Greece threatens new elections if eurozone rejects planned reforms

by Helena Smith, The Guardian

Sunday 8 March 2015 14.02 EDT

Greece’s anti-austerity government has raised the spectre of further political strife in the crisis-plagued country by saying it will consider calling a referendum, or fresh elections, if its eurozone partners reject proposed reforms from Athens.

Racheting up the pressure ahead of a crucial meeting of his eurozone counterparts on Monday, the Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, said the leftist-led government would hold a plebiscite on fiscal policy if faced with deadlock.

“We are not attached to our posts. If needed, if we encounter implacability, we will resort to the Greek people either through elections or a referendum,” he told Italy’s Il Corriere della Sera in an interview on Sunday.

Varoufakis was the second high-ranking official in as many days to suggest the possibility of a referendum being held. On Saturday, Panos Kammenos, who heads the government’s junior partner in office, the small, rightwing Independent Greeks party, said such a ballot could be a “possible response” to protracted disagreement with creditor bodies propping up Greece’s debt-stricken economy.

…

Ahead of tomorrow’s meeting, creditors have signaled that they want Athens to specify reforms with “harder facts and figures” including showing a renewed commitment to the country’s stalled privatisation process. Militants on the far-left of Syriza have made such “asset stripping” a “red line” that they will not cross.

“The country is at war with lenders,” warned the interior minister, Nikos Voutsis, giving voice to the increasingly combative sentiments now colouring relations with creditors. “Every month the leash is getting tighter for us. But we are not going to proceed in this war like happy scouts ready to follow bailout policies.”

With the rhetoric at such levels, Athens is treading a very fine line.

…

“If the ECB insists on this decision, which in our opinion is not the right one, then it will be taking on a major responsibility,” Tsipras told Der Spiegel before appealing to Draghi by phone on Saturday to change course.

With the current impasse threatening to lead Greece into defaulting on its payments and the spectre of a referendum renewing fears of further turmoil for an economy already blighted by the twin ills of bankruptcy and political uncertainty, Varoufakis’ remarks were quickly described as “irresponsible” by the political opposition.

Former prime minister Antonis Samaras, who now heads the main opposition centre-right New Democracy party, said a plebiscite would be “a very bad development”.

Why yes it will, for Antonis Samaras and his New Democracy party who are highly likely to get their butts kicked.

You may ask, “So what good does a vote do?”  It shows that Tsipras and SYRIZA have the support of the Greek people.

Because the alternative for Draghi, Schaeuble, and Lagarde is that Greece simply repudiates its debt entirely, slaps on capital controls, and the German Banks (who are the ones actually being “bailed out”) end up without even paper suitable for outhouse use as those ephemeral electrons all change to zero.

They can kill you, but they can never force you to do anything.  You’d think the Germans would have learned that.

The Conundrum of Corporation and Nation

Robert Reich

Sunday, March 8, 2015

The U.S. economy is picking up steam but most Americans aren’t feeling it. By contrast, most European economies are still in bad shape, but most Europeans are doing relatively well.

What’s behind this? Two big facts.

First, American corporations exert far more political influence in the United States than their counterparts exert in their own countries.

In fact, most Americans have no influence at all.

…

The second fact is most big American corporations have no particular allegiance to America. They don’t want Americans to have better wages. Their only allegiance and responsibility to their shareholders – which often requires lower wages  to fuel larger profits and higher share prices.

…

(B)ecause of these two basic facts – their dominance on American politics, and their interest in share prices instead of the wellbeing of Americans – it’s folly to count on them to create good American jobs or improve American competitiveness, or represent the interests of the United States in global commerce.

By contrast, big corporations headquartered in other rich nations are more responsible for the wellbeing of the people who live in those nations.

That’s because labor unions there are typically stronger than they are here – able to exert pressure both at the company level and nationally.

…

Governments in other rich nations often devise laws through tri-partite bargains involving big corporations and organized labor. This process further binds their corporations to their nations.

Meanwhile, American corporations distribute a smaller share of their earnings to their workers than do European or Canadian-based corporations.

