The Guerilla Post

Douthat Books His Cabin On Exxon's Ark

2010-07-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

Right-wing apologist Ross Douthat brings himself to admit that global warming is real, but then makes the following argument on the OpEd page of the NYT:

But this doesn’t mean that we should mourn the death of cap-and-trade. It’s possible that the best thing to do about a warming earth — for now, at least — is relatively little. This is the view advanced by famous global-warming heretics like Bjorn Lomborg and Freeman Dyson; in recent online debates, it has been championed by Jim Manzi, the American right’s most persuasive critic of climate-change legislation.

Their perspective is grounded, in part, on the assumption that a warmer world will also be a richer world — and that economic development is likely to do more for the wretched of the earth than a growth-slowing regulatory regime.

This entire argument is grounded in nothing less than a virtually religious belief that technology can somehow solve all the problems that will result from climate change, and, in an even more frightening display of hubris, that we can somehow predict the limits of this change on the indescribably complex natural system that we all live in.

But the complete destruction of the environment in which we live does not lend itself to casual cost/benefit analysis. Would Douthat take this same stance if there was an massive asteroid hurtling towards the planet with a one in a thousand chance of extinguishing all life? There are some things you just don't take chances with, and I would guess that the odds of climate change moving into a positive feedback loop and threatening life on earth is considerably higher than one in a thousand.

But it’s also grounded in skepticism that such a regime is possible. Any attempt to legislate our way to a cooler earth, the argument goes, will inevitably resemble the package of cap-and-trade emission restrictions that passed the House last year: a Rube Goldberg contraption whose buy-offs and giveaways swamped its original purpose.

Well, yes. Cap and trade was a joke; a huge corporate giveaway that probably would have done nothing to mitigate climate change, but would have enriched Goldman and the entire energy industry at the expense of taxpayers. It's climate change's version of Obama's health care "reform".

But what Douthat conveniently leaves out is the fact that better legislation could never have passed because the people he represents (the Democrats and Republicans in Congress that are owned by the corporate sector) would never have let it happen. It is not inevitable that climate legislation would be bad; it just turned out that way because Douthat and the rest of the ruling elite wouldn't have it any other way.

I'd really like to see Douthat publish a list of his past columns arguing for effective and fair legislation. Where are his calls for a carbon tax, for example? This is a free-market, fair and effective way of getting people to use less carbon for forcing them to pay for the harm its use causes. But of course "conservatives" like Douthat oppose all forms of taxes as evil, and would be taken aback at any plan that would result in people using less oil, for example, because it would mean smaller profits for the oil companies that are part of our ruling elite.

But of course, if the planet becomes unlivable for most, there'll be room for Douthat on Exxon's ark.

Journalism Class

2010-06-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post has an interesting interview with Michael Hastings, who wrote the Rolling Stone story on Stanley McChrystal, which ultimately led to his firing. At the end comes this interesting exchange:

(HuffPo) In the hypercompetitive media world, some of the reaction to your story has been a little negative, that you have "hostile views" and that you're anti-war. Some have wondered how you could jeopardize your future access to sources. How do you respond to that?

(Hastings) Look, I went into journalism to do journalism, not advertising. My views are critical but that shouldn't be mistaken for hostile - I'm just not a stenographer. There is a body of work that shows how I view these issues but that was hard-earned through experience, not something I learned going to a cocktail party on fucking K Street. That's what reporters are supposed to do, report the story.

That is a great quote.

And this is ultimately why Michael Hastings is a journalist, and people like CNN's Ed Henry are not. Hastings cares about getting at the truth, and that's it. Ed Henry and the like care only for being invited back to posh sprinkler parties, and will never do, say or write anything that might jeopardize their access.

It's worth noting that Rolling Stone has featured some really good pieces of journalism of late, with Matt Taibbi's scathing Wall Street exposes and now Hastings piece. You can also find some pretty good journalism from Jon Stewart over at the Daily Show, who often posts extended online interviews that are more illuminating and honest than anything you'll ever find at Fox or CNN.

Do I wish that the mainstream media would do their jobs for once? Of course. But since they aren't, let's stop watching and reading them. Let's support actual journalists.

Here's to Michael Hastings!

Drill, Baby, Drill!

2010-06-18T15:33:00.000-07:00

There is a widely circulated new analysis of the Gulf spill that was posted on The Oil Drum recently, which claims that the true extent of the catastrophe is much greater than either BP and the government are, even now, letting on.

The post lays out a fairly convincing argument that the problems within the well go far beyond what we can see on the deep sea video-in other words, that the oil spewing from the wellhead is not the whole story.

The poster, who identifies himself as an expert in domestic energy business, claims that everything that we know about the leak points to a catastrophic sub-seafloor failure of the well pipe, and that it is now leaking at around 1000 feet below the seafloor. This leak will grow worse and worse, until it results in an unrestricted flow of oil from the reservoir below. And to make matters worse, if the relief well that is currently being drilled doesn’t reach the well pipe before it disintegrates, it will be useless and we will be out of options to stop it. And at this point, we could be looking at releases of 150,000 barrels per day.

At this point, the entire capacity of the underlying Macondo prospect will flow unrestricted into the Gulf of Mexico.

Does this sound scary? It should. The Macondo reserve holds an estimated 50 million barrels of crude oil. This is 2.1 billion gallons of crude. To put that in perspective, this is 200 times the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. It is an unimaginable figure, and would cause an environmental disaster of unimaginable proportions.

The post claims that it is probably too late to prevent this from happening. I don’t know if that is true or not. I hope it’s not. But so far, everything that BP and the government has told us has been either a lie, or frighteningly wrong. There is absolutely no reason to believe anything they say regarding what’s actually happening down there. And so we have to assume that there is a good chance that the doomsday scenario will happen-that the entire 50 million barrel reserve is going to end up in the Gulf and eventually spread to all four corners of the earth.

What is BP doing about this possibility? Nothing. The spill response plan that BP was required by law to have ready at all times was useless, a generalized plan written by a contractor that had references to saving walruses and proved to be completely inadequate for the current spill, and will be even more so if this entire well does, in fact, fail.

We are told that they are drilling a relief well, and have been told that this is guaranteed to work. But now, unsurprisingly, we are learning that there is a good chance that it will not work, even if the well does not fail. What then?

I think that there is one other thing that we could do which would mitigate the disaster. It would be expensive, and that’s probably why I haven’t heard BP make a peep about it. In fact, I haven’t heard this suggestion anywhere, but I’m going to make it anyways: It’s time to start drilling multiple wells into this reserve. By this I don’t mean a relief well, because these won’t work in case of complete failure. I mean separate wells.

If this gusher cannot be stopped, we can either get the oil out in a relatively safe manner, or it can get itself out. Every barrel that we can get out through a well is a barrel that won’t be escaping into the sea. We don’t need one well, or two, but as many as we can possibly drill, in as short a time as possible. And we should start drilling them now, because they will take a long time to complete.

BP, of course, doesn’t want to contemplate this. Deep sea wells are extremely expensive to drill. Multiple wells make no economic sense in normal times, because there is a fixed amount of oil in a reserve, and there is no hurry in getting it out.

But these are not normal times. Every single day tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of barrels of poison are escaping from that reserve. We are in a huge fucking hurry.

Will this be expensive? Of course. We may drill these wells almost to completion only to find that the original well has not deteriorated further, and we may decide at that point that we only risk making the problem worse by tapping the reserve with the same well technology that just recently failed so spectacularly.

But if this well fails completely, then we are going to need these wells. It won’t matter if they fail, anyway. And it will be far to late to drill them at that point.

BP will scream bloody murder, of course. But if they refuse, the United States government should nationalize them, and make them drill. There is plenty of precedent for doing this in the face of threats to the national security, and there can be no doubt that this is exactly such a threat.

Empty promises from BP to pay for the cleanup instead are unacceptable. There is a great likelihood that BP doesn’t have enough money to pay for the damage already done, and that’s assuming that you can even put a price on what’s happened. And I don’t believe that you can.

It’s past time for us to assume the worst. We can no longer trust BP when they say they have a plan, or when the government says it’s on top of things.We can no longer allow BP to base its response to this disaster on its own financial interests. It’s time to act.

The Terrible True Cost Of Oil (That BP Doesn't Want You To See)

2010-06-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

Notes from the BP hearing:

"(BP President Lamar) McKay, did, however, issue a plea for forbearance from Congressional and executive branch officials, saying: “America’s economy, security and standard of living today significantly depend upon domestic oil and gas production. Reducing our energy production, absent a concurrent reduction in consumption, would shift additional jobs and dollars offshore and place millions of additional barrels per day into tanker ships that must traverse the world’s oceans.”

As detestable as BP is, McKay is right about this. We absolutely must reduce our consumption of oil. And the reasons for this go far beyond those which McKay listed. Our out-of-control use of oil is the reason we are currently engaged in two wars, which are killing hundreds of thousands and costing the United States trillions. It is the reason we suffer from air pollution that kills thousands each year, and sickens many more. It is one of the reasons we are facing global climate change.

And today, it is the reason that a huge part of the ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico is dying, that thousands of fisherman and shrimpers have lost their livelihoods, and that millions more who rely on a clean ocean will pay a fearsome price.

But what McKay didn't say is that one of the main reasons Americans do not reduce their consumption is because he and the rest of his industry do everything in their power to keep Americans hooked on oil. And the way that they do that is by using Congress to hide the true costs of oil consumption.

When we buy gas at the pump, we pay only the cost of producing and delivering that gas, plus a little extra in taxes to maintain roads. The people who use gas don't directly pay the costs of trillion dollar wars, or pollution, or climate change, or of the devastation in the Gulf.

But those costs are real. The true cost of a gallon of gasoline is probably somewhere around $15. We all know there is no such thing as a free lunch. So who pays?

You do.

You pay in taxes to support imperialistic wars needed to secure large supplies of oil for our addicted population.

You pay every time you take a breath of polluted air.

You pay every time a landfill overflows with petroleum based plastics.

You pay every when production catastrophes result in a virtual destruction of large parts of our country.

And you pay for this even while the oil companies make hundreds of billions of dollars, while passing off the hidden costs to you.

We must reduce our use of oil. But we will never be able to do this as long as the oil industry pays off Congress to require us to pay the hidden costs of oil. These hidden costs make our alternatives to oil seem more expensive, even though they are not. And until we are able to see the true cost of our oil use, we will not kick the habit.

Maybe the silver lining in this disaster is that people will finally begin to see just how terrible is the price we pay.

Israel Doesn't Need Help, Plans To Investigate Itself

2010-06-14T14:01:00.000-07:00

This should really get to the bottom of things:

JERUSALEM—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed a commission that includes two international observers to investigate the bungled raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla that left nine dead last month.

The May 31 raid by Israeli naval commandoes triggered one of Israel's worst diplomatic crises in decades. The U.S. joined the United Nations Security Council in condemning the raid and called for a credible and transparent investigation.

The commission, announced late Sunday night by Mr. Netanyahu, is unlikely to satisfy some in the international community, however, including Turkey, which has called for an international investigation. All nine passengers killed during the raid were Turkish, including one who had dual U.S. citizenship.

The whole world, with the usual exception of Israel's chief defender and enabler, the United States, has demanded an international investigation of Israel's killing of nine aid activists in international waters. Israel has refused, saying that it will investigate itself, as though that could ever be done in a meaningful way. It has appointed a commission of Israelis, who will be joined by two international observers as a sop to those who demanded a fair inquiry.

Those observers? One is the British Lord David Trimble, who was last noted for founding the "Friends of Israel" initiative, only last month. The other is Canadian General Ken Watkin, of which little seems to be known. It should be sufficient to point out that all of the members of the commission were hand-picked by the Israeli government-the same government which has confiscated all audio and video recordings of the event that it could find, and whose main goal is to ensure that the only story ever told is the one they are telling.

So far, it's working.

The Joke That The Afghan War Has Become

2010-06-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

The NYT today highlights the confusion around the private Afghan security companies that are hired by the private trucking firms that the United States pay to transport supplies to combat troops.

The story documents what has become painfully obvious. We have no real idea who we are fighting. We claim to be committed to destroying the Taliban, because they are evil and anti-democratic. So instead, we pay money to other groups who on paper oppose the Taliban, even though they are just as violent and repressive. And that's ok, because they aren't called "Taliban", which Americans have been trained to see as the most evil of all people on earth.

So on any given day, we hand out money with no accountability to armed groups who we have no control over, who may or may not be colluding with the Taliban, who are just as repressive as the Taliban, and who may in fact be integrated with, or indistinguishable from the Taliban. We really just have no fucking idea.

Why don't we just guard our own convoys? I was once in the Army back in a different life, and I was a truck driver in a supply company. Do those jobs not exist anymore?

They don't, and the reason is simple. The Obama administration finds it politically impossible to ask for enough troops to actually carry out the mission. So instead, they are literally outsourcing our war. And what's worse, they are outsourcing it to our enemies.

The insanity of this policy is hard to overstate. It is destroying our ability to accomplish the already pointless and impossible mission which we have ludicrously set for ourselves: building a democracy in a strange country whose population doesn't want it. So why do we do it?

There are two reasons, and they stand as an insult to the troops we have who are needlessly sacrificing their lives for a mission which our government is sabotaging daily for political reasons.

The first reason is that politically, our government refuses to tell the people the straight truth, which is that in order for us to waste our time more efficiently in Afghanistan, we need more troops. But Americans won't support more troops, and so our government tries to cover this up by essentially bribing our enemies to allow supplies to go through, so that we can continue to pretend to fight this war.

The second reason is that, while our military could re-supply itself at a far smaller cost, and without handing millions over to people who we call our enemies, we won't do that because these supply and security contracts are bribes in and of themselves. We're bribing American contractors, who lobby Congress daily in order to enrich themselves through our war. And we're bribing members of the Afghan government, who have connections with both the Taliban and warlords who are sympathetic to the government, at least at the moment. (The grim truth is that the loyalties of pretty much anyone with a weapon in Afghanistan lie with whomever can help them out at the moment.)

But don't worry. We have a well-defined goal and a clear path to its accomplishment.

The goal is to destroy our empire in the wilds of Afghanistan. And the path is the one that we are on today.

Sovereignty?

2010-06-05T16:59:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering who is making US foreign policy decisions about issues which affect us deeply:

At the United Nations, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was cobbling together a proposal for an international panel to investigate the deadly raid.

The panel would include representatives from Turkey and Israel, or at least one member each to represent their interests, and two or three others selected from a list assembled by Mr. Ban, diplomats said.

Mr. Ban plans to pitch the plan to Israel and Turkey over the weekend, the diplomats said, and the United States has said it will sign off on it once Israel accepts it.

Here's a hint: it's not the United States.

The Israel Ambassador Defend Poor, Helpless Israel

2010-06-04T23:09:00.000-07:00

The New York Times has a shameful editorial contribution about the recent Israel assault on the humanitarian aid flotilla that was attempting to deliver aid to Gaza. It's written by none other than Michael Oren, who is the Israeli ambassador to the United States. It says a lot about the current state of media affairs when the reaction of the "liberal" New York Times is to give a national platform to the Israeli ambassador to spew his propaganda, as though Israel has trouble getting heard in the United States.

Needless to say, there is nothing from anyone representing the Palestinians side, or the side of the outraged international community in general.

PEACE activists are people who demonstrate nonviolently for peaceful co-existence and human rights. The mob that assaulted Israeli special forces on the deck of the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara on Monday was not motivated by peace. On the contrary, the religious extremists embedded among those on board were paid and equipped to attack Israelis — both by their own hands as well as by aiding Hamas — and to destroy any hope of peace.

There is so much that is wrong with paragraph that I hardly know where to begin.

First, he calls them a mob, but the rest of the world knows that the group included European legislators, peace activists, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner. These people were not armed, and the idea that they were some some of angry mob bent on invading Israel in ludicrous.

Second, the notion that these people assaulted the Israeli commandos is would be laughable if it were not so outrageous and disgusting. These people were unarmed, were in international waters, and were assaulted by Israeli storm troopers rappelling out of helicopters in the middle of the night. Numerous reports have been made that the Israeli's fired their weapons from the helicopters before they even reached the ship. The most obvious explanation is that the peace activists were defending themselves. And it simply boggles the mind that any sane person could believe that a bunch of unarmed activists could pose any resembling a threat to the Israeli Defense Force, which is one of the most ruthless, well-armed, and unstoppable military forces on the planet, much less could be assaulting them from the deck of a small boat.

What does he think happened here? Does he think that those Israeli special forces guys were just innocently hanging from helicopters in the Mediterranean when a boat full of politicians and peace activists swooped in with ferry boat and attacked them with sticks? Because that's what he's saying.

Millions have already seen the Al Jazeera broadcast showing these “activists” chanting “Khaibar! Khaibar!”— a reference to a Muslim massacre of Jews in the Arabian peninsula in the seventh century. YouTube viewers saw Israeli troops, armed with crowd-dispersing paintball guns and side arms for emergency protection, being beaten and hurled over the railings of the ship by attackers wielding iron bars.

I haven't seen this video, but it's not surprising that people who were being assaulted and murdered would say things like that. And there is frankly nothing that can believed about any of the videos that the Israelis have released, because they are out of context and because the Israelis have seized all journalistic evidence, and are controlling the flow of information completely.

What the videos don’t show, however, are several curious aspects Israeli authorities are now investigating. First, about 100 of those detained from the boats were carrying immense sums in their pockets — nearly a million euros in total. Second, Israel discovered spent bullet cartridges on the Mavi Marmara that are of a caliber not used by the Israeli commandos, some of whom suffered gunshot wounds. Also found on the boat were propaganda clips showing passengers “injured” by Israeli forces; these videos, however, were filmed during daylight, hours before the nighttime operation occurred.

First of all, when did it become a crime or even suspicious behavior to carry money? And is this really that much money? That averages out to 10,000 euros apiece. If I was going to a place like Gaza, I'd probably want to have some cash with me, too. Is that supposed to be some sort of justification for murdering a bunch of aid workers in cold blood?

As far as spent bullet casings and video clips go, well, does anyone with any knowledge of how Israel operates doubt for a second that could easily be a plant? And Israel, of course, is insisting that all of this "evidence" and, indeed, the whole massacre, be investigate by none other than Israel.

The investigations of all this evidence will be transparent, in accordance with Israel’s security needs.

Note that he does not say that the investigation will be transparent, but that it will be transparent as long as the transparency serves Israel's interests.

There is little doubt as to the real purpose of the Mavi Marmara’s voyage — not to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, but to create a provocation that would put international pressure on Israel to drop the Gaza embargo, and thus allow the flow of seaborne military supplies to Hamas.

So the real intent of this mission was to spotlight the cruelty and inhumanity and criminality of Israel's denial of vital food and medicine to Gazans, and we're supposed to think that there is something wrong with this? Of course, Israel is not only trying to starve Gaza, but it's also trying to deny them weapons. This is what any genocidal government would do to a population that it has been brutally occupying for decades. I'm sure the Nazi's tried to keep guns out of the Warsaw Ghetto, too. It doesn't make it right.

Just as Hamas gunmen hide behind civilians in Gaza, so, too, do their sponsors cower behind shipments of seemingly innocent aid.

What is only "seemingly innocent" about a boatload of medical supplies? Did the Israelis find a weapons cache and forget to tell the world?

This is why the organizers of the flotilla repeatedly rejected Israeli offers to transfer its cargo to Gaza once it was inspected for military contraband. They also rebuffed an Israeli request to earmark some aid packages for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held hostage by Hamas for four years.

Or maybe it's because Israel has repeatedly refused to allow these exact same kinds of supplies to get through, and has even publicly claimed it plans to put the Palestinians people in Gaza "on a diet". And so what if they refused to bring an aid package to Shalit? It's a group of international aid workers and politicians. If Israel wants to deliver aid to Shalit, they can drop it off themselves. They're in Gaza shooting people every day anyway.

In the recent past, Israeli forces have diverted nine such flotillas, all without incident, and peacefully boarded five of the ships in this week’s convoy. Their cargoes, after proper inspection, were delivered to non-Hamas institutions in Gaza. Only the Marmara, a vessel too large to be neutralized by technical means such as fouling the propeller, violently resisted.

Wait, I though they were assaulting the Israelis? Now they're only resisting these heavily armed commandos? With sticks?

It is no coincidence that the ship was dispatched by Insani Yardim Vakfi (also called the I.H.H.), a supposed charity that Israeli and other intelligence services have linked to Islamic extremists.

You'll have to excuse me for not believing the Israeli intelligence service. So who are these "other intelligence services"? Is he trying to say that Al Qaeda is mixed up in this? Because Oren knows damn well this isn't true, and is just trying to spread rumors that he knows will get America's thoroughly-terrorized wing nuts foaming at the mouth.

The real intent of breaking the embargo is to allow rockets to be transported to Gaza from Hamas’s suppliers in Syria and Iran. Israel has already intercepted several such ships laden with munitions. Since Israel’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005, Hamas has fired more than 10,000 rockets and mortars at our civilian population. This week, two Hamas rockets exploded near Ashkelon, one of Israel’s largest cities.

I'm sure Hamas would love to have some more rockets, as ineffectual as they have been. A few dozen Israelis have ever been killed by these rockets, and that's over the entire history of Israel's brutal occupation of Gaza, a history which includes a recent war against the defenseless Palestinians in which 13 Israeli soldiers died, while 1300 Palestinians, many of them civilians and children perished and what was left of the Gazan infrastructure was left in rubble- the ruins of which the Israelis are condemning the Palestinian people to live in while denying them food, medicine, clean water, and any hope of rebuilding.

But apparently, we should all be outraged that the Palestinians would want to get a few homemade rockets to fight back against the world-class military that the United States has so graciously provided for Israel. And this outrage is somehow supposed to obscure the fact that there were no rockets on these ships, as the whole world already knew.

