If you’ve watched a news show, listened to the radio, picked up a newspaper or even just watched The Daily Show this week, you know that Wall Street is in trouble. Years of irresponsible speculation and reckless lending policies–including the targeting of subprime mortgages in America’s most vulnerable communities–have contributed to the threat of bankruptcy of some of the biggest names in banking and insurance. Bear Sterns. Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac. Lehman Brothers. Merrill Lynch. AIG. You may not have heard of all of them before, but chances are that you’ve heard of one of them, and the chances are even bigger that they have, somewhere along the road, been involved in your own financial situation, whether it is as an investor in the bank that lent you your mortgage or as the manager of your 401(k) or pension. Long story short, this is really big news with potentially huge impacts on every sector of American life and the economy. And as big news, the reporters are covering it, just as they’re also covering the fact that the Federal Reserve, an independent government agency entrusted with managing America’s monetary policy (mainly through deciding interest rates), has bailed out a few of these large investment banks to the tune of over $300 billion.
I’m no economist, but the economists who are talking about these bailouts right now generally appear to believe that they are necessary. The fabric of the American economy is so interwoven that we cannot simply allow major segments of our community to fail without repercussions for the rest of us. Undoubtedly, there should be reprecussions for bad behavior, and the current critiques of the lack of accountability for these banks and their managers are very persuasive. Just as America cannot succeed without broad support of the common good, it cannot succeed without accountability, transparency, or justice. Responsibility in America cannot just be to ourselves (or our stockholders), it must be to each other as well.
Of course, this interconnectedness isn’t only true for large investment banks; this is true for all of us, from the largest to the smallest. That’s why it’s disappointing to see that as the Federal Reserve takes action to keep our financial sector in one piece, our elected official in Congress and the Administration are not providing parallel support to American families and children. Apparently frozen until next year is consideration of expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides access to health care for about 7 million children. One of the most successful government programs, the Children’s Health Insurance Program has reduced the number of uninsured children by around 3 million, and, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, is credited for helping with the reduction of the number and percentage of uninsured from 2006 to 2007. Similarly, we’ve yet to see a federal response to the
So my question is, what’s AIG got that your child doesn’t? True, this isn’t exactly comparing apples to apples; the Federal Reserve’s independence allows it to act in ways that are more difficult for Congress and the Administration. Nonetheless, the social contract of America which has made this country strong is one of mutual security, the guarantee that our elected officials will work to insure our ability to provide for the health, food, education and other basic needs of our families, neighborhoods, and communities. Almost a century ago, when financial crisis also created hardship for Americans across the country, the government responded not with bailouts, but with a program of hope and support, a set of policies that did not seek to provide for American’s basic needs, but rather to assist us all, as families and as a national community, to get back on our feet. Legacies of those policies live on today, responding to high fuel prices with the Low Income Home Energy Assistance program and to skyrocketing food prices with the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program for mothers and their children, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program for senior citizens, and the Emergency Food Assistance Program that supports food banks. At only a fraction of the cost of the recent investment bank bailouts, there is an opportunity for our elected representatives to not only guarantee and uphold the core American value of economic and community security, but to help stimulate the economy as well.
Today Wired Magazine published an in-depth look at potential Election Day problems associated with voter registration data matching, list maintenance, provisional ballots, and shadowy interstate compacts through which member states cross-check their voter registration lists and purge supposedly duplicated voters. Titled “Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands”, the piece, written by Kim Zetter, starts this way,
Electronic voting machines have been the focus of much controversy the last few years. But another election technology has received little scrutiny yet could create numerous problems and disenfranchise thousands of voters in November, election experts say.
This year marks the first time that new, statewide, centralized voter-registration databases will be used in a federal election in a number of states.
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I got this e-mail from the Obama campaign that stated the following:
That can only come from supporters like you — unlike John McCain, we don’t take money from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs.
Now why are they stating that the day after the Washington Post reported that the Obama campaign got it’s largest donations from Lockheed Martin, including PACs?
That sort of thing is condescending and only opens the Obama campaign to effective attacks.
I don’t care if Obama takes money from PACs as long as I know what he will do to change the course of this country for ‘the little guy.’
