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Another Profile in Cowardice

Friday, April 5, 2013

This time from a more expected source. Seems Tom Foley just couldn’t seem to summon up the courage to tell us where he stands on the new Connecticut gun law.

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What comes after “Fool me twice, shame on me”?

Friday, April 5, 2013

Well, Obama is doing it for at least the third time in his presidency, though I’m sure I’m missing quite a few: proposing as an opening gambit a position that he should accept only as a last resort in any negotiation. Actually, what he’s now proposing, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, should be off limits, particularly in a time when banks are robbing us blind and corporations are sitting on piles of untaxed cash.

The politics of this is even worse. All Democrats can look forward to a 2014 campaign in which, should they show the slightest support for this, they will be accused of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare, and, for once, Republican charges will be true.

But all is not lost.

We can’t necessarily count on the right to stop this out of Obama hatred. They may put it to a vote, as a trap and will then certainly run against the Democrats for voting to cut social security, should any of them vote for it. But progressives in Congress can stop the train before it departs by announcing their unalterable opposition to these cuts, by calling them cuts (thus undercutting the White House fallacious argument that they are merely adjustments to a formula) and saying they will not under any circumstances vote for them. That leaves the rest of the Democrats in Congress with a choice. They can back the cuts, and have to run on having done so, without even the solace of having been able to pass them, or they can run and hide. Republican attacks will be bolstered by the easily quoted statements of Democratic progressives. For once, this is a situation in which the Democratic left can call the shots, provided they can speak with one voice, or at least speak in harmony.

My bet is that Congressional Democrats will run and hide. Obama deserves to be left standing alone on this one. I for one am not impressed with the White House argument that this proposal to impoverish millions of Americans shows Obama’s courage and seriousness of purpose. If he wants to show those qualities, he should consider putting some bankers in jail and breaking up some too big to fail financial institutions.

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Profiles in Cowardice

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

We Democrats here in Southeastern Connecticut must hang our heads in shame. The only two Democrats to vote against the gun bill in the State Senate are from our part of the state: Cathy Osten of Norwich, and Andy Maynard, whose district includes my home. Andy, some may recall, cast one of the votes that delayed the abolition of the death penalty. Now he’s taken a brave stand in favor of gun kooks, advancing an argument which refutes itself:

Everyone wants to make sure that another tragedy does not occur, but “I think in my view this bill runs a little off track,” Maynard said. “I just don’t have a comfort level with a bill that goes that far.”

Maynard said he was not given enough time to thoroughly review the bill because it came out this morning and that constituents from his rural community who are “proud” sportsmen and traditional folks had valid concerns about being able to protect themselves from intruders and the government.

“It is their right to feel that,” Maynard said. “I don’t share their same weariness of the government because I have the privilege of working in the government.”

But he said his neighbors and friends feel passionately about the erosion of their Second Amendment rights.

“I will defend them on principle, not because they are gun nuts or fringe elements, but because this is who we are as a people, this is what was established as a Bill of Rights when the Constitution was ratified.”

Democrats “jealously guard” a woman’s right to choose after that hard-won battle, he said.

(via theday.com Mobile Edition)

It does refute itself, but a few comments are in order nonetheless. First, it seems passing strange that a state legislator, sworn to uphold both the state and federal constitutions, feels he has an obligation to preserve the “right” of gun nuts to rebel against the government lawfully constituted under those constitutions. But perhaps most offensive is his comparison of this non-existent right to the right of a woman to control her own body.

Well, I don’t regret voting for Andy, because the alternative, at least the last time around, was so much worse. I give him credit for the intelligence to know that his reasoning is specious, so I can only conclude he acted out of fear. He may even get my vote next time, as the alternative will once again probably be worse, but my checkbook will be closed, and I’ll certainly encourage others to follow my example. Presumably the folks itchin’ to take up arms against the government can make up the difference for him.

 Oh wait, I forgot, they only vote for Republicans.

As for Osten, I really don’t know her. I give her credit for matching the speciousness of Andy’s argument.

One final observation. Isn’t it strange that it is only when it comes to guns that otherwise sensible legislators resort to the argument that if a bill cannot completely solve a problem then it can’t possibly be worth passing?

Filed in Local issues | | Comments (1)

Storm is threatening

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

I wrote last year about the likelihood that we’ll be seeing right wing movements in Europe, as the bankers put the screws to the common folks so they can preserve their own privileges. Since the Greeks are getting screwed the most, it only stands to reason that it’s most likely, especially given recent Greek history, that the movement would start there, and if it didn’t start there, it’s apparently blossoming in the cradle of democracy:

Emboldened by its meteoric rise in Greece, the far-right Golden Dawn party is spreading its tentacles abroad, amid fears it is acting on its pledge to “create cells in every corner of the world”. The extremist group, which forged links with British neo-Nazis when it was founded in the 1980s, has begun opening offices in Germany, Australia, Canada and the US.

