Greed is good! Just don’t get [...]]]>

“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman [Sachs]’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”

Greed is good! Just don’t get caught…

Click to enlarge

Unfortunately, Perry is a [...]]]>
I’m sure by now you’ve read or heard about John Perry’s cris de coeur begging the military to take care of “the Obama problem.” Some, like Jurassic Pork, have even questioned whether Perry is a real person or just some military officer in drag, projecting the tea-baggers’ “take our country back” screed through a civilian straw man.

Unfortunately, Perry is a real person: I worked for him in the late 80s/early 90s when he had fallen from his Washington perch (he was a quizzling in the Nixon & Ford administrations) down, down, down to the editorship of the NW Georgia (a stone’s throw from Alabama) Rome News-Tribune. In fact, I might never have had my first date with my husband of almost 20 years if it weren’t for Perry firing J. for insubordination: J. had refused to put his byline on a piece of blatant boosterism for a proposed new civic center -- given the gag-inducing name of “The Roman Forum” -- and Perry’s response to this demonstration of journalistic integrity was to give J. the choice: quit or be fired. J. showed up at my door that night with a six pack and a warning (about Perry’s temper and shifting standards), and we’ve been together ever since.

Rome was an appropriate place for Perry: the center of town is dominated by the hideous statue pictured above, of Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf’s teats that was donated to the city by none other than Benito Mussolini himself.

My only surprise in reading Perry’s screed yesterday was learning that the old crank was still alive; I’d have thought he’d have succumbed to cirrhosis years ago.

But it is tremendously frightening to think that the John Perrys of this country, who populate our small town newpapers, city councils, and Kiwanis Clubs, truly believe not only that Obama is somehow a leftist/Marxist/Stalinist/Fascist (they are too intellectually lazy to know or care about the difference), but that just the fact that we have an African American in the White House is sufficiently dangerous to warrant a military coup.

The irony, of course, is that we did have an unconstitutional coup 8 years ago when the Supreme Court handed the White House to George W. Bush. Perhaps our John Perrys truly did understand that this is what had taken place, and so the idea of a coup to get rid of Obama and “take our country back” is not so shocking.

These men -- and Phyllis Schafly, Michelle Bachman and Ann Coulter notwithstanding, they are largely men -- cannot imagine a United States under the control of anyone non-white or non-male. The election of Barack Obama therefore has to be the result of some sort of mob mentality, a madness borne of “wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility.” No responsible citizen could vote for an African American Democrat for President, at least no responsible citizen of their country.

I was frightened during Bush’s tenure by what I thought it said about what this country had become, and I was dumb enough to believe that the election of Barack Obama was a course correction, back to Constitutional government and the rule of law.

My imagination failed me, because despite growing up in the South surrounded by John Perrys, I never imagined that election of a Black man would drive our civic fathers to consider coup, assassination or civil war as a reasonable response.

I should have known better, because I’ve seen what the likes of John Perry will do when even his small town paper editorial power is challenged.

Obama Risks a Domestic Military Intervention

By: John L. Perry

There is a remote, although gaining, possibility America’s military will intervene as a last resort to resolve the “Obama problem.” Don’t dismiss it as unrealistic.

America isn’t the Third World. If a military coup does occur here it will be civilized. That it has never happened doesn’t mean it wont. Describing what may be afoot is not to advocate it. So, view the following through military eyes:

# Officers swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Unlike enlisted personnel, they do not swear to “obey the orders of the president of the United States.”

# Top military officers can see the Constitution they are sworn to defend being trampled as American institutions and enterprises are nationalized.

# They can see that Americans are increasingly alarmed that this nation, under President Barack Obama, may not even be recognizable as America by the 2012 election, in which he will surely seek continuation in office.

# They can see that the economy — ravaged by deficits, taxes, unemployment, and impending inflation — is financially reliant on foreign lender governments.

# They can see this president waging undeclared war on the intelligence community, without whose rigorous and independent functions the armed services are rendered blind in an ever-more hostile world overseas and at home.

# They can see the dismantling of defenses against missiles targeted at this nation by avowed enemies, even as America’s troop strength is allowed to sag.

# They can see the horror of major warfare erupting simultaneously in two, and possibly three, far-flung theaters before America can react in time.

# They can see the nation’s safety and their own military establishments and honor placed in jeopardy as never before.

So, if you are one of those observant military professionals, what do you do?

Wait until this president bungles into losing the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s arsenal of nuclear bombs falls into the hands of militant Islam?

Wait until Israel is forced to launch air strikes on Iran’s nuclear-bomb plants, and the Middle East explodes, destabilizing or subjugating the Free World?

What happens if the generals Obama sent to win the Afghan war are told by this president (who now says, “I’m not interested in victory”)) that they will be denied troops they must have to win? Do they follow orders they cannot carry out, consistent with their oath of duty? Do they resign en masse?

