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The banks want your money, and no credit union is going to stop them

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Periodically issues crop up that give an accurate, and usually depressing, indication of the extent to which our alleged democracy is or is not the captive of the elites. Here’s one that’s been flying under my radar, at least, and probably almost everyone else’s. It seems the banks have discovered that special tax breaks are a bad thing. No, I’m not talking about the fact that hedge fund billionaires get taxed at half the rate we peons pay; I am of course referring to the tax break that allows credit unions to provide an alternative place for the rest of us to plant our ever decreasing supply of money.

Given the steady growth of consumers turning to responsive credit unions for their banking, the oligopolistic banks that brought you the crash of the American economy – and made you lend them money to survive – are now trying to crush credit unions.

The vehicle being used by the large financial institutions – many of whom are still engaged in risky and unethical if not illegal actions – to remove credit unions as competition is to get their pawns in DC to pass legislation that will remove their tax exemption.

According to a July 6 LA Times article:

The tax exemption is crucial to credit unions, which by law can’t raise capital through public stock offerings the way that banks can, said Fred R. Becker Jr., president of the National Assn. of Federal Credit Unions, a trade group with about 3,800 federally chartered members.

“They’ll have to convert to banks, which is what the banks want,” he said. “Then they’d have, for lack of a better term, a monopoly.”

(via Buzzflash)

Sort of an acid test. There is no policy reason to do this, other than to hand the banks yet another bonanza. Even removing the tax break would mean a reduction in federal government tax receipts:

A 2012 economic study commissioned by the trade group found that removing the tax exemption would cost consumers about $10 billion a year through higher fees and interest rates on loans, as well as lower interest rates on savings.

That loss of income would end up costing the federal government $1.5 billion a year in lost tax revenue, the study said.

It’d be interesting to keep an eye on this and see who steps forward to crush the credit unions at the banks’ behest. Why does the name Chuck Schumer pop to mind?

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We have nothing to lose but our Schumers

Monday, July 8, 2013

Some thoughts provoked initially by a mass email I received today, in which Hullabaloo’s digby offered me a chance to win a Neil Young souvenir if I donated money to Daylin Leach, a proud progressive running for Congress in Pennsylvania. Apparently, the powers that be in the Democratic Party would prefer a corporate Democrat run in his place.This got me thinking about how asymmetric the current situation is between the parties. The Republican Party is in thrall to its base, to the point where its continued existence as a national party is threatened. The Democrats, on the other hand, are in many ways totally divorced from their base.

Mr. Leach, for instance, appears to be on the outs with Steny Hoyer because he strongly takes traditional Democratic positions that are more and more being relegated to the sidelines as the Beltway Democrats seek to please their corporate masters. Meanwhile, from the President on down, party “leaders” feel no shame about shilling for Wall Street and the banks, while ever so silently sticking it to us on core issues like Social Security. I’ve linked to stories about Gary Gensler before, but haven’t written about him, but his story is a case in point.

Mr. Gensler is the one Obama appointee (chair of the Commodity’s Futures Trading Commission) that has actually turned his back on his banker past and sought to vigorously regulate the derivatives market in accordance with the weak, but better than nothing, dictates of the Dodd-Frank act. As a reward Obama has fired him, but the effective date, and I assume Obama had no choice about this, won’t arrive until after the new regulations become effective. The banks are crying foul; they want the U.S. to await some international standards that they fully expect will allow them to continue their criminal enterprises unabated.

Senator Charles (Chuck) Schumer of New York is writing letters and pounding the table to try to stop sweeping new regulation of derivatives from being put into effect by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) four days from now on July 12.

Schumer is leading an assault against Gary Gensler, Chair of the CFTC, who wants to impose cross-border rules which would prevent firms like JPMorgan Chase from simply moving its derivative trades to London or another foreign trading venue to escape U.S. rules – the situation that allowed JPMorgan to lose $6.2 billion of deposits in its infamous London Whale derivatives episode.

Schumer’s actions and those of other Senate Democrats who joined with him in a letter to Jack Lew, Treasury Secretary, brought a sharp rebuke last week from the editorial board of the New York Times:

“In the letter to Mr. Lew, the senators say that to avoid confusing the banks, the C.F.T.C. cross-border guidelines should not take effect until the Securities and Exchange Commission completes a separate set of derivatives rules. That is ridiculous. The C.F.T.C. oversees virtually all of the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market; the S.E.C. a relative sliver. The C.F.T.C. has diligently issued its required rules under the Dodd-Frank law over the past three years and has set a deadline of July 12 to put the cross-border guidelines into effect. The S.E.C. first got around to issuing a pathetically weak derivatives proposal in May.”

