You are the steward of your 401k. After Enron, I warned everyone I knew that these people were playing fast and loose with the rules. Sure, Phil Gramm got a few things through in the late 90's but once the Bush free marketeers got into it, it was just nuts. I think Goldman Sachs was leveraged 33 to one for god's sake. Hank Paulson him self got the SEC to change the rules that he took advantage of, and then when he became treasury secretary, basically bailed himself out.
You don't have to be a genius to know if you pile up a bunch of money and don't pay anyone to guard it, it will disappear. The Bushies did this with cold hard cash they sent to Baghdad on pallets! Billions if cash right from the US Treasury. Then, they did it 1000 times bigger with credit default swaps and unregulated insurance instruments. The average 401k guy gets told to buy and hold, the long run is good, stay in stocks if you're young, yada yada yada... Meanwhile, they're pocketing your money, buying jets and private islands in countries with no extradition, no income tax, and no minimum wage.
Just imagine what would have happened if we fed this GOP genetic mutation our social security funds.
So, is the 401k a bad thing? Should you be buying in right now? Well, you can get some good stuff cheap right now. But the next time you smell a bubble, put it in a money market fund. I wish people had the option of just going into an index fund with no fees. In the long run, that's better than all that damn day trading anyway. But who knows... It could be Mad Max world soon, in which case you'll want to invest in sharp boomerangs and gasoline.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Friday, March 06, 2009
Conservative Catharsis: Blame Deregulation and Privatization
George W Bush broke the world. It was pretty fucked up to begin with, after years of laissez-faire economics practiced by all American presidents since FDR, but much more so since Reagan. The conservative philosophy was corrupted by deregulators who's belief in the free market completely left out the fact that most people are greedy bastards who will steal everything that's not tied down.
Now this upper class of well-to-do Reaganites, many of them in the Democratic party, have drained the wealth of this country into their walled communities and private security forces, while they whine about their portfolios being worthless. What did they think when they were doing everything Phil Graham suggested? Did they think we could just trust the robber baron class not to be robber barons?
The profit motive works just fine in a regulated market, where everyone has their cards above the table, and we all play by the same rules, which we can all understand. Old timey conservatives were for stringent regulations, especially capital requirements on banks and the like. To be a fiscal conservative meant, literally, to not take crazy risks. A little risk for a decent return, but nothing crazy.
Well, you guys had your chance and you blew it. But what's funny about it is that Karl Marx basically predicted it. It's not hedge fund science, you know. If you have a bunch of money in one place, and you loosen the rules that protect it, someone will steal it. Human nature--GREED--is not good in a market because the greedy will take down the rest of us in that inter-dependent system.
So, now we're going to try something else. It's kind of like what FDR tried, at least in the sense of the largess, the investment in infrastructure and people, and the like. But it's also like FDR in the sense that he realized that everyone deserves some basic floor to stand on: a starting place so that we are all, indeed, created equal when we become a member of The Class of US Taxpayers. Now some of us might get more out of that system than we paid in, but the ones at the top will still get something out of it. They'll have clean dishes to eat cooked food on in restaurants. They'll have firemen and cops and teachers and those people will have the basic dignity of health coverage, affordable housing and utilities, and the like. If the private enterprise system refuses to charge enough for the products and services so that those people can be paid enough to buy their own coverage, then it is we the people, the government, who must force them to, through taxation.
And if you don't believe that, then your option is to have a whole class of people who are broke, unhealthy, and damn angry about it. In this country, those people vote for someone who will make the playing field fair again. In the current view of the dominant conservative voices, those people can just crawl off and die somewhere. Or wind up in prison where we subsidize their everything.
There will be people at the top who pay for it. That is populism. That is the price you pay for living in a country where we pay people who stock shelves at Wal Mart so little that they qualify for government subsidized health care. I'm sure most free market conservatives would prefer to have Wal Mart take care of their employees. But then how could they be the low price leader?
It's still a free country, and there's going to be a free market for practically anything (including things that are illegal). There will be a free market for health care and those of you who can afford it are more than welcome to sink your dollars into a system that profits from your sickness on one end (the HMOs) and profits from your minimal care on the other (the insurance companies who don't want to pay, they just want to collect). I ask you, which force will drive doctor salaries lower? A government that tries to enforce fairness, no matter how cumbersome a bureaucracy that develops in order to implement that fairness (and, again, medicare does it with amazingly low administrative costs compared to private companies), or a private insurance company that is trying desperately to keep outlays down because raising premiums is just making them lose customers?
I'm all for personal responsibility. I grow a lot of my own food. I own my own small business and work for a lot less than minimum wage. I would require more stringent food requirements on Food Stamp recipients, like me, to eat healthy foods and support local, small, and organic farmers. But when it comes to something as complex as health care, I just don't trust the greedy bastards to run it anywhere but into the ground.
I lived in LA for 20 years. I remember the Enron fiasco during the electricity crisis. We had been sold a bill of goods about privatizing and deregulating the electricity markets that turned out to be worse than a load of horse shit (which is at least good fertilizer). It is a perfect example of how unfettered markets only serve as suet to a bunch of hungry birds like Ken Lay who fly away with the whole chunk if they can.
At that point, I started looking into co-ops, public ownership of utilities, community supported agriculture, and credit unions. I like employee owned companies and try to support them when I can. Guess what all those examples are? Communist! They take the assets, the factories, the power lines, the loan portfolios, and they collectively own them among all the members. Where I live now, we have an electric co-op (a remnant of FDR's Rural Electrification Association). It's great. All the people who get the cheap power own the assets of the power company collectively. There is no profit, but the guys who cut the tree branches out of the way get paid well, get health insurance and other benefits. So does the nice lady who answers the phone. Because we, the owners, have decided that's a good thing to do. There's no profit for any corporation, but there is enough to make sure everyone gets paid what they're worth. If those employees had a government health plan they could choose, and pay for with a tax on their paychecks, then as a co-owner of the co-op, I would be more than happy to give them a raise with the money the co-op saved by not having to pay for their health care.
I'm pretty sure GM would like that too.
Why should health care be any different than the co-op itself? Why can we not use the medicare paycheck tax to pay into a fund that is then used to pay our dues for a medical co-op that fairly and equitably distributes care on a triage basis, and puts a premium on prevention, even to the point of rewarding people who do the right thing for their health (thereby being less of a burden to the rest of the co-op)?
Now a lot of people will say it's a red commie flag there, but if you really think about it, and look back over American history at the collective good that has developed as a ethic in this country, it's conservative. It says YOU have a stake, YOU have a responsibility, and if you do well, you will be rewarded. The fact that we are all owners makes it the ownership society for real. And the fact that it is controlled by a bureaucracy that is built to make it as fair as possible takes it out of the realm of Stalin or other totalitarian philosophies, and puts it squarely in the hands of voters who get tho choose the head of the federal government every four years.
I worked my ass off for big entertainment companies for 20 years. They made plenty of money off my labor: more than I did, in fact. And when that work caused the degenerative disease I have in my big load bearing joints, those company's insurance companies denied that they had caused it, and tossed me out like any old broken cog. In your world, it's toughsky shitsky for Scotty because they have to profit. In my world, the money I put into the co-op would come back to me from the co-op when I needed it. Some guy who profited more from my work might have to pay a little more tax now to fund it, but I'll never get back all the profit I helped him make. That's fine. But when he tries to say he has no responsibility for my care, now that I'm broken down and can't do the physical labor that I spent 20 years turning into a career, I say he's full of it.
But when he says, well, I don't really want to pay into a system where a bunch of jet-setting insurance company executives and HMO executives milk every last dime out of everything in order to feed their Myopic vision of next quarter's stock price, then he has a point. I don't want him to pay them either. I want him to pay my doctor, with as little administrative or other overhead as possible. In fact, less overhead means more for my doctor.
So that's my long and winding explanation of why I want medical care to be non-profit and universal. And I'd like to thank the Ron Paul Republican who's been rattling a few cages around here for setting me off on what was a comment, but turned into a diary. So much for banging out a quick answer and getting back to work!
And thanks to Hunter today for firing up my populist, anti-Randian roots. Sometimes I forget why I hang out here, and then Hunter posts something that makes me feel like writing again.
Now this upper class of well-to-do Reaganites, many of them in the Democratic party, have drained the wealth of this country into their walled communities and private security forces, while they whine about their portfolios being worthless. What did they think when they were doing everything Phil Graham suggested? Did they think we could just trust the robber baron class not to be robber barons?
