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Won’t give in to blackmail

Monday, September 30, 2013

As regular readers know, I'm a Monty Python fan, particularly The Life of Brian, which I consider to be one of the best movies ever made.

Well, the Republican shenanigans of the past few days put me in mind of the following scene from that best of all movies. Unfortunately, this clip continues on past the most salient point, that the blackmailers won't give in to blackmail, but the “What have the Romans ever done for us” colloquy has a certain salience in this debate as well. Try replacing the word “Romans” with “liberals” or “Democrats” .

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Crime Definitely Pays

Friday, September 27, 2013

You couldn't make this up. Matt Taibbi gives a summary history of the most successful organized crime gang in the country, the Bank of America. Of course, the Mafia has a handicap in this competition. It helps if the government enables your criminality, something it has done for the banker class in spades.

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Surprising finding…not

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Some news from the Department of Why am I not surprised by this. It seems that politicians of both the the right and the “left” believe their constituents are far more out of touch with their own self interest than is actually the case:

When we compare what legislators believe their constituents want to their constituents’ actual views, we discover that politicians hold remarkably inaccurate perceptions. Pick an American state legislator at random, and chances are that he or she will have massive misperceptions about district views on big-ticket issues, typically missing the mark by 15 percentage points.
What is more, the mistakes legislators make tend to fall in one direction, giving U.S. politics a rightward tilt compared to what most voters say they want.

Not surprising, in a way. But startling. The typical conservative candidate in their survey overestimated the district's conservatism by 20 points. The typical liberal candidate overestimated the conservatism by around 5 percentage points.

via Daily Kos

Now, there are probably a lot of reasons for this, including some mentioned in the Daily Kos article, but surely one of them is the gravitational influence of money. Politicians of both the “left” and right, intentionally or unintentionally, conflate their contributors with their constituents. Republicans owe fealty to the most extreme of the rich, the Koch brothers and others of their ilk, while the Democrats take their marching orders from the Wall Street types who don't mind if people get health care (so long as the profits go to them) and are generally supportive of the liberal position on social issues. In both cases, the interests of the large contributors are significantly to the right of the base in both parties, not to mention the public at large. The so called “liberal media” helps, of course, by perpetuating the meme that this is a “center-right” country, despite what the polls may say.

I suppose we can take some comfort from the fact that the Democrats are far less deluded than the Republicans. On the other hand, the Republicans are far more aggressive at demanding and delivering what their fantasy constituents want than are the Democrats.

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Our nobility

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

I think it can legitimately be argued that democracy is definitely dead when the nobles no longer even pretend to believe that this is a “classless” society. Put another way, we can kiss democracy good-bye when the nobles insist on being treated like nobles, or, alternatively, when they insist on their right to treat us peasants like dirt.

If I’m right, then it looks like we might as well accept that our Republic is on its last legs. Case in point, this truly amazing, and one would think unbelievable factoid. The president of the University of Chicago has declared that the uninformed proles (maintenance, security officers, etc.) at the University may not ride the elevators in the Administration building, but must, instead, trudge up six flights of stairs. In a sign of hope, the union is not taking this lightly, and seems to understand the issue and its implications well enough.

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Speaking of the nobility, it’s definitely good to be the king, or, failing that, the head guys at Google. You’ve probably asked yourself: Why can’t I get below market rates on fuel for my private jet? Well, maybe you haven’t. If you could afford to ask the question, you probably wouldn’t need to. Remember when Leona Helmsley said that only the “little people” pay taxes? Well, she was only half right. Not only do the nobles not pay taxes, they drink most deeply from the government teat:

A year-long examination of federal government documents shows that a company owned by the founders of Google has purchased millions of dollars’ worth of jet fuel at below-market prices from NASA and the Department of Defense. The records show the company, H211, whose principals are also the principals of Google, used the fuel to fly their private airplanes around the world.

Local officials in Santa Clara County confirm that the company owned by the Google founders, H211, pays no property taxes on the airplanes that are housed at Moffett—a potential loss to local tax rolls of up to $500,000 per airplane per year.

Nearly $8 million worth of jet fuel that sold for as little as $1.68 a gallon was put into a fleet of seven different airplanes and two helicopters that are kept on taxpayer-owned land at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field. The same jet fuel sells for two to four-and-a-half times that amount, up to $8.05 a gallon, at fixed-base operators at nearby airports in the Bay Area.

