Displaying 61 To 90 Of 5,146 Comments Starting the New Year with a Smile – The Year in PlanetPOV Art Amen! Loved this AND miss Sally terribly. I’m glad to know she’s doing well. Please send my best wishes, too. These are very funny – starting the next TWO years with a good laugh it more than amazing. It is what will help us get through it all. Happy New Year to all our PPOV friends and allies! We love you and thank you for keeping on keeping on so we both learn AND laugh in the face of very hard times! » Posted By choicelady On January 1, 2015 @ 6:35 pm A Bit of History: Cuba and the USA This is very helpful, Nirek, thank you! May I add in a note of lost history? In 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, one of the people who helped forge the stand-down was then pope, John XXIII. The story was told in Saturday Review, now defunct, and it interested me then as the current story does now. Pope Francis may well be re-opening a period of peace by following in his predecessor’s footsteps. It’s a nice bit of historical ‘closure’ with the circle coming around 52 years after the first effort. » Posted By choicelady On December 18, 2014 @ 1:28 pm The Torture Report – An Organization Held to Account…But Not One Single Person My overwhelming concern is that we’re seeing several things that are common to this report and all else around us. We look to finger the perps – Bush, Cheney, Woo, et al. – without tackling the underlying issue. Since the mid 1970s we have permitted almost without objection to the ‘commodification’ of ‘the other’. From factory labor to minorities to immigrants to enemies abroad, we have done what we reviled in our enemies – we have dehumanized those who stand in our way of what we want. We excoriated the Germans in WW I and WW II for doing this to Belgians and Dutch in the first war, to Jews, labor, gypsies, gays in WW II. But after WW II forces that actually admired the ‘hard practicality’ of German fascists embraced the very notion of objectification and used it to build a more dehumanized racism, war targets, immigrants, and now, as in Vietnam, targets of war. We see in the rise of bragging over gang rape to plant shutdowns to the murders of young Black men and women a persistent retreat to the dehumanization of others. We made progress after the gains of the Civil Rights movement but have lost that sense of collective equality. When we entered a war of lies, we had to objectify Muslims to justify the adventurism. We have racial divisions because they help divert us from the erosions of our well being by the few. It’s that collective disregard – and the Left is not immune in its sneering dismissal of so many people – that justifies torture, racism, class bias, fragmentation. Whenever we let that occur, then it is we who are culpable. Anti-torture movements and groups arose long after the deeds were known. Why weren’t they there at the beginning? When did we lose our ability to stand against such things always, not just when we learn about them later? This is a pivotal moment not just to identify perps in this one administration but to do a whole lot of soul searching about how we contribute to objectification and, by extension, commodification of others when we think it serves some interest we support. It’s all of us. It’s our society as a materialistic capitalist culture that needs to be held to account. We have our work cut out for us. » Posted By choicelady On December 11, 2014 @ 7:57 am No no a thousand times NO, it is NOT up to this administration – especially THIS administration – to prosecute. That is the work of the ICC as it has been since WW II on. We cannot burden any administration with the prosecution of their OWN people, no matter how heinous their actions. The checks and balances – we are those. Where is the outrage against the actions rather than the ‘gotcha’ about the previous administration’s perps? It’s the ISSUE, and we just elected people who would indeed use torture. Why? Democracy is NOT up to the elected officials. It is up to us. If we can be outraged about “Black Lives Matter” we show that we CAN stand for something amazing. There is no excuse for us being silent and not in our elected officials’ offices day after day insisting that we honor our treaties, the Constitutional prohibitions on cruel and inhuman punishment we’ve obeyed since at least the Civil War, and our history against abuses in any and all circumstances. I heard a lot of mewling in 2009 about bringing Bush and Cheney to justice. I heard almost NOTHING about insisting that our actions uphold our ideals – no one pounded down the doors of Congress insisting we mandate NO TORTURE. Unless and until we besiege every elected official with this demand, we will return to our worst ideas and abandon our best ideals. This report is not about