The profit motive works just fine in a regulated market, where everyone has their cards above the table, and we all play by the same rules, which we can all understand. Old timey conservatives were for stringent regulations, especially capital requirements on banks and the like. To be a fiscal conservative meant, literally, to not take crazy risks. A little risk for a decent return, but nothing crazy.
Well, you guys had your chance and you blew it. But what's funny about it is that Karl Marx basically predicted it. It's not hedge fund science, you know. If you have a bunch of money in one place, and you loosen the rules that protect it, someone will steal it. Human nature--GREED--is not good in a market because the greedy will take down the rest of us in that inter-dependent system.
So, now we're going to try something else. It's kind of like what FDR tried, at least in the sense of the largess, the investment in infrastructure and people, and the like. But it's also like FDR in the sense that he realized that everyone deserves some basic floor to stand on: a starting place so that we are all, indeed, created equal when we become a member of The Class of US Taxpayers. Now some of us might get more out of that system than we paid in, but the ones at the top will still get something out of it. They'll have clean dishes to eat cooked food on in restaurants. They'll have firemen and cops and teachers and those people will have the basic dignity of health coverage, affordable housing and utilities, and the like. If the private enterprise system refuses to charge enough for the products and services so that those people can be paid enough to buy their own coverage, then it is we the people, the government, who must force them to, through taxation.
And if you don't believe that, then your option is to have a whole class of people who are broke, unhealthy, and damn angry about it. In this country, those people vote for someone who will make the playing field fair again. In the current view of the dominant conservative voices, those people can just crawl off and die somewhere. Or wind up in prison where we subsidize their everything.
There will be people at the top who pay for it. That is populism. That is the price you pay for living in a country where we pay people who stock shelves at Wal Mart so little that they qualify for government subsidized health care. I'm sure most free market conservatives would prefer to have Wal Mart take care of their employees. But then how could they be the low price leader?
It's still a free country, and there's going to be a free market for practically anything (including things that are illegal). There will be a free market for health care and those of you who can afford it are more than welcome to sink your dollars into a system that profits from your sickness on one end (the HMOs) and profits from your minimal care on the other (the insurance companies who don't want to pay, they just want to collect). I ask you, which force will drive doctor salaries lower? A government that tries to enforce fairness, no matter how cumbersome a bureaucracy that develops in order to implement that fairness (and, again, medicare does it with amazingly low administrative costs compared to private companies), or a private insurance company that is trying desperately to keep outlays down because raising premiums is just making them lose customers?
I'm all for personal responsibility. I grow a lot of my own food. I own my own small business and work for a lot less than minimum wage. I would require more stringent food requirements on Food Stamp recipients, like me, to eat healthy foods and support local, small, and organic farmers. But when it comes to something as complex as health care, I just don't trust the greedy bastards to run it anywhere but into the ground.
I lived in LA for 20 years. I remember the Enron fiasco during the electricity crisis. We had been sold a bill of goods about privatizing and deregulating the electricity markets that turned out to be worse than a load of horse shit (which is at least good fertilizer). It is a perfect example of how unfettered markets only serve as suet to a bunch of hungry birds like Ken Lay who fly away with the whole chunk if they can.
At that point, I started looking into co-ops, public ownership of utilities, community supported agriculture, and credit unions. I like employee owned companies and try to support them when I can. Guess what all those examples are? Communist! They take the assets, the factories, the power lines, the loan portfolios, and they collectively own them among all the members. Where I live now, we have an electric co-op (a remnant of FDR's Rural Electrification Association). It's great. All the people who get the cheap power own the assets of the power company collectively. There is no profit, but the guys who cut the tree branches out of the way get paid well, get health insurance and other benefits. So does the nice lady who answers the phone. Because we, the owners, have decided that's a good thing to do. There's no profit for any corporation, but there is enough to make sure everyone gets paid what they're worth. If those employees had a government health plan they could choose, and pay for with a tax on their paychecks, then as a co-owner of the co-op, I would be more than happy to give them a raise with the money the co-op saved by not having to pay for their health care.
I'm pretty sure GM would like that too.
Why should health care be any different than the co-op itself? Why can we not use the medicare paycheck tax to pay into a fund that is then used to pay our dues for a medical co-op that fairly and equitably distributes care on a triage basis, and puts a premium on prevention, even to the point of rewarding people who do the right thing for their health (thereby being less of a burden to the rest of the co-op)?
Now a lot of people will say it's a red commie flag there, but if you really think about it, and look back over American history at the collective good that has developed as a ethic in this country, it's conservative. It says YOU have a stake, YOU have a responsibility, and if you do well, you will be rewarded. The fact that we are all owners makes it the ownership society for real. And the fact that it is controlled by a bureaucracy that is built to make it as fair as possible takes it out of the realm of Stalin or other totalitarian philosophies, and puts it squarely in the hands of voters who get tho choose the head of the federal government every four years.
I worked my ass off for big entertainment companies for 20 years. They made plenty of money off my labor: more than I did, in fact. And when that work caused the degenerative disease I have in my big load bearing joints, those company's insurance companies denied that they had caused it, and tossed me out like any old broken cog. In your world, it's toughsky shitsky for Scotty because they have to profit. In my world, the money I put into the co-op would come back to me from the co-op when I needed it. Some guy who profited more from my work might have to pay a little more tax now to fund it, but I'll never get back all the profit I helped him make. That's fine. But when he tries to say he has no responsibility for my care, now that I'm broken down and can't do the physical labor that I spent 20 years turning into a career, I say he's full of it.
But when he says, well, I don't really want to pay into a system where a bunch of jet-setting insurance company executives and HMO executives milk every last dime out of everything in order to feed their Myopic vision of next quarter's stock price, then he has a point. I don't want him to pay them either. I want him to pay my doctor, with as little administrative or other overhead as possible. In fact, less overhead means more for my doctor.
So that's my long and winding explanation of why I want medical care to be non-profit and universal. And I'd like to thank the Ron Paul Republican who's been rattling a few cages around here for setting me off on what was a comment, but turned into a diary. So much for banging out a quick answer and getting back to work!
And thanks to Hunter today for firing up my populist, anti-Randian roots. Sometimes I forget why I hang out here, and then Hunter posts something that makes me feel like writing again.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Conservative Catharsis: Don't Blame Obama
There are no principles left on the right, only tactics and bluster, as if John Bolton himself has taken over the GOP diplomacy wing. At this point, looking back on all the facts I collected at this site, which proves conclusively that the entire Bush administration committed treason, repeatedly: I don't really care what they say. When you say as much shit as the right wing has said in the last few decades, it renders your speech meaningless. We are for x except when we're not. We're against y except when we're not. Now we're going to do that which we told you not to. Then we're going to tell you not to again.
I often tell myself I could be a better conservative than them. It wouldn't be hard. I have libertarian bones, like most Americans. We want the government to protect us and leave us alone, that delicate balancing act that, in a world of nanotechnology, is going to get harder and harder to perform. But it's really not that tricky. Conservatives should be reality based, do what would actually make us safer (which is more like Ron Paul's position than John Bolton's).
They should not be afraid of logic which leads to a conclusion similar to Dennis Kucinich. The liberal left and the reasonable right have much more in common than most of them would care to admit. If the Nationalist Times could get over its racism, they'd have some decent solutions about some things, like keeping government out of medical decisions, a position long held by the libertarian liberals on issues like abortion, medical marijuana, and euthanasia.
But first, the conservatives of the US need a catharsis: George W Bush ruined this country. Rush Limbaugh may be hoping Obama fails at big-government rescue, but it's really too late. George W. Bush (aided amply by Dick Cheney and Rush) drove this country right off a cliff, and Obama is trying to stitch together a big enough parachute to save the whole car. It's probably too late to save the car. But it is not too late to save those occupants who are willing to start stitching their own little parachutes, and we can wind up falling a little slower with a contraption that's going to look a little like the seagulls James lassoed to carry his giant peach.
We'll probably still have a hard landing, but maybe we can slow it all down enough to not break our legs when we hit. All the "conservatives" -- and I would argue that there really aren't many any more -- who can't realize that they were wrong about Bush, wrong about Iraq, wrong about Cheney, wrong about trickle down economics, and wrong about practically every social issue from Terry Schiavo to Sodomy, are going to have to crash. Continuing on at this point as if George Bush wasn't the worst president ever, as if Dick Cheney doesn't belong in prison, as if Donald Rumsfeld doesn't deserve to be "sleep deprived" for days, is the intellectual equivalent of a quivering bowl of decomposed fruit with ditto head flies swarming around it.
