krebscycle

The Bush gambit and the Press

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:31:00 -0400

The press and Republicans kept the 2000 Presidential election close enough for the Supreme Court to steal it for George W. Bush thanks a great deal to Bill Clinton’s abdication under fire. The Justice Department stopped trying to enforce the voting rights act - facilitating Florida and other states gross vote theft operations. The FBI was basically handed over to the Republicans and spent 2 years devoting enormous resources to investigating Clinton, his allies, and many Democratic politicians on trivial issues - remember the destruction of Henry Cisneros? And from every government agency, there was a flood of inappropriate leaks of information that was or could be made to seem embarrassing for the Administration from empowered GOP sympathizing bureaucrats secure in their untouchable status.

Ken Starr commanded vast resources from the executive branch to ferret out and publicize any rumor he could find about Clinton’s sex life. (And so the FBI did not have the resources to look at Saudis who were studying how to fly planes, but not land them. ) Grand Jury secrecy, supposedly one of the cornerstones of rule of law, was openly violated thanks to the complicity of the press. And when the press was not assisting Starr’s “elves” to violate Grand Jury secrecy, they were assisting in 24-7 hysteria about Clinton’s penis. That was a great moment when, at a joint Press Conference with the French President in Paris, the US press didn’t even pretend to want to know anything about US relations with France or national security issues or trade - just about semen stains on the blue dress. Income inequality, tax fairness, the already visible problems of bank deregulation, racial discrimination, jobs, environment - the Press was bored with all that when they could run with low grade smarm all day. What a glorious moment for the First Amendment.

The press creation of fake scandals intimidated Clinton and Janet Reno so much that they gave up trying to run the Department of Justice (and FBI). They scared Gore out of running on the Clinton Administration’s successful and popular record. And then they pushed their “serial liar” smear of Gore while covering up Bush’s extremism and racist dog-whistle campaign. Now Bill Keller the former NY Times editor wants to go back to the glory years of Ken Starr when the NY Times went day after day inventing scandals to benefit the GOP.

And now we are being told to support the AP’s sabotage of a US espionage operation directed at AQAP bomb makers? Or even more ridiculous: to support Fox “News” effort to sabotage US foreign policy in Korea and embarrass the Administration. When there is not a scintilla of evidence that there was any government wrongdoing exposed? And to line up with the Press in their defense of their right to violate any law in an effort to damage a Democratic Administration while treating the GOP with fear and an embarrassing servility?

Right.

Liberal libertarianism and the Associated Press

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:00:00 -0400

@root_e I don’t care. Govt, any govt, vs freedom of press, there’s only one honest side.
— JeffSharlet (@JeffSharlet) May 15, 2013

And I immediately think about El Mercurio in Chile in 1972 and Radio Rwanda when it was urging its listeners to kill the “cockroaches”. Or perhaps when Rush Limbaugh refers to liberals as cockroaches. To me, the Allende government should have prosecuted El Mercurio editors for treason, bugged their phones, arrested the CIA agents who were paying them, and traced their connections to the military traitors who were planning to overthrow the government. To me Radio Rwanda’s eliminationist rhetoric or Rush Limbaugh’s, for that matter, are not examples of free speech or the operation of the free press. I’m interested in justice and freedom not empty formalism or reflexive libertarianism. The government is not always in the wrong or even a single entity.

What did the AP do? Did they expose government misconduct? No. Did they inform the public of policy issues of great importance? No. Did they practice journalism? No. Did they express a political opinion? No. What they did, in all probability, was provide a channel for one faction in the bureaucracy to attempt to disrupt the functioning of the elected government. They exposed a US covert operation in Yemen that was spying on people who are manufacturing bombs and trying to send them into the US or onto US airplanes. That’s not an exercise of freedom of speech or press. It would have been irresponsible of the Obama administration to let such sabotage go un-investigated. When the Clinton administration passively allowed Ken Starr to violate grand jury secrecy with the assistance of the media they were not supporting freedom of the press, they were failing to protect democratic government - not to mention the rights of grand jury witnesses.

As candidate for President in 1968, Richard Nixon sabotaged peace talks. Ronald Reagan’s team likely sabotaged or tried to sabotage Carter’s efforts to get back US hostages before the Presidential election. The far right has spent decades planting loyalists inside the armed forces, the security apparatus, and the bureaucracy. And the far right, the evangelical right in particular, does not believe in democracy, rule of law, constitutional process or any of that stuff. Sharlet’s book The Family is a chilling documentation of the mindset of one right wing faction. And yet …

There are obviously significant parts of the US security bureaucracy that hate the Obama administration. The right wing in Congress is not opposed to the President within the context of a political system in which law and voting determine outcome, but in the context of what they see as a crusade. Former Representative Alan West, without a single complaint from even his “moderate” GOP colleagues said that Obama supporters are “a threat to the gene pool”. The last election cycle saw a lavishly funded campaign to deny the right to vote to African-Americans. Anyone who lives outside of the liberal villages can testify that the level of anger and open threat from the right is high. I take those people seriously.

So here we have a situation where someone inside the government is working with a hostile corporate media operation to sabotage a legitimate, even vital, US national security operation. Attorney General Holder has spent 5 years attempting to clean up the right wing destruction of the Department of Justice, to start enforcing civil rights laws and environmental laws again, to at least remove some of the most noxious right wing ideologues buried in the bureaucracy by the Bush administration, to get rid of the people in the DOJ who claimed torture was legal, to defend the right to vote against legal and extra-legal intimidation. Faced with a national security violation, a real one - not like the fake ones Bush and Cheney and Nixon invented - the AG goes out of his way to follow both the letter and spirit of existing law by recusing himself from the investigation. A subpoena that is clearly legal within existing law gets phone records. There is not even a hint that AP journalists will face any criminal charges.

And yet, the formalist “left” wants Holder fired - they join the far right which has been demanding his ouster from day one ( and imagine the confirmation hearing for a replacement AG in the Senate as Lindsay Graham defends “liberty”). They even go so far as to echo the bullshit “tyranny” rhetoric that Confederates have used in this country since the 1840s. The civil liberties “left” urges us to “Stand With Rand” as he echoes the paranoid anti-government rhetoric of Dixiecrats. And then they take it as self-evident that they are principled supporters of liberty and those of us who find their arguments grossly unpersuasive are unprincipled or worse. Well to hell with that. Privilege and naivete are not principled. You want to call for Holder’s resignation? Tell me who is going to defend the Voting Rights Act over the next 3 years first. And if the voting rights act matters less to you than the sanctity of the AP’s phone records, then - well then we know who you are. And it’s not admirable at all.

The USA can reduce budget deficit and use Keynesian stimulus at the same time

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:22:00 -0400

The budget of the United States is so bloated with give-aways to the wealthy, subsidies of dirty, obsolete industries, waste and inefficiency that it could be brought into balance rapidly while still increasing both investment in infrastructure and the kind of economic stimulus Keynes showed will boost economies out of recession.