Between the negative campaigning and the lies, I am loosing understanding of the positions.
With all the attention that SEIU has received over rampant corruption in its largest California local, 6434 formerly headed by the disgraced Tyrone Freeman, and Michigan’s largest healthcare Union also formerly headed by, yet again another disgraced leader (Rickman Jackson), and now most recently the resignation of one of Mr. Sterns newly elected top International Vice-Presidents, Anelle Grajeda, for diverting members dues to her former boy friend, one must ask the question: “who does Andy Stern really support for President?” At first glance at the current situation with SEIU Andy Stern’s pick as our next President may seem unrelated to the corruption within SEIU. That is, until you examine closely how Mr. Stern has acted upon the alleged corruption within SEIU.
Instead of aggressively pursuing all available remedies to rid the corruption within the aforementioned SEIU locals and getting back to the business of electing a pro-worker candidate he has instead chosen to expend the vast majority of SEIU’s resources in a personal vendetta against arguably one of SEIU’s most successful union locals, SEIU-UHW West.
Why? Because SEIU-UHW West dared to hold Stern and his “Team” accountable for the inherent promise that SEIU be of the members, by the members, and for the members.
SEIU-UHW West has engaged Stern for close to 3 years in an internal debate over union governance that has challenged the destructive direction Stern has moved SEIU towards. SEIU-UHW West attempted to sound the alarm during the recent SEIU convention in Puerto Rico by bringing to the floor measures that would have ensured and preserved member governance, oversight, and participation at the highest levels of SEIU.
Unfortunately, Stern and his “Team” choreographed a textbook campaign that vilified SEIU-UHW West’s platform as centric only to the needs of SEIU-UHW West and devoid of any conscience for the plight of unorganized workers. He stated that SEIU-UHW West was only interested “in polishing their apples”. Nothing was further from the truth. In fact the platform put forward by SEIU-UHW West expanded the powers of its members and was a threat to Stern’s lust for control, power, and centralization of decision making within SEIU.
Second only to 1199 NY in its COPE contributions (member voluntary political fund) to the International, the leader in California COPE dollars by double the states locals average, and the fastest growing local in SEIU, SEIU-UHW West, instead of being utilized by Stern to ensure that we elect a President sensitive to the needs of the working class, is instead under a vicious and completely baseless attack from Stern and his appointed henchmen and surrogates that includes a threatened trusteeship on false charges of financial mismanagement.
It is important to note that this is Stern’s second bite at this apple. The international recently had their proverbial heads handed to them in the highest court in California on this very issue.
The court ruled that the International had no basis for their claims and dismissed all relevant claims made by SEIU with prejudice. Put simply, the court told Stern and his “Team” not to ever bring this frivolous matter before the court again. So now Stern wants to drag SEIU-UHW West thru the mud in an attempt to discredit them as well as distract attention away from the more serious previously mentioned malfeasance (and long known by Stern) of his handpicked appointees, Tyrone Freeman, Rickman Jackson, Annelle Grajeda.
With so much at stake in this years election one must wonder why a personal vendetta against SEIU-UHW West is the highest priority for Mr. Stern. At the SEIU convention in Puerto Rico this year, delegates endured wave after wave of self righteous indignation opposing SEIU-UHW West’s desire to debate internal jurisdictional issues. At stake was the very essence of what it meant to be a healthcare worker; the ability to advocate on behalf of patients, better staffing, improvements in working conditions, and the right to choose in a fair and democratic process what union local to be represented by.
Stern surrogates and appointees made statements calling SEIU-UHW’s arguments selfish and self-serving. One even stated, “People are dying right now as we waste time debating these issues. We have work to do! Let’s get to work!” Staffers from the SEIU continued to echo this same tired line at nausea throughout the debate process.
Certainly the work of electing a progressive pro-working class president falls into the category of “work to do”. And if it does why, with the incredible political fight before us, would Andy Stern sideline his second biggest political weapon against four more years of Bush’s failed policies in order to carry out a personal vendetta against SEIU-UHW West?
