Tag: ek Politics

Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wall Street Paying to Get Regulators

Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Tuesday, 02 December 2014 04:00

Andrew Ross Sorkin used his column today to complain about the AFL-CIO and others making an issue over Wall Street banks paying unearned deferred compensation to employees who take positions in government. He argues that the people leaving Wall Street for top level government positions are victims of a “populist shakedown.”

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In the housing bubble years the Wall Street folks made themselves incredibly wealthy packaging and selling bad mortgage backed securities. When this practice threatened to put them all into bankruptcy, the Treasury and Fed stepped in with a bottomless pile of below market interest rate loans and loan guarantees to keep them afloat.

This was explicit policy as former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner makes very clear in his autobiography. He commented repeatedly that there would be “no more Lehmans,” and he ridiculed the “old testament” types who thought that somehow the banks should be made to pay for their incompetence and left to the mercy of the market.

The result is that the Wall Street banks are bigger and more powerful than ever. By contrast, more than 10 million homeowners are still underwater, the cohort of middle income baby boomers are hitting retirement with virtually nothing but their Social Security and Medicare to support them, and most of the workforce is likely to go a decade without seeing wage growth. And Geithner is now making a fortune at a private equity company and gives every indication in his book of thinking that he had done a great job.

This state of affairs would probably not exist if the Treasury had been full of people without Wall Street connections. If we had more academics, union officials, and people with business backgrounds other than finance, it is likely that all the solutions to the economic crisis created by Wall Street would not have involved saving Wall Street as a first priority.

Bankers Who Commit Fraud, Like Murderers, Are Supposed to Go to Jail

Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Tuesday, 02 December 2014 09:45

Wow, some things are really hard for elite media types to understand. In his column in the Washington Post, Richard Cohen struggles with how we should punish bankers who commit crimes like manipulating foreign exchange rates (or Libor rates, or pass on fraudulent mortgages in mortgage backed securities, or don’t follow the law in foreclosing on homes etc.).

Cohen calmly tells readers that criminal prosecutions of public companies are not the answer.

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Cohen’s understanding of economics is a bit weak (most of these people quickly found other jobs), but more importantly he is utterly clueless about the issue at hand.

Individuals are profiting by breaking the law. The point is make sure that these individuals pay a steep personal price. This is especially important for this sort of white collar crime because it is so difficult to detect and prosecute. For every case of price manipulation that gets exposed, there are almost certainly dozens that go undetected.

This means that when you get the goods on a perp, you go for the gold — or the jail cell. We want bankers to know that if they break the law to make themselves even richer than they would otherwise be, they will spend lots of time behind bars if they get caught. This would be a real deterrent, unlike the risk that their employer might face some sort of penalty.

Why is it so hard for elite types to understand putting bankers in jail?

The Wall Street Journal Still Refuses to Grasp Accounting Control Fraud via Appraisal Fraud

By William K. Black, New Economic Perspectives

December 2, 2014

Even moderately-sized lenders have vastly greater power to successfully extort appraisers than does any residential borrower. It may be true that “many” borrowers tried to “pressure” appraisers to increase the appraisal, but the overwhelming source of such pressure was from lenders and their agents and virtually all of the successful pressure came from lenders and their agents.

Then New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s investigation confirmed that the largest mortgage lenders were leading the extortion of the appraisers to inflate appraised values.

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These … findings allow us to understand a great deal about the appraisal fraud epidemic.

• Appraisal fraud was endemic
• Appraisal fraud was led by the controlling officers of lenders and their agents
• No honest lender would ever coerce, or permit, the inflation of the appraised value because the home’s true value provides a critical protection to the lender
• The lenders’ controlling officers were deliberately creating a “Gresham’s” dynamic in which bad ethics drives good ethics out of the appraisal profession
• Honest lenders’ controlling officers could easily block such a Gresham’s dynamic by creating desirable financial incentives and internal controls that will block inflated appraisals
• Appraisal fraud optimizes accounting control fraud by lenders (and loan purchasers)

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We now have well documented experience with two epidemics of appraisal fraud – the savings and loan debacle and the current crisis plus the developing epidemic. It should be very hard to get appraisal fraud wrong given these painful experiences and the appraisers’ astounding petition that made it inescapably clear no later than the year 2000 that there was an epidemic of appraisal fraud led by the lenders’ controlling officers. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal is up to the task of getting it horrendously wrong.

The WSJ’s title for its article on appraisal fraud makes obvious that it has learned nothing from two fraud epidemics in two crises a quarter-century apart. “Dodgy Home Appraisals are Making a Comeback: Industry Executives See Parallels With Pre-Crisis Valuations, Regulators are Wary.” Every aspect of the title is disingenuous. The bank “executives see parallels” because they have run the same appraisal fraud scheme twice only a few years apart. That is one of the immense social costs of failing to prosecute the banksters that led the fraud epidemics that drove the financial crisis. “Dodgy” is a misleading euphemism for “fraud.” The article uses the word “fraud” only once. Even then, it uses the word “fraud” only to describe civil investigations of appraisal fraud by Freddie Mac.