Keynsian stimulus is a simple idea based on the observation that people who are working create wealth - they don’t just move it around. If the government buys things and pays people to make things or to do other work or just gives unemployed people a living wage, their economic activity can create wealth. The government pays me to get my house insulated, I pay you to do the work, you hire laborers and buy equipment and supplies, your employees buy things from local stores which hire salesclerks, and so on. If this is done well, there is a multiplier - each dollar of government spending generates multiple dollars of economic activity. And so when the government eventually reduces spending, the economy has a running start and keeps going along. Your home insulating business is chugging along, your employees are consuming goods and producing home improvements and so on. People were not just taking in each other’s laundry, they were building businesses, educating kids, inventing new products, and so on

Keynes particularly advocated this program during a recession when the economy is in a downward spiral. As businesses fail, their ex-employees and suppliers and bankers all suffer and cut back on their spending which causes more business failures and lower government tax collections and so on. When the Great Depression started, Keynes was not widely respected by economists and politicians. So they tried austerity - the government cut back on spending and the theory was that things would eventually reset themselves. That did not work out so well. The economy got stuck in reverse and got worse and worse until FDR came into office and started spending. Government spending immediately stopped the fall and began revving up the economy. Keynes theory worked, the austerity theory did not.The same thing has happened in our time. The Europeans have tried austerity and are mired in recession, poverty, and increasing social unrest. The US tried stimulus and the economy recovered. There’s not really room for debate: Keynsian stimulus works and austerity hurts the economy. But as with FDR, because of political opposition, the current US government has not been able to spend enough on stimulus to boost the economy into full speed. FDR had to wait until the war started to boost spending high enough, but we do not. In fact, we don’t even have to increase government spending.

If you oversimplify what Keynes argued, you end up only thinking about total government spending. But Keynes never argued that just having the government spend money was stimulative - he argued for government spending that put money in the pockets of consumers and that otherwise increased domestic demand. Keynesian stimulus is government spending with a multiplier, but a lot of government spending has no multiplier. For example, the US government spends $200/gallon to get gasoline to soldiers in Afghanistan. That money does nothing for the US domestic economy - it just increases the debt. The government spends $7,000,000,000 (seven BILLION) dollars a year to buy crop insurance for mostly big corporate farmers. Suppose the government let farmers buy their own insurance and let insurance companies sell insurance without government welfare, and took half that money to hire teachers. At $50,000 for teachers (salary plus overhead), we could hire 70,000 teachers and scatter them across the country. Those teachers would rent apartments/buy houses, purchase goods, pay local taxes, save money in local banks, and also - by the way - teach our kids. That is, we could reduce government spending by $3 1/2 billion each year while increasing government stimulus of the economy and investing in the future via education. Why don’t we do it? Big corporate farm interests have better lobbyists than school teachers. Pure and simple.

Or consider all the tax expenditures in the budget - because someone has to pay for tax breaks. Bowles-Simpson estimated tax breaks like carried interest exemption that let Mitt Romney pay 15 % tax rates cost the rest of us over $1,000,000,000,000 (one TRILLION dollars) a year. If that money went into pockets of ordinary people instead of into Caribbean gangster banks, it would create a lot of domestic demand and lift the economy. Same with money budgeted to be spent on the Iraq and Afghan wars or on oil subsidies or to reduce the cost of executive jets or waste in Medicare or …

The bottom line is we can increase government stimulus of the economy, as Keynes proposed, while reducing total government spending because way too much of the Federal budget is corporate welfare.

Tomasky and Charles Pierce battle for hysterical weeper award

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:23:00 -0400

I’m inclined to award this to Michael Tomasky for his “Fire Holder” article in which he gives the following hilarious advice to President Obama:

And if Obama permits these things to linger, they’ll poison the situation on Capitol Hill, which hardly needs any more poisoning, and the substantive bills he wants to pass will be at risk because the GOP base will be that much more intolerant of any Republicans voting for anything Obama favors.

OH MY! Don’t “poison the situation” on Capital Hill or else the GOP will start filibustering everything in sight, run hundreds of phony investigations, try to repeal Obamacare nonstop, make strenuous efforts to sabotage the economy - by golly you might even get to a situation where a Republican Congressman yells out an insult during the State of the Union address, maybe “YOU LIE”. For God’s sake, the GOP may become so angry and extreme it will steal elections or start wars for no reason. Please President Obama, preserve the present mood on the Hill so your “substantive bills” will be seriously considered by Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan, not to mention Steve King and Louis Gohmert. Michael Tomasky’s world - where Republicans are reasonable.

Nearly as good as this counterfactual flight of weepy fantasy is Tomasky’s reasoning for firing Holder

And so the subpoena—extremely far-reaching as these things go, and possibly sought in violation of the guidelines governing such action.

Oh my! A totally legal subpoena that was “extremely far reaching” (something Tomasky knows without actually knowing how far reaching it was) that was possibly in violation of guidelines! Guidelines, no less. That’s a stunning indictment isn’t it. Well, the President better take Mr. Tomasky’s advice and dump Holder for this possible guideline violation before the GOP gets all pissy and starts blocking his nominations - because God knows we’d hate to go into the next election without a strong AG to defend the voting rights act. Oh, wait.

But then there’s Charles Pierce, hopping frantically from foot to foot as if he’s just finished drinking beer at his favorite bar through a Celtics loss only to find out that the men’s room key has been lost.

This isn’t hard. This is what made Egil (Bud) Krogh famous. This is what got people sent to jail in the mid-1970s. This is the Plumbers, all over again, except slightly more formal this time, and laundered, disgracefully, even more directly through the Department Of Justice

Jesus wept! Here’s a tip, Egil Krogh Watergate Plumber and his colleagues went to jail because they violated the law. When the justice Department issues a subpoena, that’s called following the law. See, there is a difference between LEGAL and ILLEGAL and it is not that LEGAL is “slightly more formal”. The problem with Egil Krogh and Whitey Bulger for that matter was not too much informality. It was too much LAW BREAKING. And Holder not only did not break the law, he apparently worked very hard to keep out of the case to avoid even an appearance of impropriety.

And while we are going over obvious differences in kind that seem too hard to remember when you are overwhelmed with the vapors, let’s think about the difference between spying on political opponents (Egil Krogh) and investigating an illegal and dangerous compromise of US security. Just because Bush and Cheney and Nixon wanted their political bullshit to be treated as national secrets doesn’t mean there are no national secrets, no data that needs to be kept confidential. If a FBI agent leaked names of informers to Whitey Bulger, to pick an example that could never happen in Michael Tomasky’s world, wouldn’t the government be duty bound to go after him? What about if someone leaks information about a perfectly legit US intelligence operation in Yemen? To me, and I know I’m just a craven Obot unable to make these kind of moral judgments, leaking that information is not only criminal, but it is dangerous and immoral. You see there is a difference between violating secrecy to expose wrongdoing - whistleblowing - and violating secrecy to make Ron Fournier feel more like a real little boy or to damage an Administration run by a black guy. The second thing is not admirable or defensible.

You can't borrow your way out of debt - what?

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:16:00 -0400

Suppose I’m in debt, have no car, and get a job offer for a good job that I can’t reach by bus or train. If I could borrow money to buy a car should I stay unemployed and hope for a miracle?

Suppose my company gets an order for 100 widgets at $1million dollars and it will cost me $1/2 million to get the raw materials and pay for the labor and shipping to make those 100 widgets. Should I borrow the money or tell the customer to forget about it?

Suppose my city has factories closing and jobs being lost because the sea port needs to be dredged. Should the city borrow the money to reopen the port or should it just shut down?

