January 2012 archive

Capitalism Out of the Closet

By Taylor Marsh

13 January 2012

It’s a mistake to see the 28-minute video above and think this is just about Mitt Romney. He rightly earns the role of diabolical villain in the video, but what he represents is why Occupy Wall Street rose up in the first place. Romney’s a master at playing the Wall Street system, which even the film above stipulates is facilitated by investment bankers who helped Mitt Romney and others like him work the current system that collapsed in 2008, caused the current unemployment rate, but also the hollowing out of the American middle class that started a long time ago.

…

The caterwauling over Mitt Romney tapping the core of American capitalism for his own benefit is rooted in partisanship and doesn’t address the wider reality, which is that there are hundreds of Mitt Romneys in this country, many of whom got the Bush tax cut extensions, which Pres. Obama gladly gave and never really mounted a nationwide fight against. If you truly understand the calamity facing our middle class there is no way morally or in good conscience you could possibly back down from this fight, turning it into a war if you have to. Yes, a class war, but when Democrats hail compromise and gut Dodd-Frank or go along to keep things moving how innocent are they for watching what’s developed under their own backers and bundlers?

Using Steve Rattner’s defense of Mr. Romney and Bain Capital as an example, what are Democratic venture capitalists and heads of holding companies and investment bankers supposed to do in the shadow of this damning video that reveals the sausage making that is our economic system? As Rattner reveals, Democrats in his class can feel his pain and you can bet they’re just glad it’s Romney and not them.

That Wall Street Democrats are fleeing Obama’s side because of hurt feelings and would certainly find common cause in the onslaught that would be unleashed on Mitt Romney if he’s the nominee, who is one of their own, is another interesting tidbit of this tale. Sympathy vote, anyone? More likely, they’ll send cash.

If Occupy stays relevant, the entire American Corporation class will have to go underground, because Mitt Romney may be the star of the film, but they’re mirror images of this man and his methods and we’ve heard a lot about who’s been hurt lately, but now it’s in a film reel.

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That Obama reelect will trumpet the video and all of its parts in the general election season, freaking out their own Democratic version of the Mitt Romney class, is wrought with irony.

What we need is a different kind of conservation about the country we are going to be in the 21st century and that’s not coming from any direction or either political party. The only thing that matters to the partisans is putting their sock puppet in power, while the money men just keep on funneling the system to the top.

It no longer matters who ends up in the White House and Congress anymore, because the Mitt Romneys of this country are the ones really in charge and they won’t allow anyone else in, buying politicians and the presidency.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

My dad was passionate about old cars.  As far back as I can remember he would restore them, some to keep and some to sell.  When we moved to North Little Rock when I was three, he had been working on a 1919 Model “T” Ford Touring.  He put it on a trailer and brought it with us so he could finish it.  There will be more on that car later.

I also remember him with a 1923 Studebaker Touring, a 1949 Willys Jeepster, a 1955 Ford Thunderbird, and his pride and joy, a 1941 Packard 110.  I helped with some or all of the restorations on all of these cars, but was too little to do much with the Model “T”.  However, there are more memories associated with the cars.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 18 is the 18th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 347 days remaining until the end of the year (348 in leap years).

On this day in 1865, the United States House of Representatives passes the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States. It read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On December 18, Secretary of State William H. Seward, in a proclamation, declared it to have been adopted. It was the first of the Reconstruction Amendments.

President Lincoln was concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation, which outlawed slavery in the ten Confederate states still in rebellion in 1863, would be seen as a temporary war measure, since it was based on his war powers and did not abolish slavery in the border states.

History

The first twelve amendments were adopted within fifteen years of the Constitution’s adoption. The first ten (the Bill of Rights) were adopted in 1791, the Eleventh Amendment in 1795 and the Twelfth Amendment in 1804. When the Thirteenth Amendment was proposed there had been no new amendments adopted in more than sixty years.

During the secession crisis, but prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the majority of slavery-related bills had protected slavery. The United States had ceased slave importation and intervened militarily against the Atlantic slave trade, but had made few proposals to abolish domestic slavery, and only a small number to abolish the domestic slave trade. Representative John Quincy Adams had made a proposal in 1839, but there were no new proposals until December 14, 1863, when a bill to support an amendment to abolish slavery throughout the entire United States was introduced by Representative James Mitchell Ashley (Republican, Ohio). This was soon followed by a similar proposal made by Representative James F. Wilson(Republican, Iowa).

