Author: Pen

The NYT’s came out with an article Sunday that posed the question:  Should the government nationalize the banks?  Natually, our fearful leaders danced around the question of nationalization, fearing right wing backlash.  The Dems still fear being called socialists and commies doncha know?

“This Week” on ABC, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, alluded to internal debate when she was asked whether nationalization, or partial nationalization, of the largest banks was a good idea.

“Well, whatever you want to call it,” said Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California. “If we are strengthening them, then the American people should get some of the upside of that strengthening. Some people call that nationalization.

“I’m not talking about total ownership,” she quickly cautioned — stopping herself by posing a question: “Would we have ever thought we would see the day when we’d be using that terminology? `Nationalization of the banks?’ “

How about we call it what it is then?  Repossession.

Afterall, that’s what the banks would do to us isn’t it?  We don’t call THEM commies or socialists when they repossess someone’s car who can’t pay their debts.  I think the Dems should rightly point out that when We The People repossess their banks, it’s the same damned thing.
When you fail to pay your mortgage, don’t the banks repossess your home?  They call it foreclosure, but it’s repossession.  Because you can’t pay your debts.

Miss a few car payments and is it the car lot that sends the repo man?  No, it’s the financial department.  The ones who gave you the loan.  

In fact, pretty much anything in life that you have to finance a loan to pay for, if you don’t come up with the money, they will repossess it.  And it won’t stop there.  Need a way to guarantee that loan?  How about you put your house up?  Oh dear!  You can’t pay us back?  We repossess the house too!

So what’s going on in the banking industry today?

They have debt obligations far in excess of their market value.  In other words, they can’t pay back their loans.  Well who do banks borrow from anyways?  US.  We The People.  That’s who.  So the banks OWE US THE MONEY and they can’t repay it.  Which means we have every right on earth to repossess said banks.  

They went out and lost all their money, then they kept losing money.  A lot of it went into their fat little pockets.  So let’s be honest here, they didn’t REALLY lose the money, they STOLE it.  So not only do we have the right to repossess the banks, but we have the right to demand that those who ran this little Ponzie Scheme be sent to prison for a good long time.

That’s when Eisman finally got it. Here he’d been making these side bets with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank on the fate of the BBB tranche without fully understanding why those firms were so eager to make the bets. Now he saw. There weren’t enough Americans with shitty credit taking out loans to satisfy investors’ appetite for the end product. The firms used Eisman’s bet to synthesize more of them. Here, then, was the difference between fantasy finance and fantasy football: When a fantasy player drafts Peyton Manning, he doesn’t create a second Peyton Manning to inflate the league’s stats. But when Eisman bought a credit-default swap, he enabled Deutsche Bank to create another bond identical in every respect but one to the original. The only difference was that there was no actual homebuyer or borrower. The only assets backing the bonds were the side bets Eisman and others made with firms like Goldman Sachs. Eisman, in effect, was paying to Goldman the interest on a subprime mortgage. In fact, there was no mortgage at all. “They weren’t satisfied getting lots of unqualified borrowers to borrow money to buy a house they couldn’t afford,” Eisman says. “They were creating them out of whole cloth. One hundred times over! That’s why the losses are so much greater than the loans. But that’s when I realized they needed us to keep the machine running. I was like, This is allowed?”

Theivery, plain and simple.

So imagine if YOU had not only defaulted on your loans, but you’d committed fraud and theft and possibly even bankrupted the greatest nation on earth?

You think they’d let you keep your home?  Your car?  You think they’d march YOU off to jail?  Or do you think they’d lavish YOU with with millions of dollars?

Nah, me neither.

So why is it so hard for the Dems to do the right thing?

The problem here is semantics.  The Dems don’t want to be called socialists or commies, so they aren’t ready to “nationalize” the banks.  Nationalization is what they do to banks in Venezuela, doncha know?

“I’m not talking about total ownership,” she (Pelosi) quickly cautioned — stopping herself by posing a question: “Would we have ever thought we would see the day when we’d be using that terminology? `Nationalization of the banks?’ “

So far, President Obama’s top aides have steered clear of the word entirely, and they are still actively discussing other alternatives, including creating a “bad bank” that would nationalize the worst nonperforming loans by taking them off the hands of financial institutions without actually taking ownership of the banks.

So instead, they’re doing it half-assed.  We OWN the banks, we just don’t have any say in how they are run.  

Others talk of de facto nationalization, in which the government owns a sizeable chunk of the banks but not a majority, with all that connotes.

That has already happened; taxpayers are now the biggest shareholders in Bank of America, with about 6 percent of the stock, and in Citigroup, with 7.8 percent. But the government’s influence is far larger than those numbers suggest, because it has guaranteed to absorb the losses of some of the two banks’ most toxic assets, a figure that could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Many believe this form of hybrid ownership — part government, part private, with the responsibilities of ownership unclear — will not prove workable.

