February 14, 2009 archive

Burning the Midnight Oil for a Brawny Recovery

Joseph Stiglitz on the Political Economy of the Bail-Out: Who’s At the Table?

Or as your humble correspondent wrote at Obama’s Emergency Banking Act of 2009 (European Tribune) … (below the fold)

This fits, for further study, especially with Brandon Friedman’s posts on Afghanistan, over at Vet Voice, which can be found here and here and the present to future of.

In my opinion we lost there already, when they pulled out to destroy Iraq.

Memories don’t die, and we, as well as many others, made promises we didn’t keep in not filling the vacuum after the Soviet pullout in helping that country rebuild. That vacuum was filled which led to this present!!  

Republicans Vote Against America  

Stimulus Plan Tightens Reins on Wall St. Pay



By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and ERIC DASH

Published: February 13, 2009

WASHINGTON – A provision buried deep inside the $787 billion economic stimulus bill would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at financial institutions that are much tougher than those proposed 10 days ago by the Treasury Department.

The provision, inserted by Senate Democrats over the objections of the Obama administration, is aimed at companies that have received financial bailout funds. It would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the five most senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive money under the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

The stimulus package was approved by the House on Friday, then by the Senate in the late evening.

GOP lawmakers tout projects in the stimulus bill they opposed



By David Lightman | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Rep. John Mica was gushing after the House of Representatives voted Friday to pass the big stimulus plan.

“I applaud President Obama’s recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future,” the Florida Republican beamed in a press release.

Yet Mica had just joined every other GOP House member in voting against the $787.2 billion economic recovery plan.

Republicans echoed their party line over and over during the debate: “This bill is loaded with wasteful deficit spending on the majority’s favorite government programs,” as Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Va., put it.

But Mica wasn’t alone in touting what he saw as the bill’s virtues. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, also had nice things to say in a press release.

USA

Buffalo crash claimed Sept. 11 widow, Rwanda advocate

Beverly Eckert, whose husband died at the World Trade Center, helped survivors and pushed to create the 9/11 commission. Alison Des Forges fought for justice after the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

By Bob Drogin

February 14, 2009

Reporting from Silver Spring, Md. — If tragedy brings people together, the still-unexplained crash of a Continental Airlines commuter jet Thursday night forever links Beverly Eckert and Alison Des Forges, two extraordinary women who led separate crusades, against seemingly impossible odds.

Eckert was a Sept. 11 widow who turned her grief into powerful advocacy. She helped force a reluctant Bush White House to create the 9/11 Commission to investigate the attacks, and then helped push Congress to pass sweeping reforms of America’s secret intelligence agencies. “She really redefined for America how to be an effective activist and a committed citizen,” said Tim Roemer, a member of the 9/11 commission and liaison to the victims’ families. “That’s an extraordinary achievement.”

Des Forges led a tireless, often dangerous campaign to bring to justice the perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and other massacres. She appeared as an expert witness at scores of war crimes trials and other judicial proceedings around the world.

Nothing But Love Here

You can’t make this stuff up

In an effort to get people to use less toilet paper, a “research center” called Japan Toilet Labo has been placing poems in public restrooms. The asinine verses include “Fold the paper over and over and over and over again” and “That paper will meet you for but a moment.”

After seven diners in Yamagata were sickened by improperly prepared fugu, the restaurant’s owner told police that he has “never eaten blowfish before, but I heard it was good, so I served it.”

Cops say a homeless man broke into an apartment in Chiyoda-ku and installed a “keylogger” virus on the resident’s computer, allowing him to steal some ¥9 million from the victim’s bank account.

Police in Osaka reported that a Buddhist priest who was upset over the noise made by delivery vehicles sprinkled salt on a shipping company’s doors in an attempt to make them rust. The priest initially told the cops he was using the salt to conduct a purification ritual.

Watch where you drop it … you could hurt your feet!

There must be something about the number, but Republicans truly don’t seem to like 1100 page bills.

At the White House meeting, Mr. Gingrich said, he told Mr. Clinton that any “attempt to ram through an 1,100 page bill, which is what I am told the Mitchell measure is, would so embitter the process that I don’t think anything else would pass. I think this is crazy.”

Perhaps if the page count had been different, Americans would have universal health care today.