And top U.S. corporate executives make far more money than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.

…

And because of the overwhelming clout of American firms on U.S. politics, Americans don’t get nearly as good a deal from their governments as do Canadians and Europeans.

Governments there impose higher taxes on the wealthy and redistribute more of it to middle and lower income households. Most of their citizens receive essentially free health care and more generous unemployment benefits than do Americans.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that even though U.S. economy is doing better, most Americans are not.

…

(W)hen at global negotiating tables – such as the secretive process devising the “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal – American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans but also reside all over the world.  

Which is why the pending Partnership protects the intellectual property of American corporations – but not American workers’ health, safety, or wages, and not the environment.

The Obama administration is casting the Partnership as way to contain Chinese influence in the Pacific region. The agents of America’s interests in the area are assumed to be American corporations.

But that assumption is incorrect. American corporations aren’t set up to represent America’s interests in the Pacific region or anywhere else.

Acting Out

Consumer Accountability is tonight’s topic and as near as I can tell from quick Google News scan it refers to the effort by Health Insurers in particular to blame you, as the customer, for making actual Health Care too expensive for them by not shopping well enough for Emergency Rooms while you’re bleeding out.

There is a larger penumbra of references to other ways Corporations are trying to make the purchasers of their products and services responsible when the Companies screw up and deliver defective goods.  Apparently it’s based on the Libertarian idea that bad Companies will eventually be forced to improve their practices because informed consumers will shop elsewhere and it’s your own damn fault if you are maimed by a poorly engineered air bag because every expert automotive engineer knows about that problem so you are either a) too lazy to do your research, b) too stupid to understand it, or c) too cheap to buy a car with a good one.

And probably all three.

Of course, it may mean something else entirely.

Continuity

Booted

This Week’s Guests-

• Monday 3/9: John Lewis
• Tuesday 3/10: Abbi Jacobson, Ilana Glazer
• Wednesday 3/11: Common
• Thursday 3/12: Rob Corddry

What can you say about John Lewis?  The man is a Giant of the Civil Rights Movement

At the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church

“Still Work to Be Done”: Rep. John Lewis Returns to Selma 50 Years After He Was Beaten Unconscious, Democracy Now

Well, maybe this- he’s drafted a bill to correct the misguided Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder.  It has only 2 Republican Sponsors in the House, Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin and Gibson of New York (and but a paltry few Democrats) and none at all in the Senate.

The real news below.

So why do I think that after Greece, Spain could be the next to experience a ballot box Revolution?

Hmm…

Gürtel: A Dangerous Spanish Silence

The Spain Report

Friday, March 6th, 2015

The Gürtel investigation is going to trial. The suspects have been charged. The Popular Party as an organisation will now officially be tried, not as a suspect prosecuted for a crime but for being a “profit seeking participant” that benefited from the allegedly criminal fraudulent activities of its three former treasurers whose activities spanned a 20-year period, fundamentally the same period that the party has existed for, although the specific crimes 40 people have now been charged with took place between 1999 and 2005.

Spain’s governing party will be ordered to repay €245,492. A quarter of a million euros. Ana Mato, who was Mr. Rajoy’s Health Minister until the end of November last year, will have to hand back €28,467. She famously claimed she did not know she had a brand new Jaguar parked in her garage at home. She is still a sitting MP. The Public Prosecutor is seeking 42 years in prison for Luis Bárcenas, the most well-known of the three former party treasurers, who was recently released from prison after 18 months on remand during the investigation. Those accused must post a total of €449 million in bonds to cover restitution liabilities. Half-a-billion euros.

…

Spanish voters know there is nothing they can do about corruption until the elections, and then they cannot get rid of individual rotten apples because, as Mr. Rajoy is demonstrating, it is he who decides who will be the party boss in each Spanish region and major city, not voters, party members or even the senior regional leaderships themselves, who for weeks have been on edge over the Prime Minister’s decision. The freshly anointed chiefs will decide who gets on their coveted electoral lists, who is to be on their team with a chance of playing in the next round. Thus Spain races from one end of the political spectrum to the other, at the national and regional levels. There is no middling option seeking balance, no gentle pruning of dead or dying branches; a party reigns strong in a place for many years and then, apparently suddenly, is out of favour with the voters and out of office.