If I were a conservative right now (and in many ways I am), I would be encouraging bigger investment in infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient. I would be encouraging micro-loans to the poor to help them start small local businesses. I would demand that food stamp programs only get increases if the recipients can use that money at farmer's markets and on community supported agriculture programs. I would strongly encourage small, local power producers, and companies that create on site energy creation, especially in rural areas.
If I were a conservative right now, I would strongly encourage people to grow their own food in organic victory gardens or urban rooftop gardens, or community gardens on empty lots, like they're doing in Detroit now. The roots of the conservative philosophy lie in independence. This disaster brought on by the insolent teenager of a president and his Dr. Strangelove sidekick offers a chance for conservatives to get back to their roots and encourage the people of this country to become independent, to help each other, and to reward behavior that makes things better, while punishing those who make it worse.
Today's LA Times has a great story about the Mad Maxing that's going on right now, in this case at abandoned construction projects around southern California.
Eight years of robber barons in charge has left us in a world we are much more equipped to deal with than many think. One of the facts (I know, conservatives, it's hard to get used to the idea that there are facts to be found outside of Fox News) that LA Times story touches on is that the thieves who show up in these abandoned construction projects are there to take copper wire and other commodities that are valuable. These people have been watching the robber barons do this to the whole country for the last 8 years. They are watching now as they all get away with it. And while there may not be a Wall Street worth plundering ever again, there will be things that aren't tied down. And unless those things are protected by armed guards, they will be stolen. In the Mad Max world Bush has left us with, people are left on their own to survive with whatever they can find.
We have the know-how and where-with-all to create resilient communities that produce their own power, grow their own food, and live sustainably without oil or coal. We just have to get used to the idea that we've been robbed. We have to start over, from scratch, with very little to help us besides government and abandoned industries to supply scraps. To what extent a federal government will be able to help a system that needs a lot of independent nodes, we will see. One reason I've chosen to not become a conservative is that I believe the government can help.
But it's going to need some basic conservative help, or it can easily get out of control. Hopefully, there are some conservatives willing to step up to a podium, admit that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Limbaugh conservatism is over. Bombastic, disagreeable, authoritarian, top-down, imperialistic, interventionist assholes are going to have to step aside and shut the hell up for a while. They had 8 years to do what they assured us was the absolute right thing to do, and it turned out they were lying, torturing thieves who literally stole billions of dollars (in deregulated Ponzi schemes, or by taking pallets of cash directly out of the US Mint and flying it to Baghdad where it disappeared). Any talk of government spending being out of control is just more of the same shit that trickled down their legs since Reagan. This government is going to spend on infrastructure and people, and the most the conservatives can hope to do is direct some of it in ways that they prefer.
The conservative in me would like to see the investments lead to more independence and less centralization. Is there any principal more important to conservative philosophy? At this point, it seems more likely that President Obama will preserve that principle more than the GOP will.
I often tell myself I could be a better conservative than them. It wouldn't be hard. I have libertarian bones, like most Americans. We want the government to protect us and leave us alone, that delicate balancing act that, in a world of nanotechnology, is going to get harder and harder to perform. But it's really not that tricky. Conservatives should be reality based, do what would actually make us safer (which is more like Ron Paul's position than John Bolton's).
They should not be afraid of logic which leads to a conclusion similar to Dennis Kucinich. The liberal left and the reasonable right have much more in common than most of them would care to admit. If the Nationalist Times could get over its racism, they'd have some decent solutions about some things, like keeping government out of medical decisions, a position long held by the libertarian liberals on issues like abortion, medical marijuana, and euthanasia.
But first, the conservatives of the US need a catharsis: George W Bush ruined this country. Rush Limbaugh may be hoping Obama fails at big-government rescue, but it's really too late. George W. Bush (aided amply by Dick Cheney and Rush) drove this country right off a cliff, and Obama is trying to stitch together a big enough parachute to save the whole car. It's probably too late to save the car. But it is not too late to save those occupants who are willing to start stitching their own little parachutes, and we can wind up falling a little slower with a contraption that's going to look a little like the seagulls James lassoed to carry his giant peach.
We'll probably still have a hard landing, but maybe we can slow it all down enough to not break our legs when we hit. All the "conservatives" -- and I would argue that there really aren't many any more -- who can't realize that they were wrong about Bush, wrong about Iraq, wrong about Cheney, wrong about trickle down economics, and wrong about practically every social issue from Terry Schiavo to Sodomy, are going to have to crash. Continuing on at this point as if George Bush wasn't the worst president ever, as if Dick Cheney doesn't belong in prison, as if Donald Rumsfeld doesn't deserve to be "sleep deprived" for days, is the intellectual equivalent of a quivering bowl of decomposed fruit with ditto head flies swarming around it.
If I were a conservative right now (and in many ways I am), I would be encouraging bigger investment in infrastructure that will make our communities more resilient. I would be encouraging micro-loans to the poor to help them start small local businesses. I would demand that food stamp programs only get increases if the recipients can use that money at farmer's markets and on community supported agriculture programs. I would strongly encourage small, local power producers, and companies that create on site energy creation, especially in rural areas.
If I were a conservative right now, I would strongly encourage people to grow their own food in organic victory gardens or urban rooftop gardens, or community gardens on empty lots, like they're doing in Detroit now. The roots of the conservative philosophy lie in independence. This disaster brought on by the insolent teenager of a president and his Dr. Strangelove sidekick offers a chance for conservatives to get back to their roots and encourage the people of this country to become independent, to help each other, and to reward behavior that makes things better, while punishing those who make it worse.
Today's LA Times has a great story about the Mad Maxing that's going on right now, in this case at abandoned construction projects around southern California.
At its Oakland site, structures dating to World War II were to have been demolished by now to make way for 1,000 homes and a shopping center.
But workers walked off the job when their payments stopped, leaving behind piles of debris. A nine-story hospital the developers planned to raze was invaded by squatters.
In the Sacramento River Delta area of Contra Costa County at SunCal's planned Delta Coves housing development, blowing sand is filling in a new lagoon, and crucial water pumping systems are unmonitored.
Eight years of robber barons in charge has left us in a world we are much more equipped to deal with than many think. One of the facts (I know, conservatives, it's hard to get used to the idea that there are facts to be found outside of Fox News) that LA Times story touches on is that the thieves who show up in these abandoned construction projects are there to take copper wire and other commodities that are valuable. These people have been watching the robber barons do this to the whole country for the last 8 years. They are watching now as they all get away with it. And while there may not be a Wall Street worth plundering ever again, there will be things that aren't tied down. And unless those things are protected by armed guards, they will be stolen. In the Mad Max world Bush has left us with, people are left on their own to survive with whatever they can find.
We have the know-how and where-with-all to create resilient communities that produce their own power, grow their own food, and live sustainably without oil or coal. We just have to get used to the idea that we've been robbed. We have to start over, from scratch, with very little to help us besides government and abandoned industries to supply scraps. To what extent a federal government will be able to help a system that needs a lot of independent nodes, we will see. One reason I've chosen to not become a conservative is that I believe the government can help.
But it's going to need some basic conservative help, or it can easily get out of control. Hopefully, there are some conservatives willing to step up to a podium, admit that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Limbaugh conservatism is over. Bombastic, disagreeable, authoritarian, top-down, imperialistic, interventionist assholes are going to have to step aside and shut the hell up for a while. They had 8 years to do what they assured us was the absolute right thing to do, and it turned out they were lying, torturing thieves who literally stole billions of dollars (in deregulated Ponzi schemes, or by taking pallets of cash directly out of the US Mint and flying it to Baghdad where it disappeared). Any talk of government spending being out of control is just more of the same shit that trickled down their legs since Reagan. This government is going to spend on infrastructure and people, and the most the conservatives can hope to do is direct some of it in ways that they prefer.
The conservative in me would like to see the investments lead to more independence and less centralization. Is there any principal more important to conservative philosophy? At this point, it seems more likely that President Obama will preserve that principle more than the GOP will.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Epitaph for the Bush Years
As usual, Scott Horton sends the nail deep into the wood with one blow.
