Author's posts
Dec 14 2012
More Hanukkah Jollity
It sucks to be a member of the 70% majority.
Self loathing. Did I mention self loathing?
Day 14, the traditional gift is a pad of paper and a pen.
Dec 13 2012
Justice For All
HSBC’s $1.9 Billion Settlement and the Men on the Hill
By Pam Martens, Wall Street On Parade
December 11, 2012
Today, the U.S. Department of Justice and multiple other U.S. regulators will tie all that up with a tidy red bow for a settlement of $1.921 billion; a small nick in HSBC’s profits of $22 billion last year. HSBC released a statement saying it was “profoundly sorry.”
During the July 17 Senate hearing on HSBC, Subcommittee Chairman, Carl Levin, questioned Chistopher Lok, the former head of global banknotes at HSBC Bank USA, about internal emails from HSBC that the Senate had in its possession.
In the first email, a subordinate tells Lok that a proposed bank customer has a “know your customer” profile that “documents various allegations of fraud, internal control weaknesses, and the FBI investigation into terrorist financing…” The colleague was inquiring if a special security status should be placed on this account. Lok responds in an email: “…this is such a large bank hence malfeasance is expected” and recommends no special security status.
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- HSBC Bank USA, N.A., known as HBUS [pronounced H-Bus] functions as the U.S. nexus for HSBC’s worldwide network. HSBC has 7,200 offices in more than 80 countries and 2011 profits of $22 billion; HBUS has 470 branches across the United States with 4 million customers. HBUS provides accounts to 1,200 other banks including more than 80 HSBC affiliates.
- In 2010, HSBC was cited by its federal regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), for multiple severe anti-money laundering deficiencies, including a failure to monitor $60 trillion in wire transfer and account activity; a backlog of 17,000 unreviewed account alerts regarding potentially suspicious activity.
- HBUS offered correspondent banking services to HSBC Bank Mexico, and treated it as a low risk client, despite its location in a country facing money laundering and drug trafficking challenges. The Mexican affiliate transported $7 billion in physical U.S. dollars to HBUS from 2007 to 2008, outstripping other Mexican banks, even one twice its size, raising red flags that the volume of dollars included proceeds from illegal drug sales in the United States.
- Foreign HSBC banks actively circumvented U.S. safeguards at HUBS designed to block transactions involving terrorists, drug lords, and rogue regimes. In one case examined by the Subcommittee, two HSBC affiliates sent nearly 25,000 transactions involving $19.4 billion through their HBUS accounts over seven years without disclosing the transactions’ links to Iran.
- HBUS provided U.S. dollars and banking services to some banks in Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh despite links to terrorist financing.
Justice Department outlines HSBC transactions with drug traffickers
By Peter Finn and Sari Horwitz, Washington Post
Published: December 11
“HSBC is being held accountable for stunning failures of oversight – and worse – that led the bank to permit narcotics traffickers and others to launder hundreds of millions of dollars through HSBC subsidiaries, and to facilitate hundreds of millions more in transactions with sanctioned countries,” Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer said at a news conference in New York on Tuesday.
One of the world’s largest banks, HSBC has its headquarters in London and $2.5 trillion in assets. It earned nearly $22 billion in profits in 2011.
Breuer said that between 2006 and 2010, the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico, the Norte del Valle Cartel in Colombia and other drug traffickers laundered at least $881 million in illegal narcotics trafficking proceeds through HSBC.
“These traffickers didn’t have to try very hard,” Breuer said. “They would sometimes deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows.”
The illicit money was submerged in the billions of dollars of transfers that flowed between HSBC’s Mexican and American affiliates. In many cases, the illicit cash was generated by drug sales in American cities, smuggled to Mexico and deposited at HSBC there. Then it was wired back to an account at HSBC in the United States as clean money. In other cases, bulk cash was deposited and converted into local currency, a process called the Black Market Peso Exchange by investigators.
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“If these people aren’t prosecuted, who will be?” asked Jack Blum, a Washington attorney and a former special counsel for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who specializes in money laundering and financial crimes. “What do you have to do to be prosecuted? They have crossed every bright line in bank compliance. When is there an offense that’s bad enough for a big bank to be prosecuted?”
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In deciding not to prosecute now, Breuer said the Justice Department considered “the collateral consequences,” including the possible effects on the worldwide financial system if HSBC’s ability to operate was ruined by criminal conviction.“If you prosecute one of the largest banks in the world, do you risk that people will lose jobs, other financial institutions and other parties will leave the bank, and there will be some kind of event in the world economy?” Breuer said in an interview.
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HSBC was also accused of allowing Iran, Sudan, Cuba and other countries subject to U.S. sanctions to move hundreds of millions of dollars through the U.S. financial system in violation of U.S. law.“On at least one occasion, HSBC instructed a bank in Iran on how to format payment messages so that the transactions would not be blocked or rejected by the United States,” Breuer said. Payment instructions sometimes included a notation saying “do not mention Iran,” U.S. officials said.