Israel has a right and a duty to defend itself from Hamas and its backers.

But not by committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Our struggle is not with the people of Gaza but only with the radical regime that overthrew the legitimate Palestinian Authority and has pledged to seek Israel’s destruction.

No matter how many times Israel says this, it doesn't change the fact that it is the civilian population of Gaza that pays the price.

Each day, Israel facilitates the passage into Gaza of more than 100 truckloads of food and medicine — there is no shortage of either.

100 truckloads-for a population of 1.5 million, and in a territory that has been reduced to rubble and desperately needs to rebuild. The notion that there is no shortage of food in Gaza is laughable; report after report from independent agencies have shown that there is a massive ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

We, too, want a free Gaza — a Gaza liberated from brutal Hamas rule — as well as an Israel freed from terrorist threats.

Hamas was put in power because they got the electricity working. The Palestinians don't seem to think they're brutal, and it would be hard to imagine anything as brutal as the Israeli army's treatment of Gaza. It's preposterous for Israel to claim that they are concerned about the freedom of Gaza.

As far as Israel being free from terrorist threats, the next time they complain about rocket attacks or suicide bombers, we should all remember that they have overwhelming regional military superiority, they have nuclear weapons, the have the world's only superpower backing them regardless of what they do, and that they have been brutally occupying Gaza for decades. They have denied the Palestinians any method of self-determination, and have denied them a conventional military with which to defend themselves.

How can they complain that it's somehow "unfair" when the Palestinians fight back with stick, stones, rockets and suicide bombs?

What other options have they been left with?

Unbelievable

2010-06-02T14:58:00.000-07:00

Did you hear the story about the guy who was suspected of murder? It seems that the police department let him conduct an investigation of himself.

Didn't hear that story? I didn't either. But the United States is insisting that Israel be allowed to investigate itself in a case in which it is suspected of murdering 9 peace activists in an incident that has sparked widespread international condemnation from all corners of the globe-with the exception, of course, of the United States.

I mean seriously, how fucking stupid does America think the rest of the world is? Because they either think that, or they just don't give a damn anymore.

What I don't understand is why they would even bother with an investigation. The US should just speak up and say what everyone else already knows: As far as America is concerned, Israel can do whatever the hell they want.

Why bother covering it up with a report no one will believe anyway?

The Shameful Silence Of The United States

2010-06-02T14:07:00.000-07:00

I thought that this week's commando assault on an international group of unarmed peace protesters and aid workers in international waters, which was perpetrated by the terrorist state of Israel, might finally elicit some criticism from the Obama administration.

I was wrong.

The president and high ranking members of his administration have made it very clear in the past that there is noting, literally nothing, that Israel could do that the United States would condemn. The billions of dollars worth of weapons and aid which the United States sends to Israel each year will not stop, nor will the United States' ever stop enabling Israel commit war crimes with impunity.

What is the end result of our policy of aiding and abetting a country that has done more to harm the security of the United States than any other nation on earth besides our own?

First, we can expect more terror attacks. Our shameful support for Israel as it commits a slow form of genocide against the Palestinian people probably does more to radicalize Islam than any other policy, and there are plenty of shameful American policies to choose from.The whole world knows what Israel has done, as it commits war crime after war crime, and the whole world knows that the only reason Israel is able to continue doing these things is because the United States has told the rest of the world that it will not allow anyone to do anything to stop Israel.

We have seen case after case of terror attempts by radicalized Muslims, some successful, some not, who are motivated by a deep hatred of the United States, because they correctly see us as the sole reason that Israel can keep an entire people living in a virtual concentration camp, even as the rest of the world cries out for justice.

Our leaders and the media, of course, willfully ignore what motivates these terrorists, as though the reasons for these attacks are unimportant. And the American people, by and large, accept this, as though the last thing we should worry about are the stated reasons for these continued and escalating attacks.

But no one in Washington really cares about doing anything about the threat of terrorism. The Obama administration, like the one before it, has realized that it is able to claim vast imperial powers for itself as long as the "War on Terror" continues, and so it has a vested interest in continuing the "war" forever, if possible.

The military/security/industrial complex is a profit making enterprise for whom terrorism and fear is a form of marketing. It's greatest fear is that peace will come.

And most members of Congress refuse to do anything positive, either because they have been bought off by the military/industrial complex, or because they are petrified of ignorant voters who can't stand to hear anything other than that the United States is the greatest nation that ever was, and that it can never, but never, do wrong.

And so nothing happens. What will be the response of the United States when Israel detonates a nuclear weapon inside Iran? It will have the choice of siding with Israel against the entire world, including a comprehensively radicalized Islamic population, or of siding with civilization against Israel. Is there any question which choice it will make?

Soon, the United States will indeed find itself and its client state of Israel isolated against the international community. In fact, this is arguably the case today, but the degree of isolation and its effects can become radically worse. In the short term, the result will be more and worse terror attacks, more civil rights taken away from American citizens as the country slips closer and closer to an armed police state, and a more rapid consolidation of power in the elite.

This sounds bad enough, but the long term is even worse. The US is a fading empire, and like all fading empires, the cost of incessant war will suffocate its economy. The US is already held hostage to foreign oil, and is being rapidly eclipsed by economies like China, which are light years ahead of us in the race to develop clean, efficient energy. The US no longer knows how to make things. The largest sector of its economy -by far- is a virtual house of cards, pretending to make money by shuffling paper around.

What happens in 10 or 20 years, when the rest of the world sees the United States crumbling? One thing is for sure-if we continue on the path we are on, we will have no friends, and our enemies will show us no mercy.

This Didn't Need To Happen

2010-05-31T14:15:00.001-07:00

From the NYT:

SAN FRANCISCO — A 23-year-old man died and nearly a dozen other people were hospitalized on Sunday — some with life-threatening symptoms — after apparently ingesting a batch of tainted drugs at a weekend rave party just south of here, the authorities said.

Why would someone die from tainted drugs? Because these drugs are illegal, and when you make drugs illegal, only criminals make drugs. And criminals just aren't as careful about making safe drugs as they could be. They're more concerned with not going to jail.

So here is another name we can add to to the long list of victims of the Drug War. But it doesn't have to be this way. We aren't going to keep people from doing drugs. We've spent hundreds of billions of dollars over 40 years, and people are still using them. Let's legalize them and regulate them and make them safe.

It's Time To Cut Israel Loose

2010-05-31T12:22:00.000-07:00

Last night, Israel attacked a flotilla of ships in international waters who were trying to deliver humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, the same people whom Israel is slowly starving to death and who have been cut off from the rest of the world by an Israeli blockade. A number of peace activists who resisted this act of aggression were killed, and many more wounded. By all accounts, this appears to be a war crime, and yet, as in the past, any attempt to sanction or even criticize Israel through the United Nations will be blocked by the United States.

How much longer can the United States unconditionally support Israel? Its actions are universally condemned by the world community with the exception of the US, and it is only our continued military and financial aid which is allowing Israel to act in the manner it does.

The cost of this relationship to the United States can hardly be overstated. Our support for Israel at the expense of the Palestinians is widely acknowledged to be one of the prime reasons for the ongoing radicalization of the Islamic world, and has probably done more to ensure a steady supply of recruits to Islamic terror organizations than anything else we've done, even including our barbarous and criminal invasion and destruction of Iraq.

It is becoming abundantly clear to the citizens of the United States that Israel is a rogue country, and that we simply cannot justify our continued support of it, even as it continues to oppress the Palestinian people, murder them and steal their land. How much longer will it take for the Congress to reach the point where voters are so angry that they can no longer afford to allow the Israeli lobby to dictate the terms of US foreign policy towards Israel?

Israel has reached the point of no return with this attack. It has shown that has every intention of doing whatever it pleases, and that it could care less about the morality of its actions or the effects that they have on its allies.

Israel has been warned repeatedly by the United States and by the world, and it has ignored those warnings. It has exhausted the international goodwill that foolishly allowed it to appropriate land for a new nation in the wake of the Holocaust. It has become a terrorist state, and is guilty of crimes against humanity. It's time to cut it loose.

Spreading Freedom, One Mutilated Corpse At A Time

2010-05-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

The road to freedom and democracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan has hit something of a speed bump.

American commanders, in some sort of misguided attempt to ensure that only actual Taliban members (or perhaps people who have talked to or seen one, or maybe is a relative of or went to school with one) are eligible to be taught the wonders of American values which the US military often delivers by means of Hellfire missiles, are responding to reports that we've also been sharing these values with civilians. Apparently, the official US policy is that we only liberate people who have some connection to the Taliban, and spreading democracy to whole families who are just out for a drive by ripping them into little pieces of meat for the crows and vultures to eat is just not acceptable. For this, you will be written up. The horror!

This sure is some kind of noble war we've got going on over there, where operators of remote controlled drones called Predators sit in quiet rooms safely behind the US border and spread democracy and freedom by firing missiles through remote control at people who look suspicious. Sometimes, they just blow up whole families of innocent people with those freedom bombs, spreading the blasted little pieces of blood and guts and brains all over the shrubbery, and maybe leaving some limbless, frightened people alive who have to sit there covered with those little pieces of blood and guts and brains that until just moments before belonged to the laughing, smiling, innocent bodies of their families.

Now, I know the casual reader of this blog might be concerned that this reasonable suspicion requirement could prevent US forces from murdering a sufficient number of innocent Afghan citizens. The American elite class, particularly those Freedom-and-Democracy-loving Neo-Cons, love nothing better than a good bloodbath to demonstrate the superiority of the American system of freedom and justice and equality for all. And who better to turn into a sort of exploding fountain of body parts than innocent civilians? After all, aren't they the ones whose hearts and minds we are trying to win over?

But not to worry. As US General Stanley McChrystal recently bragged, "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."

So you may rest assured that US forces are not being hamstrung too severely in their hunt for harmless civilians to render into paragons of democracy, much the way the spare parts of a steer are rendered into so much bone and meat meal to be used for pet food or glue.

And it seems to be working. We've been trying to get the Afghans interested in American democracy for quite some time, but with little apparent success. Oh, sure, we claimed to have found some, like 12 year old Mohammed Jawad, who the US claimed was so interested in the US that they had to lock him up for 7 years in a cage in Gitmo. But as it turns out, Jawad and most of those like him really weren't interested in the US at all; the US military was just making the whole thing up so that we Americans would think the Afghans cared.

Now, however, the new approach of liberating innocent Afghan souls by splattering the small, remaining fragments of their bones, teeth, hair and other more solid body parts against the walls of their family homes has begun to reap some rewards. Why, just last September an Afghan citizen in the United States showed so much interest in this American method of spreading democracy and freedom that he planned to go all the way to New York City to return the favor, intending to show how he himself had embraced the American method by painting the walls of a New York City subway car with his remains and those of a few dozen of his traveling companions.

Our leaders, of course, are far too modest to take credit for this rapid interest in the American way by Afghan citizens. In typical fashion, they humbly claim that Afghans still actually hate America, and that they hate us for our freedoms, and our clothes and our movies.

But we know better. We know that our great leaders have indeed brought about great change. We know that there are many Afghans who, in the past, were interested only in tending to their flocks or fields. But our leaders have shown them the awesome power of democracy and freedom by shredding small children into even smaller pieces of children, or incinerating grandfathers as they sit telling stories, or of filling the pregnant wives of influential and respected community members with a great multitude of fast moving lead projectiles.

The success of this method is readily apparent. There is a huge rise in the number of previously unenlightened sheep farmers with new-found interest in the United States, and who have recently not only embraced this method of sharing ideals, but have grown determined to share the technique with the rest of Western World.

Being new to this method of spreading liberty and freedom, the Afghans still have some things to learn. For example, their preferred method of delivering their message of freedom, blowing themselves up along with the intended recipient of the message, while certainly brave, is just not as artistic or relaxing as the American method of flying invisible Predator drones high overhead, and then silently delivering their blood-soaked version of Democracy from on high, like some sort of Freedom God. This has the added benefit of keeping the rest of the population in a constant state of heightened anticipation, wondering when their chance to experience liberty will come.

But the Afghans will learn. Our American leaders have made it clear that we will be teaching them these lessons for many years to come, and so it is inevitable that the Afghans will get better at this. Today, there are only failed attempts at spreading freedom in subways; tomorrow, we may have pitched gun battles in shopping malls, as Afghans find new and better ways to return the favor.

And let us not forget that we are showing the Pakistanis the American way as well. Our Predator drones are in full effect there as well, and the results appear to be just as promising. Not long ago, a Pakistani citizen who was inspired by the wonderful American gifts of disemboweled children and crispy, smoking, corpses (which inevitably accompany our wonderful family massacres) attempted to return the favor in New York City's Times Square. His generous act of freedom was not, of course, on par with the bloody contributions to justice that America so selflessly and frequently makes, but that will change with time.

And if there is one thing that both Pakistanis and Afghans have, it's time.

A Police State

2010-05-26T17:05:00.003-07:00

Here's a sad example of the War On People Who Use Drugs:

It's hard to think that we live in anything other than a police state. Here is a man who is on flimsy evidence is suspected of being a drug dealer, but who in fact is actually nothing more than than a marijuana user who a police informant happened to have mentioned.

This man had never shown any signs of violence, and is at home sleeping with his family and their dog. And yet the police somehow find it necessary to show up in force-at least seven paramilitary members, in full battle gear including kevlar and machine guns. They knock once, and when there is no immediate answer from the sleeping family, smash through the front door and begin shooting. The family dog is killed, and a second injured by a stray bullet, but that could just as easily have been the young daughter or the parents who were injured or killed.

And for what? They found a small amount of pot and a pipe. This guy could not have been any more harmless, and yet they sent a bunch of amped cops, armed to the teeth, and obviously ready to shoot something or someone into this man's house in the middle of the night.

Please tell me how this is functionally any different from what East German Police or the KGB did. Sure, you can say those people shouldn't smoke pot, but I guess you could have told the East Germans not to get together and talk politics too.

I realize these cops will say they're just doing their jobs, but at some point you have to wonder why they don't resign out of shame. Perhaps they have none.

Rand Paul Says He's Not A Racist. Ok, Well Here's A Way To Prove It

2010-05-22T13:35:00.000-07:00

There's been plenty of talk about Rand Paul and his indecision about whether he supports the ban on private discrimination that was part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Let's back up to Tuesday night, shall we?

The younger Mr. Paul made clear on Tuesday that the celebration at the Bowling Green Country Club was a Tea Party party. He declared himself a proud member, credited the movement for his success and dismissed speculation that he would abandon its message to appeal to more moderate voters in the general election.

“People are already saying, now you need to weave and dodge,” he said. “Now you need to switch. Now you need to give up your conservative message. You need to become a moderate. You need to give up the Tea Party. You need to distance yourself.” The crowd yelled “No!”

Rand Paul followed that speech up by going on Rachel Maddow's show the next night and weaving and dodging, as he simply refused to give an answer when Maddow asked him whether he thought businesses should be able to refuse to serve blacks. Watch this embarrassing exchange:

Of course, Paul has been saying for quite some time that he thinks the government should not get involved, but all of sudden he is faced with the prospect of having to defend the reality of such a position in front of people who think it's abhorrent. By the next night he was proclaiming his support for a ban on this kind of discrimination.

So much for consistency and being above politics. I guess getting elected is more important.

But I want to follow up on Paul's argument a little more. I've been asking around on libertarian message boards, and, at least among these people, the answer to Maddow's question seems to be a resounding no. Libertarians, quite frankly, believe that Congress does not have the constitutional power to forbid discrimination in private business.

Let's take that argument at face value, for it seems to be the argument that Rand Paul is making. Paul keeps protesting that he is not a racist, but rather someone who just believes in following the Constitution. He talks about how discrimination is terrible, and how he wishes it would all go away, but throws his hands up in the air and says it can't be helped-the Constitution just doesn't allow Congress to interfere.

Well, I have a suggestion for Mr. Paul. If he really believes that discrimination is terrible, and an affront to humanity, and that he would love to ban it but for the Constitution, then he should promise that his first act as a U.S. Senator will be to sponsor an amendment to the Constitution banning discrimination. This should take care of all of his concerns.

In fact, I think he has a duty. He has now claimed that he is not a racist, that he is opposed to discrimination, and that he supports the Civil Rights Act in its entirety although he thinks that it is unconstitutional. What choice left is there for an honorable man in this situation but to rectify the situation through a Constitutional amendment?

Needless to say, I won't hold my breath waiting for this to happen.

Stating The Obvious

2010-05-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

This Dumb Quote Of The Day comes comes courtesy of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, on why 30-year senator, long-time member of the establishment elite and opportunistic Democratic convert Arlen Specter lost his bid for a sixth term to relative outsider Joe Sestak:

“In fairness to Arlen,” Mr. Rendell said, “if the economy was ok and there was no anti-incumbent wave, this wouldn’t have been a close election.”

Keeping in mind the fact that Arlen Specter is one of those responsible for the horrible economy, Rendell might as well have said:

"In fairness to my client, if he had not actually committed this crime he probably would have gotten off."

Yes, Mr. Rendell, had Senator Specter actually been a good senator, he may well have won this election.

We Need It; They Don't

2010-05-21T19:47:00.000-07:00

Brian Doherty at Reason gets it half right:

What’s wrong with cutting back big government that mostly exists to serve the interests of big corporations?

Here's why in a nutshell. Big corporations don't need government in order to screw us. But we need government if we're going to keep them from doing it.

The BP disaster is the perfect example. Without government, BP would have gone right ahead and done exactly what it did.* With a shitty government, like the one we have, it made no difference.

The only thing that can help us is good government. Can we get it? I don't know, but I know that not having any government at all is not necessarily any better than having bad government.

*Actually, they would have done it long ago, and even more often.

This Should Tell You All You Need To Know

2010-05-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

If you still think the "financial reform" that the Senate passed today is going to do anything to rein in the out of control banks that are holding the country hostage, this bit from the WSJ should clear up any confusion you might have:

Among the financial components posting big gains following the Senate's approval of the biggest overhaul of the financial system since the 1930s were J.P. Morgan Chase, up 4.6%, while Bank of America, up 4%, and Goldman Sachs, up 3.7%.

Given that JP's market capitalization is around $150 billion, this means that the news of the Senate passing this bill was worth around $7 billion to JP Morgan.

So much for reform.

Put Your Seat Belts On

2010-05-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

At the end of Ron Lieber's write-up of the new financial reform bill comes this gem of a line, which pretty much sums up what Congress is doing:

Lest we forget, the whole point of this bill is to keep something like what went on in the latter half of the last decade from ever happening again. Perhaps the new cops on the beat will sound the alarms sooner when we inevitably go off the rails again in the years to come.

We're not going to actually stop any of this mess from happening again, of course. We're just going to sound the alarm a little earlier so people can brace themselves before the train goes off the tracks and over the cliff.

And that's about as good a summation of the "reform" that Congress is foisting on us as you'll find anywhere.

BP's Priority Is Not Stopping The Leak

2010-05-20T21:50:00.000-07:00

It's becoming pretty obvious that BP's top priority at the moment is not mitigating the damage from the gulf oil spill, but trying to find a way to keep from paying for what they've done.
The New York Times is reporting that the EPA has ordered BP to find a new chemical dispersant to use on the gulf oil leak.

Citing worries about a fragile coastal environment, the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday gave the giant energy company BP 24 hours to select a less toxic chemical than the one that it is now using to break up crude oil gushing from a ruined well in the Gulf of Mexico…

In seeking to break up the oil bubbling to the surface from the Deepwater Horizon well, BP has sprayed nearly 700,000 gallons of Corexit chemical dispersants on the surface of the gulf and directly onto the leaking well head, a mile underwater. It is by far the largest use of chemicals to break up an oil spill in United States waters to date.

That's a lot of dispersant. I realize that the United States government is only recently beginning to care about science again, but someone must have an idea of whether these dispersants make sense to use.

The purpose of the dispersants is to break up the crude oil into tiny droplets that will sink into the water rather than float, and thus be more easily diluted by ocean currents, so that oil slicks do not hurt marine life on the surface or affect sensitive shoreline ecosystems.

But all dispersants are types of detergents and at best are mildly toxic, so applying them requires a careful calculation about whether the dispersant-oil mixture will cause more or fewer problems than untreated crude oil would.

Now, you may have heard that BP is refusing to allow scientists to use accurate, modern equipment to measure the flow rate at the wellhead, and is teaming up with the government to try to make its original much lower estimate stick, an estimate that has been widely discredited by independent observers. From an earlier story:

BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing.

This is PR bullshit. How can you possibly begin to know how to stop the leak if you don't even know how big it is? There are a whole host of reasons to figure this out, foremost among them being that it's essential to solving the engineering problem. But there are two other reasons that are almost as important. The first is so that we can accurately assess the damage when it comes time to make BP pay for what it's done. The second is so that we can have a much better understanding of the risks involved in drilling these wells, risks that the industry repeatedly lied about.

Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well.

Richard Camilli and Andy Bowen, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who have routinely made such measurements, spoke extensively to BP last week, Mr. Bowen said. They were poised to fly to the gulf to conduct volume measurements.

But they were contacted late in the week and told not to come, at around the time BP decided to lower a large metal container to try to capture the leak. That maneuver failed. They have not been invited again.

Ok, so BP is using chemical dispersants that require "careful calculations" in order to determine whether or not their use causes more damage than doing nothing. And yet they refuse to allow independent scientists in to determine the actual rate of flow.

Now, you may wonder why BP wouldn't want an accurate flow rate. After all, it's obviously something they'll need in order to mitigate this disaster, right?

The problem is that BP has no interest in mitigating this disaster. BP is interested in mitigating how much this disaster is going to cost BP, and that's it.

