Year: 2011

Guess Who Loses If There Is a Default?

No Comments

Surprise, surprise, it won’t be the Banksters, because the bond holders will get priority over the people who will actually suffer as a result:

The U.S. Treasury will give priority to making interest payments to holders of government bonds when due if lawmakers fail to reach an agreement to raise the debt ceiling, according to an administration official.

The official requested anonymity because no announcement has been made. The Treasury has said about $90 billion in debt matures on Aug. 4 and more than $30 billion in interest comes due Aug. 15. Overall, more than $500 billion matures in August.

The $90 billion in six-month Treasury bills maturing Aug. 4 pared losses after the comments. Obama administration officials will brief the public no earlier than after financial markets close tomorrow on priorities for paying the nation’s bills if the $14.3 trillion limit isn’t raised, a Democratic Party official said earlier.

“The announcement is reassuring, but there’s really no alternative to favoring the bondholders,” said Christian Cooper, head of U.S. dollar derivatives trading in New York at Jefferies Group Inc., which as one of the 20 primary dealers is obligated to bid in Treasury sales. “The alternative would point to a default”

The alternative would be children not going to bed hungry, uninspected meat poisoning people, and old people not eating cat food, but no one in Washington, DC gives a crap about them.

Teabagger Family Values

No Comments

The Teabagger Congressman who defeated Melissa Bean (no great loss, she was a horrible Dino) is being sued for $117,000 in unpaid child support.

He’s claiming poverty, but he loaned his congressional campaign $35,000, so I’ll just put it down to his being a sleaze ball:

U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh of McHenry owes more than $100,000 in child support and interest to his former wife, she alleges in a Cook County Circuit Court filing.

The dispute, set out in a court filing last December, remains unsettled. Walsh’s ex-wife says he is $117,437 behind in payments.

Walsh, 49-year-old Republican, entered Congress in January, swept into office with help from tea-party activists. He often appears on television demanding the country drastically cut its spending and pay its bills.

John Kenneth Galbraith nailed it when he said, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

It Sucks to be John Boehner

No Comments

I guess we already knew this, but today, it sucked even more than usual to be John Boehner.

You see, John Boehner had to postpone the vote on his debt ceiling plan because he didn’t have the votes to get it passed:

Despite a days-long push to force their conservative members into line, and sneak Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) debt limit bill through the House of Representatives, GOP leadership has postponed a scheduled vote on the legislation — a sign that their efforts have thus far failed.
TPM SLIDESHOW: Debt Negotiations At The White House

This evening, members were alerted that Boehner and his leadership team were delaying the vote, which had been scheduled for 6 p.m.

“Members are advised that the House GOP Leadership has postponed the votes on the motion to recommit and final passage of S. 627 – Speaker Boehner’s Short Term Default Act (amending the Faster FOIA Act of 2011),” reads a notice from Minority Whip Steny Hoyer’s (D-MD) office to his whip team.

You would think that as speaker of the house, he would be able to get his own caucus to vote for him, or at least he would be able to count votes, but this is apparrently beyond the Congress’s orange avenger.

He’s the most incompetent Speaker of the House ever.

This is a good thing, because he’s an evil son of a bitch, it’s better when evil people are incapable of doing evil well enough.

I expect the Todal to so totally Gleep his ass.*

*The Todal is, “an agent of the Devil, sent to punish evildoers for having done less evil than they should.”   It Gleeps said unfortunate souls.  Go read James Thurber’s magnificent book, The 13 Clocks.

It Looks Like the 50-State Foreclosure Fraud Coverup May be Unraveling

No Comments

First, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said yesterday she will not release banks from liability incurred through fraudulent paperwork:

Three states conducting their own probes of residential mortgage practices are resisting broad liability releases sought by banks to settle a nationwide foreclosure investigation.

The banks, in settlement talks with state and federal officials, are seeking releases that would protect them from future legal liabilities. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said yesterday she won’t endorse a deal that includes certain releases. New York and Delaware have raised similar concerns over terms of a possible deal.

