August 2012 archive

Call me Ishmael.  Long before the movie there was a book and since paperback pop trash sci-fi was only a hobby I can say that Jaws was worth the $.75 I paid for it and the 2 hours it took to consume not unpleasant if not particularly memorable.  I have no idea why people think Spielberg is a genius either.

Nor are sharks a particular terror of mine, the reason I don’t swim in dark water is my acrophobia and the sensation of falling, not because I’m afraid of getting eaten by a big fish.

Still there is no denying the mass fascination.

About 24 years go the programmers at Discovery were wondering how they could fill the hot dead humid air of August when they came up with an idea.

The Evolution of Shark Week, Pop-Culture Leviathan

By Ashley Fetters, The Atlantic

Aug 13 2012, 1:02 PM ET

Now the longest-running cable TV programming event in history, Shark Week has cemented itself as a fixture in the pop-culture lexicon, both seriously and meme-tastically. Stephen Colbert and Tracy Morgan (the voices of their generation, of course) have both publicly professed the sanctity of Shark Week in recent years: In 2006, Morgan’s character on 30 Rock sagely advised a colleague to “Live every week like it’s Shark Week“, and Colbert proclaimed it the second holiest annual holiday next to the week after Christmas in 2010.

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By 1994, Shark Week had lured Jaws author Peter Benchley on board as the show’s first-ever host. For its 15th anniversary in 1997, the sharks had costars-Celebrity Shark Week, it was dubbed, with appearances by Julie Bowen, Mark McGrath, and Brian McKnight, among others. Volleyball player Gabrielle Reece jumped into shark-infested waters without ever really informing the producers that she was more than a little new to scuba-diving: “I thought if I told [Discovery],” she said, “they wouldn’t let me come.”

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To this day, Runnette says, the team continues to develop its programming simply by asking themselves the question that spawned the first Shark Week: “What would be the most fun?” (“Chum underpants” and “the meat suit” are just two unforgettable responses that Runnette mentions, laughing at the memory-but clarifies that neither one has ever been or will ever be actually implemented.)

Shark Week, though, Runnette says, has never been at a loss for fun. “It’s taught us that it wants to be almost like a holiday-which it is for a lot of people,” Runnette says. “They want to wave little flags that say ‘Happy Shark Week.’ I always see pictures of all these cupcakes and these party decorations that they have to celebrate Shark Week.”

A beginner’s guide to Shark Week – a bloody American tradition

Amanda Holpuch, The Guardian

Friday 10 August 2012 12.28 EDT

Thrashing limbs, bloodied ocean and the shell-crushing teeth of the most-feared creature in the sea: this my friends, is Shark Week.

Broadcast annually for a quarter-century, the shockingly educational and often voyeuristic week of shark-oriented programming has dominated American airwaves each summer, courtesy of the Discovery Channel.

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The combination of courageous camerawork, melodramatic music and terrifying facts – a shark can smell a single drop of blood in an Olympics-sized pool! – has been a ratings boon for Discovery since its inception.

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For the past 24 summers, the network has hosted shows including: Teeth of Death, In Search of the Golden Hammerhead, The Man Who Loves Sharks, Shark Shooters, Blood in the Water and Jaws Comes Home.

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And though people are more likely to die from digging a hole in the sand than from a shark attack, the programming’s focus on these aquatic onslaughts plays up to the fears most famously induced by Jaws (whose author happened to host the first Shark Week) and helps get great ratings along the way.

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“People are quite obviously a greater danger to sharks than the other way around, so I talk to them about how we can show that or how we can talk about that,” Runnette said.

Happy Shark Week.  Tomorrow, Little League Baseball.

In April of 2011, Rollingstone‘s contributing editor Matt Taibbi wrote a piece about Paul Ryan and budget proposal titled, Tax Cuts for the Rich on the Backs of the Middle Class; or, Paul Ryan has Balls

I heartily laughed at Matt’s description of Paul Ryan:

Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan. All of these smug little jerks look alike to me – from Ralph Reed to Eric Cantor to Jeb Hensarling to Rand Paul and now to Ryan, they all look like overgrown kids who got nipple-twisted in the halls in high school, worked as Applebee’s shift managers in college, and are now taking revenge on the world as grownups by defunding hospice care and student loans and Sesame Street. They all look like they sleep with their ties on, and keep their feet in dress socks when doing their bi-monthly duty with their wives.

