Inside the Data Mine

Crooks, crooks and more crooks. When will it ever end, unless we form a squad of citizen vigilantes and track them all down like wild animals?

A Dig led by Onnesha Roychoudhuri

On April 20, 2007, former Qwest telecommunications CEO Joseph Nacchio was found guilty on 19 of 42 counts of insider trading. “For anyone who has ever made a call in Qwest territory, the term ‘convicted felon Joe Nacchio’ has a nice ring to it,” U.S. prosecutor Troy Eid told the press. The mood was fairly universal. One securities lawyer pitched in: “The government has another notch in their belt. They’ve had a tremendous winning streak in these corporate crime cases.”

But it would have been more accurate to qualify the statement by saying that the government has had a tremendous winning streak in the corporate crime cases it chooses to pursue. We now know that the Securities and Exchange Commission has chosen not to pursue charges of insider trading in the case of a Wall Street executive named John J. Mack because of his “political clout.” And while former U.S. Attorney William Leone led the case against Qwest, he was one of the unfortunate attorneys on the Department of Justice’s “purge list,” replaced by none other than Bush-nominated Troy Eid, a former co-worker of Jack Abramoff at the firm Greenberg Traurig.

In the wake of the Enron scandal, Nacchio’s verdict could be seen as the continuing triumph of an efficient and unbiased judicial system—one working to protect the people’s interests against unbridled business tycoons. But the insidious environment of purges and selective prosecution based on cronyism necessitates a more critical view. To celebrate Nacchio’s verdict in such a simplistic light would miss a far more interesting story about what telecommunications success and failure signify in a post-September 11th world.

Delving into Joseph Nacchio and Qwest’s story reveals a company with close ties to the White House—ties that appear to have been temporarily severed when, according to Nacchio and his legal team at Qwest, the company refused to participate in the government’s data-mining program—making it the only big telecommunications company that didn’t take part. Nacchio claims that secret government contracts he was expecting were never delivered after his refusal to participate in the National Security Agency program, resulting in skewed profit claims.

While currently under new leadership, wooing back government contracts, and finally turning a profit, Qwest will have to struggle to maintain a competitive edge in an industry of telecommunications giants. These giants have received favorable treatment from the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. Parallel to this success have come news reports that these ever-merging entities—notably AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon—are participating in domestic data-mining programs.

In an amoebic dance, SBC, AT&T, Bell South, Cingular, MCI and Verizon have all coupled and re-coupled, forming a terrain redolent of the days of Ma Bell. Comedian Stephen Colbert, with deadpan delivery, traced the acrobatics in his January 2007 TV primer explaining why Cingular changed its name to AT&T:

As you no doubt remember, Cingular was co-owned by BellSouth and SBC, which had been Southwestern Bell and Ameritech, which before that had been Illinois Bell, Wisconsin Bell, Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell, and Indiana Bell. ... A couple of years ago Cingular bought AT&T Wireless and renamed it Cingular, but then SBC bought AT&T and changed its own name to AT&T. Then that new AT&T bought BellSouth, changing its name to AT&T, making it only logical to change Cingular into AT&T.

These mergers are even more conspicuous due to the number that have been approved in just the past three years. 2005 alone saw enough mergers to leave Americans with only two major telecommunications companies: Verizon and AT&T. Colbert cites the most recent and highly contested AT&T/BellSouth merger that combined the country’s two largest telecommunications companies. Despite the massive scope of the merger, when the Department of Justice conducted its regulatory analysis it concluded that there were no major antitrust issues.

In contrast to companies such as AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, Qwest has encountered significant roadblocks in its expansion efforts, causing telecommunications experts to ask pointed questions about differing treatment from the Department of Justice, the FCC and the SEC. Specifically: Is there government retribution? The question gains clout in light of the recent U.S. attorney scandal and the selective prosecution that the Bush administration has been practicing.

The ties between the telecommunications industry and the White House have grown even deeper since the Sept. 11 attacks, making it impossible to understand data mining or the telecommunications industry without exploring this relationship.

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Let The Sun Shine In......

2012: Armegeddon or Quantum Leap? Gregg Braden's Answer-Fractal Time

Has it dawned on anyone that "the world" is not the same as the planet, Earth.?

February 28, 2009

By Meryl Ann Butler

Gregg Braden

CULVER CITY, CA – NY Times Bestselling author Gregg Braden offered a compelling presentation, Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age on Friday evening, Feb. 27th , at the Agape International Spiritual Center. The Center was founded by the Rev. Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith of “The Secret” fame.

Braden asked, “What does 2012 mean for us today?” noting that a number of traditions around the world predict the end of the world on Dec. 21st, 2012. Climate change, new diseases, food shortages, and “wars, and rumors of wars,” all seem to herald the end. Even now, some people are living in bunkers, hoarding food and weapons, and preparing for a global disaster.

Braden showed the trailer for the movie “2012,” due out later this year, which introduces an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world, (Hollywood-style, natch.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVi_2lHBVhQ

Perhaps inspired by images like these, a 15-year old boy recently wrote a letter to Braden, saying that it didn’t seem right that the world would end in 3 years, just when he turned 18, and was supposed to be beginning his life. Poignantly, he asked Braden if there was any way for him to survive.

And Braden offers his answers.

According to Braden, the end of any age is accompanied by a period of brief but significant intensity, and he says we are in those times now. These outer changes inspire us to look within for answers.

And, he says, it is no accident that we are here at the moment of great change – the very same science that heralds doom and gloom, also offers the answer: what is required is a new language. And he explores what that language might be.

Science tell us that:

1. In the center core of the Milky Way Galaxy is a great source of energy, a powerful, pulsing, magnetic field that affects us.

2. Where our planet is in her orbit determines how we are affected by this magnetic field of energy. The location changes on a regular basis over long cycles of time which can be calculated. Ancient Egyptian and Mayan civilizations knew about this, but we couldn’t confirm it scientifically until the 1990’s with the use of the Hubble telescope.

3. The Earth also “wobbles” on its axis, due to the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. This “wobbling” affects how outer space appears when viewed from Earth. One complete wobble takes almost 26,000 years. This 26,000 year cycle is composed of 12 shorter cycles of slightly over 5000 years each, and is called the Precession of the Equinox.

4. The Milky Way galaxy is shaped like a disc. Our solar system is positioned toward the outer portions of the galaxy.


On Dec. 21st, 2012, when the solstic sun rises, our planet will be in perfect alignment with the core of the Milky Way Galaxy for the first time in over 5,000 years, giving us an an unobstructed window to our galaxy’s source energy. This moment is the ending of a 5000 year cycle, as well as the ending of the 26,000 year cycle.

But this isn’t the first time this has happened. This is a cycle that our little planet has gone through many times.

The last time a similar ending of cycles happened was in 1155 BC, when Egypt’s 20th dynasty collapsed. The cause of its demise? They initiated so many wars, that they couldn’t maintain them all, and this caused economic collapse. Déjà vu, anyone?

The understanding of these cycles of time can be illuminated by fractal science.

Braden explained that a fractal is repetition in different scales: microcosm and macrocosm.