If it does not do justice, what is the government but a great criminal enterprise? For what are gangs of criminals but petty little governments?--Augustine
Saturday, January 17, 2009
The Only Thing That Could Be Worse
would be not prosecuting the murdering mother fuckers who did all this.
Eight Years In Eight Minutes
Here's the transcript, courtesy of this comment by TrueBlueMajority at the KOS.
Eight Years In Eight Minutes
Here's the transcript, courtesy of this comment by TrueBlueMajority at the KOS.
George Walker Bush.
43rd president of the United States.
first ever with a criminal record.
our third story tonight,
his presidency: eight years in eight minutes.
early in 2001 the U.S. fingered Al Qaeda
for the bombing of the USS Cole
Bush counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke
had a plan to take down Al Qaeda.
instead by February the NSC
had already discussed invading Iraq,
and had a plan for post-Saddam Iraq.
by March 5 Bush had a map ready for Iraqi oil exploration
and a list of companies.
Al Qaeda?
Rice told Clarke not to give Bush a lot of long memos.
not a big reader.
August 6, 2001
a CIA analyst briefs Bush on vacation:
"Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S."
Bush takes no action tells the briefer—quote
all right, you've covered your ass now.
next month Clarke requests
using new predator drones to kill Bin Laden
the Pentagon and CIA
say no.
September 11th
Bush remains seated for several minutes
to avoid scaring school children
by getting up and leaving.
he then flies around the country
and promises quote a full scale investigation to find
those folks who did it
Rumsfeld says Afghanistan does not have enough targets
we've got to do Iraq.
when the CIA traps Bin Laden at Tora Bora
it asks for 800 rangers to cut off his escape
Bush outsources the job to Pakistanis
sympathetic to the Taliban
Bin Laden
gets away
in February General Tommy Franks tells a visiting Senator
Bush is moving equipment out of Afghanistan
so he can invade Iraq.
one of the men who prepped Rice for her testimony
that Bush did not ignore pre 9-11 warnings
later explains quote we cherry picked things
to make it look like the president
had been actually concerned about Al Qaeda
they didn't give a bleep about Al Qaeda
July and Britain's intel chief says Bush is
fixing intelligence and facts around the policy to take out Saddam
January 03
Bush and Blair agree to invade in March
Mr. Bush still telling us he has not decided
telling Blair they should paint an airplane in UN colors
fly it over Iraq and provoke a response
a pretext for invasion
the man who said it would take several hundred thousand troops
fired
the man who said it would cost more than a hundred billion
fired
the man who revealed Bush's yellowcake lie
smeared
his wife's covert status
exposed
the White House liars who did it
and covered it up
not fired
one convicted
Bush commutes his sentence
then in Iraq, stuff happens:
Iraq's army, disbanded
the government de-Baathified
200,000 weapons, billions of dollars just
lost
foreign mercenaries immunized from justice
political hacks run the Green Zone
religious cleansing forcing one out of six Iraqis from their homes
Abu Ghraib
the insurgency
Al Qaeda in Iraq
other stuff does not happen:
WMD
post-war planning
body armor
vehicular armor
the payoff?
oil
and billions for Halliburton, Blackwater and other companies
while Mr. Bush denies VA healthcare to 450,000 veterans
tries to raise their healthcare fees
blocks the new G.I. Bill
and increases his own power with the USA PATRIOT Act
with the Military Commissions Act
public orders exempting himself from a thousand laws
and secretly from the Presidential Records Act
The Geneva Conventions
FISA
sparking a mass rebellion at the Justice Department
secret star chambers for terrorism suspects,
overturned by Hamdan v Rumsfeld.
denying habeas corpus,
overturned by Boumediene v Bush.
200 renditionings
sleep deprivation
abuse
Rumsfeld warned in 2002 that he was torturing
that it would jeopardize convictions
out of 550 at Gitmo
hundreds ultimately go free with no charges
dozens are tortured
eight fatally
three are convicted
on U.S. soil twelve hundred immigrants rounded up
without due process
without bail
without court dates
without a single charge of terrorism
it wasn't just Mr. Bush no longer subject to the rule of law
he slashed regulations on everyone from banks to mining companies
appointed 98 lobbyists to oversee their own industries
weakening emission standards for mercury
and 650 different toxic chemicals
regulators shared drugs
and their beds
with industry reps
the Crandall Canyon mine owner told inspectors to back up
because his buddy, Republican Mitch McConnell
was sleeping with their boss
McConnell's wife is Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao
her agency overruled engineer concerns about Crandall Canyon
and was found negligent
after nine miners died in the collapse there
Mr. Bush's hands off
as Enron blacks out California
doubling electric bills
after months of rejecting price caps Mr. Bush bows to pressure
the blackouts end
Mr. Bush further deregulates commodity futures
midwifing the birth of unregulated oil markets
which just like Enron jack up prices to an all time high
until Congress and both presidential candidates call for regulations
and the prices fall
deregulating financial services and lax enforcement of remaining rules
created a housing bubble
creating the mortgage crisis
creating then a credit crisis
devastating industries that rely on credit
from student loans to car dealers
firms that had survived the Great Depression could not survive Bush
those that did got
seven hundred billion dollars
no strings, no transparency
no idea whether it worked
unlike the auto bailout
which cut workers' salaries.
a GOP memo called it
a chance to punish unions
but Bush failed even when his party and his patrons
did not stand to profit
investigators blamed management cost cutting communication
for missed warnings about Columbia
Bush administration convicts include
sex offenders at Homeland Security
convicted liars
every kind of thief in the calendar
and if you count things that were not prosecuted
the vice president of the United States actually
shot a man in the face
the man apologized.
Mr. Bush faked the truth
with paid propaganda in Iraq
on his education policy
tried to silence the truth about global warming
rocket fuel in our water
industry influence on energy policy
politicized the truth of science at NASA, the EPA,
the National Cancer Institute, Fish and Wildlife
and the FDA
his lies
exposed by whistleblowers from the cabinet down
"complete BS" the treasury secretary said
of Mr. Bush on his tax cuts.
Rice's mushroom cloud
Powell's mobile labs
Iraq and 9-11
Jack Abramoff
Jessica Lynch
Pat Tillman
Pat Tillman again
Pat Tillman, again.
the air at Ground Zero
most responders still suffering respiratory problems.
global warming
carbon emissions
a Clear Skies initiative lowering air quality standards
the Healthy Forests initiative increasing logging
faith based initiatives
the cost of medicare reform
fired US attorneys
politically synchronized terror alerts
the surge causing insurgents to switch sides
that abortion causes breast cancer
that his first recession began under Clinton
that he did not wiretap without warrants
that we do not torture.
that American citizen John Walker Lindh's rights
were not violated
that he refused the right to counsel
heckuva job Brownie
some survivors still in trailers
New Orleans still at just two-thirds its usual population
the lie that no one could have predicted the economic crisis
except
the economists who did
no one could have predicted 9-11 except
one ass-covering CIA analyst
or thirty
no one could have predicted the levee breach
except literally
Mr. Bill
in a PSA that aired on TV a year before Katrina
Bush actually admitted that he lied about not firing Rumsfeld
because he did not want to tell the truth.
look it up.
all of it
all of it and more leaving us with
ten trillion in debt
to pay for 31% more in discretionary spending
the Iraq War
a 1.3 trillion dollar tax cut
median income down two thousand dollars
three-quarters of all income gains under Bush
going to the richest one percent
unemployment up from 4.2 to 7.2 percent
the Dow, down from ten thousand five hundred eighty seven
to eighty two hundred seventy seven
six million now more in poverty
seven million more now without health care
buying toxic goods from China
deadly cribs
outsourcing security to Dubai
still unsecure in our ports
and at our nuclear plants
more dependent on foreign oil
out of the international criminal court
off the anti ballistic missle treaty
military readiness and standards down
with two unfinished wars
a nuclear North Korea
disengaged from the Palestinian problem
destabilizing eastern european diplomacy with
anti missile plans
and unable to keep Russia out of Georgia
2000 miles of Appalachian streams
destroyed by rubble from mountaintop mining
at his last G-8 summit,
he actually bid farewell to other world leaders
saying quote—goodbye from the world's greatest polluter
consistently undermining historic American reverence
for the institutions that empower us
education, now "academic elites"
and the law, "activist judges"
capping jury awards
and Bin Laden?
living today unmolested in a Pakistani safe haven
created by a truce endorsed and defended by George W. Bush
and among all the gifts he gave to Bin Laden
the most awful, the most damaging not just to America
but to the American ideal
was to further Bin Laden's goal
by making us act out of fear rather than fortitude
leaving us with precious little to cling to tonight
save the one thing that might yet suffice:
hope.
