West Virginia Open to Homicide Prosecution for Massey Coal Mine Deaths

Let's hope Blankenship gets prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. These minors deaths must not be in vain.


CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER

24 Corporate Crime Reporter 16, April 16, 2010

For years, the state of West Virginia was proud to say that it was “open for business.”

In a twist, now it might be open for a homicide prosecution in connection with the deaths of 29 miners at the Massey Energy mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia earlier this month.

“If there is evidence to support a homicide prosecution, I would not hesitate to prosecute,” Kristen Keller, the prosecuting attorney for Raleigh County told Corporate Crime Reporter last week.

Keller says she has been in touch with the West Virginia State Police on the matter.

And she says that any federal regulatory investigation would not preclude a state homicide investigation.

“A federal regulatory investigation does not satisfy the need for a state criminal investigation,” Keller said. “If there were a car accident where one or ten or 29 people were killed – a federal investigation would not preclude a state criminal investigation. In fact, there would be a state criminal investigation.”

Twenty-nine miners died at Massey’s Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County as the result of an explosion on April 5.

Since then, there have been calls for both federal and state criminal prosecution.

Bob Franken, wrote an article last week for The Hill titled “Murder in the Coal Fields?”

“Plain and simply, the police and prosecutors need to pursue this case,” Franken wrote. “And if those who run Massey can be shown to be culpable beyond a reasonable doubt, they need to be thrown into prison. The sentence for involuntary manslaughter, as just one possible charge, in West Virginia, is a year in prison. For each case.”

West Virginia has an involuntary manslaughter statute.

Here’s the state’s definition: “Involuntary manslaughter involves the accidental causing of death of another person, although unintended, which death is the proximate result of negligence so gross, wanton and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life.”

Under West Virginia law, reckless disregard is something more than ordinary or simple negligence.

It is negligence that consciously ignores the safety of others.

And so the question is – do Massey’s actions at the Upper Big Branch mine meet the standard for reckless disregard?

The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. reported last week that three months before last week's deadly explosion, “Massey Energy managers at the Upper Big Branch Mine told workers ‘not to worry’ that the flow of air in the mine – meant to control deadly gases and coal dust – was headed in the wrong direction.”

The comment was made in January, when state and federal inspectors were battling Massey over what Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the state Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training said were major ventilation problems.

“When questioned, Terry Moore, mine foreman, said he knew of [the] condition and that he asked Everett Hager, superintendent, about it and he was told not to worry about it,” the MSHA inspector, whose name was not released, wrote in his official notebook, the Gazette reported.

“When mine ventilation moves in the wrong direction, that’s a big deal,” Dan Heyman, a stringer for the New York Times based in Charleston told Corporate Crime Reporter last week. “The inspector was complaining to the foreman that the ventilation was moving in the wrong direction and it was not being fixed.”

“The foreman at the company went to the mine supervisor and was told not to worry about it,” Heyman said. “That’s really a smoking gun.”

“Inspectors have told me that it’s a constant tug of war trying to get Massey to obey the rules,” Heyman said.

Over the past two decades, there have been a number of criminal manslaughter prosecutions around the country for worker deaths

In the 1980s, every time a worker died on the job in Los Angeles County, the district attorney would send out a team to investigate the case for a possible manslaughter investigation.

And many successful homicide prosecutions were brought against companies and executives as a result.

We asked Heyman what impact he thought the 29 coal miner deaths have on public opinion in West Virginia.

“I’ve been surprised as to how these things will settle back down,” Heyman said. “I thought the coal industry was in terrible trouble after the Sago mine accident that took 12 lives. And for a time, it was. But eventually, it begins to try to exercise the influence that it always had in the state.”

“This feels a bit different this time. At least in the worlds of journalism and politics that I follow – inside the equivalent of the West Virginia beltway – I sense a willingness to get tough. I don’t know whether that will result in criminal charges. But there have been a couple of op-eds in the states’ largest newspapers calling for criminal prosecutions.”

“We have also seen people saying publically that the coal industry in general is bad for the state of West Virginia – which is tantamount to heresy. Many have thought these things, but there hasn’t been a willingness to voice it.”

“There was a lot more shock and dismay in 2006, because it seemed like such a surprise. This time, there is less rhetoric and more anger.”

Heyman says that coal still has its supporters.

“People who are tied into the economy – successful local business owners – will say – this is the only thing that brings money into our area,” Heyman said.

“I was making this point to another reporter – that there is a split – between people like car dealers, who are successful and tied into the American dream in a sense – and people who live on the margins. I was saying the successful businessmen are much less likely to criticize Massey.”

“And he went and talked to a local prominent businessman in Raleigh County. And that businessman refused to talk with him because he said – there is so much anger at the company, that if his customers heard him on the air saying good things about Massey and Blankenship, that it would blow back on him.”

“That’s the reverse of what we would have seen in the past. So, there’s a power dynamic. And there is a tipping point where the king loses control of the kingdom. And then everything goes to hell for him. I don’t know if we are at that point.”

“Yes, coal is king in West Virginia. But it’s never been a peaceful kingdom. There has been a long history of conflict and dispute and even violence between the coal industry and workers or environmentalists. It’s always a very restive situation.”
Last week, an editorial in the Mountain Eagle newspaper of Whitesville, Kentucky asked the question – Why Do Miners Die?

And the paper answered this way:


“They die because of negligence. They die because the company they work for cares more about running coal than making mines safe. And they die because the federal agency that is charged with protecting them fails in its mission.”

“The mine was projected to earn $145.6 million for Massey this year, and nothing was going to get in the way of meeting that goal. Massey CEO Don Blankenship has dismissed any and all criticism as the work of ‘the enemies of coal.’ He’s God, in short, and you’re not.”

In a now infamous 2005 memo, Blankenship wrote this to his workforce:

“If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers, or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e. build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever) you need to ignore them and run coal.”

The following year, a deadly fire broke out at another Massey mine, Aracoma, killing two men.

The memo helped federal prosecutors secure a guilty plea from Massey’s Aracoma unit in January 2009. The company was fined $2.5 million.

[For a complete transcript of Interview with Dan Heyman, see 24 Corporate Crime Reporter 16(12), print edition only.]