An atom is a fractal of a solar system, and a neural synapse is a fractal of a bolt of lightening. Nature builds the universe from similar patterns. Braden said, “The small pattern is a window to understanding the big pattern.”

This fractal relationship is seen in the cycles of time as well. If one can determine when the seed event of a cycle was planted, the natural laws and rhythms of cyclic activity will divulge details about what to expect when the conditions repeat.

“The future is only the past, returning through another gate.” ~ Arnold Glasgow

Braden has devised a Time Code Calculator, based on mathematics that he explains more fully in his book. This calculator shows how events like Pearl Harbor and 9-11 are not random events, but linked through meaningful patterns of cyclic activity. Once the patterns are decoded, future events can be predicted.

Once his book is released on March 17th, a working Time Code Calculator will be available on his website for visitors’ use.

Science now supports the concept of an energy field that connects everything. Heart-math research shows that it is the language of emotion that connects us to the heart rhythms and brain waves of the planet. www.heartmath.com/

The organ in the human body that creates the strongest electrical and magnetic field is the heart, and it is 5000 times stronger than the field created by the brain.

I have often wondered if that’s why, when the Ancient Egyptians mummified their rulers, they discarded the brain, but preserved the heart.


Fractal Time by Gregg Braden (Pub. Hay House, March 2009)

Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) send an image of the geomagnetic field back to earth every 30 minutes. The magnetic field registered major anomalies on Sept. 11th and the days following, indicating the effect that human emotions have on the magnetic field.

Any ending, is also a new beginning. Braden says he believes we have a rare opportunity to come together as a family on this planet, and to learn from the mistakes of the civilizations in the past.

Global changes trigger spiritual growth. We have an opportunity for cooperation or competition. 300 years of science have told us that we are powerless victims, but Braden begs to differ. The magnetic field, which is the source of life, cannot be separated from human beings, and the link is the language of the heart: our emotions.

Braden predicts that 2012 is not the end of the world, but a new beginning.



Braden continues with a workshop intensive on Sat Feb. 28th, from 10 – 6pm. Agape International Spiritual Center, 5700 Buckingham Parkway, Culver City CA. $140 at the door. 90230. www.agapelive.com.

Further info and resources:

Fractal Time: The Secret of 2012 and a New World Age by Gregg Braden (Hay House, March 2009)

According to Global Coherence Initiative (www.glcoherence.org ), and organization with which Braden is involved, 16 years of heart-brain communication validated the central role of the human heart in building coherence and setting forth the chain of wellbeing. This science-based initiative is working to unite millions of people in heart-focused care and intention, to shift global consciousness from instability and discord to balance, cooperation and enduring peace. This project has been launched by the Institute of HeartMath®, a nonprofit 501(c)(3), a recognized global leader in researching emotional physiology, heart-brain interactions and the physiology of optimal health and performance.

Gregg Braden’s website: www.greggbraden.com/

A related event of interest: 2012 Quantum Leap March 13-15, at the Burbank, CA Marriott Hotel and Convention Center. www.2012quantumleap.com.

Author's Website: www.merylannbutler.com

Author's Bio: Meryl Ann Butler is an artist, author and educator who counts First Lady Dolley Payne Todd Madison as well as two signers of the Articles of Confederation among her ancestors. Mary Ball, mother of George Washington is in the ancestral lineage of Butler's great grandmother, Blanche Ball. Grateful to know that the blood of America's founding mothers and fathers runs in her veins, Butler has been newly filled with matriotism as a direct result of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Lest she appear too uppity, it should be revealed that she also has family ties to James Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill. Butler has been actively engaged in utilizing the arts as stepping-stones toward joy-filled enlightenment for the past two decades. A native of NYC, her response to 9-11 was to pen an invitation to healing through creativity, entitled, "90-Minute Quilts: 15+ Projects You Can Stitch in an Afternoon" (Krause 2006). They don't call quilts "comforters" for nothing! www.90minutequilts.com Butler was faculty advisor for "The Love for All Mankind/Anti-Apartheid Quilt" project at ENMU (1993), now in the collection of the Hon. Nelson Mandela. As Arts Advisor for the Center for Improving U.S.- Soviet Relations (CIUSSR) Baltimore, MD; her activities included the "First U.S.-Soviet Childrens' Peace Quilt Exchange" (1987-88), an historic project chronicled in the media of both countries. Citizen diplomacy trips to the U.S.S.R. in 1987 and 1988 included lectures and presentations to fashion designers, craftspeople and artists in Odessa, Moscow, Kiev and St.Petersburg, in which she focused on the topic of creating global peace through international art exchanges. Butler is the proud mother of a daughter and seven stepchildren (all grown), and a passel o' grand younguns. It is to these new generations that she dedicates her political activism. Archived articles www.opednews.com/author/author1820.html Older archived articles, from before May 2005 are here.,

Let The Sun Shine In......

CPAC: Is This What The GOP Has Come to?

My God in heaven!

I've just been watching the last and, possibly, the most clinically insane of the speakers at CPAC; Rush "Hill-billy Heroin" Limbaugh.

Limbaugh and people like him are surely doing their best to start an insurrection, cause another Oklahoma City or another assassination.

If this is what the GOP has come to, I don't know whether to feel sorry for them or start making plans to take them out, label the Rethugs illegal, as Germany did with the Nazi party.

What in God's name is the matter with these people?

Their hatred for Obama and every person who voted for him is more than palpable. What they haven't considered, I guess, is that Americans of all stripes are wising up and know who to blame for the horrendous state of our nation. and it's not Barack Obama.

Ifwhen the shooting starts, as they are all calling for, they will have the biggest targets on their backs.

One of the many pleasant aftereffects of ultra-conservatism's crackup is the retirement of a civic need for appalled spectators to demonize its out-patient disciples -- or whacko-ize them, if you will -- because they're doing such a marvelous job of it all by themselves.

I mean, what additional diagnosis or prognosis is required when, for instance, the far right gathers with such convenient tidiness at events like CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, and puts on pitiable display not only a wholesale absence of serious public policy, but a virtual 24/7 unraveling of whatever slim dignity it once strove to possess.

When even goddess-of-the-right Sarah Palin declines an appearance -- she suspects her old pals now have the cooties, I guess, plus she's too busy cramming for her 2012 finals, uncomprehendingly digesting copious past issues of Foreign Policy and Time for Kids -- then one knows the heavy black curtains are being lugubriously drawn.

"Man, this CPAC thing is crazy," observed Mr. Samuel Wurzelbacher, a.k.a. Joe the Plumber, to fellow attendee Mike Huckabee -- and that's probably the sanest thing we'll ever hear Sam/Joe utter. With concise but tragically fleeting lucidity, he captured the moment, the spirit, the zeitgeisty degeneration of his semi-philosophical compadres.

Sam/Joe Wurzelbacher/Plumber was, as the Politico reported, "a headliner at a Thursday panel titled 'Conservatism 2.0.' " A headliner, mind you: an itinerant, breathtakingly clueless bullshitter was a CPAC-Chosen One to enlighten the multitudes on the fundamentals of conservatism. Breathtaking indeed.

