Month: October 2011

Dear Readers:

Since I started this blog in early 2005, I have had one overriding focus. The GOP is the problem. The GOP was ruining our country on every level, and things have gotten progressively worse at every point along the way. The Great Awakening of the progressives in this country, represented by the emergence of the blogosphere, has accomplished a great many things. We helped win back Congress in 2006 and elect the first black president in 2008. We’ve provided a counterweight to the corporate media and even groomed a few voices to be participants in the corporate media. In many ways things have improved. More importantly, things could have been much, much worse. Just contemplate a McCain-Palin administration, for example.

But the condition of our country is still unacceptable, and it’s still almost entirely the fault of Republicans. Republican-appointed judges legalized unlimited and unaccountable corporate funding of campaigns. Republicans created so much fear around Guantanamo Bay that Congress decided to forbid the president from closing the facility, moving the prisoners to a maximum-security prison in the United States, or even putting them on trial in civilian courts. They’ve basically undermined our system of justice. Under Republican leadership, Wall Street was allowed to ruin the economy and countless people’s lives, and then they refused to support the president’s efforts to fix the problem. They almost unanimously opposed the Stimulus Bill, negotiating its size down to an inadequate amount. They refuse all efforts to create jobs, going so far now as to try to organize a hiring freeze. Republicans unanimously opposed the health care reforms. They nearly- unanimously opposed the Wall Street reforms. They killed efforts to deal with climate change. Their engaged in a nationwide voter suppression effort that mainly disenfranchises blacks. They demonize Latinos at every opportunity. It’s gotten so bad that they have a presidential candidate talking about electrocuting border-crossers. The same candidate has openly opposed Muslims’ right to build their own centers of worship and has promised repeatedly not to employ any Muslims in his administration. Republicans continue to demonize gays and have opposed every bit of progress made for gay rights under Obama’s administration. They’re engaged in a relentless war on women and children.

Before Obama was even inaugurated, the Republicans decided on a plan of maximum obstruction unlike anything seen since the lead-up to the Civil War. And that, you know, ended in civil war. As a result of Republican influence, ideology, and action, our electoral system is worse than ever and our federal government is paralyzed.

You can, of course, blame the Democrats for some of this. They aren’t the best organization in the world. And there are many problems facing this country in which the Democratic Party is fully complicit. I include the president in that criticism. It may seem like I have blinders on sometimes, where I only see what’s wrong with the other side. If you pay closer attention, you’ll notice that I do not fail to be critical of the president or the Democrats when I think they deserve it. But my focus remains the same as it was when I got started as a blogger. The GOP is the problem. Upset about the war on drugs? The GOP is worse, and this administration finally did away with crack/cocaine sentencing disparity. Upset that the health care bill didn’t include a public option? Every Republican candidate for president has pledged to destroy the health care reforms. Upset that the Dodd-Frank bill wasn’t stronger? Only three Republican senators voted to do any Wall Street reforms at all.

Our country used to work. It had its problems, but it limped along. Now it’s so dysfunctional that we lost our AAA credit rating. And, in almost every case, the Republicans hold the primary blame. In every case, they’re on the wrong side of the issues and are pushing us in the wrong direction.

So, that’s why I blog, and that’s why I blog the way I do. I know I don’t see eye-to-eye with a lot of progressives, and I feel like the progressive blogosphere kind of splintered and lost focus on the big picture after Obama was elected. I hope my perspective isn’t too unique, but it seems to be a bit unusual. If you value my perspective please consider making a donation towards the upkeep of the Frog Pond. I can only continue to blog through the support of people like you. We had a very rough summer financially, and we’re still trying to recover. Anything you give will be immensely appreciated.

Best,

BooMan

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project

Hamburgers, pizzas, french fries, and sugary drinks-in today’s fast-paced world, these foods have become staples for many Americans. But this unhealthy diet has led to an increase in chronic health problems such as obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, and high blood pressure. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 34 percent of adults and 17 percent of children and adolescents are now obese, staggering numbers that the organizers of Food Day, a nationwide event taking place on October 24, hope to decrease dramatically.

But promoting safe, healthy and affordable food is only one aim of Food Day, which is sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit watchdog group that fights for food labeling, better nutrition, and safer food. The organizers also want to support sustainable, humane farming, and fair trading conditions.

