The Real Face of Socialism

The real 'socialists' here.

The George W. Bush administration handed 125 billion dollars to nine of Wall Street's richest banks, but this will do little to help the economy that is crumbling around ordinary U.S. citizens, independent experts and activists say.

"There is no way a modern economy can function without good roads, telecommunication, rail transport and an educated labour force," Allan Mendelowitz, a member and former chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board, told IPS.

Bush's new Office of Financial Stability, led by Neel Kashkari, sealed a deal Tuesday to provide the billions, plus 125 billion dollars more for small banks, to encourage them to start lending to each other and the world's biggest businesses again.

A freeze in lending, related to the banks' risky trading ventures, has slowed the global economy, rocked stock markets around the world, and tightened lending throughout the U.S. economy.

"We're not proud of all the mistakes that were made by many different people, different parties, failures of our regulatory system, failures of market discipline that got us here," said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Thursday in an interview on Fox Business Network.

Freddie Mac Pays Republicans to Scuttle Bill

This story has more legs that I can count.

Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI's chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain's campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

Freddie Mac's payments to DCI began shortly after the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee sent Hagel's bill to the then GOP-run Senate on July 28, 2005. All GOP members of the committee supported it; all Democrats opposed it.

In the midst of DCI's yearlong effort, Hagel and 25 other Republican senators pleaded unsuccessfully with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to allow a vote.

"If effective regulatory reform legislation ... is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole," the senators wrote in a letter that proved prescient.

Unknown to the senators, DCI was undermining support for the bill in a campaign targeting 17 Republican senators in 13 states, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The states and the senators targeted changed over time, but always stayed on the Republican side.

Planet McCain

One of the better videos that I have seen on McSame lately.

The Latest Poll Numbers from South Carolina

Here are the latest numbers from South Carolina.

THE NUMBERS - DEMOCRATS

Hillary Rodham Clinton, 42 percent

Barack Obama, 34 percent

John Edwards, 16 percent

___

THE NUMBERS - REPUBLICANS

Mike Huckabee, 24 percent

Fred Thompson, 17 percent

Rudy Giuliani, 16 percent

Mitt Romney, 16 percent

John McCain, 13 percent

Ron Paul, 11 percent

Alan Keyes- He's Back Again!

Alan Keyes, the self-righteous perennial Republican candidate, showed up at the Iowa GOP debate today. He has slowly inched back into the scene after his humiliating loss to Senator Obama back in 2004. The following clip will give you a good idea of why politics on the GOP side have reached the heights of lunacy.




It is getting a little tired watching the Republicans try to outdo each other in the area of morals and religion. No issue is left untouched. Problem with the schools? Why Alan Keyes claims it's the fault of judges who drove God out! Huckabee is running around apologizing to Romney about a remark he made in regards to Mormans. They are all constantly screaming about who is the most Conservative (whatever the hell that means) and how they appeal to the 'value voters' (once again, what is that?!).

I cannot wrap my brain around these holier-than-thou right wing politicians who wear religion on their shoulders while condoning torture and illegal wars. They speak of the sanctity of life while allowing companies to pour toxic gases in the air and pollute our water. They oppose the use of birth control while denying health care to children who had the misfortune to be born poor. I could go on and on in exposing their brand of right wing hypocrisy.

The sad fact of this is that we should not even be discussing religion in regards to politics and policy. There was, at one time, something called the separation of church and state.

2008 Election- It's that Important

The focus of this blog since its inception has been on the economy and the effects that free trade and globalization have had in our world today. While I will continue to talk about these issues, I will shift some of the focus on the upcoming 2008 election. Although I often said back in 2004 that no other election was ever so important, that feeling is much more urgent this time around. I do not think that the country (or world, for that matter), can continue on this path that we now follow.

The issues of the economy, globalization and free trade are all very important to me personally, but the disastrous Republican foreign policy (or the lack of) that we have experienced the last few years deserves serious attention.

I will be shifting the focus somewhat for the foreseeable future and examining some of the positions taken by the prospective candidates from both parties. It is only by understanding the issues that people can really cast their ballots. God, gays and guns needs to go the way of the wagon wheel. The politics of division and fear have done nothing but cause internal strife and have created more and more problems along the way.

It is time for Americans to get out of their collective bubble and reflect on where we are as a nation. Renditions, torture, economic disparity, false wars of aggression- this is not our country. We must stop worrying about what sweatshop goods are on sale this week and take a good look in the mirror. Do we really want to be like so many other rogue regimes of the past and consistently endorse the worst elements of human nature or do we want to rise up and start repairing our country and the crumbling image of America in the world today? Do we wish to tackle the hard economic problems that we face or simply look the other way and let another generation worry about it?

These are some of the things that I will focus in the foreseeable future. It's only by understanding and talking about the issues as well as holding politicians accountable that any real meaningful change will occur.

The Conscience of a Liberal

Paul Krugman is one of the few traditional media columnists that I read consistently. His new book, The Conscience of a Liberal, takes a look at the growing income inequality and why this has occured. From the review:

Starred Review. Economist and New York Times columnist Krugman's stimulating manifesto aims to galvanize today's progressives the way Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative did right-wingers in 1964. Krugman's great theme is economic equality and the liberal politics that support it. America's post-war middle-class society was not the automatic product of a free-market economy, he writes, but was created... by the policies of the Roosevelt Administration. By strengthening labor unions and taxing the rich to fund redistributive programs like Social Security and Medicare, the New Deal consensus narrowed the income gap, lifted the working class out of poverty and made the economy boom. Things went awry, Krugman contends, with the Republican Party's takeover by movement conservatism, practicing a politics of deception [and] distraction to advance the interests of the wealthy. Conservative initiatives to cut taxes for the rich, dismantle social programs and demolish unions, he argues, have led to sharply rising inequality, with the incomes of the wealthiest soaring while those of most workers stagnate. Krugman's accessible, stylishly presented argument deftly combines economic data with social and political analysis; his account of the racial politics driving conservative successes is especially sharp. The result is a compelling historical defense of liberalism and a clarion call for Americans to retake control of their economic destiny.

