February 2009 archive

Original article, By John Burton and Marge Holland, via World Socialist Web Site:

For the second time in less than a week, lawyers from the Justice Department headed by Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder have embraced the Bush administration’s pseudo-legal argument that the “state secrets” doctrine bars civil lawsuits challenging the methods used in its so-called “war on terror.”

Republicans Begin The Week

Just Wanting To Say No

Even If It Helps A Nation  

To Fix Detroit, Obama Is Said to Drop Plan for ‘Car Czar’



By BILL VLASIC

Published: February 15, 2009

DETROIT – President Obama has dropped the idea of appointing a single, powerful “car czar” to oversee the revamping of General Motors and Chrysler and will instead keep the politically delicate task in the hands of his most senior economic advisers, a top administration official said Sunday night.

Mr. Obama is designating the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the chairman of the National Economic Council, Lawrence H. Summers, to oversee a presidential panel on the auto industry. Mr. Geithner will also supervise the $17.4 billion in loan agreements already in place with G.M. and Chrysler, said the official, who insisted on anonymity.

New world of squalor and exploitation

• Labourers badly paid and work in squalid conditions

• Exploitative middlemen lure poor into huge debts

Tom Phillips in Marabá

The Guardian, Monday 16 February 2009

Day and night the men roll up outside the Correntão supermarket, a roaming army of impoverished workers, searching for a better future and for work. Any work.

Wearing rubber flip-flops, ragged T-shirts and carrying their possessions under their arms in plastic bags, they gather at the meeting point on the outskirts of Marabá, a gritty Amazon city, at Kilometre Six of the Trans-Amazonian highway and wait.

Some are picked up almost immediately and transported to remote jungle camps and farms where they are often forced to work by cattle ranchers and illegal loggers in dangerous and squalid conditions for little or no pay.

Others string hammocks up around the local bus station, waiting for a possible employer to arrive. The rest pile into dozens of tatty boarding houses, known in the Amazon as “pioneer hotels”, where they await recruitment.

USA

4 Cases Illustrate Guantanamo Quandaries

Administration Must Decide Fate of Often-Flawed Proceedings, Often-Dangerous Prisoners

By Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, February 16, 2009; Page A01

In their summary of evidence against Mohammed Sulaymon Barre, a Somali detained at Guantanamo Bay, military investigators allege that he spent several years at Osama bin Laden’s compound in Sudan. But other military documents place him in Pakistan during the same period.

One hearing at Guantanamo cited his employment for a money-transfer company with links to terrorism financing. Another file drops any mention of such links.

Barre is one of approximately 245 detainees at the military prison in Cuba whose fate the Obama administration must decide in coming months.

White House wants changes in executive pay rules

By DOUGLASS K. DANIEL, Associated Press Writer

2 hrs 18 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Facing a stricter approach to limiting executive bonuses than it had favored, the Obama administration wants to revise that part of the stimulus package even after it becomes law, White House officials said Sunday.

While President Barack Obama plans to sign the $787 billion stimulus bill in Denver on Tuesday, his administration will seek changes in the government’s approach to executive compensation, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said.

“We all have the same goal. We all have the same sentiment. And we want to do something that’s workable, and we’ll work with them to get to that point,” Axelrod said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Citi, M. Stanley may pay $3 billion to keep brokers: report

Reuters

Fri Feb 13, 10:11 pm ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Citigroup Inc (C.N) are preparing to pay $3 billion of retention awards to brokers to keep them from fleeing a brokerage joint venture, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Terms are not expected until later this month, but the issue could grow politically sensitive because the government has injected money into both companies, the newspaper said.

Morgan Stanley is paying Citigroup $2.7 billion to take control of the joint venture, which will combine its brokerage operation with Citigroup’s Smith Barney unit.

In defence of bonuses: experts warn on banker pay caps

by Katherine Haddon, AFP

Sat Feb 14, 10:47 pm ET

LONDON (AFP) – From Britain to the United States and France, political leaders are clamping down on the bankers’ bonus culture they say helped cause the credit crunch — but some experts warn this could be counterproductive.

The screw-tightening comes amid public fury at big payouts — thousands of people have joined groups on the Facebook Internet site with names like “Bankers Are Leaches”, “Impudence: The Act Of UBS Bank” and “No Ifs, No Buts — Give Up The Bonus, RBS.”

But taking too tough a line with banks could have unintended consequences for taxpayers according to academics and insiders, who say the risks include banks losing their best staff and their share prices falling even lower.

Merkel slams bonuses at bailed out banks: report

AFP

Sat Feb 14, 10:40 am ET

BERLIN (AFP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel hit out at banks that have doled out bonuses to executives despite having received government aid to weather the global financial crisis.

“It’s incomprehensible that, in several cases, banks that have benefited from the support of the state distribute huge bonuses at the same time,” Merkel told Der Spiegel magazine in an interview to be published Monday.

Bank bonuses will be on the agenda at the meeting of the Group of 20 advanced and developing nations in London in April.

Merkel does not rule out nationalising Germany’s HRE bank

AFP

Sun Feb 15, 5:15 pm ET

BERLIN (AFP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had not ruled out nationalising the troubled Hypo Real Estate (HRE) bank as a last resort, during a television interview Sunday.

What ever happened, she wanted the state to have a majority stake in the bank, she told Germany’s ZDF public channel.

“We can get that by taking control by means of a majority stake” in the shares, she added.

Don’t Think About Monday

Heads My Explode  

Also posted at Orange here

At first glance, the problem with the College Board election in DuPage County, IL seems like a traditional spat over not filling out the petitions correctly. However, delving a little deeper and remembering that DuPage County has been Republican controlled for 135 years, one sees a little different slant to the objections. It seems that those who are being challenged in their opportunity to run for the four open seats on the DuPage College Board are Democrats! And those who question their petitions’ legality are not only present Board Members who are also running for those open seats, but Republicans.

Then there is the innocuous little matter of the board wanting to adopt the “Academic Bill of Rights” written by David Horowitz for the college without discussion and in its entirety.