“a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”
The moral philosopher Cornel West, if Barack Obama’s ascent to power was a morality play, would be the voice of conscience. Rahm Emanuel, a cynical product of the Chicago political machine, would be Satan. Emanuel in the first scene of the play would dangle power, privilege, fame and money before Obama. West would warn Obama that the quality of a life is defined by its moral commitment, that his legacy will be determined by his willingness to defy the cruel assault by the corporate state and the financial elite against the poor and working men and women, and that justice must never be sacrificed on the altar of power.
Perhaps there was never much of a struggle in Obama’s heart. Perhaps West only provided a moral veneer. Perhaps the dark heart of Emanuel was always the dark heart of Obama. Only Obama knows. But we know how the play ends. West is banished like honest Kent in “King Lear.” Emanuel and immoral mediocrities from Lawrence Summers to Timothy Geithner to Robert Gates—think of Goneril and Regan in the Shakespearean tragedy—take power. We lose. And Obama becomes an obedient servant of the corporate elite in exchange for the hollow trappings of authority.
No one grasps this tragic descent better than West, who did 65 campaign events for Obama, believed in the potential for change and was encouraged by the populist rhetoric of the Obama campaign. He now nurses, like many others who placed their faith in Obama, the anguish of the deceived, manipulated and betrayed. He bitterly describes Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”
“When you look at a society you look at it through the lens of the least of these, the weak and the vulnerable; you are committed to loving them first, not exclusively, but first, and therefore giving them priority,” says West, the Class of 1943 University Professor of African American Studies and Religion at Princeton University. “And even at this moment, when the empire is in deep decline, the culture is in deep decay, the political system is broken, where nearly everyone is up for sale, you say all I have is the subversive memory of those who came before, personal integrity, trying to live a decent life, and a willingness to live and die for the love of folk who are catching hell. This means civil disobedience, going to jail, supporting progressive forums of social unrest if they in fact awaken the conscience, whatever conscience is left, of the nation. And that’s where I find myself now. Continue reading →
According to Woodhouse, the union’s research into executive pay at Salinas uncovered the fact that the hospital’s outgoing CEO, Sam Downing, will receive a nearly $4 million payout, most of it in so-called “supplemental” pensions, in addition to his normal annual pension of $150,000.
WASHINGTON — In recent months, the management at Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System has approached workers with a set of proposals that include layoffs and cuts to pensions and health benefits. In doing so, the administration at the publicly funded Monterey County, Calif., hospital has asked its workers to make concessions typical of this budget-tightening era.
But rather than roll over, the union of nurses, technicians and other hospital workers has rejected management’s proposal, instead launching a counter attack on the executives themselves. The hospital’s top officials now face a firestorm in the local media and an audit from the state of California. The layoffs and benefit cuts are, at least for now, on hold.
It’s a sharp break from the national labor playbook. From Maine to California, unions have been negotiating just how deep the concessions they’ll give to management will be. Even in Wisconsin, public workers immediately accepted drastic cuts to pay, pensions and health care, drawing the line only at the right to collectively bargain. In Washington, D.C., Democrats have similarly capitulated to GOP demands for major cuts in social spending under reasoning succinctly laid out by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio): “We’re broke.”
The Salinas hospital workers’ response, in essence, serves as a rebuttal: No, you’re not broke. And we can prove it. Continue reading →
The audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes that sold for less than the outstanding loan balance using defective and faulty documents.
WASHINGTON — A set of confidential federal audits accuse the nation’s five largest mortgage companies of defrauding taxpayers in their handling of foreclosures on homes purchased with government-backed loans, four officials briefed on the findings told The Huffington Post.
The five separate investigations were conducted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general and examined Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial, the sources said.
The audits accuse the five major lenders of violating the False Claims Act, a Civil War-era law crafted as a weapon against firms that swindle the government. The audits were completed between February and March, the sources said. The internal watchdog office at HUD referred its findings to the Department of Justice, which must now decide whether to file charges.
The federal audits mark the latest fallout from the national foreclosure crisis that followed the end of a long-running housing bubble. Amid reports last year that many large lenders improperly accelerated foreclosure proceedings by failing to amass required paperwork, the federal agencies launched their own probes.
The resulting reports read like veritable indictments of major lenders, the sources said. State officials are now wielding the documents as leverage in their ongoing talks with mortgage companies aimed at forcing the firms to agree to pay fines to resolve allegations of routine violations in their handling of foreclosures.