The international push follows successive polls that show Golden Dawn entrenching its position as Greece’s third, and fastest growing, political force. First catapulted into parliament with 18 MPs last year, the ultra-nationalists captured 11.5% support in a recent survey conducted by polling company Public Issue.

The group – whose logo resembles the swastika and whose members are prone to give Nazi salutes – has gone from strength to strength, promoting itself as the only force willing to take on the “rotten establishment”. Amid rumours of backing from wealthy shipowners, it has succeeded in opening party offices across Greece.

(via The Guardian)

If we learn nothing from history, and we always do, we will ignore this nascent movement until it’s too late. But then, from the banker’s point of view, it’s all good. The demagogues on the right talk a good game on the way up, but once they take over, they’ll be the banker’s friend, maybe even more than the corrupt so-called “democratic” regimes in Europe that have been selling out their people for the past several years. It’s win-win for the banks, and lose-lose for the rest of us, but that’s nothing new.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism | | Comments (1)

 Miracles, redefined

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Those of us upon whom a religious upbringing or education was inflicted are well aware that this past Sunday was the celebration of history’s biggest miracle; the revivification of a man who had been tortured to death by crucifixion. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, why such wonders never happen in this modern age, for despite what Paul Simon sang, this is not truly the age of “miracles and wonders”. We’re still wondering, but miracles we see not.

Well, wonder no longer, for Pat Robertson tells us that the problem is those pointy headed intellectuals of the Ivy League, whose skepticism has apparently infected the whole country, for, according to Pat, nowadays, if you want to dupe someone into believing in miracles, you have to go to Africa, where, again according to Pat, you can get them to believe anything. And it’s all the fault of those Harvard and Yale elites that we aren’t as easily duped as the credulous Africans. (Spoiler alert, Pat went to Yale Law School, but apparently that doesn’t count)

According to Robertson, it’s the “skepticism and secularism” that is being taught at “the most advanced schools” around the country that is keeping God’s miracles at bay.

Meanwhile, Africans are “simple” and “humble.” “You tell ‘em God loves ‘em and they say, ‘Okay, he loves me’,” said Robertson. “You say God will do miracles and they say, ‘Okay, we believe him’.”

(via TPM News)

Give the man credit. It’s not easy to blend ignorance and racism so subtly that you almost don’t notice the racism. But note too, the clever manipulation of language. Most of us would say a miracle is an event that took place contrary to the laws of nature. Pat defines it as anything he can get a credulous person to believe.

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Good Friday Night Music

Friday, March 29, 2013

I’m a strong believer in traditions, at least when they serve my purposes, and here at CTBlue we now have a tradition of posting this video on Good Fridays. I am adhering to this tradition for a number of reasons, chief of which being that it spares me from having to overtax my brain by coming up with something original.

Anyway, I believe that this song contains some very good advice, and the movie from which it is derived, is one of the best ever made. It may very well be that one needs a Christian religious upbringing (preferably drenched in guilt) of some sort to truly appreciate The Life of Brian.

As a bonus, here’s one of the funnier scenes from the flick. I never took Latin, but I can imagine the type of teacher that inspired this.

Filed in Music | | Comments (1)

Defending Fat Tony

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Wow. If you do this sort of thing long enough, you find yourself doing all kinds of crazy things. If you’d told me I would ever rise to defend Injustice Scalia, I’d have thought you were crazy, but here I go.

I was reading this firedoglake post and was struck by a quote attributed to Fat Tony, to the effect, that he has a ( and these are words from the quote) “longstanding and profound fear of homosexuals”. I googled Fat Tony’s last name along with the quote, and found the source to be the Borowitz report at the New Yorker, which bills itself as the “news reshuffled”. The quote was attributed to an interview with Fox News and the article also included the following:

“As Justices of the Supreme Court, we have a sacred duty to check our personal feelings at the door,” he told the Fox News Channel. “In my case, that means putting aside my longstanding and profound fear of homosexuals.”

Justice Scalia added that he was committed “to safeguarding the rights of all Americans—even those I personally find terrifying.”

“I take my role as an impartial arbiter very seriously,” he said. “So when I hear a case, I put all feelings of abhorrence, disgust, and revulsion completely out of my mind.”

The Justice said that when it came to the issue of same-sex marriage he would rely on the Constitution, “which makes no mention of gays whatsoever.”

“Remember, when the framers wrote the Constitution, there were no gays in America,” he said. “They didn’t come here until the nineteen-sixties.”