Or do they soldier on, hoping the 2010 congressional elections will reverse the situation? Do they dare gamble the national survival on such political whims?

Anyone who imagines that those thoughts are not weighing heavily on the intellect and conscience of America’s military leadership is lost in a fool’s fog.

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a “family intervention,” with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama’s exponentially accelerating agenda for “fundamental change” toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama’s radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don’t shrug and say, “We can always worry about that later.”

In the 2008 election, that was the wistful, self-indulgent, indifferent reliance on abnegation of personal responsibility that has sunk the nation into this morass.

9 Comments

• At October 1, 2009, me wrote:

  I cannot give them any more air time or energy! I've switched from npr to 89.1 to get away from hearing about them. It is a Very nice change!

  Mark Morford has a great idea:

  The absolute best way to speak to complete idiots is, of course, not to speak to them at all. That is, you work around them, ignore them completely, disregard the rants and the spittle and the misspelled protest signs and the fervent prayers for apocalypse on Fox News. Complete refusal to take the fringe nutballs even the slightest bit seriously is the only way to make true progress. "

• At October 5, 2009, Pat Campbell wrote:

  These are sad days for the Republican Party and our country. Most of the rational conservatives have left and someone turned the lights out as they left. Here is a link to Paul Krugman's recent article. Our form of government needs "loyal opposition," unfortunately we now have a group in treasonous opposition who would sink our country to spite the duly elected President:

  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/opinion/05krugman.html?em

• At October 5, 2009, John democracyforvancouver.org wrote:

  Pat, Thanks for the Krugman article link. One of my favorite political writers David Michael Green also weighs in on the sad state of our country here.

  Here is an excerpt:

  So what if the Russians invaded?

  What if they came and stole all of our money?

  What if the Russians invaded and enslaved our children as cheap worker bee drones locked in dismal dead-end jobs?

  What if the Russians invaded and excavated all of our natural resources, leaving only mountains of toxic debris in their wake?

  What if the Russians invaded and they ruined our infrastructure, thrashed our educational institutions, and stuck us with a grossly inadequate healthcare system?

  What if the Russians invaded and incarcerated a huge percentage of our people in for-profit jails? What if they ruined our military by sending it off on big-money colonial expeditions? What if they cut the legs out from under the middle class?

  What if the Russians invaded and turned us against each other, tricking this tribe of Americans into hating that tribe, in order to keep any of us from realizing that they were looting our country?

  If the Russians did any of these things, we’d kill ‘em. Dead.

  If the Russians invaded, we’d send our army to crush them in defense of our country (or, at least, we hire somebody to do it).

  If the Russians invaded, we’d be furious and raging and hateful and destructive – for good reason, too – and we would bring to them the full measure of American organized violence in order to take back our country from their plundering rampages.

  Of course, the Russians haven’t invaded. But what’s astonishing about the moment we live in is that America has in fact been subjected to all these travails. We have essentially been invaded by those who wish us ill, and our national and private resources are being stripped bare. This country is being looted, and everything in it that isn’t nailed down is being carted away and sold off.

• At October 5, 2009, me wrote:

  Green nails it!

• At October 5, 2009, Pat Campbell wrote:

  Personally, I don't think our problems are that great John. We've come out of worse situations in the past.

  My point is that we need balance for our system of government to work.

• At October 5, 2009, John democracyforvancouver.org wrote:

  Pat,

  I am having trouble seeing the forest for the trees.

  Personal bankruptcies hits a 4-year high

  Unemployment rate edges up to 9.8%

  Study: 45,000 U.S. Deaths Per Year May Be Linked to Lack of Health Insurance

  Foreclosure Rate Rises 17 Percent

  Now that is some of the bad stuff. I would like to hear from Pat and anyone else about all the great stuff that is happening. I am actually still very optimistic but I prefer to keep that sentiment to myself.

• At October 5, 2009, John democracyforvancouver.org wrote:

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GoFj8Fc9iM

  www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztlWFss7EFU

• At October 6, 2009, Pat Campbell wrote:

  I don't believe this is a time to keep one's optimism to oneself. We've got a few loud naysayers who are trying to frame issues in a manner to tear down our country. They have theirs and that's all they care about.

• At October 6, 2009, John democracyforvancouver.org wrote:

  If and when my optimism becomes a reality, it will be made public.

  Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth -- don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency.

  AESOP

Many in our country labor under the illusion that we are a representative democracy and a beacon of freedom to the world. In reality, we are a fascist, corporate-controlled country.

We are a beacon to corporations and executives who are [...]]]> Beautifully said Bob although I think we are beyond, “If you care, voice your outrage to Congress.”, making any difference at all.

