Well, Joe Biden was certainly right when he said that President Obama would be “tested” soon after taking office. The question is not so much “how did he do” on the test as it is, “when will the tests ever stop?” It is perhaps more accurate to look at these entire four years of the Obama administration (first or only) as an ongoing test, and one that grows increasingly difficult and challenging as it progresses, like the LSAT. Furthermore, much more is being tested than this still young presidency. The entire nation is being asked difficult questions about itself. Encapsulated into one question, what we are being asked is – As a nation, what are we?

- Are we a nation so divided by vapid ideologies that we can do nothing but shout at each other and hold those with whom we disagree in the utmost disdain, a disdain fueled by obnoxious purveyors of half truths and grotesque characterizations on our airwaves and our computer networks?

- Are we a nation that, forty years after Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech must nevertheless experience a form of shock that we finally, finally, have managed to elect a person of color to the highest office in the land?

- Are we a nation that truly can envision no other course for itself than to keep fighting wars and wreaking destruction, even as the jury is no longer out about how effective these military escapades are in actually solving the problems our country faces in its dealings with adversaries?

- Are we a nation so beholden to the economic powers that essentially run things in this country that we powerlessly bear witness to the destruction of two of our most valuable national assets, the American Middle Class and the Gulf of Mexico, conceding all responsibility to big, self serving corporate entities that have shown time and again that their interests are, charitably, clearly NOT prioritizing the health and well being of our floundering country?

In the middle of the fray stands President Barack Obama. Born in the last year of the postwar Baby Boom, campaigning with the invigorating, motivational catch phrases, “Yes, WE Can!”, “Change We Can Believe In” and “The Audacity of Hope”, his victory in November 2008 inspired and uplifted a large portion of the American public, many of whom had nearly given up hope that the trajectory of self serving government, and the decline of America’s status globally, could ever possibly be reversed, particularly after eight years of a presidency that felt downright alien and Orwellian to them.

Yet, a few short months before crucial midterm elections, those catch phrases ring hollow. The Obama presidency, viewed as a whole, has not delivered in a way that justifies their bold and cheerful optimism. Indeed, many, I’m guessing millions, of Americans feel deceived about those words, and sold out by this presidency. It is as if Obama never really, truly, understood the nature of the  “change” that the majority of the American people wanted so desperately to believe in. 

I find myself asking, “Why did Barack Obama want so desperately to be president?” I am frankly stumped by this question. The question is much easier to answer when applied to his recent predecessors. Richard Nixon (a Shakespearean villain if ever there was one) wanted the job because nothing short of that would satiate his monumental ego and lust for power. Jimmy Carter had an evangelistic and fervent belief that the country itself was far more decent and honorable than its leadership, and that its true heart and soul were crying out to be affirmed. Ronald Reagan was so driven by his Ayn Rand-influenced philosophy about government, capitalism and communism that he stormed into office as a True Believer, ordained, or so he believed, with the power to remake the country into a sort of real-life version of “Atlas Shrugged” (it is interesting to wonder if he, and not Gary Cooper, had landed the lead role in the Hollywood version of “The Fountainhead”, that he may have gotten his  ya yas out that way, and spared the rest of us the consequences of his Objectivist wet dream). Bush the Elder and Bill Clinton were both convinced that they were the smartest guys in the room, and that nobody else was as capable as they were of running the enormous machinery that makes the world’s most powerful country tick. And Bush the Lesser was just a frat boy who, his entire life, basically proved the Peter Principle, simply coasting along on the zephyrs of forces and connections far more powerful than him to increasing Levels of Incompetency.

I am quite certain that Obama did not become president to, paraphrasing Churchill, preside over the demise of the American Republic as a great nation, and yet why does it appear that this is what he is doing? Is the job bigger and harder than he imagined it to be? Are many of his detractors right in proclaiming that he is in over his head, a “community organizer sent to do a president’s job”? Are the problems our country is facing too large and complex and metastatic for any leader to make headway against them? Is our president, like Hamlet, caught up in such a swirl of dark doings that he can only retreat into a cool, calculated inertia? At a time when the economy, the war in Afghanistan, the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf, etc.  – nothing is going right, does anyone really believe that this hesitancy to seize the zeitgeist and place his stamp upon it is a matter of him “playing chess” and “thinking three steps ahead of his adversaries”? If so, how does that Kool Aid taste?

Returning to the American public and the landslide victory it gave him, what was the change that we pinned our hopes on Candidate Obama to achieve? These were not small things. In a word, what we were hoping to see was a reversal of Reaganism.  Just as Hamlet was haunted by the ghost of a king, so it is that the Obama presidency, and the nation as a whole, are even now haunted by the “ghost” of a former president whose disdain for government shows up like fingerprints on all the troubles we are facing today. Remember James Watt? Reagan appointed him to head the Environmental “Protection” Agency as a slap in the fact to environmentalists. This country has more than enough trees, rivers, large bodies of water, etc. -  King Ronald decreed. While I’m president, no tree huggers are going to tie the hands of industry and keep this country from reaching its full economic potential! Now, because the environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico is foremost on everyones mind, that example seems particularly glaring, but run through all our current problems, the ones President Obama is charged with dealing with, from Wall Street to the military, to healthcare, to corporate outsourcing, etc., and they can be connected as if by Day Glo dots back to King Ronnie’s obsession with small social government and a huge military, and his Holy Mantra, “deregulation”. That was what we believed in as we threw our support behind Obama, that that could change. We’re not so sure anymore, are we? It appears abundantly clear that that was not the change that our president was referring to or envisioning. 

I truly believe that he is at heart, a good, decent man who wants his presidency to be a great one, one that goes far toward uplifting this country, morally, economically, ecologically.  I believe that, much as MBA George W. Bush believed that this country should be run and operated as if it were a company, former community organizer Barack Obama believes that this country can grow and flourish through outreach, networking, coming together and working together. Cooperation and sacrifice are his lifeblood, and what he has the power to extol us toward. But we need that voice! We need to believe that it applies to everyone, most obviously the arrogant, “Too Big To Fail” (Too Big to Make Sacrifices?) entities that have caused so much trouble with neither governance nor guidance from elected officials. “Guidance”; that is what they need. Even big companies are made up of little people, just like us. If the U.S. government, with Barack Obama as its leader, could take responsibility for telling the suits, “We are going to do things differently now. You are going to play a different role. Your interests and the interests of this country as a whole are going to conjoin. You are going to  play a large role in making this a great, safe, prosperous, and happy nation and you will have the gratitude of its people as you do so”, things would change. The nations of Europe, Japan, etc. have achieved this with far greater success than any of our leaders since the Reagan Revolution have managed. It’s doable, clearly. But if the country sees that its president and elected officials appear to be abdicating that role – the very role for which they were elected – then “hope” and “change” seem to be as hollow as the reassurances of BP officials, and as void of life as large swaths of the Gulf of Mexico have become.

There is something sadly symbolic in the birthplace of democracy being destroyed by banks. The domination of corporatism over democracy across the world, using the freedom of democracy against itself, is a sad, terrorist type strategy that has unfortunately succeeded to date.

a. Greece created the roots of democracy.

b. Goldman Sachs helped destroy Greece’s economy.

c. Goldman Sachs has helped to destroy the roots of democracy.

Okay, it may be a bit of a reach but you get the symbolism here.

In a nutshell, what GS did was conspire with the corrupt government in Greece to fraudulently hide debt. Then, being the slime covered weasels that they are, GS turned around and bought into credit default swaps against Greece, meaning, they bet against Greece ever being able to pay off their debts which they helped Greece hide.

