Year: 2011

Dems Try for Seppuku Once Again

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So the Democrats on the “Super Committee” are trying to gut Medicare once again, while showing how serious they are by exceeding their mandate for deficit reductions:

Democrats are proposing to slash huge budget deficits by up to $3 trillion, aiming high to repair the country’s fiscal mess even as Republicans show early signs of resisting the proposals.

The broad package of measures calls for long-term spending cuts, including to the government-run Medicare health program for the elderly that threatens to explode the national debt. The other half of the package would come from tax increases, four congressional aides told Reuters on Wednesday.

Republicans rejected the Democratic initiative.

“Asking for a $1.5 trillion tax hike in the middle of a jobs crisis is not a serious proposal,” said a House of Representatives Republican leadership aide.

There is a deep ideological divide between the two parties over taxes — likely a key issue in the congressional and presidential elections in November 2012.

The Democratic plan was presented on Tuesday behind closed doors to a special congressional panel tasked with finding ways of cutting the budget deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years, the sources said.

It was a rare leak from the so-called “super committee,” whose secretive deliberations have sparked intense speculation about how much progress the 12 Republican and Democratic members have made since they first began meeting on September 8. They face a November 23 deadline to report to Congress.

The aides spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

The Democratic plan proposes cutting the deficit by $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion and calls for between $200 billion and $300 billion in new stimulus spending to boost an ailing U.S. economy. It would be paid for with lower interest payments from reducing deficits.

It also seeks around $400 billion in Medicare savings, with half coming in benefit cuts and the other half in cuts to healthcare providers. Details of that proposal were scant but tackling the popular Medicare program is always politically risky for politicians in Washington, especially Democrats.

The Democratic proposal also identifies $100 billion in cuts to the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor, according to a lobbyist in contact with the committee.

Seriously, it’s both bad policy and bad politics, and it echos Obama’s strategy of attempting to show that they are even more crazy serious about the deficit, which the rest of the country really does not give a crap about.

Quote of the day

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On the virtues of conceding points to your opponent at the start of negotiations:

It’s a case study in the perils of offering concessions to your opponents before negotiations have begun. And it will force Democrats in both chambers, but particularly in the Senate, to decide whether to pass a proposal comprised of measures Obama’s backed in the past, even though they’ve been cherry picked to essentially constitute a Republican piece of legislation. If Senate Dems block the measure, Republicans will accuse them of wanting to pick political fights instead of passing Obama jobs legislation. If Dems pass the measure, and Obama signs it, the GOP can cite it as evidence that they’re not simply standing in the way of action on the economy.

—Brian Beutler.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

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The Marijuana Policy Project has just declared that Barack Obama is the worst President ever on medical Marijuana.

I think that this is not a deeply felt philosophy, but yet another case where a lack of ideology, or perhaps a contempt for ideology, that leads him to placate the most extreme of the dead enders, whether it be the drug war, or the Iraq war. (Where we were thrown out, we didn’t leave voluntarily)

What this means is that he doubles down more aggressively on bad policy than he would if he actually believed in it.

It’s kind a metaphor for his whole a political career.

H/t Disinformation.

Taibbi Gets It

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People are claiming that somehow or other Occupy Wall Street hates the rich because of envy of the wealthy.

Taibbi argues that it’s because they haven’t gotten rich by cheating, not winning:

And we hate the rich? Come on. Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that’s just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they’re cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.

We cheer for people who hit their own home runs in this country– not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon.

That’s why it’s so obnoxious when people say the protesters are just sore losers who are jealous of these smart guys in suits who beat them at the game of life. This isn’t disappointment at having lost. It’s anger because those other guys didn’t really win. And people now want the score overturned.

Go read the rest.

Police Use Gas, Shotguns, and Grenades to Break Up Occupy Oakland

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No, I’m not joking that’s what, “firing tear gas, rubber bullets and beanbags into the protest and lobbing flashbang grenades,” means, and that’s what the cops did in Oakland.

Interestingly enough, the day before a recall effort was initiated against Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, and I’m wondering if there might have been some sort of cause and effect.

There allegations of problems at the Oakland protest, sanitation and vandalism, but I would like to hear something about from someone other than the authorities who initiated the crackdown.

There has since been a protest march to Oakland city hall over the arrests, with some scuffles.

I’m waiting for the police to ride down the protesters on camels and horses.

Why Rick Santorum is Not a Douche

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Because in a just world, no part of him would never see the inside of a vagina:

The candidate later went on to explain that sex between a man and a woman is “special,” and even birth control is “not OK.”

“We’ll repeal Obamacare and get rid any idea that you have to have abortion coverage or contraceptive coverage,” he said. “One of the things that I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the sexual liberty idea and many in the Christian faith have said, you know contraception is OK. It’s not OK because it’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.”