Home

Corporate Crime Reporter
1209 National Press Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20045
202.737.1680

Let The Sun Shine In......

http://NSA Whistleblower Indicted for Leaking Classified Information to Reporte

Thursday 15 April 2010

by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: NSA, cleanzor)

A former senior National Security Agency (NSA) official was indicted Thursday on charges he leaked classified information to and served as a source for a reporter who wrote a series of critical articles about the agency's work.

The indictment "suggests the Obama administration may be no less aggressive than the Bush administration in pursuing whistleblowers and reporters’ sources who disclose government secrets," the New York Times noted.

According to the federal indictment, Thomas A. Drake, 52, allegedly corresponded and met in person with an unnamed newspaper reporter between February 2006 and November 2007 and exchanged hundreds of emails with the journalist about the inner workings of the super-secret spy agency.

The allegations agaisnt Drake are unrelated to the charges leveled against Thomas Tamm, the NSA whistleblower who revealed the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program to the New York Times. No charges have been filed in the Tamm case. Tamm has publicly admitted he was a source for the Times story. 

The Washington Post identified the reporter Drake allegedly leaked classified information to as Siobhan Gorman, who worked for the Baltimore Sun and published a series of reports in that newspaper which focused on poor management at the NSA and the agency’s failure to set priorities.

"Gorman wrote a number of articles about the NSA during the time period cited in the indictment, including stories about problems with classified information collection and analysis programs known as ‘Turbulence’ and ‘Trailblazer,’” Agence France-Presse reported.

Gorman's reports also "disclosed a crisis in meeting NSA's demands for electrical power and described how the agency had rejected a program that had the promise of collecting communications while protecting Americans’ privacy," according to the Times.

"The articles, though, did not focus on the most highly protected NSA secrets — whose communications it collects, exactly how it collects them and what countries’ codes it has broken," the Times report added. "That may make a prosecution more feasible, from the point of view of protecting secrets during a trial. But because the articles in question documented government failures and weaknesses, the decision to prosecute could raise questions about whether the government is merely moving to protect itself from legitimate public scrutiny."

Ironically, Gorman, who now works for the Wall Street Journal, was covering the Senate confirmation hearing of NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander when the Justice Department announced that a federal grand jury in the District of Maryland returned an indictment against Drake. Gorman, the Post reported, did not comment about the case as she left the hearing.

“Gorman's coverage of NSA often placed an unflattering focus on NSA administrators,” the Post reported. “An August 2006 story quoted intelligence officials as showing that the NSA eavesdropping facilities in Fort Meade were at risk of paralysis because of electrical overload and potential failure of the power supply.”

A call to the Baltimore Sun was not returned Thursday. The Justice Department would not confirm whether Gorman is the reporter identified in the indictment.

Drake was charged with 10 felonies, including obstruction of justice, making false statements to the FBI, and the willful retention of classified information related to four classified emails and one classified document. He is alleged to have obstructed justice by shredding classified and unclassified documents, including his handwritten notes that he had removed from the NSA and deleted classified and unclassified information on his home computer

The indictment further alleges that in November 2005, Drake, who was the head of an office within the NSA that dealt with signals intelligence (SIGNIT), was asked by a former congressional staffer to speak with a reporter. Between November 2005 and February 2006, Drake set up a free email account and then paid for a premium Hushmail account that allowed users to exchange secure emails without disclosing the sender or recipient’s identity.

The Justice Department claims Drake used an alias when he contacted the reporter, had her set up her own private, secure email account and then “volunteered” to disclose classified information about the NSA. The indictment alleges Drake had the reporter agree to a set of ground rules, such as never disclosing his identity, attributing information he provided to a "senior intelligence official,” never relying on Drake’s information alone to report a story, never telling Drake who the reporter’s other sources were; and not commenting on what people, to whom Drake recommended the reporter speak, said to the reporter.

"As alleged, this defendant used a secret, non-government e-mail account to transmit classified and unclassified information that he was not authorized to possess or disclose,” said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer. “As if those allegations are not serious enough, he also allegedly later shredded documents and lied about his conduct to federal agents in order to obstruct their investigation. Our national security demands that the sort of conduct alleged here – violating the government’s trust by illegally retaining and disclosing classified information – be prosecuted and prosecuted vigorously."

In addition to the email exchanges, the Justice Department claims Drake:

• Research[ed] stories for the reporter to write in the future by e-mailing unwitting NSA employees and accessing classified and unclassified documents on classified NSA networks.
• Cop[ied] and past[ed] classified and unclassified information from NSA documents into untitled word processing documents which, when printed, had the classification markings removed.
• Print[ed] both classified and unclassified documents, bringing them to his home, and retaining them there without authority.
• Scann[ed] and email[ed] electronic copies of classified and unclassified documents to the reporter from his home computer and reviewing, commenting on, and editing drafts of the reporter’s articles.

The Obama administration’s decision to prosecute Drake will have a chilling impact on whistleblowers, said Lucy Danglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

"It's not a shock,” Danglish said. "They've always had the ability to charge people with violating national security laws when they leak to a reporter. They just don't typically do it very often."

Danglish said Gorman's reports exposed "a multibillion-dollar boondoggle that was of great interest to Congress."

Still, Danglish said the indictment is "unfortunate" and is "designed to have an impact on leakers."

"It's going to impact people sharing information with reporters," she said.

 
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Civilian Toll

National Security:

This month, the investigative website Wikileaks released a horrifying video "showing an American helicopter shooting and killing a Reuters photographer and driver in a July 2007 attack in Baghdad." After the initial shooting, a van of civilians arrived to aid the wounded, only to be fired upon by the helicopter's high-power cannon, wounding two children on board. "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle," one military pilot says, echoing the grim detachment of much of the conversation captured between the soldiers on the tape, which the military later authenticated. "[A]t face value, it is the most damaging documentation of abuse since the Abu Ghraib prison-torture photos," the Atlantic's James Fallows commented. But appearing on ABC's This Week Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed that while the video was "clearly not helpful" and "painful to see," it "should not have any lasting consequences." Gates appears to be giving the unfortunate impression of U.S. indifference to civilian casualties. The video portrays just one incident among many others of civilians being needlessly killed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just yesterday, "American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar" in Afghanistan, "killing as many as five civilians and wounding 18." The Wikileaks video serves to underscore the human and strategic costs of the U.S.'s continuing military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly the stepped-up use of drone strikes. While insurgents are inflicting chaos and violence (last year was the deadliest for civilians since 2001 in Afghanistan), the foreign troops are more often blamed, thereby dangerously undermining American credibility among the public and their political leadership. Sadly, as the Center for American Progress' Brian Katulis notes, the Wikileaks video may just confirm what Iraqis already assume about U.S. forces. New York Times correspondent Rod Nordland noted last week that the response in Iraq to the video has been "somewhat muted," as "most Iraqis have a pretty cynical attitude toward the Americans. And incidents of this sort don't really surprise them as much as maybe it does ourselves."