HSBC affiliates in Europe and the Middle East also “systematically altered transaction information to strip out any reference to Iran and characterized the transfers as between banks in approved jurisdictions,” according to a July report by the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations.
The subcommittee report said an outside auditor hired by HSBC’s U.S. affiliate found 25,000 undisclosed transactions involving Iran. And the report said that HSBC conducted business with Saudi and Bangladeshi banks suspected of having links to terrorism.
HSBC to Pay $1.92 Billion to Settle Charges of Money Laundering
By BEN PROTESS and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG, The New York Times
December 10, 2012, 4:10 pm
Some prosecutors at the Justice Department’s criminal division and the Manhattan district attorney’s office wanted the bank to plead guilty to violations of the federal Bank Secrecy Act, according to the officials with direct knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The law requires financial institutions to report any cash transaction of $10,000 or more and to bring any dubious activity to the attention of regulators.
Given the extent of the evidence against HSBC, some prosecutors saw the charge as a healthy compromise between a settlement and a harsher money-laundering indictment. While the charge would most likely tarnish the bank’s reputation, some officials argued that it would not set off a series of devastating consequences.
A money-laundering indictment, or a guilty plea over such charges, would essentially be a death sentence for the bank. Such actions could cut off the bank from certain investors like pension funds and ultimately cost it its charter to operate in the United States, officials said.
Despite the Justice Department’s proposed compromise, Treasury Department officials and bank regulators at the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency pointed to potential issues with the aggressive stance, according to the officials briefed on the matter. When approached by the Justice Department for their thoughts, the regulators cautioned about the effect on the broader economy.
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HSBC’s actions stand out among the foreign banks caught up in the investigation, according to several law enforcement officials with knowledge of the inquiry. Unlike those of institutions that have previously settled, HSBC’s activities are said to have gone beyond claims that the bank flouted United States sanctions to transfer money on behalf of nations like Iran. Prosecutors also found that the bank had facilitated money laundering by Mexican drug cartels and had moved tainted money for Saudi banks tied to terrorist groups.HSBC was thrust into the spotlight in July after a Congressional committee outlined how the bank, between 2001 and 2010, “exposed the U.S. financial system to money laundering and terrorist financing risks.” The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a subsequent hearing at which the bank’s compliance chief resigned amid mounting concerns that senior bank officials were complicit in the illegal activity. For example, an HSBC executive at one point argued that the bank should continue working with the Saudi Al Rajhi bank, which has supported Al Qaeda, according to the Congressional report.
Despite repeated urgings from federal officials to strengthen protections in its vast Mexican business, HSBC instead viewed the country from 2000 to 2009 as low-risk for money laundering, the Senate report found. Even after HSBC’s Mexican operation transferred more than $7 billion to the United States – a volume that law enforcement officials said had to be “illegal drug proceeds” – lax controls remained.
HSBC, too big to jail, is the new poster child for US two-tiered justice system
Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian
Wednesday 12 December 2012 05.14 EST
It all changes radically when the nation’s most powerful actors are caught breaking the law. With few exceptions, they are gifted not merely with leniency, but full-scale immunity from criminal punishment. Thus have the most egregious crimes of the last decade been fully shielded from prosecution when committed by those with the greatest political and economic power: the construction of a worldwide torture regime, spying on Americans’ communications without the warrants required by criminal law by government agencies and the telecom industry, an aggressive war launched on false pretenses, and massive, systemic financial fraud in the banking and credit industry that triggered the 2008 financial crisis.
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It really is the case that this principle is now not only routinely violated, as was always true, but explicitly repudiated, right out in the open. It is commonplace to hear US elites unblinkingly insisting that those who become sufficiently important and influential are – and should be – immunized from the system of criminal punishment to which everyone else is subjected.Worse, we are constantly told that immunizing those with the greatest power is not for their good, but for our good, for our collective good: because it’s better for all of us if society is free of the disruptions that come from trying to punish the most powerful, if we’re free of the deprivations that we would collectively experience if we lose their extraordinary value and contributions by prosecuting them.
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The New York Times Editors this morning announced: “It is a dark day for the rule of law.” There is, said the NYT editors, “no doubt that the wrongdoing at HSBC was serious and pervasive.” But the bank is simply too big, too powerful, too important to prosecute.That’s not merely a dark day for the rule of law. It’s a wholesale repudiation of it. The US government is expressly saying that banking giants reside outside of – above – the rule of law, that they will not be punished when they get caught red-handed committing criminal offenses for which ordinary people are imprisoned for decades. Aside from the grotesque injustice, the signal it sends is as clear as it is destructive: you are free to commit whatever crimes you want without fear of prosecution. And obviously, if the US government would not prosecute these banks on the ground that they’re too big and important, it would – yet again, or rather still – never let them fail.