You have to admit that is scathingly accurate.

I thought of my own Tea Party House “Rat”, Michael Grimm. Grimm a former FBI agent and freshman representative from New York’s newly redrawn 11th who is currently the target of a federal grand jury investigation into the fundraising for his 2010 campaign. He fits Matt’s description to a tee.

Although Grimm is not a member of the Tea Party Caucus, he has voted lock step with them. When Grimm voted for Ryan’s first budget plan which called for a fix voucher and cuts to Medicaid that that would hurt the poor and elderly, Staten Island Tea Partiers were vocally upset with him. But I can almost guarantee they will give him a second chance to screw them, and everyone else, come November.

Back to Matt’s article. With his wry wit, he goes on to describe Ryan’s goal to reduce taxes for the wealthiest by asking seniors to cut back on their health care in order to pay for those tax breaks. That takes balls.

Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse.

The problem, of course, is that to actually make significant cuts in what is left of the “welfare state,” one has to cut Medicare and Medicaid, programs overwhelmingly patronized by white people, and particularly white seniors. So when the time comes to actually pull the trigger on the proposed reductions, the whippersnappers are quietly removed from the stage and life goes on as usual, i.e. with massive deficit spending on defense, upper-class tax cuts, bailouts, corporate subsidies, and big handouts to Pharma and the insurance industries.

This is a political game that gets played out in the media over and over again, and everyone in Washington knows how it works. Which is why it’s nauseating (but not surprising) to see so many commentators falling over themselves with praise for Ryan’s “bold” budget proposal, which is supposedly a ballsy piece of politics because it proposes backdoor cuts in Medicare and Medicaid by redounding their appropriations to the states and to block grants. Ryan is being praised for thusly taking on seniors, a traditionally untouchable political demographic .

Medicaid cuts that would deeply effect the elderly are never discussed by the media, even now with Ryan the presumptive Republican vice presidential nominee:

While the Republican vice-presidential candidate is careful to avoid touching Medicare benefits for anyone at or near retirement, his budget would impose immediate cuts to Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor that funds nursing-home care and other benefits for 6 million U.S. seniors. [..]

The proposed Medicaid changes are often overlooked amid the debate over Ryan’s Medicare plan, which has taken center stage in the presidential contest since the Wisconsin congressman was chosen as Mitt Romney’s running mate on Aug. 11. It’s politically important because those 65 and older are a crucial voting bloc. [..]

Health-care policy specialists say it’s politically easier to cut Medicaid because most voters don’t understand it. [..]

Many middle-income Americans who may be unfamiliar with Medicaid end up relying on the program in their old age because they exhaust their assets. Medicare doesn’t cover long-term care so they turn to Medicaid, which does. [..].

Without Medicaid, current and future Medicare recipients would be in deep financial trouble, as would nursing homes and hospitals that would be under obligation to treat them even if they lack coverage. Ryan’s budget would do this just to give the top 2% another tax cut that wouldn’t even be covered by the cuts.

In his last paragraph, Matt say this about Ryan and his budget:

The absurd thing is that Ryan’s act isn’t even politically courageous. It’s canny calculation, but courage it is not. It would be courageous if Ryan were, say, the president of the United States, and leaning on that budget with his full might. But Ryan is proposing a budget he knows would have no chance of passing in the Senate. He is simply playing out a part, a non-candidate for the presidency pushing a rhetorical flank for an out-of-power party leading into a presidential campaign year. If the budget is a hit with the public, the 2012 Republican candidate can run on it. If it isn’t, the Republican candidate can triangulate Ryan’s ass back into the obscurity from whence it came, and be done with him.

All Paul Ryan has are his “balls” because he certainly doesn’t have a heart or a conscience.

So much for obscurity. Little did Matt know.  

One factor common to our elite’s failures is their utter and complete unwillingness to accept factual reality.

Eurozone on brink of double-dip recession as growth falls 0.2%

Graeme Wearden, The Guardian

Tuesday 14 August 2012

The eurozone is on the brink of following Britain into a double-dip recession after its economy shrank between April and June.

GDP across the 17-nation bloc fell by 0.2% in the second quarter of this year and economists believe the downturn is continuing. Better-than-expected figures from Germany and France were offset by sharp contractions elsewhere, with the Spanish, Italian, Finnish and Portuguese economies all shrinking. The wider European Union also suffered a 0.2% contraction.

