The First100 is a daily news, entertainment and motivation blog on Barack Obama's first 100 days -- news snippets, reactions and suggestions for things you can do to help improve this already great nation.
Note: Yesterday I made an erroenous statement about Nancy Pelosi that was up for about 4 hours. I took it down when I realized it was errenoous. I'm sorry for the error. If you ever catch me posting an error, please let me know. Accuracy should be important to all of us.
Your Job:
Try to find work for someone you know that needs it. Remember this one not just for today. Unemployment and inflation are both going to continue to rise. We're going to need each other's help.
Your Job We all know the truth that we don't live forever, but how often do we actively keep that in mind?
Appreciate life. Communicate now with your loved ones. Life is short. Appreciate the living by talking with them. Appreciate the dead by sharing with the living your memories and thoughts about them.
What can we do for ourselves that also helps the country? Barack Obama has some ideas.
They include:
- Go to/stay in school
"Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.
This is a prescription for economic decline...I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It's not just quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country - and this country needs and values the talents of every American."
This may be the point that most impressed me about Obama's speech. Of course he's right. Why not enroll in a night class?
"Finally, because we're also suffering from a deficit of trust, I am committed to restoring a sense of honesty and accountability to our budget. That is why this budget looks ahead ten years and accounts for spending that was left out under the old rules - and for the first time, that includes the full cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price."
- Be a good parent - education starts at home
- Support small businesses
I don't like the idea of propping up big failing companies. I love the idea of helping small companies get started. This is a fantastic time for startups to develop their business and have it ready to go in anticipation of the next upswing.
During this Lenten season, dedicate your fasting for an end to the war in Iraq, the return of all troops, and the restoration and reconstruction of Iraq for its people.
Incorporate your fast into public action drawing attention to President Obama's promise to the end the war in Iraq. Consider undertaking one or all of these actions:
• Write President Obama regarding your fast. Express in your email or letter that you are fasting for an end to the war in Iraq, the safe return of U.S. troops, and our nation's commitment to help in the restoration and reconstruction of Iraq. Express also your trust that President Obama will follow through on his pledge and bring the war to a close, leaving NO troops behind. You can click here to send a message to President Obama.
• Share your fast and the reasons behind it in a letter-to-the-editor of your local newspaper. Such public actions will help to keep the war in Iraq from being forgotten amidst our current economic problems and other issues. Additionally, it is important for us to continue to help build up public sentiment calling for an end to the war and occupation. Government leaders who want to do the right thing are more likely to do it when they believe they have the backing of various public constituencies, especially faith communities.
• Invite your friends, family, church groups, fellow students, and others to join you in your fast. Keep a tally of how many of you are fasting and share that number with us by sending an email to communications@paxchristiusa.org.. In our work with the new administration, it is important for us to show how people are mobilizing on particular issues like this. Knowing the number of people fasting can help us to show the broad support for bringing this war to an end.
• If you are on Facebook, join the Pax Christi USA Facebook group and follow the discussion thread, sharing your insights and reflections during your fast. Simply search for Pax Christi USA and join the group.
Your Job Remember when the best advice the president had was to be vigilant and buy duct tape? This president is offering advice and money to you which will also help our nation. The response to his speech in the SF bay area has been overwhelmingly positive. His views are the views of the entrepreneurs that made Silicon Valley and San Francisco the business and creative success it has been. Take a class. Start a small business. Listen to his speech. Have a great day!
Barack Obama is trying to find ways to save money.
The most obvious place to do that would be by reducing defense budgets. We need better strategies and a more efficient and effective contract procurement and oversight process. Our use of the military in the world tends to backfire and blowback in our faces, meaning the only consistent winners within our policies are the defense industry. Defense spending is the largest, most wasteful and often counter-productive spending we do. It's also one of the last things our nation produces.
Obama likely wants to give the impression that he's cutting defense budgets in order to politically calm the anxieties many felt about the Bush admin's increased abuse and dependence on the military. Will that actually take place? I don't believe so, but we'll see. There are many ways to spin the numbers. This is one of the two or three most powerful lobbies in the nation. At the least, I'd like to see a major reduction in waste and corruption in this area.
NAFTA is being militarized. "Leaders of Canada, the US, and Mexico have been meeting to secretly expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with “deep integration” of a more militarized tri-national Homeland Security force. Taking shape under the radar of the respective governments and without public knowledge or consideration, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)—headquartered in Washington—aims to integrate the three nations into a single political, economic, and security bloc."
In case we complain too much about everything, the army is buying riot gear.
The government likes to argue that it doesn't spend your income tax dollars on military, but is that true?
At the very least, is it too much to ask that the military stop "misplacing" billions in cash and equipment?
‘Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars.
Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.’ (John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt)
Rep Baird-D wants US to reassess aid to Israel. After visiting Gaza last week, he was struck by "the level of destruction, the scope of it, specifically the civilian targets - schools, hospitals, industry."'
What about Saudi Arabia and Pakistan ?
The United States is the clear leader in worldwide arms sales, with about 60% global market share of arm sales. Of the 100 largest arms-producing companies, 43 are US companies, including 8 of the 10 largest.
Have you ever heard anyone state that we don't export anything? We export weapons and weapons technology, though often not via routes that pay taxes to the US government.
Yesterday I mentioned the lawsuit coming from Geronimo's relatives alleging that a Yale fraternity stole Geronomo from his grave. Yesterday the House honored Geronimo.
Your Job Get some exercise! A healthy body is a healthy mind is a healthy individual and a healthy nation. Commit and don't quit! Happy Tuesday.