Many in our country labor under the illusion that we are a representative democracy and a beacon of freedom to the world. In reality, we are a fascist, corporate-controlled country.

We are a beacon to corporations and executives who are free from regulation, can buy and influence elections, avoid taxes and maximize greed without regard to public prosperity, health and national security.

Our “elected” representatives spend far more time talking with lobbyists and soliciting their “contributions” than meeting with the voting public. We can’t even implement something as critical and decent as nonprofit public health care, despite overwhelming public support.

Private insurance and pharmaceuticals (the most profitable sector of our economy) are spending over $1 million per day to defeat the public option with lies and distortions.

If you care, voice your outrage to Congress.

If you fall for Fox propaganda like that in Sallie Nielson’s July 10 letter, “Keep government out of health care,” don’t complain about your health premiums doubling every three years with dramatic out-of-pocket increases.

Bob Donohoe

Vancouver

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1 Comments

• At July 17, 2009, missy nofishnonuts.blogspot.com wrote:

  I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything we can do to stop us from becoming post-Soviet Russia.

  It's funny that so many Republicans believe Reagan is responsible for destroying the Soviet Union, when what he really accomplished was bringing the wealth gap that led to the Russian Revolution back home to the U.S.A.

My husband’s name is very common; our son’s first name and my own are slightly unusual, but we all share the same common last name.

On our recent trip to Florida, J. flew out several days after our son and me, and had no difficulties; on the way home we all flew together.

When checking our [...]]]>

My husband’s name is very common; our son’s first name and my own are slightly unusual, but we all share the same common last name.

On our recent trip to Florida, J. flew out several days after our son and me, and had no difficulties; on the way home we all flew together.

When checking our bags at Tampa International for our return flight to Portland, the self-serve kiosk printed out boarding passes for both legs of the trip for our son and myself, but only the first leg, Tampa to LAX, for J. We didn’t notice this until our bags were checked through and we were at the gate for boarding, and so figured we’d get J.’s Portland boarding pass on arrival at LAX.

But when J. tried to print a boarding pass from the kiosk at LAX, an error message flashed on the screen, and so we had to join the line of bag-checking passengers in LAX’s bus terminal homage of a ticketing level.

When we finally reached the counter and explained ourselves, the Alaska Airlines rep clattered the keyboard for a full minute with eyes conspicuously averted, after which she turned and left – pointedly taking J.’s driver’s license with her.

She returned 10 minutes later, and without explanation printed out a boarding pass, handing it to J. along with his confiscated license.

When we asked what the problem had been, the rep said that J.’s name was “too common,” and they had to make sure that either (1) it wasn’t an alias; or (2) that he wasn’t “one” of the many who shared his name on the TSA’s vaunted Terrorist Watch List.

Amazingly, somehow J. was an upstanding citizen when we checked in at Tampa at 6am that morning, but had become a suspect individual by afternoon – as TSA remarkably knew he would when they refused to grant the boarding pass for the second half of his journey, but let him take the first flight anyway.

I feel so much safer now.

It’s the best of times for Goldman Sachs, and the worst of times for the rest of us.

Ironic that this news would break on Bastille Day:

Goldman Sachs’ profits for the second quarter smashed Wall Street estimates and are likely to trigger a windfall for bankers.

The bank, long considered the most prestigious and profitable on Wall Street, recorded [...]]]>

It’s the best of times for Goldman Sachs, and the worst of times for the rest of us.

Ironic that this news would break on Bastille Day:

Goldman Sachs’ profits for the second quarter smashed Wall Street estimates and are likely to trigger a windfall for bankers.

The bank, long considered the most prestigious and profitable on Wall Street, recorded net profits of $3.44bn in the last three months, up from $2.1bn in the same period in 2008.
…
Goldman, led by Lloyd Blankfein, has already repaid the $10bn it borrowed from the US Government last year, liberating it from restrictions on pay imposed on those institutions which have relied on taxpayers’ cash.
…
Mr Viniar said that the company had benefited from the loss of some of its competitors in the investment banking business. “There is definitely less competition out there,” he said, adding that there is also less risk capital available.

“Goldman’s got a sweet spot in here, they were the go-to players,” Peter Sorrentino, a fund manager at Huntington Asset Advisors, told Bloomberg News. “For the time being, they’ve got kind of an open playing field all to themselves.”

Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson guaranteed that open field when he refused to lend a hand to Lehman Brothers, causing panic after money markets “broke the buck” and leading to the credit crisis we’re still enjoying today.