ALL TOO COMMON: Before taking command of the war in Afghanistan last summer, Gen. Stanley McChrystal told Congress that his success should be measured by "the number of Afghans shielded from violence." He has taken some laudable steps, and emphasizes the right things, but unfortunately, civilians are killed by coalition forces far too frequently. "[T]he most remarkable thing about the video is the business-as-usual dialogue between the pilots and crew of the Apache and the ground controllers that are guiding their actions," Foreign Policy's Stephen Walt notes. "This tells me that this incident wasn't unusual, which is of course why no disciplinary action was taken against the personnel involved. What is different in this case is that two Reuters journalists got killed, and eventually a video got leaked and put on the internet," he adds. Reports from former soldiers and war correspondents support this claim. Yesterday's bus shooting was "the latest deadly case of what the military calls 'escalation of force,' in which troops guarding military convoys or checkpoints gun down Afghans perceived as a threat because they have come too close or are traveling too fast." Speaking of these types of incidents earlier this month, McChrystal made this startling assessment: "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force." Still, checkpoint and convoy deaths are "fewer in number" than those from air strikes or Special Forces operations. And while drone attacks have been successful at killing top al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, they have also killed a startling number of innocents. As the Washington Independent's Spencer Ackerman notes, the military leadership may say the right things, but "the effect, the output, the result -- that's what matters." And the military's official reaction to killings is often unhelpful, with attempts to cover up or down play embarrassing incidents.

BLOWBACK: While it's difficult to count how many civilians have been killed by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, the effect of the killings is tangible. Yesterday's bus shooting in Afghanistan "triggered a vitriolic anti-American demonstration, infuriated officials and appeared likely to harm public opinion on the eve of the most important offensive of the war, in which tens of thousands of American and NATO troops will try to take control of the Kandahar region," the New York Times observed. Demonstrations like this are common after civilian killings, which undermine public opinion of the coalition forces. Killings may also aid recruitment of militants fighting coalition forces. "Many of the detainees at the military prison at Bagram Air Base joined the insurgency after the shootings of people they knew, said the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall." "There are stories after stories about how these people are turned into insurgents," Hall told troops last month, urging them to exercise more caution. Following an alleged cover up of a botched Special Forces raid in February that killed two pregnant women and a teenage girl, the father of the girl vowed revenge, saying, "I will destroy everything I have and will launch my own suicide attack."

STRAINED RELATIONS: Civilian killings also have "political reverberations far beyond the sites of the killings." Following yesterday's bus shooting, the governor of Kandahar "called for the commander of the military convoy who opened fire to be prosecuted under military law." "If you want to stop the bus, it should be shot in the tires," he said. "Why shoot the people inside?" "This is a savage action. They have committed a great crime," said a member of Kandahar's provincial council. Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called such attacks "unjustifiable" and become increasingly frustrated with civilian deaths. Last week, he told a gathering of tribal elders in Kandahar that he "would not permit an American offensive there unless the people supported it." The planned operation will be "one of the biggest of the nine-year war" and involve 10,000 American soldiers, but Karzai is threatening to stop it because of these needless deaths. "Are you happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out?" Karzai asked the elders. "We are not happy," one shouted back. Karzai undeniably needs to clean up corruption and nepotism within his government, but the pressure he faces internally over civilian killings makes it more difficult for the U.S. to influence him.
 

Let The Sun Shine In......

Emails show CIA detroyed interrogation tapes

Posted on April 16, 2010 by dandelionsalad

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/
AlJazeeraEnglish

April 16, 2010 — More than one-hundred pages of newly released documents from the US’s top intelligence branch are providing the clearest look yet at the CIA’s decision to destroy videotapes of detainee interrogation. The new documents show that Porter Goss, the then CIA chief, agreed with the decision to destroy the tapes, though they show he did not know of the destruction until after it occurred. They also reveal that almost immediately after the destruction, CIA officials worried they had done something wrong, if not illegal. Patty Culhane reports

Emails show CIA detroyed interrogation tapes
from the archives:
ACLU Obtains New Information About Destruction Of Torture Tapes

1 Votes

Filed under: CIA, Crime, Crime and or Corruption, Dandelion Salad Posts News Politics and-or Videos 2, Dandelion Salad Videos, Torture, Torture on Dandelion Salad

Let The Sun Shine In......

Plot Thickens On Siegelman Prosecution and Air Force Tanker Deal

Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman has confirmed that his prosecution probably was driven partly by the prolonged battle over a massive Air Force tanker contract.

Andrew Kreig, executive director of the Justice Integrity Project, shines new light on the Siegelman case--and its ties to major national stories, in a new piece at OpEd News. Here is how Kreig summarizes the latest on the Siegelman story:

Imprisoned businessman Richard Scrushy, a defendant in the most controversial federal prosecution of the decade, last week repeated his call for the presiding judge to remove himself, even as the disputes widened to include reported Supreme Court contender Elena Kagan, up to $50 billion in scandal-ridden Air Force contracts, and Karl Rove's best-selling new memoir.

Scrushy, who was Siegelman's codefendant, renewed his call for trial judge Mark Fuller to remove himself from the case. Reports Kreig:

Scrushy, now serving a seven-year sentence for arranging $500,000 in donations to a non-profit at the request of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, requested last week that Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller of Montgomery rule on recusal requests filed last summer, or else withdraw.

Scrushy and Siegelman have argued that the judge is disqualified after being enriched by $300 million in Bush-era contracts via the judge's closely held company Doss Aviation for such services as refueling Air Force planes and training pilots.