Friday, January 16, 2009
We Were Warned
When President Eisenhower told us, in his 1961 farewell address, to beware of the Military Industrial complex, America ignored him, and built the most powerful group of private corporations ever to supply a military.
But way before Ike did his best to tell us what was going to happen if we weren't careful, another president gave a farewell address that warned us about George Bush:
That's from George Washington's farewell address (h/t Scott Horton). Did you have to be a George Washington to figure this out: "...unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people..." I was physically attacked, made fun of, blacklisted by Republican co-workers who spread the word not to hire me, called a traitor and a commie, all because I tried to warn people, before he was even appointed by the Supreme Court, that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were unprincipled men who would subvert the power of the people.
Washington even tried to warn us that these men would start dangerous wars of choice with their out-of-control military. He prayed that we would...
If my union is the main prop of my liberty, then shouldn't I protect my union from another Bush/Cheney "administration" in order to preserve my liberty? Shouldn't we, as patriotic Americans aware of our history and the admonishments of past presidents, work to avoid the necessity of an overgrown military establishment which is inauspicious to liberty? Do we not have a duty to past Americans who have fought and died for our rights to fight for the liberty of our descendants?
What would be the best way to stop future presidents from usurping the power of the people? Should we move on and not bog ourselves down in the bickering that would accompany trials of war criminals from the highest echelons of government? Will we signal to future presidents that they will be considered above the law as long as their partisans promise to bicker and complain that the prosecution is not deserved because it is being controlled by someone from a different faction?
If fear of political harm prevents the prosecution of criminals, then wouldn't criminals simply threaten political division and wrangling in order to avoid prosecution? Has political calculation won over an executive's duty to uphold the law and the constitution?
Listen carefully to the oath of office on Tuesday. The promise that President Elect Obama makes will be:
This oath does not mention protecting Americans from terrorists no matter what the cost to liberty. It doesn't say anything about letting people avoid prosecution because it would be divisive or distracting. It doesn't even say anything about getting God's help. It says to protect and defend the Constitution, to the best of your ability. I know that the best of Obama'a ability is pretty damn good. I heard what his Attorney General Designate said about torture. I heard Obama say no one is above the law. He is capable of heeding the warnings of Eisenhower, Washington, and many other presidents.
As for how we managed to get to this place, it seems we just don't listen, do we? America has a long, rich history that we will be doomed to repeat if we don't study it, and prosecute those responsible for usurping the power of the people and ignoring the rule of law.
But way before Ike did his best to tell us what was going to happen if we weren't careful, another president gave a farewell address that warned us about George Bush:
Political parties serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.
However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
That's from George Washington's farewell address (h/t Scott Horton). Did you have to be a George Washington to figure this out: "...unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people..." I was physically attacked, made fun of, blacklisted by Republican co-workers who spread the word not to hire me, called a traitor and a commie, all because I tried to warn people, before he was even appointed by the Supreme Court, that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were unprincipled men who would subvert the power of the people.
Washington even tried to warn us that these men would start dangerous wars of choice with their out-of-control military. He prayed that we would...
...avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
If my union is the main prop of my liberty, then shouldn't I protect my union from another Bush/Cheney "administration" in order to preserve my liberty? Shouldn't we, as patriotic Americans aware of our history and the admonishments of past presidents, work to avoid the necessity of an overgrown military establishment which is inauspicious to liberty? Do we not have a duty to past Americans who have fought and died for our rights to fight for the liberty of our descendants?
What would be the best way to stop future presidents from usurping the power of the people? Should we move on and not bog ourselves down in the bickering that would accompany trials of war criminals from the highest echelons of government? Will we signal to future presidents that they will be considered above the law as long as their partisans promise to bicker and complain that the prosecution is not deserved because it is being controlled by someone from a different faction?
If fear of political harm prevents the prosecution of criminals, then wouldn't criminals simply threaten political division and wrangling in order to avoid prosecution? Has political calculation won over an executive's duty to uphold the law and the constitution?
Listen carefully to the oath of office on Tuesday. The promise that President Elect Obama makes will be:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
This oath does not mention protecting Americans from terrorists no matter what the cost to liberty. It doesn't say anything about letting people avoid prosecution because it would be divisive or distracting. It doesn't even say anything about getting God's help. It says to protect and defend the Constitution, to the best of your ability. I know that the best of Obama'a ability is pretty damn good. I heard what his Attorney General Designate said about torture. I heard Obama say no one is above the law. He is capable of heeding the warnings of Eisenhower, Washington, and many other presidents.
As for how we managed to get to this place, it seems we just don't listen, do we? America has a long, rich history that we will be doomed to repeat if we don't study it, and prosecute those responsible for usurping the power of the people and ignoring the rule of law.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
A Brief History of a Joke
Sometime's it's fun to follow the conversation that leads to a funny joke. But the joke has to stand alone:
My moat is frozen. Hopefully the assholes can't ice-skate.
--Me
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
From Bush's Last Press Conference (as pResident)
And so, I view those who get angry and yell and say bad things and, you know, all that kind of stuff, it's just a very few people in the country. I don't know why they get angry. I don't know why they get hostile.—GW Bush
I can only answer with another quote, from his Vice pResident:
Go fuck yourself.—Dick Cheney
Monday, January 05, 2009
Not an Utter Failure for Rich Cronies
From the January Harper's Index: A retrospective of the Bush era:
Portion of all U.S. income gains during the Bush Administration that have gone to the top 1 percent of earners: 3/4
Increase since 2000 in the number of Americans living at less than half the federal poverty level: 3,500,000
Percentage change since 2001 in the average amount U.S. workers spend on out-of-pocket medical expenses: +172
Estimated percentage by which Social Security benefits would have declined if Bush’s privatization plan had passed: –15 ...
Portion of the $3.3 billion in federal Hurricane Katrina relief spent by Mississippi that has benefited poor residents: 1/4
Sunday, January 04, 2009
No Elaborating on Utter Failure
No! You can go back to your, what do you call it, your Google, and you figure out all that.-- Former President George H.W. Bush, when asked to elaborate on some of his son's failures as president.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Justice After Bush, Prosecuting an outlaw administration
Scott Horton wrote in the December, 2008 issue of Harper's Magazine:
Anyone who thinks I'm some nutcase for wanting to prosecute the entire Bush "administration" for war crimes should read what Scott Horton has to say. I dare any wing nut Republican to argue any of it.
Who is Scott Horton?
Step on up, wing nuts.
No prior administration has been so systematically or so brazenly lawless. Yet it is no simple matter to prosecute a former president or his senior officers. There is no precedent for such a prosecution, and even if there was, the very breadth and audacity of the administration’s activities would make the process so complex as to defy systems of justice far less fragmented than our own. But that only means choices must be made. Indeed, in weighing the enormity of the administration’s transgressions against the realistic prospect of justice, it is possible to determine not only the crime that calls most clearly for prosecution but also the crime that is most likely to be successfully prosecuted. In both cases, that crime is torture.
Anyone who thinks I'm some nutcase for wanting to prosecute the entire Bush "administration" for war crimes should read what Scott Horton has to say. I dare any wing nut Republican to argue any of it.
Who is Scott Horton?
A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Scott served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union. He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Scott recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.
Step on up, wing nuts.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Bush Should Have Signed This Guy with the Rangers
"This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog. This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq."--Muntather Zaidi
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
The Penultimate Bush Quotes Update
I haven't updated my Bush quotes page in a while, and man did I miss some doozies, like this one:
Recently, the publishers of The War in Quotes sent me a copy of their book. It is horrifying! I wish I had read it before Halloween! It got me to thinking about how a lot of these quotes (not just Bush's) are actually windows that tell you exactly what these criminals are thinking! They're little Freudian slips of truthiness that tell you exactly what they're thinking.
Honestly, I'm so sick of the man that I might have just gone on without every touching that quote page again. But I've started to feel a tug toward forgiving this cruel, evil, spoiled little frat boy, and I just can't stand the thought of people saying "Oh, he meant well."
No he didn't. He meant to make a lot of money for himself and his friends in the military industrial complex. He meant to cripple the federal budget for years to come, and there's probably a whole bunch of shit he did, that he meant to do, that we will only learn about in the years to come.