If you haven’t been reading Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone on the unholy alliance between Goldman Sachs, the Fed, the U.S. Treasury and the World Bank, you’re probably not seething with fury right now about Goldman playing Midas while the average American fights to keep his/her head above water. The word corruption doesn’t even cover it, unless it’s in the sense of the raped and battered body of our democracy putrefying beneath the overladen banquet table at which Goldman alums suck the marrow from the bones of taxpayers and pensioners:

By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush’s last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup – which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There’s John Thain, the rear end in a top hat chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain’s sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There’s Joshua Bolten, Bush’s chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York – which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman…

Taibbi’s reporting on this is stunning and sickening, and despite every attempt of Golmanites to make their business too complicated for the layman to understand, Taibbi makes it clear that what we’re talking about are, at base, the oldest of crimes: Fraud. Theft. Insider trading.

Our problem is that Goldman has become so enmeshed in every level of government that our representatives in Congress, our executive branch, and our justice system (headed by corporate leg-humper John Roberts) feel a much greater affinity for the Goldman Masters of the Universe than they do for the average American taxpayer. (This happens at the local level, as well: Hank Paulson’s son, Merritt Paulson, is very busy right now jerking Portland around, threatening to pull his AAA Portland Beavers from the city if we don’t build him a new stadium, freeing up PGE Park for his major league soccer franchise.)

We may not be ready to storm the Bastille, but honestly, I don’t know what else will move them.

3 Comments

• At July 14, 2009, John democracyforvancouver.org wrote:

  The wonders never cease of deregulation and free market pablum. And the regressive Righties are afraid of socialism? How do you like what we actually have now, oligopoly and pauperism?

• At July 16, 2009, John democracyforvancouver.org wrote:

  And here comes Cenk Uygur on the subject of "too big to fail" Goldman Sacks.

• At July 18, 2009, Angie in WA State dailykos.com wrote:

  Guess it's time to add "banksta gangsta" to our current patois de lingua.

[W]e’re about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in Iran, and other places in South America, like Chavez is running down in Venezuela. People become more dependent on the government so that they’re easy [...]]]> Jim DeMint may be a ridiculous asshole:

But Obama had better kick Larry Summers & Co. under the bus while he has the chance, or it will be Mourning in America all over again:

It’s not the socialist part I’m worried about, Sen. DeMint. It’s the rabid, xenophobic, blame-shifting fascism that seems to rear its ugly head every time we have an economic downturn in this country.

I don’t remember Hitler or Goebbels (or Reagan) being all that concerned about universal health care or labor union rights.

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Why is it that you have to turn on a comedienne these days to hear advocacy for progressive values that the majority of Americans want.  As Maher says:

Cutting the Military Budget Gun Control Gay Marriage Higher Taxes on the Rich Universal Health Care Legalizing Pot Steep, Direct Taxing of Polluters.

These aren’t radical ideas.  [...]]]> to or about us, that is.

Why is it that you have to turn on a comedienne these days to hear advocacy for progressive values that the majority of Americans want.  As Maher says:

Cutting the Military Budget
Gun Control
Gay Marriage
Higher Taxes on the Rich
Universal Health Care
Legalizing Pot
Steep, Direct Taxing of Polluters.

These aren’t radical ideas.  The majority of Americans are either already for them or would be if they were properly argued and defended… Democrats are the new Republicans.

With all the brainwashing and bullshit that is spewed from the major media, it is amazing that most of us Americans support these things.  But if there is no one hearing the tree fall in the forest, is it really making a noise?

Granted, it was only a single election, and the President can’t change everything. But we did give ourselves majorities in both the House and Senate, too, [...]]]> Last November 4th, there was literally dancing in the streets. The era of torture and infinite detention without trial and corporate ownership of the government was over. It was our own velvet revolution, and the People had won.

Granted, it was only a single election, and the President can’t change everything. But we did give ourselves majorities in both the House and Senate, too, which left only the Judiciary to begin the long correction necessary in a branch of the government filled with lifetime appointments.

But six months in, Obama is swiftly morphing into Bush in blackface, and the Senate – despite its near supermajority – has proved itself to be as contemptuous of its constituents as Dick Cheney is of anyone not named Dick Cheney.

How do they hate us? Let me count the ways:

• Banks are given trillions to stay in their palaces on Wall Street, rapidly converting their debts to the government into stock in order to launder the red ink out of their balance sheets, while judges overseeing homeowners in bankruptcy don’t even have the option of re-writing loan terms to make mortgage repayment possible.

• The government buys 80% of AIG in order to avoid the domino collapse that would follow its defaulting on trillions in credit default swaps, and pays the same banks who made those bad bets – the same banks who needed TARP bailouts – 100 cents on the dollar with taxpayer funds, while taxpayers suffered the loss of half or more of their retirement investments.

• The TARP program was set up to buy bad assets off the banks that made bad loans, then turned around and instead used that money to directly invest in banks. Those banks then used this taxpayer money to lobby Congress kill cramdown, kill protection for credit card holders, and kill the Employee Free Choice Act – all while calling in loans from credit card holders and ratcheting up interest rates in order to provide profits for their executives and shareholders.

