Choreographed Budget Cave In - The Money Party Stabs Citizens in the Back
By Michael Collins
So this is how it is going to be:
"After putting controversial cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table in negotiations with congressional Republicans over a plan to raise the nation's debt ceiling, President Obama still doesn't have a deal in the works." Chris Moody, Yahoo News, July 7
Who told President Obama to put "controversial cuts on Social Security and Medicare on the table"? Hasn't the president seen his public opinion polling numbers lately? He is consistently at or below 50% job approval. (Image)
Didn't he pay attention to the special congressional election in the highly conservative, long-time Republican upstate New York district that elected a Democrat for the first time in years?
Isn't the President Obama aware that there's an election coming up; that many of the people he is so willingly and openly betraying rely on Social Security to live and Medicare to stay alive?
What planet does he live on? (Unless this is what he truly desires.)
PermalinkA Weiner in Hand
Michael Collins
If you're in the retail business, it's all about packaging. If you're in wholesale, it's about volume. If you're Congressman Anthony Weiner, it's about the double game of liberal packaging without the throw weight to justify the image.
I managed to get through the last few days without much information on Weiner's Tweets. etc. As I exited the corporate media's fantasy land a few days ago, I saw a clip of Weiner with a shit eating grin on his face. He was trying to act like an “adult” (i.e., a pol like Cheney who lies without blinking).
Weiner asked that people not make more out if his situation than was actually there. I thought he's lying as I left the virtual world for some pressing business. Upon my return, I saw just enough to let me know that the congressman was the subject of the much discussed underwear shot heard round the world.
Death Panels, Palin's Targets, and Political Assassination
Michael Collins
The attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords raises the bar for political lies and hate to a new level. Previously, incendiary political lies stopped just short violent imagery. Sarah Palin's Take Back 20 campaign presented a violent threat in the form of rifle site crosshairs placed over the congressional districts of 20 Democratic supporters of health care reform.
Ironically, Giffords sent Palin a clear message to end the violent allusion in the ads. In this brief video, she warns:
"… we're on Sarah Palin's targeted list but the thing is that the way she's had it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun site over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize that there [are] consequences to that action." Rep. Giffords
The Era of Pain Avoidance is Over
By Numerian
Erskin Bowles: former Chief of Staff to President Clinton and prior to that a North Carolina businessman. Alan Simpson: at age 79, fourteen years senior to Erskin Bowles, and a former Republican senator from Wyoming. Alice Rivlin: also age 79, and Clinton’s former budget director. Peter Domenici: age 79, and a former Republican senator from New Mexico. These four people are the principal players in a set of competing proposals to do something about the US federal debt. They all have what Washington calls “gravitas”, which is a certain respectability that comes with age and experience. They also display that precious quality of “bipartisanship” which makes them supposedly immune from political bias. That’s why you get these Republican-Democrat partnerships: Simpson-Bowles, and Domenici-Rivlin. You would trust these people, wouldn’t you, to give you the cold, hard truth that politicians cannot deliver?
You shouldn’t. These people are good at delivering cold, hard truths in terms of areas of the budget to cut, and new sources of revenue to tap, which together over the long run will bring deficits down to zero and reduce the interest burden of the national debt to something manageable. But they won’t give you a vision of America under these new fiscal conditions. Reading through their proposals, we are left to imagine what America would be like in such a permanent state of austerity.
Triumph of the Money Party!!! Warren's role downgraded, reports to Geithner
The White House snatched back one of the few bones it's thrown to the people outraged at the looting of the United States Treasury by failed financial concerns - the big banks and Wall Street. The promised appointment Elizabeth Warren as head of the new agency to protect consumers from the financial services industry has been seriously downgraded. Instead of running the Consumer Finance Protection Agency, Warren's role has been diminished to that of special assistant to the president and adviser to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
"President Obama, sidestepping a possibly heated confirmation battle, will appoint Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren as a special advisor to the Treasury Department to launch the government's powerful new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to two Democratic officials familiar with the decision." LA Times, Sept 15
An interim appointment would have given the no-nonsense Warren the full authority to structure consumer bureau in the interests of the people. A special adviser role is defined in a New York Times article as follows:
Why Economic Growth in the United States Cannot Happen
By Joaquin posted by Michael Collins
So, you cut back on your lifestyle; performed a so un-Greek personal austerity reset but your credit card balance is still creeping up; or perhaps you are slowly burning through your savings; or you are at the end of the line; abandon ship. Whatever, you have a lot of company out there. (Image)
Why is it so hard to make ends meet these days? The days of living high on the credit hog are over and we all have to get small but in the end, we still have to make ends meet; we have to pay for food, pay for utilities, buy gas, etc. How to make that work?
We all bought a lot of stuff during those days of easy credit. Debt driven demand drove up the value of lots of things. Homes increased in value so much that they became a kind of income harvested through a home equity line of credit. Autos got big and powerful again making them unaffordable to buy and operate now that we have to live within our means. Cell phones replaced land lines and cost a lot more; especially when everyone in the family has to have one. Maybe you have a home that you cannot sell and you are stuck living 20 miles or more from your workplace and your car is fast reaching the point when you will need a new one just to get to work.
The Checking Account Scam - How Wells Fargo Gouged Its Customers
By Numerian posted by Michael Collins
We’ve often talked here about the bank practice of extracting equity from customer accounts. Now comes a 90 page ruling from Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California against Wells Fargo Bank, showing in detail exactly how the bank engaged in “gouging and profiteering” when it managed customer checking accounts. Nor is this one of those polite judicial rulings where the judge waits to the end to conclude whether or nor the defendant engaged in bad behavior. Judge Alsup is biting and nasty throughout his ruling, barely able to hold his disgust at what he concluded was a deliberate attempt by Wells Fargo to profit off a system that trapped customers into overdraft hell.
How the System Was Rigged to Create Overdrafts
Prior to 2000, Wells Fargo did its best to minimize overdrafts in customer accounts. Its computers processed all credits to the account first, followed by ATM withdrawals and debit card purchases, followed by checks and then Automated Clearing House transactions (the ACH is used by banks to process debits such as PayPal charges or monthly mortgage or rental payments where the customer has agreed to an automatic debit). In every step, Wells Fargo used low to high sequencing; the smallest debits would go first and the largest would go last. This entire process mimicked the way the consumer managed their account using a traditional checking account balance, which ranks all transactions in chronological order. When an overdraft occurred on the bank’s records, the consumer would have known had they been keeping their checkbook balance up to date.
The White House, Big Oil, and the "American Power Act"
This analysis looks behind the scenes at how the ban on offshore drilling was lifted and what that had to do with the ultimate prize for big oil, the American Power Act. It focuses on the current administration. That in no way implies that the problem originated in January 2009. The out sized and destructive influence of the oil monopoly has been with us for since the 1870's.
Banning Offshore Drilling
In 1969 a Unocal oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara, California began leaking oil. The extent of the leak, damage to wildlife, and the shoreline caused considerable outrage. The state of California banned offshore drilling shortly after the leak. In 1980, Congress banned offshore drilling in most federally controlled waters. President George H.W. Bush reluctantly banned off shore drilling in 1990 for California, Florida, Oregon and Washington and in the North Atlantic.
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