GOP Show Moves South, Why Obama Is Not Prosecuting Wall Street, Lockouts On The Rise

January 23rd, 2012 - by: danny

This morning at 7:30 AM: I will be on CBC’s Current program discussing the Colbert “Campaign” In SC

***Tune into the Podcast of Friday’s News Dissector Radio Hour on Prn.fm***

Once Again: Floriduh Takes Center Stage

LBN: Its far from over yet, so the jumbled Republican presidential race now shifts to Florida after South Carolina failed to decide the nominee. The candidates have 10 days before Floridas Jan. 31 primary to see if Mitt Romneys inevitability was indeed shaken by Newt Gingrich’s 12 percent win in South Carolina, a remarkable comeback for the former speaker after seeing his campaign nearly ruined twice. But Florida is a much larger and diverse state, and Gingrich wasted no time in his victory speech going after the wealthy Romney, who has already built up an organizational advantage there.

•Romney To Release Recent Tax Returns

•Forrest Keener writes about Newt Gingrich’s Selective Memory

The 1997 House ethics investigation into then-Speaker Newt Gingrich has resurfaced on the campaign trail, but Gingrich told CNN’s Candy Crowley that all information relevant to the scandal was already public. Gingrich said the $300,000 penalty he was ordered to pay by the House Ethics Committee was a reimbursement for the cost of the investigation, and that “on every single count, I was exonerated.” He added that many House Republicans to vote “yes” on the ethics charges against Gingrich in order to put it behind them more quickly, rather than because they believed he had done anything wrong. Watch Gingrich’s explanation here:

As Gingrich himself admitted later in the interview, he was not exonerated on every count. While most of the initial charges against him were dropped, he was sanctioned on one count of flouting tax laws relating to a college course he taught that received non-profit status even though it was political in nature.

And contrary to Gingrich’s claim that House Republicans voted to reprimand him simply to move on, many said at the time that they were very disturbed by Gingrich’s actions. “Newt has done some things that have embarrassed House Republicans and embarrassed the House,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) at the time. “If [the voters] see more of that, they will question our judgment.” Even Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), who cast the lone dissenting vote on the ethics committee against charging Gingrich, the Speaker made “real mistakes but they shouldn’t be hanging offenses.”

The Hill: Rep. Giffords to step down from Congress

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) is stepping down from Congress to focus full-time on her recovery, her office announced Sunday.

“I have more work to do on my recovery so to do what is best for Arizona, I will step down this week,” Giffords announced in a video message posted on her website. “I am getting better.”

Giffords’s announcement comes a year after the Jan. 8 shooting rampage in Tucson, Arizona where six people died and thirteen, including Giffords, were injured.

•Yemen’s President To Leave Yemen –Like The Shah Years Ago, Goes to NY for Medical Treatment

Calls On Obama To Prosecute Wall Street Crime, Help Victims of Housing Bubble

Van Jones & George Goehl: Obama must choose on housing: A sweetheart deal for the 1% or a fair deal for the 99%

Rumor has it that on Monday, after months of negotiation with big banks, the White House may announce a settlement that would let the banks off the hook for their role in the foreclosure crisis – paying a tiny fraction of what’s needed in exchange for blanket immunity from future lawsuits.

We hope these rumors are untrue.

President Obama has the ability to stop and change the direction of this sweetheart deal. He should reject any deal that benefits the one percent and lets the big banks get away with their crimes. Instead, the President should stand with the 99 percent and push for real accountability and a solution that will help millions of people in this country.

Here are the hard facts about the housing crisis we face:

• 3.5 million Americans are homeless.
• 18.5 million homes sit vacant.
• Since 2007, more than 7.5 million homes have been foreclosed.

Default and foreclosure rates are now several times higher than at any time since the Great Depression.

•Ml-Implode: “Exasperated over the Obama administration’s response to the ongoing housing crisis, a large group of California Democrats has asked to meet directly with the president.”

