Dysfunctional or Highly Effective

Watching the right wing in congress wield its powers to obstruct the health care restructuring that 85% of the public wants reveals the character of the wingers more than ever. Policy that public interest would dictate is anathema to what remains of the GOP. It's rather scary to see what they do want; war, debt, deregulation, repression of workers/salaries.

Today as the minimum wage rises for the first time since the last Democratic White House, it might be a good time to look at who benefits when the public is slammed.

The facts behind the wars that the previous war criminal administration waged have become clear; the war on Iraq had been determined long before 9/11 which was used to precipitate it. Many believe, and state, that it was a war for oil; I think that the outcome indicates it was a broader pattern. Not just the oil companies that the previous maladministration truckled to profited hugely. The war profiteers that include Cheney's Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater and associated military suppliers also had free reign which included being appointed oversight of their own activities. The wars that impoverished this country enriched the perpetrators of it, something a previous profiteer,, progenitor of the worst president in history, had been rebuked for by Congress after WWII.

There were other methods of impoverishing the country, a major one being the deregulation of financial houses that pushed debt so great onto the country that our households have lost an estimated one-third of total assets. Wages' falling - along with soaring prices of oil and transported goods - has required individuals and families to go deeper into debt than ever experienced before. The service jobs that predominated during eight years of winger policies forced multitudes of wage earners to take more than one job to support themselves and their families.

National debt rose to pay for the extravagance of the free market profiteers. National debt brings to mind a vision of the Treasury, whose bonds have been sold to various investors here and abroad. More than just the Treasury is involved in the transaction, though.

The sellers of those Treasury bonds are for the most part the very financial houses that handle other investments, and can be your bank, your financial manager, even your insurance agent. Few have, as I did, bought their bonds directly from the U.S. Treasury, and it offended my banker to find out that I had not gone through him when I did. The profit in each individual transaction is minimal, but in the multitudinous transactions of sales to get into the immense debt constitution some trillions of dollars huge profits accrued.

Once again, policies that made a mockery of the concept of government, that it serves the public, brought huge profits to the moneyed interest that the right wing serves.

While public office holders who take direct bribes from those they serve by betraying public interest are prosecuted, those who serve their own interests by allowing them to profit off of policies harmful to the public usually are ignored.

The highway robbery, that acquiring huge public debt has been. may not ever be prosecuted. Like the war, though, it has accumulated huge profits for those that committed this crime against the public.

In discussion of the wingnut attacks on health care for the public, more than one commenter I've been talking with has expressed amazement that we aren't taking to the streets and running them out of office. Quite probably, if the full truth of their thefts from the public were exposed, there would be even greater anger against the profiteers from war, debt and the health crisis.

I prefer accumulating anger and using it personally to work for a return to government of, by and for the people. In the sixties, I marched around the White House holding a candle, and against the Pentagon - though I went home before the soldiers advanced against civilians there. It's quite likely that I will be marching again, should the wingnuts succeed in robbing this country of its access to health care, along with the return on its productivity and its right to survive on that production.

D.C. Gets Raptured

A long time tradition in the South in the summer is the tent revival. The itinerant preachers came to town, held rousing services, provided entertainment and gave the small towns an excuse to blow off steam without calling it an orgy. The old time religion also produced population explosions and behind-the-tent slips - famously documented in Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry, later a successful film.

It seems that the revival spirit has descended on D.C. and taken a slice out of our government, and the usual revelations about over indulging in spirits of one sort or another is making its mark.

The falls of self-proclaimed public representatives Ensign, Sanford, and Pickering all chose a location in common, the C Street 'church' home where they communed and kept each others' secrets - while they indulged in an excess of their favorite spiriting. This has all the ribald character of the classic evangelistic masquerade, and Gov. Sanford has added a new touch today by declaring that God is going to cure him so he gets to keep his salary.

"It's in the spirit of making good from bad that I am committing to you and the larger family of South Carolinians to use this experience to both trust God in his larger work of changing me, and from my end, to work to becoming a better and more effective leader," he wrote.

The promise comes as the term-limited governor approaches his final legislative session. Even before the scandal, he admitted the session would offer him little chance of success in pushing a small-government agenda that sought to give his office more authority. The possibility of a White House run in 2012 has all but disappeared.

He's known for slamming fellow Republicans who control state government — once by carrying two piglets to the door of the House chamber to protest spending. More recently, a court order forced Sanford to seek federal stimulus money he refused to accept because of his libertarian principles, despite warnings from education officials of massive teacher layoffs.

Legislators said the governor's previous pledges to work together always quickly disintegrated.

The major point in common of the latest round of scandal producers seems to be their pretension to a faith that sets them apart and gives them special dispensation to do their own thing. Not surprisingly, their halos are their golden ring on the public fund carousel, as well.

The oldtime South's town's regular preachers didn't appreciate the revivalists either. That partly was the result of the loss of revenue, and partly because of the mass loss of decorum that usually came with the tent.

For those who have been experiencing a main leader of the revivalist character in Iran, there is more to that self-proclaimed halo than just the the cartoon quality.

...30 years of experience living under the “Islamic Regime”, has taught us that theocratic, authoritarian regimes are much worse and more brutal than other forms of government. In the past 30 years, despite using all of the media, the schools, the mosques, etc. to enforce religion into the minds of people, the new generation of Iranians are more distant from religion than the previous generations. Moreover, the worst thing that has happened to our culture is the domination of hypocrisy, which has become the norm in daily life, probably as a tool for survival in a religious dictatorship.

The usual result of mistaking a religious claim for actual holiness has always been disaster for the deluded. For those of us who grew up in an era when the halo was stripped from the tent revivalists, this has sad familiarity.

Instead of the C Street Christian Fellowship, perhaps the locus for the rightwing philandering should be called The Last Refuge of Scoundrels, a more fitting title.

That remnant that will always follow the tent preachers really doesn't like to see it fall, time and time again. It's best when it does fall, though, for all of us.

Military Pork

Defense Secretary Gates has been a breath of fresh air when it comes to the military budget. He has made it clear that the days of unlimited funding for untested and unnecessary weapons are over. Given the huge chunk of the national budget given over to military spending, that is a remarkable and welcome change.

Sean E. Duggan, a research associate at the Center for American Progress, noted that change in an op-ed piece published in the Boston Globe. He also pointed out that unfortunately the Defense Secretary doesn't have the last word in the matter.

Gates's budget proposal, the most significant overhaul of the Pentagon's spending priorities since the end of the Cold War, is an opportunity to more adequately match capabilities to necessity. Among other needed moves, Gates's plan would eliminate vehicles for the Army's Future Combat Systems because they are highly vulnerable to the kinds of improvised explosive devices used by insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Similarly, Gates's proposal would stop the purchase of a new presidential helicopter, reorient the Navy's ship building priorities, and cancel unproven missile defense systems.

One of the other programs that Gates would close down in production of the F22 Raptor, a fighter plane that was initially designed to counter a Soviet fighter, one that was never built. As Duggan points out, the F22 is useless in the wars we are fighting now and has not been used in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Yet, added to the supplemental request President Obama submitted to Congress recently, funding for four additional F22s was included. Why did that happen?

In fact, the supplemental request submitted to Congress last month already includes funding for one such unneeded program: four additional F-22 Raptors. In a letter to President Obama, the entire Connecticut delegation urged the continuation of the F-22 program in order to "meet critical national security needs." ... [Emphasis added]

Even though Secretary Gates has gotten the message through to several key military officials (including Air Force Secretary Michael Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz) that the F22 is a dead program, he hasn't successfully gotten that message through to Connecticut's congressional contingent. The F22 program has deep connections to that state and, to be honest, provides jobs for its citizens. It's pretty hard to fault the Connecticut delegation for fighting to preserve jobs, but in this case, it's time to stop the pork.

