Warren FTW

I have been geeking out over yesterday’s big primaries, and the ensuing act of Republican cannibalism that really, really belongs in one of Linda McMahon’s WWE Smackdowns. (I mean seriously: who doesn’t want to see Sarah Palin kick Karl Rove in the crotch, followed up by Rush Limbaugh taking a bite out of Rove’s ear? Meanwhile, Christine Crazy-pants O’Donnell enters wearing nothing by a floor-length cape made of tea-bags, shrieking, “Stop masturbating and put on your man-pants!”) I’ll go pop more popcorn.

But then I heard even more exciting news: President Obama has tapped Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And he did it with all the panache of Wesley as the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/business/16consumer.html?src=busln

http://www.veoh.com/collection/s274425/watch/e107370y6p2Dpwx

Can you see the connection? No? Let me explain. No, there is no time. Let me sum up.

Here’s the deal: everyone sane and to the left of Richard Nixon wanted the brilliant, the steely-spined, the unflappable, and unimpeachable Elizabeth Warren, in this job. (Except Chris Dodd. WTF, Dodd?) Obama wanted Warren in this job. But …. The 40 Republicans (plus Dodd) in the Senate - and their evil, economy-torpedoing, bank-executive soul keepers - did not want Warren in this job. So, Obama had a few crappy choices:

1. Nominate Elizabeth Warren, and watch an ugly, protracted confirmation hearing process, which could very well end in her not getting confirmed. (And, as the lovely and talented Rachel Maddow just pointed out, Warren would have to provide vapid non-answers to her congressional questioners, which would make her appear to be other than the ass-kicking, name-taking, populist paladin that she is.) Even if the GOP weren’t beholden to their bank-exec orc overlords, they couldn’t be seen to compromise with Obama this close to an election. Because they must appease the tea-bagger fringe. Who don’t like getting ripped off, or big government, and really, really don’t like a government agency that would prevent them form getting ripped off. Oh, Tea-baggers. You are a riddle wrapped in crazy, drowned in a teabag.)
2. Not nominate Elizabeth Warren, and have his entire base (you know, the Progressives, who got him this President gig) break up with him and write mean facebook posts about him for the next two years.
3. Name Warren in a recess appointment, like this summer, when no one sane is paying attention, but everyone crazy seizes on the tiniest morsel of news and twists it out of shape. (Cue the Elizabeth Warren Hitler posters). And give the GOP another thing to complain about: “Obama’s doing things behind our back! And it’s probably socialist! And fascist! And French and gay!”

But, no. Obama chose the jedi ju-jiitsu move instead: wait until congress is back in session. Wait until the last big primary day passes, when a few GOP-establishment candidates are ousted by wild-eyed fringe candidates (have you met Mr. Paladino?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20016461-503544.html), and the entire news cycle realizes that the GOP might be in disarray (ya think?!). Then.

Name Warren to a temporary “Assistant to the President” post, where her duties will include creating and running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“But, that’s not the same as a real appointment! That’s just a symbolic gesture!” Oh, no, my dears.

Here’s the beauty of it:

1. The “Special Assistant” position is no Miss Congeniality prize. You know who else is a “Special Assistant” in the White House? (Hint: it’s not Bo.) Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel. Warren answers directly to the President and to the Treasury Secretary. And everyone else answers to her.
2. She can start immediately, without waiting for Congress make an ass of themselves. I’m going to assume, since the whole agency was her idea, and she’s been talking about it since the financial debacle of 2008, she’s got a rough outline of what she wants to do with her time. Which means she can start doing things between now and the election.
3. This will make the left base very, very, happy. Which might make them less inclined to stay home on the first Tuesday in November.
4. Oh. We might get some meaningful banking regulation in our lifetime.
5. Obama can (and likely will) make her appointment the old-fashioned way, with the ridiculous confirmation hearings, at a later time of his choosing. Like, after the midterms. And after she’s kicked some ass. Which should make her confirmation hearings go more smoothly (and make them more fun to watch.)

But wait, there’s more!

It seems that this bit of Venusian Akido (hmmm. Is that spelled right? My spell-check is about to implode.) isn’t the only bone President Obama is throwing to his base (you know, the sane people in the country).

No! Look at what Obama has been saying about the Bush-era tax-breaks!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/06/obama-promotes-job-creati_n_706652.html

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/09/15/obama.economic.relief/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39203810/ns/politics-decision_2010

Look what’s been happening with immigration reform!

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/Obama-slams-Republican-blockade-on-immigration/articleshow/6563535.cms

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/09/gutierrez_meeting_with_obama_t.html

http://www.poder360.com/dailynews_detail.php?blurbid=9044

People! This is three-dimensional chess! A three-dimensional chess hat trick! At the galactic championship of three-dimensional chess! (Look, I watched a lot of movies and sci-fi this summer. Sue me.)

Finally, President Obama is doing something! I mean, besides the landmark health care reform, the watershed banking reform, the fair-pay acts, the pants-ing of BP for peeing in our Gulf, and the nomination of 2 terrific Supreme Court Justices. And, oh yeah, lowering your federal taxes last year, plus winding a senseless 8-year war in Iraq, and pulling the economy back from the abyss, preventing a second Great Depression. All of this with an obstructionist opposition so hell-bent on doing nothing helpful whatsoever, they voted against bills they themselves had written.

Somewhere over the summer, President Obama found his progressive self, gave him some Red Bull, and sent him out to fight. He put Mr. Bipartisan Compromise in deep storage. And he’s insisting that the Democratic congresspersons (as a certain tea-party candidate would say) “put on their man pants” with him and pass some serious legislation before the midterms. (For other awesome things this certain tea-partier has said, here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/15/christine-odonnell-craziest-quotes_n_718328.html)

There's even some movement on (ok, ok, I admit, Obama is still dragging his feet on this one, but the Democratic congress seems to be finding its spine) finally repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell!

http://www.southfloridagaynews.com/news/national-news/2102-big-victory-judge-strikes-down-dadt.html

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/10/advocates-of-dadt-say-ruling-should-spur-senate-to-act.html

The next few weeks should be telling. Watch how the Republicans, who currently gave their man-pants to a bunch of fruit loops wearing powdered wigs and knee-breeches, react to these issues. And ask yourself: should we cede more ground to these jack-holes?

Democratic base (and sane independents): consider this your wake-up call. Elizabeth Warren isn’t a bone thrown to the liberal fringe. She’s a warning shot across the Tea-Bagger’s and GOP’s bow.

The polling booths await.

Fire up. Get ready to go.

Choosing a New Police Chief: No Local Ties, Please.

Do you want your town to look like The Dukes of Hazzard? Then again, maybe New Milford has been run by Boss Hogg and Roscoe P. Coltrane for a while. If that's not your idea of how a quaint New England town should be run, then help make sure the next police chief has no local ties - political or familial.

