Unsurprisingly, it’s an editor for The New Republic, Jonathan Chait, who writes a New York Times OP/ED calling liberals whiny bitches for not worshipping at the alter of Barack Obama.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
Labor Day News that Will Be Thoroughly Buried
Did you see the story on the news about thousands of nurses lobbying congressmen for a tax on financial transactions fund essential services and infrastructure:
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, an estimated 10,000 nurses and community participants joined actions in 21 states today demanding immediate attention to the economic crisis to heal America.
They called on Senators and Congress members in their local district offices to pledge to “support a Wall Street transaction tax that will raise sufficient revenue to make Wall Street pay for the devastation it has caused on Main Street.”
Did you hear about that on the news?
Neither did I.
(rest of press release after the break)
Events from soup kitchens to feeding the hungry, to community speak outs, to street theater took place from urban centers including Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Orlando, to smaller towns, such as Corpus Christi, TX, Marquette, MI, and Dayton, OH. National Nurses United, the largest U.S. union of nurses with 170,000 members, sponsored the actions.
In Richmond, VA, 120 RNs and allies descended on the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and were greeted by a squadron of police. The RNs responded with singing and a large picket line. Cantor’s office invited a delegation to meet with his chief of staff. Fifteen constituents lead by NNU nurses held the meeting.. Cantor’s staff heard moving testimony and said the congressman would “respond.” The local CBS and NBC stations filmed outside, as they were not allowed in. A “Lady Liberty” character greeted the delegation on Cantor’s office lawn as it exited the meeting, and heard stories of the pain caused on Main Street by Wall Street.
“America’s nurses every day see broad declines in health and living standards that are a direct result of patients and families struggling with lack of jobs, un-payable medical bills, hunger and homelessness. We know where to find the resources to bring them hope and real solutions,” said NNU Co-president Karen Higgins, RN, outside Cantor’s office.
Ringing a bell and shouting “Oye Oye,” a town crier dressed in colonial attire drew a crowd of nearly 200 nurses, activists and passersby as he decried the reckless actions of Wall Street and its impact on the working people of Boston’s Main Street in front of the office of Senator Scott Brown.
Watch a video of the Boston event at this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejgeLElHVkI and see a photo below.
In Pueblo, CO, a pledge delivered to Senator Udall asked “which side is the senator on: Wall Street or Main Street?”
One hundred people attempted to enter Senator Toomey’s office near Philadelphia but were blocked by security guards. At Rep. Peter King’s Long Island, New York office, 50 nurses and supporters entered his office to serve up the pledge but were kept out. See photo below.
Chicago’s nurses sang the blues as hundreds of nurses and others gathered in support of the pledge. See photo below.
The staff of Senator Rubio in Orlando, FL is accompanying nurses to feed local homeless. In downtown San Francisco a soup kitchen was assembled to feed the hungry and drew more than 500.
And outside the office of Rep. Darryl Issa, north of San Diego, a crowd of 300 nurses, including members of other unions and area residents, expressed outrage at allegations of self dealing by the congressman. An RN delegation entered his office and delivered the pledge. Outside, community members shared stories of enduring economic hardships. See picture below.
Nurses visited home offices of Republicans and Democrats throughout the day with a common message – American families are hurting, and they need jobs, healthcare, housing, quality education, nutrition, and a secure retirement.
In addition, the RNs are releasing data where available contrasting contributions the legislators have received from Wall Street with the plummeting economic conditions in their districts that has left substantial numbers of their constituents in crisis.
Rep. Paul Ryan, for example, a Wisconsin Republican, has accepted $2,417,672 in campaign contributions from Wall Street financial institutions the past 12 years, as a champion for Wall Street interests. But the payoff has been small for his district where 69,241 people are uninsured, 22,884 are dependent on food stamps, and 20,394 children and 7,939 seniors live in poverty.
Similarly, Sen. Michael Bennett of Colorado, a Democrat, has collected $2,409,806 in campaign contributions from Wall Street interests while his state languishes in the top 10 in foreclosures, has 184,689 children in poverty, 116,941 people dependent on food stamps, and 13,390 homeless.
