Tag: corruption

Nov 04 2009

Goldman’s Near Perfection

  Goldman released its trading records from the 3rd Quarter today, and it was impressive.

 (Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, reaped more than $100 million of trading revenue on 36 days in the third quarter, down from a record 46 in the preceding three months.

  The firm’s trading division lost money on only one day during the quarter, down from two days in the second quarter, according to a quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. New York-based Goldman Sachs made at least $50 million on 53 of the 65 trading days in the period, or 82 percent of the time.

 The statistical probability of losing money on only 1 out of 65 days goes a little beyond just skill.

Oct 31 2009

If you haven’t seen this? See it

If you haven’t yet seen Frontline’s documentary about Brooksley Born, the woman who warned about the dangers of the Derivatives markets during the Clinton Administration, and the resulting financial disasters that ensued from deliberately choosing to ignore her, you simply must see it.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…

Frontline is one of the few true journalistic documentary shows remaining in this country.  And in this case they do their usual superlative job in presenting the story of what happened when Wall Street took over Washington, and when an idiot named Alan Greenspan channeled tricked everybody into thinking he was a genius.  

And yes, Virginia, it was Clinton’s fault.  It happened on Clinton’s watch, when Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, and Alan Greenspan convinced everyone that NO REGULATION of the markets, of Wall Street, was a good idea.

Can you believe that?   Alan Greenspan actually came out and said that even going after blatant fraud on Wall Street was a bad idea, a mistake even, because “the markets would take care of it themselves”.   He gave fraudsters a GREEN LIGHT.  

This is like saying we shouldn’t fight gangs of street thugs because it will sort itself out.  Police?  Just stay home.  Rapists and murderers and thieves will somehow just take care of themselves and will magically eradicate themselves.

Indeed this was a classic example of Magical Thinking.

And Magical Thinkers ran this country’s economy, and almost destroyed it completely.  

And what is worse, is that the policies that led to this are still in place.  Nothing has changed, and I mean nothing.

And some of the people who LED this disaster are now back in power, with the Obama administration.  Larry Summers, for one, who was “the enforcer” for these fools, the tough guy who would really play hardball with people (and how that must have made his balls swell with manly pride when he would do that) is now Obama’s chief economic adviser!

This is just insulting as hell.

This is like putting Charles Manson in charge of security for the Oscars.

Obama is an idiot to have these guys anywhere near his big-ass ears.  These people should be too ashamed of themselves to ever step foot in Washington ever again, but here they are, in control.

What is astounding about this documentary is that what this woman warned about, regarding the derivatives market, happened.  

No, not in 2008.  It happened in 1998.  

In 1998, exactly as she predicted, a major, enormous hedge fund went under and almost took the economy of the United States down with it.   And what was the result?   Nothing.   Greenspan and the other fools managed to convince Congress that NOTHING was the thing to do, that NOTHING was the plan, that NOTHING could be done.   “I can’t conceive of any way we could regulate this!” was his refrain.   He didn’t want to.   He had a childlike fascination with Ayn Rand and thought that there simply should be no regulations of any kind, that government should have absolutely no ability or power to TOUCH industry, or banking.  And here we had a guy with this kind of MAGICAL THINKING in charge of the Federal Reserve!  For years.  And touted as a genius.  

It blows the mind.

And keep in mind this happened on a Democrat’s watch.  Bill Clinton, the best Republican President ever, as I’ve always said.  Indeed he was.

So what happened in 1998 happened ten years later, AGAIN, almost to the date.  Only this time it was a mega-meltdown, the mother of all meltdowns, and once again EXACTLY what this woman warned against.   This woman whose job as a regulator was destroyed by an Act of Congress, a woman who was deliberately neutered by these fools who didn’t even know what a derivative WAS.   And this time it nearly did take the economy of the world down with it and still very well might.  

And what do we have now?  This slimy old piece of dung FOOL, Alan Greenspan, saying “gosh, I guess I was wrong all my life”.    And his buddies Larry Summers and his mop-topped protoge Timmy Geithner back in the White House.

Obama, you’re an idiot.   Larry Summers, you should resign in shame at once.   Congress, you should figure out a way to impeach Geithner and get rid of him.  They all gotta go.  If they don’t clean house, this is all going to happen AGAIN.   And that’s not me saying that, that’s Brooksley Born saying that, and she’s saying that now, that if this isn’t dealt with, and it is STILL not being dealt with, that this will happen again.  And again.  And again.  Until we learn and finally get it right.

We have learned, and we are deliberately not getting it right?  Why?  Because Wall Street makes money off of it.  Yes, the banks.  And they will be bailed out, and they will have their billion dollar bonuses, and this country will see what is in effect NATIONALIZED GAMBLING taken hold, by the ultra-rich, in a game that they can never lose.