This was made possible under a NASA Space Agreement which has allowed these planes to be housed at Moffett Field since 2007. In exchange, H211 agreed to pay NASA first $113,365.74 a month in rent. That figure later dropped to $108,938.62 a month in rent and NASA was allowed to use the planes for science.

But an examination of records by NBC Bay Area in May 2012 showed that only 155 out of more than 1,039 flights were actually used for science. And these newly released fuel records show the planes used the below-market-rate fuel to fly to exotic places around the world, such as Paris, London, Cancun, Scotland, Puerto Vallarta, St. John, Hawaii, Liberia and Tahiti.

(via Google Executives Globetrotting on Taxpayers’ Dime | NBC Bay Area)

Well, really, we can’t expect these Google guys to pay for their own fuel, can we? Nor can we expect them to pay local property taxes, which they also evaded through this scam. Thank god we can cut the food stamp budget to find the cash to make sure that Larry, Serge and Eric can fly on our dime. But wait, I’ve spoken too soon. This Bush era deal having seen the light of day, has been terminated.

But am I being fair? After all, the government got good value for the nearly free fuel it gave to the Google guys and the money it literally stole from the local municipality.

In explaining the unusual arrangement, NASA officials have pointed to a related agreement by the Google executives to perform scientific flights and other NASA-related transport. That mostly has involved flights by an Alpha jet, a small trainer bought by the Google executives and used by NASA to measure atmospheric greenhouse gases and ozone.

(via Google Founders’ Jet Fleet Loses a Pentagon Fuel Perk – WSJ.com)

In other words, in exchange for fueling the Google RV, the government got to take the Google scooter out for a spin now and then. Well, that’s alright then.

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Let them live amongst the rabble

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Digby rebuts the argument (made here) that members of Congress should be paid more, so that they can keep up with their “peers” and won't feel tempted to cash out for even more than their enhanced (above the present $172,000 per year) salaries by turning to a career in crime lobbying:

But they're not supposed to be “elites.” They're supposed to be representatives of the people who voted for them, which means they should not think of their “peers” as bankers, entertainers, executives etc. (at least not most of them.) Perhaps if they spent more time among the former instead of the latter they wouldn't feel so cheated and would have a better idea of who it is they should be identifying with. In fact, the problem may be that they actually make too much money which explains why they no longer understand the needs and wants of 95% of America.

via Hullabaloo

This leads me once again to a modest proposal that I have made in the past. There was once a need for a national capital, but that time has long since passed. Washington is now an artificial world, a bubble nation insulated from the effects of the policies it inflicts on the rest of us, and our “representatives” increasingly have no idea how we live. Even many who start with the best intentions are eventually infected with Inside-the-Beltway syndrome.

The Capitol should be used for ceremonial purposes only; a place the average Congressman or Senator visits only rarely. The rest of their time should be spent in their offices in their districts or states. They can participate in committees via the internet, and can cast their votes the same way. Not only would they be spending more time with their constituents, it would become about 435 times harder for lobbyists to effectively run the country. It would be easy to list disadvantages to this system, but they are trivial in comparison to the advantages.

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Sunday Sermon

Sunday, September 22, 2013

As my regular readers know, I have a hard earned degree in Catholic theology from Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School, so it was only to be expected that many readers would have asked for my thoughts regarding the Pope's recent announcement that the church has, perhaps, been a bit obsessive about abortion and gays. It will likely, therefore, come as a shock to those readers to learn that no one has solicited my views, but I attribute this to shyness. Not wanting to deprive the world of my unique perspective, informed as it is with years of grueling Catholic education, I will respond to the uplifted voices which, if they are not raised in the world of reality, ring out loud and clear in my head.

Some might say that it is strange that the Pope can make news by verbalizing something that is and was common knowledge to those whose synapses are properly wired. But I beg to remind my readers that properly wired synapses are in short supply these days. The laws of evolution have been subverted, for certainly while some are winnowed out, many more survive despite Darwin's supposedly iron laws.