•Ml-Implode: Judge: Stern Can Pursue $11M Unpaid Claims Against BofoA

Disgraced “foreclosure mill” law firm David J. Stern “can seek $11 million in unpaid legal fees for its work on Bank of America foreclosure cases, a federal judge ruled…Stern’s 11-count complaint claims that Bank of America and its corporate parent owe more than $1.9 million, while BAC Home Loans Servicing owes more than $8.7 million. The BAC tally reflects that work that Stern allegedly performed for Countrywide Home Loans, which Bank of America bought in 2008 and merged with its loan-servicing operation.”

George Washington Blog via Zero Hedge: Why Obama Hasn’t prosecuted Financial Criminals

•Is This Why They Won’t Prosecute? Top Justice Officials Represented Banks

Obama’s Department of Justice isn’t prosecuting any big fish.

Indeed, the Obama administration is prosecuting fewer financial crimes than Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

This is true even though the big banks – such as Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo – committed some fraud, but their entire business model is fraudulent. See this, this, this, this and this.

The same is true of Fannie, Freddie. And even more so with Mers, where its entire purpose – from day one – was fraudulent.

So why haven’t the fraudsters running these chop shops been prosecuted by Attorney General Eric Holder, and the head of the DOJ’s criminal division Lanny Breuer?

Reuters helps explain why today:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Lanny Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal division [watch this to get a sense of Breuer], were partners for years at a Washington law firm that represented a Who’s Who of big banks and other companies at the center of alleged foreclosure fraud, a Reuters inquiry shows.

The firm, Covington & Burling, is one of Washington’s biggest white shoe law firms. Law professors and other federal ethics experts said that federal conflict of interest rules required Holder and Breuer to recuse themselves from any Justice Department decisions relating to law firm clients they personally had done work for.

Both the Justice Department and Covington declined to say if either official had personally worked on matters for the big mortgage industry clients. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Holder and Breuer had complied fully with conflict of interest regulations, but she declined to say if they had recused themselves from any matters related to the former clients.

Reuters reported in December that under Holder and Breuer, the Justice Department hasn’t brought any criminal cases against big banks or other companies involved in mortgage servicing, even though copious evidence has surfaced of apparent criminal violations in foreclosure cases.

The evidence, including records from federal and state courts and local clerks’ offices around the country, shows widespread forgery, perjury, obstruction of justice, and illegal foreclosures on the homes of thousands of active-duty military personnel.

•The Street: Occupy To Go Global With Protests At The World Economic Forum In Davos, Switzerland

•Yahoo: Greece Under The Gun: Euro zone finance ministers to rule on Greek debt talks

(Reuters) – Euro zone finance ministers will decide today what terms of a Greek debt restructuring they are ready to accept as part of a second bailout package for Athens after negotiators for private creditors said they could not improve their offer. Resolving the issue of a Greek debt swap is key to putting Athens’ debt on a sustainable path and avoiding a chaotic default that could threaten the whole currency bloc. …

•NYT: In Egypt, Signs of Accord Between Military Council and Islamists

Evident points of agreement on a new charter include a legal system no more Islamic than the previous one and broad guarantees of freedom of religion and expression.

•Owners Of Ship Being Questioned: Costa Concordia Owner Faces Questions Over Blame

GIGLIO, Italy – The operators of the Costa Concordia faced questions over their share of the blame for the shipwreck, as divers recovered another body…

Rob Hager and James Marc Leas, Truthout: The Problem With Citizens United Is Not Corporate Personhood

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Florida Rep. Ted Deutch introduced a
constitutional amendment
in December to overturn Citizens United,
one of five decisions since 2006 by which a closely divided Supreme Court
vastly increased the amount of corrupting corporate money in elections.

In an opinion piece critical of the decision in Citizens United, Senator
Sanders wrote:

When the Supreme Court says that for purposes of the First Amendment,
corporations are people, that writing checks from the company’s bank account
is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal
government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are
unconstitutional, when that occurs, our democracy is in grave danger.