Barack Obama gives great speeches. I agree with most of what he says, often passionately. He's able to inspire a damaged nation to believe in itself again. He hasn't been in office for long enough for all that he talks about to take place. That said, some consistent themes remain:
The government and industry often appear to have more power over the president than vice versa -- a president's own advisors are often more powerful than the president himself, a concept written about by both Plato and Strauss.
Barack Obama is but one man presiding over a government full of folks trying to take him down.
The financial elite are above the law.
Some consistent problems remain unaddressed:
Wall Street engineered the housing & debt bubble, bribed and blackmailed politicians and secured bailouts worth more than the net worth of the companies receiving the bailouts, while everyone else who can't pay their bills goes bankrupt or out of business.
Banks are being further bought up by international organized crime and the Carlyle Group
"The plan proposed in Washington would effectively force the troubled US banks into receivership and put them under government control, recapitalise them with taxpayers' funds and then sell them off to private investors, wiping out the existing shareholders' equity. The President said of the US banking system last week: "I think what you can say is I will not allow our financial system to collapse. And we are going to do whatever is required to get credit flowing again, so companies and consumers can do their business and we can get this economy back on track.""
Maybe a new US Department of Banking would be created and then the work of the department would be outsourced to new companies formed by the currently out-of-work hedge-fund workers who helped get us into this mess. I thought I was kidding, but the possibilities aren't so far off.
I really want to like the idea of bank nationalization. I've read convincing arguments but I can't help but note that the government outsources everything and oversees nothing. We end up overpaying for sweetheart deals that don't have a good record of accomplishing what was originally intended. Do you really want your money supply to be centralized? We're already headed toward a future of profile-aware everything -- for instance, picture entering an airport and a machine stopping you from proceeding -- "Please pay $44.23 to pay your Blockbuster fee before proceeding. Say YES to confirm deduction from your US National account." What's to stop the next Bush-style administration from shutting down your bank account or internet access based on critical comments you make on the web? The ultimate goal of some industrialists is to have all of our information and money accessible by a chip embedded in a card we carry (ie, passport?) or directly on our person. Some might say this is alarmist, but what was called alarmist 10 years ago is accepted as common today.
This isn't what is being suggested now, is it. What is being suggested now sounds like more bailouts with a vague notion of temporary government ownership.
"The heirs of Apache chieftain Geronimo are suing Skull & Bones, Yale's oldest secret society, for the return of the old warrior's skull, the Yale Daily News reports.
Geronimo died of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Okla., but the suit alleges that members of the society, whose membership rolls include George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, John Kerry, and William F. Buckley, exhumed the remains around 1918 and placed them in the society's tomb. The paper says rumors have long suggested that Prescott Bush, father of the 41st president, was among the group allegedly involved." USA Today
Old Quotes:
"I have put thousands of Americans away for tens of thousands of years for less evidence for conspiracy with less evidence than is available against Ollie North and CIA people. . . . I personally was involved in a deep-cover case that went to the top of the drug world in three countries. The CIA killed it."
Former DEA Agent Michael Levine
CNBC-TV, October 8, 1996
Your Job What role do you want the government to play with banks?
If you steal enough money you wield power over the government that might pursue you for a lesser offense. Who cooked the World's Economy?
This scheme that smacks of securities fraud facilitated the dreams of buyers called "counterparties" willing to ante up. Hedge fund offices sprouted in Kensington and Mayfair like mushrooms after a summer shower. Revenue from premiums for derivatives at AIGFP rose from $737 million in 1999 to $3.26 billion in 2005. Cassano reportedly hectored ever-willing counterparties to "play the power game"—in other words, gobble up all the credit derivatives backing CDOs that they could grab. As the bundled adjustable-rate mortgages ballooned, stretched home buyers defaulted, and the exciting power game became about as risky as blasting sitting ducks with a Glock.
In mid-September, when it was on the ropes, AIG received an astonishing $85 billion emergency line of credit from the Fed. Soon, that was supplemented by another $67 billion. Much of that money, to use the government's euphemism, has already been "drawn down." Shamefully, neither Washington nor AIG will explain where the billions went. But the answer is increasingly clear: It went to counterparties who bought derivatives from Cassano's shop in London.
Imagine if a ring of cashiers at a local bank made thousands of bad loans, aware that they could break the bank. They would be prosecuted for fraud and racketeering under the anti-gangster RICO Act. If their counterparties—the debtors—were in on the scam and understood that they didn't have to pay off the loans, they could be charged, too. In fact, this scenario played out at subprime-pushing outlets of a host of banks, including Washington Mutual (acquired last year by JP Morgan Chase, which itself received a $25 billion bailout); IndyMac (which was seized by FDIC regulators); and Lehman Brothers (which went belly-up). About 150 prosecutions of this type of fraud are going forward.
The top of the swamp's food chain, where the muck was derivatives rather than mortgages, must also be scrutinized. Apparently, that is the case. AIGFP's Cassano has hired top white-collar litigator and former prosecutor F. Joseph Warin (profiled in the 2004 Washingtonian piece, "Who to Call When You're Under Investigation!"). Neither Cassano nor his attorney responded to interview requests.
The crash of 2008 continues to reverberate loudly nationwide—destroying jobs, bankrupting businesses, and displacing homeowners. But already, it has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?
Soros sees no bottom for world collapse. Banks can't afford to pay out the insurance policies (CDS) that were taken betting on the real estate market crashing. When most companies and people can't pay up, they go bankrupt and the people owed money to get pennies on the dollar.