Also on Thursday there were book signings by the still-unnetted Ann Coulter -- just the name chills for itself -- and the vastly disingenuous David Horowitz. (I once heard David say in an interview that college professors lead a carefree, easy life of leisure with phenomenal pay; oh, they give occasional lectures, but that's pretty much the burden of their existence. A few months later, in another interview that touched on why there are so few female professors in the sciences, I heard him say it's because women don't care to suffer the grueling schedules and demands of a college professorship. This is a man who makes his living by deriding the intellectual honesty of higher-education sorts.)

So that was Thursday but today, of course, is Saturday, which brings us -- or, rather, just them, thankfully -- to CPAC's bookended finale of ... Rush Limbaugh, scheduled to bellow and bray at 5:00pm EST, then -- get this -- receive at 5:30 the "Defender of the Constitution Award." (America's Constitution?)

Just now I ventured over to rushlimbaugh.com to take an intrepid peek at how this deep Conscience of Conservatism might be previewing his upcoming performance. Here's what I found, here's what is on Rush's Web site, here's what is weighing on the profound mind of Mr. Limbaugh in these profoundest of deeply troubled times:

You know, Clint Eastwood had it right, Clint Eastwood said he's fed up with political correctness. He's fed up with everybody trying to be politically correct. He's fed up with nobody being able to laugh anymore. He's fed up with not being able to tell race jokes and ethnic jokes. When he was growing up, everybody did. Nobody took offense at it. Every race tells jokes about the other race. Every country tells jokes about people in other countries. We can't do it anymore.

I gather, however, that Rush will this evening. But pause just a moment and consider what topic -- from all the topics available to choose from in these, as noted, horrifically troubled times -- Mr. Limbaugh chose with which to preview his speech: race jokes.

That kind of says it all, doesn't it? It pinpoints and broadcasts just how utterly adrift and altogether irrelevant movement conservatism has become.

But don't take my word for it, commie-pinko unAmerican rabble-rouser that I surely am in the seething, delirious, Rush-possessed eyes of the far right. You might, however, try on for size, say, John Derbyshire, a National Review contributing editor writing this (suspiciously) for The American Conservative:

Why have we allowed carny barkers to run away with the Right?...

Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs? They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they helped create the great debt bubble that has now burst so spectacularly....

In place of the permanent things, we get Happy Meal conservatism: cheap, childish, familiar. Gone are the internal tensions, the thought-provoking paradoxes, the ideological uneasiness that marked the early Right.

But however much this dumbing down has damaged the conservative brand, it appeals to millions of Americans....

If conservatism is to have a future ... it will need to listen to more than the looped tape of lowbrow talk radio.

As spotlighted this evening before the huddled, fawning and lowbrow masses of CPAC.

A Mr. Derbyshire I can respect, I can debate, I can even empathize with, in many a Burkean way. A Mr. Limbaugh I can only laugh at -- and marvel at the irrelevantly silly depths to which he and his fellow carny barkers have dragged modern conservatism. 'Tis a pity, because modern liberalism needs a worthy opponent if it's to maintain its own mental health.

For personal questions or comments you can contact him at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

Let The Sun Shine In......

Why the Meltdown Has Only Just Begun

By Ed Komarek

As general economic conditions deteriorate in the United States and around the world we hear politicians and bureaucrats increasing using fire analogies in reference to the financial and economic meltdown. Almost every day we hear politicians, reporters, and economists making statements like, "We have to put out the fire now, or that there is a fire raging through our financial-economic system."- As it turns out these analogies are well founded because both fire and man are part of nature.

Because man is part of nature his social behavior is subject to natural periodic cyclical processes of creation and destruction. Fire is a regenerative force in nature that periodically removes waste products that build up in natural ecosystems on a regular and periodic basis. In a similar manner, regular natural periodic recessions remove excesses and rot that build up in financial, economic and political systems during boom times.

Most natural ecosystems are adapted to light cool fires that burn out dead debris and brush every one to three years. There are some ecosystems that naturally cycle in longer catastrophic cycles in the Arctic and in Australia , but most natural ecosystems use fire to regenerate every several years. The large trees in the forest are protected by insulating bark from light cool fires, while the roots of grasses and herbs are protected by the topsoil and quickly sprout back after a light fire has passed.

Because man is part of nature we can also see these same natural periodic cycles in the growth and collapse of man's social systems. In boom times all manner of social rot builds up from outright fraud and deceit to excessive unrealistic expectations of future unlimited growth and opportunity. When man's social systems are allowed to cycle naturally, economic, financial and political bubbles are allowed to collapse in small limited recessions removing the social rot. The limited recession, like the light fire in the forest ecosystem, removes the excesses from the social system that then leads to economic expansion once again.

As mankind learns and evolves there is a tendency to make false assumptions about both nature and social systems and to begin attempts to improve on nature and social systems. Again this is a learning process and mistakes are bound to be made based on these false assumptions. In the case of fire at the beginning of the past century some folks got it into their minds that fire was bad for the environment and began attempts at fire suppression through the U.S. Forest Service.

Over the past century fire suppression got better and better, but with the suppression of fire, debris began to build up in the Nation's forests to catastrophic levels resulting in catastrophic wildfires that could not be stopped and that burned up the whole forest. The wildfire that consumed Yellowstone National Park was the result of the fire suppression policies set forth decades earlier. Ironically Yellowstone burned because the same incompetent people that were involved in the suppression of light natural fires finally realized that they had created a power keg that was about to explode. They tried to control burn but just as incompetently let the controlled fire get out of control.

Coincidentally over this past century mankind has also learned how to suppress limited frequent economic recessions. This suppression of limited natural occurring recessions that remove economic, political and financial rot and excess has resulted in a catastrophic accumulation. This has created the conditions for a catastrophic collapse of global social systems beginning with the global financial system. Like with fire the collapse is exceeding the ability to suppress because the rot accumulation has become so great. We can now expect the financial meltdown to continue into the global economic and political systems with increasing disastrous consequences.

The same mistakes made with fire over the past century have been made socially. We need to learn from these mistakes rather that throw even more monies into suppression efforts. Unfortunately suppression also creates powerful special interests that fight efforts to understand these mistakes and re-balance the system. These entrenched interests demand even greater efforts at suppression which will eventually result in naught. Monies should be saved to rejuvenate the system after the collapse is complete.

Huge societal excesses, deceptions, fraud and other rot has built up since the great depression of the 1930s and now is threatening yet another great depression. As with Yellowstone National Park in the past, today's political, economic and social leaders are actually bringing to fruition their greatest economic and social nightmares. Again ironically their economic remedies to control the situation are fanning the flames.

Much of the rot in society has to do with the concentration of power in all social systems. Today's leaders are continuing to try to prop up the large institutions responsible for this mess with funds siphoned off from the taxpayers. This is being done either through an overt direct increase in taxes, or from a covert hidden tax of future hyper-inflation.

While recessions and depressions may be naturally occurring rejuvenating forces like fire, these great depressions are the result of mankind's misunderstanding of the natural role of recessions and the economic cycle. Often our initial attempts to control nature and ourselves backfire because of our misunderstanding and irresponsible interference in natural processes.

