Tag: Politics

Jun 20 2012

Punting the Pundits

“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.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Kaura Flanders: ‘Jamie Dimon, You’re No Good. The People Need a Robin Hood’

Tuesday June 19th, saw the formal launch of an NNU-led national campaign for the Robin Hood Tax. Not just in DC, but all over the country, nurses and their allies showed up at branches and offices of JP Morgan Chase summoning the spirit of the 13th century British bandit.

As National Nurses United President Rose Ann deMoro explains:  “It’s time to pay up for the damage you have done to our communities and our nation.”

It’s an idea whose time has long since come, they say, and there’s no better time to be talking about it than this moment. The Robin Hood tax, or financial transaction tax (also known as the Tobin tax after the US economist who first proposed a version of it,) would impose a levy on financial transactions, like sales of stocks, bonds and derivatives. It would take from the rich and generate revenues for poor public services, and stymie reckless speculation — like the gamble that lost JP Morgan that missing $2 billion —  in the process.

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Progressive action can move the candidates

After a rough few weeks, filled with disappointing economic news and distracting political gaffes, President Obama finally had a rare throw-down-the-mike moment. In a highly anticipated campaign speech in Ohio last Thursday, he clearly and unequivocally framed the November election as a choice, not simply “between two candidates or two political parties, but between two paths for our country.”

The choice is indeed a stark one: a return to the failed Bush policies of unregulated markets and antitax fundamentalism that served the 1 percent as they failed the country; or concerted government action to rebuild the middle class as the foundation for sustained economic growth. As Obama said, “this is not another trivial Washington argument.”

Allison Kilkenny: Activists Protest G20 While US Media Talk Trivialities

Protests continue in Los Cabos, Mexico, during the G20 summit of world leaders, though learning of these demonstrations-especially if one lives within the United States-is quite a difficult task for consumers of the establishment media.

On Monday, activists unfurled a giant “one trillion dollar” bill to represent the money given in fossil fuel subsidies every year, and the group Avaaz.org says it collected more than 750,000 signatures for a petition calling for a shift to renewable energy.

But rather than discussing environmental policies or austerity measures, NBC’s Chuck Todd obsessed endlessly over the body language between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Obama.

Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto: Obama Boxes in Republicans on Immigration

What do the Republican Party of Texas and the president have in common? Not much of anything, except their support of an immigrant guest worker program. Just over a week before President Obama issued his executive order establishing a work authorization program for undocumented youth, the Texas GOP approved a platform calling on the federal government to implement a guest worker program. While the president did what the Lone Star Republicans asked, I doubt they’ll be sending a “thank you” card anytime soon (they also advocate for the repeal of birthright citizenship for people whose parents are not American citizens).

Republicans now find themselves in a tricky position. Up until last week they could say that they opposed the president on immigration because his reforms came with pathways to citizenship. Amnesty, or a pathway to citizenship, has been the greatest point of contention between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans believe that to give citizenship to those who came to this country illegally as children would reward those who broke the law, even if it was through no fault of their own. And what the president did last week was concede this non-negotiable.

Katha Politt: What’s the Matter With Creationism?

Do you know what the worst thing about the recent Gallup poll on evolution is? It isn’t that 46 percent of respondents are creationists (“God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last ten thousand years or so”). Or that 32 percent believe in “theistic evolution” (“Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process”). Or that only 15 percent said humans evolved and “God had no part in this process.” It isn’t even that the percentage of Americans with creationist views has barely budged since 1982, when it was 44 percent, with a small rise in the no-God vote (up from 9 percent) coming at the expense of the divine-help position (down from 38 percent). Or that 58 percent of Republicans are creationists, although that does explain a lot.

It’s that the proportion of college graduates who are creationists is exactly the same as for the general public. That’s right: 46 percent of Americans with sixteen long years of education under their belt believe the story of Adam and Eve is literally true. Even 25 percent of Americans with graduate degrees believe dinosaurs and humans romped together before Noah’s flood. Needless to say, this remarkable demonstration of educational failure attracts little attention from those who call for improving our schools.

Alice Slater: The Folly of Mindless Science

In 2000, I traveled to India, invited to speak at the organizing meeting of the Indian Coalition for Nuclear and Disarmament and Peace. About 600 organizations, including some 80 from Pakistan gathered in New Delhi to strategize for nuclear disarmament. India had quietly acquired the bomb and performed one nuclear test at Pokhran in 1974 but it was in 1998 that all hell broke out, with India exploding five underground tests, swiftly followed by six in Pakistan.

