Tag: ek Politics

Now frankly I still think the appropriate historic parallels are Late Imperial Rome and Nazi Germany, but for some reason (I can’t quite figure out why) people object when you point out their irrational worship of all things Obama is nothing more than Führerprinzip and the United States an exceptional example of decadence.

Matt Taibbi gives a more contemporary perspective-

Democrats Must Stop Ted Cruz’s Hollywood Ending

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

POSTED: October 11, 11:28 AM ET

Having lived in the former Soviet Union for 10 years, I will forever have plastered to the back of my cerebellum the commemorative bumper sticker: “WWSD?”

What Would Stalin Do? It’s a useful question to ask sometimes, because it offers valuable perspective. What would Stalin have done with Britney Spears? Have her declared a People’s Artist of the Soviet Union, with the Leningrad-Murmansk train line named after her. Dan Dierdorf would have been made Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Region. Shepard Smith would probably get to head up the Press Ministry to start, then maybe work his way up to Foreign Affairs. It’s hard not to look at the American cultural landscape and see all sorts of people the old seminarian would really have liked.

But the main reason I’m thinking of this now is the debt ceiling/government shutdown issue. How would Stalin have handled all of this? Reflexively, I can’t help but wonder.

I’m guessing he would have taken Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz’s caucus members, loaded them onto cattle cars, and relocated them to a piece of woodsy wilderness in Alaska’s Chugach National Forest. Once there, guards would have handed saws and hammers to the esteemed legislators (still dressed in suits and heels – no wasteful government spending on parkas!) and instructed them to build new congressional “branch offices” out of the still-living trees surrounding them. Always conscious of cost, Stalin preferred, whenever possible, to relocate pesky populations to remote deserts and taigas rather than waste bullets liquidating them. Tea Party congresspersons would naturally be one of the first nationalities moved.

Leaders of movements were a different matter. Of those, one had to make very public examples. In this instance, with Cruz and company, Old Koba would likely go the “Kirov’s Assassins” route. First, he’d have someone like Ted Yoho bite an exploding apple during a live CNBC broadcast. Then he’d immediately send Eric Holder out for a massive impromptu press conference in which the White House, furious over the loss of so great a patriot, would announce a sweeping, coast-to-coast search for Yoho’s killers.

Eventually, the chief suspects would be arrested, and they would be everyone you would expect – the Koch Brothers, Rand Paul and of course Cruz himself, who, weeping and begging for forgiveness, would confess in lurid detail to the crime in a live televised trial. He got Michelle Bachmann to design the exploding apple! They conspired to have it delivered on-set by Maria Bartiromo! And they all removed Yoho out of jealousy (he was getting too much ink for out-dumbing the field, saying a default would “bring stability to world markets”)!

Not making any value judgments at all, but that’s what Stalin would do. What is Barack Obama doing? Well, something much less than that. Much, much less, to the point where it’s getting a little weird.  

…

The 2008 crash was triggered by the failure of one investment bank, Lehman Brothers, and when that bank collapsed, the world discovered that it was now so interconnected financially that one significant and unexpected failure could start a nuclear chain-reaction of losses. The Lehman impact stunned everyone. The average American family lost 18 percent of its wealth within months. The stock market lost half its value. The repo market collapsed, freezing economic activity and leading to massive declines in asset prices. Unemployment soared past 10 percent almost instantly.

And that was just one bank failure. Can one imagine the consequences of the failure of the United States? The $12 trillion in outstanding government debt is 23 times bigger than the $517 billion Lehman owed when it went under in September 2008. In every way that Lehman’s failure played havoc with the economy, the failure of U.S. debt would repeat the disaster, only it would do it on an almost inconceivably huger scale.

The entire world financial system revolves around the notion that the U.S. will never default, because under normal, rational circumstances, it can’t. (It can always print enough money to meet its obligations, as even Alan Greenspan conceded two years ago.) Before this latest political madness, no one could ever have conceived of a sovereign state intentionally defaulting. But we’re, like, a week away from this happening, and where’s the emergency mobilization?

I’m not saying that this is the case, but one wonders whether the Democrats have made a miscalculation here, based upon their own narrow, transactional, materialistic view of politics. The Democrats may be sitting back just a little bit, content to let this felicitous political situation develop just a little longer, perhaps (and I have no proof of this) convinced that the other party will come to its senses and stand down at the last minute.

But Cruz and his people are something we never see in Washington – believers.

Obama and his Neoliberals are believers too, and it’s not in democracy.

Sell outs?  Nope, bought and paid for.