Eventually the Congress and the public began to take notice and a number of additional legislative proposals were brought forward. On January 11, 1864, Senator John B. Henderson of Missouri submitted a joint resolution for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The abolition of slavery had historically been associated with Republicans, but Henderson was one of the War Democrats. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Lyman Trumbull (Republican, Illinois), became involved in merging different proposals for an amendment. On February 8 of that year, another Republican, Senator Charles Sumner (Radical Republican, Massachusetts), submitted a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery as well as guarantee equality. As the number of proposals and the extent of their scope began to grow, the Senate Judiciary Committee presented the Senate with an amendment proposal combining the drafts of Ashley, Wilson and Henderson.

Originally the amendment was co-authored and sponsored by Representatives James Mitchell Ashley (Republican, Ohio) and James F. Wilson (Republican, Iowa) and Senator John B. Henderson (Democrat, Missouri).

While the Senate did pass the amendment on April 8, 1864, by a vote of 38 to 6, the House declined to do so. After it was reintroduced by Representative James Mitchell Ashley, President Lincoln took an active role in working for its passage through the House by ensuring the amendment was added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming Presidential elections. His efforts came to fruition when the House passed the bill on January 31, 1865, by a vote of 119 to 56. The Thirteenth Amendment’s archival copy bears an apparent Presidential signature, under the usual ones of the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, after the words “Approved February 1, 1865”.

The Thirteenth Amendment completed the abolition of slavery, which had begun with the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

Shortly after the amendment’s adoption, selective enforcement of certain laws, such as laws against vagrancy, allowed blacks to continue to be subjected to involuntary servitude in some cases.

The Thirteenth Amendment was followed by the Fourteenth Amendment (civil rights in the states), in 1868, and the Fifteenth Amendment (which bans racial voting restrictions), in 1870.

As a matter of policy, TheMomCat and I, DocuDharma and The Stars Hollow Gazette, are firmly against SOPA and PIPA and in support of the January 18th Internet Shut Down Direct Action.

Since our sites are hosted by Soapblox and are community blogs that accept and encourage content from regular members just like you we can’t exactly pull the plug, nor do we think it a public service to do so.

It will in any event be difficult or impossible to operate as usual.

What you can expect is a greatly reduced posting schedule from us and that many links, videos, and pictures will be temporarily unavailable.  I urge desperate readers to revisit our back catalog of political prescience, humor, and time wasting bloopers (not so many of those).

Members may wish to create their own fun.  The ‘Recent’ list is always available and we’ll be around to do promotions of timely topics.

We appreciate your support and interest and look forward to your continued participation in our success together.

I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.

You may be 38 years old as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause–and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you’re afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or you’re afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand.

Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice.

Who are the victims of civil liberties assaults and Endless War?

By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Monday, Jan 16, 2012 7:29 AM

Part of the debate over the last couple weeks among progressives regarding political priorities, the Obama presidency, the Ron Paul candidacy and the like has entailed a litany of accusations – smears – hurled at those of us who insist on the prioritization of issues of war and civil liberties abuses, and who vocally highlight the ways in which the Democratic Party generally and President Obama specifically have been so awful on these matters. Some Democratic loyalists have explicitly argued that contrasting Obama with Ron Paul on these issues is warped because issues of war and civil liberties are, at best, ancillary concerns, while others have gone so far as to claim that only racial and/or gender bias – white male “privilege” – would cause someone to use the Paul candidacy to highlight how odious Obama has been in these areas.

Leaving aside the fact that (as I detail in the discussion with Pollitt), numerous women and people of color have made the same points about the vital benefits of Paul’s candidacy – voices which these accusers tellingly ignore and silence – these accusations are pure projection. Those who were operating from such privilege would not seek to prioritize issues of war and civil liberties; that’s because it isn’t white progressives and their families who are directly harmed by these heinous policies. The opposite is true: it’s very easy, very tempting, for those driven by this type of “privilege” – for non-Muslims in particular- to decide that these issues are not urgent, that Endless War and civil liberties abuses by a President should not be disqualifying or can be tolerated, precisely because these non-Muslim progressive accusers are not acutely affected by them. The kind of “privilege” these accusers raise would cause one to de-prioritize and accept civil liberties abuses, drone slaughter, indefinite detention and the like (i.e, do what they themselves do), not demand that significant attention be paid to them when assessing political choices.

First they came for the communists,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,

and I didn’t speak out because I was Protestant.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

–Niemöller

Birmingham Jail–

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

(op. cite)

Where you going this morning, my friends, tell the world that you’re going with truth. You’re going with justice, you’re going with goodness, and you will have an eternal companionship. And the world will look at you and they won’t understand you, for your fiery furnace will be around you, but you’ll go on anyhow. But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow before the gods of evil.