The WSJ’s key sources for the article – “Industry Executives” – are the “perps” leading the frauds. The WSJ article, however, never even considers the possibility that they are (again) leading the effort to extort appraisers to inflate the appraised value.

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The obvious question, except to the WSJ, is why the banks’ controlling officers continue to design perverse compensation systems for loan officers. The loan officers don’t design their own compensation systems. Everyone saw in the most recent crisis that the compensation systems designed and implemented by the banks’ controlling officers were exceptionally criminogenic and had the inevitable effect of creating the three fraud epidemics that drove the financial crisis. We have known for over a century that if you pay loan officers on the basis of loan origination volume you will produce endemic fraud. No bank CEO can claim with a straight face to be “shocked, shocked” that when he creates perverse compensation incentives the result is endemic fraud.

The WSJ, however, tries to make it appear that the ever-so-honest managers are paragons of virtue who first create compensation systems that create overwhelming incentives that produce endemic loan origination fraud by loan officers – and then strive mightily to limit the resultant endemic fraud that they caused.

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(It) claims that “banks” were hiring AMCs in an effort to try to prevent the bank’s corrupt loan officers from extorting appraisers to inflate appraisals. “Banks,” of course, are incapable of having any true intent. The article actually means to claim that the banks are run by honest CEOs who are making strident efforts to ensure that their corrupt loan officers do not extort appraisers to engage in appraisal fraud. Given that premise, the obvious question is the one I raised above – why do those same CEOs create the perverse incentives that corrupt the loan officers and create their overwhelming incentive to extort appraisers to commit appraisal fraud if the CEO is dedicated to preventing appraisal fraud? There is also an obvious way for bank CEOs to end promptly the coercion of appraisers by the bank’s corrupt loan officers – fire the corrupt loan officers and the appraisers who succumb to their extortion.

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(T)he AMCs are now extorting appraisers to inflate appraisals. The article reports that “some” claim that the reason that the AMCs are extorting appraisers to inflate the appraisals is that the AMC’s are being extorted by the “lenders.” This should, of course, lead the author to explain what that word refers to. In context, it seems to admit the truth – that the extortion is led by the officers that control corporate policy, i.e., the bank CEOs. So much for the WSJ’s claim that the banks’ controlling officers are the good guys betrayed by the fraud mice.

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The funniest line in the title is “Regulators are Wary.” The Clinton and Bush administration anti-regulators were the recipients of the appraisers’ petition. They took no meaningful action to block the Gresham’s dynamic and the resultant epidemic of appraisal fraud. The Obama administration anti-regulators and anti-prosecutors have not prosecuted or sanctioned any senior banker for his role in leading the epidemic of appraisal fraud. The anti-regulators are so far from “wary,” and have been for so many years, that picturing them as vigilant rather than oblivious is very funny. An extremely careful reader of the article would realize that the article does not report that the supposedly “wary” regulators actually did anything that would be effective in stopping endemic appraisal fraud.

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No bank officer was sanctioned administratively by the regulators, sued by them, or prosecuted. No enforcement action is described as being taken by the OCC against any bank. The OCC is not described as adopting any rule. The OCC is not described as having made a single criminal referral. If this is what the WSJ thinks describes a “wary” regulator’s response to a fraud epidemic then they are delusional. I have explained in prior articles that the head of the OCC is an anti-regulator who has expressly refused to make ending control frauds led by bank CEOs a regulatory priority. Note that the OCC not only failed to use the word “fraud” to describe appraisal fraud, it also attributed the endemic appraisal fraud to preposterous explanations such as insufficient staff “training” and “oversight.”

A nation crippled by fear: Why America’s reaction to Ferguson, Tamir Rice and ISIS are all connected

Marcy Wheeler, Salon

Tuesday, Dec 2, 2014 06:58 AM EST

White people in this country are afraid — and it’s the key to understanding race relations and our foreign policy.

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What was so striking about Obama insisting that there’s never an excuse for violence was not just the contrast with his resumption of his predecessor’s violence in the Middle East, a resumption of policies that have resoundingly failed.

It’s that the president decried violence even as various parts of government rolled out what looked like a counterinsurgency strategy in Ferguson. The Saint Louis area and, in the following days, groups around the country rebelled – most people, peacefully – against the serial, banal violence of cops directed against African-American sons. In Ferguson especially, the fears sown in the weeks before the verdict provided the excuse to roll out state instruments of violence that may well have exacerbated the violence after the verdict – and certainly didn’t contain it. Sure, technically the government is supposed to have a monopoly on violence – which is why Darren Wilson got away with shooting an unarmed black teenager without being charged. But of late, the legitimacy of the state’s violence has become increasingly fragile. The state’s excuses for violence, both overseas and in localities across America, are increasingly dubious. The legitimacy of their excuses was further undermined last week when it became clear Cleveland cops shot a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, wielding a toy gun.

