Independent Light

Global Corporations Now Eclipse the Power of Sovereign States: We are at Their Mercy

2010-06-03T06:58:00.000-04:00

We are Soooo screwed

MARK KARLIN FOR BUZZFLASH, EDITOR'S BLOG

To say that many global corporations get away with murder is not an understatement; it's a likely fact. BP --despite the DOJ's investigation which given the Obama Administration's corporatist record will end up putting some low level figure or two in jail to avoid offending the President's corporate CEO buddies -- as miners get killed because of the intentional negligence of Massey Energy in West Virginia, as men on oil rigs in waters that shouldn't be drilled in get blown to smithereens, and union organizers killed by paramailitary groups with alleged relations to Coca Cola in Colombia and elsewhere, and the list goes on and on.

And then there are the slave wages, toxic pollution, deaths caused by cancer, predatory monopoly of the earth's harvest as Monsanto is doing around the world with its GMO rice. Then there is the IMF and World Bank forcing third world countries to by from these firms. Then there is Wal-Mart as our de facto State and Commerce Department power behind the U.S. presence in China, paying slave wages to sell cheap products to Americans who have lost their jobs. The list goes on and on.

Exxon/Mobil reported the largest profit in the history of the corporate world last year; they make hundreds of billions of dollars. Few nations have the financial resources of these multinational corporations; the dollars to buy men, women and the power over lives without acccountablity for the death and ruin that they leave in their wake.

Most of the nations of the world, including the U.S. D.C. government and President Obama, are wholly owned subsidiaries of the multi-national corporations who run the world without fear of anything but an occasional outcry and laugably small penalty imposed on them to make it seem like a country's leader is actually punishing them. But the Masters of the Universe know that the necessary PR stunts are done for political purposes and go about doing what they do best, raping the world for profit.

Ten years ago BuzzFlash was started by me with the vision of progressive socialism, but now i feel the strength of grassroots populism where people create the change and force the corporate puppets in D.C. to flee office if they don't want to be tarred and feathered and dumped into a toxic pool of BP oil sludge.

It's time for a non-violent revolution of civil disobedience against the corporations who run the sovereign governments of the world; it's time for the resources of the planet to return to the people of the planet; it's time for democracy to flourish free of the toxic influence of greed and money concentrated in the hands of so few who care so little about the future of life and the planet.

It is time for an outburst of populism that is a celebration of life and progress against the corporate agents of death and destruction who pull the levers in D.C. and around the world.

MARK KARLIN FOR BUZZFLASH, EDITOR'S BLOG

Let The Sun Shine In......

Can Beck GET anymore outrageous

2010-06-03T06:50:00.000-04:00

BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Jeffrey Joseph

Considering the exceedingly hyperbolic rhetoric that comes out of Glenn Beck’s mouth, from claiming a Jewish social justice worker used “exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany” to telling his Christian listeners to leave their churches, he makes it hard for a reasonable person to agree with any of his sentiments. Yet, with all his misguided rhetoric, one plea Beck repeats that actually makes some kind of sense involves demanding that people keep the families out of political fights. Beck would earn more credit for the assertion — if only he were not so obviously hypocritical about it.

Just last week, Beck went on the air and mocked Malia Obama’s level of education in an attempt to criticize President Obama’s response to the BP oil spill. Doing a derogatory impression of Malia, Beck asked his co-host Pat Gray, pretending to be President Obama, “Daddy? Daddy? Daddy, did you plug the hole yet? Daddy?” Beck went on to ask, through his Malia voice, “Why do you hate black people so much?” Beck, who never attained a college degree himself, reiterated the initial comment with an extra dig at Malia, saying, “‘Did you plug the hole yet, daddy?’ Is that’s their — that’s the level of their education, that they’re coming to — they’re coming to daddy and saying ‘Daddy, did you plug the hole yet?’”

Bringing Obama’s children into the argument so exceeded the boundaries of entertainment that Beck felt the need to apologize for his actions days later. Unfortunately, the apology comes across as disingenuous considering he lies to say, “There is absolutely no excuse or reason to ever, ever, ever, ever even come close to the line of dragging somebody’s family into the debate. I’ve never done it. I’ve never done it until last Friday.”

Not only has Beck dragged families into the debate often, he has specifically introduced the Obama family into the debate for years. Beck went after Obama’s father, saying, “His father abandoned him. Why? So he could go off to a Marxist school in New York. Then his father left the country to go try it out.” At the same time, Beck targeted Obama’s mother, who he believes left Obama “with his grandparents so she c[ould] pursue critical theory, which is Marxist. Both parents leave a boy for Marxism?” In addition, Beck went after Obama’s grandparents, wife, and children for what he perceived to be their political thoughts and inclinations, all despite his rule against involving the families.

Of course Beck willfully invokes the family at his own leisure. Though he claimed to have criticized Malia with the intention of illustrating how Obama used children as a shield, he had done that very thing with Sarah Palin earlier in the week. Journalist Joe McGinniss moved next door to Sarah Palin, incidentally while he worked on an unauthorized biography about her. In response to the move, Palin and Beck manufactured all kinds of outrage, Beck demanding that McGinniss “leave the families alone.” While McGinniss had not yet approached anyone in the Palin family, Beck portrayed him as “a peeping tom” who “is now able to look into Piper’s bedroom,” Piper being Sarah’s nine-year-old daughter. Beck and Palin, who supported Beck’s claims, had no foundation for their insinuations. Rather, they simply used the children as political tools to conveniently vilify the respected author next door.

Those instances pertain to just last week; Beck’s malicious use of the family extends much further back. Years ago, he had embarked on a ratings war with a friend in town, Bruce Kelly. Two days after Kelly’s wife suffered a traumatizing miscarriage, Beck called Bruce’s wife, on the air, to mock how Bruce “apparently can’t do anything right.”

Those are the kinds of classless attacks Beck has stooped to in his career involving families in a bid to increase ratings. He would go so far as to mock a fellow DJ, a friend, for something as tragic as a miscarriage. Yet he still musters faux outrage at the trumped-up violations he believes others make against the sanctity of the family. It makes about as much sense as him telling his audience he is not juxtaposing modern America with Nazi Germany within an hour of doing precisely that. Even if Beck could make a valid point, like how people should avoid targeting the apolitical family around a politician, he so immediately contradicts his own point that hardly anyone would notice.

FOX has quite a few problems to work on, but airing a personality like Beck who so often goes after the family of his political opponents or uses family as a shield against attacks crosses an ethical line. In between contradicting himself, Beck would agree to the reprehensibility of doing so. Hence, viewers should tell FOX it should stick to the facts and to the politicians if it wants to work as a serious news organization — and in the meantime choose to Turn Off FOX.

Please send in tips and success stories to turnofffox@gmail.com, look out for us on Twitter @turnofffox, and join us at BuzzFlash in the Campaign to Turn Off FOX News. And please forward this article to a friend. You can drive the message home by obtaining a Turn Off FOX Bumper Sticker. Just Click Here.
Originally posted at Turn Off FOX.
BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Let The Sun Shine In......

Congress Gets A Kick in the ....Pants

2010-05-23T18:13:00.000-04:00

I know where my aim would be!

MICHAEL WINSHIP FOR BUZZFLASH

There's a story about a member of the British House of Commons who was stopped in the halls of Parliament by a constituent, an elderly pensioner. The little old man had a specific concern about his fellow senior citizens that he hoped the politician could solve.

He made his case clearly and intelligently and when he was finished, the Member of Parliament promised to see what might be done. As the MP turned to leave, the old man hauled off and kicked him in the backside as hard as he could.

The astonished politician turned; the old man waggled a finger and cheerily said, "Now don't forget!"

Few American politicians will forget that a lot of incumbent backsides were kicked by frustrated voters in Tuesday's primaries: longtime Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, a converted Democrat more from expedience than allegiance, lost renomination to Rep. Joe Sestak; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell saw his handpicked Senate candidate go down in Kentucky, defeated by Tea Partier Rand Paul; and Arkansas Democratic Senator Blanche Lincoln was forced into a runoff by progressive Democrat Bill Halter.

Yet for all the talk of an anti-incumbent fever sweeping the land, the image of angry voters manning the tumbrels and throwing the rascals out, consider the special congressional election for the late Democratic Congressman John Murtha's seat in southwestern Pennsylvania. Democrat Mark Critz handily defeated Republican Tea Partier Tim Burns and pundits declared it a big loss for the GOP, which had tried to play on anti-Obama and anti-Nancy Pelosi sentiment to defeat Critz.

Maybe the analysts are right, but it sure as hell wasn't a kick in the pants of incumbency. Mark Critz was an aide to Murtha for more than a decade and doubtless learned well at the trough of the master. Murtha, who famously declared, "If I'm corrupt it's because I take care of my district," used his many years as a member of the House Appropriations Committee to shower government munificence on the good people of the Pennsylvania 12th -- more than $2 billion worth, according to the group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

"While nobody can fill his shoes," Critz said of his mentor, "I have the honor of following in his footsteps." Be careful not to slip on all that pork grease, Congressman.

What does it all mean? The fact of the matter is that in Washington, as in Hollywood, nobody knows anything (to quote screenwriter William Goldman) about why things happen, although a great many people earn a decent living to huff and puff as if they do. But this seems clear: beyond the inchoate and diffuse anger of the Tea Party faction there is a real and reasoned discontent in the land and it's not so much against incumbents themselves as it is anti-establishment, protesting the games played and the resulting inertia suffocating what's left of our democracy and our economy. If elected officials would just do what they're supposed to -- or even just create the illusion of forward motion -- hearts would be a little lighter.

Instead, they produce tepid versions of reform -- weak tea when strong doses of antibiotics are called for -- and engage in games of parliamentary gotcha, creating nothing and reducing what was once the loyal opposition to a bunch of sniggering schoolkids.

Take, for example, recent attempts to pass the House version of the America COMPETES Act. It is, as the Associated Press describes, legislation "that would have committed more than $40 billion... to boost funding for the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies involved in basic and applied science, provided loan guarantees to small businesses developing new technologies, and promoted science and math education.

"Congress enacted a first version of the legislation in 2007 with a large majority in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate. But in this election year, with Republicans out to show their antispending credentials, things are different."

Last week, the legislation was pulled when Republicans stuck onto it an amendment not only cutting certain programs in the bill but cracking down on federal workers watching porn on their office computers -- a move simply intended to embarrass Democrats. How could many of them vote against the cuts without fearing GOP campaign ads declaring, "Congressman XX supports smut?"

The bill's supporters tried again this week, restoring the cuts but reducing the measure's timeframe from five years to three -- and including the anti-pornography provision. “But Democrats made a losing gamble by bringing the bill up under a procedure that prevented Republicans from offering more amendments but requiring a two-thirds majority for passage," AP reported. "The vote was 261 to 148 for passage, short of the two-thirds needed. Every Democrat supported it, but only 15 of 163 voting Republicans backed it."

Here is what's essentially a jobs bill, shot down by gameplaying and fiddling at a time when, as former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes, "Unemployment continues to haunt the middle class -- the anxious class of America...

"The real lesson from the economy's first quarter is the recovery is so weak that the anxious class is likely to remain anxious through November."

So perhaps the most telling punchline of this week's primaries was the one used to devastating effect by Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania: "Arlen Specter switched parties to save one job. His own."

Contrary to conventional wisdom, once financial reform is done, if members of Congress think they can save their jobs by sitting out the rest of the session, doing nothing to make waves -- or create jobs -- they will find themselves kicked in the backside, and onto the pavement.

Michael Winship is senior writer for Public Affairs Television.

Let The Sun Shine In......

It Takes More Than Just Waving a Flag to be an American

2010-05-23T18:05:00.000-04:00

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Sat, 05/22/2010 - 6:47pm.

Guest Commentary

MARC PERKEL FOR BUZZFLASH

The Tea Party is actually desecrating the flag rather than honoring it by using it as a tool of hatred. It's no different than the way the Ku Klux Klan used the flag to try to define themselves as the "Real Americans" when their message is that the rest of us are not as real of Americans as they are. They walk around in their costumes waiving their flags and their crosses and wearing their guns and spouting racist rhetoric calling everyone who disagrees with them Communists and Nazis. Their message is meant to inspire violence and is phony and dishonest.

America is a land of many cultures. We are all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants from all parts of the world. This is not a nation of just white people. When someone uses the flag to send a message of hate and exclusion they are dishonoring everything America stands for. It takes more than just waiving a flag to be an American. When the flag becomes a lie about your patriotism and you use it as a tool of anger you might as well just set it on fire because your message is not the message that this country was founded upon.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Right Likes To Mix Oil With Their Tea

2010-05-23T17:56:00.000-04:00

Capitol Idea:

By Scott Nance

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico threatens to damage the environment, the livelihoods of local commercial fishermen and others, as well as affect the region's residents for months, if not years, into the future. But the response from the Right to the disaster so far also threatens for the long-term any credibility that the so-called tea party movement claims in representing such bedrock conservative principles of limited government, controlled federal spending, or strong national security.

If they truly cared about these core notions of what conservatism at least used to be about, the tea party activists would have been already been plenty angry about the relationship between big oil companies like BP and the federal government. And the disaster now unfolding off the coast of Louisiana only would have increased their outrage. That the tea partyers seem so unconcerned — and in the case of Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul, outright hostile, who went as far as calling President Obama "un-American" for holding BP's feet to the fire — indicates either a profound ignorance of the situation, or more likely, just further unmasks the truth that conservatives today are motivated by unfettered corporatism, not the supposedly high-minded ideals to which they pay lip service.
Were a supposedly limited role for the federal government and spending restraint truly motivations for conservatives, they would be trying to pass legislation to make sure BP pays to clean up its own mess. Instead, it's the conservatives who are blocking such a bill in the Senate, leaving the American taxpayers to pick up the check.
Make no mistake, BP ain't hurting. As the fourth-largest corporation on the planet, BP reported $5.5 billion in profit — not revenue, but take-home profit — in the last three months.

It doesn't need a bailout, but by obstructing legislation to hold the company accountable for paying for its cleanup, the conservatives are offering BP just that.

In so doing, conservatives are talking out of both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they wail about deficits and debts, but when push comes to shove, it is the right who needlessly adds to the nation's red ink.

BP's bosses aren't even the only Big Oil executives to be reaching into our wallets to take our money. All five of the largest oil companies are reporting huge profits, but they each are taking $20 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies over the next five years.

Are conservatives outraged over this federal corporate welfare, which even George W. Bush has described as an unnecessary for oil production? Nope, quite the opposite: they are complicit in it. When President Obama proposed eliminating these wasteful tax giveaways — which truly represent an unwarranted federal hand in the private sector — it was a top conservative who howled.

Sen. John Cornyn is the Texas conservative who heads up his party's campaign to elect more Republican senators. He pounds Democrats on the one hand for deficit spending, but the moment someone tried to pull his oil buddies' hands out of your back pockets, Cornyn screamed bloody murder.

Where were the tea party folks during all this? Nowhere that I could see. Apparently, it's easier for the tea-party crowd to talk the limited government talk than it is to walk the walk.
Meanwhile, many conservatives and tea partyers are also busy betraying American national security. By shilling for Big Oil, they are helping to prop up a number of regimes and groups known to be unfriendly toward the United States. Specifically, it's known that each $1 increase in the price of oil provides an additional $1.5 billion to Iran annually. In this way, conservatives who side with Big Oil are giving direct aid and comfort to Iranian strongman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Fortunately, conservatives can turn this around and start helping, not hurting, their fellow Americans. One way that they can do this is by supporting the Senate's new American Power Act. The American Power Act aims to contain greenhouse gas emissions, while simultaneously reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

Even if you're one who thinks global climate change is bunk, you should still support the American Power Act. Many serious conservatives for years have recognized that the things they need to do to ensure strong U.S. energy security and national security are the exact same things others want to do to mitigate climate change. This includes such things as government mandates on automakers to manufacture increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles. That means everyone needs to be doing all of the same things in energy policy, even while they may disagree on why they are doing them.

The choice conservative activists face today is as big as the Gulf oil spill itself. They can either live up to what their ideals demand of them, or they can just keep spouting the same empty, angry platitudes in the defense of corporate greed.

The publisher of On The Hill, Scott Nance has covered government and Washington for more than a decade. Capitol Idea is his regular column from Washington. The article was first published as "Right Likes To Mix Oil With Their Tea," on Blogcritics.org.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Inside The Collapse

2010-05-23T17:50:00.000-04:00

60 Minutes: Inside The Collapse - Michael Lewis Interview
- Watch more Entertainment Videos at Vodpod.

Let The Sun Shine In......

US govt angry that BP missed deadlines -Salazar

2010-05-23T17:46:00.000-04:00

* BP has deepwater know-how for the task:Coast Guard chief
* Coast Guard Admiral Allen says "I trust" BP CEO Hayward (Recasts with Salazar comments)

By Matthew Bigg and Chris Baltimore

VENICE, La/HOUSTON, May 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. government threatened to remove BP (BP.L) from efforts to seal a blown-out oil well in the Gulf of Mexico if it doesn't do enough to stop the leak, though it acknowledged only the company and the oil industry have the know-how to halt the deepwater spill.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Sunday Washington is frustrated and angry that BP Plc missed "deadline after deadline" in its efforts to seal the well more than a month after an oil rig explosion triggered the disaster.

"I am angry and I am frustrated that BP has been unable to stop this oil from leaking and to stop the pollution from spreading. We are 33 days into this effort and deadline after deadline has been missed," U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said after visiting BP's U.S. headquarters in Houston.

"If we find they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately," he told reporters as the administration maintained its hard line.
Salazar's strongly worded comments followed President Barack Obama's on Saturday, when he blamed the spill on "a breakdown of responsibility" at BP. The unfolding disaster has become a top priority on Obama's crowded domestic agenda. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

TAKE A LOOK on the spill [ID:nSPILL]
INSIDER TV: link.reuters.com/wuw64k
Graphic: link.reuters.com/ken64k
Breakingviews column [ID:nLDE64C1D1]
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The chief of the Coast Guard, Admiral Thad Allen, acknowledged on Sunday that the government is forced to rely on BP and the private oil sector to try to plug the gusher. At the same time, BP said the containment method it was attempting on the ocean floor was capturing much less of the leaking oil than three days ago.

Company engineers were readying other short-term solutions, the next one expected to start late on Tuesday. But BP Managing Director Bob Dudley said there was "no certainty" of success at the unprecedented depths at which they were being tried -- one mile (1.6 km) down in the Gulf of Mexico.

More than a month after a rig explosion triggered what Obama has described as an environmental disaster and "BP's mess," oil is still spewing virtually unchecked from BP's ruptured Macondo seabed well.

TRUST

At a time of mounting U.S. government and public criticism of the company and its executives over the catastrophic spill, Allen said he trusted BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who has made comments downplaying its size and environmental impact.

Sheets of heavy oil have washed ashore in Louisiana's fragile marshlands and lesser "oil debris" has also reached the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama in what is seen as an ecological and economic calamity for the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Given the lack of a solution so far and the doubts over BP, Allen was asked on CNN's "State of the Union" why the U.S. federal government did not completely take over the spill containment operation from the London-based firm.

"What makes this an unprecedented anomalous event is access to the discharge site is controlled by the technology that was used for the drilling, which is owned by the private sector," Allen said. "They have the eyes and ears that are down there. They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved," he added.

Asked too about the apparent growing U.S. lack of confidence in BP CEO Hayward, Allen said: "I trust Tony Hayward. When I talk to him, I get an answer".

BP has deployed a long suction tube down to the larger of two leaks from the well, but a BP spokesman said on Sunday this captured only 1,360 barrels per day of oil over the 24 hours to midnight Saturday. The flow has been declining from the 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 litres) per day the company had said the tube was siphoning off three days ago.

BP engineers are now preparing a "top kill," pumping heavy fluids into the well to try to shut it off, an operation to begin late Tuesday or early Wednesday, Dudley told CNN.

Many scientists believe the Gulf spill has already eclipsed the 11 million gallons (41 million litres) spilled by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker accidnet in Alaska. They warn the spreading oil could increasingly be caught in a powerful ocean current that could take it to the Florida Keys, Cuba and the U.S. East Coast.

PRAYERS TO GOD

Churchgoers in Louisiana coastal parishes affected by the spill prayed for God's help. "You (God) can clear that oil up, because that oil was down there thousands of years before it came up in the Gulf. So you know what to do with it, dear God," retired oyster fisherman Herbert Guidry prayed in the New Mount Pilgrim Baptist Church in Houma.

Analysts say growing ecological and economic damage from the spill could become a political liability for Obama before November congressional elections.

While also promising to hold Washington accountable for proper oversight of the industry, Obama ramped up pressure on companies linked to the spill: BP, Halliburton (HAL.N) and Transocean Ltd (RIG.N). He believed a "breakdown of responsibility" between them led to the disaster.

BP stocks have taken a beating in the markets in the month since the well blowout and rig explosion that killed 11 workers and touched off the spill. Its share price shed another 4 percent on Friday in London, extending recent sharp losses. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Jackie Frank in Washington, Sharon Reich in Louisiana, Hashem Kalantari in Tehran; Writing by Ed Stoddard and Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Jackie Frank)
Let The Sun Shine In......

Right-Wing Machine Attacks Kagan

2010-05-14T18:05:00.000-04:00

Jilani, and Alex Seitz-Wald

RADICAL RIGHT

Immediately after President Obama announced Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his nominee to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, the right-wing attack machine kicked into high gear. In the few short days since the announcement, the far right has tried to smear Kagan -- much as it did to Sonia Sotomayor -- with sexist, personal attacks, and misinformation about her background, professional history, ideology, and judicial philosophy. Hate radio host Rush Limbaugh said that "we don't need to go too deep in analyzing the babe...I guess she can change her mind. She's a woman." Michael Savage called Kagan a "radical leftist red-diaper doper baby" who is "out of touch...with mainstream America." Late last month, before Kagan's nomination, top GOP strategist Curt Levey revealed the right's strategic motives. He urged Republicans to vigorously contest whomever Obama nominated -- regardless of qualification -- in order to delay confirmation and "eat up precious time Democrats need to round out their agenda." "Even if it's a nominee that we can't seriously stop, we can accomplish several things, and so a hard fight is worthwhile," Levey said, adding, "There's broader goals such as just distracting Obama from other items on his agenda." Yet at the same time, others on the right recognize the divisive strategy's key flaw. "I don't think it's good for the Court. ... I don't think it serves the country well," said former Whitewater prosecutor Ken Starr, who famously led the impeachment of President Clinton. Nevertheless, the right-wing attack campaign continues.

EXPERIENCE HYPOCRISY: Kagan's experience equals, or even exceeds, the backgrounds of some of the Court's most respected justices, past and present. However, Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY), Sen. Jim DeMint (SC), and John Cornyn (TX) have questioned Kagan's qualifications because she has never served as a judge. "I'm concerned that she has no judicial experience," DeMint said. Yet back in 2005, all three senators vigorously supported President Bush's Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, who also had never sat on the bench. "Ms. Miers has great experience," McConnell said at the time. "She is well qualified to join the nation's highest court," he added. Before Kagan's nomination, Cornyn said she would be a "highly qualified" candidate to replace Stevens but this week he said he finds her nomination "surprising" because "she lacks judicial experience." When challenged on his double standard, he flip-flopped, saying that Miers, "like Ms. Kagan, has not been a judge. I don't think that should be a disqualifier." Indeed, many other GOP senators feel the same way. "I don't think that's a disqualification," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said, noting that "some of the greatest justices in history never sat in a court room." Even Miguel Estrada, who was nominated to a federal appeals court by President Bush but was never confirmed, said Kagan is "highly capable and should be confirmed."