(h/t welshTerrier2)

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Robert Reich: Free Enterprise on Trial

Mitt Romney is casting the 2012 campaign as “free enterprise on trial” – defining free enterprise as achieving success through “hard work and risking-taking.” Tea-Party favorite Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina says he’s supporting Romney because “we really need someone who understands how risk, taking risk … is the way we create jobs, create choices, expand freedom.” Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donahue, defending Romney, explains “this economy is about risk. If you don’t take risk, you can’t have success.”

Wait a minute. Who do they think are bearing the risks? Their blather about free enterprise risk-taking has it upside down. The higher you go in the economy, the easier it is to make money without taking any personal financial risk at all. The lower you go, the bigger the risks.

Bill McKibben: Agitators in the Oilsands Debates are Working for Oil Companies

I’ve been visiting Canada all my life, but I’m a little worried about my upcoming trip.

In late March I’m supposed to come to Vancouver to give a couple of talks. Youth Action Canada invited me to come, to speak to college students from across the country; I’m also planning to do a benefit for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. But now I read that Joe Oliver, the country’s natural resources minister, is condemning “environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block” the Northern Gateway pipeline from the oilsands of Alberta to the Pacific.

I think he’s talking about people like me. I’ve spent much of the last year helping rally opposition to the Key-stone XL pipeline from the oilsands to the Gulf of Mexico. I was arrested outside the White House in August, and emceed the demonstration that brought thousands of people to circle the White House in November. When I come to British Columbia, I’ll urge everyone I meet to oppose the Gate-way project. In fact, Youth Action is paying me to come. And the money will end up at 350.org, the international climate change campaign, helping fight projects like Gateway around the world.

Over the weekend the discussion about bills pending in Congress that would change the Internet has started to get some attention. Opposition to Stop Internet Piracy Act, House version and the Senate’s version, Protect the Internet Privacy Act came from the White House in a statement expressing concerns that the bills would stifle innovation and infringe on free speech and lead to “online censorship of lawful activity.” While the White House statement did not say Pres. Obama would veto it, it was a clear condemnation of the flaws critics have pointed to in the bill.

One of the most controversial portions of the House bill that would require Internet service providers to block infringing websites was removed completely by House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX). Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA) secured a promise from Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) that the House will not vote unless there is consensus on the bill. A Reddit campaign managed to persuade Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) to oppose the bill, for instance.

On the Senate side, PIPA had up unit now blocked by a lone senator, Ron Wyden (D-OR. He has now been joined by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD)and Mark Udall (D-CO). Similarly, six Republican Senators, including two co-sponsors — Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Chuck Grassley (R-IA) (the two co-sponsors) along with  John Cornyn (R-TX), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) — have asked Aenate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D_NV)not to bring the cloture vote he’s promised to bring on the 24th. Sen. Pat Leahy, a key sponsor of the Protect IP Act, has conceded that more study is needed for the provisions that would allow rogue sites to be delisted from the Domain Name Service (basically the Internet’s phone directory). Critics have warned that mucking with DNS could splinter the architecture of the Internet.

On Wednesday beginning at midnight, several major web sites will go dark for 24 hours. Websites Wikpedia, Reddit, Craig’s List and ICanHasCheezburger.com are among the larger sites that will participate. The document-sharing site Scribd, for instance, made a billion pages vanish to protest the bill. Wikipedia users can view proposed designs for “blackout pages,” which may appear in place of normal Wikipedia entries during the protest on January 18.

click on image to enlarge.

In New York City, New York Tech Meetup, a 20,000 member community of people working in the New York Tech Industry are protesting the pending legislation in from of the offices of Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand who are still supporting the bill and urging Sen. Reid to bring the bill to the floor for cloture. One of the largest areas of job growth in NYC has been in the tech industries. New York Tech believes that SOPA, besides threatening freedom of speech, will kill those jobs.

You can physically join the NYC Protest at this site:

You have to ask yourself, why give free money to Banksters?

Iceland makes fledgling recovery from its economic meltdown

By Brady Dennis, The Washington Post

Published: January 16

Iceland did what the United States chose not to do – allow its biggest banks to fail and force foreign creditors to take a hike. It did what troubled European nations saddled with massive debts and tethered by the euro cannot do – allow its currency to remain weak, causing inflation but making its exports more desirable and its prices more attractive to tourists.

…

Realizing the peril – and perhaps the fallacy – of trying to rescue the banks, Iceland’s government ultimately let them collapse. “No responsible government takes risks with the future of its people, even when the banking system itself is as stake,” the prime minister said in an unprecedented address to the nation in October 2008.

…

In the wake of the catastrophe, officials guaranteed deposits of Icelandic citizens but refused to pay off many foreign investors – a controversial move that remains a sore spot here and in Europe. The government created new banks made up of the domestic operations of the failed firms. The old banks, which held foreign assets, are being dismantled and their assets sold, with proceeds going to pay off creditors.