Transcript

“An honest politician is one who, when he is bought, will stay bought.”- Simon Cameron (1799-1889)

The great neoliberal dream-

Will China’s Gambit to Undermine the Trans-Pacific Partnership Succeed?

Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Thursday, October 10, 2013

While eyes in the US have remained focused on the budget cliffhanger in Washington, in Bali, two sets of meetings were taking place. The first was the latest set of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations. The US, led by John Kerry (Obama was supposed to make an appearance but the budget drama kept him away) met with representatives of the 12 nations it is pressing to agree to this deliberately mis-branded “trade deal”. The reason the label is misleading is that trade is already substantially liberalized; the real point of the TPP and its cousin, the pending EU-US trade agreement, is to weaken the power of nations to regulate, which will allow multinationals to lead a race to the bottom on product and environmental safety.

…

he second meeting in Bali this week was for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). And the two intersected in intriguing ways. Remember, the terms of the TPP are shrouded in secrecy that is utterly inconsistent with the notion of democratic rule. Draft chapters have not been released. In the US, the US Trade Representative has given briefings on the general terms of the pact’s chapters, but as anyone who has worked on contracts or legislation, reading the detailed terms is critical to understanding an agreement, and those are being kept firmly secret.

…

Not only has the US been pushing remarkably hard on the secrecy front, it’s being remarkably aggressive on timing. It got a commitment from the prospective signatories in Bali for the pact to be finalized by year end, when a State Department briefing immediately afterward met with skeptical questions (if you have time, you really should read the session in full. The obstinacy and disingenuousness of the State Department mouthpiece is way too obvious).

…

In fairness, the Forbes article points out that one set of issues that was seen as a major stumbling block for Japan, that of five types of agricultural products it wanted held out of the deal, may not be such a problem after all because the Japanese Prime Minister Abe, who talked up the deal this week, looks to be able to play the sellout of domestic farmers so as to disadvantage an LDP rival.

However, the US has been ruffling the potential signatories.

…

And the State Department Q&A also indicated that Indonesia, which was also hosting the APEC leaders’ meeting, had the US trying to upstage that session.

Now bruised official egos are likely not enough in and of themselves to derail a trade deal. But the Asian nations are also playing a careful balancing act between the current hegemon, the US, and its presumed successor, at least in the region, if not globally, China. Now remember, the whole point of the TPP is that it is an “everybody but China” deal. So what did China do at the APEC summit when Obama was detained in Washington? Step up its efforts to undermine the TPP.

…

It’s not clear that China’s efforts to throw sand in the TPP gears will work. But the year end timetable looks like a bizarre Administration fantasy (why push for an empty commitment to a deadline that clearly can’t be met?). And the parallel ASEAN trade talks could give countries that wanted to drag their feet on the TPP an excuse to do so (note that one country being reluctant is likely to be insufficient to derail the deal, but two or three could change the equation. Reporters in the State Department briefing were making comparisons to the failed Doha round).

A final factor that could work against the TPP is a continuation of a destabilizing budget battle. As we’ll discuss in our accompanying post today, there was progress of sorts Wednesday, in at least the two sides have agreed to talk. But they aren’t even at the stage of discussing terms, beyond a vague idea of putting the debt ceiling on hold while the two parties work out a bigger budget deal, with deficit cutting measures included. The problem is given the failure to reach a Grand Bargain Great Betrayal last year, I don’t see why there is any reason to believe a six week delay will pave the way for a deal coming together, given the increased hostility between the two camps and the hard core Republican right insisting on throwing Obamacare into the talks. The longer Washington is in disarray, the weaker its position in pushing for a trade deal. As we’ve said before, that may be the one silver lining of the damaging Federal shutdown.

(Yves is running a fundraiser and while things are going well she would certainly appreciate a token of your support.  ek)

Don’t worry, I got this.

Obama’s Credibility Problem

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Wednesday October 9, 2013 10:38 am

During health care reform, instead of saying he actively opposed the public option and direct drug price negotiations because he cut a deal with the drug lobby, Obama tried to pretend these were in fact big concessions to Republicans. This ended up causing Obama to waste months trying to get any Republicans on board to make this excuse work. When no Republicans agreed to go along Obama ended up look like a terrible negotiator for still giving up “big concessions” – without getting any votes.

When the Bush tax cut deal was reached, Obama again thought it would be clever to needlessly “fold” and only accept an tax on incomes over $400,000. In reality what Obama has always wanted most was a grand bargain. If he fought harder and got a full repeal on the Bush tax cuts for the rich, there would probably be nothing for congressional Democrats to get from a grand bargain. That would have ended up being a long term “lose” from Obama’s perspective. So he chose to look weak and leave some revenue on the table. That way there could be something he could “get” from Republican in his next grand bargain push.