MILITARY ATTACK HYPOCRISY: Although it has been thoroughly debunked, Republicans and conservative media have latched on to the false talking point that as Harvard Law School (HLS) dean, Kagan "banned" the military from recruiting on campus and that because of it, she is "hostile to the military." However, it has been well-documented that Kagan never booted, banned, or barred military recruiters from HLS. The criticism focuses on Kagan's opposition to the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy. Highlighting Kagan's statement from 2004 that "the military's recruitment policy is both unjust and unwise," the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol went on the attack, saying "[i]t is intellectually wrong and morally cowardly to call this the 'military's policy'" because "[i]t is the policy of the U.S. Government, based on legislation passed in 1993 by (a Democratic) Congress, signed into law and implemented by the Clinton administration, legislation and implementation that are currently continued by a Democratic administration and a Democratic Congress." Others at the Weekly Standard quickly echoed Kristol's charge. However, as Media Matters' Jamison Foser noted, "The interesting thing about Kristol & Co. insisting that the military itself has nothing to do with the military's anti-gay policies is that they've been insisting for years that civilian policymakers should defer to the military when it comes to adjusting those policies." Moreover, Kristol has never attacked Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen for criticizing DADT. "We have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens," Mullen told Congress earlier this year. "For me, personally, it comes down to integrity: Theirs as an individual, ours as an institution."

THE RIGHT-WING CRAZY: Outside the dishonest "experience" and "ban on the military" talking points, others on the right have resorted to outright personal attacks on Kagan. Fox News' Sean Hannity called Kagan a "radical," others in the conservative media are calling her a socialist. Radio talk show host Michael Savage said she had been part of the "New York City communist front" and the Republican National Committee attacked Kagan for saying the Constitution was "defective" as originally written (She was referring to the fact that the founding document codified slavery before the 13th Amendment). CNN conservative commentator Bay Buchanan said Obama had "dummied down" the Court with Kagan's nomination. Others in the right-wing media have targeted Kagan's physical appearance. "Has anyone seen Mike Myers and your new Supreme [Court nominee] in the same room at the same time?" conservative radio host Neal Boortz tweeted. HumanEvent.com's Jason Mattera compared Kagan to a football linebacker and Savage said that he finds Kagan's appearance "personally grotesque." One far-right group has wondered if Kagan is a lesbian, asserting that if she is, she would not be "qualified to sit on the Supreme Court." Even the mainstream media is dabbling in this rumor, finding speculation over Kagan's private life more news-worthy than asking how a nominee's sexual orientation is relevant to his or her qualifications.

ECONOMY -- DESPITE MILITARY OPPOSITION, BROWNBACK CONTINUES PUSH TO EXEMPT AUTO DEALERS FROM NEW CONSUMER PROTECTIONS: Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) has offered up an amendment to the Senate financial reform legislation that would protect auto dealers' ability to engage in unscrupulous lending practices. The move, which mirrors an amendment included in the House version of the legislation, prompted an interjection from President Obama, who blasted Brownback's amendment, saying it would allow auto dealer-lenders to "inflate rates, insert hidden fees into the fine print of paperwork, and include expensive add-ons that catch purchasers by surprise." "The fact is, auto dealer-lenders make nearly 80 percent of the automobile loans in our country, and these lenders should be subject to the same standards as any local or community bank that provides loans," said Obama. The President also singled out the harm the amendment could cause military families, who are often targets of these deceptive practices. In February, the Defense Department in February weighed in on the auto dealer-lender exemption, hailing the "intervention of the CFPA in overseeing auto financing and sales" in protecting U.S. servicemembers and "reducing the concerns they have over their financial well-being." Yesterday, Secretary of the Army John McHugh wrote a letter to Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) expressing his "strong concerns" about the Brownback amendment. Research by the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy has found that "auto finance is demonstrably susceptible to unfair and deceptive practices" -- including mark ups and a host of fees -- "and those practices are demonstrably not held in check by private market forces alone." In fact, The New York Times this week detailed one instance of a dealer exploiting a member of the military by demanding more fees after a purchase was already completed, while physically blocking his car to that the soldier could not leave until he agreed to pay.

New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo has begun an investigation "of eight banks to determine whether they provided misleading information to rating agencies in order to inflate the grades of certain mortgage securities." Cuomo's investigation includes megabanks such as Bank of America and Goldman Sachs.

A new WSJ/NBC poll finds that only 4 percent of respondents have a very or somewhat positive view of Goldman Sachs; 50 percent have a somewhat or very negative view, worse figures than even those of oil-giant BP.

In a joint press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai yesterday, President Obama stressed that the U.S. remains on schedule to begin withdrawing troops by July 2011, but he also said, "We are not suddenly, as of July 2011, finished with Afghanistan." The president promised a "long-term partnership" with the Afghans beyond a military presence.

"The monthly cost of the war in Afghanistan, driven by troop increases and fighting on difficult terrain, has topped Iraq costs for the first time since 2003 and shows no sign of letting up," USA Today reports. "Pentagon spending in February, the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq."
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has signed a bill banning public schools from offering ethnic studies courses. The measure was aimed at the Tucson Unified School District's popular Mexican-American studies department, which critics called "ethnic chauvinism." Schools that don't comply with the law "could have as much as 10% of their state funds withheld each month."

President Obama's approval rating "remained stable" in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll at 50 percent, compared with 48 percent in March. "In the wake of the attempted Times Square terrorist attack, a plurality of respondents approve of his handling of terrorism." The poll also found that 64 percent "strongly or somewhat" support Arizona's new immigration law, with 70 percent of Hispanics opposed.
Transocean Ltd., which owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, is petitioning to limit its liability to under $27 million. The contractor is already facing dozens of lawsuits from aggrieved parties.

The head of the U.S. Naval Academy said yesterday that the school would adapt to a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, "because basic respect among students is crucial to succeeding." Noting that there was a time when minorities and women were not allowed to attend the school, Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler told reporters that students already come from many different backgrounds.

The Los Angeles City Council voted 13-1 yesterday to ban most city travel to Arizona, and asked the city attorney to review all $58 million in existing contracts with companies in the state to see which could be canceled in protest of Arizona's new immigration law. Councilman Ed Reyes said Arizona's law is "not American."

And finally: "When President Obama was asked if he would play a round of golf" with Rush Limbaugh, his response -- according to "a top Democrat" quoted in a new book about the hate radio host -- was that "Limbaugh can play with himself."

ThinkProgress has a new mobile version of our website. Please check out www.thinkprogress.org on your mobile device, and let us know what you think.

Whenever the media insists both sides are guilty of ideological purges, "an angel loses its wings."

Is Faisal Shahzad linked to the Pakistani Taliban or not?

Are people interested in facts?

Washington, DC is oddly complacent about unemployment.

Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) reportedly falls asleep during an intelligence briefing.

Obama on civilian casualties in Afghanistan: "I am accountable."

Senate Democrats' misguided push to give national banks immunity from state law.

Military bloggers come out against DADT.

"In Arizona, they know exactly what's in the legislation. They argued over the details in the legislation. The rest of America doesn't realize that it isn't profiling. In fact, the only way that a policeman can stop someone is if they believe that they're in the process of committing a crime."
-- GOP Pollster Frank Luntz, 5/12/10

VERSUS

"[A] police officer responding to city ordinance violations would also be required to determine the immigration status of an individual they have reasonable suspicion of being in the country illegally. City ordinance violations vary by municipality
but could include things like loud parties, barking dogs, cars on blocks in the yard or too many renters."
-- The Arizona Republic, 4/29/10

Let The Sun Shine In......

Voters Chart a Dangerous Path

2010-05-14T17:55:00.000-04:00

What a predictable society we have become. Not only are we guilty of expecting instant gratification of our every wish and quick solutions for problems years in the making, we are delusional about the reasons for our failure. Conservatives deluge call-in programs with partisan talking points as if they were voicing opinions derived in some rational process instead of being fomented in the torrid right-wing spin machine with disciples mobilized to spread the word about everything from health care to Supreme Court nominees.

Persistent rants claiming President Obama is driving the country toward a socialistic, one-world amalgam are made by people who obviously have no idea what socialism is and simply repeat the vituperations of talk-radio hosts. They are misled as well by a cadre of fast-talking self-promoting cable ‘analysts’ who discuss the most profound subjects in a shallow, dismissive manner and who always manage to have the last word.

On Morning Joe recently a guest discussed his documentary about how content-light Supreme Court confirmation proceedings often are. He mentioned, for example, that Judge Roberts had been something less than forthcoming during confirmation giving the impression that he was a moderate of sorts. Once on the bench, however, he went out of his way to deliver a conservative message. Host Joe Scarborough said he disagreed with everything the guest had said about Roberts but then he (Joe) was a conservative and the guest was a filmmaker. The truth is most observers agree that the Roberts who appeared before the Senate was a different creature from the Roberts presiding as Chief Justice.

We knew of course there’d be a fight over the president’s nominee to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, no matter who it was. The veto machine in the Senate otherwise known as the Republican minority is always hard at work immobilizing that body with secret holds and manipulating issues to force filibuster-proof votes. They have plenty of company in efforts to malign nominee Elena Kagan. Absolutely ludicrous criticisms are leveled at her by a variety of people, many of whom should be relegated to the dustbin of inconsequential talking heads - - people like Bay Buchanan.

Buchanan says the president “dummied down” the Supreme Court by nominating Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, an astonishing pronouncement considering her support of Sarah Palin whom she described as accomplished and “extraordinarily qualified” to be president, and coming on the heels of the eight-year administration of a seriously under-qualified George Bush. Speaking of “dummied down” appointments other than the Supreme Court appointment of Bush in 2000, we have Clarence Thomas who received a minimally-qualified grade from the American Bar Association. But agree or disagree with the Kagan and Sotomayor nominations, saying they aren’t smart is, well, just stupid.

It is hard to imagine that voters stand ready to ‘throw the bums out’ of office and return bums of even greater magnitude in frustration at the nation’s slow rate of progress out of financial distress. Disregarding the previous administration’s failed agenda and believing that tax cuts and unregulated markets will resuscitate a weak economy and ward off creeping socialism represents an impulse to clutch at a huge empty straw. Oddly, political enemies don’t seem to grasp the irony of referring to what they describe as Obama’s failings in terms, as Jon Stewart puts it, of Bush “f**k-ups.” Thus Kagan becomes his Harriet Myers, the BP spill his Katrina and Afghanistan his war. In a desperate attempt to excoriate Obama, opponents run the risk of highlighting the failed policies and offhand governing style of the former president.

The ship of state was foundering long before Obama took office but the quicksand of previous inaction and intransigence was waiting to suck the life out of his agenda. Now, little more than a year later, the public seems to have forgotten the reason for our national distress and, in a wave of misplaced anger inflamed by strident demagogues, have taken aim at the president and all incumbents whether or not they deserve blame. If voters choose to embrace the politics of the past and heed the demon call of the right-wing we will be delivered into the mindless world of Rush Limbaugh.and the party he leads.

Please respond to Ann Davidow's commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community.

FINDING A VOICE by Ann Davidow

Let The Sun Shine In......

Indecision: Britain 2010

2010-05-08T07:29:00.000-04:00

Polls: Conservatives fall short of majority in UK

By PAISLEY DODDS and DANICA KIRKA, Associated Press Writers Paisley Dodds And Danica Kirka, Associated Press Writers Thu May 6, 7:57 pm ET

LONDON – The Conservatives captured the largest number of seats and the ruling Labour Party suffered substantial losses Thursday in Britain's national election, according to television projections based on exit polls.

The projected result did not bode well for Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister since 2007, and triggered widespread uncertainty over who will form the next government. The country's top three parties — the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats — immediately began jockeying for position in possible coalition.
Frustrated voters, meanwhile, said they were turned away from polling stations and some stations appeared overwhelmed by late voter turnout — a sign of the intense interest in this election.

An analysis by Britain's main television networks suggested David Cameron's Conservative party will win 305 House of Commons seats, short of the 326 seats needed for a majority.
The projections also showed a substantial drop for Brown's ruling Labor Party, giving it 255 seats — its smallest number since 1987. Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats were seen as winning 61 seats — far less than had been expected. Smaller parties got 29 other seats.

The projection suggests that the Conservatives will gain 95 seats, Labour will lose 94 and the Liberal Democrats will lose one.

If the vote does not give any party a majority, that could produce a destabilizing period of political wrangling and uncertainty. Brown could resign if he feels the results have signaled he has lost his mandate to rule, or he could try to stay on as leader and seek a deal in which smaller parties would support him.

"Let's see how it pans out. Gordon will know whether he should stay on or not," Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson said. "I think Gordon deserves the dignity to look at these things and make up his own mind."

Hard results began to trickle in about an hour after polls closed. The first seat to declare, Houghton and Sunderland South in northern England, was retained by Labour.

Hundreds of British voters across the country claimed they were unable to vote because they were left still standing in long lines when polls closed at 10 p.m. (2100 GMT, 5 p.m. EDT).

Police in London said they were called to a polling station in east London when about 50 angry voters denied the chance to cast their ballot staged a sit-in protest. Voters in Sheffield, Newcastle and elsewhere in London also complained that they had been denied a vote because of lines as polls closed.

Theresa May, a senior Conservative Party lawmaker, said the exit poll result showed Labour's heaviest losses since 1931, and that the incumbent party had lost "the legitimacy to govern."

But Labour's Business Secretary, Peter Mandelson, pointed out that the sitting prime minister is traditionally given the first chance to form a government.

"The rules are that if it's a hung Parliament, it's not the party with the largest number of seats that has first go, it's the government," he said. "I have no problem in principle in trying to supply this country with a stable government."

He extended an olive branch to the Liberal Democrats, who have called to end the first-past-the-post system, where the number of districts won — not the popular vote — determines who leads the country.

"There has to be electoral reform as a result of this election," Mandelson said. "First-past the-post is on its last legs."

The results may yet change. Projecting elections based on exit polls is inherently risky — particularly in an exceptionally close election like this one. Polls are based on samples — in this case 18,000 respondents — and always have some margin of error.

Britain's census is nine years out of date and the polling districts haven't caught up to population shifts. Many voters also refuse to respond to exit polls.

Thousands have also already cast postal ballots but those results don't factor into the exit polls. About 12 percent cast postal ballots in 2005.

The election result would be disastrous news for the Liberal Democrats, Britain's longtime third party, who enjoyed a big poll surge after the charismatic Clegg appeared in televised TV debates.

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Vince Cable described the outcome of the exit poll as "very strange" and insisted they had been "horribly wrong" in the past.

The Tories are hoping to regain power for the first time since 1997, when they were ousted by Labour under Tony Blair. After three leaders and three successive election defeats, the party selected Cameron, a fresh-faced, bicycle-riding graduate of Eton and Oxford who promised to modernize the party's fusty, right-wing image.

Whoever wins faces the daunting challenge of introducing big budget cuts to slash Britain's huge deficit.

In late trading in New York, the British pound sank to its lowest point in a year to trade at $1.4715.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Time to Prosecute Corporate Criminals at Massey, BP

2010-05-08T07:25:00.000-04:00

Minuscule fines ,comparatively speaking, aren't getting the job done. Maybe jail time will get corporate attention.

By Ruth Conniff, May 5, 2010

Nothing prevents the government from criminally prosecuting corporate CEOs who willfully ignore health and safety standards, killing workers, as in Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, and causing environmental catastrophe, as in BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

For years, we haven't seen many corporate criminals prosecuted in the United States, thanks to the power of corporate lobbyists and the reluctance of government officials to take on business interests.

A PBS Frontline show "A Dangerous Business"—notes that, in the 32 years since OSHA was created, there have been over 200,000 workplace deaths. But OSHA has referred only 151 of these cases to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. Of these, only eight have resulted in prison sentences for company officials.

There is a lot of political pressure not to seek prison terms for CEOs of unscrupulous companies, and little public sentiment pushing the government and prosecutors to get tough on corporate criminals.
But that may be changing.

The explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana that killed eleven people and led to an oil spill that will soon surpass Exxon Valdez in its size and destructiveness led Attorney General Eric Holder to announce a Justice Department investigation into health and safety protocol aboard the BP-leased the rig.

BP was involved in a Texas oil refinery explosion that killed 15 people in 2005. And the company seems to have foregone the safety systems that allow deep-water oil rigs off the coast in Northern Europe to avoid catastrophic accidents.

Public patience with accidents caused by lax safety and environmental standards is wearing thin.

This became clear after the Massey Energy mine disaster.

"I live in West Virginia, and my sense is the tide is turning politically [in the wake of the mine disaster]," Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter told me. "With the oil spill in the Gulf and with the deaths of the mine workers, there is fertile ground for a renewed social movement against corporate crime."

Mokhiber points to a raft of opinion pieces calling for criminal charges against Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.

Blankenship is a particularly odious character. A heavyweight in Republican politics in his state, he ran a justice off the West Virginia Supreme Court and installed his own coal-friendly judge. Under his leadership, Massey Energy has been cited for safety violations again and again-with 1,300 violations in the Upper Big Branch Mine alone since 2005, and 50 in the last month for poor ventilation--the apparent cause of the recent disaster.

After 29 people died at the Upper Big Branch mine last week, Bob Franken of The Hill newspaper in Washington, DC, wrote:

"Perhaps it's time for Don Blankenship to get involved with the courts again. This time, as a defendant. The charge: murder."

Franken points out that the sentence for involuntary manslaughter in West Virginia is one year in prison per case--or a possible 29 years for Blankenship.

It's not such a far-fetched notion. In a 2005 memo to deep mine supervisors, Blankenship ordered the miners not to work on anything but "running coal." They were not to "build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever." When a deadly fire broke out at Massey's Aracoma mine, killing two men, the memo became Exhibit A at a trial that ultimately resulted in a $2.5 million fine for the company.

That sort of direct complicity in flouting safety standards could form the basis for a criminal prosecution of Blankenship.

There is important legal precedent for bringing such charges.

Mokhiber cites the Ford Pinto case: In 1978, three teenage girls driving in a Ford Pinto were hit from behind on Highway 33 in northern Indiana. All three died from terrible burns after their car burst into flames. An Indiana grand jury indicted the Ford Motor Company for reckless homicide for making and selling the Pinto with an unsafe fuel tank.

"Although Ford was ultimately acquitted, the criminal prosecution of Ford Motor Company reestablished an important precedent: In certain cases involving human health and safety, corporations and their executives could be required to submit not only to the scrutiny and sanctions of traditional federal agencies, but to state criminal courts as well," The Corporate Crime Reporter notes.

Mokhiber sees parallels to the Massey Energy mine disaster.

Despite the intimidation factor of taking on a politically powerful figure like Blankenship and a big company like Massey, the Pinto case sets a precedent for an underfunded, public-interest-minded prosecutor to do just that.

"The Pinto case was brought by a Republican state prosecutor in Indiana," Mokhiber notes. "He was totally outgunned for resources by Ford. He relied on law students for support. Even thought the company was ultimately found not guilty, it set an important precedent."
Another role model Mokhiber cites is Ira Reiner, who was the LA County district attorney in the early 1980s. Reiner made it a practice to open an involuntary manslaughter investigation of a company every time there was a death on the job. This resulted in many criminal prosecutions and justice for the families of dead and injured workers.

The current political climate might produce more Ira Reiners.

Kristen Keller, the prosecuting attorney for Raleigh County, and the only prosecutor in West Virginia who has the power to press charges in the case, recently told Corporate Crime Reporter: “If there is evidence to support a homicide prosecution, I would not hesitate to prosecute."

In the last week, several news outlets, including NPR, the Washington Post, and Reuters, have reported that a Federal criminal investigation is underway against Massey Energy.
NPR also reported that the government was looking into possible bribery of officials at the Mine Health and Safety Administration.

"Most people aren't familiar with the history of criminal prosecution for worker deaths," Mokhiber says. "There is a whole generation that has forgotten the Ford Pinto prosecution, and just thinks workers die on the job sometimes and no one is responsible"

But that is not the case "if the prosecution can make a case that Blankenship knew the situation at the mine and if it meets the legal definition of involuntary manslaughter."

Back in the 1980s, Mokhiber says, Congressman John Conyers proposed a "public endangerment" law that would have held corporate executives criminally liable if they knew of a product or process that could cause harm and failed to report it. But corporate lobbyists tied up the proposed legislation and it died.
Now is a good time for a renewed effort of that kind.
Meanwhile, prosecutors at both the federal and state level have the power to prosecute executives who have direct involvement in negligent practices by their companies that lead to worker deaths and environmental damage.
The only thing holding them back is politics. That's where the renewed social movement comes in.
Ruth Conniff is the political editor of The Progressive magazine.
Let The Sun Shine In......

2010-05-08T07:14:00.000-04:00

May 6, 2010

Op-Ed Columnist

Congress, Up in Arms

By GAIL COLLINS

There seems to be a strong sentiment in Congress that the only constitutional right suspected terrorists have is the right to bear arms.

“I think you’re going too far here,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday. He was speaking in opposition to a bill that would keep people on the F.B.I. terrorist watch list from buying guns and explosives.

Say what?

Yes, if you are on the terrorist watch list, the authorities can keep you from getting on a plane but not from purchasing an AK-47. This makes sense to Congress because, as Graham accurately pointed out, “when the founders sat down and wrote the Constitution, they didn’t consider flying.”

The subject of guns turns Congress into a twilight zone. People who are perfectly happy to let the government wiretap phones go nuts when the government wants to keep track of weapons permits. A guy who stands up in the House and defends the torture of terror suspects will nearly faint with horror at the prospect of depriving someone on the watch list of the right to purchase a pistol.

“We make it so easy for dangerous people to get guns. If it’s the Second Amendment, it doesn’t matter if they’re Osama bin Laden,” said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

Graham wanted to make it clear that just because he doesn’t want to stop gun purchases by possible terrorists, that doesn’t mean he’s not tough on terror.

“I am all into national security. ... I want to stop reading these guys their Miranda rights,” he said.

The Obama administration has been criticized by many Republicans for having followed the rules about how long you can question a terror suspect before you read him his rights. These objections have been particularly loud since the arrest of Faisal Shahzad in the attempted Times Square bombing. No one seems moved by the fact that Shahzad, after being told that he had the right to remain silent, continued talking incessantly.

“Nobody in their right mind would expect a Marine to read someone caught on the battlefield their rights,” Graham said.

Terror threats make politicians behave somewhat irrationally. But the subject of guns makes them act like a paranoid mother ferret protecting her litter. The National Rifle Association, the fiercest lobby in Washington, grades every member of Congress on how well they toe the N.R.A. line. Lawmakers with heavily rural districts would rather vote to legalize carrying concealed weapons in kindergarten than risk getting less than 100 percent.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on “Terrorists and Guns: The Nature of the Threat and Proposed Reforms,” concerned a modest bill sponsored by Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. It would allow the government to stop gun sales to people on the F.B.I. terror watch list the same way it does people who have felony convictions. Because Congress has repeatedly rejected this idea, 1,119 people on the watch list have been able to purchase weapons over the last six years. One of them bought 50 pounds of military grade explosives.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, dutifully trekked down to Washington to plead for the bill on behalf of the nation’s cities. The only thing they got for their trouble was praise for getting the city through the Times Square incident in one piece. And almost everyone had a good word for the T-shirt vendor who first noticed the suspicious car and raised an alert. Really, if someone had introduced a bill calling for additional T-shirt vendors, it would have sailed through in a heartbeat.
Gun legislation, not so popular.