After this financial, economic, political and social collapse from this catastrophic super cycle of our own creation, our social systems will recover and be rejuvenated just as is happening with Yellowstone National Park. Instead of getting the pain in small regular stable doses over time we have elected to take the pain all at once and in one huge dose. The problem is that this destabilizes the whole social system causing a huge restructuring of human activity in a short period of time. When we look back on this collective experience we may discover that a whole way of life has now truly gone with the wind.

Author's Website: http://exopolitics.blogspot.com/

Author's Bio: Ed Komarek Jr. was born into a family of early ecologists and learned ecology and the natural sciences as a apprentice. He holds no formal degrees as did neither Herb Stoddard or his father Ed Komarek Sr. (Ed Komarek Sr. did later in life did get a honorary doctorate for his lifetime of work from Florida State University.) Herb Stoddard and close friend Aldo Leopold are recognized as the fathers of Ecology. Herb Stoddard was Ed's father's mentor, who later became know internationally as the father of Fire Ecology and who waged a lifetime info-war against Smokey The Bear anti-fire propagandists. Herb was like a grandfather to young Ed. In his early twenties Ed Komarek Jr. dropped out of college where he was majoring in wildlife management to strike out on his own into what was later to be called exopolitics, long before the name exopoltics was coined by Alfred Webre, JD. Never in his wildest dreams did young Ed expect that latter in life that the fields of ecology and exopolitics would converge into even another field of advanced study becoming known as astro-ecology.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Leahy Announces List of Witnesses For 'Truth Commission' Hearing

Friday, 27 February 2009 12:07

By Jason Leopold Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy released the list of three witnesses who will testify at a hearing next week on forming a "truth commission" to investigate controversial Bush administration policies, such as torture and domestic surveillance. Thomas Pickering served as Under Secretary of State from 1997-2000, and served as Ambassador to the United Nations for President George H.W. Bush. He holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the United States Foreign Service. Pickering is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations. Retired Vice Admiral Lee Gunn served in the military for 35 years. He was Inspector General of the Navy, and on the board of the American Security Project. Gunn has been outspoken about his opposition to detention and interrogation policies that have permitted torture. John Farmer served as a senior counsel and team leader for the 9/11 Commission. Farmer is a former State Attorney General for New Jersey. Through his work with the Constitution Project, Farmer has expressed support for an independent commission to examine Bush administration detainee and interrogation policies and practices. In a floor statement on Wednesday, Leahy said his March 4 hearing, “Getting to the Truth Through a Nonpartisan Commission of Inquiry," would examine the best way for an independent panel to probe how Bush exercised his “national security and executive power as related to counter-terrorism efforts.” “The past can be prologue unless we set things right,” the Vermont Democrat said. “The last administration justified torture, presided over the abuses at Abu Ghraib, destroyed tapes of harsh interrogations, and conducted ‘extraordinary renditions’ that sent people to countries that permit torture during interrogations. “The last administration used the Justice Department – our premier law enforcement agency – to subvert the intent of congressional statutes. They wrote secret law to give themselves legal cover for these misguided policies, policies that could not withstand scrutiny if brought to light.” On the same day, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, in an interview with Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC program Wednesday, called Leahy's investigative plan “a good idea,” but objected to an immunity proposal by Leahy that could prevent prosecutors from holding Bush administration officials accountable for crimes in a court of law. Pelosi, who refused to hold impeachment hearings when George W. Bush was President, signaled that she now prefers a proposal by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, who wants a “blue-ribbon panel” to probe the Bush administration but seeks a special prosecutor, too. Pelosi also said that when she was on the House Intelligence Committee during Bush's first term she was briefed about the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques but only in the "abstract." She said she was never told the agency's interrogators intended to use such methods. Though Leahy has argued that a “truth commission” is the best way to expose the dark underbelly of Bush’s policies, other civil liberties experts say accountability requires bringing to justice perpetrators of serious crimes, no matter how high their government positions. On Tuesday, David Swanson of afterdowningstreet.org circulated a petition demanding Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special prosecutor to launch a criminal investigation into the Bush administration’s actions. After Leahy’s Senate comments, the American Civil Liberties Union weighed in, urging both a special prosecutor and a congressional select committee. "Both the Obama administration and Congress have an obligation to conduct investigations in order to achieve accountability and to ensure these egregious errors will not happen again,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “In order for America to move forward and put torture and abuse behind us, we must know how our nation was led astray.” A Gallup poll, released this month, found a plurality favoring a criminal probe – and a strong majority supporting some additional fact-finding. For instance, on torture, 38 percent favored a criminal investigation while 24 percent favored an inquiry by an independent panel. Thirty-four percent of those polled said they did not support additional investigation of Bush’s policies. The poll results undercut claims of many Republicans and some Democrats that the public lacks the appetite to look into Bush administration abuses.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Good Odds that Rupert Murdoch Will be Responsible for the Next Timothy McVeigh or Assassination Attempt

The Constitution guarantees free speech. It does not guarantee huge megaphones to people who incite hatred and/violence against elected officials, judges or ordinary citizens.

If terrorist events or assassinations occur as a result of their blabbering on our airwaves, these people should be held responsible and, trust me, they will be.

by Mark Karlin (Buzzflash)

Yes, with the civil war talk on the program of the recently acquired FOX News demagogue, Glenn Beck, inflammatory talk by Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh's nativist rants that equate Obama to something akin to an amalgamation of Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler, the right-wing media is stirring up the dangerous angry white male resentment to a dangerous frenzied pitch.

And we all know where that ended up with Timothy McVeigh and the militia movement of the '90s, which was enabled by the right-wing media barons -- such as Rupert Murdoch -- to create a literal armed militia movement against the government of the United States.

Call it treasonous, call it demagoguery, call it treachery: it is what comes down the pike when the wealthy Democratic elites are more content to fund organizations that criticize the apocalyptic, brown-shirted Murdoch media barons rather than buying up media and delivering an alternative message that emphasizes loyalty to the truth, Constitution and democracy.

Sure, we love Media Matters, but they are just a fly on a donkey's butt as far as Rupert Murdoch and the gang are concerned. Media Matters will get an occasional correction of factual errors -- if they pull out all their guns for one, but it's too little a compensation for the energy put into the effort. And the people who take in the corporate media remember the misleading assertion, not the rare convoluted retraction.

The reality is that the only thing that matters in media is owning it. Murdoch knows that and couldn't give a horse's fart for what Media Matters has to say, nor does CBS which just hired a Democratic-hating Republican stalwart as their senior communications executive.

Nor do any of the mainstream corporate media: including radio, television and print. They will just keep on doing what they are doing because they own it and they know what they want: an oligarchy.

The troops for this formidable army of images, mistruths, and emotional manipulation are the angry white males, the guys who have felt displaced by minorities and women and immigrants ever since the Civil Rights and Feminist upheaval began in the '60s.

And these displaced white guys are armed to the teeth, courtesy of the NRA and the senators and representatives who lie down like doormats for the gun lobby in Congress.

And bristling with guns -- including the .50 caliber sniper rifle that is legal in all but California -- they feel enabled and patriotic in rising up against the legitimate Constitutional government of the United States.