From the first story:

Many experts in the field wonder why dispersants are being used at all so far out in the gulf, and why the federal agencies whose approval was required to apply the chemicals signed off on the plan.

Dispersants are conventionally applied to move oil off the surface of the ocean to protect marine life there and to prevent large amounts of surface oil from coming ashore. Yet the well that was left leaking by the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April is 50 miles from shore, which could be too far for the dispersants to play a helpful role in protecting coastal ecosystems, some experts said.

Why would BP spend millions on dispersants that will have no net benefit to the environment?

Here's your answer:

Recent research shows that rather than degrading the oil so that it disappears — a natural process that occurs over time — the dispersants move it to a different part of the ocean where, in theory, it causes less trouble. As in a shaken bottle of vegetable oil-based salad dressing, “what goes down, eventually comes up” somewhere, Dr. Fingas said.

Huge underwater plumes of dispersed oil have been spotted drifting in the gulf over the last week — a predictable consequence of dispersant use, according to experts including Dr. Fingas, because the oil droplets sink and are carried by underwater currents.

Frederic Hauge, head of the international environment group Bellona, said that the use of dispersants can make it harder to track a spill and to measure the effect of the oil and chemicals, because “you don’t know where it will pop up next.”

So BP is refusing to allow anyone to take the critical measurements of the flow rate from this well, because they know damn well that it a hell of a lot more than 5000 barrels a day. In fact, McClatchy reported today that a scientist testified to a House Energy subcommittee that his estimate of the flow rate was 95,000 barrels (4 millions gallons!) per day. And in order to make sure that no one can prove that this 5000 barrel number is wrong, they're using dangerous chemicals to disperse the oil across the world's seas so that no one will ever be able hold them liable for the true cost of the disaster.

Sure, all that dispersant will just make things worse, but who ever really believed that BP gave a damn about the environment anyway?

Freddie Mac Executive Lectures Underwater Homeowners About Morality. Really.

2010-05-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

Is your mortgage underwater? Are you wondering if you should stop throwing money away in a hopeless cause? Is your mortgage putting you in dire financial straits? Well, don't worry-one of the jackasses who just destroyed our economy is here to lecture you about morality and social responsibility.

Here's a letter that Freddie Mac Executive Vice-President Don Bisenius recently posted on the Freddie Mac web site. It is an insulting and pathetic attempt to convince people with underwater mortgages to keep paying them, even when it's not in their best interests. I felt as though he was talking to me, so I figured I'd respond.

(Freddie Mac, of course, is the secondary mortgage buyer that was rescued by taxpayers after it essentially failed in 2008. It has already taken $52 billion, and the cash drain on taxpayers seems to have no end in sight.)

****

A Perspective on Strategic Defaults

Don Bisenius

May 3, 2010 – As the mortgage industry works through a large volume of loan delinquencies, a new and growing concern has emerged: strategic defaults. In other words, borrowers who have the financial means to make monthly mortgage payments, but choose not to do so and, instead, purposely default on their loan.

Yes, this is a huge problem. Foreclosures, whether intentional or not, are often personally traumatic, and not only on affect the borrower, but society in general as they have the effect of lowering home prices for everyone around as well.

Now, Mr. Bisenius, since you are a longtime executive at Freddie Mac, which paid its executives millions to buy shitty mortgages from anyone that would sell them, you are among the people most responsible for this tragic wave of foreclosures which has crushed the housing market and destroyed the finances of millions of households. You must be planning to write about how bad this situation is, and how sorry you are for your role in it. No doubt this will be accompanied by a letter of resignation, and an offer to return your ill-gotten salary to the taxpayers for helping to preside over such an utter failure. Please continue.

Strategic defaults come from a variety of homebuyers: from real estate investors who sought to profit from rising house prices during the housing boom, to individual families who simply sought shelter. But these homebuyers have certain things in common: their properties reside in regions where house prices have declined considerably, and the amount still owed on the mortgage is far greater than the present value of the house.

Yes, it's terrible. Get on to the resignation, please.

Some in this situation believe they will be forever chained to a large debt owed when they sell the house. And so, even though they have the ability to keep paying the monthly bill, they have decided to walk away from the property without paying off the loan. An intentional foreclosure, if you will.

Makes perfect sense to me. I mean really, Don, did you raise a stink when your buddies at Morgan Stanley walked away from a $2.5 billion loan and handed the keys to its office buildings back to its lender, even though they could have kept paying? I didn't think so.

In essence, these borrowers are weighing the costs and benefits of a strategic default, and coming to a conclusion.

And in many cases, that very obvious conclusion is that it would be insane to continue to pay their mortgages.

Now, the costs can be considerable. Once a mortgage goes into default, a borrower's credit rating is severely tarnished, making it more expensive, if not impossible, to qualify for any new form of credit.

Of course, if they continue to pay said mortgage, they will be so broke that they will also find it impossible to qualify for any new form of credit.

In certain states, a borrower's personal assets can be subject to a deficiency judgment.

Well, that's what Chapter 7 is for. And in most states, that's not the case anyway. And so what? Do you think people don't take this into consideration when they make a rational decision to walk away?

And anything that involves a credit review, such as obtaining auto insurance or getting a new job, can be complicated. These detriments can be in effect for several years.

That sounds like a threat.

The benefit: the borrower avoids paying for the lost equity in the house.

So let's recap your cost/benefit analysis, shall we, Don?

The costs of defaulting on your mortgage:

Your credit score will go down, which will make it harder for you to get new loans that you obviously can't afford in the first place, and which you won't get anyway because you're broke and no one is lending.
In certain states, you may have to file Chapter 7 in order to protect your other assets, which will also affect your credit score as already discussed.
Your credit score may affect your ability to get certain jobs- jobs that aren't available anymore anyway ever since institutions like Freddie Mac destroyed the economy.
It might be a hassle to get car insurance.

These costs are real, but they aren't catastrophic, and for many people will hardly affect them at all.

The benefits:

You could immediately get rid of tens of thousands of dollars of debt. This money could be used for sending your kids to college, or going back to school yourself, or buying groceries or health insurance.

So is it worth it? I don't know, because every situation is different. What I do know is that you, Don Bisenius, have absolutely no fucking clue either. So sit down, and shut the hell up.

And you seem to realize that too, don't you, Don? Because that's not really your point. And it's also becoming pretty obvious that you have no intention of resigning or refunding your salary to taxpayers.

I'm deeply disappointed.

Knowing the costs and factoring in the time horizon, some borrowers have made the calculation that it is better to purposely default on the mortgage. While I understand how that might well be a good decision for certain borrowers, that doesn't make it good social policy.

What the fuck, Don? Did you seriously just start talking about good social policy? When did it become the responsibility of borrowers to worry about social policy? Borrowers have enough on their hands trying to keep your bankster buddies from raping them. Where in the hell do you get off talking about social responsibility? Where were you in the last 10 years-hell, the last 30 years- when the entire financial industry took a giant crap on social responsibility, and destroyed the American economy so that executives like yourself could get obscenely rich at the expense of average Americans, who have lost their jobs and seen their life savings go up in smoke as a result of the free-market bullshit spouted by people exactly like you?

That's because strategic defaults affect many other families and communities. And these costs – or as they are known in economic jargon, externalities – are not factored into the individual borrower's calculations.

Yeah, externalities. I don't suppose anyone on Wall Street factored in the externalities of destroying the financial system either, did they? Did they worry about the millions of jobs that would be lost? Did they worry about the trillions of taxpayer dollars that would get transferred from the poor and middle class to executives like yourself? Did anyone at Freddie Mac give two shits about the fact that the banks they dealt with were pushing fraudulent loans on people who didn't know any better or who couldn't afford them, and paying themselves billions in bonuses as fast as they could, knowing that taxpayers would bail them out when the shit inevitably hit the fan?

You've been at Freddie Mac since 1992, Don. What were you doing-napping? Maybe you should have woken the hell up and delivered this speech about social responsibility and externalities to your colleagues and golfing buddies at Goldman and Citigroup and the rest. Maybe you should give it right now to your boss, one Ed Haldeman, who will make $6 million this year presiding over a company that has attached itself to the American economy like a bloodsucking leech.

Let's start with the neighbors. When strategic defaults occur, homes go into foreclosure and sit vacant for some period of time. We know from experience that foreclosures and vacancies drive down the property values of everyone else in the neighborhood. Thus, strategic defaulters, in effect, deplete the personal wealth of their neighbors. Get a critical mass of strategic defaults, and broader communities and regions become affected. Indeed, Economy.com , the analytic firm, recently said that more strategic defaults could tip a fragile housing market back into one of further price declines. Even more families harmed.

Yeah, and that's all the fault of the borrower. The borrower who was told by everyone in the financial industry that prices would rise forever. The borrower who bought a home cautiously and conservatively, only to watch the banks and Freddie Mac team up to flood the market they live in with thousands of homes which were destined for foreclosure the minute the deal was done.

Don, if you were the CEO of a company that intentionally spread a fatal and infectious disease among the population, you would blame the contagion on people who didn't just shoot themselves as soon as they found out they were infected in order to keep themselves from passing it on. And then lecture them in a letter not unlike this one.

But that's not all. Should strategic defaults become more common, mortgage guarantors and investors, including Freddie Mac, would need to factor this risk more prominently into their credit policies and prices.

Now that is a threat.

The likely impact on future homebuyers: the cost of a mortgage will go up and credit terms will be less flexible. Thus, the impact of strategic defaulters on still more families might be more expensive mortgages and loans that are more difficult to obtain. The strategic defaulter does not usually consider these costs.

You think?

You're telling us we have a moral responsibility to keep throwing our money away on a hopeless and disastrous loan so…other people can get these loans?

Do borrowers considering strategic defaults have other options? They do. For those who have not suffered any disruption in income and have a longer time horizon, simply continuing to pay the bills might be best.

Sure, it might be best for them. Or it might not. And if it is, I'm sure they'll do it.

Over time, recovering house prices and declining mortgage balances likely will close some, if not all, of the equity gap.

And you know this….how? Because you have some super power that lets you predict where housing prices will go? Why didn't you use that five years ago? It might have helped save the global economy.

The reality is that you have absolutely no idea where housing prices will be in one year, much less 20. But for a lot of people, everything will have to go just right to break even in 20 years. And if it doesn't, their kids won't be going to college, or they'll find themselves greeting people at Wal-Mart well past retirement age so they can buy groceries and Geritol.

But don't worry about that; listen to Don Bisenius, an executive at a corporation that was so good at predicting the future, they've been taken over by the government and have already had to beg taxpayers for $52 billion, even before their recent $10.6 payoff.

According to the Federal Reserve, while the housing bust wiped out $8 trillion in home equity, $1 trillion came back in 2009. The point here: time might be your best ally.

Guess what? The $1 trillion that already came back was the stuff that shouldn't have been devalued. That other $7 trillion was the bubble; and it's gone and will take years to come back at historical housing appreciation rates. There is a reason people can't pay back all these loans. The homes just aren't worth that much.

Another alternative: if Freddie Mac owns the loan, a family might be able to refinance up to 125 percent of the current property value. In other words, if a family's home equity has been completely wiped out and the mortgage balance is as much as 25 percent more than the home is worth, we can help.

Well, if you're so worried about the social effect, then get out there and start modifying the principal on these loans. But Freddie Mac isn't doing that. They have great programs for the few people that can actually qualify for them. But the Making Home Affordable Program has been a colossal failure, because no one wants to do the only thing that will help, which is to reduce the principal. The banks won't do that because it would force them to start telling the truth about how much these mortgages are really worth, and that would put a damper on the bonus parties. How's that for social responsibility?

What about families who need to move? We can help here, too. Freddie Mac has an array of solutions that help certain borrowers avoid the cost and stigma of foreclosure, such as short sales and deeds in lieu of foreclosure. And we continue to work on additional solutions that address would-be strategic defaulters while minimizing the impact on neighbors.

"An array of solutions that help certain borrowers…" Just not the ones who really need the help.

"Avoid the…stigma of foreclosure." You want to help people avoid the stigma? Stop writing asinine letters accusing them of ruining society. Like this one.

In the end, borrowers considering a strategic default should recognize the damaging impact their actions can have on others. While a personal financial strategy might argue for a strategic default, entire communities and future homebuyers can be harmed as a result. And that is why our broader social and policy interests will be best served by discouraging strategic defaults.

So borrowers should sacrifice their own financial interests in order to make sure that you continue to get paid, while you and the people like yourself who are responsible for the mess collect billions of dollars of taxpayer funded bonuses and lecture struggling families about wasting money on college funds and groceries when they could be paying their mortgages.

Are there some borrowers who are at fault? Sure, but most people just didn't know any better. And how could they? They aren't financial experts like you are, Don. They're teachers and waitresses and mechanics and soldiers who didn't know any better than to listen when you and your friends in the business told them to buy now or they'd miss out on the chance to buy a home forever. And even the worst of the speculators and house flippers weren't doing anything worse than your banking buddies still are today. The only difference is that they lost their investment, while Freddie Mac got bailed out and you and your friends got to keep your jobs and fancy cars.

**********

There are two important points that I want to make.

First, there is no moral requirement to pay off a mortgage. It makes my blood boil when I hear bankers lecturing people about living up to their responsibility, especially when those same bankers wouldn't think twice about defaulting on commercial loans they no longer view as profitable. It is not a moral issue.

What do you think happens when you get a mortgage? Do you think the bank is relying on your good word that you will pay them back? If they are, then I guess you have a moral responsibility to pay keep paying. But that's not how it works. You don't promise to pay them back. You promise to either a) pay them back or else b) let them take the house. You have the option. If it makes more sense to pay it, then pay it. If it makes more sense to walk away, then walk away. That's it.

The second point is that there is no such thing as a strategic default. It's just a default. No one ever makes every payment that they possibly could. Have you ever heard of a borrower who stopping eating and sold all of his possessions in order to make payments as long as he possibly could?

Of course not. People make payments until it no longer makes sense for them to make them anymore. For some people, that moment comes when they have to choose between food and the mortgage. For others, it's the car. For the more prescient among us, it's the ones who make the decision right around the time they realize the choice is between paying the mortgage or giving up what little hope for future financial freedom they still have.

But I guess you won't get the coveted Don Bisenius Social Responsibility Medal Of Honor unless you starve the family and live without electricity.

Thanks for the morality lesson, jackass.

Just A Little While Longer...We Promise

2010-05-11T17:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a real shocker:

American commanders, worried about increased violence in the wake of Iraq's inconclusive elections, are now reconsidering the pace of a major troop pullout this summer, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The withdrawal of the first major wave of troops is expected to be delayed by about a month, the officials said. Waiting much longer could endanger President Barack Obama's goal of reducing the force level from 92,000 to 50,000 troops by Aug. 31.

We will never leave there, will we? I suppose the only intriguing question left at this point is how Obama's most blindly loyal supporters will excuse yet another broken campaign promise-this time, the very important promise to end the war and bring the troops home.

More than two months after parliamentary elections, the Iraqis have still not formed a new government, and militants aiming to exploit the void have carried out attacks like Monday's bombings and shootings that killed at least 119 people — the country's bloodiest day of 2010.

Of course, we had an opportunity to allow Iraqi's elections and democracy soon after our invasion. They wanted elections, but the United States refused to let them have them because it was worried that they would elect people who weren't interested in just handing over all of Iraq's oil to Bush's friends. So we denied them the democracy that Bush claimed we were spreading, and ruled them by decree from the safety of the Green Zone. And Iraq proceeded to burn.

The threat has prompted military officials to look at keeping as many troops on the ground, for as long as possible, without missing the Aug. 31 deadline. A security agreement between the two nations requires American troops to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011.

A lot can happen between now and then. The neo-cons are alive and well, and they have no intention of allowing America to give up its conquest in Iraq. They'll need those bases for the next war in Iran. Is there any reason to believe they won't remove the new government from power with the excuse that it cannot maintain the peace, and forcibly install another puppet government in its place? And would anyone then be surprised to find out that that puppet government asked the Americans to stay a little longer?

I know I wouldn't.

He's Just One Of Us

2010-05-11T17:03:00.000-07:00

Wow.

This man truly has no shame. Not to mention a really inflated sense of self. This ad is like an SNL sketch. I don't know if you could even come up with a parody of it, but I sure hope someone tries.

Also, he was against the fence before he was for it.

In The Footsteps Of Tyrants

2010-05-11T15:13:00.000-07:00

Another one of our freedom-loving allies in the Middle East continues to show us the way:

CAIRO—Egypt's government on Tuesday extended the country's controversial emergency law for another two years, saying it would limit its use—a promise dismissed by human-rights activists who warned the law would continue to be used to suppress dissent.

The emergency law, in place since the 1981 assassination of then-President Anwar Sadat by Islamic militants, gives police broad powers of arrest and allows indefinite detention without charge. Democracy advocates and human rights groups have long said the law is used to silence critics and ensure the ruling party's lock on power in this top Mideast ally of the U.S., pointing to the arrest of bloggers, political activists and others.

Does this sound familiar?

After an attack by Islamic militants, a government uses the incident to take a hard turn to the right and gives its law enforcement agencies broad powers to arrest people suspected of being terrorists, or of providing support for suspected terrorists, or really of doing anything that the government doesn't like. The people arrested under these new powers can be held in indefinite detention, without any charges, and without any trial. This government has also used the incident to rationalize the torture of its prisoners.

The United States has done all of these things, and the only thing that seems to separate it from Egypt, at this point, is the government's reluctance to use violence to stifle free speech.

But at this rate, how long will it take them to cross this line? They are already up against it; their prosecutions of whistleblowers and their attempts to silence Wikileaks are but two disturbing examples.

An overt campaign to keep real journalists from reporting on the actions of government may seem far-fetched, but we must remember that both the current and previous administration have been among the most non-transparent in history, and already tightly control the flow of information to the select group of friendly lap-dog media elites it knows it can control.

And consider that, 10 years ago, the idea of the United States openly torturing prisoners, spying on its own citizens, locking people in solitary confinement without trial at their pleasure and claiming the power of its president to assassinate its own citizens at will would have seemed equally far-fetched. And yet, to a large percentage of the population, this seems perfectly acceptable today.

Freedom of the press won't be destroyed overnight, of course. The government isn't going to just take over TV stations and newspapers. It might start by employing (as Glenn Greenwald reports) Obama confidant Cass Sunstein's proposal to infiltrate organizations who promote "false conspiracy theories" about the government, which, of course, would include any theory that does not agree with the government's official claims.

Next might come a few arrests of bloggers who are sympathetic to the grievances of Islamic terrorists. They could be charged with "providing material support to terrorism," a law so broad that the Humanitarian Law Project fears is could be used against them for promoting peace talks with groups like the Tamil Tigers. Those arrests will have the effect of silencing much of that sort of criticism.

And the more critics are silenced, the easier it will get for the government to restrict the press even further. Many Americans won't even notice it happening; the mainstream media, run by members of the same elite class of people who run the government and corporate America, will continue to serve up the same official party line, and to distract us with their endless tales of meaningless Washington intrigue and political horse races. Their willingness to create their own version of the truth will become less and less constrained as competing journalists are either frightened into silence or marginalized by being denied access to information.

And this is how democracies die. When the voters are denied the information that they need in order to make informed decisions, the whole system becomes a sham. Even worse, they are often unaware that they are not getting the truth, and are even more unlikely to ever remedy the situation. We can only hope that Americans start taking an interest in their democracy before it's too late to save it.

The Terrorists Have Won, Part 2469

2010-05-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from a piece by British attorney Gareth Peirce in the London Review of Books.

One young American citizen, Syed Fahad Hashmi, was due to stand trial this month in Manhattan. He has been subjected to every coercive and unconstitutional practice at issue in the still outstanding extraditions in the three years since he was flown from the UK to the US. Before his transfer to the US, Hashmi was held in Belmarsh Prison in the same conditions as all other prisoners, accused of an offence that if tried in the UK would have merited at most a sentence of two or three years; since his extradition, he has been kept in total isolation in a tiny cell. He has not seen daylight since arriving in this New York prison.

The Anglo-American adversarial process is intended to rest on a guarantee of fairness, an equality of arms between prosecution and defence. Hashmi, under the disabilities that years of solitary confinement inevitably create, even for the strongest and fittest, faced a prosecution based on the evidence of a co-operating witness who pleaded guilty in the US to engagement in terrorist activity in Pakistan, including the use of explosives and the attempted murder of the country’s then president. The witness, having served the shortest of prison terms in the US, and having given evidence against others in a cluster of trials in a range of jurisdictions, claimed that Hashmi, a student in England, let him leave a suitcase in his London flat in which there were combat clothes and lent him his phone, on which he, the witness, rang a suspected terrorist in the UK. This was enough to secure his extradition. For this, the co-operating witness goes free and his victim stands trial on charges of providing material support for terrorism. On the eve of that trial, having maintained his innocence for three years, but faced with the prospect of a 70-year sentence, Hashmi changed his plea to guilty.

And that effective life sentence would be served under the most horrifying conditions imaginable- in total isolation, without any human contact or sunlight, and deprived of any stimulation or distraction of any kind. Imagine the door closing on a small white room, with no books or television or phone or anything else to do but stare at a white wall until you drive yourself mad. And imagine realizing that this is where you will spend the rest of life.

If that is not one of the worst forms of psychological torture imaginable, then I am at a loss as to how else to describe it.

And after three years of enduring this torture, and being told that if you do not confess you be found guilty anyway by an American kangaroo court, and that this will be your fate, how can you possibly find the strength to continue to maintain your innocence?

The entire piece must be read by anyone who still believes that the United States criminal justice system is anything more than a total farce, and who believes that we have any right to lecture Iran or China or anyone else on the subject of human rights.