Lautenberg’s bill has been moldering in committee, and that is not going to change.

“Let me emphasize that none of us wants a terrorist to be able to purchase a gun,” said Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who nevertheless went on to argue against allowing the government to use the terrorist watch list to keep anyone from being able to purchase, um, a gun.

“Some of the people pushing this idea are also pushing the idea of banning handguns,” said Graham, darkly. “I don’t think banning handguns makes me safer.”

The terrorist watch list is huge, and some of the names on it are undoubtedly there in error. The bill would allow anyone denied the right to purchase a firearm an appeal process, but that would deprive the would-be purchaser some precious gun-owning time. Before we subject innocent Americans “to having to go into court and pay the cost of going to court to get their gun rights back, I want to slow down and think about this,” said Graham.

Slow is going to be very slow, and the thinking could go on for decades.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Reid suppports breaking up of large banks

2010-05-08T07:10:00.000-04:00

Thursday, May 6, 2010

The Tide Is Turning: Call Your Senator NOW!

The tide is now turning towards real financial reform:

In a major development, Senator Harry Reid is now supporting breaking up the giant banks and auditing the Fed

Number two Senate majority leader, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), came out Tuesday in favor of a far-reaching amendment that would break up big banks and cap their size (the Brown-Kaufman amendment)

Senator Feingold has announced that he will filibuster and financial regulation which does not include serious banking reform

I asked a friend on the hill - a top aide to a very important Congress member - whether people would be wasting their time by calling their Senator. I explained that many people called and demanded that the U.S. not invade Iraq, but that Congress just ignored us. I said that many people feel that traditional political activism, like phonecalls, can't work, as the level of political corruption is too high.

He responded that given the bipartisan support of many congress people and the American people for financial reform, this is very different from Iraq.

He urged everyone to call their Senators and demand the giant banks be broken up and the Fed be audited.

Senator Sanders' bill to audit the Fed will probably be voted on today. Please call your Senator now.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Lieberman supports stripping of citizenship for anyone ....

2010-05-08T07:01:00.000-04:00

...suspected of terrorist ties.

Joe Lieberman is independent of everything except Israel. One can expect him to say something insane anytime terrorism or Israel is involved. In his mind the two are forever linked.

by Meg White

Quick. Someone strip Joe Lieberman of his citizenship before he causes actual damage to the country. Oh, wait. I forgot; we don't engage in that kind of Orwellian nonsense in this country.

Yet.

You probably heard about the latest idea from the "independent" senator from Connecticut (who seems to be independent of nothing more than reality) to strip citizenship from people who are accused of having ties to terrorism. Somehow this incredibly stupid idea got codified into an actual bill, which was introduced yesterday. The fact that this knee-jerk response is now present in the Congressional Record is an anathema to our justice system.

Countless questions have been raised about this ridiculous notion advanced by Lieberman. Like, for one: "Why?"

After all, what good does this actually accomplish? The ability to try someone in a military tribunal comes easier when the accused is not a U.S. citizen, but then again, what's the problem with criminal court? And apparently the Miranda rights argument advanced by Lieberman is erroneous as well.

So why would a graduate of Yale Law, who should know better, introduce such a legally fraught, Draconian law?

Oh, of course! I should have known. Thanks for spelling this one out, Rep. Charlie Dent:

Stripping U.S. citizenship from terror suspects is not only the moral thing to do - it will make it easier to kill them, legislators argued Thursday.

"I suspect it would be easier to launch a Hellfire missile at a noncitizen than a citizen," said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.). He rolled out a proposal with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and others giving the State Department power to yank the citizenship of Yanks who join up with Al Qaeda or similar groups.

Yeah, just killing U.S. citizens whom the State Department suspects of having terrorist ties would be wrong. Instead, we should strip them of their citizenship then bomb them to smithereens. Neat and tidy.

But here's another nagging question: What if they're wrongfully accused? After all, it's happened before. Richard Jewell, anyone?

Of course, Lieberman probably has no interest in stripping citizenship from white Christians accused of terrorism. You didn't see Lieberman all over FOX News suggesting that the Hutaree militants -- who were recently arrested under the suspicion of planning to wage war on this country from within -- be stripped of their citizenship or denied their Miranda rights or tried in a military tribunal.

Nope. It took fellahs with scary names suchas Faisal Shahzad, Umar Faoruk Abdulmutallab and Khalid Sheik Mohammed to arouse such despotic ire in Lieberman.

The scariest part is that Lieberman has bipartisan support for the measure, and by "bipartisan" I don't mean independent Lieberman plus the GOP. Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA) is introducing companion legislation in the House with the aforementioned Pennsylvanian who likes bombing people. And Greg Sargent is predicting that there are more spineless Democrats "than you might think" who are afraid to deny the State Department the right to deny you your citizenship. Awesome.

I can't wait to hear psychopath-at-large Glenn Beck try to rationalize this to his Big Gubmint-fearing audience.

Not only is this proposal downright offensive to the very idea of American citizenship, it is also downright frightening that people with the grave responsibility of holding national elective office would propose or support it. And that is why we need to act to stem this sudden rush of fascism.

But since we are lawful U.S. citizens who have faith in the American system of justice, I'm not proposing that we strip Lieberman of his citizenship, or toss him in jail or even bug his phone line.

Instead, let's get him disbarred. He clearly has forgotten everything he learned about American justice while in law school. Any Yalies out there who can help me out with this one?

Let The Sun Shine In......

The (Almost) Crash of Wall Street

2010-05-08T06:49:00.000-04:00

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Ninety minutes before the end of the trading day today, the U.S. stock market almost melted down The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 1,000 points. The market regained ground before the end, like a giant 747 narrowly averting a crash landing, but the questions of the day are: What happened? And What does it mean?

At this point no one knows why. Some say it was sudden burst of worries about Greece’s debt and the increasing possibility of a default that might cause a run by global investors. Others point to a “trading error.” Giant high-speed computers generate millions of trade based on instructions embedded in computer programs designed to move fast enough to beat everyone else. So when there’s a glitch in one of them it can immediately spread to all the other programs designed to move just as fast. Some say it was an erroneous trade entered by someone at a big Wall Street bank who mistyped an order to sell a large block of stock, and that the big drop in that stock’s price (Procter & Gamble?) triggered “sell” orders across the market.

Regardless of why it happened, it’s further evidence that the nation’s and the world’s capital markets have become a vast out-of-control casino in which fortunes can be made or lost in an instant — which would be fine except for the fact that most of us have put our life savings there. Pension funds, mutual funds, school endowments — the value of all of this depends on a mechanism that can lose a trillion dollars in minutes without anyone having a clear idea why. So much of the market now depends on computer programs and mathematical models that no one fully understands, so much trading is in the hands of a few people whose fat thumbs or momentary carelessness might sink the economy, so much of global wealth now depends on who can move their money quickest at the slightest provocation — that we are toying with financial disaster every day. The luck or foolishness of a few traders, and inside knowledge and information that some possess and others don’t, combined with ultra high-speed computers, put us all at the whim of a system whose risk is way out of proportion to any public benefits.

The financial reforms being considered on Capitol Hill are steps in the right direction. But the “systemic risk” now embedded in our capital markets is higher than ever, and will require far greater understanding and vigilance than now being considered.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Journalists Must Donate To Anti-Choice Organization In Order To Cover Palin’s Speech

2010-05-01T08:26:00.000-04:00

Today, Sarah Palin will be speaking at a fundraiser for the Austin-based Heroic Media, a “faith-based” anti-choice organization that seeks to reduce the number of abortions “by creating a Culture of Life through television, billboard and internet advertising.” As part of its anti-choice media strategy, Heroic Media airs television commercials that “encourage viewers to learn more about and rethink the Life issue.” The group’s Internet strategy tries to direct Google users to an anti-choice website:

Heroic Media utilizes an online strategy to purchase top listings on search engines, such as google, so when teens “google” the word “abortion,”… “I think I’m pregnant,” … or “terminate pregnancy,” one of the top web sites they’ll see is our partner web site http://www.teenbreaks.com
Teenbreaks.com provides information about abortion, communicating with parents, adoption, cutting and more.

As Indecision Forever notes, the fact that Teenbreaks.com provides “information” on “cutting” is a giveaway that it isn’t interested in providing women with the best possible facts about their reproductive rights: “Cutting, that’s right, because self-mutilation has everything to do with handling an unplanned pregnancy.”
But in order to cover Palin’s speech, the Austin-American Statesman reports that journalists will have to make a contribution to Heroic Media:

Restrictions: Heroic Media will try to prohibit video and audio recordings of Palin’s appearance, and news organizations wishing to cover her speech must buy a ticket, the proceeds of which will go to Heroic Media.

Denying media access has become Palin’s standard operating procedure. After the debacle that was her interview with CBS’ Katie Couric during the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin made sure she wouldn’t step into any embarrassing interviews — often demanding that reporters submit their questions “ahead of time” to guarantee a one-on-one. And as a private citizen, the former Alaska governor requires that any questions asked at her speaking engagements be pre-screened. Just last week at an event in Eugene, OR, media were “not…allowed to ask her questions and take still pictures… [or] videotape or record it in anyway.”
Earlier this year, after conservatives criticized Palin’s $100,000+ fee to speak at the Tea Party convention, she said she would donate the proceeds to “the cause.” Perhaps that’s what she is trying to get the media to do as well.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Whistleblower: BP Risks More Massive Catastrophes in Gulf

2010-05-01T08:22:00.000-04:00

Friday 30 April 2010

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

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: futureatlas.com, US Coast Guard)

A former contractor who worked for British Petroleum (BP) claims the oil conglomerate broke federal laws and violated its own internal procedures by failing to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico, according to internal emails and other documents obtained by Truthout.

The whistleblower, whose name has been withheld at the person's request because the whistleblower still works in the oil industry and fears retaliation, first raised concerns about safety issues related to BP Atlantis, the world's largest and deepest semi-submersible oil and natural gas platform, located about 200 miles south of New Orleans, in November 2008. Atlantis, which began production in October 2007, has the capacity to produce about 8.4 million gallons of oil and 180 million cubic feet of natural gas per day.

It was then that the whistleblower, who was hired to oversee the company's databases that housed documents related to its Atlantis project, discovered that the drilling platform had been operating without a majority of the engineer-approved documents it needed to run safely, leaving the platform vulnerable to a catastrophic disaster that would far surpass the massive oil spill that began last week following a deadly explosion on a BP-operated drilling rig.

BP's own internal communications show that company officials were made aware of the issue and feared that the document shortfalls related to Atlantis "could lead to catastrophic operator error" and must be addressed.

Indeed, according to an August 15, 2008, email sent to BP officials by Barry Duff, a member of BP's Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Atlantis Subsea Team, the Piping and Instrument Diagrams (P&IDs) for the Atlantis subsea components "are not complete." P&IDs documents form the foundation of a hazards analysis BP is required to undertake as part of its Safety and Environmental Management Program related to its offshore drilling operations. P&IDs drawings provide the schematic details of the project's piping and process flows, valves and safety critical instrumentation.

"The risk in turning over drawings that are not complete are: 1) The Operator will assume the drawings are accurate and up to date," the email said. "This could lead to catastrophic Operator errors due to their assuming the drawing is correct," said Duff's email to BP officials Bill Naseman and William Broman. "Turning over incomplete drawings to the Operator for their use is a fundamental violation of basic Document control, [internal standards] and Process Safety Regulations."

BP did not respond to repeated requests for comment for this story. Despite the claims that BP did not maintain proper documentation related to Atlantis, federal regulators continued to authorize an expansion of the drilling project.

Last May, Mike Sawyer, a Texas-based engineer who works for Apex Safety Consultants, voluntarily agreed to evaluate BP's Atlantis subsea document database and the whistleblower's allegations regarding BP's engineering document shortfall related to Atlantis. Sawyer concluded that of the 2,108 P&IDs BP maintained that dealt specifically with the subsea components of its Atlantis production project, 85 percent did not receive engineer approval.

Even worse, 95 percent of Atlantis' subsea welding records did not receive final approval, calling into question the integrity of thousands of crucial welds on subsea components that, if they were to rupture, could result in an oil spill 30 times worse than the one that occurred after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon last week.

In a report Sawyer prepared after his review, he said BP's "widespread pattern of unapproved design, testing and inspection documentation on the Atlantis subsea project creates a risk of a catastrophic incident threatening the [Gulf of Mexico] deep-water environment and the safety of platform workers." Moreover, "the extent of documentation discrepancies creates a substantial risk that a catastrophic event could occur at any time."

"The absence of a complete set of final, up-to-date, 'as built' engineering documents, including appropriate engineering approval, introduces substantial risk of large scale damage to the deep water [Gulf of Mexico] environment and harm to workers, primarily because analyses and inspections based on unverified design documents cannot accurately assess risk or suitability for service," Sawyer's report said. He added, "there is no valid engineering justification for these violations and short cuts."

Sawyer explained that the documents in question - welding records, inspections and safety shutdown logic materials - are "extremely critical to the safe operation of the platform and its subsea components." He said the safety shutdown logic drawings on Atlantis, a complex computerized system that, during emergencies, is supposed to send a signal to automatically shut down the flow of oil, were listed as "requiring update."

"BP's recklessness in regards to the Atlantis project is a clear example of how the company has a pattern of failing to comply with minimum industry standards for worker and environmental safety," Sawyer said.

The oil spill blanketing roughly 4,000 square miles in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed eleven workers, was exacerbated, preliminary reports suggest, by the failure of a blowout preventer to shut off the flow of oil on the drilling rig and the lack of a backup safety measure, known as a remote control acoustic shut off switch, to operate the blowout preventer.

Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, sent a letter Thursday to BP Chairman and President Lamar McKay seeking documents related to inspections on Deepwater Horizon conducted this year and BP's policy on using acoustic shut off switches in the Gulf of Mexico.

The circumstances behind the spill are now the subject of a federal investigation.

Profits Before Safety

Whether it's the multiple oil spills that emanated from BP's Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope or the March 2005 explosion at the company's Texas refinery that killed 15 employees and injured 170 people, BP has consistently put profits ahead of safety.

On October 25, 2007, BP pled guilty to a criminal violation of the Clean Water Act and paid a $20 million fine related to two separate oil spills that occurred in the North Slope in March and August of 2006, the result of a severely corroded pipeline and a safety valve failure. BP formally entered a guilty plea in federal court on November 29, 2007. US District Court Judge Ralph Beistline sentenced BP to three years probation and said oil spills were a "serious crime" that could have been prevented if BP had spent more time and funds investing in pipeline upgrades and a "little less emphasis on profit."

Also on October 25, 2007, BP paid a $50 million fine and pleaded guilty to a felony in the refinery explosion. An investigation into the incident concluded that a warning system was not working and that BP sidestepped its own internal regulations for operating the tower. Moreover, BP has a prior felony conviction for improperly disposing of hazardous waste.

The incident involving Deepwater Horizon, now the subject of a federal investigation, may end up being the latest example of BP's safety practices run amuck.

The issues related to the repeated spills in Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere were revealed by more than 100 whistleblowers who, since as far back as 1999, said the company failed to take seriously their warnings about shoddy safety practices and instead retaliated against whistleblowers who registered complaints with their superiors.

In September 2006, days before BP executives were scheduled to testify before Congress about an oil spill from a ruptured pipeline that forced the company to shutdown its Prudhoe Bay operations, BP announced that it had tapped former federal Judge Stanley Sporkin to serve as an ombudsman and take complaints from employees about the company's operations.

That's who the whistleblower complained to via email about issues related to BP's Atlantis operations in March 2009 a month after his contract was abruptly terminated for reasons he believes were directly related to his complaints to management about BP's failure to obtain the engineering documents on Atlantis and the fact that he "stood up for a female employee who was being discriminated against and harassed." The whistleblower alleged that the $2 million price tag was the primary reason BP did not follow through with a plan formulated months earlier to secure the documents.

"We prepared a plan to remedy this situation but it met much resistance and complaints from the above lead engineers on the project," the whistleblower wrote in the March 4, 2009, email to Pasha Eatedali in BP's ombudsman's office.

Federal Intervention

Additionally, he hired an attorney and contacted the inspector general for the Department of the Interior and the agency's Minerals Management Service (MMS), which regulates offshore drilling practices, and told officials there that BP lacked the required engineer-certified documents related to the major components of the Atlantis subsea gas and oil operation.

In 2007, MMS had approved the construction of an additional well and another drilling center on Atlantis. But the whistleblower alleged in his March 4, 2009, email to Eatedali in BP's Office of the Ombudsman that documents related to this project needed to ensure operational safety were missing and that amounted to a violation of federal law as well as a breach of BP's Atlantis Project Execution Plan. The ombudsman's office agreed to investigate.

MMS, acting on the whistleblower's complaints, contacted BP on June 30, 2009, seeking specific engineering related documents. BP complied with the request three weeks later.

On July 9, 2009, MMS requested that BP turn over certification documents for its Subsurface Safety Valves and Surface Controlled Subsea Safety Valves for all operational wells in the Atlantis field. MMS officials flew out to the platform on the same day and secured the documents, according to an internal letter written by Karen Westall, the managing attorney on BP's Gulf of Mexico Legal Team.

But according to the public advocacy group Food & Water Watch, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit, which became involved in the case last July, BP did not turn over a complete set of materials to MMS.

"BP only turned over 'as-built' drawings for [Atlantis'] topsides and hull, despite the fact that the whistleblower’s allegations have always been about whether BP maintains complete and accurate engineer approved documents for it subsea components," Food & Water Watch said in a 19-page letter it sent toWilliam Hauser, MMS’s Chief, Regulations and Standards Branch.

During two visits to the Atlantis drilling platform last August and September, MMS inspectors reviewed BP's blowout preventer records. Food & Water Watch said they believe MMS inspectors reviewed the test records and failed to look into the whistleblower's charges that engineering documents were missing. The blowout preventer, however, is an issue at the center of the Deepwater Horizon spill.

An MMS spokesperson did not return calls for comment.

Last October, Food & Water Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for expedited processing, seeking documents from MMS that indicate BP "has in its possession a complete and accurate set of 'as built' drawings ... for its entire Atlantis Project, including the subsea sector." "As-built" means lead engineers on a specific project have to make sure updated technical documents match the "as-built" condition of equipment before its used.

MMS denied the FOIA request.

"MMS does not agree with your assessment of the potential for imminent danger to individuals or the environment, for which you premise your argument [for expedited response]. After a thorough review of these allegations, the MMS, with concurrence of the Solicitor's Office, concludes your claims are not supported by the facts or the law," the agency said in its October 30, 2009, response letter.

In response, MMS said that although some of its regulatory requirements governing offshore oil and gas operations do require "as built" drawings, they need not be complete or accurate and, furthermore, are irrelevant to a hazard analysis BP was required to complete.

Unsatisfied with MMS's response, Food & Water Watch contacted Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), a member of the Committee on Natural Resources and chairman of the subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands, about the issues revolving around BP's Atlantis operations and provided his office with details of its own investigation into the matter.

"Unsubstantiated" Claims

On January 15, Westall, the BP attorney, wrote a letter to Deborah Lanzone, the staff director with the House Subcommittee on Energy and Minerals, and addressed the allegations leveled by Food & Water Watch as well as indirect claims the whistleblower made.

Westall said BP "reviewed the allegations" related to "noncompliant documentation of the Atlantis project ... and found them to be unsubstantiated." But Westall's response directly contradicts the findings of Billie Pirner Garde, BP's deputy ombudsman, who wrote in an April 13 email to the whistleblower that his claims that BP failed to maintain proper documentation related to Atlantis "were substantiated" and "addressed by a BP Management of Change document." Garde did not say when that change occurred. But he added that the whistleblower's complaints weren't "unique" and had been raised by other employees "before you worked there, while you were there and after you left."

Westall noted in her letter that "all eight BP-operated Gulf of Mexico production facilities" received safety awards from MMS in 2009.

"Maintenance and general housekeeping were rated outstanding and personnel were most cooperative in assisting in the inspection activities," MMS said about BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling facilities. "Platform records were readily available for review and maintained to reflect current conditions."

Westall maintained that the whistleblower as well as Food & Water Watch had it all wrong. Their charges about missing documents has nothing to do with Atlantis' operational safety. Rather, Westall seemed to characterize their complaints as a clerical issue.

"The Atlantis project is a complex project with multiple phases," Westall said in her letter to Lanzone. "The [August 15, 2008] e-mail [written by Barry Duff, a member of the Atlantis subsea team] which was provided to you to support [Food & Water Watch's] allegations relates to the status of efforts to utilize a particular document management system to house and maintain the Atlantis documents. The document database includes engineering drawings for future phases, as well as components or systems which may have been modified, replaced, or not used."

But Representative Grijalva was not swayed by Westall's denials. He continued to press the issue with MMS, and in February, he and 18 other lawmakers signed a letter calling on MMS to probe whether BP "is operating its Atlantis offshore oil platform ... without professionally approved safety documents."

Grijalva said MMS has not "done enough so far to ensure worker and environmental safety at the site, in part because it has interpreted the relevant laws too loosely."

"[C]ommunications between MMS and congressional staff have suggested that while the company by law must maintain 'as-built' documents, there is no requirement that such documents be complete or accurate," the letter said. "This statement, if an accurate interpretation of MMS authorities, raises serious concerns" and requires "a thorough review at the agency level, the legal level and the corporate level. The world's largest oil rig cannot continue to operate without safety documentation. The situation is unacceptable and deserves immediate scrutiny.

"We also request that MMS describe how a regulation that requires offshore operators to maintain certain engineering documents, but does not require that those documents be complete or accurate, is appropriately protective of human health and the environment."

On March 26, MMS launched a formal investigation and is expected to file a report detailing its findings next month.

Zach Corrigan, a senior attorney with Food & Water Watch, said in an interview Thursday that he hopes MMS "will perform a real investigation" and if the agency fails to do so, Congress should immediately hold oversight hearings "and ensure that the explosion and mishap of the Horizon platform is not replicated."

"MMS didn't act on this for nearly a year," Corrigan said. "They seemed to think it wasn't a regulatory or an important safety issue. Atlantis is a real vulnerability."

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

Let The Sun Shine In......

Jim Hightower; A Very Funny Man

2010-05-01T07:02:00.000-04:00

MICHAEL WINSHIP FOR BUZZFLASH

I first became aware of Jim Hightower more than 20 years ago, during the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. The Democrats were nominating Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis to run for president against Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, and at the time Dukakis looked like he had a pretty good chance at the White House.

This was before a series of events did him in, including the notorious Willie Horton ad that attacked Dukakis for a Massachusetts weekend furlough prison program that allowed a convicted murderer back on the street, where he robbed and raped.

And it was before Dukakis bobbled a harsh debate question about what he would do if his own wife Kitty was raped and murdered. And it was before he was photographed atop an Abrams tank wearing a helmet that made him look like he was starring in Snoopy III: This Time It's Personal.

All of that misery lay ahead. The Democrats were still in giddy spirits during the convention and had a high old time poking fun at Bush, Sr.That was when the late Ann Richards, then the Texas state treasurer, famously lamented, "Poor George! He can't help it - he was born with asilver foot in his mouth!"

But it was the convention speech by Hightower that I especially remember. He was the Texas agriculture commissioner in those days - an important job in the Lone Star State - and described Bush as a "toothache of a man," a cruel but remarkable metaphor. And he said that Bush behaved like someone who was "born on third base and thought he hit a triple... He is threatening to lead this country from tweedle-dum to tweedle-dumber."