The only way to do that, Duggan asserts, is to stop framing the discussion in terms of national security and to start treating the issue for what it actually is.

It is time for more military leaders to do the same. If nothing else, the refusal to endorse the continuation of unneeded weapons programs by the leadership of the military services would force lawmakers to admit what the inclusion of that platform in a supplemental bill is really all about: a jobs program. If that ends up being the case, let's debate it on those terms.

The F22 and other programs like it were designed in response to the Cold War and assumed a traditional battlefield. The Cold War is over, and it is doubtful that we will ever return to traditional warfare. Defense Secretary Gates knows this, and gradually the Pentagon officials under him are beginning to get it. Wasting money on such programs simply is not an effective use of taxpayers' money, even if it does provide jobs.

It's time to move on. It's time to create jobs for this century, jobs that involve building the carriages for public transportation, or building the windmills and transmission systems for renewable energy. At the start of World War II, the automakers shifted from building automobiles to building tanks in a matter of months. There is no reason that such a shift could not be implemented now without dislocating our struggling economy further. All it takes is a little honesty and the will to make it happen.

Mad Hatter Government

The kind of kids' stuff that has been going on in the U.S. government in all divisions is coming out pretty quickly now that the secrecy of the maladministration has been lifted. A PBS piece on the failures of our 'intelligence' operations to share information with each other - how those failures meant that the FBI had the authority but not the information that should have kept 9-11 operatives from freewheeling activity inside the U.S. - was pretty disheartening.

Today there is a post in WaPo that gives a look inside the military craziness that President Obama has inherited. Things are not going well in Afghanistan and/or Pakistan, and much of it is a result of the same mindset that kept 9/11 terrorist perpetrators from being headed off.

As President Obama prepares to formally authorize the April deployment of two additional combat brigades to Afghanistan, perhaps as early as this week, no issue other than the U.S. economy appears as bleak to his administration as the seven-year Afghan war and the regional challenges that surround it.

A flurry of post-inauguration activity -- presidential meetings with top diplomatic and military officials, the appointment of a high-level Afghanistan-Pakistan envoy and the start of a White House-led strategic review -- was designed to show forward motion and resolve, senior administration officials said.

But newly installed officials describe a situation on the ground that is far more precarious than they had anticipated, along with U.S. government departments that are poorly organized to implement the strategic outline that Obama presented last week to his National Security Council and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
(snip)
Obama has ordered up a plan for diplomatic outreach to Iran and others in the region. Afghanistan and Pakistan are to be treated as a single theater of war and diplomacy, even as stability becomes a higher priority than democracy in Afghanistan and as the U.S. relationship with Pakistan is expanded and deepened.

The administration will also seek a new compact with hesitant European and other partners in the war effort, promising new leadership and focus and expecting more resources and commitment. And Obama wants to get beyond the lip service long paid to balance and coordination between the U.S. diplomatic and military services. (Emphasis added.)

This sounds like the situation in Congress, with progressives calling for jobs and salaries to return health to our consumer economy while the wingers insist that more of the same - reduced taxes on the rich and on business, used to destroy the economy for eight years under winger maladministration - is the means to restore it from that disaster. Sadly, we can depend on the lockstep right wing to follow their pied pipes wherever that may lead. Been there, done that.

The staggering amount of waste that has decimated our economy is reflected in the lack of tactics and planning that have characterized the 'theatre' of war. Last week hearings were held on the waste that has resulted from lack of supervision and fraud. Military projects were almost uniformly unsuccessful in Iraq, as money was thrown at the troops who in turn threw it at contractors that had been hastily assembled to catch the money. Our losses were monumental.

Overall, the Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development have paid contractors more than $100 billion since 2003 for goods and services to support war operations and rebuilding projects in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congress created the bipartisan panel a year ago over the objections of the Bush White House, which complained the Justice Department might be forced to disclose sensitive information about investigations.

There are 154 open criminal investigations into allegations of bribery, conflicts of interest, defective products, bid rigging and theft in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, said Gimble, the Pentagon's principal deputy inspector general.

Indeed, sensitive information was involved, about the insouciance and incompetence used in handling public funds by the executive branch just past. The government has come as close to totally dysfunctional as ever in this country's history. President Obama will try to work with the operatives that were happy with that condition, but he will get nowhere in establishing rational government unless he ignores their diversions and gets back to business.

The country has been led astray in every area, and it is only going to be put back on track by going around or over the agents of ideology at the country's expense.

Shuffling Those Walnut Shells

Maybe it's a sign of my advancing years but I still have an image of the traditional conman at the local carnival, egging on his victims to pick the walnut shell the token was hiding under. Of course, while shuffling, he'd made you think you had seen which one had the token under it, and picked that one, while he'd shifted the token and you never won. It's an old trick but one that U.S. corporations are sure you'll fall for again, and again, and again.

The U.S. corporate tax rate is the highest in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). McCain insists that if we just lower the tax rate, business will boom, and of course not go offshore anymore. Fooled you! In actuality, U.S. corporations pay the least of any of the OECD nations. Those tax cuts, such as the one that makes offshoring jobs pay off, make it possible for most of U.S. corporations to avoid taxes altogether.

About two-thirds of U.S. companies and foreign firms doing business in this country paid no federal income taxes from 1998 to 2005, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., called the report "a shocking indictment of the current tax system."

To be sure, many of the nonpayers were small or new companies that probably made no money. But the report said that about a quarter of large corporations - ones that had more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts - paid no taxes. In 2005, for instance, 3,565 large U.S. companies and 998 large foreign-owned companies operating here did not pay any income taxes.

The report neither identified any companies nor specified how they avoided tax liability.

There are numerous legal ways a corporation can duck taxes. The most obvious one: If you don't make money, you don't have to pay taxes. Companies also can write off previous years' losses, get tax exemptions for a plethora of expenses, use R&D credits, even wipe out tax liability when their employees exercise stock options.

But corporations can do a lot of creative accounting to "lose" money - and sometimes that can cross the line.

One such practice identified by the report is "transfer pricing abuse." Essentially, that means shuffling money among corporate subsidiaries by charging pumped-up fees for goods and services instead of market-rate "arms-length" prices.

Adam Hughes, director of federal fiscal policy at OMB Watch, a nonpartisan government accountability watchdog, explained how transfer pricing works.

"A company will incorporate offshore where there are no taxes," he said. "That (parent) company charges the U.S. company lots of money for things like the trademark for the company logo. The U.S. company says, 'I made $50 million, but my stupid parent company charged me $50 million for the logo.' The U.S. company gets to deduct the royalty fees as an expense and move profits to the parent company offshore in a tax-free haven."
(snip)
From 2000 to 2005, revenue from federal and state corporate income tax averaged 2.2 percent of the U.S. GDP, compared to an average of 3.4 percent in 30 of its trading-partner countries, according to the Treasury Department.

Individuals paid 80% of the taxes paid in the U.S. when this occupied White House began its maladministration. It's a much higher proportion now. You are supposed to vote for your best representative, but it's hard to choose which that would be when the government in power is promoting lies through its agencies, which are supported by your tax dollars.

The coming election is a last desperate attempt to keep stealing the public blind. All stops are out to keep the blindness infecting voters by Big Lies. The fight to lower corporate taxes is a big indication of who knows the truth and tells the lie, and McCain's campaign is counting on fooling you for its continuing profits.

157 more days.

Eating Mud

The word 'hunger' probably means to most of us that grinding sensation that means you need to get yourself to the refrigerator and choose from a lot of possibles exactly what you're going to eat. Last night I watched Newshour, and saw a report about Haiti which included a scene of making mudpies. Not child's play, but staving off hunger.

I have posted here before about the food shortages, and our need to take a personal role in our environment - such as gardening. That food is impossible for the very poor to afford at all isn't a prospect easy to investigate, but probably closer to us all than we imagine.