NNU will also be calling for the establishment of Main Street commissions to push real solutions for Main Street communities, such as the Wall Street financial tax, in comparison to what NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro calls “the Wall Street ‘super committee’ set up in the recent debt ceiling deal whose main goal seems to be more cuts in programs that help people to funnel more resources to Wall Street and foreign banks and investors.”
A tax on Wall Street trading of stocks, derivatives, currencies, credit default swaps, and futures – which many other nations have now adopted – could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for programs that “are desperately needed to reduce the pain and suffering felt by so many who feel abandoned across this nation,” says NNU Co-President Deborah Burger, RN.
“It’s time for Wall Street financiers, who created this crisis and continue to hold much of the nation’s wealth, to start contributing to rebuild this country, and for the American people to reclaim our future,” says DeMoro.
The $2.4 trillion in government bailouts to financial and other institutions already spent, noted DeMoro, alone would have funded 63 million jobs at the national median level of about $39,000 a year. “Instead we have over 25 million people who are unemployed or underemployed, and in the past decade U.S. based corporations added 2.4 million jobs in foreign countries while divesting in America, cutting 2.9 million jobs in the U.S.”
“We need to reallocate the money back to our communities, and our actions on September 1 are going to raise the demand to a new level to heal our nation,” said NNU Co-president Jean Ross.
Learn More About the Main Street Contract for America and Get Involved Here
Where I’ve Been the Past Couple of Days
Click for full size
My room was on the 1st floor on the front right
The enclosed porch on the back right is new.
For the past two days, I’ve been camping at the Atlantia 30th year celebration, and the site, pretty much across VA route 20 from James Madison’s home in Montpelier, did not have any internet access (voice and text worked fine), so I wasn’t posting anything.
I was also 20 miles from Charlottesville, VA, where I spent the plurality of my youth growing up (6 years), so I checked out the old house on Brandywine Drive.
It appears that my Dad’s planting of ivy on the lower front yard took.
One of his other lawn innovations, a cairn which ran the length of the lawn, has mercifully been removed.
I recall many an unpleasant afternoon removing grass that grew in between the stones.
I hated that pile or rocks about as much as I did the plant to whose roots the flowering plum in Portland (big, long shoe sole puncturing thorns, but that’s another story), so the fact that is gone fills me with some glee.
I also swung by my old elementary school, Greenbriar.
It’s the first time that I’ve seen the old house in more than 35 years, though I was at the elementary school about 20 years ago.
As a measure of how little life I have, this is the first time that I have missed two consecutive days to post since I started blogging in 2007. (I think that the total number of missed days is less than 10)
If You Think That This is Bad, Just Wait for the AI Toasters
First, they get you to let down their guard, and then they strike!Neck massagers are not strangling people, as shown by the case of the Shoulderfles (Shudderflex?):
Let’s all be thankful that the pictured woman enjoying her Shoulderflex isn’t wearing a necklace or much in the way of clothing, and also that her hair is tied neatly atop her head. It turns out that necklaces, clothing, and hair have the potential to turn that peaceful look on her face into something else entirely.
(Credit: Shoulderflex)No, seriously. One person was strangled to death after her necklace became caught in the personal massager’s rotating component, while another was almost killed when a piece of clothing was caught. Still more have been injured when their hair became entangled in the device.
It’s like Rise of the Planet of the Apes in silicon.
Your Moment of Monty Python
None Shall Pass!
When this was described to me, my reaction was, “How can you find this funny?”
When I saw it, I understood.
U.S. Said to Be Ready to Sue Banks Over Mortgages – NYTimes.com
U.S. Said to Be Ready to Sue Banks Over Mortgages – NYTimes.com
Not gonna happen
When a ‘Phant Calls Another ‘Phant a Stupid Classless Idiot…
You know that a big fat line has been crossed.
In this case, it’s Brian Miller, former head of the Pima County (Tucson) Arizona Republican Party, calling his successors classless dolts for raffling off a Glock handgun as a fund raiser.