I voted for Obama and I like still like the guy. That doesn't change the fact however that his administration is wrong and even corrupt when it comes to this banking crisis. It began in the Bush administration. I like what Obama SAYS about cleaning it up, but so far the actions have not matched the rhetoric. I'm not going to pile on Obama because that simply leads to the same-old democrat versus republican swings we get which get us nowhere. We need real change and if we don't determine as a society what that change is, we will be handed the change on the dollar from a plan derived by, for the most part, the same group of people that robbed and crashed us. The world economy was trashed for profit and the criminals who did this are not being pursued as criminals -- they've been pursued as administration allies in the Treasury Department, the SEC, etc. We cannot afford this level of corruption. The banks don't need more money. More of them need to fail and default on their payments. The taxpayer can help pay the debts, but pennies on the dollar. Derivatives need to be regulated ASAP. There is no talk of any of this. There's simply been a mad rush to get the money out the door.
Today is Suggestion Sunday, so let us know what ideas you have. Happy Sunday folks.
So, let's recap. Read the previous blog entries for the links to the news stories. Wall Street firms (ie, international organized crime):
- engineered the housing and debt bubble
- spent laviscously on US politicians
- received more bailout money than they are worth from the US taxpayer
- are being further bought up by international organized crime and the war profiteering, defense/security company super-VC, the Carlyle Group
This was the largest bank robbery in our history -- a stone cold blow from Wall Street/international organized crime and none of the leaders in charge stopped it -- most, including Barack Obama, John McCain and George Bush, pushed it through, and very few spoke out against it. An overwhelming number of Americans that called their represenatives last fall to protest it.
The result:
- prices are going to go way up while salaries are not
- The same war profiteers and international crime networks that put up the neocons now have even more power and wealth, thus the far right-wing, which politically includes both Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad, continues to see a growth in power, despite recent assumptions that the election of Barack Obama would reverse all of this.
Here is a simple explanation of a part of the economic aspects of this crisis, but not the criminal or political aspects. Note that it also does not discuss the massive knockout punch that are Credit Default Swaps; insurance policies on the mortgage mess that payed out when it all collapsed.
Call Congress. Tell them you know about the bank robbery, that the nation isn't quite as out of the loop as they think and demand they start addressing it. We should be calling often. I'll keep this number posted somewhere.
You can reach any Congress-person via the Congress switchboard at 202.224.3121
Money manager Robert Allen Stanford has a few things in common with Bernard Madoff: both have defrauded investors, given significant money to politicians and both are tied to organized crime and the darker side of intelligence work.
Stanford is "yet another multi-billion dollar cog in a network of off-shore banks, corporate contrivances, and folding tent operations. Although Stanford is being investigated for a $8 billion fraud scheme, the U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Stanford has "extensive" holdings on the island of St. Croix, told the Associated Press that the Obama Justice Department is "not actively pursuing" Stanford."
"Last November 1, the Spanish news agency EFE reported that Hugo Chavez's military intelligence agents raided Stanford International Bank in Caracas and investigated three Stanford Bank employees at the Venezuela branch who were believed to be U.S. intelligence agents.
Investigations into Stanford and his Stanford Financial Group in Houston buying up land in Antigua and Barbuda and running roughshod over the government of that nation."
Project Censored's set of censored stories for 2009: #1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation # 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA # 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business # 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America? # 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets # 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act # 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking # 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly #9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify # 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture # 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror # 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind # 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq # 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste # 15 Worldwide Slavery # 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights # 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights # 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers # 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction # 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record # 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option # 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid # 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs # 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror # 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer
Your Job: Bush or Obama, we still have the same war profiteers making a killing. The wealthiest 4% during the Busy years made a killing, often via international organized crime which no government seems to police very often.
The FBI has a separate, on-going investigation into whether Stanford's operation served as a money-laundering operation for one of the big Mexican drug cartels.
Did you know that Facebook is aggregating information about you outside of what you do on Facebook? Facebook is now worth $15B? Its a huge success.
Unrelated but also succesful is the occupation of Iraq...
...for the defense and security industry. Alright, but what kind of operation misplaces $50 billion? What kind of government can't figure out what happened?
In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money.
In many cases, contractors never started or finished facilities they were supposedly building.
Obama is surging troop levels in Afgahnistan. I'm not convinced that the right strategy in Afghanistan starts with more troops.
Mr. free-the-markets Greenspan now backs nationalizing banks, just until their back on their feet, so...isn't that a fancy way of suggesting taxpayers just give banks even more money for nothing? Capitalists don't truly nationalize anything, do they?
For years many of us fought privacy invasions on the web. Now we're voluntarily tagging ourselves. We finally trust the privacy of a web system because we see old friends in it. We have however voluntarily helped create the world's largest database of personal profiles. Facebook is on the cusp of expanding their efforts to monetize what they have for value.
... profile information for targeted advertising: "We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalised features."
Think Facebook only knows what you tell them?
"Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (eg, photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalised experience."
What's wrong with what we tell them? That's a lot. Why isn't that enough for them that they have to go on an aggressive profile aggregation and enhancement program? To further monetize us.
Facebook is...
...permananent: "When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information."
The government doesn't have to ask to be your friend.
"By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States ... We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies."
Facebook today announced that for the time being they are reverting to a previous privacy policy until the controversy dies downbut the face remains the same, they have a lot of personal information and they need to monetize. I assume we all remember that the government's Total Information Awareness program had to pretend to no longer exist due to bad publicity as well.
I've heard two stories about users that tried to delete their information en masse and subsequently had their accounts frozen.