As rabid as Hannity and Beck and Limbaugh may seem, their ratings have actually gone up since Obama's election. The white male who has been shafted by the wealthy elite, pick-pocketed and left in humiliation, falls prey yet again to the siren song of the Murdoch/Ailes stable of Goebbels disciples and their cohorts such as Limbaugh and Savage.

This is no exaggeration. Glenn Greenwald discusses it as do the superlative FOX trackers at FOX Newshounds.

And its impact is seen drilling down to discussions on Sean Hannity's website of armed rebellion, military coup, and secession.

Those Obama supporters who think I am being hyperbolic have a short sense of history. This is what we saw in the Clinton administration that led to the domestic terrorist Oklahoma bombing and trumped up impeachment.

And before the right-wing media was as consolidated as it is today, we saw our liberal leaders gunned down one by one in the '60s, resutling in the election of Richard Nixon -- and the beginning of the well-funded corporate mainstream media consolidation owned by people beholden only to the oligarchy, not the American public.

Yes, there are exceptions, but they are few in number, far too few.

And Murdoch may do his own non-apology about his New York Post's thinly veiled racist incitement cartoon of two white police officers shooting a chimp representing -- in full bigoted Murdoch fashion -- Obama.

But when the armed angry white males decide to act because of the Murdoch/Limbaugh et al. incitement to rise up ringing in their ears, the blood will be on the hands of Rupert and his fellow right-wing corporate media barons -- and he won't be sorry for it.

He'll only feel one thing: Mission accomplished.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Bobby "Earmark" Jindal

Earmarks are just fine, when they help goopers get elected, I suppose.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Meg White

The morning after listening to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's rebuttal speech, where he railed against a stimulus package "larded with wasteful spending," to the president's state of the nation address, I walked into the office and sent out a Tweet:

"Did anyone else think Gov. Bobby Jindal sounded like a cross between Mr. Rogers and a used car salesman in his rebuttal to Obama's speech?"

The more I learn about this new Republican savior, the more he sounds like a used car salesman.

It was no surprise when Jindal went off on the supposed earmarks in the stimulus package. Many have written about the lies that Jindal repeated about supposed stimulus pork, which ran the gamut all the way from miserly mice to voracious volcanoes. But it turns out he was being disingenuous and hypocritical at the same time.

In fiscal year 2008, his last hurrah as a U.S. congressman representing Louisiana before taking over the governor's mansion, Jindal scored big in the pork contest. He, sometimes in concert with other lawmakers, ended up bringing home $97,913,200 in bacon. That put him at the number 14 spot in Taxpayers for Common Sense's annual tally of the most successful appropriators in the House.

Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, told me that Jindal has every right to change his mind about earmarks now, but "facts are facts."

"He definitely did well... in the House," said Ellis. "Clearly he was not concerned about the earmark process, or not concerned enough to say 'no' at that point."

Ellis also pointed out that Jindal's place on the list is more significant than some others.

"There's only one other lawmaker that's ahead of him that wasn't on the appropriations committee," Ellis said.

That didn't seem to be weighing on Jindal during his prime-time speech.

Jindal's objection over the money going to volcano monitoring sounded like a crafted pop song. He even had a nice hook: "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."

Too bad his factoid wasn't true. ProPublica notes that the $140 billion Jindal was whining about will be spent on "U.S. Geological Survey facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities."

But obfuscation wasn't enough for Jindal, so he threw in another batch of hypocrisy.

According to the USGS Web site, "a major goal of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is to reduce the vulnerability of the people and areas most at risk from natural hazards."

So if we take away money for monitoring volcanoes, wouldn't it be fair to cut funding for hurricane watchers as well?

Not that Jindal was silent on hurricanes. No, he wasn't about to let one of the biggest government letdowns in the past decade go not utilized. He railed against the shoddy response to the 2005 disaster to prove that, um... the stimulus won't work?

Furthermore, Jindal shows his true bullying nature when he repeats a lie about the salt marsh harvest mouse. The lie was first uttered by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) when he dubbed it Nancy Pelosi's pet mouse. From there it marched up the ladder of pseudo-credibility from the Washington Times to Fox Business to The New York Times. But it still wasn't true.

Come on, Bobby. Put away the tired rhetoric and pick on somebody your own size.

He is picking on someone his own size; a mouse apparently.

Jindal doesn't seem to mind when pork makes it to his state. Maybe his objection is that the salt marsh harvest mouse and volcanoes aren't in Louisiana?

Let The Sun Shine In......

Bobby Jindal's Secret Past

Geeze Louise, I thought Palin was a nutcase. This guy is even worse!

by Max Blumenthal

February 24, 2009 | 7:24pm

Alex Brandon / AP Photo

Did you know about the exorcism? The name that came from The Brady Bunch? Those and other surprising facts about one of America’s fastest rising young politicians.

Last night, on the evening of President Barack Obama’s first major speech, the Republicans put forward Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal as the face of the opposition, tapping him to deliver their response. As a 37-year-old Indian-American Rhodes Scholar, the first-term governor presented a deliberate visual counterpoint to Obama. His folksy speech last evening is meeting with mixed reviews. But with GOP politicians already jockeying for the 2012 primary, Jindal is emerging as a top contender.

“From the insiders I’m talking to, Jindal’s in the top three, right next to [Sarah] Palin and [Mitt] Romney. He’s the rock star of the Republican Party right now,” says Jeff Crouere, the former executive director of the Louisiana GOP and host of daily political talk show Ringside Politics.

“Whenever I concentrated long enough to begin prayer, I felt some type of physical force distracting me,” Jindal reflected. “It was as if something was pushing down on my chest, making it very hard for me to breathe…”

But as the country gets acquainted with the Bayou’s boy wonder, the stranger details of Jindal’s religious or personal background remain largely unknown, even among the Republican grassroots. How many Americans know that Jindal boasted of participating in an exorcism that purged the spirit of Satan from a college girlfriend? So far, Jindal’s tale of “beating a demon” remains behind the subscription wall of New Oxford Review, an obscure Catholic magazine; only a few major blogs have seized on the story.

Born in Baton Rouge in 1971, Jindal rarely visited his parents’ homeland. His birth name was Piyush Jindal. When he was four years old, Piyush changed his name to “Bobby” after becoming mesmerized by an episode of The Brady Bunch. Jindal later wrote that he began considering converting to Catholicism during high school after “being touched by the love and simplicity of a Christian girl who dreamt of becoming a Supreme Court justice so she could stop her country from ‘killing unborn babies.’” After watching a short black-and-white film on the crucifixion of Christ, Jindal claimed he “realized that if the Gospel stories were true, if Christ really was the son of God, it was arrogant of me to reject Him and question the gift of salvation.”

Jindal’s Hindu parents were non-plussed. “My parents have never truly accepted my conversion and still see my faith as a negative that overshadows my accomplishments,” he wrote. “They were hurt and felt I was rejecting them by accepting Christianity… I long for the day when my parents understand, respect and possibly accept my faith. For now I am satisfied that they accept me.” (In a subsequent interview with Little India, Jindal claimed his parents were “very supportive. They felt like it was important that I was embracing God.”)

