No More "news" Today

I'm signing off any more "news" today. I'm afraid my tears might just destroy my keyboard -- if my RAGE doesn't.

How "our" government can work so hard to DESTROY what is a totally inadequate "safety net" is beyond me. Especially without any real outcry by those of us affected.

We are back to being a country of rich and poor -- with little in-between. Those that are still somewhere in the middle will be those that do the bidding of our ruling class.

I wonder when the pressure of a possible uprising will convince, once again, the wealthy to give a little.

Unfortunately, the entire nation might be too far gone by then.

Now, I wonder what the "new improved" propaganda machine will be doing to keep us immersed in the fiction of "opportunity", of "upward mobility". Soon, our current "celebrity culture" won't be enough, nor will the rapidly excessive culture of "sport".

It's going to be interesting. Once again, I'm really happy I lived through much of "The Flowering of America" -- the decline will be brutal.

(musical selections will follow for the rest of the day)

THE WAR ON YOU!

This from "The Economic Populist" by Michael Collins. Please follow link to original
--------------------------------------------------------------------

The War On YOU!

Let the word go forth from Washington! The corporate rulers occupying our nation's capital have declared war on just about every citizen.

Have no doubt: those in the upper ranges of the top 1% of wealth in this country (aka The Money Party) want to kick you to the curb.

They want to reduce your social security and make you go broke paying for medical care.

They want to lower your wages and trash your retirement.

They ignore the clear facts that we've had negative job growth since 2000 and the situation is just getting worse.

They want to ship jobs, factories, and entire businesses overseas and give companies that do that a big fat tax credit for doing so.

They've been given so much for nothing for so long. Now, they're ready to take it all. It's their time!

The most recent assault is the ridiculous debate about raising the debt ceiling. There should be no debate. Failing to raise the ceiling right now means deliberate default on debts, refusing to pay bills the government can pay. It's called fraud.

The pressing need to fix the budget is a separate issue. Reduced spending and increased revenues should come through broad public involvement and open debate. It mandates that the rulers behave like adults.

But this crisis isn't about putting together a real budget. It's about creating a budget that punishes you, your family, and friends. It's about taking your attention away from your vital interests to maximize income and control by The Money Party.

Were the leaders on either side of the debate serious, the Bush era tax cuts would be restored. These cuts on the top 1% were temporary. Guess what? Congress lied. When the temporary tax breaks ran out a few months ago, they were revived and renewed just when we had the greatest need for revenues.

The Money Party won't give up its wars either. Iraq and Afghanistan have added $4 trillion to the national debt of $14 trillion. Why not stop the wars? How hard is that to figure that out?

Getting rid of Bush tax cuts for the super-rich, ending the wars, and moving out of the recession/depression would be huge steps toward balancing the budget. But that won't happen with this Congress and this president. Why? That would cost the financial elite money for taxes and lost income for all those weapons they sell to support the wars.

The Attack on You Began in Earnest Just Years Ago

Congress repealed Depression era banking regulation that kept your banks from risky investments in 1999.

Congress enacted legislation in 2000 that allowed extremely risky investments in real estate and other derivatives, illegal for nearly a century.

In 2001, the big banks and Wall Street celebrated its newly purchased freedoms with a decade-long binge of fraud and risky investments. Like a greedy con artist, they took everything they could from people here and around the world until there was no more to take. We have now hit the wall thanks to them.

The outrageous expenses of wars based on lies caught up with us and shoved the deficit to new heights. The tax cuts for the top 1% took away revenues needed to balance the budget.

The money they steal from the Social Security surplus is no longer enough. They want to keep the tax in place for us and take an even bigger rake-off.

This crisis is manufactured by the ongoing greed of The Money Party. It is funded by the US Treasury. You pay for it, all of it.

End

The New Reality?

Here's an interesting post from "Financial Armageddon" -- please follow link to original
------------------------------------------------------------------

The New Reality?

Many people question just how bad social conditions can get if the economy deteriorates further. After all, they say, we live in a civilized society with a safety net that can help those who find themselves in dire straits.

Unfortunately, such views don't necessarily square with reality. Even now, in the midst of a so-called recovery, some urban down-and-outers have decided that a more primitive approach to survival is called for, as the New York Post reports in "'Game' Time in B'klyn":

It's a little slice of Alabama in the middle of Brooklyn.

A pack of vagrants was found living in a makeshift camp alongside the Prospect Park lake, where they poached the local wildlife using cruel hunting methods, officials said yesterday.

The dirty-dozen men and women have spent the last two months on the lake's southern shore near a construction site for a $70 million ice-skating complex.

They have littered the area with beer cans, poaching nets and other trash, with much of the refuse winding up in the lake.

"It's disgusting," said wildlife advocate Johanna Clearfield. "The city doesn't care, because it's the poor side of the park. This wouldn't happen on the Park Slope side or by Grand Army Plaza.

"The most they've done is issue fines to homeless people who can't pay."

The drifters have been illegally trapping and cooking up the critters that call the park home, including squirrels, ducks and swan-like cygnets.

They used crude tactics to hunt their prey, including barbed fishing hooks that ripped off the top half of one poor gosling's beak. They then cooked the meat over illegal fires. Some of the animals were eaten raw.

Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean the streets of New York (and other cities) will be overrun with aggressive hunter-gathers as the economy cycles down. In fact, many of those who see or are worried about hard times ahead have decided to act now. They are stockpiling necessities before the stuff really hits the fan. Unfortunately, as the latest Dilbert cartoon suggests (in Scott Adams' humorous but characteristically spot-on way), that may not be the perfect solution either. -- (Go to original to see cartoon)

Why is Vatican so miffed at reaction to Cloyne report?

This from "The Irish Times" -- more on what "The Holy Roman Catholic Church" really is. How they duck and dodge, doing anything to protect their power. Sad little men, corrupt and venal, telling the world all about "morality" -- while they abuse, rape, and distort boys and girls.

It's time to end their power, time to take all their worldly goods. If they survive, let it be because of TRUE MORALITY.

Italy, solve your budget crisis -- invade and annex The Vatican.

Please follow link to original
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why is Vatican so miffed at reaction to Cloyne report?

By: PATSY McGARRY

OPINION : SO, ROME is miffed at “excessive reactions” in Ireland following publication of the Cloyne report. This State has spent millions unearthing what has been available to Rome all along. In October 2005, there was the Ferns report, costs to date: €2.3 million.

In May 2009, the Ryan report, estimated costs to date: at least €126 million. In November 2009, the Dublin report: costs to date €3.6 million. In July 2011, the Cloyne report: costs to date €1.9 million. Total costs so far of the four statutory inquiries? €133.8 million, with more to come.

None of this would have been necessary had the Catholic Church here and in Rome co-operated fully in establishing the truth. Instead, those that could be were dragged, kicking and screaming, into disclosing what they desperately wanted to keep hidden. So, in Ferns, abuse files on five further priests which should have been presented to the inquiry remained unavailable until an accidental discovery in the summer of 2005 – when the Ferns draft report was already completed. A “regrettable error on the part of the diocese . . .” said apostolic administrator to Ferns diocese, canon lawyer, barrister-at-law and Dublin auxiliary bishop Eamon Walsh. Four years later, Rome declined his resignation.

On May 15th, 2009, five days before the Ryan report was published, in a letter to the redress board, the Christian Brothers said the congregation “totally rejects any allegations of systemic abuse . . . or that boys were inadequately fed or clothed . . . and vehemently repudiates all unsubstantiated allegations of sexual abuse . . .” When that letter was published in this newspaper on June 3rd, 2009, a Christian Brothers statement “reflected their shame that as recently as five days prior to publication of the [Ryan] report their responses were still shamefully inadequate and hurtful”.

In January 2008, the former archbishop of Dublin Cardinal Desmond Connell went to the High Court to prevent his successor giving documents to the Murphy commission. Later, he withdrew the action.

In 2008, Bishop John Magee of Cloyne and Msgr Denis O’Callaghan lied to the church’s child protection watchdog about abuse there.

This formidable desire to hide the truth on the part of senior clergy in Ireland by lies, damn lies and mental reservation was not rooted in any peculiar aversion on their part. It rested entirely on what they understood was required of them by Rome.

Yet in his March 2010 pastoral letter to Irish Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI told the bishops that “some of you and your predecessors failed, at times grievously”, when it came to child protection. Not a word about Rome’s role in any of this.

Not a word about Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos who was responsible for the 1997 letter to the Irish bishops dismissing their 1996 Framework Document as “merely a study document”. Which letter, the Cloyne report said, “gave comfort and support” to those who “dissented from the stated official Irish church policy” on child protection.

In 1999, when the Irish bishops were visiting Rome they were reminded by a Vatican official they were “bishops first, not policemen” when it came to reporting clerical child sex abuse.

But apologists for Rome insist all changed in May 2001 when then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sent two letters to every Catholic bishop in the world. In Latin. One insisted that both be kept secret. The other directed that all clerical child sex abuse allegations “with a semblance of truth” be sent to the congregation and it would decide whether they be dealt with at diocesan or Vatican level.

Yet, as current chancellor of Dublin’s archdiocese Msgr John Dolan told the Murphy commission, this policy “was subsequently modified as Rome was unable to deal with the vast numbers of referrals”.

