Carlos Montes and the Security State: A Cautionary Tale

Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 by meganwilson

By Chris Hedges
TRUTHDIG

On May 17 at 5 in the morning the Chicano activist Carlos Montes got a wake-up call at his home in California from Barack Obama’s security state. The Los Angeles County sheriff’s SWAT team, armed with assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests, as well as being accompanied by FBI agents, kicked down his door, burst into his house with their weapons drawn, handcuffed him in his pajamas and hauled him off to jail. Montes, one of tens of thousands of Americans who have experienced this terrifying form of military-style assault and arrest, was one of the organizers of the demonstrations outside the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., and he faces trial along with 23 other anti-war activists from Minnesota, as well as possible charges by a federal grand jury.

The widening use of militarized police units effectively nullifies the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the armed forces for civilian policing. City police forces have in the last few decades amassed small strike forces that employ high-powered assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, elaborate command and control centers and attack helicopters. Poor urban neighborhoods, which bear the brunt of the estimated 40,000 SWAT team assaults that take place every year, have already learned what is only dimly being understood by the rest of us—in the eyes of the state we are increasingly no longer citizens with constitutional rights but enemy combatants. And that is exactly how Montes was treated. There is little daylight now between raiding a home in the middle of the night in Iraq and raiding one in Alhambra, Calif.
Continue reading →

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Bill Maher: The Big American Lie

Posted on Saturday, July 9, 2011 by meganwilson

Posted in CAPITALISM, EVIL CORPORATIONS, GREED, POLICY, Tax cuts for the rich | Leave a comment

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch: The ‘Poor’ Should Do More To Shrink Debt, Not The Rich

Posted on Thursday, July 7, 2011 by meganwilson

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Barack Obama IS The Greatest Disappointment Of Our Generation

Posted on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 by meganwilson

In Debt Talks, Obama Offers Social Security Cuts
By Lori Montgomery, Washington Post

Is Torture In America’s Future As Well As In Our Country’s Past?
by Dan Froomkin, Huffington Post

Obama’s Failure To Hold Wall Street Accountable
By Frank Rich, New York Magazine

Anderson Cooper Calls Out Obama’s Gay Marriage Flip Flopping
By Jack Mirkinson, Huffington Post

Obama, War President
By Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive

Obama’s “bad negotiating” is actually shrewd negotiating
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon

Posted in CAPITALISM, DEMOCRACY | Leave a comment

SOLUTIONS: Swing-State Voters Favor Taxing The Rich To Lower Deficit

Posted on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 by meganwilson

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Instead of cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, lawmakers could pass the Schakowsky millionaire’s tax and raise about a trillion dollars …

By Michael McAuliff
HUFFINGTON POST

WASHINGTON — Republicans may find a resolution to make the rich share more of the pain in debt-reduction “rather pathetic,” but new survey data suggest voters in swing staFFINtes favor the idea — strongly.

Poll data by the Democratic-aligned Public Policy Polling released Wednesday said voters in Ohio, Missouri, Montana and Minnesota back hiking taxes on the wealthy — even for people with incomes as low as $150,000.

The respondents were asked: “In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose raising taxes on those with incomes over $1,000,000 a year?”

Nearly 80 percent of voters in the four states backed the idea.

The new poll comes a day after Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) labeled Senate Democrats’ efforts to pass a non-binding resolution expressing that sentiment “pathetic.”

But the poll, commissioned by a number of liberal groups including MoveOn.org and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, aims to support legislation that would not just support tax hikes, but actually enact hikes larger than many Democrats have been willing to back.

Legislation sponsored by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) aims to hike tax rates on income over $1 million to 45 percent and set rates as high as 49 percent for income over $1 billion. The top rate is currently at 35 percent. At the end of the Clinton administration, it was 39.6 percent.

Dean Baker, an economist with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, estimated that such rates would have a huge impact on the deficit in 10 years, while leaving other taxes and rates on the upper middle class on down untouched.

“Instead of cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, lawmakers could pass the Schakowsky millionaire’s tax and raise about a trillion dollars,” Baker said.

Republicans have insisted repeatedly that the only option for cutting the debt is cutting spending, and have been adamant that raising revenues should not be part of the equation.