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The UK … shrank by 0.7%, according to last month’s preliminary estimate from the Office for National Statistics.

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In Germany, there was some relief that the economy grew by 0.3%. Analysts, though, fear that Europe’s powerhouse could slide into recession soon.

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With no growth in the last quarter, France has now been flatlining for the last nine months.

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Portugal continued to be buffeted by the austerity programme now being implemented. Its GDP tumbled by 1.2% in the latest quarter and is 3.3% smaller than a year ago, while the unemployment rate crept up to a new record of 15%.

Greek Economy Shrank 6.2% in Second Quarter

By DAVID JOLLY, The New York Times

Published: August 13, 2012

(M)any economists were skeptical that the heavily indebted Greek state can cut its way out of crippling recession.

A shrinking economy creates pressure for further budget cuts, since the deficit and debt grow as a percentage of the overall economy.

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Standard & Poor’s estimated last week that the Greek economy would shrink 10 percent to 11 percent cumulatively this year and next, compared with the 4 percent to 5 percent decline the European Union and International Monetary Fund assume.

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“(W)e’ve long argued that that is a fantasy,” Mr. May (economist at Capital Economics) said. “Greece will have to go through a long recession if it’s going to remain in the euro zone.”

He said Greece needed a 30 percent to 40 percent decline in real wages to restore its competitiveness, a punishing prospect if accomplished as a member of the euro. He said the better alternative might be for Greece to leave the euro and accomplish the same goal with a devalued currency.

US economic recovery is weakest since World War II

By Paul Wiseman, Associated Press

1 hour 50 minutes ago

Economic growth has never been weaker in a postwar recovery. Consumer spending has never been so slack. Only once has job growth been slower.

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Europe’s troubles have undermined consumer and business confidence on both sides of the Atlantic. And the deeply divided U.S. political system has delivered growth-chilling uncertainty.

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America’s gross domestic product – the broadest measure of economic output – grew 6.8 percent from the April-June quarter of 2009 through the same quarter this year, the slowest in the first three years of a postwar recovery. GDP grew an average of 15.5 percent in the first three years of the eight other comebacks analyzed.

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Government spending and investment at the federal, state and local levels was 4.5 percent lower in the second quarter than three years earlier.

Three years into previous postwar recoveries, government spending had risen an average 12.5 percent. In the first three years after the 1981-82 recession, during President Ronald Reagan’s first term, the economy got a jolt from a 15 percent increase in government spending and investment.

This time, state and local governments have been slashing spending – and jobs.

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Since June 2009, governments at all levels have slashed 642,000 jobs, the only time government employment has fallen in the three years after a recession.

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Consumer spending has grown just 6.5 percent since the recession ended, feeblest in a postwar recovery. In the first three years of previous recoveries, spending rose an average of nearly 14 percent.

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The economy shed a staggering 8.8 million jobs during and shortly after the recession. Since employment hit bottom, the economy has created just over 4 million jobs. So the new hiring has replaced 46 percent of the lost jobs, by far the worst performance since World War II. In the previous eight recoveries, the economy had regained more than 350 percent of the jobs lost, on average.

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Never before have so many Americans been unemployed for so long three years into a recovery. Nearly 5.2 million have been out of work for six months or more. The long-term unemployed account for 41 percent of the jobless; the highest mark in the other recoveries was 22 percent.

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(P)ay raises haven’t kept up with even modest levels of inflation. Earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers – a category that covers about 80 percent of the private, nonfarm workforce – have risen just over 6.2 percent since June 2009. Consumer prices have risen nearly 7.2 percent. Adjusted for inflation, wages have fallen 0.8 percent. In the previous five recoveries -the records go back only to 1964 - real wages had gone up an average 1.5 percent at this point.

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Washington isn’t doing much to help the economy. An impasse between Obama and congressional Republicans brought the U.S. to the brink of default on the federal debt last year -a confrontation that rattled financial markets and sapped consumer and business confidence.

Given the political divide, businesses and consumers don’t know what’s going to happen to taxes, government spending or regulation. Sharp tax increases and spending cuts are scheduled to kick in at year’s end unless Congress and the White House reach a budget deal.