But this case is the opposite of an anomaly. That the most powerful actors should be immunized from the rule of law – not merely treated better, but fully immunized – is a constant, widely affirmed precept in US justice. It’s applied to powerful political and private sector actors alike. Over the past four years, the CIA and NSA have received the same gift, as have top Executive Branch officials, as has the telecom industry, as has most of the banking industry.
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Having different “justice systems” for citizens based on their status, wealth, power and prestige is exactly what the US founders argued most strenuously had to be avoided (even as they themselves maintained exactly such a system). But here we have in undeniable clarity not merely proof of exactly how this system functions, but also the rotted and fundamentally corrupt precept on which it’s based: that some actors are simply too important and too powerful to punish criminally. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz warned in 2010, exempting the largest banks from criminal prosecution has meant that lawlessness and “venality” is now “at a higher level” in the US even than that which prevailed in the pervasively corrupt and lawless privatizing era in Russia.Having the US government act specially to protect the most powerful factions, particularly banks, was a major impetus that sent people into the streets protesting both as part of the early Tea Party movement as well as the Occupy movement. As well as it should: it is truly difficult to imagine corruption and lawlessness more extreme than having the government explicitly place the most powerful factions above the rule of law even as it continues to subject everyone else to disgracefully harsh “justice”.
Dec 13 2012
Who never will be missed.
Joe Lieberman’s sad send-off
By Dana Milbank, Washington Post
Dec 13, 2012 01:53 AM EST
As Lieberman plodded through his speech, thanking everybody from his wife to the Capitol maintenance crews, a few longtime friends trickled in.
In came John Kerry (Mass.), who bested him in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries and then, like many Senate Democrats, endorsed Ned Lamont, who tried to oust Lieberman from his Senate seat in 2006.
In came Susan Collins (Maine), Lieberman’s Republican counterpart on the Homeland Security Committee, whom Lieberman supported over a Democrat in her 2008 reelection.
In came GOP iconoclast John McCain (Ariz.), who was close to naming Lieberman as his vice presidential running mate in 2008 – which would have made Lieberman the first man on both a Democratic and a Republican national ticket.
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And so it was a man with few political allies who bid the chamber farewell. “I regret to say as I leave the Senate that the greatest obstacle that I see standing between us and the brighter American future we all want is right here in Washington,” he said.
You too Dana.
Dec 13 2012
Falalalalalalalaheh
Merry ek’smas.
Some think I’m an unrelievedly gloomy storm crow, an albatross if you will who never shows his face except to taunt from behind a mask.
Well, that’s very true.
Still even I occasionally run across something that reminds me I really ought to get my clothes out of the dryer.
Sea Shepherd buys anti-whaling ship from Japan
Justin McCurry in Tokyo, The Guardian
Tuesday 11 December 2012
“We have four ships, one helicopter, drones and more than 120 volunteer crew from around the world ready to defend majestic whales from the illegal operations of the Japanese whaling fleet,” said Sea Shepherd’s founder, Paul Watson.
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To compound Japan’s embarrassment, the 184ft vessel was previously moored in Shimonoseki, home to the country’s Antarctic whaling fleet, after being retired by the meteorological agency in 2010.In its past incarnation as the Seifu Maru, the ice-strengthened vessel’s duties included gathering data on ocean currents for Japan’s north Pacific whaling fleet, according to Sea Shepherd.
Paul Watson is a bail jumping fugitive arrested in Germany and wanted by INTERPOL for endangering whalers.
In February, the whaling fleet was called back to port early with just one-fifth of its planned catch following clashes with activists.
The Sam Simon’s skipper, Lockhart MacLean, said he hoped to intercept the whaling fleet’s factory ship before a single whale was killed. “The goal is to find the factory ship, the Nisshin Maru, and to pin the bow of this ship on the stern of that factory ship throughout the duration of the campaign, and send them home without any whales killed,” he told Reuters.
“We’re confident we can seriously impact their whale quota. This year all four of their harpoon ships are going to be tied up by our four ships, and the goal is that no harpooning can be done.”
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A clause in the International Whaling Commission’s 1986 ban on commercial whaling allows Japan to kill almost 1,000 whales each year for what it calls “scientific research”.The meat is sold to restaurants and supermarkets, although the public’s waning appetite for the delicacy has created a huge stockpile of unsold produce.
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
He prayeth well, who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”
The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
Whose beard with age is hoar,
Is gone; and now the Wedding-Guest
Turned from the bridegroom’s door.
He went like one that hath been stunned,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.
