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"We're all in this together"

Submitted by phastphil40 on July 14, 2012 - 7:26am
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“He made a fortune letting it happen… Mitt Romney’s not the solution, he’s the problem.”

Submitted by phastphil40 on July 7, 2012 - 10:50pm
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Really Mitt?

Submitted by phastphil40 on June 15, 2012 - 2:15pm
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The President on Private Equity

Submitted by phastphil40 on May 21, 2012 - 3:57pm
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Who are the real job creators

Submitted by phastphil40 on May 17, 2012 - 4:30pm

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Accidentally Released

Submitted by phastphil40 on May 16, 2012 - 5:39am

From: Common Dreams

Published on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 by Rolling Stone

Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'

by Matt Taibbi

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes God smiles on us. Last week, he smiled on investigative reporters everywhere, when the lawyers for Goldman, Sachs slipped on one whopper of a legal banana peel, inadvertently delivering some of the bank’s darker secrets into the hands of the public.

The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time – primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks.

Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.

I contacted Morgan Lewis, the firm that represents Goldman in this matter, earlier today, but they haven’t commented as of yet. I wonder if the poor lawyer who FUBARred this thing has already had his organs harvested; his panic is almost palpable in the air. It is both terrible and hilarious to contemplate. The bank has spent a fortune in legal fees trying to keep this material out of the public eye, and here one of their own lawyers goes and dumps it out on the street.

The lawsuit between Overstock and the banks concerned a phenomenon called naked short-selling, a kind of high-finance counterfeiting that, especially prior to the introduction of new regulations in 2008, short-sellers could use to artificially depress the value of the stocks they’ve bet against. The subject of naked short-selling is a) highly technical, and b) very controversial on Wall Street, with many pundits in the financial press for years treating the phenomenon as the stuff of myths and conspiracy theories.

Now, however, through the magic of this unredacted document, the public will be able to see for itself what the banks’ attitudes are not just toward the “mythical” practice of naked short selling (hint: they volubly confess to the activity, in writing), but toward regulations and laws in general.

Go over to Common Dreams and read the whole article (hint -well worth it)

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Peons

Submitted by phastphil40 on May 3, 2012 - 8:14pm

From: About.com

Peons

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Look up Jude Wanniski and his "Two Santa Claus Theory"

Submitted by phastphil40 on May 1, 2012 - 1:24pm

From Greg Sargent's blog at the Washington Post

One more time: Republicans don’t care about the deficit

By Jonathan Bernstein

So let me get this straight. Republicans are currently blocking the extension of lower student loan interest rates because they insist on cutting a health care fund to pay for its cost. But when it comes to the Bush tax cuts, they continue to believe that no budget offsets are necessary to pay for them.

The Hill reports: “House Republicans say they have no plans to pay for the extension of the Bush-era tax rates, a move that could erase the deficit reduction they have achieved since winning their majority in the chamber in 2010.”

In other words, Republicans intend to do exactly what they did when they passed the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts in the first place, which (along with not paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or for Medicare prescription drug coverage) is exactly what created our budget mess in the first place.

Welcome, again, to the GOP War on Budgeting. You really couldn’t ask for clearer evidence that Republicans are not only wholly uninterested in reducing federal budget deficits, but even oppose the whole notion of considering individual spending and taxing decisions in the context of an overall budget.

Here’s how the GOP War on Budgeting actually works. If Republicans are seeking increased spending on one of their priorities (such as defense), or are looking to cut taxes and decrease revenues, there’s no need (in their view) to offset either; whatever they’re demanding is simply an urgent national priority, end of story.

If, however, Democrats want a tax cut (such as on the payroll tax) or spending increase on one of their priorities, then suddenly it must be paid for — by more spending cuts in programs that Dems favor, which Republicans are always for, regardless of the budget situation. That’s why Republicans have twice eliminated “PayGo” budget rules that would require tax cuts to be paid for.

All of this is accompanied by loud wailing about the deficit, which is apparently enough to fool some deficit idealists and quite a few reporters.  But there’s little question about it: any party that truly believed that the budget deficit is the major threat to the nation Republicans say it is would absolutely insist on paying for tax cuts. Anyone who pays close attention to these things already knows that Republicans have little if any real interest in cutting deficits, but you really couldn’t ask for a clearer example than this one.

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The media needs to call them out

Submitted by phastphil40 on April 28, 2012 - 5:56am

From: The Reality Based Community

Mann and Ornstein say the Thing That Is

by Mark Kleiman
Category: Campaign 2012

Thomas Mann (Brookings) and Norm Ornstein (AEI) writing in the Washington Post. Sounds like a formula for Inside-the-Beltway even-handedness between the firefighters and the fire, doesn’t it? But not at all. They have some frank observations:

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

They have some advice for the press:

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

[snip]

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?

[snip]

Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be. Report individual senators’ abusive use of holds and identify every time the minority party uses a filibuster to kill a bill or nomination with majority support.

They name names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

And they have some advice for the voters, too:

If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change. In the short run, without a massive (and unlikely) across-the-board rejection of the GOP at the polls, that will not happen …. it is up to voters to decide. If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better.

Amen.

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The Buffet Rule Calculater

Submitted by phastphil40 on April 13, 2012 - 10:46am

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