The implosion of senior party leadership at different levels and the swirling undercurrents of corruption will make for a very exciting electoral year in 2015 if they all come together in time to anger Spanish voters enough for them to decide radical change is what is now needed, that the current lot just won’t do anymore, that this is it, their only chance in four years to do something about it. Whatever the outcome.

(h/t Lambert @ Naked Capitalism)

The Gürtel case is an ongoing political corruption scandal in Spain, which implicates officers of the People’s Party (PP), Spain’s major right-wing party, some of which have been forced to resign or have been suspended. The case came to public attention in early 2009, but for the most part the suspects are still awaiting trial. Gürtel is one of the largest corruption scandals in recent Spanish history, and there are related scandals, such as the Barcenas case, which have received media attention in their own right.

The investigative operation was given the name Gürtel in a cryptic reference to one of the principal suspects, Francisco Correa (Correa means belt in English, Gürtel in German). Correa is a businessman who cultivated links with PP officers. The Spanish police began to investigate his activities in 2007 after information was obtained from a whistle-blower regarding alleged corruption in the Madrid area.

The accusations include bribery, money laundering and tax evasion, and implicate a circle of businessmen led by Correa and politicians from the People’s Party. The alleged illicit activities relate to party funding and the awarding of contracts by local/regional governments in Valencia, the Community of Madrid and elsewhere.

Early estimates of the money loss to public finances amounted to at least €120,000,000., while some of the alleged bribes paid in return were not particularly large (for example, items of luxury clothing).

It’s not that you can buy politicians, it’s that it’s so cheap.

We’ll try to remain serene and calm, when Alabama gets the bomb.

Three corners has my hat

And had it not three corners

It would not be my hat!

I dunno, maybe it makes more sense in Italian.

This is the famous (I mean, as far as any Renaissance Italian Folk Tune appropriated for ‘Art Music’ can be) Carnival of Venice.

Or infamous in my case as it was the audition piece for All-State Band and since my sight reading skilz are for crap I really didn’t have even a clue what it was supposed to sound like and between the triple and quadruple tounging and the rampant octave jumps (not to mention the rapid fire fingering) I could only make up in energy and enthusiasm what I lacked in technique.

You know, like your first sexual experience.

I have dissipated a youth of extreme privilege on these ephemeral photons.  I went to Summer Camp every year, sometimes twice at different places.  This year my family in Michigan pulled some strings and got me in a Youth Music program that featured lessons with the great Leonard Falcone who just happened to have arranged (that’s a technical musical term for someone who re-does an original piece for different instruments or ensembles, or changes the key or tempo to make it sound different even though it’s really the same) my audition piece.

What could go wrong?

Well, I am a horrible musician, even for a brass player, and I have a tin ear and no discipline or muscle memory whatsoever.  It took Falcone mere seconds to recognize how hopeless I was.

But he was a trooper and there were only so many Euphonium players so he was stuck with me for 2 weeks.

Towards the end I dragged out my audition piece and said-

“Do you think you can help me with this?”

“Let me hear it.”

So I embarrassed myself and he said-

“It should sound like this.”

My Hat It Has Three Corners

It wasn’t a total waste.  I did learn a lot about music and improved tremendously (though I still couldn’t get a gig in a Circus Band which is somewhat unfair to them because they are dead serious professional musicians who practice every day and then do 3 shows) and I also hooked up with this clarinetist who came to my Grandmother’s place where I had to wait for my parents to pick me up after camp was over and took me to a Drive In Movie where I got to second base with her.

Anyway, I’m not here to talk about my early relationships (as amusing as they are in retrospect) what I really want to talk about is Frank Music.

Let’s set the wayback machine to August 16, 2014 where I wrote in Renaissance Man about the importance of a common musical notation that could be printed and distributed to the development of Western ‘Art’ Music.

(A)mong the signal advances musically during this time period is the development of recognizably ‘modern’ musical notation.

