March 17, 2009 archive

Look around you, what can one say, except possibly going further into lower wages, at least they wouldn’t be stagnant as they have been for most for these past years.

And workers having a Voice, C’mon!!!

Iraqi unions announce new confederation

And where did this take place, wellll…. in Iraq, of all places:

As even a commenter at The Daily Show’s website put it, Jon Stewart’s interview tonight with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George W. Bush, General Richard Myers, was “one of the most fawning, sycophantic interviews I have ever seen Jon Stewart do.”

There is no transcript or link to the interview yet. It’s too fresh. From my memory, the interview began with Stewart lauding the sacrifice of U.S. troops, and it also ended the same way. A few days after electrifying much of the blogosphere with a critical interview with CNBC financial host Jim Cramer, Stewart showed how he can cower when faced with someone with real power, and not a small-time media crony like Cramer.

General Myers was promoted to the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs only two weeks before 9/11, after having served as vice chair under President Clinton. As a loyal military man under the evil Bush/Cheney regime, he helped organize the “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq that produced hundreds of thousands of deaths and a million or more refugees, all under the guise of a bogus search for supposed weapons of mass destruction.

1. Well I bet nobody could have predicted this. According to the Washington Post, Anger over AIG depletes Obama’s political capital.

   “The populist anger at the executives who ran their firms into the ground is increasingly blowing back on Obama, whom aides yesterday described as having little recourse in the face of legal contracts that guaranteed those bonuses… The Obama administration was already facing a skeptical public and members of Congress critical of the huge sums of money the government has allocated to shoring up the devastated financial system.”

   WaPo also reports Senate Democrats look at new taxes seek to recoup $165 million in AIG bonuses.

2. Over at the NY Times, they report on some other tax news — the Internal Revenue Service plans a deduction for Madoff victims.

   IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman told the Senate Finance Committee that the agency will allow victims of Bernard “Madoff’s investment fraud to claim a tax deduction related to the bulk of their losses… The plan would ease existing rules governing what are known as theft-loss deductions, which are losses claimed by investors who are cheated by their investment advisers and others in Ponzi schemes and other frauds.”

   So much for the people who were defrauded out of their retirement savings in IRA and 401(k) plans.

Four at Four continues with China wants consumers to pay for CO2 reduction, Rudman advising CIA on how to beat torture rap, and scientists use lasers to shoot mosquitoes.

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Beauty Platform and Economic Populism

The problem with the “Good Bank / Bad Bank” (see also Dr. Seuss version) plan is, of course, … {drum roll}

… in order to “rescue” banks that distributed a massive amount of contingency reserves as if it was income … by pretending that massive downsides did not exist …

… we “have to” reward the people who proved to be grossly incompetent in the core competency for senior executive management of a bank.

Except, as Joe Stiglitz points out, we don’t have to at all.

In other words, there is good and bad in the Good Bank / Bad Bank plan. And if we reverse who ends up with the Good Assets and who ends up with the Bad Assets, we can have all of the Good, and avoid most of the Bad.

UPDATE

Keith Olbermann cites “my” plan on the Tonight show … posted at the Big Orange

A sad thing is happening to Barak Obama. As it has during past periods of crisis, the American electorate sought the “necessary man,” a highly qualified leader to assume the powers of the Presidency. Obama has the personal qualities of intellect and character to address the great difficulties facing the nation. But as daily events are beginning to reveal, Obama’s presidency has been betrayed from within. All of the bold measures he promised during his campaign and in recent speeches are being steadily undermined by his own advisers and deputies. How can this be?

Over the last thirty years, the moneyed interests in the United States developed a sophisticated system of recruiting and co-opting large numbers of politically prominent or promising individuals. By means of selective promotions, institutional subsidies, book contracts, and many other forms of professional favoritism, the owner’s of our nation’s wealth, corporations and private fortunes, have effectively bought off the entire set of candidates for national leadership. As Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall said “I don’t care who does the electing as long as I do the nominating.”

The American plutocracy controls the mass media. It controls talk radio. It controls popular entertainment. But, most importantly, it controls the pool of individuals from whom Barak Obama chooses the officers of his administration. The otherwise inexplicable actions of Geithner and Summers are no mystery once one understands that they were recruited to be agents of wealth decades ago. The persistence of the Military Industrial Complex and the likelihood of fresh attempts to raid Social Security are not puzzling once one understands that anyone “qualified” to lead these agencies and survive confirmation hearings is an agent of the plutocracy.