The next police chief should be the most qualified candidate, period. Local knowledge and local ties should factor zero into this hiring decision. Promoting from within the department is fine, but with 57 people applying for the job, I'd bet some highly qualified out-of-town candidates were on that list.

The recent rash of retirements have significantly affected the leadership of the New Milford Police Department. Seven (7) officers left the force, including the chief and three in the administrative ranks. Without going into the details as to "why" (i.e. retirement benefits will be reduced with the new union contract), the retirements now bring the politicos into the arena of police power. And that's where the trouble can begin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRX4mlFi06A

According to the Town Charter, the Mayor appoints (with TC approval) a chief for a term "not to exceed four years." They can then reappoint the chief for successive terms. Then it's the Chief that can pick the rest of his leadership team.

Some politicos in town are already whispering about those losing connections to the top brass of the NMPD. Here's why Roscoe and Boss Hogg comparisons have started popping up:

• A key member of the retiring top brass has a "long term relationship" with a family member of a leading local businessman/politico
• This local businessman/politico is often seen with "R" town council members
• One of these "R" town council members is the only TC member to ask for a committee to search for the next police chief. Even though the Mayor had already started a search process (using an outside consultant), this TC member remained obstinate about wanting a committee

Why would this TC member be so insistent about a committee - unless he and his politico pal didn't want an outside consultant to bring in an outsider? Is all of this a coincidence? I'll let you decide - place a comment below.

Can you guess who the TC member is? Put your guess in a comment (if you do your homework, you can find the answer in less time than it takes a politico to drive home from Milano's).

With all of the current co-mingling of business, political, and personal lives, it's almost like The Dukes of Hazzard. In fact, there is a replica of the General Lee in New Milford - it even has the confederate flag painted on the roof. But I've never seen Bo or Luke Duke behind the wheel. Break out the moonshine, boys!

To ensure "NM politics as usual" don't become part of the future police department leadership, tell the Mayor and TC members that the new chief should not be connected to anyone in New Milford. Not connected to a politico, a builder, a blogger, Grandma or Uncle Jesse. If a candidate is chosen who has local ties, ask the tough question: WHY is this the BEST person for the job? If the politicos can't tell you, then you know they've picked Roscoe P. Coltrane.

If you don't think hiring a new chief is significant, then you've never been pulled over for a traffic ticket, arrested, or helped from a dangerous situation by a police officer. In other words, the powers of the police are very significant. These powers shouldn't be granted to a friend or relative of the local cabal.

Party like it's Orwell's 1984

This summer, I read George Orwell’s paranoid dystopia novel, 1984. I have no idea how I managed to graduate from high school, let along college, without reading it, but, there you go. (And, all literary genius aside, I’m so glad I wasn’t friends with Orwell. Somehow I doubt he was ever the life of a party.)

Now that I’m done with it, I can safely say that I will never read it again. Not because it’s a bad book (it’s brilliant), or because Orwell’s prophetic powers were off (in so many ways he’s so dead-on-balls-accurate it’s frightening). No. I will not reread it, because I can go anywhere there’s a “Don’t Tread On Me” flag flying, and relive it, kind of like a Renaissance Faire or a Civil War Reenactment. Between the idea of perpetual war and the permanent underclass, the celebration of enforced ignorance, the rewriting of history, and “Newspeak” (Orwell was channeling Sarah Palin’s Twitter account, wasn’t he?!), I am certain most of the novel is actually set in a TEA Party rally.

Want an example of Orwell’s Oceania in “real” life? Look no further than this discussion between CT 5^th district Congressional candidates, Chris Murphy (D) and Sam Caligiuri (R).

http://www.housatonictimes.com/articles/2010/08/20/news/political/doc4c6dbc03cf24d674185404.txt

Let’s remember a few things: we’re in a recession. The worst one since the Great Depression. We all, no matter our political leanings, want to end the recession as soon as possible. And, while progressives and Democrats have suggested investing in economic stimulus projects to create jobs, services and infrastructure (like Grove St and Boardman Rd), Republicans have been screaming since, oh, November 6^th 2008, that we Must! Lower! The! Deficit!

Thankfully, our 43^rd president showed us the way to do just that. The huge tax breaks to the biggest earners are set to expire. This will return tax levels to Clinton administration levels. (Remember the great recession of the Clinton administration? Neither do I). And yet, suddenly, this is a bad idea. It’s a startling idea. It’s also, apparently, a plot cooked up by Obama.

So. Chris Murphy calmly explains how these expiring tax cuts will be good for everyone, and Sam Caligiuri repeats the same double-think talking points that every Republican across the country has repeated since Obama won the presidency.

Murphy: “If you are serious about deficit reduction, then I can’t see how you can support adding $700 billion over the next 10 years to the federal budget deficit by extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy when a millionaire is getting an extra $100,000 in tax reductions and a middle-class person in Waterbury is getting $20 a year.” (Duh.)

Caligiuri: “Small business owners I talk to in the district have said that they are concerned that those tax cuts might be there in January, and it can have an effect in them hiring again.”

According to Caligiuri, “If you tax the upper class more, then you’re going to have fewer jobs and less revenue.”

Because, in his world, you must be of the “upper class” to own a small business. And a marginal increase in the tax rate causes otherwise prosperous businesses to go belly up. (I’m guessing he also will tell us that a million bucks just isn’t worth what it used to be too.)

Murphy, dwelling in reality, reminds us, “People expand their businesses because they have more customers.” If you sell widgets, and people start buying your widgets faster than you can make them, you hire someone to help you make widgets. You may even bump up the price of your widgets. Regardless if your personal income tax rate is 28% or 31%. Because, dude, you’re selling more widgets! (And if that’s not how you do business, UR doin it wrong!)

It’s like watching a college senior debate Scooby Doo. Except not as funny.

Caligiuri is selling that old song, that asking top earners to bear a greater portion of the tax base than their mini – er, employees, is “wealth redistribution.” Which is communist, or at least French and gay, and could lead to dancing. Or a terrorist attack (I get lost after the “redistribution of wealth” part). Of course, this is pure bunk. The thing is, the Bush tax cuts of the last decade were a “redistribution of wealth” back into the hands of the very, very, rich, at the expense of the other 98% of earners.

But, don’t take my word for it.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/04/jonah-goldberg-anti-maldistributionist.html

There’s some nifty charts, some fancy economist words, and a well-supported argument that we are not in danger of sending our million- and billionaires to Siberia while we dirty proles dine on their Bichon Frises off their gold plates. Basically, we as a nation do not over tax our population, we do not play Robin Hood with the tax revenue, and we are not in danger of becoming French and gay.

Here’s a more plain-spoken explanation of the blatant hypocrisy of the “tax cuts save jobs” double-think:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/38720553

“Those who want to extend the Bush tax cuts make the following argument, among others. This is not their only argument: 1) The rich include many small business owners. 2) Small businesses are the primary engine of job growth. 3) If we raise taxes on the rich, they will not hire people or will hire fewer people than they would have under the lower tax rates. 4) Therefore, raising taxes on the rich will hinder job growth.”