An allegory would be like a mechanic helping someone hide that their transmission is about to go out so they can sell their car to an unsuspecting person, then the mechanic announces publicly that he is betting against the car being in good running order.

When banks do these credit default swaps, it is publicly known in the financial world. It can be and was in the case of Greece, a fait d’accompli, causing the failure it’s betting will happen. With the financial world, including those with the most intimate knowledge of Greece’s finances, betting that Greece would fail to pay their debts, they insured that Greece would indeed fail. Naturally, the public knowledge of this chased away money from investing in Greece, preventing Greece from being able to pay towards its debt.

So Greece went bankrupt. And Goldman Sachs made an enormous sum for helping Greece try to hide its debt then made an enormous sum betting against Greece being able to pay all of its debt.

Greece had been operating irresponsibly, deficit spending enormously for many years with no regard for a day of reckoning but Goldman saw them as an easy mark and juiced them dry, coming and going, laughing and bonusing to themselves as Greece collapsed.

There are many differences between Greece’s situation and America’s but what’s happening there should be seen as a warning of what could happen here.

Primarily, since Greece is on the Euro, they couldn’t do what America did to address a lack of money, that is, just print more. Other than that, read this description below about Greece and consider how it may apply to the U.S.:

Greece has been living beyond its means in recent years, and its rising level of debt has placed a huge strain on the country’s economy.

The Greek government borrowed heavily and went on something of a spending spree during the past decade.

Public spending soared and public sector wages practically doubled during that time.

However, as the money flowed out of the government’s coffers, tax income was hit because of widespread tax evasion.

When the global financial downturn hit, Greece was ill-prepared to cope.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8508136.stm

Greece, now at the mercy of the banks and the EU and IMF for survival has had to apply severe austerity plans to its nation, as demanded by them. The cuts of services and huge rises in taxes have destabilized their nation and society. As reported today:

3 dead as anti-austerity riots erupt in Athens

By DEREK GATOPOULOS and ELENA BECATOROS, Associated Press Writer Derek Gatopoulos And Elena Becatoros, Associated Press Writer – 59 mins ago

ATHENS, Greece – Riots over harsh new austerity measures left three bank workers dead and engulfed the streets of Athens on Wednesday, as angry protesters tried to storm parliament, hurled Molotov cocktails at police and torched buildings. Police responded with barrages of tear gas.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in a nationwide strike to protest new taxes and government spending cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations before heavily indebted Greece gets a euro110 billion ($141 billion) loan package to keep it from defaulting.

The three bank workers — a man and two women — died after demonstrators set their bank on fire along the main demonstration route in central Athens.

On the streets of Athens, demonstrators chanted “Thieves, thieves!” as they attempted to break through a riot police cordon guarding Parliament and chased ceremonial guards away from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front of the building.

Tear gas drifted across the city center as rioters hurled paving stones and fire bombs at police. Firefighters extinguished blazes at least two buildings — the bank and a branch of the Finance Ministry — while protesters set up burning barricades and torched cars and a fire truck.

The marches came amid a 24-hour nationwide general strike that grounded all flights to and from Greece, shut down ports, schools and government services, and left hospitals working with emergency medical staff. The Acropolis and all other ancient sites were closed and journalists also walked off the job, suspending television and radio news broadcasts.

Violence also broke out in the northern city of Thessaloniki, where another 20,000 people marched through the city center and some youths smashed store windows.

Some fear the austerity measures insisted upon by the EU and IMF could make prospects for growth even worse.

“These people are losing their rights, they are losing their future,” said Yiannis Panagopoulos, head of GSEE, one of the two largest unions. “The country cannot surrender without a fight.”

Again, Greece is not innocent in this economic disaster, the government did dig a massive financial hole for itself on its own…Goldman Sachs just took a bundle from them to spread a blanket over the hole to hide it then took out accident insurance on Greece before pushing Greece into the hole. Ain’t capitalism grand?

The mercenary, corporate plundering of societies and nations around the world must either be reigned in or the fate of Greece may be the eventual fate of most nations and people. Banks and corporations will dictate how society operates and how people must live if most become financially beholden to them.

It would be ironic if the birthplace of democracy was ground zero for the death of it. In the U.S., democracy can be rescued by releasing it from the choke-hold of banks and corporations. Supporting a strong financial reforms bill and contacting your congresspeople to do the same would be something meaningful that could be done in the short term.

In the long term, corporate control in our political system needs to be broken. Addressing the SCOTUS/Citizens United decision, campaign finance reform and restricting lobbying should all be on the plate.

And enforcing the law against these crime lords running Wall Street wouldn’t exactly hurt either.

During and right after the mortgage crisis some were talking about the commercial crash and how that would soon hit.  At the time I thought, in a tunnel vision sort of way, Commercial Real Estate, which could be partially true but that would not even be considered the medium banana.  To get a sense of where the next credit problem is festering, think Private Equity(PE) Firms.  The crash is likely to happen because of Leveraged BuyOuts that have put many well-known companies in serious debt.  This excerpt is from “The Buyout of America”, a book by Josh Kosman:

It is late 2011 months before President Obama will run for reelection.  The U.S. economy is gradually recovering from four years of hovering on the brink of disaster.  Banks are lending money again, at least to strong companies and employment is stabilizing.

President Obama has finally begun to breathe a bit more easily, when the Secretary of the Treasury walks into his office one day.  “You better sit down,” the secretary says, “I’ve got bad news.  First Data, the largest merchant credit card processor, has defaulted on $22 billion in loans.  Clear Channel Communications which owns more than 1200 radio stations is on the brink.  The other credit tsunami that we knew was out there has begun”…….

“Considering what we have already been through, how bad can it be?” asks Obama  “Well”, says the Treasury Secratary, “PE firms  own companies that employ nearly 7.5 million Americans.  Half of those companies, with 3.75 million workers, will collapse between 2012 and 2015.  Assuming that those businesses file for bankruptcy and fire only 50 percent of their workers, that leaves 1.875 million out of jobs.  To put that in perspective, Mr President, NAFTA caused the displacement of fewer than 1 million workers, and only a slightly higer 2.6 million people lost jobs in 2008 when the recession took hold.”   A spike in unemployment will mean more people will lose their homes in foreclosure, and the resulting nosedive in consumer spending will threaten other businesses.  The bankruptcies will also hit the banks that have financed LBO’s and the hedge funds, pensions and insurers who have bought many of those loans from them.”

“Is this bigger than the subprime crisis?”

“It is similar in size to the subprime crisis meltdown.  In 2007, there were 1.3 trillion of outstanding subprime mortgages.  As a result of leveraged buyouts, U.S. companies owe about 1 trillion.  Sir, we are on the verge of the Next Great Credit Crisis”

President Obama is no longer smiling.

This picture painted by the Treasury Secretary is not total fantasy, nor is it worst-case scenario.  There are people in the financial world, including the head of restructuring at one of the biggest banks, who predict this outcome.  Some knowledgable observers predict the carnage will start sooner.