Around the United States, cities and communities are coming together to showcase the benefits of eating healthy, locally grown, and organic food. Philadelphia is organizing a city-wide event focused on ending hunger and food “deserts”-areas where healthy, affordable food is difficult to obtain. In California, organizations are building a statewide Food Day partnership to promote new food policies, and in Iowa, conferences are being held to highlight how small and mid-sized farmers can get their produce to markets.

In addition to these forums and celebrations, nearly 400 individual events are being sponsored by communities, groups, and companies across the United States. These include:

 

   
• San Francisco. The organization savenature.org is hosting benefit dinners on October 20-22 to show how delicious earth-friendly food can be.

   
• Boston. Boston Food Swap is organizing a crowd-sourced potluck-where they will provide the venue, and attendees will provide local, organic food to show that responsible food is both nutritious and tasty.

   
• Phoenix. In a “Lunch and Learn” session for students and the general public, a panel of local farmers and chefs will demonstrate how they work together to provide sustainable food.

   
• Miami. The city will hold its annual Food & Recreation Expo, offering health screenings, fitness demos, diet and nutrition sessions, giveaways, free massages, and more. The host of “Dinner: Impossible,” Robert Irvine, will perform a live cooking demonstration.

   
• Seattle. On October 24, the restaurant Fresh Starts and filmmaker Severine von Tscharner Fleming will screen “The Greenhorns,” a film about the spirit, vision, and stories behind new farmers, followed by an interactive information session on the Farm Bill.

   
• Universities. Events are being planned at the University of Vermont, University of Pennsylvania, University of Minnesota, University of North Carolina, New York University, Stanford, Yale, and Harvard School of Public Health, among others.

Well, it appears that however reluctantly Herman Cain is pro-choice. He may change that position once he realizes what it means for his chances of winning the Republican nomination, but he’s on the record. Speaking with Piers Morgan on CNN he said the following, in the context of discussing someone who has been impregnated by their rapist:

“No, it comes down to is, it’s not the government’s role — or anybody else’s role — to make that decision. Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidents, you’re not talking about that big a number. So what I’m saying is, it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president. Not some politician. Not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t try to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive decision.”

It will be interesting to see what happens to his poll numbers and where his supporters migrate.

Reports are still sketchy, but it appears likely now that Moammar Gaddafi was shot and killed today in his home city of Sirte. This causes me to reflect. I graduated from high school in 1987. One of my good friends graduated in 1986 and then went to Syracuse University. Thirty-five Syracuse students died when Pan Am Flight 103 blew up over Scotland in 1988. Fortunately, my friend was not one of them, but he knew several of the victims. Dick Cheney and George Bush decided that they’d rather have Gaddafi’s oil than keep him in perpetual pariah status, so they pretended that he had some massive WMD program that he had agreed to give up. The U.K. wanted Gaddafi’s oil, so they released the man responsible for the Pan Am bombing.

I advised against getting the U.S. involved in Libya’s civil war. But, I have to say that I prefer Obama’s methods to the methods of Bush and Cheney. I swear that if Usama bin-Laden had possessed oil fields, Bush and Cheney would have allowed him to repent and then made a deal with him.

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Al-Jazeera English – LIVE!   NTC confirms: Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is Dead

Anti-Gaddafi fighters claim former stronghold of Sirte

(France24/AFP) – BREAKING NEWS: Muammar Gaddafi wounded but under arrest!
Unconfirmed reports of Gaddafi death surface

Forces fighting for Libya’s National Transitional Council said they had captured the last areas held by troops loyal to Muammar Gaddafi in his hometown and former stronghold of Sirte. New regime troops were poised to declare victory in their long siege of Muammar Gaddafi loyalists in their last redoubt in his hometown Sirte, a commander told AFP on the front line.

“This is the last day of the fight,” said Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Abdel Salam of the Misrata Brigade. “Within some hours we will announce that Sirte is free.”

 « click for story

Abdel Salam said that National Transitional Council troops were carrying out a mopping up operation in the city’s Number Two residential neighbourhood, the last redoubt of Kadhafi loyalists in all of Libya.

“We are now inside to look for Kadhafi fighters hiding in the houses and for guns and weapons. We started at 6 am (0400 GMT) this morning.”

An AFP correspondent heard sporadic gunfire in the neighbourhood during the morning as NTC fighters went house to house to root out the snipers who have inflicted heavy losses in their ranks in recent days.

• Inside Hillary Clinton’s C-17 to Libya
• Hillary Clinton’s surprise visit to Tripoli, Libya
• Clinton hails “Libya’s victory”

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

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Former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Company William Isaac warns Europe to heed the lessons from TARP and catastrophic public stress tests …

Europe should learn from US mistakes

(CentralBanking.com) Oct. 13, 2011 – Some are calling for Europe to adopt a “Euro-TARP” programme and more stringent bank stress tests, arguing those programmes helped resolve the US financial crisis in 2008-2009. This assertion is wrong.