the people – it IS about the principles. Do you want to be a nation that does not torture? Fucking FIGHT for it. » Posted By choicelady On December 10, 2014 @ 6:17 pm Thank you for this. Understand that I respectfully disagree on several points coming as I do from a position of advocacy against torture on a national campaign. I served on the Board of a national organization against torture. As part of the responsibility, I had to figure out where prosecutorial responsibility lay. We started well ahead of the 2008 election, and we knew whoever won would have an immense burden dealing with what to us was a horrific breech of democratic process, Constitutional authority, and a violation of international standard. When President Obama won in 2009, virtually his first act was to abolish the faux legal standards written by Yoo and others that seemed to justify the use of torture. Law was clear – no presidential authority allowed us to over-ride our commitment to treaties, to history, to our Constitutional obligation to protect people from ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. Torture is not and never has been about getting ‘truth’ from prisoners. It doesn’t. It never has. Torture is totally, exclusively, and historically always about asserting the power of the ‘sovereign’ over other people – injecting terror in every aspect of their lives to make them fold and become subject to the power of the sovereign. If you wish a grim but incredibly important look at torture, read French philosopher, Michele Foucault’s amazing book, “Discipline and Punish”. It is what you need to know about the PURPOSE of torture. Truth has no role in torture. POWER is what it extracts from people. What became obvious to me is that it has a most horrifying impact not just on the tortured but upon everyone in a nation that uses it. So when one asserts – and it’s probably accurate – that Dems knew something about Bush’s unleashing of terror, understand that those people who knew were under the most horrific mandate to keep silent. By LAW they could not reveal what the administration had done. It’s no cowardice to refuse to fight in public – it is absolutely essential. Only a handful – maybe Nancy Pelosi when she became Speaker – had access to this information. They could NOT legally speak out. Would you? We keep pretending that the system can be ignored, we demand the ultimate sacrifice from our leaders, we insist that courageous and principles elected officials should defy the law. Would you? Well – I have. And I have paid HUGE costs for it, and it’s not even around something of national security significance. What people in this position do is what got done – information such as Abu Ghraib is leaked. Laws are changed. Public opinion is swayed with the hard, cold facts. Now we have an administration that has declared NO TORTURE and has released this document. Not enough you say? You don’t know what you’re asking. You cannot think ahead to the embedded interests that support American hegemony to the point they’d KILL to keep us No. 1 over all the others in the world. So we don’t have names. So we don’t cite Bush and Cheney. Well – what country has ever prosecuted its OWN for war crimes? Anyone? Yes – Guatemala last year, and the courts overturned the verdict, and now the people who came forward are once again hunted by the supporters of RW extremist Rios Montt. This is progress? The International Criminal Court has acted – Bush and Cheney have been tagged They cannot leave the US without risking arrest. They may live here – they cannot leave here. Were this administration to try to prosecute them – they actually can’t prosecute ANYONE – we would already have civil war. That’s why we leave it to ICC. We must as a matter of national survival. It’s not that easy. It’s not just putting away the Mafia – it’s killing the nation. IF the Congress had originally acted in 2009, we might have gotten a bill of particulars, but they did not. I spoke directly with the chair of the Dem led Civil Rights subcommittee in the House. The Dems who now felt they had some measure of freedom to open an inquiry still wanted to leave it to ICC – and they did. There is no simplistic solution. Think carefully about how torn this nation has become over every damned issue then think what would have occurred if Bush and Cheney were to stand trial IN the US of A. We can press ICC to do more – especially now the report has been released – but let it be logical, mature, and useful action. Nothing less than the survival of our nation is at stake depending on what path we take, what we recommend. Democracy requires maturity and thoughtfulness – simple revenge is never EVER the answer. » Posted By choicelady On December 9, 2014 @ 3:24 pm Grand Juries Agree: Police Are Authorized to Kill Poor Black Men