“The case for full nationalization is far stronger now than it was a few months ago,” said Adam S. Posen, the deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “If you don’t own the majority, you don’t get to fire the management, to wipe out the shareholders, to declare that you are just going to take the losses and start over. It’s the mistake the Japanese made in the ’90s.“

How fucked up is that?  We PAY for it and THEY get to keep running it?

The banks going to let you keep driving your car after they repossess it?  They going to let you keep living in your home after they repossess it?

Why is it then, that THEY get to keep running their banks after WE repossess THEM?

Because, once again, the Dems are cowards.  They don’t know how to tell the public the honest truth.  That we have a RIGHT to own those banks.  We PAID for them.  They are ours.  WE, the people, have the right to repossess what’s always been ours.

Well, well, it seems the first blush is wearing off on the Obama honeymoon.  People are getting up in arms over some of his recent appointments.  While others are trying to defend his choices by saying that:

He is keeping his word to us by keeping Gates.  This is what “new politics” looks like.

Which is to say it looks disturbingly much like the old politics.  You know, the politics that Kos wrote about when he said:

Oh boy. Robert Gates, Bush’s choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, is another shoot first crazy neocon

So let’s take a look back at what we had to say two years ago and what is being said in todays “new politics”.
Kos two years ago:

The target of Gates’ anxieties was Nicaragua’s leftist president, Daniel Ortega.

Take a look at what had Gates quaking in his boots:

Gates saw a calamitous situation in Central America in December 1984. Congress had ordered a halt to U.S. support for the Contra rebels, leaving Ortega free, as Gates saw it, to establish Nicaragua as a “permanent and well-armed” ally of the Soviet Union and Cuba.

He said the United States should acknowledge that the existence of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Nicaragua closely allied to Moscow and Havana “is unacceptable to the United States and that the United States will do everything in its power short of invasion to put that regime out.”

In addition to airstrikes, he recommended withdrawal of U.S. recognition of the Nicaraguan government and recognition of a Nicaraguan government in exile that would be entitled to U.S. military support.

Economic sanctions should be considered, “perhaps even including a quarantine,” Gates wrote.

Lots of parallels.

Republicans just aren’t complete without a scaaaaary enemy to keep them up at night, and happy visions of “shock and awe” to salve their terror.

Gates is just another conservative coward.

As for Nicaragua, Ortega was defeated in elections four years later. And a few weeks ago, he staged a comeback and was elected once again president of Nicaragua.

Funny, that thing called “democracy”.

Yes, funny indeed that thing called democracy.  I’ll get back to that in a minute.  But Kos also had this to say about Gates:

Brilliant. Bush’s penchant for bringing out the most corrupt of retreads of past Republican administrations continues.

Robert M. Gates was the Central Intelligence Agency’s deputy director for intelligence (DDI) from 1982 to 1986. He was confirmed as the CIA’s deputy director of central intelligence (DDCI) in April of 1986 and became acting director of central intelligence in December of that same year. Owing to his senior status in the CIA, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran/contra affair and was in a position to have known of their activities.

This is who Bush has nominated for Secretary of Defense.

Looks like I’ll have to do another Usual Suspects expose, this time on Gates.  Yeah, THAT’S a guy to be excited about.  Can’t wait to read even more defenses of this pick by Obama telling us why we shouldn’t be concerned.  Why we should take a “wait and see” attitude.

Let’s look at what else was being said about Robert Gates two years ago in McJoan’s excellent diary, “Where have we heard this before?”:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates is continuing to cite iffy intelligence about Iran and its involvment in Iraq.

SEVILLE, Spain Feb 9, 2007 (AP)– Serial numbers and markings on explosives used in Iraq provide “pretty good” evidence that Iran is providing either weapons or technology for militants there, Defense Secretary Robert Gates asserted Friday.

Offering some of the first public details of evidence the military has collected, Gates said, “I think there’s some serial numbers, there may be some markings on some of the projectile fragments that we found,” that point to Iran….

Gates, who is attending his first NATO defense ministers meeting, said Iran is “very much involved in providing either the technology or the weapons themselves for these explosively formed projectiles. Now they don’t represent a big percentage of the IED attacks but they’re extremely lethal.”

Gates said the raids combined with the movement of an additional U.S. aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf have created a stir, but said the Bush administration has no intention of attacking Iran.

At least he’s not calling it a slam dunk.

So Gates is someone who will pass on the administrations lies and propaganda to further their agenda.  Great.  And keeping him is change HOW?  

In summation, I think McJoan nailed it pretty well last year in her diary Who’s Running This Show Anyway?:

So maybe we don’t know anything until April, maybe it’s September, maybe we have 35,000 more troops going into Iraq, maybe we don’t. Secretary Gates today in a Senate Appropriation Committee hearing:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Wednesday the United States could consider reducing troop levels in Iraq later this year, contradicting comments by a senior military commander….

“The outcome of that evaluation is not foreordained,” Gates told the defense subcommittee of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee.

“I think if we see some very positive progress and it looks like things are headed in the right direction, then that’s the point at which I think we can begin to consider reducing some of these forces,” Gates said.

