The column criticizes the Biden administration for issuing “executive orders to protect abortion and contraception, but those do not invalidate state abortion bans or potential contraception bans.” Filopic adds, “The Department of Health and Human Services issued an important directive on the long-standing Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, confirming that hospitals receiving federal Medicaid dollars have to care for and stabilize any patient who comes through their doors, regardless of that patient’s ability to pay.” But they have limited effect.
So “it’s hard to say that restoring abortion rights has been the No. 1 priority of Biden’s administration,” Filopic continues (in a post likely filed over the weekend), “because, while he has made some statements supporting abortion rights, the president simply hasn’t made it a cornerstone of his campaign.”
The White House on Monday is announcing new steps intended to ensure access to contraception, abortion medication and emergency abortions at hospitals. It represents President Biden’s latest bid to contrast himself with Republican challengers who support strict abortion limits and arrives on the anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed abortion rights for nearly 50 years.
The effort to expand access to contraception involves several measures. Federal agencies are issuing guidance that would make no-cost contraceptives more available under the Affordable Care Act and take similar actions to expand contraception access for federal employees. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra also plans to send a letter to health insurers instructing them of their obligation to provide no-cost contraceptives, according to a memo the White House sent to reporters Sunday.
The federal health department also announced a new team dedicated to enforcing its interpretation of a law, known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which the Biden administration has said requires hospitals to provide emergency abortions nationwide, including in the 21 states where the procedure is limited or banned.
EMTALA is the law Filopic thinks doesn’t go far enough; anti-abortion groups in Texas are already pushing back in court. Fair enough. But her column may have been premature. Biden, she writes, must “not just pledge to make abortion rights the top priority of his second term but … make them a top priority in this election and in his administration right now.”
Biden answers (The Post again):
Meanwhile, Biden on Monday is expected to convene two dozen senior officials in the White House for a meeting of his reproductive health task force, where he will be joined by several physicians who have practiced in states with abortion bans. Vice President Harris is slated to kick off a multistate reproductive rights tour with a visit to Wisconsin, where she is expected to criticize a proposal by state Republicans to ban abortion after 14 weeks of pregnancy. Wisconsin’s Democratic governor has already said he will veto the bill.
“On this day and every day, Vice President Harris and I are fighting to protect women’s reproductive freedom against Republicans’ dangerous, extreme, and out-of-touch agenda,” Biden said in a statement.
The Biden administration’s actions — coming on what would have been the 51st anniversary of the landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, before the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022 — reflect Democrats’ ongoing effort to highlight an issue that gives them a strong political advantage. Fifty-eight percent of all voters, including about 1 in 5 Republicans, said they trust Democrats more than Republicans on abortion, according to a November poll conducted by KFF, a health policy organization.
Still, an “anniversary” press event is not enough to drive home the point that restoring abortion rights is central to Biden’s reelection campaign. The campaign’s messaging effort has to be sustained and part of every event. Paint the beautiful tomorrow. Lather, rinse, repeat. “Tell ’em what you’re going to tell ’em; then tell ’em; then tell ’em what you told ’em.” The truth, if it’s to set voters free, must be shouted.
Biden was in North Carolina last week touting his administration’s infrastructure spending putting “shovels in the ground, cranes in the sky, and people hard at work on these projects.” Terrific. Yet there was no reference to women or women’s rights in his remarks. Yes, campaigns like to build events around themes. But women’s rights are not a theme if they’re not ever-present. Always Be Closing.
Speaker Mike Johnson is beset with political challenges: At least two conservative lawmakers have begun threatening his job. The former acting speaker trashed Johnson’s performance this week. A border-policy showdown with the Senate and White House draws nearer every day.
And then there’s the problem of the 2024 campaign.
A growing number of House Republicans are increasingly frustrated with Johnson’s leadership and whispering about whether he can hang on to his role after 2024 — if he even makes it that far.
Despite serving barely three months as speaker, the Louisianan is already facing an immediate threat from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is openly disparaging him and suggesting she may try to boot him from the speakership.