Dec 12 2012
Temporary Halt to Keystone XL South
TransCanada Keystone Pipeline Temporarily Halted in Texas
By Laurel Brubaker Calkins, Business Week
December 11, 2012
Michael Bishop, who granted TransCanada an easement across his property in Nacogdoches County, obtained a temporary restraining order from Texas County Court at Law Judge Jack Sinz on Dec. 7. The order blocks the company from working on Bishop’s property for two weeks while allowing work on other sections of the pipeline to proceed.
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Bishop, a 64-year-old chemist who owns a biofuels company, claims the Keystone pipeline is only permitted to carry crude oil that is liquid under normal atmospheric temperatures and pressure. Bitumen is “solid at atmospheric temperature and pressure and must be diluted for transport via pipeline,” he said in his complaint.The U.S. Internal Revenue Service ruled last year that crude oil isn’t the same as tar sands, and that “tar sands oil” isn’t subject to the U.S. excise tax on petroleum, Bishop said in his complaint. He said TransCanada has “intentionally misled and misrepresented” the nature of its product to regulators, landowners and the public in order to obtain permits and eminent domain rights to push its project through.
“It is also a fact that the firm used coercion and intimidating tactics to obtain the property in question and that acting on the validity of their claim, I settled under duress,” Bishop said in an affidavit filed with his request for a restraining order.
Bishop said in a phone interview today that TransCanada didn’t try to negotiate with him before survey crews trespassed on his 20-acre property near Nacogdoches, located about 100 miles northeast (161 kilometers) of Houston, a year ago.
Judge temporarily halts Keystone XL pipeline in Texas
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
December 11, 2012, 11:38 a.m.
The decision came after Michael Bishop, 64, a retired paramedic and chemist in East Texas, filed a lawsuit arguing that TransCanada lied to him and other landowners, promising that the Keystone XL pipeline would transport crude oil, not tar sands oil.
“What they’re calling tar sands oil is not oil by anyone’s definition,” Bishop told The Times, adding that he’s worried the pipeline’s proposed contents might contaminate his land. “I’m very concerned about a leak. They need to pull the permit, go back and re-register this on the federal level as a hazardous-material pipeline and see if they can get it permitted then.”
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Environmentalists have converged on East Texas to protest the pipeline’s construction, arguing that if it leaks or spills, tar sands oil could cause dangerous contamination. Groups such as Tar Sands Blockade have protested at construction sites and highlighted the cases of landowners, including Bishop and Eleanor Fairchild, an East Texas great-grandmother arrested after a protest with actress Daryl Hannah on her property in October.
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President Obama encouraged construction of a portion of the pipeline from Oklahoma to Texas, but rejected a presidential permit for construction earlier this year, suggesting that the company reroute the pipeline to avoid areas in Nebraska that environmentalists argue should be protected. Howard said the company has proposed a new route for that portion of the pipeline and was awaiting approval from state officials.
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Bishop, a libertarian former Marine, initially fought the company’s attempt to condemn his land — 20 acres in the town of Douglass, about 160 miles north of Houston — but eventually settled with the company a month ago because he could not afford the hefty lawyers’ fees of more than $10,000.He said he contacted environmental groups, but no one would help him bring a lawsuit against the company. So he bought a law book and decided to proceed by himself, filing suit in Austin against the Texas Railroad Commission, the state agency that oversees pipelines. He argued that it failed to properly investigate the Keystone XL pipeline and protect groundwater, public health and safety.
Dec 11 2012
Are you an economist or a polemicist?
What about ‘Nobel Prize‘ don’t you understand?
The panel everyone is talking about.
Transcript of Part 1
Thanks a lot for coming in. George, we just heard the lawmakers there as far apart as ever with just 23 days to go, is there any way out of this? Conceptually, we’re dealing here with splittable differences.
Numbers, how high rates ought to be. We really in our country had unsplittable differences. Differences that you really couldn’t compromise on.
This is doable. The problem is, george, since the second world war, really, through all of american history, our politics has been about allocating abundance. Now, we’re allocating scarcity.
We’re not very good at it. I would like to postulate that, the real problem in the country today isn’t the divisions that we talked so much about it’s a consensus. As broad as the republic, as deep the grand canyon, we should have a generous welfare state and not pay for it.
Oh, boy. Paul krugman? It’s not just numbers.
We have a basic difference in outlook. And I think part of the problem is, republicans are unable to make concrete proposals. If you actually look, all of that talk that we just heard, deficits in china and greece, which is nonsense, all of the talk is about how to deal with this, they put out numbers.
If you look at all of things that concretely mentioned, all of their actual proposed spending cuts, raising the medicare age, cutting the price index for social security, it’s about $300 billion. On the wealthy? Yeah, it’s tiny.
What they put on the table is almost nothing. All of the rest is just big talk. How is the president supposed to negotiate with people who say, here my demands?
That’s the point that the white house keeps making, mary, that they can’t give the republicans what they don’t ask for. That’s completely mendacious, the republicans have offered in theory and specificity. Raise $1.