So, how will these Private Equity firms contribute to such a scenario?  PE firms buy companies with other people’s money by structuring the acquisitions like mortgages, but not quite like the average American would take out a mortgage.  PE firms have the company they are buying take out the loan for the acquisitions, making the company responsible for re-payment.  The PE puts down cash equal to 30 to 40% of the purchase price and the acquired company borrows the rest in what is termed as a Leveraged Buy Out(LBO).  From 2000 to 2007 PE’s bought firms that employed nearly 10% of the private sector(10 million people).  These loans taken out by the companies have balloon payments due 6-8 years down the line.  In the meantime, the PE manages the company and because there is little risk to them, they do not manage for long term success, they usually will turn around and sell the company five years down the line.  But while they are managing the company, they are also collecting management fees.  They are always looking for ways to cut costs and they usually do so by downsizing, selling off divisions, replacing current management, cutting back on customer service, raising prices and turning up production with fewer employees and cutting corners on the finished product.  With these cost cutting measures, they could re-invest back into the company, but they use those cost cutting measures instead to bring up the value of the company.  When they sell, it is not because they have actually brought up the market value by investing and growing the company, but rather by cutting back.  They manage to satisfy short term greed, not long term survival.

To give you an example of what could happen in a worst case scenario, Mervyn’s and Linens n Things were both LBO’s and both have filed for Bankruptcy and liquidated within the past few years.  With Mervyns the PE was only really interested in their real estate holdings.  When they started managing the first thing they did was to split the company, retail side and real estate side.  For many years Mervyns had succeeded because of their real estate holdings.  After the LBO, the retail side was barely solvent.  They had assets of $674mm and liabilities of $664 mm and were left with negative capital unable to pay debts of $22mm.  On the real estate side they borrowed $800 mm and increased the pressure on the retail side by raising rents to market value in order to pay back the loan.  Rents went from $80mm to $172mm and they closed 33% of the stores.  In the meantime, the PE took dividends and distributions of $400mm (which was taken away from the original loan).  The retail side tried to obtain financing to work out of the BK but could not secure because they no longer had the real estate to back the loan.  When Mervyns closed their doors in 2008, they let go approximately 18,000 workers with no severance and no vacation pay.  Mervyns could have survived if not for the rental increases.  The PE responsible for all this and who took no losses was Sun Capital Partners.  Apollo Management did the LBO for Linens n Things.  They received $15mm in transaction fees, plus $2mm per year management fees.  In the space of 2 years, LNT filed bankruptcy closing 589 stores and letting 17,500 employees go.

You are probably asking why a company would do this and why the banks would loan the money on these acquisitions.  The banks, just like in the subprime crisis, lent the money because they knew they were going to package the loans up(80%) and sell to another buyer down the line while collecting the fees for the exorbitant loans.  The tax loopholes that make this damaging activity possible have never been closed.  The company can treat the debt similar to capital expenditures – as an expense deducted from profits through depreciation tax schedules, greatly reducing their tax burden.  In an ideal situation, the company could use that savings to pay down the loan but new management is usually brought in to run the company and it does not happen.  In general the PE will also look at the company as “parts more valuable than the sum of the whole” and sell off piece by piece.

Beatrice, who owned Samsonite, Tropicana, Peter Pan PB, Avis, Swift, Wesson and CocaCola bottling plants was broken up in just such a transaction.  Because the principle for the loans for these acquisitions are not due until between 2012 and 2104 and most issued bonds due in several years rather than pay the interest, underfunded pensions that are counting on PE firms to save them are going to be in bigger trouble than they are now.  In 2006 when speciality retailers, Burlington, Michaels and PETCO took out such loans, Moody’s gave them a B2 rating which means ”assurance of loan compliance over any long period of time might be small.”  They said these companies would probably not be able to pay the loans within 1000 years let alone 6-8.  For another example of an LBO gone wrong, go to Wiki and take a look at MGM Studios.  Prior to reading this book, I would have looked at their recent troubles and thought, “Boy are they mismanaging things”.  But that is not the case, the PE is the one who is mismanaging things and a grand old tradition in Hollywood is being eaten up piece by piece.  Warner Records, founders of Atlantic, Electra and Warner have also been the subject of an LBO and have seen the company broken up.  First Data Resurces was also taken private and as a result have taken on $22b in debt.  While they have not made major changes yet, there are rumors already that their Dallas offices will soon be shuttered(see link below), moving the operations from Dallas to Omaha, their biggest facility.   I have been to the Dallas facility and they employ alot of people.  They have their own campus just outside of downtown Dallas.  The Hugo Boss factory in Ohio is scheduled for closure at the end of April, another LBO.  This closure will put approximately 375 more workers on the unemployment line.  Danny Glover brought attention to their plight at the Oscars and encouraged a boycott of the Hugo Boss label.

As with the sub-prime problem, the PE firms have also spread out to Britian and Europe so if a crash comes, it is going to pretty much be global, not localized to the United States.  Banks, although they have sold most of the loans, will suffer.  Hedge funds that invested heavily in LBO financing will suffer as well as CLO(Collateralized Loan Obligations), investers who took insurance will lose.  Purchasers of the even more derivitive vehicles built out of CLO’s will also lose.  Sound familiar?  It should, it is a miror of the sub-prime crash.

As is the case with most financial issues, it is almost impossible to correctly predict a crash as day to day so many things can happen to change the financial standing of any company, however if half of the total owed by these companies only causes a small tsunami, the workers and communities affected will not fare well.  Nor will our fragile economy so soon after the mortgage crisis.  People in the business of Private Equity firms will not be hurt except for their reputations and their are some pretty big players who are either now or have been in the business.  Some of the players are and have been: Mitt Romney(Bain Capital), David Rubenstein(Carlyle Group), Goldman Sachs, Ray Kravis(Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), Cerberus(John Snow/Treasury Sec/Clinton) and others.  Some of the companies involved in LBO’s: General Motors Acceptance Corp, Hertz, Michaels, PETCO, TXU(Texas) Energy, Sealy and Simmons Mattress Co, Hugo Boss, Burlington(Coat Factory), Warner Records, MGM, Mervyns, Linens n Things, General Instrument, Hospital Corp of America, Spire Healthcare, Vanguard Health Systems, Iasis Healthcare, Capella Healthcare, Ardent Health Services, Essent Healthcare, Hilton Hotels, Alltel, Clear Channel Communications, Harrah’s Entertainment, Kinder Morgan(pipelines).  And if you are looking for the banks who participated, they are the same villians as in the mortgage crash, BofA, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank.  In fact, Wells Fargo may have been brought in by default because Wachovia is in the mix and Merrill Lynch could bring more exposure to BofA.

If you know what you are looking for, you can find many articles and commentaries on this potential looming crisis, I have provided a head start below.  I certainly do not wish this tragedy on any of us or the companies involved, but it is better to be forewarned than to be surprised.  It is also better to educate yourself on these issues, I know it will change how I look at businesses being bought and sold and who I put my trust in for the future, it would, and should, factor into decisions in the employment search of any individual.

The Buyout of America, Josh Kosman(it is a surprisingly easy read for a financial industry book)

First Data

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/first_data_having_hard_time_paying_EyeJ8g003qxnrNh41me4GM

Pension Funds waiting for payoff on equity

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03equity.html

Hugo Boss

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/hugo_boss_takes_heat_in_ohio_9xwRqtjqhzRTdQgBRTrH7J

Buyout of America Website

http://www.joshkosman.com/private-equity-news

I think we all recognize that poverty in our nation has increased in the past three years, but what is not so much discussed is that it has been increasing steadily over the past 10 years.  In the past 10 years, millions of Americans who work full-time have consistently fallen below the poverty line and it is almost as though they are unemployed as well.

Any person who works full-time responsibly in this country should be able to earn enough to rise above the poverty line and have decent healthcare.  Our President and the Democratic congress took care of the latter and now it is time to address the former.  No economic system based on having 37 million of it’s citizens(as of 2007) living in poverty or only 1%-5% holding the most wealth can survive.  There needs to be an honest critique of capitalism in this country.  The McCarthyism that derides anyone who dares to question the perfection of unbridled capitalism needs to be confronted and soon.