Stern has time and again issued the battle cry against corporate greed, affirmed his commitment to lift workers out of poverty, and boldly stated that SEIU will lead the battle to get universal healthcare and pass perhaps one of the most ambitious pieces of legislation ensuring workers rights to organize (EFCA).
So it defies logic that at the most critical time in the election process, where so many peoples lives depend on the outcome, Mr. Stern would allow himself to be consumed with forcing a trusteeship upon a union local that has a long and proven history of, not only adhering to the values he claims to hold dearly but, excelling at those same values.
And why would Mr. Stern schedule the Trusteeship hearing, not only during the most critical time of the general election but on the exact same dates (September 26-27) that the Obama campaign is attempting to mobilize California supporters to participate in a canvassing effort in neighboring “swing state” Nevada, where Obama trails McCain by 1 percentage point?
It begs the question, who ultimately wins if Mr. Stern allows himself to take action against a union local who has the power to help end eight years of failed economic and foreign policies? And whose’ hopes ultimately die if we fail?
Andy Stern prides himself on being a leader in the progressive majority movement. However, his current actions fly in the face of his alleged progressive values. He is jeopardizing real reform in our labor movement to fulfill a personal grudge. These are hardly the qualities of a true progressive and reformer, and certainly not the qualities that will bring hope and “Justice For All”.
Sources within SEIU International expose plan by President Andy Stern to divert hundreds of staffers away from November election to prop up Stern’s illegal trusteeship of UHW-West.
The San Francisco Bay Guardian reports.
more below
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For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
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Everybody aboard the McCain-Palin Express to the land of cognitive dissonance. As our government scrambles to keep the country’s largest insurance company, AIG, from collapsing, John “I’m always for less regulation” McCain is calling for more government regulation.
“Now hold on,” you might say.
Isn’t this the John McCain who, told the Wall Street Journal “I am a fundamentally a deregulator,” just a few months ago?
Or, hasn’t John McCain been out on the campaign trail arguing that tax cuts and less regulation are the keys to fixing our economy?
Or, isn’t one of McCain’s top economic advisers Phil Gramm – the guy who call Americans, “a nation of whiners,” and authored the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to strip regulations that could have helped prevent this mess?
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In this article, entitled, “How to win a presidential debate,”Paul Waldman repeats a bit of standard wisdom, which I've long since accepted:
there are a few things a candidate and a campaign must do if they hope to win these debates. The first is to understand that the goal is not so much to win the debate but to convince the press that you won the debate. The first step to doing that is to shape their definition of "winning." In the next week and a half, we'll see an absurd amount of discussion about "expectations," as though an election were a round of golf in which everyone is judged according to his or her handicap.
Waldman acknowledges that managing expectations is not the whole game; among other things, the occurrence of a "single, crystallizing moment" is key in determining a debate's significance.
In any event, here's my question: is it possible that this year the expectations game and opinions of the pundits may – at long last – not turn out to be the most important factor in resolving who "wins" the debates?
More under the fold:
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On a day when the Federal Reserve puts up an $85 Billion loan to AIG, after Lehman Brothers fell yesterday and Bank of America ate up Merril Lynch, both Presidential candidates are releasing new commercials pushing their economic plans. The economy is not likely to get better anytime soon, and neither candidate is doing anything to create new jobs, other than talk about the problem.
In comparing the two candidates’ positions, Obama has a slight edge in terms of credibility: his economic plan was not created by the lobbyists and former Republican congress folk (like Phil Gramm) who got us into this mess in the first place. To hear McCain say that he is going to set up a Commission, like the 9/11 Commission that was virtually ignored by the current administration, is a confirmstion that he will talk big but do nothing. At least Obama has posted a fairly detailed economic plan that would change the government’s overall approach significantly.
The best thing the political discussion on the economy has done is that it has removed the ongoing fluff about Sarah Palin from the Main Stream Media. That, in a way, is a blessed relief. Since she is not going to be interviewed directly by the press and will continue in highly controlled and scripted appearances, it is better to have the media looking away from her. There is nothing there and so many important things – like the economy – need to be on the active agenda.
