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Obama blinks again

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

In the past I’ve observed that, politics being a dirty game. When one has one’s opponent on the ground, the thing to do is stomp on his head, especially in this political clime, and especially if you are a Democrat, since you know that you’d get even worse treatment if you were down.

Obama had a different idea in 2009, which led directly to the massive defeat of 2010. Apparently, he remains convinced that he has a better way. He had Boehner backed into a corner. The entire non-crazy portion of the country (and it is still a larger number than the whackjobs)had pre-blamed the Republicans were we to tumble off the non-existent “fiscal cliff”. The Republicans were floundering for a way to please their base and not alienate the rest of the country, an almost impossible task. But Obama has apparently stepped up and saved their bacon, offering cruel, unnecessary and wildly unpopular social security cuts in exchange for..well, in exchange for less than he could have gotten by walking over the fiscal curb.

An economic case can be made for the “chained CPI” he has offered, but it’s unlikely Obama will hold out for the required protections. But even the best case that can be made yields rather trivial returns, particularly since there are perfectly effective ways to “fix” social security, something that should be deferred, in any event, until the Democrats (I know I’m fantasizing here) lay some groundwork for rational solutions, like raising the cap on the payroll tax.

But the political implications are even worse, particularly since it’s Obama that initially openly (it’s been under the national radar until now) suggested this benefit cut. Sure, the Republicans want it, and more, but they are always careful to put themselves into a position where they can implausibly argue (and implausible arguments work perfectly well for them) that it was the Democrats that did it. They did that with Medicare, and they would have done it again had the Democrats fallen for the push to raise the Medicare eligibility age. They’ll do it again in 2014 on Social Security.

Bad policy and bad politics. It’s a recurring theme in the Obama administration. What is really frustrating is that they so often verbalize awareness that they should not do something; and then they do it.

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Irrational Optimism

Monday, December 17, 2012

There is a lot of talk out there that this time will be different; that this time something really will be done about guns. The optimism extends even to those sections of the blogosphere where realism normally reigns. I’d love to believe it, but I think Tom Tomorrow has it absolutely right. The only real difference this time is that the NRA has to keep its head a little farther down for a few days, but they’ll be coming out from under their rocks pretty soon and all those politicians making squeaky little rational noises will find religion once again.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, December 14, 2012

In case you missed it on last night’s Colbert, Sean Lennon, Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy and the Harlem Gospel Choir singing “Happy Christmas (War is Over)”. Sean is, I imagine, almost as old as his dad was when he died. You can certainly see that he’s a mix of both John and Yoko.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Sign Off – Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples & Sean Lennon – “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive
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Horrible

Friday, December 14, 2012

The tragedy in Newtown is very much on our minds. Already the usual suspects are trotting out their right wing memes to divert attention from our lax gun laws. Rational people can only grieve, and those of us who are parents can imagine, even if we can’t truly feel, the unbearable anguish of the parents of all those dead children.

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A can’t miss prediction

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

There are some behind the scenes, “bi-partisan” negotiations about filibuster reform going on in the Senate, featuring the usual suspects:

“I think we’re having hopeful discussions,” Sen. John McCain told TPM. “We’re doing everything we can, but I don’t know if we’ll succeed. … I can’t tell you the back and forth but we are having discussions.”

Asked if negotiators have made any progress, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) quipped, “I’m sure they have — I just don’t know about it.” And is he aware of any concessions Democrats have been willing to make to avoid using the Constitutional option? “No.”

(via TPMDC)

Several years ago the bi-partisan-niks effectively removed the filibuster as a tool the minority Democrats could use. The basic deal was that the filibuster would not be ruled unconstitutional by the Republicans as long as the Democrats did not use it. It was a true bi-partisan solution, meaning that it gave the Republicans everything they wanted, including carte blanche to use the filibuster without restraint once they were in the minority, which, of course they have done, and they and the compliant media have forgotten all about the constitutional argument they advanced.

If this present group makes a deal it’s safe to say that the result will be a deal in which the Republicans agree to a set of restrictions that they will either ignore, or which will, in fact, not restrict them. That past deal worked because there were six Democrats perfectly willing to sell out their party and stick to a deal not to filibuster, guaranteeing the Republicans the 60 votes needed to end any filibuster. There is not a single Republican in the Senate who could be trusted not to violate a pledge of that sort.

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Bankers are different than you and me

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Imagine, if you will, that you were the plaintiff in one or more lawsuits. Imagine that you submitted evidence to a court knowing that it was fraudulent, or, upon learning it was fraudulent, failed to make the court aware of that fact.

Now imagine that just about everyone knew what you’d done or were doing, because the person who committed the fraud pleaded guilty to doing it.

What do you suppose would happen to you?

Well, if you were a normal human being, you would very likely go to jail, or at the very least, the tainted evidence would be tossed, your cases would likely be tossed out of court and you might incur some hefty sanctions.

But that’s because you’re not a bank. For this very scenario is now playing itself out.

On November 20th 2012 I told you about a guilty plea taken by Lorraine Brown, the founder of DOCX (later known at LPS), in federal court in Florida. The press release for that plea did not come out until after 5 PM on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving most of the reporters who usually occupy the front pages of our newspapers and network news were presumably traveling or preparing for their holiday. The story was barely reported.

Lorraine Brown also pled guilty earlier that same day in state court in Missouri. She is rumored to be in plea negotiations in other states.