Shortly after LBJ took office, he declared a “war on poverty”.  Through his efforts of abatement our country implemented Head Start, Medicare and Medicaid.  This war was fought on many fronts by people who recognized that poverty has many causes and consequences and it was a noble war that spoke to the deepest spiritual beliefs of the American people.  How much more successful would George Bush and his Republican led congress have been had they declared a “war on poverty” instead of their “war on terror”? 

Since the days of LBJ the war on poverty has gradually mutated into a war against the poor, a punative approach that places pressure on the “least of these”, our fellow Americans.  Today we need a 21rst Century version of the War on Poverty.  And we cannot just expect the government to fight it alone, it needs to be a partnership between the Private sector and Government.  With Healthcare signed into law, we now need to look at seriously reforming education(which President Obama has already started) and we need to deal with the minimum wage.  We need to learn to deal with poverty more agressively when it arises and to prevent poverty before it starts. 
Why is it that some people will excuse their lack of action by replying, “there will always be the poor among us”?

The injustices of an individual working full time at minimum wage, only to be rewarded with poverty, is not what this nation was founded on.  An individual working full time at the current national minimum wage, $7.25 per hour as of summer 2009,  will earn $15,370.00 prior to taxes.  Forget benefits because most employers who pay minimum wage do not provide benefits.  Add to that single worker the scenario of a single mother with two children and I think the picture becomes quite depressing very quickly.  What is the cost of a healthcare premium for one year, what about food, clothing and shelter?  It is very clear from the chart of minimum wage increases since 1955 which party has done the most on behalf of the workers, and it still has not been enough.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0774473.html

Far from getting ahead, minimum wage workers have been steadily falling behind for at least the past 10 years.  As of 2006, the minimum wage had not been adjusted since 1997, so for 9 years it steadily lost it’s value.  During this same time pay for Congress went from $133k per year to $174k in 2009.  The increase alone amounted to nearly triple the annual income for a full time minimum wage worker(using only 2009 figures), if you go back the numbers are worse, much worse.  Tom Delay, an ardent opponent of increasing the minimum wage, made this statement in 2005 on a pay raise for congress

“It’s not a pay raise,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas. “It’s an adjustment so that they’re not losing their purchasing power.”  and made this plea on the floor of congress, “Mr. Speaker, I will tell you something, Members of this House have families.  They have 2 homes, in most cases.  Some members are living in their offices because they cannot afford a second residence…..I am not making excuses or apologizing, it is difficult to raise a family and serve in Congress….My wife and my children suffer enough.”

Really?  Are you kidding me, Really?  At least we don’t have knowledge of DeLay staying at C Street, because that would make his plea even more insidious.  What about the purchasing power of millions of Americans, do they not count?  I am sure the members of Congress have a hard time making it but a fast food worker cannot even afford one home, much less two.  I doubt if Congress’ suffering is going to make America’s top 10 list of America’s most disadvantaged groups.  I am not saying they do not deserve the pay they get, and some might disagree with me on that, but don’t deny the same fair treatment to other Americans.

If corporations had been stagnant during this time period, you might be able to justify the mimimum wage, but that is not the case.  In fact when the “to big to fail” Banks nearly took our economy over the cliff they received attention within days and not much discussion was allowed prior to the “bottom falling out of our economy”.  And despite the tax benefits to Corporate America, they have been steadily moving operations offshore where they can pay a worker $0.50 an hour, if that.  Our manufacturing base has nearly disappeared and the United States is quickly turning into a “service industry” society.  Toga parties, conferences at posh resorts, parties in Las Vegas, have all been taken on the backs of the poor in this country.  Inequality, we  all know, is surging.  This erosion is neither an accident nor the product of apathy, it is the result of  a deliberate policy choice of the right.

Maury Weidenbaum, one of Ronald Reagan’s Economic Advisors once said:

If we had our druthers, we would have eliminated the minimum wage. 

Former Congressman from Pennsylvania, Bob Edgar, commented on this saying:

Since that would have been such a “painful political process”, he and other officials were content to let inflation turn the mimimum wage into an “effective dead letter”.

My question is where and how did the United States breed such distasteful and evil people?  Like Teddy Kennedy asked of the Senate, “Have you no shame?” Look at the Republican record(link above) when they hold the majority in congress.  What about the recent extension of unemployment, their stand on the recent jobs bill?  Do these members of Congress really have a bead on the public sentiment or have they spent so much time in the Beltway that they are immune to what happens in the real world?  Do they ever wonder about that worker who hands them a sandwich for their lunch and how they might be surviving?  The Right has two myths regarding the minimum wage; 1) increasing the minimum wage would destroy millions of jobs and 2) nobody actually earns the minimum wage, except for teenagers.  The contradictions of these two myths is amazing.  Millions of jobs have been sent overseas anyway and far more adults in this day are making minimum wage, and for millions more the minimum wage sets a floor that determines their pay.  Sometime when you have a few hours to spend, peruse the want ads, you will find entry level jobs for college graduates with at least a Bachelor of Arts starting not much higher than $30k a year, for High School graduates, it is around $20k, if you can find many these days.

Those working at or below minimum wage perform some of the most important jobs in our society, home health aides to the elderly and daycare workers for our children.  What about the hospitality industry?  Without them, these CEO’s couldn’t sleep in their “heavenly beds” in a hotel room that is clean as a whistle, nor could they entertain their important clients at the many restaurants in this country.  Who would stock the shelves in our stores, keep the offices clean, clean the pools, keep their golf courses groomed, provide the laundry services for their hospital beds?  Who would do all of this in the absence of minimum wage workers?  You can bet the wealthy would be complaining if these workers were suddenly gone and they would not feel the least bit bad about it, in fact they would find a 1000 ways to justify their whining and complain about the welfare roles.

Rewarding a hard day’s work with poverty is an abomination, but what we have not done is to frame a living wage as a “values issue”.  These workers work as hard as any other American.  We see them everyday, we smile, they smile back but the heartache and sturggles they face at home are invisible to us.  The minimum wage should be framed as a values issue in that it must be a living wage that properly reflects the cost of housing, food and other needs in individual markets.  A living wage in Arkansas would not be a living wage in New York or Los Angeles and should be adjusted based on the demographic. 

In some states responsible people have stood up for these people, led by grassroots activists, and minimum wage increases were passed by overwhelming margins.  In California the minimum wage as of January 1, 2008 was $8.00 an hour, $.75 above the national wage but still not enough.  There is an old African proverb that reads:

If you want to walk fast, walk alone.  If you want to go far, walk together.

The 9th Psalm verses 17-18 says:

The wicked bought a one way ticket to hell. For the needy shall not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the poor perish forever.

Government and Private Industry need to work together, they need to “go far” not “go fast”.  So when the far right pulls out their “government is not the answer”, tell them it is the only institution capable of compelling corporations and individuals to observe the rules of fair play in the marketplace.  I don’t think the poor and middle class in this country want a big share of the wealth redistributed, they just want a fighting chance.

Unlike healthcare reform where I have spent many hours researching the issue, I know very little about the substance of financial reform.  My gut says it would be better to have an independent agency for Consumer Financial Protection but some make an argument that a financial protection agency would be better funded under the Fed.  The first question that comes to my mind is why then did the Fed miss the financial crisis?  I am not a Fed woo woo by a long shot I just think of it as another institution that needs to be improved but there is nothing inherently evil with it and going back to some kind of precious commodity type of backing is far from realistic.  So I’m open to the Fed having jurisdiction over financial protection I just hope it’s done right with proper legislation, oversight and execution.