But back to the Pope. Of course, I agree with his remarks. (How can you not help but agree with an infallible being?) In its almost single minded obsessiveness with gays and abortion, the Church has almost completely lost sight of the other groups and activities that it has righteously condemned through the centuries. When was the last time the Church burned a usurer, or even condemned one, and God knows (or at least I believe God knows) that if usurers ever needed condemnation they certainly need it now. But usurers are small potatoes.

Take women, for instance. In its single minded obsession with abortion, the Church has almost lost sight of its broader mission to keep women securely under the thumb of men. During this obsessional period the Church has silently acquiesced to a level of sexual equality that would, I'm sure, have been abhorrent to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, had he ever chosen to express himself on the subject. I am qualified to speak on this subject because, as a person with a degree in theology, I can unerringly tell what Jesus would have said on any subject, no matter how much my pronouncements might seem at variance with what little we know of what he actually said.) It's off the subject a bit, but few people know that Jesus was adamantly opposed to any restrictions on gun ownership. But..back to women. In ways large and small the church has neglected many opportunities to keep women in subjection. Oh sure, it spared a few moments to condemn American nuns for their own obsession: social justice, but there was no follow through. Nary a witch was burnt.

Heretics, too, have gotten a virtual free pass. It's more than ever true that no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, but the sad fact is that no one gets one! Unless, of course, they are gay or had an abortion, but that lets so many fish wriggle through the net.

And don't let me get started on the Jews. The Church has a proud history of virulent anti-Semitism, but lately, unless the Jew in question is gay, the Church seems perfectly content to keep its anti-Semitism hidden in the closet, along with so many of its priests.

And need I remind my readers that nowadays, there are brand new groups that deserve condemnation and persecution that hardly even existed before modern times, which the Church has all but ignored in its single minded obsession with gays and abortion. Now that science has made the case for atheism, the number of out and proud non-believers has skyrocketed. Why, back in the day no Pope worth his salt would have let an atheist go unburnt; nowadays, even in Rome you can't even spit without hitting one.

So I am absolutely with the Pope. The Church has made a grievous mistake by focusing on gays and abortion. Millions of people are going un-demeaned, un-persecuted, and un-loathed because of it. They deserve to know that they too are unworthy of respect and human dignity.

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Organized Crime on the Government Dole

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

There is no criminal enterprise more organized than the modern banking industry. Wait, that may be unfair. It’s not really criminal if the government legalizes it once you start doing it. Still, if anyone else was doing it…

This is somewhat old news, but worth passing on, as reported by Pam Martens at Wall Street on Parade. It seems Elizabeth Warren was a bit upset about the fact that the too big to fail banks are feeding at yet another government trough, pushing the intended beneficiaries aside in the process:

Warren reminded the federal regulator that “Congress established the Federal Home Loan Bank System to serve as a reliable source of funding to local banks and other community lenders that offer families home mortgages.” Warren cited a report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau showing that significant levels of student debt pose a barrier to Americans trying to buy their first homes.

With housing stalling and mortgage credit still tight for many borrowers, Wall Street On Parade decided to delve into the financial filings of each of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks and see who else might be getting a windfall from a program set up to help local lenders compete with the big boys. According to the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, the system’s mission is as follows: “By supporting community-based financial institutions, the Federal Home Loan Bank System helps to strengthen communities. The System directly benefits consumers by helping to ensure competition in the housing-finance market.” Got that – competition.

The mission, like so much else that Wall Street touches, seems to have run off the tracks. As of June 30, 2013, three of the giant, global, Wall Street banks are the largest borrowers from the Federal Home Loan Banks, with JPMorgan way out in front with borrowings of $61.840 billion. And it’s not borrowing from just one FHLBank, it’s borrowing from three and grabbing 65.8 percent of all advances from the FHLBank of Cincinnati, which services Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Bank of America Corporation comes in second with borrowings of $33.844 billion. Citigroup, parent of Citibank, is next with $25.702 billion. These 3 banks, out of 7500 members of the Federal Home Loan Banks, already control over $2.539 trillion in domestic deposits in their FDIC insured subsidiaries – a whopping 41 percent of all U.S. domestic deposits. Because they are considered too-big-to-fail, they already receive a huge, lower-cost borrowing advantage over community banks and credit unions. With all those deposits, why do they need to go to the well of the FHLBanks?