The Cloyne report continues: “The position now, he [Msgr Dolan] said, is that all cases brought to the attention of the archdiocese before April 2001 and which were outside prescription . . . were not going to be dealt with by the CDF. It was up to the bishop to apply disciplinary measures to the management of those priests.”

In effect, the Irish bishops were back where they were before 2001. As Murphy reported: “Victims have expressed disappointment that neither the Framework Document nor its successor, Our Children, Our Church (2005), received recognition from Rome, thus leaving both documents without legal status under canon law.”

This, Murphy found, “was in direct contrast to the approach adopted by the Holy See to the request of the American Conference of Bishops”. The truth is Rome tied the hands of those Irish bishops and religious superiors who wanted to address the abuse issue properly.

Yet, Rome did not even acknowledge correspondence from the Murphy commission in September 2006. Instead it complained the commission did not use proper channels. So, in February 2007, the Murphy commission wrote to then papal nuncio to Ireland Archbishop Giuseppe Lazzarotto requesting he forward “all documents in his possession relevant to the commission”. He did not reply.

So, in early 2009, it wrote to current nuncio Archbishop Giuseppe Leanza, (in situ since April 2008), enclosing a draft of its report for comment. He did not reply.

The nunciature in Dublin has been the conduit for truthful clerical child abuse reports to Rome, while Archbishop Leanza was personally involved in talks which led to Bishop Magee standing aside at Cloyne in February 2009. So, the Murphy commission asked him to “submit to it any information which you have about the matters under investigation”. He felt “unable to assist” it “in this matter”.

Unofficial Problem Bank list increases to 995 Institutions

'nuff said

The Simple but Horrifying Fallacy at the Core of the Tea Party

This from "The Economic Populist", please follow link to original
------------------------------------------------------------------

The Simple but Horrifying Fallacy at the Core of the Tea Party

Originally published on The Agonist

It’s hard to say if the Tea Party has an acknowledged leader, but someone who professes to be just that has chosen a very opportune moment to trash Speaker John Boehner’s attempts to craft legislation that would allow an increase in the debt ceiling. Judson Phillips, the CEO of Tea Party Nation, is the self-acknowledged head of the Tea Party, and in an editorial this morning in The Washington Post, he attacks Boehner’s legislation for providing “almost non-existent budget cuts.”

Phillips says:

As the founder of Tea Party Nation, I feel confident in saying that the Tea Party understands what so many in Washington seem to have forgotten: We do not have a debt crisis. We have a spending crisis. There is only one way you get to a debt crisis — you spend too much money.

Here is what is fundamentally wrong and dangerous with the core assumption of the Tea Party: There are two ways to get to a debt crisis – you either spend too much money or you don’t take in enough revenue. Anyone who has done a family budget or a business budget understands there are two sides to every discussion of cash flow: cash flow in, and cash flow out. In government terms, this equates to taxes received and expenditures made.

By taking one half of this equation out of the discussion, the Tea Party is dragging the nation along on a fantasy ride in which only spending cuts are allowed as a solution to the government’s debt problem. The danger in an approach which demands enormous budget cuts - $4 trillion is the number mentioned by the Tea Party – is that you expose the economy to a depressionary shock, especially since the Tea Party wants the cuts immediately. Immediate cuts of that size would be the equivalent of removing 25% of all cash flow out of the economy, throwing tens of millions of middle class Americans into acute financial stress. For many poor people, it would be an existential crisis, in which starvation becomes a real prospect.

What sort of person would deliberately ignore the obvious fundamental reality of any budget? Tea Partiers have been called crazy, “nutters”, reckless, irresponsible, and just plain stupid. I suspect they have bought into a partisan set of talking points that have been dogma for many years in the Republican Party. First, all taxes are bad, because they steal money from hard-working people and deprive businesses of the means of creating jobs. Second, government spending is generally bad because it makes people indolent and dependent on hand-outs. Third, deficits are bad because they stifle economic growth.

Tea Partiers are obviously creatures of the Republican Party. Fifty of them sit on the Republican side of the aisle in the House of Representatives. They pride themselves on attracting someone like Sarah Palin as a keynote speaker at their conferences. They get funding from right-wing special interest groups. They are partisan in their approach to politics, excoriating liberals and Democrats, and eager to push the Republican Party into their imaginary world where all government deficit problems can be solved simply by cutting and capping expenditures. In his editorial, Judson Phillips ascribes all of the spending problems to the “Obama-Pelosi-Reid axis of fiscal evil.” What happened to George W. Bush and his $300 billion annual tax cut, his unfunded wars, his drug company give-away, and his bailout of the banking industry? You are no longer dealing in fantasy when you ignore the president and party who in 2000 inherited a budget surplus and converted it into a $1 trillion+ deficit.

Party hack though he is, Mr. Phillips makes some good points about waste and fraud in the federal budget. These points are lost, however, in his one-sided mind set: he takes only the Republican side in the politics of the deficit debate, and then he requires that we look only at the spending side in the budgetary calculus. We could say that his approach helps no one, but in point of fact there are some beneficiaries, namely all the people who have direct access and influence with Congress so that they can get their taxes cut at the exclusion of everybody else. That would be wealthy people, and large corporations.

As much as the Tea Party likes to fancy itself as independent, it has become the radical wing of the Republican Party. It would be bad enough if the only thing the Tea Party might accomplish would be pulling the Republican Party to the fringe of radical conservatism, but it is doing more than that. It is holding the Republican Party hostage to its immensely dangerous concept that the only solution available to the federal deficit is to cut spending. The Republican Party in turn is holding the country hostage over the same profoundly simple error – that taxes cannot be raised as a matter of principle. When one party in a two-party system perpetuates and insists on such an appalling error, the people who are going to get hurt are the 99% of the population who no longer are represented in the Congress.

Very Serious Suckers

I never fail to be impressed by the way Prof. Dr. Dr. Krugman puts things. A voice of reason backed by thought and impressive intelligence. He's one of those Americans we once had running our country. People who were pragmatists with a solid grounding in economics -- or, smart enough to know what they needed help with.

I'm so disappointed by the Obama Presidency my grief knows no bounds -- anyway, this is about something else entirely.

Please follow link to original
-------------------------------------------------------------

Very Serious Suckers

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece documenting the way in which what he calls the establishment, and I call Very Serious People, misjudged the way the debt ceiling thing would play out:

The failure to understand the crisis we were entering was widely shared among centrist types. When Republicans first proposed tying a debt ceiling hike to a measure to reduce the deficit, President Obama instead proposed a traditional, clean debt ceiling hike. He found this position politically untenable for many reasons, one of them being that deficit scolds insisted that using the debt ceiling to force a fiscal adjustment was a terrific idea, and that connecting the deficit debate to a potentially cataclysmic financial event was the mark of seriousness.

He then goes on to show how the usual suspects — the WaPo editorial page, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the Concord Coalition, etc. welcomed a crisis over the debt ceiling in the belief that it would lead to fiscal goodness.

This was terrible policy, even if it had worked: now is not the time for fiscal austerity, and the way the VSPs have shifted the whole conversation away from jobs and toward deficits is a major reason we’re stuck in the Lesser Depression.

But it also showed awesome political naivete. As Chait says, the first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs; as soon as the conversation turns to taxes, or anything else that would require them and their friends to make even the smallest sacrifice, deficits don’t matter at all.

I can’t help but notice that Chait’s list of chumps is basically the same as the list of people who puffed up Paul Ryan and gave him an award for fiscal responsibility. Enough said.

What’s really awesome here is the blindness. Anyone reading the newspapers with an open mind had a pretty good idea of what would happen in the debt fight; only Washington insiders managed to fool themselves.

But they’re Very Serious.

Don’t Fall for the GOP Lie: There is No Budget Crisis. There’s a Job and Growth Crisis.

This from Robert Reich. Please follow link to original
--------------------------------------------------------------

Don’t Fall for the GOP Lie: There is No Budget Crisis. There’s a Job and Growth Crisis.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

A friend who’s been watching the absurd machinations in Congress asked me “what happens if we don’t solve the budget crisis and we run out of money to pay the nation’s bills?”

It was only then I realized how effective Republicans lies have been. That we’re calling it a “budget crisis” and worrying that if we don’t “solve” it we can’t pay our nation’s bills is testament to how successful Republicans have been distorting the truth.

The federal budget deficit has no economic relationship to the debt limit. Republicans have linked the two, and the Administration has played along, but they are entirely separate. Republicans are using what would otherwise be a routine, legally technical vote to raise the debt limit as a means of holding the nation hostage to their own political goal of shrinking the size of the federal government.

In economic terms, we will not “run out of money” next week. We’re still the richest nation in the world, and the Federal Reserve has unlimited capacity to print money.

Nor is there any economic imperative to reach an agreement on how to fix the budget deficit by Tuesday. It’s not even clear the federal budget needs that much fixing anyway.

Yes, the ratio of the national debt to the total economy is high relative to what it’s been. But it’s not nearly as high as it was after World War II – when it reached 120 percent of the economy’s total output.

If and when the economy begins to grow faster – if more Americans get jobs, and we move toward a full recovery – the debt/GDP ratio will fall, as it did in the 1950s, and as it does in every solid recovery. Revenues will pour into the Treasury, and much of the current “budget crisis” will be evaporate.

Get it? We’re really in a “jobs and growth” crisis – not a budget crisis.