It was lunchtime in one of Haiti’s worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud.

With food prices rising, Haiti’s poorest can’t afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies.

Charlene, 16 with a one-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country’s central plateau.
(snip)
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is increasingly concerned about food prices, which are up as much as 40 percent on some Caribbean islands. Floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season forced the agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other countries.

Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.

At the market in the La Salines slum, two cups of rice now sell for $0.60, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.

It isn't the experience we have every day, with markets full of more than we can consume, in the U.S. We are used to lower prices for what we buy there than we are experiencing at present, but our stores are full of goods.

Throughout the rest of the world, this is becoming ominously less the case. Where there is a supply, it is increasingly out of reach for the indigent.

Rice prices are set to keep rising as demand for the staple is outstripping production, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) has said.

The Philippines-based body said in its Rice Today publication that more research was needed in how to increase rice productivity.

The price of rice has risen by as much as 70% during the past year, with increases accelerating in recent weeks.

Several rice-producing countries have put curbs on exports in recent weeks.

'Research needed'

"Longer term demand-supply imbalance is clearly indicated by depletion of stock that has been going on for several years," said Sushil Pandey, agricultural economist at the IRRI.

"We have been consuming more than what we have been producing and research to increase rice productivity is needed to address this imbalance."

World history has had episodes of this sort before, with the conclusion that cake is not an adequate substitute for bread. Incidentally, Versailles is a lovely place to visit, and the excesses of the French Revolution do not make access to great public services less attractive in that country, imho.

Earth Day is April 22, and it is past time to take seriously the crisis in food production that this earth is experiencing. On that date, we will be reminded that we are not forever going to experience plentiful food supplies. It shouldn't take any world bodies reminding us for us to see for ourselves.

Food riots have occurred in Haiti and a few African nations, brought on by hunger. The outbreaks of violence will be growing as food disappears. For our own well-being, we need to be aware, and begin taking appropriate steps such as using less energy, gardening, cutting back on car and airplane travel.

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NTodd posted a site you may want to explore, for microfinance internationally, mainly small industry with lots of women trying to find a way to support their families: http://www.kiva.org

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From CNN's Planet in Peril site, Quick Vote;

What do you think is the greatest threat to the planet?
Global warming 29% 4843
Species loss 3% 508
Habitat loss 8% 1325
Overpopulation 60% 9995
Total Votes: 16671

I find it rather disheartening that more poll takers saw their fellow beings as the problem than saw major importance in protecting the environment. This a.m. in Eschaton comments, more than one person I apprised of this little vignette saw this as indicative of the popular fear of 'brown people'.

I suppose it might be enlightening to find out what measures the respondents would choose to eliminate the problem of overpopulation? I fear it might be what I suspect is the White House idea of ending our invasion of Iraq: attrition.

Milk At $3 A Gallon - Limit Two With Additional $10 Purchase

If that title makes you cringe, come sit over here by me.

My scenery is all snow. It fell from around noon yesterday until the middle of the night, and it's beautiful. West Texas would be so happy to have it, and I'm sure that the offices in the area where employees will be arriving late if at all would be delighted to make the switch. I already offered it to several commenters at Eschaton, and no takers.


Now for snow, early morning N. Texas -


It's covering over my little garden and adding to the ground water. It takes a farmer to know how beautiful that is, and since I can't give the snow, let me give you some idea what that kind of beauty is. It may mean the difference between having food to put on your family and the desperation that you know when you can't.

I learned a lot from doing a post not long ago on Darfur, which led me to the statement made by U.N. Secretary General Ban ki Moon, to the effect that there is a direct correlation between the effects of climate change and the racial/ethnic conflict that has led to that tragedy.

Those of us who grew up familiar with water needs have a consciousness that the rest of the world is just beginning to find, an eye to natural resources. Global warming may just be making that important. I always planned to grow veggies, and you may have read a few days ago about my garden reflections. Have you checked prices in the grocery stores recently? I may be looking next for my own cow or goats. I would hate to do without cheese.

Yesterday the U.N. World Food Program issued a report on the declining availability of foodstuffs worldwide that made my eyes open wider to the growing problem of hunger for the poor nations of the world. With the financial situation in this country lowering so many into poverty, it's time to take a close look at the emergent problems of hunger for so many.

The head of the UN World Food Programme has warned that the rise in basic food costs could continue until 2010.

Josette Sheeran blamed soaring energy and grain prices, the effects of climate change and demand for biofuels.
(snip)
Areas where the WFP is already seeing an impact include:

# Afghanistan: 2.5 million people in Afghanistan cannot afford the price of wheat, which rose more than 60% in 2007

# Bangladesh: The price of rice has risen 25% to 30% over the last three months. In 2007, the price rose about 70%.

# El Salvador: Rural communities are buying 50% less food than they did 18 months ago with the same amount of money. This means their nutritional intake, on an already poor diet, is cut by half.

# Anger over rising food prices have already led to riots in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal and Morocco.

If your concern about carbon emissions, and fossil fuels, didn't just grow, you're a step behind the times.

For those of you who haven't thought about it I suggest you look around. What you are used to having for the amount you have to spend is shrinking, and that's happening to all of us. Resources are not growing to match that plight. My title is about a sale price, something that makes me sad for those of you with young families. It would have made me quite desperate.

Your budget will have to change. It's changing already for the most needy, and we used to just drop more nickles into our charities. For those of us who aren't in that .01% that has 90% of the wealth in this country, we're getting there.

We might not have gotten to this predicament if the rest of this country hadn't let itself be lulled into equanimity - or alienated so badly - that it voted in some one who doesn't like us. Working against reduction of carbon emissions hurts everyone except the producers of those emissions, and is vicious. Working against the ability of working people to support their families hurts even the producers of work, since there is less to buy whatever they are selling.

Since we're at the mercy of the voters, we need to be very concerned about the atmosphere that put us in this situation.

Depths of Stupidity in Financial Op-Editorialism

The refrain from Young Dr. Frankenstein, "Sweet Mystery Of Love, At Last I've Found You" is hammering on my head as I read Robber Samuelson at WaPo today. This is as truly delusional as it gets.

I can't help but follow Avedon Carol, who has nailed it this a.m., the WaPo has this morning kept its record up, in choice of op-eds that have wrong premises. I went on, after the Meyerson post accepting McCain as a real moderate, to try out the morning's essay on how perfectly Eat Thy Brother economics works.

Degrees in Economics are available at U. of Phoenix anytime you want to start in, but for journalist's credentials that you can sell WaPo's editors, you need to know Black is White and Up is Down.

As the economy weakens and the campaign intensifies, we'll hear more of James Carville's familiar refrain: It's the economy, stupid. Well, it ain't or, at least, shouldn't be. I'm not claiming that Carville is wrong about voting. People vote their pocketbooks. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, the economy overshadows Iraq as the most important issue by 39 percent to 19. What I'm saying is that this sort of voting is shortsighted. It rewards or punishes candidates for something beyond their power.

We have a $14 trillion economy. The idea that presidents can control it lies between an exaggeration and an illusion. Our presidential preferences ought to reflect judgments about candidates' character, values, competence and their views on issues where what they think counts: foreign policy; long-term economic and social policy -- how they would tax and spend; health care; immigration. Forget the business cycle.
(snip)
History's long view teaches the same lesson. No president tried harder, with good reason, to influence the business cycle than Franklin Roosevelt. When he took office in 1933, unemployment was roughly 25 percent. By executive order and congressional legislation, FDR effectively abandoned the gold standard, adopted deposit insurance, tried to prop up falling farm and factory prices, rescued many defaulting homeowners, regulated the stock market, and embarked on massive public works.