In the meantime, it’s difficult for consumers to summon the confidence to spend and businesses the confidence to hire and expand. Never in the postwar period has there been so much uncertainty about what policymakers will do, says Steven Davis, an economist at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business: “No one is sure what will actually happen.”

Voodoo Supply Side Economics does not work.  Period.  It is faith based Mammon worship by the greedy and evil.

The recent release of e-mails from STRATFOR, a right wing global intelligence company, and documents about the surveillance system Trapwire by Wikileaks, has become the talk of the web and Twitter. David Seaman, an up and coming new media advocate and host of The DL Show, explains everything you need to know about Trapwire:

Anyway, here’s what Trapwire is, according to Russian-state owned media network RT (apologies for citing “foreign media”… if we had a free press, I’d be citing something published here by an American media conglomerate): “Former senior intelligence officials have created a detailed surveillance system more accurate than modern facial recognition technology-and have installed it across the U.S. under the radar of most Americans, according to emails hacked by Anonymous.

Every few seconds, data picked up at surveillance points in major cities and landmarks across the United States are recorded digitally on the spot, then encrypted and instantaneously delivered to a fortified central database center at an undisclosed location to be aggregated with other intelligence. It’s part of a program called TrapWire and it’s the brainchild of the Abraxas, a Northern Virginia company staffed with elite from America’s intelligence community. [..]

So: those spooky new “circular” dark globe cameras installed in your neighborhood park, town, or city-they aren’t just passively monitoring. They’re plugged into Trapwire and they are potentially monitoring every single person via facial recognition. [..]

In related news, the Obama administration is fighting in federal court this week for the ability to imprison American citizens under NDAA’s indefinite detention provisions-and anyone else-without charge or trial, on suspicion alone.

So we have a widespread network of surveillance cameras across America monitoring us and reporting suspicious activity back to a centralized analysis center, mixed in with the ability to imprison people via military force on the basis of suspicious activity alone.

The Young Turks’ host Cenk Uygur breaks down what Trapwire is and why it is a danger to individual freedom.

Noah Shachtman at The Danger Room takes an in depth look at the “sleazy” connection of STRATFOR to Trapwire and the CIA:

On Nov. 4, 2009, Fred Burton, the vice president of the private intelligence firm Stratfor, co-wrote an essay on emerging terrorist threats and the means to stop them. Particularly impressive, Burton wrote, was a new software tool called Trapwire, which works “with camera systems to help detect patterns of preoperational surveillance … to help cut through the fog of noise and activity and draw attention to potential threats.” [..]

What his customers reading that November 2009 essay may not have realized was that Burton was also marketing them a product. On Aug. 17 of that year, Stratfor and Trapwire signed a contract (.pdf) giving Burton’s company an 8 percent referral fee for any business they send Trapwire’s way. The essay was partially a sales pitch – a fact that Burton neglected to mention. [..]

That’s a breach of trust and possibly worse, says Matthew Aid, author of Intel Wars: The Secret History of the Fight Against Terror. “It’s a conflict of interest.” [..]

Stratfor’s now-famous business partner, Trapwire Inc., began as a division of Abraxas Corporation, one of the more prominent intelligence contractors to crop up after the 9/11 attacks. Begun by Richard “Hollis” Helms, the former head of the CIA’s European division, the company grew so quickly that by 2005, Helms boasted it was “the largest aggregate of analytical counter-terrorism capabilities outside of the U.S. government.” The CIA began entrusting Abraxas with one of its most sensitive tasks: constructing false identities, front companies, and cover stories for agents traveling overseas. At one point, so many CIA employees were jumping ship for Abraxas that the director of the CIA asked it, and a handful of other firms, to stop recruiting in the agency cafeteria.

Today, contractors make up about one-third of the 845,000 people with top-secret security clearances in this country, the Washington Post estimates. It’s safe to assume that at least the same portion of the $80 billion annual intelligence budget goes to these outside firms. The Post counted 1,931 private companies in nearly 10,000 locations across America working on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence efforts.

TrapWire is already used in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Texas, DC, London, and other locales around the USA. Although a spokesperson from NYPD denies that they are using Trapwire, there are other companies that are doing the same surveillance that are just as sinister. Remember that NYPD has labeled people “professional agitators” for filming their activities but now they have a tool that can be used to shut down peaceful demonstration and association. It could be easily used to violate the First and Fourth Amendment rights of citizens wherever this type of surveillance is used.