And the best way to get jobs and growth back is for the federal government to spend more right now, not less – for example, by exempting the first $20,000 of income from payroll taxes this year and next, recreating a WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps, creating an infrastructure bank, providing tax incentives for small businesses to hire, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, and so on.

But what happens next week if Congress can’t or won’t deliver the President a bill to raise the debt ceiling? Remember: This is all politics, mixed in with legal technicalities. Economics has nothing to do with it.

One possibility, therefore, is for the Treasury to keep paying the nation’s bills regardless. It would continue to issue Treasury bills, which are our nation’s IOUs. When those IOUs are cashed at the Federal Reserve Board, the Fed would do what it has always done: Honor them.

How long could this go on without the debt ceiling being lifted? That’s a legal question. Republicans in Congress could mount a legal challenge, but no court in its right mind would stop the Fed from honoring the full faith and credit of the United States.

The wild card is what the three big credit-rating agencies will do. As long as the Fed keeps honoring the nation’s IOUs, America’s credit should be deemed sound. We’re not Greece or Portugal, after all. We’ll still be the richest nation in the world, whose currency is the basis for most business transactions in the world.

Standard & Poor’s has warned it will downgrade the nation’s debt from a triple-A to a double-A rating if we don’t tend to the long-term deficit. But, as I’ve noted, S&P has no business meddling in American politics – especially since its own non-feasance was partly responsible for the current size of the federal debt (had it done its job the debt and housing bubbles wouldn’t have precipitated the terrible recession, and the federal outlays it required).

As long as we pay our debts on time, our global creditors should be satisfied. And if they’re satisfied, S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch should be, too.

Repeat after me: The federal deficit is not the nation’s biggest problem. The anemic recovery, huge unemployment, falling wages, and declining home prices are bigger problems. We don’t have a budget crisis. We have a jobs and growth crisis.

The GOP has manufactured a budget crisis out of the Republicans’ extortionate demands over raising the debt limit. They have succeeded in hoodwinking the public, including my friend.

Bad mothers get paid

Please go and read "I Blame The Patriarchy" - follow link.

I'll just give you the headline, go read the rest:

"Bad mothers get paid"

The Corrosion of the Conservative Economic Mind

Here's a little something from Prof. Paul Krugman - as usual, please follow link to original.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Corrosion of the Conservative Economic Mind

First Michael Boskin, now John Taylor: there seems be an epidemic of politically conservative economists who used to be technically competent repeating the obviously wrong falsehood that Reagan ushered in an era of “unprecedented” growth.

No matter what measure you use, it just ain’t so — and I thought every macroeconomist in America knew it wasn’t so. Here’s one measure that the BLS happens to have put in a convenient chart, so that I’m not choosing the dates, they are:

This shows what everyone was supposed to know: we had an awesome performance in the generation following the war (despite very high tax rates on the rich and a very strong union movement); we had a long period of poor productivity performance that spanned the Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush I administrations; we then had a revival during the Clinton administration, but even so not up to postwar standards. By the way, I don’t give Clinton credit for that revival; it was about learning to use technology. But in any case, there is no hint of a Reagan miracle in the data.

So what on earth is going on with people like Boskin and Taylor? It’s not hard to guess; but as Dan Quayle said, a mind is a terrible thing to lose.

61

Old National Bank, Evansville, Indiana, Assumes All of the Deposits of Integra Bank, National Association, Evansville, Indiana

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 29, 2011
Media Contact:
Greg Hernandez (202) 898-6984
Cell: (202) 340-4922
Email: ghernandez@fdic.gov

Integra Bank, National Association, Evansville, Indiana, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Old National Bank, Evansville, Indiana, to assume all of the deposits of Integra Bank, National Association.

The 52 branches of Integra Bank, National Association will reopen during their normal business hours beginning Saturday as branches of Old National Bank. Depositors of Integra Bank, National Association will automatically become depositors of Old National Bank. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage up to applicable limits. Customers of Integra Bank, National Association should continue to use their existing branch until they receive notice from Old National Bank that it has completed systems changes to allow other Old National Bank branches to process their accounts as well.

This evening and over the weekend, depositors of Integra Bank, National Association can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.

As of March 31, 2011, Integra Bank, National Association had approximately $2.2 billion in total assets and $1.9 billion in total deposits. Old National Bank will pay the FDIC a premium of 1.0 percent to assume all of the deposits of Integra Bank, National Association. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Old National Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

The FDIC and Old National Bank entered into a loss-share transaction on $1.2 billion of Integra Bank, National Association's assets. Old National Bank will share in the losses on the asset pools covered under the loss-share agreement. The loss-share transaction is projected to maximize returns on the assets covered by keeping them in the private sector. The transaction also is expected to minimize disruptions for loan customers. For more information on loss share, please visit: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/lossshare/index.html.

Customers with questions about today's transaction should call the FDIC toll-free at 1-800-830-6698. The phone number will be operational this evening until 9:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time (EDT); on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., EDT; on Sunday from noon to 6:00 p.m., EDT; and thereafter from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., EDT. Interested parties also can visit the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/integra.html.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $170.7 million. Compared to other alternatives, Old National Bank's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Integra Bank, National Association is the 61st FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Indiana. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Irwin Union Bank and Trust Company, Columbus, on September 18, 2009.

60

SCBT, National Association, Orangeburg, South Carolina, Assumes All of the Deposits of BankMeridian, N.A., Columbia, South Carolina

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 29, 2011
Media Contact:
Greg Hernandez (202) 898-6984
Cell: (202) 340-4922
Email: ghernandez@fdic.gov

BankMeridian, N.A., Columbia, South Carolina, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with SCBT, National Association, Orangeburg, South Carolina, to assume all of the deposits of BankMeridian, N.A.

The three branches of BankMeridian, N.A. will reopen on Monday as branches of SCBT, National Association. Depositors of BankMeridian, N.A. will automatically become depositors of SCBT, National Association. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage up to applicable limits. Customers of BankMeridian, N.A. should continue to use their existing branch until they receive notice from SCBT, National Association that it has completed systems changes to allow other SCBT, National Association branches to process their accounts as well.

This evening and over the weekend, depositors of BankMeridian, N.A. can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.

As of March 31, 2011, BankMeridian, N.A. had approximately $239.8 million in total assets and $215.5 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, SCBT, National Association agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

The FDIC and SCBT, National Association entered into a loss-share transaction on $179.0 million of BankMeridian, N.A.'s assets. SCBT, National Association will share in the losses on the asset pools covered under the loss-share agreement. The loss-share transaction is projected to maximize returns on the assets covered by keeping them in the private sector. The transaction also is expected to minimize disruptions for loan customers. For more information on loss share, please visit: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/lossshare/index.html.

Customers with questions about today's transaction should call the FDIC toll-free at 1-800-883-4390. The phone number will be operational this evening until 9:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time (EDT); on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., EDT; on Sunday from noon to 6:00 p.m., EDT; and thereafter from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., EDT. Interested parties also can visit the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/bankmeridian.html.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $65.4 million. Compared to other alternatives, SCBT, National Association's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. BankMeridian, N.A. is the 60th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the third in South Carolina. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Atlantic Bank and Trust, Charleston, on June 3, 2011.

#59

Press Releases
Xenith Bank, Richmond, Virginia, Assumes All of the Deposits of Virginia Business Bank, Richmond, Virginia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 29, 2011
Media Contact:
Greg Hernandez (202) 898-6984
Cell: (202) 340-4922
Email: ghernandez@fdic.gov

Virginia Business Bank, Richmond, Virginia, was closed today by the Virginia State Corporation Commission. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was appointed as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Xenith Bank, Richmond, Virginia, to assume all of the deposits of Virginia Business Bank.

The sole branch of Virginia Business Bank will reopen on Monday as a branch of Xenith Bank. Depositors of Virginia Business Bank will automatically become depositors of Xenith Bank. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage up to applicable limits. Customers of Virginia Business Bank should continue to use their existing branch until they receive notice from Xenith Bank that it has completed systems changes to allow other Xenith Bank branches to process their accounts as well.

This evening and over the weekend, depositors of Virginia Business Bank can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.

As of March 31, 2011, Virginia Business Bank had approximately $95.8 million in total assets and $85.0 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Xenith Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

Customers with questions about today's transaction should call the FDIC toll-free at 1-800-837-0215. The phone number will be operational this evening until 9:00 p.m., Eastern Daylight Time (EDT); on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., EDT; on Sunday from noon to 6:00 p.m., EDT; and thereafter from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., EDT. Interested parties also can visit the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/vbb.html.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $17.3 million. Compared to other alternatives, Xenith Bank's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Virginia Business Bank is the 59th FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Virginia. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Imperial Savings and Loan Association, Martinsville, on August 20, 2010.

Team Obama Fiddles While Debt Ceiling Fires Burn

This from "Naked Capitalism"by Yves Smith. Please follow link to original.

Here's one "money quote: "It is hard to come up with words that are strong enough to describe what an appalling display of misguided ego, inept negotiating postures, bad policy thinking, and utter disregard for the public interest are on display in this fiasco. But as a friend of mine likes to say, “Things always look darkest before they go completely black.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Team Obama Fiddles While Debt Ceiling Fires Burn

Some historical accounts of the Great Fire of Rome, which destroyed three of the city’s fourteen districts and damaged seven others, depict it as an urban redevelopment project gone bad. Emperor Nero allegedly torched the district where he wanted to build his Domus Aurea. Hence any lyre-playing was not a sign of imperial madness, but a badly-informed leader not knowing his plans had spun badly out of control.