7 trillion over ten years. We have been very specific. Professor — you know we have — that kills charitable deductions.
It hits the middle class hard. We had two different ways of going forward. We will not have medicare or social security, we have senior democrat dick durbin saying social security isn’t costing a penny.
You have those democrats that medicare, medicaid and social security aren’t the drivers of this debt. Even the president disagrees with this. What these guys should do, coburn is right, this is meaningless, they should even given him 98% or they should do what president clinton proposed, which is like it extend it for three months and let the new congress.
We have a new congress, how is it fair that the outgoing congress that lost is making — they’re the ones that voted for it. First of all, what we want to do, we want to raise taxes. We want to raise tax rates.
When you say you want to close loopholes that does not count. You have to tell us which ones. That’s a generic thing.
Are you going to close charitable, state and local deduction? Local finance? All of the above.
What is that you’re going to do? The generic statement is it doesn’t count. We’re very clear about what we want to do.
We’re not enhancing revenues. We’re talking about raising taxes. By the way, one thing that had me mad was, when hensarling was talking, he said that the president hasn’t proposed cuts.
Look at that proposal, it has specifics. The stuff that’s looking forward, there are major medicare spending cuts, mostly falling on providers not on beneficiaries. But there are a lot of detail in there.
Professor, if you cut a provider, that doesn’t cut beneficiary. Is that an economic reality? If you cut provider, you’re going to cut a beneficiary.
Not true. You know that I have spent a lot of time out in the country. I was in norfolk talking about this, to me, this is not a fiscal problem, this is a leadership problem, if you watch what happens right before we came on, the american public sees that and says what’s going on in washington?
What values do we stand for as a country? What do we really stand for? With both sides basically taking out positions where american public is a pawn on both sides of this, if both sides sat down and asked themselves what values do we stand for?
What do we represent? Do we represent a value of shared sacrifice, do we represent a value of balanced budget and fiscal responsibility? We try to convey values to the american public so that we say this is what we stand before.
To go to george’s point, every time the value of shared sacrifice is presented to the american public, it’s rejected. Because they keep telling the american public, you have your cake and eat it, too. It’s the american public fault, but leaders tell them.
You know, this is exactly what we’re doing. We are giving the american people $10 worth of government and charging them about $6. 50 for it.
Of course, they think it’s a good deal. We have made big government cheap. It seems to me, paul, first of all, you may not like the ryan budget.
You have made that clear in the past. But, the house has twice passed the ryan budget and sent it to the senate. They could have acted on it.
Because the ryan budget is filled with magic asterisks, too, it’s not a real budget. It’s a fake document. The fact that he doesn’t actually present real budgets.
Well, look, I have yet to encounter someone who disagrees with you that you seem is that they’re corrupt. Specifics have indeed have been offered. The question is, are the american people, rhetorically conservative and operationally liberal?
We’re in the processover calling some bluffs. George, I wrote a book about this. We haven’t grown incomes in this COUNTRY SINCE THE ’70s.
People have watched wars come. People have watched tax cuts come, bailouts come, right now, after the election, you’re the cause of this. We’re going to — you know, if they cut medicare and social security, without really laying a predicate, people are going to say, why am I paying for these mistakes?
I have no growth in my income. And the top 1% has had 250%. That’s what the average guy thinks out there.
That’s half-true. That’s half-true. The other side says, those who are at fault are the rich people.
You won’t have to share sacrifice if we just tax the rich more. What I’m saying is, both sides have to come to the conclusion that, if we want to tell the american public that balance in your checkbook is a good ia, having a sense of shared sacrifice is a good idea, personal responsibility is a good idea, helping your community is a good idea. Washington, d.
C. , Ought to act on all of the same values. That we want the american public in their neighborhoods to act on.
But, people who are going to a lot of those shadow values, worked hard and played by the rules and saw their income stagnant or go down, they saw the deficit go up and they saw bad war and bad decisions being made, they’re not overly happy about it and I can’t blame them. It presents a political problem for the republicans, mary, the tax increase for the 98%. THAT HAPPENS ON JANUARY 1st.
It does seem very difficult. You’ll get all of this resolved BY THE DECEMBER 31st. Doesn’t that put the pressure — that makes my point.
I’m taking the clinton position here, that to try to, with the president repeatedly wasting week after week after week to have a political — to be able to blame the republicans politically for this, that’s the problem, all of this structural debt is a problem. We do have declining wages. They have declined faster under the obama recovery than under the “bush recession” that’s the whole separate problem.
You can’t just take this piecemeal. Republicans will have a problem if they con trip late on the problem. The reality in the world the republicans, while we’re looking dismal at the federal level have won the majority of the governorships and in those cases they’re lowering taxes.