…

The country’s debt grew to more than 100 percent of GDP in 2011. But even as government officials made budget cuts in an effort to return to a more sustainable path, they deliberately safeguarded its already-generous social safety net, adding and expanding programs targeted to the most vulnerable groups. In part to offset those measures, the country put in place new taxes on the banking system and on wealthy individuals.

…

Allowing the krona to remain weak has hastened Iceland’s return to stability. The country’s exports, which feature fish and aluminum, were running about 11 percent higher last year, and the tourism industry also showed an 11 percent increase through November. But struggling countries bound together by the euro, such as Greece and Portugal, don’t have the ability to let their currency fluctuate to more favorable levels.

Judging by economic data and by the workaday scenes of life in the capital, the economic engines are turning again. “For a country whose entire financial system collapsed, Iceland is doing remarkably well,” said Julie Kozack, the IMF’s mission chief for Iceland, adding that the country “is not out of the woods yet.”

But wait ek you say, what about all those scary bad no good things the Post reports are the evil consequences of kicking the Bankster’s asses out on the street corner to sell apples like, like, like…

LIKE POOR PEOPLE!

Oh, you mean like-

Iceland has weathered the worst of the financial crisis, but its society has yet to solve the identity crisis that followed in its wake.

…

The crisis scarred Iceland’s national psyche, and citizens are wrestling with profound questions, not only about how to return to better financial footing but also about what kind of society should emerge.

Well-

Inflation has fallen. Consumers are spending more money. There are new investments in geothermal energy, and the fishing waters remain plentiful. Hammers and power saws have become a familiar sound again in Reykjavik. Fewer Range Rovers clog the streets, but there’s no lack of Audis and Mercedes or BMWs.

But ek- SCARRING THE NATIONAL PSYCHE!

Businessmen came and went from Reykjavik in private jets. They bought showy yachts and multimillion-dollar vacation homes. Bankers became a popular and swaggering breed; after all, they were handing out a slew of high-paying jobs and providing a fortune in tax revenue.

“You had to be crazy not to want to become a banker,” said Heimir Hannesson, a student council member at the University of Iceland. “You went to college, studied business. You became a millionaire overnight. That was the dream. And for a few years, it was the reality.”

…

“What we had before was some sort of irrational exuberance. That has left, and maybe that’s a good thing,” said Gylfi Magnusson, an Icelandic economist who served as minister of economic affairs after the crash.

…

“The smaller the country gets, the bigger the national pride, the bigger the soul. Here we are on a tiny island, with nothing but our pride,” said Hannesson, the student council member.

…

“The modern-day financial Vikings, I think we feel scarred by the reputation they gave us,” he said. “Especially among the younger population, there’s a desire to do things better and more honorably.”

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

January 17 is the 17th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 348 days remaining until the end of the year (349 in leap years).

On this day in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his farewell address to the nation warning the American people to keep a careful eye on what he calls the “military-industrial complex” that has developed in the post-World War II years.

A fiscal conservative, Eisenhower had been concerned about the growing size and cost of the American defense establishment since he became president in 1953. In his last presidential address to the American people, he expressed those concerns in terms that frankly shocked some of his listeners.

Eisenhower began by describing the changing nature of the American defense establishment since World War II. No longer could the U.S. afford the “emergency improvisation” that characterized its preparations for war against Germany and Japan. Instead, the United States was “compelled to create a permanent armaments industry” and a huge military force. He admitted that the Cold War made clear the “imperative need for this development,” but he was gravely concerned about “the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex.” In particular, he asked the American people to guard against the “danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Military-industrial complex (MIC) is a concept commonly used to refer to policy relationships between governments, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them. These relationships include political approval for research, development, production, use, and support for military training, weapons, equipment, and facilities within the national defense and security policy. It is a type of iron triangle.

The term is most often played in reference to the military of the United States, where it gained popularity after its use in the farewell address speech of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, though the term is applicable to any country with a similarly developed infrastructure.

It is sometimes used more broadly to include the entire network of contracts and flows of money and resources among individuals as well as institutions of the defense contractors, The Pentagon, and the Congress and executive branch. This sector is intrinsically prone to principal-agent problem, moral hazard, and rent seeking. Cases of political corruption have also surfaced with regularity.

A similar thesis was originally expressed by Daniel Guerin, in his 1936 book Fascism and Big Business, about the fascist government support to heavy industry. It can be defined as, “an informal and changing coalition of groups with vested psychological, moral, and material interests in the continuous development and maintenance of high levels of weaponry, in preservation of colonial markets and in military-strategic conceptions of internal affairs”.