“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”.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day

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Katrina vanden Heuvel: Paul Ryan: Cruel, Not Courageous

A word of advice: If you’re announcing the most radical and reactionary Republican ticket in half a century, don’t do it on a ship named for the birthplace of progressivism, to Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man.”

But that is precisely the kind of audacity congressman-turned-vice presidential-nominee Paul Ryan brings to the flailing Romney campaign. Courage! Vision! And that hair! (Within minutes of the announcement, @VPRyansCowlick boasted dozens of follicle-fixated followers.)

Ryan is the rare Washington pseudo-wonk described by serious people of both parties in the adulatory terms typically reserved for battlefield heroics. “Courageous.” “Politically gutsy.” Author of “the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal”-wait for it-“in our lifetimes.” He is Jimmy Stewart, if Mr. Smith had spent less time establishing a boys’ camp and more time pretending to pay down the debt, one food stamp at a time.

Therein lies the rub. Ryan’s budget isn’t courageous-it’s just cruel. Three-fifths of the cuts he wants would hit those with low incomes, while those who have the most would continue getting more. It’s no wonder the former altar boy has had his knuckles rapped by a group of nuns for peddling a budget that “rejects church teaching about solidarity, inequality, the choice for the poor, and the common good.”

Bryce Covert: Paul Ryan’s Budget Deals a Body Blow to Women’s Bottom Line

You’d have to live under a rock to miss the news on Saturday morning that Mitt Romney has picked Congressman Paul Ryan to be his running mate. The announcement immediately kicked up a flurry of speculation: what does Ryan bring to the ticket that Romney wants? One thing he does not bring: women’s votes. Mitt Romney has been dogged by a problem with female voters, lagging in their support far behind President Obama, particularly among single women. But where Romney has been vague and flip-floppish on many issues, Ryan has long been very clear about his staunch support for policies that will hurt women economically.

Most people know Paul Ryan for his budget plans. There’s plenty of pain to be found in his budget for the lower and middle class, but women in particular make out poorly (literally) if his budget gets a presidential signature. Add in other policies he’s proposed or supported, and the picture becomes even bleaker.

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.

August 15 is the 227th day of the year (228th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 138 days remaining until the end of the year.

While there were many significant events that happened on August 15, the most delightful and happily remember is Woodstock. Not many of my Baby Boomer generation remember that today Emperor Hirohito announced the unconditional surrender of Japan or that East Germany began the building of the Berlin Wall or that Malcolm slain Macbeth, it was peace, love and Rock N’ Roll in the mud with a lack of sanitary facilities but lots of music from some of the best at the Woodstock Festivalduring the weekend of August 15 to 18, 1969. The site was a dairy farm in West Lake, NY near the town of Bethel in Sullivan County, some 43 miles southwest from the actual town of Woodstock in Ulster County. During that rainy weekend some 500,000 concert goers became a pivotal moment in the history of Rock and Roll.

Peace, Drugs and Rock N’Roll. Rock On.

I have to admit that I very rarely watch CNN these days but today while reading through the posts at Crooks & Liars, I may have to consider watching Soledad O’Brien. Most of the this morning Romney surrogate John Sununu was spouting half truths and bold faced lies about Medicare and the Romney/Ryan budget proposal that would leave seniors with a fixed voucher for private insurance. When he tried to spew the same talking points to Ms. O’Brien on her CNN show Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien, he found himself in a debate with someone who had done her homework:

You can read the transcript of the exchange here

Sununu had been making the rounds of talk shows for several days spouting the same talking points virtually unchallenged. He even, rudely, out shouted Andrea Mitchell on her MSNBC show who was not as well prepared to counter the debunked party line.

Apparently this was not the first encounter that Ms. O’Brien had with a Romney/Ryan camp spokesperson. While subbing for Anderson Cooper Monday night on CNN’s 360° she cut off spokesperson Barbara Comstock when Comstock spouted the nonsense lie that $700 billion has somehow been “stolen” from Medicare. As soon as Comstock realized that she wasn’t getting away with that talking point she fell back on the debunked canard of “death panels.” Of course the right wing is having a field day with this because they claim that O’Brien was taking her argument from a left wing blog and siting Obama talking points. That’s the best they can do to counter Ms. O’Brien’s accurate fact checking.