President Obama’s plan at social and economic engineering, of rolling back core elements of the Great Deal out of a misguided effort to cut spending in a weak economy, is similarly blazing out of control. The debt ceiling crisis was meant to be a scare to provide an excuse for measures that are opposed by broad swathes of the public. Polls predictably show that voters want five contradictory things before noon: they are against cutting Social Security and care much more about more jobs than about less deficit, but yeah, they’d like that too if they can have it.

While members of the administration may dimly recognize what a firestorm they have unleashed, their crisis responses look to be no better than Nero’s. Obama has severely limited his options by playing up the rigidity of the debt limit. In the meantime, the Republicans are playing chicken and are looking very convincing by claiming the Tea Partiers had removed the steering wheel from the car. As John Kay warned in the Financial Times, this produced a toxic “bidding” dynamic:

The game theorist Martin Shubik invented an unpleasant economists’ party game called the dollar bill auction. The players agree to auction a dollar bill with one cent increments to the bids. As usual, the dollar goes to the highest bidder. The twist is that both the highest bidder and the second-highest bidder must pay.

You might start with a low bid – but offers will quickly rise towards a dollar. Soon the highest bid will be 99 cents with the underbidder at 98 cents. At that point, it pays the underbidder to offer a dollar. He will not now gain from the transaction, but that outcome is better than the loss of 98 cents. And now there is a sting in the tail. There is no reason why the bidding should stop at a dollar. The new underbidder stands to lose 99 cents. But if a bid of $1.01 is successful, he can reduce his loss to a single cent.

The underbidder always comes back. So the auction can continue until the resources of the players are exhausted. The game must end, but never well. There are reports that over $200 has been paid for a dollar in Shubik’s game.

In the DC version, neither the Democratic Senators nor the Republicans in the House want to be underbidders. And the Obama appears recklessly unwilling to circumvent the debt ceiling, since it would eliminate his leverage for pushing through entitlement cuts.

Yet as we’ve discussed, the outcomes the players have committed themselves to are either shooting the economy or bleeding it to death. A sudden curtailment of Federal spending, unless it was very brief, would almost assure a slowdown. And that’s before you get to wild cards of what might happen to the Treasury market. With Timmie in charge, an actual default seems unthinkable but not all investors will be willing to trust that, and it is not at all clear what would happen in the event of a downgrade. It has had remarkably little effect on Japan, but crisis psychology has kicked in. While I think worries on that front are exaggerated, even small changes will still have an impact. And utter failure of the Treasury or Fed to make any reassuring noises or discuss contingency plans is making rattled nerves much worse than they need to be.

Put it another way: you know things have gotten really bad when you realize having Larry Summers back in a position of authority would probably have led to less stupidity than what we are seeing now. As bad as many of his reflexes are, Obama and Geithner’s are even worse.

It has, late in the game, hit the point where Wall Street is imploring Team Obama and Congress to raise the debt ceiling. Obama has claims that his lawyers told him that he could not use the 14th Amendment to ignore the debt ceiling. But the few precedents suggest otherwise, and opinion is certain to be divided enough among authorities that the President could easily have found legal cover if he wanted to (the Administration has had no compunctions on taking aggressive positions on habeas corpus and a raft of other Constitutional issues).

Respected Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe, who had obligingly provided Obama with an ass-covering, not-convincingly-argued New York Times op ed against the viability of invoking the 14th Amendment, has effectively reversed himself since then, admitting that that both a court challenge and impeachment were highly unlikely. Yale constitutional scholar Jack Balkin wrote today (hat tip Arthur) of three additional routes the President could use to work around the debt ceiling. One is the coin seigniorage idea that has been discussed here and on other sites. Another is the “exploding option”:

The government can also raise money through sales: For example, it could sell the Federal Reserve an option to purchase government property for $2 trillion. The Fed would then credit the proceeds to the government’s checking account. Once Congress lifts the debt ceiling, the president could buy back the option for a dollar, or the option could simply expire in 90 days.

Balkin also argues for a third route, effectively, that the President can’t use the 14th Amendment casually, but could when circumstances became more extreme:

If the president reasonably believes that the public debt will be put in question… Section 4 [of the 14th Amendment] comes into play once again. His predicament is caused by the combination of statutes that authorize and limit what he can do: He must pay appropriated monies, but he may not print new currency and he may not float new debt. If this combination of contradictory commands would cause him to violate Section 4, then he has a constitutional duty to treat at least one of the laws as unconstitutional as applied to the current circumstances.

The increased urgency has also led to a change in stance in the Democratic hackocracy. Matt Yglesias, a reliable purveyor of party orthodoxy, pooh poohed the coin seigniorage idea two weeks ago. Today, Brad DeLong (who is generally a loyalist but not an official water-carrier) came out in favor of it based on the Balkin reading. Yglesias made a partial retreat and admitted that Balkin might be right but invoked the bogeyman of a debt downgrade.

But a related question is why is the Administration not doing a better (as in any) job of crisis preparation as a way of calming rattled nerves? Of course, part of the answer is that since this is a manufactured crisis, they really feel they need to keep the heat on and are locked into their current strategy. But a piece by Gillian Tett of the Financial Times lists five areas where the Fed and Treasury owe the public answers on what takes place if there is no debt deal before official finances become strained. I’m not in agreement with all the questions on her list. For instance, “What might the US government do to support the US money market funds if American debt is downgraded, or suffers a technical default?” Paul Volcker was vehemently opposed to the backstopping of money market funds in the crisis, and the assumption underlying Tett’s question assumes that these reserves are entitled to some sort of official protection. Money market fund managers have reportedly raised cash levels substantially in anticipation of redemptions; Treasury-only money market funds won’t dump Treasuries; AAA only funds would presumably in the event of a downgrade (other types of institutional investors are seeking waivers, but I think it would be a non-starter in a product branded as AAA). But her general point is valid: the authorities have been way too close mouthed given the worries they have whipped up. It is astonishing, for instance, that the false August 2 deadline is still widely reported in the media when it is now widely acknowledged that the real drop dead date is August 10.

We know that the end game is the Democrats will blink, but uncharacteristically, they haven’t done so yet. And enough Senators regard cuts to Social Security with no corresponding sacrifices from better heeled interests (from the military industrial complex to the rich) as fatal to their re-election chances so as to make bringing them to heel daunting in the limited time left.

It is hard to come up with words that are strong enough to describe what an appalling display of misguided ego, inept negotiating postures, bad policy thinking, and utter disregard for the public interest are on display in this fiasco. But as a friend of mine likes to say, “Things always look darkest before they go completely black.”

My Current Fears

NEWS FLASH ----------- Obama is NOT as smart as he thinks he is. Nor does he seem to have the nerve needed to face down rabid opponents.

I'm beginning to think he really is TOO YOUNG, TOO INEXPERIENCED.

What have we done to ourselves?

Sputtering

I sit here at the interwebs machine absolutely AMAZED at the STUPIDITY of our "conservative"/"Tea Party"/"Republican" Representatives. The idea that we put the Government into default and some good will come from that simply boggles the mind.

I wondered why this is happening.

Then it hit me ---- THEY ARE STUPID. They are either too dumb to understand a COUNTRY is NOT run like a "family", or they are the VICTIMS of "home schooling".

Perhaps they are a result of the runaway "self esteem" crap infesting the USA. No one ever told them "self esteem" is tied in with actual ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

I guess the ideology that infests the brains (?) of these "Tea Party" folks is one that refuses to accept the simple fact the USA is still the one "superpower". For how long, we don't know - but today it still is. Their ideology wants to take us BACK to a time that never existed. A time that is long gone. A time when we were (in reality) a second rate nation.

They actually want to destroy AMERICA, both its promise and its reality.

Why we the CITIZENS put up with this crap is beyond me.

Are there ANY ADULTS left?

The American People are Angry

We are the United States of America, the greatest country on earth. We don't default.

No comment necessary

Financial Condition of American Families

This from the site "The Economic Collapse" - it's just a listing of some amazing facts about the USA -- looked at together I'm left with little hope for the future.

My political view is quite different from many who read the site -- you, of course can make up your own mind. Please follow link to original
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The following are 10 facts about the financial condition of American families that will blow your mind.....

#1 Only 58 percent of Americans have a job right now.

#2 Only 56 percent of Americans are currently covered by employer-provided health insurance.

#3 The median yearly wage in the United States is $26,261.

#4 The average American household is carrying $75,600 in debt.

#5 Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.

#6 At this point, American families are approximately 7.7 trillion dollars poorer than they were back in early 2007.

#7 The poorest 50% of all Americans now own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#8 According to one study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010.

#9 Today, there are more than 44 million Americans on food stamps, and nearly half of them are children.

#10 According to Newsweek, close to 20 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 54 do not have a job at the moment.

Tea Bagger Joe Walsh: Deadbeat Dad

Here's the "human interest" story of the day. It speaks of "TeaBagger" Joe Walsh, a crusading Congresscritter -- fighting to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all sorts of "unfair" payments to "undeserving" folks -- including his ex-wife and kids. A "real man"!

Is he typical of today's "Republicans"?