All three states are conducting investigations tied to mortgage operations of banks. Delaware and Massachusetts officials say a settlement shouldn’t release banks from some claims, including those related to bundling mortgages into securities, while the inquiries continue.

“We’re not prepared to do a broad liability release for either securitization issues or for MERS until we’ve completed that piece of investigation,” Coakley said in a telephone interview yesterday. Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., or MERS, is a national mortgage database used by banks.

Basically, Coakley is saying that if there is a release on securitization fraud, she will not sign onto the deal, and the banks know that if they are ever effectively pursued on securitization fraud, they are dead, so no deal.

To the rest of the AGs, get off your ass, and convene a grand jury, the rest of the AGs, and stop letting yourself get strong-armed by Obama, Holder, and company to go easy on the banks.

H/t Naked Capitalism.

You Have to Love the Bait and Switch that Obama Pulled on the CFPB

No Comments

As you know, Barack Obama decided not to appoint Elizabeth Warren as the first head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), but instead chose to nominate their current head of enforcement, Richard Cordray, former Ohio Attorney General, who had filed lawsuits against predatory banks.

It was better than the alternative, Raj Date, but it seemed to me that it was a worthless gesture to the Republicans, since they promised to filibuster anyone, because they want the bureau gutted.

Obviously, this screams “Recess Appointment,” but Obama is having none of that, not because he’s weak, but because this creates paralysis which he can exploit to effectively make a banker the head of the agency.

Raj Date has been elevated to adviser to the Treasury secretary for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Warren’s old position, and I guarantee that there will be no pressure from the Obama to administration to get an up or down vote on Cordray.

They give a nod to the people who want the CFPB to work with their nomination, and then they put a bankster in charge of running the bureau.

Seriously, Obama has his tongue so far up the bankster’s asses that he tastes tonsils.

Who is Date? He’s the current associate director of research, markets and regulations, and he’s a f%$#ing bankster, having been the, “senior vice president for corporate strategy and development at Capital One and a managing director in the financial institutions group at Deutsche Bank.”

So now, Date can emasculate the CFPB while Cordray waits for a vote on his nomination that will never come.

If You Were Wondering How Evil the Banksters Were………

No Comments

The fact that they are threatening to drop millions of customers because the law may require them not to F%$# them over quite so badly might give you an inkling:

Brokerage firms may drop millions of individual retirement account holders if a proposed U.S. Labor Department rule takes effect, a lobbying group said today.

The Labor Department wants to expand the scope of fiduciary responsibility to protect those saving for retirement from conflicts of interest, such as recommending investments with higher fees. The rule would require investment professionals who advise employers and workers with retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s or IRAs to act in the best interest of their clients.

The change may cause financial firms to offer fewer investment options in retirement accounts and shift to a fee- based model used by investment advisers, which will raise costs, Kenneth Bentsen, executive vice president for public policy and advocacy at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said at a Washington hearing before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions.

He’s circumspect, but what the lobbyist from the lead financial services organization in the country just said was, “If you don’t let us f%$# our customers without lube, we’ll kick them to the curb.”

Why aren’t these guys going to jail?

H/t Naked Capitalism.

The Koch Suckers are Flooding the Zone in Wisconsin

No Comments

No, I do not mean boots on the ground, the Kochs don’t work that way.

I mean money, and lots of it:

If you want to get a good sense of what’s really happening in the Wisconsin recall wars, keep an eye on the right wing money that’s now flooding into the races, in a last ditch effort to keep the state senate in Republican hands.

Club for Growth Wisconsin has dumped at least $1.5 million into the recall races, according to the progressive group One Wisconsin Now, which tells me it got the information from its ad tracker.

Even more tellingly, the Club has poured a surprising $400,000 into the battle to recall state senator Alberta Darling, who was once viewed as safe, One Wisconsin Now’s executive director Scot Ross tells me. Ross adds that his media tracker found that the Club sank the money into the race right after a Dem poll found that Darling is getting edged by her Dem recall challenger, Rep. Sandy Pasch.