The audits conclude that the banks effectively cheated taxpayers by presenting the Federal Housing Administration with false claims: They filed for federal reimbursement on foreclosed homes that sold for less than the outstanding loan balance using defective and faulty documents. Continue reading →
A Senate committee has laid out the evidence. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges
They weren’t murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it.
Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn’t leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial.
This article appears in the May 26, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue is available now on newsstands and will appear in the online archive May 13.
The great and powerful Oz of Wall Street was not the only target of Wall Street and the Financial Crisis: Anatomy of a Financial Collapse, the 650-page report just released by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan, alongside Republican Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Their unusually scathing bipartisan report also includes case studies of Washington Mutual and Deutsche Bank, providing a panoramic portrait of a bubble era that produced the most destructive crime spree in our history — “a million fraud cases a year” is how one former regulator puts it. But the mountain of evidence collected against Goldman by Levin’s small, 15-desk office of investigators — details of gross, baldfaced fraud delivered up in such quantities as to almost serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge to the curiously impassive Justice Department — stands as the most important symbol of Wall Street’s aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produced since the crash of 2008.
To date, there has been only one successful prosecution of a financial big fish from the mortgage bubble, and that was Lee Farkas, a Florida lender who was just convicted on a smorgasbord of fraud charges and now faces life in prison. But Farkas, sadly, is just an exception proving the rule: Like Bernie Madoff, his comically excessive crime spree (which involved such lunacies as kiting checks to his own bank and selling loans that didn’t exist) was almost completely unconnected to the systematic corruption that led to the crisis. What’s more, many of the earlier criminals in the chain of corruption — from subprime lenders like Countrywide, who herded old ladies and ghetto families into bad loans, to rapacious banks like Washington Mutual, who pawned off fraudulent mortgages on investors — wound up going belly up, sunk by their own greed.
But Goldman, as the Levin report makes clear, remains an ascendant company precisely because it used its canny perception of an upcoming disaster (one which it helped create, incidentally) as an opportunity to enrich itself, not only at the expense of clients but ultimately, through the bailouts and the collateral damage of the wrecked economy, at the expense of society. The bank seemed to count on the unwillingness or inability of federal regulators to stop them — and when called to Washington last year to explain their behavior, Goldman executives brazenly misled Congress, apparently confident that their perjury would carry no serious consequences. Thus, while much of the Levin report describes past history, the Goldman section describes an ongoing? crime — a powerful, well-connected firm, with the ear of the president and the Treasury, that appears to have conquered the entire regulatory structure and stands now on the precipice of officially getting away with one of the biggest financial crimes in history.
Defenders of Goldman have been quick to insist that while the bank may have had a few ethical slips here and there, its only real offense was being too good at making money. We now know, unequivocally, that this is bullshit. Goldman isn’t a pudgy housewife who broke her diet with a few Nilla Wafers between meals — it’s an advanced-stage, 1,100-pound medical emergency who hasn’t left his apartment in six years, and is found by paramedics buried up to his eyes in cupcake wrappers and pizza boxes. If the evidence in the Levin report is ignored, then Goldman will have achieved a kind of corrupt-enterprise nirvana. Caught, but still free: above the law.
To fully grasp the case against Goldman, one first needs to understand that the financial crime wave described in the Levin report came on the heels of a decades-long lobbying campaign by Goldman and other titans of Wall Street, who pleaded over and over for the right to regulate themselves.
Athens — Already struggling to avoid a debt default that could seal Greece’s fate as a financial pariah, this Mediterranean nation is also scrambling to contain another threat — a breakdown in the rule of law.
Thousands have joined an “I Won’t Pay” movement, refusing to cover highway tolls, bus fares, even fees at public hospitals. To block a landfill project, an entire town south of Athens has risen up against the government, burning earth-moving equipment and destroying part of a main access road.
The protests are an emblem of social discontent spreading across Europe in response to a new age of austerity. At a time when the United States is just beginning to consider deep spending cuts, countries such as Greece are coping with a fallout that has extended well beyond ordinary civil disobedience.
Perhaps most alarming, analysts here say, has been the resurgence of an anarchist movement, one with a long history in Europe. While militants have been disrupting life in Greece for years, authorities say that anger against the government has now given rise to dozens of new “amateur anarchist” groups, whose tactics include planting of gas canisters in mailboxes and destroying bank ATMs.
Some attacks have gone further, heightening concerns about a return to the kind of left-wing violence that plagued parts of Europe during the 1970s and 1980s. After urban guerrillas mailed explosive parcels to European leaders and detonated a powerful bomb last year in front of an Athens courthouse, authorities here have staged a series of raids, arresting dozens and yielding caches of machine guns, grenades and bomb-making materials.