The gang that can’t shoot straight. We’re going to trust them with any more money, any more time, any more troops?

And now we’re going to keep trusting Gates?  Because Obama says so?

Which brings us back to that funny thing called “democracy”.  What is a democracy?  There’s an interesting take on what constitutes a democracy over at DemocracyNow:

Question is what is a democracy supposed to be? That’s exactly a debate that goes back to the constitutional convention. But in recent years in the 20th century, it’s been pretty well articulated by important figures. So at the liberal end the progressive end, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century was Walter Lippman. A Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy progressive. And a lot of his work was on a democratic theory and he was pretty frank about it. If you took a position not all that different from James Madison’s. He said that in a democracy, the population has a function. Its function is to be spectators, not participants. He didn’t call it the population. He called it the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The ignorant and meddlesome outsiders have a function and namely to watch what’s going on. And to push a lever every once in a while and then go home. But, the participants are us, us privileged, smart guys. Well that’s one conception of democracy. And you know essentially we’ve seen an episode of it. The population very often doesn’t accept this. As I mentioned, just very recent polls, people overwhelmingly oppose it. But they’re atomized, separated. Many of them feel hopeless, unorganized, and don’t feel they can do anything about it. So they dislike it. But that’s where it ends.

In a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or the United States in earlier stages, they did something about it. That’s why we have the New Deal measures, the Great Society measures. In fact just about any step, you know, women’s rights, end of slavery, go back as far as you like, it doesn’t happen as a gift. And it’s not going to happen in the future. The commentators are pretty well aware of this. They don’t put it the way I’m going to, but if you read the press, it does come out. So take our local newspaper at the liberal end of the spectrum, “Boston Globe,” you probably saw right after the election, a front page story, the lead front page story was on how Obama developed this wonderful grassroots army but he doesn’t have any debts. Which supposed to be a good thing. So he’s free to do what he likes. Because he has no debts, the normal democratic constituency, labor, women, minorities and so on, they didn’t bring him into office. So he owes them nothing

What he had was an army that he organized of people who got out the vote for Obama. For what the press calls, Brand Obama. They essentially agree with the advertisers, it’s brand Obama. That his army was mobilized to bring him to office. They regard that as a good thing, accepting the Lippman conception of democracy, the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders are supposed to do what they’re told and then go home. The Wall Street Journal, at the opposite end of the spectrum, also had an article about the same thing at roughly the same time. Talked about the tremendous grassroots army that has been developed, which is now waiting for instructions. What should they do next to press forward Obama’s agenda? Whatever that is. But whatever it is, the army’s supposed to be out there taking instructions, and press work. Los Angeles Times had similar articles, and there are others. What they don’t seem to realize is what they’re describing, the ideal of what they’re describing, is dictatorship, not democracy. Democracy, at least not in the Lippman sense, it proved- I pick him out because he’s so famous, but it’s a standard position. But in the sense of say, much of the south, where mass popular movements developed programs; organize to take part in elections but that’s one part of an ongoing process. And brings somebody from their own ranks to implement the programs that they develop, and if the person doesn’t they’re out. Ok, that’s another kind of democracy. So it’s up to us to choose which kind of democracy we want. And again, that will determine what comes next.

So which kind of Democracy are we?  The kind that isn’t really a democracy at all?  The kind that takes its orders from the top down?  Or the kind that demands from the bottom up?  You know, a REAL democracy?  I think we all know the answer to that question.

In retrospect, this commment in the Kos diary looks poignantly tragic in its naivete:

783 Days Left (5+ / 0-)

I believe we are going to survive the Bush years! But he makes it difficult to sustain the belief. Why can’t Bush appoint morally decent and competent people to positions in the government- instead of ideological screw-ups?

Indeed?  And why can’t Obama do the same?  Because we don’t MAKE him do so!  And until this becomes a community that looks beyond just electing Democrats, we’re never going to get to determine what comes next.  We’re just going to remain a community that pulls the lever for the “D” and then goes home.

I, for one, intend to express my dissatisfaction with the selection of “shoot first crazy neocons” like Gates, hardcore “free trade” economists from the University of Chicago like Goolsbee, and any other right wing wacko that Obama “tells us” we have to accept.

I’m not going home till the fights over.

Cross posted at Pen’s Pages

Advance the money as a loan to the UAW in return for commitments to higher energy standards and working towards oil independence.  Let American workers reap the profits from their own blood, sweat and tears instead of some lazy CEO who never saw a resource he couldn’t exploit.

I’ve been down on Obama since rumors started surfacing of the kind of people he’s thinking of putting into office.  However, with todays announcement of Eric Holder to be our next Attorney General, I have to say that I am quite pleased.

This IS change.

If you don’t know who Eric Holder is, then let me explain why this man brings change to America.
In the early 90’s the Democrats controlled Congress.  Newt Gingrich had offered up his Contract On America and not only were many right wingnuts ready to sign on board but a lot of other people were getting concerned about what they perceived as corruption in our government.  This was to be the beginning of the right wingnut wackos rise to power on the basis of their beliefs that Democrats didn’t stand for anything.