The reason that he’s saying this is because this is Gabrielle Gifford’s district, and she was shot, wait for it, with a Glock:
Eyebrows shot up all over the country Thursday following news that that the Republican Party in Pima County, AZ — home to Tucson and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ (D) district — is raffling off a Glock similar to the one used to shoot Giffords in the head in January.
In Tucson, the condemnation of the plan was universal and bi-partisan.
“There’s a woman who has a bullet in the brain and who everybody is wishing a full recovery,” Brian Miller, the immediate past chair of the Pima County GOP told TPM. “I don’t think that raffling off a firearm right now is probably the right way to go.”
Miller says the people who took over the party — and booted him from his position after he criticized local law enforcement for shooting a Marine in a controversial raid on his home in May — are from the “my way or the highway” wing of the GOP who don’t pay much thought to the political fallout from their actions.
While he said that raffling off a firearm to raise money is something he did himself when he ran (and lost) in the 2010 Republican primary in Gifford’s district, it’s not something he’d do now.
But it’s the kind of thing the folks in charge of things at the Pima County GOP may become known for, and to the party’s detriment, he said.
“The people who are running the Pima County GOP right now aren’t exactly known for their ability to feel the political pulse,” he said. “Politically, it’s kind of a silly thing to do.”
Anyone who thinks that you can reason with rat f%$#s like this is delusional.
Catch Phrases II
This is Not Star Trek. In Startrek, the Evil Spock has a goatee. In our world the evil James O’Keefe is clean shaven, and the good James O’Keefe is chief cat-herder for the Massachusetts Pirate Party, whilst sporting a goatee.
This is why I call Barack Obama the worst constitutional law professor ever.
As Eric Falkenstein observes:
People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes. A phone conversation can always be disavowed, you just say you were talking about last weekend’s bar mitzvah.
Why Yes, It Is a Blimp
Click for full size
Seen at the Westminster Airport
It was about 2 weeks ago, and I have no clue as to why, but the DirectTV blimp was parked at the Westminster Airport.
I didn’t even know that DirectTV had a blimp.
How Quaint, Anti-Trust Law Enforcement
The Department of Justice has filed papers to prevent the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile:
The US government is attempting to block the $39bn (£24bn) takeover of T-Mobile by AT&T on antitrust grounds.The department of justice (DoJ) filed court papers in Washington on Wednesday in an attempt to halt the merger, claiming that it would “lessen competition substantially” in the telecoms market and harm consumers. AT&T said it was “surprised and disappointed” by the intervention.“AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low-priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market,” the DOJ said in its filing, which was first reported by Bloomberg.The multibillion-dollar merger, announced in March, would create the largest mobile provider in the US with 130 million customers, and reduce the number of players in the market to three.
This is not surprising, except perhaps to AT&T, who greased a lot of palms lobbied extensively for support of this deal.
After all, not only is T-Mobile aggressively competing on price, but between it and AT&T, the two cmpanies control something like 90% of the GSM cell network in the US, which, unlike Sprint and Verizon’s competing CDMA, works everywhere in the world,* which means that if you wanted to use your phone internationally, then you would have only one choice.
We don’t care, we don’t have to…we’re the phone company.
The Death Star is saying that they will “Vigorously Contest” the filing, but considering the fact that on their own paperwork it was shown to be 10 times as expensive to buy T-Mobile as it would be to upgrade their network to 4G:
So just to recap what you’re reading here, if AT&T doesn’t buy T-Mobile and spends $3.8 billion instead of $39 billion then they will be able to cover 97% of Americans in 4 years less time. What’s the deal? AT&T continues to downplay this memo, hopefully it’s enough for some of the Attorney Generals on the fence to start asking the important questions.
Fundamentally the business plan for the incumbents is the same as it ever was, finding ways to leverage their natural monopolies to extract maximum rent from the general public.
Finally, as much as it pains me to say this, props to Obama and Holder for engaging in some real antitrust actions.