As a business owner and Democrat, I am often amazed by what my Republican neighbors and colleagues say about government budgeting. Markets are almost always based on credit - on borrowing and lending. The whole (legitimate) purpose of the corporate bond market is to allow companies to “borrow their way into profits”. The corporate bond market in the US is somewhere around eight trillion dollars. We have records of Summerian farmers borrowing money against a wheat harvest in 2000BC or so. David Packard and Bill Hewlett needed a line of credit from the Bank of Palo Alto to keep their business alive in early days. Businesses borrow to get out of debt all the time and have as far back as people know. And governments can also borrow for good reason. How can anyone say something so absurd as ” you can’t borrow your way out of debt” ?

In a command economy like the old Soviet Union,of course, none of this silly borrowing takes place at all. Are the people who say ” you can’t borrow your way out of debt” just against markets and capitalism altogether? My guess is that they are just using a simple slogan that make them feel virtuous without having to think about what sorts of borrowing is good and what is bad. If I borrow that money for a car and decide to get a Rolls Royce even though I won’t make enough to keep up with the payments, that would be irresponsible. If I borrow money for my company and spend it on dividends even though we don’t have enough income to keep running that would be irresponsible (and illegal for a small business, not, unfortunately, for a business like Bain Capital big enough to hire smart lawyers.) If my country borrows a trillion dollars to fight a war in Iraq for no good reason anyone can find, that’s even worse. Some borrowing is prudent and even essential. Some is irresponsible or even criminal. Is that so hard?

Since 2009, the USA has borrowed a lot of money, but has spent a lot of it wisely. That’s why the deficit is going down. Some money went to pay unemployment benefits keep the economy from tipping over before the recession could end. Some of the money that went to loans to advanced battery makers and electric car companies and helped to create jobs and give us a valuable new industry ( and, yes, some of those loans didnt work out, so?). Some money went to saving the big three auto companies. Some money went to Pell grants for students who will get jobs and pay taxes. It’s reasonable to argue about expenditures that are wasteful, but you have to do your homework and not just yell if you are going to make sense.

It’s infuriating that many of the same people who cheered as the GW Bush administration piled up huge debts for irresponsible or even corrupt projects are now telling us that they are “deficit hawks”. Where were Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and John Boehner when GW Bush doubled the Federal budget for things like the Medicare Advantage subsidy to highly profitable insurance companies? There was no way that debt was remotely justified and the whole country will be suffering the consequences for a long time. And here in Texas, we have people like Rick Perry talking as if he were frugality itself while building up a monster debt ($31billion on Dept of Transportation alone) that nobody can even imagine how to pay back. Suppose you worked in a company where some of the partners built up a huge debt to pay themselves bonuses and suddenly started complaining when you stopped the waste and borrowed money to meet payroll and to get the business operating again? That’s what today’s Republicans and Tea Partiers are like. That’s why nobody sensible takes them seriously.

You can’t run a business, a household budget, and certainly not a country on simplistic slogans and pretending. I wish my Republican neighbors and business acquaintances and friends would act more like responsible citizens and less like people yelling into sports radio call in shows.

Why do right wingers hate Keynes so much?

Sat, 11 May 2013 13:23:00 -0400

It’s not because they don’t believe “Keynsian stimulus” works - although they pretend otherwise. Listen to Republicans talk about Federal spending on the military or state spending on roads - they know that government spending can create jobs and wealth even if they usually say the opposite. What Republicans and Hayekians and the other right wingers hate about Keynes is that he explained how poverty and scarcity and struggling to make a living and competing just for basics are all unnecessary.

A modern industrial economy, based on markets, without a “command economy” or bureaucratic management of everything can provide both opportunity for wealth and success and a basic good standard of living for everyone. In the 1960s and 1970s, even market fundamentalists like Milton Friedman advocated that the government could pay everyone a basic living wage. Just offer every person the option of a basic living for when they were sick or studying or taking care of little kids or thinking up a great invention or writing poetry or whatever. People who wanted more or want to be useful would work. Friedman said this program would be cheaper and less demeaning and more effective than 100 different welfare programs all of which have bureaucratic overhead and have to spend a lot of money in a not very effective effort to prevent cheating. In those days people then spoke about “post-scarcity” economics.

As Keynes had shown, and as the great J.K. Galbraith helped prove, government actions can create market conditions for economic growth and general prosperity high enough to be able to afford such a program. For example, the government funded basic research and then the initial development of the Internet, generating a huge increase in prosperity. None of this was all that new: Adam Smith pointed out that if the government kept interest rates low the markets would favor well thought out investment, but if rates went up too high investors would speculate and harm national prosperity (ahem, Lehman Brothers). But it was Keynes who first explained that poverty and insecurity could be cured within market systems with some limited assistance from the government.

Here’s Keynes writing just after WWI to explain that market systems in which all the gains are grabbed by a very small number of people are unstable and unnecessary:

I seek only to point out that the principle of accumulation based on inequality was a vital part of the pre-war order of Society and of progress as we then understood it, and to emphasize that this principle depended on unstable psychological conditions, which it may be impossible to recreate. It was not natural for a population, of whom so few enjoyed the comforts of life, to accumulate so hugely. The war has disclosed the possibility of consumption to all and the vanity of abstinence to many. Thus the bluff is discovered; the laboring classes may be no longer willing to forego so largely, and the capitalist classes, no longer confident of the future, may seek to enjoy more fully their liberties of consumption so long as they last, and thus precipitate the hour of their confiscation.

But this is heresy to conservatives. The conservatives tell the public that the only alternative to a system in which “few enjoy the comforts of life” is some despotic Stalinist state. “Put up with David Koch dumping poison in the sea and buying Senators”, they say, because the only alternative is misery for all and the despotism of a command economy. Keynes showed that was nonsense.

A dynamic market economy without fear and scarcity is the last thing conservatives want - because it would limit the power of the elite. For conservatives, when a “job creator” threatens to shut down low wage jobs unless he gets more government subsidies, less regulation of harmful environmental effects, less job safety, and no taxes the response should be be craven fear and obedience.The idea that the response could be: someone else can organize that work better, safer, more profitably, and more cleanly, terrifies the entrenched “incumbents” at the top of the heap, their paid propagandists and flacks, and people who enjoy servility. And face it, the popular support for the right is from people who take pleasure in the misery of others, fear change, and love having “powerful” bosses. You know, from the kinds of people who as kids followed the bully and cheered him on. Impertinent rabble rousers, entrepreneurs, inventors, tinkerers, innovators, union organizers, do-gooders and other trouble makers who want to change the world , are poorly suited to conservatism. So are people who just want to do their part and carry their share of the work

Why do conservatives hate Keynes? Because Keynes showed that market economies can be post-scarcity economies and that the deprivation,uncertainty, fear and insecurity that are so much a feature of our present economy can all be cured. Conservatives need deprivation and insecurity to keep the serfs in line. They don’t hate Keynes because his suggested policies don’t work They hate Keynes because his suggested policies do work. What would a party that wins office by scaring people with lies about how immigrants are going to take their jobs or black people are going to take all the welfare or other nonsense do if nobody was scared?

The overweening arrogance of the progressives

Fri, 10 May 2013 11:44:00 -0400

The Dem base—even its big donors—are in a real uproar over Keystone. As they should be—it’s a fateful decision washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-pol…

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben)

May 10, 2013

So Bill McKibben claims to speak for the Democratic Base even though the AFL-CIO President supports the pipeline. The sheer arrogance and smug self-righteousness of the Pro-Left benefits only the Republicans.