• Banks that took taxpayer TARP money pushed Chrysler into bankruptcy, knowing that their credit default swaps purchased from AIG for milli-cents on the dollar would pay off in full, courtesy again of the U.S. taxpayer, thus assuring the loss of tens of thousands of jobs across the auto and manufacturing sector – jobs held by: U.S. taxpayers.

And this is just the banks. Max Baucus laughed at single-payer advocates as they were arrested and dragged from the health care reform hearings, and a few days later Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius played grab-ass with health insurers and healthcare corporatists (again excluding single-payer advocates), cheering the vampires as they offered to suck us 1.5% less dry over 10 years, which offer will doubtless evaporate once a public option is put on the table.

And now TARP funds are being extended to insurers:

The federal government must have at least some concern that the failure of a major insurance company would set off a cascade of events that could harm the financial and credit markets. In an attempt to prevent this, it has committed $22 billion to the industry.

According to Bloomberg, “Insurers need the money to quell doubts about whether they can pay claims and retirement stipends after falling stock and bond markets depleted capital.” The companies that will get funds include Allstate, Prudential, Hartford, Lincoln Financial, Principal, and Ameriprise.

So the insurers get bailed out with taxpayer money when their stocks tank, but those of us – taxpayers, again – with IRAs and 401(k)s suffering the same “depleted capital” can go fuck ourselves.

But that’s just the crass, materialistic side of things, where taxpayers are getting the shaft. Those of us whose vote was cast hoping for a return to the Constitution, the rule of law, and human rights can go fuck ourselves as well, as campaign promises for transparency, prosecution of torture, and the restoration of habeas corpus turn to dust:

President Barack Obama declared Wednesday he would try to block the court-ordered release of photos that show U.S. troops abusing prisoners.

He said the abrupt reversal of his position came out of concern that the pictures would “further inflame anti-American opinion” and endanger U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These photos are already “out” in the rest of the world; only in the U.S. are we being protected from these horrific images (and we can find them if we are the least bit savvy at navigating the intertubes).

So the only rationale Obama can have is that he wants to avoid an increase in the number of U.S. citizens calling for prosecution of the torturers and their abettors (in the Bush Administration, Congress, etc.).

He wants this issue to go away, so the photos must go away, as well. And so must habeas corpus, the right to a speedy trial, and all of those constitutional niceties that separate us from fascist dictatorships:

President Obama said today he will revive military commissions but with greater legal safeguards for defendants to try some terrorist suspects held at the military base in Cuba.

The decision, which follows an intense internal debate, represents something of a reversal by the president who said during the campaign that military courts martial or the federal courts offered a better route to successful prosecution because he said military commissions had been an “enormous failure.”

In recent weeks, however, the administration appears to have bowed to fears articulated by the Pentagon that bringing some detainees before regular courts presented enormous legal hurdles and could risk acquittals.

Yeah, you risk acquittal WHEN YOU TORTURE PEOPLE.

Obama must be terrified of the political fallout that will come when his Justice Department fails to convict “terrorists.”

PROSECUTE THE TORTURERS. Put the onus where it belongs – on the Bush Administration. Say it plainly: WE CANNOT GET CONVICTIONS BECAUSE BUSH AND CHENEY TORTURED.

I knew Obama was a political animal, an operator – it was one of the reasons he scared me during the primaries.

But I held out some hope after he was elected that the office itself would give him some spine; that being President would give him a firmer hand than he could have among the collegiality über alles atmosphere of the Senate.

All hopes are dashed now. He has not once used the bully pulpit to push the Senate – to shame them – to turn toward their constituents and away from their corporate masters.

We are that little voice inside the dust speck, and Obama should speak for us against those who would boil us in beezle-nut oil.

But he’s just another Wickersham brother after all.

1 Comments

• At May 15, 2009, John democracyforvancouver.org wrote:

  Re Obama,

  I've come to the same conclusion. I gave the President the benefit of the doubt for a long time. He is now proving to be just a much more intelligent Bush III.

  If I were President, my first act would be to reform the media so that they no longer could use me for a punching bag every time I did something that threatens the existing power structure. But that does not seem to be happening.

  It is going to be interesting to see how Obama expects to get reelected. The right wing-nuts will not vote for him even if they thought he was the second coming of Jesus. And progressive, liberal people are now going to desert him in droves.

  I though this was a good article about what Cheney has been doing that seems to have our President cow-towed.

  Watch out America, more pain and suffering ahead.

A supertanker cargo of Alaska North Slope crude ASW- is headed for the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, an unusual destination for crude from Alaska, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil’s (XOM.N) shipping affiliate confirmed Wednesday.