But … we’ve been doing tax cuts for much of the last decade. How did they work out for jobs, growth, and small businesses?

They sucked at it. Why? Because:

“If there is no increase in business, no profitable reason to add to the payroll, no small business is going to hire people no matter what their tax rate is.”

Now, why did Bush enact those tax cuts in the first place? Because, in his world, Bill Clinton (remember when Bill Clinton was a socialist? Neither do I.) had imposed an unfair tax burden on the rich (those poor business owners, again). So, maybe if the Bush tax cuts hadn’t been enacted, the uber wealthy would have done even worse?

I dunno. I look at these numbers, from the oppressive Clinton tax era, and it doesn’t look like many of the “upper class” went hungry:

“In 1990, the marginal rate was raised from 28 percent to 31 percent and the higher rate bracket was changed to include income over $82,150 (previously it was $162,770). That year job growth slowed dramatically from about 2 million in 1989 to 321,000 in 1990. In 1991 there was a net loss of 857,000 jobs.”

This was under Bush Senior. (Remember his “No New Taxes” pledge? Yeah. Me too. But, hey, the guy was trying to pay for a war in a tiny, far away, oil-rich country. Because he apparently forgot that wars pay for themselves.) Here’s what happened under Bill Clinton:

“In 1993, two new high income brackets were created: For income over $140,000 the rate went from 31 percent to 36 percent; for income over $250,000 the rate went from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. In 1993, 2,791,000 new jobs were created on a base of 109,415,000. In 1994, 3,851,000 new jobs were created.”

I know, I know, I mentioned the C-word! And even though he shepherded America through a fantastic economic boom (and recovery from the Bush-41-era Recession), created millions of jobs, balanced the budget, and left us with a huge surplus, by taxing the super-rich at slightly higher rates than his predecessor, America did not crumble, nor did super-rich people find themselves homeless, penniless, or too scared to hire people and make more money.

http://www.kellysite.net/taxes.html

“ Not only was the entire national deficit eliminated after raising taxes on the wealthy in 1993, but the economy grew so fast for the remainder of the decade that many conservative economists thought that the Fed should raise the prime interest rate in order to slow it down.

“This is another of conservatives’ hidden agendas: they keep promising workers that if we cut taxes on the wealthy and the economy grows, their wages will go up. But when wages even start to go up—for whatever reason—conservatives do everything they can to slow down the economy.”

How’s that for double-think?

Of course, in true Orwellian fashion, many citizens on the Right have decided that the Bush-41-Recession was really Clinton’s recession, and the Clinton-era good times was Bush 43’s boom. Sigh. Or, if they can remember the reality everyone else experienced, they assume the Clinton boom was an aberration.

Too bad history doesn’t support that idea:

http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/content-pages/why-tax-the-rich?-efficiency,-equity,-and-progressive-taxation/

“In Greek mythology, Atlas was a giant who carried the world on his shoulders. In Ayn Rand's 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged, Atlas represents the "prime movers"--the talented few who bear the weight of the world's economy. In the novel, the prime movers go on strike against the oppressive burden of excessive regulation and taxation, leaving the world in disarray and demonstrating how indispensable they are to the rest of us (the "second handers").

“Rand wrote in a world in which the top marginal federal income tax rate in the United States was 91% (beginning at taxable income of $400,000). This is an unimaginably high rate by today's standards, when the dominant view in Washington is that a marginal rate of 39.6% (the top rate from 1993 to 2001) is too high. The key turning point in the process of abandoning high marginal tax rates occurred in the presidency of Ronald Reagan. When Reagan became President in 1981, the top marginal federal income tax rate was 70%; when he left office in 1989, the top rate was 28%.

“The reduction of marginal tax rates in the Reagan years was driven by a new policy consensus that still persists today. That consensus is that high marginal tax rates on the rich come with an unaffordably high price for the U.S. economy in the form of reduced incentives for the rich to work and to save, and increased incentives to engage in socially wasteful tax planning. And yet 1957, when Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged and the top income tax rate was 91%, falls in the middle of the period from 1951 through 1963. Those were the golden years of the U.S. economy, in which the average annual rate of productivity growth was 3.1% (compared with about 1.5% after 1981). Of course, the growth might have been even faster had the marginal tax rates been lower, but the coincidence of high rates and high productivity raises challenging questions for those who believe that high marginal tax rates carry an unacceptable cost.”

Not that I want to eat the rich. I don’t want to punish them (well, except for the knuckleheads who melted down the economy, then walked away with millions while regular people watched their homes fall into foreclosure. Those guys … I want to punish. With plagues of boils or some other Biblically poetic means. But, failing plagues of boils …) I understand that returning to Eisenhower-style tax brackets is probably inefficient. There is only so far the super-rich can be taxed.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/08/how-much-revenue-would-millionaires-tax.html

It’s just, right now, the super-rich aren’t being taxed at a reasonable rate. There is a “vast redistribution of wealth” happening in this country. Wealth Trickles out of the pockets of the average tax-payer, up to the super-rich, where it apparently dissipates into off-shore accounts or gets spent on diamond-studded doggie collars.

This is probably best explained in a play:

http://www.skeptically.org/curpol/id24.html

Thank goodness we don’t live in George Orwell’s Oceania. This play was written nearly a decade ago. If this were 1984, Winston would long ago have slid this gem into a memory hole, or else rewritten it entirely.

I’d love to sit Sam Caligiuri down to a performance of Bush Tax Cut, and then ask him to repeat his talking points. I’d like to see how deep his double-think programming goes.

Actually, I’d prefer it if the voting public viewed it. Over Halloween Weekend.

Landmark Ruling Last Week that YOU may not have heard about and then some...

Zach Carter takes note of recent ruling in a case that shows pretty clearly how the banks, not just Wells Fargo BUT all banks, purposely rigged their overdraft system against you:

Wells Fargo Overdraft Scam Makes Elizabeth Warren More Important Than Ever

A landmark court ruling on Wells Fargo's outrageous overdraft scam has the potential to return hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen funds to consumers all over the country. But like many of the banking scandals from the past decade, there's more to the story than simple bank predation. When banks devised this new program to swindle their own customers, bank regulators did not merely look the other way, they actively encouraged the behavior by writing a new rule approving a practice that courts now believe to be unfair and deceptive. The Wells Fargo case should be viewed as a clear example of why Elizabeth Warren ought to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The overdraft scam that Judge William Alsup slapped down yesterday is not unique to Wells Fargo-- every big bank in the country has been doing it for years, and if it's never happened to you, it's probably happened to your friends or family. Banks make a lot of money from overdraft fees-- $38 billion last year, compared to a combined industry profit of just $12.5 billion. They don't make that money by accident. Internal company emails and memos from the Wells Fargo case show bankers spending a lot of time figuring out how to maximize the number of overdraft charges they can hit their checking customers with.