“I don’t think he’s safe right now,” Greene said, adding: “The only reason he’s speaker is because our conference is so desperate.”
Few Republicans are prepared to join Greene, at least at this point. But more than 100 of them signaled frustration with Johnson’s approach to government spending by opposing a funding patch on Thursday, including House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who briefly served as interim speaker, delivered a blunt warning Thursday night that “we’re sucking wind” under Johnson’s leadership, urging the speaker to broaden his circle of advisers and avoid kowtowing to his right.
And still other Republicans are privately predicting that unless Johnson can hang onto their thin majority this fall, his time atop the GOP conference could expire.
Interviews with more than a dozen GOP lawmakers revealed a consensus that Johnson would have serious trouble staying in power after an electoral defeat. These days, some lawmakers who embraced Johnson — after the failure of three other aspiring successors to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy — openly acknowledge that the Louisianan would get the blame for any stumble at the ballot box this fall.
“It’s up to him to win or lose. And if he loses, he will leave,” said Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, a former National Republican Congressional Committee chair.
Sessions, who had his own short-lived bid for the gavel in October, predicted that if Republicans do not hold the majority, then Johnson “isn’t going to stick around — I mean that.”
Yes, he was dealt a bad hand. But he is also a right wing nut job who is at the mercy of his own allies — other right wing nut jobs. The House is ungovernable by any GOP majority. It’s been that way for over a decade because the party has lost its mind. Johnson is just the latest in a long line of failed GOP speakers.
But here’s a little bit of sunshine for you:
Johnson allies argue that skeptics are underestimating him, pointing to his quick progress assuaging concerns that he couldn’t keep up with McCarthy’s torrid fundraising pace. The more he helps with the 2024 campaign and candidate recruitment, the more Johnson can form some of the deeper connections to incoming members that helped McCarthy survive a grueling speakership race last January.
Even so, Republicans are openly admitting that they’re worried about November. Which is never a good sign.
“We’re in real jeopardy of not winning the White House and not winning the House,” said Rep. Richard McCormick (R-Ga.), who argued the party is not focused on voters’ top issues.
“The Federal Reserve is going to cut [interest rates] probably at least twice, if not five times this year. The gas price always comes down during an election. And the border will be secured before November. It’s gonna happen, right? It’s gonna be part of some package,” McCormick mused. “What are the three things that are the Achilles heel of Biden? Those three things.”
Many normal Americans who don’t necessarily agree with all of Biden’s policies are loyal to him because they’re tired of being looked down on and sneered at like this by Republicans. https://t.co/raejY7XfK9
This is the media’s fault for indulging these spoiled brats’ tantrums about being “insulted” by the coastal elites. Nobody is more insulting than they are — and they’ve been that way for years. This isn’t a Trump thing. It’s a “Real America” thing.
Yes, he is the most worthless politician in America:
Ron DeSanctimonious endorses Trump. Self-respect anyone? DeSantis earlier this month: “You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring, he’ll say you’re wonderful… if you don’t kiss that ring, then he’ll try to trash you.” https://t.co/EkhdxVHUjb
It seems only minutes ago that the whole political world was agog at his tremendous political talent. Well…
The lesson? Never assume that the next GOP Great Whitebread Hope is as fantastic as the press corps thinks he is.
The other lesson? If you’re going to run as the biggest asshole in politics you’d better have a lot of money and celebrity that makes people think you must be really great anyway. Ron is just an asshole.
I am so happy to see the end of him. It’s been a real horror covering his disgusting campaign. Let’s hope we never see him on the national stage again. This massive flame-out argues for him joining Scott Walker and Tim Pawlenty in the Loser Hall of Fame.
What does it all mean? We’ll unwind all that in the next few days. But Greg Sargent is right that it spells the end of the big post-pandemic “woke” war. That battle in the culture war is coming to an end, but never fear, the war isn’t over.