Break Up Goldman and The Rest

2010-05-10T09:30:00.000-07:00

Today's WSJ:

NEW YORK—Goldman Sachs Group Inc., facing securities fraud charges leveled against it by the government, on Monday warned that future litigation costs could cut into profits

...

Analysts have estimated that a settlement of the SEC's current complaint could range between $1 billion and $5 billion.

"We are involved in a number of judicial, regulatory and arbitration proceedings concerning matters arising in connection with the conduct of our businesses," the company said in a filing with the SEC. "Given the range of litigation and investigations presently under way, our litigation expenses can be expected to remain high."

It sounds as though Goldman is assuming that the current SEC charges will not be the only ones, and that evidence turned up during the course of this current investigation could lead to new charges.

Goldman said the challenges would not be material to the overall business, but that legal costs and potential settlements could trim operating results. The company spent about $500 million on legal costs in 2009.

What this means is that they expect to pay the fines as a business expense, and don't have any real expectation of having to do anything differently in the future.

Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's chairman and chief executive, said Friday during the company's annual meeting that the investment bank will look into ways the company can confront the current scrutiny over its business practices. He was re-elected to the board, and shareholders voted down a proposal to split the chairman and CEO posts.

"The last few weeks have been ... difficult and disappointing," Mr. Blankfein told shareholders on Friday. "Questions have been raised that have gone to the heart of our most fundamental value: How we treat our clients."

Well, the evidence coming out in this case seems to provide an answer to that question. Apparently, they treat their customers like shit. They use them like chumps by selling them crappy products designed to fail so that they can collect insurance payments when they do.

He has been criticized for not disclosing the SEC investigation sooner. The company, which was hit by the government complaint last month, said it did not originally believe the SEC investigation would have a material effect on business.

Right. Why would having the SEC formally charge you with defrauding your own clients have any material effect on your business?

Goldman, which emerged from the financial crisis with record earnings in 2009, also disclosed in the regulatory filing that its traders did not lose money during the first quarter. The firm reported that it made more than $100 million daily for 35 days during the quarter.

Let's talk about these profits for a minute, and look at the big picture. How could anyone who believes in the efficiency of markets possibly defend a company making these kind of profits? Forget about whether you think they're obscene, and never mind the fact that most of that money will go towards buying private planes and yachts for the Goldman folks.

Think about this: in an efficient market, these kinds of profits simply wouldn't be available. In an efficient market, other firms would move in and offer the same services for far less, and still make a decent profit. In fact, in an efficient market, these profits would be approaching zero, as Goldman's competitors continued to undercut them.

This is obviously not happening, and this is obviously not an efficient market. There are many reasons why Goldman's competitors cannot compete with them, and it's not just because of some special technical skill or ability that Goldman has that they don't. Those kinds of edges never last long in that kind of business.

But Goldman has other advantages, some of which it shares with a few other huge banks that are making similar profits.

It has much cheaper funding through the Fed discount window than smaller banks do. This cheaper funding is directly paid for by taxpayers.

It has much cheaper funding from institutional investors. This is because those investors realize(even if taxpayers don't) that if Goldman fails, taxpayers will rescue it, as they've already done. Smaller banks, of course, are simply put into receivership.

Goldman acts as a member of a oligopoly, and so has very little competition. And with no competition, you get obscene profits and inefficient markets.

Goldman does not have to worry about long-term profitability. Goldman is concerned with making money today; if it makes money today, its traders and executives make millions. It can do this by making extremely risky bets. Like betting on Russian Roulette, these bets will eventually turn catastrophic. But at that point, the people at Goldman will have already been paid. And the gun is pointing at the taxpayer's head anyway.

Goldman owns the government, along with the rest of Wall Street. This means that they don't have to worry about the government passing any pesky laws that would prevent them from destroying the global economy for the sake of some bonuses, or of declining to bail them out with taxpayer money when they fail. The US Treasury department and the SEC, in fact, are full of people who used to work for them, and who are planning to go back to work for them once they've finished their little stint of infiltrating the enemy camp.

All of these are reasons to require that Goldman and the other top five banks be broken up. There is no advantage to having banks with more than $100 billion in assets, and the disadvantages become more glaringly obvious every single day.

Breaking these banks up would not be anything radical or unprecedented. It was done with Standard Oil, and it was done with AT&T. Last time I checked, this didn't result in the end of the oil or phone industries.

Excusing Obama

2010-05-09T10:07:00.000-07:00

BP, Deepwater, Obama, Salazar

Debcoop at Open Left has a new post up trying to make sure everyone knows that Republicans are to blame for the oil spill, and not Obama.

The NY Times thinks that President Obama has not responded aggressively enough to this spill. Let's be clear:

No way is this oil spill Barack Obama's fault.

Seriously? As Paul Rosenberg points out (also in a post on Open Left!), Obama appointed an Interior Secretary (Ken Salazar) with deep ties to the oil industry. Salazar was confirmed in January of 2009. The BP permit for the Deep Horizon well was approved 3 months later in April, with zero meaningful oversight.

Since then, 26 additional well permits have been handed out in exactly the same way, by the exact same Interior Secretary. As Rosenberg says, these permits were simply rubber stamped, and the oil companies were allowed to simply assert that there would be no environmental impact. (Read Rosenberg's post if you want to get a good idea of what the Interior Department does to make sure disasters like the BP catastrophe don't happen.)

Now, you may argue that we can't expect the president to know all of the intricacies of deep sea drilling, and that it is true. But you simply cannot excuse him for appointing an Interior Secretary with the record that Ken Salazar has.

And in case you think he just didn't know any better, just last month Obama approved a massive expansion of offshore drilling, which would have been done using the exact same regulatory process, by the exact same department-a process that could best be described as simply signing whatever drilling applications the oil corporations filled out, and then going back to sleep.

This is not some case of Obama making the passive and innocent mistake of not realizing that the Secretary of the Interior was in charge of regulating activity that could (and did) result in a massive environmental catastrophe. No, this is worse. Obama actively planned to allow a huge expansion of this activity, and he either did not bother to look into the risks of such activity, or did look into it and saw nothing or didn't care. And we know this because his administration has continued to issue rubber stamp permits, just like the one that BP got, even after the BP explosion!

None of these explanations are acceptable, nor the actions excusable. They are precisely the kind of thing that we would be (rightly) excoriating Bush/Cheney for, and yet here is DebCoop, on Open Left of all places, excusing this behavior.

This is exactly the kind of sycophantic drivel one would expect to find on the pages of the White House web site or some Democratic Party hack's blog, and yet it is making it's way onto the pages of OpenLeft.com.

The fault lies with the ideology and mores of the Republican party and its theory of government.

Which are, it is becoming painfully obvious, no different from the ideology and mores of President Obama.

Their solution to this country's energy's future is to drill anywhere and everywhere.

This might be more relevant to your case if Obama had not- just last month!- approved a plan to pretty much just drill anywhere and everywhere.

Is Government The Problem?

2010-05-07T22:19:00.000-07:00

Have you heard about the big oil leak off of the coast of Louisiana? The one that is threatening to destroy what's left of the wetlands that are the only barrier between a major American city and the ocean? The same wetlands that oil companies have been destroying for years by building pipelines and canals through?

Well, it turns out that the oil companies were warned repeatedly about the possibility that precisely what happened would, well, happen.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators warned offshore rig operators more than a decade ago that they needed to install backup systems to control the giant undersea valves known as blowout preventers, used to cut off the flow of oil from a well in an emergency.

The warnings were repeated in 2004 and 2009. Yet the Minerals Management Service, the Interior Department agency charged both with regulating the oil industry and collecting royalties from it, never took steps to address the issue comprehensively, relying instead on industry assurances that it was on top of the problem, a review of documents shows.

Anyone who paid any attention to the Bush administration's attitude towards regulation during the last decade would hardly be surprised. That attitude could be summed up as: "There will be no regulation."

In the intervening years, numerous blowout preventers and their control systems have failed, though none as catastrophically as those on the well the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig was preparing when it blew up on April 20, leaving tens of thousands of gallons of oil a day spewing into the Gulf of Mexico

Agency records show that from 2001 to 2007, there were 1,443 serious drilling accidents in offshore operations, leading to 41 deaths, 302 injuries and 356 oil spills. Yet the federal agency continues to allow the industry largely to police itself, saying that the best technical experts work for industry, not for the government.

This is how adversarial relationships work, you see.

When the government charges you with a crime, if you hire a lawyer who is smarter than the prosecutor, the government just lets your defense lawyer write the prosecution's case.

In tournament chess, the player with the most experience gets to make his opponent's move as well as his own.

Hell, I don't understand why bank robbers aren't allowed to write the laws on bank robbery, since they arguably know more about the subject than anyone.

(Actually, the banks do write the laws governing banking, and that's pretty much the same thing.)

The free-market fraudsters, of course, want you to believe that regulation by government is bad because they'll just fuck it up. And they'll use this case as evidence, because in this case, they did fuck it up.

But what they won't tell you is that they fucked it up because the free-market fraudsters told them to.

They ran the government almost singlehandedly for eight years. Their goal was to let corporate interests do whatever the hell they wanted to, and to hand them money for doing nothing whenever possible. And they succeeded.

Are you an investment bank that wants to gamble in an unregulated derivatives market with a notional value equal to 40 times the size of the entire US economy? Go right ahead, and we'll bail you out with taxpayer money when you implode.

Are you an international drug company that feels like marketing dangerous pharmaceuticals to people who don't need them? We'll slap you on the wrist and send you back out to kill again.

Are you a defense contractor who's tired of having someone in the government making sure you're not ripping off the Pentagon? We'll just tell those in charge of watching to close their eyes.

Are you an oil company that doesn't want to spend a few more bucks on safety equipment to prevent catastrophic environmental disasters that will affect millions of average Americans? We'll just tell the inspectors to defer to your best judgement, as though you actually have the welfare of the American people in mind when you despoil their land.

Over and over again, you will hear that government is incompetent and can't do anything right.

But here's the thing. People don't suddenly get stupid when they work for the government. The government invented the atomic bomb. It predicts the weather. It built the interstate highway system. It put a man on the fucking moon 40 years ago, using a computer that probably had less power than your $30 mp3 player. It sure as hell can figure out when BP is blowing smoke up its ass, if its told to do so!

And that's the thing. It has been told not to figure that out, over and over again. Regulators have been told not to regulate derivatives, so they did not. Regulators were told not to pay attention to the billions and billions of dollars of Iraqi reconstruction funds that were handed out to Halliburton on pallets of cash for work that was never done, so they did not. The Department of the Interior was told not to argue with BP about whether they were doing enough to prevent this kind of disaster, so it did not.

And now we have one more disaster on our hands; one more in a long line of disasters that could have been prevented by government, but were not because the free-market fraudsters and their paid-for politicians made sure that government would not be allowed to interfere in the making of money, unless they were just going to be handing more of it out.

The sad thing is that this has been a long time coming. It's not just the Bush administration; it started with Reagan's bullshit line that government was the problem, and continued through Bush I and Clinton, and then was accelerated in a frenzied looting of the American public during the eight long years of Bush II. And Obama doesn't seem to even know where to begin to fix it, and I have no idea if he even wants to.

But after a 30-year long evisceration of government's ability to govern, there really isn't much left there institutionally. The free-marketers would have you believe that government is bigger than ever, but it's not. It spends more than ever, but instead of using that money to actually do things, it just hands it over to corporations and tells them to do whatever they want with it.

It's going to be a big challenge to get the regulatory arm of government rebuilt. It will take time, and it will take money. Rich people who run oil companies will have to pay more in taxes. But it must be done, and the sooner we start on it, the better.

Will The Greeks Reject The Shock Therapy?

2010-05-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

Over the last 30 years, as Naomi Klein has thoroughly documented in "Shock Doctrine", numerous governments have used crises to ram through deeply unpopular "free market" reforms that have really been little more than thinly disguised efforts to make massive social spending cuts and to direct vast sums of lower and middle wealth to the corporate/government elite.

They've done this in times of crisis because, without some catastrophe to frighten and shock them, the citizenry would never go along with the plans. Whether it's been hyper-inflation in South America, Yeltsin's attack on the Russian Parliament or the millions of pounds of ordinance dropped on Bagdad in the Shock and Awe campaign, these crises have always done the trick. And the trick is to force severe austerity measures on all the citizens of already stressed nations.

Today, it's Greece's turn. Greek sovereign debt has risen to unsustainable levels, and, without a bailout from the EU, Greece is headed towards default.

So, naturally, the EU has decided to bail them out. And, just as naturally, they are calling for austerity measures, which will mean severe cuts in the pensions, salaries, and jobs of ordinary Greek citizens, all while taxes are being raised.

If you just read the headlines, you'd think that this bailout is a great thing for all of Greece. And you would be wrong. The money from this bailout will go to paying off the banks and institutions that made bad decisions and lent Greece more money than they should have. These are banks which are based in the countries which are organizing the bailout, so in essence these countries are bailing out their own banks at the expense of the Greeks. These banks screwed up royally, but they'll get paid off in full. It's the average Greek citizen which will get screwed.

Now, you may have heard that Greek pensions, salaries and social spending levels are unsustainable, and that the people who are protesting because the pensions they were promised won't be there should realize that the deal they had was too good to be true, and shouldn't expect it to be honored. And there may be a shred of truth in that statement.

But the institutions that lent Greece money, and banks like Goldman Sachs that actively enabled Greece to get around it's debt limits, should realize that when you lend people more money than they can afford to repay, you shouldn't expect that deal to be honored either.

In other words, there are two parties to this mess. The first is the Greek citizen, who has gotten perhaps too good of a deal when it comes to social benefits. (This, of course, is open to interpretation. If Greece bothered to collect taxes on the rich, these benefits would be a lot more affordable.)

The second party comprises the institutions that lent Greece money, all of which have made massive amounts of money in fees and interests, and whose executives have paid themselves handsomely for lending money to a country that was already too far into debt.

The first party is expected to accept new taxes and deep and painful wage cuts, social service cuts, pension cuts, and cuts in virtually every public sector in a country that relies heavily on public spending. These cuts will be catastrophic for the Greek economy, as the massive reduction in income will lead to reduced aggregate demand and a deflationary spiral which will push the country into the abyss and which will be extremely difficult to recover from, and that could easily take a decade or more to do so.

But they will be asked to do this so that the second party, the banks and institutions that enabled this crisis in the first place, can get their shitty loans paid back in full.

Does this sound like a raw deal? It does to me, and, apparently, it does to the Greeks as well, who are taking to the streets by the thousands to protest the austerity measures just announced by the government. In fact, the NYT is reporting that three people were just killed in the firebombing of a bank in Athens.

Of course, many (including leading economists) have criticized these banks, saying that they should have known better than to lend Greece money. But that misses the larger point, which is that they knew that the IMF or the European Central Bank would make sure that they were made whole, no matter how insane their lending standards. So it wasn't that they didn't know better; it was that they didn't care. They expected that the Greek people would be forced to pay for their mistakes and the mistakes of the Greek leaders. (As Yves Smith points out, the moral hazard implicit in this bailout is one of its worst features. It will encourage banks to continue to lend to countries at unsustainable levels, secure in the knowledge that the IMF will bail them out and make the citizens of the countries pay with their livelihood or lives.)

The Greeks understand that this is not about bailing them out. It's about making them pay for the mistakes of others, and about transferring vast sums of Greek wealth to the financial elite, in a process which will destroy the Greek economy and impoverish its people.

And for what? To stave off a sovereign debt default which is coming anyway? To ensure that they can remain in the very currency union which is currently preventing them from using monetary policy to escape the clutches of the IMF and the ECB?

This is not a case of figuring out some way forward that is best for everyone. As always, this is about large financial institutions and their executives getting preference over the middle class and the poor. There is absolutely no reason on earth why bondholders shouldn't take a hit, but taxpayers should.

But this is how it's done. A country is frightened into believing that the end of the world is coming if they don't agree to massive social spending cuts. The money that is saved by making these cuts is then transferred to the people who made foolish loans to that country's government, hoping to make a killing, but assuming they would be bailed out either way. And then the massive cuts in spending lead to a widespread unemployment, reduction in demand, and an accompanying economic meltdown.

But by this time, of course, the bankers have their money.

This is happening right now in the United States, with the debt hysteria that is being whipped up by bondholders who can't wait to slash social security and unemployment, but who wouldn't even consider cuts to the bloated military trough their rich buddies feed from.

Greece needs to reject the bail-out package. It should default on its debt; it has no moral obligation to pay it. This will require them to withdraw from the currency union, but so what? It has been a disaster for them anyway. And with debt repudiation, Greece will at least have a chance to start anew.

Let's just hope that the protesters can be successful without further bloodshed.

Ron Paul and the Blindness of Ideological Belief

2010-04-27T17:46:00.000-07:00

Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul, Free Markets

Ron Paul has a piece up at Lew Rockwell's site about the mischaracterizations of Obama as a socialist. He is obviously right about that, but wrong about much else, as usual.

Proceed, sir.

Lately many have characterized this administration as socialist, or having strong socialist leanings. I differ with this characterization. This is not to say Mr. Obama believes in free-markets by any means. On the contrary, he has done and said much that demonstrates his fundamental misunderstanding and hostility towards the truly free market. But a closer, honest examination of his policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.

I just want to stop here and go on the record for first time readers by saying socialism is certainly not insidious. It may or may not be the best system for creating the highest amount of profits, but that really has nothing to do with whether it's a good system or not. That, of course, will have to remain a topic for another discussion.

Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses.

This is untrue. Socialism is a system where the means of production are owned by workers and administered either by them or in their name by the state. In a social democracy, the two groups are one and the same.

Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government.

This is also untrue. Ron Paul hates government, so he places all the blame on government while accusing it of taking over business. But in a corporate state, business and government are one and the same. And if business is governing, then there can be no democracy. This is, of course, where we are heading in the United States. The Obama administration has been a continuation of the Bush administration in this regard.

In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.

And, even more importantly, to the detriment of workers, who soon find themselves at the mercy of large corporations and their government policies.

More to the point, in a corporatist state, there is no actual distinction between government and corporate officials. They are often interchangeable, and sometimes occupy both positions at once. Their loyalty is to each other, and their concern for the general citizenry is limited to ensuring that there are no armed rebellions.

This is exactly where we find ourselves today. Retired generals who serve as special advisors to the government at the same time they serve on the boards of defense contractors (who stand to make billions from each new war) were regularly appearing on TV advocating the invasion of Iraq. Where they government officials? Were they businessmen? There is no longer any real distinction.

Health insurance CEO's literally wrote much of the legislation in the recent health reform bill. Blackwater managers directly commanded US troops in Iraq. Hank Paulson went directly from his position as CEO at Goldman Sachs to his next job as Treasury Secretary, where he was responsible for overseeing his former company. Did he even need to change offices?

A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single-payer health care system.

(Which it would have done if it actually reflected the wishes of most Americans.)

Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance or pay a fine. It also includes subsidies for low-income Americans and government-run health care “exchanges.” Contrary to the claims of the proponents of the health care bill, large insurance and pharmaceutical companies were enthusiastic supporters of many provisions of this legislation because they knew in the end their bottom lines would be enriched by Obamacare.

Absolutely true, although calling it "Obamacare" belies this point, and, while sure to incite a rabid response from his Tea Party minions, obscures the fact that his role was one of merely marketing the product, not creating it. That job was left to the industry, which fought not with Congress or the administration, but amongst each other over which sector would get the biggest pound of flesh.

Similarly, Obama's “cap-and-trade” legislation provides subsidies and specials privileges to large businesses that engage in “carbon trading.” This is why large corporations, such as General Electric support cap-and-trade.

Also true. Instead of making them buy the carbon credits from the peasants who will bear the costs of pollution, the industry plans to just give them to themselves, at which point they can sell them back to the taxpayer in the event that the taxpayer actually wants to stop carbon emissions. And of course, if they do sell them back, they'll just give themselves some more.

To call the President a corporatist is not to soft-pedal criticism of his administration. It is merely a more accurate description of the President’s agenda.

And Ron Paul will probably be called a Marxist for this statement.

When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President’s policies, industry remains in nominally private hands. Using the more accurate term – corporatism – forces the President to defend his policies that increase government control of private industries and expand de facto subsidies to big businesses.

Although, given the fact that corporate media is also a part of the virtual government, it's unlikely that he'll be forced to defend himself any time soon.

This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.

It's amazing that Ron Paul can't take the next logical step. He's been so sure that businesses operating in a free market are the cure for all that ails us that he can't see that in a free market, corporatism is the inevitable result. If there are no rules, why shouldn't the corporate world consolidate into large companies and then take over government?

In fact, the last 30 years have been an experiment in destroying social democracies and anyone else who got in the way of corporate interests, from Chile to Argentina to China to Russia to Iraq and now finally right here in the United States. It's all been done in the name of Ron Paul's beloved free markets. The free market philosophy has triumphed, and it has led us to this place: the Corporate States of America- authoritarian rule by an elite who have consolidated political power and the means of production. This fact is so glaringly self-obvious that it is astonishing that Paul cannot see it, and yet that is the nature of ideology. It is that blinding.

Using precise terms can prevent future statists from successfully blaming the inevitable failure of their programs on the remnants of the free market that are still allowed to exist.

Remnants? There has never been a free market. You cannot have an "kind of" free market. It's like being "kind of" pregnant. The quest for a free market is an impossible one; it results not in free markets (which no one really wants anyway), but in the consolidation of power by those born into it or lucky enough to attain it. Once this consolidation reaches a critical mass, reversing it will become nearly impossible, as the corporate state will own both the means of production and the political system by which it is maintained.

The problem isn't free markets. They are a myth. The problem is that the quest for free markets inevitably results in a corporatist state-the same corporatist state that Ron Paul professes to hate.