I instigated what as far as I know, was the first ever Facebook party. Ok, Facebook already is a party and maybe I wasn't the first, but at any rate, as a party, it like having a few people over to chat around photos of drinks, food and varying entertainment rooms, playing from Jazz to Gwar. I expected conversations to jump around from object to object but only the most committed to the party chose to jump around with "the party". The conversations-around-objects (ie, status updates, photos, etc) paradigm of Facebook was not conducive to real-time conversations with groups. Though it works on a day-to-day basis, limits of talking only with your "friends" also impeded the party possibilities. Ultimately it was more interesting as a social experiment and product test than it was as a party.
Thanks to Facebook, I've reconnected with many old friends. For that, I'm grateful and appreciative of the product. It is however a product. Some other product will improve on the experience and our personal information will continue to be more widely available.
Companies and the government want to be your "friend"! Select one: Accept or Accept.
"The 545 people link indirectly made me think of something I've never thought of: that term limits (on any level) encourage lame ducks to do crap they'd be afraid to do if they faced reelection.
Let's get rid of term limits. For presidents too. That's my suggestion for Thing to Do." (Mark Baldridge)
Your Job:
Companies and politicians you don't know personally, are not your friends. It's OK to constructively criticize. I voted for Barack Obama. I'm against bailing out failing companies but I'm for spending on health, education and infrastucture. I can be for one and against the other. I use and appreciate Facebook but I openly critizize it as well. We can do both. Today, pick something that has an affect on you, be it within the government or our culture, and come up with a list of what is good and what is bad about it. Constructive criticism helps us improve.
Taxpayers gave money to banks so they could increase lending and ease up the credit crunch, right? Well, the ones that received money actually cut lending!
The cycle during which the Stanford Financial Group gave the most in political contributions was 2001-2002. That may have been because, at that time, Congress was debating the Financial Services Antifraud Network Act, which, according to CRP, would have "created a computer network linking the databases of state and federal banking, securities and insurance regulators to curb financial fraud." http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/after_lobbying_from_stanford_senate_killed_bill_to.php
Your Job: Watch less television and do something positive with that time. There's good programming on TV. I don't watch much of it, but when I do, I enjoy movies and occasionally things like the the Discovery Channel or Comedy Central. We need to relax to regenerate and sometimes after a long day some mindless entertainment does the trick. It's easy however to overdue it. Maybe researching a topic on the web or reading a book or playing a game every once in awhile is ultimately more rewarding. Do what you want, but remember that as a nation we are what we consume. Happy Tuesday! :)
What exactly would it be like to be president? What do you do when your advisers manage you? Pick someone beside yourself and "walk a mile in their shoes."
Are just 545 people responsible for all of our problems or are they just puppets of industry?
Normally I won't link to stories like this, but today I'll make an exception just to point out again that it's interesting how many details in a story get contradicted by other stories and how many assumptions and conclusions we jump to based on the little we pay attention to and are essentially told to think. I'm busy - it happens to me too.
Cockpit instruments apparently indicated that onboard anti-icing systems were operating normally on a Continental Connection turboprop shortly before it stalled and crashed near Buffalo, N.Y. Thursday night from what now appears to be deadly accumulation of ice on some critical flight surfaces, according to federal investigators
9/11 activist, 9/11 skeptic and widow Beverly Eckert died on that plane but so too did human rights expert, Alison Des Forges', who had just revealed a secret deal between Rwanda's Paul Kagame and Congo's Joseph Kabil. I'm not making any claims because I haven't spent enough time researching it, but where there's a story with quickly and contradictory details, there's often fire.
"The US government has given Citigroup $45 billion in direct cash injections while guaranteeing another $291 billion of the banks toxic (worthless) assets. Citi’s cost to the taxpayer now totals $336 billion.
Think you over paid? You did. The entire market capitalization of Citigroup is only $19 billion which means that anyone can buy the entire company and assume full control for $19 billion. Taxpayers have paid Citi almost 18 times what the entire company is worth, while receiving no control, voting rights, or even an ATM fee reversal!
Bank of America is a similar story. $183 billion in injections and guarantees of worthless assets on a company that can be bought and controlled entirely for $27 billion.
Bank of America and Citigroup have already cost the US taxpayer a whopping $519 billion.
To put things in better perspective, at $519 billion, you could completely own and control General Motors, Alcoa, American Express, The Disney Corporation, McDonalds, Home Depot, Hewlett Packard, Merck, Du Pont, Boeing, Caterpillar, Intel, 3M, and Kraft foods while still having a cool $6 billion in cash left over.
Nearly half of a trillion dollars has gone to Citigroup and Bank of America alone. The government has overpaid by more than 11 times the total value of the two companies and has absolutely nothing to show for it. The taxpayers receive no dividend or interest payments, have no ownership or control, and are at the mercy of paying back interest and fees to organizations running on public money."
The FBI is going to move from helping cover up investigating . My cynicism there may be ill-founded given how significantly much more widespread financial fraud is than terrorism. So for now, hats off to the FBI. Your Job: It's suggestion Sunday. Suggest something for the rest of us to do!
When we read today's news, what happens to yesterday's news?
We tend to forget it. We look at news at least in part as entertainment. When news outrages us, we tend to forget yesterday's outrage.
This doesn't help us prioritize the issues we face. Bank scandals get old. What else ya got? We've learned as a society not to let anything take us down, not for too long anyway. Cheer up man, have some fun. No one likes the buzzkill. The party is marching off the cliff but are you going to be the one to try to stop it? It's certainly not fun trying.
"Although we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons, we assess Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop them."
Except, hmm, US newspapers are spinning the opposite story:
It's so easy to forget how misleading headlines can me -- agendas can beobvious if you stay alert, though even when you're aware of them, they can be effective propoganda.
But enough of today, what happened to yesterday, or the day before or the day before or last September or the past 8 years or the past 40?