DeSantis's implosion is more confirmation that anti-woke politics has completely fizzled. DeSantis organized his entire governorship *and* campaign on this theme. Now Moms for Liberty is losing everywhere, Youngkin failed disastrously, and "where woke goes to die" Ron is kaput. https://t.co/cgRsaliPRa
Daniel Uhlfelder went through the FEC reports and found all money paid to law firms by Donald Trump’s Super PAC in the first 6 months of last year.
FEC records show that between January 1, 2023, and June 30, 2023, Donald Trump’s Super PAC, SAVE AMERICA, made payments to the following law firms in these amounts: BALLARD SPAHR LLP – $109,174.55
The total amount paid to these firms between January 1, 2023 and June 30, 2023 by SAVE AMERICA is almost $19 million.
$18,789,359.07 actually
28 law firms so average of $671,048 per firm
My God. I’m sure that all Super PACs have legal expenses but this is insane. $19 million just in the first six months. I guess all his marks just love to give money to billionaires.
I hear a lot on my social media these days about how Trump is better than Biden on the Gaza war. That’s utter nonsense. It’s true that Trump isn’t particularly fond of Netanyahu (neither is Biden, actually) but that does not mean that he would ever be an ally of the Palestinians or the Palestinian allies.
Donald Trump promised on Monday that if elected president again he will bar immigrants who support Hamas from entering the U.S. and send officers to pro-Hamas protests to arrest and deport immigrants who publicly support the Palestinian militant group.
Trump, president from 2017-2021, said that if elected to a second White House term he will ban entry to the U.S. of anybody who does not believe in Israel’s right to exist, and revoke the visas of foreign students who are “antisemitic.”
He also vowed to step up travel bans from “terror-plagued countries.” He did not explain how he would enforce his demands, including the one requiring immigrants to support Israel’s right to exist under what he called “strong ideological screening.” …
Promising to drastically tighten U.S. immigration laws, Trump said: “If you want to abolish the state of Israel, you’re disqualified, if you support Hamas or the ideology behind Hamas, you’re disqualified, and if you’re a communist, Marxist, or fascist, you are disqualified.”
“We will aggressively deport resident aliens with jihadist sympathies,” Trump said.
He may now say some things on the trail that imply that he would ditch Israel, since he surely senses the tension in the Democratic coalition, but I suspect he’ll be pretty careful about that. He wants to keep Republican Israel supporters in his corner and that means the evangelicals, a huge faction.
Trump is a blatantly racist piece of work who isn’t fond of Jews (except the “good ones” like Jared) but he really, really hates brown and black people. He spits out the word “Hussein” every time he mentions Obama. If people are unaware of his history with Muslim bashing, they need to educate themselves. There is no way in hell that he is going to be helpful to Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank or Cambridge Massachusetts. He will make an already terrible, complicated situation a million times worse.
The Biden campaign is out with a stark new ad featuring a woman talking about traveling out of state to receive an abortion due to Texas’ strict abortion ban. It’s the latest in their push to put reproductive rights front and center in the 2024 race.
New Biden campaign ad features a woman who says she had to flee Texas to end a planned pregnancy after the doctors said the fetus had no chance of survival. “Because of Donald Trump overturning Roe v. Wade.”pic.twitter.com/Uy1iURYrxo
People don’t know what they don’t know. That’s tautological, but true. One reason I publish ForThe Win every two years (the 5th edition isn’t quite ready) is to give less-experienced Democratic county chairs in under-resourced counties a “cookbook” for assembling a countywide get-out-the-vote program in support of their candidates. State parties assume chairs have already learned the nuts and bolts by the seat of their pants. They instead provide sometimes overly thick manuals focused mainly on party administration. “Where’s the part about electing Democrats?” is my usual reaction.