 (Emphasis mine)

Seriously, the fact that any woman ever let this meat sack pass his genes on with her makes me despair for the future of our species.

The Question is Not Whether, but How Obama’s HARP Will F%$# Homeowners

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So, Obama has announced a new assistance program for homeowners with underwater mortgages, the Home Affordable Refinance Program, which is to succeed the thoroughly corrupt HAMP program, which was geared toward helping the banksters to defraud homeowners, to allow for that cash flow to paper over some of the evidence of their insolvency.

A quick perusal of the proposal gives us the the following bullet points:

  • The homeowner can be at a higher level of negative equity than previously allowed.
  • An appraisal is not necessarily.
  • Some fees are being waived, particularly for those who take shorter term loans.
  • Underwriting standards for the banks are relaxed, making it less likely for them to have to buy back bad loans. ⇐ This is the stealth bank bailout. Another f%$#ing get out of jail free card.
  • An agreement from the major banks to not block refinancing on the basis of a 2nd mortgage.
  • It only applies to loans held by Fannie and Freddie .

I’m dubious because I believe that the Obama administration has been completely captured by the banksters, and so will not live up to its expectation, but Felix Salmon calls the program pathetic based on its basic features:

  • If you’re a homeowner whose mortgage isn’t owned or guaranteed by Frannie, you’re out of luck.
  • If your mortgage was sold to Frannie after May 31, 2009, you’re out of luck.
  • If you want to get out of negative-equity hell by doing a principal reduction, you’re out of luck.
  • If your bank doesn’t feel like participating, for whatever reason, you’re out of luck.

Salmon also notes that even by the FHFA, the agency that is managing this program, does not forecast a significant uptick in refinancing, and the initial program has refinanced less than ⅕ of the the anticipated activities.

So, it probably fails on both the specifics of the plan, and the fact that Timmy “The Bankster’s Bitch” Geithner will be supervising the implementation, which is a recipe for another blow job for big banks.

Rats Leaving a Sinking Ship

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In this case, it’s Michelle Bachmann’s entire campaign in New Hampshire just quit on her:

Staff members in New Hampshire for Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann have resigned en masse, a Republican familiar with the situation said on Friday, in a fresh blow to her 2012 hopes.

The Republican had few details, but news reports in New Hampshire said the resignations included her New Hampshire campaign manager, Jeff Chidester.

Bachmann, campaigning in Iowa, sowed some confusion by saying she was unaware of the resignations.

Manchester’s Union Leader newspaper said Chidester, a conservative activist and radio talk show host, left due to frustration with Bachmann’s national campaign, not with the candidate herself.

Bachmann has a long history of churning through staff the way that Rush Limbaugh churns through Oxycontin.

This is a not unexpected development.

Sometimes, There is Truth in Justice

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A federal court judge just said that two key prosecution witnesses are not credible because they were motivated by racism and politics”

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in an order today lambasted two key prosecution witnesses in the State House vote-buying case as being motivated by political ambition and racial prejudice.

Thomson said Republicans Sen. Scott Beason of Gardendale and former Rep. Benjamin Lewis of Dothan had ulterior motives when they assisted investigators in the case. Beason and Lewis were key prosecution witnesses in the case, in which VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor and others were charged with offering and taking bribes to try to get a gambling bill approved in the Alabama Legislature. The two Republicans said they approached FBI agents after they felt gambling interests made improper offers to try to secure their votes on the bill.

“The evidence introduced at trial contradicts the self-serving portrait of Beason and Lewis as untouchable opponents of corruption. In reality, Beason and Lewis had ulterior motives rooted in naked political ambition and pure racial bias,” Thompson wrote.

“The court finds that Beason and Lewis lack credibility for two reasons. First, their motive for cooperating with F.B.I. investigators was not to clean up corruption but to increase Republican political fortunes by reducing African-American voter turnout. Second, they lack credibility because the record establishes their purposeful, racist intent,” Thompson wrote.

He’s allowing the testimony, but he is allowing the defense to present the evidence of racism and political dirty tricks at trial.

Still, if I were a prosecutor, and the judge just told me that their star witnesses are racist scum, and he’s also sent a message to the prosecutors that the traditional “all white jury” is not an option, and I’d be mainlining antacid right now.

H/t TPM.
gee, you think?

It Appears that Batsh%$ Insane is Bad for Business

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Because it looks like the big corporate fat cat donors are not supporting the Republicans as one would expect:

Last month, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just about doubled the haul of their counterparts, the National Republican Congressional Committee. The DCCC pulled in $6.64 million, while the NRCC brought in just $3.8 million. While the NRCC has more cash on hand (around $12.2 million to the DCCC’s around $9.5 million) and slightly less debt, over the course of the year the DCCC is outraising the team with the big House majority.

The year-long totals show the DCCC raising nearly $48 million to the NRCC’s just over $44 million.

