Advertise on more than 70 progressive blogs! |
Phred42's Journal
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/05082009... In a recent radio address on Radio Chicagoland Senator Richard (Dick) Durbin remarked on power the financial services industry still wields at a time when that industry is theoretically under great scrutiny: "The banks — hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created — are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place." The banking lobby won a significant victory in Congress on May 1, 2009 when 12 Democrats joined a united Republican Caucus to vote down an amendment to President Obama's housing bill. At issue was a measure that would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. The House version of the bill, which provides wide housing assistance and consumer protection measures, passed with the amendment, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently said she does not expect the measure to be included in the final bill since the Senate voted it down.
North Carolina Autoworkers Protesting NAFTAhttp://www.economyincrisis.org/articles/sh... "NAFTA has done more damage to the United States of America than any terrorist group ever could." A group of North Carolina autoworkers are the latest victims of the North American Free Trade Agreement and are taking to the streets to express their displeasure. According to The Gaston Gazette, two Anti-NAFTA protests have taken place in the past two months after hundreds of autoworkers have had their jobs outsourced to plants in Mexico where labor is cheap and environmental standards are nonexistent. "We're losing manufacturing jobs. We've lost textile jobs - now that's all gone to China," Troy Friday, a representative of the United Auto Workers Local 5286 in Gastonia told The Gaston Gazette. "We feel like NAFTA and other trade treaties are hurting the American workers."
Confirmation Vote: John G. Roberts, Jr. to be Chief Justice of the United Stateshttp://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll... Obama Voted AGAINST confirming Roberts as Cheif Justice of the Supreme Court. Interesting. Maybe the "screw-up" on the oath was an FU from Roberts to Obama. 
No link yet
Reported on Hartmans' show
Was it Roberts first FU to Obama? Or just an 'innocent' mistake? Update: 12:33 cst
On CNN, Wolf Blitzer said, "John Roberts had one job to do today and he sort of screwed up." Jeffrey Toobin replied, "I almost fell out of my chair."
It is possible that other similar outsourcing firms are engaged in the same fraudulent practices. Outsourcing Firm Stealing American Money and Jobs http://www.economyincrisis.org/articles/sh... Satyam Computer Services, a major outsourcing firm based in India which serves hundreds of American companies, admitted to several years of snowballing accounting fraud putting Indian stock markets in an uproar and perhaps jeopardizing the existence of the firm. While this news may be bad for Satyam employees in India and Satyam contractors in the United States; the enormous fraud perpetrated by Satyam is a stinging reproach of outsourcing in general. Satyam was able to encourage American companies – including the United States government – to use its technical services instead of other companies because of its strong asset base and sound financial policy. As it turns out, the company had virtually no assets and was close to the brink of collapse. Satyam claimed an asset base of nearly 54 billion rupees in cash and bank loans (approximately $1.04 billion), that number was actually much closer to 3 billion rupees. Nearly 95 percent of all Satyam assets did not exist at the time they were reported. To make matters worse, the company has been audited by the World Bank, the Indian government and multinational firm Pricewaterhousecoopers for years yet no one had noticed the accumulating accounting fraud in the company. American firms go to India and contract out work to companies like Satyam because they believe those companies are sound and present better opportunities for profit than an American technical firm. As it turns out, one of the biggest technical outsourcing companies in the world had “cooked its books” for years in order to trick American corporations – and corporations from other countries – into investing there instead of with a domestic firm.