This from "My FDL - Readers Diaries" by robertarend. Please follow link to original
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Tea Bagger Joe Walsh: Deadbeat Dad

One of the loudest Tea Party Republicans much favored by the cable news circuit of late, first term Representative Joe Walsh of the Illinois 8th District, has been sued by his ex-wife, Laura, for more than $117,000 in back child support, according to a July 27, 2011 report by Abdon M. Pallasch for the The Chicago Sun-Times:

…court documents examined this week by the Chicago Sun-Times during research for a profile on the increasingly visible congressman showed his financial issues also included a nine-year child support battle with his ex-wife.

Before getting elected, he had told Laura Walsh that because he was out of work or between jobs, he could not make child support payments. So she was surprised to read in his congressional campaign disclosures that he was earning enough money to loan his campaign $35,000.

“Joe personally loaned his campaign $35,000, which, given that he failed to make any child support payments to Laura because he ‘had no money’ is surprising,” Laura Walsh’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed in December seeking $117,437 in back child support and interest. “Joe has paid himself back at least $14,200 for the loans he gave himself.

Also, in Walsh’s ex-wife’s December 2010 court filing, her lawyer wrote:

The apparent availability of large sums of money from either his employment, his family or his campaign has allowed him to live quite a comfortable lifestyle, while at the same time, due to his failure to pay child support or any of his share of the education costs or medical expenses, Laura and his children were denied any of these advantages.



This deadbeat dad is the same Joe Walsh who, at his press conference after winning election to the United States House of Representative, insisted, “The first thing we need to do is acknowledge that everybody is going to have to give on Social Security reform and Medicare reform,” and that unemployment benefits probably already have been extended for too long and attention should be paid to the cost.

Congressman Walsh apparently considers he shouldn’t have to subsidize the cost even of raising his own children out of his $175,000 salary. Besides, those kids are not in the wealthy class that he represents.

Walsh lives with his new wife and children in McHenry, Illinois.

When you see his sweaty, sleazy mug doing his poor and old folks must sacrifice more blather on the tee vee machine, have a bucket of dirty socks ready to throw at him. Think about his kids. He certainly won’t be

Company Stores

I wonder when someone will get a "wonderful new idea" -- pay workers in scrip only redeemable at specific stores (company stores). Then "tie them to the land" -- modern day serfs.

That seems where we are headed. That seems the way our "leaders" want to go. After all, Freedom is so "messy" -- workers so "ungrateful".

Some actually want something called "lives" -- can you believe that?

I didn't realize "end stage Capitalism" leads to feudalism.

Don't you young folks think it's time to complain a bit?

When Profiteering and Union-Busting Repackaged as School Reform

This from "My FDL - Reader Diaries" by David A. Love.

It's telling the truth about some of these groups that want to "save" education.

It's worth reading.

Remember, follow link to original - read more
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Profiteering and Union-Busting Repackaged as School Reform

This is one of those stories that shows how far some people will go in America to make a buck—even if it means profiting at the expense of children, or exploiting the legacy of the civil rights movement.

Stand for Children is an unassuming name for an organization. Just taken at face value, one would conclude that the Portland, Oregon-based nonprofit aspires to accomplish what the title suggests. Their website says SFC is “an innovative, grassroots child advocacy organization. Our mission is to use the power of grassroots action to help all children get the excellent public education and strong support they need to thrive. Our members believe we need to stand up for our children now – particularly for their education from pre-school through high school – to create a better future for America.”

Now, that all sounds good, until you dig deeper. The co-founder and CEO of SFC, Jonah Edelman, is the son of Marian Wright Edelman, the well-respected civil rights activist and head of the Children’s Defense Fund. Critics charge that Stand for Children started out on the right side of the issues, devoting itself to progressive issues such as class sizes, affordable children’s healthcare and adequate funding for schools. But then, things changed when they started taking the money, and lots of it— from wealthy interests who arguably care nothing about poor children of color in the inner cities, and care a great deal about a vision of privatization that extracts profit from the public schools.

In an infamous YouTube video that went viral, Edelman discussed his strategy in Illinois at a July 10 Aspen Institute event. That strategy was essentially to mislead the teachers unions, do a number on them, and pay off the state legislators to pass SB7, an extensive school reform bill. The original bill would have stripped teachers of their right to strike, eliminated seniority as a factor in layoffs, and denied teachers their due process rights that come with tenure. What this has to do with the interests of children is anybody’s guess. A weaker version of the bill that passed still undermined labor rights by restricting seniority and the right to strike.

Typically, when Edelman goes into a state, he sets up a PAC, raises a ton of money and hires the best lobbyists money can buy. He benefits from his mother’s Rolodex and the cache her name and reputation brings to the table. SFC spreads money around in the community, in an attempt to soften up the black clergy and community leaders and get them on board as partners. And they bribe public officials to pass union-busting legislation.

In Illinois, SFC raised $3 million late last year and hired 11 lobbyists. They approached Illinois Speaker Michael Madigan—who failed to garner union support that year for passing pension reform— and donated $610,000 to nine state campaigns in both major parties.

And Edelman attended a community meeting of black Chicago clergy with what observers have called a “slick dog and pony show.” But the pastors didn’t take the bait. According to Rev. Robin Hood, executive director of Clergy Committed to Community, SFC wasn’t the least bit interested in the concerns of the black community.

“One of the schools I’m working in has serious problems. Their organizer wasn’t concerned about that, they were interested in getting people to see [the film] Waiting for Superman,” Rev. Hood said of SFC. “Waiting for Superman did not fly here in Chicago. It wasn’t a hit like they thought it was going to be. It was about taking away the rights of unions to organize. In the communities we live in we need living wage jobs,” he said. “Most of these parents have been arguing about how we don’t have books in school. Those are not the things Stand for Children were talking about. They were talking about taking power from teachers,” Hood added.

From the start, Rev. Hood found Edelman and his group disrespectful and arrogant, with dollar signs and union-bashing on their mind. “I found they were anti-union when we met with Stand for Children. It was all about money, it was nothing about children. That’s why they had to build a grassroots component. They did a switch up while they were working here,” he said.

Although SFC spread around a lot of money in Chicago communities, Rev. Hood emphasized that not one of the pastors in his group would take any of it. “How much money do you people have?” he asked rhetorically of Edelman. “First they said they are doing political advocacy, and using community organizations as their base. Six months later they said ‘we got our own base now.’ Then they gave $3 million to state legislators,” he noted.

“Instead of advocating they became lobbyists,” Rev. Hood concluded.

Rev. Hood also shared his thoughts on the recent fallout from Edelman’s comments at Aspen. “As much money as they put out, I didn’t think they would self-destruct,” Hood said. “On a personal level, it was interesting to see him self-destruct, and I knew they weren’t focused on changing things for the children. They were union busting and making money off the backs of our kids.” Moreover, Rev. Hood believed Edelman’s public disclosure of his machinations with Speaker Madigan was particularly damaging. “Speaker Mike Madigan is the most powerful man in the state. The Governor doesn’t have that power. To say what he [Edelman] did to him [Madigan] is what the Japanese call hari-kari.”

To put Jonah Edelman and his operations in perspective, just follow the money. Susan Barrett quit her volunteer leadership position at SFC in Portland because wealthy investors are now driving the organization. “I want to make sure that people pay close attention to who is on the SFC board, where their money is coming from, and think critically about whether or not the agendas they are promoting will bring the results parents and community members hope for in public education,” Barrett recently wrote.

SFC’s Illinois PAC amassed the state’s largest war chest, just days before new caps on state campaign contributions went into effect. Those new restrictions limit individual contributions to $10,000, with $20,000 from corporations. All of the contributions to SFC were five- and six-figure amounts, including $250,000 from the billionaire Pritzker family, and $500,000 from Ken Griffin, CEO of the Citadel Group and bankroller of GOP state candidates. Sam Zell, owner of Tribune Co., contributed $100,000. Meanwhile, of the $610,000 that Edelman gave to legislative candidates, his PAC handed over $175,000—a record for Illinois— to Republican state House candidate Ryan Higgins, who lost his contest.

Stand for Children’s donor list is quite impressive, and equally revealing. For example, last year SFC received a $3.5 million grant from the Gates Foundation, its largest donor. The Walton Family Foundation—of Walmart anti-union fame—chipped in $1.4 million. And New Profit Inc., with ties to a firm running Muammar Gaddafi’s PR campaign, has donated nearly $1.5 million in recent years.

Meanwhile, the SFC board of directors consists of venture philanthropists and private equity investors, including the extremely wealthy and powerful. One would think that a “grassroots child advocacy organization” would have at least a token of community representation on its board, including educators and child advocates of color. Laurene Powell Jobs, wife of Apple CEO Steve Jobs, is a board member, as is Emma Bloomberg, daughter of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Mayor Bloomberg, who is pro-charter school and seems to claim personal ownership of New York’s public schools, has a history of placing ill-prepared corporate types in charge of the nation’s largest—and mostly black and brown— school system. Bloomberg’s most immediate past schools chancellor, a magazine executive named Cathleen Black, had no experience in education whatsoever. During her brief and painful stint as chancellor, Black offended many with her jaw-dropping remarks, which included addressing shortages in classroom space by asking “Could we just have some birth control for a while? It could really help us all out a lot.”

Black’s predecessor, Joel Klein, now Rupert Murdoch’s deputy at News Corp., is overseeing an investigation into the company’s infamous phone hacking scandal. Klein is the head of Murdoch’s new education technology business, which Murdoch plans to spend $1 billion to build.