The trigger for this outbreak of nuclear testing in Asia was the refusal of the US Clinton Administration, under the pressure of the US nuclear weapons scientists, to negotiate a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that precluded laboratory testing and “sub-critical” tests, where plutonium could be blown up underground with chemicals without causing a chain reaction-hence defined as a non-nuclear test by the US and the nuclear club. India warned the nuclear powers at the Commission on Disarmament (CD) where the CTBT was being negotiated, that it opposed the CTBT because it contained discriminatory “loopholes … exploited by some countries to continue their testing activity, using more sophisticated and advanced techniques”, and it would never agree to consensus on the treaty unless the ability to continue high-tech laboratory testing and computer-driven nuclear experiments was foreclosed.

Jun 19 2012

More Pain In Spain

The Greeks choice of staying with the pain of austerity measures may have helped divert a crisis for the Euro Zone, but not for long. There is still Spain.

Spain bailout fears mount

Fears of a full-scale bailout for Spain have mounted as its borrowing costs spiked to danger levels on concern over the nation’s stricken banks and fast-rising debt. [..]

Tapping the markets for the first time since the Greek vote on Sunday, Spain raised 3.04 billion euros, beating its 2.0-3.0 billion euro target in an auction of 12- and 18-month notes.

But it had to pay exorbitant rates to lure investors – 5.074 per cent for 12-month debt and 5.107 per cent for 18-month debt.

The yield on Spanish benchmark 10-year government bonds shattered the 7.0 per cent barrier on Monday for the first time since the creation of the euro in 1999, pushing above 7.2 per cent.

On Tuesday, the yield on 10-year bonds was at 7.003 per cent. [..]

Spanish borrowing costs at ominous levels

Spain, on the edge of losing debt-market access, paid around 200 basis points more in interest rates Tuesday than a month ago to lure investors to its Treasury bill sale, an ominous sign ahead of a critical government bond auction Thursday.

The latest surge in the country’s borrowing costs comes a day after fresh central-bank data showed Spanish lenders were sitting on the highest level of bad loans in 18 years, raising fresh worries over the battered sector’s capital needs.

The Fat Lady isn’t singing yet.

Just an interesting aside about interest rates, David Dayen points out this exchange from today’s House hearings with none other than the Obama administration’s favorite banker, Jaime Dimon:

But the two stars of the show thus far were Democratic Reps. Gary Ackerman and Brad Sherman. Ackerman asked point-blank if there’s any difference between gambling and investing. Dimon replied that with gambling, the house usually won, to which Ackerman quipped “That has been my experience in investing.” But he got at the central point, that hedging, which entails making a bet that would counteract any other actions in the markets, really bears reveals no difference from gambling. He emphasized that “with hedging, if you’re right, only you win, and if you’re wrong, we all lose.” Precisely. There’s no productive business being done with hedging.

Dimon replied to this by saying that they do a lot of other productive business with the rest of their $2 trillion in assets, so the gentleman from New York should kindly shut his mouth (that’s a paraphrase). And Brad Sherman followed up on that very well. He first said that hundreds if not thousands of small businesses need loans, and instead of accommodating them, “you took $350 billion to London.” Sherman added that JPMorgan holds a $14 billion subsidy through their implicit Too Big to Fail guarantee. This elicited an amusing moment, as Dimon said “We borrow in the marketplace, with the smartest people in the world, with 200 basis points over Treasury.” Sherman replied that “after you lost so much money in London, I would be surprised if people lent you money for less than that.”

Well.

Jun 19 2012

Punting the Pundits

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: Egypt’s Democracy Interrupted

he once-promising democratic transition in Egypt is in peril after a power grab by the generals and the courts – holdovers from Hosni Mubarak’s repressive regime. This is not what Egyptians rallied and died for in Tahrir Square. It guarantees more turmoil. Given Egypt’s importance in the Arab world, it sets a terrible example for other societies trying to get beyond autocratic rule. [..]

American officials were right to warn the generals on Monday that they risk losing billions of dollars if they don’t swiftly transfer power to the president, ensure elections for a new Parliament and begin writing a new constitution with help from a broad range of Egyptians. The United States needs to work with Egypt to maintain the peace treaty and a stable border with Israel. But an undemocratic Egypt in perpetual turmoil is no help to its own people or Israel or the rest of the region.

Ari Melber: Do Liberals Support Obama’s Kill List?

President Obama is wielding several security powers that have been historically controversial among Democrats, from indefinitely detaining Guantánamo prisoners to shutting down torture lawsuits as “state secrets” that cannot be addressed in court. There has not been a major Democratic backlash, but all the recent attention on Obama’s “kill list”-a set of targets that has included American citizens as young as 16 years old-seemed like an opening for a new chapter in challenging the administration’s security policies.

For starters, the kill list is just different. Many divisive security measures linked to the Bush administration have been inherently convoluted-Obama’s team had to clean up a mess while developing new policies on the fly. For example, take the Bush-era detainees. Some are difficult to convict in civilian courts because the evidence against them was gathered through torture. Obama supporters understand that the administration’s options are more limited on this score, a predicament Daniel Klaidman stresses in his new chronicle of Obama’s terror policies, Kill or Capture.