It is good to see a news anchor on cable doing their job. Perhaps David Gregory, Chris Matthews, et al should take a page from Ms. O’Brien’s book. I should watch CNN in the morning more often.

No agreement is perfect but the settlement that was reached Tuesday afternoon with the New York Department of Financial Services over Standard Charter Bank’s illicit money laundering with Iran and other countries under sanctions was better than most. In particular, SBC’s admission that the “the conduct at issue involved transactions of at least $250 billion.” The fine of $340 million was larger than the $250 million SBC offered but smaller than either the $700 million to $1 billion that SBC might have had to pay if the case had gone to a hearing on Wednesday and large because of the multi-billion dollar transaction admission. So the agreement is being touted as a victory for Benjamin M. Lawsky and his 10-month old agency, the New York Department of Financial Services which took on the bank without the Federal agencies who have been negotiating with SBC.

Yves Smith at naked capitalism has the statement from Mr. Lawsky:

STATEMENT FROM BENJAMIN M. LAWSKY, SUPERINTENDENT OF FINANCIAL SERVICES, REGARDING STANDARD CHARTERED BANK

   Benjamin M. Lawsky, New York Superintendent of Financial Services, issued the following statement today.

   “The New York State Department of Financial Services (“DFS”) and Standard Chartered Bank (“Bank”) have reached an agreement to settle the matters raised in the DFS Order dated August 6, 2012. The parties have agreed that the conduct at issue involved transactions of at least $250 billion.

   “The settlement also includes the following terms:

       

• The Bank shall pay a civil penalty of $340 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services.
• The Bank shall install a monitor for a term of at least two years who will report directly to DFS and who will evaluate the money-laundering risk controls in the New York branch and implementation of appropriate corrective measures. In addition, DFS examiners shall be placed on site at the Bank.
• The Bank shall permanently install personnel within its New York branch to oversee and audit any offshore money-laundering due diligence and monitoring undertaken by the Bank.

   “The hearing scheduled for August 15, 2012 is adjourned.

   “We will continue to work with our federal and state partners on this matter.”

This settlement is only with the New York regulator and it includes the transfers with Libya, Mynmar and the Sudan.

While this could have been better, Mr. Lawsky did get the bank to concede that the transfer did indeed involve the $250 billion which resulted in a larger settlement. SBC still must deal with the federal regulators based on the concession with NYDF. As David Dayen at FDL sees it this put a whole new slant on those talks:

In addition, this does not end the legal trouble for Standard Chartered. This only resolves the issues with the New York Department of Financial Services. Federal regulators (including Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the Justice Department) as well as the Manhattan District Attorney must now enter into their negotiations, and if they cannot get as much as the DFS, it will be completely embarrassing. This could cost Standard Chartered at least double this initial figure.

Meanwhile over at the SEC, Wells Fargo walks away from mortgage investment case with a $6.5 million fine and no admission of wrongdoing as usual. Wells Fargo earned $16 billion last year.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has spent nearly four years building cases against the nation’s biggest banks for their role in the mortgage mess.The agency has filed civil actions against Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup.

But in recent months, the agency has struggled to bring big cases as it pursued a second round of investigations focused on the banks’ failure to disclose the dangers of mortgage securities. The Wells Fargo case comes just days after Goldman Sachs revealed that the S.E.C. had closed an investigation into a 2006 mortgage deal without pursuing charges. [..]

The action also cited Shawn McMurtry, a former vice president and broker at the bank, over his role in selling the deals. Under the settlement, Mr. McMurtry agreed to a $25,000 fine and six-month suspension from the securities industry.

I’m sure Mr. McMurtry can afford it.

Earlier this year Pulitzer prize winning author, Chris Hedges and several other prominent activists and politicians filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration  over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) alleging that it violated free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment and due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Obama DOJ argued that the group had no standing to bring the suit since they had been harmed. Federal Judge  Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York saw it differently in her ruling (pdf)on May 16 when she issued a preliminary injunction enjoining enforcement of the highly controversial indefinite provisions of NDAA, Sections 1021 and 1022. The final hearings were held last week on whether the injunction enjoining enforcement of 1021 will be permanent.