If true, this is significant. If labor and Dems can knock off Darling, it would be a major coup: She is the co-chair of the legislative committee that passed Scott Walker’s union-busting proposals. Of all the GOP state senators targeted for recall, she’s been in office the longest. And Dems privately admit that they think the chances are slim that she can be defeated. But if the Club is pouring massive cash into an effort to prop her up, this could mean Dems have succeeded in widening the playing field beyond the most vulnerable GOP recall targets, meaning that cash being spent on Darling could have otherwise been spent elsewhere.

Obviously, the fact that they have lots of money to throw around is not good, but the fact that they feel compelled to throw it at what should be slam dunks is good.

If the Democrats want to win this, they need to focus on boots on the ground, and I mean locals, not hired guns, because the ‘Phants will have more money for the foreseeable future.

Oh My God…

2 Comments

And I am left listening to this with an expression resembling a cow that has stepped on its own udder

This is a day for insane bigoted people to leave me stunned at their evil.

Case in point, Glenn Beck compared the murdered Norwegian campers to Hitler Youth:

Glenn Beck, the rightwing US broadcaster and Tea Party favourite, has compared those who were massacred on the Norwegian island of Utøya to the Nazi party’s youth wing.

“There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler youth, or, whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics. Disturbing,” said Beck on his syndicated radio show.

The comments were condemned by Torbjørn Eriksen, a former press secretary to Jens Stoltenberg, Norway’s prime minister.

Seriously, what is wrong with him?

More importantly, what the f%$# is wrong with the people who watch his show, and what the f%$3 is wrong with his sponsors?

BTW, when I was at school, I remember some of the right wing ratf%$#s on the SGA Senate (some of whom were later caught up in the Abramoff scandal) talking about conferences, summer internships, and similar activities, so the idea of some sort of  “political camp” is not foreign to the ‘Phants.

Not Enough Bullets…

No Comments

Just so you know, pay about 18% of their income in federal taxes:

The 400 richest Americans used to pay 30% of their income on the average to Uncle Sam. Today, they pay 18% on the average, according to Steve Rattner, a Wall Street financier, who just presented these figures on Mornings With Joe,MSNBC.

The main reason for the drop in their tax rate of some 40% is the tax cuts by George Bush in 2003, taking the rate paid on dividends and capital gains down to 15%. This reduction in the investment class’s taxes powered the bull market in stocks from the fall of 2003 until the fall of 2007.

Shockingly, the plan to raise the debt ceiling collects nothing from the wealthiest Americans to reduce our budget deficit. The Republican right wing holds the Obama White House hostage. It’s a sad day for the principle of sharing the pain equitably

Obviously, we need to make major cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

We really need to go back to a 94% maximum tax rate.

The Unemployed Need not Apply

1 Comment

Many employers are now explicitly saying in their ads that they only hire people who are currently employed:

That is the message being broadcast by many of the nation’s employers, making it even more difficult for 14 million jobless Americans to get back to work.

A recent review of job vacancy postings on popular sites like Monster.com, CareerBuilder and Craigslist revealed hundreds that said employers would consider (or at least “strongly prefer”) only people currently employed or just recently laid off.

Unemployed workers have long suspected that the gaping holes on their résumés left them less attractive to employers. But with the country in the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression, many had hoped employers would be more forgiving.

“I feel like I am being shunned by our entire society,” said Kelly Wiedemer, 45, an information technology operations analyst who said a recruiter had told her that despite her skill set she would be a “hard sell” because she had been out of work for more than six months.

Legal experts say that the practice probably does not violate discrimination laws because unemployment is not a protected status, like age or race. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently held a hearing, though, on whether discriminating against the jobless might be illegal because it disproportionately hurts older people and blacks.

The American business culture is truly repulsive.

Pat Buchanan Has Disappointed Me

No Comments

I did not think that he could actually disappoint me, Molly Ivins had him nailed when she said that his infamous “Culture War” speech at the Republican convention, “It probably read better in the original German.”

Needless to say, he is an appalling person, and it is even more appalling that he is treated as a font of wisdom by the Washington punditocracy.

So I expect him to appall me.