In his speech after the Darren Wilson news, Obama might better have spoken about fear, not violence.

Because fear incited by provocative videos posted online likely explains why Americans ignored the resurgence of violence in Iraq until a few Americans were killed (and ignore the frequent beheadings carried out by our allies the Saudis).  “As long as ISIS is beheading Americans there’s no way the president can stand up and say that Syria isn’t our problem,” Drew reported a source asserting.

And whatever else you think of Darren Wilson’s testimony – which conflicted in some ways with what he reportedly said immediately after the shooting – he used the language of fear and dehumanization to justify the killing. The big black teenager he shot, Mike Brown, was like “Hulk Hogan,” Wilson said. “It looks like a demon,” Wilson described Brown’s face. Brown “made like a grunting” before Wilson fired the fatal shots. “[T]he only other option I thought I had was my gun,” Wilson explained to the grand jury to explain why he started shooting Brown. As for 12-year-old Rice, he and his toy gun elicited a response from a caller for this reason: He was “scaring the s___ out of people.”

File this one under yet another failure of supposed elites who turn out to know very little about the subjects they’re “professional experts” in.

St. Louis Police Claim It’s Their ‘First Amendment’ Rights Not To Protect Football Players Who Supported Protestors

Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt

Tue, Dec 2nd 2014 9:33am

It’s been pretty obvious that law enforcement in the St. Louis area has a rather tenuous grasp on the concept of the First Amendment. Obviously, they’ve done a fairly terrible job recognizing the right to “peaceably assemble” for quite some time, even having a court declare its “5 second rule” approach unconstitutional. They’ve also ignored the freedom of the press by repeatedly arresting journalists. And, remember, the local prosecutor has claimed that it was really all those people speaking out on social media who were to blame.

But it appears that the misunderstanding of the First Amendment has been taken to new, and even more ridiculous levels, following a brief show of support for the protestors by some players for the St. Louis Rams (the local NFL football franchise for you non-sportsball people). The Rams’ wide receivers decided to all put their hands up — the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture — in support of Michael Brown and the protestors. It’s a small, but meaningful gesture, showing they supported the protestors. And it shouldn’t have been taken as anything more than that.

Instead, the St. Louis County police decided to respond… by suggesting that, because of this, the police would no longer protect the Rams.

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As many have noted, this certainly sounds like Roorda saying that it’s the police’s “First Amendment” rights to look the other way should any threats come to the team or the stadium.

Of course, that’s not how the First Amendment actually works. It’s quite the opposite. As Sally Jenkins at the Washington Post points out, the reality is exactly the opposite. The First Amendment protects the public from government officials (including the police) from taking actions based on expression of members of the public. If anything, Roorda’s implied threat violates the First Amendment, suggesting that the government will punish people for their expression.

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Of course, the First Amendment now also protects the press digging into Jeff Roorda’s own background and reporting what they find. Like the time he was reprimanded for trying “to ‘cover’ for another police officer filing a report that contained false statements.” Or how he’s against body cameras because they “sometimes don’t reflect exactly what happened” and saying that “cameras have been bad for law enforcement” because “it causes second guessing by the courts and the media.” Roorda has also defended an officer who a surveillance video showed was assaulting a handcuffed suspect, claiming the officer was “only defending himself” and saying he was doing “as he’s trained to do.”

In fact, we actually wrote about that last story and posted the video.

As we noted at the time, Roorda then lied about what’s in the video. Roorda claimed that the officer was crouched down and the suspect started moving forward at him. But the video shows no such thing. Roorda further claimed that such videos should only be used when it helps the police view of things.

Meanwhile, the St. Louis County Police still seem to think that their First Amendment rights include pretending that the Rams apologized to them when they did not.

1991, 23 years ago.

Interestingly enough many of the location shots were filmed in Seymour and Georgetown.  Both businesses are now defunct.

In case you hadn’t noticed, oil prices are way, way down and after yesterday’s OPEC meeting they’re unlikely to rise any time soon.

Why is this and what does it mean?

Like most things economic it’s largely demand driven.  Japan is in recession (again), Europe teetering on the edge of deflation, China no longer on an expansionist binge, and as for US?  Well, the U.S. has the same crappy .01% economy we’ve had for the last 7 years.

At the same time recoverable reserves have expanded through fracking and other techniques to the point where the U.S. is once again the #1 Oil exporter in the world.

Can I get a chorus of Proud to Be or at least a U.S.A., U.S.A. chant for that?

