Tag: TMC Politics

Sep 01 2011

Roubini: We”re Going Into A Second Recession”

Nouriel Roubini: “we’re going into a recession”

Bloomberg TV’s Margaret Brennan speaks to Nouriel Roubini, co-founder and chairman of Roubini Global Economics LLC. Roubini tells Brennan, “we’re going into a recession based on my numbers” and that the Federal Reserve and other authorities no longer have the ability to provide emergency support.

There seems to a consensus here. Just last week Nobel Prize winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz told Bloomberg the same thing:

“The unemployment situation in the U.S. is very severe and very probably going to get worse,” Stiglitz told reporters today at a conference in Lindau, Germany. “There’s a very high probability we’ll go into double dip.”

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Stiglitz said calls by policy makers to engage in deficit- cutting austerity measures were heading in “exactly the wrong direction.”

“The most important way to address the deficit is to get America back to work, to get the economy back to full employment,” Stiglitz said at an annual gathering of Nobel Prize-winning economists. “Austerity is going to get us predictably into trouble. Spend the money on investments, and those investments will lead to higher growth.”

Two other points were made about the current economic crisis by Paul Krugman. One is that the economy has not really recovered and that the Federal Reserve needs to take firmer action to stimulate job growth. The non-recovery is best illustrated with this chart provided by Krugman:

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Krugman’s second point is about debt, federal and personal, that there has not been an explosion in debt over the past few years

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There have been hints about President Obama’s jobs plan that he will present to a joint session of Congress Thursday night but it needs to be big and bold but that’s doubtful with this president.

Sep 01 2011

Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Worst Persons 8.30.11

Countdown with Keith Olbermann 08-30-2011 – Worst Persons

Aug 31 2011

FDIC Objects to BoA Bailout & Files Suit

Well, well, this is getting juicy. The FDIC has filed a lawsuit objecting to the $8.5 billion bail out of the Bank of America:

The FDIC, the receiver for failed banks, owns securities covered by the settlement and said it doesn’t have enough information to evaluate the accord, according to a filing yesterday in federal court in Manhattan.

Under the agreement, Bank of America would pay $8.5 billion to resolve claims from investors in Countrywide Financial Corp. mortgage bonds. The settlement was negotiated with a group of institutional investors, including BlackRock Inc. (BLK) and Pacific Investment Management Co. LLC, and would apply to investors outside that group.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BK), the trustee for the mortgage-securitization trusts covered by the agreement, has asked a New York state judge to approve the settlement in November. An investor group is trying to move the case to federal court, which Bank of New York opposes.

Investors that would be bound by the settlement, including American International Group Inc., have criticized the deal and Bank of New York’s role representing investors in the mortgage bonds. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden have sought to intervene in the case and asked the court to reject it.

The Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has further upped the ante:

The attorney general of Nevada is accusing Bank of America of repeatedly violating a broad loan modification agreement it struck with state officials in October 2008 and is seeking to rip up the deal so that the state can proceed with a suit against the bank over allegations of deceptive lending, marketing and loan servicing practices.

In a complaint filed Tuesday in United States District Court in Reno, Catherine Cortez Masto, the Nevada attorney general, asked a judge for permission to end Nevada’s participation in the settlement agreement. This would allow her to sue the bank over what the complaint says were dubious practices uncovered by her office in an investigation that began in 2009.

In her filing, Ms. Masto contends that Bank of America raised interest rates on troubled borrowers when modifying their loans even though the bank had promised in the settlement to lower them. The bank also failed to provide loan modifications to qualified homeowners as required under the deal, improperly proceeded with foreclosures even as borrowers’ modification requests were pending and failed to meet the settlement’s 60-day requirement on granting new loan terms, instead allowing months and in some cases more than a year to go by with no resolution, the filing says.

The complaint says such practices violated an agreement Bank of America reached in the fall of 2008 with several states and later, in 2009, with Nevada, to settle lawsuits that accused its Countrywide unit of predatory lending. As the credit crisis grew, the settlement was heralded as a victory by state offices eager to help keep troubled borrowers in their homes and reduce their costs. Bank of America set aside $8.4 billion in the deal and agreed to help 400,000 troubled borrowers with loan modifications and other financial relief, such as lowering interest rates on mortgages.