In the early 1990s I had reason to confront an entire police department for its selective enforcement of the law. I enlisted the aid of a Black city council member who helped me file a complaint against the PD and create an FBI investigation. It freaking worked. It changed EVERYTHING for the good. Someone has to be the ‘name’ on a complaint – I was not thrilled to be that, but eventually it was OK. I urge anyone who has a beef, if a resident of the area where the issue exists, to find a brave public official with whom to partner and file that complaint. I was pointed out to the PD Commissioner – and lived to tell the tale. It’s scary, but it’s important. It can be done. We must step up and do it. » Posted By choicelady On December 8, 2014 @ 3:36 pm Totally agree, Nirek! But how do we address this issue? Is it to attack some value of theirs or to address their extremism head on? I think it’s the latter. Otherwise we tend to tar everyone on that ‘side’ with the same brush and drive a larger wedge between NON extremists of differing views. I wish Charlie had focused on extremists of all kinds instead of the elements of Islamic faith. I think the responses from American Muslims has been amazing, condemning the murders without a single reservation. But the ‘satire’, if that’s what it is, has been hurtful, and it makes even thoughtful people less willing to trust the cartoonists and writers who spread the contempt without care. » Posted By choicelady On January 8, 2015 @ 8:38 pm Have to reply here. This is so muddy I can’t totally unpack it, but your assertion about short term borrowing is not accurate. Credit unions and community banks can and have offered short term loans at low rates. What you miss is that preferential rates for huge financial institutions is the system, always has been. That is NOT new. That is why CDFI and related non-banking institutions are growing by leaps and bounds with the aid of this administration’s policies FAVORING smaller institutions and systems for alternative banking. In Fruitvale, Oakland, an amazingly innovate “payday” lender and check cashing operation is bringing people in to offer loans at low rates then link them to better options such as credit unions. They do financial counseling for loans of larger size to people with really poor credit ratings. All of this has been the outgrowth of the system we FINALLY paid attention to in 2007-08. But it would not be going so fast and strong without the NEW policies aimed at Main Street instead of Wall Street that enable these operations. Critique without options is not getting us anywhere. We need to unpack what was from what can be and is happening – and then DAMNED WELL protect these advances. You’re rehashing policies from the Bush and Reagan era that are, slowly because of GOP pushback, changing things for the good and holding back the floodgates against the rapacious capitalists who want their old privileges back. » Posted By choicelady On November 11, 2014 @ 10:54 am Sued. Not imprisoned. Civil v criminal issues. » Posted By choicelady On November 11, 2014 @ 10:46 am monicangela – they were NOT interest free loans! They were also quickly repaid because of the restrictions PBO put on bonuses. They have now all been paid back WITH interest. The lunacy is in the banks’ capacity to deduct FINES from their income taxes. That is something never passed by Congress because the supermajority in the Senate lasted a whipping 6 months (Franken in, Ted Kennedy and Byrd out) so changes were blocked by the GOP. But the loans were NOT interest free. » Posted By choicelady On November 11, 2014 @ 9:32 am I don’t disagree, but we’re talking largely about your SAVINGS here – and the face amount vastly exceeded FDIC reserves. People would have lost everything. That is different from the homeowner mortgages – those should have been rewritten. The bailout did not focus on that but on the assets of banks, and Bush plus Paulsen took this course of action, and PBO made it stronger. Yes, we should have provided far stronger protection for mortgage rewrites – the laws exist after 2009 but were not well implemented. » Posted By choicelady On November 11, 2014 @ 9:29 am It wasn’t until she came forward with Taibbi that we knew any of this, and I think people don’t understand the complexity of forensic accounting under these circumstances. She was the only one with the information, now on tape, but when it is LEGAL to keep multiple sets of books, think how easy or not it would be for even a skilled forensic accountant to unsnarl the real illegalities from what was ‘business as usual’ under deregulation. It’s hideously ironic that in a world that gave bankers almost free rein to do whatever they wanted, some of them STILL did things that now put them in jeopardy of arrest. Greed apparently is