One way is by changing the order in which your transactions are processed. Most people think that their checks and debit card purchases are processed in the order that they make them. But that's not how banks actually do it. Instead, they wait for you to make several purchases, and then process the most expensive purchases first. This method pushes a customer's balance to zero faster than the honest way that actually reflects buying habits. And the sooner your balance goes to zero, the more overdraft fees the bank can hit you with.

It is institutional fraud, across the board and directed at the average consumer, that had elevated the issue of the new consumer protection agency to a grassroots level to begin with.

And it is not just the bank customers that are institutionally screwed over by the financial system. Again from Mr. Carter, even the small players on Wall Street are habitutally hammered to the benefit of the American elite that continues to escape punishment for their crimes:

Will Anyone Be Punished For Citibank's $40 Billion Subprime Lie?

Finally, some good news on Wall Street accountability. A federal judge is holding up the SEC's effort to let Citigroup's top executives off the hook for misleading their own shareholders about $40 billion in subprime debt.

If Citi executives did what the SEC says they did, then the company's top managers are guilty of both civil and criminal fraud. But regulator isn't even going after some of the executives, while letting others off with a penalty that amounts to a rounding error on their bonuses. The proposed settlement is a stunning and shameful declaration of deference to the nation's top financiers, a literal get-out-of-jail free card for bankers who not only wrecked the economy, but—according to SEC allegations—broke the law to do it.

Cindy Sheehan wrote a particualrly prescient piece recently that drives home the truth as it has always been known to too many of us:

Racketeers for Capitalism

by Cindy Sheehan

"I spent 33 years in the Marines. Most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism."
Major General Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket (1935)

...snip...

As little as we hear about U.S. troops, as is our custom here in the Empire, the tragic slaughter of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan doesn't even deserve a blip on our radar screens. I watched three hours of MSDNC (MSNBC) tonight and the manipulative gyrations to find out how many ways that they could talk about the "distraction" of the "mosque" at ground zero without talking about the one-million plus Arabs (Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc) that the psychopathic U.S. response to September 11, 2001 has killed, was pathetic and frustrating to watch.

There has been a bumper sticker saying for years that goes: "What if they gave a war and no one showed up?"

Well, "they," the ones that give the wars are not going to stop. "They" have too much at stake to give up the cash cow of wars for Imperial Profit, Power, and Expansion. "They" use the toady media to whip up nationalistic and patriotic fervor to get our kids to be thrown together with the victims in a meat grinder of destruction and we just sit here and allow them to do it.

The Empire preys on our kids using all the tools at its disposal: Economic panic, high college tuition, high unemployment and a mythology that the U.S. has some existential right to steal the resources of other nations.

I, and too many others, have noted many times that we appear to be a Plutocracy that has already fallen into a kleptocracy (witness the generational theft that is the bailouts).  This is taken from a post on the bailouts and how they were not helping the average Americans (nor democracy) at all:

Everything you need to know about the bailouts

in 2 short paragraphs. A relatively long post for Atrios. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!

What's The Goal?

Others have made this point in various ways, but if the goal is to bail out the banksters and keep the existing too big to fail financial order in place with the same cast of characters in charge, then all of this sounds like a cunning plan.

If the goal was really to get banks lending again they'd be funneling large sums of money to healthy (mostly smaller) financial institutions who actually made sensible choices over the last few years.

Meanwhile a fire sale is going on:

Lenders have become so overwhelmed by the foreclosure crisis that they are starting to unload properties in bulk to investor groups at steep discounts.
Investors then flip the properties for a profit without necessarily improving the home.

For example, a unit of Citigroup, the troubled financial giant, sold a foreclosure in Temecula to an Arizona investment firm for $139,000 when comparable homes in the area were selling for $240,000 to $260,000.

The firm listed the home for $249,000, received multiple offers and the property has entered escrow, said Amber Schlieder, the real estate agent who handled the listing.

Citi left a 100 grand on the table. This looks like a great way to abuse the taxpayer even more.
I want to know who they are all selling in bulk to.

Remember who else was buying up the mortgages in bulk?

So it may come as a surprise that a dozen former top Countrywide executives now stand to make millions from the home mortgage mess.

Stanford L. Kurland, Countrywide's former president, and his team have been buying up delinquent home mortgages that the government took over from other failed banks, sometimes for pennies on the dollar. They get a piece of what they can collect.

"It has been very successful - very strong," John Lawrence, the company's head of loan servicing, told Mr. Kurland one recent morning in a glass-walled boardroom here at PennyMac's spacious headquarters, opened last year in the same Los Angeles suburb where Countrywide once flourished.

The Treasury has shown a willingness to recklessly toss all of our futures away to keep these "Too Big Failures" operating in their self-entitled comfort zone.

It is worth revisiting that piece both for the post and the comments that followed here and at other Blogs, as well as other reactions to the discussed news articles of the day across the Blogosphere:

We had this discussion over at MLN (greenpeas brought it to our attention in comments).
Plutocracy is a better description of our situation, IMHO. A Plutocracy that has collapsed into a Kleptocracy, given the Robber Baron Banks... The oligarchy is just a part of our plutocracy:

In a plutocracy, the degree of economic inequality is high while the level of social mobility is low. This can apply to a multitude of government systems, as the key elements of plutocracy transcend and often occur concurrently with the features of those systems.

The word plutocracy is derived from the ancient Greek root ploutos, meaning wealth and kratein, meaning to rule or to govern.

The term plutocracy is generally used to describe two distinct concepts: one of a historical nature and one of a modern political nature. The former indicates the political control of the state by an oligarchy of the wealthy. Examples of such plutocracies include some city-states in Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian merchant republics of Venice and Florence, and Genoa.
Kevin Phillips, author and political strategist to U.S. President Richard Nixon, argues that the United States is a plutocracy in which there is a "fusion of money and government."

snip

A Plutocracy is a government controlled by a minuscule proportion of extremely wealthy individuals found in most societies. In many forms of government, those in power benefit financially, sometimes enough to belong to the aforementioned wealthy class.

Classically, a plutocracy was an oligarchy, which is to say a government controlled by the wealthy few. Usually this meant that these 'plutocrats' controlled the executive, legislative and judicial aspects of government, the armed forces, and most of the natural resources. To a certain degree, there are still some situations in which private corporations and wealthy individuals may exert such strong influence on governments, that the effect can arguably be compared to a plutocracy.

If there are no forms of control within the society, the plutocracy can easily collapse into a kleptocracy, "reign of thieves", where the powerholders attempt to confiscate as much public funds as possible as their private property. A kleptocratic state is usually thoroughly corrupt, has very little production and its economy is unstable. Many failed states represent kleptocracies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

But I do understand that either oligarchy and plutocracy might be used almost interchangeably in these times.