Let's recap and simplify:
Wall Street is international organized crime. Wall Street firms conspired to engineer a fraudulent housing and debt bubble, illegally shipping vast wealth to foreign banks and then held the government ransom in order to secure massive amounts of taxpayer money -- money that dwarfs the cost of Obama's stimulus plan. The mouthpieces for the international organized criminals object to spending any money on healthcare, education or infrastructure. Why do US politicians and US media only label spending that helps US citizens as "big government" spending?
We are their enemy. The SEC protects them, not you. They have more power than the president. The largest robbery in the history of the US hasn't ended.
That's not the story the US media tells, is it, but the US media, like Wall Street, is a business. There is a seemless transition between legal big business and illegal big business, with both having more power over the government than you do. This is our crisis folks and we haven't come even close to rising to the challenge to address it.
How much money are we talking about? The following is a chart of federal borrowing through Dec. 2007:
Electing Barack Obama was an inspiring event, but it's possibly served to pull the wool further over our eyes, believing that one man can change all of this. Some Obama critics like to say that Obama is no different than Bush. I strongly disagree. Obama is more intelligent, honest and ethical and cares more about the American public than Bush or his administration did. That's not however, nearly enough.
Your Job: Stop for a moment. Stop going on quickly to the next thing just for a moment to process this. I learned long ago not to wallow in my own pain, but that's not what I'm suggesting you do. We can still enjoy our lives and even consume news as entertainment, but if it's only entertainment to us than as a society we're nothing more than pawns in our own small ponds. But I can't do anything about it, you might tell yourself, and this is not true. Culture changes when we change. We change when we let information sink in. Culture is our best weapon as a people. We can still celebrate our lives along the way. If we didn't do that, we'd forgot what we were fighting for.
The government likes to argue that it doesn't spend your income tax dollars on military, but is that true?
U.S. military spending is equal to the military spending of the next 15 countries combined.Our spending accounts for 47 percent of the world’s total military spending, and our share of the world's GDP is about 21 percent. Of the top 15 military spenders, 12 are US allies. We outspend Iran and North Korea by a ratio of 72 to one.
That means the defense industry is going to have sell the government more weapons not only to replace the ones being lost but to fight the Taliban's increased weapon capacity. Is it any wonder we spend so much on defense companies? There are defense companies in all 50 states. Is it any wonder politicians never oversee these contracts? What do we think about the fact that most defense contracts are "cost plus", meaning taxpayers pay more and defense companies make more when projects go overbudget. Ever heard the phrase, "good enough for government work?"
Originated in World War II. When something was "good enough for Government work" it meant it could pass the most rigorous of standards. Over the years it took on an ironic meaning that is now the primary sense, referring to poorly executed work.
"Government work" is also a term for the manufacture of something on company time for personal use. For example, a custom trailer hitch made at a welding shop for the welder himself on the afternoon shift with no supervisors around is government work. Commonly heard in Ontario, Canada and northeast U.S. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/good_enough_for_government_work
The biggest spending programs of recent years were the Iraq occupation, the counter-productive War on Terror and now the Bush/Obama bank robberies.
"I am frustrated beyond belief. We're talking to ourselves and you're pretending to be here. I really don't understand what's going on. Previous witness said that you guys as an agency act like you're deaf, dumb and blind...You've told us nothing and I figured that's your intention." (Rep Gary Ackerman to SEC officials)
So....Bernie Madoff ran the largest ponzi scheme ever for foreign organized crime, Wall Street engineered the sub-prime crisis for profit and the SEC is an expensive front for all of this?
Republican politicians are more upset about the spending on US health, education and infrastructure.
Does the president run the government or does the government run the president?
Regarding that run on the banks that took place last year, written about in yesterday's blog. Mike Rivero has a theory:
"At 2:20 the big ugly secret comes out. Within an hour, some $550 billion was electronically withdrawn from the money market accounts. The claim is that had the government not blocked further withdrawals and stared poffering guarantees, the US and World economies would have been collapsed?
Maybe. Obviously there are theories all around as to what happened, and mine is very simple.
Wall Street knew they were in trouble. The American people were no longer asking for new loans that could create new money that would be used to pay the interest on old loans. Collapse was imminent, and worse, the American people rightly blamed the financial shysters for their poverty. People were starting to sue the mortgage lenders and the mortgage-back securities fraudsters.
So the investment banks and brokerages and loan companies pulled off a scam. Working through overseas "cut-outs" they yanked $500 billion dollars to put a scare into the US Government, then turned around and warned that if the bailout was not passed, they would collapse the US economy itself and shift the blame onto the government.
This theory explains the absolute total panic we saw in Congress as they ramrodded through the first bailout despite overwhelming taxpayer opposition.
And the problem is that is this theory is correct, and the Wall Street "Bernies" are blackmailing the US Government with their own financial doomsday weapon, then the bailouts will continue, as blackmailers never stop on their own.
This may be why, even as Congress passes this most recent bailout, word is already coming from the White House that yet another trillion and a half bailout is already being planned."
Is Los Alamos better than Pakistan's ISI as a source of black market nuclear intelligence? This time they are missing 69 computers.
We seem to always overlook in our nation that only a small portion of the government changes from administration to administration. Barack Obama is one man with a sword fighting a tidal wave.
People who report on abuses by government are still not welcome in government. Is Barack Obama one man with a sword fighting a tidal wave?
Rahm Emmanuel is why Howard Dean isn't in Obama's administration.
Support for the stimulus is increasing:
But not support for the bank bailouts. Is the public really able to distinguish the two? Good news if so.