During the last debt ceiling fight Obama thought a fake crisis would cause all sides to agree to a grand bargain so Obama pretended to be weak. He invited this Republican hostage taking tactic by saying he was open to negotiations. Now Republicans think he is weak on the debt ceiling, instead of realizing he was just trying to play everyone the last time.

After watching Obama constantly feigning weakness to do things to justify pursuing policies he know his Democratic base would oppose, I find it funny that no one in Washington ever knows when Obama is being sincere. So when Obama finally actually takes a firm position Republicans don’t trust him. Rep. Paul Ryan straight up said, “no one believes that.”

You know, human nature hasn’t changed much in 2,500 years.

There once was a shepherd boy who was bored as he sat on the hillside watching the village sheep. To amuse himself he took a great breath and sang out, “Wolf! Wolf! The Wolf is chasing the sheep!”

The villagers came running up the hill to help the boy drive the wolf away. But when they arrived at the top of the hill, they found no wolf. The boy laughed at the sight of their angry faces.

“Don’t cry ‘wolf’, shepherd boy,” said the villagers, “when there’s no wolf!” They went grumbling back down the hill.

Later, the boy sang out again, “Wolf! Wolf! The wolf is chasing the sheep!” To his naughty delight, he watched the villagers run up the hill to help him drive the wolf away.

When the villagers saw no wolf they sternly said, “Save your frightened song for when there is really something wrong! Don’t cry ‘wolf’ when there is NO wolf!”

But the boy just grinned and watched them go grumbling down the hill once more.

Later, he saw a REAL wolf prowling about his flock. Alarmed, he leaped to his feet and sang out as loudly as he could, “Wolf! Wolf!”

But the villagers thought he was trying to fool them again, and so they didn’t come.

At sunset, everyone wondered why the shepherd boy hadn’t returned to the village with their sheep. They went up the hill to find the boy. They found him weeping.

“There really was a wolf here! The flock has scattered! I cried out, “Wolf!” Why didn’t you come?”

An old man tried to comfort the boy as they walked back to the village.

“We’ll help you look for the lost sheep in the morning,” he said, putting his arm around the youth, “Nobody believes a liar…even when he is telling the truth!”

Economic Confidence Craters As Shutdown, Income Stagnation, and Poverty Roil Americans

By: DSWright, Firedog Lake

Tuesday October 8, 2013 10:32 am

We are now in day 8 of the federal shutdown and it seems Americans are rapidly losing faith that the powers that be can turn the economy around. Confidence in the economy has deteriorated more in the past week than in any week since Lehman Brothers collapsed on Sept. 15, 2008.

…

And why not? Is there any evidence the economy is turning around for the vast majority/99% of Americans? No.

If anything the shutdown has jarred people awake to the fact that poverty and income stagnation remain at record levels. If things remain as they are we will continue to have massive inequality and little hope of social mobility. The economy is broken for most Americans which even the New York Times is recognizing as seniors are now falling back into poverty.

…

To recap the state of affairs – the government is shutdown and the economy is rigged for the rich. Now tell me the Koch Brothers lost the 2012 election, seriously, I need a laugh.

As Citigroup proved long ago, an economy run for the benefit of the rich or “plutonomy” is economically sustainable. But is it politically sustainable? Are the vast majority of Americans going to accept slavery and poverty from plutocrats and their extremist attack dogs in Congress?

Kathleen Sebelius’ Incoherent Defense of Obamacare’s Design on The Daily Show

By: Jon Walker, Firedog Lake

Tuesday October 8, 2013 10:03 am

When pressed on the Daily Show why Democrats went with a Rube Goldberg health care plan instead of single-payer, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ incoherent defense was that tje Republicans called even this “market based” plan super socialism.

…

Sebelius sarcastically responded to Stewart’s question about single-payer by saying, “As you know we are facing the end of Western Civilization by having a market based strategy. We are bringing Western Civilization to its knees by selling private insurance plans on a website where people pick and choose.”

I have heard this same basic argument made by several defenders of Obamacare. The point is “look at how badly Republicans flipped out over this conservative law, so imagine how bad they would have flipped out over single-payer.” The problem is this argument makes no sense because, as Sebelius points out, the Republicans already turned their freakout dial to 11. They can’t going any higher. There is nothing worse than the end of “Western Civilization.”