As we get closer to the Presidential debates, having real issues to discuss will elevate the campaigns (and Reuters/Zogby has just put out the latest poll that has once again pulled Obama ahead – it looks like folks don’t think the “fundamentals of the economy are strong.”)
Let’s watch closely where we go from here. There are 48 days left.
The Senator, who steered federal earmarks to groups represented by his son Ben, and filed false financial documents, has let down the people of Alaska.
Let’s be honest: the week is off to a rough start. Bank failures. Stock market losses. All those annoying lipstick jokes.When will it ever end?
Something has to change. But where should you start?
I suggest you start with the basics. Step one: register to vote.
Been putting it off because you’re too tired each night to do anything other than eat, blog and watch “The Daily Show”? I can help with that, too. With Progressive Future’s spiffy new online voter registration tool, you won’t even need to leave the sofa.
Our awesome new online registration system makes the whole process quick, simple and secure. And the voter registration deadline is just around the corner – so don't delay.
Think you can do more? Then put down those Pringles and give it a try!
Step Two: Get your friends and family to register.
Sure, you think all of them have this under control; but are you sure? That uncle who drives around with expired tags? Your neighbor who still has the weed whacker that you loaned to him last March? Are you sure that they all remembered to register?
Just to be on the safe side, why not use this Progressive Future action page to send those folks a short email letting them know about our quick, easy online registration tool?
You can send it along with a reminder about that weed whacker.
Here’s where more knowledgeable folks than myself can help, because this is potentially damning.
Obama stands accused by the New York Post of trying to postpone an agreement between Iraq and the US until after the new administration came to office. That’s the headline.
My own recollection is that there was some talk during the primaries, of Bush attempting to pressure the Iraq government into a deal that would circumvent Congress’s authority to come out of the war – by signing a commitment that tied the hands of the incoming administration. In that context, it seems that Obama, as part of a senate delegation, would try to urge against such a deal.
Are these two ideas related? If so, is Obama authorized to have such a conversation with Iraq as Senator? And if these headlines get out of hand, will Hagel and Reed be helpful and back Obama up on his words, rather than letting the Iraqi government play us and interfere with the election?
No one could say it better than the Anderson’s – “Norm Coleman has got to go.”
Voting repeatedly to keep our troops in Iraq, and blind to the instability created in the Middle East, Coleman has consistently ignored his own constituents, who have children fighting, and dying, in Iraq.
Campaigning in Golden, Colorado, Barack Obama delivered a speech today on the current economic crisis, blaming the McCain-GOP failed policies while laying out his plans to bring about “change that will make a difference in your lives.”
Dishing out some good old fashioned populist indignation, Obama called for “an end to the broken system in Washington.”
McCain’s Economic Philosophy has Failed for 8 Years
Obama: America is Prosperous when All Americans Can Prosper
FULL TEXT OF REMARKS AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY: CONFRONTING AN ECONOMIC CRISIS
There is an article in today’s Salon called “The pastor who clashed with Palin” By David Talbot which concerns itself with Sarah Palin’s religious fundamentalism as it relates to government.
The primary focus of the article is the interactions between Palin and Howard Bess, a retired Baptist preacher from Wasilla’s nearby neighbor town Palmer, Alaska. Bess, the author of a book entitled “Pastor, I am gay,” originally came into conflict with Palin over book banning, and eventually on other social issues as well.
One issue was abortion. This from the article:
Soon after the book controversy, Bess found himself again at odds with Palin and her fellow evangelicals. In 1996, evangelical churches mounted a vigorous campaign to take over the local hospital’s community board and ban abortion from the valley. When they succeeded, Bess and Dr. Susan Lemagie, a Palmer OB-GYN, fought back, filing suit on behalf of a local woman who had been forced to travel to Seattle for an abortion. The case was finally decided by the Alaska Supreme Court, which ruled that the hospital must provide valley women with the abortion option.
The thing that shook me up the most in the article was a quote from another local progressive that raises the issue of Palin’s knowledge, beliefs and clear danger if she were to become president:
Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says that Palin also helped push the evangelical drive to take over the Mat-Su Borough school board. “She wanted to get people who believed in creationism on the board,” said Munger, a music composer and teacher. “I bumped into her once after my band played at a graduation ceremony at the Assembly of God. I said, ‘Sarah, how can you believe in creationism — your father’s a science teacher.’ And she said, ‘We don’t have to agree on everything.’