I can’t give many more details about Senator Dodd’s legislation but it does contain some language Paul Volker has promoted to help and prevent the “too big to fail” from happening in future.  The debate is starting and I’m sure the legislation is not enough reform for progressives and too much for conservatives but at this point in our political discourse I personally don’t view those perceptions as reasons to be against this legislation right now.  Probably if the HCR push ends soon one way or another I’ll research the issue more intensely.  Like every issue I like to cut through the partisan bullshit and decide for myself.  I also realize that even my expectations like on healthcare reform are not going to be realized in the first step because of the influence of lobbyists and the corrosive nature of our political discourse.

Click here to read the full article which contains a copy of the proposed legislation.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) on Monday unveiled a sweeping financial regulatory reform bill designed to prevent future Wall Street bailouts and to protect borrowers with a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau housed at the Federal Reserve.

During a press conference at the Capitol, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee emphasized the need for consumer protection, adding that the financial crisis and resulting recession were caused by predatory lending.

“The root cause of our economic crisis was a lack of consumer protection,” Dodd said, emphasizing that the current regulatory structure is “hopelessly inadequate.”

The consumer protection bureau would have authority to write rules governing all entities — banks and nonbanks — as well as the “authority to examine and enforce regulations for banks and credit unions with assets over $10 billion and all mortgage-related businesses,” according to a summary of the bill.

President Obama praised the proposed bill, calling it “a strong foundation to build a safer financial system” and saying that it provides the government with “essential tools to respond in a financial crisis, so that we can wind down and liquidate a large, interconnected failing financial firm. It allows us to protect the economy and taxpayers so that we can end the belief that any firm is “Too Big to Fail”.

Elizabeth Warren who proposed the CFP agency had this to say about Senator Dodd’s legislation.

Since bringing our economy to the brink of collapse, Wall Street has spent more than a year and hundreds of millions of dollars in an all-out effort to block financial reform. Despite the banks’ ferocious lobbying for business as usual, Chairman Dodd took an important step today by advancing new laws to prevent the next crisis. We’re now heading toward a series of votes in which the choice will be clear: families or banks.

I will not qualify her statements like some progressive pundits have so just present it and you can make your own opinions.

With the growing abuse of the filibuster and Democrats unwilling to take the strong action necessary to fix the economy and regain the public trust, with the airwaves and cable increasingly dominated by the demagogic likes of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, and with the ever-growing influence of corporate money on Congress and public opinion, what hope do we have? This country, with all of its great power and potential, is becoming increasingly ungovernable, increasingly in the hands of the myopic and greedy and the voices of ignorance. We are on the brink of disaster.

The argument that free speech won is a false one. The only voices that will be heard are the ones with the most money. Your voices/letters/emails to representatives will fall on deaf ears more so than ever. But we have a tiny window of opportunity to still be heard NOW.

Here’s the background from the New York Times:

Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: January 21, 2010

WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business.

Read the entire article here.

Here’s what lawmakers may do in response to this terrible decision:

Campaign finance ruling: Can Congress do anything?

While many Republicans on Capitol Hill hailed the Supreme Court decision striking down restrictions on corporate spending on political campaigns, Democrats are ramping up measures to curb its impact. This is what lawmakers are thinking about to ameliorate the decision:

For majority Democrats, it’s yet another urgent agenda item heading into a charged election season.

“This disastrous decision paves the way for free and unlimited special-interest spending in our elections,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York at a briefing with Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland on Thursday. “We will not let this decision go unchallenged.”

Read the entire article here.

I think we need to immediately contact our representatives and demand legislation—or better still, a Constitutional amendment to reverse this terrible decision!

Here’s where you can contact senators:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Here’s where to contact the House of Representatives:

http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/index.html

If you want to contact a member of Congress other than your own, they will ask for your area code and zip code to make sure you are in their state/district. Here’s where to get area codes/zip codes:

http://www.prodial.com/areacodes-Alpha.html

http://www.zip-area.com/search.html?type=coord&string=?57,156

These are the addresses of the major television news outlets:

FAIR’s Media Contact List

Let your voice be heard! Talk back to the media.

ABC News
77 W. 66 St., New York, NY 10023
Phone: 212-456-7777 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              212-456-7777      end_of_the_skype_highlighting

General e-mail: netaudr@abc.com
Nightline: nightline@abcnews.com
20/20: 2020@abc.com

CBS News
524 W. 57 St., New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-975-4321
Fax: 212-975-1893

Email forms for all CBS news programs
CBS Evening News: evening@cbsnews.com
The Early Show: earlyshow@cbs.com
60 Minutes II: 60m@cbsnews.com
48 Hours: 48hours@cbsnews.com
Face The Nation: ftn@cbsnews.com

CNBC
900 Sylvan Avenue, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 07632
Phone: (201) 735-2622
Fax: (201) 583-5453
Email: info@cnbc.com

CNN
One CNN Center, Box 105366, Atlanta, GA 30303-5366
Phone: 404-827-1500
Fax: 404-827-1784
Email forms for all CNN news programs

Fox News Channel
1211 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10036
Phone: (212) 301-3000
Fax: (212) 301-4229
comments@foxnews.com

List of Email addresses for all Fox News Channel programs
Special Report with Bret Baier: Special@foxnews.com
FOX Report with Shepard Smith: Foxreport@foxnews.com
The O’Reilly Factor: Oreilly@foxnews.com
Hannity: Hannity@foxnews.com,
On the Record with Greta: Ontherecord@foxnews.com
Glenn Beck: GlennBeck@foxnews.com

MSNBC/NBC
30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112
Phone: (212) 664-4444
Fax: (212) 664-4426

List of Email addresses for all MSNBC/NBC news programs
Dateline NBC: dateline@nbcuni.com
Hardball with Chris Matthews: hardball@msnbc.com
MSNBC Reports with Joe Scarborough: joe@msnbc.com
NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams: nightly@nbc.com
NBC News Today: today@nbc.com

PBS
2100 Crystal Drive, Arlington VA 22202
Phone: 703-739-5000
Fax: 703-739-8458

The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: newshour@pbs.org

National Public Radio
635 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20001-3753
Phone: 202-513-3232
Fax: 202-513-3329

E-mail: Alicia Shephard, Ombudsman ombudsman@npr.org
List of Email addresses for all NPR news programs
The Rush Limbaugh Show
1270 Avenue of the Americas, NY 10020
Phone (on air): 800-282-2882
Fax: 212-445-3963
E-mail: ElRushbo@eibnet.com
Sean Hannity Show
Phone (on air): 800-941-7326
Sean Hannity: 212-613-3800
James Grisham, Producer: 212-613-3807

E-mail: Phil Boyce, Program Director phil.boyce@citcomm.com

The Los Angeles Times
202 West First Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Phone: 800-528-4637 or 213-237-5000
Fax: 213-237-4712

L.A. Times Contact Information by Department
Letters to the Editor: letters@latimes.com
Readers’ Representative: readers.rep@latimes.com
The New York Times
620 8th Ave., New York, NY 10018
Phone: 212-556-1234
D.C. Bureau phone: 202-862-0300
Fax: 212-556-3690

Letters to the Editor (for publication): letters@nytimes.com
Write to the news editors: news-tips@nytimes.com
Corrections: senioreditor@nytimes.com
New York Times Contact Information by Department
How to Contact New York Times Reporters and Editors

USA Today
7950 Jones Branch Dr., McLean, VA 22108
Phone: 703-854-3400
Fax: 703-854-2078

Letters to the Editor: editor@usatoday.com
Give feedback to USA Today
The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty St., New York, NY 10281
Phone: 212-416-2000
Fax: 212-416-2658

