shortly after taking the oath of office, according to the Birmingham News. ”But if you have been adopted in God’s family like I have, and like you have if you’re a Christian and if you’re saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister.”

”Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters,” he continued. “So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.”

Awww… I’m really hurt.

Didja hear the new Republican House voted to repeal the useless Republican style health care non-reform bill?

The vote passed Wednesday 245-to-189 — with unanimous GOP support, plus three Democrats. But the repeal bill is destined to die in the Senate, so Republicans will use their newly acquired power in the House to wage a long-term campaign to weaken the law.

The next steps — hearings, testimony from administration officials, funding cuts — lack the punch of a straight repeal vote, but Republicans said they will keep at it, hoping the end result is the same: stalling implementation of the $900 billion law.

Republicans promise to hold a series of hearings and oversight investigations into the law, attempt to repeal individual provisions and craft an alternative health care plan. Some of the first issues they will tackle are the cost of the law, the mandate on larger employers to provide coverage and the impact of the legislation on the states.

But the GOP is expected to be thwarted at every turn by the Democratic-controlled Senate — and ultimately President Barack Obama, who has said he is willing to “improve” the law but “we can’t go backward.”

{HUGE YAWN}

At least while they’re fooling around with Obamacare, they’re not repealing Social Security….

Sooooo…. what are you reading this morning? Anything cheerful happening?

Late Night Drift

Posted: January 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Barack Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

I’ll bet Dakinikat can’t wait to start plowing through the New York Times Magazine’s cover story this week: The White House Looks for Work: Inside Obama’s Struggle to Bring Down Unemployment, by Peter Baker.

Who knew Obama was involved in a struggle over jobs? As far as I can tell jobs are about the last thing on Obama’s mind. But what do I know? Apparently, there has been a life and death struggle going on within the President’s economic team over jobs.

Let me just buy them a clue: the answer isn’t cutting the deficit and wiping out the social safety net. Anyway, back to the Caucus blog’s preview of the upcoming NYT mag story and some of the “surprisingly newsy nuggets” we can look forward to reading on Sunday morning.

Mr. Baker writes that the president’s economic team “fractured repeatedly over philosophy (should jobs or deficits take priority?) and personality (who got to attend which meetings?), resulting in feuds that ultimately helped break it apart.”

Wait…that’s news?

The most sensible “tidbit” in the article comes from Christina Romer.

“In Washington, she said, ‘you’re not supposed to say the obvious thing, which is that in retrospect of course it should have been bigger. With unemployment at 10 percent, I don’t know how you could say you wouldn’t have done anything different. Of course you would have made it bigger.’”

— In the article, Ms. Romer said the Obama administration should have gone back to Congress for more stimulus money to bolster the economy when it was clear how bad things really were.

He writes: “‘In my mind,’ she said, ‘the problem was not in the original package; it was in not adjusting to changed circumstances.’ Once it was clear that the situation was deteriorating, she said, the White House should have gone back to Congress for more stimulus money. ‘That was where we could have been bolder,’ she said.”

Duh. For that kind of truth-telling, you get sent to Siberia UC Berkeley.

There’s a supposedly funny story about Larry Summers that I don’t understand. Can someone explain it to me?

Mr. Baker offers this fun tidbit about Mr. Summers: “Tan from a holiday in Jamaica and trying to get his bearings again at Harvard, where he plans to teach a course on Obama’s economic policy and write a book, Summers sat at a corner table and ordered bisque and — from the lighter-fare menu — a steak ‘as rare as your chef will make it.’”

On second thought, maybe Dak should skip the NYT mag article. If these are the highlights, it sounds like a crashing bore. And I didn’t see anything about jobs in there either.

Tuesday Reads

Posted: January 18, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Social Security, Team Obama, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 52 Comments

Good Morning!!!

It’s the end of a long weekend that celebrates the life of an American with vision, purpose, and fortitude in the pursuit of principle.   The news at the moment is as glum as the weather.  I will try to end the morning reads on higher and lighter ground.  I promise.