The anarchist movement in Europe has a long, storied past, embracing an anti-establishment universe influenced by a broad range of thinkers from French politician and philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon to Karl Marx to Oscar Wilde. Defined narrowly, the movement includes groups of urban guerillas, radical youths and militant unionists. More broadly, it encompasses everything from punk rock to WikiLeaks. Continue reading →
Facebook users will soon be able to tag more than just people in photos.
On Wednesday, Facebook announced a new photo-tagging feature that lets users identify people or objects that have their own Facebook Pages. Previously, users could tag only their friends.
For example, if you’ve recently uploaded a photo of yourself holding a can of Coke, you can now label the Coke can with a tag that links to Coke’s official Facebook Page.
The feature is currently limited to Pages for people or brands and products, though Facebook plans to expand these categories.
As with any new Facebook update, there are downsides. ZDNet’s Rich Harris explains, “The more obnoxious byproduct possibility is that the trail of tagging activity in people’s feeds could be overkill.”
Noting potential privacy concerns, Facebook warns that public photo will “appear publicly on the Photos tab of the Page,” while pictures shared just with friends will only be accessible to friends.
If it catches on, this new feature could be great for brands looking to virally spread awareness about their products. It could also be a big opportunity for Facebook to monetize the site’s popular photo service.
Writes the Atlantic, “It’s conceivable that, soon enough, you won’t need to tag the Pages in your photos, but that Facebook will do it for you, demanding that, once you’re photographed with an object, you’re forever associated with it. Coke would love that.”
ASHINGTON (Timothy Gardner and Deborah Charles) – The world’s biggest oil companies on Wednesday launched broadsides against Democratic plans to pare back some of their cherished U.S. tax breaks, saying the measure was “un-American” and would only push up already high gasoline prices.
Top executives from the five biggest oil companies will testify about the tax breaks on Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee. A day before the hearing companies and lawmakers traded barbs over the effort that Democrats say could help cut the deficit by about $21 billion over a decade.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said he hopes a bill repealing the tax breaks will be voted on in the full chamber next week.
Eliminating the tax breaks has been a goal of President Barack Obama and the call by lawmakers has become louder with stubbornly high fuel prices ahead of next year’s elections. The effort will face opposition by Republicans and some Democrats who fear it could send gasoline prices higher. But with $4 a gallon gasoline, it could also be an awkward time for many politicians to appear to be supporting oil companies.
Senators who sponsored the bill said the companies needed to do their part to cut the deficit and they could afford to give up the tax breaks.
“We’re here to say ‘enough already’ to Big Oil. You’re doing fine enough on your own,” said Senator Charles Schumer, standing at a Washington gas station where prices started at about $4.30 a gallon (3.78 liters).
“Right now people are paying as much for gas as they’re paying for healthcare and groceries,” said Senator Debbie Stabenow. “Now’s the time to take away subsidies.”
But Republicans said it would act as a tax that the oil companies would pass onto consumers by pushing up fuel prices.
“JOB DISCRIMINATION” AND “UN-AMERICAN”
Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil one of the five companies to appear before the Senate panel, will say at Thursday’s hearing that the tax breaks are not special incentives for oil companies, but standard deductions applied across many businesses, including corn farmers, movie producers and coffee roasters.
“Frankly, to then deny a select few companies within the oil and gas industry this standard deduction is tantamount to job discrimination,” Tillerson will say, according to a copy of his oral testimony obtained by Reuters.
ConocoPhillips, one of the five oil companies that will testify called the tax proposals “un-American” in a release, angering the bill’s main sponsor, Senator Robert Menendez, who demanded the company apologize at Thursday’s hearing.
Conoco said the proposal unfairly singles out the five biggest oil companies for additional taxes and would cost jobs and shrink government revenue.
Oil companies, on the defensive after raking in huge profits in their first quarter, also said consumers would pay more if they lose their drilling incentives.
“At a time when everyone is concerned over the cost of gasoline, Congress shouldn’t do anything that could actually worsen the situation,” said Jim Mulva, the ConocoPhillips chief executive.
Exxon wants Congress to pass Republican bills in the House to open offshore drilling, which they say has been held back by Obama administration rules after last year’s BP oil spill.