Oligarchy is a form of government where political power effectively rests with a small elite segment of society distinguished by royalty, wealth, family, military powers or occult spiritual hegemony. The word oligarchy is from the Greek words for "few" and "rule".

Early societies may have become oligarchies as an outgrowth of an alliance between rival tribal chieftains or as the result of a caste system. Oligarchies can often become instruments of transformation, by insisting that monarchs or dictators share power, thereby opening the door to power-sharing by other elements of society (while oligarchy means "the rule of the few," monarchy means "the rule of the one"). One example of power-sharing from one person to a larger group of persons occurred when English nobles banded together in 1215 to force a reluctant King John of England to sign the Magna Carta, a tacit recognition both of King John's waning political power and of the existence of an incipient oligarchy (the nobility). As English society continued to grow and develop, Magna Carta was repeatedly revised (1216, 1217, and 1225), guaranteeing greater rights to greater numbers of people, thus setting the stage for English constitutional monarchy. Oligarchy is also compared with Aristocracy and Communism. In an aristocracy, a small group of wealthy or socially prominent citizens control the government. Members of this high social class claim to be, or are considered by others to be, superior to the other people because of family ties, social rank, wealth, or religious affiliation. The word "aristocracy" comes from the Greek term meaning rule by the best. Many aristocrats have inherited titles of nobility such as duke or baron.
snip

Capitalism as a social system is sometimes described as an oligarchy. Socialists argue that in a capitalist society, power - economic, cultural and political - rests in the hands of the capitalist class. Communist states have also been seen as oligarchies, being ruled by a class with special privileges, the nomenklatura.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

greenpeas: "In terms of how he thinks the situation should be handled, he is in favor of breaking the banks up into much smaller entities and letting them prey upon themselves essentially. Sound diabolical enough for ya? (grin)"

As for this part? It will have to be done in some way. I think they should be nationalized, clean sweep of the gambling junkies, broken up into "small enough to fail" banks, and then they could be returned to a well regulated market. Originally I had said "let them fail", but the problem with that that took me a while to realize was that if they were just "left to fail" you could add trillions more of losses to the credit derivatives gambling tables making this even worse.
And you can add this to the list of things to do: prosecution and litigation for any criminal and criminally negligent activities.

My beef above with oligarchy is more a matter of a technicality in the actual definition of our society. We have so much more than just a ruling elite. Our politicians profit from their legislation in favor of the oligarchy, etc., corporations, companies and the upper middle class (the lower uber rich?) that have the money to invest - and aren't really part of the true oligarchy - also profit from these manipulations. The rest of "us" pay the price for this selling out. I am sure most of you can recognize the difference and similarities in the two definitions and decide for yourselves.

It sure is somewhat gobsmacking to see and hear an insider talk like this. As greenpeas put it: "This is somebody with what I would consider very insider, accepted connections - Sloan School of Management, Peterson Institute - saying the situation sucks big time."
Thanks for writing this up... I can check one thing off of my own "too-much-to-do list" now. lol

At the time that we, here at ePluribus Media, and MLN and too many others places were having these dicussions, buddydarhma wrote what I thought was an outstanding post on this at dKos

Some extra food for thought:

Hard Not To Call It Evil

According to people who should know, The Ruling Class is using our money....draining our money, the money we use to survive and feed our children and to actual produce things, to rescue the very structure...that allows them to BE The Ruling Class. The structures that enable them to Rule us by controlling credit, capital, and our pensions and IRA's and 401k's.

And our regulatory agencies and politicians. And so by extension our military. Which is then used in the service and interests of The Ruling Class and their Party of Business, the GOP.

These people, the Ruling Class, are the ones who got us into this financial armageddon. These are the same Ruling Class that took us to war in Iraq, after ignoring the warnings that an attack was coming.

They are the same people who made America into a nation that tortures people they KNOW to be innocent. They are the same people...if they even deserve the name...who are stopping any serious efforts to mitigate a Climate Crisis of incomprehensible scope.

They are the same people that so unprecedentedly had the Supreme Court decide Bush vs. Gore, so they could have Bush cut their taxes and deregulate the very same structures that we are now being called to give OUR money to prop up. Yes, the very same people who are directly responsible for everything that has gone wrong in our world, are the people who are now telling us....not asking us....telling us, that we have to bail them out. While as always, not telling us the whole story, not telling us what they are doing behind the scenes and behind our backs.

Read on...

The fact is that the entire political system is so rigged against the average American that not only have the elite successfully robbed us to bail themselves out... They have managed to pass through this entire mess they created without even barely a scratch. IOW:

We have gone from a failing Plutocracy to Kleptocracy and ridden right back into a new age of Plutocracy that has, IMHO, actually gained a stronger grip on Americans and our politics:

From Digby, and I hope she forgives me for stealing the entire thing because it is noteworthy:

Plutonomy Revival

We've been hearing a lot lately about how we have to coddle the wealthy or they'll hold their breath until they turn blue and then we'll be in real trouble. It seems ridiculous that anyone would listen to this, but it's worth revisiting this Wall Street Journal piece from 2007 to get an idea of where this is coming from:

It’s well known that the rich have an outsized influence on the economy.

The nation’s top 1% of households own more than half the nation’s stocks, according to the Federal Reserve. They also control more than $16 trillion in wealth — more than the bottom 90%.

Yet a new body of research from Citigroup suggests that the rich have other, more-surprising impacts on the economy.

Ajay Kapur, global strategist at Citigroup, and his research team came up with the term “Plutonomy” in 2005 to describe a country that is defined by massive income and wealth inequality. According to their definition, the U.S. is a Plutonomy, along with the U.K., Canada and Australia.

In a series of research notes over the past year, Kapur and his team explained that Plutonomies have three basic characteristics.

1. They are all created by “disruptive technology-driven productivity gains, creative financial innovation, capitalist friendly cooperative governments, immigrants…the rule of law and patenting inventions. Often these wealth waves involve great complexity exploited best by the rich and educated of the time.”

2. There is no “average” consumer in Plutonomies. There is only the rich “and everyone else.” The rich account for a disproportionate chunk of the economy, while the non-rich account for “surprisingly small bites of the national pie.” Kapur estimates that in 2005, the richest 20% may have been responsible for 60% of total spending.

3. Plutonomies are likely to grow in the future, fed by capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity and globalization.

Kapur says that once we understand the Plutonomy, we can solve some of the recent mysteries of the American economy. For instance, some economists have been puzzled (especially last year) about why wild swings in oil prices have had only muted effects on consumer spending.

Kapur’s explanation: the Plutonomy. Since the rich don’t care about higher oil prices, and they dominate spending, higher oil prices don’t matter as much to total consumer spending.

The Plutonomy also could explain larger “imbalances” such as the national debt level. The rich are so comfortably rich, Kapur explains, that they have started spending higher shares of their incomes on luxuries. They borrow much larger amounts than the “average consumer,” so they have an exaggerated impact on the nation’s debt levels and savings rates. Yet because the rich still have plenty of wealth and healthy balance sheets, their borrowing shouldn’t be a cause for concern.