When the subprime mortgage loan crisis hit the US in 2008, a handful of large firms teetered on the brink. The government lurched from failure to failure without a coherent plan or sensitivity toward public psychology. The markets panicked, as did the government.

The Bush Administration slapped together a Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) to spend $700 billion of taxpayer money to purchase toxic assets from Wall Street. The poorly conceived programme had no chance of calming the crisis. Indeed, over-heated rhetoric used by the political leaders to sell the program exacerbated the panic.

… Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, was forced to announce in late March 2009 that none of the 19 large US banks would be allowed to fail. This announcement calmed the markets by making the stress test results irrelevant. But the damage was enormous.

The Dow Jones Average stood at 10,800 when TARP was enacted in October 2008. By March 2009 it had plummeted to 6,500 and financial stocks had been crushed.

Insuring toxic assets: throwing good tax payers’ money after bad private money

(FT blog) Feb. 26, 2009 – The UK government has offered, under its asset protection scheme (APS), to guarantee (or insure) up to £600 bn worth of toxic assets held by British banks- up to £300 bn for RBS and up to £250 -£300 bn for the Lloyds Banking Group.  Barclays may be waiting in the wings.  The APS insures the banks (that is, their CEOs, shareholders, junior and senior unsecured creditors other than retail depositors – already covered by deposit guarantees up to £50.000 – and staff) against losses on these toxic assets over and above a certain deductible or `first loss’ for the bank.

There is ample precedent for this kind of guarantee scheme.  In the US, the Fed, the FDIC and the US Treasury have guaranteed a large chunk ($300 bn) of toxic assets of CItigroup.  In the Netherlands, the Dutch state insured a portfolio of $39 bn (face value) worth of securitised US Alt-A mortgages held by ING.

Like its American and Dutch counterparts, this toxic asset insurance scheme is without redeeming social value: it is inefficient, unfair and expensive to the tax payer.

Why should the government guarantee/insure or purchase the toxic assets at all?

All the toxic assets insured by the government are already existing assets. They are the result of investment decisions made in the past.  One of the oldest insights in economics is that bygones are bygones.  You cannot undo past mistakes.  We may not know yet the magnitude of the losses that have been incurred on the underlying assets (how bad the toxic assets will turn out to be), but there is little if anything the banks or anyone else can do, other than sensible macroeconomic management (monetary, credit and fiscal policy) to affect the eventual magnitude of these losses.

By insuring losses that have already been incurred (although we may not know their magnitude as yet), the government simply redistributes these existing losses from the shareholders, creditors, management and employees of the banks to the tax payers.  This is both unfair – those who break something should own it – and inefficient: it encourages future reckless lending and investment by the banks, that is, it creates serious moral hazard.

How Goldman offloaded its toxic assets  

Will Geithner and Summers Succeed in Raiding the FDIC and Fed?

(Huffington Post) March 23, 2009 – Geithner and Summers have now announced their plan to raid the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and Federal Reserve (Fed) to subsidize investors to buy toxic assets from the banks at inflated prices. If carried out, the result will be a massive transfer of wealth — of perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars — to bank shareholders from the taxpayers (who will absorb losses at the FDIC and Fed). Soaring bank share prices on the morning of the announcement, and in the week of leaks and hints that preceded it, are an indication of the mass bailout at work. There are much fairer and more effective ways to accomplish the goal of cleaning the bank balance sheets.

• NY Fed Kathryn Wilde: Wall Street is our Main Street

No surprise a OccupyPlanetEarth social revolt is spreading like wildfire, see Spain, Arab Spring, Israel and Greece.
A sign posted by the Occupy Wall Street campaign demonstrators stands in Zuccotti Park: “Bail Out the People”.

"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

A scientific analysis has revealed the 147 company “super-entity” that controls most of the world’s economy. Here is an article about the study. And here is the study itself.

I already knew that a small number of corporations was running things, but now we have the scientific analysis to back up the suspicions. This is what deregulation has wrought. Sorry, I don’t have any additional analysis or anything else to add. Maybe someone smarter than me can add more.