In presidential years, people unfamiliar with local party operations start calling the headquarters here in West Cackalacky (or your Cackalacky). Some have basic election questions. Others want to discuss policy or something they just saw on the news. Angry others want to chew the ears of retiree volunteers who answer the phone as though local committees are part of the Collective with a subspace connection to decisions made in the West Wing. That’s not how this works. (There is no The Democratic Party.) But they don’t know what they don’t know. That’s why the White House comment line number is written in large letters on the wall beside the reception desk. (Comments: 202-456-1111.)
Most of what people think they know about party politics they pick up from watching the presidential contest every four years. First, because it’s the only time they are paying close attention. Second, because the news coverage is inescapable. But it leaves a false impression of how parties work day to day.
Men (it always seems to be men) call the Democratic office here every presidential cycle to ask about their favorite primary candidates. They want to know when [your candidate here] is coming to town. Explain you don’t know, and they get an attitude. You’ve confirmed Democrats are as much a waste of their time as they already believed. The voices suggest Jimbo Jones from “The Simpsons.”
“Well, this is the Democratic Party, isn’t it?”
Yes, but (I do not reply) I’m not the one who called the guy at the motor pool with his hands in a Humvee transmission to ask for the base commander’s itinerary. Callers’ grasp of force structure is a tad fuzzy.
To my knowledge, no Commander in Chief (or senior staff) has ever called down here to the motor pool for our advice on policy or for any other reason. Even for planning local campaign stops. Those calls go first to local elected and police officials. The local party committee is maybe fourth in line to get the news, and then with only a couple of days’ notice.
Protesters in Tel Aviv call for change to Netanyahu government. (via Reuters).
The race is on to see who burns out on Donald Trump first, Trump Himself or the rest of us. With his shuttling furiously between court apearances and campaign appearances, Trump can no longer tell his Nikkis from his Nancys. “I am your retribution” has turned into “IMMUNITY NOW, IMMUNITY TOMORROW, IMMUNITY FOREVER.” Although Trump is neither as smart nor as clever nor as intellectually agile as George Wallace, Jamelle Bouie nonetheless believes Wallace’s “legacy in national politics … is very clearly Trump.”
I need a break. Make that “break.”
The Russians are still bombing Ukraine. The Israelis are still bombing Gaza. Vladimir Putin is still directing the former and Benjamin Netanyahu, the latter.
Al Jazeera provides a rundown of events on Day 697 of the war on Ukraine:
A fire broke out at a natural gas terminal in the Russian Baltic Sea port of Ust-Luga, the regional governor said early on Sunday. A high alert regime has been introduced in the Kingiseppsky district, which includes the port, and no casualties have been reported, according to the AFP news agency.
Russia’s parliament will consider a law allowing for the confiscation of money, valuables, and other property from those deemed to spread “deliberately false information” about Moscow’s military actions, a senior lawmaker said on Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Saturday that he expected a number of new Western defence packages for Ukraine to be signed this and next month. “We are preparing new agreements with partners – strong bilateral agreements,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
The wife of a Russian soldier delivered an emotional appeal for his return from Ukraine on Saturday at the election headquarters of President Vladimir Putin, a defiant gesture in a country where open criticism of the war is banned.
The Ministry of Defence in the United Kingdom stated on Saturday that Ukraine sustains a military presence along the left bank of the Dnipro River and persists in fending off Russian assaults despite logistical challenges.
Russia has lost 375,270 soldiers in Ukraine since the beginning of the war, including 750 over the past day, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine claimed on Saturday. The number has not been independently verified.
Russian marines and paratroopers are refusing to launch certain types of assaults due to concerns over the huge losses other troops are suffering, a Ukrainian official said, the Kyiv Post reported.
Nataliya Humenyuk, a press secretary for the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Joint Command South, said that the soldiers considered “themselves ‘elite troops'” and did not “want to go into frontal assaults” that former felons and reservists typically carry out, the outlet reported.
Throughout the Russian invasion, Russia has become increasingly reliant on high-risk frontal assaults involving waves of attacks that probe Ukrainian positions and seize small portions of territory at the cost of substantial casualties.