We must not allow the disastrous results of corporatism to be ascribed incorrectly to free market capitalism or used as a justification for more government expansion.

To what else, then, would you ascribe it? It has been the direct result, to varying degrees, of every single instance of free-market capitalism. It's not a bug; it's a feature. There is not one single example in the history of the entire human race of a successful free market system outside of Ron Paul's imagination.

And the reason for that is simple. It's a theory. It's an elaborate theory, yet one that seems simple enough to be understood by your average person. It's appealing because it tells you that all you have to do is be selfish and the world will be perfect. But it's a theory. It has never been tried because it fails to take into account one major thing: the fact that human beings never have complete information, and don't always behave in the perfectly rational ways that this theory requires them to do. In other words, it's a beautiful theory ruined by imperfect people.

And so who are you going to believe-your eyes that tell you that every time free markets are tried, they result in a corporate state, or Ron Paul, who insists that "It shouldn't happen that way! That's not how I planned it!"?

Most importantly, we must learn what freedom really is and educate others on how infringements on our economic liberties caused our economic woes in the first place.

What is true freedom, Mr. Paul? Is it the freedom to choose between food and health care while executives eat caviar in their private jets? Is it the freedom to defraud pension funds out of billions of dollars of retirement funds so that Wall Street execs can buy another island? Is it the freedom to trick unsophisticated 20 year olds into going into credit card debt which will take them years to dig themselves out of? Is it the freedom to sell extremely complex and rigged financial products to unsuspecting clients, while taking out insurance on them with AIG so that you get paid off when they fail? Is it the freedom to threaten the poor and middle class taxpayer with the complete destruction of the economy if they don't pay those multi-billion dollar insurance claims when AIG fails? Is it, as Matt Taibbi puts it, the freedom to "sell some working father a car with wobbly brakes, then buy life insurance policies on that customer and his kids"?

Government is the problem; it cannot be the solution.

In a corporate state, this is true. In a democracy, government is us.

It's All Right There

2010-04-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

Glenn Greenwald, Ross Douthat, South Park

Glenn Greenwald rightfully skewers Ross Douthat's outrage at the censorship of the South Park caricatures of Mohammed, noting that Douthat's claim that Muslims get special deference is ludicrous. Go read that column for more.

But I noticed two things at the end of this column that Greenwald didn't address. Here's Douthat:

This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that “bravely” trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

He's speaking here of our supposed deference to Islam, but as a description of what conservatives like him have done to the Constitution in response to the so-called Muslim threat is much worse. Comedy Central pulled a few seconds out of a cartoon; conservatives have exploited the fear to justify invasion, mass killings, torture and an absolute shredding of the Bill of Rights.

Happily, today’s would-be totalitarians are probably too marginal to take full advantage. This isn’t Weimar Germany, and Islam’s radical fringe is still a fringe, rather than an existential enemy.

No, today's totalitarians are on the right wing, as usual, and they have taken full advantage. This isn't Weimar Germany, another famous right wing republic; it's the Neo-Con era, and for Muslims, the difference probably doesn't seem too great.

For that, we should be grateful. Because if a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there’s enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down.

It's already been sent crashing. And his movement is the one that did it.

Tasing Is About Sending A Message. Send One Back.

2010-04-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

Taser, Frank Meek, Jackson WY

JH Underground's Jim Stanford takes a break from his Jazz Fest duties to alert us to another report on Tasering, this time from my hometown paper:

The Teton County attorney said Wednesday he plans to dismiss criminal charges against a man whom police subdued with a Taser last week during a traffic stop.

County Attorney Steve Weichman said the pretrial publicity in the case against Frank Meek makes him uncomfortable.

…

Meek, 60, was arrested during a traffic stop April 7 on a misdemeanor charge of interfering with a police officer and cited for improper vehicle registration. Meek has Colorado plates on his car. He said he is a Colorado resident who lives part time with his girlfriend in Driggs, Idaho, and works at the Jackson Hole Twin Cinema.

Meek accused police of using a Taser on him more than 10 times during the traffic stop. Police released a video of the traffic stop that shows Meek repeatedly calling officers profane names and displaying generally defiant behavior.

This isn't the first time area cops have had fun with a Taser. They famously Tased a harmless streaker at a demo derby a few years ago in front of a large family crowd, literally torturing him and causing him to urinate on himself before losing consciousness. This, of course, was their way of making sure that the event was kept safe for kids to view.

No doubt the cops are glad to have the Tasers. It would be terrible if they had to do what they presumably did before they got them. I suppose they would have had to just shoot that streaker, and the guy who had the audacity to argue with a cop would presumably have been filled with lead as well.

I don't believe that all cops are evil or anything. But to become a cop, you kind of have to have an authoritarian streak. You need to be interested in telling people what to do, as well as in the power that you get when you get a badge, a gun and a Taser.

And in a society that has decided to simply criminalize social behavior that it finds distasteful, like drug use or profanity, you just aren't going to get a lot of people applying for police positions who don't buy into that philosophy. So it's more symptomatic of American society's rightward lurch toward authoritarianism than some narrow indictment of law enforcement.

Look at what is already happening in Arizona, as a result of the new law that requires everyone to carry papers with them at all times to prove they are legal residents:

PHOENIX – A Valley man says he was pulled over Wednesday morning and questioned when he arrived at a weigh station for his commercial vehicle along Val Vista and the 202 freeway.

Abdon, who did not want to use his last name, says he provided several key pieces of information but what he provided apparently was not what was needed.

He tells 3TV, “I don't think it's correct, if I have to take my birth certificate with me all the time.”

3TV caught up with Abdon after he was released from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in central Phoenix. He and his wife, Jackie, are still upset about what happened to him.

Jackie tells 3TV, “It's still something awful to be targeted. I can't even imagine what he felt, people watching like he was some type of criminal.”

Abdon was told he did not have enough paperwork on him when he pulled into a weigh station to have his commercial truck checked. He provided his commercial driver’s license and a social security number but ended up handcuffed.…

Both were born in the United States and say they are now both infuriated that keeping important documents safely at home is no longer an option.

Jackie says, “It doesn't feel like it's a good way of life, to live with fear, even though we are okay, we are legal…still have to carry documents around.”

Let's leave aside the obvious and eerie similarities to the way the Gestapo, the KGB and the East German Volkspolizei typically operated. What will happen when people become understandably upset at the fact that they are being arrested for the crime of not carrying their proper papers with them?

I don't think we should be surprised when we start seeing more completely innocent people brutalized and killed by cops who Tase them for protesting their innocence.

The goal, of course isn't to just subdue the person on hand. It's to send a message loudly and clearly: If you argue or protest your innocence or do anything other than immediately lie on the ground and submit to arrest, you will be immediately and repeatedly shot with 50,000 volts of electricity, which will result in extreme pain or death. After that, you will probably be charged with resisting arrest or assault on a police office so that the officer can justify the shooting.

In other words, the goal is to terrorize people into complying.

This is how police states begin, and the use of psychological terror is a hallmark of each and every one. But it's not too late. It's not too late to call your mayor's office or city councilman or county commissioner and demand that they remove the Tasers from law enforcement agencies.

If you live in Jackson Hole, here are some numbers:

Mayor Mark Barron: 307-733-3092
Teton County Commissioners: 307-733-8094

Call them. They won't think you care if you don't.

No, Our Great Recession Was Not A Mistake. Stop Saying That.

2010-04-26T10:25:00.000-07:00

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman who was as responsible as anybody for the economic crisis which has cost millions of average Americans their jobs, and millions more their life savings, is now trying to convince whoever is still listening that the crisis was not a repudiation of his ideology:

TAPPER: You'll be testifying about the financial crisis on  Wednesday before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. When you  testified before Congress in October, you said that you finally saw a  flaw in -- in the way that you looked at markets, that markets cannot  necessarily be trusted to completely police themselves.

But isn't it -- isn't it more than a flaw? Isn't it an indictment  of Ayn Rand and the view that laissez-faire capitalism can be expected  to function properly, that markets can be trusted to police themselves?

GREENSPAN:..So it's not the principle of competitive markets which really has no  alternative which works. It is a strict application -- as I presented  in a Brookings paper fairly recently on a somewhat technical area, the  major mistake was assuming what the nature of risk would be. And the  reason it was missed is we have had no experience of the type of risks  that arose following the default of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.

This is total horseshit. For one thing, the amounts of risk were not missed. People were pointing them out over and over again during the years leading up to the crisis. For another, this exact same thing caused the Great Depression, and has been repeated over and over in every banana republic in the world. It's not some mystery or unintended consequence.

There was nothing accidental about this crisis. Purely free markets are designed to result in large disparities in wealth. And, in fact, this wasn't a disaster for the people who were responsible. The major financial players (big banks and hedge funds, particularly) made out like bandits. Or, more to the point, the executives and traders of these firms did. They had every expectation that the government would transfer huge amounts of taxpayer money to the banks, and that once they had it they could pay themselves bonuses as they liked. And no one would hold them accountable. In other words, they're keeping your money. They'll be on an island somewhere while the rest of us spend a generation paying the bill.

This is how a free market works. Without political restraint in the form of an educated, involved electorate, the players in a free market will begin to accumulate wealth and power. When they do, they will consolidate that power and use it to control the political system in the absence of any meaningful voter interest (and voters know nothing about the complex ways in which these players rig the game until it's too late, if even then.)

There is nothing anti-free market about big banks using their immense power and influence to control government. In a purely free market, anything goes. It's survival of the fittest, after all, right? And the firms which are best suited to survive in a free market system are not those that make the best product, or provide the best service. No, the ones who know how to write the laws and make government an accomplice to the theft of trillions from poor and working-class Americans are the ones who will flourish in a free-market system.

Greenspan: That's the critical mistake. And I made it. Everybody that I know who works in this business made it. And it means that basically we have to work our way back to understanding what went on. And as I argue, what we need is far more required capital for financial institutions than we've had.

What was the critical mistake? That he was wrong about the correct level of capital reserves? Does he not recognize that in a true Randian free-market economy, there would be no capital reserves? Does he not realize that the position of great power he once held, that of Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, would not even exist in a Randian free-market economy?

Here's the deal, Greenspan. If you want a "free market", then try proposing that we abolish the Federal Reserve, the SEC, the FDIC, the FBI, every single law every written about fraud, and basically the entire system of business and civil law that Western economies have devised over the past few centuries. See how that flies.

And when even your most sycophantic, Randian cultists recoil at the specter of creating a lawless Somalian-style free-for-all, maybe you'll admit that you do need a few laws here and there.

And then maybe, just maybe, you'll admit that the fight isn't over whether we have laws, but over who will be the ones writing them for their own benefit.

For the last 30 years, the financial sector has been writing those laws, and telling all Americans that they are for the good of all the country.

That lie is getting a lot harder to tell these days, isn't?

"Journalism" At Its Best

2010-04-22T08:17:00.000-07:00

This is what passes for reporting these days. Here is an excerpt from a story in the NYT about Obama's planned speech to Wall Street.

The president and his allies have eagerly portrayed Republicans as handmaidens of Wall Street, while the Republicans have accused Democrats of trying to strangle the financial markets and even institutionalize the idea of bailouts in tough times.

One of these statements is true; the Republicans are taking millions from Wall Street in exchange voting as Wall Street instructs.

But the second is demonstrably false. The NYT, of course, could not make that claim itself, because it knows it is false. So instead, it mindlessly prints that "the Republicans have accused", and then never once bothers to find out whether the Republican accusation is false.

I honestly believe that if the Republicans claimed that the moon was made of cheese, the New York Times would simply repeat that claim, and if the Democrats disagreed, they would note the disagreement and move on.

I understand that it is sometimes impossible, due to space limitations, to fully analyze every lie that Republicans make. But if you can't at least note that it's not true, and then link to an analysis of why it isn't, then just don't print the lie in the first place.

It is a well known fact that when people read these lies, it is very difficult to ever get them to rally believe the truth, That's the way the human mind works. You can show them all the evidence you want further down the road; it won't matter.

But this is the sorry state of mainstream "journalism" today. It's not about finding out the truth; it's about simply repeating whatever people in power say. Instead of being an adversary of entrenched power, mainstream journalism aids and abets it.

Republicans Are Outraged At The Attacks On Poor, Defenseless Goldman Sachs

2010-04-20T14:31:00.000-07:00

You've probably read about the fraud charges that the SEC has leveled against Goldman Sachs. Goldman has been accused of intentionally selling investors securities which they knew were designed to fail. People are outraged; the investors include institutions like pension funds and so forth, and Goldman has been a big cause of the financial collapse and has received billions of dollars in taxpayer money, which it has used to pay it's employees obscene bonuses.

Naturally, the Republicans are outraged at what happened. But not at Goldman, you see. They are actually outraged at the SEC for filing the charges, because it makes them look bad for defending the status quo in general and Goldman in particular. From Politico:

Rep. Darrell Issa, the top Republican on the House Oversight committee, is demanding a slew of documents from the Securities and Exchange Commission, asserting that the timing of civil charges against Goldman Sachs raises “serious questions about the commission’s independence and impartiality.”

Issa’s letter, addressed to SEC Chairwoman Mary Schapiro and signed by eight other House Republicans, asks whether the commission had any contact about the case, prior to its public release, with White House aides, Democratic Party committee officials, or members of Congress or their staff.

“[W]e are concerned that politics have unduly influenced the decision and timing of the commission’s controversial enforcement action against Goldman,” Issa writes.

Of course they are concerned. Republicans wouldn't dream of ever taking political advantage, especially not regarding an issue as important as financial reform. Don't think that the millions of dollars they've taken from companies like Goldman Sachs would ever influence them to do anything other than what's best for America.

They're probably trying to return that money right now, and if they can't, they'll go spend it on something that's not political, like strip clubs or private jet service.

And I'm sure that they're also concerned that Goldman, which only earned around $3.5 billion in the first three months of the year, won't be able to afford a decent attorney to defend itself against these charges.

I'm not too concerned for them, myself. After all, not only are they too big to fail, but, as their CEO claims, they're also "doing God's work."

Great. Now Let's Go Home

2010-04-20T14:10:00.000-07:00

Color me unimpressed:

BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced Monday that two top insurgent leaders had been killed, including a somewhat mythic figure who has operated under the name Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Mr. Baghdadi has been reported dead or detained several times previously, and his very existence had been called into question a few years ago by American military leaders.

How many "top Al Qaeda leaders" have been captured or killed since the the war in Iraq began? The list is as long as it's unimpressive. Is this somehow supposed to reassure us that we're making progress in Iraq? Are we to believe that these two guys, whoever they are, won't be replaced immediately by two more?

It reminds me of the constant trumpeting of the arrest of major Mexican or Colombian drug lords, who are replaced just as immediately, and the arrest of whom makes absolutely no difference in the vain attempt to halt the flow of drugs to Americans who want them.

Both men were found in a hole in the ground.

“The security forces surrounded the hole, and when they got them out they were dead,” Mr. Maliki said at the news conference. Mr. Maliki said computers and letters were found that included communication between the men and Osama bin Laden.

I'm curious to know why they were dead. Were they just shot to death in cold blood? If so, why weren't they captured alive and tried?

To the casual observer, this might seem like progress. But if you follow the history, you'll realize that these captures are meaningless. They should be ignored, and they aren't leading to any real change in the underlying situation in Iraq, which is still a complete disaster.

Ray LaHood Wants To Outlaw Cars...Or Something

2010-04-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently announced a new departmental policy which would recognize methods of transportation such as walking and biking as deserving the same opportunity for funding as driving.

Predictably, the defenders of the helpless oil and auto industries immediately attacked LaHood, going as far as to suggest that he was on drugs.

LaHood, of course, was not suggesting that we give biking and walking special treatment. He was just suggesting that we recognize that walking and biking are legitimate forms of transportation.

Of course, driving is already subsidized. The gas tax does not cover the cost of road construction, so money is taken from the general budget for that. But that's just the start of the massive subsidies that driving gets.

The United States has spent trillions of dollars and endured thousands of casualties as a result of the endless wars it now fights to ensure the supply of oil. This is a direct subsidy to oil companies, the auto industry, and drivers.

Who pays for this subsidy? Well, people who walk and bike do. All Americans do, through the payment of taxes to fund these wars. And most importantly, millions of innocent people in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and more pay for it with their lives.

Our current rate of oil consumption is, of course, unsustainable. It is devastating to our economy and to our national security. Our transportation policy currently favors the use of vehicles over any other mode of transportation. Ray LaHood just wants to give people who want to walk or bike a chance to do so. He wants to fund things like bike paths and walkways, or plowing those things in winter so they can be used year round. He is not trying to force anyone to walk or bike. It's a minor change of policy, and one that is long overdue.

He's trying to do his part to make America safer for its citizens and the rest of the world.

And for that, the defenders of corporate America, in their callousness, greed, and complete disregard for human life, laugh at him and accuse him of being a criminal. Will they ever have enough money?

That's how our political system works these days.

Whatever Happened To The Purple Heart?

2010-04-14T19:25:00.000-07:00

I guess they phased those out along with body armor when it became clear that useless stealth fighters were more profitable.

This should make you sick:

For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors' fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers [see Kors, "How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits," April 9, 2007]. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.

According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.

It's not really surprising. No one really gives a damn about the troops once they come home. They're important when they are over there, of course, because you can justify invading foreign countries with some nonsense about supporting the troops. But when they come home, they're mostly just poorly-educated, lower-income citizens, and a large percentage of them are minority. Why would anyone care about a group of people like that?

You Had Your Chance, And YOU BLEW IT!

2010-04-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

Simon Johnson on the Republican plan for financial reform:

At one level, it is good to see the Republican Senate leadership finally express clear positions on the financial industry and what we need in order to make it safer. At another level, what they are proposing is downright scary.

In a Senate floor speech yesterday, Senator Mitch McConnell (Senate Republican leader) said,

"The way to solve this problem is to let the people who make the mistakes pay for them. We won’t solve this problem until the biggest banks are allowed to fail.”

Do not be misled by this statement. Senator McConnell’s preferred approach is not to break up big banks; it’s to change nothing now and simply promise to let them fail in the future.

What makes McConnell's plan not only foolish, but dishonest as well, is the fact that he has already had the chance to let these big banks fail, back in October 2008. So what did he do then?

He voted to bail them out!

The Republicans can talk all day long about how important it is to "let the market decide", and to let these banks fail, but what every single person with even a passing familiarity with the subject knows is that, when the United States Congress is faced with the choice of:

A) Allowing the financial industry to collapse, and doing nothing while tens of millions more Americans lose their jobs in what is sure to be a worse disaster than the previous one

B) Voting to avert complete collapse by handing over trillions of middle class tax dollars to the very corporations which are funding their campaigns, and whom they hope to work for when they leave Congress

they sure as hell aren't going to let these banks fail. And the market knows this. Major Wall Street firms are getting funding at rates which reflects the fact that knowledgeable operators have zero doubt that our government will not let them fail. And Mitch McConnell knows this, too.

But what does he care? When taxpayers finally wise up after the next bailout, he'll probably still have 4 years left in his term, and then he'll just go make a hundred million or so "consulting" for Citibank or Wells Fargo like Robert Rubin did after his "public service" as Treasury Secretary.

I suppose he's doing it for the children. His children, that is.

Still Making Terrorists

2010-04-13T18:03:00.000-07:00

(Posting will be a little light, as I'm on the road for a month.)

This just happened:

KABUL, Afghanistan — American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near Kandahar on Monday morning, killing and wounding civilians, and igniting angry anti-American demonstrations in a city where winning over Afghan support is pivotal to the war effort.

This really shouldn't be too surprising, I suppose. Innocent people get killed all the time during war. There's no using in wondering why these troops wouldn't bother to try something else before just opening fire. You can't arm a bunch of 20 year olds with automatic weapons, give them a license to kill, and then profess surprise when they do it. And it's not the first time it's happened, either.

General McChrystal has sought to emphasize to troops how such cases undermine Afghan support. But he has also stressed his sympathy for troops who have to make critical decisions in an instant.

“We really ask a lot of our young service people out on checkpoints because there’s danger, they’re asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations,” he told troops in a video conference last month.

“However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I’ve been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it.”

Please remind me once again what our goal in Afghanistan actually is. If we're there to wipe out Al Qaeda, well they aren't there anymore. They moved over to Yemen, and if we invade Yemen they'll just go somewhere else.

So what are we doing? Saving the Afghan people from the Taliban? They are the Taliban, and the more we terrorize the population by doing unavoidable things like opening fire on buses, the better the Taliban looks.

Here's what we are actually accomplishing in Afghanistan (and Iraq, and Yemen, and Somalia.) We are creating thousands of angry people, who become suicidal with grief and rage. After that, it's just a matter of Al Qaeda operatives strapping the bombs onto them and pointing them in the direction of Americans, or anyone else who looks like an easy target. Listen to the father of two men who, along with their pregnant wives, were murdered in cold blood by US Special forces, who woke them in the middle of the night and shot them on the basis of some rumor from someone who didn't like them:

The father of the two brothers who were killed in the raid adds, "My heart is burning. I will take revenge, no matter what happens to me."

and

"I have lost patience. I am obliged to revenge my martyrs," he told an ABC News cameraman on March 18. "I will destroy everything I have and will launch my own suicide attack. My heart is burning."

When the Special Forces entered that home, there was one big family and no terrorists. When they left, the family was murdered, and there was a terrorist left behind.

This may not be our mission, but we are accomplishing it nonetheless.

Marc Thiessen Tries To Excuse The Machine-Gunning Of Innocent Civilians

2010-04-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

Torture fetishist Marc Thiessen weighs in today on "Collateral Murder", the video released recently by Wikileaks.