And, as usual, the issue that the progressives have picked as “the line in the sand” is kind of stupid. If your goal is to address global warming, CAFE standards, mercury/coal rules, Wind power credits, solar financing, electric cars, smart grid, and so on are all important - more important.

For the record, I oppose the pipeline even though I don’t buy into McKiben’s hysteria and self-promotion.

Henry Farrell, Colin Crouch, and why the old line progressives are hopeless

Mon, 06 May 2013 09:45:00 -0400

Crouch sees the history of democracy as an arc. In the beginning, ordinary people were excluded from decision-making. During the 20th century, they became increasingly able to determine their collective fate through the electoral process, building mass parties that could represent their interests in government. Prosperity and the contentment of working people went hand in hand. Business recognised limits to its power and answered to democratically legitimated government. Markets were subordinate to politics, not the other way around.

The realm of real democracy — political choices that are responsive to voters’ needs — shrinks ever further

At some point shortly after the end of the Second World War, democracy reached its apex in countries such as Britain and the US.[from]

Farrel cites this bullshit approvingly when all the deep research he needs to do to refute it can be done by going to see a movie: 42. What kind of Democracy did African-Americans experience “shortly after the end of the Second World War”? Women?

Clearly “ordinary people” means “white men” to a sadly large number of liberal/left intellectuals even here in 2013. But it’s even worse then that: the “left” apparently now cannot remember works like “Power Elite” by Mills. Instead it is lost in a haze of Truman era nostalgia based on God knows what. You can’t find a path forward if you are lost in delusions about the past.

Taxpayers help banks, Apple, stock investors, again

Thu, 02 May 2013 13:11:00 -0400

Apple just borrowed $17,000,000,000 (seventeen billion dollars) even though it has $145,000,000,000 (one hundred forty five billion) in cash. Why borrow when you have so much cash sitting around? Apple, Apple Stockholders, bond investors, Goldman-Sachs and Deutsche bank all benefit from this strange deal because - yes you guessed it, the American taxpayers love to give away money for corporate welfare.

Apple is borrowing the money to give it to Apple stockholders in an attempt to encourage people to bid up the price of Apple stock. Let’s look at how the numbers would work out if we didn’t have corporate welfare. Most of Apple’s cash is in offshore banks because Apple doesn’t want to pay corporate tax on profits it earns overseas (or can pretend to have earned overseas by clever book-keeping).

Suppose Apple used its cash to pay the dividend instead of borrowing. If Apple paid 20% tax on its corporate profits (actually it pays a lot less) it would bring $21 billion back into the USA and pay $4 billion in tax leaving $17 billion for the dividend.

What would $4billion in taxes pay for? Maybe these three things.

14,000 college scholarships of $150,000 each would come to $2.1 billion only. Apple complains a lot about how it can’t find engineers.
100,000 poor children could get $20,000 a year food and shelter, maybe even a tutor, for another $2 billion.
10000 wounded Veterans could be given $10,000 each for another 1/10th of a billion dollars

Ok, enough with the fantasy world in which corporations paid taxes on profits. Let’s go to America where debt and underwriting expenses are tax deductible. Apple’s sold ten year bonds at 2.4% so for $17billion that comes to just over $4billion in interest over ten years - almost exactly the same as the taxes it might have paid. And it paid the underwriters: $38.3 million to Goldman and $9.3 million to Deutche bank. But here’s why it’s so much fun to be operating in the Romney Zone, those costs are tax deductible for Apple. Supposing that same 20% tax rate, the Feds give Apple $800,000,000 (eight hundred million) or so back. Let’s suppose Apple is making 1% interest on its overseas cash, then over 10 years it will earn over $2billion from the $21billion it left in cash. Sum it up and there is $2.8billion to subtract from the $4billion or so in interest and the total cost to Apple of borrowing the money is nearly $3billion less than spending its own cash.

Of course we don’t get to send people to school or feed poor children or bonus veterans, but Goldman-Sachs makes some money, Apple executives and other people who have Apple shares make money (which they get low cap gains rates on), Apple investors get the dividends, Apple bond buyers get 2.4% on a very low risk investment. Everyone is happy! Everyone who counts. Thanks taxpayers: without the interest deduction and the sheltering of overseas profits, none of the high priced tax lawyers who structured this deal would have made any money at all. And think of the benefits of increasing the liquidity in tax shelter overseas banks! Wouldn’t want the Zetas to have to wait on a withdrawal to process.

When the Simpson-Bowles commission estimated that tax treats to the wealthy cost the taxpayrs over $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars) a year, this is the kind of thing they had in mind.

George W. Bush kept us safe

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 08:35:00 -0400

This is what Republicans were saying last week: After 9/11, George W. Bush kept us safe. The slick con-man “after 9/11”, as if the President who ignored a national security briefing with the title “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US” was somehow not responsible for his own inaction is so offensive you might not notice the really sickening part - the Republican “us”. For the Republicans “us” doesn’t include US soldiers and sailors and marines - because some of us Americans were not at all safe even after 9/11.

Some of us were sent to Afghanistan where the inept and disinterested Bush didn’t bother to collect allies, provide enough resources to accomplish the mission, or think through a strategy. Bin Laden escaped, Taliban regrouped, and some of us were most definitely not safe.

Some of us were sent to Iraq to get Weapons of Mass Destruction that turned out to be Bush administration marketing gimmicks. The Bush administration didn’t bother to get us basic equipment, like bulletproof vests. They sent over highly paid children of political operatives to mismanage the occupation from within walled bases equipped with swimming pools and chefs while some of us were forced on tour after tour “stop loss”. They diverted billions to overpaid contractors who electrocuted some of us in the damn showers even.

That’s Republicans for you: “us” doesn’t include anyone but them.

Section 60 in Arlington Cemetery.

I don’t even want to talk about those of us who were not so safe in New Orleans after Katrina.

How does the world change?

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 03:26:00 -0400

In 1860, the cash value of the slaves in the cotton belt of the United States was more than the value of all the railroads and factories in the USA. The technology employed to move cotton down the Mississippi and goods up it was the leading edge of modern technology. The financial system that advanced credit to slavers and moved cotton bales to British factories was sophisticated and powerful and profitable. The whole of the Deep South had been, in a few decades, stolen from its inhabitants, cut up into parcels and massively reshaped into cotton fields, factories, markets, and transportation channels. Slavery was not a weird anachronistic survival from primitive times, it was the heartbeat of the world economy, it was modern, thriving, self-sustaining and reaching out to expand into Texas and Central America while driving British armies into India and China.

It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism. Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined [Walter Johnson]

Slavery had a working business model. Without the efforts of millions of people, mass slavery could have grown and adapted and lived on to our times. Soldiers fighting for the Union armies and the army of free Haiti, the men who escaped bondage to show General Grant how to move around Confederate positions at Vicksburg or who labored to move Union artillery into place, the men and women who kept escaping and rebelling, the people who helped them escape, Harriet Tubman, Theodore Parker who kept a gun by his Bible in Boston to kill slave catchers, Charles Deslondes and his men who brought the terror of justice to the Mississippi in 1811 before they were slaughtered by the army, Wilberforce and Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglas and millions of others: fought and sacrificed and persuaded and worked through defeat and despair. Even the bravery of those who deserted Confederate armies (defying the violent rule of the Slave masters) played a role. It was the action of human beings in the cause of justice that ended New World Slavery.