And in Gaza on Day 107 of that war, another milestone (Associated Press):
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — The Palestinian death toll from the war between Israel and Hamas has soared past 25,000, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said Sunday, while the Israeli government appeared far from achieving its goals of crushing the militant group and freeing more than 100 hostages.
The level of death, destruction and displacement from the war already is without precedent in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet Israeli officials say the fighting is likely to continue for several more months.
During the Cold War, nuclear disamament protesters condemned the arms race as an effort to create enough surplus weapons to make the rubble bounce. Netanyahu is doing that in Gaza with conventional arms (many of them ours). And not just rubble, but bodies.
The war has displaced some 85% of Gaza’s residents from their homes, with hundreds of thousands packing into U.N.-run shelters and tent camps in the southern part of the tiny coastal enclave. U.N. officials say a quarter of the population of 2.3 million is starving as only a trickle of humanitarian aid reaches them because of the fighting and Israeli restrictions.
Netanyahu has vowed to keep up the offensive until Israel achieves “complete victory” over Hamas and returns all the remaining hostages. But even some top Israeli officials have begun to acknowledge that those goals might be mutually exclusive.
TEL AVIV, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday to protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, accusing the veteran leader of mishandling the nation’s security and calling for a new election.
Anti-government protests that shook the nation for much of 2023 ceased after the attacks by Hamas in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Political rifts were set aside as Israelis rallied behind the military and the families of those killed or taken hostage.
But with the devastating war in Gaza in its fourth month and opinion polls showing lagging support for Netanyahu, calls for leadership changes are growing stronger, though there is no indication that his position is under any imminent threat.
This was reflected in Saturday night’s turnout in a central Tel Aviv square where many of last year’s protests took place.
While the crowd was much smaller than those seen last year, it still comprised several thousand people, with many banging on drums, yelling their dismay and waving Israeli flags.
“This is the first time we are seeing this protest happen in the north,” said Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from Haifa on Saturday.
“It’s a protest with Israeli Jews and Palestinian Israelis, and it is significant because of the two coming together.
“The message here is to end the war and that they can only live peacefully side by side with a political solution for the Palestinians,” she said.
Omri Evron, a member of the Communist Party of Israel, who helped organise the anti-war protest, spoke to Al Jazeera about the message the protesters were hoping to convey.
“The killing of thousands and thousands of Palestinians, the vast majority of whom are innocent civilians, is not only reprehensible, it does not serve the security of the people of Israel. It does not bring us security, it only ensures the next massacre, the next cycle of violence,” he said.
History never repeats (I tell myself before I go to sleep)
– Split Enz
Thankfully, I was between gulps of coffee when I espied this tidbit on X (re-posted by Digby)…otherwise I would have done an involuntary spit take all over my Cocoa Puffs:
I think capitalism far superior to socialism, and free markets with a welfare state and some regulation far superior to a government-run economy with limited room for freedom. But if capitalists side with authoritarians–better social democracy than corporatist authoritarianism.
“Wait a minute…that has to be a parody account,” I thought to myself. But nope, that is from the actual Bill Kristol, neoconservative writer and commentator. He was (in his words) “provoked” into sharing that observation after “reading a couple articles about Davos.”
I suspect it’s not just the shenanigans this past week at the World Economic Forum that prompted this magical trip to the other side of the wardrobe, but the all-too-real *possibility* of history repeating itself this November (do I need to spell it out?). I pray (as fervently as an agnostic can) that “it” doesn’t happen again…but in our heart of hearts, you and I both know that it could.
With that in mind, I thought I’d revisit a “top 10 list” I originally posted on the eve of Inauguration Day 2017, which contains bellwethers that may need to be heeded once again. With my childlike grasp of investment strategies, the best tip I can give is: go long on Hope.
(The following was originally published on Hullabaloo on January 14, 2017)
“To assess the ‘personality’ of the corporate ‘person’ a checklist is employed, using diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and the standard diagnostic tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation give it a highly anti-social ‘personality’: it is self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism.”