This is not an argument against going to single-player, this is an argument for why you should have gone for single-payer. If the Republicans are going to completely freak out regardless, there is no reason to compromise. The political response from the GOP will be the same.

This highlights why the Democrats are having such a hard time selling the law. Early on they chose to go with bad design to buy off the big industry lobbyists, but they planned to blame the bad design on needing to get Republican votes for a great compromise. When Republican refused to play along it left Democrats holding the bag. Democrats had pro-lobbyists laws, but they don’t want to publicly say they made the law needlessly complex to make lobbyists happy. So the administration is still trying to use the original excuse they planned – even though it now doesn’t make sense.

((Note- In addition to a transcript, this link auto-plays)

Government Close Down – Another Grand Betrayal in the Works?

The Real News

October 7, 2013

William K. Black-

(T)he Koch brothers don’t care about the Republican Party. They don’t care about the United States of America. And they are incredibly wealthy. They are pure ideologues, in very large part.

What they do care about is making sure there’s no effective regulation, no effective environmental laws, no effective prosecutions of elite businesses. And they believe that this kind of power, which after all has taken offline, for example, a number of the regulatory agencies–and, you know, the EPA has lost all kinds of folks and such–they, the Koch brothers, love all of this. And what they mostly love is that they have demonstrated that they can take over one of the two major parties in the United States of America and use it for what is obviously an improper means, right, that we will extort you to get rid of legislation that was validly passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president of the United States. And this is, from their purpose, a demonstration of raw power that is supposed to make people fear them in the future. That’s what the Koch brothers get out of it.

James Clapper Thinks That NSA Employees Will Sell Out Our Nation After A Few Days Without A Paycheck

by Tim Cushing, Tech Dirt

Tue, Oct 8th 2013 7:45am

According to James Clapper, nearly 70% of the intelligence workforce has been furloughed. The recently-passed Pay Our Military Act should put most of those civilian contractors back to work, but early last week, Clapper was very, very concerned about the damaging effects a layoff could have.

…

Clapper expounded on how exactly a shutdown would harm national security. It’s not so much that the massive servers might be powered down temporarily or that it might not be able to write checks to telcos and tech companies for backdoor rentals. No, the real problem is that a single missed paycheck is all that stands between any NSA contractor and complete subversion by foreign agencies.

…

According to Clapper, our national security is reliant on uninterrupted payments to a mercenary group of extortionate contractors. A few missed paychecks is a risk this country simply can’t take, not if we’re going to stay ahead of the terrorists.

This sort of statement from Clapper has to do wonders for troop morale. “Hey, guys! The boss says we’re all just opportunistic jerks with no loyalty and the willingness to sell out an entire nation if Uncle Sam doesn’t keep topping off the bank account.”

This paints a very different picture of the average intelligence analyst than the comparatively glowing portrait former NSA director Michael Hayden whipped up for a CNN interviewer while dodging the "ability" question.

…

According to Clapper, the American population values a continued paycheck more than it values loyalty and would gladly sell out its employer (and nation) rather than consider other options like short-term unemployment, job hunting or cutting expenses. If that’s how Clapper views the civilians the NSA employees, the biggest surprise is that, so far, only Snowden has skipped town with a few hard drives’ worth of documents.

Hayden, on the other hand, seems to feel NSA analysts are just Americans with bigger, faster computers and a frighteningly in-depth search engine. They’re people just like us, who would never, ever consider exceeding their “authorization,” no matter what amazing “abilities” the system provides.

NSA Center for Spy Data Suffers Electrical Failures

By Chris Strohm, Bloomberg News

Oct 8, 2013 12:00 AM ET

A $1.2 billion data center being built in Utah for the National Security Agency to house U.S. intelligence secrets has been plagued by electrical failures, according to an agency official.

…

The causes of the center’s problems, which include 10 electrical meltdowns in the past 13 months, have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of machinery and delayed the its opening by a year, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Giant NSA Data Center Won’t Stop Blowing Up

By Adam Martin, New York Magazine

10/8/13 at 12:29 AM

The N.S.A.’s enormous new data storage center in Bluffdale, Utah, will eventually blow up (in the cell phone sense of the phrase) with quantities of data thought to be thousands of times larger than the printed collection of the Library of Congress. But first, its builders must figure out how to stop the machines inside from literally blowing up in electrical surges. … “One project official described the electrical troubles-so-called arc fault failures-as ‘a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box.’ These failures create fiery explosions, melt metal and cause circuits to fail, the official said.” Each arc failure, the most recent of which happened Sept. 25, has caused up to $100,000 in damage, according to The Journal. And the site’s builders and managers can’t agree on exactly what’s causing them or how to fix it.