Maybe Hightower didn't originate those lines (as Milton Berle used to say, "When you steal from me, you steal twice"), but he delivered them with a gusto akin to genuine authorship and over the years has come up with enough original material of his own to absolve him - mostly - from the sin of occasional joke-filching. Now others steal from him.

It was Jim, I believe, who came up with the notion that all elected officials be required to wear brightly colored, NASCAR-like jumpsuits with the corporate logos of their biggest campaign contributors, an idea I've heard appropriated by several others without proper attribution. And I think it was Jim who first said of George W. Bush, "If ignorance ever reaches $40 a barrel, I want the drilling rights to his head." (On hearing that another politician was learning Spanish, Hightower is supposed to have remarked, "Oh good. Now he'll be bi-ignorant.")

These days, Jim Hightower broadcasts daily radio commentaries and edits "The Hightower Lowdown," an invaluable monthly newsletter. With the passing of both Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, he has became the funniest person in Texas politics - intentionally, that is. But it is his steadfast advocacy of progressive politics, his unyielding embrace of the old time gospel of populism, that made him an especially appropriate guest on the final edition of the PBS series, Bill Moyers Journal.

"Here's what populism is not," he told my colleague Bill Moyers. "It is not just an incoherent outburst of anger. And certainly it is not anger that is funded and organized by corporate front groups, as the initial tea party effort [was], and as most of it is still today - though there is legitimate anger within it, in terms of the people who are there.
But what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government.

"...One big difference between real populism and... the tea party thing is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, 'Let's get rid of government.' You need to be saying, 'Let's take over government.'"

As Hightower's fond of saying, the water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek. "I see the central issue in politics to be the rise of corporate power," he reiterated.
"Overwhelming, overweening corporate power that is running roughshod over the workaday people of the country. They think they're the top dogs, and we're a bunch of fire hydrants, you know?"

Of President Obama he said, "It's odd to me that we've got a president who ran from the outside and won, and now is trying to govern from the inside. You can't do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force... Our heavyweight is the people themselves. They've got the fat cats, but we've got the alley cats..."

This weekend, Jim is being honored at Texas State University-San Marcos with an exhibition celebrating his life's work as a populist journalist, historian and advocate. They're calling the event "Swim Against the Current" because, as Moyers says, "That's what he does." In fact, "Swim Against the Current" also is the title of Hightower's most recent book, subtitled, "Even a Dead Fish Can Go with the Flow." He comes from a long history of flow resisters, a critical, American political tradition. "I go all the way back to Thomas Paine," he said.

"I mean, that was kind of the ultimate rebellion, when the media tool was a pamphlet." The men who wrote the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence "didn't create democracy. [They] made democracy possible.

"What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and CaesarChavez. And now it's down to us.

"These are agitators. They extended democracy decade after decade. You know, sometimes we get in the midst of these fights. We think we're making no progress. But... you look back, we've made a lot of progress... The agitator after all is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out. So, we need a lot more agitation.... "We can battle back against the powers. But it's not just going to a rally and shouting. It's organizing and it's thinking. And reaching out to others. And building a real people's movement."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

With this week's edition, Bill Moyers Journal goes off the air. But
we'll be continuing the conversation via our Web site at PBS.org/moyers.
These weekly columns will be continuing for the foreseeable as well. It
has been a delight and honor collaborating with Bill - and the entire
production team - so intensely over the last two years. I am always
improved in their presence and thank them all, especially Bill and
executive editor Judith Davidson Moyers, executive producers Judy
Doctoroff and Sally Roy and Diane Domondon and Jesse Adams, the two of
whom every week have made sure these scratchings make it out alive, with
alacrity and accuracy.

Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs
program Bill Moyers Journal, which concludes Friday night on PBS.
Watch online or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.

Let The Sun Shine In......

GriTV: Jobless recovery

2010-04-29T08:57:00.000-04:00

GRITtv: Economic Recovery For All or a Few?
- Watch more Politics Videos at Vodpod.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Wall Street Fraud

2010-04-29T08:48:00.000-04:00

Colbert: Goldman Sachs Fraud Case
- Watch more Funny Videos at Vodpod.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Holding Wall Street Accountable

2010-04-29T08:46:00.000-04:00

ECONOMY

"We cannot let the narrow interests of a few come before the interests of all of us," President Obama said last year in a call for "an overhaul of U.S. financial regulations." Buoyed by success in the long battle to pass comprehensive health care reform behind them, Congress has set its sights on reining in Wall Street's recklessness and providing new protections for consumers, reducing risk, and increasing transparency. The bill introduced by Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd (D-CT) "would create a new consumer protection bureau within the Federal Reserve to guard against lending abuses," "create oversight of the enormous derivatives market,"and "give the government authority to wind down large, troubled financial institutions in an orderly way." If institutions that are "too big to fail" repeat the kind of disastrous behavior that sent the global economy into a tailspin in 2008, "the Senate bill gives the government the authority to wind down the firm with no exposure to the taxpayer," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner described. "No more bailouts. Instead, we will have a bankruptcy-like regime where equityholders will be wiped out and the assets will be sold." The legislation's wind-down provisions are similar to the insurance fund and resolution authority that the FDIC has to safely shut down smaller banks, and the fund is paid for by big banks, not taxpayers. Since September, Dodd has tried to work with committee Republicans Richard Shelby (AL) and Bob Corker (TN) to find bipartisan consensus. However, as a vote grows near, Republicans have been on the attack. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared his opposition to the financial reform bill, claiming that it "institutionalizes...taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks" and would give the Federal Reserve "enhanced emergency lending authority that is far too open to abuse."

MCCONNELL'S 'BAILOUT' LIE: McConnell has touted his opposition to financial regulation by pretending to speak on behalf of American citizens, opposing "bailouts" and "abuse." As Time's Adam Sorensen noted, McConnell's attack made "the exact argument pollster Frank Luntz urged Republicans to make earlier this year in a widely publicized memo." Luntz told the GOP to attack reform as "bailouts" and blame "Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve" for creating the "bubble." A number of other Republicans -- including House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) -- have repeated this false right-wing talking point. However, the disingenuous attempt at populist posturing to kill reform has fallen flat. CNBC's Ron Insana laughed when trying to explain McConnell's views, and MSNBC's John Harwood said that "Senator McConnell's argument is a little silly when you look at the text of the bill." Time's Mark Halperin told MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, "They are willfully misreading the bill or they are engaged in a cynical attempt to keep the president from achieving something." On Monday, Corker called his leader's attacks "silly," saying that the fund he designed with his colleague Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) "is anything but a bailout." Yesterday, fellow banking committee member Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) praised the resolution authority as a "good approach." Following an in-depth analysis, the nonpartisan PolitiFact rated McConnell's claim that the financial regulation bill "actually guarantees future bailouts of Wall Street banks" completely false.

IN BED WITH WALL STREET: McConnell did not mention in his attack on Wall Street regulation that the week before he traveled alongside National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) to New York City for a private meeting with elite hedge fund managers and other Wall Street executives. The purpose of the meeting between the top Republicans and the financial executives was to enlist "Wall Street's help" in funding Republican campaigns in the fall and killing any tough financial reform. McConnell takes more money from the finance industry than any other sector. He has taken $1,147,924 for his current re-election campaign, including PAC contributions from megabanks like Citigroup and Bank of America. When pressed by reporters for details about his meetings on Wall Street, McConnell repeatedly refused to discuss the matter. But as the Wall Street Journal reported in February, Republicans have been "stepping up their campaign to win donations from Wall Street," "striving to make the case that they are banks' best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street." In a January meeting, Boehner told JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon that "congressional Republicans had stood up to Mr. Obama's efforts to curb pay and impose new regulations." Since 2009, contributions from JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Bank of America have all "trended toward Republicans." Hedge funds similarly shifted, going "from giving 2 to 1 to Democrats at the start of 2009 to providing almost half of its donations to Republicans by the end of the year."

MCCONNELL FOLDS, FOR NOW: Yesterday, a battered McConnell abandoned his "bailout" lie, saying, "I'm convinced now there is a new element of seriousness attached to this, rather than just trying to score political points. ... I think that's a good sign." The change in tone came, the Washington Post writes, "as the Security and Exchange Commission's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs for allegedly defrauding investors continued to dominate headlines, underscoring public anger at Wall Street and reminding lawmakers of the potential consequences of inaction." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said yesterday that he plans to "wait until early next week to introduce the financial overhaul package on the Senate floor," to give Dodd and Shelby "more time to try to reach a compromise." However, hurdles to cleaning up the financial industry remain. "I think there's a continuing tension in the caucus between those who hold out hope for meaningful and sincere bipartisan negotiations," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said, "And those who see Lucy yanking the football away from Charlie Brown for the umpteenth time." Economist Paul Krugman is similarly concerned that the White House isn't taking seriously the "possibility that Republicans will filibuster financial reform." Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)warns that the fine print of the final legislation will determine "whether the Congress has the ability to regulate Wall Street or Wall Street continues to regulate the Congress." Lobbyists are fighting the effort by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) to bring transparency and price discovery to the shadowy derivatives market. Tomorrow, the President will go to New York City to begin the final push, reminding "Americans what is at stake if we do not move forward with changing the rules of the road as a part of a strong Wall Street reform package." It has been three years since the over-inflated housing market began to crash. It has been a year and half since the Wall Street meltdown and over a year since Treasury rolled out its principles for reform. It's time to get this done.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The WTO Now Controls Our Economy, Fate and Future

2010-04-29T08:03:00.000-04:00

by Thomas Heffner on April 28, 2010 - 10:48am

All our decisions regarding trade must be supervised and approved by this foreign undemocratic body – often to our detriment. This is why we can no longer do what is in our best interest and are forced to concede to their demands. Most decisions made by the WTO are unjustifiably made to our detriment.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an undemocratic non-American organization run by the rich, for the rich. The bylaws of the organization supersede our own Constitution. They override, supervise and control all our international trade laws.

The U.S. Constitution states that all treaties made under the authority of the United States become supreme law of the land. However, our government backtracked and irresponsibly allowed the World Trade Organization to rule over us when they signed this treaty. Now we have no choice but to conform many of our laws, regulations and administrative procedures to the agreement.

By signing the agreement with the World Trade Organization, the U.S. Congress agreed to concede a major portion of our sovereignty and usurp our democratic legislative process, including:

Conforming U.S. laws, regulations and administrative procedures to the will of the WTO
Subjecting all federal, state and local laws and practices that affect trade to international review by
Allowing any WTO member country to challenge federal, state and local laws and practices as trade impeding
Giving the WTO final jurisdiction over all trade altercations
Empowering the WTO to enforce its rulings by imposing fines on the United States until we comply

Those who signed this lengthy agreement did not read the fine print or did not have the interests of America in mind.

The WTO is inherently wrong for other reasons. This organization has little to no transparency as all of its hearing are closed to the public and all its decisions are final and uncontestable. We lose nine out of every 10 trade disputes brought before this body.

We must renegotiate terms or completely withdraw from the WTO – IMMEDIATELY!

Let The Sun Shine In......

Some people really don't CARE....

2010-04-29T07:35:00.000-04:00

....if the whole damn planet goes down the tube because Jesus is gonna come back and make it all O.K. again. Seriously!

Waiting For Armageddon DVD: A Must See if You Want to Understand the 50 Million Americans Who Believe in End Times, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Michelle Bachmann Among Them (5/18/10 Release Date)

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

So much of the language of the right (think Palin and Bachmann) is in code for a desire to rule on behalf of heralding in the End Times, or Armageddon. This is not a joke that progressives should feel disdain for; it's one that they should regard with alarm.

And that is why this documentary is so informative. It doesn't cast harsh judgment. Instead, it lets representatives of the 50 million American Evangelists who believe in End Times explain and speak about what will happen, including the destruction of all the Jews who don't convert, but even that number will be limited.

This is a film that goes a long way toward explaining what appears on the surface to be an odd alliance between the End Times Evangelists and Israel. It's a particularly peculiar pairing since when the "rapture" occurs, the Jewish faith will no longer exist and only a few "lucky" converted Jews will survive as Christians.

It also explains how Evangelists see disaster as a heralding of Armageddon and therefore something to be celebrated not mourned.

This is one of the most insightful documentaries we have seen as BuzzFlash reviwers, precisely because it lets the Evangelists articulate their own views on Armageddon, and that's really quite chilling, considering they have so many people in our government and hoping to lead it into Armageddon.

******

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Financial Reform: Stand By it or....

2010-04-27T11:29:00.000-04:00

....Make it tougher. but.....

I wouldn't change a word of it, not even a comma.

I wouldn't negotiate further, I wouldn't concede anything further, I wouldn't further debate the matter.

What I would do, if I were Harry Reid, is say that this is the bill we have, painstakingly achieved 18 long and grueling months after the last Republican administration took us to the edge of our deepest economic abyss in nearly a century -- this is where we stand and we're not changing one bloody word of it.

We're playing no more Republican games. We've sat with them and haggled with them and added and subtracted assorted angels from the legislative pinheads. But no more. Their squalid game of obstructionism and delay stops here, on this bill, and it stops now.
Senate Democrats finally possess an unmitigated winner -- a reasonably stringent anti-Wall Street bill, or so agrees virtually every responsible economist; a financial bill which also registers a supermajority of popular support -- and what do they do?

"After meeting briefly on Monday," reported the NY Times, Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd and "Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, reported no progress."

Dear Sen. Dodd: Progress on what? How does one improve or progress on the winning hand, which later can only be strengthened by merger with the House bill and weakened by Republican accommodations?

From this point on, further "progress" can only be defined from the Republicans' political perspective: They'll tweak the bill just enough to declare that they saved it -- and the American people -- from a horrific Democratic mistake of apocalyptic proportions.

Dear Sens. Dodd and Reid, by shifting a comma or dotting one more "t" or crossing another enigmatic "i," you're only handing those operatically fussy, sea-lawyer Republicans your clear victory.

They've backed themselves into their own uncompromising, obstructionist corner -- and now you, Sens. Dodd and Reid, are opening an escape route for them.

Make them drop the procedural "F" bomb, which by rights they'd have to do -- right? -- sans any more legislative changes, since they've declared the current bill unworthy of divine Republican support.

Look, dear Sens. Dodd and Reid, this filibustering showdown has been in the offing for months. So I ask you: What better time to play your hand than when it's the undisputed winning one?

Damn it all you've got them on the ropes. Now deliver the lethal blow; pummel these latte-sipping, sunbooth-tanning, Volvo-driving, Wall Street-schmoozing predators for the unrehabilitated bullies they are.

Speaking from the Senate floor yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell "rattled off a list of major legislation," reports the Times, "that he said had not benefited Americans in the ways Democrats had promised, including the economic stimulus measures" -- loaded with Republican amendments -- "and the health care legislation" -- loaded with Republican amendments.

And McConnell was absolutely right, the Dems can say. Had it not been for Republican accommodations achieved after prolonged watering-down sessions, the major legislation he cited would have been far superior -- by now we would have achieved full employment, banished the common cold, and all your children would be straight-A students. You know, real populist stuff.

Yet the minority leader is at it again, this time "pretending to stand up for taxpayers against Wall Street," as Paul Krugman wrote a few days ago, "while in fact doing just the opposite."
Or, to boil their antidemocratic chokehold down to its paradigmatic essence, as Krugman also did: What Senate Republicans are doing on the financial bill is a "truly shameless performance" -- three little profoundly accurate words that should be DNC-gilded and etched on every American brain.

Senate Republicans will come around, because they have to; in this overheated election year, populist anger will trump virtually all partisan allegiance. But that's the whole point. Why should Senate Democrats concede even a comma, if, in the longer run, the Republicans have no choice?

Good God we're begging you, Sens. Dodd and Reid: Declare -- now -- that enough is enough.

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. 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......

FOREIGN CORPORATIONS IN OUR ELECTIONS?

2010-04-27T11:12:00.000-04:00

If money is speech, it should be perfectly within the law for ordinary Americans "speak with silence" when it comes to paying for a criminal war, in other words, to refuse to support THE number one international crime which was committed during the Bush-Cheney administration in the country known as Iraq.

In the mean time, why should sociopathic fat cats have more influence over American elections than American citizens can afford to have? This is b.s. and Congress should address this as part of financial reform or any damn bill they can cook up. This just makes me crazy!

Monday, April 26, 2010 | Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

Having decreed that Corporations have a free speech "right " to spend unlimited sums from their massive corporate treasuries to elect or defeat candidates in our elections, the Supreme Court's five-man corporatist majority has opened a colossal can of worms. One of those worrisome squigglies is this question: Does the Court's newly-fabricated political right extend to foreign corporations?

In their ruling, the answer from the five judicial monkeywrenchers was... silence. How sly. With no explicit ban to rule out foreign corporate money, the justices have implicitly ruled it in. After all, argue apologists for this constitutional l perversion, a corporation is a corporation, and its official domicile is irrelevant in determining its political rights.

So, not only have the Supremes magically endowed all inanimate corporate things with the human ability to speak, but they've also granted corporate "persons" more speech than actual people-people have. Start with the fact that the Court's ruling equates our freedom of speech with the freedom to spend money – a plutocratic contortion of democracy that gives the most speech to those with the most money. American corporations alone have trillions of dollars they can draw from to shout down the voices of us mere humans.

But it appears that Toyota, Unilever, Deutsche Bank, Bin Laden construction company and thousands of other foreign entities can also add their trillions of dollars to drown out the democratic voices of real Americans. Interestingly, foreign humans are banned from spending money to influence our elections – so the Court has decreed that corporate foreigners have superior rights to human foreigners.

To help reverse this Supreme insanity, link up with the grassroots coalition called Move To Amend: www.movetoamend.org.

"Should Foreign Corpoations Spend Money on U.S. Political Candidates?" www.newsweek.com, January 22, 2010.

"The Supreme Court Just Handed Anyone, Including bin Laden or the Chinese Government, Control of Our Democracy," www.alternet.org, January 22, 2010.

"Will the Citizens United Ruling Let Hugo Chavez and King Abdullah Buy U.S. Elections?"www.publicintegrity.org, January 22, 2010.

"Watchdog groups warn 'Corporate globalization' of U.S. elections is upon us,"
www.rawstory.com, January 23, 2010.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Narcissistic , Sociopathic America

2010-04-27T10:29:00.000-04:00

One of our current society's most salient characteristics is an absence of shame on the part of politicians, financial architects and media fulminators. No matter how scurrilous or dishonest their behavior, they exude, if not exactly respectability, an air of self-righteousness - - proud of their ability to delude the general public and do whatever it takes to get elected, get a gig on cable TV or just make as much money as possible.

At the start of the health-care debate, there was widespread support for reform. But, over the course of a tumultuous summer, disruptive town-hall meetings, raucous tea-party events and obstructionism in Congress managed to distort the process and turn support into dissent. Indeed polls showing voter dissatisfaction with the bill were a distortion themselves since some of the negative numbers were the result of people who weren’t against reform itself but felt the proposed legislation didn’t go far enough.

It is distressing now to see some of the same tactics being used by Republicans in the Senate to stall and perhaps kill legislation that would regulate the financial sector and rein in the systemic deceptions that came close to precipitating a full-blown depression. “Let’s start over” says Senate minority leader McConnell fresh from his visits to pals on Wall Street. Let’s not do anything to stifle the markets other conservative politicians and editorialists say. Like Alan Greenspan in his day they insist that unfettered markets would self-regulate and investors would be protected, all evidence to the contrary.

On Bill Moyer's Journal recently, William K. Black, Assoc. Professor of Economics and Law at the Univ. of Missouri and former bank regulator, described practices that were fraudulent in both intent and outcome. It isn’t that nobody saw danger in the casino-like activities at a number of the nation’s largest financial institutions. According to Black, people at the top had to know that shaky mortgages packaged as triple-A investment-quality instruments were likely to fail at some point which is why they ‘hedged’ their bets, notably at Goldman-Sachs. Aside from the obvious problems these questionable instruments would cause in the general markets, deceiving clients who trusted advisors he calls “financial sociopaths” was an unconscionable deception.

But it wasn't only at Goldman-Sachs that dubious transactions were occurring. In testimony before Congress, one Lehman Brothers executive told of being fired when he attempted to expose irregularities at the firm. Professor Black said most whistle blowers were intimidated from speaking out and that industry-wide fraud would be found if proper investigations were undertaken. SEC spokesmen have insisted disingenuously that they lacked the authority or the tools to detect and remedy infractions even after they had created a “deliberate black hole” by lobbying successfully for the repeal of Glass-Steagel, legislation that kept banks from engaging in securities trading.

Deceit has become a way of life in our society. Right-wing pundits repeat lies about the president and his policies with such regularity that they derive a kind of legitimacy through repetition and are discussed endlessly by the news media. Prevarigators rarely seem to suffer any consequences and are celebrated in some circles for having political smarts, or for just being amusing. Conservatives in Congress fail to disavow egregious distortions and outright lies by the more extreme members of the media or their party, so anxious are they to claim victory in the next election.

How strange it is that only a little over a year into a new administration, an impatient and frivolous electorate is poised, according to current estimates, to re-elect representatives of the very party that brought the country to near collapse. The only interesting outcome of a return to such an inglorious past would be to watch an old-time, new majority wrestle with the real world problems the country faces. No doubt lower taxes would be the most original idea a change of leadership in the House would promote.

Former vice-president Cheney provided insight into what the best and the brightest Republican minds have to offer when, guesting with comic Dennis Miller, he said that telling Senator Leahy to “go f**k himself was “sort of the best thing I ever did.” Shameless as ever but in light of the awful policies he helped facilitate in the previous administration, his unstatesman-like remark to Leahy on the floor of the Senate may ironically have been his best thing in that it was the least reprehensible compared to his other bad acts.

Please respond to Ann Davidow's commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community.

FINDING A VOICE by Ann Davidow

Let The Sun Shine In......

Decrying U.S., Iran Begins War Games

2010-04-23T12:31:00.000-04:00

Things are definitely heating up in the middle east and Central Asia.

By NAZILA FATHI and DAVID E. SANGER

Iran’s supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that President Obama’s new nuclear strategy amounted to “atomic threats against Iranian people,” and Iranian state television reported Thursday that the military had begun a large exercise in the Persian Gulf, where the United States and Israel have both increased their presence in recent months.

The ayatollah’s statement on Wednesday referred to the section of Mr. Obama’s “Nuclear Posture Review” that guaranteed non-nuclear nations that they would never be threatened by a United States nuclear strike — as long as they are in compliance with the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty as judged by the United States.

Speaking in Washington on Wednesday, Gary Samore, Mr. Obama’s top adviser on unconventional weapons, said the wording of the nuclear review was “deliberately crafted” to exclude Iran and North Korea from the security guarantee, creating an incentive for both countries to come into compliance with the treaty. (While North Korea has conducted two nuclear tests and is believed to have fuel for eight or more weapons, the United States has never acknowledged it as a nuclear-weapons state.)

Mr. Samore insisted that Mr. Obama’s decision did not amount to making a nuclear threat against Iran, which many Western countries believe is pursuing a weapon. The policy, Mr. Samore said, referred only to the use of nuclear weapons in the most extreme circumstances, which most experts believe means in retaliation for a strike against the United States or its allies.

Still, Ayatollah Khamenei’s statement struck at the heart of one of the criticisms of Mr. Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review: That it could give Iran a pretext to argue that it should develop nuclear weapons to defend itself. The ayatollah’s remarks suggested that the Iranian leadership regarded the administration policy as a new level of intimidation, or perhaps a justification for pursuing its nuclear program.