Letters to the Editor: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Comment on News Articles: wsjcontact@dowjones.com
The Washington Post
1150 15th St., NW, Washington, DC 20071
Phone: 202-334-6000
Fax: 202-334-5269

Letters to the Editor: letters@washpost.com
Ombudsman: ombudsman@washpost.com
Contact Washington Post Writers and Editors

Newsweek
251 W 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
Phone: 212-445-4000
Fax: 212-445-5068

Letters to the Editor: letters@newsweek.com
Time
Time & Life Bldg., Rockefeller Center, 1271 6th Ave., New York, NY 10020
Phone: 212-522-1212
Fax: 212-522-0003

Letters to the Editor letters@time.com
U.S. News & World Report
1050 Thomas Jefferson St., Washington, DC 20007
Phone: 202-955-2000
Fax: 202-955-2049

Letters to the Editor letters@usnews.com

Associated Press
450 West 33rd St., New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212-621-1500
Fax: 212-621-7523

General Questions and Comments: info@ap.org
Partial Contact Information for the Associated Press by Department and Bureau

Reuters
Three Times Square, New York, NY 10036
Telephone: 646-223-4000

Reuters Editorial Feedback

United Press International
1133 19th Street, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20036
Telephone: 202-898-8000
FAX: 202-898-8048

Comments and Tips: tips@upi.com

FAIR
104 W. 27th St. 10th Floor
New York, NY 10001
fair@fair.org

If anyone has any other addresses, including your local newspapers, please add them to this post. PLEASE– LET’S AT LEAST TRY TO KEEP DEMOCRACY ALIVE. THANK YOU!

After a Superbowl that symbolically saw the city of New Orleans make a statement of defiance and resilience against social and economic injustice, CBS (Corporate Broadcasting System) debuted a show that was a disturbing piece of pro corporate propaganda disguised in the sheep’s clothing (borrowed from Carly Fiorina’s media consultant).

So, in addition to promoting the hateful faux-Christian political group, Focus on the Family during the Superbowl, CBS used the valuable slot that followed the Superbowl with a segment from “Undercover Boss”

The superficial description of this reality series is that a corporate CEO goes undercover as a lowly employee to learn about and appreciate the lives of the insects…whoops… employees…under him.

What it represents though is pro-corporatist propaganda wrapped in the manipulative, humiliating, saccharine sweetness of “Queen For a Day”. You see, the corporate “Prince” (CEO) masquerades as a “pauper” (employee) to rub elbows with the unwashed and discovers…they’re actually human beings with real problems (some of which ironically have been caused directly or indirectly by their greedy employers).

The dynamic itself is insulting. In these times when CEOs and hedge fund managers have so devastated and continue to devastate the lives of what was a robust middle class, the concept that a series would present CEOs as warm hearted, compassionate “kings” of our society who may grant their “peasants” a favor out of their holy mercy…is a sobering roadmap for where the corporate “kings” of our society are charting course.

In light of the SCOTUS ruling which openly awards ownership of our democracy to corporations, the corporate plutocracy that has taken over our society needs to have ongoing propaganda to keep the peasants from using their strength in numbers to take back their wealth and country…the only strength the people have that corporations can’t overcome.

So, corporations and CEOs need to shape the perception of themselves as kind and gentle kings who should be loved and respected by their serfs. They need to be Tom De Lay on Dancing With The Stars. Be self-deprecating and humble on tv so they can shield their greed and ruthless acquistion of wealth and power from the American people.

For example, look at the phony “concerned American” T. Boone Pickens (who Dylan Ratigan celebrated last week by using Boone’s ass as a nose warmer) and his “Pickens Plan” .

As the book, Deceiving Americans For Dummies explains on Page 1, if you’re trying to present a plan as selfless, you don’t name it after yourself.

Greedy, egotistical creatures like Pickett just can’t help themselves. Even when they’re trying to cloak themselves in sheep’s clothing, they can’t help but put a huge wolf tattoo on it.

Why is Pickens, the greedy, polluting, destructive oil man who financed the hateful, lying Swift Boat ads against John Kerry, now our savior, only trying to help us to energy independence without any concern for his own benefit?

You guessed it, like all the bullshit that corporations and CEOs shovel about themselves, it’s another Swift Boat-style blatant lie just for public consumption.

The Pickens Plan is about changing our addiction to the limited fossil fuel, oil…to an addiction to the limited fossil fuel, natural gas.

Pickens has cornered a majority of the natural gas market in the U.S., along with using his money and deception to get state governments to grant him wide swaths of public land for “wind farms”…but somehow has ended up with the water rights for all of that land too.

As many nations in the world could tell you now, potable water is the oil of tomorrow, something that is quickly shrinking in supply thanks to global warming and the destruction of rain forests and nature…that has happened due to the use of and exploration of oil and gas and other plundering of the Earth.

Which was and still is Pickens original “plan”.

Pickens used his money to get a ballot measure in CA that would have only allowed natural gas powered cars and natural gas stations to be subsidized by the state, excluding all other vehicles and stations that used any other type of energy. It’s a credit to Californians that they voted the deceptively “altruistic” bill down which would have effectively smothered actual renewable and environmentally positive types of energy including plug-in electric and the potential for hydrogen powered cars.

When you see generic energy organizations or oil companies promoting natural gas in commercials on MSNBC, CNN, etc. with clear blue skies and happy families having picnics at big grassy parks, that’s Pickens rubbing his hands like Mr. Burns and sighing, “Exxx-ce-llent!”, hoping that his dream of a new monopoly on energy has just moved a little closer to reality.

What all of this points to is the ongoing propaganda assault on our nation by the unapologetically, greedy corporations and CEOs who, despite destroying our economy, won’t stop trying to shake the piggy bank until all of our nation’s wealth and democracy are emptied into their hands.

And IMO, the new, post-economic-crash phase of propaganda is in full swing, exemplified by the debut of this new series in a great time slot and cynically presented with a deceptive, populist theme.

Perhaps they should have titled the show, “The People Are Revolting” so that people on each side of the fence could have a definition they found most satisfying.

I’ve mentioned Randi Rhodes a few times on this site. She’s probably my favorite progressive broadcaster (Rachel Maddow is nipping at her heels). I like Randi because she reads. She scours the newspapers and agency sites for stories, and she has an uncanny ability to pull together information from different sources to create a narrative that other news organizations miss. Many times, insights from her broadcast can be heard on other, higher profile shows (I won’t mention them by name, but they are popular with progressives).

I also enjoy her show because her callers are so intelligent. Below is the transcript of an exchange between Randi and a caller from the January 28 second hour. It’s a very important conversation — one I wish we were having more often. (Our Mr. Bopp would be thinking along these lines.)

I’ve substituted the word “Caller” for the caller’s name for privacy’s sake. I’m sure he wasn’t expecting his words would be preserved in this transcript.

Note: Adlib, I don’t think we run into any copyright issues with this transcript (Fair Use), but let me know if you think it’s problematic

RANDI: Caller in Santa Rosa, California.

CALLER: Hello Randi.

RANDI: Hi.

CALLER: I wanted to talk about the corporate thing that you brought up today because it’s so profoundly important. In my opinion, what the supreme court did was to change our form of government in the same way that, when a bably is born, you really don’t get to see what it’s like until it begins to develop. We’re not going to see — many people are not going to understand, in my opinion — what occured in that decision and how it’s going to emerge over time Into a corporate state, which is a different form of government as you know…

RANDI: I do.

CALLER: …than democracy. They’re not the same thing.