The drone program, however, goes far beyond what Bush ever did. It was not required by the past. And it sets a stunning precedent for the future.

Dean Baker: Republicans Love Big Government (So Long as It Serves Big Business)

Last week Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent picked up on a blogpost from Democracy editor Michael Tomasky about how liberals should be touting the merits of “government.” That is a great idea, if the point is to advance the conservatives’ agenda.

It is astounding how happy liberals are to work for the right by implying that conservatives somehow just want to leave markets to themselves whereas the liberals want to bring in the pointy-headed bureaucrats to tell people what they should do. This view is, of course, nonsense. Pick an issue, any issue, and you will almost invariably find the right actively pushing for a big role for government.

However, for conservatives the goal is not ensuring a decent standard of living for the bulk of the population. Rather the goal is ensuring that money is redistributed upward. And, of course, the conservatives are smart enough not to own up to their use of the government. [..]

It is totally understandable that the right would try to conceal the massive extent to which it relies on government to redistribute income upward. It is very hard to figure out why the country’s leading progressive thinkers want to help them.

Simon Johnson: The risk Jamie Dimon poses to the Federal Reserve System’s legitimacy

If Tim Geithner says it’s a problem that the CEO of America’s biggest bank chairs the New York Fed board, be assured it is

The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913, a late arrival to the world of central banks. The American public and banking community had long distrusted the notion that there should be one authority in charge of managing the financial system. At least since the presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s, there had been aversion to giving too much power to one bank. Much of this suspicion of can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson and his belief that that a “financial aristocracy” could take over the newly independent United States. [..]The Federal Reserve System was created in 1913, a late arrival to the world of central banks. The American public and banking community had long distrusted the notion that there should be one authority in charge of managing the financial system. At least since the presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s, there had been aversion to giving too much power to one bank. Much of this suspicion of can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson and his belief that that a “financial aristocracy” could take over the newly independent United States. [..]

Arguably, this system has always been tilted towards over-representing bankers, particularly those based on Wall Street. This issue has become particularly sensitive of late because Jamie Dimon – CEO of JP Morgan Chase, now the largest bank in the country – is a class A director of the New York Fed.

Chris Hedges: Occupy Will Be Back

In every conflict, insurgency, uprising and revolution I have covered as a foreign correspondent, the power elite used periods of dormancy, lulls and setbacks to write off the opposition. This is why obituaries for the Occupy movement are in vogue. And this is why the next groundswell of popular protest-and there will be one-will be labeled as “unexpected,” a “shock” and a “surprise.” The television pundits and talking heads, the columnists and academics who declare the movement dead are as out of touch with reality now as they were on Sept. 17 when New York City’s Zuccotti Park was occupied. Nothing this movement does will ever be seen by them as a success. Nothing it does will ever be good enough. Nothing, short of its dissolution and the funneling of its energy back into the political system, will be considered beneficial.

Those who have the largest megaphones in our corporate state serve the very systems of power we are seeking to topple. They encourage us, whether on Fox or MSNBC, to debate inanities, trivia, gossip or the personal narratives of candidates. They seek to channel legitimate outrage and direct it into the black hole of corporate politics. They spin these silly, useless stories from the “left” or the “right” while ignoring the egregious assault by corporate power on the citizenry, an assault enabled by the Democrats and the Republicans. Don’t waste time watching or listening. They exist to confuse and demoralize you.

Joe Nocera: When ALEC Takes Over Your Town

The Rhode Island State Legislature finally adjourned its 2012 session around 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It had been a brutal last few days.

In May, the State Senate had approved a supplemental property tax increase of 13.8 percent, to be imposed on the residents of Woonsocket, a struggling city with a $10 million deficit. But when the bill moved to the House of Representatives, two conservative Woonsocket representatives refused to go along, and no amount of late-night negotiating could change their minds. Everyone finally gave up and went home.

The state has named a budget commission to grapple with Woonsocket’s money woes. Ultimately, though, a receiver may have to be appointed – which is to say, a person not beholden to the voters, who would nonetheless have the power to abrogate union contracts and do whatever else he or she deems necessary to erase the deficit. Incredibly, the two Woonsocket legislators have pushed for a receiver, despite the pain that it would likely bring their city.

Jun 19 2012

Deep Faults and Lines in the Sand

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Other than the names and faces of the actors, not much is different in either Greece or Egypt after much analyzed and anticipated elections this weekend. In Greece, the center right is still faced with the dilemma of forming and holding together a coalition government to deal with the economic crisis that threatens to take down the Eurozone. While is Egypt, despite the historic election of an Islamic president, the military still maintains a tight control and all the power.