The Alaska crude is similar in gravity and sulfur content to some Gulf Coast grades of oil, but there could be nonmarket reasons for the [...]]]> From today’s Cargo Business News:

A supertanker cargo of Alaska North Slope crude ASW- is headed for the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, an unusual destination for crude from Alaska, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil’s (XOM.N) shipping affiliate confirmed Wednesday.

The Alaska crude is similar in gravity and sulfur content to some Gulf Coast grades of oil, but there could be nonmarket reasons for the voyage, including retiring the vessel from the Alaska trade. It is the last single-hull ship on that service.

Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez spilled 11 million gallons of oil into pristine Prince William Sound, eventually covering 11,000 square miles of ocean, the last single-hull tanker is taken out of service?

And now, a tribute to the U.S. oil & gas lobby:

1 Comments

• At August 13, 2009, ExxonMobil is Green. Will Media Notice? | linkthe.com wrote:

  [...] i shouldn’t be shocked, and yet… (democracyforvancouver.org) [...]

Some of Bybee’s greatest hits:

Sickening.

At May 5, 2009, John democracyforvancouver.org wrote:

An Even Worse Bybee Memo

When this memo was written, our president, vice president, and top cabinet officials were screaming about Iraq's vast quantities of weapons, but Bybee was already crafting his justifications around the idea of weapons "programs."

The result was guaranteed to be massive death, no matter how "proportional" to the nonexistent threat. But the permission was also guaranteed to be wildly exceeded by anybody's definition. The result has been 1.2 - 1.3 million deaths according to Just Foreign Policy's updated figure based on the Johns Hopkins / Lancet report, and according to the British polling company Opinion Research Business's estimate as of August 2007. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of Iraqis who have fled their homes has reached 4.7 million. If these estimates are accurate, a total of nearly 6 million human beings have been displaced from their homes or killed. Many times that many have certainly been injured, traumatized, impoverished, and deprived of clean water and other basic needs, including the need to have parents...

...Bybee claims not only that a president can simply launch any war he wants, and that the "authorization to use force" somehow adds to that complete and total power, but also that -- in terms of international law -- attacking Iraq would be justified both as authorized by the UN Security Council and as an act of self-defense. The war would not be so much a new war, Bybee claims, as the suspension of a cease-fire that Iraq suspended first. And the Security Council would have authorized a war even though the Security Council itself might claim otherwise. Bybee redefines self-defense as "anticipatory self-defense" and argues that the authors of the UN Charter could never possibly have meant otherwise. And he adds that, in an age of nuclear weapons, anticipatory self-defense can justify launching a war against any nation that might conceivably acquire nukes, even if there was no reason to think that nation would use them to attack yours:

"We observe, therefore, that even if the probability that Iraq itself would attack the United States with WMD, or would transfer such a weapon to terrorists for their use against the United States, were relatively low, the exceptionally high degree of harm that would result, combined with a limited window of opportunity and the likelihood that if we do not use force, the threat will increase, could lead the President to conclude that military action is necessary to defend the United States."

This memo justified a war of aggression and all the crimes and abuses of power abroad and at home that were justified by the war. Jay Bybee has a lifetime appointment as a federal judge wearing black robes drenched in the crimson blood of his victims. His crimes are on paper in black and white for the world to see. If he is not impeached and prosecuted, similar horrors await our planet in the near future.

Pennsylvania’s highest court on Thursday overturned hundreds of juvenile convictions issued by a corrupt judge who took millions of dollars in kickbacks from youth detention centers.

The state Supreme Court ruled that former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella violated the constitutional rights of youth offenders who appeared in his courtroom without lawyers between [...]]]>
Who could’ve known that privatizing prisons could lead to corruption?

Pennsylvania’s highest court on Thursday overturned hundreds of juvenile convictions issued by a corrupt judge who took millions of dollars in kickbacks from youth detention centers.

The state Supreme Court ruled that former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella violated the constitutional rights of youth offenders who appeared in his courtroom without lawyers between 2003 and 2008.

”Today’s order is not intended to be a quick fix,” Chief Justice Ronald Castille said in a statement. ”It’s going to take some time, but the Supreme Court is committed to righting whatever wrong was perpetrated on Luzerne’s juveniles and their families.”

In one of the most egregious cases of judicial corruption ever seen, federal prosecutors charged Ciavarella and another Luzerne County judge, Michael Conahan, with taking $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in privately owned lockups.

The judges pleaded guilty to fraud last month and face sentences of more than seven years in prison.

Hillary Transue, 17, who appeared in Ciavarella’s courtroom in 2007 and spent a month in a wilderness camp for building a MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal, was elated that her record would be expunged.