Speaking of the Air Force, Kreig follows up on his report from last week about the Siegelman prosecution and its possible ties to a tanker contract that could be worth $50 billion. Alabama is expected to be the site of a major assembly plant if Europe-based EADS wins the contract over U.S.-based Boeing--and Kreig now provides insight from Siegelman himself. Writes Kreig:

The EADS-led plan would replace Boeing Corp., the previous tanker builder. Years ago, EADS used competitive intelligence agents to show that Boeing had bribed an Air Force procurement officer. My article noted that an EADS victory would enable an assembly plant in Alabama, as advocated by four European heads of state, major global financiers and some U.S. politicians.

"The ring of truth in the article," Siegelman wrote me last week after publication and follow-up, "is that Republicans wanted EADs, and I was close to Boeing because I had helped them expand their National Missile Defense Center in Huntsville and had them locate a manufacturing facility for the Delta IV and Delta II Rockets in Decatur, AL."

Kreig shows how the Siegelman case could have an impact on the process to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated by retiring John Paul Stevens. That's because one prominent contender, U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, has taken controversial positions regarding the Siegelman matter. Writes Kreig:

A bipartisan group of 91 former state attorneys general from more than 40 states have since formed an unprecedented coalition filing a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court and arguing it should hear Siegelman's case because his actions did not constitute a crime.

But Kagan, now widely reported as a leading candidate to ascend from her post as Justice Department solicitor general to become her friend Obama's nominee for a Supreme Court vacancy, urged the high court in November to deny Siegelman a hearing.

She cited technical legal arguments devised with the assistance of DOJ's trial prosecutors. Since the 2006 convictions DOJ has withstood complaints that include: political prosecution with Rove, judge-shopping, jury tampering, lying about the recusal of Alabama's top prosecutor, firing a DOJ whistleblower, and suppressing evidence that DOJ tried to blackmail its central witness.

Karl Rove has stepped into the fray while promoting his new book. Writes Kreig:

Concurring with DOJ's view is former White House advisor Rove, now on book tour promoting his memoir "Courage and Consequence" that denies any improper role by him, others in the Bush White House, prosecutors or the judge.

Also, Rove mocks whistleblowers and congressional Democrats alike who have become involved in the Siegelman/Scrushy case.

One Rove target is California Congressman Adam Schiff, the House Judiciary Committee's chief interrogator last July asking Rove about his role in DOJ prosecutions. In his book, Rove says Schiff "was clearly not prepared."

Rove also attacks Jill Simpson, an Alabama lawyer who became a key whistleblower in the Siegelman case. Writes Kreig:

Rove wrote also in "Courage" that a Democratic committee staffer privately disparaged to him Republican whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson. She is an Alabama lawyer from rural Rainsville who had stepped forward to provide the committee in 2007 with sworn testimony and documentation of the court record on military contracting.

She alleged a plan by her fellow Republicans as early as 2002 to frame Siegelman, and later steer the case to Fuller. Her testimony said that Riley's son Robert confided to her in 2005 even before Siegelman was indicted in his second trial that Fuller hated Siegelman and would "hang" him. Robert Riley has issued a statement denying her claim, but has not been called to testify.

Simpson responds that the facts would become obvious if Congress for the first time summoned witnesses for a public hearing under oath, or if the Supreme Court would examine the court filings on Fuller's conflicts. Siegelman, released on bond in 2008 by federal appeals court Democrats promptly after CBS 60 Minutes alleged GOP misconduct, also seeks Supreme Court review and a first-ever congressional hearing.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Steele Allies Point Fingers At Rove --

 Say Former RNC Team Fanning Flames

Christina Bellantoni | April 15, 2010, 11:11AM

10Share

10diggsdigg

Karl Rove, former President George Bush, and Michael Steele

Seems like just about everyone is irritated with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele these days, but both friends and foes of the embattled party leader think allies of Karl Rove and former Bush-era RNC staffers are fanning the flames to make Steele's problems worse.

Republicans told me in interviews that Rove's team got cozy at the RNC during the eight years of the Bush presidency, and feathers were ruffled when Steele was elected and cleaned house. They admitted Steele has dug himself into a deep hole, but the spate of recent death watch stories on national television and gracing the nation's front pages seemed like a calculated effort to trash the chairman as revenge.

The GOP universe isn't huge -- consultants who worked with the RNC decades ago are
bound to pop up again and hop from campaign to campaign. But some people tied to Rove, George W. Bush's right-hand man, were "badly, badly hurt when Michael came in," an RNC member told me in an interview. "It's no surprise he's got a collection of enemies."

Republicans said that when taking over in 2009, Steele "emptied out the building" of about 100 consultants and top aides who closely coordinated with Rove at the White House from 2001 until President Obama took office. A Republican familiar with the inner-workings of the RNC told me that Steele made a mistake asking for resignations from the old guard so quickly. Had Steele gone "more cautiously" and kept one or two members of the Rove team on board it might have avoided the bad blood, the source said.

"We built in some pretty vocal critics right from the start. It would have been easy to overcome had the chairman not been hit with a gaffe a minute," the Republican said.

It's worth a reminder that Rove put the brakes on an effort to elect Steele chairman in 2006. Steele told The Washington Times last year that when elected, Rove did not send congratulations like other former top Bush White House and campaign officials.

The aides who left under Steele's takeover aren't household names, and many quickly found work on campaigns across the country or within the other party committees in Washington.
The intra-party spat is even more relevant as Rove and former RNC officials Mike Duncan and Ed Gillespie have formed a new 527 group they say has received pledges worth $30 million from big donors to help with the 2010 elections. Top Republicans annoyed with Steele's leadership have said groups like the "American Crossroads" 527 might fill a void left during this troublesome period at the RNC.

We tried to reach out to Rove, the American Crossroads group and Bush White House aides who might speak about the story, but have so far been unsuccessful.

The RNC member said few are willing to criticize Rove specifically since he's still working with hundreds of Republicans nationally, but said it has seemed obvious to Steele allies that it's the old guard talking smack about the chairman. "When you get a new sheriff and the old guys all know the reporters and they all have an axe to grind, this happens," the member said.