Nothing represented that more to them than what became known as the Congressional Post Office Scandal.  

What started as a simple case of embezzlement by a post office employee being investigated by the Capitol Police eventually grew into a national scandal that brought down one of the most powerful Democrats in office, head of the powerful Ways and Means Committee and ushered in a new age of Republican rule.  The Republicans, of course, in 12 short years out corrupted and out scandalled anything the Democrats had ever dreamed of.

But back to the investigation:

evidence rapidly led to the inclusion of several other employees, before top Democrats in the House of Representatives moved to shut down the whole line of inquiry, despite protests from Frank Karrigan, chief of the Capitol Police.

A new investigation was started by the United States Postal Service, which eventually submitted a report which was held in silence by Speaker Thomas Foley (D-WA) until media reports of embezzlement and drug laundering leaked out in 1992.

Following public outcry, the Democratic leaders of the House were forced to refer the matter to the Committee on House Administration, which started its own investigation.

That committee broke into two parts along party lines, the Democrats issuing a report saying the matter was closed, but the Republicans issuing a dissenting report including a number of unanswered questions and problems with the investigation.

The Republican charges were largely ignored until July 1993, when the Congressional Postmaster Robert Rota pleaded guilty to three criminal charges, implicating Representatives Dan Rostenkowski (D-IL) and Joe Kolter (D-PA). They were accused of heading a conspiracy to launder Post Office money through stamps and postal vouchers.

Ultimately, Rostenkowski was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison, in 1995.

Dan Rostenkowski,  Democratic Congressman from Chicago.  One of the most senior members of Congress at the time of his downfall.  36 years he served his nation.  Richard Cohen was to write a book about Rostenkowski in which he claimed that “The rise and fall of Dan Rostenkowski tracks the rise and fall of Democrats in the House.”  Republicans portrayed him as emblematic of the corruption of the Democratic Party and used it as a springboard to take over control of the reins of power during the Clinton administration.

And who brought down Dan Rostentowski?

Eric Holder.

It was Eric Holder’s 17 count indictment that ultimately led to the downfall of Dan Rostentowski and the corruption within the Democratic Party.  

This guy was once a part of the Justice Departments elite Public Integrity Section.  There he spent 12 years rooting out corruption.  He went after an Assistant Attorney General from New York.  A Philadelphia judge.  A Floridian treasurer.  Several corrupt FBI agents.

Now he’s our Attorney General.  In my opinion, that means we should be seeing the return of integrity to that office.  This guy will go after you if you’re a Republican.   He’ll go after you if you’re a Democrat.

I feel like a little sanity is finally starting to return.

Of course, the Republicans will start screaming he’s the next coming of the Anti-Christ, but then, I said sanity was starting to return, I didn’t say it was returning to them.

Cross-posted at Pen’s Pages

Not 10 years from now.  Not 5 years from now.  Not 2 years from now.  TODAY.  Starting IMMEDIATELY.

Because if 6 high school kids from Philly were able to do it a few years ago, then you can certainly do it RIGHT NOW.

It’s called “The Attack” and it’s a hybrid supercar with over 300 hp developed from a AC electric motor powering the front wheels and a 1.9L VW TDi biodiesel powering the rears. The batteries powering the electric motor act as capacitors able to discharge a lot of energy in short bursts, enough for 0-60 runs in the sub 4-second range. Under normal driving conditions the car is powered by the biodiesel engine and achieves 50mpg.

And the best part is, this super-hybrid didn’t come from the Big 3 or some obscure Euro supercar maker, The Attack is the work of the West Philadelphia High School Electric Vehicle Team – a group of 6 high school, YES, high school kids.

While the righties claim GM’s woes are all the fault of its workers, and others are coming forward with all kinds of ideas, from breaking GM into smaller parts to bankruptcy before bailout, it seems that Congress has caught a case of “bailout fatigue” that makes it likely no GM bailout is coming.

Though all sides agree that Detroit’s Big Three carmakers are in peril, battered by the economic meltdown that has choked their sales and frozen loans, the White House and congressional Democrats are headed for stalemate over the government money that might go toward helping them.

Behind the logjam is a troubling reality for the car companies: Bailout fatigue has set in at the White House and on Capitol Hill.

The Senate Democrats’ measure would carve out a portion of the Wall Street bailout money to pay for loans to US automakers and their domestic suppliers, but aides in both parties and lobbyists acknowledge they do not have the votes to pass it.

The White House and congressional Republicans insist that any automaker bailout money instead come from redirecting a $25 billion loan program approved by Congress in September to help the industry develop more fuel-efficient vehicles. The GOP would lift restrictions on that money to speed it to the carmakers.

Democrats want to leave that money alone and give the industry an additional $25 billion from the financial bailout funds.

The industry needs $25 billion to help them develop more fuel-efficient vehicles?  Really?

Maybe they should be hiring those kids from Philly.