With what result? Well, leaving the gold standard aided recovery. But some economic research suggests that other New Deal measures may have frustrated revival. In any case, all of them together didn't end the Great Depression. World War II did that. In 1939 unemployment was still 17 percent.

No matter. When the economy is good, presidents claim credit...

Sammwich hasn't noticed that two wars have not sufficed to make this wagefree economy go uphill.

Forgive me, once again I will give a sampling of just a few commenters' rebuttals of this total misrepresentation of history and of economics as well as of reality.

perryc1 wrote:
Does Samuelson believe that our Democracy could have survived without the efforts of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 'New Deal"? The Home Owners Loan Corp saved one million homes. The C.C.C. put three hundred thousand young people to work three months after Roosevelt took office. The W.P.A., in its lifetime gave millions of Americans meaningful employment. The New Deal pulled the country back from the abyss of a facist state symbolized by General McArthur driving the bonus army out of Washington and burning their camp. Remember, Hoover sent McArthur who beat them and Rosevelt sent Eleanor and she charmed them. Roosevelt with his fireside chats and real concern gave people hope. He certainly had an impact on the economy. He was also a victim of conventional wisdom, tightening things every time things got better and that caused regression. To think the President has no control over the economy is fatuous.

kstack wrote:
presidents--and congress--do control the economy in the long run. for instance, the tax and war policies of president bush have drained programs such as infrastructure repair that might have meant middle class jobs and consumer spending. the deliberate lack of regulation gave us the subprime crisis. ruinous trade policies have further devastated the middle class. lack of a rational health care policy has hobbled american business. and so on and so on.

My comment I will leave for you to find, it's jocabel at 6:50:30. There are some really excellent and informative, historically accurate comments that I just don't include as they will take up so much space. I recommend you look through the comments for the facts, which is where you will find the real information at the WaPo editorial pages.

Ruth Marcus is worth another screech of dismay. But you've suffered enough for today, Dear Reader.

On Sunday WaPo just gave us rational types some hope to lead us on, today's dismal assemblage of lies is the downwards spiral of disinformation, back in full strength.


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Update on buyout of local media in TX by Macquarie post Monday - ASX, Aussie Stock Market group announces Allan Moss to retire in May, to investors' "dismay". see http://www.macquarie.com.au/au/about_macquarie/media_centre/20070213a.htm

Total Failure -The Budget Priority

Having spent all he can on his cronies and contributors, the cretin in chief has thrown a phantasmagorical budget at us that is good for laughs at best. He doesn't count in his wars, and is nudging medicaid onto the states.

...the fact remains that the purported surplus on which Mr. Bush based his tax-cutting agenda was always something of a mirage, and the president has never been willing to adjust his agenda to the grim new fiscal reality. Yesterday's promise of a small surplus by 2012 is once again premised on omitting likely costs (zero is budgeted for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan) and by assuming cuts to domestic spending that are unachievable politically and, in large part, unwise as a matter of policy.

As always, Mr. Bush pledges to press ahead with his tax-cutting agenda: another $2.4 trillion over the next decade, $3.7 trillion if relief from the alternative minimum tax is included. The president argues that failing to extend his previous tax cuts would result in an average tax increase of $1,800. But Mr. Bush neglects to point out that the overwhelming share of the tax cuts go to the wealthiest Americans. The top 1 percent of households -- those with incomes of more than $450,000 -- would get 31 percent of the benefits, with tax cuts averaging $67,000 by 2012. And Mr. Bush does not even propose fully paying for these cuts: The budget he submitted yesterday envisions another $397 billion in deficit spending over the next five years because it would devote more money to tax cuts than it would cut in spending.

Mr. Bush inherited a potential windfall -- and squandered it. The next president will inherit his mess.

In Texas, the realization that taxes are not just being raised on all of us, but also on the states, is a hard blow.

President Bush rolled out a $3.1 trillion budget Monday that boosts funding for the military while cutting projected spending for Medicare and Medicaid, proposals that would have a noticeable impact in Texas.
(snip)
Mr. Bush proposed eliminating all or part of 151 federal programs, some of which provide assistance to state and local governments, saving $18 billion in 2009. They include funding to house noncitizens in state prisons, which provides about $26 million for Texas, and grants for undergraduate students, which provide about $22 million to Texans, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.

Overall, federal grants to Texas would total almost $27 billion in 2009, about 2.3 percent more than in 2008.

But the state would see reduced funding from federal grants for highway planning and construction, foster care, anti-poverty programs and subsidized housing. The administration proposes to eliminate the social-services block grant, which would take away $38 million in 2009. Texas uses the money to pay for long-term care and adult protective services.

The state's allotment of community development block grants, a prized source of aid for nonprofits and local governments, would drop from $250 million in 2008 to $190 million in 2009.

Grants for programs such as child protection, child care and children's health care would remain at 2008 levels. Texas' share of funding for some social services, including subsidized school lunch and breakfast programs, would increase.

On Medicare, which provides care to the elderly, projected savings would come from freezing increases in reimbursement rates to hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers. Those reimbursements are typically adjusted for inflation.
(snip)
"The president writes only in red ink, having never submitted to Congress a balanced budget," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin, a member of the House Budget Committee. "He piles on more debt to fund his misguided foreign policy while neglecting so many needs at home."

In his usual reverse Robin Hood fashion, the war criminal at our helm will take away working, worthwhile programs from the needy and give more of the nation's wealth from its citizens to the leeches that work for profits instead of worth.

I am joining Diane, the criminality is leaving me speechless. Rep. Doggett says it better than I ever could.
*********************************************************
In an encouraging development, the Navy has been held answerable to law, and will need to let sea life off of California live.

A federal judge in California on Monday reinstated a series of provisions meant to protect whales from high-powered sonar during military exercises in the Pacific Ocean.

The decision was a rebuke to an effort by the Bush administration to exempt the Navy from those rules and from federal law.

The decision, by Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of Federal District Court, found that the administration’s Council on Environmental Quality had overreached on Jan. 15 when it cited “urgent national security reasons” to approve weaker rules for the exercises.

My best regard goes to the judge for enforcing law that all of us should follow.

Who Owns Your Media

If you happen to live in Alice, TX, your news is now brought to you by an Australian firm, Macquarie, that builds toll-roads. The big story is about the mayor's dognapping, but tomorrow it may be why you want a toll road.

The same is true of several other small towns whose independent newspapers have been bought up by that firm, which is now vying for the growing toll-road building industry in the Trans Texas Corridor that the legislature in Austin is considering.

The UK and Australian press have christened Macquarie, the Australian investment and banking group, the “Millionaire Factory” for the hefty bonuses it lavishes on its executives. Macquarie has several tentacles including the Macquarie Infrastructure Group which builds toll roads and the Macquarie Media Group.

It’s worth noting that the Macquarie Media Group has gobbled up more than 100 small town U.S. newspapers since last year, including the Dallas-based American Consolidated Media, which owns a number of small papers in Texas. Just this month it bought the Glen Rose Reporter in Glen Rose, south of Fort Worth. Its acquisitions make the Macquarie Media Group’s American Consolidated Media — the 5th largest regional newspaper publisher in the United States.

Why should we care? Because Macquarie Infrastructure Group has made several bids to build toll roads in Texas and across the United States. One of the Macquarie Media Group’s acquisitions is the Alice Echo-News, the homepage of which currently sports a web banner touting the I-69 Trans Texas Corridor public meetings. This is part of the same media campaign which angered legislators such as Senator John Carona (R-Dallas) chair of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Commission. The “Keep Texas Moving” media campaign is costing TxDOT up to $9 million. Meanwhile, TxDot says it will delay more than $1 billion worth of projects this year because it doesn’t have enough money, a claim that many legislators and citizens alike find laughable.

For more toll road fun, Carona, will hold a hearing February 5th, asking TxDot to explain where its money went, and why it didn’t mention this cash-flow crisis during last year’s legislative session.(Emphasis added.)