“How can the U.S. president make atomic threats against Iranian people?” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a speech to Iranian medical workers, the Fars news agency reported from Tehran. “This threat is a threat against humanity and international peace and no one in the world should dare to articulate such words.”

Ayatollah Khamenei said Wednesday that countries that had nuclear ability were themselves “brazenly lying” about their commitment to nonproliferation. He argued that nuclear-armed states sought to keep non-nuclear states from developing such weapons because they did not want competition. “We have repeatedly said that we do not intend to use weapons of mass destruction, but the Iranian people do not surrender to these threats and will force those who make such threats to come to their knees,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

“We will not allow America to renew its hellish dominance over Iran,” he added.

To meet the United States’ demands, Iran would need to take several important steps, including halting uranium enrichment and allowing broad inspections of the country to ensure that Iran had no secret plants.

The Iranian military defined its military exercise as a three-day naval, ground and air-war game in the Persian Gulf, including the sensitive Strait of Hormuz, a narrow transit way through which a large amount of the world’s oil passes.

The deputy chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, Brig. Gen. Hussein Salami, said that the exercise, which is being called the Great Prophet 5, was aimed at showing “Iran’s strength and will against the threats of the enemies,” Fars reported. Iran regularly stages drills to show off its military power.

Iran has refused to suspend its nuclear program despite existing United Nations sanctions and calls by the United States for new, more stringent sanctions.

Iranian officials have floated in recent days the possibility of revisiting a deal to swap a portion of the country’s nuclear fuel. The Iranians had agreed in principle to a deal last year that would have allowed the fuel to be converted overseas and then returned in a form that would be difficult to convert for weapons use, but they later renounced the agreement.

While some officials have suggested recently that they might reconsider, they have recently insisted that all the fuel they gave up would have to be stored on Iranian soil. To the Obama administration, the main advantage of the original deal was that it would take the fuel out of Iranian hands for about a year, in the hopes of slowing their program.

The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Salehi, said Wednesday that Iran would be willing to discuss a deal on the sidelines of a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review meeting in New York, which begins next month, the state-run Press TV reported.

Let The Sun Shine In......

'All options' open if Syria gives Hezbollah missiles: US

2010-04-23T12:17:00.000-04:00

(AFP) – 1 day ago

WASHINGTON — The United States said Wednesday it considered "all options" on the table if Syria is found to have supplied Scud missiles to Hezbollah, posing a major threat for Israel.

Jeffrey Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, said the United States would have "really, really serious concern" if Syria delivered such high-grade weapons to the Lebanese Shiite militia.

"If these reports turn out to be true, we're going to have to review the full range of tools that are available for us in order to make Syria reverse what would be an incendiary, provocative action," Feltman said.

"The United States has shown in the past that we are able to act," he told a congressional hearing. "I expect that all options are going to be on the table looking at this."

But Feltman and other State Department officials said they were still investigating the alleged Scud missile transfer. The United States on Monday summoned the most senior Syrian diplomat in Washington over the concerns.

"We continue to study the matter," State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said.
Israeli President Shimon Peres on April 13 accused Syria of providing Scud ballistic missiles to Hezbollah, the only group that did not disarm after Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.
Israel launched punishing raids on Lebanon in 2006 in response to more than 4,000 attacks by Hezbollah with rockets, which are less sophisticated than Scuds.

The 34-day war killed 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mainly soldiers.

The allegations come just as the United States cautiously steps up dialogue with Syria.
President Barack Obama in February appointed the first US ambassador to Damascus in five years, Robert Ford, although the Senate has not yet confirmed him.

Feltman defended the Obama administration's approach favoring diplomacy, saying that the United States needed to have regular dialogue with Syria despite concerns about its actions.

"We're not doing engagement because it's a pleasurable experience with the Syrians. We're doing engagement because it's in the US national interest," Feltman said.

He said that many in the Arab world would not respond well to US envoys coming in for brief visits with negative messages.

With an ambassador, the United States "can go in at a very high level on a regular, continual basis," Feltman said. "It enhances our ability to get our message across."

But his approach faced criticism from lawmakers, particularly members of the rival Republican Party, who accused the Obama administration of rewarding Syria despite the concerns.

"I've talked to the Syrian ambassador here, and he seems like a nice guy and he's got a lovely wife," said Representative Dan Burton, a Republican from Indiana.

"But I don't see how in the world we can take steps in that direction if this kind of crap's going on," he said.

He said that while the United States should seek a positive relationship with Syria, "we certainly don't want to reward them when they're kicking us in the teeth or spitting in our eye."

Syria has long played a dominant role in Lebanon but withdrew its last troops in 2005 after an outcry following the assassination of pro-Western former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
Feltman, a former US ambassador to Beirut, said he had "deeply felt feelings" for the "courageous Lebanese people."

"The Lebanese should be in control of Lebanon," he said. "That's the message that we deliver to all the parties in the region but particularly Syria."

US officials doubt Syrian scud transfer
Telegraph.co.uk - 19 hours ago
Report: Hezbollah may have Scud missiles
UPI.com - 22 hours ago
Israel…The Continuous Lies
Asharq Alawsat - 1 day ago
More coverage (1)

Let The Sun Shine In......

Taking a closer look at Tea Party Spoutings

2010-04-23T09:37:00.000-04:00

Like millions of interested observers, you've probably been wondering what constitutes the inner President Obama. Well, lucky for both of us, the answer arrived in my inbox just days ago: He "is nothing less than a capo of a vast, uncompromising thugocracy, utterly drunk with power and completely unconcerned with public opinion or public will."

That would be completely unconcerned, just in case mere unconcern on the capo-regime thug's part might fail to concern you.

This assessment, from a certain Mr. Claude Sandroff, came to me via TeaParty.org, one of the many publicity arms for modern right-wing hysteria. And in that, the organization does a wonderful job; it blasts its screeds with unabashed abandon, spewing them hither and yon to not only the movement's identifiable followers but every unfortunate member of the commentariat.

Yet rarely will you hear the movement's intensity on, say, cable news. Its public spokesmen almost invariably present the face of activist Tea Partyers as the merely fiscally conservative in something of an emotional knot about excessive federal spending and debt, perhaps accompanied by a dash of (newfound) worry about executive power. Its spokesmen are the Everyman, the solid citizen, the civic republican, the rational player -- who's getting a bad rap from the biased mainstream media.

Those overzealous activists with the deranged posters we see on the news? They're just that, say the spokesmen: sincere but overzealous, hardly representative of the sound, sober sentiment of the Tea Party movement itself.

And then, away from the cameras, the movement's leaders blast this drivel: Obama is the thuggish head of a criminally organized political syndicate, infused with a Nietzschean-superman Will quite indifferent to the public's -- you know, as vividly evidenced by his arduous, two-year presidential campaign, a freely held election, his decisive victory and, ever since, his rolling pleadings to do a few right things ... for a change.

If only, I have often thought, the movement's spokesmen would just read to the media their e-mailings of internal hysteria. That would pretty much say it all, and then, perhaps, somewhat less than one of every four Americans, according to Pew Research, would sympathize with the movement. Which, at its core, is just clinically, indisputably, sulfurously nuts.

How nuts? How's this, again from the above-quoted email:

"Many of us spend time trying to place Barack Obama in the correct collectivist phylum. Is he a Saul Alinsky socialist? An Anita Dunn Maoist? A Van Jones Marxist? A mummified Wilsonian progressive suddenly come back to life?

"Or, given his corporate and unionist cronyism, and complete control of a fawning, propagandistic media, is the label most fitting for Obama also the most frightening one: fascist?

"Whichever label is most apt, Obama is instinctively a dictator, and dictators are surprisingly quick at seizing power."

When such stridency negates the necessity -- or even urge -- for any counter-analysis or rebuttal, you know you're experiencing a too-close encounter with Hofstadter's Paranoid Style. The above isn't opinion; it's a condition, and one in desperate need of some quality Thorazine.

Other of TeaParty.org's emails are merely in need of a remedial writing course. From March 29, for instance, there was this emetic:

"The sweet perfume of Liberty which once permeated the Halls of Congress and the White House is conspicuously missing.... Today, the aroma of Liberty has grown stale; a dowdy cloud of ominous proportion hangs over Washington like an impending storm waiting to pour forth its fury."

That was, I guess, Snoopy's rewrite: a "dark and stormy night" was a trifle too stale, although the writer did manage to work in a mention of our presidentially "cruel warlock" who has cast "a dark and eerie spell ... over a once vibrate and thriving setting, turning the halls of Liberty into corridors of depression, loss and gloom."

Mostly, however, my TeaParty.org emails are from its "president/founder," whose monomania about Obama's "bitter poison of Global Marxism" dominates. Yet he's not depressed, at a loss, or gloomy; he is, rather, positively randy to "redirect our justifiable anger and outrage into a focused and straight forward [sic] effort to stop the Global Marxist take-over [sic] of America."

Should we "fear" the likes of this garbage, as so many abhorred voices exhort us to do? Hardly, for that is precisely the overreaction that TeaParty.org's "president/founder" and his terrorism-tinted minions aim for. Fear, of course, lies at the heart of their strategy; they cannot advance without it, for it is that which legitimizes and empowers them.

What does frighten, however, is that one of every four Americans is willing to express political sympathy with the public face of the Tea Party movement. Perhaps if they could only read what's behind that face ...

Please respond to P.M.'s commentary by leaving comments below and sharing them with the BuzzFlash community. 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......

Arizona's Radical Bill

2010-04-23T09:30:00.000-04:00

IMMIGRATION

Arizona has often been referred to as "ground zero" of the nation's immigration fight. It's the state where a nine-year-old girl and her father were shot and killed by anti-immigrant Minuteman vigilantes this past summer. It's the place where the brutal murder of a prominent rancher led politicians to blur the line between dangerous drug cartel operatives and undocumented workers. It's also home to "Hispanic-hunting" Sheriff Joe Arpaio. On Monday, the Arizona state legislature made headlines when it approved a bill entitled the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," legislation that will likely end up establishing the harshest set of state immigration laws in the country. Gov. Jan Brewer's (R-AZ) phone has been ringing off the hook with residents encouraging her to either sign or veto it. Given the fact that Brewer is up for re-election this fall, and with polling data suggesting that 70 percent of Arizona voters support the stringent measure, it seems likely that the bill will soon become law -- but not without a fight.

HIGH-RISK BILL: SB-1070 would require police to attempt to determine the immigration status of anyone they encounter as part of a "lawful contact" and allow them to arrest undocumented immigrants and charge them with trespass. If residents believe police officers are not enforcing immigration laws, they can sue them. It would also outlaw the hiring of day laborers off the street and prohibit anyone from knowingly transporting an undocumented immigrant for any reason. The ACLU points out that SB-1070 unconstitutionally allows the state to regulate immigration -- a power which the Constitution assigns to the federal government. The ACLU also highlights a provision of the bill that grants police officers authority to conduct warrantless arrests of anyone who cannot immediately produce documents and notes that such action has already been deemed invalid by the Ninth Circuit Court. The ACLU concludes that the bill will "exacerbate racial profiling" and tries to "rewrite the Constitution by turning the presumption of innocence on its head." Several research institutions have also cited the high fiscal costs associated with local immigration crackdowns. The National Employment Law Project pointed out that smaller-scale anti-immigrant ordinances have cost individual localities millions of dollars. The Perryman Group estimates that if all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Arizona, the state would lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs. The Immigration Policy Center noted that, "with Arizona facing a budget deficit of more than $3 billion, Gov. Brewer might want to think twice about measure that would further imperil the state's economic future." Brewer has until Saturday to sign or veto SB-1070 before it automatically becomes state law.

MCCAIN EMBRACES DISCRIMINATION: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is facing a tough primary challenge this year from immigration hawk J.D. Hayworth and is using SB-1070 to show that he's "tough" on the issue. On Monday, McCain endorsed SB-1070, describing it as "a very important step forward" shortly after proposing his own 10-point enforcement-only plan to secure the nation's borders. In an interview with Fox News, McCain stated that he would be "very sorry" if racial profiling happened, but "illegals" are "intentionally causing accidents on the freeway." McCain once preferred to refer to undocumented immigrants as "God's children" and described "enforcement-first" policies as an "ineffective and ill-advised approach." McCain now wants 700 miles of fencing along the Arizona-Mexico border, a proposal he once derided as a "quick fix" to our border security problems in the absence of a comprehensive approach. Now McCain says that he and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) will block immigration reform if it is proposed this year. In 2006, McCain opposed the failed Sensenbrenner bill -- which contained criminalization components virtually identical to SB-1070's -- calling it "anti-Hispanic." McCain is clearly trying score cheap political points in a state in which 83 percent of voters say a candidate's position on immigration is an important factor in how they will vote, with 51 percent saying "it's very important." The co-founder of the Minutemen, who is usually quick to embrace anyone who agrees with his radical views, described McCain's newly adopted position as "shameful election-year politics" and accused him of trying to "hood-wink" voters. Meanwhile, immigration advocate Frank Sharry stated, "Obviously, John McCain is fighting for his political life in Arizona. I sure miss the days when he fought for his principles."

VOCAL OPPOSITION: Rasmussen may suggest that most Arizonians support SB-1070, yet it has generated a strong and vocal opposition. The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police (AAOP) firmly opposes it for fiscal and public safety reasons. Mesa Police Sgt. Bryan Soller, who is president of the Mesa and Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, has expressed similar concerns, stating that the bill "will bankrupt our city." Arturo Venegas, director of the Law Enforcement Engagement Initiative, issued a statement accusing the Arizona legislature of "playing politics with public safety," pointing out that it "will result in police spending less time keeping the streets free of violent criminals" and create distrust within the immigrant community. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have asked Brewer to veto the bill and are pressuring President Obama to either warn of federal pre-emption of the law or threaten Arizona's federal funding. Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) has called for a national boycott of his state until it disavows its "fundamentally racist" immigration bill. Meanwhile, on the ground, several 24-hour candle light vigils have been held and nine students were recently arrested after chaining themselves to the old State Capitol building. As of Monday, Brewer's office had received 1,356 calls, e-mails and faxes in favor of SB-1070 and 11,931 against the bill. While Cardinal Roger Mahony "can't imagine" Arizona reverting to "German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques," former President Bill Clinton explained that the bill is a response to widespread insecurity and disorientation and reminded Americans that, ultimately, "we can't let the debate veer so far into hatred that we lose focus of our common humanity."

Let The Sun Shine In......

Where's RICO?

2010-04-22T10:15:00.000-04:00

Where's RICO?

Wednesday 21 April 2010

by: James Howard Kunstler, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: RLHyde, aresauburn™, Pink Sherbet Photography)

It's interesting and instructive to read The New York Times' lead story this morning, "Top Goldman Leaders Said to Have Overseen Mortgage Unit." While it pretends to report all the particulars of the huge scandal growing out of Friday's SEC action against Goldman Sachs (GS), the story really comes off as an attempt to create an alibi for the so-called "bank." It pretends that some kind of an intellectual struggle was going on among GS executives as to whether the housing market was doing just fine or poised to tank - therefore, muddling the company's intent in setting up investment deals based on sketchy mortgages designed to blow up, so that a favored big customer, John Paulson, could collect on the deal insurance known as credit default swaps.

The truth is that anyone with half a brain could see the securitized mortgage fiasco coming from 10,000 miles away. I said as much in Chapter Six ("Running on Fumes: the Hallucinated Economy") of my book "The Long Emergency," which was published in 2005, but written well before that in 2002-2004. And I had had no work experience whatsoever in banking generally or Wall Street investment banking in particular.

Ah! That's about the same time I took out a 4% fixed rate loan and paid off credit cards. Haven't used one since. It hasn't been easy, but I shutter to think where I would be if I had kept living above my means.

One week before the SEC action against GS, the Pro Publica web site published a story about virtually the same kind of mischief being run out of the Chicago-based hedge fund Magnetar led by a clever young fellow named Alec Litowitz. Like GS, Magnetar deliberately constructed investments (bundles of bundled mortgage-backed securities called collateralized debt obligations or CDOs) that were certain to fail, so that Magnetar could collect on credit default swaps that amounted to a bet against products they themselves had participated in creating. There was no question that Litowitz and his employees did this absolutely on purpose. Nor is there any question that they aggressively sold positions in these CDOs to credulous investors like Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and others.

The question that now begs to be answered is: why is this activity not being investigated and prosecuted under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) statutes against racketeering? RICO was designed to punish exactly this kind of behavior, whether the defendant's name ended in a vowel or not. How is it not a racket to deliberately and systematically construct investments designed to fail so you can collect what amounts to insurance against them - and then to sell those financial instruments to customers without telling them that these investments were engineered to blow up? At the very least, it amounts to a failure to disclose material information, which is the basis for distinguishing illegality. More to the point, it almost certainly amounts to prosecutable criminal fraud and insider trading.

Dylan Ratigan at MSNBC asked pretty much this question on Friday when interviewing Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (because the AIG company, headquartered in his state, sold gobs of credit default swaps to GS for dodgy CDOs, leading to a giant government bailout and incidental huge payoffs to GS). Blumenthal's answer was lame, to put it mildly - that recent federal rules tied his hands, he claimed. He could have at least publicly protested his hand tying and applied pressure to the US Department of Justice to enforce the anti-racketeering law.

So, where is the DOJ's criminal division in all this? The GS racket has been publicly known, in one form or another, for several years. I wrote in this space several times at least as far back as 2007 that GS was essentially shorting it's own issued securities, and I'm neither a lawyer nor a finance professional. Anyone could see this from just reading the news. Magnetar's activity was so notorious that the very business of engineering dodgy CDO investments to collect insurance on their failure became known throughout the industry as "the Magnetar Play."

The feigned cluelessness among some of the highest-profile figures in these rackets is something to behold. For instance, Citibank was among the companies that helped Magnetar put together their designed-to-fail CDOs. Citi's chairman at the time, former US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, testifying before the new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission said, "Almost all of us, including me, who were involved in the financial system - that is to say financial firms, regulators, rating agencies, analysts and commentators - missed the powerful combination of factors that led to this crisis and the serious possibility of a massive crisis." Bank of America's CEO, Brian Moynihan, told a Congressional hearing, "No one involved in the housing system - lenders, rating agencies, investors, insurers, consumers, regulators, and policy-makers - foresaw a dramatic and rapid depreciation in home prices [and, therefore, in investment instruments based on mortgages]."

Either they are lying or they are profoundly stupid and incompetent. If the former, then they might be induced to spend some time talking to federal prosecutors; if the latter, then the US financial system is too hopeless to survive and we will all soon be bartering hand tools and designer shoes for food. Evidence of the latter is ample, for instance, in Citigroup's loss of 70 percent share value during Rubin's chairmanship - for which, in the crash year of 2008 alone, he was paid $17 million plus $33 million in stock options.

The GS SEC action and the related Magnetar story seems to be a pretty big deal, and appear to be dragging public opinion to a crossroads where we acknowledge the deep structural corruption of the financial system or watch the legitimacy of both banking and government dissolve. At least, it throws gouts of gasoline on the political fires lit by Tea Partiers and even more extreme political factions. I don't see how President Obama can keep Rubin at his elbow or the hosts of other GS alumni in their federal jobs. The whole episode is disgusting in the purest sense of the word. If Obama doesn't shake these people loose, and if he doesn't pick up the phone and direct his attorney general to execute the laws - including the RICO law - then all the moonbeams issuing from his renowned smile will not avail to keep him in office, or keep the financial underpinning of the USA from collapse.

This article has been previously published on James Howard Kunstler's blog.

James Howard Kunstler is the author of "The Long Emergency," the novel "World Made By Hand" and the sequel, "The Witch of Hebron," coming out in September from The Atlantic Monthly Press.

All republished content that appears on Truthout has been obtained by permission or license.

Let The Sun Shine In......

The tea party's exaggerated importance

2010-04-22T09:47:00.000-04:00

By: Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith April 22, 2010 05:05 AM EDT
2009 was the year when many journalists concluded they were slow to recognize the anti-government, anti-Obama rage that gave birth to the tea party movement. 2010 is the year when news organizations have decided to prove they get it. And get it. And get it some more. Part of the reason is the timeless truth in media that nothing succeeds like excess. But part of the reason is a convergence of incentives for journalists and activists on left and right alike to exaggerate both the influence and exotic traits of the tea-party movement. In fact, there is a word for what poll after poll depicts as a group of largely white, middle-class, middle-aged voters who are aggrieved: Republicans. But just read the succession of New York Times stories, profiling newly energized activists who are “bracing for tyranny.” Or follow the dispatches of the CNN crews who went along with two national Tea Party Express bus tours. Or delve into the crosstabs of polls conducted in the past few weeks by the Times, CNN, and, POLITICO about the opinions and demographic characteristics of tea partiers. Or check out the blogger the Washington Post hired to chronicle their movement. The findings have been unveiled with the earnest detachment of Margaret Mead reporting her findings among teenage girls in Samoa. Indifference has given way to curiosity, and —in recent weeks especially— to a nearly manic obsession that sometimes seems to place the tea partiers somewhere near the suffragettes and the America-Firsters in the historical ranking of mass political movements. Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which tracks media reports, found that the tea parties consumed a steady measure of news for most of this year before exploding during tax week to compete with the Icelandic volcano for attention and outstripping health care with 6% of all media reports that week. But various sides have their own reasons for finding something new and arresting in the spasms of outrage personified by the tea partiers. The right sees the protests as evidence of a popular revolt against President Barack Obama—proof of a changing tide they believe will bring massive victories in 2010 and 2012. The left sees them as evidence of incipient fascism and an opposition to Obama rooted in racism—proof of the beyond-the-pale illegitimacy of large swaths of the conservative moment. The tea party “movement,” meanwhile, has little organizational structure to speak of. True tea party candidates – as opposed to establishment figures like former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio who have gladly adopted the label – have failed to make a dent so far in Republican primaries. The one true tea partier poised to make a splash, Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul, is an imperfect example thanks to his being the son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), who still commands a national following after his quixotic presidential race. The tea parties’ main expression has been public gatherings. But last week’s Tax Day crowds were not representative of a force that is purportedly shaping the country’s politics. About a thousand people showed up in state capitals like Des Moines, Montgomery and Baton Rouge – and even fewer in large cities like Philadelphia, Boston and Milwaukee. In some cases, turnout was less than the original protests spurred by the stimulus, bailouts, financial crisis and new Democratic president last April 15th. In Washington, about 10,000 people showed up on the national Mall last week – a rally worth covering but far fewer than the tens of thousands who marched in support of immigration reform in March. “If I organized a rally for stronger laws to protect puppies, I would get 100,000 people to Washington,” Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell cracked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “So, I think the media has blown the tea party themselves out of proportion." What’s more, the eruption of protest after a president of a new party takes the country in a new direction is a standard feature of modern American politics. Ronald Reagan’s election produced record-breaking rallies for the now-forgotten Nuclear Freeze movement. The right, with rhetoric and occasional excesses that are almost identical to those of today, rose up angrily against Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s. And just a few years ago, hundreds of thousands of Americans turned out to rally against the Iraq war. Now, veterans of those protests – covered largely as spot news and spectacle – wonder why they didn’t get the weighty, anthropological treatment assigned to the tea parties. “They’re being treated with a lot more respect than the anti-war movement was,” said Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq, who became the most visible face of those protests. “The anti-war movement has always been treated as a fringe movement – even though at the height of our movement we had hundreds of thousands of people at protests and the majority of public opinion on our side,” said Sheehan, who spoke to POLITICO from a bus on her way to an Oregon protest against the Afghan war. “Nobody is poling us to find out our thoughts and opinions on things,” she added. The polling has discovered what the Republican officials who have allied themselves with the tea parties already knew: That the new energy and organization is a function of an inflamed conservative grassroots already basically aligned with one party. “There is definitely some anger at the GOP over our big spending ways, but generally this is an Obama protest vote,” says Republican strategist Mike Murphy. Polls indicated that tea party adherents overwhelmingly support GOP candidates. Over 70 percent backed John McCain in 2008, according to POLITICO’s own in-person survey of those who attended the tax day rally in Washington. And a New York Times poll released last week showed that 40 percent of self-identified tea party supporters indicated a desire for a third party – less than the 46 percent of overall respondents to the survey who said they’d like to see an option besides the Republicans and Democrats. “No one should mistake tea partiers for swing voters,” said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, noting surveys that show the group largely identifies as either Republican or independents who lean toward the GOP. “Those who say they're independent do not choose that status because the Democrats are too liberal but because the Republicans are too conservative.” Other polling suggests that the protests, while much discussed within the political class, hasn’t entirely pierced the consciousness of average Americans. A new Pew poll out this week with a national sample of 2,505 found that 31 percent of those surveyed had never even heard of the tea party movement – and another 30 percent had no opinion of them. The media fascination, trickling down from A1 of the New York Times, for instance, to A1 of the Arizona Republic, is prompting a second round of anthropology, this time from aggravated political professionals. Murphy, who calls the attention “absolutely ridiculous,” sees it of a piece with what has become the biennial compulsion in the political community to hold up a newly-discovered, and always pivotal, bloc of voters; Like the Angry White Males, NASCAR Dads, Soccer Moms of election cycles past – only on steroids. “There is this urge to give any political development a catchy name and a picture,” he lamented, adding the familiar Republican complaint that well-educated, left-leaning, coast-dwelling reporters view middle America through an elitist lens. “These young reporters fly to the wilds of Oklahoma or Kentucky, find a bunch of folks in Uncle Sam suits hollering and come back thinking they’ve got some hot scoop,” Murphy said. The coverage began, notes Republican consultant Alex Castellanos, with not much more than bemused mockery: “’How amusing, the peasants are revolting’” Now it has reached a level of worried fascination. Or, as Castellanos put it, “The peasants actually are revolting!” In some ways, perceptions of the tea partiers have become much like the politician most frequently identified with the movement – Sarah Palin. For both the left and the right, both have become symbols that outweigh their actual impact – thanks largely to excessive media attention. Conservatives mostly rush to defend them while liberals delight in mocking them, and reporters can’t get enough of the spectacle. And, as with Palin, the tea parties enjoy an unlikely convergence of saturation coverage from media outlets across the political spectrum. The more ideologically-driven cable networks have something near ideal for television news in the modern era: vivid images of political activism that can either be celebrated (Fox) or mocked (MSNBC). And columnists and editorial writers from the mainstream media have something to celebrate or deplore. “It feeds the paranoia of the New York Times and provides pictures of conflict and color for TV,” said Murphy.
© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC

Let The Sun Shine In......

