Category: Economy

There is a clash of titan forces taking place in the American Economy right now. It’s a tale as old as Greed itself.  

It is the tale of the “Powers that Be” running into the watchful eyes of the “World that Should Be”.

The story involves how corporate Robber Barons avoid the watchful glare of the citizen Muckrakers.  

It is the tale of Deception and Greed vs Honesty and Fairness …

     It seems that Mr. Greenspan has reared his head again to give us more of his unsound economic advice. You’d think one ginormous worldwide financial disaster would be enough for this guy, but Alan Greespan, like an animal trainer after a wild mauling, insists on trying to help even after the white tiger has clawed your face off.

    So I am going to take a page out of Bill Maher’s book and put down a New Rule.

    There will only be 1 Clusterfuck alloted per idiot expert from now on. After that, should you attempt to give us more advice, we get to move you into a box underneath the Queensboro Bridge, and then launch that box into deep space.

    Take the New York Times for instance. Now that we might go to war with a country with four letters in it’s name that starts with I they have “advice” to give us. Good thing for me, between the New York Times’s advice on I country wars and Greenspans expertise, I can wipe my ass with the place I live now.

    America, land of the Double Whopper with WTF sauce. Pass the scotch.

    More ranting below the fold

Crossposted from Daily Kos

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::

Hobson’s Choice

Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

I’m just back from seeing Michael Moore’s new movie, “Capitalism – A Love Story”.

It was moving, funny, and educational, all rolled into one. It made me feel both, proud and sad, to be an American. … but it’s recommended viewing if you still want to take OUR Country back, from the Powers that Be.

There are many lessons to be learned from the film — But the one that struck me, the one I’m motivated to write about now —

Is the Lesson of Plutonomy …

Corporate Rights and Responsibilities: Restoring Legal Accountability

Dr Dan Plesch & Dr Stephanie Blankenburg

[pg 4]

Giant corporations have the rights of a person, but none of the responsibilities.

Society needs successful businesses, but today business is taking over society.

– 51 of the world’s 100 largest economies are corporations

(Institute for Policy Studies, Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power, 2001).

– 80% of the world’s industrial output is made by 1,000 corporations

(The Economist, 29 January 2000).

https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/570…  (pdf)

Staggering Stats! from nearly a decade ago!

If were not careful, metaphorically at least, that world of Terminator 2 may indeed come to pass … that day “When machines rise up rule the world”.

It may already be too late — despite the Human Face, we like to paint on our neighborhood global Corporate Entities …

Just watch the video after reading the contents of this link by Matt Taibbi.  I’ve lifted a paragraph from Mr. Taibbi so you have a better understanding of exactly what you’re watching.

I have personal experience with… well, let’s call it the unique personality of Alan Grayson. In his capacity as an attorney he once basically threatened to have me dismembered and have my body parts dumped in a tin canister and fired into the center of a burning supernova. And that’s actually underselling the real language he used. We were having a disagreement about the use of information given to me by a certain source in a story about military contracting, and in the middle of what had been a normal contentious argument between two sane adults, dude suddenly assumed this crazy monster-voice and just went medieval on me. He was roaring into the telephone about how he was going to crush me, how I was going to wish I had never messed with him, how I didn’t know who the hell I was dealing with, and so on. One phrase I remember in particular was, “I am going to strip the bark off of you!” It came totally out of the blue and it was like being on the telephone with a metamorphosing werewolf – the whole performance genuinely freaked me out. I may even have peed a little, I can’t remember.

Now, ask yourselves this: are you or are you not glad that this guy seems to be on our side?

(Cross-posted from the Free Speech Zone.)

While being cold and becoming sick I decided that the time was right for me to call the Emergency Service Hotline for Suffolk County’s Department of Social Services to request an emergency oil delivery.  We had a choice between rent and heat so we had to pass on such a luxury as a warm place to live in order to settle for just a place to live.  The other sideswipe we got was that our bank, that has what little money we have, decided to update their everything so our accounts don’t reflect what we actually have while also rendering our ATM and Debit options non-existent.

I figured it was worth a shot to call the county, and seeing as we make WAY too much money to be eligible for any assistance that would of prevented this, I feel they should at the very least be informed of my situation.

Senators can afford to wait for Health Care reform — after all they ALREADY HAVE Health Insurance for their Families!

Trigger? — No Problem!

2013? — Who Cares!

Public Option only for the Few — No Worries …  ( — For Them! )

Montana Senators have a wide Menu of Health Care Options, so What’s the Rush?