In other words, much of the nation’s lower savings rate is due to borrowing by the rich. So we should worry less about the “over-stretched” average consumer.
Finally, the Plutonomy helps explain why companies that serve the rich are posting some of the strongest growth and profits these days.

“The Plutonomy is here, is going to get stronger, its membership swelling” he wrote in one research note. “Toys for the wealthy have pricing power, and staying power.”

Keep in mind that from atop the rubble of the economic meltdown, those very people are once again making big bucks and lobbying strongly for less regulation whiloe they cry about being demonized in the press. (And it is those same people who are telling congressmen, many of whom are also in the upper one percent, that they have plenty of jobs, but the unemployed are too lazy to take them.)

If you think plutonomy is a good idea (or at least a neutral one) then the current housing slump and unemployment crisis are irrelevant to the health of the nation --- as long as the government doesn't expect you to kick in more to keep these people from being forced to accept falling wages and a much lower standard of living. If that happens you might not be able to buy as many jewels and fine art and then the whole thing falls apart.

The writer did offer one little warning about the potential problems that might stem from that:

The author of the piece did offer a teensy little warning back in 2007:

Of course, Kapur says there are risks to the Plutonomy, including war, inflation, financial crises, the end of the technological revolution and populist political pressure.

I might have thought that the destruction of the middle class would be considered a primary risk for social unrest, but perhaps society's winners think they can protect their jewels and mansions by hiring Blackwater these days, so it's not a problem. In any case he brushed off all those potential consequences:

Yet he maintains that the “the rich are likely to keep getting even richer, and enjoy an even greater share of the wealth pie over the coming years.”

All of which means that, like it or not, inequality isn’t going away and may become even more pronounced in the coming years. The best way for companies and businesspeople to survive in Plutonomies, Kapur implies, is to disregard the “mass” consumer and focus on the increasingly rich market of the rich.

It would appear that even in the aftermath of a near cataclysm in the financial sector, they have not changed their minds. But then, why would they? From their perspective, the government did its job by bailing out the big banks and Wall Street to save the economy and everything's back to normal.

The truth is that it is not really back to normal.

There are still those that had and still have, and continue to expect to have more, and are the only people in this nation with any real money to spend... Too bad for us that it is our money, and our government too, they have completely consumed.

But the rest of us have even less than we did before... And can expect to lose even more than we have already lost over the last 20 or 30 years. The haves are currently sitting on their pile of money in the hopes of driving wages down even more. And as long as they don't create jobs the demand for you continues to shrink. That is reality.

Why not? They can afford to. Can you afford to just sit there and watch your way of life and what used the American dream get flushed down the drain?

If we continue to do nothing all we'll have left is this Open Thread. Hope it does not leave a bad taste in your mouth!

And some more stuff, previously posted at ePM, for the rest of us have nots to choke on:

--------------

How Can Tax Cuts Make This Pile Of Money Trickle Down?

They've got their massive piece of the pie... And they want more.

Corporations Sitting On $1.84 Trillion Cash

From last month: U.S. Firms Build Up Record Cash Piles,

U.S. companies are holding more cash in the bank than at any point on record, underscoring persistent worries about financial markets and about the sustainability of the economic recovery.

The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies had socked away $1.84 trillion in cash and other liquid assets as of the end of March, up 26% from a year earlier and the largest-ever increase in records going back to 1952.

The problem is reduced demand. Continuing unemployment means that the economy is not producing demand, so businesses are not willing to risk investing in meeting demand, which means they are not hiring, which means unemployment continues.

Seriously? They are already hoarding vast sums of money - probably trying to figure out how to offshore it with our jobs too - and the GOP plan, the highly desired plan of corporations and the their rich owners, is giving them more with tax cuts for the listless elites. That will just be a bigger welfare check than the ones we already floated Wall Street for doing absolutely nothing to fix the disaster they created.

Meanwhile, the screech of the typical village idiot corporate shills and deficit peacocks is getting shrill:

Arguments From Authority

A quick note on David Brooks’s column today. I have no idea what he’s talking about when he says,

The Demand Siders don’t have a good explanation for the past two years

Funny, I thought we had a perfectly good explanation: severe downturn in demand from the financial crisis, and a stimulus which we warned from the beginning wasn’t nearly big enough. And as I’ve been trying to point out, events have strongly confirmed a demand-side view of the world.

But there’s something else in David’s column, which I see a lot: the argument that because a lot of important people believe something, it must make sense:

Moreover, the Demand Siders write as if everybody who disagrees with them is immoral or a moron. But, in fact, many prize-festooned economists do not support another stimulus. Most European leaders and central bankers think it’s time to begin reducing debt, not increasing it — as do many economists at the international economic institutions. Are you sure your theorists are right and theirs are wrong?

Yes, I am. It’s called looking at the evidence. I’ve looked hard at the arguments the Pain Caucus is making, the evidence that supposedly supports their case — and there’s no there there.

And you just have to wonder how it’s possible to have lived through the last ten years and still imagine that because a lot of Serious People believe something, you should believe it too. Iraq? Housing bubble? Inflation?

Those Deficit Peacocks won't dare look at what is really creating the deficits and what would really get more people back to work.

Bush Tax Cuts, War Costs Do Lasting Harm to Budget Outlook

Some commentators blame recent legislation — the stimulus bill and the financial rescues — for today’s record deficits. Yet those costs pale next to other policies enacted since 2001 that have swollen the deficit. Those other policies may be less conspicuous now, because many were enacted years ago and they have long since been absorbed into CBO’s and other organizations’ budget projections.

Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs. [6] (The prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003 accounts for further substantial increases in deficits and debt, which we are unable to quantify due to data limitations.) These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies (especially the tax cuts and the drug benefit) do not fade away as the economy recovers (see Figure 1).

Without the economic downturn and the fiscal policies of the previous Administration, the budget would be roughly in balance over the next decade. That would have put the nation on a much sounder footing to address the demographic challenges and the cost pressures in health care that darken the long-run fiscal outlook.

Figure 1 for your reference... And note the heavy costs of tax cuts for the Wall Street Welfare elites and uber rich, the cravenly irresponsible masters of economic disasters that are hiding behind political maneuvering of both parties to destroy any sense of justice in the economic system to keep their gravy train looting the nation:



A huge swath of tangerine dream green handed to them on a silver platter in tax cuts that far and away benefited the rich and the GOP side is publicly voicing support for these evident do-nothings of the economy to keep from paying their fair share at the exact time that all of America is suffering these elites' disaster.

Nevermind the Pelosi's of the world pretending to be against dropping the budget hammer on you while putting in place the very real means to run over the small people's social safety nets with "procedural votes" behind closed doors.

And that is supoosed to be liberal leadership? Give me a corporatist break!