Pfft.  It won’t last.  Either demand will rise or we’ll spiral into an economic black hole.  And should demand and consumption rise we’ll be killing off 50% of the population through climate change and demand will go down anyway.  This is why Tar Sand development is as dead as the Dodo, they had a window to make obscene amounts of money that is now permanently closed.

But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task, if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us, that when the storm is long past, the ocean is flat again.

John Maynard Keynes- A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923)

So, let’s take a look at the the short term, Qui Bono?

It’s clearly the House of Saud who are driving these developments and their extraction costs are around $5 – $15 a barrel.  This is why they are price makers, they can produce enough to fill most of the demand and as long as they are getting more in return they are making a ton of money they don’t have to share too widely.

Other traditional producers, like Venezuela and especially Iran, have larger and more restive populations and thus benefit from a price point that maximizes their income, something the Saudis aren’t concerned about.  It’s not far fetched to speculate that the current oil glut has been orchestrated specifically to disadvantage Shia Muslims (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon) in what can easily be argued is open Jihad by militant Wahabi Sunnis that the ignorant West (that would be the Empire of the United States and our coalition of the coerced and cowardly) is only too happy to support in return for a little liquid black gold to keep our inebriated Military Industrial Complex well lubricated.

Not that they like us, they hate us almost as much as the Shia… almost.  And low oil prices also mitigate against costly extraction technologies (North Sea and Arctic Drilling, Deep Sea Drilling, Fracking, Tar Sands) by making them unprofitable.  Likewise the longer term threat of cheap renewable power via Solar, Wind, Tidal, and Hydro-electric.

So we’re not only whores, we’re cheap whores, practically sluts giving it away for nothing (regular readers will know that I have no objection to a healthy and active sexual life, sex work, or promiscuity).

The benefit of fossil fuel is that its reliability and low volume to energy ratio make it uniquely suited to military applications.  Is it any wonder then that access to it is the number one priority of Empire?

It also illustrates the power of monopoly pricing, not just in extracting the maximum revenue, but in destroying the economic viability of competitive rivals

I’m among those who have fond memories of Mario and thought at the time he should be President, or at least a Supreme Court Justice.  His son has led me to question my judgement.

Andrew Cuomo has, almost single handedly, kept the New York State Republican Party alive because he doesn’t believe in liberal ideas and finds it easier to have a convenient excuse to disguise his naked conservatism.  He has, without fail, sabotaged the campaigns of State legislators of his own nominal party in order to promote the “deal makers” and “compromisers” to stifle any truly populist initiatives, especially any that might offend the delicate sensibilities of the Bankster “Master of the Universe” Thieves and Con Men.

Content to coast on the store of goodwill built up by his father, he basks in the the rumors that he’s on the short list of Presidendial prospectives.  If he ever got close to the nomination it would be a shame and a travesty.

First of all he’s an incompetent finger pointing weasel-

Gov. Andrew Cuomo shamefully blames lack of preparation for Buffalo snow on the National Weather Service

Joanna Rothkopf, Salon

Monday, Nov 24, 2014 09:20 AM EST

On Saturday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo felt he had to comment on the massive lake effect snowstorm that buried Western New York and Buffalo under up to 7 feet of snow last week. People were surely wondering: Why had there been so many deaths? Why was the region seemingly unprepared to deal with such extreme conditions?

Cuomo, in an attempt to appease the state’s residents, blamed it on the National Weather Service. “No one had an idea that it was gonna be that much snow that fast,” he said in a press conference on Saturday. “Snow coming down at the rate of about five inches an hour. No one had an idea. The weather service was off. By the way, I said this in my State of the State last year, we’re putting in our own weather detection system.”

In fact, the National Weather Service had warned of the possibility of an extreme storm.

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One of the most dangerous impulses of politicians is their willingness to dive head-first into scientific issues, professing authority in areas where they quite simply have none. For the most part, politicians and pundits look to science only when it is a suitable scapegoat on which to place blame for failed policy, rather than as the most accurate barometer we have of what is to come.

Don Paul, chief meteorologist at the CBS affiliate in Buffalo-

Governor Cuomo’s attempt to scapegoat the National Weather Service for an inaccurate forecast in advance is not only completely in error–the NWS did an outstanding job–but is a disservice to the public and to the hard-working staff of this federal agency. No forecast of such an historical disaster is going to be absolutely perfect, but no one who lives here can say this event was not well forecast in advance, or that the warning headlines of its impact to come were not well explained in advance…his statement is disinformation, purposeful or ill-informed.

Secondly, he revels in his science denialism as thoroughly as any card carrying tea-bagger-

New York Governor Cuomo: ‘I Don’t Want To Get Into A Political Debate’ About Climate Change

by Emily Atkin, Think Progress

Posted on November 25, 2014 at 9:34 am

According to a Capital New York report, the politically savvy governor has historically refused to talk about the scientific link between extreme weather events and climate change, citing a desire to avoid contentious debate. He most recently did this on Sunday, when asked about the climate connection to Buffalo’s massive lake-effect snowstorm, and the worry of flooding because of rising temperatures.