We have inherited from the Victorian Economists a collection of clockwork myths about progress. According to those myths the rationalizing power of capitalism, or the advance of historical development through stages, or new technologies, or some other mechanical process brought modernity to the world and obsoleted slavery automatically. These myths are no more true than earlier myths about how Kings and Emperors and Generals made history while others just followed along. Slavery could have modernized and prospered in blood and torture. Humans beings chose to resist slavery and, eventually, after many reverses and false paths and dashed hopes and cruel defeats they killed the monster.

One of the stories Walter Johnson tells in his amazing book is of Charles Deslondes doomed rebellion in 1811. Deslondes was brought to Mississippi by a slaver who was fleeing Toussaint’s victory in Haiti. He raised a rebellion:

Among their number were men named Charles, Cupidon, Telemacque, Janvier, Harry, Joseph, Kooche, Quamana, Mingo, Diaca, Omar, Al-Hassan. They were African- and American-born, French- and English-speaking, Christian and Muslim, Creole, Akan, and Congo, organized in companies that reflected their various origins.

Johnson, Walter (2013-02-26). River of Dark Dreams (p. 18). Belknap Press.

They were defeated by massive force, but their memory haunted the South and helped drive the slavers into the paranoia and deluded over-reach that eventually brought them down. If people had not rebelled in the face of hopeless odds, if Lincoln had lost either Presidential election, if Fred Douglas had given up and retired to a farm, if ordinary men and women in the Underground Railroad had not defied the law to help their brothers and sisters escape - any of these things could have helped evil to survive and grow. It’s impossible to tell even in retrospect what was the best, the most effective path or action. But we can be confident that the sum of the actions of all those people who would not accept slavery eventually beat the actions of those who supported slavery and those who shamefully tolerated it.

When the troops debarked, the evening of the 29th, it was expected that we would have to go to Rodney, about nine miles below, to find a landing; but that night a colored man came in who informed me that a good landing would would be found at Bruinsburg, a few miles above Rodney, from which point there was a good road leading to Port Gibson some twelve miles in the interior. The information was found correct, and our landing was effected without opposition.

Ulysses S. Grant. Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete.

Nobody knows who that “colored” man was. But he took initiative and helped change the world, at considerable risk to himself.

Please take your disappointment with President Obama and have a fucking seat

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:04:07 -0400

If you are disappointed that President Obama always speaks civilly and keeps reaching out to the ill-mannered, ignorant, and often badly intentioned racist Republicans, grow the fuck up and put a sock in it. President Obama repeatedly explained that this would be his strategy from the day he ran for US Senate. He discussed this strategy in his books, in articles, in speeches and even in a fucking blog post on the DailyKos in 2005. You are entitled to disagree with this strategy if you want, but when you express disappointment that a man is doing exactly what he said he would do, you sound like entitled whiners. The President is a grown man who has clearly expressed an opinion that you do not share. He does not owe you obedience or deference. He’s not weak or naive or stupid for not changing his mind because you complained. If you wanted Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders or Hillary “Flag Amendment” Clinton to be President and think they would have acted out your West Wing Fantasy better, then you did a crappy job convincing the voters. So suck it up and figure out how to persuade other people to agree with you instead of bitching like a teenager who wants a ride to the mall now or you’ll never clean your room again. And if you even think of telling me that you interpreted “change” to mean “give President Bartlett speeches on command”, just don’t. If you insist on refusing to understand the difference between reality and TV nobody else is to blame. Get therapy, read a book, don’t embarrass yourself.

On the other hand, if you think the President’s strategy is wrong, I’m less inclined to yell at you because I agreed with you at one time. When I read Obama’s DailyKos post, I thought he was wrong, maybe even naive. But even though I am not the most brilliant political analyst in the world, something eventually occurred to me: Barack Obama’s method works and the method I supported did not work. Even though it sickens me to see him smile while the skunk cage full of GOP Congressmen scream and gibber and urinate on themselves, the fact is that President Obama has accomplished more significant things than any Democratic President since LBJ - and he didn’t even need to sacrifice 3 million Vietnamese to do it. While science is totally out of fashion, my scientific training forces me to conclude that even if I don’t understand why it works or how he can stand it without smacking someone, the President’s method does work. Reality is what it is.

I could never do what the President has done, not just because I lack political skills, but because I would have smacked John Boehner’s ugly Dewar’s pickled face and drop kicked Evan Bayh 5 years ago. Even today, when Boehner gloats about his “victory” on air traffic controllers (a “victory” based entirely on the chickenshit Senate Democrats unwillingness to show a shred of loyalty or solidarity), it’s enraging, and I don’t ever have to be in the same room as that greasy punk (thank you Lord). But the President is sticking with it, showing grace under pressure and unflinching strength and determination in the face of insults that would have made the Buddha smack someone with a baseball bat long ago. Barack Obama and his family’s courage and self-control is one of the great political performances of our time and it’s contemptible to see so many people who never had to put up with any obstacle more serious than delayed air-flight sneer at it and call him weak and naive. You people should save your talents for call in sports radio.

Here’s a short summary of the obstacles the President faces: The GOP is an authoritarian hate filled, united partisan political block under unified command more than any political organization ever before in US history. The Republicans have unbelievable amounts of money at their disposal, own most of the media, benefit from 8 years of Bush infiltrating the bureaucracy and judiciary with operatives who let nothing stand in their way, and are supported by the biggest corporations in the world. Furthermore they benefit from the deep racism that is the hidden engine of US politics. The Democratic Party, on the other hand, is long term neglected and abused and most Democratic Congressmen are crippled little creeps afraid of doing anything that would take them and their relatives and friends off the gravy train. In the face of this, staying in office is a miracle, accomplishing anything at all is nearly impossible and what the President has accomplished is awe inspiring.

So please, if you want to close Gitmo, organize protests against Congress’s stonewall to closure. If you want to increase Social Security support, elect congresspeople who will stand up for it instead of worrying about whether their husbands are getting enough bribes. If you want to stop the war in Afghanistan - I’ll be there protesting with you. But take your whiny consumer-at-the-mall temper tantrum about President Obama and shove it.Your disappointment is not just a confession of immaturity and self-absorbed narcissism, it’s politically harmful. You are actively providing cover for both evil-doer Republicans and their Democratic Party accomplices. Stop it.

Process versus Substantive Civil Liberties and Miranda Warnings

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 21:23:00 -0400

The purpose of the Miranda warnings is to discourage police from coercing confessions or self-incriminatory statements from people in police custody. Let’s note two important facts:

The warning is far from completely effective. For example, the Central Park 5 were coerced into confessing rape and assault and spent many years in jail until someone else confessed the crime and DNA evidence backed him up. Poor people and particularly poor black and Latino people are routinely coerced into jail, Miranda warning or not.
The warning is not supposed to prevent the police from asking public safety questions. In the case of the Boston Marathon attack, the police want to question Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to find accomplices, other possible explosives and so on - they don’t need to get self-incriminatory statements from a man arrested after a spectacular chase and gun battle.

Miranda warnings are a process that is supposed to help protect a right. Some people get confused between the right and the process. They are not the same thing at all.