And if he, and his cronies, aren't prosecuted, then it's proof that there is no justice, and this country is broken.
And we all know who broke it.
"And I, unfortunately, have been to too many disasters as president."—discussing flooding in the Midwest, Washington, D.C., June 17, 2008
Recently, the publishers of The War in Quotes sent me a copy of their book. It is horrifying! I wish I had read it before Halloween! It got me to thinking about how a lot of these quotes (not just Bush's) are actually windows that tell you exactly what these criminals are thinking! They're little Freudian slips of truthiness that tell you exactly what they're thinking.
Honestly, I'm so sick of the man that I might have just gone on without every touching that quote page again. But I've started to feel a tug toward forgiving this cruel, evil, spoiled little frat boy, and I just can't stand the thought of people saying "Oh, he meant well."
No he didn't. He meant to make a lot of money for himself and his friends in the military industrial complex. He meant to cripple the federal budget for years to come, and there's probably a whole bunch of shit he did, that he meant to do, that we will only learn about in the years to come.
And if he, and his cronies, aren't prosecuted, then it's proof that there is no justice, and this country is broken.
And we all know who broke it.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
This is what happens when a Junta steals everything
From Bloomberg:
The Bush Junta has spent 8 years robbing the US Treasury. From no-bid contracts, to pallets of cash "lost" in Iraq, to Wall Street getting "bailed out" (bailed out from what? robbing us blind?), the Bush cronies have stolen everything that's not nailed down. In fact, I think I can hear the pry bars and claw hammers working their way through the White House now.
Now the increased tax of paying off all this debt will fall on our grandchildren. And I still have people telling me I should be nice? A good friend of mine forwarded a typical right wing email full of crap about Pelosi, and I went off on the guy (who's email I got out of the forwarded mail)...
Well, my good friend was a little perturbed at me for attacking a long-time friend of his. Oh well. I refuse to apologize for treating this wing nuts like the idiots they are. They should be shamed and marginalized. Here's my reply to my friend, who suggested I play nice if I want to get people like that guy thinking....
Employers cut 240,000 jobs last month, for a total so far this year of 1.2 million jobs lost, while the total number of unemployed Americans jumped to 10.1 million, the highest level in a quarter century, according to last week's jobs report from the Labor Department.
The Bush Junta has spent 8 years robbing the US Treasury. From no-bid contracts, to pallets of cash "lost" in Iraq, to Wall Street getting "bailed out" (bailed out from what? robbing us blind?), the Bush cronies have stolen everything that's not nailed down. In fact, I think I can hear the pry bars and claw hammers working their way through the White House now.
Now the increased tax of paying off all this debt will fall on our grandchildren. And I still have people telling me I should be nice? A good friend of mine forwarded a typical right wing email full of crap about Pelosi, and I went off on the guy (who's email I got out of the forwarded mail)...
Well, my good friend was a little perturbed at me for attacking a long-time friend of his. Oh well. I refuse to apologize for treating this wing nuts like the idiots they are. They should be shamed and marginalized. Here's my reply to my friend, who suggested I play nice if I want to get people like that guy thinking....
I did send him a link. It carefully explained how there was no evidence that Pelosi owns stock in Star Kist.
However, the bigger point was that to dare to compare that one little thing, even if it was true, which it's not, to the long litany of disaster created by this president and his cronies, is the most specious of all their bad arguments. It's like a little kid going, yeah, I ruined your sandcastle and the entire beach with this oil spill, but you ruined my Popsicle with this tiny spec of sand.
I lost sleep over this last night, because I sure don't want to make you mad at me. And losing sleep is not something I need right now, as I have to take a shit load of drugs to make it through the pain and get any sleep at all.
But I will tell you that this isn't about left vs. right. This is about the fact that people like this guy supported this right wing junta that has ruined this country, that is busy robbing us and our grandchildren of trillions right now, and yet he, and people like him, continue this bullshit that is just sand in the eyes to stop us from seeing what is really going on.
This is about reality.
This crap goes back further than Gingrich. I don't really care about getting him thinking. His response to me was so condescending that I just wanted to piss him off. I hope I did. And I hope it sticks with him. Frankly, I've learned that pissing wing nuts off actually is what makes them think. Trying to play nice with them is just a waste of time. Their whole philosophy is confrontation and agitation. They really hate me because I'm very good at their silly game.
Honestly. Here we are on the brink of a depression and environmental ruin brought on by the Philosophy of people like that, and you're saying we should be nice to them and try to get them to think? I don't think it's possible to get them to think. They need to be shamed. They need to be shown, over and over again, the connection between their Laissez-Faire, Trickle-Down, economics and the current condition of this country, from the environment to the economy.
Besides, they are a small minority now. As long as we keep them marginalized and ridiculed, they will not be able to affect things any more. Their days are over, and they will have to re-invent themselves into something more reality based to come back. Honestly. We're talking about a whole political wing of this country that doesn't believe in evolution or global warming.
It's like with religion. If they would only admit that they don't know... If they would just admit to the reality that ideology spits out standard answers and prescriptions for action that are not based on facts. The right wing philosophy, like practically any religion, is simply not pragmatic. It used to be, but then it was taken over by the ideologues, mostly from Nixon and Reagan (like Cheney and the Neo-cons, and Bush, the Theo-con).
Now, if this guy wants to admit that this disaster is the direct result of a Wild West Deregulatory environment that festered in the Enron Accounting and Halliburton No-Bid contract petri dish in some right wing laboratory, then maybe we could all come to some Obamaesque understanding and cooperation. But do you think this person is reality based? When he just forwards whatever right wing talking points come through his machine?
Monday, November 10, 2008
Epic Fail
Odd that the conservatives I occasionally hear from have gotten so quiet. Plotting the fascist overthrow of the newly elected government, or are you putting "country first" these days?
Well, at the risk of saying "I told you so" yet again about the Bush "administration" I'd like to point out that the looting of the US Treasury, of our children's and grandchildren's tax dollars, is going on at break neck pace in Washington. And all you Bush voters should be even more ashamed. This isn't capitalism. Hell, it's not even conservative. The fascist corporate right wing of America has taken control of your money, and I hear nary a peep out of you. Not one single, hey, that hard left liberal lunatic Supak was actually right about these Bushies! They're robbing us blind!
Ah, well, all the better to drown Obama's government in a bath tub. Where is Grover Norquist on this bailout issue? Where are the true conservatives who should be first in line demanding that there be transparency in the bail out?
Could it be that it was never conservatism that interested you? Could it be that you only care about pouring the next generation's tax dollars into paying off the credit card bills accrued during these heady days of Christo-Military-Corporo-fascism? As long as you get your private Blackwater armies and Halliburton support services paid for in perpetuity with stolen pallets of cash, right? As long as you hand out more free money to the CEOs who robbed their companies and their investors blind, right? As long as that fucking socialist Obama doesn't get to spend it on health care for a bunch of lazy welfare queens, right?
As I write this, the financial world is abuzz with this news:
And which banks specifically benefited from this centralized, fascist takeover of our financial system? None of your damn business, that's who.
Well, maybe this will help:
I'm not the least bit surprised by a lack of accountability in the Bush Jr. "administration." I am surprised that more conservatives aren't waving some torches and pitchforks right now, as this lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and apparent lack of competency (unless they are competent crooks) reveals the depths to which Bush and Cheney will sink in order to reward his cronies who have epically failed us all.
Well, at the risk of saying "I told you so" yet again about the Bush "administration" I'd like to point out that the looting of the US Treasury, of our children's and grandchildren's tax dollars, is going on at break neck pace in Washington. And all you Bush voters should be even more ashamed. This isn't capitalism. Hell, it's not even conservative. The fascist corporate right wing of America has taken control of your money, and I hear nary a peep out of you. Not one single, hey, that hard left liberal lunatic Supak was actually right about these Bushies! They're robbing us blind!
Ah, well, all the better to drown Obama's government in a bath tub. Where is Grover Norquist on this bailout issue? Where are the true conservatives who should be first in line demanding that there be transparency in the bail out?
Could it be that it was never conservatism that interested you? Could it be that you only care about pouring the next generation's tax dollars into paying off the credit card bills accrued during these heady days of Christo-Military-Corporo-fascism? As long as you get your private Blackwater armies and Halliburton support services paid for in perpetuity with stolen pallets of cash, right? As long as you hand out more free money to the CEOs who robbed their companies and their investors blind, right? As long as that fucking socialist Obama doesn't get to spend it on health care for a bunch of lazy welfare queens, right?