They are flattening the tax rates. They’re creating jobs and growing their economies at twice the rate of this lunacy that the president continues to pursue. We have a short-run problem, which is purely a political problem about this fiscal cliff.
It has nothing to do with the bondholder and the debt. We should solve that. We should work on that.
Transcript of Part 2
I’ll see you at the reunion dinner table for two. Know any good diners in new hampshire. Paul, thank you for your invitation in iowa and new hampshire.
But I will not stand by and watch the people of south carolina ignore it. The joking and the jockeying have already begun for 2016. Let me reintroduce everyone.
George will, paul krugman, matthew dowd, james carville and mary matalin. But first, the supreme court took up two big gay marriage ca they took up the proposition 8 case which banned gay marriage in california. Which leaves up to the possibility that they get to the underlining question is gay marriage a guaranteed right?
Peter finley dunn, great american humorist, his character famously said the supreme court follows the election returns. This decision by the supreme court came 31 days after election day in which three states for the first time endorsed same-sex marriage at the ballot box, never happened before, maine, maryland and the state of washington. Now, the question is, how will that influence the court?
It could make them say it’s not necessary for us to go here. They don’t want to do what they did with abortion. The country was a constructive accommodation on abortion, liberalizing the laws, the court yanked the subject of public discourse.
Let democracy take care of this, but on the other hand, they could say it’s now safe to look at this because there’s something like an emerging consensus. The opposition of gay marriage is dying. It’s old people.
That’s true. But, at the same time, james carville, right now at least, split the difference position that george argued, 41 states still outlaw gay marriage. Right.
It depends on whether they’re going to allow this to happen. His logic point is actually correct. The election just matters in profound ways, look at salt lake city, the mormon church after the election said, well, maybe we’re going to change our position on homosexuality is a choice you’re not born that way.
The effects of the election reverberates all of the way through society. I can’t believe that they took this up. The fact that they took it up, just tells me that they’re going to uphold some of these.
Mary, not just the election, but the trend has been pretty clear over the last dozen years. I want to show this pew poll. It shows right now, back in 2001, 57% of the country opposed gay marriage, only 35% were for.
This year, it’s crossed — the lines have crossed. 48% approaching. Going above 50%.
Support gay marriage in the country. Well, because americans have commonsense. Important constitutional, theological questions relative to homosexual relationships.
People living in the real world, say, the greatest threat are the heterosexuals who don’t get married and create babies. That’s more problematic for our culture than homosexuals getting married. I find this important dancing on the head of a pin argument, but in real life, looking down 30 years from now, real people understand the consequences of so many babies being born out of wedlock to the economy.
That chart. I don’t know why they highlighted 2001. It was a wider gap in 2004 gay marriage was a losing thing for democrats in 2004 is now a winning thing, that’s amazing.
Eight years, this country has changed dramatically. I think it’s actually a positive, because this is a significant bloc of voters that will make a decision based on which party they feel as being favorable to equal rights here. To me, the consensus has already emerged on this issue.
It’s just a question of, is the supreme court going to catch up or get ahead of it? I mean, if you take a look at this, there’s still a division in the country over this issue. But there’s no division in the country under 35 years old on this issue.
I have a perfect example. My son went in the army, they asked him ten years before, raised that hands, who’s for gays in the military, 80% said they’re opposed to gays in military. When he got in, five, six years, they were for gays in the military.
To me, we still, you still have to know that there’s a huge group of folks in this country that believes this issue not ready to be established nationally. They’re over 35. Go to church regularly.
But in the end, this issue five years from now, is going to be more settled. George will, that’s still the president’s position, he didn’t come out with a complete federal solution, he didn’t say it was a right guaranteed by the constitution. He said let the states continue to decide this.
Married law is a prerogative of the state. A new york woman married in canada her female partner, they lived together 44 years. The partner dies, because the partner wasn’t a man, the woman is hit with $363,000 tax bill from the federal government, there are a thousand or more federal laws or programs that are at stake here and the more the welfare state envelops us in regulations and benefits the more the equal protection argument weighs in and maybe — it’s hard to see how the supreme court is going to allow them to continue deny those benefits.
Something of a surprise, senator jim demint of soh carolina left the senate to become the head of the heritage foundation, and it created a big debate on whether he had impact. I believe that I can do more good for the conservative movement outside of the senate. Well, I think it’s safe to say boehner is not forcing either of you guys out, right?
That’s pretty true. It might work a little bit the other way, rush. Right.
Mary, do you think demint made the right choice if he wants to have more influence? Yes, absolutely. As our hero once said, ideas drive history.
Ideas drive progress. And heritage has long been a vaunt of so many good ideas. And they have — they’re respected.
They’re cutting edge. We find in congress, it’s a piecemeal process. These guys have big ideas and they have big frameworks, he has a conservative, as a constitutionist, that was a brilliant move, a good move for us, a brilliant move for him and it also leaves nikki haley to fulfill her legacy, her vision of real legislative reform and real economic reform by appointing someone like tim scott.