Greek elections: Antonis Samaras faces tough task to forge unity

The fault lines are so deep that even if a government is formed, many believe it will be a miracle if it survives for long

[..]The ambitious politician faces the Herculean labour of forging a government of “national salvation” at a time of unprecedented crisis. Not since the collapse of military rule has the country come so close to resembling a failed state. Following almost three months of political paralysis – before and after an inconclusive poll in May – Greece’s public finances are in tatters, its public administration is in disarray and its austerity-weary people are beaten down. It is now for Samaras to pick up the pieces. [..]

Late on Monday Samaras announced he had agreed with the head of Pasok, Evangelos Venizelos, to build a coalition, with negotiations expected to be concluded by Tuesday. Once bitter political rivals, the socialists, who came in with 12.3% of the vote, say the creation of a government of “national co-responsibility” is vital if Greece is to be steered through the crisis.

Combined, the two parties would control a comfortable majority of 162 seats in the Greek parliament. [..]

But fault lines in Greek society are so deep that even if a government is formed many believe it will be a miracle if it survives for long. To secure further rescue loans Athens has agreed to pass an extra €12bn in budget cuts, measures seen as vital if its economy is to reclaim competitiveness. And on Monday creditors led by Germany appeared in little mood to relent.The fiscal adjustment programme might be relaxed but “only marginally,” several officials said. “Greek society simply cannot endure any more measures,” insisted (New Democracy MP Kyriakos) Mitsotakis. “It’s not a question of what party is in office, it is a fact.”

German Chancellor Andrea Merkel, emboldened by the Greek center right narrow victory, has continued her hard line stand on enforcing the Greek deal

“The Greek government will and must naturally follow through on the commitments that were made,” Ms. Merkel told reporters at the Group of 20 meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico, disappointing those in Athens who hoped for a signal of new flexibility toward Greece in the wake of the vote. “There can be no loosening of the reform steps.”

At least Greece has a Parliament. Egypt on the other hand is once again on the verge of revolution as the Muslim Brotherhood threatens to take to the streets once again in protest over the military usurpation of power:

The ruling generals sought for the first time to sell the public on the decision to dissolve the Brotherhood-led Parliament on the eve of the vote. In a nearly two-hour news conference that was edited before it was televised, two members of the military council insisted that they regretted dissolving Parliament, but that they had been forced by a court ruling from judges appointed by former President Hosni Mubarak.

And although they have now issued an interim Constitution keeping legislative and much of the executive power for themselves – and even said later Monday that they would appoint a general to run the new president’s staff – the generals promised to hold a “grand celebration” when they turned over power as promised at the end of the month. [..]

In their news conference, the generals acknowledged they would have a monopoly on all lawmaking powers as well as control of the national budget. But they said that the new president – they did not name Mr. Morsi – would retain a veto over any new laws and could name the prime minister as well as other cabinet officials.

The generals have not backed away from the initial charter that removed the military and the defense minister from presidential authority and oversight and defended the imposition of martial, arresting and detaining civilians for trials in military courts. They also took it upon themselves to appoint the new president’s chief of staff and revived a special national defense council packed with loyal military officers, charged with overseeing matters of national security. This is not going over very well with the Egyptian people.

The bright spot in all of these travails, the French who gave newly elected president François Hollande a majority in Parliament on Sunday, which is likely only to embolden his drive for more growth-oriented spending and a retreat from German-style austerity. But if everything you hear about Greece and Egypt sound familiar, it is.

Jun 18 2012

Punting the Pundits

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: Greece as Victim

Ever since Greece hit the skids, we’ve heard a lot about what’s wrong with everything Greek. Some of the accusations are true, some are false – but all of them are beside the point. Yes, there are big failings in Greece’s economy, its politics and no doubt its society. But those failings aren’t what caused the crisis that is tearing Greece apart, and threatens to spread across Europe.

No, the origins of this disaster lie farther north, in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin, where officials created a deeply – perhaps fatally – flawed monetary system, then compounded the problems of that system by substituting moralizing for analysis. And the solution to the crisis, if there is one, will have to come from the same places.

New York Times Editorial: Fiscal Cliffs Notes

Word has it that senators from both parties have begun discussing ways to avert the “fiscal cliff” – the tax increases and spending cuts slated to take effect starting in January and totaling some $700 billion next year alone.

More power to them. If Congress does nothing to soften the blow of automatically higher taxes and lower spending, the changes would further devastate the economy and provoke a recession in 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office and private analyses.

On the other hand, if lawmakers decided to undo or delay all of the scheduled changes – in effect, extending today’s policies indefinitely – there would be no progress toward long-term deficit reduction, and that would raise the risk of fiscal crisis in the future.

Matt Taibi: Senators Grovel, Embarrass Themselves at Dimon Hearing

I was unable to watch J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s Senate testimony live the other day, so I had to get up yesterday morning and check it out on the Banking Committee’s web site. I had an inkling, from the generally slavish news reports about the hearing that started to come out Wednesday night, that it would be a hard thing to watch.