In fact, just today, it has come out that Geithner’s idea to “fix” things, this little fuck actually has the gall to come out and propose that the Big Banks have an unlimited line of credit from the Executive Branch of the country, that they should be able to do whatever the FUCK they want and be PERMANENTLY BAILED OUT.   With no limits as to the dollar amount behind the bailouts.  

What the FUCK is this shit?   This is throwing good money after bad taken to a literally insane level.  Here, check this shit you, you simply won’t believe it:


In my opinion, Geithner’s proposal is “TARP on steroids.” Section 1204 of the proposal [the proposal being the “Resolution Authority for Large, Interconnected Financial Companies Act of 2009”] allows the executive branch to use taxpayer money to make loans to, or invest in, the largest financial institutions to avoid a systemic risk to the economy.

Geithner’s proposal reminds me of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the $700 billion Wall Street bailout adopted last year, but the TARP was limited to two years, and to a maximum of $700 billion. Section 1204 is unlimited in dollar amount and is a permanent grant of power to the executive branch. TARP contained some limits on executive compensation and an array of special oversight authorities. Section 1204 contains absolutely no limits on executive compensation and no special oversight.

When I asked Geithner whether he would accept a $1 trillion limit on the new bailout authority (if the executive branch wanted to spend more, it would have to come back to Congress), he rejected a $1 trillion limit, insisting that the executive branch be able to respond without coming back to Congress.

That’s Geithner’s idea of how to “fix” corruption on Wall Street — KEEP GIVING THE CROOKS MONEY.

Why the FUCK does this guy have a job again?  Why the FUCK isn’t he fired?   How DARE he propose something like this?

This documentary should be required viewing by everyone in this country.

And after watching it you will never want to see Larry Summer’s ugly face ever again.  But you will, because he’s Obama’s “guy”.  

With Dems like these, who needs Republicans?  

They’re all crooked.  Time to throw them all out.  All of them.   Every last one.

It’s just so appalling.  

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…

Oct 30 2009

Transparent Motives, Transparent Government, Transparent Expectations

Some time ago I did work for a man who was promoting a truly radical idea regarding the act of negotiation between two competing nations.  Ostensibly it was an attempt to provide a kind of complete transparency that left the camera on every word, gesture, or strategic move made by both parties while each was seated around the bargaining table.  Though the notion was certainly composed of the best of intentions, it was also highly unlikely to find adoption among almost every country that believes behind-the-scenes diplomacy is the surest way to achieve a country’s fullest desires.  While I admit it would certainly be interesting to hear every word Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks while in the process of active deliberation with other countries, it’s much too soon for C-Span to worry about needing to considering adding another channel, one queued up specifically to cover diplomatic efforts in real time.

For those who push sunshine laws and greater transparency in government, the question before us is whether the government has an obligation to keep its internal matters protected from public view, even when they concern pending investigations into political corruption.  I find it interesting how the existence of these laws adheres mainly to government agencies and are rarely, if ever expanded to include the private sector.  The implication is that private business has some intrinsic right to lock out prying eyes (if not a sort of purity) that tax-payer funded endeavors do not.  It has been my own experience that every corporation or government entity which I have worked for prefers to use internal means whenever possible to deal with public relations snafus.  I am reminded of one of the arguments stated by those who advance vegetarianism, which states that if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all forsake eating meat.  In this context, if corporations, government entities, and even school districts had glass walls, we’d all certainly be nauseated at the spectacle.    

The European perspective regarding is this matter is much different than our own.  Though we gripe about the abuses and excesses of our elected representatives, we still assume that they should and will adhere to a code of ethical conduct that they are sworn to uphold.  In great contrast, attitudes across the ocean assert that public officials, regardless of party are uniformly corrupt, and as a result, one should never expect, nor be surprised when they are revealed to be just so.  This past Presidential election saw Candidate Obama saying all the right things regarding the influence of lobbyists and lucre on the political process and I, like the rest of you, stood and applauded with great vigor.  Since then, I have not changed my stance, nor my belief in the President, but I recognize that the challenges before us are much more complex than I could have ever imagined.  I’m not sure I could ever become as jaded or fatalistic as our European brothers and sisters,  nor do I think we as a people could ever reach that state, either.  Though we deny it, we are still a romantic, idealist people at heart.  If that were not so, we’d keep the same party in control forevermore, and cast our ballots more in a spirit of harm-reduction than in hope.  We are much more inclined to resort to a “throw the bums out” kind of logic and eagerly toss one party out to insert the other, expecting that change alone is the correct remedy.        