“Making the rich pay higher tax rates is both overwhelmingly popular and necessary in these tough economic times,” said PCCC co-founder Adam Green. “Cutting life-saving programs while saying new tax rates for the rich are off the table is an extreme position, completely out of step with the majority of Americans.”

To back their argument, PCCC sent an email blast nationwide asking members to contact their senators and tell them to back Reid’s resolution — and the actual tax-hikes.

“Majority Leader Harry Reid is putting every senator on the record — he’s called for a vote in favor of raising taxes on the rich this week,” the email said.

“Can you call your Senators, Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, right now and ask them to vote yes?,” said the version of the message sent to The Huffington Post.

Both senators have backed a more limited millionaire’s tax before. Schumer (D-N.Y.) offered a measure last year to restore the Clinton-era tax rates for millionaires and billionaires, but it failed before President Obama cut a deal with the GOP to leave the Bush-era cuts in place for two more years. Sens. Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Schumer are also backers of the Reid resolution.

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Whhhhaaaaaaaa …. Bankers Complain of Regulatory Protections

Posted on Wednesday, July 6, 2011 by meganwilson

REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Dave Clarke) – Banks and other large financial companies that could be seized and liquidated by the government are balking at a proposed plan they argue gives regulators too much power to snatch back executives’ pay if their institutions fail.

The plan is part of a broader proposal first issued earlier this year. A final rule is expected to be adopted on Wednesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law gives regulators the ability to recoup up to two years of pay from executives considered substantially responsible for a company’s failure as part of regulators’ power to seize large financial firms on the brink of failure.

Banking groups are complaining that the regulators are going too far in interpreting who is “substantially responsible” and are not setting clear standards for when executive pay should be recouped.

“Vague and arguably unfair provisions would create powerful incentives for senior executives and directors with the best options to head for the exits at the first sign of trouble, lest a substantial portion of their compensation be at risk,” top banking groups including the American Bankers Association, The Clearing House and the Financial Services Roundtable wrote regulators in May.

The groups argue that an institution’s failure could be due to market conditions outside of a company’s control and that should be reflected more in the rule.

The clawback provision was inserted into the law in response to public anger that banking and Wall Street executives at firms such as American International Group were being paid handsomely despite mistakes that helped bring about the 2007-2009 financial crisis.

There is some sympathy among regulators for the banks’ complaints.

Acting Comptroller of the Currency John Walsh and acting Office of Thrift Supervision Director John Bowman, both FDIC board members, expressed concern when the rule was first released that the clawback provision may be too broad.

Walsh said he was concerned the provision was tied too tightly to job titles as opposed to what actions specific executives took.

But regulators and politicians, for the most part, have had little sympathy for complaints about executive pay restrictions at a time when unemployment is high and the economy is still weak. The final rule is not expected to be much different from the proposal released in March.

The pay provision is part of a broader rule governing the pecking order of which creditors will be paid first during a liquidation, which the FDIC would run.

Banks with more than $50 billion in assets and large non-bank financial firms that the government designates as being important to the smooth running of financial markets are subject to the new liquidation regime. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are among the big financial houses expected to fall under the regime.

Also on Wednesday, the FDIC is expected to discuss a proposal for how large financial firms should draft “living wills,” which are intended to provide a roadmap for how they can be broken up if they fail.

The rule governing these plans is being written by the FDIC and the Federal Reserve.

Last week, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair told reporters that a final rule may not be ready for a vote on Wednesday as regulators iron out differences. An initial proposal was released in April.

Bair is stepping down as FDIC chairman on Friday after five years heading the agency.

(Reporting by Dave Clarke; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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His Turn: Bill Clinton Is On His Knees and Blowing Wall Street …

Posted on Tuesday, July 5, 2011 by meganwilson

Bill Clinton: Lower Corporate Tax Rate

By Alexander Eichler
HUFFINGTON POST

As the deadline to strike a deal on the debt ceiling draws closer, former president Bill Clinton criticized the nation’s corporate tax rate over the weekend, saying it should be lowered as part of an agreement between the parties.

“We’ve got an uncompetitive rate,” Clinton told a crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Saturday. “We tax at 35 percent of income, although we only take about 23 percent. So we should cut the rate to 25 percent, or whatever’s competitive, and eliminate a lot of the deductions so that we still get a fair amount, and there’s not so much variance in what the corporations pay.”