“I don’t want to get into a political debate at this time about climate change causes, et cetera,” Cuomo reportedly said. “Forget the causes. Is it global warming? Is it reliance on fossil fuels? Forget the causes. What is inarguable is the result.”

The issue with these comments – and arguably all modern political rhetoric about climate change – is that the debate over extreme weather and global warming is not inherently political. It is scientific. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international body that provides comprehensive updates on climate science, says that man-made warming increases the severity of heat waves, wildfires, and heavy precipitation events. Some scientists have even tied Buffalo’s massive snowstorm to climate change, citing the increased moisture held in the atmosphere as a result of warming temperatures.

Instead of acknowledging this, however, Cuomo’s position is that it doesn’t matter whether climate change is causing extreme events. And it’s not the first time he’s made the claim. In a 2012 op-ed for the Daily News, where he pledged increase storm preparation measures in the face of Superstorm Sandy.

“Debating why does not lead to solutions – it leads to gridlock,” Cuomo said at the time. “The denial and deliberation from extremists on both sides about the causes of climate change are distracting us from addressing its inarguable effects.”

The issue with that stance, however, is that it focuses solely on adaptation to extreme weather events, and does not acknowledge the need to reduce carbon emissions to reduce the likelihood of those extreme events happening in the first place. That’s bad, considering the latest IPCC report says the effects of climate change – including extreme weather – could be irreversible if decisive actions aren’t taken to reduce carbon in the atmosphere. And those impacts will only get worse as future carbon emissions rise.

Evil or an Idiot?

I must say I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that when a politician or a media personality acts in ways that are contrary to the expressed wishes of their constituents or audience, they’re not idiots.

Ferguson and the brokenness of America’s “Justice” System

Ian Welsh

2014 November 26

At this point, in America, calling the police for anything short of a murder is more likely to make your situation worse than better if you aren’t solidly middle upper class or better, and white.  If you are black or Muslim, you might not even want to call them for murder.

Police can beat your, rape you or kill you, and the odds are very high they will get away with it.  In far too many cases they are nothing but the strongest gang.

The police are so militarized that they amount to a domestic army, stationed in every city.  The civil forfeiture laws, RICO statutes and the cost of an effective defense, plus the removal of most judicial discretion and the fact that the vast majority of cases are plea bargained, not tried, means that for most accused of a crime there is no justice.

The police have huge incentives to charge people with crimes, because they can seize the assets of those charged (well, strictly speaking, they can seize your money without ever charging you, and do.)  For profit prisons and prison guard unions support prosecutors and judges who will imprison more people, not less.   The incentives in the system are almost all towards incarcerating more people and seizing more assets, because that’s how police and prosecutors improve their personal situation.

Prisons are rural support projects where poor whites are paid to lock up poor blacks.

Ferguson: It is Right to Resist, By Any and All Means Necessary

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report

Wed, 11/26/2014 – 16:44

The Mass Black Incarceration State, or the New Jim Crow, as Michelle Alexander calls it, has methodically criminalized a whole people. When Walking, Talking and Breathing While Black is punishable by death – a sentence carried out daily in the United States – then organizing for genuine social transformation is beyond the pale of civil protections. The only defense is a militant people’s movement that exacts its own consequences when the state exercises its claims to, essentially, limitless powers. There must be some kind of payback; otherwise, as we have witnessed over the past 40-plus years, the people succumb to self-destructive diversions, demoralization and despair, while the state steadily expands its machinery of social and physical death.

You know the state is worried when it suddenly starts assuring the oppressed that they have certain, limited rights that will be recognized. President Obama, who early in his first term succeeded in legislatively abolishing due process of law, has responded to the threat of a genuine people’s movement by endorsing peaceful protest – by which he means protest within parameters of time and space and behavior laid down by the very same police against which the grievances are directed. This constitutes “ways of channeling your concerns constructively,” says the president.

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Six years into the Age of Obama, it has finally dawned on Black people that Frederick Douglass was right when he said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will.” Douglass did not say: “Power concedes nothing without the consent of the legislature and a nod from Democratic Party hack in the Oval Office.” Had Obama not been sharing the screen with the youth of Ferguson, few would have watched his speech. It has required a mass movement in-the-making to focus Black people’s attention on the war waged against them by the state, rather than living vicariously with the family in the White House.

No sooner had the fires and looting commenced in Ferguson, than Obama henchman Al Sharpton and the entire multigenerational cadre of handkerchief heads and New Age opportunists sprang into action, to delegitimize the youth and funnel Black peoples energies into official channels that go nowhere.

CNN’s Van Jones denounced the “small number of knuckleheads” that “are causing the problem.”