The Republicans I interviewed said Rove's team should have known better, since historically this is the way it goes. When a party loses the White House, someone new comes in and makes it their own shop. GOPers say that's done to signal regime change, not create bad blood. One Republican suggested that since Rove and his crew weren't as familiar with the pre-Bush Washington he was taken aback by the changes.

"Of course the guy who comes in put his own team in. For anyone to act like that somehow was a horrible thing just completely disregards the history of the place," the Republican said.
But Steele critics note that some of the fired RNC aides helped run a steady ship for years and could have been useful during this period of turmoil.

Politico also explored this topic recently, with sources telling them that Steele replaced the Rove team with rookies who made the mistakes leading to his problems. Among those, the approval of a reimbursement request for a staffer who spent nearly $2,000 at a bondage-themed Los Angeles night club.

The Politico story said there is grumbling that Steele has brought in his own team from his days in Maryland state politics. It also highlighted that Steele fired Jay Banning, "someone
 known as a frugal and meticulous bookkeeper," and replaced him with a pal.

Another big question is what will happen come January. Steele's allies say he's definitely planning to seek a second term and we've reported about members thinking that Steele may not get fired, but will definitely be toast next year even if the GOP puts big wins on the board in the midterm elections.

A Steele foe thinks the chairman will definitely try for another term, telling me: "He loves being chairman. Even with all the troubles he's had he loves it."

An RNC spokesman declined to comment for this story but said the party offers full support for groups like Rove's new American Crossroads. "Such groups will help all Republicans as we move towards November," spokesman Doug Heye said.

As if Steele didn't have enough enemies, some Republicans have suggested the most vocal critics calling for Steele's ouster are tied to one another. For example, after the nightclub expense mishap, chief of staff Ken McKay was ousted. Curt Anderson, a GOP consultant who helped recruit McKay, followed him out the door. That firm did work in North Carolina for Tom Fetzer, the first RNC member to call for Steele's ouster last week. Also pals with the group? Alex Castellanos, the strategist who publicly severed ties with Steele on CNN last week.

Those involved say that's ridiculous since many Republicans work together.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Great American Bank Heist

On the Day we Reach a Monthly Foreclosure Filing Record Banks Announce Record Profits and the Stock Market is up 80 Percent.

• Posted by mybudget360 in bailout, banks, casinos, corporate power, economy, government, i-banking, wall street
• 0 Comments

It is rather fitting that on the day we hear about banks reaching record profits once again, because after all it is so difficult to borrow at zero percent and gamble in the stock market and make a gain, that we also find out that March was the highest month of foreclosure filings ever (and we’ve had some bad months).  If there was ever a more clear indication between the split from Main Street and Wall Street this is probably the strongest indicator so far.  I’ll include the charts below but being blunt about the situation, the bailouts worked.  If we define “worked” as boosting banking profits once again while 40,000,000 Americans are on food stamps and 17 percent remain underemployed then all is well again in the economy.  Yet this isn’t what the American people bargained for in the bailouts.  In fact, they didn’t want the bailouts if you remember the massive anger from both aisles calling their representatives.  But the cronies didn’t listen since they receive millions in lobbying dollars and $13 trillion went to Wall Street in the biggest wealth transfer witnessed by the disgruntled American public.
It should be obvious the real economy is still a mess.  The latest foreclosure data is merely a reflection of failed government programs but more importantly, the absolute greed and robbery committed by Wall Street:



Just look at that chart.  We’ve had an 80 percent stock market rally in one year and today, we are at the peak of foreclosure filings.  That is, Americans getting kicked out of their homes because they are unable to pay their mortgages.  So much for banks using that money to help people stay in their homes and keeping the credit markets open as they preached.  JP Morgan announced stunning profits for the first quarter.  How did they make their money?

“(Yahoo!) NEW YORK – JPMorgan Chase & Co. reported a $3.3 billion first-quarter profit on big gains in the financial markets even as the Obama administration pressed for limits on banks’ trading of risky but lucrative investments.”

$3.3 billion is fantastic.  But how did they make that money?

“Investment banking, especially bond trading, generated the bulk of JPMorgan’s profits. The bank said that division earned $2.5 billion, up 50 percent from a year earlier.”

So their gambling division made up the bulk of their profits.  How are they helping out consumers with those billions in taxpayer dollars?

“JPMorgan said it lost $1.3 billion on its real estate portfolios, slightly more than the $1.1 billion it lost the previous year. Signaling that it expects further credit weakness, the bank set aside $3.3 billion for real estate loan losses, up from $3.1 billion a year earlier.

The bank’s losses in its credit card business fell to $303 million, while provision for future credit card losses also dropped to $3.5 billion.”

The formula is simple for these banks.  Use the taxpayer money to enrich their elite class under the guise of helping average Americans.  They have robbed the American people and much of this was all legal.  Yet we all know that there is something royally flawed in the financial system since it is the legislature that develops the laws and many are bought by the Wall Street crowd.  So this 80 percent stock market rally if we dissect it is being propelled by banks gambling:



Source:  Bloomberg

Notice how non-financials (i.e., the real economy) is only seeing a slight uptick in profits?  This probably has to do with 15 million unemployed Americans and another 9 million working part-time looking for full-time work.  But given there are 6 workers for every 1 job opening, things will be slow going.  Unless you are the corrupt banking sector.  In that case, you can borrow at zero percent and buy Treasuries, foreign currencies, stocks, or whatever it is and make money hand over fist while the real economy remains in the trough.  Why would you expect anything to be different?  We have yet to have one single piece of serious legislation hit the table for financial reform.  These banks are back to their same antics.

So what should be done?  Break the banks up.  Commercial banking should become more boring and what it once was, the lubricant to get the real economy going.  Right now it is merely a vampire sucking the blood out of the productive sectors.  Investment banking will be pushed to the edges and if banks want to gamble their own money then that is fine. 
But right now they are gambling taxpayer money trying to get back to even while shifting all the toxic credit out of their books.  Privatize gains and socialize losses.  With a system like that, is it any wonder the banks are back to record profits?