From Chris Hedges on Criminalizing Dissent:

[..] Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself-the Homeland Battlefield Bill-suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within “the homeland” as well as those abroad. [..]

Barack Obama’s administration has appealed Judge Forrest’s temporary injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional rights. The administration’s added failure to restore habeas corpus, its use of the Espionage Act six times to silence government whistle-blowers, its support of the FISA Amendment Act-which permits warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens-and its ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, is a signal that for all his rhetoric, Obama, like his Republican rivals, is determined to remove every impediment to the unchecked power of the security and surveillance state. [..]

The language of the bill is terrifyingly vague. It defines a “covered person”-one subject to detention-as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.” The bill, however, does not define the terms “substantially supported,” “directly supported” or “associated forces.” In defiance of more than 200 earlier laws of domestic policing, this act holds that any member of a group deemed by the state to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or a Black Bloc anarchist unit, can be seized and held by the military. Mayer stressed this point in the court Wednesday when he cited the sedition convictions of peace activists during World War I who distributed leaflets calling to end the war by halting the manufacturing of munitions. Mayer quoted Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ dissenting 1919 opinion. We need to “be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe,” the justice wrote. [..]

The Justice Department’s definition of a potential terrorism suspect under the Patriot Act is already extremely broad. It includes anyone with missing fingers, someone who has weatherproof ammunition and guns, and anyone who has hoarded more than seven days of food. [..]

Contrast this crucial debate in a federal court with the empty campaign rhetoric and chatter that saturate the airwaves. The cant of our political theater, the ridiculous obsessions over vice presidential picks or celebrity gossip that dominate the news industry, effectively masks the march toward corporate totalitarianism. The corporate state has convinced the masses, in essence, to clamor for their own enslavement. There is, in reality, no daylight between Mitt Romney and Obama about the inner workings of the corporate state. They each support this section within the NDAA and the widespread extinguishing of civil liberties. They each will continue to funnel hundreds of billions of wasted dollars to defense contractors, intelligence agencies and the military. They each intend to let Wall Street loot the U.S. Treasury with impunity. Neither will lift a finger to help the long-term unemployed and underemployed, those losing their homes to foreclosures or bank repossessions, those filing for bankruptcy because of medical bills or college students burdened by crippling debt. Listen to the anguished cries of partisans on either side of the election divide and you would think this was a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. You would think voting in the rigged political theater of the corporate state actually makes a difference. The charade of junk politics is there not to offer a choice but to divert the crowd while our corporate masters move relentlessly forward, unimpeded by either party, to turn all dissent into a crime.

Not that there is any solace in the argument of voting for Obama to protect the Supreme Court from more corporatist right wing appointments, when Pres. Obama has his good friend and mentor Cass Sunstein waiting in the wings, salivating to further gut and criminalize dissent.

But thank you, Judge Forrest.

“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”.

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Paul Krugman: Romney/Ryan: The Real Target

So, let me clarify what I believe is really going on in the choice of Paul Ryan as VP nominee. It is not about satisfying the conservative base, which was motivated anyway by Obama-hatred; it is not about refocusing on the issues, because R&R are both determined to avoid providing any of the crucial specifics about their plans. It is – as Jonathan Chait also seems to understand – about exploiting the gullibility and vanity of the news media, in much the same way that George W. Bush did in 2000. [..]

So, a memo to the news media: you have now become players in this campaign, not just reporters. Mitt Romney isn’t seeking a debate on the issues; on the contrary, he’s betting that your gullibility and vanity will let him avoid a debate on the issues, including the issue of his own fitness for the presidency. I guess we’ll see if it works.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Happy Birthday, Social Security! Now About Your Gift …

Today, August 14, is Social Security’s 77th birthday. That presents us with a difficult challenge: What do you give a government program that has everything … except a secure future of its own?

Let’s take a look at the options for this year’s celebration.

The Gift Pile

Talk about an embarrassment of riches! Look what Social Security can already list among its gifts. It’s got:

Hundreds of millions of people who love it. Polls consistently show that Social Security, along with Medicare, is one of our most popular government programs.

The best balance sheet in the entire government. Despite all the scare talk (which we’ll get to shortly), no program in US history is on a firmer financial footing than Social Security. It’s a stand-alone program which isn’t allowed to contribute to the overall government deficit, and is absolutely solvent until the mid-2030’s.

No other program can say that.