*God bless the international standards averse USA, where we use the English system of measurements, and CDMA, for no good reason at all.
The Schadenfreude Shortage is Officially Over
After Bill O’Reilly and his wife separated, she started dating a cop, and he used the promise of donations to a police charity to get the police commissioner to order an investigating his wife’s boyfriend:
Last summer, Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly came to believe that his wife was romantically involved with another man. Not just any man, but a police detective in the Long Island community they call home. So O’Reilly did what any concerned husband would do: He pulled strings to get the police department’s internal affairs unit to investigate one of their own for messing with the wrong man’s lady.
We reported in June that Bill O’Reilly and his wife of 15 years Maureen McPhilmy O’Reilly seem to be on the outs. Last summer she purchased a separate home under her own name, and transferred her voter registration to the new address, while O’Reilly kept his registration current at their old address. As per usual, Fox News did not comment on the situation at the time. Since then we’ve learned what happened, and it’s like Bridges of Madison County meets Copland. When confronted with a potentially disloyal spouse, O’Reilly reacted by—not unlike his boss Roger Ailes—treating his local police department like a private security force and trying to damage one cop’s career for the sin of crossing Bill O’Reilly.
………
Richard Harasym is a 23-year veteran of the Nassau County Police Department who, as of last summer, had been a detective in the elite internal affairs unit for 12 years. His job was to catch crooked cops, root out corruption, and police the police. But at some point during the summer of 2010, his commanding officer, Inspector Neil Delargy, called him into his office with a highly unorthodox assignment: Harasym was to launch an investigation into a fellow officer based not on what he had done, but on who he was dating.
Delargy ordered Harasym to meet with two private detectives working on behalf of Bill O’Reilly. They had information about an NCPD officer they believed to be carrying on with O’Reilly’s wife. Delargy told Harasym to launch an investigation into the man and to tell him to end the relationship.
………
According to our source, Delargy offered Harasym no justification for investigating the detective—who is unmarried—aside from the alleged infidelity. “The order was to investigate this detective not for any misdeeds,” the source said, “but to see if they could get anything on him. Delargy also told him to tell the detective to back off.”
Delargy told Harasym that the investigation was highly sensitive for two reasons, the source said: 1) It was ordered directly by then-police commissioner Lawrence Mulvey, and 2) O’Reilly was at the time considering making a major donation to the Nassau County Police Department Foundation, a private not-for-profit foundation Mulvey helped found in 2009 to raise money for construction of a planned $48 million police training facility at Nassau Community College.
“These internal affairs cops were on the case at the behest of Mulvey in order to get O’Reilly’s funds,” the source said.
I don’t know from the story if Billo broke any laws here. In order for him to have broken the law, he would have had make statements implying that there would be no donation forthcoming unless they targeted his wife’s boyfriend, but with allegations that Mulvey routinely offered favors to people who made donations to his charity, it does seem that there is some serious ethical lapses.
The fact that this mirrors Newscorp’s payoffs to in matters related to the phone hacking scandal in the UK makes it even more amusing.
I think that I will have a surfeit of schadenfreude to last me through September.
Best Healthcare System in the World, My Ass!
The USA is now 40th in the world in infant mortality:
Babies in the United States have a higher risk of dying during their first month of life than do babies born in 40 other countries, according to a new report.
Some of the countries that outrank the United States in terms of newborn death risk are South Korea, Cuba, Malaysia, Lithuania, Poland and Israel, according to the study.
Researchers at the World Health Organization estimated the number of newborn deaths and newborn mortality rates of more than 200 countries over the last 20 years.
Malaysia????
Malaysia has a better infant mortality record?
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
FWIW, this problem is largely driven by preterm births, which are in tern driven by lack of access to adequate prenatal care.
Yes, that Acquisition of Countrywide was So Good for BoA
I probably haven’t been writing about this as much as I should, but it’s beginning to look like Bank of America’s ill-advised takeover of Countrywide Financial, and it’s portfolio of fraudulent mortgages, is beginning to cause some real problems.