I don’t know about you, but my jaw is getting pretty sore from repeatedly dropping to the floor with each successive cabinet nomination by our incoming CEO-in-chief of the United States of Blind Trust. It seems that candidate Trump, who ran on an oft-bleated promise to “drain the swamp” in Washington D.C. bears little resemblance to President-elect Trump, who is currently hell-bent on loading the place up with even more alligators.
When I heard the name “Rex Tillerson” bandied about as Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, it rang a bell. I knew he was the former head of Exxon, so it wasn’t that. Then I remembered. Mr. Tillerson was one of the “stars” of a documentary I reviewed several years back, called Greedy Lying Bastards (conversely, if I hear the words “greedy lying bastards,” bandied about, “Trump’s cabinet picks” is the first phrase that comes to mind).
So with that in mind, and in keeping with my occasional unifying theme, “Hollywood saw this coming”, I was inspired to comb my review archives of the last 10 years to see if any bellwethers were emerging that may have been dropping hints that the planets were aligning in such a manner as to set up a path to the White House for an orange TV clown (the “self-interested, inherently amoral, callous and deceitful” kind of orange TV clown).
All 10 of these films were released within the last 10 years. I’ll let you be the judge:
The Big Short – Want the good news first? Writer-director Adam McKay and co-scripter Charles Randolph’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’ eponymous 2010 non-fiction book is an outstanding comedy-drama; an incisive parsing of what led to the crash of the global financial system in 2008. The bad news is…it made me pissed off about it all over again.
Yes, it’s a bitter pill to swallow, this ever-maddening tale of how we stood by, blissfully unaware, as unchecked colonies of greedy, lying Wall Street investment bankers were eventually able to morph into the parasitic gestalt monster journalist Matt Taibbi famously compared to a “…great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Good times! (Full review)
Capitalism: A Love Story – Back in 2009, Digby and I did a double post on this film, which was Michael Moore’s reaction to the 2008 crash. Here’s how I viewed his intent:
So how did we arrive to this sorry state of our Union, where the number of banks being robbed by desperate people is running neck and neck with the number of desperate banks ostensibly robbing We The People? What paved the way for the near-total collapse of our financial system and its subsequent government bailout, which Moore provocatively refers to as nothing less than a “financial coup d’etat”? The enabler, Moore suggests, may very well be our sacred capitalist system itself-and proceeds to build a case (in his inimitable fashion) that results in his most engaging and thought-provoking film since Roger and Me […] at the end of the day I didn’t really find his message to be so much “down with capitalism” as it is “up with people”.
Digby gleaned something else from the film that did a flyover on me at the time:
But this movie, as Dennis notes, isn’t really about saviors or criminals, although it features some of both. It’s a call for citizens to focus their minds on what’s actually gone wrong and take to the streets or man the barricades or do whatever defines political engagement in this day and age and demand that the people who brought us to this place are identified and that the system is reformed. Indeed, I would guess that if it didn’t feature the stuff about capitalism being evil he could have shown this to audiences of all political stripes and most of the latent teabaggers would have given him a standing ovation.
If the film manages to focus the citizenry on the most important story of our time then it will be tremendously important. If it gets lost in a cacophony of commie bashing and primitive tribalism then it will probably not be recognized for what it is until sometime later. As with all of his films, he’s ahead of the zeitgeist, so I am hopeful that this epic call to leftwing populist engagement is at the very least a hopeful sign of things to come.
She called it. “Someone” did tap into that populist sentiment; but sadly, it wasn’t the Left. (Full review)
The Corporation – While it’s not news to any thinking person that corporate greed and manipulation affects everyone’s life on this planet, co-directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott deliver the message in a unique and engrossing fashion. By applying a psychological profile to the rudiments of corporate think, Achbar and Abbott build a solid case; proving that if the “corporation” were corporeal, then “he” would be Norman Bates.