Criticism from the left

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 23:16:00 -0400

Suppose you were a left liberal, what we used to call a “progressive” writing about President Obama’s proposed 2014 budget. You might write something like this:

A. The 2014 budget makes some steps towards: fixing the economy, with a $50B infrastructure investment fund, to a healthier society with things like universal Pre-Kindergarten, and to tax fairness by cutting outrageous subsidies for executive jets and oil companies. But the extremist Congressional Republicans have threatened to destroy the economy to protect tax gifts to the rich and they hate what they call “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare and this budget sacrifices too much to try to satisfy their demands. In particular the offer to limit cost of living increases for Social Security is wrong, Social Security can easily be fixed by simply increasing the cap on the tax - making wealthy people pay more of their fair share. President Obama should not let the GOP damage Social Security with their blackmail, Congressional Democrats and the people need to push back hard and protect our basic right to a fair society.

That argument is a perfectly reasonable argument and it captures, I think, what progressives claim to believe. However, the progressive blogs and other media did not make this argument. Instead they made the following two arguments:

B. Obama is a fool who has agreed to let the GOP destroy Social Security because he’s naive/stupid/weak/deluded …

C. Obama has always wanted to destroy Social Security and now going for it

Actually, my summary tones things down too much. The raw contempt and anger at places like DailyKos are kind of shocking - read this post and some of the comments to get a sense of the extent of it.

The second most important difference between A and B or C is that A draws the reader attention to the positive program, the way forward and B&C are purely reactionary, line-in-the-sand arguments. Nobody reading arguments B or C would know that Democrats want to take care of children and create jobs or make taxes fairer instead they would, incorrectly, see the Democrats as the threat to Social Security. But more importantly argument A attacks GOP branding and arguments B&C reinforce it. Since the 1970s, when Nixon, Roger Ailes, and Lee Atwater destroyed Goerge McGovern’s campaign, the Republicans have followed a simple branding strategy:

Republicans: strong, decisive, competent, hard working, manly men/feminine women, Patriotic, trustworthy
Democrats: weak, waffling, incompetent, lazy, effeminate men/bitchy women, unpatriotic, untrustworthy

This list bears no relationship to reality, but it has been sold very well and many people believe it without even knowing that they do - that’s what “branding” means, after all. Notice that argument A damages GOP branding, while arguments B and C reinforce republican branding. B and C tell you that the Democrats consist of two groups a weak, incompetent, untrustworthy President and a weak, betrayed, impotent constituency. After all, Markos supported the election of a man he now calls “bumbling” - what does that tell you about his judgment? B and C carry the message that being a Democrat is shameful and pathetic and that Republicans are powerful, decisive, effective and competent at what they do.

Most citizens do not engage in the political process with a checklist of political positions they support or oppose - they often lack the interest, or access to information, or education, or the time to consider such things. What they do is vote on impressions. But people like Markos Moulitsas tell them that the Democratic President is a clown and Democratic voters have been suckers and the party itself is for losers. Who wants to sign up for that?

if there’s any silver lining in this debacle, it’s that it’ll allow congressional Democrats the opportunity to distance themselves from this bumbling White House.

Unfortunately, they have to distance themselves from the party’s leader, never a fun place for a politician to be. See 2006. And 2010.

What’s craziest about this whole fiasco is how shellshocked the White House appears about it. It’s as if they expected to be greeted with rose petals for “making the tough choices” or whatever bullshit they want to call it today.

This is not an argument defending Social Security or one advancing a progressive agenda. The usual defense of such arguments is that they reflect a left dissent, a truth telling, a principled opposition to too much compromise. That defense is not sustainable.

The kind of sharp political analysis you find at DailyKos

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:20:21 -0400

The DailyKos analysis of the Chained CPI dispute starts from the premise that the President has alienated older voters:

Except it’s not the base of the party that’s (57+ / 0-)

upset. It’s the majority of Americans, especially elderly voters, whose votes Democrats need in the 2014 elections. The President really doesn’t care about the electoral future of the Democratic party. Why should he? He sees himself as being post-partisan, and it’d be a terrible partisan thing to do to adhere close to Democratic party ideology.

by slinkerwink on Wed Apr 10, 2013 at 02:15:44 PM PDT

And the data:

Senior citizens, who swung to the Democrats during the Medicare and Social Security fights of the 1990s, have swerved to Republicans. Close to six in 10 seniors backed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, according to exit polls Tuesday, up from the 51% of the group siding with Sen. John McCain in 2008.

The split by age reached even deeper: A majority of voters age 40 and older sided with Mr. Romney. The majority of every younger age group voted for Mr. Obama, according to exit polls [WSJ]

So if the premise was correct, which is far from obvious, then calling a proposal which funds young children and jobs and environment to a small extent at the expense of projected increases in SS payments “post partisan” would be getting things precisely backwards. The proposal is designed particularly to appeal to people who vote Democrat. Like many DailyKossians, Slinkerwink has demographic ideas that are exceptionally out of date. In any event, the idea that older voters who overwhelmingly supported Paul Ryan will flee from the Democrats because of this proposal is even more absurd though.

The main post, by Markos Moulitsas is even dumber.

Wall Street Journal Capitalism for the Entitled

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:18:00 -0400

Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal today contains two insightful glimpses into the minds of the Entitled Capitalists who think big fat government subsidies are the natural right of the rich. The first is a very sympathetic news story about Sheep Farmers who have a special government program that allows them to import impoverished sheep-herders from places like Peru and pay them a generous $750/month plus lodging (no benefits of course). Although their visas only permit them to labor for their masters, shockingly, these ungrateful wretches often walk off the job and find work in construction or somewhere else where even undocumented workers earn more money. The Entitled Market Solution is of course: to have the government go after and imprison or deport the impudent serfs. So all these “conservative” Republican Congressmen are attempting to help the Sheep Lords by stepping up punishment for escaped “employees” (at taxpayer expense, of course). The idea that maybe the Sheep Lords could pay higher salaries or otherwise incentivize the sheep-herders doesn’t even come up in the Journal article. That’s not how the Entitled Market works. Incentives are for the rich.

Which brings us to another Entitled Murdoch Capitalism editorial about how Communist Despot Barack Obama is attacking free markets by proposing to limit another tax gift to the ultra-rich. The President has proposed limiting the size of 401(k) plans to $3,000,000 so that people like Pension Fund Looter Mitt Romney can’t put hundreds of millions of dollars in those accounts tax free. The Journal is, of course, incensed that the Sharia Law Nanny State would dare to interfere with the proper function of limited government - which is, in their eyes, to transfer money from serfs to the Entitled. The theory of the 401(k) tax exemption is that tax breaks will encourage people to save for retirement. But as the Journal points out, $3 million in an IRA account may not be enough to afford retirement summers in Nantucket. Rich people need that tax break with no limits! Note that President Obama is not suggesting that people cannot save or accumulate more than $3,000,000, he’s just saying that after that you don’t need a tax exemption. And remember, tax breaks are not free money, they mean someone else has to pay the taxes for necessary government services like national defense, environmental protection, and even - chasing down absconding sheep herders who are not content with a generous $750/month plus! room and board.