I think that the Republican Party Presidential Primary clown show has convinced business executives that Republicans are simply not a good investment, because while one can price risk, you can’t price uncertainty, and insane motherf%$#er teabaggers are the very definition of uncertainty.

God Bless Gawker

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Call Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on His Cell Phone and Cheer Him Up

It’s been a rough day for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. His company reported a humiliating $428 million quarterly loss this morning, just the second in Goldman’s 12-year history as a public company. We figured he might like a sympathy call from the Occupy Wall Street folks, who know how to get by with less. Here’s his cell phone number.

Last week’s effort to put Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit in touch with the Wall Street protesters worked so well we thought we’d expand the program.

Here are some pick-me-up messages you might want to deliver to Blankfein: “I know you just lost half a billion dollars, but look on the bright side—you’ve set aside $10 billion in bonuses to pay out to your 34,200 employees.” Or, “Hey, just do what I do when I run out of money—head over to the Fed’s discount window and borrow more at no interest.” Or, “Just think how much worse the loss would be if you hadn’t had the foresight to snag that $13 billion taxpayer-financed pass-through bailout via AIG.” Or, “We’ve all got to eat a shitty deal once in a while.”

…………

Heh.
H/t MP at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!!

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And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Old Harbor Bank,Clearwater, FL
  2. Decatur First Bank, Decatur, GA
  3. Community Capital Bank, Jonesboro, GA
  4. Community Banks of Colorado, Greenwood Village, CO

Full FDIC list

Two weeks of 4 bank failures in a row.

I’m not sure if this is a trend, I’d wait another week on that, but we are back to (exactly) a two bank failure per week.

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):

Another Inspector Renault Moment

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I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!

So, now that we are looking into the corruption and cronyism in Mubarak’s Egypt, and it turns out that it has its roots in the American led privatization of the Egyptian economy, just like the rampant corruption in post-Soviet Russia:

Beginning two decades ago, the United States government bankrolled an Egyptian think tank dedicated to economic reform. A different outcome is only now becoming visible in the fallout from Egypt’s Arab Spring.

Formed with a $10 million endowment from the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies gathered captains of industry in a small circle — with the president’s son Gamal Mubarak at the center. Over time, members of the group would assume top roles in Egypt’s ruling party and government.

Today, Gamal Mubarak and four of those think tank members are in jail, charged with squandering public funds in the sale of public resources, lands and government-run companies as part of a dramatic restructuring. Some have fled the country, pilloried amid the public outrage over insider deals and corruption that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

“It became a crony capitalism,” Magda Kandil, the think tank’s new executive director, said of the privatization program advocated by its founders. Because of the corruption, the center now estimates, the assets that Egypt has sold off since 1991 have netted only about $10 billion, $90 billion less than their estimated worth.

The privatization saga is a cautionary tale about the power and perils of U.S. foreign aid — most notably the nearly $8 billion that the United States has provided to Egypt since the 1990s to push the country toward economic reforms.

This is not a bug, it’s a feature. This sort of economic liberalization is all about creating a few corrupt individuals, because it’s cheaper to allow cronies to get siphon off a billion or two while our banksters steal the rest than it is to allow those resources to accrue legally to the workers and the country.

I may seem cynical about this, but the corruption in Egypt, or Russia, or pretty much all of other privatization schemes outside of the Scandinavian countries run this way, so I’ve come to the conclusion that this is the actual goal of these policies.

Mission Accomplished

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While on some objective level, there might be some advantages (For officers who need a combat tour on their resume) to a continued US presence in Iraq, the Iraqis loath the Americans, both the military, and (in particular) the mercenaries private military contractors.

So it comes as no surprise that the Iraqis have refused to extend immunity to the military and has additionally refused to allow US bases to remain in country:

The US suffered a major diplomatic and military rebuff on Friday when Iraq finally rejected its pleas to maintain bases in the country beyond this year.

Barack Obama announced at a White House press conference that all American troops will leave Iraq by the end of December, a decision forced by the final collapse of lengthy talks between the US and the Iraqi government on the issue.

The Iraqi decision is a boost to Iran, which has close ties with many members of the Iraqi government and which had been battling against the establishment of permanent American bases.

Obama attempted to make the most of it by presenting the withdrawal as the fulfilment of one of his election promises.

“Today I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year. After nearly nine years, America’s war in Iraq will be over,” he told reporters.

But he had already announced this earlier this year, and the real significance today was in the failure of Obama, in spite of the cost to the US in dollars and deaths, to persuade the Iraqi president Nouri al-Maliki to allow one or more American bases to be kept in the country.

Obama was doing his damnedest to try to make his promise to leave Iraq a promise in name only, but the Iraqis are having none of it.

Like I said, to the degree to which Obama claims to oppose “stupid wars”, he refuses to believe that any war can be stupid.

Just as as a note, Bush’s invasion of Iraq is the just the gift that keeps on giving.