November 13, 2009 archive

9/11 suspects to be tried in N.Y. civilian court

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, 4 other detainees will trade Gitmo for U.S. soil

updated 6:51 a.m. ET Nov. 13, 2009

WASHINGTON – Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, officials said Friday.

NBC News confirmed that Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning.

The Associated Press quoted an Obama administration official who was not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, and therefore spoke on condition of anonymity.

Join WWL Radio cohosts Diane Gee and Michael Gottlieb tonight on BTR at 6PM Eastern Time.

Tonight we again have the honor of interviewing Cmdr Jeff Huber contributor at Antiwar.com and Aviation Week’ proprietor of Pen and Sword and author of Bathtub Admirals to help us un~weave the tangled web of our Afghanistan Policy.

Seymour Hersh echoed Cmdr Jeff’s essay on WWL this week, “Hillary’s Dope Deal” in his interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, that there are certainly back-dealings, side dealings and intrigue afoot behind the overt McChrystal and his West Point Boy’s propaganda and the media dumps coming from the White House.

So, pour yourself your favorite recreational beverage, sit back and enjoy your happy hour in brilliant, entertaining company, (and yes, that implies you as well). It will be an amazing evening.

See you there! As always, respectful questions and commentary are welcomed. Call in, or use our attached live chat function!

Join Gottlieb and Diane tonight at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for an interesting hour of Political Reporting and Commentary.

WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.

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Open Thread

Yes, folks, what’s wrong with the American economy is that the American worker is paid too much.

This according to the “liberal” New York Times.

I suppose that America just can’t be competitive in the world economy until we have 15 year old girls making 6 cents an hour in our factories.

American Wages Out of Balance

By EDWARD HADAS, MARTIN HUTCHINSON and ANTONY CURRIE

Published: November 10, 2009

American workers are overpaid, relative to equally productive employees elsewhere doing the same work. If the global economy is to get into balance, that gap must close.

Gotta love that phrase:  “If the global economy is to get into balance”.

So that’s the underlying assumption now?   That it’s all about “the global economy?”   What about the American economy, you blowhards?

The NY Times is actually telling us that we all need to drop to “emerging economy” status in order to get the “global” economy “into balance.”   What the fuck does that even MEAN?    Who benefits from that?   Why, GLOBAL corporate bosses, that’s who!    Nobody else benefits form it,   JUST THEM.

And they’re already doing just fine.   A friend of mine just reported on Facebook that he’s working on a shoot aboard a $88 million dollar yacht, complete with a heliport for, you know, those times when the speedboat just isn’t fast enough.   In the meantime, millions of Americans can’t get jobs, and are losing everything.

And we’re being told we’re supposed to take a fucking PAY CUT?

And check this out:

The global wage gap has been narrowing, but recent labor market statistics in the United States suggest the adjustment has not gone far enough.

Oh, it’s been “narrowing” has it?  That’s what you call it?   I call it everybody making less money, I call it the  middle class being squeezed into non-existence, I call it economic COLLAPSE for this country.    But according to these fucktards, we’re “getting closer!”   To whatever they think it a “good” spot.   “Balance!”    Ah, who doesn’t want “Balance?”

What the article, and idiots like this, ALWAYS fail to point out, is that “emerging economies” have taken all the work because the CEO class is able to completely bypass generations of blood, sweat, and tears on the part of the American workers to get humanity-preserving and environment-preserving regulations into the Industrial landscape.   Our forefathers worked and fought and in many cases DIED for this stuff, and now the CEO class is just doing an end-run around 100 years or true progress in order to make cheap goods and increase THEIR profits.

They entice us by selling us this cheap shit, which works for a little while, but now?   The party’s over.   We’re all being told we have to now take paycuts to restore “balance” to the world economy, i.e. resort to making wages on the level of South Korea or elsewhere.  

Which is absolute fucking BULLSHIT.

Got dollars?  Well trade ’em in for something else.    These people want the dollar to fail:

Both moderate inflation to cut real wages and a further drop in the dollar’s real trade-weighted value might be acceptable.

I like how they say “acceptable”.   Like they have the power to “accept” this or not.   And maybe they do (not the writers but the transnational elites who now run things).   Dollars are now for suckers.   The dollar has to fall to make American goods cheaper to everyone else.

In other words, you can keep your $9 an hour job, because in a few years $9 will be worth about $2 and that will have restored things into “balance”.   And if you argue, they’ll tell you hey, you’re still making $9 an hour, what are you complaining about?

Les Leopold has a great rebuttal to all of this crap over at HuffPo right now.   He says it better than I can.

They are preparing us for the horrific rise in the unemployment rate that is still to come. But, like accidental time travelers from the go-go ’90s who haven’t learned that the current crash was manufactured by the financial sector, they predict the cause of any worsening in the situation will be those greedy workers.

In this they are recycling a theory that economists like Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke believe to be true: that the Great Depression got much, much worse because workers resisted wage cuts as deflation increased the buying power of their wages.

But blaming workers for their own unemployment is only possible if you adopt the deep logic of the Billionaire Bailout Society. In that world, financiers can do no wrong. In that world they deserve what they earn, because they earn it. In that world, wealth equals value, value equal wealth. By definition the super-rich are the most valuable among us. If their fantasy finance games eventually crash the entire system, we bail them out. Sure, they may have sent tens of millions to the unemployment lines, but that can’t be helped. Wall Street must be free to innovate and to earn their rapacious profits and bonuses. So under this logic, when unemployment skyrockets, like now, you blame workers for being overpaid. You see, the markets will resume job creation if they are free to adjust. We don’t want downwardly sticky wages caused by worker resistance to wage cuts. After all, wage cuts are for their own good and for the good of the unemployed. They must sacrifice for the good of their country.

Of course, even in this billionaire alternative reality, it’s very hard to get workers to cut their wages, especially while Wall Street is gorging itself at the bonus trough filled with workers’ tax receipts. So the authors suggest that “a moderate inflation to cut real wages and a further drop in the dollar’s real trade-weighted value might be acceptable.” In other words, we’ll cut their wages by devaluing them and maybe they won’t notice.

He ends with this:

The very last thing we need right now is to cut workers’ wages and turn over more booty to the billionaire bailout class. That should be clear to all by now unless you have succumbed to billionaire bailout logic.

Too bad they killed most of the Unions.   Do working americans really have a leg to stand on?