(via Wall Street on Parade)

By any reasonable standard, what Shumer is doing is anathema not just to his base, but to the rest of the country. Yet he will go on, and will take no risk in doing so. His position will remain secure, for the corporatists and “moderates” who have captured the Beltway Democratic Party are securely in the saddle.

Now, one could argue that the Democrats are only doing the right thing by ignoring their base, for look what has happened to the Republicans, who have been captured by theirs. But there’s an important distinction between the two bases. The Democratic base is, to a great degree, merely asking for preservation of the status quo, or a return to the status quo that prevailed prior to the regulatory surrender to the banks in the late 90s. What we want is quite popular. We want social security preserved. So do almost all Americans, except the Beltway punditocracy, the Randian billionaires and their too-numerous Democratic fellow travelers (looking at you, POTUS). We, along with most Americans, are even willing to pay more, though we think the untaxed rich should do more paying (as do most Americans). We want Wall Street regulated (still looking at POTUS). We want people to be allowed to vote. We want women to be able to decide their fates for themselves. We want religion out of our schools and we want our schools to be public, not privatized. We are happy to let gay people get married. With few exceptions, these positions have super-majority support and the rest have at least majority support. They are not fringe positions; indeed, for the most part all we want is to preserve the good choices this country has made in the past, which corporate rent seekers and religious zealots are trying to destroy.

So, perhaps it’s time for we folks in the Democratic Party to take a page from the Tea Party playbook and start primarying people like Chuck Schumer. We’d probably lose the first few fights, but that would stop eventually if we took another page from that book and didn’t give up. Recall, after all, that it was an eventually unsuccessful attempt to unseat Joe Lieberman that finally got the Democratic Party to oppose the Iraq war in earnest. It might take even less heat to get them to start supporting the New Deal.

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Friday Night Music, 4th of July Edition (A look back), and a bit of a rant

Friday, July 5, 2013

Well, another national natal day has passed, but just barely, and festivities certainly go on around our great land, so it’s only appropriate that we give another listen to the song that should be our National Anthem. This performance is by Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and the assembled multitude. It brings back memories of those early days, when we thought we’d elected a president who bid fair to become another Roosevelt. Well, we got that wrong, and we never got that Hope and Change, or hardly enough to matter. Still, we can’t give up hope, the other side of that wall still belongs to you and me if we can only get ourselves together to jump it.

Lest it be claimed by some people that I am too hard on Obama, let me say that he appears to be holding his own in the affections of the people. Yesterday the Groton Federation of Democratic Women had cardboard Barack on its parade float, see below, and he and they were very well received by the crowd: many cheers and only scattered naysayers.

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In a weird sort of way the man is blessed by the enemies he’s made. Most people are totally unaware of the extent to which he’s sought to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted. Fox and the right wing have pushed so hard on their “radical socialist” meme that most folks assume that Obama is at least inclined in that direction. As for yours truly, I face facts, albeit reluctantly sometimes. The guy we thought or hoped we elected doesn’t exist. He coulda been a contender, right up there with the big guys; the times were right, and the country was primed. Instead, he’ll merely take his place as the best president of this century so far, and given the competition, that’s saying nothing at all.

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A Thought Experiment

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Digby notes that at least one protestor, an asshole openly carrying a gun in order to assert his “second amendment rights” and his rights under a crazy open carry law, gets an inordinate amount of respect from the cops that confront him . I’ve seen the video before, but if you haven’t, you can view it at the link.

So here’s my thought experiment, one that could actually be carried out. Suppose someone-someone black and male-walking down that same street carrying that same gun was confronted by the same cops. Who would want to bet against me that the respectful and humble tone the cops took with the asshole would be repeated?

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Monday Night Music-Wendy

Monday, July 1, 2013

This is the sort of thing that makes me re-think my position about re-opening talks with the Confederacy. We definitely want to keep folks like this. The Bright Light Social Hour of Austin (where else in Texas?), honors the most famous state senator in the world:

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Friday Night Music

Friday, June 28, 2013

Okay, it’s somewhat depressing, but the obituaries do provide great fodder for this feature, which I am really contemplating either retiring or lightening up on the no repeat artists rule.

Anyway, Bobby Bland died this week, so he’s the featured artist. I do remember listening to some of his music on my first transistor radio, but I will be the first to admit that I didn’t know he was such a giant figure in the blues world. Unfortunately, as is often the case with the late 50s, early 60s acts, it’s not easy to find good video as opposed to songs accompanied by pictures of 45s. Anyway, I settled on this, and the fact that he’s accompanied by B.B. King is just icing on the cake. You have to wait through a minute and a half intro, but the music is worth it.

