March 16, 2010 archive

No one is satisfied with the FBI investigation into the anthrax terrorism case following on the heels of 9/11.  Not Congress, not the National Academy of Sciences, not Lawrence Livermore Labs, not Sandia Labs, not the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, Nature, not Dr. Meryl Nass, not Glenn Greenwald, and not me.

Bush-hating Obama-bots, please explain why Obama wants to quash any new investigations into Amerithrax.  With such determination that he would deny funding to the entire intelligence budget.  Golly, I thought we were still in a state of national emergency concerning terrorism.    

The terrorist threat that led to the declaration on September 14, 2001, of a national emergency continues. For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect after September 14, 2009, the national emergency with respect to the terrorist threat.

Obama will take away funding from all intelligence agencies just to prevent this case from being further investigated.  Unprecedented transparency in government, my ass.

March 15 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama probably would veto legislation authorizing the next budget for U.S. intelligence agencies if it calls for a new investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, an administration official said.

A proposed probe by the intelligence agencies’ inspector general “would undermine public confidence” in an FBI probe of the attacks “and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a letter to leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

And why the fuck is Peter Orzag of OMB even commenting on this?  No one can now claim that terrorism is a budgetary waste, not after we have re-committed ourselves to inordinately expensive Bush-era war policies and re-declared national emergency states.   Did Peter Orzag suddenly develop expert biological insights into bio-terrorism?

Maybe we can no longer afford “to keep Americans safe” from bio-terrorism, because of stupid wars and bailing out capitalist crooks.  If so, just say so.  We’ll understand.  We’ll buy some fucking duct-tape and plastic.

Nope, doesn’t smell like dead rats to me.  We’re officially back in “black helicopters” territory.

Open Thread

Timmy-Gate: Did Geithner Help Hide Lehman’s Fraud?   By L. Randall Wray

Timmy-Gate Takes a Turn For The Worse: Did Geithner Help Lehman Hide Accounting Tricks?

Just when you thought that nothing could stink more than Timothy Geithner’s handling of the AIG bailout, a new report details how Geithner’s New York Fed allowed Lehman Brothers to use an accounting gimmick to hide debt. The report, which runs to 2200 pages, was released by Anton Valukas, the court-appointed examiner. It actually makes the AIG bailout look tame by comparison. It is now crystal clear why Geithner’s Treasury as well as Bernanke’s Fed refuse to allow any light to shine on the massive cover-up underway.

Recall that the New York Fed arranged for AIG to pay one hundred cents on the dollar on bad debts to its counterparties-benefiting Goldman Sachs and a handful of other favored Wall Street firms. (see here) The purported reason is that Geithner so feared any negative repercussions resulting from debt write-downs that he wanted Uncle Sam to make sure that Wall Street banks could not lose on bad bets. Now we find that Geithner’s NYFed supported Lehman’s efforts to conceal the extent of its problems. (see here) Not only did the NYFed fail to blow the whistle on flagrant accounting tricks, it also helped to hide Lehman’s illiquid assets on the Fed’s balance sheet to make its position look better. Note that the NY Fed had increased its supervision to the point that it was going over Lehman’s books daily; further, it continued to take trash off the books of Lehman right up to the bitter end, helping to perpetuate the fraud that was designed to maintain the pretense that Lehman was not massively insolvent.

This might be a short diary, and I hope you will forgive me.

You see, one thing bothers me.  Columbo style, you might say.  You might say it sticks in my craw.  Makes me scratch my head in puzzlement.  But in order for me to ask it in the most expansive possible fashion you might have to bear with me while I circle, apparently aimlessly, around to my question..

We see these problems in our country.  Some of these problems revolve around accountability, others account to a systemic shafting of the middle class, and still others revolve around political will.

We have a country in which a Democratic Senator backtracks endlessly on basic oversight regulation for people who potentially stole or defrauded the American Middle Class out of billions or perhaps trillions of dollars.  Yet this is the same country that will have bespectacled IRS Agents showing up at a car wash with threats and demands for 4 cents in back taxes.

(HT/Colorado Is the Shiznit).

We have a country in which the Attorney General’s Office of the United States of America will spend lawyers, briefs, and endless uncounted dollars making sure that two people with the same dangly bits can’t possibly join their lives together in a manner that might make them eligible for one cent of government benefits — benefits their taxes paid for.

Yet we have this SAME country where, when even supposedly “respected” mortgage companies defraud millions and millions of home owners, nothing, apparently can be done — our government, we are led to believe, is utterly helpless to hold them accountable.

We know that accountability does still exist in this country, for some people.

We know, for example, that if I were to go out, with a finger in my jacket, and hold up a liquor store for $50, I would be going to prison for a long long time.

Yet we have this country, that whispers, siren like in our ear — “Just be a BIGGER criminal.  Steal MORE.  Then they won’t put you in prison, they’ll promote you to Secretary of the Treasury.”

So, to my question .. I almost forgot!

Check this out, it’s well worth it.  If you don’t want to watch, there’s a transcript at http://therealnews.com/t2/inde…

Very informative, he talks about PA single payer for a while, among other things.

Check out single payer for PA at http://healthcare4allpa.org

So we lost, didn’t we.

Sure, there’s no HCR bill signed yet, but we know the game has been fixed and we’ve been sucker punched.

Bad enough to get screwed by the Republicans for so many years.  It’s irritating, very irritating to get screwed by who we thought were our fellow Democrats.

So this is being a US citizen in the year Twenty-Ten.

Huh.

Even trying to be informed seems an impossible task, much less changing everything.

And to make it even more surreal, the very institutions, the members of which are riding a  high tide of obscene wealth and power, are also crumbling as I type this.

It’s chaotic!

So I look at these kids, these four kids who have wallked what they call the “Trail of Dreams.”

These are four undocumented kids who are demonstrating how they are coming out of the shadows (you know, those shadows that 12 million of our brothers and sisters live in, over 2 million of them children).

These are their names and a little P.R. information about them for the Trail of Dreams website.  First a joint statement by the four:

We are four students from Florida – Felipe Matos, Gaby Pacheco, Carlos Roa, and Juan Rodriguez – who were brought to the United States by our families when we were young. This is the only country we have known as home. We have the same hopes and dreams as other young people, and have worked hard to excel in school and contribute to our communities. But because of our immigration status, we’ve spent our childhoods in fear and hiding, unable to achieve our full potential. We walk in order to share our stories and to call on our leaders to fix the system that forces people like us into the shadows, stripping us of the opportunity to participate meaningfully in society.