Barney Frank, at least, has the right idea:

A House version drafted by Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank goes further, requiring that US automakers immediately repay the loans next spring if they don’t give the government an acceptable restructuring plan that shows they can survive, including details on how they will transition to making vehicles that use less gasoline.

Because if 6 high school kids could make a fuel efficient car that looks HOT for less than a tenth of a million dollars, several years ago, $25 BILLION should help GM start rolling them off the production line before business closes TODAY.

Cross posted at Pen’s Pages

Over at DKos, Kos himself has written up a little attack on every DLC’ers favorite whipping boy, Ralph Nader.  He recently mocked Nader and his supporters and in response, received several emails and now was mocking the emailers as well.

Anyone who sails with the Nader crowd deserves nothing more than ridicule.

Fuck Ralph Nader, and fuck his supporters. If the past eight years hasn’t smacked any sense into their addled brains, then nothing will. This site caters to the reality-based community. No one else need apply.

Well, I’m no Naderite, but I think Kos could use a huge dose of reality right about now.
Kos takes issue with Nader saying that there is only one party:

Saint Ralph

Said that there was no difference between the democratic and republican presidential candidates in 1980, with President Carter versus Ronald Reagan. Nader repeated this nonsense in 2000 with Gore versus Bush and handed the damn election to Bush.

Both Carter and Gore went on to win the friggin’ Nobel Peace Prize. Reagan went on to murder 250,000 people in his insane wars in Central America, and the Dubya has terminated between 600,000 and 1.2 million people from his war in Iraq.

There are buckets of blood worth of differences between those candidates. And yes, Nader and his lunatic supporters need to be held accountable for these actions.

What Nader actually did was point out that the current system is fixed.  You get two choices:  A corporatist shill or a lunatic corporatist shill, ie, a boogeyman candidate to scare you into voting for the corporatist shill.  The only logical choice for any sane person is to vote for neither.  This, of course, leads to the lunatic being elected.  Which is what happened.  

However, let’s get back to Kos assertion that DKos is a “reality based” commmunity.  This is the reality about Barack Obama:

Can We Talk About The Real Obama Now?  by Sam Smith

Obama supported making it harder to file class action suits in state courts. David Sirota in the Nation wrote, “Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this big business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop ‘frivolous’ lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill’s real objective was to protect corporate abusers.”

He voted for a business-friendly “tort reform” bill

He voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards

He had the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors in the primaries

He was even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain

He was most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists

In 2003, rightwing Democratic Leadership Council named Obama as one of its “100 to Watch.” After he was criticized in the black media, Obama disassociated himself with the DLC. But his major economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, is also chief economist of the conservative organization. Writes Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer, “Goolsbee has written gushingly about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures.”

Added Henwood, “Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house last spring, ‘The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,’ one source said of the posh headquarters of the hedge fund industry. They like him because they’re socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and think he’s the man to do their work. They’re also confident he wouldn’t undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth.”

Civil liberties

He supports the war on drugs

He supports the crack-cocaine sentence disparity

He supports Real ID

He supports the PATRIOT Act

He supports the death penalty

He opposes lowering the drinking age to 18

He supported amnesty for telecoms engaged in illegal spying on Americans

Conservatives

He went to Connecticut to support Joe Lieberman in the primary against Ned Lamont

Wrote Paul Street in Z Magazine, “Obama has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neo-liberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and other Wall Street Democrats to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party. . . Obama was recently hailed as a Hamiltonian believer in limited government and free trade by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having “a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS.”

Writes the London Times, “Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee. Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain’s closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defense secretary.

Richard Lugar was rated 0% by SANE. . . rated 0% by AFL-CIO. . . rated 0% BY NARAL. . . rated 12% by American Public Health Association. . . rated 0% by Alliance for Retired Americans. . . rated 27% by the National Education Association. . . rated 5% by League of Conservation Voters. . . He voted no on implementing the 9/11 Commission report. . . Vote against providing habeas corpus for Gitmo prisoners. . .voted no on comprehensive test ban treaty. . .voted against same sex marriage. . . strongly anti-abortion. . . opposed to more federal funding for healthcare. . .voted for unconstitutional wiretapping. . .voted to increase penalties for drug violations

Chuck Hagel was rated 0% by NARAL. . . rated 11% by NAACP. . . rated 0% by Human Rights Coalition. . . rated 100% by Christian Coalition. . . rated 12% by American Public Health Association. . . rated 22% by Alliance for Retired Americans. . . rated 36% by the National Education Association. . . rated 0% by League of Conservation Voters. . . rated 8% by AFL-CIO. . . He is strongly anti-abortion. . .voted for anti-flag desecration amendment. . .voted to increase penalties for drug violations. . . favors privatizing Social Security

Ecology

Obama voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker buster bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.

He supports federally funded ethanol and is unusually close to the ethanol industry.

He led his party’s reversal of a 25-year ban on off-shore oil drilling

Education

Obama has promised to double funding for private charter schools, part of a national effort undermining public education.

