Month: November 2009

Health Care 911

by digby

Wingnut talk radio is evidently going nuts with the phone calls to members in anticipation of the historic health care vote in the House tomorrow. So, everyone who wants health care reform this year needs to call their congressional Rep today and let him or her know that they expect them to vote for the bill, especially if you live in a district with a pants wetting, short sighted Democratic “moderate” who is planning to run with the highly successful Creigh Deeds strategy in 2010. (You need to tell them that you will absolutely lay out and let the Republican jackals dine on their political carcass next November if they vote against this landmark legislation.)

AFSCME has a handy tool to help you make the call easily. You can click here and just follow the directions.

SEIU has another one.

OFA has a handy twitter gadget, here

Families USA has a video

AFL-CIO here

HCAN here

This is crunch time.

Update: If any of you are constituents of the following and you want the health bill to pass, give them a call.

Kucinich
Nye
Bean
Kaptor
McMahon
Boyd
Donnelly

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Change The Rules

by digby

Wow. The banks are trying to create a new oversight board that can change accounting standards whenever they need to hide risk and insolvency from investors and the public. Seriously. And they are doing it in the name of making the economy more stable, if you can believe that. See the real problem comes when people know that banks are failing. So they need to keep that information hidden lest the whole system becomes unstable.

Unsurprisingly, the business community (led by the Chamber of Commerce, even) is a teensy bit upset by this. Ryan Grim has the story:

The mechanism is contained in an amendment set to be introduced in mid-November by Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) that would move final authority over the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) from the Securities and Exchange Commission to a new body, a so-called “oversight” board, that would include the officials charged with managing systemic risks to the financial markets. These regulators would have the authority to override FASB’s accounting guidelines by taking into account economic conditions. The move is so radical that it has split corporate America. The bankers and members of Congress who support it have earned themselves an unlikely enemy: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. A typical business or investor, after all, prefers honest, independent accounting, because they buy and sell real things based on real value. “Washington isn’t thinking straight,” said Josh Rosner, managing director of Graham, Fischer & Co, a New York-based financial analyst who advises regulators and institutional investors. “Financial statements are for the benefit of investors.”

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Satisfied With Bernie

by digby

Where do you suppose Democratic voters got the ridiculous idea that the new administration was going to take on the malefactors of great wealth if they got elected? And why do you suppose they aren’t enthusiastic about the Democratic majority right now?

James Lieber in the Village Voice has written a piece that I believe goes some way to explain it, called: “We’ve Bailed out the Banks. When Do We Go After the Crooks Behind our Financial Collapse?”

When Barack Obama donned the crusader’s mantle during the 2008 presidential campaign, his Web-savvy campaign team created KeatingEconomics.com and pushed it on millions of voters. The main video showed the Ichabod Crane–like Charles Keating—the wealthy, politically connected poster child of the ’80s savings-and-loan scandal—in handcuffs. The Obama video portrayed John McCain as Keating’s stooge and likened the S&L crash to the 2008 Wall Street meltdown, except that the current crisis is global and its bad guys bigger and badder. Today’s corporate villains were flashed on the screen, among them AIG, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. The opening narrator was Bill Black, a Ph.D. criminologist and lead lawyer at the Office of Thrift Supervision, who helped steer the brilliant federal effort that cleaned up the S&L industry and won more than 1,000 felony convictions of senior insiders while recovering millions of their ill-gotten dollars. Those watching the compelling attack ad (still online) had every reason to believe that Obama’s approach would be just as hard-edged, and that felon-busting G-men would rout the crooks and recover our money. This was not to be. As it stands now, there is only one federal prosecution related to the credit crash and bailout cycle, and it was begun by the Bush administration’s Justice Department in June 2008.

Financial reform was what the Obama campaign ran on during the later part of the campaign. Here’s the video, if you have forgotten what they said about McCain and the need for accountability and regulation:

Obama whipped for the TARP before he was elected, and that set off alarm bells. But I think a lot of people assumed that was an emergency measure and that upon his election, he would be listening to people like Bill Black and doing something serious about the reckless, illegal scamming that had gone on on Wall Street and the banks. Obviously, that hasn’t happened.