“I pushed her on the earth’s creation, whether it was really less than 7,000 years old and whether dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time. And she said yes, she’d seen images somewhere of dinosaur fossils with human footprints in them.”
Munger also asked Palin if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. “She looked in my eyes and said, ‘Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.'”
And this from Bess:
Forget all this chatter about whether or not she knows what the Bush doctrine is. That’s trivial. The real disturbing thing about Sarah is her mind-set. It’s her underlying belief system that will influence how she responds in an international crisis, if she’s ever in that position, and has the full might of the U.S. military in her hands. She gave some indication of that thinking in her ABC interview, when she suggested how willing she would be to go to war with Russia.
It is the clear danger of extreme religious views combined with the age and health history of John McCain that should make all voters review the potential of a radical creationist with a finger on the nuclear (noo-clee-ar) button.
Here we are, in the non-regulated bank economy which we were gifted with when Phil Gramm was in Congress (and before he left to be a big-time bank lobbyist… and financial advisor to McCain) that has left us with a 500 point drop in the Dow today, with Lehman Brothers going belly-up and with Bank of America swallowing Merrill Lynch.
There’s a summary of the whole works on Olbermann with a commentary about halfway in by Paul Krugman. Just go to
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21… to view it.
Note… without the Republicans over the last decade or so, we would never be in the worse mess since the era of Herbert Hoover (who McCain seems to imitate) and the start of the Great Depression. Right now we seem to be up the creek, an Obama may be the last available paddle.
Freud’s reaction formation theory is gaining currency in this election discussion. What was once a marginalized part of the debate on the right to discredit ‘do-gooders’ is moving into the mainstream, mainly as a trope to discredit Obama’s years as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer.
The movement of this discussion into the mainstream only punctuates Matt Stoller’s constant call for better Democrats and a Democratic Party with a coherent Progressive agenda. Fake do-gooders and anyone who fits the bill as a limousine liberal will only extend bad Malthusian policy into the next political era.
Reaction formation is the underlying trope that is being rolled out in the Right Wing talking about Obama paying his female staffers less money:
http://www.newsmax.com/insidec…
Notice how the right wing press positions this as hypocrisy on Obama’s part when the original news article about this in the Seattle Post Intelligencer notes “Why this disparity? One reason may be the under-representation of women in Obama’s highest-compensated ranks.”
Using the term ‘limousine liberal’ doesn’t really lend much to a serious political critique. It would be as if one painted a picture of all the CEOs in the Fortune 500 as robber barrons wearing top hats and spats. Reaction formation is a more intellectual way of bringing forth this discussion.
It is partially true that there are many wealthy progressives who have a funny reaction to their own money. However, this is not the core of people around Obama in Chicago. My step-father drives a truck and has volunteered on his campaign. My adopted mother made $32,000 when she retired last year and volunteered on his campaign.
I will take some tomatoes and say that this may apply to Nancy Pelosi but not Barack Obama.
To diffuse this argument, it is important Democratic Party that is filled with insurgents who are not of the monied class — something Matt Stoller has been doing on the ground in local elections.
That said, progressives have already won this election because more than getting a Democrat in office, the process is building a mandate. If the Democrats loose, we will see the wealth gap become more exasperated and a growing demand for better, more sincere, representation.
While progressives may not articulate it, they see this reaction formation in lazy, institutionalized Democrats who Stoller has been railing against over the past several years.
The Proper Name for Eliot Spitzer’s brand of hypocrisy is Reaction Formation
Posted by Mark Dombeck, Ph.D. on Thu, Mar 13th 2008
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/…
In Reaction Formation, people react strongly to their own unacknowledged desires by acting to suppress or even destroy similar desires in others (all the while denying that they themselves have those desires).
http://www.opinionjournal.com/…
Why is the liberal left more frightened of George W. Bush than of Osama bin Laden? It is a classic reaction formation, a neurotic response that a feminine Freud who dubs herself “Answer Girl” defines concisely as “behavior or emotion that is the polar opposite of the way someone is or should be feeling, because the authentic emotion is too frightening to deal with.”