A report released in January from Colorado Legal Services found that immigrant sheepherders from South America working in western Colorado routinely are paid low wages and live in small campers without electricity or toilet facilities. [Denver Post]

It’s enough to make one dash the martini to the floor of the Nantucket House and yell for the maid to clean it up!

The big union win that nearly nobody has noticed

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 03:33:00 -0400

This is mostly true:

Put a union label on the new American Airlines because it never would have happened without labor.

The airline’s own employees pushed the company into bankruptcy, drove out the hated leaders and escorted their own white knight onto the property. On Thursday, as US Airways announced its merger with American at a crowded media event at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, employees were well represented and all smiles.

The part that isn’t true is that the unions pushed the company into bankruptcy. The bankruptcy proceedings started in an all too common way: management took a company into bankruptcy proceedings for their own reasons.

Having $4 billion in the bank is not your typical definition of broke. That’s why American Airlines’ parent company AMR surprised a bunch of people — particularly, one presumes, the five Wall Street analysts who still rated the company’s shares a “buy” — when it filed for bankruptcy on Tuesday. Its comfy nest egg aside, American isn’t facing any looming debt payments. The company said it didn’t need emergency financing, like most bankrupt firms do.
Read more: http://business.time.com/2011/11/30/american-airlines-bankrupt-companies-are-healthier-than-they-used-to-be/#ixzz2Q8KIFPwb

What did management want to do?

Have the bankruptcy judge invalidate union contracts so management could slash pay and benefits and lay off 14,000 employees
Take funds from the pension plans and dump remaining obligations on the government.
Stiff vendors who were owed money
Pay management huge bonuses for their great work
Generate enormous fees for banks and consultants

Things started off as planned, and one of the beneficiaries was Bain, the old Romney company, that got a fat contract to figure out how to eliminate jobs. Sadly for management, there were three problems: the unions were smart and mobilized, US Airways wanted to merge with American, and Barack Obama was elected President in 2008 and re-elected in 2012.Which is why Business Press featured headlines like this one:

American Airlines’ Bankruptcy Plan Will Set Off A War With The Union AND The Government

The government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Board, which was supposed to follow the script and take over the debts from the destroyed pension started filing liens on AMR’s assets and announced it would fight AMR in bankruptcy court. The head of the PBGB is a guy named Joshua Gotbaum: recess appointed over Republican filibuster in 2010. The Republicans are not in favor of any limits to welfare payments to management of big companies. Then the US Bankruptcy Trustee, appointed 2010 by Eric Holder intervened:

In objections filed Tuesday, U.S. trustee Tracy Hope Davis asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane not to approve the application of AMR, American Airlines and subsidiaries to hire a variety of consultants in their bankruptcy cases.

In the first filing, Davis asked the judge not to approve the hiring of five law firms that AMR and American Airlines want to use in their Chapter 11 case, including the lead attorneys in the case unless some conditions are met

In a separate filing, the trustee also objected to American Eagle’s hiring of Bain & Co. to advise on labor issues, and the requests of AMR and/or American to hire a variety of other consultants.

Why does Wall Street love corporate bankruptcy? Well, take look at the law firms and Consultants that the government objected to:

Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, which is leading the AMR and American case.

Groom Law Group, to advise on “employee benefit matters.”

Paul Hastings LLP, to act as “special labor counsel,” including the filing of any Section 1113 proposals to modify collective bargaining agreements.

Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, to assist in collective bargaining and other labor-related negotiations.

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP to act as “special aircraft counsel” and to advise on employee benefit matters

Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP

Ernst & Young LLP as auditorKPMG LLP, as tax compliance and tax consultants

McKinsey Recovery & Transformation Services U.S. LLC,

McKinsey & Company Inc., United States, and McKinsey & Company, Inc. Japan as management consultants

Perella Weinberg Partners LP as financial advisor

Rothschild Inc. as financial advisor and investment banker

Skyworks Capital LLC as aircraft consultant

YUM! Amazing how many fees can be generated from laying off thousands of workers and scooping up any money owed to them under their contracts.

And then, the airlines unions didn’t act like deer in the headlights, they acted like organizations that knew how to play finance hardball. The unions went to US Air, negotiated new contracts, and went back with other creditors to the bankruptcy judge with an alternative plan that would pay more back to creditors than AMR management offered

Labor played a key role in enabling the historic merger between US Airways and American, which will create the largest airline in the world.

And now, the US Trustee has succeeded even in putting the golden parachute for the ex-CEO of American into doubt.

This is, of course, not a complete win, but it is a huge win for labor unions, for good well paying jobs, and for the public.It’s a big loss for American’s old management, for the horde of consultants and advisers, and for the banks which would have undoubtedly profited from issuing more debt for the restructured corporation. And it’s a lesson for the managemnt at other companies who are tempted to try the same trick.

Talk about an entitlement: Wall Street Journal demands risk free returns for the rich

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 14:43:00 -0400

The invaluable Wall Street Journal editorialists provide a clear explanation of the kind of free market that the entitled 1% want: one where all risks are on the backs of the people who work for a living while all rewards are reserved for “investors”. Stockton California is moving towards bankruptcy and, grab yer hankies ‘cause this is sad:

… leaves the city’s bondholders as the likeliest targets. Creditors who thought that lending to cities was a risk-free exercise are learning the ugly reality of modern public union politics

“Creditors who thought that lending to cities was a risk free exercise” is a phrase that one normally might finish with ” are stupid”. Why do municipal bonds pay more interest than US Treasury bonds? Because of the “risk premium”. That word “risk” is an important clue. The probability that a small town in California with shaky economics or the Government of Greece or Lehman brothers will not be able to repay debts is higher than the probability that the US Government or the German Government will not be able to repay debts. That’s why when the first three entities went to borrow money on the bond market they paid higher interest rates - because investors wanted compensation for higher risk. But in the world of the Wall Street Journal, investors in municipal bonds get higher interest rates - because they are investors. They don’t have an obligation to examine the finances of Stockton and decide to possibly not lend it money. That would be too much like work. Instead, these wealth creating investors should be able to make a risk premium without any risk. What an advance.

So what happens to the risk? Well, in Wall Street Journal Capitalism, the risk should be for the municipal workers whose contracts gave them pensions in place of higher private industry salaries. Apparently, when the Investors chose to lend Stockton money, under Wall Street Journal Capitalism, the workers and pensioners of Stockton selflessly assumed the risk of that investment!. But, imagine this, the Communist influenced Calpers, the public employee pension fund

“insists that pensions are contracts protected under state and Federal law”

So here’s the deal that the Journal thinks is in place: having exempted themselves from most taxes, the investor class is entitled to risk premium inflated interest rates on municipal bonds with first dibs on taxes paid by other people, with risks shifting to firemen and teachers who did not actually participate in the bond transaction and who have contracts that are more like suggestions than contracts. That’s Rupert’Murdoch’s Free Enterprise and it should be familiar to anyone who has seen the European Central Bank generously pay off bank bondholders time after time.

The same theory motivates the despicable business model of vulture capitalists like Paul Singer who buy government bonds at a fraction of their face value and then demand that the US or British governments, at the expense of suckers who pay taxes, act as enforcers and extract the money from poor people in foreign countries. For example Singer is now demanding that the current government of Argentina pay back in full, plus interest, loans that were made to the Argentine dictatorship. Some people were immoral enough to lend the Argentine Dictatorship money to pay for it to torture and murder its citizens, and now the US Courts are being used to make the successor government pay it back. Wealth creators in action! Because nothing builds the national prosperity more than investments in lawsuits. At least that is what the Journal’s owners and serfs think.