"As I've said to a couple of the bankers, 'Here's this problem: People really hate you, and they're starting to hate us because we're hanging out with you.'" (Barney Frank - D)
Most people oppose nationalizing the banks, but one reader, Josh Keiler, asks if nationalization of the banks is the only possible solution:
Nationalization is likely the only true way out of this mess. 75% of people don't know what that really means, and are just scared of the word "Socialism". Especially if it is screamed day after day by the likes of Rush-O'Rielly-Hannity-Beck.
It may be getting to the point that the system becomes unsalvageable. Of course, if we reach that point, Obama will get the blame rather than Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush.
Another reader, Paul Brown, points out using the unemployment stats, just how wrong the republicans are on this:
Of course FDR didn't cause the depression, but there has been a consistent and still popular debate as to whether he actually ended it. Even after 6 years of the new deal the unemployment rate in 1938 was still almost 20%. This stat (most often quoted by Republican talking heads is based on stats that don't take into account the jobs that govt creates. This tactic is alive well today as it was back in the 1930s. Republicans don't consider government created jobs as jobs but rather as temporary work. Tell that to the KBR no-bid contractors who have been soaking up those temporary work gigs for the last 8 years.
Real stats are hard to argue when it comes to who actually puts Americans to work and creates jobs. Jobs defined as people earning a pay check whether through govt created intervention or through private enterprise.
Check out these numbers. FDR orchestrated the biggest drop in unemployment in history. Trend analysis: Republicans generally make the number of unemployed go up and Democrats make the numbers go down.
ROOSEVELT PRE-WWII NEW DEAL 1932 Unemployment Rate: 23.6% (12.8 million total unemployed) 1940 Unemployment Rate: 14.6% (8.1 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: -9.0 Total unemployment percentage change: -36.7%
ROOSEVELT WWII 1941 Unemployment Rate: 9.9% (5.5 million total unemployed) 1944 Unemployment Rate: 1.2% (670,000 total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: -8.7 Total unemployment percentage change: -87.9%
TRUMAN 1945 Unemployment Rate: 1.9% (1.0 million total unemployed) 1952 Unemployment Rate: 3.0% (1.8 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: +1.1 Total unemployment percentage change: +81.0%
EISENHOWER 1953 Unemployment Rate: 2.9% (1.8 million total unemployed) 1960 Unemployment Rate: 5.5% (3.8 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: +2.6% Total unemployment percentage change: +110.03%
KENNEDY 1961 Unemployment Rate: 6.7% (4.7 million total unemployed) 1963 Unemployment Rate: 5.7% (4.0 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: -1.0% Total unemployment percentage change: -13.6%
JOHNSON 1964 Unemployment Rate: 5.2% (3.7 million total unemployed) 1968 Unemployment Rate: 3.6% (2.8 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: -1.6% Total unemployment percentage change: -25.6%
NIXON 1969 Unemployment Rate: 3.5% (2.8 million total unemployed) 1974 Unemployment Rate: 5.6% (5.1 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: +2.1% Total unemployment percentage change: +82.0%
FORD 1975 Unemployment Rate: 8.5% (7.9 million total unemployed) 1976 Unemployment Rate: 7.7% (7.4 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: -0.8% Total unemployment percentage change: -6.6%
CARTER 1977 Unemployment Rate: 7.1% (6.9 million total unemployed) 1980 Unemployment Rate: 7.1% (7.6 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: 0.0 Total unemployment percentage change: +9.24%
REAGAN 1981 Unemployment Rate: 7.6% (8.2 million total unemployed) 1988 Unemployment Rate: 5.5% (6.7 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: -2.1% Total unemployment percentage change: -19.0%
BUSH I 1989 Unemployment Rate: 5.3% (6.5 million total unemployed) 1992 Unemployment Rate: 7.5% (9.6 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change: +2.2 Total unemployment percentage change: +47.2%
CLINTON 1993 Unemployment Rate: 6.9% (8.9 million total unemployed) 2000 Unemployment Rate: 4.0% (5.6 million total unemployed) Unemployment Rate Change -2.9 Total unemployment percentage change: -36.3%
Of course that isn't to say the democrats are inherently right. They have a stimulus plan, but you can't read it.
Your Job: Tell someone about this blog. That's pretty easy to do , isn't it? Thanks for reading it. That's enough motivation alone for me to write it. Some of you have written me e-mails of support and I really do appreciate them. If you would, please help me increase readership by e-mailing the link to a few folks. Thanks kindly! Happy Thursday nation! :)
Did you know there was an electronic run on the banks last year?
"It was about September 15th.....On Thursday, at about 11 O'Clock in the morning, (At 2 minutes, 20 seconds into this C-Span video clip), Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania explains how the Federal Reserve told Congress members about an hour-long electronic run on the banks of $550 B which had to be shut down.
Illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the U.S.;
Used “privitization” as form of piracy - a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder."
The derivatives that have the banks in trouble right now (Credit Default Swaps) are like insurance plans that pay out when things fail. There is next to zero honor or ethics at the top levels of business and government. Is Barack Obama not one man waving a sword at a tidal wave? Bush was clearly a puppet of industry.
Does the US President run the government or does the government and industry run the US president?
These bank bailouts will continue to sour the public's appetite for "stimulus" spending. Is the general public distinguishing between the two? Fiscally conservative republicans who lockstep supported Bush's record big government spending are balking at helping American health, education and infrasturcture. In a few years, the public is likely to forget the distinction between the two presidents when it comes to at least spending on banks.
How do you fix banking? Let bad banks fail. These companies are like bad drug habits without jobs.