So, this sent me back to the search results and a quick review of the results seemed to show that a lot of folks swallowed this satire hook, line and sinker.

The guy is a bigot, but not stupid. The giveaway is that while lots of the folks swallowing this line attribute it to a Fox interview, there seems to be no verification that the interview ever took place nor is there any actual video. So, I am here to defend Scalia. He would never have said these things. He merely thinks them. Entirely different, sort of.

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A prognostication revisited

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Pundits, be they pros like David Brooks, or amateurs like yours truly, are in the business of making predictions. It is therefore only fair that they should be held strictly accountable for those predictions. I’m no exception, particularly when I’m proven right yet again. A mere month and a half ago I wrote this in light of Amazon’s announcement that it would build a distribution center in, and start paying sales taxes to, the state of Connecticut:

We learn from this morning’s Day that Amazon will be building a “customer fulfillment center” here in the Nutmeg State, and will have to begin collecting sales taxes on in state purchases in November. Amazon, of course, has been in the forefront of the lobbying effort to keep states from collecting sales taxes on internet sales. Let’s look into the future, as Amazon approaches its goal of same day delivery throughout most of the nation.

That will require customer fulfillment centers in almost every state, subjecting Amazon to state sales taxes everywhere. Look for Amazon to have a change of heart, and support efforts to require its far smaller competitors to remit sales taxes to all states, rather than only to those states in which they have a physical presence. This is actually good public policy, but at that point it will be used by Amazon as a cudgel to destroy its smaller competitors.

(via CT Blue › A prognostication)

Today, we learn this about a Congressional proposal to require internet retailers to collect sales taxes for all states to which they ship:

Guess who else supports the bill? The one company whose business would seem to be more deeply affected than any other if such a bill were to become law — and the one company at which this legislation would appear to be directly aimed: Amazon.

(via Congress Backs Borderless Internet Sales Tax (And So Does Amazon) | Wired Business | Wired.com)

Okay, I admit this was a no-brainer, but if I’m not mistaken, it still puts me one up on Brooks for the year.

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JPMorgan can’t be bothered with trivialities

Monday, March 25, 2013

Believe it or not I am slowly, and hopefully surely, making my way through the Senate Banking Committee’s report on the JPMorgan “Whale” fiasco. I have to pass a quote along. Here’s the context: JPMorgan, for a time, hid it’s mounting losses by changing the way it valued the investments in which it was trading. This, by the way, was apparently done with the full knowledge of the higher ups, including Jamie Dimon, but let’s put that criminality aside for the moment. This jumped out at me:

The bank told the Subcommittee that, despite the favorable pricing practices noted in the May memorandum, it did not view the CIO as having engaged in mismarking until June 2012, when its internal investigation began reviewing CIO recorded telephone calls and heard CIO personnel disparaging the marks they were reporting. On July 13, 2012, the bank restated its first quarter earnings, reporting additional SCP losses of $660 million. JPMorgan Chase told the Subcommittee that the decision to restate its financial results was a difficult one, since $660 million was not clearly a “material” amount for the bank, and the valuations used by the CIO did not clearly violate bank policy or generally accepted accounting principles. The bank told the Subcommittee that the key consideration leading to the restatement of the bank’s losses was its determination that the London CIO personnel had not acted in “good faith” when marking the SCP book, which meant the SCP valuations had to be revised.

I know a million dollars is not what it used to be (just ask Doctor Evil), but 660 millions is still a “material” amount of money to most of us. It is truly amazing that these bankers can suggest that it’s a trivial sum, hardly worth mentioning. By the way, if you read the report, you can’t help but conclude that all of JPMorgan’s rationalizations summarized in the quoted paragraphs were bunkum, when they weren’t out and out lies. 

The report, by the way, is a fascinating thing. It spells out a massive fraud in great detail, clearly states that the malefactors knew just what they were doing, and establishes quite clearly that Congress is totally aware of the criminal behavior of the bankers. It should come as no surprise that the same Congress is considering doing something about this criminal behavior:decriminalizing it.

Filed in Corporate Crime | | Comments (0)

Nothing to see here

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Matt Stoller writes: Earlier this week, the House Ag Committee marked up some bills deregulating derivatives. I don’t think they were expecting anyone to really notice, but there was a bunch of press on what they did.

The next step in the legislative process is for the House Financial Services Committee to look at the bills. That will take place in April.

(via The Big Picture)

Needless to say, this push to license criminality is being done in “bipartisan” fashion, with Connecticut’s Jim Himes taking a prominent role on behalf of the Democratic enablers. The sad fact is that nowadays, more than ever (as the rule almost always holds true), anything done in a “bipartisan” fashion is an imminent threat to the Republic.

Filed in Corruption, Economics | | Comments (0)