In many ways, this election is over and the mandate has won which is, as a person who grew up poor and used the mechanisms put in place by policy to get ahead, is more important than any figurehead.
Meanwhile, be aware of this ‘Reaction Formation’ trope and speak out against it when it is not appropriate.
Defining our opponent is simple: “McBush”. That is really all you have to say.
McBush voted with Bush 90% of the time. All of you Bush supporters, all half-dozen of you nationwide, should love McBush. And everyone else has a choice: whether or not to believe McBush when he says “in spite of voting with Bush 90% of the time, I have now had a flip-flop and despise all that he stands for… but I really, REALLY promise that I will NOT flip-flop again once I am in office. Really. So help me Bush.”
McBush.
McBush, McBush, McBush. Short and true. McBush.
Repeat until Election Day.
McBush.
P.S. – McBush’s hasty and pandering choice of an unvetted VP, Palinoccio, is:
an extremist
a liar
and an extreme liar
But she is only a heartbeat away from the Presidency on the Republican ticket. At the top of that ticket is someone even worse: McBush.
Because most the new financial exotic derivatives that created the current financial crisis come out of Chicago, the Republicans are trying to find the right research to tie Obama, as a proxy of Chicago interests, to the crisis in the financial markets and the mortgage crisis.
There is one person close to Obama who can be tied to the mortgage crisis and he should be dropped by all progressive interests like a hot potato: that is Congressman Luis Gutierrez.
Here is some background.
In 2004, I was doing research on an article for the alternative newsweekly in Madison, Wisconsin, the Isthmus about Community Block Development Grants for first-time homeownership being extended to undocumented immigrants. I had first uncovered this story for one of the student newspapers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison: http://badgerherald.com/news/2…
Having worked for the now defunct Real Estate Profile in Chicago and having working on team that did the first marketing research project on undocumented homeownership in the Hispanic community for PNC Mortgage, I knew a bit about the national landscape to contextualize these proposed moves in Madison.
I made some phone calls to HUD and soon began talking to someone who I will only identify as the “only woman doing hosing on The Hill” who shared with me that Congressman Gutierrez had gotten money ‘from the five major banks to craft legislation to protect all of the non-doc mortgages that had been taken into their direct portfolio.’ That is in quotes because it was a quote.
Knowing quite a bit about how mortgages are insured, I knew how dangerous this trend of taking on uninsured mortgages into a direct portfolio was. Basically, the banks could hide the protection of these high-risk mortgages in legislation that worked towards protecting undocumented immigrants. This was at the ascent of anti-immigrant sentiment among the Republican crowd and there were real threats of mass deportations.
The banks used this threat to protect irresponsible lending practices and having ties to developers as well as being in the business of flipping properties himself, Gutierrez was well aware of how these non-doc mortgages were helping his friends involved in real estate development. Gutierrez was also responsible for leading the push for Fannie and Freddie to take on high risk mortgages.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/m…
CHICAGO, Sept. 1, 2004 PRNewswire — U.S. Representative Luis V. Gutierrez (D- IL) today joined local community leaders, housing advocates, and representatives from nonprofit organizations, Guaranty Bank, and Fannie Mae , the nation’s largest source of financing for home mortgages, to announce a new mortgage designed to help increase affordable homeownership opportunities for underserved markets.
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms…
And of course, a new mortgage means, new financial instruments will be floated into the market that will be used to back mortgages that are not insured by Fannie and Freddie. Gutierrez and his cabal were also behind pushing Fannie and Freddie to take on these high-risk securitizations.
If Gutierrez is not dropped faster than Wright by the Obama camp, he will provide the electric conduit the McCain camp is looking for to tie the financial crisis to Obama.
That scapegoating aside, Gutierrez is not progressive and although he is off the radar of activists trying to better the Democratic party, he should be on the radar.
To his Puerto Rican constituents in Humbolt Park, he rails against gentrification. Then he goes and does deals that fatten his pocketbook to the tune of 9 million dollars and promote gentrification.