During his years at Brown University, Jindal pursued his Catholic faith with unbridled zeal. Jindal became emotionally involved with a classmate named Susan who had overcome skin cancer and struggled to cope with the suicide of a close friend. Jindal reflected in an article for a Catholic magazine (called “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare”) that “sulfuric” scents hovered over Susan everywhere she went. In the middle of a prayer meeting, Jindal claimed that Susan collapsed and began convulsing on the floor. His prayer partners gathered together on the floor, holding hands and shouting, “Satan, I command you to leave this woman!”

While under the supposed control of satanic demons, Susan lashed out at Jindal and his friends. “Whenever I concentrated long enough to begin prayer, I felt some type of physical force distracting me,” Jindal reflected. “It was as if something was pushing down on my chest, making it very hard for me to breathe… I began to think that the demon would only attack me if I tried to pray or fight back; thus, I resigned myself to leaving it alone in an attempt to find peace for myself.”

Toward the conclusion of what Jindal called “the tremendous battle between the Susan we knew and loved and some strange and evil force,” Jindal and his friends forced Susan to read passages from the Bible. “She choked on certain passages and could not finish the sentence ‘Jesus is Lord.’ Over and over, she repeated "Jesus is L..L..LL," often ending in profanities,” Jindal wrote. Finally, evil gave way to the light. “Just as suddenly as she went into the trance, Susan suddenly reappeared and claimed ‘Jesus is Lord.’ With an almost comical smile, Susan then looked up as if awakening from a deep sleep and asked, ‘Has something happened?’”

During the 2006 gubernatorial campaign, the campaign of Jindal’s Democratic opponent, incumbent Gov. Kathleen Blanco, attempted to inject his religious views into the race by running an ad promoting a website called JindalonReligion.com, which featured his essay about participating in an exorcism. However, Jindal immediately fired back, denouncing the commercial as an assault on his faith and on the deeply religious culture of Louisiana. “Jindal turned that one around and tried to play the victim before [the Democrats] could get any traction,” Crouere told me. “Then the Blanco campaign just backed off”

(Excuse me, but how is reporting Jindal's "battle with Satan" an assault on his faith? He's the one that told the story to begin with, so how is re-telling it a bad thing unless, of course, he is ashamed of it or maybe it never happened, much like the story he told about being with the sheriff of Jefferson Co. La. when he was actually in Baton Rouge at the time.)

Though Crouere is a Republican, he harbors strong doubts about Jindal. To him, the young governor is still too green for the national stage. “I just find it odd that the GOP seems to have as its savior a guy who has been in Congress for three years and governor for one year,” Crouere said. “The same criticism that was leveled against Obama for being untested could easily be leveled against Jindal.”

Because Obama entered the presidential campaign without an extensive political track record, the video histrionics of his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, remained unexposed until the middle of the Democratic primary. Could similar exposure of Jindal’s tales of “spiritual warfare” complicate his ascendancy as well? “The Louisiana Democrats don’t really have their act together, and weren’t able to get the word out,” Crouere remarked. “I still don’t think a lot of people are aware of the nature of Jindal’s religious background.”

Max Blumenthal is a senior writer for The Daily Beast and writing fellow at The Nation Institute, whose book, Republican Gomorrah (Basic/Nation Books), is due this spring. Contact him at maxblumenthal3000@yahoo.com.

Related: Memo to Bobby Jindal: Dump Rush (By Paul Begala)

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Bushite Nightmare Continues! STOP THIS NOW!

UnFreakin'Believable!

We have to wonder what else these crooks did to shaft us in the waning days of their reign of amorality.

The ugly Bush stain: Nursing Home Watchdogs Muted

By GottaLaff

Per Keith Olbermann just now on Countdown:

Another little surprise from BushCo that nobody discovered until yesterday. It involves nursing home state inspectors and Medicare and Medicaid contractors . Guess what they can't do any more? They can't give evidence in federal lawsuits. They can't testify. Bush just took a 144 billion industry and immunized it from civil suits.

And nobody knew about it.

The Bush administration shut off a source of information last fall about abuse and neglect in long- term care facilities that people suing nursing homes consider crucial to their cases.

The change that affects the $144 billion nursing-home industry occurred with no public notice or attention, perhaps because of the array of last-minute rules that President George W. Bush’s appointees rushed out before leaving Washington last month.

“This is pretty stunning,” said Mark Kosieradzki, a plaintiff attorney in Plymouth, Minnesota. “Nobody was told. It was just done.”

The rule designates state inspectors and Medicare and Medicaid contractors as federal employees, a group usually shielded from providing evidence for either side in private litigation.

The restrictions affect about 16,000 nursing facilities in the U.S. and 3 million residents. The practical effect is to force litigants to go to greater lengths, including seeking court orders, to get inspection reports or depositions for cases they are pursuing or defending.

“This change hurts nursing-home residents and their families by allowing bad practices to be kept in secret by nursing homes and inspectors,” said Eric M. Carlson, an attorney with the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Los Angeles. “Government inspectors have the right to go into nursing homes and investigate, and they learn things that residents and families otherwise could never find out.”

More here.

Bush is still damaging this nation, says Keith. What an understatement.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Lobbyist Line Up To Sabotage Obama and We, The People

By BRODY MULLINS and SCOTT KILMAN

WASHINGTON -- Industries from health care to agribusiness to mining that stand to lose under President Barack Obama's policy agenda are ramping up lobbying campaigns to derail or modify his plans.

The day after Mr. Obama formally laid out his policy goals in his first address to Congress, the former chief executive of HCA Inc. unveiled a $20 million campaign to pressure Democrats to enact health-care legislation based on free-market principles.

More

• Complete Coverage: The Obama Budget

"What you see is when the government gets involved, you run out of money and health care gets rationed," former CEO Richard Scott said Wednesday, after announcing the creation of Conservatives for Patients Rights.

Now that's a real joke, Mr. Scott. What you really mean is conservative patient rights for the wealthy.

Mr. Obama's ambitious agenda -- ranging from expanding health-care coverage to cutting farm subsidies to cutting wasteful defense projects -- touches almost every part of the U.S. economy. It threatens to disrupt the business models of a broad swath of America's biggest companies.

Opinion polls indicate that Mr. Obama's broad goals enjoy popular support. But crucial details of the president's agenda will be decided in coming months by close-in legislative fighting, where big industries and the members of Congress that support them have plenty of clout. At the same time, threatened interests are gearing up to shape the coming debates with multimillion-dollar public-relations and lobbying campaigns.

(So when the price of everything goes up, we can thank the multimillion dollar lobbying P.R. campaigns. These CEO types really have no clue about how the people feel right now. Their "fear-campaigns" aren't likely to work this time, as they expect them to. Sooner or later, fear turns to anger. It's already happening and has been for some time, from what we are hearing. What's more, unlike during the Clinton administration, a greater mass of people know who is to blame for the nightmare in which we find ourselves.

Politicians would be well advised not to get involved with these greedy monsters on the now dangerous trail they tread.)

The agriculture lobby quickly recoiled Wednesday against President Obama's vow to "end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them," though industry leaders and farm-state legislators weren't sure which government payments they'll have to defend.

"We were surprised President Obama included farm payments in his speech," said Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. "But it is Congress where the rubber meets the road."