The government which produced our War Criminal In Chief has a long record of serving industry at the expense of the public. It has been carried into national operation by the worst executive branch in history, to this country's great damage.

Diane wrote about one of the truly destructive records that is being amassed at HUD in her post this morning. Such records of shameful behavior need to be studied, and they need to be considered in voting for our country and our states' future.

When media are gobbled up by a firm that has an interest in the local laws being written, it is a matter that needs more exposure. The FCC will probably show no interest until a new administration puts public servants into oversight of the country's needs and practices.

Industry's Bird of Prey

Not your usual Thursday bird, the Osprey is surviving in the wilds of fiscal incompetence, flying on with all its flaws intact. As if things weren't dangerous enough, it's migrated to Iraq now.

The Osprey has been under fire from defense industry critics since it first tested badly, and has cost untold millions, in addition to the lives lost, in its many accidents. It has received enough attention in print that it has become an embarrassment to everyone involved - except its supporters in congress from the states that produce it, yep, you read Texas there. In 2001, it served as an early litmus test the occupied White House failed.

DoD manages the captive defense industry with a combination of socialism (inefficient government-owned facilities compete unfairly with the private sector), industrial policy (so called “competition” rarely lives up to its name), and the erection of high barriers to entry through excessive specifications for weapon systems (which discourages non-defense companies from bringing new methods and products into a stagnant industry). The Osprey is a typical product of the creaking defense acquisition system. If nothing else, killing the Osprey would have sent a message to the Congress, the defense industry, and the defense bureaucracy that George W. Bush was serious about radically transforming the nation''s defenses and was not going to tolerate business as usual. The new president has failed his first test as a defense reformer. (Emphasis added.)

In Iraq, it is stumbling along ferrying stuff to and fro, and now is being eased into some combat operations. Its supporters in the defense industry have had to pull several back as they advance its use, though. Just what our troops need, playing nursemaid to another disaster from our military industry.

As of Dec. 28, three months through a scheduled seven-month deployment, the 23 pilots of Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263, known as VMM-263, had logged 1,639 hours of flight time in Iraq, carried 6,826 passengers and delivered 631,837 pounds of cargo without a mishap or even a close call.

That's good news not only for the Marines but also for Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. of Fort Worth and Boeing Co.'s helicopter division, near Philadelphia, which make the Osprey in a 50-50 partnership. About 2,500 Bell employees work on the Osprey in Fort Worth and Amarillo, where V-22s are assembled.
(snip)
"As long as they keep using it like a truck, I think they'll probably be OK," said Philip Coyle, a former Pentagon weapons testing director and a longtime Osprey critic.

In December, VMM-263 began to take on riskier tasks.

On Dec. 6, two of the Ospreys carried 24 combat-loaded Marines and 24 Iraqi troops on a raid near Lake Tharthar, 150 miles north of Baghdad, to look for suspected insurgents.

"It turned out to be a dry hole, there was nothing there," said Capt. Drew Norris, 30, of Dallas, a graduate of Jesuit College Preparatory School and Texas A&M University who was one of the pilots on the raid. As for the flight, he said, "It went off without a hitch."

Two days later, two Ospreys were included for the first time in a well-established mission called "aeroscout," a sort of roving raid in which troops aboard helicopters search for insurgents by air. The ground troops commander scrubbed the mission when one Osprey needed to turn back to base because one of its four generators failed.

The generator failure is symptomatic of one big question hanging over the Osprey in Iraq: Is the $70 million aircraft reliable enough, or does it break too often?

One of the squadron's 10 Ospreys had to land in Jordan on the way into Iraq in October and spend a couple of days there being fixed after a wiring problem led the pilots to make a precautionary landing. Others have been grounded for days at a time for similar problems in Iraq. (Emphasis added.)

Once again, our troops are guinea pigs for the defense contractors. Inadequate armor, humvees that left them sitting ducks, like the war itself are not designed to protect anyone, but to pay off lobbyists. The description of corporate welfare by the Pentagon which I featured above tells us all we need to know about actual 'respect for the troops'.

Guess which chicken hawk absolutely will not use the Osprey? If you guessed the Cretin in Chief, you were right, and a great judge of character or the lack thereof. AWOL has all the care in the world for his own hide, not a whit for those he routinely throws away to keep his friends rolling in public money.

The military industrial complex is all about war profiteering. We need to stop it before it kills again.

SMU Threat Remains At Liebury Site.

The Liebury is still tangled in conflict while the occupier of the White House keeps his heels firmly dug into the ground on the issue of letting the public have records that he claims as his private property. At SMU, meanwhile, professors and church officials are still trying to keep the dreaded obscenity away from their school.

The waiting game for the Bush library to be officially awarded to SMU has turned into something of a punch line for school President Gerald Turner.

"A business leader recently told me that every major deal he ever made was within two weeks of completion – five or six times," Dr. Turner told the SMU faculty in August.

Then this month, asked again when an announcement would come, he responded, tongue-in-cheek: "We're about two weeks away."

Southern Methodist University launched its campaign for the George W. Bush Presidential Library five years ago. It beat out other competitors to become the sole finalist in December. Since then, campus leaders have said they expect to hear from the White House within weeks or months or "very soon" that SMU will indeed host the library.

A lead architect has been named, and the library has even been mentioned in a recent job posting by the school. But still, no announcement.
(snip)
The Faculty Senate passed a resolution this semester urging more openness on presidential records. An executive order issued by Mr. Bush in 2001 allows presidents since Ronald Reagan to protect documents from public release indefinitely.

SMU professors say the issue isn't being debated as fervently these days.

"They have pretty much stopped talking about it with a sense of resignation," history professor Kathleen Wellman said, adding that people assume "it's a done deal."

There are professors on campus who support the project, but others say they dread a library on campus for such an unpopular president whose administration has approved domestic wiretapping and imprisonment without habeas corpus rights.

Meanwhile, some Methodists are seeking to overturn a church decision that allows the library and institute to be built on SMU land. A petition has been circulated opposing the project.

"The president says this [institute] is to promote his values and his policies. ... Breaching the Geneva Convention is not a Methodist value," said the Rev. Andrew Weaver, who's led the opposition.
(snip)
In College Station, neighbors took Texas A&M University to federal court in early 1996 over plans to relocate a swine farm with hundreds of pigs near their homes to make room for the elder George Bush library.

A pig farm would certainly be a more desirable facility, but the smell of cash seems to be leading SMU's president away from his school's best interests.

Mercs Unemployment Program Sends Mexico Our Problems

Just because killing Iraqi innocents got them kicked out of that country, don't think the psychopaths in charge of your money will let them look for work like the rest of the unemployed. We have a whole new program set up to take care of the former assassins.

Would you like a vacation in Mexico? Maybe sending your money will satisfy you, so speculates the cabal at the White House.

The U.S. and Mexican governments are expected Monday to announce an anti-drug package that will probably involve hiring private U.S. military contractors to train Mexican troops on the use of new technologies and equipment, senior U.S. officials said.

The government's use of private contractors has been highly controversial, especially since a deadly incident involving contractors last month in Iraq.

The counternarcotics plan, estimated at $1.4 billion over two years, is expected to be announced simultaneously by President Bush in Washington and President Felipe Calderón in Mexico City. It will cap seven months of talks carried out in response to spreading drug violence, considered by many the biggest threat to Mexican security.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, called the plan "a quantum leap forward, partly because Mexico is willing to take that risk to build a new relationship."

"This is transformational diplomacy at its best, but don't expect miracles," the official said. "If we can do this right with a partner who really wants to change the relationship, then this will have an impact on the future of the relationship."