And you have to ask yourself how is it that banks while pushing a record number of foreclosure filings are back to record gains?  It is actually very simple.  They can shift the crap to taxpayers as they have through the FDIC, HAMP, suspension of mark to market, and other absurd gimmicks.  Then, they can use taxpayer money primarily funded through the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury and then gamble on the stock market.  But don’t be surprised when the market falls through again.  And why wouldn’t it?  The real economy isn’t really improving.  For $13 trillion we sure got bunk but add up the Wall Street market cap and profits and you can see what occurred.

It is a simple formula to understand.  And with no rules being changed, things are back to normal for the banks.  Too bad the other 95 percent of Americans are still dealing with the repercussions of the actual economy.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Here Comes Another Colossal Republican Lie

In a hotly contested election year where the stakes are huge, how will Republicans fight financial reform without appearing to defend Wall Street's interests at the expense of Main Street? The answer is simple: lie. And lie big, as always. Craft a disingenuous campaign to convince voters that regulating big banks--and thus the GOP's rich fatcat pals--will hurt the little guy. Brilliant. Turn financial reform into a populist movement. Convince the Average Joes to get all fired up, march in the streets, and fight against the very reforms that will in fact help them considerably. Turn them, once again, against their own self-interests by lying to them. As Lenin said, "A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

And where have we seen this before? If you said health care reform, you're right. The Republicans may be the Party of No, and may not have a lick of ideas of their own, but they are very effective liars, highly adept at framing issues to turn public sentiment their way. The recent health care battle is a stunning example of this. How else do you explain all the Tea Bagger rage over legislation that truly protects them and their families?

A perfect illustration of this duplicity is the "death panel" lie, where the "government takeover" of health care, according to the GOP, would result in President Obama getting to decide whether Granny lives or dies. Makes a great soundbyte. Republicans are masterful at creating devastatingly effective talking points.

Which brings us to financial reform and the Senate bill proposed by Democrats. A bill which seeks to place further regulations on Wall Street and aimed at the sort of high-risk trading practices that caused the meltdown of 2008. Here's the lie which we can bet will become the new ad nauseum "death panel" talking point:

"We cannot allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell this week. "That’s why we must not pass the financial reform bill that’s about to hit the floor. The fact is this bill wouldn’t solve the problems that led to the financial crisis. It would make them worse."

That's right. Get out there and fight, Mr. and Mrs. Average American. Fight for your Wall Street executives! We need to protect them. We need to make sure they stay rich, fat and happy, because if we attempt to rein in their reckless cowboy investment activities, that'll be bad for you and bad for America! It'll cost you in taxes! No! We must let them do whatever the hell they want, without restriction! No more 'big government' intervention! Power to the people! The Wall Street people! Financial reform, like health care reform, is terrible for you! No more death panels and bailouts! Don't let Democrats hurt you. We Republicans are looking out for you. Have your best interests at heart. And by helping us protect the insurance industry, the big banks and corporate America...we're really protecting you. God bless America!

A note of interest: McConnell himself supported President Bush's emergency $700-billion Wall Street bailout back in the Fall of 2008. Oh, how quickly those pesky little Republicans forget...

posted by The Ostroy Report @ 7:38 AM
Let The Sun Shine In......

Junior staffer big GOP buyer

By Adam C. Smith, Times Political Editor

Published Friday, April 9, 2010

---

She was a 25-year-old junior staffer when the Florida Republican Party gave her an American Express card.

Over the next 2½ years, nearly $1.3 million in charges wound up on Melanie Phister's AmEx — $40,000 at a London hotel, and nearly $20,000 in plane tickets for indicted former House Speaker Ray Sansom, his wife and kids, for starters. Statements show thousands spent on jewelry, sporting goods and in one case $15,000 for what's listed as a month-long stay at a posh Miami Beach hotel, but which the party says was a forfeited deposit.

The credit card records, obtained by the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald, offer the latest behind-the-scenes look at extravagant and free-wheeling spending by the party touting fiscal restraint. Not only did certain elite legislative leaders have their own party credit cards to spend donors' money with little oversight, but Phister's records show these leaders also liberally used an underling's card — without her knowledge, she says.

"I did not have the sole discretion to initiate credit card spending," Phister said in an e-mail statement. "Over that period of time, there were multiple instances when the card was used to make purchases that I had no knowledge of, and I did not regularly review the monthly credit card statements which I understand were sent directly to the Party's accounting office."

Even after a series of embarrassing revelations over profligate credit card spending by the likes of Republican U.S. Senate frontrunner Marco Rubio, Sansom and incoming House Speaker Dean Cannon — and pending state and federal investigations of party finances — revelations of the huge charges on Phister's card had veteran GOP fundraisers apoplectic.

"Oh my God. I can't believe it,'' said Al Hoffman, a top fundraiser from Fort Myers, when told of the $1.258 million on Phister's card. "See, that's it. They have an underling do it all. There's no reason a young assistant should be ringing up charges like that."

Phister served as finance director for state House campaigns for 2½ years starting in mid 2006.

She was a Republican Party employee who mainly answered to Sansom, R-Destin, speaker-designate at the time and overseeing House campaign operations. The job involved planning fundraising events and often accompanying Sansom and other legislative leaders on fundraising and other political trips.

Sansom was indicted by a grand jury last year for inserting $6 million into the state budget for an airport building that a friend and GOP contributor, Jay Odom, wanted to use as an airplane hangar. That criminal investigation revealed that Sansom charged more than $170,000 on his party-issued credit card — everything from plane tickets for his family to clothes to electronics.

Turns out Sansom spent heavily on Phister's card as well.

Her credit card statements include at least four sets of plane tickets for Sansom, his wife and four kids. He also ordered Phister to accompany him on a trade trip to London in the summer of 2008. Phister brought her mother along at Sansom's encouragement, and Phister's GOP AmEx saw plenty of action: nearly $40,000 at a London hotel, and more than $3,600 in sightseeing expenses.

"I can't believe it. Someone should be hanged for that," Mark Guzzetta, a Boca Raton developer who has raised millions of dollars for Republicans, said of the party allowing so much spending on a low-level staffer's card.

Republican legislative leaders during that period were raising many millions of dollars, and they note that it costs money to raise money. So such Phister expenses as $1,200 for Broadway tickets in New York, or $19,000 at the Water Club restaurant during a different New York City trip may have been for evenings that raised many times that much.