He supports the No Child Left Behind Act albeit expressing reservations about its emphasis on testing. Writes Cory Mattson, “Despite NCLB”s loss of credibility among educators and the deadlock surrounding its attempted reauthorization in 2007, Barack Obama still offers his support. Even the two unions representing teachers, both which for years supported reform of the policy to avoid embarrassing their Democratic Party ‘friends,’ declared in 2008 that the policy is too fundamentally flawed to be reformed and should be eliminated.”

Fiscal policy

Obama rejected moratoriums on foreclosures and a freeze on rates, measures supported by his primary opponents John Edwards and Hillary Clinton

He was a strong supporter of the $700 billion cash-for-trash banker bailout plan.

Two of his top advisors are former Goldman Sachs chair Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Noted Glen Ford of black Agenda Report, “In February 1999, Rubin and Summers flanked Fed Chief Alan Greenspan on the cover of Time magazine, heralded as, ‘The Committee to Save the World.’ Summers was then Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton, having succeeded his mentor, Rubin, in that office. Together with Greenspan, the trio had in the previous year labored successfully to safeguard derivatives, the exotic ‘ticking time bomb’ financial instruments, from federal regulation.”

Robert Scheer notes that “Rubin, who pocketed tens of millions running Goldman Sachs before becoming treasury secretary, is the man who got President Clinton to back legislation by then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, to unleash banking greed on an unprecedented scale.”

Obama’s fund-raising machine has been headed by Penny Prtizker former chair of the Superior Bank, one of the first to get into subprime mortgages. While she resigned as chair of the family business in 1994, as late as 2001 she was still on the board and wrote a letter saying that her family was recapitalizing the bank and pledging to “once again restore Superior’s leadership position in subprime lending.” The bank shut down two months later and the Pritzker family would pay $460 million in a settlement with the government.

Foreign policy

Obama endorsed US involvement in the failed drug war in Colombia: “When I am president, we will continue the Andean Counter-Drug Program.”

He has expressed a willingness to bomb Iran and won’t rule out a first strike nuclear attack.

He has endorsed bombing or invading Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda in violation of international law. He has called Pakistan “the right battlefield … in the war on terrorism.”

He supports Israeli aggression and apartheid. Obama has deserted previous support for two-state solution to Mid East situation and refuses to negotiate with Hamas.

He has supported Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, saying “it must remain undivided.”

He favors expanding the war in Afghanistan.

Although he claims to want to get out of Iraq, his top Iraq advisor wrote that America should keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq. Obama, in his appearances, blurred the difference between combat soldiers and other troops.

He indicated to Amy Goodman that he would leave 140,000 private contractors and mercenaries in Iraq because “we don’t have the troops to replace them.”

He has called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez an enemy of the United States and urged sanctions against him.

He claimed “one of the things that I think George H.W. Bush doesn’t get enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he helped negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us $20 billion dollars. That’s all it cost. It was extremely successful. I think there were a lot of very wise people.”

He has hawkish foreign policy advisors who have been involved in past US misdeeds and failures. These include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, General Merrill McPeak, and Dennis Ross.

It has been reported that he might well retain as secretary of defense Robert Gates who supports actions in violation of international law against countries merely suspected of being unwilling or unable to halt threats by militant groups.

Gays

Obama opposes gay marriage. He wouldn’t have photo taken with San Francisco mayor because he was afraid it would seem that he supported gay marriage

Health

Obama opposes single payer healthcare or Medicare for all.

Military

Obama would expand the size of the military.

National Service

Obama favors a national service plan that appears to be in sync with one being promoted by a new coalition that would make national service mandatory by 2020, and with a bill requiring such mandatory national service introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel.

He announced in Colorado Springs last July, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

On another occasion he said, “It’s also important that a president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s not always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it’s important for the president to say, this is an important obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some.” Some have seen this as a call for reviving the draft.

He has attacked the exclusion of ROTC on some college campuses

Presidential crimes

Obama aggressively opposed impeachment actions against Bush. One of his key advisors, Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School, said prosecuting government officials risks a “cycle” of criminalizing public service.

Progressives

Unlike his deferential treatment of right wing conservatives, Obama’s treatment of the left has been dismissive to insulting. He dissed Nader for daring to run for president again. And he called the late Paul Wellstone “something of a gadfly”

Public Campaign Financing

Obama’s retreat from public campaign financing has endangered the whole concept.

Social welfare

Obama wrote that conservatives and Bill Clinton were right to destroy social welfare,

Social Security

Early in the campaign, Obama said, “everything is on the table” with Social Security.

o

As things now stand, the election primarily represents the extremist center seizing power back from the extremist right. We have moved from the prospect of disasters to the relative comfort of mere crises.

Using the word ‘extreme’ alongside the term ‘center’ is no exaggeration. Nearly all major damage to the United States in recent years – a rare exception being 9/11 – has been the result of decisions made not by right or left but by the post partisan middle: Vietnam, Iraq, the assault on constitutional liberties, the huge damage to the environment, and the collapse of the economy – to name a few. Go back further in history and you’ll find, for example, the KKK riddled with members of the establishment including – in Colorado – a future governor, senator and mayor after whom Denver’s airport is named. The center, to which Obama pays such homage, has always been where most of the trouble lies.