Thiessen: Left-wing blogs have jumped on the video as proof of the callous brutality of American troops.
Glenn Greenwald made a point of saying this:

The WikiLeaks video is not an indictment of the individual soldiers involved -- at least not primarily. Of course those who aren't accustomed to such sentiments are shocked by the callous and sadistic satisfaction those soldiers seem to take in slaughtering those whom they perceive as The Enemy (even when unarmed and crawling on the ground with mortal wounds), but this is what they're taught and trained and told to do. If you take even well-intentioned, young soldiers and stick them in the middle of a dangerous war zone for years and train them to think and act this way, this will inevitably be the result. The video is an indictment of the U.S. government and the war policies it pursues.
I agree with Greenwald, as long as he is not completely absolving the troops from blame. The real blame for tragedies like these lies with those who pushed for, supported, and enabled this tragic, unjust and unnecessary war. People like Marc Thiessen.

Thiessen: The Huffington Post ran a story describing how “crew members can be heard celebrating their kills. ‘Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,’ says one crewman after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street. A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: ‘Come on, let us shoot!’ Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses. And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: ‘Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle.’”
This, of course, is all true.

Thiessen: These words sounds horrific with the 20/20 hindsight of knowing that the targets were not insurgents, but civilians and journalists.
No, this sounds horrific no matter what. At one point a crew member is heard begging one of the wounded to pick up a gun so he can legally shoot him again. He wants the man to pick up a weapon, which would make him dangerous, just so he can shoot him! These aren't brave warriors; they're bullies.

Thiessen: But watching the video, it is clear the troops did not know they were firing on civilians.
That is not clear at all. What is clear is that they a) had no idea who these people were, 2) had a vague suspicion that they were armed and c) couldn't wait to mow them down with machine gun fire.

Thiessen: They thought they were attacking terrorists and insurgents who kill innocent civilians on a daily basis.
Everyone looks like that when you have an itchy trigger finger.

Thiessen: As even the Times points out, the “attacks took place amid clashes in the neighborhood and … one of the men was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.”
Does this mean that anytime you see someone with what you think is an RPG, you are entitled to shoot everyone in sight, whether they are armed or not? And that you can then murder the Good Samaritans who show up to help?

Thiessen: As the video unfolds, the troops mistake a telephoto lens for a weapon and repeatedly say things such as: “That’s a weapon,” “Have individuals with weapons,” “Yup, he’s got a weapon too,” “Have five to six individuals with AK-47s. Request permission to engage,” “He’s got an RPG,” “We’ve got a guy with an RPG,” “Have eyes on an individual with an RPG getting ready to fire,” and “we had a guy shooting and now he’s behind the building.” As the video unfolds, it’s clear the troops believe they have come across heavily armed enemy fighters.
No, that just means that they know that they are on radio, and that if they want to shoot someone, they are going to have to say those sorts of things to justify it. It doesn't mean that it's true, and it doesn't mean that they believe it.

Thiessen: In other words, what unfolds is not “collateral murder” but a tragedy of mistaken identity.
I guess if I convince myself that Marc Thiessen is packing heat and threatening me, I am justified in murdering him in cold blood. As long as I believe it, right? (I do not believe this, just to be clear.)

Thiessen: The Huffington Post reports that “unveiling the video at the National Press Club on Monday morning, [WikiLeaks editor Julian] Assange said the helicopter crew approached its job as if it were a video game, not something involving human lives. ‘Their desire was simply to kill,’ he said. ‘Their desire was to get high scores on that computer game.’” That is unfair. Their desire was not to kill innocent people; their desire was protect the American and Iraqi people from a murderous enemy.
They killed innocent people. They did it in a very enthusiastic way. There is absolutely nothing in that video that would lead you to believe that they cared one bit if those people were innocent or not. They showed an absolute lack of any concern whatsoever. For Thiessen to give these troops the benefit of the doubt is a huge leap of faith, one which a honest person would not be prepared to make.

Thiessen: The video is heart-wrenching to watch, but I suspect that those most horrified after they learned the truth were the troops aboard that Apache helicopter who discovered they had accidentally killed innocent civilians.
You could tell how horrified they were by the way they casually said "Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle."

Thiessen: The incident deserves investigation, and it appears that the military was not fully forthcoming about what took place.
Not fully forthcoming? The military lied about this from the beginning, and refused to release the videos. They were forced into this admission by Wikileaks, an organization which is dedicated to revealing the truth about the war, and which is being targeted by the US Government for its efforts.

Thiessen: If so, disciplinary action may be warranted. But using this tragedy to question the humanity of American troops, or to suggest they have a callous disregard for human life—as WikiLeaks and the HuffingtonPost do—is simply wrong.
Who is questioning their humanity? They are all too human, it appears. And when our troops mow down innocent civilians and children in cold blood as though they are characters in a video game, they deserve to be questioned. And people like Marc Thiessen, who have enabled these horrific wars in the first place, deserve far worse.

Standard Operating Procedures

2010-04-07T14:40:00.000-07:00

From Al Jazeera (which runs circles around American MSM when it comes to reporting) comes this story about the children whose father was murdered in shocking* tape released by Wikileaks (video below):

Two young children whose father was killed in the attack could not understand why they were targeted.

"We were coming back and we saw an injured man. My father said, let's take him to hospital. Then I heard only the bullets ... Why did they shoots us? Didn't they see we were children?" said Sajad Mutashar, who was injured along with his sister.

His uncle, Satar, demanded the pilot be taken to court.

"Nobody gave the children anything, their rights are gone and the Americans didn't even compensate for the destroyed car. I sold it for $500 to spend the money treating them," Satar told Al Jazeera.

The US army says it has authorised payments to the family.

The US Army also said that they don't doubt the authenticity of the video, but that everyone did everything by the book.

And the sad thing is, it's true. It appears that they did. The problem is that doing things by the book includes murdering people in cold blood because they looked suspicious.

*To be clear, what is shocking isn't that this happens. What is shocking is that you are actually seeing it, because this is the kind of thing that the US Government does everything it can to keep quiet about. It wouldn't want people thinking that there might be a reason all those Muslims are angry.

Here is the video if you haven't see in it yet:

Collateral Murder

2010-04-07T08:27:00.000-07:00

This explosive new video from Wikileaks absolutely must be seen by anyone who cares the slightest about what American troops have done in Iraq:

This video shows the cold-blooded murder of civilians who are doing nothing more than standing around talking, and who are not engaged in any kind of military action. After the Apache crew brutally mows them down with a machine gun, a good Samaritan drives by in a van with two young girls clearly visible in the front seat. He stops, and attempts to load up a badly wounded man (who, instead of being an insurgent, was an Iraqi citizen who worked for the Reuters news agency.)

The Apache crew opens fire again, killing the injured man and his rescuer in cold blood, and injuring the two girls in van.

It's like target practice for these guys, who can be heard begging for permission to open fire.

Please watch this. It may make you uncomfortable, but it is your duty as an American citizen to see what your government is doing.

And this is not some isolated incident. These men apparently followed the Rules of Engagement, which means that this kind of indiscriminate killing is officially sanctioned by the chain of command, which goes all the way up to the president.

Keep in mind that we invaded this country after accusing it of accumulating weapons of mass destruction, weapons which we knew that they did not have. We destroyed this country under false pretexts, caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and now pretend to outraged and shocked when Muslims decide to fight back the only way they know how.

This entire war was an illegal act of terror, one that dwarfed what happened on 9/11. And these people had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.

This is what war is. And the people who are responsible for this invasion and the subsequent widespread death and destruction (particularly George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, among others) have still not been brought to justice.

Putting A Hit On An American Citizen

2010-04-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

From the NYT:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

This is indeed an extraordinary step, and one which should disabuse anyone of the notion that President Obama is not only continuing the attacks on the constitutional civil rights of American citizens, but escalating them.

Al-Awlaki is an American citizen. He is not an enemy combatant, and the government is not claiming the right to kill him during battle, but at any time they see him, whether he is at home with his family or out shopping.

This is a direct assault on the Constitution of the United States, and specifically the 5th Amendment thereof:

No person shall be held to answer for any capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The law is very clear on this. The US government cannot kill people for crimes they may have committed without first arresting them, trying them, and convicting them. The only exception is if they are engaged in active warfare. Al-Awlaki is most certainly not engaging in active warfare.

He has been vocal in his criticism of the United States and it's unjust war against Iraq. But this is not a crime. In fact, it is essential and protected free speech.

He has praised Ft. Hood shooter Major Nidal Hassan. But praising someone is also free speech, and the government has done nothing to show that he conspired with Hasan in any way. Furthermore, using the government's own definitions, Hasan was an enemy combatant, not a terrorist, and he directly attacked soldiers.

He has expressed support for the actions of others who have plotted attacks against the United States, but he has claimed steadfastly that he has not been involved in planning these attacks.

Al-Awlaki may or may not be guilty of plotting terror attacks. We just don't know, and the US government is claiming only that it believes this to be true. It has presented no evidence to a judge. It has presented no evidence to the American people. But we do know that he is an American citizen. He was born in New Mexico; his father has a PhD from the University of Nebraska. He is guaranteed certain rights by the US Constitution. And now Obama plans to disregard those rights, and to murder him on sight without so much as a trial or a hearing before a federal judge to present evidence.

With this action, Obama is claiming the right to kill any American citizen anywhere, at any time, for any reason that he deems sufficient.

Film director Roman Polanksi fled the country after pleading guilty to the sexual assault of a 13 year old girl. Why not send in a sniper team to kill him? He's actually had his day in court.

Nine members of the Hutaree Christian militia were believed to be plotting to murder police officers. Why not just drop a bomb on their homes?

The fact that we can't easily arrest Al-Awlaki because he is in Yemen is not an excuse to murder him. The United States government has not even gone to the trouble of presenting evidence and getting an indictment. Is their evidence so thin that they believe they can't get an indictment? If so, how can they contemplate murdering him on the basis of this evidence?

Both the C.I.A. and the military maintain lists of terrorists linked to Al Qaeda and its affiliates who are approved for capture or killing, former officials said. But because Mr. Awlaki is an American, his inclusion on those lists had to be approved by the National Security Council, the officials said.

Who gave the National Security Council the authority to unconstitutionally target American citizens for killing? The NYT notes that "As a general principle, international law permits the use of lethal force against individuals and groups that pose an imminent threat to a country," but international law does not supersede the US Constitution.

Al Qaeda is undoubtedly winning. Their goal was never to defeat the United States on its home soil militarily; that would be impossible. Their goal was change the fundamental character of the United States, and every time we allow our government to suspend civil rights- to spy on its citizens, to torture, to murder its own citizens without any due process whatsoever-Al Qaeda wins.

And today, Obama is driving one more nail into the coffin that holds all the things that America once stood for.

Moving Your Money

2010-04-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

Well, it took a a day or so, but I finally closed down my Wells Fargo account. I had an account for around 10 years with a local bank that was bought out by Wells Fargo a year or so ago. I never had any problems with the local bank; you could always get someone on the phone, and they were never trying to screw you over with fees every chance they got.

Wells Fargo, on the other hand, was another story. At one point they deposited a tax refund in the someone else's account, and then refused to credit me even after months of IRS correspondence resulted in a copy of the EFT which showed that they didn't bother to check the name. I had to begin legal proceedings in order to get this money credited; apparently, they realized that it might look bad to screw a customer out of their tax refund so soon after screwing millions of taxpayers out of billions of dollars.

And that's the real reason I changed banks. I can no longer in good conscience support the activities of the top six banks in the United States, all of which are using the money of depositors like you and me to fund a giant gambling operation which adds no value to the American economy, and in which the executives pay themselves massive bonuses with their winnings and simply bill the taxpayer when they lose. Those top six banks are

Bank of America
Citibank
JPMorgan Chase
Wells Fargo
Goldman Sachs
Morgan Stanley

There are plenty of modern local and mid-sized banks in the country which did not gamble with your money in the derivatives market, who are not still gambling with your money in the derivatives market, and which are not going to gamble with your money in the derivatives market. These six are not among them.

One of the defenses that these big banks like to use is that they provide financial innovation.

This is true. The problem is that the innovations they provide are just fancier and more complex ways to screw their customers and the US taxpayer.

As Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said last year, the only useful financial innovation to occur in the last 30 years has been the ATM.

This is no longer actually true. My new bank, USAA, has recently introduced a mobile banking application for the Iphone which allows me to deposit checks by simply taking a picture of them. I no longer have to go to a bank to do this. It works, and it's awesome. This is actual innovation.

USAA, incidentally, was never in danger of insolvency, and, in fact is not even a corporation. It is an exchange, and since it has no shareholders, it returns its profits to its members or uses them as the ensure that it is adequately capitalized. This is pretty much the epitome of responsible banking.

USAA is reserved for former military people, so it might not be an option for many readers. However, there are thousands of well-capitalized, well-run banks in the United States, and if you're using one of the banks listed above, I urge you to close your account and move your money elsewhere. There is a national movement underway to do just that; you can find more here at moveyourmoney.info.

Consumer deposit accounts are the lifeblood of the banking cartel which is strangling our economy. Instead of investing in businesses, these massive banks are taking your money and gambling with it or using it to pay off regulators to look the other way. The are the reason we have massive unemployment and massive public debt. And they are using your money to defeat reform legislation which would cut them down to size.

If you think Congress will ever pass any meaningful reform, you're mistaken- because these big banks, as Senator Dick Durbin said, "frankly own the place." And if Congress won't act (and they won't), then depositors are the only people who can actually do anything about it.

You have the power. Don't think of it as just a statement. It is one, but it's also an action that will deprive these banks of the ability to further destroy our economy.

Move your money.

Update: Reader Jose Castillo emails the following info:

USAA is great, and they allow anyone to open an account. Some products are limited to military, but anyone can apply for a bank account or credit card*. Go to: https://www.usaa.com/inet/ent_membereligibility/CpMemberEligibility?action=init

*A few cards are reserved for military only

The Fight For Health Care Reform Starts Now!

2010-03-31T11:00:00.000-07:00

The ink had barely dried on the new health reform bill when a new insurance company outrage came to light. A Texas couple has been denied coverage for a heart condition that their baby was born with; their insurance company, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, considered the condition to be "pre-existing" and therefore denied the couple coverage.

This case was made for the headlines; how could a baby's congenital heart defect, which was present before it was even born, possibly be considered a pre-existing condition?

No matter-BS/BC had decided it was, and that was the end of it.

Well, not quite. The latest is that BC/BS, which has been publicly embarrassed by the media firestorm, has decided to reconsider. Which changes absolutely nothing in the big picture, because most people who get their coverage denied aren't lucky enough to have the media publicize their plight.

It was subsequently revealed that the heath insurance industry was already claiming that they had found a loophole which would enable them to avoid covering children with pre-existing conditions even after relevant provision of the reform bill takes effect six months from now.

And people are shocked. Shocked! Those who sold out true health care reform in order to get what they considered would be a political victory are already professing surprise that the bill in fact accomplishes very little, and does it at the price of handing over hundreds of billions of dollars of potential profits, bonuses, and waste to health insurance companies and their executives while doing little to rein in costs.

What did they expect?

There were three main objectives for health care reform, but the public was only told about two of them. Those three objectives were (1) universal coverage, (2) systemic cost reduction and (3) ensuring the profitability of the health insurance industry.

In reality, health insurance profitability predictably turned out to be the most important of these, at least for the people who were writing the laws. (These people were, in many cases, executives of those same health insurance companies.)

The truth is that in a universal coverage system, there is simply no reason to have insurance companies. Insurance companies earn money by discriminating between high-risk (healthy) and low-risk (unhealthy) customers.

This works out great with car insurance. State Farm discriminates between risky and safe drivers, and drivers who are extremely unsafe either can't get coverage or have to pay large amounts of money to be able to drive. We're okay with that, because we realize that people often have a choice about whether to be unsafe drivers, and, at any rate, society has determined that driving a car is not a right.

But our society long ago determined that access to health care is a right. This is settled. Medicare, Medicaid, the VA hospital, an array of tax deductions and the right to emergency treatment are all proof of this. The new legislation acknowledges that right. Health care reform is not a matter of establishing the right to health care; it's a matter of implementing it in a sensible way.

The point is that health insurance companies are essentially useless in a system which guarantees universal access. Useless, but not free.

Health insurance companies cost the system vast amounts of money. Consider the case of the Texas newborn. If the surgery that the baby needs to live costs $50,000, then it makes economic sense for BC/BS to spend $49,999.99 on lawyers to fight that claim. In fact, the executives of that company have a legal, fiduciary duty to do exactly that, because their duty is to maximize shareholder value, not to provide health care.

That $49,999.99 is essentially wasted. It will not be used to provide health care, and it is properly viewed as a drag on the system. Add in the money insurance companies spend on marketing, executive bonuses, return on shareholder capital, and administrative overhead, and you can start to see why the United States spends more money per capita than any other country on earth for a health care system that is ranked lower that of Costa Rica.

So why was primary objective of health care reform to ensure the continued existence of insurance companies? Because they make so much money that they can afford to buy off politicians and run marketing campaigns designed to convince voters that they are essential to the system.

They are not.

What can we do about it?

We should fight for single payer and eliminate the useless, expensive, for-profit health insurance industry. Single payer could be best defined as "Medicare For All." Rep. Alan Grayson has introduced a bill which would provide exactly that. He writes:

Let's face it. Health insurance companies charge as much money as possible, and they provide as little care as possible. The difference is called profit. You can't blame them for it; that's what a corporation does. Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, health insurers got to rip you off. And if you get really expensive, they've got to pull the plug on you. So for those of us who would like to stay alive, we need a public option.

In many areas of the country, one or two insurers have over 80% of the market. They can charge anything they want. And when you get sick, they can flip the bird at you. So we need a public option.

And they face no real competition because it costs billions of dollars just to set up a national health care network. In fact, the only one that's nationwide is . . . Medicare. And we limit that to one-eight of the population. It's like saying that only seniors can drive on federal highways. We really need a public option.

You can sign his petition here. And here is Grayson on the floor of the House explaining this bill:

The fight for universal, affordable health care has only just begun. A majority of voters favor a public option. But it will take a supermajority of informed, committed voters to defeat the powerful health insurance industry, who will fight tooth and nail against anything that improves your health at the expense of their bonuses and profits.

Sign the petition. Learn about the system. Fight for your health care.

The Liquidation of The US Economy

2010-03-30T08:22:00.000-07:00

Marshall Auerback has a guest post at NC in which he discusses the origins of the Greek debt crisis, and makes the point that it was precipitated by both France and Germany, who, he notes, have violated the same GDP/Debt rules that Greece did:

Of course, both France and Germany also violated these rules and were never punished for their transgressions. Indeed, the selective applications of the rule in EMU have made it more apparent that this is nothing more than a liquidationist gambit on the part of Berlin and now, it appears, Paris.

A liquidationist gambit is the removal, by power, of government from the society. Liquidation occurs when society has ceased to be a center of power, and has become a center of weakness. It therefore becomes far more prone to corporate predation. It does not mean that government becomes either smaller or less intrusive, but that government’s traditional role of mobilizing resources for broader public purpose is impaired. These are some of the instruments which are characteristic of liquidation gambits:

1. Looting

2. Corporatism and cartelization

3. Brow-beating (societal interest above self interest, power as power, cooptation and betrayal) particularly via manufactured bankrupcties

4. Shams and accounting frauds

These are all, of course, the exact same types of activities you'd expect to find in your average banana republic. But what should seem frightening to Americans is that three of the four (1,2,4) are now standard operating procedure in the U.S. economy.

And they are certainly not sustainable.

Don't Worry-They Aren't Terrorists. They're White.

2010-03-29T14:19:00.000-07:00

The FBI has arrested a group of alleged radical Christian terrorists militia members, who have been accused of plotting to kill law enforcement personnel. From CNN:

Nine people federal prosecutors say belong to a "Christian warrior" militia were accused Monday of plotting to kill a Michigan law enforcement officer and then attack other police at the funeral.

A federal grand jury in Detroit, Michigan, indicted six Michigan residents, two Ohioans and an Indiana resident on charges of seditious conspiracy, attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, teaching the use of explosive materials and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade and Andrew Arena, FBI special agent in charge, announced.

According to the indictment, the killings “would intimidate and demoralize law enforcement diminishing their ranks and rendering them ineffective.”

Neither the CNN article, nor the NYT story, nor the Fox News piece even once mentions the words "terror", or "terrorist", or "terrorism".

And yet the indictment specifically alleges that the plot was intended to "intimidate and demoralize" through violence. If what these people are alleged to have planned does not rise to the level of terrorism, then is there any meaningful definition of the word at all?

If these nine people were of Middle Eastern origin, or were Islamic, every single headline would have the word "terror" in it. Can there be any doubt of that? Does this mean that "terrorism" is now defined as any act of violence committed by Muslims? If this is going to be the new definition, than the national press corps should state that as fact, and the laws which are written regarding terrorism should be amended to include definitions that say that they only apply to Muslims.

And after that, we should just drop the pretenses and admit that the United States considers itself to be at war with the religion of Islam.

Phil Gramm Fights For Your Freedom... From The Tyranny of Medical Care

2010-03-26T19:15:00.000-07:00

What the hell is this supposed to mean? Former Republican Senator Phil Gramm, while writing about the evils of medical care in the WSJ, closes with this nugget of stupidity:

There is one more overwhelming reason freedom is so critical in health care. In the end, even the greatest health-care system in the world fails. At 92, my mother decided to stop going to the hospital, stop going to the doctor, stop taking her medicine, and to die in her own bed. It was a free choice, and she made it. For her family, it was a painful choice, but she died as she lived—proud and free. Government bureaucrats did not make that decision; she did. And that made all the difference.

This is his rationalization for failing to support health care for all Americans? Because with universal health care, his grandma would not have been allowed to die at home?