…

(T)he systematized notation of music and printing of same made the spread of musical ideas philosophy, science, and theology (the latter of which was pivotal in the political struggles of the period) much easier than previously possible.

…

(I)nfluence on European music was widespread, from … England to the remotest eastern principalities of the Holy Roman Empire.

…

The secret of … success?  The printing press and musical notation.

If you are of a certain age you’ll remember what we called Ditto machines but which were far more likely Spirit Duplicators or Mimeographs.  Man, nothing like sniffing the solvent off a fresh Ditto to give you that nice, in class, buzz.

Sheet Music for Band was reproduced the same way and it was a source of continual irritation for me that I always got the flimsiest, crappiest copies, especially since they always doubled the Tenor Sax parts (hey, at least they were in B-Flat which meant I didn’t have to do any in my head transpositions).  The problem was I didn’t understand how Sheet Music was packaged and sold.

As a Band Director you’d find a piece you liked and thought your Band could handle and then searched through catalogs and stores until you came up with an Orchestration Package.  They typically cost over $100 and included (in addition to the Conductor’s Score) original individual parts for each instrument called for by the Composer.  Since School Bands are always much larger you had to copy those so that you had one for every student to practice with.

So that’s why your teacher was always so mad at you when you lost your folder.  Those things are hard to get.

Now as it turns out Carnival of Venice was not available locally and the closest place to get a copy was Frank Music in New York City.  It was a big deal for me as it’s the first time I can remember visiting the City alone (for which I’d probably get seized by DCS now).

Frank Music is a dingy hole in the wall in Mid-town filled floor to 15 or 20 foot ceiling with shelves stacked about as close as you can the sheet music laying flat inside and layers of faded labels pasted on the dividers.  If you have any sense at all you’ll wait for a clerk to find what you want but I was adventurous and wandered around the mustiness.

In the end I found it and a copy of Arban’s (neither of which helped, see above) and escaped about $50 lighter than I went in.  With the train and lunch it was a $100 day but I could have gone golfing and spoiled a good walk.

New York City’s last classical sheet music shop closes its doors after eight decades

by Lauren Gambino, The Guardian

Friday 6 March 2015 12.33 EST

After nearly eight decades in business, Frank Music, the last classical sheet music store in New York City, will close on Friday at 5pm.

With a pencil tucked behind her ear, Heidi Rogers, the 63-year-old shopkeeper, puttered around the store, retrieving scores from the shelves piled high with music from the classics – Beethoven, Chopin, Stravinsky – to the arcane. She paused occasionally to look around at the spartan office, tucked away on the 10th floor of a midtown Manhattan building, as if keen not to forget the position of a single score.

Rogers indulged every customer – new and old – at the checkout line. With the faithful patrons who had shopped there for years, she reminisced. With the first-timers, she joked, taking digs at the “freebie” culture that brought about the store’s demise, and guessing their musical forte.

…

Frank Music has struggled in the internet age, as more musicians turn to Amazon or other online sellers that sell scores for less than their brick-and-mortar counterparts charge. It has also had to compete with free downloads, found on websites such as IMSLP, a virtual music library that allows users to download scores at no cost.

“To be replaced by something so inferior – it’s such an insult,” Rogers said. “But if you appeal to people’s lowest instincts, like we’re going to give you this score for nothing, it’s basically saying it has no value.”

Until the very end, Frank Music resisted the creeping digitization of the internet age. The store’s vast inventory, methodically organized by composer, is registered only in Rogers’s brain. She almost never takes credit cards; she prints handwritten receipts; and she records her sales with a pencil on a piece of loose-leaf paper.

“The way other stores bought was very different than the way I bought,” Rogers said. “They would buy 20 copies of one thing that they knew they would sell 20 copies of. I would buy one copy of 20 things they didn’t want to be bothered with.”

The store’s stock boasts, in Rogers’s estimation, hundreds of thousands of scores. The massive, and unique, inventory is what Rogers believes set the store apart.

…

Annie Shapero, a vocal student and fragrance reviewer, said she heard about the store’s closure on the radio and had to come in and smell the sheets of music before it was too late.