Obey, Murtha Say Bush Can Get Iraq Money

I am so tired of hearing Republican shrieks that Democrats are somehow tying the Pentagon's hands by not passing a war spending bill. The troops will do without, they cry. Nothing could be further from the truth.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) and Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the Defense subcommittee on Appropriations, said President Bush can receive all $200 billion in new funding he wants to pay for the Iraq war next year, as long as he agrees to their demands to set a non-binding "goal" for withdrawing most U.S. combat troops by Dec. 2008.

The two senior Democrats also repeatedly slammed Pentagon officials for claiming that the Defense Department may have to shut down some military depots, and lay off civilian employees, if the Iraq funding bill is not enacted soon. Murtha called the charge "despicable," and he angrily yelled at a reporter at one point during today's press conference, asking "Do you believe the Pentagon?"

Obey said the "bridge fund" passed by the House before it left for a two-week recess includes "three simple requests" that must be met before he agrees to any release any of Iraq funding - more training and better equipment for troops before they are deployed to Iraq; adoption of the Army Field Manual's prohibition on torture by all U.S. government agencies; and "the president produce a plan to end our military involvement in Iraq by the end, not this year, but next year. That is another 14 months. That is more than 400 days. That is hardly a precipitous withdrawal."

There you go. The money is there but it doesn't pass the Republican 100% approval test. Last week, the House passed a $50 billion bill that would keep operations afloat for several more months, but sets a goal of bringing most troops home by December 2008. After Bush threatened to veto the measure, Senate Republicans blocked it.

Just who is obstructing here? The Democrats who passed a funding bill with non-binding measures attached, or the Republicans, who perceive any challenge to Bush as somehow akin to treason?

Sunday Matinee- Iraq For Sale

This for all of you 'fiscal conservatives' who care about the 'people's money'...

John McCain and the Torture Issue

The New York Times has a piece out this morning highlighting McCain's opposition to torture in the primaries. I am no big fan of John McCain, but I do admire the fact that he is the only Republican willing to say in this campaign that torture does not work and is wrong. According to the Times,

On a bitterly cold morning last week, diners at the Whistle Stop Cafe in Boone, Iowa, were just sitting down for their morning coffee when Senator John McCain entered. Within minutes, Mr. McCain turned to a hot-button topic for which he literally serves as the living embodiment: the subject of torture.

“One of the things that kept us going when I was in prison in North Vietnam was that we knew that if the situation were reversed, that we would not be doing to our captors what they were doing to us,” he said.

When Mr. McCain brings up the issue of torture, he is often met by a complex response. Many of the Republican voters he courts do not agree with his opposition to aggressive interrogation techniques that many have condemned as torture. But they are often captivated by his discussion of the issue, in some cases even moved to tears, as was the case in Boone.

On the campaign trail, Mr. McCain does not dwell on the personal details of his five and a half years as a prisoner of war, the “torture ropes” in which he was bound day and night, or the beatings he endured. But as he speaks, the physical reminders of his wounds are there for all to see, from the stiffness of his arms, which to this day he can only painfully raise above his head, to the shortness of his stride, a result of injury and subsequent beatings.

Mr. McCain has been speaking out more forcefully about the issue as it has bubbled up recently on the campaign trail and in debates.


“I know how evil this enemy is,” Mr. McCain told the Boone audience. But the issue is about more than one technique, he said. “This is really fundamentally about what kind of nation the United States of America is.”

But Milt Mattson, standing outside the cafe after Mr. McCain left, said he thought the United States needed to take any measure it deemed necessary.

“This is a war for our life,” Mr. Mattson said. “These are people that chop heads off. I don’t care what we have to do to stop them.”

First of all, the New York Times should lay off of the 'aggressive interrogation techniques' buzzwords and call it what it is-- torture. Secondly, I find it incredible that some Republican voters find the torture issue a 'complex' issue. Never in my life did I believe that this would be a topic of any presidential campaign by either party in our country in the 21st century. If we as a country had acted like this during the Cold War, I guess we would have chained any suspected Communists naked to a wall and beat them to their senses. Scream democracy, boy!

We wonder why our moral standing as a nation has declined and are stunned to find out that we are not the most popular kid on the block anymore. We act in outrage when our fellow citizens speak out against any of these policies or the politicians responsible for implementing them. I am frankly tired of seeing some of our citizens willing to throw away the many rights and freedoms many brave citizens have fought for in our history. Moral values be damn. They think that the only way to fight extremism is to act like an extremist, torture and all. Their talk of the current situation being 'the war for our life' is cheap and only serves to fear monger people into believing that this is a 'anything goes' kind of war.

As a side note, maybe this Mr. Mattson who so strongly believes in torture because 'these are people who chop heads off' needs to talk with our pals in Saudi Arabia. They have doubled their beheading count for the year.

SCIP and the Expected Fallout

First let me admit that I am not a big fan of columnist and 'dean' of the Washington punditry David Broder of the Washington Post but his article today detailing the plight of the Republicans who voted against the expansion of SCHIP is a good read.