limitless. That said, most of what occurred in banking during the 90s and 2000s was not CRIMINAL. And do note that it is the smaller banks that actually wrote mortgages rather than the banks that bought them where you find the actual criminality. Here in the CA Eastern District of the USDOJ, there have been prosecutions for fraud of MORTGAGE brokers – they are the ones who falsified information, lied to customers, and created major illegalities. What the Whistleblower notes is that in her firm they moved from buying to writing, and that is where they were vulnerable. Banks that merely bought worthless securities and traded falsely (based on equally false S&P ratings) did nothing illegal, period. It was utterly immoral and incredibly risky – NOT illegal. They’d already seen to that. » Posted By choicelady On November 11, 2014 @ 9:25 am This is the real problem – we were not watching closely enough, and we thought the existing laws would protect us. We didn’t pay enough attention to the fact many new instruments – derivatives, hedge fund transactions, etc. – were never regulated and that GLB shattered the most fundamental protection of all. We can’t let that happen again! » Posted By choicelady On November 11, 2014 @ 9:17 am Hi kes – I subscribe, but it’s on my ‘guilt pile’ of unread everything, so I appreciate your reminding me to read it! This is my largest worry – the grinding away at really good legislation, bit by bit. As long as there is a veto pen, much of the large cuts won’t happen, but yes, this IS their game plan, and it’s already working. If I have one criticism of our president it is that he believed that the GOP were not stupid enough to kill democracy by putting the nation on the brink of economic catastrophe in government shut down to GET sequestration and thus cuts to non-protected programs. He was wrong. They are. » Posted By choicelady On November 11, 2014 @ 9:14 am I seriously disagree that we were vigilant in the 90s. I worked with labor folks who tried to get progressives in NY engaged in opposing the deregulation, and NO ONE CARED. They simply could not be bothered, and some even thought it was a good idea. Are we vigilant now? I hope so, but it will be an uphill fight because of this Congress. They are focused on defunding CPA, cutting the regulatory rules, and defunding the enforcement of them. They can do huge harm, but they have to be called out on that. And yet I get from Progs the knee jerk rant that Dodd-Frank and CPA are ‘meaningless’ demanding we ‘bring back Glass-Steagall’. Anyone who says that is a fool because they did not know then or now what G-S did, what the Volcker Rule does. When rant exceeds reason and understanding, it blocks real action, and that is something to fear. We may yet be headed to Great Depression 2.0 » Posted By choicelady On November 11, 2014 @ 8:53 am Remember this happened under Bush – it was left to PBO to organize it in the best way possible, and he was able to get some major mortgage relief programs for people in trouble during the next two years. He inherited the bailout – and I think the bailout per se was essential lest the banks fold. That would have utterly destroyed most of us on Main Street because it would have taken down all our savings as happened in 1929. As it stands now, this can’t happen again. Unless we once again pay no attention and allow the law to be gutted. » Posted By choicelady On November 10, 2014 @ 9:21 pm Beatlex – there is not one damned thing the government can do about wages other than raise the bottom. Period. We are NOT a socialist state – and even socialist states such as Sweden and Germany have no control over that. In European controls, they may specify the RATE of increase to slow things down but cannot increase wages at all. Too big to fail was structured to be LEGAL so wanting bankers arrested? Exercise in futility. It will be so much up to us over the next years to watch these GOP corporatists like hawks. We have to be sure of our ground on what laws and regulations they are trying to change – and protest loudly when they undermine US in favor of THEM. » Posted By choicelady On November 10, 2014 @ 4:12 pm Well, that should have worried us all in the 1990s when in law after law, we took down the barriers between us, the public, and the rapacious financial corporations in our nation. There was absolutely NO excuse for this march toward chaos since we’d just weathered the Savings & Loan disaster based on deregulation of that sector. Some new things – derivatives, hedge funds, real estate investment trusts (REITs)etc. – were considered outside the financial sector and were allowed to grow and flourish with no regulation from the beginning. We caved under Clinton to the mantra under the GOP- deregulation encourages competition: competition brings wealth to all. Uh