But the larger picture here is that corporate education reform is big business. And the rightwing, plutocratic agenda— of school privatization, government austerity measures and deunionization— clashes with the needs of poor, working class, and disproportionately black and brown public school students.

“What I can say personally is their true colors came out. He won’t get a base in my community.” Rev. Hood said defiantly of Edelman. “We need to educate our kids, not get rich folks richer. These are the same people that don’t want you to have a living wage and adequate housing.”

Meanwhile, the education reformers, armed with a pocketful of billionaire money, rip off communities of color. And as they buy off legislatures, they come off looking like the saviors of the black and brown children they just pimped.

“I wish I could be wrong, but I think they’ll be back for vouchers,” Rev. Hood offered on a cautionary note. “They’ll be back with a sad sack of legislators to write a bill for vouchers.”

Evidence Suggests GOP Hacked, Stole 2004 Election

Here's some interesting stuff from "Benzinga" - can't vouch for any of it -- BUT, put NOTHING past Teh Rethuglikkers.

Please follow link to original
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Forget Anonymous: Evidence Suggests GOP Hacked, Stole 2004 Elec

Three generations from now, when our great-grandchildren are sitting barefoot in their shanties and wondering how in the hell America turned from the high-point of civilization to a third-world banana republic, they will shake their fists and mutter one name: George Effin' Bush.

Ironically, it won't be for any of the things that liberals have been harping on the Bush Administration, either during or after his term in office. Sure, misguided tax cuts that destroyed the surplus, and lax regulations that doomed the economy, and two amazingly awful wars in deserts half a world away are all terrible, empire-sapping events. But they pale in comparison to what it appears the Republican Party did to get President Bush re-elected in 2004.

"A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush," according to Bob Fitrakis, columnist at http://www.freepress.org and co-counsel in the litigation and investigation.

If you recall, Ohio was the battleground state that provided George Bush with the electoral votes needed to win re-election. Had Senator John Kerry won Ohio's electoral votes, he would have been elected instead.

Evidence from the filing suggests that Republican operatives — including the private computer firms hired to manage the electronic voting data — were compromised.

Fitrakis isn't the only attorney involved in pursuing the truth in this matter. Cliff Arnebeck, the lead attorney in the King Lincoln case, exchanged emails with IT security expert Stephen Spoonamore. He asked Spoonamore whether or not SmarTech had the capability to "input data" and thus alter the results of Ohio's 2004 election. His response sent a chill up my spine.

"Yes. They would have had data input capacities. The system might have been set up to log which source generated the data but probably did not," Spoonamore said. In case that seems a bit too technical and "big deal" for you, consider what he was saying. SmarTech, a private company, had the ability in the 2004 election to add or subtract votes without anyone knowing they did so.

The filing today shows how, detailing the computer network system's design structure, including a map of how the data moved from one unit to the next. Right smack in the middle of that structure? Inexplicably, it was SmarTech.

Spoonamore (keep in mind, he is the IT expert here) concluded from the architectural maps of the Ohio 2004 election reporting system that, "SmarTech was a man in the middle. In my opinion they were not designed as a mirror, they were designed specifically to be a man in the middle."

A "man in the middle" is not just an accidental happenstance of computing. It is a deliberate computer hacking setup, one where the hacker sits, literally, in the middle of the communication stream, intercepting and (when desired, as in this case) altering the data. It's how hackers swipe your credit card number or other banking information. This is bad.

A mirror site, which SmarTech was allegedly supposed to be, is simply a backup site on the chance that the main configuration crashes. Mirrors are a good thing.

Until now, the architectural maps and contracts from the Ohio 2004 election were never made public, which may indicate that the entire system was designed for fraud. In a previous sworn affidavit to the court, Spoonamore declared: "The SmarTech system was set up precisely as a King Pin computer used in criminal acts against banking or credit card processes and had the needed level of access to both county tabulators and Secretary of State computers to allow whoever was running SmarTech computers to decide the output of the county tabulators under its control."

Spoonamore also swore that "...the architecture further confirms how this election was stolen. The computer system and SmarTech had the correct placement, connectivity, and computer experts necessary to change the election in any manner desired by the controllers of the SmarTech computers."

SmarTech was part of three computer companies brought in to manage the elections process for Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican. The other two were Triad and GovTech Solutions. All three companies have extensive ties to the Republican party and Republican causes.

In fact, GovTech was run by Mike Connell, who was a fiercely religious conservative who got involved in politics to push a right-wing social agenda. He was Karl Rove's IT go-to guy, and was alleged to be the IT brains behind the series of stolen elections between 2000 and 2004.

Connell was outed as the one who stole the 2004 election by Spoonamore, who, despite being a conservative Republican himself, came forward to blow the whistle on the stolen election scandal. Connell gave a deposition on the matter, but stonewalled. After the deposition, and fearing perjury/obstruction charges for withholding information, Connell expressed an interest in testifying further as to the extent of the scandal.

"He made it known to the lawyers, he made it known to reporter Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story, that he wanted to talk. He was scared. He wanted to talk. And I say that he had pretty good reason to be scared," said Mark Crispin Miller, who wrote a book on the scandal.

Connell was so scared for his security that he asked for protection from the attorney general, then Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Connell told close friends that he was expecting to get thrown under the bus by the Rove team, because Connell had evidence linking the GOP operative to the scandal and the stolen election, including knowledge of where Rove's missing emails disappeared to.

Before he could testify, Connell died in a plane crash.

Harvey Wasserman, who wrote a book on the stolen 2004 election, explained that the combination of computer hacking, ballot destruction, and the discrepancy between exit polling (which showed a big Kerry win in Ohio) and the "real" vote tabulation, all point to one answer: the Republicans stole the 2004 election.

"The 2004 election was stolen. There is absolutely no doubt about it. A 6.7% shift in exit polls does not happen by chance. And, you know, so finally, we have irrefutable confirmation that what we were saying was true and that every piece of the puzzle in the Ohio 2004 election was flawed," Wasserman said.

Mark Crispin Miller also wrote a book on the subject of stolen elections, and focused on the 2004 Ohio presidential election. Here is what he had to say about it.

There were three phases of chicanery. First, there was a pre-election period, during which the Secretary of State in Ohio, Ken Blackwell, was also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, which is in itself mind-boggling, engaged in all sorts of bureaucratic and legal tricks to cut down on the number of people who could register, to limit the usability of provisional ballots. It was really a kind of classic case of using the letter of the law or the seeming letter of the law just to disenfranchise as many people as possible.

On Election Day, there was clearly a systematic undersupply of working voting machines in Democratic areas, primarily inner city and student towns, you know, college towns. And the Conyers people found that in some of the most undersupplied places, there were scores of perfectly good voting machines held back and kept in warehouses, you know, and there are many similar stories to this. And other things happened that day.

After Election Day, there is explicit evidence that a company called Triad, which manufactures all of the tabulators, the vote-counting tabulators that were used in Ohio in the last election, was systematically going around from county to county in Ohio and subverting the recount, which was court ordered and which never did take place. The Republicans will say to this day, 'There was a recount in Ohio, and we won that.' That's a lie, one of many, many staggering lies. There was never a recount.

And now, it seems, there never will be.

Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/news/11/07/1789905/forget-anonymous-evidence-suggests-gop-hacked-stole-2004-election#ixzz1TQhSkezb

The Empty Bully Pulpit

This from Robert Reich -- if you haven't read it yet - please do so now. Also, follow link to original
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Empty Bully Pulpit

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

How did we get into this mess?

I thought I’d seen Washington at its worst. I was there just after Watergate. I was there when Jimmy Carter imploded. I was there during the government shut-down of 1995.

But I hadn’t seen the worst. This is the worst.

How can it be that with over 9 percent unemployment, essentially no job growth, widening inequality, falling real wages, and an economy that’s almost dead in the water — we’re locked in a battle over how to cut the budget deficit?

Part of the answer is a Republican Party that’s the most irresponsible and rigidly ideological I’ve ever witnessed.

Part of the answer is the continuing gravitational pull of the Great Recession.

But another part of the answer lies with the President — and his inability or unwillingness to use the bully pulpit to tell Americans the truth, and mobilize them for what must be done.

Barack Obama is one of the most eloquent and intelligent people ever to grace the White House, which makes his failure to tell the story of our era all the more disappointing and puzzling. Many who were drawn to him in 2008 (including me) were dazzled by the power of his words and insights — his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, his autobiography and subsequent policy book, his talks about race and other divisive issues during the campaign.

We were excited by the prospect of a leader who could educate — an “educator in chief” who would use the bully pulpit to explaini what has happened to the United States in recent decades, where we must go, and why.

But the man who has occupied the Oval Office since January, 2009 is someone entirely different — a man seemingly without a compass, a tactician who veers rightward one day and leftward the next, an inside-the Beltway dealmaker who doesn’t explain his comprises in light of larger goals.

In his inaugural address, Obama warned that “the nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.” In private, he professes to understand that the growing concentration of income and wealth at the top has robbed the middle class of the purchasing power it needs to keep the economy going. And it has distorted our politics.

He is well aware that the Great Recession wiped out $7.8 trillion of home values, crushing the nest eggs and eliminating the collateral that had allowed the middle class to keep spending despite declining real wages — a decrease in consumption that’s directly responsible for the anemic recovery.

But instead of explaining this to the American people, he joins the GOP in making a fetish of reducing the budget deficit, and enters into a hair-raising game of chicken with House Republicans over whether the debt ceiling will be raised.