This is a war of ideals, one that the real people have been losing for far too long:

Anyone who thinks the unemployment situation is a product of poor governing on the part of this President can't recognize a class war when they see it. The real issue on the table here is corporate power and control.

Consider the recent Luntz-style attacks on the unemployed. Rather than addressing the reasons for the stubbornly high unemployment rate, they choose to demonize those who are unemployed.

We're too stupid, too lazy, or we want to be paid too much to rehire.

Of course, none of these things are true, but they offer cover for CEOs to duck the true questions about why they'd rather simply sit on the cash and forego expansion for now. They'd rather do it because they can. Because they can afford to wait until they have a puppet in the oval office who will do their bidding, who will call off the regulatory dogs, and who understands unique corporate challenges.

And while Wall Street throws itself a faux pity party:

Wall Street's pity party snit fit

Anonymous bankers complain to Politico that Democrats did not do enough to soften bank reform

Imagine two alternate realities. In one universe, the bank reform bill likely to be signed into law in the United States is generally regarded by critics as not quite up to the task of delivering on its primary goal: preventing a repeat of the financial crisis that broke the global economy in 2008. In this universe, there are differences among those who believe that the bill, while manifestly imperfect, still represents an improvement on the status quo, and those who dismiss it as irredeemably irrelevant, but there is nonetheless a widespread consensus that resistance from Republicans and moderate Democrats, in combination with a cautious White House, resulted in legislation that is much milder than what would seem to have been called for under the circumstances (a devastating economic collapse precipitated by recklessly irresponsible financial institutions.)

Now let's visit another universe, one constructed from anonymous comments relayed to Politico reporters from enraged Wall Streeters. In "Wall St. Plans Payback For Reg Reform," we learn that there is a "great deal of frustration" being felt by bankers towards Democratic politicians who have the gall to come to Wall Street asking for money, after having dared to vote for bank reform.

While the final Wall Street reform bill turned out to be less onerous than banks feared, there are still hard feelings, especially over the rhetoric used to slam banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JPMorganChase...
... Still, feelings in the financial industry are very raw, especially toward moderate and New York-area Democrats who, the industry feels, did not do enough to ease the potential impact of the financial overhaul.

• Continue reading

HTWW agrees with the bankers on one count: It is indeed "unseemly" for politicians to be soliciting Wall Street for campaign contributions while at the same time carving out the final shape of bank reform.

No kidding that it is unseemly. It is beyond obscene given that it is clear that a lot of the regulatory changes to the finanacial industries are highly illusory.

And much of the continued fight is to keep the country from sliding any faster into the corporatocracy deep end, we have to remember that we are fighting hugely powerful interests that will spend millions to fight any regulation - even the laws that have been in place for years - in order to grease the slippery slope and even if the fight's cost dwarf the minute penalties from enforcement of legislation:

Wal-Mart spends $2 million fighting $7K fine

The Death Star of American corporations, Wal-Mart, has decided to contest a minor fine from OSHA. In doing so, the Arkansas based company has amassed $2 million in legal fees, according to the NY Times.

The $7,000 fine from OSHA was for the trampling death of a Wal-Mart employee , crushed by a surging mob of customers outside a Long Island Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving, 2008.
And BTW, they are using Teabagging Konstatooshunull Lawe (sic) to argue, OSHA lacks the authority to issue fines in the first place

The people we are fighting against have the big money guns and they control the strings of every corporate puppet at every level of government, at every turn of the traditional media's corrupted phrases... And they are liars.

The only thing we do have on our side is the sheer numbers of real people to effect change. And the occasional Financial realists that are already in a position to advocate for what they know is the right thing to do, both morally and fiscally. Yves there, at Naked Capitalism, echoing thoughts of the Financial Times' Martin Wolf:

Wolf next establishes that the private sector in countries all around the world is saving. The OECD forecasts that savings in advanced economies will be 7% of GDP, or roughly $3 trillion. In theory, these savings could go to investments in emerging economies, but the private sector in those countries is projected to be saving too. The Institute for International Finance anticipates a total of $300 billion for 2010.

Wolf then explains how this all plays out:

According to the IIF, the net flow of private funds from advanced countries to emerging countries will be close to $700bn this year. But that will be almost entirely offset by an official outflow, in the form of foreign currency reserves, of close to $600bn. These huge official interventions prevent the emergence of large net capital inflows into emerging countries. Instead, the private sectors of the advanced countries accumulate net claims on the private sectors of emerging countries, while the governments of emerging countries accumulate offsetting claims on the governments of advanced countries.

The bottom line is clear: there exists, at present, a gigantic net flow of funds into the liabilities of the governments of advanced countries. Of course, some countries can still get into difficulties. But it is quite wrong to argue that the difficulties of a Greece or a Spain entail difficulties ahead for the US, or even the UK. The opposite is far more likely: flight from risk entails flight into something less risky. What is the least perilous asset for the investment of gigantic private financial surpluses? The only answer is the public debt of the big advanced countries.

These flows of funds consist only of identities. So what are the causal factors? Maybe, the collapse in private spending in the wake of the financial crisis was caused by terror of the fiscal deficits to come. Maybe, the moon is made of green cheese, too. There is also next to no sign of crowding out in capital markets. The plausible hypothesis, then, is that the fiscal deficits were a response to the collapsing desire to spend of the crisis-hit private sector. Fiscal policy could have been tighter. But the result would have been a depression.

What then of the future? Suppose there is no significant change in policy in emerging economies. Then if a fiscal contraction in advanced countries is not to cause a slowdown, even a second recession, it must be accompanied by an upsurge in private spending.

The argument must be that improved confidence in the long-run sustainability of public finances would lead to greater private consumption and investment spending now, even if there is no significant effects on interest rates or the exchange rate. I am highly sceptical of this argument (see “Why it is right for central banks to keep printing”, Financial Times, June 22, 2010). But grant that this is true. Then the best policy is to slow the long-term growth in spending on age-related programmes. This comes out clearly from the discussion of long-term fiscal trends in the excellent new annual report from the Bank for International Settlements.

Yves here. So Wolf, and the Bank of International Settlement (hardly a bunch of socialists) think keeping old people from having to subsist on pet food would be good for economies around the world. I’d love to see Wolf up against the Social Security fear mongers from the Peterson Foundation. Fur would fly.

Meanwhile? We will still have to listen to absolute drivel coming out of a failed incoprporated system of government for the corporation, of the corporation and by the corporation:

So I was watching a CNN panel today and the subject up for debate was something along the lines of, "Is Obama shedding constituents? Critics say he's abandoned Wall Street."
My first reaction was, "Wait, critics are saying this? Are you sure that wasn't what his allies said?" But no -- I actually had to listen to a debate over whether Obama was making a huge political mistake by "abandoning" his bestest pals in the world at the megabanks.* You know, the guys whose greed and irresponsibility caused the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression.