Americans MUST understand that our banking system is based on a Ponzi scheme. We can't fix it if we don't know what the problem really is. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme called Fractional Reserve Banking http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context... Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul - by Ellen Brown Cartoon in the New Yorker: A gun-toting man with large dark glasses, large hat pulled down, stands in front of a bank teller, who is reading a demand note. It says, “Give me all the money in my account.”Bernie Madoff showed us how it was done: you induce many investors to invest their money, promising steady above-market returns; and you deliver – at least on paper. When your clients check their accounts, they see that their investments have indeed increased by the promised amount. Anyone who opts to pull out of the game is paid promptly and in full. You can afford to pay because most players stay in, and new players are constantly coming in to replace those who drop out. The players who drop out are simply paid with the money coming in from new recruits. The scheme works until the market turns and many players want their money back at once. Then it’s game over: you have to admit that you don’t have the funds, and you are probably looking at jail time. A Ponzi scheme is a form of pyramid scheme in which earlier investors are paid with the money of later investors rather than from real profits. The perpetuation of the scheme requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep it going. Charles Ponzi was an engaging Boston ex-convict who defrauded investors out of $6 million in the 1920s by promising them a 400 percent return on redeemed postal reply coupons. When he finally could not pay, the scam earned him ten years in jail; and Bernie Madoff is likely to wind up there as well. Most people are not involved in illegal Ponzi schemes, but we do keep our money in accounts that are tallied on computer screens rather than in stacks of coins or paper bills. How do we know that when we demand our money from our bank or broker that the funds will be there? The fact that banks are subject to “runs” (recall Northern Rock, Indymac and Washington Mutual) suggests that all may not be as it seems on our online screens. Banks themselves are involved in a sort of Ponzi scheme, one that has been perpetuated for hundreds of years. What distinguishes the legal scheme known as “fractional reserve” lending from the illegal schemes of Bernie Madoff and his ilk is that the bankers’ scheme is protected by government charter and backstopped with government funds. At last count, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury had committed $8.5 trillion to bailing out the banks from their follies.1 By comparison, M2, the largest measure of the money supply now reported by the Federal Reserve, was just under $8 trillion in December 2008.2 The sheer size of the bailout efforts indicates that the banking scheme has reached its mathematical limits and needs to be superseded by something more sustainable. Penetrating the Bankers’ Ponzi Scheme....
Coal Ash Spill Is Much Larger Than Initially Estimated http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27slu... A coal ash spill that blanketed residential neighborhoods and contaminated nearby rivers in Roane County, Tenn., earlier this week is more than three times larger than initially estimated, the Tennessee Valley Authority said on Thursday. Coal ash, a byproduct of burning coal, contains toxic heavy metals like arsenic, lead and selenium that can cause cancer and neurological problems. Authority officials initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond breached, but on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep. The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the Authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards   
The New World Order - you betcha.DUCK! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From Global Crisis to "Global Government"http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context... US Intelligence: A Review of Global Trends 2025 - by Andrew G. Marshall - Introduction The United States’ National Intelligence Council has released a report, entitled "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World". This declassified document is the fourth report of the Global Trends 2025: The National Intelligence Council’s 2025 Project, The report outlines the paths that current geopolitical and economic trends may reach by the year 2025, in order to guide strategic thinking over the next few decades. The National Intelligence Council describes itself as the US Intelligence Community’s “center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking,” with the tasks of supporting the Director of National Intelligence, reaching out to non-governmental experts in academia and the private sector and it leads in the effort of providing National Intelligence Estimates. The report was written with the active participation of not only the US intelligence community, but also numerous think tanks, consulting firms, academic institutions and hundreds of other experts. Among the participating organizations were the Atlantic Council of the United States, the Wilson Center, RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, Texas A&M University, the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House in London, which is the British equivalent of the CFR.<1> Among the many things envisioned in this report to either be completed or under way by 2025 are the formation of a global multipolar international system, the possibility of a return of mercantilism by great powers in which they go to war over dwindling resources, the growth of China as a great world power, the position of India as a strong pole in the new multipolar system, a decline of capitalism in the form of more state-capitalism, exponential population growth in the developing world, continuing instability in Africa, a decline in food availability, partly due to climate change, continued terrorism, the possibility of nuclear war, the emergence of regionalism in the form of strong regional blocks in North America, Europe, and Asia, and the decline of US power and with that, the superiority of the dollar.
While Jon Q. Taxpayer would be committing a crime by purposely undervaluing his annual earnings on his tax returns, it appears when a company intentionally misleads investors it’s a lot of harm, but no foul. http://www.economyincrisis.org/articles/sh... Will bankers be prosecuted? http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/11/bus... The American public is angry - and rightfully so. Over the past year, they have seen their country’s economy go to hell-in-a-hand basket. As Wall Street executives ran their companies into the ground, taxpayers became responsible for footing the bill to keep Wall Street afloat. In some cases the executives were rewarded with fat bonuses for their obvious malfeasance. While Jon Q. Taxpayer would be committing a crime by purposely undervaluing his annual earnings on his tax returns, it appears when a company intentionally misleads investors it’s a lot of harm, but no foul. A U.S. District Court judge wrote in a case brought against mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, that "the federal securities laws do not create liability for poor business judgment or failed operations." However, the judge did leave the door open for future action against failed companies by stating that "the extraordinary case where a company's essential operations are so at odds with the company's public statements that many statements that would not be actionable in the vast majority of cases" could potentially be the basis of a complaint.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy;
that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Just a recap. Buffet has been calling it for many years. Even Dobbs gets it. "It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." - Warren Buffet CNN Interview, May 25 2005, in arguing the need to raise taxes on the rich. http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/10/buffett/i...