Local Black clergy met with the white mayor of Ferguson and tried to shame the youth involved in Monday night’s rebellion. Then they bowed their heads and asked God to solve the problem, as always.

Congressman William “Lacy” Clay, who misrepresents the district and was among the 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus that opted, back in June, to continue the Pentagon’s transfers of weapons to local police departments, denounced The Race as a whole for the destruction of 12 businesses, the night before. “It hurts me to my heart to see what we have turned into,” he said.

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The burned-out businesses, some of them Black-owned, are collateral damage in a grossly asymmetrical struggle – one in which the insurgents must battle a murderous state, a pervasively racist white society, plus the most backward, opportunistic and comprador elements of their own community. It is true that, in a small town like Ferguson, the loss of jobs, investments and amenities associated with these small “martyred” businesses is significant. In comparison, however, the costs inflicted on African Americans by the Black Misleadership Class since the demise of the last mass people’s movement, in the late Sixties, have been catastrophic. Black family wealth is one-twentieth of median white family wealth, the lowest since slavery. Great Black metropolises have been turned into wastelands, bare of employment, affordable housing, recreation, adequate education, cultural enrichment, and even healthy food. One out of every eight prison inmates in the world is an African American – an arguably genocidal outcome arrived at with the full collaboration of much of Black elected officialdom and the preaching class. Absent a fundamental change in power relationships in America – which can only come about through mass action, within and outside the law – the destruction of the Black social and physical environment can only escalate.

By attempting to delegitimize Black youth – who definitely will break the law and destroy property in their enthusiasm for immediate payback as well as lasting change – the Misleaders seek to corral and, ultimately, kill the movement.

In the coming days and months, activists must be diligent in drawing lines between those honest elements that counsel against violence for moral or tactical and strategic reasons, and those who, like Sharpton, Van Jones and Rep. “Lacy” Clay, seek to destroy the budding mass movement by ostracizing and alienating its youthful core.

Black Lives Matter: Ferguson Erupts After Grand Jury Clears Officer in Michael Brown Killing

“It is Officially Open Season on Black Folks”: Legal Expert Decries Handling of Wilson Grand Jury

Riot as the Language of the Unheard: Ferguson Protests Set to Continue In Fight For Racial Justice

With A The Real News Bonus

“Democracy on Fire”: Protestors Respond to Grand Jury’s Failure to Indict Mike Brown’s Killer

Killings by Utah police outpacing gang, drug, child-abuse homicides

By ERIN ALBERTY, The Salt Lake Tribune

Nov 24 2014 09:30 am

Over a five-year period, data show that fatal shootings by police officers in Utah ranked second only to homicides of intimate partners.

In the past five years, more Utahns have been killed by police than by gang members.

Or drug dealers. Or from child abuse.

And so far this year, deadly force by police has claimed more lives – 13, including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan – than has violence between spouses and dating partners.

As the tally of fatal police shootings rises, law enforcement watchdogs say it is time to treat deadly force as a potentially serious public safety problem.

Dead Of Night: The Ferguson Decision

By Charles P. Pierce, Esquire

November 24, 2014

There is something gone badly wrong in the way police are taught to look at civilians these days. This is the logic of an occupying power being employed on American citizens. Ever since 9/11, when we all began to be told that we were going to have to bend a little bit, and then a little bit more, to authority or else we’d all die, the police in this country have been militarized in their tactics and in their equipment, which is bad enough, but in their attitudes and their mentality, which is far, far worse. Suspicion has bled into weaponized paranoia, especially in the case of black and brown people, especially in the case of young men who are black or brown, but this is not About Race because nothing ever is About Race. Even the potential of a threat requires a deadly response, Dick Cheney’s one-percent idea brought to American cities and towns until Salt Lake City, of all places, winds up with cops who are deadlier on the streets than drug dealers. This is how you wind up with Darren Wilson. This is how you wind up with Michael Brown, dead in the middle of the road. This is how Darren Wilson walks, tonight, for the killing of Michael Brown. This is how you end up with an American horror story.

After Vowing to End Combat Mission in Afghanistan, Obama Secretly Extends America’s Longest War

Democracy Now

11/24/14

In a Shift, Obama Extends U.S. Role in Afghan Combat

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT, The New York Times

NOV. 21, 2014

President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year.

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

In an announcement in the White House Rose Garden in May, Mr. Obama said that the American military would have no combat role in Afghanistan next year, and that the missions for the 9,800 troops remaining in the country would be limited to training Afghan forces and to hunting the “remnants of Al Qaeda.”

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The internal discussion took place against the backdrop of this year’s collapse of Iraqi security forces in the face of the advance of the Islamic State as well as the mistrust between the Pentagon and the White House that still lingers since Mr. Obama’s 2009 decision to “surge” 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan. Some of the president’s civilian advisers say that decision was made only because of excessive Pentagon pressure, and some military officials say it was half-baked and made with an eye to domestic politics.