“But how can they do that by August 2?” Clinton added, referring to the cutoff point for negotiations, the date when the U.S. will reach the limit of its borrowing abilities and begin defaulting on its loans.

In practice, though, American corporations often end up paying significantly less than the full 35 percent. Through tax breaks and loopholes, The New York Times reported in May, “United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries.”

And it’s common for major corporations — including, in the past year, General Electric, Exxon Mobil, and Boeing — to sidestep taxes entirely.

Clinton also offered his thoughts on corporate tax policy on Thursday, June 30, when he spoke out in favor of a corporate tax holiday, which would allow companies to repatriate overseas profits at reduced tax rates.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television, Clinton said that a tax holiday would be welcome “under certain circumstances.” He suggested a tax rate of 20 percent for companies bringing in offshore cash — less than the current rate of 35 percent, but more than the Republicans’ proposed rate of 5.25 percent. Clinton recommended that the tax rate fall to 10 percent if corporations “reinvest [the offshore profits] in increasing employment in America.”

The Obama administration has signaled its opposition to the idea of a tax holiday. A similar holiday, enacted in 2004, brought $299 billion into the United States but did little to stimulate the economy.

However, in his State of the Union address in January, President Obama nodded to the possibility of lowering the corporate tax rate. The U.S. has the second highest corporate income tax in the world, after Japan, and to characterize it as “uncompetitive,” as Clinton did on Saturday, is a common conservative charge.

Besides urging a lower corporate tax rate on Saturday, Clinton also appealed to President Obama to accept a package of spending cuts that would allow for a six- to eight-month extension of the debt ceiling. Clinton said the parties would not be able to hammer out a final deal by August 2.

Overall, though, Clinton was supportive of President Obama, praising his performance on national security, gay rights, education, and the economy, and predicting that he would win a second term in 2012.

Posted in CAPITALISM, ECONOMY, EVIL CORPORATIONS, GOVERNMENT, GREED, POLICY, Tax cuts for the rich | Leave a comment

This Hero Didn’t Stand a Chance

Posted on Monday, July 4, 2011 by meganwilson

By Chris Hedges
TRUTHDIG

People found the strength and the faith that, no matter what happened to them when they sat at that lunch counter or got on that bus, there would be another wave of people coming behind them to take their place and another wave behind that and behind that. And that is part of what is missing from the progressive community today …

Tim DeChristopher is scheduled to be sentenced in a Salt Lake City courtroom by U.S. District Judge Dee Benson on July 26. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine for fraudulently bidding in December 2008 on parcels of land, including areas around eastern Utah’s national parks, which were being sold off by the Bush administration to the oil and natural gas industry. As Bidder No. 70, he drove up the prices of some of the bids and won more than a dozen other parcels for $1.8 million. The government is asking Judge Benson to send DeChristopher to prison for four and a half years.

His prosecution is evidence that our moral order has been turned upside down. The bankers and swindlers who trashed the global economy and wiped out some $40 trillion in wealth amass obscene amounts of money, much of it provided by taxpayers. They do not go to jail. Regulatory agencies, compliant to the demands of corporations, refuse to impede the destruction unleashed by the coal, oil and natural gas companies as they turn the planet into a hothouse of pollutants, poisoned water, fouled air and contaminated soil in the frenzied quest for greater and greater profits. Those who manage and make fortunes from pre-emptive wars, embrace torture, carry out extrajudicial assassinations, deny habeas corpus and run up the largest deficits in human history are feted as patriots. But when a courageous citizen such as DeChristopher peacefully derails the corporate and governmental destruction of the ecosystem, he is sent to jail.

“The rules are written by those who profit from the status quo,” DeChristopher said when I reached him by phone this weekend in Minneapolis. “If we want to change that status quo we have to step outside of those rules. We have to put pressure on those within the political system to choose one side or another.”

DeChristopher, whose defense is being assisted by the website Peaceful Uprising, knew the government would be auctioning off public land in a sale in Salt Lake City, where he had gone to college. He knew it was wrong. He knew he had to do something. But he did not know what. So he did what all of us should begin to do. He showed up.

