Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Latest Bailout Fiasco

Masters of the Universe, Do You Need a Dime?



The ruling class is more than a collection of ideologies and bank accounts. There is a cohesiveness to their rule that suggests a cultural and social interconnectivity that transcends mere political parties.



This has been made painfully clear in the collaboration between different political groupings to give billions of dollars away, with little or no control or oversight, to the Wall Street "masters of the universe" who have looted the economy of trillions of dollars with speculative schemes, and just out and out thievery. The latest egregious hit to the U.S. taxpayers for another financial bailout comes with the announcement of a mega-billion bailout to Citigroup.



As F. William Engdahl explains in an article at Global Research:



Citigroup and the government have identified a pool of about $306 billion in troubled assets. Citigroup will absorb the first $29 billion in losses. After that, remaining losses will be split between Citigroup and the government, with the bank absorbing 10% and the government absorbing 90%. The US Treasury Department will use its $700 billion TARP or Troubled Asset Recovery Program bailout fund, to assume up to $5 billion of losses. If necessary, the Government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will bear the next $10 billion of losses. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve will guarantee any additional losses. The measures are without precedent in US financial history.



Yet, no one in the mainstream political discourse argues to hold these criminals to account. Instead, aim has been taken lately against unions, like the UAW, who conservatives argue have made companies like GM non-competitive in the global marketplace, with their demands for humane work rules, a decent, living wage, health care, etc. Even when the liberals criticize the CEOs of the Big Three automakers, and argue that the lack of nationalized health care puts the car companies behind the economic eight-ball, they barely raise a peep when it's argued that everyone, including the workers, will have to sacrifice to "save" Big Auto (which means tearing up the union contracts, fought for by workers over decades).



In the latest sign of complete moral, ethical, and political collapse, Bloomberg now reports the capitalists' bailout will top $7 trillion dollars -- "half the value of everything produced in the nation last year"!!! For once, the use of multiple exclamation points fails to describe the exaggerated circumstances.



But will this near-total failure of the economic system lead any respectable mainstream or blogging analyst to question the bankruptcy of the capitalist system as a whole? Not unless you're waiting for Barack Obama to lay the foundation stone for a new mammoth statue of Joseph Stalin on the D.C mall. (The rot of communism -- really Stalinism -- was declared by sober folk on both the U.S. left and right, based on far less economic failure.)

Monday, November 10, 2008

Mondays news and post-election analysis


It Still Felt Good the Morning After

Voter registration process is under scrutiny

Election reformers are pushing for a 'universal' approach, in which the government would ensure that all eligible citizens are registered to vote.
By David G. Savage

Gift card holders may be out of luck in retail bankruptcies

They could lose more than $75 million from store and restaurant closings in 2008, an analyst says.
By Jerry Hirsch

The Religious Vote Postmortem  on Street Prophets A Daily Kos Community

The Religious Vote Postmortem

Thu Nov 06, 2008 at 09:03:16 PM PDT

So how did Barack Obama do among the churchy types? The short answer is: He did great, but he did even better with the other folks. And that might turn out to be something of a problem in the long run.

Faith in Public Life points out that Obama made strong gains among religious voters, with his strongest improvements shown:

among voters who attend church more than once per week, narrowing a 29-point GOP advantage (64% - 35%) to a 12-point GOP advantage (55% - 43%). This represents an 8-point increase among a strongly Republican group.

According to the CNN exit pollJohn McCain won the Protestant vote. He won pretty handily at that: 54-45, rising to 65-34 among white Protestants and just shy of 75-25 with white Evangelicals, depending on how the question was asked. McCain even won the white born-once constituency by a slimmer 54-44 margin.

But McCain lost everybody else, 67-31. Obama's margins, in declining order, were with Jews (78-21), non-religious voters (75-23), other religions (73-22), and Catholics 54-45.


Washington Post

Hillary Denied Bid to Take Charge of Health Care?

Ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) apparently has rebuffed a bold bid by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) 

to take over health care policy in the Senate when the new Congress convenes in January.



Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Barack Obama's speech

The Day after the Earth Stood Still

Can you say change has come to the Red, White and Blue? We better add brown to the list of all American colors now that for the first time in our history we have elected a black man President of the United States. Here in the United States of Texas the news is not good. We reelected the same knee jerk, backward and determindly ignorant Republican Senator John "Corndog" Cornyn. Locally, in another step backward, eighty five year old Ralph "I'd drill on my grandpa's grave" Hall was reelected in what can only be seen as a repudiation of reason and discourse. Ralph has survived into the 21st century with an iron grip on his 19th century view of America. He still peddles the nonsense idea that we can drill our way out out of the energy crisis despite the fact that rational people know better. He never met a social program he could love or a corporate welfare bill he didn't. Don't tell him Texas leads the nation in uninsured children, he doesn't care. He and Cornyn are two peas in a pod. They still think big bid'ness is the be all and end' all of what makes this country tick. And they will do any thing they can to keep the ill gotten gains of those folks on Wall Street from trickling down to the people they despise, the average American. 

I don't know about you but I feel an immense sense of relief now that the election is almost over. I say almost because there are still important Senate races where all of the votes have yet to be tabulated. Two important ones are Franken vs Coleman in Minnesota and Jeff Merkley in Oregon. 

Al Gore wrote an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal on Sustainable Capitalism,
That would be the opposite of the kind we have now. And just to give you a flavor of what is to come in the Journal now that Ruport Murdoch owns it there is an editorial on the Shameful Way Bush has been Treated. ??

Arriana Huffington's post today is on Why All Americans have a Reason to Celebrate.

So much for UNsustainable capitalism.