Lieber’s article needs to be read in full to understand just how heinous it is that these people aren’t even suffering social embarrassment for their crimes. But the political problem is made clear by his conclusion:

Washington’s soft-core approach to the epic financial fraud that caused the crash remains hard to understand. As Bill Black says: “When you don’t prosecute, things don’t get better.”

They’re not getting better or safer. Credit is tight as a tick—especially for consumers. The financial industry is expanding its use of new and exceedingly complex derivatives. The mortgage market, the source of the raw material for mayhem, remains unchecked. The FBI said this summer that mortgage fraud is “rampant” and growing. Suspicious-activity reports (known as SARS) rose from 47,000 in fiscal 2007 to 63,000 in fiscal 2008, which ended last September at the height of the crisis and its publicity, and now such reports are on schedule to exceed 70,000 for fiscal 2009. A growing source of exploitation involves reverse mortgages marketed to the elderly.

People want justice. They’ve lost savings, homes (or the value of homes), jobs, and retirements. Foreclosures continue to rise. People can’t believe that the mega-grifters who pulled off mortgage, securitization, and derivative frauds walk the streets with lined pockets. And the venal “experts” who issued bogus ratings that deodorized subprime cesspools should be in the dock. But it almost seems as if Bernie Madoff’s 150-year sentence for a scheme that had nothing to do with causing Wall Street’s meltdown is supposed to cover all the crooks, and that we’re supposed to be satisfied.

Having a “D” after your name no longer stands against the charge of working for the benefit of the financial elites. And one great way to change that would be for the administration to hold some of these people accountable. Instead, they and their spokespeople are all bending over backwards to portray most of these scofflaws as the most valuable people in society who can’t even be asked to take a cut in their gluttonous bonuses during the crisis.

Don’t be surprised to see the Republican presidential candidate of 2012 produce an attack video very much like the one that the Obama administration put together on McCain. And the way things are going, they’ll have plenty of material.

Update: A reader sent this along about David Plouffe’s new book:

Plouffe writes that he green-lighted a documentary about Senator McCain’s association with Charles Keating during the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s. Obama was angry when he learned from watching television that the campaign was releasing the film. Obama took Plouffe and Axelrod aside and asked, “Why wasn’t I consulted?” Plouffe tried to explain, but, as he writes, “Obama cut me off. “This is not a run-of-the-mill ad. This is a big bomb. And I should have made the final decision on whether to use it and when.” He was clearly frustrated”

My reader suggests that Plouffe probably knew that Obama wouldn’t give the go-ahead. I suspect that’s right.

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Infiltration

by digby

Some readers are telling me that writing about the right wing is a waste of time and only feeds their need for attention and helps perpetuate the freakshow. Perhaps that’s right. But since I’ve seen the mainstream of the Republican party go from being the party of Eisenhower to the party of Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachman in my lifetime, I’m a little bit concerned about what happens if they happen to come back into power with these people in influential, powerful positions. It can happen.

So, here’s a little taste of what the freakshow is saying today:

[A] growing number of other Muslim American soldiers as well as civilian contractors have put their religion before their duty. Some like Hasan have killed, or tried to kill, their fellow soldiers. Others have infiltrated the military in order to undermine it and aid and comfort the enemy.

Perhaps that’s not worth noting. World Net Daily is a fringe operation that never let a fact stand in the way of its lunacy. But you’re hearing the same thing on Fox, the cable network that has been tasked with setting the news agenda by the paper of record:

“Do you think it’s time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army officers, anybody enlisted? Because if I’m gonna be deployed in a foxhole, if I’m gonna be sitting in an outpost, I gotta know the guy next to me is not gonna wanna kill me,” Kilmeade said. (Check out the video here.) Geraldo Rivera commendably pointed out that there are several million Muslims in America, and that many serve in the military and are highly valued. Another host, Gretchen Carlson, interrupted in order to point the blame at “political correctness.” “Could it be that the military was also exercising political correctness, even though he had a poor performance report and even though he spoke openly about being a radical Muslim and had those supposed postings online?” she asked.

Spencer Ackerman writes that GOP candidates are there already:

The Hill reports that Allen West, a former Army lieutenant colonel promoted by the National Republican Congressional Committee as one of its “young guns,” has come to some conclusions about the meaning of Maj. Hasan’s murders at Ft. Hood:

“This enemy preys on downtrodden soldiers and teaches them extremism will lift them up,” West said in a statement. “Our soldiers are being brainwashed.” The release added that West claims “the horrible tragedy at Fort Hood is proof the enemy is infiltrating our military.”