I’ll bet you this has Obama and the remaining AG’s panties in a twist, since, according to rumors they were looking to settle this by Labor Day.

Here’s the link to the FDIC’s brief:

FDIC Objection to Bank of America Mortgage Settlement

Aug 31 2011

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”.

Paul Krugman: Europe’s Crisis of Currencies

John Plender, a columnist at The Financial Times, seems mystified by something that has become obvious lately: Bond vigilantes are only going after countries that no longer have their own currencies.

In a column published on Aug. 16 he writes: “The underlying logic is that no country defaults on its domestic bonds if it retains the right to set the printing presses in motion. Yet it seems counterintuitive that bond markets, with their traditional fear of inflation, should punish a country for not being able to debase its currency.”

Oddly, he seems unaware of the pretty good explanation offered by Paul DeGrauwe, an economist and researcher at the Center for European Policy Studies, which I’ve sketched out a bit further.

New York Times Editorial: The New Resentment of the Poor

In a decade of frenzied tax-cutting for the rich, the Republican Party just happened to lower tax rates for the poor, as well. Now several of the party’s most prominent presidential candidates and lawmakers want to correct that oversight and raise taxes on the poor and the working class, while protecting the rich, of course.

These Republican leaders, who think nothing of widening tax loopholes for corporations and multimillion-dollar estates, are offended by the idea that people making less than $40,000 might benefit from the progressive tax code. They are infuriated by the earned income tax credit (the pride of Ronald Reagan), which has become the biggest and most effective antipoverty program by giving working families thousands of dollars a year in tax refunds. They scoff at continuing President Obama’s payroll tax cut, which is tilted toward low- and middle-income workers and expires in December.

Amy Goodman: Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Dark Art of Propaganda

“When one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it,” wrote Joseph Goebbels, Germany’s Reich minister of propaganda, in 1941. Former Vice President Dick Cheney seems to have taken the famous Nazi’s advice in his new book, “In My Time.” Cheney remains staunch in his convictions on issues from the invasion of Iraq to the use of torture. Telling NBC News in an interview that “there are gonna be heads exploding all over Washington” as a result of the revelations in the book, Cheney’s memoir follows one by his colleague and friend Donald Rumsfeld. As each promotes his own version of history, there are people challenging and confronting them.

Maureen Dowd: What Price Life?

So the big, bad storm huffed and puffed and didn’t blow all the houses in.

Reversing Katrina, on the sixth anniversary of that shameful episode in American history, the response to Irene was more powerful than Irene.

And that made some solipsistic Gothamites who missed their subways and restaurants grouchy. There is no greater abuse to New Yorkers than inconvenience.

Once the storm became “Apocalypse Not,” as The New York Post called it, there were those who accused Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey of overreacting to make up for their infamous underreactions to last year’s Christmas blizzard, when Hizzoner was baking in Bermuda and the Guv was playing at Disney World in Florida with his family.

Eugene Robinson: Jobs: Go Big or Go Home

President Obama’s promised jobs plan needs to be unrealistic and unreasonable, at the very least. If he can crank it all the way up to unimaginable, that would be even better.

This is a moment for the president to suppress his reflex for pre-emptive compromise. The unemployment crisis is so deep and self-perpetuating that only a big, surprising, over-the-top jobs initiative could have real impact. Boldness will serve the nation well-and, coincidentally, boost Obama’s re-election prospects.

The political calculus is pretty simple. If voters base their decision on the state of the economy on Election Day, Obama is in trouble. Even the most optimistic scenarios predict that unemployment will still be above 8 percent next fall. These rosy projections envision month after month of painfully slow growth, the kind that is barely discernible. Pessimists see another dip into recession.