Mixing archival footage with observations from some of the expected talking heads (Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, etc.) the unexpected (CEOs actually sympathetic with the filmmakers’ point of view) along with the colorful (like a “corporate spy”), the film offers perspective not only from the watchdogs, but from the belly of the beast itself. Be warned: there are enough exposes trotted out here to keep conspiracy theorists, environmentalists and human rights activists tossing and turning in bed for nights on end.
The Forecaster – There’s a conspiracy nut axiom that “everything is rigged”. Turns out it’s not just paranoia…it’s a fact. At least that’s according to this absorbing documentary from German filmmaker Marcus Vetter, profiling economic “forecaster” Martin Armstrong. In the late 70s, Armstrong formulated a predictive algorithm (“The Economic Confidence Model”) that proved so accurate at prophesying global financial crashes and armed conflicts, that a shadowy cabal of everyone from his Wall Street competitors to the CIA made Wile E. Coyote-worthy attempts for years to get their hands on that formula.
And once Armstrong told the CIA to “fuck off”, he put himself on a path that culminated in serving a 12-year prison sentence for what the FBI called a “3 billion dollar Ponzi scheme”. Funny thing, no evidence was ever produced, nor was any judgement passed (most of the time he served was for “civil contempt”…for not giving up that coveted formula, which the FBI eventually snagged when they seized his assets). Another funny thing…Armstrong’s formula solidly backs up his contention that it’s the world’s governments running the biggest Ponzi schemes…again and again, all throughout history.
And something tells me that we ain’t seen nuthin’ yet…
Greedy Lying Bastards – I know it’s cliché to quote Joseph Goebbels, but: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomesthe truth.” That’s the theme of Craig Rosebraugh’s 2013 documentary. As one interviewee offers: “On one side you have all the facts. On the other side, you have none. But the folks without the facts are far more effective at convincing the public that this is not a problem, than scientists are about convincing them that we need to do something about this.” What is the debate in question here? Global warming.
Using simple but damning flow charts, Rosebraugh follows the money and connects dots between high-profile deniers (“career skeptics…in the business of selling doubt”) and their special interest sugar daddies. Shills range from media pundits (with no background in hard science) to members of Congress, presidential candidates and Supreme Court justices. Think tanks and other organizations are exposed as mouthpieces for Big Money.
Sadly, the villains outnumber the heroes-which is not reassuring. What does reassure are suggested action steps in the film’s coda…which might come in handy after January 20th. (Full review)
Inside Job – I have good news and bad news about documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson’s incisive parsing of what led to the crash of the global financial system in 2008. The good news is that I believe I finally grok what “derivatives” and “toxic loans” are. The bad news is…that doesn’t make me feel any better about how fucked we are.
Ferguson starts where the seeds were sown-rampant financial deregulation during the Reagan administration (“morning in America”-remember?). The film illustrates, point by point, how every subsequent administration, Democratic and Republican alike, did their “part” to enable the 2008 crisis- through political cronyism and legislative manipulation. The result of this decades long circle jerk involving Wall Street, the mortgage industry, Congress, the White House and lobbyists (with Ivy League professors as pivot men) is what we are still living with today…and I suspect it is about to get unimaginably worse. (Full review)
The International – Get this. In the Bizarro World of Tom Tykwer’s conspiracy thriller, people don’t rob banks…. banks rob people. That’s crazy! And if you think that’s weird, check this out: at one point in the film, one of the characters puts forth the proposition that true power belongs to he who controls the debt. Are you swallowing this malarkey? The filmmakers even go so far as to suggest that some Third World military coups are seeded by powerful financial groups and directed from shadowy corporate boardrooms…
What a fantasy! (Not.)
The international bank in question is under investigation by an Interpol agent (Clive Owen), who is following a trail of shady arms deals all over Europe and the Near East that appear to be linked to the organization. Whenever anyone gets close to exposing the truth about the bank’s Machiavellian schemes, they die under mysterious circumstances. Once the agent teams up with an American D.A. (Naomi Watts), much more complexity ensues, with tastefully-attired assassins lurking behind every silver-tongued bank exec.