Is the right to die at home even being threatened? And by whom? And if it is (it is not), is the right to die at home now more important to Republicans than access to medical care which will help you to live?

You can't make this shit up. It seems as though it's ripped straight from the Onion, but there it is, on the editorial page of the fucking Wall Street Journal.

Ladies and Gentleman, your Republican Party!

Kooks

2010-03-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

Media Matters has this awesome clip of Fox News' Steve Doocy interviewing Tea Party nutcase Victoria Jackson. I think he quickly realizes that this is not part of the Fox News narrative. These teabagger aren't supposed to be crazy, just rationally angry, right? Wrong. Turns out they're crazy.

He quickly tries to dissociate himself from her wacky opinions, but it's a little late for that. That's what you get for playing with fire.

Victoria Jackson is a former SNL cast member. It's really hard to tell if she is serious, or just a comedic caricature of Tea Party people. She's been making these statements for a few years now, so if it's an act it's a pretty involved one.

But what's really amazing is that you can't really tell.

Legal Pot?

2010-03-26T11:50:00.000-07:00

There is a rather exciting new development in the push to legalize marijuana laws. Californians will be voting on a ballot measure that will legalize, tax and regulate marijuana. Here is the relevant text of the "Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010" which Californians will have the option of passing in November:

Article 5 of Chapter 5 of Division 10 of the Health and Safety Code, commencing with section 11300 is added to read:

Section 11300: Personal Regulation and Controls

(a) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, it is lawful and shall not be a public offense under California law for any person 21 years of age or older to:

(i) Personally possess, process, share, or transport not more than one ounce of cannabis, solely for that individual’s personal consumption, and not for sale.

(ii) Cultivate, on private property by the owner, lawful occupant, or other lawful resident or guest of the private property owner or lawful occupant, cannabis plants for personal consumption only, in an area of not more than twenty-five square feet per private residence or, in the absence of any residence, the parcel. Cultivation on leased or rented property may be subject to approval from the owner of the property. Provided that, nothing in this section shall permit unlawful or unlicensed cultivation of cannabis on any public lands.

(iii) Possess on the premises where grown the living and harvested plants and results of any harvest and processing of plants lawfully cultivated pursuant to section 11300(a)(ii), for personal consumption.

(iv) Possess objects, items, tools, equipment, products and materials associated with activities permitted under this subsection.

(b) “Personal consumption” shall include but is not limited to possession and consumption, in any form, of cannabis in a residence or other non-public place, and shall include licensed premises open to the public authorized to permit on-premises consumption of cannabis by a local government pursuant to section 11301.

(c) “Personal consumption” shall not include, and nothing in this Act shall permit cannabis:

(i) possession for sale regardless of amount, except by a person who is licensed or permitted to do so under the terms of an ordinance adopted pursuant to section 11301;

(ii) consumption in public or in a public place;

(iii) consumption by the operator of any vehicle, boat or aircraft while it is being operated, or that impairs the operator;

(iv) smoking cannabis in any space while minors are present.

(Full text of the proposed act is here.

The New York Times has a story on this, and some of the reactions to the proposition are unsurprising:

Opponents, however, scoff at the notion that legalizing marijuana could somehow help with the state’s woes. They tick off a list of social ills — including tardiness and absenteeism in the workplace — that such an act would contribute to.

This is indicative of how desperate the drug Nazis are becoming. Pretend for a moment that this is actually true-that tardiness and absenteeism will result. These people favor arresting and jailing people for doing things that they believe might result in them being late for work. By this standard, we should imprison people for using the snooze button on their alarm clocks. In fact, we should probably just make being late for work a crime.

Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that legalizing marijuana would have this result. But one thing that it will affect is the amount of money that law enforcement agencies get for arresting people who are harming no one- not even themselves.

“We just don’t think any good is going to come from this,” said John Standish, president of the California Peace Officers Association, whose 3,800 members include police chiefs and sheriffs. “It’s not going to better society. It’s going to denigrate it.”

Standish states this as fact, and offers no evidence to support it. But of course he feels that way; members of his organization stand to lose millions of dollars in grants which they receive for arresting and ruining the lives of people who have committed no offense against society.

Mr. Standish said: “We have a hard enough time now with drunk drivers on the road. This is just going to add to the problems.”

Except that the act specifically prohibits the use of marijuana while driving, among other things.

He added: “I cannot think of one crime scene I’ve been to where people said, ‘Thank God the person was just under the influence of marijuana.’ ”

He's probably never been to a crime scene where he was thankful that the perpetrator wore black shoes, or had a hat on, or had taken aspirin for a headache either. Should we outlaw everything that Mr. Standish has never been thankful for?

The War on Americans Who Use Drugs has been an abject failure. It's becoming more and more apparent to people every day, especially to people who don't use drugs. I believe that opposition to it is reaching a critical mass. Polls consistently show the highest percentages of people ever who favor legalization and taxation. More and more states are passing medical marijuana laws, and voters are realizing that the world is not ending. The federal government is running massive deficits while state budgets (especially California's) are in utter disarray, and voters who wouldn't otherwise care are starting to notice the hundreds of billions of dollars we have wasted over the years. People who believe in freedom are starting to question why the United States has far and away the highest incarceration rates in the world. And they are realizing that, for all of that, people who want drugs can still get them whenever they want.

Even if you accept the ludicrous arguments against drug use at face value (marijuana is dangerous, addictive, and makes people prone to violence, for example), it is becoming readily apparent that it just doesn't matter, because people are using them anyway.

I believe that in five years, marijuana will be legalized federally, and most states will have followed suit. There might be a few holdouts (Utah comes to mind), but their position will become increasingly untenable as the supply of federal funding will begin to dry up.

And I think that five years is on the conservative side.

They Have No Shame

2010-03-24T14:32:00.000-07:00

The Huffington Post reports:

On Wednesday, the Judiciary Committee was forced to cancel a hearing as was the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) tweeted today : "Disappointed. Rs refusing to allow hearings today. Had to cancel my oversight hearing on police training contracts in Afghanistan."

Sen. Mark Udall also complained that he had to delay a hearing on the cause of Western forest fires.

Republicans just have no shame. This is no less than an abdication of their duties as representatives of the citizens of their respective states. The United States Congress has a job to do. If they really are going to refuse to govern, then the honorable thing to do would be to resign en masse. How can they continue to justify their lavish salaries, their gold-played government health care, and their expensive pensions when they won't even do their freaking job?

This Explains Everthing

2010-03-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

This New York Times story provides a rather illuminating quote about the passage of health care reform:

“There is no downside for Republicans,” Michael Steele, theRepublican National Committee chairman, said Monday in an interview. “Only for Americans.”

I think what he is saying is clear. In America's "newspaper of record", the Chairman of the Republican National Committee is acknowledging that Republicans are not only not "Real Americans", but in fact not Americans at all.

Journalism In Action

2010-03-21T10:44:00.001-07:00

The New York Times has finally addressed their sorry performance in reporting on the James O'Keefe scandal, in which he falsely claimed that he dressed a pimp and was assisted by Acorn in setting up a brothel for underage girls. The tapes were heavily edited, and Acorn has been cleared of any criminal activity. The Times took all of these claims at face value, and printed numerous stories which uncritically repeated what O'Keefe claimed. After mounting criticism of their lax reporting standards, the Times finally responded through its public editor, Clark Hoyt, who writes today:

Here is what I found: O’Keefe almost certainly did not go into the Acorn offices in the outlandish costume — fur coat, goggle-like sunglasses, walking stick and broad-brimmed hat — in which he appeared at the beginning and end of most of his videos. It is easy to see why The Times and other news organizations got a different impression. At one point, as the videos were being released, O’Keefe wore the get-up on Fox News, and a host said he was “dressed exactly in the same outfit he wore to these Acorn offices.” He did not argue.

That's right - The New York Times, America's newspaper of record, is excusing their false and libelous reporting with this claim: "But we saw it on Fox News!"

Apparently, the budget cuts at the Grey Lady have led them to suspend any actual real journalism and resulted in their reporting staff simply transcribing Fox and Friends.

It's beyond me how anyone can take this newspaper seriously at this point.

Just Speculatin'

2010-03-19T13:34:00.000-07:00

The information coming out the collapse of Lehman Brothers is astonishing. The bottom line is the current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was at least guilty of gross incompetence in ignoring the looming crisis, and mostly likely complicit in manipulating markets by covering it up. I wrote about that here, and Naked Capitalism, among others, has covered it here and here.

Geithner deserved to be fired before this, and these new revelations will make that even more apparent. But I doubt that Obama wants to do anything drastic during the run up to passing his signature health care for fear of jeopardizing the process.

But that process will be over this weekend. What then? Will the administration finally do the right thing and start making some real changes?

I sure hope so.

Young Friedmans

2010-03-19T11:43:00.000-07:00

The freaks (freakonomists?) who think the world can be explained by theories alone are getting excited about this:

What would the world look like if economists were in charge? In the meantime, a charter school organization in Arizona offers a glimpse at what the educational system would look like if economists were in charge. The BASIS Educational Group, run by two economists, requires every 8th-grade student to take a year’s worth of economics. Many BASIS students, who are all required to take at least six AP exams before graduation, go on to take AP Economics in 9th grade, and average a 4 (out of 5) on their AP exams.

This is a great idea! We don’t have enough people running around wedded to the hubris of their economic thinking. Why wait until these kids are in college to turn them into brainwashed free-market zombies? They could be ignoring empirical data and reality right now!

You Want Choice In Health Care? Here You Go...

2010-03-19T11:22:00.000-07:00

We need to reform health care. We have two basic choices: the progressive choice and the right wing/elitist choice:

A. We can choose a system that has been thoroughly tested and works. Every other advanced nation in the world has managed to guarantee universal health care to all of its citizens, and they have done this at up to half the total cost or more than our current system. So we have any number of examples out there to choose from, all of which are more universal and efficient than what we have now. Some of them have been in place for over 100 years. They are proven, and they work.

B. We can try a free market health care system, which has never been tried in a modern advanced economy, and which all reputable economists and experts say will fail miserably at providing universal access and cost savings. It will require us to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid, the VA system, and all insurance, drug, and medical regulations of any kind. People who can't afford care will be left to die or at the mercy of charity hospitals. Insurers will be free to cancel your policy when you get injured or sick; your only remedy will be to sue them to reinstate it, which will hard to do when you're dead. Doctors and hospitals will be free to botch surgeries or mistreat patients without have to deal with pesky malpractice lawsuits. Insurers will write policies that only lawyers can understand, and which say in the fine print that you are covered only as much as they want you to be, and not a dollar more. Anyone with any serious preexisting condition will find themselves completely unable to buy insurance, which means that only the rich will be treated for expensive diseases.

For your average American, this would be a complete and total disaster. But there is one group who would benefit from such a system: rich Republicans. You see, they run most of the insurance companies and hospitals and drug companies. They would make plenty of money, and so they would be able to afford the best care in the world. They wouldn't even have to share waiting rooms with poor people, or people of color, or any of the other untouchables who are not, as Sarah Palin puts it, "Real Americans."

So it's probably not surprising that rich Republicans oppose any meaningful reform. Oh, sure, the insurance industry is supporting the current bill, but that's only because they helped write it, and made sure that it included provisions to force all Americans to buy their product. So their free-market philosophy was abandoned as soon as they realized that they could make even more money by forcing Americans to buy crappy policies that would never really pay out. They figured that was a hell of a lot better than the European models, which take it for granted that insurance companies should be non-profit at a minimum, and non-existent as an ideal.

Everyone, even Republicans, agree that our system is broken and needs to change. Progressives and, as polls consistently show, most Americans, want option A. Rich Republicans, the corporate medical/industrial complex, and Tea Baggers who believe people should have to die before getting "handouts" want option B.

Go ahead, pick one.

This Means War!

2010-03-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Fred Barnes serves up a big plate of crap entitled "The Health Care Wars Are Only Just Beginning":

On Dec. 7, 1941, an announcement was made during the football game between the hometown Washington Redskins and the Philadelphia Eagles. All the generals and admirals at Griffith Stadium were instructed to report to their duty stations. Little did they know their lives would be changed forever and America would be at war, or on war footing, for the next half-century. Pearl Harbor had been attacked.

This was indeed a historic occasion. Few events have changed the course of American history the way that WWII did. You might add to that list the American Revolution, The Civil War, WWI, the Great Depression, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam and 9/11 (and it's subsequent decade-long wars).

Apparently, Fred Barnes would add a government reform of health care to that list.

America will be in a constant health-care war if ObamaCare is enacted.

Will this war involve tanks, guns, bombs and widespread slaughter like WWII?

Passage wouldn't end the health-care debate. Rather, it would perpetuate ObamaCare as the dominant issue for decades to come, reshape politics, create an annual funding crisis in Congress, and generate a spate of angry lawsuits. Yet few in Washington seem aware of what lies ahead.

One can see this from an examination of the other countries that have reformed their health care. Canada, for example, has fought a bloody and disastrous civil war ever since they implemented the original Medicare, guaranteeing health care for all its citizens, who were so angry at this affront to their dignity that they stormed Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

The Swiss have been so busy fighting in the aftermath of their health care reform that they haven't even had the chance to enjoy their status as the world's leader in per capita wealth, and have even been forced to curtail their production of fine timepieces and cheese. The United States will be so busy fighting its own health care civil war that it will never again address another issue (with the obvious exception of a periodic examination of that Communist Obama's birthplace.)

We only have to look at Great Britain to get a glimpse of the future. The National Health Service—socialized medicine—was created in 1946 and touted as the envy of the world.

And at the time, it was, although since then there is reason to believe that the Canadian, French and German systems may now be better.

It's been a contentious issue ever since. Its cost and coverage are perennial subjects of debate.

This is terrible. They instituted this system in 1946. Why didn't they just set all the rules and funding levels in place for eternity? It's obvious that the NHS wasn't created perfectly; therefore it must be evil.

The press, especially England's most popular newspaper, The Daily Mail, feasts on reports of long waiting periods, dirty hospitals, botched care and denied access to treatments.

This is shocking. A conservative tabloid newspaper finds things it doesn't like about a universal health care program? Well, that settles it.

A Conservative member of the European Parliament, Daniel Hannan, last year in an interview on Fox News denounced the NHS as a "60-year mistake," declaring he "wouldn't wish it on anybody."

Daniel Hannan said this? He also said this about Iceland:

"In the ten years that I have been travelling to Iceland, I have watched an economic miracle unfold there"

Iceland, of course, is the country whose economy completely and spectacularly collapsed recently, with its stock market losing 90% of its value and its banking system suffering the worst relative losses of any country on earth. On the other hand, he was a guest on Fox News, where -surprise!- Fred Barnes also works.

As prime minister, Margaret Thatcher bravely cut NHS spending in the 1980s, but current Tory leaders regard criticism of the NHS as too risky. "The Conservative Party stands four square behind the NHS," its leader, David Cameron, said in response to Mr. Hannan.

I wonder why British conservatives are afraid to criticize NHS? Oh, right. Because, though not perfect, it is wildly popular, and the Brits pretty universally qualify their criticism of it by saying something like "At least we don't have the American system!".

Also, pointing out that both major British political parties support the NHS unequivocally is a strange way of arguing that people don't like it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes ObamaCare would have a more congenial fate—that it will become as popular as Social Security and Medicare with voters. She's kidding herself. Social Security and Medicare were popular from the start and passed with bipartisan support.

That's because back then you didn't have crazed right wing operatives like Fred Barnes comparing Medicare to WWII.

ObamaCare is unpopular and partisan. It's extremely controversial. Its passage is far more likely to spark a political explosion than a wave of acceptance.

Here, Barnes omits the fact that it's unpopular and controversial because he and his employer, Fox News, have led the charge to make it a worse bill than it could have been, and because they have been telling their viewers that there are provisions in it that will mandate that all grandmas be killed immediately upon passage. (Grandpas are, curiously, exempt. I'm surprised they haven't latched on to the obvious gender discrimination.)

Democratic leaders believe the public doesn't focus on the process of how legislation is enacted. But in this case they're wrong. I've been amazed at how many people understand "reconciliation"—a process that allows budget and spending bills to pass in the Senate with only 51 votes, instead of 60.

Fred, I'm sure you're amazed at how many of your friends, who are all right wing pundits, have an understanding of how reconciliation works. I can assure you that most of my friends -who are too busy trying to make ends meet and praying they don't get injured or sick- don't give a fuck.

Many voters are also now studying the details of the "Slaughter solution," which would allow the House to "deem" the Senate health-care bill to have passed without actually voting on it and then to vote through changes to the Senate bill. These legislative shortcuts are already infuriating ObamaCare's opponents.

Yes, Fred, many millions of voters are undoubtedly spending their half-hour lunch breaks engrossed in a detailed examination of the ins and outs of a technical procedure in which the majority of the members Congress passes legislation in a process known to these voters as "democracy".

If ObamaCare passes, sooner or later the backlash against it would morph into a movement to repeal it. Republicans would likely make repeal a top issue in congressional elections this November. The GOP is expected to win a substantial number of seats in Congress this fall. If Republicans take control of the House or Senate or both, clashes over health care would be unavoidable.

I guess that this "democratic process" is not really familiar to Barnes. You see, Fred, in a democracy, the majority passes laws. If the voters don't like the laws, they vote the majority our and vote in people that will repeal the laws. So what is your argument against health care reform? That it will involve debate?

Assuming it passes, ObamaCare wouldn't go into effect fully until 2013. This fact alone would make the health-care plan a paramount issue in the 2012 presidential race, regardless of whether Mr. Obama is on the ballot. As long as he's president, Mr. Obama would surely veto legislation to repeal or gut ObamaCare. With a Republican in the White House things would be different. Republicans might be successful in dismantling the program.

Well, if people hate it so much, this will work out great for you. They will vote Obama out.

But Democrats wouldn't give up. Having gone to great lengths to enact ObamaCare, they'd go all out to protect it or revive it. Mrs. Pelosi is already talking about expanding ObamaCare. She favors adding a "public option" to compete with private insurers. "Once we kick through this door [and pass it], there'll be more legislation to follow," she told liberal bloggers on Monday.

And since you have presented no argument against a public option on the merits, we have to assume that this fight will be dragged out because Republicans just like political fights. It makes them feel like warriors, you see.

So the struggle would go on and on. If you think the fights over funding of Medicare and Medicaid in recent years have been unpleasant, wait until the funding battles over ObamaCare start. It's all but inevitable that they would occur every year given the way Mr. Obama has proposed to finance his health-care program.

Yes, the debates are unpleasant. No one likes being accuses of wanting to kill grandma, or of imposing a totalitarian health care dictatorship, or of being a proponent of the fourth Nazi Reich. But unpleasantry is a necessary by-product of a system in which you allow morons like Fred Barnes to have a voice.

ObamaCare low-balls its cost and exaggerates the means for paying for it. "Our proposal is paid for," the president insisted in a speech in Ohio on Monday. It's not. The financing includes billions that are obligated elsewhere. It claims to cut the budget deficit by $118 billion but achieves this by borrowing hundreds of billions more.

Does it cut the budget deficit or not? The CBO said today that the plan would reduce the deficit by $138 billion dollars of the next 10 years. Do you have some other information that the CBO is not aware of?

Who cares if it achieves that by borrowing money? This borrowing is reflected in the CBO analysis. It saves $138 billion over ten years. For someone who harps on the deficit continuously, you'd think this would be important.

At the same time, Mr. Obama's plan offers a cornucopia of new benefits: free preventive care, coverage for those with pre-existing conditions, guaranteed issue, no lifetime or annual benefit caps, and subsidies for insuring 30 million people now uninsured. All of this would increase the use of health-care services.

Yes, it will increase the use of health care services. This is the whole fucking point. 45,000 people a year die in the United States because they don't have access to health care. The best thing about this bill is that it increases the use of health care. The fact that it does that while saving money is just a bonus.

The tendency is to underestimate just how large this increase might be. This was true with Medicare and Medicaid, whose costs have ballooned far beyond initial projections.

Yes they have, because all health care costs have ballooned, because Republicans have refused to reform the system. Medicare and Medicaid have had crazy costs increases, but the increases in the private sector have been even worse.

The annual struggles in Congress over funding for ObamaCare would be intense.

Here you go again, worrying about these intense struggles. Well, guess what? That is what Congress gets paid to do; debate, argue, fight over things and make hard decisions. It's their freaking job. Get over it.

The courts would also get involved. In anticipation of passage of the president's health-care plan, three states—Virginia, Idaho and Utah—have passed laws to nullify ObamaCare's mandate that everyone purchase health insurance. Other states are expected to follow suit. Arizona voters will decide the matter in a referendum in November. Ultimately, federal judges would decide if these state laws are constitutional. Other issues would also end up in court. That includes the constitutionality of the process that Democrats used to pass ObamaCare. We could expect years of litigation.

What's your point? This is how the system works. Virtually every law passed by Congress could be challenged in court. Does that mean we should shut Congress down? I realize that Republicans are trying to do this already, but fortunately most voters aren't in favor of paying some $4.5 billion for a Congress that's too lazy to do anything but push the "no" button.

Enacting ObamaCare would be only the beginning. The controversy surrounding its passage and how it might work would preoccupy the president, Congress and millions of average Americans for the foreseeable future—and then some.

So, to sum it up, we shouldn't pass health care reform. Not because it won't work, or because it's not needed, or because a failure to fix it won't result in the bankruptcy of our nation, but because it's hard work and someone's feeling might get hurt.

Also, because it will probably start a third world war. Or something.

Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself

2010-03-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

I don't think they got that memo. I can't wait to have these guys running the country.