Basically, the sweetheart deal that they negotiated with the trustee, Bank of New York Mellon, would have them paying out pennies on the dollar for misrepresented and mis-documented mortgages.
First, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman opposed the settlement saying that it was unfair to investors.
Of course, the unfairness was a feature, not a bug, since BNY Mellon is desperate to reduce its exposure from their deliberate lack of due diligence.
Then, the FDIC opposed the deal, saying that they did not have enough information to evaluate the deal on its merits.
And if we know anything about the world of securitized mortgages and trusts, we know that more information means more bad news, as we have seen every time another rock gets overturned.
Well, now we have individual homeowners filing to block the settlement, because, as a sop to investors, the deal would have established a “rocket docket” for foreclosures:
Lawyers for the National Consumer Law Center said in a report prepared as part of the case that the proposed settlement “will speed up foreclosures, perpetuate existing servicing abuses in the system, and undermine federal programs designed to stabilize the housing market.”
Bank of America had hoped the $8.5 billion settlement would finally put much of this potential liability behind it, but the challenges have raised investor fears that the ultimate cost of the settlement could rise sharply. Anxiety about the extent of Bank of America’s legal woes has also weighed on the bank’s stock, with some estimates suggesting the ultimate cost could be in the tens of billions.
First, I think that the penalties, including tax penalties for improperly conveying the mortgages to the trust, are almost certainly in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and second, when an $8.5 billion payout is a sweetheart deal, it means that the banks are too big.
Oh, yeah, and I almost forgot: The FHFA filed a similar objection to the FDIC’s and U.S. Bancorp is suing to get BOA to buyback the mortgages in yet another trust.
BoA would be, in a fair and just world, toast, and its executives would be facing criminal investigations.
In this world, however, it means that Obama and Geithner and Bernanke will be setting up someway to bail them out in order to insure executive bonuses “protect the banking system” with our money.
H/t Naked capitalism.
On edit:
It looks like the Nevada is claimed that BoA reneged on its loan modification agreement with the state, and so they are filing to abrogate the agreement so that they can sue:
The attorney general of Nevada is accusing Bank of America of repeatedly violating a broad loan modification agreement it struck with state officials in October 2008 and is seeking to rip up the deal so that the state can proceed with a suit against the bank over allegations of deceptive lending, marketing and loan servicing practices.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Reno, Catherine Cortez Masto, the Nevada attorney general, asked a judge for permission to end Nevada’s participation in the settlement agreement. This would allow her to sue the bank over what the complaint says were dubious practices uncovered by her office in an investigation that began in 2009.In her filing, Ms. Masto contends that Bank of America raised interest rates on troubled borrowers when modifying their loans even though the bank had promised in the settlement to lower them. The bank also failed to provide loan modifications to qualified homeowners as required under the deal, improperly proceeded with foreclosures even as borrowers’ modification requests were pending and failed to meet the settlement’s 60-day requirement on granting new loan terms, instead allowing months and in some cases more than a year to go by with no resolution, the filing says.The complaint says such practices violated an agreement Bank of America reached in the fall of 2008 with several states and later, in 2009, with Nevada, to settle lawsuits that accused its Countrywide unit of predatory lending. As the credit crisis grew, the settlement was heralded as a victory by state offices eager to help keep troubled borrowers in their homes and reduce their costs. Bank of America set aside $8.4 billion in the deal and agreed to help 400,000 troubled borrowers with loan modifications and other financial relief, such as lowering interest rates on mortgages.
I wish that I knew of a way to go short on the bad news piling up, and long on the eventual bailout.
Deep Thought
Well Our Power is Back On…
So after navigating innumerable road closings New Jersey, including parts of the Garden State Parkway, without benefit of a single sign showing where the f%$# we are supposed to go, we make it home, and our power is out.
While I could post with my laptop battery and cell phone, it’s after midnight, we’re exhausted, and there was no power, and BGE was saying that it would be turned back on on on Friday.
Well, electricity just came back on, and I’m exhausted, so I’m getting some damn sleep.