OMG! Here we go again!

2010-04-22T09:33:00.000-04:00

Muslim group warns 'South Park' creators of death

FILE - In this Sept. 21, 2008 file photo, Matt Stone, left, and Trey Parker attend the Com...

By DAVID BAUDER, AP
Thu Apr 22, 4:15 AM EDT

A radical Muslim group has warned the creators of "South Park" that they could face violent retribution for depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit during last week's episode.

The website RevolutionMuslim.com has since been taken down, but a cached version shows the message to "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The article's author, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee of New York, said the men "outright insulted" the religious leader.

The posting showed a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death in an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a fanatic angered by his film about Muslim women. The film was written by a Muslim woman who rejected the Prophet Muhammad as a guide for today's morality.

"We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show," Al-Amrikee wrote. "This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them."

The posting listed the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and Parker and Stone's California production office. It also linked to a Huffington Post article that described a Colorado retreat owned by the two men.

CNN, which first reported the posting, said the New York-based website is known for postings in support of Osama bin Laden and jihad, or holy war, against the West.

Al-Amrikee told The Associated Press in a phone call Wednesday that the posting was made to raise awareness of the issue and to see that it does not happen again. Asked if Parker and Stone should feel threatened by it, he said "they should feel threatened by what they did."

He said he was disappointed that publicity about the posting focused more on the potential danger to the producers but admitted, "I could shoulder some blame" for it.

He said he "can't answer that legally" when asked if his group favored jihad. But he praised bin Laden.

"We look up to him and admire him for the sacrifices he has given for the religion," he said.
Last week's episode, the 200th for the cheeky and often vulgar cartoon, was intended to feature many of the personalities and groups that Parker and Stone insulted during the series' run.

In 2006, Comedy Central banned the men from showing an image of Muhammad on their show. They had intended to comment on the controversy created by a Danish newspaper's publishing of caricatures of the Islamic leader. Muslims consider any physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous.

Instead, "South Park" showed an image of Jesus Christ defecating on President George W. Bush and the American flag.

Comedy Central and the show's producers would not comment.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Goldman Hires Obama's Ex-White House Counsel to Defend Bank Against Fraud Charges

2010-04-21T23:45:00.000-04:00

Monday 19 April 2010

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

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: macten, Seabamirum)

Wall Street banking behemoth Goldman Sachs, which was charged with securities fraud last Friday over its role in the subprime mortgage meltdown, has hired President Obama's former White House Counsel Greg Craig to defend the company, according to a report published late Monday by Politico.

Reporters Eamon Javers and Mike Allen, citing an unnamed source, reported that Craig was hired “in recent weeks to help navigate the halls of power in Washington.”

“Whatever the reason for his hiring, Craig will presumably be a key player in the intricate counterattack Goldman Sachs officials in Washington and Manhattan improvised during the weekend — a plan that took clearer shape Monday as Britain and Germany announced that they might conduct their own investigations of the firm,” Politico reported.

As Truthout reported, Craig was ousted last November after he fell out of favor with some Obama administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, because Craig backed public disclosure on documents and photographs related to the Bush administration’s use of torture against alleged terrorist detainees and his role in pushing the White House to shutter Guantanamo within a year.

Craig’s efforts, originally championed by the administration, led to blistering attacks against the Obama White House by former Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican lawmakers who accused the president of giving aid and comfort to the “enemy.”

Craig is no stranger to high-profile cases. He represented fomer President Bill Clinton during his Senate impeachment trial. was also instrumental in working closely with Karl Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and his staff that resulted in Bush’s former political adviser testifying before the panel behind closed doors about the firings of nine federal prosecutors in 2006 and the apparent political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Craig also arranged a similar deal for former White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

As Goldman's attorney, Craig will have defend the bank against charges that it failed to inform its investors that one of its clients had a hand in creating a mortgage-based investment portfoloio and then bet the housing market would collapse, which led Goldman to lose $1 billion. The trader earned $3.7 billion, according to a civil suit filed last week against the company by the Securities and Exchange Commission following a nine-month investigation.

Despite the allegations the SEC levled against the firm in a civil complaint last week,

Goldman still intends to dole out about $5 billion in bonuses, the Times of London reported.

Separately, Newsweek reported earlier Monday that Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has obtained new documents that link “certain actions to specific people” at Goldman Sachs related to deals the company made that precipitated the housing market crash.

Levin’s office wouldn’t disclose the substance of the documents he has obtained nor would his staffers identify the individuals at Goldman the Michigan Democrat intends to name as having played a direct role in the collapse of the bank and the financial collapse that ensued.

But come next week, according to an unnamed legislative official quoted by Newsweek, Levin believes the information he has collected will result in “another big shoe to drop on Goldman.”

Levin’s subcommittee is scheduled to hold hearings next week where Goldman’s Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein will testify about what he knew and when he knew it. It’s unknown if Craig, who returned to private practice after his departure as White House counsel last year, will accompany Blankfein to the hearing.

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

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Pathology of Seditionist Rage

2010-04-21T23:37:00.000-04:00

Peaceful, no-gun protests against an illegal, unjust war got hardly any coverage.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG BY MARK KARLIN

The politically charged gun movement in America that began when right wing ideologues took over the NRA in the '70s (in what was called "The Revolt at Cincinnati") has been pathological from the beginning. That certainly is the case with the twin pro-gun rallies that took place in Washington D.C. and across the Potomac in Virginia on Tuesday, April 19th, the date of Timothy McVeigh's deranged "killing of 168 people, including 19 children under the age of six."

Ironically, as pro-gun legislation is passing across the land and in Washington, the Virginia gun guy "protest" was held on National Park land that now allows handgun carrying because of a law signed by President Obama -- and most of the attendees were locked and loaded.

At both rallies, the talk was defiant and seditious, threatening -- in the thinnest veiled code words -- a shoot out with federal officials if psychotic objections to the "infringement of Constitutional rights" were not met.

There were only a few hundred gun nuts who showed up at each rally, but that was enough to get a scrum of media coverage, as compared to the barely covered 200,000 advocates who showed up in D.C. a couple weeks back to protest for a compassionate immigration policy.

The modern gun lobby -- after the political right wingers took over the NRA in a coup -- is more about white male entitlement, racism, and the false perception that a handgun would be of much value against the United States Military based on a paranoid view of the federal government. It is not the gun that is the real issue. It is a psychological state of mind about the perceived diminished status of the white male of limited economic means. You don't see many wealthy elites showing up at the Washington rallies. It's the "dispossessed" white males, who view their guns as their last vestige of power and leverage in a society that has become secular and in which women share more power.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to perceive how any of the Timothy McVeigh wannabee protesters have had their lives change in terms of their freedom or independence under the
Obama Administration. In fact, it is impossible to imagine, because nothing has changed. They certainly didn't protest the invasion of privacy on multiple levels under the Bush Administration.

So what is going on beyond racism, white entitlement, and the perceived power of the gun?
In an April 19th article in the New York Times on the just-released interview tapes with Timothy McVeigh, the journalist notes:

"The McVeigh Tapes" is instructive, but it is a history lesson that blends real materials and fake ones to illustrate the danger posed by fringe lunatics who cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality.

Such is the case with the dueling, press-fueled, gun guys insurrectionist rallies on April 19th in D.C. and adjacent Virginia federal land.

Such is, not so coincidentally, the content of FOX and the right wing media echo chamber.

Such is the pathology of a seditionist rage based on America's legacy of racism, white entitlement and corporate mainstream media demagoguery and fictional news repackaged to fit the oligarchical agenda of the ruling elites, who use the Tea Party and the gun guys as their diversionary shock troops.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG BY MARK KARLIN

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Bush Legacy

2010-04-21T23:30:00.000-04:00

Four of the merely six words in the title of Pew Research Center's latest poll results (pdf) are "distrust, discontent, anger" and "rancor."

That sort of says it all, doesn't it? A concentrated, supermajority of fuming, "a perfect storm of conditions," said Pew's director, Andrew Kohut -- "a dismal economy, an unhappy public, bitter partisan-based backlash and epic discontent with Congress and elected officials."
All of which, I suppose, was inevitable. During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of the more common observations was that the unluckiest candidate would be the winner. For nearly a decade the Bush administration had labored mightily to pile-drive the nation's distrust and discontent, while throughout, its chief political strategist -- Karl Rove -- cultivated partisan anger and rancor as electoral insurance, whose costly premium has now come due.

Theirs was a conscious, unconscionable effort to split the country -- plus one -- to achieve what they confidently envisioned as a permanent majority. Hyperpatriotic global adventurism and partisan scapegoating would hold it all together, while any domestic discontent would be decisively confronted with the Reaganite shibboleth that government is the problem, not the solution.

Their objective was a kind of impotent überstate -- a sort of controlled anarchy in which the militaristic protection of Big Brother would subsume the internal vulnerabilities of plutocratic whim and socioeconomic decline.

And in this, the Bush administration accomplished its one splendidly executed job: it hugely reinforced the erstwhile moderate American belief that government, where not in uniform, is spelled s-n-a-f-u.

Best of all? If that permanent-majority thing failed to work out, some other poor schmuck would have to cope with the enduringly miserable consequences. The Bushies and their politico-economic class could take their misbegotten gains and head for the hills of material comfort; the opposition would be left the herculean task of reassembling a disintegrated nation.

Which, for President Obama (as well as his admittedly hapless but passably well-intentioned allies on the Hill), became a thankless chore. The year 2009 wasn't 1933, which now, bizarrely enough, seems a golden political age, a time before lunatic cable-news hosts and lunatic radio talk-show hosts and lunatic bloggers -- all absolutely ubiquitous, and the crazier the more successful.

Yet a good deal of today's thanklessness loops back, I think, to that splendid job performed by the Bushies: their jackhammer, propagandistic insistence that government is unfailingly inept, so what might you expect?

To the contrary what the body politic did expect -- unschooled as it is in the grinding parliamentary process of reversing determined decline -- was nothing short of a miracle: virtually instant betterment. Obama would simply stroll into the Oval Office, I can only presume, and snap his fingers and issue executive commands and presto -- within, let's say, a year, our city on the hill would gleam again.

Eight years -- indeed, several decades -- of unprecedented, deliberate neglect and suffocating decay would be erased. Theoretically. And when the theory failed to hold? Why of course, thought the electorate: Government is unfailingly inept. Why -- against the Bushies' admonishments -- did we ever expect otherwise?

Much easier, then, to revert to the former administration's finely cultivated zeitgeist of distrust, discontent, anger and rancor: reactionaryism's best friends.

During a presidential campaign such an apocalyptic foursome is not only acceptable, it borders on the acceptably advisable. For nothing concentrates the democratic mind like motivated revenge.

Yet what appeared to be relatively short-term distrust, discontent, anger and rancor had in reality become a new way of American political life. Except for one's closest ideological allies, everyone's a vague kind of enemy; plus government's a joke, hope's a pipe dream and real and upwardly robust change is not only unattainable, it's a liberal mirage, QED.
That is the Bushian DNA of our political ghosts -- Bush's truest legacy; a sour, fuming, disoriented, thoroughly disenchanted electorate which -- the result of relentless, top-down repetition -- can always land on at least one identifiable enemy: inept government.

And irony of ironies, who's paying the political price? Why of course. The unlucky winner of 2008, who is only trying his damnedest to ept the inept.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Limbaugh responds to Clinton with torrent of incendiary rhetoric

2010-04-21T08:43:00.000-04:00

April 20, 2010 6:40 am ET

SUMMARY: In recent days, President Bill Clinton has warned that incendiary rhetoric and "demonizing the government" incited domestic terrorism during his presidency and threatened to do so again. On his April 19 broadcast, Rush Limbaugh responded by unleashing a torrent of incendiary rhetoric, claiming that the Obama administration is "ripp[ing] apart" and "overthrow[ing]" the country and blaming Clinton for the Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Clinton: "Demonizing" gov't, public servants can lead to domestic terror

In an April 16 speech, Clinton said of the 1995 bomb attack on an Oklahoma City federal building:

The second lesson we have to learn is that we can't let the debate veer so far into hatred that we lose focus of our common humanity. It's really important. We can't ever fudge the fact that there is a basic line dividing criticism from violence or its advocacy. And the closer you get to the line, and the more responsibility you have, the more you have to think about the echo chamber in which your words resonate.

Look, criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy. Nobody's right all the time. But Oklahoma City proved once again that, beyond the law, there is no freedom. And there is a difference between criticizing a policy or a politician and demonizing the government that guarantees our freedom and the public servants who implement them. And the more prominence you have in politics or media or some other pillar of life, the more you have to keep that in mind.
[...]

But what we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold, but that the words we use really do matter because there are -- there's this vast echo chamber. And they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious, alike; they fall on the connected and the unhinged, alike. And I am not trying to muzzle anybody.

But one of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have, and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have. Look, I'm glad they're fighting over health care and everything else; let them have at it.

But I think that all you have to do is read the paper every day to see how many people there are who are deeply, deeply troubled. We know, now, that there are people involved in groups -- these "hatriot" groups, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the others -- 99 percent of them will never do anything they shouldn't do. But there are people who advocate violence and anticipate violence.
[...]

When George Washington served his two terms and went home to Mount Vernon to retire and John Adams became president, he was called out of retirement one time. You know what it was? He was called out of retirement to command the Armed Forces sent to Pennsylvania to put down the Whiskey Rebellion, because good Americans who had fought for this country crossed the line from advocating a different policy and opposing the current one to taking the law into their own hands in a violent manner.

Once in a while, over the last 200 years, we've crossed the line again. But by and large, that bright line has held, and that's why this is the longest-lasting democracy in human history. That's why there is so much free speech. That's why people can organize their groups. It may seem like fringe groups that advocate whatever the livin' Sam Hill they want to advocate. That's why. But we have to keep the bright line alive. So that's the second lesson.

Clinton offered similar comments in an interview aired on the April 18 edition of ABC's This Week and in an April 19 New York Times op-ed.

Limbaugh says Obama administration is "authoritarian," "overthrow[ing]" the country

Limbaugh: "The country is being overthrown," "ripped apart, transformed, right before our very eyes." Limbaugh responded by arguing that Clinton's comments were part of an effort to smear the tea party movement. He stated: "The reality is that it's the Obama crowd that doesn't like government, that doesn't like the country. It's the Obama crowd and all of their related groups that have been protesting for as long as I've been alive that don't like the country; the tea party people love this country." He added that the tea party people are just angry because the "country is being overthrown. The country is being ripped apart, transformed, right before our very eyes, and in a fraudulent manner."

Limbaugh: " 'Regime' implies and defines authoritarian governments, which this one clearly is." Responding to a critique of his use of the word "regime" to describe the Obama administration, Limbaugh explained that " 'regime' implies and defines authoritarian governments, which this one clearly is."

Limbaugh: "I am treated as an enemy of the state." Limbaugh stated: "I, a guy on the radio who can't raise anybody's taxes, can't send anybody off to war, I cannot do one thing -- I can't harm you economically, I can't do a damn -- I am treated as an enemy of the state."

Limbaugh: "Obama urges more opposition to us than he does Islamic terrorists." Limbaugh stated: "I'm not saying that if we weren't around they'd be beating Obama up. Don't misunderstand. They would be full-throated supporters of Obama. But if we weren't around it wouldn't be this slavish, in the tank, sycophantic coverage. Because they now feel it necessary to defend themselves -- and him -- against us. Look at -- Obama urges more opposition to us than he does Islamic terrorists."

Limbaugh blames Clinton for the Oklahoma City bombing, 9-11

Limbaugh asks Clinton, "What words caused Timothy McVeigh to act," says McVeigh was "outraged over the government invasion" in Waco. Responding to Clinton's statement that "the words we use do really matter," Limbaugh asked of Clinton: "What words caused Timothy McVeigh to act? Name one. I want to know what words and who spoke them. What are the words that Timothy McVeigh heard? What are the words he admitted that he heard that prompted him to act?" Limbaugh went on to say: "All I've ever heard is that Timothy McVeigh was outraged over the government invasion led by Janet Reno of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. And the Murrah building was blown up on that exact date two years later. ... Somebody show me the words, Mr. President, that McVeigh heard and caused him to act."

Limbaugh: "McVeigh was not inspired by anybody's words, he was inspired by Mr. Clinton's deeds." Limbaugh said that "McVeigh was not inspired by anybody's words, he was inspired by Mr. Clinton's deeds. And this is what they're trying to wash over; this is what they're trying to erase from the historical record."

Limbaugh: Clinton has "ties to the domestic terrorism of Oklahoma City." Limbaugh said that Clinton, the Obama administration, and the press can "try to make Oklahoma City the result of a modern tea party movement," but "President Clinton's ties to the domestic terrorism of Oklahoma City are tangible; talk radio's ties are nonexistent. We had nothing to do with it."

Limbaugh: Because Clinton "ignored terrorism throughout the '90s," "the country was attacked on 9-11." Limbaugh stated: "Let us not forget Bill Clinton ignored terrorism throughout the '90s. As a result, the country was attacked on 9-11. Debra Burlingame with a great column in The Wall Street Journal today. It's just not 9-11. How about the World Trade Center bombing in '93 on Clinton's watch; the Khobar Towers on Clinton's watch? There were so many acts of terrorism in this country and around the world on Clinton's watch. He didn't care about it. He didn't fight -- he wanted to take on hard issues -- he loved that 65 percent approval number."

Limbaugh attacks Clinton for his role in "domestic violence," "Waco invasion"

Limbaugh says children at Waco "really got abused by the U.S. government."
Discussing the standoff at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Limbaugh said: "Sixty-seven people died in the fire -- we remember watching it -- 20 children. Janet Reno said we have to go in there because children are being abused. Yep. They really got abused by the U.S. government."

Limbaugh: "President Clinton ... has had a direct and indirect role in so much pain and domestic violence." Limbaugh stated: "So, throughout the '90s, we are the victims of terrorism acts by people who Obama will not even call terrorists now. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno didn't just threaten violence at Waco -- they delivered it. As a result, American citizens -- children, women, mothers -- were killed. And what followed was a domestic terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City. And President Clinton, who has had a direct and indirect role in so much pain and domestic violence, lectures us about threats and acts of violence?"

Limbaugh: OKC bombing was "about the U.S. military invading a religious compound." Limbaugh told listeners, "Don't forget that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred two years to the day after the Waco invasion -- two years to the day -- and Tim McVeigh as much as said so." Continuing, Limbaugh said that Clinton was involved in "an attempt to rewrite the history of the Oklahoma City bombing and the president's role in it. ... They know this is about Waco. They know this is about the U.S. military invading a religious compound."

Limbaugh: "You have President Clinton here simply lying about a terrible tragedy." Limbaugh said: "You have President Clinton here simply lying about a terrible tragedy to try to chill free speech and libeling me and the tea party at the same time. It does not get more despicable than this."

Limbaugh: Tea party is "the first time" that "everyday citizens" have "risen up" "since the Civil War"

Limbaugh stated: "What is it that's remarkable about the tea party is that it's the first time an uprising of common, ordinary, average everyday citizens since the Civil War has risen up like this."

A Short Citizen’s Guide to Reforming Wall Street

2010-04-21T08:37:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The real scandal isn’t the Street’s unlawful acts (i.e., Securities and Exchange Commission vs. Goldman Sachs) but legal acts that have reaped the Street a bonanza and nearly sunk the rest of us.

It’s good we finally have an SEC on which three out of five commissioners are willing to enforce laws already on the books. Hopefully other enforcement agencies (CFTC, FDIC, and the Fed) will follow suit. But we also need to make illegal the recklessness that’s now legal.

The Dodd bill now being considered in the Senate is a step in the right direction. Yet despite the hype, it’s a very modest step. It leaves out three of the most important things necessary to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street meltdown:

1. Require that trading of all derivatives be done on open exchanges where parties have to disclose what they’re buying and selling and have enough capital to pay up if their bets go wrong. The exception in the current bill for so-called “unique” derivatives opens up a loophole big enough for bankers to drive their Ferrari’s through.

2. Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act in its entirety so commercial banks are separated from investment banks. The current bill doesn’t go nearly far enough. Commercial banks should take deposits and lend money. Investment banks should be limited to the casino we call the stock market, helping companies issue new issues and making bets. Nothing good comes of mixing the two. We learned this after the Great Crash of 1929, and then forgot it in 1999 when Congress allowed financial supermarkets to do both.