The plan calls for increasing U.S. anti-drug aid to Mexico, now estimated at $44 million a year, to $1.4 billion over two to three years, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The assistance is designed to train Mexican law enforcement officials to more effectively take on drug traffickers equipped with advanced weapons, high-tech communications gear, and aircraft.

After their training totally to disrespect such values as life and liberty in Iraq, the mercs should do great work winning friends in Mexico. A long history of corrupt and violent police there will no doubt work out perfectly for their growing taste for power and disdain for the law.

The country's treasure is being used consistently with the cabal's value system, to further alienate law abiding citizens everywhere.

Bottom Feeder Privatization Hits On You and Youthful Offenders

I am happy to announce that massive misdealings in the Texas Youth Commission which horribly abused Texas youth have been uncovered and are being corrected. A compilation of the serial crimes against emprisoned youths at the Dallas Morning News begins as far back as January of this year, when reports of abuse of youths came in in video form.

In February, the reports began to be published. Reports had been received by Governor Perry's office since 2004 and not acted on. GEO Group is a private prison contractor and is now being questioned about other facilities and their problems.

Private contractors are being given a lot of former government functions and like Blackwater showing a seriously seamy side to privatization. Texas is infamous for contracts with private firms, including its lottery and toll road imbroglios. A really bad record has been amassed.

In cold bureaucratic language, the official reports describe lurid acts: High-ranking officials at an isolated state juvenile prison were molesting young male inmates.

Many prison staffers at the West Texas State School complained about the abuse to their immediate bosses and to officials in Austin, the reports say. But, for more than a year, no one in charge did anything to stop it. Evidence was ignored or covered up. Two years after a Texas Rangers investigation concluded, no one has been prosecuted.

Some former employees say similar problems afflict many prisons run by the Texas Youth Commission, whose official mission is to "fix broken children."

"The TYC has established a dynasty of corruption that condones the mistreatment of youth in its care," said Randal Chance, a retired inspector general for the agency. "Staff are being paid your tax money to rape your children."

TYC Executive Director Dwight Harris said agency officials were stunned when they learned, in 2005, that the Texas Rangers had substantiated charges of abuse at the Pyote facility.

"Quite frankly, it was a shock and a surprise to us that this could ever happen," Mr. Harris said.

But a TYC internal investigation, "Summary Report for Administrative Review," released last week to The Dallas Morning News, said that a West Texas caseworker raised the issue in a letter to Mr. Harris five months before the Rangers' investigation.

Later came more reports of the longterm abuse.

"Issues of fear and intimidation are present throughout TYC," said a report by the state auditor's office released Friday. More than 40 percent of staffers at youth prisons said they were afraid of retaliation if they complained about co-workers or supervisors, a survey by the auditor's office found.

Through the publicity, which you can read through if you have a strong stomach, hundreds of prisoners were released.

TYC's newly installed management had freed more than 100 inmates by the end of the day Friday, part of its efforts to purge and clean up the troubled agency. Spokesman Jim Hurley said 473 juveniles will have been released within days to family members or guardians.

Until this week, TYC held about 4,700 inmates, ages 10 to 21. Most are repeat offenders who engaged in property crimes, although TYC also holds those who committed rape, kidnapping and murder.
(snip)
Mr. Rodriguez spent more than two years at TYC for multiple burglaries of homes. The News highlighted his case in a story last month about physical abuse of TYC inmates.

He was badly beaten in September by a gang of four inmates while guards for his dorm were not at their station. The two guards were later fired.

Today we hear that another facility is being condemned for deplorable conditions.

The Texas Youth Commission's ombudsman said Wednesday that at least one other juvenile prison, Victory Field in Vernon, should be closed because of poor conditions.

"If I were king, I'd shut it down today," ombudsman Will Harrell said. "It's an incredibly violent campus. ... There's just this sense of fear and intimidation."

Mr. Harrell, who functions as an independent youth advocate within TYC, made his remarks outside a special meeting of the House Corrections Committee. During the hearing, he told committee members that Victory Field was the TYC prison most similar to the squalid Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, a privately run unit in West Texas.

TYC moved nearly 200 inmates out of the Coke County prison this month, citing "deplorable conditions" such as feces on the floor and insects in the food, and canceled its operating contract with GEO Group Inc.
(snip)
In a report issued this week, Mr. Owens said the "blending of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government" has "had a negative impact on the effective implementation of reform initiatives." [Emphasis added.]

There you have it. The reports were made, the abuses were known, nothing was done.

Privatization uses your funds and skips the controls/regulations/enforcement side of government contracts. It is showing up the for-profit hobbling of government for the systematic abuse of trust that it is. TYC is an instance of youths who suffered for the GoPerv ideal of letting corporate greed take over from legitimate government responsibility. This diving for the bottom line is subhuman, for bottom feeders only.

Following the Money Against GoPerverted Principal

Anyone who got the opportunity to watch proceedings on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday got a treat. Rep. Abercrombie's House Resolution 400 was up for debate. The GoPervs opposed it.

H. Res. 400 establishes a fine of $1 MN, or twice the amount in ill-gotten gains the contractor got, for defrauding the government/people. Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia brazenly led the GoPerverted assault on the bill. Of course, even slime like this admit they favor what the resolution accomplishes. His grounds, like most grounds the GoPervs have used this year to oppose any public interest legislation, are spurious. He claimed that it would stifle innovation. Yep, cut off at the roots all those grand schemes to defraud the public.

The party of perversion has declared war on any productivity for the public this legislation session. That is its revenge on voters for putting them in the minority. If it takes throwing more money into the hole that Iraq - especially contracting - has become they will enthusiastically throw it. Before resuming their seats they will be claiming that the Dems are fiscally irresponsible for the debt the same GoPervs have run up.

The House voted Tuesday to make it easier to convict private contractors of defrauding the U.S. government during wartime, an effort aimed at curbing the abuse that has plagued the Iraqi reconstruction effort.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Neil Abercrombie, would create a new federal criminal statute banning contracting abuse associated with military operations and reconstruction efforts. It also would ensure federal courts have jurisdiction in all cases, closing what Abercrombie says is a loophole in existing law that has let many contractors off the hook.

"Some of these contractors have declared the U.S. occupation of Iraq open season on the American taxpayer," said Abercrombie, D-Hawaii. "Cleaning up this mess has been hampered by the fact that while anti-fraud laws protect against the waste or theft of U.S. tax dollars in the United States, there have been no statutes prohibiting sleazy business practices by American companies overseas." The measure passed by 375-3.
(snip)
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who co-sponsored the Leahy bill, said during a spring hearing on the issue that heavy fines against contractors simply amounted to "an inexpensive license to cheat the taxpayers."

Would it seem from Sen. Spectre's claim that we are being cheated out of billions? According to Iraq Inspector General Bowen, 'losses to American taxpayers will likely amount to "relatively small components of the overall investments in Iraq, totaling in the tens of millions" of dollars and not in the "hundreds of millions or billions as is sometimes imagined."' The cheaters need to get their stories straight.

So little of what goes on in Congress is ever reported, I like to see it in action sometimes. Anyone who watches CSpan footage of actual debate will find their respect for the Dems growing, as they struggle against the slimeball tactics and determination not to allow the public interest to be served, exhibited there constantly by the GoPervs.

Extra Bucks to Cheat Americans Out of Jobs

The present executive branch has been spectacularly ill managed. One of the huge offenses was recently discovered at Walter Reed, where veterans have been disserved by turning over their care to contract employees. Today we have news that mail had gone undelivered to the veterans there for as much as a year, by contract employees. A commenter at Eschaton guessed that the mail was addressed in English, which was the problem.

It seems that the CIA has discovered a threat, which it is set up to do. Betcha thought I was going to say that its was those durned illegals working inside the government that were a threat to our security. Nope. It is the Homeland Security Department, using contract employees who are costing us huge amounts that threaten the budget further.