She did not have an attorney when she went before Ciavarella, nor was she told of her right to one.
…
Berks County Senior Judge Arthur Grim … decided that expungement was the most appropriate remedy for low-level offenders who appeared in Ciavarella’s courtroom without lawyers — a group he has said numbered ”easily into the hundreds.”
…
Grim next will review cases involving more serious juvenile offenses.

…Conahan, the former president judge of Luzerne County, shut down the county-owned juvenile detention center in 2002 and signed an agreement with PA Child Care LLC to send youth offenders to its new facility outside Wilkes-Barre.

Great name for a juvey lockup company, eh?

Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, sent youths to the detention center and to a sister facility in western Pennsylvania while he was taking payments, prosecutors said.
…
Youths were routinely brought before Ciavarella without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent to detention for offenses as minor as stealing change from cars and writing prank notes.

From a profile of Ciavarella in the Scranton, PA-area’s Times-Tribune:

Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. ascended to the Luzerne County judiciary a decade-and-a-half ago with a pledge to “return to a time when values had importance.”

“It’s time for people who break the law to realize they’ll be punished,” he said as he announced his candidacy for a seat on the Court of Common Pleas in August 1994…

“I believe I have the foresight and understanding of how the judicial system should operate and a commitment to making sure our criminal justice system punishes those who violate our rights and lets criminals understand that we law-abiding citizens have rights, too,” Judge Ciavarella said…

This is not only proof that privatization of government functions is by its very nature corrupt, but that the principle of “innocent until proven guilty in a court of law,” arguably the most important of our Constitutional values (because to exercise any of our Constitutional rights requires first that we be free), has been thoroughly devalued in these post-9/11 United States.

If the innocent can be held for years without charge – and not just incarcerated, but tortured – what harm can there be in sending some smart-ass kid to a bootcamp for a few weeks?

For men like Bush and Cheney, Ciavarella and Cochran, their status alone is justification for stealing millions from taxpayers and incarcerating torturing or killing anyone. Their power is both their means and their ends.

The Constitution was written to thwart such men, which is why they they treat it like toilet paper.

And when the Constitution fails, money damages from a civil case is often the only remedy the victims have available; small comfort indeed for those subjected to the trauma of false accusations, unjust imprisonment and/or torture, and no comfort at all to the relatives of those murdered by our government.

But insignificant as civil redress and a damage award may be, they at least offer the faintest whisper of Justice.

Is it any wonder that Dick Cheney and the Republican party have fought so hard to limit your access to the courts?

If you want to understand what is really going on re: the banking/wall street fiasco, read this article.  Here is an excerpt:

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months [...]]]> Cenk Uygur over at Huffpo sent me this story link this morning. 

If you want to understand what is really going on re: the banking/wall street fiasco, read this article.  Here is an excerpt:

The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG’s 2008 losses).

So it’s time to admit it: We’re fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we’re still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream. When Geithner announced the new $30 billion bailout, the party line was that poor AIG was just a victim of a lot of shitty luck — bad year for business, you know, what with the financial crisis and all. Edward Liddy, the company’s CEO, actually compared it to catching a cold: “The marketplace is a pretty crummy place to be right now,” he said. “When the world catches pneumonia, we get it too.” In a pathetic attempt at name-dropping, he even whined that AIG was being “consumed by the same issues that are driving house prices down and 401K statements down and Warren Buffet’s investment portfolio down.”

And to think Congress was worried about and passed legislation to make a game of skill, namely online poker, illegal while this was happening right under their noses.

And you can forget about legalizing marijuana to help pay for this clusterf$%! if President Obama has any say in the matter.  Perhaps he has to tow the line on this for political reasons?

Don’t know what you think about this, but it is very hard for me to see how this will end well.  911 didn’t scare me.  This does.  Time to increase my survival kit supplies in the basement.

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• Did the AIG Execs Commit Treason? (blogs.harvardbusiness.org)

When AIG started to become unwound last fall, who better to know just how much Goldman Sach’s own rape & pillage squad was going to depend on its AIG bad bet insurance than the former CEO, Paulson himself – and who else but the Treasury Secretary would be better positioned to make sure that at least his alma mater [...]]]> On Hank Paulson’s bald head.

When AIG started to become unwound last fall, who better to know just how much Goldman Sach’s own rape & pillage squad was going to depend on its AIG bad bet insurance than the former CEO, Paulson himself – and who else but the Treasury Secretary would be better positioned to make sure that at least his alma mater – if not your 401(k) – got paid 100 cents on the dollar?

This all seems very complicated, but it’s really no different than the usual Wall Street self-dealing [see pt. 2 of Jon Stewart's takedown of Jim Cramer here if the video doesn't appear below]:

Paulson drove a culture of risk at Goldman Sachs, and while the pus-filled cyst of the mortgage/derivative meltdown was still subcutaneous, Paulson parachuted out to Treasury (taking with him a personal net worth of at least $500 million).