I’ve put the list of the top 50 of the 147 across the break. No surprise: they are mostly financial institutions/banks.
The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies

1. Barclays plc
2. Capital Group Companies Inc
3. FMR Corporation
4. AXA
5. State Street Corporation
6. JP Morgan Chase & Co
7. Legal & General Group plc
8. Vanguard Group Inc
9. UBS AG
10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
11. Wellington Management Co LLP
12. Deutsche Bank AG
13. Franklin Resources Inc
14. Credit Suisse Group
15. Walton Enterprises LLC
16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp
17. Natixis
18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc
19. T Rowe Price Group Inc
20. Legg Mason Inc
21. Morgan Stanley
22. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc
23. Northern Trust Corporation
24. Société Générale
25. Bank of America Corporation
26. Lloyds TSB Group plc
27. Invesco plc
28. Allianz SE 29. TIAA
30. Old Mutual Public Limited Company
31. Aviva plc
32. Schroders plc
33. Dodge & Cox
34. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc*
35. Sun Life Financial Inc
36. Standard Life plc
37. CNCE
38. Nomura Holdings Inc
39. The Depository Trust Company
40. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance
41. ING Groep NV
42. Brandes Investment Partners LP
43. Unicredito Italiano SPA
44. Deposit Insurance Corporation of Japan
45. Vereniging Aegon
46. BNP Paribas
47. Affiliated Managers Group Inc
48. Resona Holdings Inc
49. Capital Group International Inc
50. China Petrochemical Group Company

* Lehman still existed in the 2007 dataset used

I was already under the impression that HBO’s The Wire was the best and most honest television program in American history. But my mind was totally blown tonight when I realized that “Little” Melvin Williams was cast as the deacon on that program. I learned this from watching an hour-long program on Little Melvin that aired on the Biography Channel. I was already familiar with his history, which you can learn about here. He’s basically responsible for the destruction of the black community in Baltimore. You couldn’t create enough life sentences to equal out the damage he’s done. And he was cast as one of the good guys on the show. Amazing.

I don’t know whether to be offended or to applaud the genius of their casting. It appears that he’s still hustling. They said on the biography program that he has an IQ of 161. He’s also a good actor. But he indicts himself with his own words.

“You know why I became a drug dealer?” he asks. “Because that cop put 16 pills of heroin in my pocket [in 1967]. Like Rambo said, they drew first blood. And all I wanted to do after that is sell kilos and kilos, and I know a lot of people died from it, but if they didn’t want a drug dealer, then they shouldn’t have fucked with me.”

That doesn’t sound like a man who has taken responsibility for his actions. It’s a great injustice to see him walk around the ruined and formerly vibrant areas of black Baltimore reminiscing about the good old days. He destroyed it all by bringing heroin and then cocaine into the community. Maybe someone else would have done it if he hadn’t been there, but he’s still responsible.

It’s a shame that Pat Buchanan doesn’t understand the history of the Irish in this country. It’s almost weird how he manages to conflate “Irish” and “white” and “Catholicism” and “Christianity.” His people weren’t really considered white when they got here, and Catholics suffered horrible discrimination in this country until fairly recently. Not ten miles from where I live is a mass grave of over fifty Irish railroad workers who died of cholera in 1832. They were denied medical care and thrown in a ditch. No funerals. No death certificates. No acknowledgment it even happened until 1970.

The America of Pat Buchanan’s imagination never existed. And, I wonder, how long before MSNBC has a moment of conscience and stops putting this bigot on teevee? Here is Joan Walsh, reviewing Pat Buchanan’s new book Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?:

The book’s most pernicious chapters seek to “prove” white superiority and black and Latino inferiority, in the U.S. and worldwide. And yet Buchanan’s cult of meritocracy can’t quite let in the information that in fact Asian-Americans are out-performing European-Americans in high schools and universities throughout America, and Asian-American family income is growing faster than that of whites. He appears to blame affirmative action for the high number of Asian and Jewish students in Ivy League schools, when in fact both groups have proven that admissions directors over the years have found shady ways to cap their enrollment despite their high achievement. He acknowledges a “white-Asian” elite in California, which he charges is being overtaxed by a lazy, underachieving black-Latino plurality supported by white liberals. But mostly he seems to see Asian-American achievement as just another affirmative action plot to take America away from white Christians. In Obama’s America, “the white working and middle class is being made to pay disproportionately for America’s past sins,” he writes. Eventually, “there is no doubt as to who will be running the country and who will be riding in the back of the bus.”

Seriously. It’s long past time for MSNBC to show some respect for their non-white viewers, fold up Pat Buchanan’s Green Room cot, and show him the door.