RANDI: No, they’re not the same.

CALLER: The corporation — which the republicans are always trying to tell us, “What a wonderful way to run the country” — a corporation is a state… is a… is a … institution in which the executives give orders. Orders are not what we do in a democracy. They’re different things. One is a political system, one is an economic system. And we have been now moved into an economic system that will continue to unfold as a fascist state. I say fascism because that is what Mussolini created when he created fascism. And that’s what a fascist state does. It is a ruthless, deadly, murderous form of government. When you transform it …

RANDI: It’s lawless.

CALLER: When you transform it from a form of running a business to a form of running a country…

RANDI: Don’t you remember Bush said he was going to run the country like a corporation?

CALLER: Yes. Yes.

RANDI: And a lot of us just, you know, had this knee jerk reaction like, ” Oh my god, this is fascist speak.” And we were, you know, told that, you know…

CALLER: That’s right.

RANDI: … we were unpatriotic, we didn’t love our country. And obviously we weren’t stupid. I wasn’t asleep in dream land. I understood …

CALLER: No you weren’t.

RANDI: … what the goal was. I got it.

CALLER: You felt lonely.

RANDI: I did.

CALLER: That’s what happened.

RANDI: I did. And now …

CALLER: And many of us did.

RANDI: Well, you know, what’s really interesting is …

CALLER: I’d like to …

RANDI: The corporate media for the most part has ignored this supreme court ruling.

CALLER: They will continue to do that as long as they can, and if I may add..

RANDI: It’s so fascinating how they ignore stories that are inconvenient to their agenda of corporatism.

CALLER: They’re lazy for one thing. They only want to do something that doesn’t require them to spend money on reporters …

RANDI: Well, quite frankly …

CALLER: [unintelligible]

RANDI: Right. The punditry is not that bright.

CALLER: No. No, they’re not. And they’re not looking at something very important that is not discussed. One of the things that I think …

You know, when a child walks behind its mother only looking at her heels, he never sees the big picture. He never sees motive. He never sees intent. Motive tells us what people want the outcome to be. And if we don’t look at motive, we only see things as events, and we don’t see them as a process. When the Bush administration set about the financial procedures, the economic procedures, it knew what it was doing. It was creating massive debt with the intent of making the country ungovernable so that the following events that they set in motion would lay this country low.

And when people refuse to talk about motve, which is comprised of circumstances … When investigators and prosecutors look at motive, they’re only looking at a set of circumstances and they say, “You know, we don’t have any absolute evidece, but here’s a bunch of circumstances that all seem to add up to the same thing — that there’s an intent here. A motive.”

So when we have Bush bankrupting the country and knowing what they were doing … They’re brilliant people behind him. Brilliant. They knew what their policies were doing to this country, and they even said, there were quotes, “You know what? Debt is not a bad thing.” Why do you suppose they said that? Because debt is the engine of capitalism. Debt is the engine and fire of capitalism. That’s how they make money. On debt.

Low and behold, along comes guess what? The big catastrophe of the big corporations. Oh what a surprise! You mean those people, those geniuses who created those systems didn’t know what they were doing?

Now we come along with another kill stroke from the Supreme Court.

If we don’t look at motives, we’re not able to assess what people were trying to do, and we only see the events without ever seeing the process. And until people start facing the fact that … There are very large nubers of people in the United States, not a small number, who — in any country they’re always present — who don’t want to live in democracy. And in this case they want to live under a corporate state. And when they talk about things like “I’m a free trader”? There are two kinds of those people. One is t the guy who knows absolutely what he believs in and understands it. He believes in a corproate way of life. The other guy is confused. He’s the guy who’s the average guy who thinks somehow he’s going to belong to the special club some day. He’s never going to make it. Never.

Ninety nine percent, we now know, of the American people are not the one percent of the people who have all the money. They’re never going to get in that club. And that club is a corporate club. And when that club becomes a form of government instead of a form of economics, the American people will rue the day they never thought about motive. Because there will be blood everywhere.

RANDI: Thank you, Caller. That was beautiful. Really. Well said. Beautiful.

Here is an interesting letter I received from AARP this morning:

If you and I don’t act now – the future of Social Security and Medicare could be decided for us without a public debate.

As soon as today your senators will decide whether to give a special commission the power to propose drastic cuts to the programs that millions of seniors depend on: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

The proposals could be voted on immediately, without full transparency and accountability – and without our voices being heard. We can’t let that happen.

Make no mistake – AARP and most Americans are deeply concerned about increasing debt, health care costs and the long-term solvency of Social Security.

But as some of the most fundamental challenges we face as a nation, surely these issues deserve full and open debate by all members of Congress.

You elected your members of Congress to make the tough decisions, not to punt them to a special “commission.”

Tell your senators to vote “NO” on the Conrad-Gregg amendment.

Thank you for your help on this urgent matter.

Sincerely,

Barry Jackson
Senior Manager, Grassroots

http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/conrad_gregg

According to AP “Obama Steps Up His Campaign Against Wall Street Banks”.

It seems like the first part of President Obama retooling his efforts is to reach out to the people and reign in the institutions people are rightfully directing their anger towards.

President Barack Obama stepped up his campaign against Wall Street on Thursday with a far-reaching proposal for tougher regulation of the biggest banks.

“We have to get this done,” Obama said at the White House. “If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have.”

It was a stern, populist lecture from the president to Wall Street for what he perceives as its abandonment of Main Street. Obama said the government should have the power to limit the size and complexity of large financial institutions as well as their ability to make high-risk trades.

He said it wasn’t appropriate that banks have been able to run these trading operations with the protections afforded to regular banking services.

“We have to enact commonsense reforms that will protect American taxpayers and the American economy from future crises,” Obama said. “For, while the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it’s still operating under the same rules that led to its near-collapse.”

I understand people’s anger but it’s all reaction from people that want pay back and only care about punishment.  These changes will be cheered on by the Huffy crowd and many progressives but it never really was my issue.  I think allot of it is grandstanding and there will be little change in the long run that positively affects people’s lives.   I would much rather have HCR which looks like it’s not happening.  Sorry but the system rarely repeats the exact same mistakes again the underlying reason for the banking crisis has been corrected by the banks themselves last year when they stopped making loans to people that could not pay them back.  Sure there were contributing mitigating factors that made the collapse worse like derivatives trading and a bloated housing market but even if the trading was based on predominantly safe loans and the unsustainable loans were not granted to artificially increase real estate values the financial crisis would have been much less intense.

I also do not see how this is going to help out main street save for making some people feel better.  The economy is out of governments control in most aspects.  No matter what FDR did it took WWII to really end the Great Depression.   Sure we can have another stimulus like the last 2 stimulus’s we had the previous two years but if big business keeps on laying off people it really does not matter.  People need to wake up and understand that big business is in the final phase of creating the kind of work environment that only favors them.  They have Americans so afraid of being fired, especially when they are going to lose benefits like healthcare insurance, that they will work harder for less.  Conservatives in big business will continue to reap more profits but they will not be hiring until at least after the midterms so they can help their party get back into power again.  That’s the real conspiracy American workers should know.

Sure it’s good political move for our short term thinking country but it could be another set up for failure with the bought and paid for Congress anyway who will take the teeth out of any legislation he proposes.  Obama be should responding to the people more but in a way to show how the future needs long term fixes like healthcare reform.   These short term populist efforts will do little to make the future better so the reactionaries win out again in round one.

UPDATE Wall Street does not seem to like this new populist president.

The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 210 points after dropping 122 on Wednesday. The index has seen four straight triple-digit moves and the latest slide erased the Dow’s gains for 2010. Bond prices rose as the stock market became more volatile.