What I don’t expect is for him to say something that is so outrageous that he actually exceeds my already lowered expectations, but he has outdone himself.

He excused the mass murder in Norway, saying that Anders Breivik might be right.

Why is this man on cable TV? Why is he not a social pariah?

Why he is published in any paper with more credibility than the Moonie Times?

The Debt Ceiling Showdown is Blazing Saddles

No Comments

One Move, and the N***** Gets It

Yves Smith’s interview on The Real News Network, is a cogent description of what is wring here, and makes reference to that classic scenes from Mel Brooks’ masterpiece, Blazing Saddles.

It’s 8 minutes and 27 seconds well spent.

Her thesis, and it is one that I support, is that the “Debt Ceiling Crisis” is largely an artifact of the Obama administration’s desire to gut cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

It’s screw granny theater.

More Like Bush Every Day

No Comments

The New York Review of Books has what can only be called an epic take-down of Barack Obama and his administration.

I really cannot do justice to the piece, you should read it, but here a re a couple of quotes:

Plouffe’s advice to the President defines not just Obama’s policies but also his behavior. Plouffe tells the President, according to this observer, that the target group wants him to seem the most reasonable man in the room. Plouffe is the conceptualizer, and Bill Daley, the chief of staff who shares Plouffe’s political outlook, makes things happen; Gene Sperling, the director of economic policy, and Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, are smart men but they come out of politics rather than academia or deep experience in their respective fields. Once Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, departs later this summer, all of the President’s original economic advisers will be gone. Partly this is because the President’s emphasis on budget cutting didn’t leave them very much to do. One White House émigré told me, “It’s not a place that welcomes ideas.”

(emphasis mine)

It sounds an awful lot like what John Dilulio characterization of the Bush Administration’s lack of a policy apparatus as, “The reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

Every time I hear something like this, I become increasingly convinced that there’s not a damn bit of difference between them and the Bushies.

And then I read this, and realize that there is a difference:

According to a report in The Hill newspaper in late June, the tough-minded, experienced, and blunt Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California told Obama in a White House meeting that he’d asked several Republicans about their meeting with him the day before, and, “To a person, they said the President’s going to cave.” Then the congressman said to the President of the United States, “And if you’re going to cave, tell us right now.” The President was reported to have been displeased, and responded, “I’m the President of the United States; my words carry weight.”

Obama, while just as petulant as Shrub, lacks his guts, and everyone knows it.

Just read the whole thing.  It’s very good.

Helmut Kohl Excoriates Angela Merkel

No Comments

And it’s not just the former German Chancellor, (with the caveat that he is denying that he said this now) who was at one point considered her mentor, as well as much of the CDU’s old guard have not taken to harshly criticizing her behavior in the crisis.

This is rather unsurprising.

Unlike in America, the mainstream right (the CDU) finds the idea of hosing down taxpayers to pay off bankers, particularly when it won’t solve the problem, to be a bad thing.

Hopefully this is a step in realizing that the problems with the Eurozone, at least those not centered in EU HQ in Brussels, flow from Germany, and how it used its influence to structure the Eurozone.

Yes, I Heard His Speech, and It Pissed Me Off…

No Comments

Same sh%$, different day, it’s the culture of Washington, both sides are at fault, if we do nothing disaster looms.  (False: doing nothing means letting the Bush tax cuts expire in 2012, and deficits drop by a lot)

It seemed to be more of a plaintive whine that people just don’t get how awesome he is, or they would go all happy non-partisan.

This is all largely an artifact of his own making, he could have gotten this all done in December, but Obama wanted an opportunity to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, so we have this hostage situation.

That’s not what pissed me off the most though, it’s that, because of the speech, Maddow was preempted by that fatuous f%$# Lawrence O’Donnell.

I know that it’s not rational, but his voice sets my teeth on edge.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

No Comments

“Democratic” Congressman Mike Ross (AR-4), has announced that he will not seek reelection in 2012:

The only Democratic congressman in Arkansas, Mike Ross, said on Monday that he will not seek a seventh term in the U.S. House of Representatives, saying he wants to spend more time with his family.