As I write this, the financial world is abuzz with this news:
The financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention.
But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: Administration officials had just given American banks a windfall of as much as $140 billion.
..."Did the Treasury Department have the authority to do this? I think almost every tax expert would agree that the answer is no," said George K. Yin, the former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan congressional authority on taxes. "They basically repealed a 22-year-old law that Congress passed as a backdoor way of providing aid to banks."
And which banks specifically benefited from this centralized, fascist takeover of our financial system? None of your damn business, that's who.
I find it astounding that many of the conservatives who have insulted my over the last 8 years are sitting on their hands right now, lest they type something a little, shall we say unflattering, about their hero president?Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.
Well, maybe this will help:
Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Let’s say you were the chief risk officer of the former Bear Stearns Cos. in the two years preceding the bank’s collapse in March.
And let’s say, just for argument’s sake, that the postmortems revealed Bear to have had too much risk and too little management of it. The only way JPMorgan Chase & Co. would agree to acquire Bear was with a $29 billion sweetener from the Federal Reserve for some of the less-palatable assets.
Following the acquisition of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan, you would expect said chief risk officer to:
a) Retire quietly to his country home;
b) Open a "consulting" business, allowing him to deduct the costs of a home office at the country home;
c) Land a plum job offer from another Wall Street bank;
d) Land a job as a bank supervisor at the Federal Reserve.
If you picked a, b or c, you would be incorrect. The correct answer is d.
Michael Alix, chief risk officer at Bear Stearns from 2006 until its demise in March, was named senior vice president in the Bank Supervision Group of the New York Fed on Oct. 31.
It’s not unusual for Wall Street to reward its own, offering rogue traders -- the ones who escape criminal prosecution -- new jobs at different firms. But the Fed? At a time when its balance sheet is exploding with increasingly risky assets?
I'm not the least bit surprised by a lack of accountability in the Bush Jr. "administration." I am surprised that more conservatives aren't waving some torches and pitchforks right now, as this lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and apparent lack of competency (unless they are competent crooks) reveals the depths to which Bush and Cheney will sink in order to reward his cronies who have epically failed us all.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Saying Bush is Socialist While He Implements Fascism
(or, Wasted Away Again in Frame-a-ritaville)
The Paulson Bailout happened so fast, who even noticed that while the "true conservatives" vituperated against this socialist move by the Bush administration, we all bought the political characterization. The negative connotation of Socialism immediately became the framing of the anti-Bush sentiment. We in the left, especially, were eager to tap the Schadenfreude of yet another chance to point out Bush's hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the conservatives call Obama socialist, and presto, they've associated Obama with Bush.
I had a Euripidean Revelation, then, when I stumbled across this nugget: Former Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Reagan and a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts, made the case recently on Democracy Now that the Paulson plan is, in fact, fascist.
The religious component of pure corporate fascism is the God of the Market. Nothing rings the opening/church bells like the holy grail of 700 Billion Dollars. When searching for a definition to demonize for the Nationalization of Financial Institutions, the Republican Party once again associated "socialism" with "communism" while the opposite was true. This financial rein-seizing will do little to nothing for society as a whole. It will do everything for society at the Country Club. This is fascist plutocracy.
A unitary executive is one of the necessary conditions for fascism. Another is disregard for the rule of law. Another is hate. The "dirty-fucking-hippie" meme is being whipped up by the standard bearers of the Republican party right now, with their Christian Right zealots right behind, and you have the very model of a fascist system. Sprinkle in some racism, and they get their picture in the fascist textbook.
And yet we go on with the crude caricature that associates the Bush administration with leftist philosophy. Even worse, of course, is that all this framing takes our eye off the Ace in this game of political three card monty. While our heads spin with the dissonance of inaccurate name-calling and right-wing red meat keywords, they pass another trillion dollars in corporate welfare, concentrate more power into the executive branch, incite violence, ignore the law, and steal more money from our children. Anyone who dares to call what they're doing is singled out as a "hater" because they didn't mean to steal this money. They were just reckless.
The snake oil we've been sold was cranked out by computers, but it was just as slimy as what you could get off a wagon a hundred years ago. This isn't the first time that markets and the treasury have been gamed. And it won't be the first time that the guilty parties walk away, probably with presidential pardons.
Another of the right's favorite frames is "Who could have seen it coming?" As in, "Who could have predicted terrorists would fly planes into buildings?" Or, "Who could have predicted that Iraq didn't have WMD?" Or, "Who could have predicted that deregulation would lead to financial trickery?" In The Rise of the Machines, Richard Dooling points out that this latest crime was, of course, predicted.
Dooling goes on to make the case that the entire scheme is essentially one giant computer crime. Keep in mind that Paulson, as chairman of Goldman Sachs, convinced the administration (of which he was about to become a cabinet member) to obliterate the capitalization rule, the lack of which helped create the "crisis." Then, as Treasury Secretary, he engineered a "bail out" that makes us all pay, again. What gall they have to even ask that he have total control of the $700 billion! Well-connected corporate directors perpetrated the fleecing of America by sending their insiders and lobbyists to run the White House, aiding and abetting the crime. Looking at the Bush Administration as a whole, wasn't it obvious where this was leading? When it was said foxes were guarding the hen house, did we trust them in spite of knowing that foxes eat chickens?
Dooling, again, uncovers the crime:
Now these unrepentant financial terrorists sip lattes on the porches of their devalued McMansions, hung-over from their drunken spending spree, and they want us to pay for it all? They complain that Obama wants to take away their Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. They scream about socialism as if it's some evil to which even George Bush has sold out. They propose more tax cuts for themselves, and tax increases on the middle class. They demand cuts in social programs, education, and infrastructure investments. They want the people who stole our future in charge of the justice that protects it? That isn't just fascism. That's an insult.
It was nice to hear Colin Powell stand up for reason and dignity when he endorsed Obama. But in his comments to the press after the endorsement, he said it was wrong to call Obama a socialist. It was a lot like hearing McCain say Obama's not an Arab, as if being an Arab was evil. I'm not sure if Powell understands that the point is not whether socialism is bad, but that after the fascism of George Bush, it's hard not to move to the left, if only because there's no room left on the right.
The Paulson Bailout happened so fast, who even noticed that while the "true conservatives" vituperated against this socialist move by the Bush administration, we all bought the political characterization. The negative connotation of Socialism immediately became the framing of the anti-Bush sentiment. We in the left, especially, were eager to tap the Schadenfreude of yet another chance to point out Bush's hypocrisy. Meanwhile, the conservatives call Obama socialist, and presto, they've associated Obama with Bush.
I had a Euripidean Revelation, then, when I stumbled across this nugget: Former Assistant Secretary of Treasury for Reagan and a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts, made the case recently on Democracy Now that the Paulson plan is, in fact, fascist.
AMY GOODMAN: Paul Craig Roberts, the piece you’ve written, one of them, asks, “Has deregulation sired fascism?” What do you mean?
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS: Well, the original Paulson plan was to give the Secretary of the Treasury $700 billion with no accountability and give him complete control over the financial system. And that, of course, is state capitalism or fascism. If you control the financial system, you control the economy. And so, that was my way of pointing out the dramatic sort of power that was said to be necessary to stem a crisis that, in my view, could be fixed just by refinancing mortgages, like they did during the Great Depression.
Of course, fascism has other necessary conditions, which I'll get to. But it's an important point that the concentration of power in the executive branch is, in and of itself, a fascist move. While the ultimate result of the nationalization of these financial firms might be socialistic (assuming we all share in the upside), the actual administrative move, approved by congress, is, in and of itself, fascist.
Moving on to further conditions that should set our fascism alarms blaring, we can see that the money, power, and control under this bailout is concentrated throughout the upper class, especially the lobbyist class that pulls the executive levers. They are using their power to perpetrate a crime, exhibiting a blatant disregard for the law. If they can't change a law they don't like, they just break it, and dare anyone to do anything about it. After all, what can we do to a runaway executive branch? Arrest them? Aren't they the cops? Don't they have the guns? Who's going to arrest the ones who are supposed to do the arresting?
AMY GOODMAN: Who is driving this? Who framed this bailout? And explain exactly who it is who benefits right now.