Standing with Rand back through history

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:08:00 -0400

Some paragraphs from Rand Paul’s speech and speeches from a couple of decades ago. There are some easy give-aways, especially at the end and the first paragraph, but take a look.

The President says, I haven’t killed anyone yet. He goes on to say, and I have no intention of killing Americans. But I might. Is that enough? Are we satisfied by that? Are we so complacent with our rights that we would allow a President to say he might kill Americans? But he will judge the circumstances, he will be the sole arbiter, he will be the sole decider, he will be the executioner in chief if he sees fit. Now, some would say he would never do this. Many people give the President the - you know, they give him consideration, they say he’s a good man. I’m not arguing he’s not. What I’m arguing is that the law is there and set in place for the day when angels don’t rule government. Madison said that the restraint on government was because government will not always be run by angels.[1]

Government essentially is a dangerous thing. There is no truth more fundamental than that power seeks always to increase. Human nature is a compound of many things. Its sole, continuously recurring characteristic is the desire deep in the hearts of all for power. Government is a dangerous thing, and the great leaders of the past, except the military men who have been despots, the great leaders since there came into existence the theory of the rights of men, have with universal tongue cautioned the people against the danger of power in the hands of the government. [2]

Hayek said that nothing distinguishes arbitrary government from a government that is run by the whims of the people than the rule of law. The law’s an amazingly important thing, an amazingly important protection. And for us to give up on it so easily really doesn’t speak well of what our founding fathers fought for, what generation after generation of American soldiers have fought for, what soldiers are fighting for today when they go overseas to fight wars for us. It doesn’t speak well of what we’re doing here to protect the freedom at home when our soldiers are abroad fighting for us, that we say that our freedom’s not precious enough for one person to come down and say, enough’s enough, Mr. President.[1]

When it [the Federal Government] moves against that great body outside any government to control, as it is doing now, then it becomes the enemy of every free American. That will not stop government – that thought, since government lives and thrives on power. But it behooves those of us over our citizens in a Republic still free to be on guard always against this invasion of our freedoms and to remain determined to resist to the end. [2]

Glenn Greenwald has written also about this subject, and he was speaking at the freedom to connect conference, and he says there is a theoretical framework being built that posits that the U.S. Government has unlimited power. Some caw this inherent power. Inherent means it isn’t - it hasn’t been defined anywhere, it hasn’t been expressly given to the government. They have just decided this is their power, they are going to grab it and take what they can get.[1]

We stand for the check and balances provided by the three departments of our government. We oppose the usurpation of legislative functions by the executive and judicial departments. We unreservedly condemn the effort to establish in the United States a police nation that would destroy the last vestige of liberty enjoyed by a citizen.[3]

There’s something called fusion centers, something that are supposed to coordinate between the federal government, the local government to find terrorists. The one in Missouri a couple years ago came up with a list and they sent this to every policemen in Missouri. The people on the list might be me. The people on the list from the fusion center in Missouri that you need to be worried about, that policemen should stop, are people that have bumper stick theirs might be pro-life, who have bumper stickers that might be for more border security, people who support third-party candidates, people who might be in the Constitution party. Oooh, isn’t there some irony there.[1]

We demand that there be returned to the people to whom of right they belong, those powers needed for the preservation of human rights and the discharge of our responsibility as democrats for human welfare. We oppose a denial of those by political parties, a barter or sale of those rights by a political convention, as well as any invasion or violation of those rights by the Federal Government.[3]

We can no longer hide our head in the sand and tell ours
elves that the ideology of our free fathers is not being attacked
and is not being threatened by another idea … for it is. We are faced with an idea that if a centralized government assume enough authority, enough power over its people, that it can provide a utopian life . . that if given the power to dictate, to forbid, torequire, to demand, to distribute, to edict and to judge what is best and enforce that will produce only “good” . . and it shall be our father … . and our God. It is an idea of government that encourages our fears and destroys our faith . .
.for where there is faith, there is no fear, and where there is fear, there is no faith.[4]

It’s interesting when you look at the Constitution, the Constitution gave what are called enumerated powers to government, and Madison said that these enumerated powers few and defined. The liberties you were given, though, are numerous and enumerated. Unlimited. So it is about 17 powers given to government which we’ve now transformed into about a gazillion or at least a million new. We don’t pay much attention to the enumerated powers for the Constitution anymore. But the Constitution left your rights as unenumerated. Your rights are limitless. So when we get to the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, it says specifically that those rights not granted to your government are left to the states and the people respectively. It didn’t list what those rights are.[1]

The oldest form of government in the world is the highly centralized one, with all power concentrated, as in Washington. There were tyrannies in the dim mists of history. It is only with the founding of this country that democracy developed, and it came, and this country grew great, because the federal government was locked and tied down by the Constitution to the point that it could not impose its will on the people in their daily lives. [2]

This vicious program means to eliminate all differences, all separation between black and white. It so declares itself, in words. It means to create a great melting pot of the South, with white and Negroes intermingled socially, politically, economically. It means to reduce us to the status of a mongrel, inferior race, mixed in blood, our Anglo-Saxon heritage a mockery; to crush with imprisonment our leadership, and thereby kill our hopes, our aspirations, our future and the future of our children. [2]

We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one’s associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one’s living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.[3]

Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and
send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the
[Nation]. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before thefeet of tyranny … and I say… segregation today …segregation tomorrow …
segregation forever. [4]

[1] Ron Paul’s “filibuster

[2] The keynote speech at the Dixiecrat convention in 1948

[3] The platform of the Dixiecrat “States Rights” party 1948

[4] George Wallace’s inauguration speech 1963

The modern GOP is shaped by Nixon's treason

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 11:19:01 -0400

The recent confirmation that Richard Nixon secretly conspired to sabotage peace talks President Johnson was holding with Vietnam also confirms the modern Republican party as a party of treason against the United States. Nixon secretly told the government of South Vietnam it would get a better deal from him than from the President of the United States and that it should walk out of peace talks. He did this because he believed he would lose the Presidential election if there was significant progress in ending the war in Vietnam. All over the US, there are wounded veterans, orphans, and widows who paid the price - not to mention the millions of people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia who lost life and limbs so that Nixon could seize power. And Nixon remade the Republican party in his image:

Dick Cheney was a Nixon White House aide,
George H. W. Bush was Nixon’s UN Ambassador chosen for his loyalty,
Roger Ailes (who runs Fox) helped run Nixon’s 1968 campaign, was key to the branding of the modern Republican party, and was likely in on the conspiracy.
Donald Rumsfeld who masterminded Bush Jr’s fiasco in Iraq was a Nixon White House aide.

The modern Republican Party is Nixon’s party, a long way from the party of Eisenhower and a very long way from the party of Lincoln. William Casey was another Nixon appointee who later became CIA director under Reagan. Now that we have proof that Nixon interfered with President Johnson’s negotiations in Vietnam, what should we think of persistent stories that Casey interfered in President Carter’s efforts to bring the Iran hostages home? What should anyone not gullible think of stories about Republican manipulation of voting machines? Is there anything in the behavior of the leaders of the GOP to show that they have second thoughts about being a party of political operatives who can commit treason to take power?