The joint Sanders-Deutch Resolution proposes an amendment to the
constitution “to expressly exclude for-profit corporations from the rights
given to natural persons.” The first section of the amendment states:

The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights
of natural persons and do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited
liability companies, or other private entities established for business
purposes or to promote business interests under the laws of any state, the
United States, or any foreign state.

While Senator Sanders and Representative Deutch correctly characterize the
danger to democracy and the need for strong action in response, a close
reading of Citizens United shows that constitutional rights of corporations
played no role whatsoever in the Citizens United decision.

The incorrect – but widely held – reading of Citizens United is that the
corruption of elections arose fundamentally because the Supreme Court
adopted a legal doctrine of corporate “personhood” which endowed
corporations with First Amendment free speech rights, which, combined with
the notion that spending money to promote a candidate is a form of speech,
gives corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of their money in
elections. This incorrect reading of Citizens United is compounded by the
further error that a constitutional amendment is necessary and sufficient to
remove those corporate constitutional rights and to remove corporate money
from elections, or could prevent the pro-corporate majority on the Supreme
Court from making further decisions corrupting elections.

Can We Have Publicly Supported Elections?

Veronica Raymond sent this to me:

“Larry Lessig gave a rousing performance for the 100th Seminar About Long-Term Thinking. In a lawyerly fashion he laid out evidence of a new type of corruption that is disrupting the American republic, and he offered a remedy for that corruption. Lessig has a very distinctive visual style of using slides that punctuates, word for word, the clear logic of his argument.

He said the type of corruption rampant in the US Congress is not the old type of bribery, where congressional representatives had safes in their offices to hold the cash they received for voting in certain directions. That is now illegal and eliminated. This new type of corruption is more subtle, indirect and harder to outlaw. Corporations legally donate money to the election campaigns of legislators, who in turn tend to vote in favor of the interests of those corporations. Non-profits like Maplight can graph the evidence that a representative voting in favor of a particular corporate-friendly law will receive 6 or 10 or 13 times the funding than someone who opposes the law.

He cited studies that showed the ROI (return on investment) of lobbying to be 1,000%. It was one of the sanest expenses for a corporation. But the distortion is not just one sided. The issue that Congress spent the most time on in 2011 — a year when US was waging two wars, dealing with a near economic depression, and revamping health care — was the bank swipe fee. Who should pay the credit card use fee — the banks or the stores?

There were corporations on both sides of this minor argument, but each side was promising campaign funds, so this was the issue that got all the attention of the officials. But the real money to be made in Congress is the relative fortune to be made as a lobbyist after leaving office. The differential in wages between a staff member and a lobbyist has escalated a hundred fold in the past 40 years. Now 43% of staff go on to become lobbyists. The promise of a well-paying job working for corporate interests later is enough to warp voting now.

None of this is illegal, but Lessig argues that we have a constitutional argument for eliminating it. The Constitution talks about the republic being “dependent on the people alone.” But now it is dependent on corporate funders, and more and more JUST on corporate funders. His solution is to return the republic to being dependent on the people alone. His solution is an innovative kind of campaign finance reform. Give every voter a $50 campaign voucher. The $50 comes from the tax pool. It can be given to any candidate who accepts only money from the vouchers (and maybe a limit of an optional voluntary $100 per single voter).

Thus all campaign money would come in very small amounts from The People. Lessig calculates that the total amount of money raised this public way would be 3 times the amount raised by private means in the last election cycles, and therefore more than adequate. But it would break the grip of corporate influence over what is voted up. The result would not be harmonious utopia, but the usual give-and-take compromises of politics — which the US has not seen in decades. The issues that people cared about would return to the agenda.

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism.com Challenges NY Times Article on Apple Manufacturing Overseas

A New York Times story, “How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work,” uses an Obama dinner with Silicon Valley titans to frame its tale of why the US middle class should roll over and die. I am of course exaggerating for effect. But not by as much as you might think. The story by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher does a very good job of explaining why Asia, and China in particular, has come to dominate consumer electronics manufacture, using the iPhone as focus.