“It’s an olfactory archive,” Shapero said, holding a book to her nose and inhaling deeply. “It’s a smell that’s disappearing from this city.”

“I think it’s something that you just take for granted living here,” Shapero said. “You just think, it’s New York – it’ll always be filled with stores like that. But it’s not! It’s gone. This is it.”

I’ll miss that place, the world has changed and not for the better.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

A guilty pleasure, season finale.

PD BTW.  Chaplin’s favorite.

Anything but Euros that is.

While I don’t think the temporary plan negotiated last week between Greece and its creditors is necessarily the sellout that some do, I do think the most desirable state of affairs for Europe is for the Euro experiment to collapse.

I would hope that both Spain and Italy, and better yet France, should tell the Germans to pound sand, eat their losses (which will destroy German banks, but since they’re responsible for this mess I feel no sympathy at all) and return to their own national currencies and fiscal policies.

Will this hurt in the short run?  Sure, but the Troika program of austerity at any cost guarantees nothing but perpetual misery and hopeless degradation without relief ever, not 10 years from now or 30 or 50.  How long are you willing to sell your people into debt slavery?  How long do you think before they rise and cast off their shackles?

SYRIZA represents probably the last attempt to address this theft at the ballot.  If it fails the next actions will be far more revolutionary and destabilising in that 1789 kind of way.

Capital Control May Become Necessary in Greece

Damn straight and high time for it too.  What’s the matter with a little capital control unless you’re a thief looking to escape with your loot?

Reform Within the Euro-Zone is a Delusion for Greece

Merkel and Schäuble should be worried about that.  It’s German Banks that are going to get a buzzcut instead of a trim.

Time for Greece to plan its exodus from the euro

By Darrell Delamaide, Market Watch

Mar 6, 2015 3:00 a.m. ET

Germany – as well as the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund – made it amply clear in the initial round of negotiations that they have no intention of being reasonable in the way Tsipras and Varoufakis believe they should.

It was always a fairly delusional assumption that German leaders would suddenly see the light and embrace an enlightened Keynesian solution to the economic and social crisis in Greece. Berlin and Brussels remain pitiless and more convinced than ever of the rightness of their destructive neoliberal policies.

The only way Greece can regain its sovereignty – which is essentially what Tsipras’s Syriza party pledged to voters in its rise to power – is to reclaim its sovereign rights, and especially control of its currency and banking system.

The consequences of defaulting on the country’s debt would be dramatic, but relatively short-lived compared to the guaranteed long-term misery of the EU austerity program.

…

Tsipras faces considerable pressure from his own party to follow through on the election pledge to roll back austerity, even if it means abandoning his commitment to stay in the euro.

A Syriza member of Parliament argued this week that the only way Greece can beat austerity is to break free from the euro and urged his party to face up to this reality.

“The most vital step is to realize that the strategy of hoping to achieve radical change within the institutional framework of the common currency has come to an end,” Costas Lapavitsas, a professor of economics and longtime proponent of leaving the euro, wrote in an op-ed in the Guardian.

“The strategy has given us electoral success by promising to release the Greek people from austerity without having to endure a major falling-out with the eurozone,” Lapavitsas wrote. “Unfortunately, events have shown beyond doubt that this is impossible, and it is time that we acknowledged reality.”

…

Without a genuine plan to leave the euro and the will to execute it, the Greek government will have no more leverage in the next round of negotiations than it did in the first.

Not that even this threat would budge the Germans. German leaders might then fret and delay further, but they are more likely to just show the Greeks the door.

It’s anyone’s guess what the consequences of a Greek exit would be for the markets or what kind of political backlash there would be in other eurozone members. Opinions range across the spectrum from indifference to turmoil in markets, and from chastened obedience to outright rebellion in other peripheral countries.

But a Greek departure from the euro would create a precedent that could lead to considerable political pressure in Spain or Italy. Perhaps that prospect would prod the Germans into some moderation of austerity policies.

But none of this will happen unless Greece is actually ready to leave the euro. Germany is leaving Tsipras and company virtually no choice on that score.