Richard Eskow: Eight Reasons Why Raising the Medicare Age Is the Worst Presidential “Bargain” Since 1854

When it comes to the “Grand Bargain” they’re pushing in Washington, the movie posters for The Fly said it best: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Other people are using our lives as bargaining chips. Whether it’s the so-called Congressional “Super Committee” or the President’s push for that grandé-sized deal, they want to look “grand” while we get stuck with the “bargain.”

The Capital’s misplaced focus on austerity has led to plenty of bad ideas, but one of the worst is raising the Medicare retirement age to 67. It may be the most destructive deal to come out of Washington since the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. It’s unfair, short-sighted, and will actually cost the economy more money than we’re spending today.

No Democratic President would accept an idea like that, right? Right?

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Aug 31 2011

Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Worst Persons 8.29.11

Worst Persons: Obama’s Roberto Arango and Eric Cantor

Find out why the Obama administration is WORSE; Roberto Arango, former leader of the governing PNP in the Puerto Rican Senate, is WORSER; and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for Aug. 29, 2011.

Aug 30 2011

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”.

Dean Baker: President Obama’s Job Creation Mirage

We’ve heard plenty about Obama’s post Labor Day job creation speech, but will it contain anything that might actually work?

President Obama has discovered how serious the recession is. That’s what he told an audience in Chicago last week. To be fair, he was referring to revised data from the commerce department showing that the falloff in GDP was larger than originally reported.

But ridicule is appropriate. He and we knew all along how many people were out of work. The employment numbers told us the size of the hole and the desperate need for government action.

This sort of ridiculous comment, and President Obama’s weak response to the recession over the first two and a half years of his presidency, explains the tidal wave of scepticism facing his widely hyped upcoming speech on jobs after the Labor Day weekend. The list of remedies leaked ahead of time does little to inspire hope.

Glen Greenwald: The Decade’s Biggest Scam

The Los Angeles Times examines the staggering sums of money expended on patently absurd domestic “homeland security” projects: $75 billion per year for things such as a Zodiac boat with side-scan sonar to respond to a potential attack on a lake in tiny Keith County, Nebraska, and hundreds of “9-ton BearCat armored vehicles, complete with turret” to guard against things like an attack on DreamWorks in Los Angeles.  All of that — which is independent of the exponentially greater sums spent on foreign wars, occupations, bombings, and the vast array of weaponry and private contractors to support it all — is in response to this mammoth, existential, the-single-greatest-challenge-of-our-generation threat:

“The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It’s basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year,” said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

Last year, McClatchy characterized this threat in similar terms: “undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism.”  The March, 2011, Harper’s Index expressed the point this way: “Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8 — Minimum number who died after being struck by lightning: 29.”  That’s the threat in the name of which a vast domestic Security State is constructed, wars and other attacks are and continue to be launched, and trillions of dollars are transferred to the private security and defense contracting industry at exactly the time that Americans — even as they face massive wealth inequality — are told that they must sacrifice basic economic security because of budgetary constraints.

Chris Hedges: The Election March of the Trolls

We have begun the election march of the trolls. They have crawled out of the sewers of public relations firms, polling organizations, the commercial media, the two corporate political parties and elected office to fill the airwaves with inanities and absurdities until the final inanity-the 2012 presidential election. Journalists, whose role has been reduced to purveyors of court gossip, whether on Fox or MSNBC, descend in swarms to report pseudo-events such as the Ames straw poll, where it costs $30 to cast a ballot. And then, almost immediately, they blithely inform us that the Iowa poll is meaningless now that Rick Perry has entered the race. The liberal trolls, as they do in every election cycle, are beating their little chests about the perfidiousness of the Democratic Party and Barack Obama. It is a gesture performed not to effect change but to burnish their credentials as moralists. They know, as do we, that they will trot obediently into the voting booth in 2012 to do as they are told. And everywhere the pulse of the nation is being assiduously monitored through polls and focus groups, not because our opinions matter, but because our troll candidates understand that by parroting back to us our own viewpoints they can continue to spend their days lapping up corporate money with other trolls in the two houses of Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and television studios where they chat with troll celebrity journalists.