The only thing that will make Obama the president pictured in the campaign fantasy is unapologetic, unswerving and unendingly pressure on him in a progressive and moral direction, for he will not go there on his own. But what, say, gave the New Deal its progressive nature was pressure from the left of a sort that simply doesn’t exist today.

Above are listed nearly three dozen things that Obama supports or opposes with which no good liberal or progressive would agree. Unfortunately, what’s out there now, however, looks more like a rock concert crowd or evangelical tent meeting than a determined and directed political constituency. Which isn’t so surprising given how successful our system have been at getting people to accept sights, sounds, symbols and semiotics as substitutes for reality. Once again, it looks like we’ll have to learn the hard way.

Sorry Kos, but it looks like it’s NADER who’s part of the reality-based community, not you.

But then, with the revelations coming from every direction that this presidency is not going to be what we all had hoped it would, I suppose Kos is feeling a little defensive about his role in helping the Democrats to elect another Wall Street sellout by making DKos a “Democratic Party” website and progressives be damned.

When progressives are damned, this whole planet is damned.  So on behalf of the Naderites that I don’t even belong to:

Fuck you Moulitas.  And fuck your DLC supporters too.

Cross-posted at Pen’s Pages

Today I heard audio of Obama saying that every American should have health insurance.  I certainly hope that was a simple semantic error on President Obama’s part.  Because Americans neither need nor want health insurance.  What they need, what they want, is affordable health CARE.

I’m sure it’s just a matter of semantics.  I’m sure President Obama didn’t mean that all Americans should have the same right to pay outrageous copayments for their prescriptions.  

Insurers say the new system keeps everyone’s premiums down at a time when some of the most innovative and promising new treatments for conditions like cancer and rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis can cost $100,000 and more a year.

But the result is that patients may have to spend more for a drug than they pay for their mortgages, more, in some cases, than their monthly incomes.

The system, often called Tier 4, began in earnest with Medicare drug plans and spread rapidly. It is now incorporated into 86 percent of those plans. Some have even higher co-payments for certain drugs, a Tier 5.

Now Tier 4 is also showing up in insurance that people buy on their own or acquire through employers, said Dan Mendelson of Avalere Health, a research organization in Washington. It is the fastest-growing segment in private insurance, Mr. Mendelson said. Five years ago it was virtually nonexistent in private plans, he said. Now 10 percent of them have Tier 4 drug categories.

I’m sure he meant that all Americans should be able to have access to affordable medecine.  I just wish he’d tighten up his semantics and SAY affordable healthcare, not health insurance for everyone.  That would lessen people’s stress because failure to pay medical bills is the number one cause of bankruptcy in America.

Secause some people might worry that he means everyone should have equal access to an insurance company that won’t cover their child’s critical leukemia treatment when what I’m certain he must mean is that everyone should receive whatever treatment their doctor deems necessary, at a sliding scale that they can afford.

Otherwise, he might come off sounding like this man who actually DOES get the difference between health insurance and healthcare – in a twisted, right wing sort of way.

I’m sure he didn’t mean that every American should have equal opportunity to be denied benefits by for-profit health insurance companies for whatever ridiculous excuse they can some up with.  What he really meant was that whenever any American anywhere needs healthcare, they should get it.

It’s just semantics, I know, because I read Obama actually told the Illinois AFL-CIO:

“So the challenge is, how do we get federal government to take care of this business? I happen to be a proponent of a single payer health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that’s what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out.”

“A single payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that’s what I’d like to see. And as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, we have to take back the House.” (Barack Obama in 2003 before the Illinois AFL-CIO)

But I just bring this up because now he’s saying that those words were taken out of context.  Now he’s saying that everyone should have access to health insurance, not healthcare.  

That’s what Bill Clinton did back in the 90’s.

Then, in 1992, Bill Clinton (who borrowed extensively from Jackson’s 1988 proposals) put the call for universal health care at the center of his program. But, once president, his closeness to Wall Street and his intellectual dependence on Robert Rubin of Wall Street (who became his Secretary of the Treasury) made him leery of antagonizing the insurance industry. It was President Clinton’s unwillingness to confront the insurance companies that led to his failure to honor his commitment to work toward a universal health care program (see my article “Why HillaryCare Failed,” Counterpunch, November 12, 2007). The type of reform President Clinton called for was a health insurance based model called “managed care,” in which insurance companies remain at the center of health care. An alternative approach could have been to establish a publicly funded health care program (which was favored by the majority of the population) that would cover everyone, providing medical care as an entitlement for all citizens and residents. This could have been achieved, such as by expanding the federal Medicare program to cover everyone. To do so, however, would have required neutralizing the enormous power of the insurance companies with a massive mobilization of the population against them and in favor of a comprehensive and universal health care program.