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American Blind Justice

Friday, June 28, 2013

This is one of those stories that is so outrageous that it is beyond my poor literary power to express. Still, I will do my mite by passing it on, in hopes that the outrage will spread and, in the end, that outrage might cause some semblance of justice to prevail.

Our tale takes place in San Diego, a reddish area in a generally blue state. It seems a fellow named Jeff Olson took it into his head to protest against the Bank of America. He chose to do so by writing slogans on the public sidewalk in front of the bank using “Creatology” chalky crayons, a toy designed for kids to do artwork on sidewalks and driveways. It’s suited for that purpose, because it washes off with water. Many months after his presumably ineffective protest, Olson was arrested for vandalism, at the behest of BOA, prosecuted by an elected prosecutor who has gotten money from BOA and apparently expects more. Olson faces 13 years in prison, and yes, you read that right.

But as Bob Dylan once wrote, take the rags away from your eyes, now’s not the time for your tears.

As would any good lawyer, his lawyer prepared to defend him on free speech grounds. It’s a reasonable defense, because even if, in the abstract, what he did constituted vandalism, if he is being selectively prosecuted for the contents of his vandalism, as he surely is, then the prosecution would be unconstitutional. We can all agree, I’m sure, that he would not have been prosecuted if he’d written “I ? the Bank of America” on the sidewalk. So, it’s a great defense, except he won’t be allowed to make it because Judge Howard Shore has ruled the laws barring disappearing chalk drawings take precedence:

During pre-trial motions prosecutors introduced a motion to prohibit Olson’s defense attorney Tom Tosdal from using the words First Amendment, free speech, free expression and other similar terms during the trial. The judge agreed saying jurors should focus on whether Olson committed vandalism and not why he did it.

(via Buzzflash)

And just to make sure that there is no unseemly criticism of the judge by Olson, his lawyer, the jurors, or anyone else within the judge’s power to restrain, he issued a gag order preventing them (this is a misdemeanor case, remember) from discussing it in public. Even that wasn’t enough for the judge, however, because “[t]he clearly pro-bankster jurist even rebuked the mayor of San Diego for calling the trial a waste of time”. The mayor is a Democrat, in case you hadn’t guessed.

By the way, now is the time for your tears, because the story’s over, or at least we’ve come up to the present.

Moving on: it appears that the prosecutor has mayoral ambitions of his own, presumably shaded red. So one must ask oneself, are his political calculations on the mark? Will the bad will he generates for this persecution be outweighed by the financial reward from BOA? Personally, I’m not sure he’s done himself a political favor here, but for his sake I hope he got something in writing from BOA before he went after this guy.

So welcome to America, the land of equality before the law. Think about it. If he serves 13 days, much less 13 years, that will be 13 days more than any of the bank presidents that led the criminal enterprises that pushed our economy off the cliff. We’re I Jerry Brown, and assuming he has pardon power, I’d step in right now.

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The Court rules on gay rights

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

We got a bit of good news out of the Supreme Court yesterday, proving among other things that race remains the final frontier in this country. Who would have thought that the Supreme Court would protect gay marriage one day after reinstating Jim Crow.

Some folks are disappointed that the court ducked the chance to make gay marriage a constitutional right, but I’d like to argue that it might have been a good thing, particularly because the effect of the DOMA ruling is that any gay couple that likes can come here to Connecticut, get married, spend some money here, and then go back to where they came from and have their marriage recognized by the federal government.

Here’s the argument. I will assert without citation, because I think most would recognize that I’m right, that legislative acts are more readily accepted by the populace at large than judicial fiat; particularly federal judicial fiat; that state legislative acts are more readily accepted than federal legislative acts, and that state court fiat is more readily accepted than federal judicial fiat.

Consider the abortion issue. I recall distinctly that New York legalized abortion prior to Roe v. Wade, and I see here that a couple of other states did as well. It is quite possible that other states would have followed. As the right to a safe legal abortion became gradually more widespread, from the ground up, so to speak, it might very well be the case that it would not have become the divisive issue it remains. The Supreme Court cut off that evolutionary process, giving the abortion foes a rhetorical cudgel they would not have, had legalization emerged from the state legislatures, or even the state judiciaries.

There are a lot of reasons that this argument might be wrong in the case of abortion, but I would argue that it is easier to make the case that gay marriage will continue to spread and that it will become ever more acceptable, until half of the hold out states (those saddled with Bush era bans on gay marriage) would be happy to have the Supreme Court invalidate their bans. The other half, and we know where they would be located, would stand alone against a country in which the institution was widely accepted. Even they would begin to feel some pressure to catch up with the rest of the country. A company looking to relocate to Texas might think twice, for instance, if it meant subjecting its gay employees to an environment in which their marriages were not respected.