DOBBS: In point of fact, the Congressional Budget Office, which is considered to be the bipartisan objective standard of such things, has research that suggests that the deficit in Social Security would be only 0.4 percent of our GDP over 75 years as compared to the other large deficits percentages that associated with trade in the budget deficit. Do you have, we're talking about fixing the fixes we're in, a quick answer for Social Security?
BUFFETT: I personally would increase the taxable base above the present $90,000. I pay very little in the way of Social Security taxes because I make a lot more than $90,000. And the people in my office pay the full tax. We're already edging up the retirement age a bit. And I would means test ... I get a check for $1,700 or $1,900 or something every month. I'm 74. And I cash it. But I'll eat without it.
DOBBS: You will eat without it. So will literally more than a million other Americans, as well. Means testing, the idea of raising taxes, the payroll tax. In 1983, Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman, he had a very simple idea: raise taxes. That's what you're saying here.
BUFFETT: Sure. But I wouldn't raise the 12-point and a fraction payroll tax, I would raise the taxable base to above $90,000.
DOBBS: That's a progressive idea. In other words, the rich people would pay more?
BUFFETT: Yeah. The rich people are doing so well in this country. I mean, we never had it so good.
DOBBS: What a radical idea.
BUFFETT: It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be.
more
Phillips is the only Republican I can think of worth listening to. He voted for Obama and Kerry and talks about why. This is 3 hours long but worth the time. They cover a lot of territory ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CSPAN-2 BookTV
In Depth: Kevin Phillips http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?Program... Upcoming Schedule - Saturday, December 13, at 9:00 AM EST Or watch now (at link) About the Program Author, former political strategist and historian Kevin Phillips will be our guest for In Depth on Sunday, December 7 (LIVE from 12 to 3 pm ET). Mr. Phillips was formerly a special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General in 1969 and was a regular political contributor to CBS News, NPR, and the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of over a dozen books including, "The Emerging Republican Majority," "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich," "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," and his latest book "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism." You can join the discussion by calling in during the program or by e-mailing your questions to booktv@c-span.org . About the Author Kevin Phillips is the author of "The Emerging Republican Majority," (1969) "Mediacracy: American Parties and Politics in the Communications Age," (1974) "Post-Conservative America: People, Politics and Ideology in a Time of Crisis," (1982) "Staying on Top: The Business Case for a National Industrial Strategy," (1984) "The Politics of Rich and Poor: Wealth and the American Electorate in the Reagan Aftermath" (1990), "Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans and the Decline of Middle-Class Prosperity," (1993) "Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street and the Frustration of American Politics" (1994) "The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, and the Triumph of Anglo-America" (1999) "Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich," (2002) "William McKinley," (2003) "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," (2004) "American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money" (2006) and "Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism."
Phillips is always worth paying attention to.
|
Profile Information Phred42
3835 posts Member since Thu Aug 25th 2005 Mundelein, IL, US Gender undeclared I consider myself and Independent but have not voted for a republican since Bob Packwood.
When someone asks me if I'm Liberal or Conservative I have to ask: What's the subject?
I voted for Carter, Bill Clinton Twice, Edwards.
I think Bill Clinton was the best republican president since Eisenhower but didn't realize it at the time I voted for him.
I think the Democratic party will not regain it's soul until it purges itself of DLC and Blue Dogs. Further, I think that if the Dems do not execute this purge very soon - They will become what 40 years ago WAS the Republican Party and their will be nothing on the LEFT. Latest Threads
The ten most recent threads posted on
the Democratic Underground Discussion Forums. Greatest Threads
The ten most recommended threads posted
on the Democratic Underground Discussion Forums in the
last 24 hours. Visitor Tools
Use the tools below to keep track of updates to this Journal.
|