Never once does he tell the public why reducing the deficit has become his number one economic priority. Americans can only conclude that the Republicans must be correct — that diminishing the deficit will somehow revive economic growth and restore jobs.

Instead of powerful explanations we get the type of bromides that issue from every White House. America must “win the future,” Obama says, by which he means making public investments in infrastructure, education, and basic R&D. But then he submits a budget proposal that would cut nondefense discretionary spending (of which these investments constitute more than half) to its lowest level as a share of gross domestic product in over half a century.

A president can be forgiven for compromising, if his base understands why he is doing so. That the health-care law doesn’t include a public option, that financial reform doesn’t limit the size of the biggest Wall Street banks, even that cuts may have to be made to Medicare or Social Security — all could be accepted in light of the practical necessities of politics, if only we understood where the President is leading us.

Why is Obama not using the bully pulpit? Perhaps he’s too embroiled in the tactical maneuvers that pass for policy making in Washington, or too intent on preserving political capital for the next skirmish, or cynical about how the media will relay or distort his message. He may also disdain the repetition necessary to break through the noise and drive home the larger purpose of his presidency. I have known (and worked for) presidents who succumbed to all these, at least for a time.

A more disturbing explanation is that he simply lacks the courage to tell the truth. He wants most of all to be seen as a responsible adult rather than a fighter. As such, he allows himself to be trapped by situations — the debt-ceiling imbroglio most recently — within which he tries to offer reasonable responses, rather than be the leader who shapes the circumstances from the start.

Obama cannot mobilize America around the truth, in other words, because he is continuously adapting to the prevailing view. This is not leadership.

Some Stuff From "Calculated Risk"

Calculated Risk has some "interesting" headlines. Read them here -- then follow link yo originals. It's "interesting" stuff.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Fed's Beige Book: "Pace of economic growth has moderated"

See the recovery. See the recovery collapse. See the Republicans look for folks to blame - little secret, they are among the folks to blame. Now, vote them ALL out - let them ALL "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". I understand many are rich white dudes, but I'd still like to see them BEGIN to enter what was once "The Middle Class".

Next: Europe Update

It looks like they're going to need a bigger bailout ...

From Reuters: Italian banks fall as Italy/Bund spread widens.

And from CNBC: S&P Expects Second Greek Haircut, New Downgrade
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Go there, read it all.

In The Land Of Self-Interested Pygmies, No One Advocates For The Nation

This from "Zero Hedge". It seems almost everyone with a brain realizes we are on our way to total ruin. Then again, as "they" say, "The market solves everything". It does. But -- I always wonder HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE TO DIE FIRST?

Please follow link to original
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

In The Land Of Self-Interested Pygmies, No One Advocates For The Nation

The great cold lie at the heart of present-day America is that the nation will magically benefit if we each single-mindedly pursue our self-interest to the exclusion of all else. The idea has a sleek quasi-free-market sheen, as it borrows the market's "invisible hand" and applies it to social, fiscal and environmental policies. That is a magical-thinking fantasy. If I pursued only my own self-interest, I would dump the toxic effluent from my factory right into the river ( a la China's very laissez faire economy) while I lived far away in an exclusive community far from the stench and poisons. Why pay for costly remediation when the "free" river beckons? After all, it all works out wonderfully if we each pursue our own self-interest with methodical, nay maniacal, single-mindedness. (Recall that rivers in America caught fire in the 1960s, before environmental regulations limited corporate self-interest.) "The good of the nation" is now a code-phrase for "good for me, and to heck with the country at large." Every self-serving fiefdom, every self-serving cartel and every self-serving constituency (a.k.a. special interest) claims that its pathetically obvious self-serving lobbying "serves the national interest." It's all lies, blatant emotional manipulation of the vilest, crassest sort. Yet we as a nation have sunk so low that the entire notion of a national interest which doesn't benefit a powerful lobby or constituency has been lost. We are now a nation of self-interested pygmies, blind to any national interest that isn't devoted to enriching us personally.

The great cold lie at the heart of present-day America is that the nation will magically benefit if we each single-mindedly pursue our self-interest to the exclusion of all else. The idea has a sleek quasi-free-market sheen, as it borrows the market's "invisible hand" and applies it to social, fiscal and environmental policies. That is a magical-thinking fantasy. If I pursued only my own self-interest, I would dump the toxic effluent from my factory right into the river ( a la China's very laissez faire economy) while I lived far away in an exclusive community far from the stench and poisons. Why pay for costly remediation when the "free" river beckons? After all, it all works out wonderfully if we each pursue our own self-interest with methodical, nay maniacal, single-mindedness. (Recall that rivers in America caught fire in the 1960s, before environmental regulations limited corporate self-interest.) "The good of the nation" is now a code-phrase for "good for me, and to heck with the country at large." Every self-serving fiefdom, every self-serving cartel and every self-serving constituency (a.k.a. special interest) claims that its pathetically obvious self-serving lobbying "serves the national interest." It's all lies, blatant emotional manipulation of the vilest, crassest sort. Yet we as a nation have sunk so low that the entire notion of a national interest which doesn't benefit a powerful lobby or constituency has been lost. We are now a nation of self-interested pygmies, blind to any national interest that isn't devoted to enriching us personally.

Current Affairs"

It makes no sense to comment on current affairs. Nothing makes any sense. Mass murder in Norway - one of the most secure nations in the world. Total insanity in the "Republican Party" (or whatever it is). Wars all over.

AND --- the actual "will of the people" thwarted at every turn as the Uber-Rich and the Corporations lead the world to total ruin.

Soon, I suspect we will NEED another World War to "set things straight". Or, that's what the "VerySeriousPeople" will say (privately).

In case you wondered, "equality" is not part of ANY political discourse.

Origins Of "Obamacare"

If anyone wonders what "Socialist-Communist-Muslim-Nazi-Think-Tank" the hated(?) "Obamacare" came from -- Prof. Paul Krugman explains all.

Here's a hint+ Look no further than "The Heritage Foundation", that conservative "Think Tank".

Please follow link to original
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conservative Origins of Obamacare

Here’s a useful resource for tracking the history of the ideas embodied in the Affordable Care Act.

The essence of Obamacare, as of Romneycare, is a three-legged stool of regulation and subsidies: community rating requiring insurers to make the same policies available to everyone regardless of health status; an individual mandate, requiring everyone to purchase insurance, so that healthy people don’t opt out; and subsidies to keep insurance affordable for those with lower incomes.

The original Heritage plan from 1989 had all these features.

These days, Heritage strives mightily to deny the obvious; it picks at essentially minor differences between what it used to advocate and the plan Democrats actually passed, and tries to make them seem like a big deal. But this is disinformation. The essential features of the ACA — above all, the mandate — are ideas Republicans used to support.

Cartoon

This from Ted Rall. Please follow link to original.
-------------------------------------------------------------

The Cult That Is Destroying America

This from Dr. Paul Krugman - please follow link to original
---------------------------------------------------------------------

The Cult That Is Destroying America

Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self-inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system.

And no, I don’t mean the fanaticism of the right. Well, OK, that too. But my feeling about those people is that they are what they are; you might as well denounce wolves for being carnivores. Crazy is what they do and what they are.

No, the cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.

Think about what’s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.

So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.

The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on austerity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conservative playbook.

What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.

You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imagine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.

And yes, I think this is a moral issue. The “both sides are at fault” people have to know better; if they refuse to say it, it’s out of some combination of fear and ego, of being unwilling to sacrifice their treasured pose of being above the fray.

It’s a terrible thing to watch, and our nation will pay the price.

The DISLOYAL Opposition

Look, I'm not a fan of President Obama. He's much too right-wing for my taste. How the Republicans and their Tea-Party "handlers" can't see that he is to the RIGHT of The Sainted Ronnie Raygun is beyond me.

Obviously, they want him out of office. Also obviously, they are willing to plunge the entire USA into an economic tail-spin to get this done. They don't give a damn what happens to OUR country. It's not THEIRS --- it's OURS!!

I, for one, think every Republican that would let us default, thus going against the very Constitution they claim to worship, should be tried for treason -- and (of course) executed.

Seriously, I really think these folks HATE the REAL USA, worshiping some figment of their imagination, something that never existed outside the movies and The Andy Griffith Show.

Arrest and prosecute.

Tim DeChristopher Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison

Who is Tim DeChristopher? He's an activist who bid up oil lease options when he didn't have the money to pay. He wanted to preserve the land. For THIS he got 2 years. Read then follow link to original. Look for other links -- you might find out what "your" government is doing in your name.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------


Tim DeChristopher Sentenced to 2 Years in Prison

(Cross-posted from peacefuluprising.org)

Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years in prison today at the Salt Lake City federal courthouse. He was taken immediately into custody, being denied the typical 3 weeks afforded to put his affairs in order and say goodbye to his friends and family.

Federal prosecutors asked for Tim to receive an extra harsh prison sentence in an effort to intimidate the movement that stands with him. They hoped that by condemning him to years behind bars, they would “make an example out of him” and deter all of us from taking meaningful action. But Tim is already an example. He’s an example of the courageous acts that people across our movements are taking to fight for justice and a liveable future. We support Tim by continuing to organize. Our response to this sentence is an affirmation: we will not be intimidated. What’s your response?