Who would become the only african-american in the senate right now. The actual quote, ideas which are dangerous for good are evil. I’m more interested in, what does this do to heritage?
This is sort of taking the think out of the think tank? Right? This is turning — george, you were there at the beginning, sort of, at the heritage foundation.
40 years ago this year I was crucial to establishing heritage because I was working for senator, a republican from colorado, and a letter came from joe coors, very generous to conservative causes, he said that I got a quarter of a million dollars and I want to do something to disseminate conservative ideas. I was out of the office that day, which was a good thing. I went to the press secretary, a young man who knew exactly what to do with it.
A few years later, they opened up the heritage foundation. This was an important part of conservatism building an alternative infrastructure. Liberals have the media, academia and hollywood.
Conservatives said let’s build our own. The interesting part of the insfrak truck — infrastructure is when dick armey, he left with $7 million severance package. At the same time, senator demint, this is a guy who thought that unmarried schoolteachers.
If you unmarried and living with somebody you shouldn’t be teaching. He had a big influence in the senate. He had big influence.
He’s a very gutsy guy. He was gutsy, I’ll give him that. Well, that’s what I was going to say.
Two things. First thing, his biggest influence was keeping the majority in the senate. But let me make a bigger point, I think is actually a very sad commentary on our politics today.
Because, here you have a guy that was a well-established u. S. Senator with tremendous amount of experience in a group of body that was supposed to respected in the world.
He leaves that and becomes a is epidemic in our political world, they now think their best route to success is to work for super pacs. As we step further and further away, people’s success in politics I’m going to hold office and do something good, they now think they can’t do that anymore in washington. Holding the office.
Theyave to leave in order to have more influence in washington. Yeah, I mean, all that really matters for the most part in congress is whether you have a r or d after your name. He can have a lot more influence by moving off to the heritage foundation.
Meanwhile, there has been this real debate of where the republicans go after the election, there were two serious speeches this week by paul ryan and marco rubio at the american enterprise institute where they took on that challenge. Both parties tend to divide americans into our voters and their voters. Let’s be really clear, republicans must steer far clear of that trap.
I have heard it suggested that the problem is that the american people have changed. That too many people want things from government. But I’m still convinced that the overwhelming majority of our people just want what my parents had, a chance.
George will, I think marco rubio used the phrase, middle-class, more than two dozen times in that speech. Yeah, usually the forgo middle class and it’s all we talk about. Is the forten middle class.
The republicans’ problem is the national problem, the sense of stagnation among americans who are not on the ladder of upward mobility. Right now, the widening disparities. Health care costs and the cost of that which puts you on the ladder, the cost of college.
In about four, five weeks, we are going to pass a milestone, a trillion dollars of student debt. More than credit card debt in this country. Two-thirds of kids leave college with student debt, average $29,000 a person.
They’re graduating from college with a mortgage already. How are they going to buy houses, form families and everything else? One of the big ideas that marco rubio was talking about, making sure there were a lot more transparency as kids are taking out loans.
Sure. I thought that what was striking by both speeches, we need to reach out to lower-income working americans, and the idea for that, tax cuts for the rich are actually good for them. No substantiative policy change in either speech.
It was amazing stuff. Well, the gop isn’t a very difficult position. Because the american country has changed and the republican brand and their candidates today don’t match where the country is, fundamentally the american electorate looks much different.
Can I — wait a second, mary. Fundamentally different than american — I think they need to stake out a ground that says, we not only look different but we’re going to say things different. They have to run against washington and run against wall street.
They have to become the party of the middle class, and whether they look at marco rubio or governor christie, their brand has to change to win the election. Mary? You just say that one of those guys don’t look like normal problems.
That’s disdifference between conservatives and liberals. Ideas are dangerous for good or evil. Can I just say we’re missing the reality here, the federal office aren’t the entirety of our problem.
We have mayors who are making progress in all kinds of states and all kinds of different people are stepping up to run for office. Rubio and ryan are very deep in policy. Policies have been reflected in huge successes in indiana and wisconsin and across the country and everywhere republicans hold the majorities of the governor ship.
Two speeches, written, a nice-looking guy, take a good shot. They had a vote, they had a vote and it was a treaty that dick thornburg negotiated that bush pushed through, that everybody was about how you treat disabled people, it was not enforceable. Somebody said, if you pass this, they’re going to break into your house and you won’t be able to homeschool your kids unless you have ramp.
36 republicans voted against this. If they can give a speech, but when it comes time to vote and the same thing comes back, they need to break out, I think the vote was the most illustrious thing of the week. Just as mary suggests, the country is mixed in its views right now.