The Isthmus story never ran because some cronies of Gutierrez threatened to sue me if the article ran in the Isthmus. They did not have grounds such as libel but still, as a poor student attending school on a full Pell Grant, I could not afford to have a lawsuit levied against me.
However, I still care about my country and what this mortgage crisis has done to it so I have spoken with authorities about Gutierrez and other shady Hispanic pols who were involved in this debacle, using the voiceless as their smokescreen.
These are the same jokers who secretly cut deals with the Bush administration to protect the funding of their precious non-profits.
Here is proof of the meeting with authorities:
From: Agent Name withheld
<—–@ic.fbi.gov>
To: —@kihconsulting.com
Subject: Re: Meeting tomorrow
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:11:07 -0400
I will put you in my calendar for 2:30 pm at my office. 600 Arch Street, 8th Floor.
I’ll be happy to send the full communications to any news organization.
Now is a time for economic populist specifics — let’s see if we hear any of that from Obama — but, even more so, ‘radical’ economic thinking. One thing that needs to take place is a re-examination of the basic thrust of an at-present failed profession, economics (‘the pro-deregulation ideology’), and its result, present-day economic policy. Here’s some, from a couple of discussions last year at tpmcafe (and no, imho, the upside-down and ‘one-side of a phone conversation’ aspects don’t compromise the understandability):
Neo-classical engineering would believe that the perfect bridge is one built under gravity-free conditions. Engineers would strive, always and foremost, to persuade policymakers to move the real world closer to that perfect, gravity-free world.
And what’s wrong with that?! (snark)
Posted at June 1, 2007 10:07 AM in response to The Methodology or The People
Or we need to accept — based on the overwhelming predominance of an oligopolistic economic real world — that everyone will not play fair, and then regulate the resultant oligopolies intelligently.
To “make sure everyone plays fair” should not be the purpose of government. Instead, governments should regulate the economy in order to produce the best economic outcomes based on the values expressed by the people who elect those governments.
For example, economic security is often associated with economies that are predominantly oligopolies/oligopsonies well-regulated to ameliorate some of the counter-productive features of such economic arrangements. If economic security is a high priority for the citizenry, and I think it is, then economic policy should favor less competitively ‘cut-throat’ economic arrangements in favor of smartly regulated oligopolies/oligopsonies.
Posted at June 1, 2007 9:59 AM in response to The Methodology or The People
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Last week the Department of Veterans Affairs, bowing to months of pressure from voting rights groups and elected officials, revised its rules concerning voter registration drives to allow such activities if certain conditions were met.
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There are numerous Senate seats up for grabs this election, from North Carolina to Minnesota to my home state of Oregon. The race in Oregon is heating up and the momentum is clearly with progressive Democrat Jeff Merkley. It’s no wonder that his opponent, Gordon Smith, decided to launch the worst smear campaign in Oregon’s history over the weekend. More below the fold…..
Full disclosure, I am the netroots director for OR-Sen candidate Jeff Merkley
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This past Friday morning in Venango County all 3 candidates for the 5th Congressional District appeared at the Venango County Chamber of Commerce Breakfast Candidate Forum. During this event, the issue of fiscal responsibility, the $482 billion budget deficit and the $9.7 trillion federal debt came up several times. Fiscal responsibility is perhaps the single issue that clearly defines the difference between me and my opponents in this campaign.
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Senator Stevens (AK) – while accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from the health insurance and Big Pharma lobbyists, managed to support some bad-for-your health legislation.
He voted against the Patient Bill of Rights which would have helped patients get higher quality care.
He voted against allowing Medicare to negotiate volume discounts with drug companies – bilking taxpayers out of billions of dollars and passing on higher prescription drug prices to senior citizens.
One of my very best friends has hated Obama from the very beginning, especially since the Rev Wright controversy erupted. He’s not a far rightie, I would describe him as a moderate conservative that frequently will vote for the Dems on a state and local level. We’ve been having a fairly friendly debate on the presidential race. Finally, I sent him a list of 10 reasons why he shouldn’t vote for McCain, issues that I know he doesn’t agree with McCain on. Including anti-abortion, anti-SCHIP, tax cuts for rich, privatize Social Security, and a few more. Here was his answer:
I do not vote for policies. No one implements their campaign promises, neither those you fear, nor those you cannot wait for to arrive.