Regarding businesses dealings, particularly with large corporations, we can always be reliably counted on to switch to a competitor if unsatisfied for whatever reason or another.  Free-market advocates cite this as being proof that capitalism works by providing choice to the consumer.  That might be true at face value, but underneath the facade of sweetheart deals and offers we can’t refuse are blatant monopolies, CEO pay raises in times of recession, and a litany of other objectionable practices that are quietly hushed up and “dealt with internally”.  I have no doubt that if by some miracle each on-going citation of illegal, unethical, or immoral dealing were magically made common knowledge and leaked to the press, we’d all end up with a collective stomach ache of epic proportions.  That it takes government stimulus money funded by taxpayer money to be the deciding factor which reveals the most significant of these offenses shows us just where our skewed priorities lay.  Governments cannot be corrupt even a little, but corporations can be corrupt up to a point.      

Public school systems, a subject of which I am fairly familiar, are masters in sweeping problematic matters under the rug.  To cite an example directly pulled from today’s headlines, for every reported instance of teachers engaging in sexual relationship with their students, there are probably one hundred that never reach the attention of the media.  Rules and regulations grant principals and administrators the ability to dismiss problematic employees without even needing to explain why, a practice that is designed primarily to save face for both the recently employed and those in charge of hiring said individual in the first place.  It is also a long-employed means of damage control, since the very threat of a lawsuit by a disgruntled parent or group of parents is frequently substantial enough for school systems to settle out of court rather than go to trial, even if the complaint is patently bogus.  That school systems cave too soon when corporations rarely have any problem proceeding directly to litigation also reveals much about what spheres of our lives we feel as though we have some degree of control and which ones we feel utterly powerless to influence one way or the other.    

It is easy for us to wish for transparency when we are on the outside looking in, but those of us in authoritative roles in our own day jobs understand that every situation isn’t nearly as cut-and-dried as management versus employees.  Nor as it as simple as consumer versus company, parent versus superintendent, or even government servant versus constituent.  This is not to say that transparency shouldn’t be our ultimate goal, but if we seek it, it ought to be uniformly applied into every area of our daily lives, not merely set out in a very limited way that easily suits someone’s talking point.  Candidates and whole political movements have lived and died by channeling populist anger at government waste and graft, but to apply this to only one highly limited segment of American society does us all a grave disservice.  We may not say this directly, but when we silently condone the unacceptable practices of any major force in our daily lives, we are implying that such behavior is fine by us.  We want public government to be lily white but we rarely speak out against private enterprise until it is consumed by the foulest, blackest cancer of greed and licentiousness.  We need to understand that it is a rationalization to assume that corruption in business or in any endeavor is not nearly as awful if it uses someone else’s money supply up front and, above all, isn’t taken out of our latest paycheck.  Eventually everyone hurts but unlike tax revenue, the results cannot be easily measured and inserted into an IRS income tax form.  The impact is a far more insidious one and it impacts more than just dollars and cents.

Oct 27 2009

Yet another scandal; yet another way Obama is just like Bush

You may have heard about the enormous, bigger-than-the-Vatican American Embassy that’s been under construction in Iraq for, like, forever, a temple being erected to the Balls of Bush, the man who invaded Iraq and liberated its oil.

You may have even heard about how it was built with what amounted to slave labor.   You may have heard about lots of problems with the construction, and how the contractor who built it, who wasn’t even American, skimped and cheated and lied.

Well, you probably didn’t realize what a huge scandal this actually is.   Because the media doesn’t report this stuff.   But Jeremy Scahill does.  He’s one of the only real journalists out there.    And it turns out that the cheating and corruption was so bad, from this Kuwaiti contractor, that he’s gonna have to probably pay back $130 million dollars to the U.S. government for this boondoggle.

Iraq Embassy Scandal Expands: Contractor May Have to Repay $130 Million


The Baghdad embassy-the largest of any nation on planet earth and ten times bigger than any other US embassy-is striking evidence indicating a continued US presence in the country for many years to come. The structure cost more than $700 million and is the size of 80 football fields. It is bigger than the Vatican, six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York and is about two thirds the size of the National Mall in Washington. It has space for 1,000 employees who are guarded by scores of paramilitary mercenary forces. In other words it is the perfect structure for a nation that claims to be leaving Iraq very soon.

The embassy is more like a fortress and hardly sends a message of warm diplomacy. “What kind of embassy is it when everybody lives inside and it’s blast-proof, and people are running around with helmets and crouching behind sandbags?” said Edward Peck, the former US ambassador to Iraq when the embassy was first being constructed.