Mr. Obama’s decision, made during a White House meeting in recent weeks with his senior national security advisers, came over the objection of some of his top civilian aides, who argued that American lives should not be put at risk next year in any operations against the Taliban – and that they should have only a narrow counterterrorism mission against Al Qaeda.

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“There was a school of thought that wanted the mission to be very limited, focused solely on Al Qaeda,” one American official said.

But, the official said, “the military pretty much got what it wanted.”

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In effect, Mr. Obama’s decision largely extends much of the current American military role for another year. Mr. Obama and his aides were forced to make a decision because the 13-year old mission, Operation Enduring Freedom, is set to end on Dec. 31.

Afghanistan Quietly Lifts Ban on Nighttime Raids

By ROD NORDLAND and TAIMOOR SHAH, The New York Times

NOV. 23, 2014

The government of the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, has quietly lifted the ban on night raids by special forces troops that his predecessor had imposed.

Afghan National Army Special Forces units are planning to resume the raids in 2015, and in some cases the raids will include members of American Special Operations units in an advisory role, according to Afghan military officials as well as officials with the American-led military coalition.

That news comes after published accounts of an order by President Obama to allow the American military to continue some limited combat operations in 2015. That order allows for the sort of air support necessary for successful night raids.

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American military officials have long viewed night raids as the most important tactic in their fight against Taliban insurgents, because they can catch the militant group’s leaders where they are most vulnerable. For years, the Americans ignored Mr. Karzai’s demands that the raids stop.

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On Saturday a White House official responded to an article in The New York Times that said that President Obama had issued a secret order continuing combat operations in 2015, after their planned end on Dec. 31. The official reiterated that “the United States’ combat mission in Afghanistan will be over by the end of this year.”

The American mission in 2015, the official said, would primarily be training, advising and assisting the Afghan National Security Forces. “As part of this mission, the United States may provide combat enabler support to the ANSF in limited circumstances to prevent detrimental strategic effects to these Afghan security forces,” the White House official said.

“Combat enabler” is military jargon for functions like air support, transportation, intelligence gathering and communications – functions for which Afghan forces are underprepared. The Afghans have relatively few combat-ready helicopters, for instance, while nearly all night raids are carried out by helicopter to achieve surprise.

Top U.S. General Says He’s Open to Using Ground Troops to Retake Mosul

By HELENE COOPER, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and RICK GLADSTONE

NOV. 13, 2014

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that Iraqi troops – who initially fled under the onslaught of Islamic State militants – are now doing a better job of standing and fighting. But he added that he could not foreclose the possibility that as operations against the Sunni militants move into more complex phases of clearing out cities and other areas by the Islamic State, American troops might have to help their Iraqi counterparts.

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“I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by U.S. forces, but we’re certainly considering it,” General Dempsey said. Defense officials said that American Joint Tactical Attack Controllers could be used to call in airstrikes from tactical positions on the ground, most likely behind Iraqi forces. The tactical attack controllers often deploy in positions like hills and other high terrain so they can see operations and call in strikes.

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The congressional testimony on Thursday underscored the challenge facing Mr. Obama as he continues to insist to a war-weary public that the United States is not returning to ground combat in Iraq. He has maintained that American ground troops will not be used, even as his generals have increasingly hinted that there may not be a way to defeat the Sunni militant group without at least some American forces, particularly to call in airstrikes.

Think any of that has something to do with this?

Hagel Submits Resignation as Defense Chief Under Pressure

By HELENE COOPER, The New York Times

NOV. 24, 2014

Administration officials said that Mr. Obama made the decision to remove Mr. Hagel, the sole Republican on his national security team, last Friday after a series of meetings between the two men over the past two weeks.

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Mr. Hagel, a combat veteran who was skeptical about the Iraq war, came in to manage the Afghanistan combat withdrawal and the shrinking Pentagon budget in the era of budget sequestrations.

Now, however, the American military is back on a war footing, although it is a modified one. Some 3,000 American troops are being deployed in Iraq to help the Iraqi military fight the Sunni militants of the Islamic State, even as the administration struggles to come up with, and articulate, a coherent strategy to defeat the group in both Iraq and Syria.

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Mr. Hagel, for his part, spent his time on the job largely carrying out Mr. Obama’s stated wishes on matters like bringing back American troops from Afghanistan and trimming the Pentagon budget, with little pushback.

Chuck Hagel forced to step down as US defense secretary

Spencer Ackerman and Dan Roberts, The Guardian

Monday 24 November 2014 12.11 EST

Hagel was out of step with the administration on Isis, having urged the White House to clarify its stance on ushering Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad out of power and bizarrely inflating the threat Isis posed, calling it “an imminent threat to every interest we have” in an August press conference. While the administration has publicly ruled out using US ground forces in combat in Iraq, Hagel and particularly the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, floated precisely that as an option in testimony earlier this month.