The announcement sent a shock through Arkansas political circles, and opened the possibility of a Republican replacement for the popular congressman. The redistricting process has left Ross’s district heavily GOP, with an uphill battle for Democrats there next cycle.

Note that he’s not only a member of the phoney Democrat “Blue Dog” Caucus, he is one of their co-chairs, and it’s these folks, who seem to value holding office above any hint of real political values, and they were the ones hardest hit by  the 2010 sweep, because people do not like voting for weasels.

Unfortunately, this means that the DCCC will doubtless find yet another phony Dem, and throw enormous sums of money at him, in the hope that he can make it to Washington, and vote against the party.

If You Are Not Up to Speed on Patent Trolls………

No Comments

Planet Money and This American Life joined forces to run Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures patent extortion ring to the ground, and it is well worth the read. (There is a link to the This American Life broadcast there)

It shows how our patent system, where I sh%$ you not, someone has patented toast, rather than being a spur to innovation, or, as they conclude:

The big companies — Google, Apple, Microsoft — will probably survive. The likely casualties are the companies out there now that no one’s ever heard of that could one day take their place.

One of the more interesting bits is how they show that Myhrvold’s claim that they are a purely defensive company which does not sue people is a bald faced lie.  They use a network of shell corporations to extract their tribute.

This system needs to be fixed, but the victims are largely invisible and poor, and the rentiers have lots of money, because they get paid for doing nothing, which means that it is tough to get Congress interested in this.

Sikorsky X2 Makes Final Flight of Program

No Comments

Considering that it was developed with private money on a shoe string, the program has had some fairly remarkable accomplishments:

  • Achieving a cruise speed in level flight of 253 kts, a record.
  • Doing so while maintaining the low speed and hover performance of a conventional helicopter. (as compared to the performance of the V-22 in those areas, which is just pitiful)
  • Doing so at noise and vibration levels equal to or lower than current helicopters.

Sikorsky will not be moving onto developing the S-97 light attack/scout helo.

Bernie Sanders Calls for a Primary Challenge to Barack Obama

No Comments
Roll tape

Yes, he did say that, on the Thom Hartmann radio show:

SANDERS: Brian, believe me, I wish I had the answer to your question. Let me just suggest this. I think there are millions of Americans who are deeply disappointed in the president; who believe that, with regard to Social Security and a number of other issues, he said one thing as a candidate and is doing something very much else as a president; who cannot believe how weak he has been, for whatever reason, in negotiating with Republicans and there’s deep disappointment. So my suggestion is, I think one of the reasons the president has been able to move so far to the right is that there is no primary opposition to him and I think it would do this country a good deal of service if people started thinking about candidates out there to begin contrasting what is a progressive agenda as opposed to what Obama is doing. […] So I would say to Ryan [sic] discouragement is not an option. I think it would be a good idea if President Obama faced some primary opposition.

Admittedly, Sanders is not technically a Democrat, he’s a Socialist (really, JFGI) but he does caucus with the Democrats, and he is a sitting US Senator, so the idea that Obama needs a primary challenge is starting to gain a bit of mainstream traction.

If someone credible announces, they go on my Act Blue page.

H/t Think Progress.

Did a Not-Krugman Times OP/Ed Writer Just Call Republicans Domestic Terrorists?

No Comments

Why yes, I think that Nicholas Kristof just wrote that:

IF China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage.

Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists.

We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength — and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home.

House Republicans start from a legitimate concern about rising long-term debt. Politicians are usually focused only on short-term issues, so it would be commendable to see the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party seriously focused on containing long-term debt. But on this issue, many House Republicans aren’t serious, they’re just obsessive in a destructive way. The upshot is that in their effort to protect the American economy from debt, some of them are willing to drag it over the cliff of default.

…………

So let’s remember not only the national security risks posed by Iran and Al Qaeda. Let’s also focus on the risks, however unintentional, from domestic zealots.

BTW, I think that he’s wrong: This is intentional.

They want to win in 2012, and they are attempting to destroy the nation to do so.