The only commodity the troll state offers is fear. The corporate trolls, such as the Koch brothers, terrify the birthers, creationists, militia lovers, tea party militants, right-to-life advocates, Christian fascists and God-fearing red-white-and-blue patriots by proclaiming that unless they vote for Perry or Mitt Romney or Michele Bachmann or some other product of the lunatic fringe of our political establishment, the American family will be destroyed, our children will be corrupted and the country will turn socialist. Barack Obama, who they whisper is a closet Muslim, will take away their guns, raise their taxes and bring homosexual couples into kindergartens.

George Zornick: Fear, Inc.: America’s Islamophobia Network

At this time last year, as the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks approached, the country was gripped by a pernicious debate over a “mosque” (really, an Islamic cultural center) near Ground Zero in New York City.

Pushback against the project actually began months earlier and was led by a group called Stop Islamization of America, which launched “Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!” in May 2010. The group’s founder, Pamela Geller, charged that “this is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem.” The group’s co-director, Robert Spencer, helped Geller organize rallies and protest campaigns aimed at a lower Manhattan community board, which reported getting “hundreds and hundreds” of calls and e-mails from around the world as a result of the well-funded and highly coordinated campaign.

David Sirota: 25 Years Later, How ‘Top Gun’ Made America Love War

Americans are souring on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military budget is under siege as Congress looks for spending to cut. And the Army is reporting record suicide rates among soldiers. So who does the Pentagon enlist for help in such painful circumstances?

Hollywood.

In June, the Army negotiated a first-of-its-kind sponsorship deal with the producers of “X-Men: First Class,” backing it up with ads telling potential recruits that they could live out superhero fantasies on real-life battlefields. Then, in recent days, word leaked that the White House has been working with Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow on an election-year film chronicling the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.

A country questioning its overall military posture, and a military establishment engaging in a counter-campaign for hearts and minds – if this feels like deja vu, that’s because it’s taking place on the 25th anniversary of the release of “Top Gun.”

Aug 30 2011

Countdown with Keith Olbermann: Worst Persons 8.26.11

Find out why television evangelist Pat Robertson is WORSE, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is WORSER, and Arizona state Sen. Frank Antenori is the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for August 26, 2011.

Aug 29 2011

Obama Corruption: Cover Up of Banking Fraud

Recent attempts by the Obama administration to persuade New York State Attorney General Eric

Schneiderman to sign off on the 50 state agreement that was being brokered by Iowa AG has resulted in Schneiderman being removed from the panel last week. In the on going power play to get Schneiderman to play ball with an agreement that would allow the banks to get away with a piteous fine and protection from any litigation regarding fraudulent foreclosures, Matt Stoller, formerly of Open Left and former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson, writes a revealing article at Naked Capitalism that examines President Obama and AG Tom Miller dishonesty in the negotiations and their need to squash Schneiderman’s investigations. Stoller argues that all the parties are doing what they think is right not because any of them must but because it is their choice. While it can be said that is somewhat true, there is the matter of law that they have all sworn to uphold. Scheiderman seems to be the one of the few, along with Delaware AG Beau Biden and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who is doing just that:

The banking system is really at the heart of our politics, which is why it’s such a great test of one’s political theory of change. I’ve been following the foreclosure fraud story for a few years now, because it’s the tail end of a massive economy-wide fraud scheme that started as early as 2003. The securitization chain failure can’t be put back in the bottle, the housing system it collapsed is simply too big to bail. So elites keep trying to patch this up the way they have everything else. It isn’t working. And their scheme has been obvious and obviously dishonest. Along with Obama (who I criticized as empty as early as 2004, ratcheting this up to dishonest and authoritarian by 2006-2007), I pointed out that Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller was engaged in serious bad faith only a few months after the negotiations started.

I’m no genius, I just listened to what these people actually said and did. Obama mocks the idea that he is an honest politician, overtly, lying about NAFTA and FISA very early on in power. Miller lied to activists about being willing to put bankers in jail, and then said he was negotiating with banks in secret. It was overt. For Miller, as with Obama, few people really picked up on the lies until recently. Iowa activists who heckled Miller got it, as did Naked Capitalism readers. Now it’s becoming more and more obvious. That’s just how it is, I suppose, people in the establishment are paid to not notice corruption until the harsh glare is too bright.