The government’s statement is clear. Tim has been sentenced to 2 years as punishment for his politics; for the uncompromising content of his speeches and organizing in the two years since his act of civil disobedience protected 150,000 acres of land. Ironically, his principled views and motivations behind his actions he took were never allowed to enter a courtroom, due to their “irrelevance.” In a highly political trial, the jury was unjustly stripped of its right to be their community’s conscience and manipulated into making a political prisoner of a peaceful and concerned young man.

Tim DeChristopher

Author and activist Terry Tempest Williams said, “To think that a young man in an act of conscience might [do any amount of time] in a federal prison for raising a paddle in an already illegal sale of oil and gas leases, compared to the CEO of BP or the financial wizards on Wall Street who have pocketed millions of dollars at our expense – and who will never step into a court of law to even get their hands slapped, let alone go to jail, is an assault on democracy.”

She’s right. But we have the power to turn this assault on democracy into a battle for democracy. Today the Salt Lake City community is expressing both their love and their outrage.

Fossil fuel lobbyists knew that Tim would be indicted the evening before it was officially filed, Jury members explained that they were intimidated throughout the process. The fossil fuel industry should not control our justice system.

Unless we decide to respond accordingly, as Tim serves his time, the real criminals — the fossil fuel industry wrecking our planet and our communities — will continue to run free, unaccountable for the countless oil spills, asthma attacks, contaminated waterways, cancer clusters, and carbon seeping into the air we breathe every day. If the justice system is intent on prosecuting the people protecting rather than pillaging the planet, we must confront the real criminals ourselves. With our heads held high, we continue to stand on the moral high-ground – and will do what’s right, despite the consequences. We know that mother nature’s consequences of inaction are far harsher than any imposed by a court system.

But we are not isolated individuals. We come together with our communities as groups of empowered agents of change who know our system is broken and does not represent us. Our communities represent us, and our vision of a resilient, just, and sustainable world that we are fighting for.

Tim’s sentence is a call to action.

For those of us who’ve been following his story fervently, our hearts were broken today. It is a sad moment. But we now have an opportunity and a responsibility to act on those feelings of hurt and outrage. For Tim’s sacrifice to truly mean something, for the spark it ignites in each of us to burn, we all must take action.

2011 has already become a year of peaceful uprisings around the country. As Tim once said, we were never promised that it would be easy. We know it will take courage, sacrifice and a willingness to sustain our resistance in our fight for real Justice. Tim has taken a step and we will take the next thousand.

Here are a few upcoming action opportunities to join:

On Aug. 4, community members are calling for direct action at BP’s New Orleans offices in protest of the oil company’s continued lack of accountability for the devastating oil spill.
On Aug. 12, Rising Tide North America and the environmental justice community is teaming up with economic justice and labor groups in St. Louis to fight corporations destroying jobs and homes with economic malfeasance and the climate with coal.
In late August and early September, thousands are converging and risking arrest over 15 days at the White House in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline.

We’ll see you on the streets,

In Arkansas, Being Best In Your Class Isn't Enough If You're Black

This from "Crooks and Liars" -- I still find crap like this AMAZING. How can ANYONE claim we are a "meritocracy" when MERIT is not enough?

Please follow link to original
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Arkansas, Being Best In Your Class Isn't Enough If You're Black
By karoli

File this in your notebook under "in case you didn't believe prejudice and bigotry lives on" here in the United States. I won't even try to summarize this. I'll just give it to you straight:

Kymberly Wimberly, 18, got only a single B in her 4 years at McGehee Secondary School, and loaded up on Honors and Advanced Placement classes. She had the highest G.P.A. and says the school's refusal to let her be sole valedictorian was part of a pattern of discrimination against black students.

Wimberly says that despite earning the highest G.P.A. of the Class of 2011, and being informed of it by a school counselor, "school administrators and personnel treated two other white students as heir[s] apparent to the valedictorian and salutatorian spots."

Wimberly's mother is the school's "certified media specialist." She says in the federal discrimination complaint that after her daughter had been told she would be valedictorian, the mother heard "in the copy room that same day, other school personnel expressed concern that Wimberly's status as valedictorian might cause a 'big mess.'"

McGehee Secondary School is predominantly white, and 46 percent African-American, according to the complaint. Bratton says that the day after she heard the "big mess" comment, McGehee Principal Darrell Thompson, a defendant, told her "that he decided to name a white student as co-valedictorian," although the white student had a lower G.P.A.

I guess the school authorities found it uppity that someone who had the highest GPA in the school would actually expect to have the valedictorian honor bestowed on her.

I think I'll set a Google Alert for this one...and hope for an appropriately punitive outcome

Pelosi Rips Into GOP Over Debt Negotiations

Concentration of Power is The Real Crime

This from "The Huffington Post" by way of "The Economic Populist" -- please read then follow link to "The Economic Populist".
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Concentration of Power is The Real Crime

We are missing the lesson of the current British outrage over Murdoch just as we missed the lesson of the financial crisis in America.

Was the real crime in England that employees of the News of the World illegally hacked the cell phone of a missing girl? Was the real financial crime in America illegal acts such as Ponzi schemes or insider trading? The answer is no in both cases.

The real crime in England was legal, not illegal; it was that one man had the power to influence large parts of the British parliament and was credited with a major influence in electing whichever government he favored. No one in government dared to cross him until an emotion-provoking illegal act unleashed a public outcry. That outcry has, at least temporarily, liberated the members of Parliament from their fear of being smeared by Murdoch's newspapers if they dared to be hostile to his interests or beliefs.

Was the real crime in America illegal acts? No. Despite the press devoted to Madoff, the real crime, here as in England, was legal. Selling subprime mortgages to people who could never pay them back was legal. Rating agencies certifying to the high quality of the resulting worthless securities was legal. The whole web of interacting CDO's was legal. It was the legal, though strongly unethical, actions of a powerful Wall Street dedicated to self-enrichment at any price that brought down the U.S. economy. And, though we are still far from recovering from that disaster, the power of money has prevented any fundamental reform of the financial sector.

In both countries, the real crime is the concentration of power that allows these things to happen.

How Power is Used

Power can be exerted through both the stick and the carrot. In England, members of Parliament feared being smeared in the powerful Murdoch newspapers, and they also knew that if they accommodated his views or interests, they could profit from his support.

In the United States, members of Congress understand that Wall Street money and corporate money can either be used to defeat them or to support their campaigns. They also know that if they are sufficiently influential in the right direction, lobbying jobs that are far more financially rewarding than their present occupation await them when they retire from Congress

Money can extend its power to other parts of government, too. In England, part of the police force became a Murdoch ally in ferreting out more news about important stories. In America, regulatory bodies, established to protect the public interest, become blind to risky behavior and kind to the industry. And these examples are some entries in a long list of possibilities.

The Tyranny of Government

It has been common throughout history for the concentration of power to be in governments, often but not always monarchies or dictatorships, and for the leaders of such governments to act to enrich themselves and their friends. In the years preceding the American Revolution, the British government's restrictions on colonial manufacturing, the Navigation Acts, the tax on stamps, and the tax on tea, brought revenue to the British Crown and profits to British merchants and manufacturers at the expense of the colonies, but also produced a revolution. This tyranny by governments is the type of oppression which the Tea Party is constantly reminding us of, but today's tyranny is of a different type.

The Tyranny of Wealth

The problem today is not the tyranny of government, but rather the concentration of money, and hence power, in Wall Street and in the largest corporations. And it is clear that enough money can buy political power.

Both Wall Street and the major corporations have added to their strong direct effect on the economy a decisive effect on the actions of governmental bodies. It is their influence on the federal government that caused the regulatory bodies to stand back from regulation and encouraged the excesses of the financial sector in the years leading up to the crash. It was the federal government, led by Wall Street alumni, that rescued the financial institutions so that they are now posting record profits despite having impoverished the nation. It was the overwhelming lobbying power of the financial sector that prevented the passage of meaningful financial reform. The banks that were too big to fail are, with the concurrence of both political parties, now bigger than ever. And the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court, permitting the unrestricted use of corporate and Wall Street money for campaigns, are adding to this effect.

The declared goal of most major U.S. corporations today is to make their stock as valuable as possible. As more than two-thirds of all stock is held by the wealthiest five percent in the country, this corporate goal amounts in practice to simply making the wealthy wealthier and increasing the extreme concentration of wealth and power that already exists in America today. And if making the stock as valuable as possible means sending jobs and technology abroad, while holding down wages at home, so be it.

Yet it is to this same corporate leadership that the government turns for policy advice on how to create jobs and revive the economy.

Today

Today we have a concentration of wealth unmatched since the days immediately preceding the Great Depression in 1929. This wealth and power, concentrated in Wall Street and in the major corporations, is being used for the enrichment of the already wealthy. Unfortunately, that enrichment is one that does not raise all boats. As statistics clearly show, the big boats are rising rapidly and the small boats are not doing well.

After the Great Depression, the U.S. government acted to lessen the power of concentrated wealth. It separated commercial from investment banking, insured bank deposits, enacted social security, and facilitated unions as a counter-force to corporations. It even became to some extent the employer of last resort.

But the power of wealth today over both political parties is now such that new government actions are mainly words that cover real inaction, and even that limited action is often described as the actions of a too large and too powerful government.

Today, the threat of tyranny comes not from the government, but from the concentration of wealth and power outside government, and from the influence on government of that great concentration of wealth and power.