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(T)he strategy has come under criticism from hawks as well as doves. Hawks want a deeper US commitment of air as well as ground forces to beating Isis back, while doves are alarmed at the shifting of US war aims and commensurate resources. The next chairman of the Senate armed services committee, Arizona Republican John McCain, wants a more forceful US response to Isis and had long fallen out with his former friend Hagel.

In the five months since Isis seized Mosul, Obama has authorized 3,000 new troops to advise and train Iraqis, and expanded an air war into Syria. Pentagon efforts to field a Syrian proxy force have barely begun and are expected to take a year before yielding the first capable units.

Mr. Obama’s decision, made during a White House meeting in recent weeks with his senior national security advisers, came over the objection of some of his top civilian aides, who argued that American lives should not be put at risk next year in any operations against the Taliban – and that they should have only a narrow counterterrorism mission against Al Qaeda.

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“There was a school of thought that wanted the mission to be very limited, focused solely on Al Qaeda,” one American official said.

But, the official said, “the military pretty much got what it wanted.”

When Is a War Over?

By ELIZABETH D. SAMET, The New York Times

NOV. 21, 2014

Ascertaining the logical limits of a campaign presents not merely a strategic but a psychological challenge to its architects and its participants. The longer an expedition’s duration, the harder it becomes to know precisely what constitutes the end, as our wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate. But campaigners with a shifting purpose can derail even a comparatively short war. Disagreement over the conflict’s proper scope led to the breach between President Harry S. Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur over Korea. Truman fired the popular general, a decision for which he was initially vilified, to prevent a limited war from becoming a third world war.

“Now, many persons, even some who applauded our decision to defend Korea, have forgotten the basic reason for our action,” the president explained in April 1951. Truman “considered it essential to relieve General MacArthur so that there would be no doubt or confusion as to the real purpose and aim of our policy.”

In 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld used different language to address essentially the same problem when he asked, “Are we winning or losing the Global War on Terror?” in a memo in October of that year. “Today, we lack metrics to know.” The metrics of 2014 are hardly more definitive.

Americans are uncomfortable with the prospect of an endless war yet deeply uncertain about the natural scope of the campaigns launched by the Authorization for Use of Military Force, signed into law by President George W. Bush on Sept. 18, 2001, against those responsible for the terrorist attacks a week before. This uneasiness and confusion have dominated the new century. Afghanistan was eclipsed by Iraq, Iraq by Afghanistan, and then the entire effort by what we have taken to calling war weariness on the part of a spectating public. A periodic revival of interest in Libya, Syria and elsewhere notwithstanding, much of that public long ago wearied even of watching, while a small percentage of Americans have been commuting to the wars.

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In their 10th year on the march the Macedonians told Alexander they would go no farther. They had conquered Persia, endured three years of enervating guerrilla warfare in the mountainous terrain of northern Afghanistan and Iran, crossed the Hindu Kush, and reached the banks of the Beas River, in the Punjab. The campaign’s sense of purpose had begun to drift. The army’s march had taken it off the map into territory heretofore known to the Greek world only through rumor and legend.

Initially billing his campaign as one of Panhellenic vengeance against the Persians, Alexander united the Greek city-states, restored territories lost in the Greco-Persian Wars and liberated Greeks living under Persian control. By the time his army mutinied in India, however, this goal – only partly the stuff of spin – had been accomplished while the initial clarity of the campaign evaporated. As the second-century Greek chronicler Arrian reports, the Macedonians had wearied of watching Alexander perpetually “charging from labor to labor, danger to danger.” Faced with the prospect of an apparently endless quest, they turned their thoughts toward home.

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Alexander informed his disgruntled troops, “As for a limit to one’s labors, I, for one, do not recognize any for a high-minded man, except that the labors themselves should lead to noble accomplishments.” He assured them that “those who labor and face dangers achieve noble deeds, and it is sweet to live bravely and die leaving behind an immortal fame.”

To which Coenus, reputedly one of the most faithful Macedonians, replied, “If there is one thing above all others a successful man should know, it is when to stop.” Persuaded to turn around despite his fury at the mutineers, Alexander meandered with his army through India’s Gedrosian Desert and Iran for another three years before dying of fever in Babylon.

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Alexander is sufficiently self-aware to understand the vanity of his quest but unable to turn back: “I see that I’m to be / Hurried about the world perpetually, / And that I’ll never know another fate. / Than this incessant, wandering, restless state!” Asked repeatedly by the rival rulers he encounters what he wants in the end, Alexander finds it increasingly difficult to come up with an answer. There’s an insight here into the psychology of long campaigns, which tend to exhaust our ability to make sense of them.