Other titles suggest themselves, but I’m trying to work not Blue.

Rahm Snaps at Mental-Health Advocates: ‘You’re Gonna Respect Me!’

by Justin Glawe, Daily Beast

03.05.15

They say old Rahm Emanuel came out last night-or maybe it was the real one hiding in plain sight all the time: a sneering, aggressive pol who went “nose-to-nose” with a mental-health advocate demanding, “You’re gonna respect me!”

The alleged exchange took place off-camera between Chicago’s mayor and Matt Ginsberg-Jaeckle, a member of Mental Health Movement, a group that has been fighting the mayor over the closure of six mental health clinics across the city. Behind a door that separated the mayor from a roomful of constituents at a campaign stop in the Wicker Park neighborhood, Ginsberg-Jaeckle says, he got Rahmbo’d.

…

Debbie Delgado, another member of the group, interrupted Emanuel, prompting the behind-closed-doors altercation.

“She told of losing her son to gun violence,” Ginsberg-Jaeckle wrote. “She told [Emanuel] how her other son was holding him as he died. She told about how the city’s Northwest Mental Health Clinic in Logan Square saved their lives, helped her and her son deal with the PTSD and depression. Then she asked why he took that clinic away from her.”

Rahm said he would speak with the pair, and Ginsberg-Jaeckle said they then left the room for a private conversation. That’s when Emanuel allegedly shouted: “You’re gonna respect me!”

…

(Emanuel spokesperson Chloe) Rasmas said that, because the event was for Rahm’s re-election campaign, now in run-off mode, the mayor’s office wouldn’t comment on what happened behind closed doors. Apparently there is an official distinction to be made between Mayor Rahm and Candidate Rahm.

Emanuel’s temper is notorious. In 1992, he was Bill Clinton’s chief fundraiser. After Bubba won the White House, it’s said that Rahm went DeNiro in The Untouchables on the people who had opposed them. “Dead!” Rahm screamed while plunging a steak knife into a table. ”Nat Landow! Dead! Cliff Jackson! Dead! Bill Schaefer! Dead!” Rahm’s rage-fueled drive later propelled him to a seat in Congress and the position of White House chief of staff under President Obama.

The toughest political fight of Rahmbo’s career though is winning a second term as mayor. Emanuel is facing an April run-off against Jesus “Chuy” Garcia after the failing to secure more than 50 percent of the vote in last month’s Democratic primary.. Among the contentious issues consuming Chicago politics are the mayor’s decision to close several public schools, install controversial red-light cameras, fail to stamp out gun violence and, for some like Ginsberg-Jaeckle, closing of six mental-health clinics.

For years Ginsberg-Jaeckle, Debbie Delgado and other members of the group have been trying to meet with Rahm. First, to convince him not to close the six mental health clinics that were eventually shut down. Then it was to re-open the clinics, which provide services Ginsberg-Jaeckle and Delgado say are badly needed in neighborhoods plagued by violence and poverty. The closures created enemies for the mayor, the members of Mental Health Movement among them.

…

“I found it to be inappropriate,” said Ronda Locke of Rahm’s response. Locke, a former city council candidate, snapped a photo during the exchange. In her campaign for first ward alderwoman, Locke advocated for keeping the clinics open, but said she attended the meeting Wednesday night only as a resident of the area.

“I thought, initially, he handled it very well,” Locke said of the interruption prompted by Ginsberg-Jaeckle and Delgado. “But as (Rahm) was leaving the room, he said something to the effect of ‘Please excuse my special guests.’

It’s unclear if Rahm was making a play on the word special, or was just being a smart-ass, Locke said. Either way he came off smarmy.

…

Locke speculated that Rahm’s attempt to put on a smooth public face was the result of a new, more cuddly, campaign strategy. But it just didn’t work very well Wednesday night. And it doesn’t really matter how nice the mayor is in public if, behind closed doors, he’s screaming at people and getting in their faces.

What are you, you thin skinned bastard?  Mr. Mayor 1%?  F@#king Retarded?

(h/t Atrios)