Newscom

Washington's K Street is a popular address for the nation's lobbying groups.

A plunge in commodity grain prices since last summer is shrinking profits across the farm sector, making it even more politically dicey for farm-state legislators to go along with any cuts in federal aid. Earlier this month, the U.S. Agriculture Department predicted that U.S. net farm income, a rough measure of profitability, will drop 20% this year to $71.2 billion from last year's record-high $89.3 billion.

The line in the president's speech about agribusiness seemed to merge two distinct ideas for overhauling subsidies. While the president didn't define "large agribusinesses," he favored as a presidential candidate limiting the amount of federal subsidies an individual grower can receive to $250,000, an idea that is included on the rural agenda of the White House Web site. The Senate voted down such a proposal as recently as December 2007.

The other idea floating around Washington is to scrap a type of subsidy check called the "fixed direct payment," which since 1996 has put about $68 billion into the pockets of growers. According to farm lobbyists, Tom Vilsack, the newly minted agriculture secretary, has been telling farm trade groups in recent weeks that fixed direct payments have outlived their usefulness.

Tom Vilsack

Meanwhile, an alliance of electric utilities, coal and mining companies said it will spend as much as $40 million to make sure Congress approves a global-warming plan with funding for technology to reduce emissions that includes carbon capture and storage at coal-fired plants. In his speech, Mr. Obama called for a $15 billion-a-year investment in clean-energy sources, including clean coal.

Joe Lucas, a senior vice president of communications for the industry coalition, says the industry is "winning the public-policy debate," but will continue funding advertisements in order to "continue to be out there in the public dialogue."

Even before Mr. Obama's speech, the defense industry had stepped up its advertising and lobbying efforts this week in response to the president's vow to crack down on defense-project cost overruns, and to separate proposals in Congress to cut off certain expensive weapons programs. Mr. Obama's criticism, industry officials fear, is a foreshadowing of deep cuts to come.

(The defense industry has been one of the biggest wasters of money in the U.S. for years. We all remember the $400.00 toilet seats and $99.00 hammers in the '80s. Nothing has changed, but it is about to.)

The Aerospace Industries Association of America has spent $2 million so far on an ad campaign urging that defense spending shouldn't be slashed to offset shortfalls in other areas.

Boeing Co. announced Wednesday new players in its Washington team, including a new top lobbyist, David H. Morrison, who hails from powerhouse firm Podesta Group.

(Podesta, eh? Some how, I think this just may prove our point, that seeing the nation in terms of Democrat and Republican is a false duality and a huge distraction from what's really going on.)

Defense companies have a wind at their back: the jobs they create, and the congressional support that goes with them. That could provide a boost to Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-22 Raptor, the Air Force's most advanced fighter, whose production line will have to begin shutting down if more jets aren't ordered soon.

Lockheed is mobilizing grass-roots Web efforts and traditional lobbying to keep the plane going, and the Air Force will ask Defense Secretary Robert Gates for more planes. But it's still not clear whether he will allocate money for more of the $143 million jets, which have been faulted for their high cost and for their origin as a Cold War-era system.

—Elizabeth Williamson and August Cole contributed to this article.

Write to Brody Mullins at brody.mullins@wsj.com and Scott Kilman at scott.kilman@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A4

Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Contemporary GOP Pathology

Understanding the Contemporary Republican Party: Authoritarians Have Taken Control
Part One in a Three-Part Series - http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/dean/20070905.html

Why Authoritarians Now Control the Republican Party: The Rise of Authoritarian Conservatism
Part Two in a Three-Part Series - http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/dean/20070921.html

The Impact of Authoritarian Conservatism On American Government: Part Three in a Three-Part Series - http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20070925.html

ALSO -
Their is also this study by the University of Manitoba:
The Authoritarians http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/


Let The Sun Shine In......

Authoritarian, Conservative Cowards

In his new book, economist Dean Baker debunks the myth that conservatives favor the market over government intervention. In fact, conservatives rely on a range of “nanny state” policies that ensure the rich get richer while leaving most Americans worse off. It’s time for the rules to change. Sound economic policy should harness the market in ways that produce desirable social outcomes – decent wages, good jobs and affordable health care.

---

Read the book:

Read in HTML | Download as a PDF | Buy the paperback | View on Scribd

Or read:

Reviews | Press Release | Policy Recommendations

---

Praise for The Conservative Nanny State

“Here is the brutal truth, exposed systematically, methodically, unsparingly. Forget the pork rinds and the hokey Texas twang: Conservative government is government by and for the upper class.”

– Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

“Dean Baker is one of the most insightful and original economists in Washington. With this book, he exposes the prevailing myth of modern conservatives. They are not for limited government, as they claim. Rather, they are for a government that helps their own. Baker says it is time to balance the books. Government is by all the people, for all the people. It's that simple.”

– Jeff Madrick, author of Why Economies Grow: The Forces That Shape Prosperity and How We Can Get Them Working Again

Let The Sun Shine In......

"Countrywide" Goes the Way of "Blackwater"

Run you life and that of others into the ground and then simply change your name. Too bad we can't all do that.

• corporations
• issue management
• politics

Source: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), February 18, 2009

Countrywide Financial, the company infamous for its role in the subprime mortgage crisis, is now called "Bank of America Home Loans." Bank of America, which purchased Countrywide in July 2008, is using the name change "to separate itself from Countrywide's reputation," reports the Wall Street Journal. "The company hopes the new brand will simplify its relationship with customers while also emphasizing that Bank of America is a 'responsible lender' and 'accountable' for sustained home-ownership." Bank of America is also trying "to showcase its contributions to an economic recovery after receiving $45 billion in U.S. aid." Ironically, "new mortgage applications" are "one of the few bright spots in banking right now," since the collapsing economy had led to low interest rates. Bank of America "plans to hire about 1,000 people" for its newly-renamed mortgage unit, "and move 500 employees to mortgage processing from home-equity processing."

Let The Sun Shine In......

Mysterious plans

This worries us as well. It seems to us that certain CEOs and other corporate types, especially the bank CEOs are pouting because their 8 year party is over, or they are afraid it is, so they simply won't cooperate.

I hope we all learn something from this. Allowing any company to get to big to fail puts us all in a position to be blackmailed. Whatever happened to anti-trust laws?

By Paul Krugman

I’m trying to be sympathetic to the various plans, or rumors of plans, for bank aid; but I keep not being able to understand either what the plans are, or why they’re supposed to work. And I don’t think it’s me.

So the latest is that we’re going to convert preferred stock held by the government to common stock, maybe. James Kwak has a good explanation of what that’s all about. And it’s not at all clear what is accomplished thereby.

Here’s my stylized picture of the situation:

At the top are a bank’s assets. Below are its obligations to various parties, with decreasing seniority from left to right. I’ve drawn it to embody a pessimistic assumption about the bank’s finances, because those are the cases we’re interested in: the bank’s assets aren’t enough to cover its debts. Nonetheless, the stock, both preferred and common, has a positive market value. Why? Because of the Geithner put: the bank is protected from collapse, keeping the creditors appeased, but stockholders will get the gains if somehow things turn up.