The crazy thing is that robosigning is apparently still going on. Right now, the “settlement” talks are the equivalent of law enforcement negotiating with a serial killer over whether he’ll get a parking ticket, even as he continually sprays bullets into the neighborhood. Even having these “settlement” talks when the actual crimes haven’t been investigated or a complaint hasn’t been registered should be example enough that this process is rigged as badly as Dodd-Frank. It should not be a surprise that the administration is putting pressure on Eric Schneiderman, that Tom Miller is kicking him out of the club house. That’s who these people are. It’s what they believe in. Just as it should not be a surprise, though it is laudable, that Schneiderman isn’t knuckling under to the administration. I suspect he probably is laughing at the idiocy of Miller’s pressure tactic. I mean, this is a guy going up some of the most powerful entities in the United States: Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, the New York Fed, etc. And the Iowa Attorney General isn’t going let him on conference calls? Mmmkay.

Stoller doesn’t end there with his indictment of the corruption and sell out to the banks. He call out the failure of Obama’s policy agenda in the wake of the 2010 defeats as a wake up call to Democrats and the party:

From 2006-2008, the Bush administration’s failures crashed down upon conservatives, and they in many ways could not cope. But their intellectual collapse was bailed out by Obama. Faux liberals are seeing their grand experiment in tatters, though right now they can only admit to feeling disappointed because the recognition that they have been swindled is far too painful. And the recognition for many of the professionals is even more difficult, because they must recognize that they have helped swindle many others and acknowledge the debt they have incurred to their victims. The signs of coming betrayal were there, but in the end it all comes down to judging people based on what they do and who they choose as opponents. And this Democratic partisans did not do, choosing instead a comfortable delusional fantasy-land where foreclosures don’t matter and theft enabled by Obama (and Clinton before him) doesn’t matter.

Ouch.

Of course there is always the possibility that a “minor player” such as Schneiderman can be easily taken down with an overblown personal scandal, as was former NY AG and governor, Eliot Spitzer. Schneiderman seems unfazed and unmoved by the threats and accusations that he undermining a bogus settlement with the banks that would help thousands of homeowners. And after the failures of other programs, such as HAMP, who is really going to believe that this is the cure?

The latest development in this on going battle for a realistic Main St rescue came when John O’Brien, Registry of Deeds for Southern Essex County in Massachusetts is requested that Iowa AG Tom Miller step down:

Schneidernan getting kicked off the committee should come as no surprise to anyone following the foreclosure negotiations and is sickeningly similar to Pam Bondi, Florida’s Attorney General firing Theresa Edwards and June Clarkson, who were heading up investigations on a series of mortgage related crimes for over a year.

While Bondi insists that the firings were a result of poor job performance, Miller points more towards attitude and that Schneiderman is somehow not a team player.

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This is like Pam Bondi firing the two assistant AGs in Florida,” O’Brien said. “Miller claims that Schneiderman was undermining the negotiations. Why wouldn’t he since the negotiations are far from being in the best interest of homeowners and the general public? This settlement clearly favors the banks and I’m one hundred percent behind Eric Schneiderman. This is an outrage and they are beginning the process of selling the American people down the drain I say Miller should step down and all AGs should be appalled at what has happened.”

Schneiderman’s removal will likely make it easier for state and federal officials to reach an accord with the five banks. However, the potential amount of money they’ll be able to extract will likely decrease.

American Banker posted the 27 term sheet of the negotiations presented to the banks with major servicing operations by the AGs and Federal Banking Regulators.

The deal completely handcuffs state attorneys general whose constituents are suffering serious economic damage as a result of the foreclosure fiasco and fraud by the banks and servicers.

When the investigation into robo-signing and fraud, Tom Miller had a brief moment of righteous advocacy until he received $261,445 in campaign contributions from out-of-state law firms and donors from the finance, insurance, and real estate sector shortly after he announced he was seeking criminal charges and retribution from the banks for mortgage fraud — that’s 88 times what he has received in the past decade.