Neither Phister nor the party would discuss the credit card statements in detail, citing pending state and criminal federal investigations into its financial activities as well as an exhaustive "forensic audit" of party spending about to get under way.

"The Republican Party of Florida has hired the firm Alston +Bird LLP to conduct an independent forensic investigation of the party's finances. Members of the firm's Special Matters and Investigations staff will review questionable credit card expenses to determine whether or not the party may have been the victim of improper financial dealings,'' said Florida Republican Party spokeswoman Katie Betta.

"If the audit reveals any inappropriate expenses that have not been reimbursed to the party, we will seek to collect compensation from the individuals who incurred the expense."
Judging what's an appropriate expense may be subjective.

For instance, Phister's AmEx shows $10,000 to a watch company in California in August 2008. Republican donors paid for Sansom to present every legislator, Democrat and Republican alike, with a memento watch.

Phister's card paid for nearly $650,000 in lodging, $60,000 in airfare — mostly commercial airlines — and $66,000 for charter planes. The statements show Republican donors also paid for plane tickets to Germany for Phister and her mother.

Phister declined to discuss those tickets, though the party said the trip was part of the expense of accompanying Sansom to Europe. Now 28, Phister parlayed her insider access to become a well-funded public employee, now earning about $70,000 yearly working for the Florida House of Representatives as a scheduler for special projects.

The Florida Democratic Party requires staffers and leaders to use their own credit cards and seek reimbursement for appropriate expenses. That's now the practice at the Florida Republican Party, and fundraiser Hoffman suggested it's about time.

"My company, with 4,000 employees, nobody had credit cards,'' said Hoffman, a developer.

"If you wanted to expense, you had to submit a form with backup. . . . It wasn't one employee taking another out to eat and charging it all off."

Miami Herald staff writer Beth Reinhard and Times/Herald staff writer Marc Caputo contributed to this report. Adam Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com.

© 2010 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times

Let The Sun Shine In......

Taxes For The Middle Class have Dropped

The following is a press release from Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

On today’s income tax filing deadline, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said federal taxes are down for most middle-class Vermonters and Americans but much more needs to be done to create a fair and equitable tax system.

“Despite much political rhetoric to the contrary, 99 percent of Vermont working families and individuals received a much-needed average federal tax cut of over $1,100 for 2009,” Sanders said.

As a result of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, some 300,000 Vermont households were able to receive a tax cut of up to $400 ($800 for married couples). Further, 14,000 Vermont families were able to receive an expanded tax cut to send their kids to college last year. More than 20,000 Vermont children benefitted from an expansion in the child tax credit. Nearly 60,000 Vermont small businesses received tax cuts to purchase new equipment and other things.

Nationwide, Congress cut individual federal income taxes by about $173 billion shortly after President Obama took office. “This tax relief is welcome news for Vermonters who continue to suffer through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” the senator said.

While federal taxes on middle class fell, Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthy continue to increase the skyrocketing federal deficit and too many large corporations took advantage of loopholes in the tax code to evade paying billions of dollars.

“Congress has a lot of work to do to create a fairer tax system. This tax day we must resolve to make the tax code more progressive, simpler and fairer to the American people,” Sanders said.

“With the top 1 percent now earning more income than the bottom 50 percent and the gap between the very rich and everyone else growing wider, we have to make sure that the wealthiest in our society and the largest and most profitable corporations in America pay their fair share in taxes. This is especially relevant given the reality that we have a record-breaking deficit and our national debt is approaching $13 trillion.”

The federal tax code is so absurd that Warren Buffett, the third richest person in the world worth $47 billion, pays a lower overall tax rate than his secretary.  Equally outrageous is the fact that the top 25 hedge fund managers who made an average of $1 billion last year, pay a lower effective tax rate than many teachers, nurses, police officers, and fire fighters.

Sanders also called it a “national disgrace” that Exxon Mobil, the most profitable corporation in history, evaded paying billions in taxes last year by setting up tax shelters in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands, among other things.  “As gas prices continue to climb, making it harder for Vermonters to afford to commute to work, Exxon Mobil shouldn't be allowed to skirt its tax bill by setting up bogus tax shelters in the Caribbean,” he said.

A member of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders said he will work to repeal the Bush tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent, end corporate tax loopholes, and make the tax code fairer and simpler for ordinary Vermonters.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Whistleblower They Ignored

No economic system is worth a damn if it does not take into account human greed. The old American saw that says everyone ought to be able to have as much money as they can possibly 'earn" by hook or crook is wrong; just WRONG! If unfettered greed is allowed to go on with no consequences, even when that greed nearly brings the biggest economy in the world down, there is no hope for a lasting recovery. The punishment for outrageous greed should fit the crime; POVERTY.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_whistleblower_they_ignored_20100414/

Posted on Apr 14, 2010

By Robert Scheer

There aren’t too many genuine heroes to come out of the banking disaster, but Armando Falcon is one of them. You have probably never heard of him, but his testimony Friday before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, available on the commission’s website, is must reading for anyone trying to figure out why U.S. taxpayers had to bail out companies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Falcon was the chief regulator attempting to bring order to the houses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the first four years of this decade, and had he been listened to, a significant part of the housing crisis could have been mitigated. Instead his agency was denied serious regulatory power by Democrats in Congress including liberals such as Reps. Barney Frank and Maxine Waters, both of whom assumed he was undermining public support for more affordable housing. 

He wasn’t, and instead was attempting to call attention to the reckless bundling of risky mortgages in which the government-chartered agencies acted like the other too-big-to-fail behemoths that together almost wrecked the entire economy. It was those on the lower end of the income scale who had put their life savings into risky mortgages that were most hurt when the bubble burst.

This is a guy whom Republican congressmen and the Wall Street Journal editorial writers have lionized, and for once they got it right. At least the part about Fannie and Freddie being out of control and their applauding Falcon’s past efforts to rein in the greed of their top executives. Where they go wrong is when they attribute the company’s misbehavior to the alleged liberal do-gooderism of the mostly Democratic Party hacks that ran the enterprises.
The reality is that concern for affordable housing goals was simply a convenient mask for unfettered greed.