Health — 2009 Plan Information for Montana

Nationwide Fee-for-Service Open to All

APWU Health Plan (APWU)

Blue Cross and Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan – Standard Option

Blue Cross and Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan – Basic Option

GEHA Benefit Plan (GEHA)

GEHA High Deductible Health Plan

Mail Handlers Benefit Plan

Mail Handlers Benefit Plan (HDHP)

Mail Handlers Benefit Plan Value

NALC

SAMBA

State Specific HMO, HDHP and CDHP Plans

Aetna HealthFund (CDHP/HDHP) – South, Southeast & Western MT

New West Health Services – Most of Montana

No shortage of Insurance Options — in Montana!

How to save $1.3 trillion a year, get healthcare reform, and lose weight doing it

Michael Lemke, Special Interests Examiner – Sept 3, 2009

Ending the Bush tax cut for the top 1% would save $132 billion next year alone.

While the rich have been getting richer at a staggering rate both under Clinton and under Bush, the lower 80% of US households have been stagnating or getting poorer. We have reach the highest level of income inequality in US history, surpassing even the obscene levels of the late 1920s.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1908…

Well, that’s one sure fire way to help pay for Health Care —

Repeal the Bush Give-Away to the Top 1%, or just let them sunset, as the legislation requires!

January 1, 2011, is one Sunset, that can’t come soon enough!

When it comes to getting around, Americans love to consider the question of “what if…?”

As a result, our cars have evolved into “land yachts”, our trucks have become “monster trucks”, and the desire to drag our living spaces around with us has morphed into converted busses with rooms that pop out of the side, a Mini-Cooper hidden under the master bedroom floor, and self-tracking satellite dishes that fight for space on the roof with air conditioning equipment.

And for more than a few of us, “what if…?” has even extended to “what if my car…was a jet car?”

In today’s improbable reality I’m here to tell you that Chrysler engineers asked that exact same question, for roughly a quarter of a century, and as a result they actually designed and deployed seven generations of cars with jet engines-and they came darn close to putting the eighth-generation design on sale to the general public.

It’s a story of pocket protectors and slide rules and offices full of guys who look a bit like Drew Carey…but as we’ll see in Part Two, it may also be a story of technology that couldn’t be perfected “back then”, but could be reborn in our own times.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   Yesterday, in a NYTimes Op-Ed titled “Reform or Bust”, Nobel Economist Paul Krugman gave some well needed advice on good economics and good politics that President Obama and Democratic members of Congress should listen to.

    It’s not just that taking a populist stance on bankers’ pay is good politics – although it is: the administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from the perception that it’s giving taxpayers’ hard-earned money away to Wall Street, and it should welcome the chance to portray the G.O.P. as the party of obscene bonuses.

    Equally important, in this case populism is good economics. Indeed, you can make the case that reforming bankers’ compensation is the single best thing we can do to prevent another financial crisis a few years down the road.

   One obvious point is the need, politically, to make the GOP the party that defends huge Wall St salaries and bonuses, which they will do anyway and gladly. Politically, the GOP can not be for the bonuses. They just can’t. Even more so, they can not be against the regulations AND against the bailouts. It just won’t work. Like Saruman in Lord of The Rings when confronted by Gandalf and the Riders of Rohan at the foot of Orthanc, the GOP can not be all things to all people, or against all things either. When too many eyes are watching at once the illusion is broken. The GOP can not be against all cures and still appear in the populist corner, as their teabagging antics try to portray, badly. The GOP must stand for something, and they do, they stand for the Super Rich and Corporate Wealth. Proving this is very important.

    Recently wingnutty teabagging Republican Senator Jim DeMint (C Street-SC) offered his answer to all that economically ails Wall St. Guess what? His answer; More Tax Cuts!

    Instead of looking at more regulation, we could do a lot by fixing our tax system here in this country, to make us globally competitive. The President needs to focus on what really has caused problems and look at what has really made America so prosperous, and I’m afraid that’s not the lens he’s looking through right now.

ThinkProgress.org

    Because who would think that cutting taxes for Wall St would be kind of rewarding for them, or a serious attempt at real reform.

    The GOP has NO new ideas, and the only ones they do have are Failed, totally and utterly Failed. Bipartisanship with these guys is a sort of cheating off of the dumb kid in class at ths point. It WILL NOT WORK. I understand why Obama has made the effort, but no it is time to play hardball, it is NO LONGER the time to keep trying to make the GOP feel good about themselves, especially when their ideas suck and they hope you fail.

    More and my own analysis below the fold.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour was recently interviewed by the conservative Washington Times and stated his opinion on a variety of current events.  Barbour’s name has been floated as a potential 2012 Republican Presidential nominee and he appeals strongly to the party’s conservative base.  The most interesting portion of the interview focuses on federal government spending versus state government spending.  Barbour’s reply also reveals how quickly we have forgotten the problems of our past.  Those who advance a states’ rights agenda and hold up the Tenth Amendment as justification often forget the massive problems this country faced when we focused more on individual states at the expense of Washington, DC.  While placing more control in a centralized system of government has created some problems, they are nothing compared to way it was when the reverse was true.