We've spent countless billions of dollars since 9/11 to bolster defenses, improve spying capabilities and chase evil-doers to their remotest lairs. But there's a remaining, gaping hole in America's security picture: the one in our wallets.

The CIA moved this month to plug that hole, announcing a 10 percent cut in its private-contracting workforce. The agency recognized that outsourcing can be a net money-loser and poses security risks by reducing the CIA's ability to retain its most valued and experienced staffers.

Other government agencies in charge of our frontline defenses also need to scrutinize their private-contractor workforce and ask whether they're really better off relying on temps to keep the nation safe and secure.

The Department of Homeland Security, where contractors account for 60 percent of personnel, shares the CIA's problem of sagging staff morale and mounting expenses linked to outsourcing. Surveys show that job satisfaction at homeland security is lowest in the entire government.
(snip)
Contractors also have divided loyalties, answering to boardroom executives and stockholders, not taxpayers. Their primary mission is to make profits.

We encourage efforts to downsize government and increase efficiency. But there's a careful balance to be struck, especially when it comes to national security.

The CIA deserves praise for questioning the conventional wisdom on contractors.

I guess at this point I should declare to the Dallas Morning News, well, I'll be hogswallowed. Its usual pro-business bias is becoming one of the casualties of the cretin in chief's war against the working man, and against common reason. There is no excuse for this race to contract out all of the jobs that otherwise would provide good employment opportunities with our government.

When it goes to the extremes of costing our taxpayers extra dollars to put the swill in the trough, the complete anti-American character of the White House shines through. True colors, green, not red-white-and-blue little lapel flags.

It's Their Pig Trough And You Can't Have Any Slop

Sports are not of any great interest to me, and I've barely noticed all the doping scandals because I don't read those pages. But I had to admire the attitude of GOP Rep. Davis of Virginia who had the chair of the House Committee on Government Reform, with oversight of the steroid use in baseball. He was using that position to declare that a group including George Soros shouldn't be allowed to purchase the "Nats" from Major League Baseball.

Moreover, Davis dID have a favorite, just happening to be a big Republican fundraiser - Fred Malek. Such reasoned arguments as that Soros is a supporter of legalization of marijuana and so shouldn't be involved with sports, or that Soros has partisan intentions in use of his earnings, kind of pale when you see what the real basis of these efforts had to be. His buddy wanted him to use his influence to be a spoiler of an otherwise aboveboard purchase attempt.

Some Republican lawmakers don't think George Soros should be permitted to
purchase a Major League Baseball team because he's too liberal and he has some
wacky notions. I must have been napping, and that's why I missed the part where
we became a country in which Democrats are no longer allowed to buy things. If lawmakers start banning people from owning ballclubs just because of their politics or because they have a few woo-woo ideas, there are going to be a lot of shuttered ballparks. Anybody who tries to say that MLB owners should meet a certain standard of political correctness will get knocked back on their butts every time by two simple words: Marge Schott.
(snip)
I don't much care about George Soros, and I don't care at all which rich guy gets the privilege of spending $400 million in heavy sugar on the Nats. But I do care when members of a ruling party start pushing people around, because next, it could be me. This is supposed to be the party that doesn't believe in government telling business or private citizens what to do.
(snip)
Davis doesn't bother to hide his agenda. He says straight out that baseball needs to cultivate some good will on Capitol Hill at the moment, given the steroid investigations, and that selling the team to billionaire Soros, a critic of President Bush and a massive financial supporter of liberal causes, would anger him.

"They could use some friends on the Hill right now, and this is not the way to make them," Davis said yesterday.

The outright thuggery of the Republics is getting to be more offensive every day. When the pig's trough they made out of the government which they refuse to serve is defended against all comers except their buddies, this is gang warfare instead of politics.

These thugs must be pursued with charges, with subpoenas, with investigations, and then with indictments. Using public positions to limit opportunities to your buds isn't public service, it's theft by deception.

DeRegulation? Just Hand Over Your Money and Nobody Gets Hurt

On the outskirts of D.C., Georgetown hosted a company of your corporate overlords yesterday, there for the occasion of attempted feast on the corpse of public oversight. Yes, you were there. You are the enemy in the view of much of the profit-directed financial realm.

Refreshingly, there is an element of the very, very wealthy who look upon the public more as a partner than an enemy, and they were represented as well, in the following by Warren Buffett.

For his part, the Oracle of Omaha (and in full disclosure, a Washington Post Co. board member) said business leaders brought government scrutiny on themselves after numerous scandals shook investor confidence. During calls to loosen rules on companies and accounting firms, Buffett pointed out that corporate profits have never been higher as a percentage of gross domestic product. "That cannot be regarded as a broken capitalistic system," he said at the Capital Markets Competitiveness Conference.

Earlier, inside the grand Georgetown University meeting hall, surrounded by rich red and blue stained-glass walls and Catholic imagery of sacrifice, Paulson opened the program with a call for "more rigorous cost-benefit analysis of new regulation."[emphasis added]

The corporate effort to throw off pesky regulations comes at a hard time for the financial community. Risky lenders are folding all around us. Rampant back-dating of stocks has been uncovered throughout the past year. Boards are losing auditors who sanctioned these little profit scams and members of the guilty boards are resigning in droves.

For those who haven't been privy to these back-dating deals, a stock can be deemed purchased by a board member at a date when it was less expensive than it is in the present - and when he gets it that stock can be worth much more than the purchase price. Voila, instant bucks!

Of course, while it was going on it was not regarded as theft, but as an accounting sleight-of-hand without a downside. It was an award given to the diligent and burdened board member - a corporate executive perk. The fact that the shareholder/investor was receiving less profit than he/she would have if the purchase were made at the existing price evidently did not enter into accounting minds.

We can be glad that this confab is happening with minds like Barney Frank, Robert Byrd and Frank Obey overseeing its recommendations. That is a great improvement over the prospect of a Ted Stevens, Pete Domenici, and Sam Brownback handling followup. When public interests are regarded as the enemy, regulations become nothing but hindrance on the capitalist benefactors. In Democratic hands, (yes Democratic, they're fighting for us) these proposals are viewed as threatening to financial wellbeing for all of us.

I like the term 'shareholder interests'. If that had been the orientation at, say, General Motors, would they now be in a hole because their production has been directed toward big guzzling vehicles that are now the proverbial 'drug on the market'? Would their financial department have gone into sub-prime lending at a time when savings were dipping into negative territory? If that had been the orientation at, say, Accredited Home Lenders Holding Co. of San Diego , one of the strongest sub-prime lenders, would it now be admitting it could not meet Wall Street profitability standards?

With the backdrop of tumbling prices on Wall Street, our representatives being presented this shiney bouquet of proposed regulation busters will not have a hard time just saying No. GOPoisons sometimes, happily, provide their own antidote.

The Unprotected Public Trough

Sometimes I feel like the Good Old Days when laws were carried out by the representatives we elected, and who swore to effect them, was some misty land of Camelot, too wonderful really to be true. In this age of sleaze, when the country's representatives actively work to defeat the people's will, our functioning country of laws takes on the quality of myth.

Still, I bet you think that the business interests are being served, since supposedly our high office holders were businessmen, developing techniques for promoting the welfare of those businesses that are supposed to provide the prosperity to trickle down to the peons, hmmm? Nope. Unless you're Carlyle Co's, I guess you're on the receiving end of the dirty tricks, too, it seems.

In 1995, Joseph Cooper won a multiyear contract worth up to $8 million to do public relations for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He received the contract through a Small Business Administration program established to increase opportunities for small companies.

But not long after the work was under way, the deal was awarded instead to three multimillion-dollar companies, which were listed as disadvantaged in contract documents. After years of trying to win the contract back, Cooper filed a false-claims lawsuit against the companies, asserting that they had committed fraud by saying they were small businesses.