"The real story of the leak by Petraeus is that the most powerful figure in the U.S. military has tried to shape the media coverage of Obama and combat troop withdrawal from Iraq to advance his policy agenda - and, very likely, his personal political interests as well."
The Soviet Union was taken down in party via an ISI/CIA-financed war of Saudi mujadeen who would later become Al Qaeda* in Afghanistan, but also via the flooding of their market with their own currency.
Given the role power of the Russian Israeli mob today is it so so far fetched to ask if they played some role in our current problems? It's certainly not far-fetched to point out that not everyone is rooting for us to succeed.
* Al Qaeda was originially the name of the database of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. ( Robin Cook, the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Commons)
For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.
Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.
Bleak assesment. The Russians know a bit about this kind of thing.
The New Hampshire state legislature introduced a resolution to declare certain actions by the federal government completely totally void and warned that certain future acts will be viewed as a “breach of peace” with the states themselves that risks “nullifying the Constitution.”
America needs Howard Dean as HHS. Why is Obama ignoring this guy? To me, this is a good test of exactly how pro-US citizen Obama really is. Howard Dean has passed that test.
Yesterday, the Senate version of the economic stimulus package included $1 billion dollars in funding for the nuclear weapons complex. The Senate Appropriations Committee is taking advantage of the current economic crisis to give the nuclear weapons complex free money to expand their programs.
President Obama pledged to "set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it." Such spending is contrary to the president's goal of nuclear disarmament. Giving one billion dollars to expand nuclear weapons capabilities is immoral, unconscionable and irresponsible, especially since it will have no impact on improving the economy, except to divert funds away from real solutions to our economic crisis.
The Senate bill next goes to a Conference Committee in order to reconcile the differences between the House version and the Senate version of the stimulus bill. The House version of the stimulus does NOT have any funding for nuclear weapons. This is our chance to impact the final version of the bill.
Senate Members of the Conference Committee include: Sen. Max Baucus (MT), Sen. Thad Cochran (MS), Sen. Chuck Grassley (IA), Sen. Daniel Inouye (HI), Sen. Harry Reid (NV)
House Members of the Conference Committee include: Rep. David Obey (WI-7), Rep. Charles Rangel (NY-15), Rep. Henry Waxman (CA-30), Rep. Jerry Lewis (CA-41), Rep. Dave Camp (MI-4)
TAKE ACTION: If your senator or representative is on the Conference Committee, call 202-224-3121 (the Capitol Switchboard)
Your Job: Get friendly.....with your neighbor, with your co-worker, with your family and with your community. Humans have endured much worse than what this nation is going through, but things are likely to get worse before they get better. The ongoing bad news is likely to foster tension, stress and depression in the public. If that motivates you to prepare yourself and your family for the worst, fine, but don't let fear drive your life. The fear of terrorism after 9/11 was used to do a lot of counter-productive expensive things in our name. Industry and political leaders tend to love fear.
If you're reading this, obviously you are alive and thus you are capable of celebrating whatever life we have and extending some good to the people around you. We're going to really need each other as time goes on.
Riots and violence are nothing more than a profit opportunity for defense and security companies. There are more productive ways to move the nation forward, from what New Hampshire is trying as a state, to trying to grow more of your own food, to staying informed and talking to each other and today, to being friendly.
Organized crime is buying up the banks, with your help of course. Bush's record spending plans helped banks, Iraq war contractors and War on Terror contractors. Maybe republicans are opposed to the Obama plan because it helps ordinary Americans.
"You have the supply — an organized crime industry with enormous amounts of cash, estimated at $322 billion in 2005, not any more stored in banks — and the demand, a banking sector strapped for liquidity."
"I insist that the (globalized) crime industry has become so gigantic, destabilizing so many countries, that it is emerging in areas where we have not seen it before. They're buying more than just industry, real estate, elections, power." (Antonio Maria Costa of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime)
“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country. Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?” (Senator Byron Dorgan - D)
A new Quinnipiac poll finds that if Joe Lieberman ran for a fifth term in 2012 against Connecticut's Dem Attorney General he would lose 58% to 30%.
Comments: Your Job: Call Congress. Tell them you want more of your taxpayer money working for you, not organized crime-backed banks. Tell them that the recovery/stimulus bill should create jobs and improve our health, education and infrastructure, not overseas companies, foreign powers or crime networks. And most importantly, tell them to figure out how to oversee what they're doing.
You can reach any Congress-person via the Congress switchboard at 202.224.3121
Alleged "Fiscal conservatives" who were just fine with Bush's massive government spending on corrupt overseas contracts are now calling Obama's plan to spend money on US healthcare, US education and US infrastructure, wasteful spending.
Government spending programs have a way of becoming ineffective or counter-productive cottage industries -- the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terror. Government borrowing makes our dollar worth less through inflation. The two largest spending programs recently have been the Iraq occupation and the counter-productive War on Terror. How can we afford these counter-productive initiatives while neglecting our own health, education and infrastructure?
Can we afford to spend more? Can we afford not to? Are we able to think beyond tax cuts?
Folks fought hard to elect Barack Obama, but he's only one man against a tidal wave of problems and extremists. The honeymoon is over, not just for Barack Obama, but for all of us. For the past 8, or even arguably 40 years, we've been pushing further and further to the extreme right. Terms like "liberal" may get redefined over time, but simply put, power and money rule the world and there is little to no effective governance insuring that we are not subjected further and further to the business of terror and war. In many ways the world united to stem the tide to the right however we may have celebrated our victory too early. US Seeks to Reduce US and Russia's Nuclear Capability to Israel's level by Including Russia in War on Terror Business?