I vote for character; I see little of it w/ BO and a lot of it w/ JM.
How do I answer something like that? He sees little character in Obama? I think it’s because of Rev Wright, he’s brought that issue up several times.
I’d rather not do it the Rove way, by mentioning McCain’s adultery, flip-flops, ambition, lobbyists, etc. And I don’t want to screw up our friendship, it is only 1 vote. And the rest of his family will be voting for Obama to more than offset his vote. But I can’t stand to think that my friend is voting against his own best interests like so many Americans continue to do because of personality, not issues. He’s very smart, very well informed (although he does get too much information from the right wing noise machine). I feel like if I can’t convince him, there isn’t much hope of convincing many other intelligent voters in this country either.
Any suggestions? Or should we just agree to disagree and move on?
Here you go: the retired Rear Admiral and former Judge Advocate General of the Navy who spoke for Obama at the Denver convention – John Hutson.
How do we get out the word that we’d like to hear from him once again?
However, with his B.A. from Michigan State, perhaps he never attended the Naval Academy. Was he in the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at MSU? Bio on Wikipedia doesn’t give enough information. Here are the dates he spoke at the convention: August 25 and 27.
Dole is someone who can play the Big Oil money game with the best of them. She accepts huge contributions from Big Oil, and passes on even larger tax breaks! For Dole, the revolving door routine is starting while she’s still in office.
Shouldn’t she be representing the interests of her constituents, and not Big Oil special interests?
Although I've also posted this video elsewhere (this diary at the DailyKos),the responses have often been to encourage me to post a diary anywhere I could, and repost it often.
This race is about McCain. About the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice quartet of horror.
The Republican convention ran on an agenda of fear-mongering, "POW POW POW", lies, Iraq, war, stealing the change mantra, and lastly, the POW-Palin ticket.
Dems have run on change and hope. So I thought since the Republicans stole change, we ought to steal fear.
Why? Because, unlike the Republicans, we actually have a lot to be afraid of!
And to prove this, I'm posting the most bone-chilling 5-minute video about the war-mongering McCain I could find out there.
There’s More…
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There is one pattern that somewhat disturbs me in the Democrats/Obama Campaign communication: the fact that, instead of calling GOP demagogy for what it is and explaining to voters why it is demagogy, they indirectly validate that demagogy by avoiding a tough fight on some subjects.
A very speaking example is the “elitism” meme that the GOP uses and overuses again and again. When Republicans say Obama is an elitist, what he and his surrogates answer is that he’s the child of a single mother that, at a time lived on food-stamps as she completed her education, that episode of his biography being supposed to invalidate the elitism-accusation.
To me, that seems a poor response. The simple fact that Obama has had a top notch Harvard Law School education definitely qualifies him as a member of a certain elite, and there’s nothing he can do against that. Yet, why should that be a negative in his profile? EVERYBODY would be proud to have kids that succeeded in their studies the way Barack did! So instead of shying away from that ill-minded accusation of elitism, Obama should use it as an advantage, in a clever way of course, not in an arrogant fashion.
The Democrats need to state the obvious to voters: POTUS is a function where you deal with the highest, head-aching complexity, especially in the world we’re living in today. Therefore, it is paramount that candidates who make a bid for that high office be people who are intellectually trained to have a fair grasp of that complexity.
John McCain and, to a larger extent, Sarah Palin use a rhetoric of oversimplification on issues, notably national-security (By the way, I think it is due to both demagogy and cluelessness! McCain has made a lot of gaffes talking about national security, unfortunately, neither the press nor the Democrats have cared to scrutinize them properly).
Informed people obviously know how bogus their logic is, but it is not the case of misinformed average voters. The responsible way to deal with that for Obama and the Democrats is to develop a pedagogic yet non-condescending message to Americans, explaining them how scared they should be about the McCain/Palin world views.
The debate is not on elitism, it’s on competence.