But President Clinton’s loyalty to Wall Street prevailed. His administration’s top priorities were reduction of the federal deficit (at the cost of reduced public social expenditures) and approval of NAFTA (without amending President George H. W. Bush’s proposal, which Clinton had inherited, and refusing to address the concerns of the labor and environmental movements). These actions antagonized and demoralized the grassroots of the Democratic Party. Clinton lost any power to mobilize people for the establishment of a universal health care program. This frustration of the grassroots, and especially the working class, also led to the huge abstention by the Democratic Party base in the 1994 congressional elections and the consequent loss of the Democratic majority in the House, the Senate, and many state legislatures. At the root of this disenchantment with the Clinton administration was its unwillingness to confront the insurance companies and Wall Street. Could that happen again?

And I firmly believe, with all my heart, that President Obama and the new Democratic majority won’t let us down AGAIN.  They won’t bait and switch the American public a SECOND time.  I firmly believe that President Obama and the Democratic majority understand that Americans don’t want to be at the mercy of for-profit health insurance companies.  No thank you.  

Americans want affordable healthcare.

Cross posted at Pen’s Pages

Cross posted at Pen’s Pages

They’re attacking everywhere and the attack is relentless.

Over at TPM, Josh Marshall is already reporting on the new MSM spin:

This adviser said Obama knows that he must move strategically to balance his pledges to govern inclusively while promoting a progressive agenda. “It’s up to him to educate people on a strategy to move forward.” Part of that strategy, he added, will be persuading people to be patient about the pace of change.

Obama advisers take seriously the senator’s rhetoric about governing in a bipartisan fashion. They are ready for potential conflict with some Democratic constituencies or with some liberal Democrats in Congress, whose pent-up demand for action may clash with Obama’s priorities, and are prepared to say no.

Obviously, they don’t want us to actually, you know, CHANGE anything.  So the new meme is that change, that thing Obama made the centerpiece of his campaign, has to come slowly, if at all.

Over at Freeperville and on pretty much every national forum, the new meme is:  

Well, the election has come and gone like a shot, apparently. After the interminable round of primaries, Operation Chaos, PUMAs, the conventions, Sarah-cuda, and all the rest.

In one night Obama and Biden have won.

This means we have a troika: Reid, Obama, Pelosi. The “rulers of peace” (ROP).

But this also means, they can no longer blame Bush and the evil Republicans for anything that goes wrong.

This includes:

the economy
the Middle East
taxes
tainted food from China
immigration
crime
unemployment
gas prices

Let us never lose an opportunity to loudly proclaim:

“OBAMA’S FAULT!”

Secondly, can we now revisit affirmative action? A black man has become President. This surely means that Sandra Day O’Connor’s mythical 30-year period has passed.

Third, speaking of this: let us see what Obama’s cabinet looks like. I foresee many laughs.

If laughing at a Dem is not redefined as a Hate Crime.

Which brings me to the fourth point: beware the ACLU, the Fairness Doctrine, and the Redistribution crowd.

In an earlier vanity, I compared Obama’s tongue to Saruman’s, in a famous passage from The Lord of The Rings. Let us pray and work to assure that we do not re-live Saruman’s usurpation of the Shire; and that our Frodos, Sams, Merrys, and Pippins are equal to the task of Scouring the Shire at the end of the next two- or four-year election cycle.

Which brings me to the last point.

Whatever happens in the next four years, let us hold our heads high. For we can say, proudly, to all the world:

Don’t Blame Me. I voted for McCain-Palin!

This isn’t a lone voice in the Freeper wilderness.  This meme is already being spread far and wide throughout the internet.  So let’s get this one straight:

When they elected Bush TWICE, it was unpatriotic to “blame them”.  Whenever ANY.THING. when wrong during Bush’s two terms it was ineviably somehow “Clinton’s fault” or “Clinton did the same thing”, but now that they’ve found their party totally swept aside it’s all going to somehow be Obama’s fault?

This administration practices torture.  This administration has committed war crimes.  This administration has the worst economy since the Great Depression.  This administration failed New Orleans.  This country has been led by a kleptocracy.  This administration outed it’s own CIA agents.  This administration failed to capture Osama bin Ladin while going to war with Iraq over non-existent WMD’s.

And yes, I blame YOU, the people who voted for McCain/Palin.

To which they inevitably reply:  “its time to move on.” or “That’s all in the past now.”  or their favorite comeback: “Get over it!”

We must remember every day for the rest of our lives that these people will NEVER go away.  They will NEVER change their tune.  They will NEVER stop.  And so we must remain vigilant to their every move, their every meme.  Even on days like today.

Evil never sleeps.

And I’ve never been so proud of America.  The Real America.

I know a lot of people think they get it. They think they understand how incredible this day has been. That a black man in America could be elected President of the United States.

Well, most of them don’t. Most of them didn’t live through it. They weren’t there. They never experienced a time when blacks were lucky to even get to vote. When riding on a bus with whites was considered controversial.

They never knew the America that forced a black man to carry a sign that read “I am a man.”

Today, that America was swept aside.

I am so proud of America today.