I believe this is what that guy meant to say:

It's really pathetic that a guy with Parkinson's won't get up off of his lazy ass and get a job! You don't see Muhammed Ali or Michael J Fox asking for handouts, do you? This guy should just take responsibility for his disease and suck it up. No one forced him to get Parkinson's. It's not our fault that he can't walk.

If we give him health care, what's next? Government health care for the elderly? It's just un-American. Next thing you know, they'll be getting rid of Medicare and replacing it with government health insurance for the old. That will be the end of the America as we know it.

But just to show you that it's not that I'm selfish, watch me take a couple bucks out of my wallet and throw it in this sick man's face. There! See? I'm not a hard-hearted bastard after all, am I?

Obama Promises Progressives A Public Option While Promising the Insurance Industry There Won't Be One.

2010-03-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

Guess who he was lying to?

Here's a transcript from last night's Ed Schultz show on MSNBC: (H/T Mike Mogulescu)

SCHULTZ: Obviously, we need to pass this health care bill. There‘s a lot of Americans that would be affected. I am bothered by this deal the White House cut with the health care industry and big insurance. Here‘s a quote from a top industry lobbyist. It was reported in “the New York Times” back on August 13th, when the Tea Parties were going on. Quote, “we have an agreement with the White House, and I‘m very confident will be seen all the way through conference. We trust the White House. We are confident that the Senate Finance Committee bill will produce a bill we fully can endorse.”

DAVID KIRKPATRICK, “THE NEW YORK TIMES”: Well, that‘s a lobbyist for the hospital industry. He‘s talking about the hospital industry specific deal with the White House and Senate Finance Committee. I thought, yeah, I think the hospital industry has a deal here.

There really were only two deals. Meaning quid pro quo, handshake, commitment on both sides deals. One with the hospitals and one with the drug industry. I think what you‘re interested is that in the background of both of these deals was the presumption, shared on the part of lobbyists on one side and the White House on other, that the public option was not going to be part of the final product.

I have written in the past that President Obama is lying to progressives and promising he will do everything he can to include a public option. And yet it seems very likely that he made an agreement with the health care industry -before this process even began-to work to ensure that there was no public option.

Well, if you promise one thing to one group, and the opposite to another, someone is going to get screwed. And it's painfully obvious that it won't be the insurance companies. Which leaves progressives, and ultimately, the American public.

Obama is blatantly operating in bad faith. Progressives wanted single payer. They were told they would have to settle for the public option. They were told the president would fight for it. The Democratic leadership promised they would fight for it. The president and the leadership lied. There is no other way around it. They got the bill they wanted, and it's a pile of crap.

Mike Mogulescu writes this:

Whenever I write blogs which are critical of Obama and Congressional Democrats for making corporatist deals, I get numerous comments from people who believe they are progressive but say they will never vote for Obama or Democrats again, that they will stay home at the next election, or that they will vote for small third parties who have no chance of winning. It's not my intent to encourage those views. Do people making these comments really think bringing Republicans back to power would make things better?

My goal is to shine a light on these backroom deals in order to embarrass Obama and Congressional Democrats to put the interests of the voters over the interests of special interests so that Republicans can't play at being faux populists and use that to take back Congress in order to enact even worse corporatist policies.

I appreciate Mike's willingness to criticize the Democrats for acting like Republicans. But I hope he isn't pinning too much hope on the tactic of embarrassing the Democrats. It appears they have no shame.

McCain, Leiberman, and Gestapo Government

2010-03-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

Senators John McCain and Joe Leiberman have just introduced legislation that would allow the United States military to arrest any American citizen, at their discretion, for anything that resembles a terrorist act, and to imprison them forever, without any access to a lawyer, and without a trial. And, presumably, to torture them.

This is perhaps the most disgusting and anti-American bill I have ever seen. It quite literally would allow the use of the exact same tactics that the KGB and the Gestapo employed. It violates everything that America stands for, and is in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.

If this bill had been the law in 1996, Richard Jewel (the Olympic security guard hero who saved the lives of many people but was initially suspected of being a bomber) would have been arrested, thrown into a military prison, denied a lawyer or any contact with the outside world, interrogated and tortured, denied a trial, and died alone and terrified in some black hole prison.

If nothing else, this bill is a stark reminder of the moral depravity of Senators McCain and Leiberman. And if the reaction of the American people is not a swift and unconditional condemnation, then the same will apply to us.

OpenCongress has more here.

Drug Terrorism

2010-03-16T12:35:00.000-07:00

Connor from Newsy.com submitted this excellent video, which I present without further ado.

There is no question that these killings constitute terrorism, and there can be no doubt that United States drug policy is creating and sustaining these terrorist groups. The death toll dwarfs that of 9/11, and the killings are often carried out in the most brutal and torturous manner (beheading, disemboweling, and dissolving victims alive in acid), and yet Americans consider these victims of our drug war to be little more than an afterthought.

But even for those who believe that one American's life is worth that of a thousand Mexicans, it is impossible to ignore the danger of intentionally breeding massive terrorist groups in a neighboring country with which we share an extremely porous border. Drug terrorism has already spilled across the border, and it will only get worse as the Mexican government is rapidly losing any semblance of control over the situation.

The solution is simple. Legalize drugs. And I don't just mean marijuana. Our drug policy has succeeded in doing only one thing-creating the largest and most lucrative black market in the history of the world. The violence associated with it has killed hundreds of thousands of people, and many more have died as a result of disease and overdose from using dangerous products that are sold without even the most basic regulation we expect from aspirin. Instead of selling drugs from a regulated pharmacy, we are empowering criminals to sell drugs, and these criminals have no compunction about selling drugs to children, or murdering to protect their turf.

We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars, imprisoned millions, gotten countless people killed and ruined countless more lives.

And for all of this, we have not reduced drug use one whit.

Mr. President, end this war!

At Least One Congressman Gets It

2010-03-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, Alan Grayson for president!

That $3 trillion dollars probably could have paid for the health insurance of the 45,000 Americans who die each year because they don't have any. But at least the oil companies are making money and Israel can keep building settlements.

Grayson forgot one benefit of the war. We removed the only regional counterweight to Iran, which has allowed Iran to become stronger and more belligerent. This, of course, is not a benefit, but it does give some neo-con artists an excuse to bomb the hell out of Iran, which, while disastrous for the United States, would excite them in a sick way. And so they probably consider that a benefit.

More Drug Killings

2010-03-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

This time traffickers are targeting people connected to the US consulate:

CNN) -- Three people connected to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, were killed in two drive-by shootings, a senior White House official told CNN Sunday.

Two of the victims were an American employee at the consulate and her U.S. citizen husband. Their 1-year-old child, who was in a vehicle with the couple at the time of the shooting, survived the incident, according to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office.

The American couple were found dead inside a white Toyota RAV4 with Texas license plates, according to the Chihuahua state attorney general's office.

The woman was shot in the neck and left arm, while the man had a bullet wound near his right eye, officials said.

The Obama administration's response was predictable:

"These appalling assaults on members of our own State Department family are, sadly, part of a growing tragedy besetting many communities in Mexico," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement Sunday night. "They underscore the imperative of our continued commitment to work closely with the Government of (Mexican) President (Felipe) Calderón to cripple the influence of trafficking organizations at work in Mexico."

Right. In other words, they promise to do what they can to stop the influence of drug cartels, as long as that means they don't have to do anything politically risky.

These cartels are a direct product of American drug policy. If drugs were legal, these cartels would not exist. And these people would not have been brutally murdered.

Our drug policy is clearly counterproductive, immoral and unjust. The president undoubtedly knows this. And yet he refuses to even discuss changing the policy because he is afraid that conservatives will label him "soft on crime."

In the meantime, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens have died, America imprisons people at rates which would make Iran and China blush, tens of billions of dollars are wasted each year, an entire generation of minorities is relegated to second-class citizen status for life, and people still use drugs at the same rate they did before the War On Drug Users. But Obama won't even consider changing any of this because it might hurt his chances for a second term.

Yes sir- Change We Can Believe In!

Hiding Behind Reporters

2010-03-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

From an NYT story:

With results still trickling in slowly from Iraq’s parliamentary elections last week and no clear winners likely to emerge anytime soon, public frustration here seems to be growing. American officials have privately expressed concern that even a fair election might be made to appear unfair.

No, they have not.They have done no such thing. You cannot express something privately on the front page of the New York Times. Which American officials are these? Why won't they give their names? What happened to the NYT's policy of not using anonymous sources unless absolutely necessary?

Read that last sentence again:

American officials have privately expressed concern that even a fair election might be made to appear unfair.

This is written to imply that the elections were fair, would make a casual reader assume that they were, and that evidence to the contrary is just coincidental and unfortunate.

And maybe that's true. But we will never get to ask that question of this person, because the NYT has agreed to give them anonymity for no reason, and against their own policy.

My new policy will be to automatically assume that anyone who speaks off the record without a good reason (and that reason had better be explained in the story), is lying, period.

Therefore, when I read this story I assume that this election is rife with fraud, and that that is the probable cause of the delay.

Tricky Dick Fuld

2010-03-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

The Lehman Brothers post-mortem is finally complete, and it's not pretty. Examiner Anton Valukas, while stopping short of declaring a finding of criminal fraud, has found plenty of evidence of it. From the NYT:

According to the report, Lehman used what amounted to financial engineering to temporarily shuffle $50 billion of assets off its books in the months before its collapse in September 2008 to conceal its dependence on leverage, or borrowed money. Senior Lehman executives, as well as the bank’s accountants at Ernst & Young, were aware of the moves, according to Mr. Valukas, the chairman of the law firm Jenner & Block and a former federal prosecutor, who filed the report in connection with Lehman’s bankruptcy case.

The intent here was to deceive regulators and shareholders. Lehman used a very questionable type of repo transaction to hide these liabilities. It was so obviously against the intent of the safety regulations that they could not find an American law firm to sign off on it. Instead, they went to London and got a British firm to give them an OK.

There were three parties involved in this deception: Lehman executives, Ernst & Young, and the New York Fed.

The NY Fed, of course, was run by Timothy Geithner, who is currently the Treasury Secretary. Either he knew about this and ignored it, or he was so grossly incompetent that he didn't know. Neither is an excuse. He allowed an insolvent company to hide its insolvency while middle class pension funds invested in its stock and bonds. When Lehman collapsed, a lot of retirees were among the people who took the big hit. Geithner must resign.

Ernst & Young is yet another accounting firm following in the proud footsteps of Arthur Andersen, the company that enabled Enron to commit massive fraud. There is a real problem with our auditing system. Accounting firms are auditing the companies that pay them; this sets up an obvious and inherent conflict of interest which results in firms like Ernst & Young abdicating their duty to protect taxpayers and investors from fraud, and instead actively sanctioning whatever shady activity will earn management the most in bonuses this year.

Valukas found that Lehman CEO Dick Fuld was "at least grossly negligent." But Fuld's lawyer claims that he “did not know what those transactions were — he didn’t structure or negotiate them, nor was he aware of their accounting treatment.”

This is ludicrous. These transactions hid nearly $50 billion worth of bad assets. They were the only thing keeping Lehman Brothers afloat. Dick Fuld made nearly a half a billion dollars during his career at Lehman, and averaged nearly $64 million a year in the six years preceding his firm's demise. For someone who makes that much money, you'd think he'd have some fucking idea where $50 billion dollars went. It's not a small amount of money. It's more than the combined value of the entire economies of Albania, Nepal, Cambodia, Haiti and Nicaragua, countries which are populated by some 60 million human beings.

Of course when it comes time to get paid, these Masters of the Universe believe that they are truly irreplaceable, "doing God's work", and worth every million they make. But when they destroy the economy and we try to hold them responsible, they suddenly claim they spent their entire tenure in the corporate bathroom, and that it's someone else's fault. Well, I don't buy that. For a half billion dollars in compensation, your job is to know these things. Here's hoping Tricky Dick Fuld gets charged with crimes; civil fines aren't going to hurt him in the least.

This should get interesting, as more information starts coming out. A year and a half after the financial collapse, and the destruction of trillions of dollars of middle class net worth, there have been virtually no arrests or investigations. There is absolutely no doubt that fraud was committed countless times and in countless ways, but no one has been held accountable. The executives are still there and collecting their bonus checks. The regulators are still there, or have been promoted to Cabinet posts like Geithner. The accountants are still looking the other way and taking money to do it.

Maybe this report will finally convince the Justice Department to get involved. Congress seems to be too busy trying to cut unemployment benefits for the people who got screwed out of their jobs in this whole mess.

Yves Smith has more here.

Jon Stewart vs Marc Thiessen

2010-03-12T09:40:00.000-08:00

Jon Stewart eviscerates torture promoter Marc Thiessen:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Exclusive - Marc Thiessen Extended Interview Pt. 1

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

It's pathetic that Jon Stewart is the only person who will actually conduct this interview the way a journalist should. At the end of this clip, Thiessen is angry that Stewart has challenged him. His complaint is that Stewart, unlike most of the mainstream "journalists", actually call him out when he lies or omits important facts.

Thiessen tries to defend, among other things, the despicable ad run by Liz Cheney which accuses lawyers who volunteered their time to make sure that innocent detainees were afforded their constitutional rights of being Al Qaeda sympathizers. Thiessen compares them to mob lawyers or drug cartel lawyers, a comparison so grossly dishonest that it fits right in with the whole "Keep America Safe" viewpoint perfectly.

Here's the difference: when you refer to "mob lawyers" or "drug lawyers", you are making an assumption about these lawyers, and that assumption is that they are dishonest, that they will do anything to get their clients off, that they are in bed with their clients, and that they are in fact just criminals who haven't been caught yet. To the extent that they are honest lawyers trying to defend their clients within the context of the law, we would not refer to them as "mob lawyers" or "drug lawyers".

The GITMO attorneys were defending people that were, in most cases, innocent. They volunteered their time, they did not profit from it, and they have no other connection to their clients. These attorneys did this because they believed in the American ideals of justice and innocence until proven guilty and the United States Constitution. For defending these American ideals, Liz Cheney accuses them of being terrorist sympathizers and Marc Theissen goes on nation television and compares them to criminals posing as lawyers.

And it should be pointed out that the innocence or guilt of their clients is not relevant. You are not supposed to know if someone is guilty before you begin the process of determining whether they are guilty or not. This is why you have lawyers and trials and constitutional safeguards. Thiessen incredibly claims that we should consider lawyers who defend accused pedophiles of being pedophiles themselves. Notice the two massive errors he makes in this one claim:

1. Lawyers who defend people accused of crimes are guilty of those crimes themselves.
and
2. People who are accused of crimes are automatically guilty.

It's both incredible and frightening that someone with such a warped and disgusting view of the most basic concepts of the American legal system and the Constitution could have ever set foot in the White House, much less write speeches for the most powerful man on earth.

And it's equally frightening that the only person who is willing to call him out on it is a comedian.

If This System Is Right, Then I Want To Be Wrong

2010-03-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

It would be difficult to find a single incident that better encapsulates everything wrong with our war on drugs and the police state it has spawned than the death of a man who was Tasered after he tried to avoid being arrested for marijuana possession by swallowing the drugs. He died shortly afterwards.

The local sheriff, Frank McKeithen, predictably tried to blame it on the victim, saying "This subject chose to ingest this and put this in his mouth, and because of that, you know, he's dead."

That's not why he's dead. He's dead because three cops, who apparently can't figure out how to subdue one man without resorting to deadly force, decided to shoot him full of 50,000 volts of electricity while he had something in his airway.

Think about the big picture. A man is carrying a misdemeanor quantity of an absolutely harmless drug. He is stopped by police. He is unarmed. Somehow, three cops let the situation get so far our of control that the end up Tasering the man to death. Sweet land of liberty!

Ten minutes before, this guy was a zero risk to society. And now he's dead. And Sheriff McKeithen thinks the system worked just fine.

Not A Good Sign

2010-03-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

I should say I'm shocked and horrified, but I suppose I'm really just kind of numb at this point:

WASHINGTON — With Democratic Congressional leaders and the White House struggling on Wednesday to finalize the details of major health care legislation, House Democrats were desperately trying to prevent another of President Obama’s top legislative priorities – an ambitious overhaul of student loan programs – from becoming a casualty of the health care battle.

...

Some Democrats said that such a move would stall the student loan changes at a minimum for several months, and perhaps kill the overhaul altogether.

Mr. Obama’s plan would end a program in which the government pays private, for-profit student lending companies to make risk-free loans using taxpayer money. Instead, the proposed overhaul would broaden the government’s existing direct-lending program, saving billions of dollars that the president had proposed using to expand Pell grant scholarships for low-income students.

The current program is literally a huge, multi-billion dollar giveaway to banks at the expense of taxpayers and broke college students. Gail Collins explained it best several months ago:

Let us stop here and recall how the current loan system works:

1) Federal government provides private banks with capital.

2) Federal government pays private banks a subsidy to lend that capital to students.

3) Federal government guarantees said loans so the banks don’t have any risk.

And now, the proposed reform:

1) The federal government makes the loans.

Wow. You really do wonder why nobody came up with this idea before.

I wrote more about it here. The current system is such a ludicrous, egregious handover of taxpayer money to banks that it is simply impossible to defend. And yet the reform of this system will probably fail because enough Democrats will join every single Republican in voting against it.

If this can't be reformed, how can we every expect to do anything to slow the rising cost of health care or reduce the military or keep the banks from finishing off the US economy.

Some days, I just see no future for this country.

Sadly, the Hurt Locker Is What Passes For A Great War Film

2010-03-11T12:09:00.000-08:00

I finally watched "The Hurt Locker" the other night, and I was, to put it mildly, underwhelmed. As an action/suspense movie, it was ok. But the fact that it was an action/suspense movie is what really bothered me.

It's been seven years since our government lied to us, and then launched a war against a small, helpless foreign country which had done nothing to us. This war resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and thousands of American troops. It has cost nearly $1 trillion dollars. It has destroyed what little moral standing America had left in the world.

These facts are not in dispute. It is, quite frankly, one of the biggest foreign policy fuck-ups of all time. And Hollywood can't even bring itself to make a mainstream movie that so much as alludes to these facts.

Critics are falling all over each other trying to congratulate this film for being apolitical. But they ignore the fact that it is simply impossible to make an apolitical film about a subject as political as Iraq. By refusing to address the illegitimacy of war, or the impact on the Iraqi people, they are making a political statement-namely, that these issues are not important. And they are very important.

Robert Scheer makes another point:

What a shame that the one movie about the Iraq war that has a chance of being viewed by a large worldwide audience should be so disappointing. According to press reports, members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences finally found a movie about the Iraq war they liked because it is “apolitical.” Actually, “The Hurt Locker” is just the opposite; it’s an endorsement of the politically chauvinistic view that the world is a stage upon which Americans get to deal with their demons no matter the consequence for others.

It is imperial hubris turned into an art form in which the Iraqi people appear as numbed bystanders when they are not deranged extras. It is a perverse tribute to the film’s accuracy in portraying the insanity of the U.S. invasion—while ignoring its root causes—that the Iraqis are at no point treated as though they are important.

And that's just it. Iraqi's, to many Americans, are not really even humans. We obsess over American casualty counts, but could give a rat's ass about how many Iraqi's have died as a result of our invasion. And the "Hurt Locker" is a perfect example of this. Towards the end of the movie, an innocent Iraqi, who has been booby trapped, pleads for the hero to save him. He is a good man, a family man. Everyone is in agreement on this point. But when he is blown up anyway, all of our concern is directed towards the hero, and how his failure will negatively affect him. The film can't even spare a few seconds of footage for the Iraqi man's family, because in our world, having your Iraqi father blown into little pieces just isn't as important as the the ego of an American soldier.

But this dehumanization is necessary if we are to continue to bomb, murder and torture people who get in the way of our dreams of global domination. It was the same with Hitler and the Jews. Dehumanization is something that "civilized" people must do before they murder other people. Because "civilized" people would never do what we did to the Iraqi's if the Iraqi's were human beings.

I hope that a truly great film will be made about Iraq one day. I hope that it has no speaking parts for any American soldiers. I that hope it centers on what it would be like to live through through the nightmare of the last seven years. A film like that could transform hearts and minds.

But this is not that film.

Now This Would Be Change You Can Believe In

2010-03-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

This is how health care reform should have been approached from the beginning. It would have made the Republicans take a position on Medicare immediately, and it could have have begun helping people immediately.

How can Republicans justify denying Medicare to the rest of the country? Why should a healthy, well-off 68 year-old get Medicare, while a poor 30-year-old with lupus gets a death sentence?

Instead of a confusing, bloated, insurance company giveaway like the bill which the Senate has passed, why not just propose The Medicare For All Act? Medicare is hugely popular, and the voters would love it.

I realize that this is a rhetorical question. We don't really live in a democracy anymore, at least not in any meaningful way. And so what the voters want is pretty much irrelevant. But what is relevant is what the insurance companies want, and Medicare For All would be the end for these parasites.

Please, Please...

2010-03-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

...Please, please please let this happen:

CALLER: If the health care bill passes, where would you go for health care yourself? And the second part of that is, what would happen to the doctors, do they have to participate in the federal program, or could they opt out of it? [...]

LIMBAUGH: My guess in even in Canada and even in the UK, doctors have opted out. And once they’ve opted, they can’t see anybody Medicare, Medicaid, or what will become the exchanges. They have to have a clientele of private patients that will pay them a retainer and it’ll be a very small practice. I don’t know if that’s been outlawed in the Senate bill. I don’t know. I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.

So Democrats could finally, after all these years, accomplish one their most cherished goals and, by doing so, run Rush Limbaugh out of the country. Naturally, they'll screw this up.

Also, I think it's funny that Rush wants to go to Costa Rica. Costa Rica's health care system, of course, is not only ranked higher than the ours by the World Health Organization, but is a perfect example of socialized medicine with universal coverage.

But hey-let's not tell him that.