Next week, michigan, the fifth highest unionization rate, and the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country, may become the 24th right to work state. My suggestion, matt, wall street, main street, and all the rest, I’ll know that the republican party is on the way back when they have a good sense from breaking up the biggest bans. Absolutely.
I don’t know whether the gop sold to wall street or vice versa in this last election. But clearly, wall street tends to be relatively democratic in the past. Now it’s that close to the republican party right now.
Meanwhile, at the same time, we got front page of “new york times” this morning, look at it right here, hillary clinton, 2016, all of her choices hinge on that. We also did a poll at abc news, this week, 57% of the country right now would support hillary clinton for president. James carville, of course, you worked closely with her for many years, it’s safe to say that no one knows what she’s going to do, the point is, every decision she makes now, she has to look at it through the prism of that bigger decision.
Right? Since 1974, sitting here, republicans have always craved order. We have always been people fell in love we’re looking for the next argument.
This is entirely different. Every democrat I know says, hope she runs. We don’t need a primary.
The republicans they need a fight. Somebody has to beat somebody. You got to beat somebody good.
You got to go through the difficult processes. You got to beat somebody. The republicans know that they need a primary.
We don’t want to be slugging this thing out in april. We like winning presidential elections. She’s popular.
Let’s just go with it. The pressure is going to be nor — enormous. You’re making mary laugh over there.
Well, the idea that this defies. I love hillary. I wish she would run.
Democrats, even though they are redistributionists and utopians would not be competitive, others waiting in the wing, would have a dynasties. They’ll have another clinton step up? Furthermore, the democratic party is split.
17% of them are extreme liberals and the rest of them are centrists. The senators that are running are centrists. The ones that just got elected are centrists.
She would to run with the country which would alienate — she bridges that divide right now. What’s happened is, the extreme liberals, I guess I talk to a lot of those guys, they’re also pragmatic. They compromised a lot on health care reform.
They wanted medicare for all. They would see hillary clinton as someone who could continue to make incremental progress toward what they want. I have never seen this much love for someone.
I do think — the whole race of 2016 pivots off of her. I think, whether or not other democrats run, it will all pivot off of her. Republicans are going to pivot off of what she does.
To me, this is a moment where we’re going to have a dominant woman candidate for president. Whether hillary clinton runs or not, if she doesn’t run, another woman is going to run. Washington is in dire need of women leadership.
In the congress. If you look at the exhibition and all of the dynamics, i think — this country would be served well, whether it’s hillary or somebody else, a woman candidate emerged as a dominant force in this country. The junior senator from new york will be that woman who’s now occupying hillary’s seat.
Senator hillebrand. And hillary? I have no clue and I’m not going to think about presidential elections.
I don’t know what she’s going to do but I do know this, the democrats want her to run. I don’t just mean a lot of democrats, I mean a whole lot of democrats, 90% across the country. We don’t — we just want to win.
We think that she’s the best person. That’s across the board. Until then, it freezes the race for a long time which is blessing for george will.
A Brief Note on Mary Matalin– “The briefer the better, I’d say.”
Dec 10 2012
We heard about the Sell Out
Dec 09 2012
Don’t Hold Your Breath
Banks are crime syndicates and their management Mafiosi.
Banks Face a Huge Reckoning in the Mortgage Mess
By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG, The New York Times
Published: December 9, 2012
Regulators, prosecutors, investors and insurers have filed dozens of new claims against Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and others, related to more than $1 trillion worth of securities backed by residential mortgages.
Estimates of potential costs from these cases vary widely, but some in the banking industry fear they could reach $300 billion if the institutions lose all of the litigation.
…
Efforts by the banks to limit their losses could depend on the outcome of one of the highest-stakes lawsuits to date – the $200 billion case that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees the housing twins Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, filed against 17 banks last year, claiming that they duped the mortgage finance giants into buying shaky securities.
…
(I)n October, federal prosecutors in New York accused the bank (of America) of perpetrating a fraud through Countrywide by churning out loans at such a fast pace that controls were largely ignored. A settlement in that case could reach well beyond $1 billion because the Justice Department sued the bank under a law that could allow roughly triple the damages incurred by taxpayers.Bank of America’s attempts to resolve some mortgage litigation with an umbrella settlement have stalled. In June 2011, the bank agreed to pay $8.5 billion to appease investors, including the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Pimco, that lost billions of dollars when the mortgage securities assembled by the bank went bad. But the settlement is in limbo after being challenged by investors. Kathy D. Patrick, the lawyer representing investors, has said she will set her sights on Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo next.
What should happen is that they should be seized and the assets distributed to those they defrauded. Investors should take a 100% haircut and the individuals convicted and sentenced to a lifetime of hard labor.
“All of Wall Street has essentially refused to deal with the real costs of the litigation that they are up against,” said Christopher Whalen, a senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners. “The real price tag is terrifying.”
But not as terrifying as the tumbrils.