Nice pay off, Tom. Now, I wonder what Barack’s campaign is getting?

Aug 29 2011

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”.

Paul Krugman: Republicans Against Science

Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. – namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

To see what Mr. Huntsman means, consider recent statements by the two men who actually are serious contenders for the G.O.P. nomination: Rick Perry and Mitt Romney.

New York Times Editorial: The Nation’s Cruelest Immigration Law

The Alabama Legislature opened its session on March 1 on a note of humility and compassion. In the Senate, a Christian pastor asked God to grant members “wisdom and discernment” to do what is right. “Not what’s right in their own eyes,” he said, “but what’s right according to your word.” Soon after, both houses passed, and the governor signed, the country’s cruelest, most unforgiving immigration law.

The law, which takes effect Sept. 1, is so inhumane that four Alabama church leaders – an Episcopal bishop, a Methodist bishop and a Roman Catholic archbishop and bishop – have sued to block it, saying it criminalizes acts of Christian compassion. It is a sweeping attempt to terrorize undocumented immigrants in every aspect of their lives, and to make potential criminals of anyone who may work or live with them or show them kindness.

John NIchols: The Chapter That Went Missing From Dick Cheney’s Book

Dick Cheney’s hyper-hyped autobiography is short on revelations (it turns out that the “secret undisclosed location” was his house) but long, very long, on excuse making when it comes to the wars of whim into which he steered the United States. The former vice president is still sure there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, dismissing any talk of apologizing for his own weapons of mass deception pontificating in the run-up to the Iraq War. In fact, Cheney remains enthusiastic about every aspect of the wars of whim he steered the country into as Ronald Reagan’s chief congressional ally during the Iran-Contra scandal, George H.W. Bush’s hapless secretary of defense and George W. Bush’s neoconman prince regent, But where’s the chapter on Cheney’s heroic service in Vietnam? Of, that’s right, he had “other priorities” than responding to draft notices.

Try as readers may to find the tale of Cheney’s Vietnam service or, to be more precise, his meticulous avoidance of service, they just won’t find that In My Times offers much in the way of revelation about Cheney’s times.

Cheney has always positioned himself as an arch militarist. But when he had a chance to get on the frontlines, he instead deferments. A lot of them

MIchelle Chen: Migrants in Limbo as Libyan Revolution Reaches Endgame

As the Libyan uprising reaches its climax, gun battles flare, bodies pile up in hospitals, and the capital is paralyzed in fear. And somewhere in the revolutionary endgame, outsiders who have no part in either side of the upheaval find their lives hanging in the balance. Masses of migrant workers, part of a stream of cheap labor that poured in from Asia and Africa during Libya’s boom years, helped build Gaddafi’s oil empire, witnessed its rapid demise and could end up helping rebuild the country from ruins.

Following the rebels’ entry into the capital, the International Organization for Migration has been working to ferry out migrants stranded in Tripoli, though it reported being stalled for a few days due to security concerns. The IOM reported Friday it had picked up a group that included “Egyptians, Filipinos, Canadians, Algerians, Moroccans and an Italian.” But many more migrants remain besieged, and the IOM has sent another boat to retrieve more workers, including possibly those living on the outskirts of Tripoli, where many of the workers from sub-Saharan Africa are concentrated.

Simon Balto: Hurricane Katrina, Martin Luther King, and the Violence of US Racial History