Yup, it’s a grand monument to the stupidity that is George W. Bush.   It’s about as big as he is stupid.  

And you may have a WTF moment when you think “wait a minute, why was the company hired to build this monstrosity not American, but Kuwait?”   Well, Scahill answers that for you:


In 2006, David Phinney reported: “Several other contractors that competed for the embassy contracts… believe that a high-level decision at the State Department was made to favor a Kuwait-based firm in appreciation for Kuwait’s support of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. ‘It was political,’ said one contractor.”

And if you thought American slavery ended with the Civil War, you were wrong:


FKIT has been plagued by allegations from whistleblowers who worked on the embassy that say the company “brought workers, mostly South Asians and Filipinos, to Baghdad under false pretenses, then abused and threatened them while there.” The company, predictably, denies those charges.

Rory Mayberry, who first worked with First Kuwaiti in March 200 as a medic on the embassy construction site, “alleges that when he showed up at the Kuwait airport for his flight into Baghdad, there were 51 Filipino employees of First Kuwaiti also waiting for the same flight – except the Filipinos believed they were going to Dubai,” reported NBC News. “He says the Filipinos were told to proceed to “GATE 26″ at the Kuwait airport – but no Gate 26 existed. There was only a door to a staircase that led to a white plane on the tarmac:”

Mayberry says even he was given a boarding pass that was marked for Dubai, though he knew he was going to Baghdad.

“The steward was having problems keeping guys in their seats because they were so upset, wanted to get off the airplane,” says Mayberry. “They were upset they weren’t headed to Dubai where they were promised they were working.”

He says when he arrived in Baghdad he notified the State Department official in charge of the embassy project about what had happened on his flight and she replied “that’s the way they do it.”

Ah, yes, just like the good old days, when a fellow could pass out drunk on the streets of a European city and wake up in a ship bound for the New World!  

Why, you might ask, were they shipping in laborers when the Iraqi workforce was completely out of work?   Why didn’t they hire Iraqis for this job?   I mean, the unemployment rate was only in the 70 – 80% range.    Oh, come on, that’s a rhetorical question, right?   Ha!   I mean, how were the Kuwatis suposed to make any REAL money if they had to pay Baghdad workers Baghdad wages!   Everybody knows what a bunch of spoiled Union goons those guys are!

You can get more details of the contractor’s failings in the article, but what I really wanted to pass along to you was the most disheartening part of this entire sickening story.

Because you might think this was just an aberration, right?  One more of countless Bush administration scandals, and thank god we got rid of him, right?   And those days are over, right?   And this kind of stuff isn’t going to happen again, right?

Wrong.

Obama has decided that we’re gonna do this all over again, this time in Pakistan!   Yessir, it worked out so well in Baghdad that we need more of these Monster Embassies to carry out our friendly activities.

Iraq redux? Obama seeks funds for Pakistan super-embassy


ISLAMABAD – The U.S. is embarking on a $1 billion crash program to expand its diplomatic presence in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan, another sign that the Obama administration is making a costly, long-term commitment to war-torn South Asia, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The White House has asked Congress for – and seems likely to receive – $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital.

The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.

Hm, must be part of the economic stimulus program.  Oh wait, this is in a foreign country?   How the fuck are Americans supposed to benefit from this massive government spending?   Oh wait, we’re NOT.   It’s another FUCK YOU from Team Obama.  

And here’s the really telling part:


A senior Pakistani official said the expansion has been under discussion for three years.

Three years!   Waiddaminute, three years ago ….. Bush was in power!   This is Bush’s idea, Bush’s plan, Bush’s boondoggle.  Brought to you by …. Obama!    

There really is no difference.    Bush/Obama.   Bushbama.   ObamBush.   Bush’s third term is what it should really be called.

Scahill says it better than anyone, calling it a “colonial fortress”:


Ah, good thing the US quest for violent global domination was brought to a screeching halt with the November presidential election. Without Obama’s election, we’d still have an occupation of Iraq, mercenaries on the US payroll, torture of prisoners, an unending and worsening war that kills civilians in Afghanistan, regular airstrikes in Pakistan, killing civilians and an embassy the size of Vatican city in Baghdad, which was built in part on slave labor. Not to mention those crazy “Bush/Cheney” neocons running around trying to become the “CEOs” of foreign nations. Wow, glad that’s all over. Whew! And, it’s a really good thing Bush is no longer in power or else the US would come up with some crazy idea like building a colonial fortress in Pakistan to defend “US interests” in the region.

I love this guy.

Oct 26 2009

An “Ideological Left?” Are you kidding me?

(I wrote this as a comment in Budhy’s essay about forming a left ideology, and decided to write it as an essay.)