huh. When the crash came in 2008 (some of it started in 2007 but was ignored by the Bush administration) it came from ANOTHER unregulated sector, the mortgage brokers. It was they, not banks, that wrote the horrid subprime mortgages. Over 55% of the people shoved into subprimes actually qualified for prime rates, but they were new customers who were preyed upon by the brokers. What the banks MOSTLY did was buy these mortgages, but unlike the old days when they bought YOUR mortgage, they bought ‘bundles’- sort as if all our mortgages were shredded, and they bought strips of many bundled together. One mortgage could be owned, in “strips” by several different banks. Banks – freed from protecting OUR money by Depression Era Glass-Steagall (named for two dead Senators) could use our SAVINGS and CDs etc. for their insecure gains. THAT is why they were ‘too big to fail’ – it would take down our money just as in 1929. That exceeded the capacity of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to cover. The bail out was meant by Bush and Paulsen to be without strings. Then came the 2008 election – and all this has changed. First, the president had Tim Geitner (who seriously knew the way the system worked but used that knowledge to curtail the excesses at the president’s direction) monitor all federal loans WITH STRINGS that prevented payouts to CEOs and other executives until the loan was repaid. And they WERE repaid with interest in record time. No CEO bonus? Highly motivating! Second, Dodd-Frank was written putting far more capital requirement for the solvency of any bank, and it permits – ready for this? – the government to NATIONALIZE any failing bank. In Dec, 2013, the Volcker Rule went into effect, restoring the firewall between bank money and OUR money. That is the firewall that Glass-Steagall had provided. It is now restored. Here is a very good column on how it’s working: Banks and bankers were NOT prosecuted because while even progressive slept thru the 90s, they made sure what they did became perfectly legal. That is NOT true for mortgage brokers who, across the country, have been prosecuted for fraud by US Attorneys in almost every US District Court. Other parts of the free-wheeling excesses of corporate finance capital have been reined in by the Consumer Protection agency and its oversight – this is what Elizabeth Warren was hired to run though she was never confirmed by the Senate. She went ahead and set it all up – and it is running without her or any other ‘official’ and doing just fine. This is a lesson for us as consumers and voters – we cannot ever go to sleep and think all will be well. Every day predators who lobby on K Street for Wall Street will try to change laws that benefit us for those that benefit themselves. Democracy is not a spectator sport. We now have a VERY solid floor under us, we have made banks NOT too big too fail or even be nationalized, but with this new Congress, every day they will try to undermine what is just reclaimed. It is entirely up to us to stop them. » Posted By choicelady On November 10, 2014 @ 4:08 pm Open Carry is a Whites Only Law Thank you, AdLib. Nothing in America is safe for Black people anymore. Not walking down the street, driving, nothing. Only way white people ever get this horrific treatment is if they’re homeless or with a person of color. Past time the outrage stops, but it will take us ALL speaking in protest. And trust me as one who has ‘been there’ – it won’t be safe to do so. White doesn’t protect you when it’s in advocacy for those already targeted by the police and the haters. But if we don’t have the courage of the Freedom Riders, those who registered Black people to vote, those who stood up to the KKK and other groups, this nation and our democracy won’t be worth a bucket of warm spit. » Posted By choicelady On September 25, 2014 @ 12:23 pm Dear Trolls: Yes, I do think Barack Obama is a Very Good President and Here is Why You are not surveilled without a warrant – we stopped that pernicious practice in 2007. Your ‘data’ are no more linked to you than your phone number in the white pages. If it were to ‘light up’ with a link to a known overseas terrorist’s number, the NSA would have to – HAVE TO – get a warrant before even knowing you are. Give it up, ST – you read the screechers but don’t do the work of finding the truth, searing or otherwise. » Posted By choicelady On September 25, 2014 @ 9:49 am LOL!!! Yes I do know what I’m talking about because I don’t take it from hair on fire blogs that LIE. Do we have CCPI? No. It was a horse trade that the president knew would NEVER be made but that gave the GOP no grounds for griping. They blinked. You want purity? Enter a convent. You want policy? Understand how democracy works. And read bills not blogs. A handful understand policy, and some sites – Center for Budget & Policy Priorities – provide analysis. One of the great things about PPOV is the degree to which FACT prevails here. Without that it’s all just whining, and that never has solved a damned thing. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 9:35 pm I ask quite a bit more. The future of those who have been abandoned requires more than passion. It requires actions. ACA has done that, and to ignore it because it’s not a dream one has is to put one’s personal desires well ahead of real, living people’s desperate needs. I’m sorry if you’re hurt by this, but reality matters. It is reality and its profound good impact on people that matters in making the society we do all dream we want. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 8:14 pm Thank you, kes. Means a lot. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 8:12 pm Do you remember that the President’s ‘offer’ to use Chained CPI (which has been massively overblown by Bernie Sanders who really OUGHT to know better) was tied to the GOP raising taxes on the rich? PBO knew the latter would never occur, so he ‘gave’ CCPI as a ‘trade’ to prove the GOP would do what would get them what THEY wanted by giving an inch on taxation issues. Understand politics and give up the faux outrage. It’s all horse trading, and a lot of what is out there is to make a point. The president did this to make a point and MADE that point. And CCPI is no longer an issue. Now – how are you going to fund Social Security beyond 2023? If you want, as most of us do, to have the cap lifted on contributions, then go out and elect the WORST DEM you ever saw because the point of elections isn’t the individual but the HOUSE. If we could get back the houses, we’d move like lightening to get all you want and more. But to sit and grouse about how you didn’t get it all (and actually you did but can’t see it) so you’re not going to vote – suicide. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 7:27 pm Dear Searing Truth – no. You are entirely wrong. This comes from embracing pompous rants instead of fact. The ‘least of these’ have now, FINALLY, got adequate care in every state that isn’t intrinsically fascist (meaning the South). The fact you don’t know that says why you irritate the crap out of me who has worked for YEARS to make this happen. You are full of sound and fury – signifying NOTHING. I distrust you as a troll of the worst order. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 6:23 pm I did!!! You are correct – and that’s the vehicle where we collectively have agreed such crimes MUST be vetted, tried, punished. How wise you are, dear Kalima! » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 6:21 pm Insurance is regulated by the states. That is why CA has a proposition 45 on the ballot to let the Insurance Commissioner do that. It is the federal system under which we operate, and that is who needs to control the companies operating within their borders. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 5:38 pm Kindly tell me of one nation, other than Guatemala, that has EVER prosecuted its own war criminals. Were we to do that, this nation would erupt. Guatemala prosecuted AND convicted Rios Montt of crimes against their own people – and the courts overturned it. It is the function of the International Criminal Court. There are warrants out for Bush and Cheney. That is where, like Nuremberg, it needs to be. That is why Bush and Cheney cannot leave our shores. No nation – NONE – can do the work of judging their own since civil war would ensue. To assert otherwise is hopelessly naïve. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 5:36 pm Actually I know ALL of it – it’s not a secret to those who pay attention. I’d appreciate some kind of comment now that I have given you the language – the essential part of law – on the NDAA that was signed into law. Silence may be your way of dealing with being shown that relying on screed from the hollering media is embarrassing, but it’s not acceptable to slink away and ignore what I’ve given you. It’s NEVER a good idea to tell me what the ‘facts’ are. I read these bills, details and all, because I mobilize over 1 million people to act, and it is imperative that I KNOW THE FACTS and thus the TRUTH. It is not acceptable to rant without truth. It is only acceptable to rant WITH the truth. You’ve been hornswoggled by the media including Leftie blogs that never EVER bothered to read the bills. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 5:32 pm …and now they do. » Posted By choicelady On September 24, 2014 @ 5:27 pmComments Posted By choicelady
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/04/opinion/paul-krugman-dodd-frank-financial-reform-is-working.html?_r=0
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