With that, I start with Glenn Greenwald at Salon and ‘The U.S. role in Gulet Mohamed’s detention’.  Thought we were done torturing people and denying them due process?  Dream on!  This is the story of a young American held in extraordinary conditions in the extraordinary country of Kuwait that basically still owes us their oil fields and freedom from the occupation by Saddam Hussein.  Gulet’s been held in some horrible situations that beg the question of who is responsible?  Is it some Sultan or President Obama?  Yes, this is change you can believe in if you’re Dick Cheney. Gulet and his family were led to believe that he would be released and sent home.  Home is the U.S. because he is a US citizen.  He deserves a lawyer and due process.  Now, he’s on the no-fly list and you know what that means.

As an American citizen, Gulet has the absolute right to return to and re-enter his country.  But by secretly placing him on the no-fly list while he was halfway around the world — and providing no information about why he was so placed — the U.S. Government is denying him his right to return.  Worse, they know that this action is not only preventing him from returning, but is keeping the 19-year-old in a state of absolute legal limbo, where’s he imprisoned by a country that admits it has no cause for holding him and does not want to hold him, yet which cannot release him.  The U.S. government has the obligation to assist its citizens when they end up detained without cause; here, they are doing the opposite:  they’re deliberately ensuring it continues.

If there’s any evidence that he has has done anything wrong, he should be charged, indicted, and brought back to the U.S. for trial.  What the Obama administration is doing instead is accomplishing what they could not do if he were in the U.S.:  holding him without a shred of due process, interrogating him without a lawyer present, and — if his credible claims are to believed — using beatings and torture to get the information it wants (or false information:  Gulet told me he was very tempted to falsely confess to make the beatings stop).  This abuse of the no-fly list is a common tactic used by the U.S. Government to circumvent all legal and constitutional constraints when it comes to its own citizens; this case just happens to be extra viscerally repellent.

Let’s see what our Secretary of State can do about this.

Not too long ago, our intrepid frontpager BostonBoomer took us down memory lane in pursuit of the vast criminal background that fills the resume of our head Inquisitor, Darrell Issa.  Now, it appears The New Yorker does the same. Just remember, your read it here first.  Skip the first two pages, those read like some blah blah blah  American Fairy Tale.  When you hit the rest, look for the pattern of insurance scams, crime, and a fortune that appears to be based in car theft.  The justice system is likely the force behind young Issa going into the military.   The unraveling of the Fairy Tale begins in 1998–like so many do–with a political tall tale that reflects the spin and not the facts.  Some one fact checked Issa’s campaign material.

In May of 1998, Lance Williams, of the San Francisco Examiner, reported that Issa had not always received the “highest possible” ratings in the Army. In fact, at one point he “received unsatisfactory conduct and efficiency ratings and was transferred to a supply depot.” Williams also discovered that Issa didn’t provide security for Nixon at the 1971 World Series, because Nixon didn’t attend any of the games.

A member of Issa’s Army unit, Jay Bergey, told Williams that his most vivid recollection of the young Issa was that in December, 1971, Issa stole his car, a yellow Dodge Charger. “I confronted Issa,” Bergey said in 1998. “I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike.”

Bergey died of lung cancer in 2002, but his widow, Joyce, recently said to me that she remembered her husband telling the story of the stolen Dodge Charger. She laughed when she heard that Issa is now a prominent member of Congress. “Well, he probably figured he was borrowing it from a friend,” she said. “But now we’re discussing politicians, so we all know how honest they are. When I meet a good one, I’ll let you know.”

Issa was transferred to a supply depot in the military.  That explains a lot.  For example, how does a guy coming out of the army find the funds for a really expensive sports car?   Only in America can this sort’ve  fractured fairy tale occur and play out in success.  Issa is bad news.   This is the second time I’ve linked to BB’s expose and it will not be the last.  We can muckrake with the best of them here and we intend to keep it up.

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An Obituary for New Deal Liberalism

Posted: January 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Bailout Blues, Barack Obama, Populism, The Bonus Class, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

If you haven’t read William Grieder’s powerful piece ‘The End of New Deal Liberalism’ at The Nation, you really should.  Let me give you a taste.

In these terms, the administration of Barack Obama has been a crushing disappointment for those of us who hoped he would be different. It turns out Obama is a more conventional and limited politician than advertised, more right-of-center than his soaring rhetoric suggested. Most Congressional Democrats, likewise, proved weak and incoherent, unreliable defenders of their supposed values or most loyal constituencies. They call it pragmatism. I call it surrender.