An “Ideological Left?”  Are you kidding me?    


Talking about a “progressive agenda” is like people sitting around talking about what they’d do if they won the lotto, or prisoners talking about what they’re gonna eat as their first meal once they get out of jail.

The world is not left-and-right any more, not one bit.

The whole notion of even calling something “left” is, frankly, kind of silly.

Listen, what we currently have in place is a thoroughly corrupt government, corrupt media, and corrupt corporate system, all of which exist in a conspiratorial circle-jerk where they all help each other out, to continue their consolidation of corrupt power.

There is only one way to get ANYWHERE right now, and that is to eliminate corruption from the system.

I mean, we cannot even TALK about a “progressive agenda” or “right vs left” until these things are addressed and dealt with.

Right now the entire government exists to provide Corporate Welfare and legal protection to a corrupt corporate class.   The media is there to do the same, and to propagandize the people into not being aware of any of this, and for the people to blame each other rather than those who are behind all the corruption.

In this battle, politics shouldn’t play a part.   Corruption is corruption, thievery is thievery, gangsterism is gangsterism.

All Americans need to realize that they are being SCREWED, and band together to get rid of the screwers so that we can get back to the quaint notions of discussing whether we should have small government, states’ rights, etc. etc. etc.  

We are being robbed blind by a ruling class who has hijacked the government itself, and has bought the media.

Listen, one year ago, I had to travel to visit my father, to help him out because he had fallen seriously ill.    He is a very intelligent man, an engineer with three graduate degrees, a career Army veteran, and is about as well informed as I am, only on the opposite side of the universe.  He is an unrepentant right-winger.    And so is his wife, my stepmom.    She is ignorant, relatively uneducated, racist, fearful, and superstitious.    She listens to Rush like he’s a member of the familiy.   They watch only Fox News.   They are the die-hard, right wing fundamentalist “Christian” types that represent a significant portion of the electorate, probably in the 25% range.  

As I was travelling is when the stock market fell 777 points, and the “bailout” was announced.

Never before in my life, and in a way that I never thought would happen, we were all on the same page.   We, for ONCE in our lives, AGREED on what was going on — that we were getting ripped off and SHAFTED.

It was, really, a beautiful moment.   We could talk about what was going on and be in agreement, for the first time ever.  

Americans all across the country felt the same way.  For, oh, about a week or two.   Then we all got distracted by the bullshit election (and the election WAS bullshit, seeing as how Obama is just another tool of the same fucking elite rich bastards who committed all these crimes), and we all moved on, and we all thought “oh well there’s really nothing we can do”.

But underneath all of that is STILL a festering realization that we’ve all been shafted.  Not the left, not the right, not the moderates, but ALL of us.

And that is what needs to happen, is we all need to get together and realize “okay, wait a minute, lets put our idealogical issues aside for a while and GET RID OF THESE LYING THEIVING MOTHERFUCKERS WHO HAVE TAKEN ALL OUR MONEY and who are LAUGHING THEIR ASSES OFF AT US.”

Which leads me, for one, back to TocqueDeville’s essay on the Guillotine.

I, for one, am for peaceful acts rather than violent ones.   Although I do honestly believe that a few brooks-brother-suited corpses hanging from lamposts would have a MONUMENTAL affect on the way these people operate.

How much shit will Americans eat?

That is really the only question worth talking about.

Beyond that, who really gives a shit about progressive agendas?   A progressive agenda is never gonna happen as long as pirates are running the show.   Talking about it is pure fantasy, it’s masturbation.

I’ve long advocated a new party, one that represents nothing but Common Sense.  In fact, I would call it the Common Sense Party.   It wouldn’t have anything to do with “left” or “right” or any of the crap that’s entrapped us for generations now, it would be about looking at problems and figuring out how to fix them.

The biggest problem right now is that Corporate Welfare has destroyed this country.  Corporate Welfare has led to the corruption we now are experiencing.

Military spending?   It’s not “defense”, it’s Corporate Welfare.   The money we spend on the “war?”   It’s not really spent on a war, it’s Corporate Welfare, i.e. $400 a gallon for gasoline.   Who gets that money?  Corporations!   Marking up the price every step of the way!    I mean, think about it.  

The money comes from us, goes to the government, and is handed out, sometimes literally, to corporations who then rent PO boxes in the Cayman Islands so they can avoid paying taxes and avoid all the American laws.   They build their factories in China so they can avoid all the American laws including those designed to protect the environment, workers, and so they can avoid paying American workers American wages.

Talking about a “progressive agenda” is like people sitting around talking about what they’d do if they won the lotto, or prisoners talking about what they’re gonna eat as their first meal once they get out of jail.