"We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq..." (These events) "swung American public opinion in our favor." (Netanyahu) http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/975574.html
Republicans who couldn't care less about fiscal conservatism under the Bush administraton are now calling the plan to help Americans instead of Iraqis, an outrageous spending program. Judging by polls, Americans are buying it. As long as they get tax-cuts, they don't care what happens.
Your Job: Wake up and get active. What did you do during the Bush administration? Do more of it. Even TALKING with one another about what's going on is helpful. If you sit back and don't speak out, then the voices in the government's ear are only those pushing us further to the right.
Madoff whistleblower begs Russian(-Israeli/Ukrainian?) organized crime not to come after him:
ACKERMAN: I'm talking about, when you talk about the Russian mob and organized crime, these are people who invested through European investors or European feeder funds?
MARKOPOLOS: Correct. And I didn't fear of them, and I didn't think they were going to come after me, I want to make this perfectly clear to all those Russian mobsters and Latin American drug cartels out there...
ACKERMAN: You're talking directly to them.
MARKOPOLOS: I was acting on your behalf trying to stop him from zeroing out your accounts. I'm the good guy here. Just like to make that clear
Just how much power does organized crime have over every government in the world?
Markopolos about the SEC:"If you flew the entire SEC staff to Boston, and sat them in Fenway Park, they wouldn't be able to find first base."
"As an alleged post 9/11 defense, the War on Terrorism is a gigantic fraud." (Terry Arnold, Deputy Director, Office of Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning)
Reactions: In response to yesterday's entry: "Is it likely that the old-guard liberal establishment will begin to misread and mistrust President Obama as it becomes apparent that he is not following scrupulously in their footsteps?
If his policies continue to approximate a more networked, distributed and collaborative model borrowed from extremely efficient and successfully evolving technology-based projects (such as Wiki*, "open source" platforms, etc.) will it be up to those whom experience has taught the superiority of those models to defend the President from mere top-down Liberal criticism?
Will the world be safer when everyone builds it?
Can President Obama continue in this direction without the vociferous support of partisans of these methods?
Is this, even, what he's attempting? Or has he made it clear in message after message that we who imagine a shared future must begin to take part in creating it?
Hypothetical Question: It's known that the NSA had intelligence, that, if shared with other agencies, might have warned or even averted the 911 attacks; What would happen if we shared intelligence about terrorist objectives, movements and communications - all of it that wouldn't compromise its source and scoured of security sensitive details - with all ally, or even demonstrably neutral governments, much less among our own agencies?
This is only a thought experiment, not a suggestion - could imagining exactly how and why such a plan might succeed of fail in the real world shed any light on ways in which sharing of information might be of advantage to ourselves and the factions of peace - even those who would see the iron domination of the US lessened in the world?
As the structures protected and in some sense founded on bullying, might, superior technology, wealth and power, all of these, collapse, can we imagine a scenario in which we share our way to success?
Where wisdom, information and communication become the common coin, what happens to the doctrine of scarcity on which our old world, now dying, was founded?" (Mark Baldridge)
Your Job: How is it that organized crime is the number one business in so many parts of the world but yet it's so rarely reported on in our media or talked about by our politicians?
Today, spend a little bit of time investigating organized crime and the overlap between legitimate big businesses and illegal ones -- arms and drug trafficking, money laundering, human trafficking, etc) How can a War on Terror with business ties to organized crime reduce global terrorism with business ties to organized crime? What incentive is there for any business to reduce that which it needs to make it profitable?
There's a reason there is no government oversight over anything (except our phone calls). When business runs government and the business is illegal, is there anything that the citizens of the world do? We can start by throwing out our old stereotypes and spend some time learning about the enormous power over us that illegal business has.
Despite reports that Rove may be cooperating int he probe of political use of US Attorneys, is Rove and the U.S. Attorney for Northern Alabama, Alice Martin, in concert with the Obama Justice Department, engaged in a fishing expedition against chief Rove accuser, former Alabama GOP research assistant Dana Jill Simpson?
Comments: “He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever” (Chinese Proverb)
“Sometimes questions are more important than answers.” (Nancy Willard)
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” (Albert Einstein)
“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” (Naguib Mahfouz)
“If you judge, investigate” (Seneca)
“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But... the good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"" (Martin Luther King Jr)
Your Job: Ask a good question.
We used to pride ourselves on being an open society unafraid of asking any question. Is that still the case? Some questions, albeit during the Bush administration years, no matter how simple or obvious, were marginalized.
Too often we are satisfied with answers that may not be accurate. We often don't have time to find out the real answer, so it's easier to simply find out what other people think and go with that.
Why did Cheney and Bush seek to obstruct an investigation of 9/11? Why did Obama select as advisors the same people that got us into this mess? The answer to the first question might be because they didn't want to focus on their failures and the answer to the second question might be that Obama wants to appease everyone, including the financial elite. But are these 100% accurate answers? When we're satisfied with easy answers, when we let the TV talking heads drive what we believe to be true, we become overly susceptible to suggestion and manipulation.
We must continue to ask questions, to break the taboo that asking these questions may entail, and to constantly seek to refine our view of what the answers are. This is the science that understanding truth is. Ask questions. Test hypotheses. Understand and isolate variables. Questions sources. Let the new information you acquire modify the paradigm in which you view the subject.
The question is so powerful that it is also used, especially in politics, to cast doubt upon something. The question can be used for good and it can be used for evil.
To improve the nation and world, we must get involved. We should constructively discuss and criticize our government, our selves, our parties and our politicians and pro-actively drive our own culture as opposed to reactively letting it be driven for us. Our politicians cannot and will not on their own improve the nation without our involvement. TheFirst100 encourages discussion, suggestions and involvement.
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