But I wasn’t prepared for just how bad it was. If not for Oregon’s Jeff Merkley, who was the only senator who understood the importance of taking the right tone with Dimon, the hearing would have been a total fiasco. Most of the rest of the senators not only supplicated before the blowdried banker like love-struck schoolgirls or hotel bellhops, they also almost all revealed themselves to be total ignoramuses with no grasp of the material they were supposed to be investigating.

Eric Margolis: Dangerous Games in Syria

America’s most vital national security concern is to maintain calm, productive relations with Russia.

The reason is obvious: Russia and the United States have thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on each other. Many are ready to launch in minutes. Compared to this threat, all of America’s other security issues are minor.

Avoiding confrontations with a major nuclear power is obvious. Yet the United States and Russia are ignoring such common sense in their increasingly heated war of words over Syria’s civil war.

John Nichols: Paul Ryan (and Mitt Romney) Versus the Nuns

Paul Ryan has made it clear enough that he’s interested in joining Mitt Romney’s 2012 Republican ticket. [..]

And the consideration will be fully in play on Monday, when Romney rolls his battleground-state bus tour into Ryan’s hometown of Janesville.

Ryan has become something of a defining figure for the bus tour, using media appearances to scope out its theme. In a bombastic statement circulated not by Ryan himself but by the Romney campaign, Ryan says, “On Day One, because we need a new president, Mitt Romney will fix this.” [..]

So it is that, on the day after Romney and Ryan visit Janesville, Catholic nuns will come to town as part of a national “Nuns on the Bus” tour organized to highlight efforts to ease the conditions of low-income Americans. Ryan has tried to suggest that his proposals are in keeping with Catholic social-justice teaching; the nuns do not agree.

Ben Adler: Romney, Republicans in a Bind Over Latinos and Obama’s Immigration Shift

President Obama executed a political masterstroke on Friday morning. He announced that undocumented immigrants brought here as children would be allowed to stay indefinitely if they complete high school or serve in the military. This is essentially the promise of the DREAM Act that Obama has urged Congress to pass and Republicans have blocked. The DREAM Act would offer the security of permanent residency, whereas Obama can only offer renewable work visas without legislation. (The executive branch can decide which undocumented immigrants to deport and which not to, but it cannot unilaterally create a path to citizenship.)  

The DREAM Act is wildly popular among Latinos. The GOP has alienated most Latino voters by harboring an intensely anti-immigration movement on its right wing. Mitt Romney has been shameless about pandering to that element: he won anti-immigration crusader Tom Tancredo’s endorsement in 2008. In the recent Republican primaries he attacked staunch conservatives such as Newt Gingrich from the right on immigration, complaining that Gingrich admitted he had no intention of deporting grandmothers who have been here for over 25 years.

But now Romney is trying to win over Latinos. He recently announced the formation of a Latino outreach team and began sending out press releases in Spanish.

Julia Olmstead: Climate Change, Food Security and the G-20

From north to south, Mexican farmers are facing some of the most severe climate instability they’ve ever confronted. The northern states are suffering from what the Mexican government has called the worst drought the country has ever experienced; rain just won’t fall, and the crops that have been planted have dried up. In the south, they’ve had year after year of devastating floods, the result of which has been devastating topsoil loss on the uniformly hilly terrain

Elias Ventura, a small-holder corn farmer in the state of Oaxaca, told me about the hopelessness of this situation when we sat next to each other yesterday at the seminar IATP is co-hosting this week in Mexico City, “New Paradigms and Public Policies for Agriculture and Global Food Systems,” in advance of next week’s G-20 meeting in Los Cabos, Mexico. He said that he’s had either too much rain, or not enough, and that getting a good harvest under the unpredictable new weather extremes (that he said are the result of climate change) seemed like an impossibility. I asked him if the Mexican government provided any support when his crops failed and he gave me a resolute “No.” Not only would he be without the income that the crop would provide, but his community would have to adjust to a sharp decrease in food availability. This challenge Mexican farmers and rural communities face in the wake of climate change stands in stark contrast to the risk-management program the U.S. Senate has proposed for the 2012 Farm Bill, which would guarantee up to 90 percent of farmers’ revenue if crops fail or prices fall, but there are some similarities.

Jun 18 2012

Elections Egypt, France and Greece: Results

The Greeks have decided to stay the course with the center right and have given a victory to the New Democracy Party headed by Antonis Samaras:

New Democracy narrowly beat Syriza, an alliance of radical leftists, winning 29.53% of the vote against 27.12% for the coalition led by Alexis Tsipras. Samaras called the result a victory for Europe.

“The Greek people today voted for the European course of Greece and that we remain in the euro,” Samaras declared in a victory speech. “This is an important moment for Greece and the rest of Europe,” he insisted, saying that Athens would honour the commitments it made in exchange for rescue loans from the EU and IMF. [..]