Talking about “revoking their corporate charters” is the same.  Fantasy.  Ain’t gonna happen.   “Sending them to jail” is a fantasy.  They own the judges, they own the lawmakers, they own everybody.  

So really the only thing worth talking about right now is how do we get out of jail?    Let’s come up with a foolproof escape plan, then we can start bickering about the details of our future.  

Right now there is no future.  There’s only more of the same.

Oct 13 2009

UPDATED. Golden Sacks: 23 billion in bonuses, pays only 14 million in taxes

 So Goldman Sacks is making big fat gobs of money off the financial crisis.

It plans to give out $23 billion, yes, that’s billion with a B, in “bonuses” (hm, we used to call that “embezzlement”) for it’s beloved employees hard work in milking a failing US economy to the ridiculous benefit of The Firm.

Last year, Goldman Sacks paid only 14 million dollars in taxes.  Worldwide.    

Okay, what is wrong with this picture ….?

And why can’t the government do something about it?

Oh right.  The government is owned by Golden Sacks.   Geithner?   Nobody can get him on the phone EXCEPT for Golden Sacks.  They call him all they want, and he calls them, too.   They’re BFF’s!

How much is $23 Billion dollars?


For one thing, it’s enough to send 460,000 full paying students to Harvard University for one year, or 115,000 for four years.

It’s enough to pay the health insurance premium for the average American family ($13,375) 1.7 million times.

It’s enough to upgrade 191 million computers to Windows 7 operating system (priced at $119.99), or to buy 115 million iPhones at $199.99 (provided the recipient was willing to sign a two-year contract).

Or, apparently, it’s enough to reward the employees of Goldman Sachs for a bonanza trading year, at a firm where average employee compensation was recently $622,000 — and likely to be greater this year.

The $23 billion figure could leave some American taxpayers woozy — the US government bailed out Goldman Sachs with a multi-billion payment last year, which the firm has since repaid.

But while Goldman is likely to pay its biggest bonuses ever to employees, the firm pays very little in taxes worldwide. In 2008, the company was said to have paid just $14 million in taxes worldwide, and paid $6 billion in 2007.

The firm’s corporate tax rate? About 1 percent. According a prominent tax lawyer, “They have taken steps to ensure that a lot of their income is earned in lower-tax jurisdictions.”

A 1 percent tax rate?  

This is the very epitome of “laughing all the way to the bank”.

I suppose it’s good to be King.   And the King of the world right now is Goldman Sachs.

They own the place.

Oct 09 2009

On Learning To Love Homegrown, Or, Baucus’ Fundraising Considered

So we are now finding out the answers to some of our questions about which members of Congress actually represent We, the People…and which ones represent, Them, the Corporate Masters.

We have seen a Democratic Senator propose a policy that would put people in jail for not buying health insurance and a Democratic President who has taken numerous public beatings from those on the left side of the fence for his inability to ram something through a group of people…and yes, folks, the entendre was intentional.

But most of all, we’ve been asking ourselves: “why would Democratic Members of Congress who will eventually want us to vote for them vote against something that nearly all voting Democrats are inclined to vote for?”

Today’s conversation attempts to answer that question by looking at exactly how money and influence flow through a key politician, Montana’s Senator Max Baucus-and in doing so, we examine some ugly political realities that have to be resolved before we can hope to convince certain Members of Congress to vote for what their constituents actually want when it really counts.

Sep 27 2009

The pure hypocrisy of our pols on Acorn

Jeremy Scahill is, to my mind, the finest journalist working today.   There are very few real journalists left, I could probably count them on one hand, and Scahill is simply on fire.  

I wanted to share his latest, from his website where he simply destroys the whole notion of ACORN being any kind of a real scandal.

Here is the jist of his article:


How could any sane person put even the wildest allegations against ACORN up against the systematic misconduct and criminality of war corporations and gigantic multi-nationals?

This, considering the way the media has covered this, the way our politicians have such a terrible, palpable fear of any real Democracy that they all, including our complicit Democrats, have decided that Acorn is the real enemy and worthy of being punished, to the point where they are trying to pass legislation called “The Defund Acorn Act”.

If you just put ACORN up against Blackwater, the charges are absolutely ludicrous.   Acorn received $53 million over 15 years, most of which went to support housing for low-income people.   Blackwater has received over a BILLION in government contracts in the last few.  