(Read Spencer’s whole post. It’s quite illuminating about this “young gun.”)

I think this is worth writing about. It may not come to anything. Let’s hope it doesn’t. But this radical right wing movement is violent, xenophobic and authoritarian in nature and that’s always worth keeping an eye on.

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Mainstream
by digby
Speaking about the House health care bill, the “moderate” Olympia Snowe sounds off:

“I do not know what world they live in,” Snowe said in an interview. “But all I know is it is totally detached from the average person, the average business owner who is struggling to keep their doors open and to have that level of taxation is breathtaking in its dimensions. I just think it is so out of proportion with reality and with mainstream America that it is hard to believe, frankly.” On a day when the $1 trillion House bill picked up support from key interest groups — which, in turn, prompted President Barack Obama to make a personal visit to the White House press room to tout the endorsements — Snowe’s words are a reminder of the dissent surrounding the bill.

Are those comments really in touch with mainstream America?

Out of all of the election results from yesterday, the anti-tax ballot measures in Maine and Washington (known as TABOR) provide a better political tea leaf into voter attitudes going into the 2010 election cycle than anything else. The good news is, progressives won big on a topic that will likely define the nature of the midterm election.

A central tenant of the right-wing agenda has been rejected with the defeat of TABOR (known deceptively as the “taxpayer bill of rights”) in these two states — states that are diverse from each other in almost all respects. Maine’s measure went down with a resounding defeat, 60% to 40%, while Washington’s campaign came from behind with a 55% to 45% rebuff.

A few weeks ago, conservative columnist and tea party champion John Fund wrote in the WSJ that: “If voters in Maine or Washington state pass a taxpayer bill of rights, it will be a clear sign that even in blue states the public is coming to believe that government spending is out of control and that elected officials can no longer be trusted to rein it in. That’s a message that will likely reverberate in Congress regardless of who wins in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.”

I don’t think Snowe or the rest of her colleagues are listening. Unless she thinks that her own voters in Maine are outside the mainstream, reflexive tax aversion is not mainstream anymore. People are getting that government without revenue results in falling bridges and lousy schools and crime and bad health care. The anti-tax fervor of the Age of Reagan is ending and the automatic rejection of anything to do with taxes almost seems anachronistic in an era when the least of most workers’ problems is taxes and businesses see them as a problem they only wished they had because it would mean they are profitable.

The right may be able to persuade a certain number that their problems are all being caused by government spending. I have no doubt that some people are more than willing to believe that. But the American people are logically far more frustrated that their government isn’t doing enough to fix the problems that have put them where they are today, which is insecure in their homes and clinging to their jobs with no ability to bargain because they so desperately need a check and health insurance. And that’s if they’re lucky enough to have homes and jobs in the first place.

The problem is that conservatives are out of the mainstream and they refuse to accept it.

Update:

Ahem

As Washington reels from the news of 10.2 percent unemployment, the Center for Responsive Politics is out with a new report describing the wealth of members of Congress.

Among the highlights: Two-hundred-and-thirty-seven members of Congress are millionaires. That’s 44 percent of the body – compared to about 1 percent of Americans overall.

“Many Americans probably have a sense that members of Congress aren’t hurting, even if their government salary alone is in the six figures, much more than most Americans make,” said CRP spokesman Dave Levinthal. “What we see through these figures is that many of them have riches well beyond that salary, supplemented with securities, stock holdings, property and other investments.”

And let’s face facts: if you don’t have a million while you’re in office, there are a boatload of incentives to ensure you’re in a position to make that kind of money if you retire. It’s an excellent resume builder.

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First Draft

by digby

First Draft is holding their yearly fundraiser. They’ve been cranking out the good stuff for five years now and deserve a couple of bucks if you enjoy what they do. We’re all trying to get by these days.

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Cruel And Unusual

by digby

Police officers commonly say that tasers are needed to get people under control for their own and everyone else’s safety. And they insist they they don’t use it as a form of punishment:

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A Little Ray of Sanity

by digby

Dean Baker has been recommending this since the beginning of the housing crisis. How do you deal with all these people who are losing their homes while at the same time dealing with the plummeting property values in places where there are many obvious foreclosures? And how do you deal with the moral hazard of major debt forgiveness? (That question should have been put to the banksters first and foremost, but well … they are so talented and productive that moral hazards don’t apply to such as them.)