When the boil began to erupt, Goldman Sachs was among the first to push AIG to prove its solvency, demanding that AIG put up multiple billions in bonds as early as August 2007. So our buddy Hank knew that keeping Goldman Sachs afloat required that AIG remain solvent – at least until all of Goldman Sach’s credit-default swaps were paid off.

This is why it was so critical for the government to prop up AIG rather than allowing it to fall into bankruptcy: a bankruptcy filing would mean that Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch et al would get paid far less than 100 cents on the dollar to cover their bad bets. It’s questionable whether Paulson cared about any brokerage other than Goldman Sachs; its more likely that there was no way for Paulson to assure that the federal government socialized Goldman’s losses without taking on the losses of Merrill Lynch and those foreign banks as well.

We are not saving AIG to save the world economy. We are socializing the losses of some of the wealthiest companies and individuals in the world, who put all of their money down on a losing number on the roulette wheel and are lucky enough to have friends in the cashier’s cage to pay off their losses and keep them whole.

We have been suckered and it is long past time for Obama to pull off the scab and reveal the festering corruption that is our politico-financial system. PUT THE BLAME WHERE IT BELONGS: on the shoulders of those who made the bad bets and those who were in power and capable to protecting them from their hubris and insane greed.

Put Hank Paulson front and center. Slam a dunce cap on his head and put him in front of Congress and read through every action of his at Goldman Sachs that pushed risk and rewarded the most cynical and short-sighted profit taking. Put Goldman Sach’s losses paid off by AIG on a big readerboard, and force Paulson to explain how the government paying off those credit-default swaps of Goldman Sachs at 100% – at the same time he was forcing auto workers to take massive pay and benefit cuts – was in the best interests of the average American taxpayer.

Put the outrage where it belongs.

And after the congressional hearings are over, force Paulson to exit the Capitol through a gauntlet of the unemployed and the newly destitute, armed with dogshit and rotten tomatoes.

Okay, maybe that last part isn’t strictly legal. But Obama must stand up and name names, and Paulson’s needs to be the first.

It’s to Wall Street’s benefit to make this seem impossibly complex. But we all understand a con when we see one, and all of us hapless marks need Obama to turn the tables on these bastards.

Because as it stands now, no one who made millions over the last 10 years will pay a dime in recompense for the horror they have wrought. And the rich will get richer and richer still.

But if we call out Paulson and his minions (I’m looking at you, Neel Kashkari) and make them explain in public why it was so important that Goldman and Merrill et al be made whole while the rest of us can’t bear to open our 401(k) statements (or worse, are retired now and have nothing left to live on), maybe we can get back the kind of fiscal, regulatory and tax policies that made the middle class possible in this country.

Because when you have people paying 15% tax on their massive wealth, they become rich enough to game the system.

And democracy dies.

UPDATE: Harold Meyerson says it better.

Special note to Merritt Paulson: You want a professional soccer team here in Portland? Pay for it yourself. Daddy’s got more than enough money and this city can’t spare one dime thanks to him and his buddies.

1 Comments

• At March 18, 2009, John d4v.org wrote:

  Because when you have people paying 15% tax on their massive wealth, they become rich enough to game the system.

  For 25 years now I have been saying the tax rates on people who make enormous amounts of money are too low. And one of the most wealthy people on the planet, Warren Buffett, agrees with me.

  But every time a new tax act was passed in the last 25 years to cut taxes for the middle class, the upper income crowd got their big fat tax cuts too (except perhaps the Bush I "mistake" and Obama's first tax package) and their cuts were bigger not just in dollars but also in percentage of taxes paid.

  If you make $10,000,000 a year, what is wrong with getting a net of $3,000,000 a year? The vast majority of the World cannot even imagine what it would be like to net $3,000,000 in a year. When it takes about 1% of that $3,000,000 to provide the necessities of life, it becomes absurd to allow such enormous wealth to accumulate in the hands of the few when so many are in such dire need of being helped out of poverty.

  Call me a socialist, a communist, whatever, - I strongly believe the biggest cause of economic turmoil is that we allow too few to have too much and too many to have too little.

  And you cannot expect wealthy individuals to give up their wealth to help those in need. Most people are far too selfish to make those kinds of sacrifices. It can only be accomplished by government intervention.

  Part of me hopes that the "too big to fail" end up failing so that a new system can be put in place to prevent the "too big" from ever being "too big" again.

Within days of his inauguration, Mr. Obama thrilled civil liberties groups when he issued executive orders promising less secrecy, restricting C.I.A. interrogators to Army Field Manual techniques, shuttering the agency’s secret prisons, ordering the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, closed within a year and halting military commission trials.

But in more recent weeks, things have become murkier.