Even though this is no longer breaking news, it still belongs on the front page of every paper in the country and should be the lead story on every newscast. I’ll tell you why:

Whatever the banks thought about the robo-signing being “sloppy” before, once Lorraine Brown admitted that virtually every document coming out of DOCX/LPS was a forgery and that ALL documents coming out of DOCX/LPS were suspect, the banks that had court cases pending using DOCX/LPS documents had an obligation to either withdraw the documents and/or withdraw the lawsuits and other foreclosure proceedings.

It is a crime (common law fraud) to knowingly use a false, perjured, forged, fraudulent document as “evidence” in court. The specific statute violated will vary from state to state, but it is impossible to conceive that there is a single state where this is legal. If I’m wrong about that, I’m sure someone from the fraud-allowing state will set me straight in the comments. This is certainly a violation of federal criminal law, for example 18 USC §§ 371, 1341, 1342, and 1343 and 39 USC§§ 1341 and 1342.

(via Firedoglake)

To a certain extent, the fact that the banks can get away with this is due to the fact that individual judges may be unaware of these facts. But this doesn’t explain why state AGs are not going after the banks. It truly is inexplicable, as I can’t imagine there’s an AG in any state, be it ever so red, that would become less popular by going after these banks.  Maybe our own George Jepsen would like to lead the way.

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Fitting in the Frame

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

This morning I attended a breakfast meeting of the Chamber of Commerce in Norwich. I made this sacrifice solely to show support for Chris Murphy, who addressed the assembled multitude. I figured that it could only help if there were at least a few Democrats in a crowd consisting mostly of people who think that their interests are aligned with the people who actually control the Republican Party.

But I digress.

Murphy acquitted himself well, but would I be a good Democrat if I didn’t find something to complain about?

There may breathe a member of Congress who speaks the flat out truth about the “fiscal cliff”, but if there is, I haven’t heard, unless it’s Bernie Sanders. I will give Murphy credit for having the brains to realize that all this talk about cliffs; looming economic Armageddons, and debt crises are fact free diversions from the agenda that is really being pushed. Yet, there he was, accepting, or appearing to accept, the reality of this artificial crisis and fitting comfortably within the frame constructed by the beltway insiders, who masquerade as deficit hawks until it looks like they will have to contribute, if ever so slightly, toward reducing the deficit they claim to deplore.

I can sort of understand why an informed politician might nonetheless feel obligated to talk to a group such as the Chamber folks in the way Murphy did. By and large, they’re uninformed, since they get their news from the media elite that have constructed the frame. It would be hard for them to bend their minds around the concept that the deficit is actually a minor matter in the near term; that in fact decreasing it is not a good idea; that the only danger posed by the “fiscal cliff” is the fact that it might very well reduce the debt too quickly; and that slashing Social Security and Medicare would be inefficient and destructive ways to deal with deficits, either in the short term or the long term.

To give him his due, Murphy did allude to the fact that Social Security does not contribute to the deficit, and that Medicare’s contribution is fairly insignificant and he certainly didn’t embrace the slash and burn solutions to the non-problem that are so often proposed. But he said nothing that would lead anyone to question that the entire debate is predicated on the existence of a threat that exists only in some fevered imaginations. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to hear a politician tell us the whole truth and nothing but the truth: that deficits are the least of our problems right now, given that we have huge numbers of people unemployed and an entire generation at risk of permanent relegation to the ranks of the unemployable. Sure, they’re not used to hearing that, and the first politician who breaks free of the mandatory meme will be taking a risk, but here we might learn from Republicans. They have found, with this issue as with so many others, that all you need to do to get people to believe a lie is repeat it often enough. It’s about time for Democrats to at least experiment with the possibility that the same thing works if you keep repeating the truth.

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A tax that can’t be mentioned in polite company

Monday, December 10, 2012

The “fiscal cliff” scare is a phony issue on a number of levels. It is a situation that was purposely created, and is now being used as a justification for taking steps that don’t have anything to do with the “cliff” itself.

One indication of this, and I’m by no means being original in saying this, is the fact that some obvious ways to enhance revenue without inflicting any real pain go unmentioned by our rulers, because the pain they would inflict, tiny as it would be, would be felt exclusively by the .01%.

The financial transaction tax is the best example. A tiny tax on each financial transaction would yield enormous sums of money for the treasury, without doing any harm whatsoever to the wider economy, and it would, as is pointed out at the linked article, impose the cost of recovering from the 2008 crash on those who caused it.

For us commoners, it would mean paying a tax so small on our infrequent stock purchases that we would never notice it. But high frequency traders would feel it.

There are two possible outcomes.

First, the traders could continue their current level of high frequency trades, which trades benefit no one but them, and often lead to market instability. This would be good, in that it would yield a bonanza for the Federal treasury without hurting the rest of us at all.

Or, the traders could stop engaging in high frequency trading, which would also be good.

But the serious folks in Washington don’t want to hear such things. It makes far more sense, apparently, to raise the eligibility age for Medicare, despite the fact that doing so would increase medical costs nationwide and inflict real harm on real people.

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Friday Night Music, Take Two

Friday, December 7, 2012

I couldn’t resist passing on this very silly video.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, December 7, 2012

Unfortunately, the choice was made for me this week. Back in the dim and distant past, if a member of my generation had only one jazz album, the odds were 10 to 1 it was Take Five, The Dave Brubeck Quartet’s masterpiece. Of course, Take Five is the signature piece from the album, but they’re all great, including this one, Blue Rondo a la Turk. And hey, check out these special effects, state of the art circa 1962.

I just have to reprise this feel good video that I believe I posted once before. I love the look of delight in Brubeck’s face as the young violinist joins in the fun.

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