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS: Well, what the bailout does is it takes troubled financial instruments off the balance sheet of the banks and puts them on the balance sheet of the taxpayer at the US Treasury. So it’s a bailout of the financial institutions whose recklessness caused the problem. And as I’ve already said, it does not address the problem. It only addresses the problem of the banks. So the foreclosures and the defaulting mortgages will continue as the economy worsens, and yet nothing is being done to stabilize that default rate or to stop these foreclosures. So the money is essentially being poured into the coffers of Washington’s financial donor base.
This is not a complex problem. Follow the money. First you loosen it up. Then you swap it around. Then you say, "Don't worry!" Then you make it disappear. Then you ask for a refund. So exactly how do you steal the money the first time around?
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS: [...] In 1999, in the Clinton administration, they repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. This was the Depression-era legislation that separated commercial from investment banking. In 2000, they deregulated all derivatives. And in 2004, Hank Paulson, the current Treasury Secretary, who at the time was chairman of Goldman Sachs, he convinced the Securities and Exchange Commission to remove all capital requirements for investment banks, and thus they were able to drive up their profits by amazing leverage. For example, when Bear Stearns finally went under, it had $33 in debt for every dollar in equity. So this is an amazing leverage. And it’s amazing that all reserves against debt would have been removed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. So, the whole thing is reckless beyond imagination. Now, they claim that they had new mathematical models that assessed risk and that they didn’t need these reserves. Well, that was all a bunch of hooey, as we now see.
We were just conned out of yet another generation's taxes and we're supposed to settle for "oops"? Is this power grab more justified because they say it was an accident? We're supposed to think that after the systematic dismantling of regulations, starting in 1999 with the repeal of Glass-Steagall, that they were simply reckless? Asst. Secretary Roberts should be commended for his liberal view of the goodness of man. I don't share his forgiving nature. You don't have to be an expert on the Bush Administration to see what seems pretty clear: a federal prosecutor could make a career out of it. If something is "reckless beyond imagination," then it's likely to be illegal as well.The religious component of pure corporate fascism is the God of the Market. Nothing rings the opening/church bells like the holy grail of 700 Billion Dollars. When searching for a definition to demonize for the Nationalization of Financial Institutions, the Republican Party once again associated "socialism" with "communism" while the opposite was true. This financial rein-seizing will do little to nothing for society as a whole. It will do everything for society at the Country Club. This is fascist plutocracy.
A unitary executive is one of the necessary conditions for fascism. Another is disregard for the rule of law. Another is hate. The "dirty-fucking-hippie" meme is being whipped up by the standard bearers of the Republican party right now, with their Christian Right zealots right behind, and you have the very model of a fascist system. Sprinkle in some racism, and they get their picture in the fascist textbook.
And yet we go on with the crude caricature that associates the Bush administration with leftist philosophy. Even worse, of course, is that all this framing takes our eye off the Ace in this game of political three card monty. While our heads spin with the dissonance of inaccurate name-calling and right-wing red meat keywords, they pass another trillion dollars in corporate welfare, concentrate more power into the executive branch, incite violence, ignore the law, and steal more money from our children. Anyone who dares to call what they're doing is singled out as a "hater" because they didn't mean to steal this money. They were just reckless.
The snake oil we've been sold was cranked out by computers, but it was just as slimy as what you could get off a wagon a hundred years ago. This isn't the first time that markets and the treasury have been gamed. And it won't be the first time that the guilty parties walk away, probably with presidential pardons.
Another of the right's favorite frames is "Who could have seen it coming?" As in, "Who could have predicted terrorists would fly planes into buildings?" Or, "Who could have predicted that Iraq didn't have WMD?" Or, "Who could have predicted that deregulation would lead to financial trickery?" In The Rise of the Machines, Richard Dooling points out that this latest crime was, of course, predicted.
“BEWARE of geeks bearing formulas.” So saith Warren Buffett, the Wizard of Omaha. Words to bear in mind as we bail out banks and buy up mortgages and tweak interest rates and nothing, nothing seems to make any difference on Wall Street or Main Street. Years ago, Mr. Buffett called derivatives “weapons of financial mass destruction” — an apt metaphor considering that the Manhattan Project’s math and physics geeks bearing formulas brought us the original weapon of mass destruction, at Trinity in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.
Dooling goes on to make the case that the entire scheme is essentially one giant computer crime. Keep in mind that Paulson, as chairman of Goldman Sachs, convinced the administration (of which he was about to become a cabinet member) to obliterate the capitalization rule, the lack of which helped create the "crisis." Then, as Treasury Secretary, he engineered a "bail out" that makes us all pay, again. What gall they have to even ask that he have total control of the $700 billion! Well-connected corporate directors perpetrated the fleecing of America by sending their insiders and lobbyists to run the White House, aiding and abetting the crime. Looking at the Bush Administration as a whole, wasn't it obvious where this was leading? When it was said foxes were guarding the hen house, did we trust them in spite of knowing that foxes eat chickens?
Dooling, again, uncovers the crime:
Somehow the genius quants — the best and brightest geeks Wall Street firms could buy — fed $1 trillion in subprime mortgage debt into their supercomputers, added some derivatives, massaged the arrangements with computer algorithms and — poof! — created $62 trillion in imaginary wealth.
Their was nothing imaginary about the cut of that wealth that the upper classes took out of the system during the last 8 years. Enron was simply foreshadowing. An executive branch already injecting the steroids of military industrial complex money and unchecked war making power forced us to purchase a seat on the board of their corrupt and broken corporation. There is nothing free about a market that can force the sale of failure to the taxpayer. These CEO's took over our government. They infused it with Religion and War. They created the United Corporations of America, aka the Bush Administration, and their chief export is war. It was heavily subsidized with tax cuts, defense spending, and corporate welfare. CEO pay inflated to the point that even astrophysicists object to calling the numbers astronomical. After all, there are only a hundred billion stars in the galaxy.Now these unrepentant financial terrorists sip lattes on the porches of their devalued McMansions, hung-over from their drunken spending spree, and they want us to pay for it all? They complain that Obama wants to take away their Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. They scream about socialism as if it's some evil to which even George Bush has sold out. They propose more tax cuts for themselves, and tax increases on the middle class. They demand cuts in social programs, education, and infrastructure investments. They want the people who stole our future in charge of the justice that protects it? That isn't just fascism. That's an insult.
It was nice to hear Colin Powell stand up for reason and dignity when he endorsed Obama. But in his comments to the press after the endorsement, he said it was wrong to call Obama a socialist. It was a lot like hearing McCain say Obama's not an Arab, as if being an Arab was evil. I'm not sure if Powell understands that the point is not whether socialism is bad, but that after the fascism of George Bush, it's hard not to move to the left, if only because there's no room left on the right.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Hard to make money when they're stealing it from you...
Since George W. Bush became president, on 1-20-01, the DJIA has now lost 1946.19 points, or 18.49%. Think that money just evaporated? No. It went somewhere.
American history provides us with an apt description of people who take control of the country and rob us all blind. They're called robber barons. And the Republican party has spent the last 40 years perpetuating one long Baron von Robsalot end run on the US Treasury, financed by the Future Generations of America (TM). If you just look back over the archives of this blog, you will find case after case of the Bush administration apologetically pilfering every dime they could get, right down to literally flying pallets of cash to Iraq, where it disappeared into blood-thick air.
Who (besides Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman) would have thought that they could possibly follow Iraq with a bank robbery of such epic fail proportions that it will eventually dwarf the Iraq war?
Of course, when the bankers opened their vaults and realized their computer traded derivatives and credit default swaps were really just smoke and broken mirrors, someone had to pay! So what if we're all just the victims of the largest crime in history, perpetrated by computer trading ponzi scheme wizards with golden parachutes and private islands to suffer on while the rest of the world writes the next Mad Max movie.
So, as election day approaches, all you greedy capitalist Republicans who have somehow wound up in bed with the Armageddon Hugging Pentecostal Secessionists should take a good hard look at this fun little graph (above). There are more fun graphs and the story from the dreaded New York Times. Hell, if you don't believe it, go check it out yourself. The DOW Jones Average closings are a matter of history. Indisputable. Unless, of course, facts about your money don't matter to you.
As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.
I'm taking suggestions as to where we should spread the ashes of "trickle down" economics.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Shit Burger Supreme
"Any change is as good as a vacation at this point. I don't know if you've paid much attention to the past eight years, but it has been a shit burger supreme. If somebody gives me an empty burger, it's better than eating shit." -- Stephen Colbert
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)