“I went there with the intention of standing in the way of the auction,” he told me. “I had no idea what that would look like. I thought I might give a speech or yell something. It was right after the guy threw a shoe at Bush. That was on my mind. I went there and at the front desk they said, ‘Would you like to be a bidder?’ I said, ‘Yes, I would.’ I was still thinking when I signed up, ‘OK, I’ll sign up to be a bidder so I can get inside and make a speech.’ It wasn’t until I got inside the auction room that I saw I had a huge opportunity to stand in the way of the auction. I had been preparing myself over the course of 2008 in a general way to take that level of action. I had been building up that commitment. I was looking for the opportunity at that point. I was ready to capitalize on it. I had prepared myself for it.”
Continue reading →

Posted in CAPITALISM, CIO Heroes, DEMOCRACY, ENVIRONMENT, EVIL CORPORATIONS, GREED, PROTESTS | Leave a comment

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, Workers Are In a Depression

Posted on Saturday, July 2, 2011 by meganwilson

And it’s only going to get worse …

HUFFINGTON POST

WASHINGTON (AP) — This is one anniversary few feel like celebrating.

Two years after economists say the Great Recession ended, the recovery has been the weakest and most lopsided of any since the 1930s.

After previous recessions, people in all income groups tended to benefit. This time, ordinary Americans are struggling with job insecurity, too much debt and pay raises that haven’t kept up with prices at the grocery store and gas station. The economy’s meager gains are going mostly to the wealthiest.

Workers’ wages and benefits make up 57.5 percent of the economy, an all-time low. Until the mid-2000s, that figure had been remarkably stable — about 64 percent through boom and bust alike.

Executive pay is included in this figure, but rank-and-file workers are far more dependent on regular wages and benefits. A big chunk of the economy’s gains has gone to investors in the form of higher corporate profits.

“The spoils have really gone to capital, to the shareholders,” says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff + Associates in Toronto.

Corporate profits are up by almost half since the recession ended in June 2009. In the first two years after the recessions of 1991 and 2001, profits rose 11 percent and 28 percent, respectively.

And an Associated Press analysis found that the typical CEO of a major company earned $9 million last year, up a fourth from 2009. Continue reading →

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Man Allegedly Brutally Beaten And Killed By Citibank Debt Collectors

Posted on Thursday, June 30, 2011 by meganwilson

By James Sunshine
HUFFINGTON POST

In the U.S., failing to pay back your Citibank bills can, at worst, lead to personal bankruptcy and a poor credit rating. In Indonesia, it may get you killed.

Jakarta resident Irzen Octa had, according to Bloomberg Markets magazine, racked up a $12,000 debt, interest included, with the large bank. On March 29, Mr. Octa traveled to Citi’s local offices where, police allege, he was brutally beaten by debt collectors. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the local hospital.

The debt collector’s attorney has denied the accusations, admitting that while there was some intimidation, it was not physical, according to Bloomberg. Mr. Octa died of a stroke, not a physical altercation, the attorney claims. The debt collectors have, nonetheless, been jailed by Jakarta police.

The practice of hiring debt collectors to intimidate clients is a common practice in Indonesia, according to Jim Castle of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia. “It’s not just Citibank,” Castle says, according to Bloomberg. “Every banker I have talked to who has a credit card business says, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’”

Physical methods of debt collecting are not uncommon in nations where firms consider local courts to be unreliable or corrupt. In Taiwan, a gang of violent debt collectors who threatened debtors with weapons were arrested by Taiwanese police in May, reports the China Post. The gang was able to market itself as a more efficient and effective means of collecting debts.

In the U.S., intimidation by courts is sometimes employed against debtors. Colorado Kelly Wiedemer, who owed close to $2,000 from a traffic accident, was arrested and held by the authorities until her sister bailed her out several days later. The American Civil Liberties Union in October described the new phenomenon as “the rise of America’s new debtors’ prisons.”

In response to this and other actions by Citibank Indonesia employees — such as the alleged embezzlement of $1.9 million by former former relationship manager Inog Malinda Dee — the Bank of Indonesia has mandated that the branch’s top executives take a test regarding proper business and banking practices. The Jakarta Globe has reported that several executives failed and will be unable to work as bankers in Indonesia for three years.

Octa’s widow has filed a $348 million lawsuit against Citibank Indonesia. The Jakarta Post has reported that Citi has cleared Octa of all debts he may have owed.

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