…

(A) statement from the joint venture of construction contractors said “the causes of those problems have been determined and a permanent fix is being implemented.” But a report by an investigative “Tiger Team” in the Army Corps of Engineers said the fix was inadequate. “We did not find any indication that the proposed equipment modification measures will be effective in preventing future incidents.” It said the causes of eight of the meltdowns hadn’t been determined.

…

So far, the Tiger Team is unconvinced the contractors know how to fix this, writing that the problems “are not yet sufficiently understood to ensure that [the NSA] can expect to avoid these incidents in the future.” When it’s finally up and running, the data storage center is expected to be bigger than anything operated even by Google (though its exact size is classified). Until then, it’s more like a zettabyte-sized headache.

70% of intelligence staff out in government shutdown

Al Jazeera

October 2, 2013 12:04PM ET

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that roughly 70 percent of the intelligence workforce – including staff from the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency – have been furloughed.

“I’ve been in the intelligence business for about 50 years. I’ve never seen anything like this,” Clapper said at the hearing on the controversial spy programs.

“I think this, on top of sequestration, seriously damages our ability to protect the security and safety of this nation and its citizens,” Clapper said.

He added that the agencies risk losing valuable staff, especially after layoffs forced by the so-called “sequestration” budget cuts that went into effect earlier this year.

Clapper: U.S. shutdown ‘a dreamland’ for foreign spy services

By JOSH GERSTEIN, Politico

10/2/13 10:39 AM EDT

Clapper said the law only allows civilian workers to be kept at work if their work addresses “an imminent threat to life or property.”

“Our applying that standard is what results across the board in furloughing roughly 70%,” he said. “I think that will change if this drags on.”

…

The ranking Republican on the panel, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said he was puzzled by reports that 72% of intelligence agency civilian workers have been furloughed as non-essential.

“The intelligence community either needs better lawyers who can make big changes to the workforce or are you over-employing in those areas?” he asked.  “It can’t be that 70% of the intelligence community is being furloughed and we’re still able to meet our national security responsibilities.”

Talking Jamie Dimon With Sam Seder of ‘The Majority Report’

By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

POSTED: October 1, 11:20 AM ET

Pareene hilariously told the CNBC panel that anybody could do Jamie Dimon’s job as badly as he’s done it, offered himself in half-seriousness as an option and made the absolutely accurate point that any other boss in any other industry who had overseen the regulatory problems that took place at Chase under Dimon would be looking for work.

“If you managed a restaurant, and it got the biggest health department fine in the history of restaurants,” Pareene said sensibly, “no one would say ‘Yeah, but the restaurant’s making a lot of money. There’s only a little bit of poison in the food.'”

I hadn’t seen the exchange until yesterday when Sam played it on his show. It’s an amazing piece of tape that tells you everything about why the financial press constantly misses major scandals – their only sources of information are bank spokestools and they have no clue about even the most obvious things, like the fact that the whole country north of TriBeCa and south of Battery Park cringes at the sound of Dimon’s name.

The problem is the sequester, particularly the Defense cuts (because as we’ve seen with SNAP, too many DC legislators are quite content to literaly take food out of the mouths of starving children).

Shutdown crisis rooted in GOP’s budget

By DAVID ROGERS, Politico

9/28/13 4:40 PM EDT

It promised to protect defense spending while living with the post-sequestration caps of $967 billion set in the Budget Control Act. But to deliver on this pledge, it required such large cuts from domestic spending bills that the whole appropriations process collapsed by mid-summer.

A popular $44.1 billion transportation and housing bill had to be pulled from the House floor in late July. Of the eight, annual appropriations bills which are most truly non-defense spending, none made it through the House this year.

…

(I)f the CR really strictly matched the post-sequester allocation of funds under the BCA for 2014, the Pentagon would have to cut roughly $44 billion from the $512.5 billion level approved by the House in late July.

That’s an immense drop which many Republicans would find hard to accept even on a two to three month basis.

…

“Some will complain that the bill breaks the cap placed on defense spending under the sequester level for fiscal 2014 put into place by the Budget Control Act,” (House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal) Rogers said. “To this I say of course it does.”

“If nothing is done to cancel the next round of sequestration cuts that are scheduled to take effect when this Congress adjourns, this bill would be cut to a total of $468 billion.”

And while the primary impetus is arguably Republican, the fact is that many, many Democrats think Austerity in times of Depression is a good idea and are willing to sell out their constituents to their campaign donors.