Had Hurricane Irene not intervened on events in Washington, this weekend would have seen an expected quarter of a million people on hand in D.C. to witness the official dedication of the memorial in Washington, D.C. to honor Dr. Martin Luther King. In a nod to civil rights history, planners of the dedication ceremony purposefully scheduled it for this Sunday, August 28, in order that it would coincide with the forty-eighth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, at which King delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. The looming threat of the storm unfortunately forced the postponement of the event, which will now be held sometime a bit later this fall, but the scheduled date of the event and the organizers’ efforts to entwine the past and the present are nevertheless significant. Within the context of U.S. racial history, the ceremony promised to be of epic symbolic proportions, with Barack Obama-the nation’s first black president and, for many, the ostensible realization of King’s integrationist dreams-providing remarks on the legacies and meanings of King and his fellow civil rights crusaders. Obama-as-the-fulfillment-of-King’s-dream is, of course, an erroneous and reductive formulation, as if the latter’s visions were either so racially provincial or electorally minded as to be satiated by the image of a black man holding the country’s highest office. Obama’s election represents progress, to be sure, but of a bounded sort that does little in and of itself to realize King’s visions of the possible. Indeed, what King fought for, with mounting urgency and an increasingly global and capacious rendering of the “beloved community,” was the revaluation and restructuring of political and social values and priorities. The point was not to see a black man elected to the presidency; it was to fundamentally reconfigure the nature of an increasingly reckless, intransigent, and immoral power structure in the United States.

Ted Rall: 9/11: Ten Years Later, Americans Still Stupid and Vulnerable

They say everything changed on 9/11. No one can dispute that. But we didn’t learn anything.

Like other events that forced Americans to reassess their national priorities (the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, Sputnik) the attacks on New York and Washington were a traumatic, teachable moment.

The collective attention of the nation was finally focused upon problems that had gone neglected for many years. 9/11 was a chance to get smart-but we blew it.

First and foremost the attacks gave the United States a rare opportunity to reset its international reputation. Even countries known for anti-Americanism offered their support. “We are all Americans,” ran the headline of the French newspaper Le Monde.

The century of U.S. foreign policy that led to 9/11-supporting dictators, crushing democratic movements, spreading gangster capitalism at the point of a thousand nukes-should and could have been put on hold and reassessed in the wake of 9/11.

It wasn’t time to act. It was time to think.

Paul Vallely: There is No Moral Case for Tax Havens

They are the epitome of unfairness and injustice, leaving ordinary citizens to foot the bill for multinational corporations

There is a building in the Cayman Islands that is home to 12,000 corporations. It must be a very big building. Or a very big tax scam. Tax havens are in the spotlight since the Chancellor, George Osborne, did a deal the other day with the Swiss authorities to slap a levy on secret bank accounts held there by British citizens. Opinions are divided on the move, which could net the Treasury £5bn, but which tacitly legitimizes bank accounts kept secret from the Inland Revenue. It is a de facto amnesty for those guilty of tax evasion crimes. And they will pay less than they would if they declared their income to the British taxman.

Are there any legitimate reasons why anyone would want to have a secret bank account – and pay a premium to maintain their anonymity – or move their money to one of the pink dots on the map which are the final remnants of the British empire: the Caymans, Bermuda, the Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands?

The moral case against is clear enough. Tax havens epitomize unfairness, cheating and injustice. They replace the old morality embodied in the Golden Rule of reciprocity – that we should do as we would be done by – with a new version that insists that those who have the gold make the rules.

Aug 28 2011

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”.

This is a very abbreviated preview. Most of the talk show are going to be concentrating on the storm that is now pounding the eastern seaboard. Since most of all of these show are based in either NYC or Washington, that shouldn’t be a surprise to our readers.

So unless you are somewhere that is not affected by Irene, haven’t lost power, are underwater or had your house blown away, good morning to stay in bed or do something else.

But just for you political junkies, here are a few pundits.

John Lewis: What would Martin Luther King Jr. say to President Obama?

Forty-eight years ago Sunday, when Martin Luther King Jr. was about to make his historic speech on the National Mall, I was huddled close to the statue of Abraham Lincoln, tapping on a portable typewriter, making last-minute changes to my own speech. As the newly elected chair of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, speaking at the March on Washington was one of my first important actions. Dr. King spoke tenth; I was sixth. Today, I am the last surviving speaker from the march.

When I think back on that day, and the hundreds of thousands of people who responded to the call to march on Washington, there is no question that many things have changed. Then, Martin Luther King Jr. was a controversial figure taking risks so that his voice might be heard. Today, the mere mention of his speech – and its powerful “I have a dream” refrain – evokes hope for the future, stirring memories of the past and mandates for change, but the context in which Dr. King delivered those words was quite different.