At that point, a Supreme Court decision requiring same sex marriage would be relatively non-controversial. It might take a few more years, but the upside is that it removes the issue as a hot button that the right can press for generations. It makes the process look far more legitimate; as indeed it would be. Evolution on the abortion issue might never have happened, but it seems pretty clear that we are evolving rapidly when it comes to gay rights. 10 years ago the Republicans were putting anti-gay initiatives on the ballot in order to turn out their base; now they are putting rhetorical distance between themselves and the anti-gay movement because it is becoming a loser issue for them. The gay-rights side is now winning statewide initiatives and that process will only accelerate as more citizens of Fox Nation are lowered into the ground. There is far more support for gay rights than for abortion rights, and much of the opposition is relatively apathetic. The more the movement is rightly perceived as emerging from the states, the easier the transition will be.

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Privatizing the security state. What could go wrong?

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Digby raises a good point at Hullabaloo, about the fact that there is a lot of money to be made by expanding the security state. We pour billions into collecting haystacks of data and then start searching for the needles, and some folks are getting very rich indeed as more and more of the work involved in getting us to Orwell is outsourced, which, in turn, leads to ever more vigorous lobbying for ever more intrusive spying. Meanwhile, we taxpayers, in addition to losing our freedom, are getting almost no bang for the buck when it comes to actual protection from the people the NSA claims to be hunting.

This seems to be an American disease, though I suppose the British will emulate us. There are certain state functions that it is desirable to keep outside of private hands, but we seem to have totally lost sight of that fact. Before privatizing our spying we privatized our prisons, which now lobby for more criminal laws. Educational “reformers” are panting to put our public school systems safely into the hands of for-profit entities. Somehow we are to believe that the lower teacher’s pay that will inevitably result will yield better educational outcomes. Chicago even privatized its parking meters, with predictable results. And let’s not forget our worst in the non-third world health care system, afflicted as it is with the twin evils of for-profit hospitals and for-profit health insurance companies.

We have come to a strange place in our national life. It was once a given that there are certain services and activities that were peculiarly the province of the state, such as running prisons, distributing vital commodities, such as water, and that there were other services, such as education, for which there should be a public option, providing an assurance that everyone, regardless of their financial position, could get that service at high quality. This notion may no longer be expressed in polite company. It appears to be an article of faith that anything the government can do, for-profit rent seekers can do better. The fact that experience proves otherwise never sinks in.

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The Free Press, Post 9/11 edition

Monday, June 24, 2013

A few weeks ago I commented on the fact that the mainstream press has a very limited attention span, and that the recent re-revelations about the extent to which Washington is spying on us all had effectively driven a number of faux scandals off the front page and out of the mass media mind.

Now, you can take the position that there’s nothing new in this story, as I did and to some extent still do. That’s not a defense of the Obama administration, which has managed to out-do Bush in its rush to institute an Orwellian state. The Obamaites have an advantage. No one expects it from a Democrat, and they do it while they smile, which Cheney, et. al., could never pull off.

Even if you argue that there’s nothing new here, that doesn’t mean it’s not an issue, nor that Greenwald and Snowden, for whatever reason, have done anything but a public service in putting the issue front and center again. Except, of course, they didn’t, and this is perhaps a corollary of my theory of the Attention Deficit infected media.

Nowadays, it’s not the message, it’s the messenger. Anyone with half a brain should realize that while what Snowden is currently doing, or how he came to do what he did, is marginally interesting, the real issue is the government spying. But that’s not what we’re seeing. The press can’t get enough of Snowden watching, and though there was some initial follow up regarding the real issue, there’s been precious little lately.

And no wonder. The press, or at least the “journalists” that dominates our discourse, no longer pretend to be anything but the tools of the corporations that pay their salaries and the powerful “sources” they cultivate. How else do you explain David Gregory’s suggestion to Glenn Greenwald that he should be prosecuted criminally for breaking this story? (Fun and games with Gregory here) It’s a risk, of course, that Gregory’s never run; the people that leak to him do so from a position of power with the express or implied consent of the people for whom they work.

This plays wonderfully into the interests of the security state. Rather than debating the acts of a government which will ineluctably destroy freedom of the press, along with a raft of other freedoms (second amendment “rights” always excluded of course), our mainstream press corps can talk of nothing other than how and whether the government will be able to properly punish the guys who revealed its criminal behavior.

So the Obama Administration is a double winner in this case. The NSA leaks have effectively killed the non-scandals (and the AP perhaps scandal), and they have successfully diverted attention from the real NSA scandal to the fate of a 30 year old computer geek and the guy to whom he spilled the beans. It’s win-win for the forces of totalitarianism, enabled by the comfortable Washington press corps.

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