Obama’s maladroit tax compromise with Republicans was more destructive than creative. He acceded to the trickle-down doctrine of regressive taxation and skipped lightly over the fact that he was contributing further to stark injustices. Ordinary Americans will again be made to pay, one way or another, for the damage others did to society. Obama agrees that this is offensive but argues, This is politics, get over it. His brand of realism teaches people to disregard what he says. Look instead at what he does.

Greider outlines the goals of the plutocracy so clearly that you wonder when he’ll be put up for trumped up espionage charges or at least some made-up sex scandal.  His opening paragraphs on the capture of our government by corporate interests are just about the most compelling and apt description I’ve read recently. He’s awakened some how to the spokesmodel-in-chief. (h/t to Cinie wherever she may be)

Government has been disabled or captured by the formidable powers of private enterprise and concentrated wealth. Self-governing rights that representative democracy conferred on citizens are now usurped by the overbearing demands of corporate and financial interests. Collectively, the corporate sector has its arms around both political parties, the financing of political careers, the production of the policy agendas and propaganda of influential think tanks, and control of most major media.

What the capitalist system wants is more—more wealth, more freedom to do whatever it wishes. This has always been its instinct, unless government intervened to stop it. The objective now is to destroy any remaining forms of government interference, except of course for business subsidies and protections. Many elected representatives are implicitly enlisted in the cause.

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Monday Reads

Posted: January 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Corporate Crime, Gulf Oil Spill, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Good Morning!! Today is the official Martin Luther King birthday holiday. I hope everyone has the day off. I think I have a few interesting reads for you this morning.

I’ll start with this in depth report by Naomi Klein on scientific studies of the impact of the BP oil gusher on the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. While the government reassures Americans that everything down in the gulf is safe safe safe, scientists are finding plenty of evidence that that’s not the case. According to

Ian MacDonald, a celebrated oceanographer at Florida State University. “The gulf is not all better now. We don’t know what we’ve done to it.”

MacDonald is arguably the scientist most responsible for pressuring the government to dramatically increase its estimates of how much oil was coming out of BP’s well. He points to the massive quantity of toxins that gushed into these waters in a span of three months (by current estimates, at least 4.1 million barrels of oil and 1.8 million gallons of dispersants). It takes time for the ocean to break down that amount of poison, and before that could happen, those toxins came into direct contact with all kinds of life-forms. Most of the larger animals—adult fish, dolphins, whales—appear to have survived the encounter relatively unharmed. But there is mounting evidence that many smaller creatures—bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton, multiple species of larvae, as well as larger bottom dwellers—were not so lucky. These organisms form the base of the ocean’s food chain, providing sustenance for the larger animals, and some grow up to be the commercial fishing stocks of tomorrow. One thing is certain: if there is trouble at the base, it won’t stay there for long.

There is evidence of permanent changes in organisms likely caused by the oil and dispersants, and those changes may be passed on to future generations as mutations. In addition, the damage to creatures at the lower end of the food chain is so extensive that it may lead to collapses and even extinctions in larger species. While it will be difficult to directly pin all the damage on BP, there really isn’t much doubt that the oil and dispersants are at the root of the problems. It’s very bad, folks.

Ms Magazine has gotten involved in a protest against the New Yorker.

Last week, Anne Hays put her latest copy of the New Yorker back in the mail, with a note explaining that the august publication owed her a refund for putting out the second issue in a row featuring almost no pieces by women. In a December issue of the New Yorker content by women made up only three pages of the magazine’s 150; one January issue contained only two items by women, a poem and a brief “Shouts and Murmers” item.

“I am baffled, outraged, saddened, and a bit depressed that, though some would claim our country’s sexism problem ended in the late ’60s, the most prominent and respected literary magazine in the country can’t find space in its pages for women’s voices in the year 2011,” wrote Hays in the letter, promising to send back every issue containing fewer than five female bylines. “You tend to publish 13 to 15 writers in each issue; five women shouldn’t be that hard,” she concluded.

Her letter, posted to Facebook and widely circulated last week, has prompted Ms. magazine to start an online petition reminding the magazine’s editors that there are in fact lots of women in the world and that many of them write feature articles, reviews and poems, and that the premier literary/current events magazine in the country should reflect that fact.

According to the article, the New Yorker is not alone in ignoring women writers. Read it and weep.

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