(via Wall Street on Parade)

So, these banks borrow from us taxpayers at near to 0% and then, in the case of yet another big bank (Sallie Mae) turn around and lend it back to us taxpayers in the form of student loans at 25 to 40 times that rate. Nice.

These are the same banks, by the way, that are working hard to destroy the type of banks the Home Loan Bank System is supposed to be helping.

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Going out with style

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

A belated comment about some recent good news, and that reminds me, this counts as my good news post of the week, as it truly is good news that Larry Summers won't be rewarded for helping destroy the economy by getting to run the Fed. This is good news on a number of levels It's the first time in recent history that someone like Summers has been taken to task for incompetence; the usual pattern is that these guys keep falling up; in Washington, nothing succeeds like failure. The other piece of good news is that this truly historical event was engineered by liberals, who have finally signaled that they have had enough. It's about time the left (such as it is in the Congress) took a lesson from the right.

So that's the good news, but here's what interested me. I read stories about Summers' withdrawal in both the Globe and the Times on Monday morning. The Globe's article was fairly straightforward, but the article in the Times appeared to have been ghostwritten by Summers and his flaks, loaded as it was with quotes from people close to Summers who refused to be identified. This has been a pattern, much noted elsewhere, throughout Summers' campaign for the job. What I took away from the article is that Summers truly is a nasty man, for when it became clear that he could not get the votes, he decided to turn on Obama and accuse him of weakness.

WASHINGTON — For Lawrence H. Summers, President Obama’s preferred candidate to lead the Federal Reserve, the messy debate over a military attack in Syria was the final sign.

After weeks of opposition to his candidacy from an array of progressives, the president’s inability to rally Congressional Democrats on Syria persuaded Mr. Summers that his most important audience — the Senate, which must confirm a Fed chairman — probably could not be won over.

He concluded that the White House was also unlikely to overcome opposition to his candidacy from many of the same Democrats, who view him as an opponent of stronger financial regulation, according to supporters who insisted on anonymity to describe confidential conversations with him.

“Clearly Obama couldn’t bring his own most enthusiastic supporters to back him on an issue of national security,” one supporter said. “How was he going to corral them for Larry?”

via New York Times

I suppose it's too much to expect Summers to have enough intellectual honesty to admit that Obama couldn't sell Summers, because Summers as Fed chief, like the proposed action in Syria, is a truly terrible idea. A few details here.

But in an extra dismal news week, month and year, this truly is good news, made a bit sweeter by the fact that New York's billionaire mayor will likely be replaced by a card carrying liberal. Next thing you know, they'll be sending a banker to jail.

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Sounds right to me

Sunday, September 15, 2013

My fellow Democrats: read this.

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Government sponsored inequality

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

As regular readers know, I'm a big fan of Dean Baker. Today he demolishes the claim that current levels of inequality are the result of market forces before which we are powerless to act. But no, as Dean shows with numerous examples, its not the invisible hand of the free market that is causing inequality, it's government policy. Baker's list is admittedly incomplete, so I'm going to add a couple of my favorites.

The first is low hanging fruit. With an exception during the Clinton years, we have had more than 30 years of tax cuts aimed disproportionately at the rich. While the rest of us get some crumbs off the tax cut table, most of those are vacuumed up by the inevitable need to raise taxes at the state and local level, not to mention the reduction in funding to essential services that causes among other thing, widespread and unfair taxation in the form, for instance, of student loans taken out to pay for an education that should be free.

But the most unequal of us all, as Baker points out, are the bankers:

At the top of the list are of winners are the Wall Street money boys. Does anyone think they would be as rich if the government taxed the financial sector the same way it taxes every other sector in the economy. Even the International Monetary Fund has called for additional taxes on the financial sector in the range of $40 billion a year to make its contribution to the Treasury comparable to that of other sectors. (My favorite here is a financial speculation tax like the one the U.K. has applied to stock trades for more than three centuries.)

via Beat the Press

But shouldn't we add the government policies that preserve inequality, particularly for the Wall Street money boys. Had they not been bailed out in 2008 at least some of the boys would not be as more equal as they are now. When we peons get into trouble the government might step in to make sure we don't starve, though the Republicans don't like even that very much, but when the boys get into trouble it makes sure their big money bonuses get paid. That’s a lot better than food stamps.

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