And check this out:


The GOP smear machine tries to link ACORN to prostitution. Beyond the hypocrisy of Republicans denouncing prostitutes (long history of using them), do they really want talk of prostitution? One former Blackwater employee recently stated in a sworn declaration that Blackwater owner Erik Prince “failed to stop the ongoing use of prostitutes, including child prostitutes, by his men.” Another former employee described “having young girls provide oral sex to Enterprise members in the ‘Blackwater Man Camp’ (in Iraq) in exchange for one American dollar.” (PDF links to these affidavits are here) Even if ACORN did provide inappropriate tax advice to a prostitute, is that really on the same level as this conduct being conducted on a huge US government contract? If you think these are just the allegations of disgruntled employees, read the Justice Department’s perspective on Blackwater’s crimes and how its men “specifically intended to kill” Iraqi civilians as “payback for 9/11.”

As Scahill notes in his previous work on the website, Where is the “Defund Blackwater Act”?     Where, indeed?    Supposedly Democratic and supposedly liberal and supposedly “for the people” Barack Hussein Obama has decided to keep using Blackwater until, well, god only knows how long.   Yet what do we hear about in the press?   How bad and terrible and corrupt Acorn is.  

Nobody talks about defunding the real criminals, others of which are mentioned here:


Beyond the question of innocent until proven guilty, these questions must be asked of Democratic lawmakers who support this punitive legislation against ACORN: Where is your legislation to defund the companies whose men are indicted by actual, real life prosecutors for manslaughter; who are accused by the IRS of tax fraud and whose North Carolina compound has been raided by the ATF for possessing unauthorized, automatic weapons? What about the move to defund KBR, which has provided polluted drinking water to US troops and installed faulty electrical wiring that has resulted in the electrocution deaths of US soldiers? What about the move to defund the massive US-funded mercenary force DynCorp in Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan? A company whistleblower alleged that in Bosnia he “witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased.” What about defunding Armor Group, which employed security guards at the US embassy in Kabul who were throwing fraternity-style parties, complete with disgusting hazing of new recruits in the form of alcohol shots off of butt cracks and the fondling of genitals?

You really just need to read the whole thing.   I can’t possibly do it justice in lame attempts to paraphrase.    And read the rest of his stuff, too, give his site a visit.   He’s amazing.   We need hundreds of Jeremy Scahills in the world, sadly there is just one.

Sep 24 2009

They Will Teach Us To Be Free

As our cities start to crumble,

And the towers fall around us,

The sun is slowly fading,

And it’s colder than the sea . . .

45,000 Americans died last year because they couldn’t get the medical care they needed, 45,000 more Americans will die this year, 45,000 Americans are going to die next year and the year after that and the year after that because corporate profit is more important than human lives, because money determines who receives medical care and who doesn’t, because the depravity of Republicans, the moral cowardice of Democrats, the craven propaganda peddling of the corporate media, and the back room deals of Barack Obama have turned an electoral mandate for health care reform into a Category Five Clusterfuck of co-ops that can’t compete, mandates that punish the powerless, and a public option trigger that will never be pulled.

President Obama Pictures, Images and PhotosBrace yourselves for three more years of change we can’t believe in, brace yourselves for more “bipartisan solutions”, brace yourselves for escalating establishment attacks on progressives, brace yourselves for more Republican outrages, more Republican threats, more Republican attacks.  The truth is burning, crosses are burning, trillions of dollars are burning, Baucus and Conrad and Snowe have lit the funeral pyre of real change and we have Obama to thank for that, he’s the one who gave them the torches.

45,000 Americans are dying every year because they cannot get the medical care they need. America is suffering a Hurricane Katrina death toll every month. A 9/11 death toll every 30 days.  More than 3,000 Americans died in January because they couldn’t get the medical care they needed, 3,000 more died in February, 3,000 more in March and April and May and June and July and August.  A hurricane didn’t kill them. Muslim hijackers didn’t kill them.  The corporate hijackers of America’s government killed them, the Muhammed Attas of K Street, the Bin Ladins of the Beltway, the Jihadists of Corporate Greed killed them.  They were American citizens, they needed health care, they asked to be given medical treatment, but the profit driven health insurance industry gave them a death sentence instead.    

Sep 10 2009

The case of the disappearing billions

Dude, where’s my money?

There’s a scathing report in Vanity Fair right now about how all that TARP money was just thrown into the world with all the responsibility of someone shoveling it out the bank of an armored car while driving down a busy highway.

In other words, nobody knows where the money went.   Any of it.   There was no accountability, no rules for keeping track of it, heck, the banks didn’t have to do anything but take it, like lotto winnings, and do whatever the hell they wanted with it.

This whole crime is going right down the Memory Hole, which is right where the banksters, the guys who “run the place” to quote a few Congresspeople, want it to be.