Across Greece’s divisive political spectrum there was speculation that Samaras would be able to form a viable coalition with the socialist Pasok and the small Democratic left – parties that have also agreed to accept the onerous terms of bailout funds even if they, too, want to renegotiate the package. [..]

Pro-bailout parties now constitute 50% of the electorate. But with the other half also vehemently opposed to the austerity policies dictated by foreign lenders, Greece’s rollercoaster ride is unlikely to end soon. It is now well into its fifth year of recession, with unemployment at a record 22% and worsening levels of poverty leaving thousands of Greeks destitute and homeless. Resistance to further austerity measures is only going to grow.

In France, exit polls indicate that Socialist Party of François Hollande has won a solid majority in both houses of the Parliament, eliminating the need for a coalition government. The conservative National Front has won four seats. The party leader, Marine Le Pen lost her bid for a seat but her 22 year old niece, Marion Marechal-Le Pen is believed to have been elected in the southern region of Carpentras. Former presidential candidate and M. Hollande’s ex-partner, Ségolène Royal has lost her bid for a seat in the National Assembly.

The Socialists and other left-wing parties came out on top in last Sunday’s first round of the vote, winning 46 per cent to 34 per cent for (former president Nicholas) Sarkozy’s UMP party and its allies. [..]

The polls showed France’s Socialists winning between 287 and 330 seats in Sunday’s runoff vote – almost certainly enough to secure a majority in the 577-seat Assembly. [..]

The Greens, who are close allies of the Socialists and already in government, were expected to win up to 20 seats.

The vote was also a key test for Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigrant and anti-EU National Front (FN), which took 13.6 per cent in the first round; far above the four per cent it won in the last parliamentary election in 2007.

There are no results yet for Egypt. But there is news and it is not good for the Egyptian people no matter who wins. This is the report by Leila Fadel and Ernesto Londoño in the Washington Post:

CAIRO – Shortly after polls in Egypt’s landmark presidential vote closed Sunday night, Egypt’s military leaders issued a constitutional decree that gave the armed forces vast powers and appeared to give the presidency a subservient role.

The declaration, published in the official state gazette, establishes that the president will have no control over the military’s budget or leadership and will not be authorized to declare war without the consent of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.

The document said the military would soon appoint a body to draft a new constitution, which would be put to a public referendum within three months. Once a new charter is in place, an election will be held to chose a parliament that will replace the Islamist-dominated one dissolved Thursday by the country’s top court.

Currently, exit polls show Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi, ahead of former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq in the presidential runoff vote.

Jun 17 2012

Rant of the Week: Jon Stewart

Bank Wankers

After reportedly losing $7 billion on risky investments, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon travels to Capitol Hill to face the mighty Senate Banking Committee.

Eight the hard way is proving riskier than I thought.

It must be fun to be a Republican Senator sometimes, becuase you get the fun of breaking shit and the joy of complaining that the shit you just broke doesn’t work.

Jun 17 2012

Elections Egypt, France and Greece

The Big Three elections that are taking place this weekend in Egypt, France and Greece. The outcome of these elections will not only effect the people of those countries but will have global impact as well.

In Egypt, the second day of voting for president is expected to be heavier than yesterday. Many Egyptians, not trusting the safety of their ballots held overnight, decided to hold off and vote today. Their choices are between between a conservative Islamist, Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hosni Mubarak’s former prime minister and long time friend, Ahmed Shafiq.

The prevailing mood among voters was one of deep anxiety over the future, tinged with bitterness that their revolution had stalled. Moreover, there was a sense of voting fatigue, and fears that no matter who won, street protests would erupt again.

Egyptians have gone to the polls multiple times since Mubarak’s fall on 11 February 2011: a referendum early last year, then three months of multi-round parliamentary elections that began in November, and the first round of presidential elections last month. [..]

The election is supposed to be the last stop in a turbulent transition overseen by the military generals. But even if they nominally hand over some powers to the winner, they will still hold the upper hand over the next president.

The generals are likely to issue an interim constitution defining the president’s authority while they retain their hold on legislative powers, and they will probably appoint a panel to write the permanent constitution.

Since the Mubarak packed Egyptian Supreme Court declared the parliamentary elections unconstitutional and dissolved parliament, the military has imposed martial law. Without a parliament, military council and the new president will get to write the constitution. This is not what the Egyptian people took to the streets planned or want. As Egyptian activist Mona Eltahawy said on Twitter: the choice is between the fascists with guns or the fascist with god.

In France, parliamentary elections are today. French citizens living outside France voted yesterday at consulates around the world. These elections will determine how much clout newly elected President François Hollande’s socialist government will have to get France and Europe out of the economic doldrums with a stimulus package from the EU. Much depends on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and just how much she will budge. So far, despite her party’s losses in state elections, it looks like she has dug her heels in forcing unwanted, and admittedly counterproductive, austerity measures on everyone.