Jury Pushes Back Against the Police State
A stripper attempted to file a sexual harassment complaint against a Chicago police officer, and when she approached Internal Affairs, instead of making an effort to investigate the allegations, they attempted to get her to withdraw their complaint.
In response, she taped their malfeasance, and the response of the District Attorney was to charge her with a felony.
Thankfully, the jury realized that this was yet another attempt to exempt police from any sort of public scrutiny, and acquitted her:
A former stripper, who secretly recorded two Chicago Police Internal Affairs investigators while filing a sexual harassment complaint against another officer was acquitted on eavesdropping charges Wednesday.But why the f%$# did the reporter feel it germane to the story.
She alleged that she was fondled by a cop on a domestic abuse call.Why the hell is this in the story/
It doesn’t matter if she was a freaking nun, or a lobbyist, it was a damn domestic abuse call, and there were allegations of sexual harrassment.
“I’m feeling a lot better now,” a smiling Tiawanda Moore said after a Cook County jury returned the verdict in a little over an hour.The 20-year-old Indiana woman admitted she taped the officers on her Blackberry in August of last year. But she said she only did it because the investigators were coaxing her to not go forward with her complaint.“I wanted him to be fired,” Moore testified of the cop she alleges fondled her and gave her his phone number during a domestic battery call at the South Side residence she sometimes shares with her boyfriend.Moore said she didn’t know about the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which prohibits the recording of private or public conversations without the consent of all parties. Even so, Moore’s attorney, Robert Johnson, said his client was protected under an exemption to the statute that allows such recordings if someone believes a crime is being committed or is about to be committed.The Internal Affairs officers were “stalling, intimidating and bullying her,” Johnson said. The recording, which was played in court during the one-day trial, proved it, Johnson said.Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Jo Murtaugh told jurors, “The content of the tape is not the issue. The issue is that the words were taped.”
No, the IA officers were conspiring to conceal an alleged crime, and as such they were engaging in conspiracy, abuse of office, and probably a few dozen other crimes that someone better versed in the law would be aware of.
But Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said the verdict “reflects a repudiation of the eavesdropping law in Illinois. Clearly, the public believes that individuals should be able to record police engaged in their public duties, in a public space in an audible voice.”
Your mouth go God’s ear, Mr. Yohnka.
There is a word for societies where law abiding citizens are prosecuted for uncovering and revealing police corruption, and that work is police state
No Posting Tonight
Between packing and hurricane Irene, no time.
Posted via mobile.
It’s On Girl!
AFL-CIO president Richart Trumpka just said that Obama has aligned himself with the teabaggers:
The most powerful union official in the country offered reporters his harshest critique of President Obama to date Thursday, questioning Obama’s policy and strategic decisions, and claiming he aligned himself with the Tea Party in the debt limit fight.
“This is a moment that working people and quite frankly history will judge President Obama on his presidency; will he commit all his energy and focus on bold solutions on the job crisis or will he continue to work with the Tea Party to offer cuts to middle class programs like Social Security all the while pretending the deficit is where our economic problems really lie,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.Trumka dismissed Obama’s recent job creation proposals — an extended payroll tax cut, patent reform, free trade deals — as “nibbly things that aren’t going to make a difference,” and said the AFL-CIO might sit out the Democratic convention if he and the party don’t get serious.“If they don’t have a jobs program I think we’d better use our money doing other things,” Trumka said.
I do not think that Barack Obama has the slightest clue just how disappointed his “base” is with him, and if he did, I think that he would be dismissive of the fact.
Get ready for President Bachmann. (honest to God, how did the ‘Phants find someone scarier than Sarah Palin?)
Light Posting for a While
Battening down the hatches, and we are actually at my Mother-In-Law’s, so we are both battening down her hatches for Hurricane Irene, and helping her pack, since she is moving from Monsey, NY to the Baltimore area.
Busy, busy, busy.
My prediction is that it will be a whole bunch of nothing, but I’m frequently wrong.
On the Road Again
I’m posting this on I-95. I’m heading to my Mother-in-Law’s.
Tethering my rooted phone once again.