This year, to Cooper's and his lawyer's surprise, the court ruled that although evidence showed the companies were indeed not small businesses, fraud had not been committed because the INS knew their true status when the work was awarded to J. Walter Thompson, the Bernard Hodes Group and Cass Communications.

The case was dismissed.

"We were floored," Cooper said. "The ruling essentially said that I was right, the companies were not small, but so what."
************************************************************
It's a hollow victory," said Raul Espinosa, a small-business owner who has won several protests in Florida."You might win the size protest, but you can't claim the contract because the agency allowed delivery to take place, and what's worse, the penalties for the violations aren't enforced."

There seems to be a new ethic among the crooks in high office that simply ignores the laws - and dares the mechanics of law enforcement to enforce them. When the cretin in chief writes out his own version of laws the Congress legally passed, and essentially declares "my way" is the new way of negating legal niceties, our laws are in really deep trouble. When our agencies of administering the laws are enabled by that illegal tactic simply to slough off their job and give public monies without regard to existing regulation, we're all in deep trouble.

Another instance of the subversion of contract requirements is found rampant in military contract awards. Not only in Iraq where the excuse was made of necessary haste in awarding contracts, but also in everyday domestic awards, this government of crooks, by the crooks, and for the crooks ignores what the laws demand.

Cindra Stolk was on the telephone one day in May when her son walked into the office, slapped a fax on her desk, and walked out without saying a word.

Ms. Stolk, chief executive officer of Federal Edge Inc., a small family-run computer reseller in Riverside, Calif., looked at the piece of paper and says she felt "the hair stand up on the back of my neck."

It was a note from the Hill Air Force Base in Utah informing Ms. Stolk that a federal-government contract of more than $600,000 to provide computer equipment was not going to her company, but rather to GTSI Corp., Chantilly, Va.

As part of the government's efforts to help entrepreneurs get a slice of the lucrative federal contract market, this contract had been set aside for bidding by small businesses only. The size standard for "small" differs by industry and contract; for instance, a firm bidding on a telecommunications award can sometimes have up to 1,500 employees while a computer reseller such as Federal Edge or GTSI typically needs 500 or fewer workers to qualify.

With eight employees and $6 million in sales last year, Ms. Stolk's company was allowed to apply. But so was GTSI, which had sales of $954 million in 2003 and employed 685 people as of March 1. "This is small?" asks 49-year-old Ms. Stolk, who opened Federal Edge in 2000 and works alongside her husband and two sons.

That question cuts to the heart of a growing debate over how the federal government awards, counts and monitors its small-business contracts. Each year, Congress establishes small-business buying goals for most federal agencies and for the government as a whole. Contracts get reported into a central database, and the government makes an annual tally of how close it comes to meeting its small-business target. The overall goal is 23% of all prime-contract dollars.[emphasis added]

With a GOP congress in power for the past six years, a 109th Do-Nothing congress that refused to supervise the government itself, the victims were left to try and find just and equitable treatment. With a judiciary run by the same perpetrators of 'signing statement' law evasion, there was little chance of that happening.

On his way into office, Sen. John Kerry has announced that he will be giving these small business awards the attention they are sorely needing. He stated recently, introducing an anti-bundling bill; Although there is current law in place intended to require Federal agencies to conduct market research before bundling a contract, loopholes in the current definition of a bundled contract allow them to often skirt these safeguards.

He will have a lot of help from similarly inclined legislators who have the public's interest as their guiding principle. I am looking for changes, and a return to the law-abiding nation that we deserve, and have to fight for.

Fool Us Once?

If I called for a show of hands for everyone reading this who believes that this administration has any interest in the 'common good', I am pretty sure there would not be any waving around. So maybe it should come as no surprise that another blow against protecting taxpayers from being robbed has been struck. This strike is from the General Services Administration. With that name, maybe the GSA thought it wouldn't be noticed. No such luck.

" "The new chief of the U.S. General Services Administration is trying to limit the ability of the agency's inspector general to audit contracts for fraud or waste and has said oversight efforts are intimidating the workforce, according to government documents and interviews.

GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan, a Bush political appointee and former government contractor, has proposed cutting $5 million in spending on audits and shifting some responsibility for contract reviews to small, private audit contractors.

Doan also has chided Inspector General Brian D. Miller for not going along with her attempts to streamline the agency's contracting efforts. In a private staff meeting Aug. 18, Doan said Miller's effort to examine contracts had "gone too far and is eroding the health of the organization," according to notes of the meeting written by an unidentified participant from the Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The GSA is responsible for managing about $56 billion worth of contracts each year for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security and other agencies.

Doan compared Miller and his staff to terrorists, according to a copy of the notes obtained by The Washington Post.

"There are two kinds of terrorism in the US: the external kind; and, internally, the IGs have terrorized the Regional Administrators," Doan said, according to the notes.

Through a spokesman, Doan said she respects the inspector general's role and is not doing anything to undercut his independence. She also denied that she had referred to Miller, a former terrorism prosecutor, or his staff as terrorists.""

Being caught robbing the public is no longer even an embarrassment to these cretins, I guess getting caught in a lie is nothing either to the crooks. Maybe it provides a distraction from their basic criminality, and serves as a shield of sorts.

The latest undermining of an official whose job is to keep the administration follows closely on the recent dismissal of the Inspector General of Iraq, which was accomplished by a little provision slipped in after the conference had approved the legislation concerned.

"Investigations led by a Republican lawyer named Stuart W. Bowen Jr. in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies like Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces.

And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Mr. Bowen’s supporters believe is his reward for repeatedly embarrassing the administration: a pink slip.

The order comes in the form of an obscure provision that terminates his federal oversight agency, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, on Oct. 1, 2007. The clause was inserted by the Republican side of the House Armed Services Committee over the objections of Democratic counterparts during a closed-door conference, and it has generated surprise and some outrage among lawmakers who say they had no idea it was in the final legislation.

Mr. Bowen’s office, which began operation in January 2004 to examine reconstruction money spent in Iraq, was always envisioned as a temporary organization, permitted to continue its work only as long as Congress saw fit. Some advocates for the office, in fact, have regarded its lack of a permanent bureaucracy as the key to its aggressiveness and independence.

But as the implications of the provision in the new bill have become clear, opposition has been building on both sides of the political aisle. One point of contention is exactly when the office would have naturally run its course without a hard end date.

The bipartisan opposition may not be unexpected given Mr. Bowen’s Republican credentials — he served under George W. Bush both in Texas and in the White House — and deep public skepticism on the Bush administration’s conduct of the war.

Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into what is called the conference report, which reconciles differences between House and Senate versions of a bill.

Neither the House nor the Senate version contained such a termination clause before the conference, all involved agree.

“It’s truly a mystery to me,” Ms. Collins said. “I looked at what I thought was the final version of the conference report and that provision was not in at that time.”

“The one thing I can confirm is that this was a last-minute insertion,” she said."

The shameless swilling at the public trough that the administration and its businesses have indulged in has become so open that its agents are eliminating all of the checks and balances that were put in place to prevent that robbery. It's going to take the Democratic powers a long time to return balance to our economy this time.

It should come as no surprise that the dollar is plummeting, as the world sees our economy going to the dogs - or is it too much of an insult to the precious pooches to bring them into comparison with the party that has so damaged this country? Going to pot it is, then.

"The dollar tumbled to the lowest level since March 2005 against the common currency today" - although being Bloomberg News, needing to keep its business sources pacified, the cause was attributed to manufacturing sector weakness. Of course, the dollar is sound as long as the rest of the world has confidence in it.

For the cretins in the White House, no doubt all these silly restrictions on their thefts must be a nuisance, and eliminating them in order to steal more readily makes perfect sense. For those of us who care about the U.S., and want to see it continue its former economic health, this administration cannot end too soon.