3. Cap the size of big banks at $100 billion in assets. The current bill doesn’t limit the size of banks at all. It creates a process for winding down the operations of any bank that gets into trouble. But if several big banks are threatened, as they were when the housing bubble burst, their failure would pose a risk to the whole financial system, and Congress and the Fed would surely have to bail them out. The only way to ensure no bank is too big to fail is to make sure no bank is too big, period. Nobody has been able to show any scale efficiencies over $100 billion in assets, so that should be the limit.

Wall Street doesn’t want these three major reforms because they’d cut deeply into profits, and it’s using its formidable lobbying clout with both parties to prevent these reforms from even from surfacing. It’s time for Main Street — Tea Partiers, Coffee partiers, and beer drinkers — to be heard.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Iceland Volcana

2010-04-21T00:50:00.000-04:00

By Mark Sappenfield, Staff writer / April 18, 2010

This history of Iceland will not make for comforting reading for thousands of would-be air travelers stranded across northern Europe and beyond.

Photo Gallery
Iceland volcano

Katla: the sleeping sister

Katla has erupted 16 times since 930, in 1755 exploding so violently that its ash settled on parts of Scotland. In 1918, Katla tore chunks of ice the size of houses from the Myrdalsjökull glacier atop it, sending them careening down its slopes and into the Atlantic on floods of melted glacier water.

While Eyjafjallavökull is virtually anonymous in Icelandic lore, Katla is one of the "Angry Sisters" along its even-more active twin, Hekla.

The 1918 eruption was the last major eruption of Katla – a volcano that has erupted twice a century, on average – which is why scientists have paid particularly close attention to it in recent days.

But while earth beneath Eyjafjallajökull trembled with thousands of small earthquakes in the months before the eruption – signaling that magma was welling up beneath the volcano – scientists have not seen the same activity at Katla yet.

Even as some scientists suggest that the current Eyjnafjallajökull eruption is abating, the past few days have been only a taste of what Icelanders have known for generations: Their island is one of the most restless places on the planet.

In 1973, an eruption near the nation's primary fishing port split the island of Heimaey in two and required its entire population to be evacuated to the Icelandic mainland by fishing boat.

On 1783, one-quarter of Iceland's population was killed when Laki erupted – an eruption so massive that it changed global weather patterns, bringing record snow to New Jersey and drought to Egypt.

And in the 1755 Katla eruption, the volume of floodwaters from the Myrdalsjökull glacier were estimated to be equal to or greater than the discharge of water from the Amazon, Nile, and Mississippi Rivers combined.

Iceland: an Arctic thread of fire

Much like lands atop the Pacific Ring of Fire, Iceland sits atop a seam in earth's crust, straddling two of the planet's tectonic puzzle pieces.

In other such places, such as Chile, one piece of crust is sliding beneath the other, pushing up the Andes mountains. But in Iceland, new earth is being born with every eruption.

Along the tectonic border marked by Iceland's volcanoes, the world is spreading, gradually pushing Iceland's halves – and the plates they sit on – farther apart. The volcanoes are making new crust, their liquid rock cooling into new landscapes, eruption by eruption, foot by foot.

In this way, Eyjafjallajökull is merely part of the ancient tectonic dance of the continents. But some scientists suggest that the changing global climate could make Icelandic eruptions more common.

As Iceland's glaciers thin, their weight upon the island's volcanoes will lighten, making it easier for magma to rise from the earth's depths, they say.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Corporate propaganda

2010-04-21T00:46:00.000-04:00

Let The Sun Shine In......

A Primer for the Democrats in the 2010 Elections

2010-04-21T00:44:00.000-04:00

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 04/20/2010 - 9:57am.

Guest Commentary

HUGH CONRAD FOR BUZZFLASH

Lesson One: Today's Words Are "Republican Recession"

The passage of the healthcare reform package became reality for a plethora of reasons, but one was essential: Barack Obama went back to his base and argued his case in a fiery and a passionate way. For the Democrats to prevent the opposition from taking over either body of Congress in November, they have to be as vocal and as passionate as Obama was down the stretch.

The Democrats must do this with issues that the Republicans have destroyed: National Security, corruption, Republican ties to Wall Street, eviscerating the Constitution under Bush, along with the major issue, the Economy.

First, here is what the Democrats should do to make their case about the economy: Demonstrate outrage at the Republicans for mishandling the economy and causing the loss of eight million jobs.

My first suggestion is a simple one: Repeat these words over and over: This was / is a "Republican Recession."

Everyone -- those on the campaign trail, those in the netroots, and those who talk to the media -- should repeat these because repetition strengthens and confirms ideas in the minds of the American people.

The second suggestion is also simple: Tie the Republicans to Wall Street. This is simple with the financial-reform bill currently being debated in Congress. Republicans will try to prevent any meaningful reform.

The last suggestion here is to use history, tying it into the Republican Recession. For instance, use this historical scenario.

The Republicans ruled for 12 years in the 1920s and early 30s. What happened? The Great Depression, the worst financial failure in history. This occurred because of the policies of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. The Depression ended after the people elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat, who instituted meaningful change.

The Republicans again ruled for 12 years during the 1980s and early 90s. What happened? The Republicans rang up the largest budget deficits in history under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and forced the country into a serious recession. This ended after the voters elected Bill Clinton, who balanced the budget and built a surplus that the Republicans squandered under George W. Bush.

The Republicans ruled for eight years under George W. Bush. What happened? The worst recession in history, forcing the government into bailing out banks and spending stimulus money to try and rebuild the country. Eight million jobs have been lost because of the Republican Recession.

History is clear: Republicans have been horrible stewards of the economy.

Since 1980, Republicans have controlled the White House 20 of 29 years. We are experiencing this economic turmoil because of the reprehensible trickle-down economics of Ronald Reagan that have led to two major recessions, the last almost another Republican Depression.

When Americans go to the polls this fall, they must remember that this horrible economy is a Republican Recession.

Summary: Tie the Great Depression, constant recessions, and horrible budget deficits to the Republicans. This is historically accurate and can be very effective in doing over and over and over again.

HUGH CONRAD FOR BUZZFLASH

Let The Sun Shine In......

The Liberal Media

2010-04-21T00:40:00.000-04:00

Propaganda

Let The Sun Shine In......

Secret prison revealed in Baghdad

2010-04-21T00:38:00.000-04:00

Forces under the office of Prime Minister Maliki held hundreds of Sunni men at the facility. The U.S. fears that the news will stoke instability.

By Ned Parker
April 19, 2010

Reporting from Baghdad

Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.

The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.

Worried that courts would order the detainees' release, security forces obtained a court order and transferred them to Baghdad, where they were held in isolation. Human rights officials learned of the facility in March from family members searching for missing relatives.

Revelation of the secret prison could worsen tensions at a highly sensitive moment in Iraq. As U.S. troops are withdrawing, Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, and other political officials are negotiating the formation of a new government. Including minority Sunni Arabs is considered by many to be key to preventing a return of widespread sectarian violence. Already there has been an increase in attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni extremist group.

The alleged brutal treatment of prisoners at the facility raised concerns that the country could drift back to its authoritarian past.

Commanders initially resisted efforts to inspect the prison but relented and allowed visits by two teams of inspectors, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim. Inspectors said they found that the 431 prisoners had been subjected to appalling conditions and quoted prisoners as saying that one of them, a former colonel in President Saddam Hussein's army, had died in January as a result of torture.

"More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies," said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. "They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods."

An internal U.S. Embassy report quotes Salim as saying that prisoners had told her they were handcuffed for three to four hours at a time in stress positions or sodomized.

"One prisoner told her that he had been raped on a daily basis, another showed her his undergarments, which were entirely bloodstained," the memo reads.

Some described guards extorting as much as $1,000 from prisoners who wanted to phone their families, the memo said.

Maliki vowed to shut down the prison and ordered the arrest of the officers working there after Salim presented him with a report this month. Since then, 75 detainees have been freed and an additional 275 transferred to regular jails, Iraqi officials said. Maliki said in an interview that he had been unaware of the abuses. He said the prisoners had been sent to Baghdad because of concerns about corruption in Mosul.

"The prime minister cannot be responsible for all the behavior of his soldiers and staff," said Salim, praising Maliki's willingness to root out abuses. Salim, a Chaldean Christian, ran for parliament in last month's elections on Maliki's Shiite-dominated list.

Maliki defended his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; his supporters say he has had no choice because of Iraq's precarious security situation. Maliki told The Times that he was committed to stamping out torture -- which he blamed on his enemies.

"Our reforms continue, and we have the Human Rights Ministry to monitor this," he said. "We will hold accountable anybody who was proven involved in such acts."

But Maliki's critics say the network of special military units with their own investigative judges and interrogators are a threat to Iraq's fragile democracy. They question how Maliki could not have known what was going on at the facility, and say that regardless, he is responsible for what happened there.

"The prison is Maliki's becauseit's not under the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Justice or Ministry of Interior officially," said one Iraqi security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

The revelations echoed those at the beginning of Iraq's sectarian war. In late 2005, the U.S. military found a secret prison in an Interior Ministry bunker where Sunnis rounded up in police sweeps were held.

The latest episode, the U.S. Embassy report warns, could exacerbate tensions between Iraq's Shiite majority and Sunnis even with the facility closed.

U.S. troops already have pulled out of Iraq's cities, and Iraqi officials say U.S. influence is diminishing as the Americans focus on ending their military presence. The number of U.S. troops in Iraq is scheduled to drop by about half, to 50,000, by the end of August.

The embassy report cautions that "disclosure of a secret prison in which Sunni Arabs were systematically tortured would not only become an international embarrassment, but would also likely compromise the prime minister's ability to put together a viable government coalition with him at the helm."

Maliki's main political rival, Iyad Allawi, narrowly defeated him in parliamentary elections last month. Allawi, a secular Shiite, drew on dissatisfaction in Sunni regions around central Iraq. In the interview, Maliki invited Allawi to join him in forming a new government. But news of a secret prison that falls under the jurisdiction of the prime minister's military office could make it difficult for him to gain any Sunni partners.

The controversy over the secret prison, located at the Old Muthanna airport in west Baghdad, has also pushed Maliki to begin relinquishing control of two other detention facilities at Camp Honor, a base in Baghdad's Green Zone. The base belongs to the Baghdad Brigade and the Counter-Terrorism Force, elite units that report to the prime minister and are responsible for holding high-level suspects.

Families and lawyers say they find it nearly impossible to visit the Camp Honor facilities. The Justice Ministry is now assuming supervision of the Green Zone jails, although Maliki's offices will continue to command directly the military units.

The 431 detainees brought down from Nineveh were initially held at Camp Honor. Interrogations began after they were transferred to the prison at the Old Muthanna airport.

According to the U.S. Embassy report and interviews with Iraqi officials, two separate investigative committees questioned the detainees and abused them. During the day, there were interrogators from the Iraqi judiciary. In the late afternoon they came from the Baghdad Brigade.

The embassy report says that at least four of the investigators from the Baghdad Brigade are believed to have been indicted for torture in 2006. The charges against them at the time included selling Sunni Arab detainees held at a national police facility to Shiite militias to be killed.

In December, the Human Rights Ministry asked the judiciary to investigate Baghdad Brigade interrogators over allegations of torture at Camp Honor, but hasn't received an answer, Iraqi officials said.

With the secret facility at the old airport being shut down, and both Maliki and Salim, the human rights minister, hailing what they regard as progress, some Iraqis with knowledge of the security apparatus say they are worried that nothing will really change.

One former lawmaker with great knowledge of the prime minister's security offices called for radical change in the next government. "This is the beginning. We have to hold people accountable," the former lawmaker said. "It's a coverup of torture."

ned.parker@latimes.com

Let The Sun Shine In......

Poll Confirms: Tea Party Movement a Greater Threat to Republicans Than to Democrats

2010-04-21T00:33:00.000-04:00

New Demographic Survey Finds Tea Party Movement Is Essentially the GOP's Voter Base: Affluent, Overwhelmingly White, Predominantly Male, Mostly Middle-Aged and Older, Fiercely Conservative -- and, At Only 18 Percent of the Electorate, More Likely to Wreak Havoc in the Spring Republican Primaries Than in the November General Election

Tea Party protesters march through Washington, D.C. last September. Strong anecdotal evidence, based on attendance at its rallies across the country, that the Tea Party movement does not represent a broad demographic cross-section of the American electorate were confirmed last week by a new survey of the movement by The New York Times and CBS News that found that Tea Party supporters are overwhelmingly white, predominantly male, middle-aged and older, fiercely conservative and heavily Republican -- essentially the GOP's electoral base. The survey also found that the Tea Party movement, which comprises less than a fifth of the total nationwide electorate (18 percent), is economically more affluent than the general U.S. population. (Photo: Aaron Wiener/The Washington Independent)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, April 20, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Who's afraid of the big, bad Tea Party movement?

If you guessed the Democrats, you'd be dead wrong. On the contrary, it's the Republicans who need to be worried.

A new demographic survey of the Tea Party movement released last week by The New York Times and CBS News confirms what many observers of Tea Party rallies have said anecdotally about the movement: That it does not represent a broad cross-section of the American electorate, let alone a majority.

To the contrary, the movement more closely resembles the electoral base of today's Republican Party: Overwhelmingly white (89 percent), predominantly male (59 percent), mostly middle-aged and older (75 percent) and fiercely conservative (73 percent).

And while a separate poll by the Pew Center for the People and the Press released Monday shows that 80 percent of Americans overall are highly critical of government, a clear partisan divide exists over whether the public considers the government to be a threat to them.

More Republicans (30 percent) than Democrats (nine percent) and independents (25 percent) are angry with government, the Pew survey found, with 43 percent of Republicans, 18 percent of Democrats and 33 percent of independents believe the government is a threat to them.

Significantly, the Pew study found, independents who lean Republican are far more hostile toward government (37 percent angry, 50 percent feeling threatened) than independents who lean Democratic (15 percent angry, 21 percent feeling threatened).

Tea Party supporters are by far the most angry and hostile toward government, with 43 percent of Tea Party supporters angry and a stunning 57 percent of them feeling threatened.

REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS FARING WORSE THAN DEMOCRATS -- BUT NOT BY MUCH

Chief reasons for the ill feelings are economic fears wrought by the recession and high unemployment and frustration with the partisan gridlock in Washington -- the latter of which has resulted in record-high negative ratings for Congress.

Only 40 percent of Democrats have faith in their elected representatives in Congress, the lowest positive rating by the majority party in the history of the Pew survey. But the GOP fares worse, with only 37 percent of Republicans expressing faith in their congressional representatives.

This is bad news for the GOP, for it means that the Tea Party movement, rather than pose a threat to Democrats in next fall's midterm elections, is more likely to wreak havoc in the upcoming Republican primaries this spring -- most of which are closed to independent voters.

The likely result is a Republican Party going into the November election saddled with hard-line right-wing nominees sure, particularly in Senate races, to turn off moderate voters -- whose support is absolutely vital in order for the minority party to win back control of Congress.

Already, two GOP stalwarts -- Florida Governor Charlie Crist and Arizona Senator John McCain -- are in serious danger of suffering humiliating primary defeats at the hands of Tea Party-backed insurgents.

Crist has fallen behind conservative Florida House speaker Marco Rubio in the GOP primary and is reported to be seriously considering running as an independent in November. McCain -- the 2008 GOP presidential nominee -- is fighting for his political life against right-wing radio talk-show host J.D. Hayworth, with a new Rasmussen Poll showing McCain leading Hayworth by only five points, 47-42 percent, down from a 48-41 percent lead in March.

SCORES OF TEA PARTIERS MOUNTING STIFF PRIMARY CHALLENGES TO GOP REGULARS

Crist and McCain are far from alone. Scores of other GOP incumbents and party establishment-backed Republican candidates in open races are also confronting right-wing Tea Party-backed primary challengers.

In Kentucky, Tea Party-backed candidate Rand Paul, the 47-year-old son of Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), is favored to win the state's May 18 GOP Senate primary against GOP establishment candidate Trey Grayson, the Kentucky secretary of state. "There's a Tea Party tidal wave coming, and when it comes, it's going to sweep a lot of people out," Grayson told the McClatchy Newspapers.

In the Democratic primary, state Attorney General Jack Conway is battling Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo. Recent polls show Conway and Mongiardo running neck and neck, while Paul holds a commanding 15-point lead over Grayson.

State Republican leaders fear that a primary victory by Paul -- who's considerably to the right of Grayson -- could lead to a loss of the Senate seat now held by the retiring Jim Bunning to the Democratic nominee in the fall election. Bunning has endorsed Paul. Grayson was endorsed by former Vice President Dick Cheney as "the real conservative" in the race.

Even Fox News -- now embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal involving talk-show host Sean Hannity's open promotion of a Tea Party event he planned to participate in, only to pull out at the last minute on the orders of Fox News executives -- has, ironically, taken note of the growing Tea Party threat to the Republicans.

Appearing on Glenn Beck's program in March, former Bush political guru Karl Rove said that "The Republican Party, like any party that doesn't control the White House, will not have a single voice or a single leader until the 2012 presidential election, and frankly, I don't want one person [in that position] now."

Beck expressed his fear that the Tea Party movement could ultimately coalesce into a third major political party in its own right -- at the GOP's expense. Noting that independents now outnumber both Democrats and Republicans, "I think that having a third party -- it could be a nightmare [for the Republicans]," he said. "There are so many conservatives who are saying 'Please, Republicans, get your stuff together!'"

SURVEY FINDS NEAR-TOTAL LACK OF DIVERSITY IN TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

Only one percent of Tea Party members are African-American, Times/CBS News survey found -- a figure much lower than the four percent of blacks who identify as Republicans. Ditto for Asian-Americans. The survey did not specifically identify Latinos in the movement, instead listing six percent of Tea Party members as "other."

Given the incendiary anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric by former Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) at the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville (Not to mention a fiercely personal attack by Tancredo on President Obama at a Tea Party rally in South Carolina that's been roundly condemned as racist) -- as well as extremely inflammatory rhetoric and signs at other Tea Party protests in recent months -- it's easy to see why blacks and Latinos are, for the most part, shunning the movement like the plague.

More than a third of Tea Party members hail from the Deep South -- where support for the GOP and opposition to Obama is strongest. Not surprisingly, Tea Partiers are far more hostile toward the president than the electorate as a whole. Only seven percent of Tea Party supporters approve of the president's job performance (compared to 50 percent of voters overall), while a whopping 88 percent of Tea Partiers disapprove (compared to 40 percent of voters overall).

SURVEY REVEALS SHARP CLASS DIVIDE BETWEEN TEA PARTIERS, VOTERS IN GENERAL

Significantly, the survey found that Tea Party members are more affluent economically than the nation as a whole, with more than half earning more than $50,000 a year and a fifth earning more than $100,000 a year. Twelve percent of Tea Party supporters earn more than $250,000 a year -- precisely the income brackets whose taxes are going up, while everyone earning less than that are seeing their taxes go down.

In sharp contrast, the survey found, voters in general were considerably less affluent than Tea Party supporters. While 35 percent of Tea Partiers earned less than $50,000 a year, nearly half of voters in general (48 percent) fall into that category. Only 25 percent of voters in general earn more than $100,000 a year compared to the 32 percent of Tea Partiers in that category.

The Times/CBS News survey found several telltale signs of class bias: While 54 percent of voters in general said that raising taxes on those earning more than $250,000 a year was a good idea, a whopping 80 percent of Tea Party supporters said it was a bad idea.

And while voters in general were evenly divided on whether the Obama administration favors the poor or treats all classes equally (27 percent each), Tea Party supporters were quite adamant (56 percent) in their belief that the administration favored the poor. Only nine percent of Tea Party supporters felt the administration was treating all classes equally.

OTHER SHARP DIFFERENCES BETWEEN TEA PARTIERS, GENERAL ELECTORATE

The figures stand in sharp contrast to voters in general in the Times/CBS News poll, 77 percent of whom identify as white, 12 percent black, three percent Asian and seven percent "other" (presumably Latino).

Fifty-one percent of voters in general are women, while 49 percent are men. In terms of age, the general electorate is evenly split, 50-50, between those under 45 and those over 45.

While 73 percent of Tea Party supporters identify as conservative, only 34 percent of voters in general do. Thirty-eight percent of voters in general identify themselves as moderate (compared to only 20 percent of Tea Party supporters) and 20 percent of voters in general identify as liberal (compared to only four percent of Tea Party supporters).

At Tea Party rallies across the country, activists have boldly asserted that their movement represents "the majority of the American people." But the Times/CBS News survey shows that only 18 percent of Americans identify with the Tea Party movement.

And with Tea Party supporters coming largely from the ranks of Republicans -- who themselves constitute only 23 percent of the electorate -- it's difficult to see how this movement can pose a threat to the Democrats in November, especially if, for the rest of this year, the economy picks up and joblessness goes down.

# # #

Volume V, Number 18
Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Could this be the end of the Republican Party

2010-04-21T00:28:00.000-04:00

I thought so, for awhile. Thing is, one can always count on the Democrats tro save them, every time.

MARC PERKEL FOR BUZZFLASH

Republicans are going all in on anger this year and betting everything on anger alone. This is very risky because as the economy recovers and things keep getting better the voters might not be as angry in November as they are now. Republicans also have the burden that their anger won't be directed back at them as it has been in the last 2 elections.

Republicans have stood on the sidelines refusing to be part of any solution to our country's problems. If the anger card doesn't work this year it might be the end of the Republican Party. Perhaps Republicans should try to accomplish something positive and become part of the solution before the election day so that don't have to bet the election on an empty hand.

MARC PERKEL FOR BUZZFLASH

Let The Sun Shine In......

U.S. political system

2010-04-21T00:22:00.002-04:00

Let The Sun Shine In......

Financial Reform Goes Full Tilt

2010-04-20T07:17:00.000-04:00

Monday, April 19, 2010

Democrats Call Out GOP Leaders On Wall Street Dealings

With the Senate planning to begin debate this week on the largest regulatory overhaul of the financial industry since the Great Depression, Democrats are demanding that GOP divulge details of "backroom negotiations" with Wall Street executives.

Advocates of reform, both inside and outside the Senate, are pushing the chamber to adopt the strongest possible measures to regulate banks and financial institutions so as to give consumers the most protection possible.

"With the announcement that the Senate is now scheduled to begin floor debate on a comprehensive financial regulatory reform package this week, we urge Senators to enact real reform to protect Americans and our financial system," says John Morton, managing director of the Pew Economic Policy Group, a division of The Pew Charitable Trusts that promotes policies and practices that strengthen the U.S. economy. "Senators from both sides of the aisle can and should work together to pass a final bill that: creates an early warning system; ends 'Too Big To Fail' and bailouts; increases transparency in markets; and provides meaningful consumer protections. Financial reform must significantly reduce the likelihood of future crises and ensure that, should a crisis occur, the American taxpayer is not left covering the tab."

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a left-leaning independent who led an unsuccessful campaign to deny Ben Bernanke a second term at the head of the Federal Reserve, outlined the four provisions that he thinks are needed provisions in a final financial reform bill.

Financial reform is another high priority for President Obama, and the legislation that the Senate will vote on is a package put together by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

“Disgust at Wall Street is profound. The American people want us to change in a very profound way how Wall Street functions, and Congress must deliver,” Sanders says, adding that he would offer amendments to the Dodd bill.

Although Dodd had worked with key GOP senators in crafting his reform bill, including Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on Banking, no Republicans have thus far been willing to support the Senate bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, however, cited public comments by Shelby who has indicated that Republicans could agree on 70 to 80 percent of the Dodd proposal.