But once the money left the building, the government lost all track of it. The Treasury Department knew where it had sent the money, but nothing about what was done with it. Did the money aid the recovery? Was it spent for the purposes Congress intended? Did it save banks from collapse? Paulson’s Treasury Department had no idea, and didn’t seem to care. It never required the banks to explain what they did with this unprecedented infusion of capital.

You can bet a lot of it was used for embezzlement “bonuses”, I mean, why not?   If someone gives you a few billion dollars and doesn’t care what you do with it, why not put it in your own little Swiss bank account?  


Exactly one year has elapsed since the onset of the financial crisis and the passage of the bailout bill. Some measure of scrutiny and control has since been imposed by the Obama administration, but even today it’s hard to walk back the cat and trace the money. Up to a point, though, it’s possible to reconstruct some of what happened in the first chaotic and crucial three months of the bailout, when Treasury was still in the hands of Henry Paulson and most of the money was disbursed. Needless to say, there is no central clearinghouse for information about the tarp money. To get details of any kind means starting with the hundreds of individual recipients, then poring over S.E.C. filings, annual reports, and other documentation-in other words, performing the standard due diligence that the government itself failed to perform. In the report that follows, we have no more than dipped a toe into the morass, but one fact emerges clearly: a lot of the money wound up in the coffers of some very surprising institutions- institutions that should have been seen as “troubling” as much as “troubled.”

I don’t really have time tonight to do much more than this, but I wanted to pass this along.   We certainly shouldn’t forget about this, not that it will matter with the Obama administration “putting corporations first” and the American people dead last.   They’re sure never gonna do crap about anything, especially this, and especially since Obama put his full 1000% support behind this crime anyway.  

Oh well.  

Meanwhile, millions more foreclosures are on their way.   But wait, didn’t the TARP money have something to do with mortgages?   Naaaahhhh, it was all about giving it to bankers, pure theft to fatten those cats.   The rest of us are left to melt down, even though the whole lie idea behind the bailout was to help out with the whole mortgage crash, right?

Pardon me while I puke.  

Sep 09 2009

Special interests receive a copy of Baucus plan before the White House does

Via Think Progress:


In today’s press briefing, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admitted that the Obama administration has not yet seen a copy of Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) newest draft of health care legislation. “[W]e’ve seen what we’ve read in the paper, but I do not believe that we’ve seen paper on the plan,” said Gibbs. However, he added that he believes special interests on K Street have already received a copy:

   GIBBS: I was told that – that K Street had a copy of the Baucus plan, meaning, not surprisingly, the special interests have gotten a copy of the plan that I understand was given to committee members today.

Baucus has received hefty financial contributions from the health care industry.

Maybe if we save our money, we can buy our very own committee chair.

Sep 08 2009

The Only Issue

The battle for Health Care is already over. It was over the minute the Democrats took single payer off the table. Now it’s just a tug of war between the lobbyists and the legislators to see how fake this fake reform will really be.

Did anyone really think that a political system as corrupt as ours could possibly produce anything but a corrupted product? Does anyone really believe another Obama speech is going to alter this fact?

Sometimes miracles do happen. So I’ve kept my mouth shut as this calamity has played out. But I accurately predicted all the way back in the campaign that a health care reform effort would, at best fail epically, and at worst actually make matters worse.

How did I know this? Am I an oracle from the netherworld? No. I predicted it because I am not insane. And by insane I mean doing the same thing over and over and over again while each time expecting different results. I mean WTF did people expect?

Progressives need to focus on one single issue for the rest of their lives if necessary: banning campaign contributions and other means to bribe politicians.

This is separate from campaign finance reform. There are a thousand ways we could finance elections. I’m sure we could come up with a few hundred that would be just, equitable and of benefit to the functioning of democracy.

The real issue is not how we finance elections. It is how we do not. We need a constitutional amendment to prohibit ever giving a penny to a public servant or candidate for office. It’s that simple.

This would be the second American Revolution and this country will continue to fail until it occurs. It will fail on health care reform, it will fail on climate change. It will fail on everything, just as it is failing now.

Removing the money from politics won’t solve all our problems. But it will at least eliminate the primary impediment that prevents us from solving those problems.  

Imagine politicians elected on the merit of their ideas instead of their ability to raise cash. George Bush would have never been governor, much less president.

Some day, historians will look back on this era as an absurdity – the way we look back on the days when monarchs enslaved the people or when we enslaved Africans.

Why wait?

Every other issue liberals and progressives care about, with the partial exception of civil rights, has one single source: the corruption of money. And yet we continue to attempt change without addressing this issue.

NOTHING WILL CHANGE until we get the money out of politics. There is no other issue that compares in importance. Not even close.

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