Punting the Pundits

Speculators at megabanks or investment firms such as Goldman Sachs are not, in a strict sense, capitalists. They do not make money from the means of production. Rather, they ignore or rewrite the law-ostensibly put in place to protect the vulnerable from the powerful-to steal from everyone, including their shareholders. They are parasites. They feed off the carcass of industrial capitalism. They produce nothing. They make nothing. They just manipulate money. Speculation in the 17th century was a crime. Speculators were hanged.

We can wrest back control of our economy, and finally our political system, from corporate speculators only by building local movements that decentralize economic power through the creation of hundreds of publicly owned state, county and city banks.

The establishment of city, regional and state banks, such as the state public bank in North Dakota, permits localities to invest money in community projects rather than hand it to speculators. It keeps property and sales taxes, along with payrolls for public employees and pension funds, from lining the pockets of speculators such as Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein. Money, instead of engorging the bank accounts of the few, is leveraged to fund schools, restore infrastructure, sustain systems of mass transit and develop energy self-reliance.

Jeff Jarvis: The primary NSA issue isn’t privacy, it’s authority

At heart, the NSA debate is about what the government is allowed to do with what it knows and who is overseeing it

I celebrate Judge Richard J Leon’s opinion that the government’s mass collection of communications metadata is “almost Orwellian”, and I decry Judge William H Pauley III’s decision that the NSA’s collection is both effective and legally perfectly peachy.

But I worry that the judges, as well as many commentators and Edward Snowden himself, may be debating on the wrong plane. I see some danger in arguing the case as a matter of privacy because I fear that could have serious impact on our concept of knowledge, of what is allowed to be known and thus of freedom of speech. Instead, I think this is an argument about authority – not so much what government (or anyone else) is allowed to know but what government, holding unique powers, is allowed to do with what it knows. [..]

In the search for a legally protected right to privacy in the United States, begun with Brandeis and Warren in 1890, the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted as affording privacy protection as have the First Amendment (freedom of belief) and the Fifth (freedom against self-incrimination). In each case, though, the right is not so much for something – privacy – as against something – namely, government abuse.

Paul Buchheit: The Shocking Redistribution of Wealth in the Past Five Years

Anyone reviewing the data is likely to conclude that there must be some mistake. It doesn’t seem possible that one out of twenty American families could each have made a million dollars since Obama became President, while the average American family’s net worth has barely recovered. But the evidence comes from numerous reputable sources.

Some conservatives continue to claim that President Obama is unfriendly to business, but the facts show that the richest Americans and the biggest businesses have been the main – perhaps only – beneficiaries of the massive wealth gain over the past five years. [..]

President Obama recently proclaimed that inequality “drives everything I do in this office.” Indeed it may, but in the wrong direction.

William Cohen: As NSA Spy Debate Heats Up in 2014 Don’t Believe the Security Hype

A new year of media noise begins, and with it an avalanche of propaganda. With the public growing wary of privacy intrusions, the NSA debate is heating up and the message from power centers will focus on the effectiveness of the spy program in stopping terror attacks, the effective controls in place to prevent abuse, and the danger to the public posed by traitorous leakers of secret operations. These claims are all false.

Yet these are the claims endorsed in the December 27 ruling upholding the legality of the NSA spy program by U.S. federal judge William Pauley III in ACLU v. Clapper. Judge Pauley’s ruling is full of deference to government and its need for secrecy. However, a December 16 ruling by federal judge Richard Leon in Klayman v. Obama exposes that the claims made by the government are wrong. Judge Leon characterizes the NSA spy program as Orwellian and violating fundamental constitutional safeguards. [..]

With a conflict between federal judges, the legality of the NSA spy program will likely be resolved by the Supreme Court in 2014, after the appeals courts in Pauley and Leon’s districts have their say. It is an open question how the Court will rule. Consider that Judge Leon was appointed by Bush 43, and Judge Pauley by Clinton. Politics and ideology are not at all predictable when it comes to views on the NSA spy program.

The Court is a powerful and conservative institution. Yet the Court is swayed by public sentiment. The best way for people to influence the law is to raise their voices against the clear violations by the national security state and the bogus arguments now being used to defend itself from further scrutiny.