The timing of the film’s release (in 2010) was interesting, in light of the then-current banking crisis and plethora of financial scandals. Screenwriter Eric Singer (no relation to the KISS drummer) based certain elements of the story on the real-life B.C.C.I. scandal. (Full review)
The Queen of Versailles — In Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 doc, billionaire David Siegel shares an anecdote about his 52-story luxury timeshare complex in Vegas. In 2010, Donald Trump called him and said, “Congratulations on your new tower! I’ve got one problem with it. When I stay in my penthouse suite, I look out the window and all I see is ‘WESTGATE’. Could you turn your sign down a little bit?” (how he must have suffered).
While Greenfield’s portrait of Siegal, his wife Jackie, their eight kids, nanny, cook, maids, chauffeur and (unknown) quantity of yippy, prolifically turd-laying teacup dogs is chock full of wacky “you couldn’t make this shit up” reality TV moments, there is an elephant in the room…the family’s unfinished Orlando, Florida mansion, the infamous “largest home in America”, a 90,000 square foot behemoth inspired by the palace at Versailles. Drama arises when the bank threatens to foreclose on it, along with the PH Towers Westgate. So does the family end up living in cardboard boxes? I’m not telling.
However, there is a more chilling message, buried near the end of the film. When Siegel boasts he was “personally responsible” for the election of George W. Bush in 2000, the director asks him to elaborate. “I’d rather not say,” he replies, “…because it may not necessarily have been legal.” Any further thoughts? “Had I not stuck my big nose into it, there probably would not have been an Iraqi War, and maybe we would have been better off…I don’t know.” Gosh, imagine a billionaire having the power to “buy” the POTUS of their choice. Worse yet, imagine a similarly odious billionaire becoming the POTUS. Oh. (Full review)
Welcome to New York — While it is not a “action thriller” per se, Abel Ferrara’s film is likewise “ripped from the headlines”, involves an evil banker, and agog with backroom deals and secret handshakes. More specifically, the film is based on the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal. In case you need a refresher, he was the fine fellow who was accused and indicted for an alleged sexual assault and attempted rape of a maid employed by the ritzy NYC hotel he was staying at during a 2011 business trip. The case was dismissed after the maid’s credibility was brought into question (Strauss-Kahn later admitted in a TV interview that a liaison did occur, but denied any criminal wrongdoing).
I’m sure that the fact that Strauss-Kahn was head of the International Monetary Fund at the time (and a front-runner in France’s 2012 presidential race) had absolutely nothing to do with him traipsing out from the sordid affair smelling like a rose (2024 sidebar: Umm…)
It is interesting watching the hulking Gerard Depardieu wrestle with the motivations (and what passes as the “conscience”) of his Dostoevskian character. It doesn’t make this creep any more sympathetic, but it is a fearless late-career performance, as naked (literally and emotionally) as Marlon Brando was playing a similarly loathsome study in Last Tango inParis. Jacqueline Bisset gives a good supporting turn as the long-suffering wife. (Full review)
The Yes Men Fix the World – Anti-corporate activist/pranksters Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno (aka “The Yes Men”) and co-director Kurt Engfehr come out swinging, vowing to do a take-down of a powerful nemesis…an Idea. If money makes the world go ‘round, then this particular Idea is the one that oils the crank on the money-go-round, regardless of the human cost. It is the free market cosmology of economist Milton Friedman, which the Yes Men posit as the root of much evil in the world.
Once this springboard is established, the fun begins. Perhaps “fun” isn’t the right term, but there are hijinks afoot, and you’ll find yourself chuckling through most of the film (when you’re not crying). However, the filmmakers have a loftier goal than mining laughs: corporate accountability; and ideally, atonement. “Corporate accountability” is an oxymoron, but one has to admire the dogged determination (and boundless creativity) of the Yes Men and their co-conspirators, despite the odds. It’s a call to activism that is as timely as ever. (Full review)