“Holding big banks accountable for the enormous economic crisis of recent years is about more than dollars and cents. It is about fairness and justice. It’s also about learning lessons from the mistakes of the past so we are not bound to repeat them,” Reid says in remarks Monday on the Senate floor.

The Senate majority leader also notes that federal regulators last week began legal action against the firm Goldman Sachs for allegedly illegal, fraudulent dealings that contributed to the 2008 financial meltdown.

Reid and his spokesman each called out Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) for "secret" meetings with Wall Street executives eager to derail the new reforms. Cornyn is chairman of the Senate GOP campaign operation. Republicans reportedly for months have been seeking campaign contributions from the financial industry in exchange for working to kill the reform legislation.

“Republicans also refuse to admit whose side they’re on,” Reid says. “Earlier this month, the Republican Leader and the head of the Republicans’ Senate campaign committee went to Wall Street. They met with the bankers and hedge-fund managers who benefited more than anyone from the broken system and are trying harder than anyone to stop us from fixing it.”

In a separate statement and citing television news interviews (video), Reid spokesman Jim Manley says McConnell and Cornyn refuse to disclose just what they have said in their talks with bankers behind closed doors. Prior to dissatisfaction due to financial reform, Wall Street executives generally gave more in recent years to Democrats.

“Senators McConnell and Cornyn should immediately reveal what they discussed earlier this month during secret, closed-door meeting with Wall Street executives in New York City,” Manley says. “Years of greed and excess on Wall Street cost 8 million jobs and trillions in wealth for middle-class families and small businesses. Since Republicans appear to be conducting backroom negotiations with these same people who took our economy to the brink of collapse, the public deserves to know what secret deals and carve-outs Republicans are offering Wall Street executives in exchange for their support.”

Let The Sun Shine In......

Wake-up Call

2010-04-20T05:59:00.000-04:00

Resist the Corporate State

Defense Spending Is Much Greater than You Think: more than $1Trillion a year

That’s right: more than $1TRILLION a year.

By Robert Higgs on Apr 17, 2010 The Independent Institute

When President Obama presented his budget recently for fiscal year 2011, he proposed that the Pentagon’s outlays be increased by about 4.5 percent beyond its estimated outlays in fiscal 2010, to a total of almost $719 billion. Although many Americans regard this enormous sum as excessive, few appreciate that the total amount of all defense-related spending greatly exceeds the amount budgeted for the Department of Defense.

In fiscal year 2009, which ended last September, the Pentagon spent $636.5 billion. Lodged elsewhere in the budget, however, other lines identify funding that serves defense purposes just as surely as—sometimes even more surely than—the money allocated to the Department of Defense. On occasion, commentators take note of some of these additional defense-related budget items, such as the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons program, but many such items, including some extremely large ones, remain generally unrecognized.

Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, many observers probably would agree that its budget ought to be included in any complete accounting of defense costs. After all, the homeland is what most of us want the government to defend in the first place.

Other agencies also spend money in pursuit of homeland security. The Justice Department, for example, includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which devotes substantial resources to an anti-terrorist program. The Department of the Treasury claims to have “worked closely with the Departments of State and Justice and the intelligence community to disrupt targets related to al Qaeda, Hizballah, Jemaah Islamiyah, as well as to disrupt state sponsorship of terror.”

Much, if not all, of the budget for the Department of State and for international assistance programs ought to be classified as defense-related, too. In this case, the money serves to buy off potential enemies and to reward friendly governments who assist U.S. efforts to abate perceived threats. About $5 billion of annual U.S. foreign aid currently takes the form of “foreign military financing,” and even funds placed under the rubric of economic development may serve defense-related purposes indirectly. Money is fungible, and the receipt of foreign assistance for economic-development projects allows allied governments to divert other funds to police, intelligence, and military purposes.

Two big budget items represent the current cost of defense goods and services obtained in the past. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which is authorized to spend about $124 billion in the current fiscal year, falls in this category. Likewise, a great deal of the government’s interest expense on publicly held debt represents the current cost of defense outlays financed in the past by borrowing from the public.

To estimate the size of the entire de facto defense budget, I gathered data for fiscal 2009, the most recently completed fiscal year, for which data on actual outlays are now available. In that year, the Department of Defense itself spent $636.5 billion. Defense-related parts of the Department of Energy budget added $16.7 billion. The Department of Homeland Security spent $51.7 billion. The Department of State and international assistance programs laid out $36.3 billion for activities arguably related to defense purposes either directly or indirectly. The Department of Veterans Affairs had outlays of $95.5 billion. The Department of the Treasury, which funds the lion’s share of military retirement costs through its support of the little-known Military Retirement Fund, added $54.9 billion. A large part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s outlays ought to be regarded as defense-related, if only indirectly so. When all of these other parts of the budget are added to the budget for the Pentagon itself, they increase the fiscal 2009 total by nearly half again, to $901.5 billion.

Finding out how much of the government’s net interest payments on the publicly held national debt ought to be attributed to past debt-funded defense spending requires a considerable amount of calculation. I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year’s ratio of narrowly defined national security spending—military, veterans, and international affairs—to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 67.6 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2009. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government’s net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending. The total amount so attributed comes to $126.3 billion.

Adding this interest component to the previous all-agency total, the grand total comes to $1,027.8 billion, which is 61.5 percent greater than the Pentagon’s outlays alone.
In similar analyses I conducted previously for fiscal 2002 and for fiscal 2006, total defense-related spending was even greater relative to Pentagon spending alone – it was 73 percent greater in fiscal 2002 and 87 percent greater in fiscal 2006. In fiscal 2009, the ratio was held down in large part by the reduced cost of servicing the government’s debt, owing to the extremely low interest rates that prevailed on government securities. This situation cannot last much longer. As interest rates on the Treasury’s securities rise, so will the government’s cost of servicing the debt attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays.

For fiscal 2010, which is still in progress, the president’s budget estimates that the Pentagon’s spending will run more than $50 billion above the previous year’s total. Any supplemental appropriations made before September 30 will push the total for fiscal 2010 even farther above the trillion-dollar mark.

Although I have arrived at my conclusions honestly and carefully, I may have left out items that should have been included—the federal budget is a gargantuan, complex, and confusing collection of documents. If I have done so, however, the left-out items are not likely to be relatively large ones. (I have deliberately ignored some minor items, such as outlays for the Selective Service System, the National Defense Stockpile, and the anti-terrorist activities conducted by the FBI and the Treasury.

For now, however, the conclusion seems inescapable: the government is currently spending at a rate well in excess of $1 trillion per year for all defense-related purposes. Owing to the financial debacle and the ongoing recession, millions are out of work, millions are losing their homes, and private earnings remain well below their previous peak, but in the military-industrial complex, the gravy train speeds along the track faster and faster.

		National Security Outlays in Fiscal Year 2009 (billions of dollars)
Department of Defense	636.5
Department of Energy (nuclear weapons & environ. cleanup)	16.7
Department of State (plus intern. assistance)	36.3
Department of Veterans Affairs	95.5
Department of Homeland Security	51.7
Department of the Treasury (for Military Retirement Fund)	54.9
National Aeronautics & Space Administration (1/2 of total)	9.6
Net interest attributable to past debt-financed defense outlays	126.3
Total	1,027.5
Source: Author’s classifications and calculations; basic data from U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011 and U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Should Banksters go to jail

2010-04-20T05:55:00.000-04:00

In a word; YES! Jail time is the only thing that will serve as a big stick with these people. That and humongous fines.....like enough to replenish the treasury.

BUZZFLASH DISCUSSION

The fallout from government's civil charges against Goldman Sachs has already begun. Still, it's not clear if this is the beginning of a wider attempt to seriously punish Wall Street for its obvious role in the recession or just a show for politics.

What do you think will happen following the Goldman suit? Will the Obama Administration be encouraged to move forward against the rest of Wall Street, either with charges or regulation? Or will old money prevail in preventing the kind of regulation that would stop this reckless behavior in the future and get any suits against them dropped?
Let us know in the comments below.

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US strike could delay Iran nuclear program-Mullen

2010-04-20T05:51:00.000-04:00

Reuters AlertNet

Original article, Reuters AlertNet - US strike could delay Iran nuclear program-Mullen by Adam Entous:

NEW YORK, April 18 (Reuters) - The nation's top military officer said on Sunday that a U.S. strike against Iran would go "a long way" to delaying its nuclear program but that he considered doing so his "last option" right now.

This should scare anybody. Last options, amongst US military the past few decades, seem to be first options. The question is what happens should we bomb Iran, particularly if there is already fuel in the nuclear reactors? Should we be concerned if a resulting cloud should drift into Russia?

Seems we should be concerned about any such cloud drifting anywhere!

Every indication that I've read from neutral observers is that Iran does not have a bomb program. This should scare anybody, since the US seems to like attacking other countries on false pretenses. The drumbeats continue.

Let The Sun Shine In......

What’s Wrong with the Financial Reform Bill

2010-04-20T05:47:00.000-04:00

By MATT TAIBBI

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd’s financial “reform” proposal (Barney Frank’s wasn’t much better) won’t change the nature of anything Wall Street does. Dodd’s needless watering down of a proposal to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency has been well-documented, so here is a list of 10 other problems Dodd’s bill will not fix:
via Speculating Banks Still Rule — Ten Ways Dems and Dodd Are Failing on Financial Reform | Economy | AlterNet.

Friend Nomi Prins, who in a former life worked for Goldman, this weekend sent along a link to an article in which she outlines the gaps in the current version of the financial regulatory reform bill. Given that the bill is sometimes being pitched as the answer to some of the problems underlined by the Goldman case, it’s a very sobering read.

My favorite is the halting, incomplete attempt at a rollback of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, i.e. the pseudo-restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act known as the Volcker rule. Nomi writes:

2) It won’t reduce the economic danger from rampant, overleveraged trading activities. The bill would restrict certain banks from having proprietary trading operations (trading with their own capital) under the “Volcker rule,” but it’s full of problematic exemptions:

a) Banks that claim they trade on behalf of their customers (which they all say they do) escape the rule.

b) Banks that trade for “market-making” purposes (i.e. Goldman Sachs betting against its own clients) are home-free.

c) Banks aren’t required to itemize their trading operations to regulators, so they get to decide what they consider trading for their customers and what they consider proprietary. I wonder how that will work out.

Then of course there’s the treatment of hedge funds, also relevant given the business with John Paulson:

5) It won’t contain the risk to the shadow banking system from hedge funds, private equity firms and venture capital funds. Venture capital and private equity advisers still won’t have to register or report to the SEC, though hedge funds with over $100 million in assets will. There’s also no statutory definition of what actually constitutes a hedge fund, and the bill doesn’t close the tax loophole that allows fund managers to be taxed at the lower capital-gains tax rate of 15 percent, rather than the higher income tax rate of 34 percent. If it sounds crazy to you that the richest people in America are being taxed at the lowest rates, it is: the loophole cost taxpayers about $5 billion this year alone.

There is some good stuff in the bill, but it is riddled with loopholes. Far more important than the actual bill is the effort to actually enforce existing laws. While it is true that the near-complete absence of a regulatory structure to oversee derivatives trading is problematic, there is a lot the government could have done still, if it had wanted to, to prevent catastrophes like AIG and Lehman Brothers. The decision to take a whack at Goldman for this Paulson business is therefore the best news there’s been on this front…

Let The Sun Shine In......

Teabonics: You Can't Fix Stupid, And Sadly, You Can't Keep It From Voting, Either

2010-04-20T05:41:00.000-04:00

And Sadly, You Can't Keep It From Voting, Either

Monday, April 19, 2010

By Manifesto Joe

I hadn't heard about "teabonics" until the other day. There are Web sites dedicated to this new dialect of American right-wing culture.

Let's go linking:

No Amensty!

Even the copy desk at the Daily News saw this error!

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a socilist. (Or is it socialest?)

One of the big regrets of my life is that I didn't dedicate myself to larnin' a furrin lanaguage. I knows just enough Spanish to get myself into major trouble in Piedras Negras.

This hyar is clearly a fite for feedom. If I ever becomes a rich banker, I wants to charge them deadbeats a fee!

And now for something completely different...

I've been awfully busy lately. I have a night-shift job with a news organization, and it's demanding. But I try to keep up with things. The other day on one of the talking-heads TV shows on one of the cable news networks, they had a biker-looking dude who was there as a representative and spokesman of the Tea Party people.

He started his point by talking about middle-class Americans. He described these "typical" Americans as, say, a household bringing in $100,000 a year.

Hold the phone there, biker dude. Chain mail must be more profitable than I ever thought.

According to the U.S Census Bureau, the median household income in America is $52,000 a year. This man was describing a typical U.S. household as one making nearly twice that. Shit, if I were bringing that much dinero into my household, I would have absolutely no complaints and would pay my taxes gladly, hoping to get commensurate services.

This was a very revealing moment. What this is all about is ME ME ME. The profile of the typical Tea Party asshole is a white male, upper middle-class Republican, with just enough "education" to be dangerous. ("A little bit of education is a dangerous thing.") I suspect that this "education" generally consists of a lot of business administration courses. I had a couple of those during my 6-year acquaintance with the liberal arts, and if there's a place to be indoctrinated into right-wing, "free-market" misconceptions, that's where to find it.

Another revealing thing is that these people have no fundamental opposition to Social Security or Medicare. Either they or their parents have benefited from these "socilist" programs. But once more, this is obviously about ME ME ME.

These people have been vocal enough, and have shown up at enough rallies, to get themselves taken seriously by the MSM. Go back to the top and check out these links. These are the fortunate anthropoids of America. They have done just well enough, through dumbass luck, usually, to be dupes for the real elite. They are stupid enough to be the foot soldiers for people who have money stashed away in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

Such imbeciles have been overcome before. I seriously pray that it can happen again.

Manifesto Joe Is An Underground Writer Living In Texas.

Let The Sun Shine In......

Maybe Nationalizing the Banks Isn't such a bad idea

2010-04-19T13:22:00.000-04:00

Wasn't Hoover who said that the problem with Capitalism is Capitalists?

- Will Hutton
- The Observer, Sunday 18 April 2010
- Article history

Goldman Sachs was in the spotlight last November when demonstrators protested outside its Washington offices against executive bonuses. Photograph: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The global financial crisis, it is now clear, was caused not just by the bankers' colossal mismanagement. No, it was due also to the new financial complexity offering up the opportunity for widespread, systemic fraud. Friday's announcement that the world's most famous investment bank, Goldman Sachs, is to face civil charges for fraud brought by the American regulator is but the latest of a series of investigations that have been launched, arrests made and charges made against financial institutions around the world. Big Finance in the 21st century turns out to have been Big Fraud. Yet Britain, centre of the world financial system, has not yet levelled charges against any bank; all that we've seen is the allegation of a high-level insider dealing ring which, embarrassingly, involves a banker advising the government. We have to live with the fiction that our banks and bankers are whiter than white, and any attempt to investigate them and their institutions will lead to a mass exodus to the mountains of Switzerland. The politicians of the Labour and Tory party alike are Bambis amid the wolves.

Just consider the roll call beyond Goldman Sachs. In Ireland Sean FitzPatrick, the ex-chair of the Anglo Irish bank was arrested last month and questioned over alleged fraud. In Iceland last week a dossier assembled by its parliament on the Icelandic banks – huge lenders in Britain – was handed to its public prosecution service. A court-appointed examiner found that collapsed investment bank Lehman knowingly manipulated its balance sheet to make it look stronger than it was – accounts originally audited by the British firm Ernst and Young and given the legal green light by the British firm Linklaters. In Switzerland UBS has been defending itself from the US's Inland Revenue Service for allegedly running 17,000 offshore accounts to evade tax. Be sure there are more revelations to come – except in saintly Britain.

Beneath the complexity, the charges are all rooted in the same phenomenon – deception. Somebody, somewhere, was knowingly fooled by banks and bankers – sometimes governments over tax, sometimes regulators and investors over the probity of balance sheets and profits and sometimes, as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) says in Goldman's case, by creating a scheme to enrich one favoured investor at the expense of others – including, via RBS, the British taxpayer. Along the way there is a long list of so-called "entrepreneurs" and "innovators" who were offered loans that should never have been made. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's CEO, remarked only semi-ironically that his bank was doing God's work. He must wake up every day bitterly regretting the words ever emerged from his mouth.

For the Goldmans case is in some ways the most damaging. The Icelandic banks, Anglo Irish bank and Lehman were all involved in opaque deals and rank bad lending decisions – but Goldman allegedly went one step further, according to the SEC actively creating a financial instrument that transferred wealth to one favoured client from others less favoured. If the Securities and Exchange Commission's case is proved – and it is aggressively rebutted by Goldman – the charge is that Goldman's vice-president Fabrice Tourre created a dud financial instrument packed with valueless sub- prime mortgages at the instruction of hedge fund client Paulson, sold it to investors knowing it was valueless, and then allowed Paulson to profit from the dud financial instrument. Goldman says the buyers were "among the most sophisticated mortgage investors" in the world. But this is a used car salesman flogging a broken car he's got from some wide-boy pal to some driver who can't get access to the log-book. Except it was lionised as financial innovation.

The investors who bought the collateralised debt obligation (CDO) were not complete innocents. They had asked for the bond to be validated by an independent expert into residential mortgage-backed securities – a company called ACA management. ACA gave the bond the thumbs-up on the understanding from Fabrice Tourre that the hedge fund Paulson were investing in it. But the SEC says Tourre misled them, a pivotal claim that Goldman denies. The reality was that Paulson was frantically buying credit default swaps in the CDO that would go up in price the more valueless it became – a trade that would make more than $1 billion. Worse, Paulson had identified some of the dud sub-prime mortgages that he wanted Tourre to put into the CDO. If the SEC case is true, this was a scam – nothing more, nothing less.

Tourre could see what was coming. In one email in January 2007 he wrote: "More and more leverage in the system. The whole building is about to collapse anytime now… only potential survivor, the fabulous Fab[rice Tourre] .. standing in the middle of all these complex highly leveraged exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all of the implications of those monstrosities". Fabulous Fab, like his boss, will not be feeling very fab today.

The cases not only have a lot in common – using financial complexity allegedly to deceive and then using so-called independent experts to validate the deception (lawyers, accountants, credit rating agencies, "portfolio selection agents," etc etc ) – but they also show how interconnected the financial system is. In Iceland Citigroup and Deutsche Bank covered the margin calls of distressed Icelandic business borrowers, deepening the crisis. Lehman uses the lightly regulated London markets and two independent British experts to validate that their "Repo 105s" were "genuine" trades and not their own in-house liability.

The American authorities pursued a Swiss bank over aiding and abetting US nationals to evade tax.

Bankers will complain these cases all involve one or two misguided individuals, but that most banking is above board and was just the victim of irrational exuberance, misguided belief in free market economics and faulty risk management techniques. Obviously that is true – but, sadly, there is much more to the crisis. Andrew Haldane, executive director of the Bank of England, highlights the remarkable reduction in the risk weighting of bank assets between 1997 and 2007. Put simply, Europe's and the US's large banks exploited the weak international agreement on bank capital requirements in the so-called Basel agreement in 2004 to reclassify the risk of their loans and trading instruments. They did not just reduce the risk by 5 or 10%. Breathtakingly, they claimed their new risk management techniques were so wonderful that the riskiness of their assets was up to half of what it had been – despite property and share prices cresting to new all-time highs.

Brutally, the banks knowingly gamed the system to grow their balance sheets ever faster and with even less capital underpinning them in the full knowledge that everything rested on the bogus claim that their lending was now much less risky. That was not all they were doing. As Michael Lewis describes in The Big Short, credit default swaps had been deliberately created as an asset class by the big investment banks to allow hedge funds to speculate against collateralised debt obligations. The banks were gaming the regulators and investors alike – and they knew full well what they were doing. Simon Johnson's 13 Bankers shows how the major American banks deployed vast political lobbying power and money to create the relaxed regulatory environment in which all this could take place. In Britain no money changed hands. Gordon Brown offered light-touch regulation for free – egged on by the Tories, who wanted to go further.

This was the context in which Goldman's Fabulous Fab created the disputed CDOs, Sean FitzPatrick allegedly moved loans between banks and Lehman created its Repo 105s along with the entire "debt mule" structure revealed this weekend of inter-related companies to shuffle debt around its empire. London and New York had become the centre of an international financial system in which the purpose of banking became making money from money – and where the complexity of the "innovations" allowed extensive fraud and deception.

Now it has all collapsed, to be bailed out by western taxpayers. The banks are resisting reform – and want to cling on to the business practices and business model that has so appallingly failed. It is obvious why: it makes them very rich. The politicians tread carefully, only proposing what the bankers say is congruent with their definition of what banking should be. Labour and Tories alike are united in opposing improved EU regulation of hedge funds, buying the propaganda those operations had nothing to do with the crisis. Perhaps Paulson's trades at Goldman, and the hedge funds' appetite for speculating in credit default swaps, may disabuse them.

It is time to reframe the question. Banks and financial institutions should do what economy and society want them to do – support enterprise, direct credit to where it is needed and be part of the system that generates investment and innovation. Andrew Haldane – and the governor of the Bank of England – are right. We need to break up our banks, limit their capacity to speculate and bring them back to earth. Britain should also launch an official investigation into what went wrong – and hand the findings to the Serious Fraud Office. This needs to become this election campaign's number one issue – not one which either a compromised Labour party or a temporising Conservative party will relish. The Lib Dems, the fiercest critics of the banks, have begun to get very lucky.

Crisis timetable

September 2007 Funding problems at Northern Rock triggers the first run on a British bank. It is nationalised in February 2008.

April 2008 Bear Stern faces bankruptcy after a run on the company wipes out cash reserves in less than two days. Backed by the Federal Reserve, JPMorgan buys up shares at far below market value.

September 2008 Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy protection, becoming the first major bank to collapse since the start of the credit crisis.

December 2008 Bernard Madoff arrested for operating the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

January 2009 The Bank of England launches £200bn quantitative easing.

March 2010 Former chairman of Anglo Irish bank Sean Fitzpatrick is arrested in Dublin after failing to disclose details of loans worth millions from the bank.

April 2010 Northern Rock former directors, David Baker and Richard Barclay, are fined £504,000 and £140,000 for deliberately misleading analysts prior to nationalisation.

April 2010 The US Securities and Exchange Commission accuses Goldman Sachs of "defrauding investors by misstating and omitting key facts".

Joanna Aniel Bidar
• This article was amended on Monday 19 April. A reference to Anglo Irish looking after the Post Office's financial services was removed. Bank of Ireland is the Post Office's financial services provider.
Let The Sun Shine In......

Independent Light

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Can Beck GET anymore outrageous

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Capitol Idea:

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US govt angry that BP missed deadlines -Salazar

Right-Wing Machine Attacks Kagan

Voters Chart a Dangerous Path

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Polls: Conservatives fall short of majority in UK

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Reid suppports breaking up of large banks

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Lieberman supports stripping of citizenship for anyone ....

The (Almost) Crash of Wall Street

Journalists Must Donate To Anti-Choice Organization In Order To Cover Palin’s Speech

Whistleblower: BP Risks More Massive Catastrophes in Gulf

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Holding Wall Street Accountable

The WTO Now Controls Our Economy, Fate and Future

We must renegotiate terms or completely withdraw from the WTO – IMMEDIATELY!

Some people really don't CARE....

Financial Reform: Stand By it or....

FOREIGN CORPORATIONS IN OUR ELECTIONS?

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Maybe Nationalizing the Banks Isn't such a bad idea

Crisis timetable

By DAVID BAUDER, AP
Thu Apr 22, 4:15 AM EDT