Conservatives make much of those goals, which both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush endorsed, but objectives of this sort had nothing to do with the sordid behavior of the executives who ran the companies. Asked by the commission to testify on the impact of those goals, Falcon responded:

“Your letter also asked me about the impact of affordable housing goals on the enterprises’ financial problems. In my opinion, the goals were not the cause of the enterprises’ demise. The firms would not engage in any activity, goal fulfilling or otherwise, unless there was a profit to be made. Fannie and Freddie invested in subprime and Alt A mortgages in order to increase profits and regain market share. Any impact on meeting affordable housing goals was a byproduct of the activity.”

The problem with the so-called government-sponsored but essentially private institutions that the conservatives are so happy to vilify and that liberals feel the need to defend is that they represented the worst of both worlds. Although originally chartered by the government, they had morphed into super for-profit monstrosities run by executives whose huge bonuses depended on the price of the company stock. As Falcon put it in his testimony:

“Ultimately the companies were not unwitting victims of an economic down cycle or flawed products and services of theirs. Their failure was deeply rooted in a culture of arrogance and greed.” 

In short, they behaved like the other financial conglomerates, but the government-sponsored housing enterprises were protected by powerful members of Congress and what turned out to be a strong guarantee that their bad paper would be covered by the taxpayers.

They do deserve considerable blame for the banking disaster that ensued, and while it is hardly the whole story, it gave the free-market conservatives a convenient target. But it also presents them with a contradiction that they refuse to confront. The housing enterprises failed not because they were do-gooder pubic entities but because they weren’t. Their top executives were driven by the same desire for outlandish profit that their counterparts at AIG and Citigroup had. As Falcon put it referring to then Fannie Mae’s CEO Franklin Raines:

“While all of this political power satisfied the egos of Fannie and Freddie executives, it ultimately served one primary purpose: the speedy accumulation of personal wealth by any means. … In the case of CEO Franklin Raines, he collected over $90 million in total compensation from 1998 to 2003. Of that amount, $52 million was directly tied to achieving earnings-per-share goals. However, the earnings goal turned out to be unachievable without breaking rules and hiding risks.”

It only adds insult to injury to blame the unfettered greed of folks like Raines, and his congressional allies who were lavishly attended to by those agencies, on a concern for the low-income homebuyers who were their main victims.
 
AP Photo/Dennis Cook

Armando Falcon, director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, holds a copy of his agency’s report on Fannie Mae in an appearance before the House Financial Services Committee on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2004. The report criticizes Fannie Mae’s accounting practices and management policies.

---

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.
Copyright © 2010 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Economy: ‘A Different Creature’

Op-Ed Columnist

By BOB HERBERT

Nancy Pelosi, at lunch, was making the point that this latest recession was not a typical cyclical downturn.

“This is a different creature,” she said, “and it demands that we see it in a different way.”

The evidence is stark. More than 44 percent of unemployed Americans have been out of work for six months or longer, the highest rate since World War II. Perhaps more chilling is a new analysis by the Pew Economic Policy Group that found that nearly a quarter of the nation’s 15 million unemployed workers have been jobless for a year or more.

Everything in Washington is a heavy lift. The successful struggle to pass last year’s stimulus package fended off an even worse economic disaster, and the Democrats have managed to enact their health care initiative. But the biggest threat to the health of the economy — corrosive, intractable, demoralizing unemployment — is still with us. And the deficit zealots, growing in strength, would do nothing to counter this scourge.

Ms. Pelosi acknowledged that “there is always a calibration” between concerns about deficit reduction and the spending that is necessary to substantially reduce unemployment. But she believes there are several fronts on which Congress and the Obama administration can — in fact, must — still move forward: on infrastructure and green energy initiatives, for example, and assistance to states hobbled with fiscal crises of their own.

The crippling nature of the joblessness that has moved through the society like a devastating virus has gotten neither the attention nor the response that it warrants. One of the more striking findings of the Pew study was that a college education has not been much of a defense against long-term unemployment.

“Twenty-one percent of unemployed workers with a bachelor’s degree have been without work for a year or longer,” the report found, “compared to 27 percent of unemployed high school graduates and 23 percent of unemployed high school dropouts.”

Whole segments of the U.S. population are being left behind, even as economists are touting modest improvements in some categories of economic data, like the creation of 162,000 jobs in March. Jobless workers who are 55 or older are having a brutal time of it. Thirty percent have been jobless for a year or more.

Blue-collar workers are suffering through a crisis characterized as a “depression” by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. Blue-collar job losses during the so-called Great Recession surpassed 5.5 million, and many of those jobs will never be seen again. This disastrous situation will not be corrected, as analysts at the center have noted, “by a modest recovery of the U.S. economy over the next few years.”

We need to pay less attention to the Tea Party yahoos and more attention to the very real suffering of individuals and families trapped in an employment crisis that is unprecedented in the post-Depression era. I’ve been in inner-city neighborhoods where residents will tell you that hardly anyone at all is working at a regular job.

The recession only worsened an employment picture that was already bleak. In a speech at the Harvard Kennedy School last week, the A.F.L.-C.I.O. President Richard Trumka spoke movingly about Americans “trying to hold on to a good job in a grim game of musical chairs where every time the music stopped, there were fewer good jobs and more people trying to get and keep one.”

More than eight million jobs vanished during the recession, a period during which three million new jobs would have been needed to keep up with the growth of the population. “That’s 11 million missing jobs,” said Mr. Trumka.

Right now there is no plan that can even remotely be expected to result in job creation strong enough to rescue the hard-core groups being left behind. These include: long-term unemployed workers who are older; blue-collar workers of all ages; and younger people in the big cities, in the rust belt and in rural areas who are jobless and not well educated.

It is not possible to put together a thriving, self-sustaining economy while so many are being left out. As Mr. Trumka noted, “President Obama’s economic recovery program has done a lot of good for working people — creating or saving more than two million jobs. But the reality is that two million jobs is just 18 percent of the hole in our labor market.”

Ms. Pelosi spoke about “jobs creation” with a tone of urgency and commitment and seemed undeterred by the fact that a big new jobs bill seems hardly feasible in the current political environment.

“You can do smaller pieces,” she said. “You can break the task up into segments, into discrete pieces of legislation. If size is a problem, we should not let it be an obstacle.”

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

Let The Sun Shine In......