Yeah again it will make people feel better but I still don’t see how this helps main street.

Click image to enlarge

Keep you doped with religion, and sex and TV;

and you think you’re so clever and classless and free;

but you’re still f**king peasants, as far as I can see

- John Lennon, “Working Class Hero”

Who Wants to Be a Revolutionary? Oh, there’s anger out there! America has got to be one of the most royally pissed off countries in the world. It doesn’t matter if you’re a leftie or a rightie, if you’re an American, there is a good chance that something has got your blood boiling now. It might be stolen elections, Kenyan birth certificates, Katrina, terrorists, bank bailouts, wars for oil, telecom spying, CEO’s salaries, religious fundamentalism, misleading food labeling, the slow death of the American automobile industry, the quicker demise of the American middle class or any sordid combination of the above. If you haven’t thought at some point in the last ten years or so that things are seriously FUBAR, that the system doesn’t work, and that it definitely doesn’t have YOUR best interests in mind, then I wonder about you. Where have you been?

Yes, the mood is ugly. It’s Tea Party ugly. It’s Ron Paul angry. It’s the stuff of which revolutions are made, the fire next time that burns like a thousand California wildfires that somebody, no doubt, blames Obama for (and somebody else probably blamed Bush for). Yes, there is revolution in the air!

Except, there isn’t. The American people are NOT going to revolt, folks. The country isn’t going to split apart either. The country probably isn’t even going to sweep a true maverick like Paul into power anytime soon. Why? People are too comfortable! A second American Revolution is no more likely to occur than a rebellion of the brainwashed, mutated denizens of Huxley’s “Brave New World”, and for the same exact reason. The Powers that Be have got us, folks, right where they want us. Docile, overfed, overstimulated, undernourished and undereducated, and most of all, hyper-entertained. Which has led me to wonder, what WOULD need to happen for Americans to rise up like the Founding Fathers, taking to the streets with eyes blazing and teeth gnashing? Something the Powers that Be would never be so stupid as to do; take away our televisions!

You’d see a revolution then! Without Monday Night Football and American Idol and Jeopardy and Lost and Jay and The Simpsons, without Wii and PlayStation, without commercials telling us what to buy and what meds we need to be taking, people would flat out lose it! You want anger? You ain’t seen nothing yet!

And see it you won’t. Nobody is going to take anybody’s television away. Television has done what no tyrant nor terrorist has ever come close to accomplishing. It has reduced a once proud and powerful nation to a land of dazed zombies, wearing a groove in the rug between the couch and the fridge while their warden, the glowing rectangular object in the Living Room, goads them to ask the question no revolutionary has ever asked; “What’s on after this?”

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I have heard many of the political pundits say that if the unemployment pictures does not improve we can expect one or more of the houses of congress to change hands, reverting back to a Republican majority. Not knowing what these predictions were based on I did some research.

I wanted to know what the unemployment trend was from 1949 to 2009. This data is available at the Bureau of Labor Statistics at http://data.bls.gov  for any period you wish to look at.  Taking this time frame I compared which parties were a majority in the Senate, the House of Representatives and which party held the Presidency.

The results to me were surprising.

In 1953 the Republicans gain a majority in the Senate and won the Presidency. Unemployment was on the rise.

In 1955 the Democrats won back the Senate. Unemployment was on a decline.

In 1961 the Democrats won back the Presidency and at that time unemployment had been rising and reached a peak of about 6 percent.

The Democrats held everything until 1969 when the Presidency reverted to the Republicans. From 1961 to 1968 unemployment had been in a free fall dropping below 4 percent. By 1969 though, there was a spike taking it back to above 4.5 percent. To me this did not seem to be that bad.

In 1977 the Democrats held everything again, when they won back the Presidency. Unemployment was in a decline at this time.

1981 Reagan won the office of President and the Senate was taken back by the Republican Party. Unemployment had been rapidly rising. It peaked in December of 1982 at 10.82 percent. This is the only data point that compares to what we have going on now. It rose under President Carter and continually rising under Reagan until the start of his second year. Looking at the trend now at the start of 2010 we may see history repeat itself with a decline starting.

In 1987 with a steady decrease in unemployment for 5 years, the Democrats took back the Senate.

1993 when President Clinton won back the Presidency, the unemployment rate was in a decline and it had been declining since the middle of 1991. The quote “It’s the economy stupid” was a little late.

The Republicans surprised everyone when in 1995 when they took both the House and the Senate. It is even more surprising that unemployment had been on a constant decline.

Unemployment was on the rise again when George W. Bush became President. The Senate was also taken back by the Democrats. That was 2001. So which party was being favored at this time?

The Democrats won back both houses of congress in 2007, unemployment was rising at the time this happened and we were well on our way into a recession.

Of course with unemployment still rising in 2009, the Presidency was back in the hands of the Democrats.

It was a surprise to me that the democrats held sway over both house of congress for a majority of the last 60 years, and the Presidency was a win for Republicans during that time by a smaller margin.

The chart I made is interesting to me as it shows that control switched hands some of the time when unemployment was on the rise and sometimes not. It was not enough to say that you can guarantee a sweep for one political party if you have high unemployment. In fact there were cases when everything was going great when control swapped hands.

I know this is hard to imagine but what if the financial industry in a nation conspired to create a dishonest system that looked to everyone else to be a sound and thriving economy but wasn’t?

Now suspend your disbelief even further and imagine that out of greed, what such entities were doing were intentionally creating an economic bubble that brought them huge wealth while pulling out the cornerstones of the world’s economy.

Now imagine that I’m talking about China.

The New York Times ran this sobering article on Thursday

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/08/business/global/08chanos.html?scp=2&sq=china&st=cse

Now, this is one man’s view of China’s economy but what’s worrisome is that it has the “feel” of being very viable, especially in light of what we’ve learned about how corrupt and nihilist the so-called “sharpest” financial minds are in the Western world.

The prevailing short-sightedness, greed and immorality of the corporate mindset represents a far greater threat to the future of our civilization than terrorism.

There is every motivation for them to kill the golden goose, to squeeze every last drop of life out of it if it means more money for them today or this quarter.

The financial world is in fact sociopathic and self-destructive, recent history clearly confirmed this.

So what if this kind of thinking, practiced to one degree or another around the world, also resides in China? What then, if China’s economy collapses and there is no one to keep financing the U.S.’s deficit spending?

It is a frightening thought but not outside of the realm of possibility. That doesn’t mean that we should buy guns, gold and canned beans and cringe in our basements waiting for the Apocalypse. What it does mean is that the U.S. urgently needs to reform its corrupt financial industry and get on top of deficit spending ASAP to insure against being thrown overboard and plunging like an anchor to the bottom of the financial sea.

It really isn’t hard to spot an economic “bubble”, all you have to do is ask yourself, “Where are all the voices of ‘common sense’ telling me is the one place to put my money?”

Well, if you won’t take my word for it that gold is the new bubble, you must be taking Glenn Beck’s, Sean Hannity’s and Bill O’Reilly’s word that the best and most secure investment that can only make you richer is gold.

I don’t know about you but I knew the housing bubble was a bubble, I knew the dot com bubble was a bubble, I even recognized the Tulip bubble way back when.

There is a natural ebb and flow to investments, in which legit investments earn profits or lose value.

They don’t go up 50% a year…unless they are sitting on top of a bubble.

So, there may be a silver lining to all of this, if all the right wingers are following their leaders’ advice and investing in gold, when a rush to sell gold wipes out their investments, that’s less money for Palin 2012.