The Socialists need 289 MPs in the 577-seat house for an absolute majority, which would allow Hollande to implement his manifesto with relative ease. The broad French left dominated the first-round vote on 10 June, and polls suggest a Socialist absolute majority is possible, though not a certainty.

Even if Hollande’s party does not quite win a majority alone, it looks likely to be able to make up the numbers by forming a partnership with the Greens, with whom it has an electoral accord. This would avoid Hollande having to depend on more hardline leftists who oppose key elements of his programme.

Much will depend on voter turnout. This is the fourth election in France in two months, after the two-round presidential race. Turnout in the first-round parliamentary vote on 10 June was 57%, the lowest since 1958.

One of the key issues is whether the far-right Front National can win seats and sit in parliament for the first time since 1986. The last FN deputy was elected in 1997, but the result was later annulled over funding irregularities.

And probably the most important election is taking place in Greece where a win for the far left Syriza Party may drastically change the austerity policies that have created a humanitarian crisis.

The Guardian has documented the humanitarian catastrophe that followed. Soup kitchens for the middle class, a huge jump in homelessness and mental disease, daily suicides, lack of basic medicines, cancer patients turned away from pharmacies, and hospitals ceasing operation because of a lack of basic supplies. The question on Sunday is not between the euro and the drachma, but between the continuation of these policies or salvation from the greatest destruction a people have experienced in peacetime. If something is leading to the exit from the euro, a probable collapse of the eurozone and a possible world crisis of 1930s magnitude, is not the Syriza policies but extreme austerity and mad economic recipes.

Syriza is totally committed to the eurozone. Its manifesto promises an immediate repeal of all laws enacted by the Greek government after the bailouts. Some of the measures affecting the private sector were never demanded by the troika – the EU, IMF and the European Central Bank – and were introduced by the establishment parties. After that, negotiations will start for a substantial reduction of the debt, which may be followed by a moratorium on servicing the debt until the economy starts growing again.

In a highly symbolic move, the minimum wage and unemployment benefit will return to their pre-austerity levels. Syriza’s anti-austerity and pro-Europe policies represent the best interests of the Greek people.

Many of the results will be available later today, some later in the week since most of these elections are done with paper ballots which take time to count and confirm. We will bring the results and analysis of their impact as they are posted.

Jun 17 2012

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Chris Hayes: Chris announced that two of his guests would be Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Rolling Stone contributor Michael Hastings.

The Melissa Harris-Perry Show: The list of guests was not available.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Sunday’s guests are White House senior adviser David Plouffe.

The roundtable debates all the week’s politics, with Romney national campaign co-chair and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, ABC News’ George Will, political strategist and ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd, former Obama economic adviser and ABC News consultant Austan Goolsbee, and editor and publisher of The Nation Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are former Vermont Governor and 2004 Democratic Presidential Candidate Howard Dean and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC),

His roundtable guests are The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan, National Review & TIME Magazine’s Richard Lowry, CBS News Political Correspondent Jan Crawford and CBS News Political Director John Dickerson

The Chris Matthews Show: This week’s guests Liz Marlantes, The Christian Science Monitor; David Ignatius, The Washington Post Columnist; Howard Fineman, The Huffington Post Senior Political Editor; and Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News Capitol Hill Correspondent.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Making appearances on MTP are White House senior adviser, David Plouffe, and the man who ran against Obama in 2008, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

The roundtable guests are associate editor at The Washington Post and author of the new biography “Barack Obama: The Story,” David Maraniss; presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin; TIME‘s Mark Halperin; Fmr. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN); and the Wall Street Journal‘s Kim Strassel.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Guests will include White House Senior Adviser, David Plouffe; former presidential candidate Rick Santorum; Senator John Barrasso (R-WY); the Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD); Matt Bai of the New York Times and Jessica Yellin, CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent.

Jun 16 2012

Punting the Pundits

“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”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: A Step Toward a Dream

The Obama administration’s decision to allow as many as 800,000 young immigrants avoid deportation and apply for work permits makes perfect sense. It wisely rescues blameless young people from legal limbo in an immigration system marked by dysfunction and toxic politics.

Before the fog sets in – with the predictable Republican outrage and the distortions of an election year – it is important to be clear that this move does not offer amnesty and has nothing to do with green cards or a path to citizenship. [..]

If this reminds you of the Dream Act, it should. The Dream Act is a bill in Congress to give legal status to young immigrants who go to college or serve in the military. It has long been stalled by Republicans who oppose relief of any sort for people without papers. Those who were complaining about Mr. Obama’s action on Friday should acknowledge that Congress could have taken on this job, but immigration extremists have not allowed it.

William K. Black: The JOBS Act and Green Slime

We learned recently about the secret adulteration of our hamburgers with “pink slime.” Agribusiness companies created pink slime from ultra-fatty beef tissue that was more likely to harbor salmonella and e coli. They processed it with ammonia (Mr. Clean) in a partially successful effort to reduce the risk of infecting the consumer. Pink slime, unbeknownst to the public, comprised up to 15% of our hamburgers.