Dana Milbank: Wanted: More bite from Obama the Great Nibbler

He declined a plate of bacon and eggs when sitting down to breakfast with a group of reporters this week because, the AFL-CIO president explained, he was concerned he might spit out a mouthful if he didn’t like a question. The stains on his Brooks Brothers necktie suggested this was more than a theoretical possibility.

So perhaps it should not be a surprise that Trumka has lost patience with the Great Nibbler in our civic life, President Obama. The president, he complained, has been doing “little nibbly things around the edge that aren’t going to make a difference and aren’t going to solve the problem” with the economy. Obama, he protested, decided to “work with the Tea Party to offer cuts to middle-class programs like Social Security.” And, Trumka accused, Obama has limited his proposals to “those little things that he thinks others will immediately accept.”

Without bolder action on the economy, Trumka told the gathering, organized by the Christian Science Monitor, “I think he doesn’t become a leader anymore, and he’s being a follower.”

Jesse Jackson; Martin Luther King’s Legacy: Nonviolence is Not Surrender

The memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King opened on the Mall in Washington. Dr. King will take his place with Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The monument features a 30-foot figure of Dr. King, hewn from granite, looking forward and very stern. This is the look of a man of action whose work is not done.

That is its power.

Dr. King was a man of peace, but he was not a passive man. He believed that confrontation in the face of indignation preceded reconciliation. To have healing, you must pull the glass from the wound. He was, as he said, a drum major for justice. He knew that peace was the presence of justice, not the absence of noise. And it could only be achieved through struggle, through the concerted actions of engaged citizens.

Maureen Dowd: Darth Vader Vents

WHY is it not a surprise to learn that Dick Cheney’s ancestor, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, was a Civil War soldier who marched with Sherman to the sea?

Scorched earth runs in the family.

Having lost the power to heedlessly bomb the world, Cheney has turned his attention to heedlessly bombing old colleagues.

Vice’s new memoir, “In My Time,” veers unpleasantly between spin, insisting he was always right, and score-settling, insisting that anyone who opposed him was wrong.

His knife-in-her-teeth daughter, Elizabeth Cheney, helped write the book. The second most famous Liz & Dick combo do such an excellent job of cherry-picking the facts, it makes the cherry-picking on the Iraq war intelligence seem picayune.

Nicholas D. Kristoff: Did We Drop the Ball on Unemployment?

WHEN I’m in New York or Washington, people talk passionately about debt and political battles. But in the living rooms or on the front porches here in Yamhill, Ore., where I grew up, a different specter wakes friends up in the middle of the night.

It’s unemployment.

I’ve spent a chunk of summer vacation visiting old friends here, and I can’t help feeling that national politicians and national journalists alike have dropped the ball on jobs. Some 25 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed – that’s more than 16 percent of the work force – but jobs haven’t been nearly high enough on the national agenda.

When Americans are polled about the issue they care most about, the answer by a two-to-one margin is jobs. The Boston Globe found that during President Obama’s Twitter “town hall” last month, the issue that the public most wanted to ask about was, by far, jobs. Yet during the previous two weeks of White House news briefings, reporters were far more likely to ask about political warfare with Republicans.

John Nichols: The Democrats’ Rural Rebellions

Democrats looking to Washington during the long, hot summer for signs of their party’s renewal got little in the way of relief. President Obama’s approval ratings tanked after he compromised away historic Democratic positions in the debt-ceiling fight. The party’s Congressional leaders, who in the spring had seemed prepared to fight off Republican attempts to erode Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, sent so many mixed signals that it was difficult to tell whether the party wanted to fight austerity or embrace it.

Yet beyond the Beltway, a different story has been unfolding. And it holds out promise for a party that needs not just hope but a coherent strategy for the 2012 election season. Dramatic overreach by newly elected Republican governors, who sought to curtail labor rights, undermine local democracy and slash spending for education and local services, has provoked a backlash that draws stark ideological and political lines on fundamental economic questions. And that is winning substantial Democratic victories in unexpected territory, including rural areas where the party suffered its greatest setbacks in 2010.

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