The consequences of this situation are unfortunate for our new President. Having promised vigorous action, his growing impotence in the face of concerted resistance to his policies BY HIS OWN APPOINTEES will result in his public humiliation. The only way out of this trap is to replace the plutocratic hand-puppets in his administration with outsiders who would immediately be labelled as “dangerous,” “radical,” or “fringe” figures, the standard code words used to denounce leaders whose first loyalty is to our republic and not to America’s wealthiest.

Every time one of Obama’s promises to the American people is betrayed by a member of his own administration, our President is humiliated. His popularity will not survive such humiliation, and unless he makes abrupt changes in his inner circle, the hope he promised our nation will prove false.

AIG Should Be Given To

Fox News, Jim Cramer Of CNBC Or

George W. Bush  

Anger Over Firm Depletes Obama’s Political Capital

AN IMPERILED AGENDA

By Michael D. Shear and Paul Kane

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, March 17, 2009; Page A01

President Obama’s apparent inability to block executive bonuses at insurance giant AIG has dealt a sharp blow to his young administration and is threatening to derail both public and congressional support for his ambitious political agenda.

Politicians in both parties flocked to express outrage over $165 million in bonuses paid out to executives at the company, demanding answers from the president and swamping yesterday’s rollout of his efforts to spark lending to small businesses.

The populist anger at the executives who ran their firms into the ground is increasingly blowing back on Obama, whom aides yesterday described as having little recourse in the face of legal contracts that guaranteed those bonuses.

Sent back by Britain. Executed in Darfur

A failed asylum-seeker who returned to Darfur under a government repatriation scheme has been murdered by Sudanese security officers after they followed him home from the airport in Khartoum, The Independent has learnt.

Failed asylum-seeker followed home from airport and shot by Sudan security officials

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor

Tuesday, 17 March 2009

Adam Osman Mohammed, 32, was gunned down in his home in front of his wife and four-year-old son just days after arriving in his village in south Darfur.

The case is to be used by asylum campaigners to counter Home Office attempts to lift the ban on the removal and deportation to Sudan of failed asylum-seekers. Next month, government lawyers are expected to go to court to argue that it is safe to return as many as 3,000 people to Khartoum.

But lawyers for the campaigners will tell the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that people who are returned to Sudan face imprisonment, torture and death. Mr Mohammed, a non-Arab Darfuri, came to Britain in 2005 seeking sanctuary from persecution in Sudan, where he said his life was in danger. The village where he was a farmer had been raided twice by the Janjaweed, the ethnic Arab militia, forcing him and his wife and child to flee their home.

His family in Britain told The Independent that Mr Mohammed witnessed many villagers being killed and became separated from his wife during a second attack on the village a few weeks later. He escaped to Chad before making his way to the UK in 2005.

But last year his appeal for asylum was finally turned down and he was told that he faced deportation. In August last year he was flown to Khartoum under the Home Office’s assisted voluntary return programme, in which refugees are paid to go back to their country of origin. He stayed in Khartoum for a few months and then, when he believed it was safe, he travelled to Darfur to be reunited with his family

USA

In Seattle, the World Still Turns, a Beacon in Memory of a Lost Newspaper



By DAN BARRY

Published: March 16, 2009

SEATTLE – A visitor passing through Seattle last week made an impertinent request. He called someone at The Post-Intelligencer to ask whether he could, if at all possible, visit the 30-foot neon globe that sits atop the newspaper’s waterfront building. He couldn’t really explain the need.

The request might have seemed especially rude, given that those employed by The Post-Intelligencer were living hour to hour, waiting for a call from the Hearst Corporation, its owner in New York, about what day would be its last as a printed entity. That call came Monday: A daily Seattle tradition that began in 1863 will end Tuesday, March 17, 2009.

But back last week, back when the newspaper could at least revel in another day passed, another edition published, the good people at The Post-Intelligencer understood the well-intentioned desire behind the request.

I propose we rename March 17th “Saint Baldrick’s Day”. Instead of getting

hammered on “Saint Patrick’s Day” (and waking up disheveled, disoriented, and obscurely ashamed for reasons you pray you will never remember),  do something nice instead and contribute a  few pence at   www.stbaldricks.org . Then go get hammered.

That is the only warm-fuzzy sentiment you will find in this piece, so enjoy it. On to the meditation …