The financial sector is far worse. Pink slime represented a relatively small portion of each burger and generally did not make the consumer sick. In the financial sector, “green slime”-slime with the color of money-came to dominate entire sectors, and it always caused severe damage. “Liar’s loans,” made without the lender verifying the borrower’s actual income, were 90% fraudulent. Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), securities giving their owners claim to a part of debtors’ interest payments, were typically composed overwhelmingly of fraudulent liar’s loans. It was lenders who overwhelmingly put the lies in liar’s loans, issuing loans that were nothing more than “green slime” and then turning around and selling them as Grade A Prime cuts.

Robert Reich: Why the Economy Can’t Get Out of First Gear

Rarely in history has the cause of a major economic problem been so clear yet have so few been willing to see it.

The major reason this recovery has been so anemic is not Europe’s debt crisis. It’s not Japan’s tsumami. It’s not Wall Street’s continuing excesses. It’s not, as right-wing economists tell us, because taxes are too high on corporations and the rich, and safety nets are too generous to the needy. It’s not even, as some liberals contend, because the Obama administration hasn’t spent enough on a temporary Keynesian stimulus.

The answer is in front of our faces. It’s because American consumers, whose spending is 70 percent of economic activity, don’t have the dough to buy enough to boost the economy – and they can no longer borrow like they could before the crash of 2008.

George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling: Economics and Morality: Paul Krugman’s Framing

In his June 11, 2012, op-ed in The New York Times, Paul Krugman goes beyond economic analysis to bring up the morality and the conceptual framing that determines economic policy. He speaks of “the people the economy is supposed to serve” – “the unemployed,” and “workers” – and “the mentality that sees economic pain as somehow redeeming.”

Krugman is right to bring these matters up. Markets are not provided by nature. They are constructed – by laws, rules and institutions. All of these have moral bases of one sort or another. Hence, all markets are moral, according to someone’s sense of morality. The only question is, whose morality? In contemporary America, it is conservative versus progressive morality that governs forms of economic policy. The systems of morality behind economic policies need to be discussed.

Alexander Cockburn: Cuomo’s Marijuana Proposal

Last week there was much rejoicing when Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, flanked by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, came out in support of ending the practice of arresting individuals for possessing small amounts of marijuana in public view.

The details here are very important. These arrests come in consequence of stop-and-frisk police powers — used across the country — otherwise known as a Terry stop (OK’d by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1968) under which a cop may briefly detain a person upon reasonable suspicion of involvement in a crime but short of probable cause to arrest. When a search for weapons is also authorized, the procedure is known as a stop-and-frisk. [..]

Obviously, anything that crimps the cops’ lawless actions is good. Maybe there are future Obamas who will be able to keep a misdemeanor off their record. But let’s retain our sense of reality. “Together, we are making New York fairer and safer, and ensuring that every New Yorker has access to a justice system that doesn’t discriminate based on age or color,” said Cuomo last week. Doesn’t discriminate? In the first three months of 2012, the police stopped 203,500 New Yorkers. Commissioner Kelly obviously didn’t feel he faced a mutiny by his men, an inventive lot when it comes to construing the law. Don’t forget. Drug policy in the U.S. is about social control. That’s the name of the game.

Gail Collins: Running on Empty

Our biggest political division is the war between the empty places and the crowded places.

It’s natural. People who live in crowded places tend to appreciate government. It’s the thing that sets boundaries on public behavior, protects them from burglars and cleans the streets. If anything, they’d like it to do more. (That pothole’s been there for a year!) The people who live in empty places don’t see the point. If a burglar decides to break in, that’s what they’ve got guns for. Other folks don’t get in their way because their way is really, really remote. Who needs government? It just makes trouble and costs money. [..]

This fall, the Republican Party is going to be running on the Empty Places war cry, and it’s ironic that Mitt Romney’s supposed to be the one to lead the charge. Maybe he’ll one-up Perry and find four federal agencies to promise to close. Maybe he’ll bag a deer. Or a moose. They’re serious this time around.

Joe Nocera: The Safest Bank

We’re counterprogramming today.

This is not another column about the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, the one and only Jamie Dimon. I mean, what’s left to say after his appearance this week before the Senate Banking Committee? With the senators unwilling to ask even mildly probing questions about the trades that cost the bank billions – hoping, no doubt, to be rewarded with JPMorgan campaign contributions – you could practically see Dimon regaining his old swagger with every passing minute.

Instead, let’s focus on a bank chief executive devoid of swagger. An executive who doesn’t denigrate the importance of regulation. Who has actually come out in favor of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And who doesn’t view banks as institutions that should be taking supercharged risks hoping to make supercharged returns for shareholders. I’m talking about Vikram Pandit of Citigroup. The Times’s Ben Protess once labeled him the anti-Dimon. Bingo.

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