Anyway, it looks like Fannie Mae is going to give a shot to letting people stay in their homes as renters rather than forcing eviction. People obviously lose their investment, but they don’t lose the roof over their heads. And the banks have people living in their foreclosed homes.

The devil is in the details, of course, but if it works it’s a much better outcome for everyone.

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The Worst There Ever Was

by digby

Chris Matthews just implied that modern warfare is much harder on soldiers than wars have ever been before because they are under so much more stress. He called it a “constant booby-trap” because they might be killed by an IED. Cliff Van Zandt agreed that this is worse than soldiers commonly experience.

I certainly don’t disagree that they are under a lot of stress or that these roadside bombs make for a very traumatic experience. And the repeated deployments make for a cumulative effect. But the idea that these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan worse than wars have been in the past is simply mind-boggling.

Has Matthews ever heard of Guadalcanal? Or Verdun?

Does that look stressful at all to you? Those guys were in those trenches and were shelled for months on end. And every once in a while they’d get an order to go up over the top of the trench to be mowed down. It destroyed nearly an entire generation, either by death, injury or shell shock (PTSD)

War is hell and that’s no lie. And the wars the military are fighting today have their own special spin on that hell. But the problem with Matthews and other pampered gasbags is that they apparently think war is some sort of a pageant and never fully grasp that war is always about lethal, bloody violence. Which is why we shouldn’t do it unless there is absolutely no choice. Using it to “send messages” or “protect the country’s prestige” not only kills the other, it kills your own — and not just on the battlefield. It kills them back home when these men and women and their loved ones have to deal with the destruction this lethal violence wreaks on their minds and spirits.

It’s the abstractness of the discussion that drives me crazy. And it’s why I do feel that those who want to fight these proxy wars to “project power” should be forced to fight them personally. It is apparently the only way they will ever understand what their support for these abstract policies really mean to the people on both sides who fight them.

Sometimes wars have to be fought. But if you honestly don’t understand that every single one of them means there will be grotesque, violent destruction of human life and years of psychological trauma for those who wage the battle, then you really shouldn’t have a say in when or why.

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America The Ugly

by digby

Not only did we have a terrible, violent shooting rampage today in Texas, things in Washington DC took an ugly turn as well. You’ll recall recently that the wingnuts had a full blown hissy fit over Alan Grayson using the word “holocaust” in generic terms to describe the preventable deaths of those who don’t have healthcare. This was the response:

“Regardless of one’s position on the issue of healthcare reform, comparing the American healthcare system to the systematic murdering of over six million Jews is totally outrageous and unfit for someone holding public office,” said Hasner in a statement. “Congressman Grayson should apologize to the Jewish community and the families of those whose loved ones were brutally executed. I’d also encourage Mr. Grayson to take a walk tomorrow afternoon to the U.S. Holocaust Museum so he can witness for himself just how offensive and inappropriate his statement is.”

Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks also said the remarks were “outrageous.”

“To link health care to the Holocaust is beyond the pale,” he said,

What say they to this? (Click on image to see larger version)

The sign reads “National Socialist Health Care: Dachau, Germany – 1945”

The picture is a pile of emaciated corpses.

This protest was attended by the entire leadership of the House Republican caucus, all of whom spoke at the dais. As you can see, that sign was very big.

According to Media Matters:

Luke Russert also observed signs reading “Get the Red Out of the White House,” “Waterboard Congress,” “Ken-Ya Trust Obama?” and “Un-American McCarthyite” (with a picture of Nancy Pelosi)

Unlike other protests, this one was not only attended but also organized by Republican members of Congress. These people came to DC — signs and all — at the request of the GOP.

But shortly after addressing the crowd, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) actually blamed Democrats for the hateful images on display. In an interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, Cantor suggested that the signs were the mere result of “frustration” over the democratically elected majority’s “extreme policies.”

Things are starting to turn very dark.

Update II:

Wow:

One sign in the crowd read: “Obama takes his orders from the Rothchilds,” a reference to theories of Jewish world dominance centered around the prominent Jewish family of Rothschilds.

Picture Via Think Progress

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