What we want to do is clean up the bank’s balance sheet, so that it no longer has to be a ward of the state. When the FDIC confronts a bank like this, it seizes the thing, cleans out the stockholders, pays off some of the debt, and re-privatizes.

What Treasury now seems to be proposing is converting some of the green equity to blue equity — converting preferred to common. It’s true that preferred stock has some debt-like qualities — there are required dividend payments, etc.. But does anyone think that the reason banks are crippled is that they are tied down by their obligations to preferred stockholders, as opposed to having too much plain vanilla debt?

I just don’t get it. And my sinking feeling that the administration plan is to rearrange the deck chairs and hope the iceberg melts just keeps getting stronger.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Obama Speaks To Congress. GOP Left Downing Bourbon and Branch.

The American people aren't fools. At least not anymore. They know who caused the catastrophe we now face. They know who continues to try to sabotage the nation.

---

February 25, 2009

By JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON — President Obama urged the nation on Tuesday to see the economic crisis as reason to raise its ambitions, calling for expensive new efforts to address energy, health care and education even as he warned that government bailouts have not come to an end.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress, Mr. Obama mixed an acknowledgment of the depth of the economic problems with a Reaganesque exhortation to American resilience. He offered an expansive agenda followed by a pledge to begin paring an ever-climbing budget deficit.

“While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this,” Mr. Obama said. “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

After eight years under President George W. Bush, Americans tuned in on Tuesday night to a scene that put the new Democratic cast front and center. Mr. Obama was preceded into the House chamber by his cabinet, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he kissed as he made his way to the speaker’s dais. Even several Republicans leaned in close to Mr. Obama as he walked down the aisle.

He set up his push for a wide-ranging overhaul of domestic policy by lamenting what he said were decades of unwillingness on the part of society and government to make tough decisions or put long-term gain ahead of short-term benefit. In the process, he took a thinly veiled swipe at his predecessor for his tax cuts and philosophy of deregulation.

“That day of reckoning has arrived,” Mr. Obama said, “and the time to take charge of our future is here.”

As he spoke for nearly an hour in a prime-time address, Mr. Obama compared the moment facing America to challenges the country has weathered before. He reminded Americans that Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and other presidents had found “promise amid peril,” which he said should serve as a guide for today.

His words were often stern, but laced with optimism and humor as he said neither political party was free of blame for the nation’s condition. He urged Americans to believe in his ability to steer the country through its fiscal emergency, even as he presented an agenda that would be considered ambitious in more prosperous times.

While he did not break new ground on the policies he proposed, he framed his argument with fresh urgency.

A failure to confront the nation’s dependence on foreign oil, deal with the rising cost of health care or find a solution to the decline of American schools contributed to the place the country finds itself in, Mr. Obama said. He renewed his call for investments in all areas, particularly finding a way to create energy resources that do not rely on foreign sources of oil.

Mr. Obama challenged Congress to pass a bill to cap emissions of the heat-trapping gases that are warming the planet and use $15 billion a year of the revenues from the program to pay for renewable sources of energy.

He was vague about how he intends to make health care more affordable and accessible, saying only that the budget he will release on Thursday will make a down payment on the goal of “quality, affordable health care for every American.”

“Let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year,” Mr. Obama said to a cacophony of applause, largely from Democrats in the chamber.

He pushed his agenda at a moment when polls show him in a commanding position. But he was also trying to turn the economic situation to his advantage by proposing additional domestic spending when normal fiscal constraints have given way to a need to run substantial deficits.

Still, Mr. Obama pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, saying his administration had “already identified two trillion dollars in savings over the next decade.” In an interview, an administration official said those savings reflected reduced spending on the war in Iraq and higher revenues from letting the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans lapse after 2010.

While the president offered no specifics, he said he would eliminate education programs that did not work, end excessive payments to large agribusinesses and overhaul the military budget “so we’re not paying for cold-war-era weapons systems we don’t use.”

In a litany of proposals, Mr. Obama called for stricter regulatory reforms of the nation’s financial institutions. He also mentioned creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans, a nod to the Republican desire to create some kind of investment vehicles as they consider overhauling Social Security.

“My budget does not attempt to solve every problem or address every issue. It reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited — a trillion-dollar budget deficit, a financial crisis and a costly recession,” Mr. Obama said. “Given these realities, everyone in this chamber, Democrats and Republicans, will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me.”

Mr. Obama’s speech lasted 52 minutes, compared with a 49-minute address by Mr. Bush during his first speech to Congress on Feb. 27, 2001, and a 58-minute address by President Bill Clinton on Feb. 17, 1993.

While it was the most high-profile presidential speech since the inauguration, Mr. Obama has already signed a $787 billion economic stimulus plan into law, held a prime-time news conference, and visited Canada and six American states to sell his economic message.

But even though Americans have seen a lot of Mr. Obama in the first 36 days of his presidency, the speech on Tuesday gave him an opportunity to command the stage in a way he had not yet done and served as an early test of whether he would be able to persuade Republicans to support any pieces of his agenda.

Republican leaders in the House and the Senate turned to a rising voice outside of Washington to deliver the party’s response to the address. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said Republicans were also focused on trying to rebuild the economy, but he criticized Democrats for turning to government programs — and spending — to deal with the nation’s challenges, calling such an approach irresponsible.

“Democratic leaders say their legislation will grow the economy,” Mr. Jindal said. “What it will do is grow the government, increase our taxes down the line and saddle future generations with debt.”

Mr. Obama acknowledged the anger felt by many Americans over the bailouts of banks, automobile companies and homeowners who are in over their heads. But he made a case that all those steps were necessary, not to help the institutions or people receiving taxpayer money, but to avert deeper economic problems that would afflict everyone for years to come.

“It’s not about helping banks, it’s about helping people,” Mr. Obama said. At a moment of crisis, he added, “we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment.”

Mr. Obama sought to explain the program he announced last week to help some homeowners prevent foreclosure. He asked for understanding from Americans who have made their payments on time and who regard the bailout plan as an unfair reward to those who lived beyond their means. The president urged Americans to consider refinancing their homes, which he said could save them nearly $2,000 a year on their mortgage.

The president waited until the last moments of his speech to address America’s relations with the world, and when he did, he struck broad themes while eschewing specific policy directives.

Instead, Mr. Obama sought to convey a new American administration that will try to lead by example. “The eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us — watching to see what we do with this moment, waiting for us to lead,” he said.

With Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Speaker Nancy Pelosi sitting behind him, Mr. Obama looked out across a sea of senators, representatives, Supreme Court justices and high-ranking military officials. The president called upon Mr. Biden to oversee the billions of dollars of public spending to ensure that it was invested properly.

“Nobody messes with Joe,” Mr. Obama said with a smile.

The White House, like others before it, sought to personalize the policy proposals by introducing the stories of real people into the speech and inviting 22 guests to sit in the balcony with the first lady, Michelle Obama.

“Those of us gathered here tonight have been called to govern in extraordinary times,” Mr. Obama said. “It is a tremendous burden, but also a great privilege, one that has been entrusted to few generations of Americans. For in our hands lies the ability to shape our world for good or for ill.”

Let The Sun Shine In......