The problem with using the microcosm to illustrate the macrocosm is you need to choose the right microcosm. The danger in using the iPhone example is that (as I have discussed at length in prior posts) there are quite a few industries in which the case for offshoring and outsourcing is not compelling, particularly if you allow for the increased risk of extended supply chains, as Apple itself learned in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

But even in those cases, it still has the effect of transferring income from middle level and factory workers to the top brass. Thus the iPhone/consumer electronics example will have the effect of giving other businesses a free pass.
And not only that, even among computer and electronics firms, Apple was unusually demanding, and not always for good reasons.

As much as Steve Jobs was revered for his fixation with design, it could interact with coming up with a final product in nasty ways. The Walter Isaacosn biography of Jobs is cock full of incidents of Jobs changing his mind to the point of wreaking havoc with getting a product out the door. For instance, one of Mac engineers, Chris Espinosa, designed a calculator to be included with the Mac OS. Jobs liked the idea but was not pleased with the appearance. Espinosa came up with new designs in response to Jobs’ input daily, only to get more criticism. He finally wrote a program, the “Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set” to put Jobs firmly in charge of finalizing the design. Similarly, on the first iteration of the NeXT computer, Jobs insisted that it be a perfect cube. I will spare you the details but that requirement caused all sorts of costly hassles.

•Related; AFP Via EJC: At least 34 Chinese reporters jailed in 2011: Human rights group

At least 34 Chinese journalists were jailed last year for charges ranging from ‘inciting subversion’ to ‘revealing state secrets’, a rights group said on Sunday, as Beijing tightened media restrictions.

NYT: Many Companies Imposing Lockouts on Unions

Via Chris Townsend of the UE: Fighting Deunionization at Caterpillar

Tom Dispatch: Ellen Cantarow on The Fight Against Fracking

On the front-lines of the anti-fracking movement — Ellen Cantarow, “Shale-Shocked, Fracking Gets Its Own Occupy Movement/

Ellen Cantarow’s latest TomDispatch post is a dramatic, on-the-ground report on a remarkable movement that has arisen to challenge some of the most powerful corporations in history and the latest in extreme energy, “fracking.” Cantarow has just spent time in New York State, where a new, community-based citizen’s movement against a nightmare technology for energy release (and the polluting of local water supplies) is gaining remarkable traction.

As she writes, “Consider this, then, an environmental Occupy Wall Street. It knows no divisions of social class or political affiliation. Everyone, after all, needs clean water.” She interviews participants, follows developments as local bans on fracking cascade across the state and anti-fracking citizens are voted into office, and vividly describes a movement with minimal funds facing off against some of the best-funded corporations on the planet, the energy giants — with amazing success.

Preview of a film on the Death (Murder?) Of Senator Paul Wellstone

Humor: Borowitz’s Take On Newt The MAN

CHARLESTON, SC (The Borowitz Report) – In a sign of renewed confidence, just minutes after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich romped to victory in the South Carolina primary he changed his Facebook status to “In an Open Relationship.”

Mr. Gingrich made no reference to his new Facebook status during his victory speech, in which he made an emotional appeal to the American people: “I say to each and every one of you: Join me. Join me in my marriage.”

The former House Speaker used the speech to highlight the differences between himself and the current resident of the White House: “The American people have a choice: do they want a President who issues food stamps, or one who runs up a $500,000 tab at Tiffany?”

Mr. Gingrich drew cheers and a standing ovation as he concluded his remarks, saying, “In closing, I am staying at the Marriott, Rm. 205. Ladies.”

Letter:

Alan Tobias writes:

Apropos Ed Sanders’ recently reviewed book on the counterculture of the 60s, do you realize that we are as far past the end of the 60s now as we were far from the conclusion of WWI at the very beginning of the 60s. Exactly.

While it was a “watershed” for our generation, so was WWI to its.

So, perhaps we ought to give up on the notion of its greater relevance to future generations.

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