(*Obama hasn't actually "abandoned" the banks in the least, but that's a story for another post.)
And then I thought, "Why the hell are we the only culture in the whole goldurned world where it's seen as a political risk to abandon the people who are responsible for causing widespread economic hardship?" And all this got me thinking about the super-weird "We-Must-Be-Nice-to-Rich-People" doctrine that has run through our national discourse since the 1980s.
You see, there was a time when American politicians could say things such as "It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes" (Andrew Jackson) and "Too much cannot be said against the men of wealth who sacrifice everything to getting wealth" (Teddy Roosevelt) and "We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace — business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering... They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred" (FDR) and no one thought anything of it. Indeed, as Simon Johnson and James Kwak show in their excellent book 13 Bankers, hating on financial oligarchs is as American as hating on soccer, dating all the way back to Thomas Jefferson.

Yes... Via CNN we get the ultimate circular firing squad of "Leave the rich alllooooone!"

The problem with their table talk? Joe and Suzy Sixpack's livelihoods, their ability to just scrape by during the elites disaster capitalism coupled with looting the nation crime sprees, are the roadkill carcasses they will gladly dine on to continue take their money for nothing.

I'd say that rather than giving the elites a bigger piece of the splattered, half-baked schemes of gambling casino pie in the sky... It is long passed time to let them have their own medicinal cake of austerity, tightening their fat elitist buckles.

But eating any cake is too good for the masters of economic disasters that want more welfare for the rich and consider pissing on you, the poor, as trickle down.
The slogan for today's real populism ought to be a well deserved:

Save America - Eat the rich.

Lead the financial sycophants and their listless do-nothing way of life to the slaughter. Because it is clear it is either going to be you or them... And lord knows the rich don't want to be held responsible for their gambling habits, their crimes and their their failures.

As a side note: If you aren't already mad as hell about this shit-salad-sandwich that we are being force fed daily, then I do question your sanity.

--------------

Please chalk this whole post up the little voice inside my head that is screaming:

"WE'RE DOOMED!!!!"

Some noteworthy pieces, IMHO, to go with this:

• A bit on the new consumer protection agency +++ FinReg with Thom Hartmann and Matt Taibi
• False Sense of Security From Masters of Econ Disasters And The Markets Empty Threats
• Open Thread - The Economic Fun Fair
• War on An Economy in Crisis
• Elizabeth Warren, Economics and Healthcare

primary colors

Primary season is finally over in CT. (Only 82 more days until the November elections!)

The New Milford results are in. And while there's nothing particularly surprising about how the town voted, I am shocked at the low turnout.

According to the tallies at the Danbury News-Times:

1497 registered Republicans voted for a senate candidate.

929 registered Democrats voted for a gubernatorial candidate.

That's only 2416 people, out of a town with some 30,000 souls (nearly 18,000 eligible voters, according to the Housatonic Times).

There are, I'm sure, several reasons for the low turnout.

-It's a primary, not a general, so people aren't as plugged in as they should be.

-It's a mid-term election, so people aren't as fired up as they would be for a presidential race.

-It's summer, and people are out of town.

-There were more Republican races (did I hear some guy named Marty was running for probate judge?), so Democrats weren't as interested.

-Because it's a primary, where one must vote within their own party, independents were left out.

But you know what? All of those reasons suck. There is absolutely no reason for New Milford voters to sit an election out.

I am always amazed at the number of people who refuse their responsibilities as citizens by opting out of election. And then feel they have a legitimate reason to complain about the state of affairs. Voting is the responsibility that comes with our constitutional rights. To shirk that responsibility is downright disrespectful. To the constitution, to the republic, to one's fellow citizens, and to one's self.

That's particularly so in these off-year elections and primaries, when each vote counts more, since only a single state, or district, or town, is in play.

I've heard people say, "Well, all the candidates for office X are bums, so I won't vote at all." Which makes as much sense as John Boehner explaining his devotion to both reducing the deficit and extending the Bush tax cuts for the uber-wealthy. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/john_boehner_talks_tax_cuts.html

(But, if I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone say something completely ridiculous about politics, I could probably buy myself a senate seat.)

If you want any say in how your government works, educate yourself about the candidates, and then choose one.

If you believe in free speech, exercise yours at the ballot box.

If you want to earn the moniker of "patriot," get off your butt and go to the polls.

If you don't vote, you're just part of the problem.

Here's hoping the turnout numbers are much, much higher in November.

"Does Probate = Masterb-te," or "Are We Getting Jerked Off by the Judge?"

What's the deal with this primary for Probate Judge? Have you ever seen such energy put into an election campaign (Oops - I mean other than this spring's budget referendum)? Why are New Milford Republicans putting so much energy behind Judge Marty? Who stands to lose here - probate should be pretty simple, right? Would the losers be the people of New Milford? Or a privileged few who might benefit from having a buddy on the bench? (What - me cynical? Nah.)


The Elephants have been working on electing Marty since the beginning of the year. There were plenty of meetings at a Town Councilman's private office, multiple fundraisers, and meet & greets covered by the press (if you can call the Spectrum "press"). There was even a last minute dirty trick by local leader Rog Szendy. Yet, Marty lost the endorsement at the local nominating convention - he only had the support of the New Milford delegates. Apparently the other town delegations were pissed off at Szendy's dirty politicking, and they all supported William DeFeo of New Fairfield. Good job, Rog.


This election was deemed "so important" by the local Elephants that Board of Ed member Lynette Rigdon skipped her BOE obligation (the Education Connection Board of Directors Meeting) in order to be at the nominating convention. Yep - she deemed attending a local probate nominating convention more important than carrying out her duties as an elected member of the BOE. But, worse than that, she didn't want to admit to the public why she missed the meeting. In the minutes of the May 11, 2010, BOE meeting, "Ms. Rigdon said she was unable to get to the last meeting..." Pretty pathetic. But, then again, it shows the importance these clowns have put on this minor election. Still confused? Me too.


The Mayor even got her boyfriend, State Rep. Clark Chapin, to write a letter to the local rags endorsing Marty. Why would he suddenly publicly endorse a candidate - he doesn't put in the same effort for his "partner," much less higher profile offices like Town Council. Why, Clark? Why now?


A few of the New Milford politico's who know both men say DeFeo is honest and acts with integrity. They also like Marty as a person, but are wary of his key backers - the shady NM Republican cabal. Not to be cynical, but the politico's are whispering.


So let's review: DeFeo wins nomination with support from all other towns in the district. New Milford carries on the fight, pouring a great deal of energy and $$ into a fight against a loyal, long standing fellow Republican. Then, throw in that the New Milford Repubs are famous for throwing dirt and dirty tricks, and you get a recipe for skepticism.


Luckily, I can't cast a vote in this primary. If you are an "R," don't blindly follow your local leaders. Ask some questions before you pull the lever on Tuesday. I'm not sure who the best candidate is - but I wouldn't defer to Rog Szenmaster's judgement.