The Republican-led House passed a bill on Wednesday requiring the Interior Department to act within 60 days on permits requested by oil and gas companies to drill on offshore federal tracts. It is one of three bills the Republicans say would boost domestic energy and government revenues. But the measures face stiff opposition in the Senate.
Several of the oil companies said they already pay more taxes than many other industries. But the Citizens for Tax Justice, an advocacy group, says consumers and workers pay some of the taxes, not the oil companies.
In addition to Tillerson and Mulva, Shell Oil Co U.S. President Marvin Odum, BP America Chairman Lamar McKay, and Chevron Chief Executive Officer John Watson will testify.
Reid and Menendez sent Republicans a letter urging them to support the legislation.
“If we are to truly address our national debt, we will all have to tighten our belts and make sacrifices — even the most wealthy and powerful among us,” the letter said.
(Additional reporting by Tom Doggett; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
WASHINGTON — Many states shortchange the jobless by distributing unemployment benefits on debit cards loaded with obnoxious fees, according to a new study by the National Consumer Law Center.
Of the 40 states that have switched from paper checks to prepaid debit cards, 22 states’ cards charge ATM fees, 24 charge balance inquiry fees, and 28 charge inactivity fees. The cards in Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, Ohio, and Oregon come with overdraft fees ranging from $10 to $20.
And in Connecticut, Iowa, Rhode Island, and Tennessee, cardholders “must pay for every ATM inquiry or pay a denied transaction fee if they request cash when their balance is insufficient,” the study says.
Tennessee stands out for having the card with the most “junk fees,” the study says. Tennessee’s card, provided by JPMorgan Chase, charges $1 for initial ATM withdrawals, 40 cents for balance inquiries, and 25 cents whenever someone swipes the card at checkout. It’s one of just four states that doesn’t provide even one free ATM withdrawal per deposit.
Tennessee doesn’t think its card’s fees are junk.
“I’m not sure calling them ‘junk fees’ is a fair statement,” said Jeff Hentschell, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Workforce Development, which distributes Tennessee Automated Payment cards for jobless benefits. “When you look at the context of where we were and where we are today, the fees are actually minimal compared to where people were going to cash paper checks before.”
Indeed: The NCLC study itself points out that for people without bank accounts, “getting cash from a UC prepaid card will usually be cheaper than paying a check casher to cash a paper check.”
Hentschell added his department has a handy website that lays out the fees.
As for Chase, the bank says it’s giving states a good deal on a valuable service.
“Each state negotiates its own contract and fee structure from numerous bidders,” a Chase spokeswoman said in an email. “To date, states have chosen card solutions that cost government nothing and save taxpayer dollars, selecting their card provider based on the best mix of fees and services to the consumer.”
The NCLC study says the Bank of America-issued cards in California and New Jersey are the best, since they offer “free and ample access to cash and transactions with no penalty fees.” The study says close runners-up are Chase’s card in Arizona and Citibank’s in Maryland.
It appears that a merry gang of agitprop pranksters associated with the Yes Men have pulled a fast one on Peabody Energy, the self-described “world’s largest private sector coal company.”
Peabody Energy (NYSE: BTU) Announces “Coal Cares™” Initiative, New Nationwide Campaign Against Stigma of Childhood Asthma
ST. LOUIS, May 10, 2011 / PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Peabody Energy today announced the creation of an innovative new public health initiative designed to combat the stigma of asthma among American children ages 0-18. With Coal Cares™ (www.coalcares.org), Peabody will offer free, custom-branded inhaler actuators to children living within 200 miles of a coal plant, along with coupons worth $10 towards the purchase of the asthma medication itself.
“Too many young Americans face daily schoolyard taunting and bullying because of a condition over which they have no control,” said Gregory H. Boyce, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Peabody Energy. “By re-branding the inhaler as a cool, individualized, must-have accessory, Coal Cares™ will empower children to tell bullies: ‘suck it up.’” Children can choose from a variety of youth-themed inhaler cases, from tween faves like “the Bieber” and “My Little Pony,” to the “Emo” and “Diamond” inhalers for older, style-conscious youth. There’s even “My First Inhaler,” for tots.
Coal Cares™ launches today in commemoration of Asthma Awareness Month, the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to call attention to rising asthma rates, especially among children. Coal Cares™ and its Puff-Puff™ line of inhalers is the first, and most ambitious, market-friendly public health initiative of this scope of any privately-owned American company, and testifies to the energy industry’s commitment to the well-being of all citizens, including the youngest.
“Our actions are guided by a singular mission: to be a leading worldwide producer and supplier of balanced energy solutions, which power economic prosperity and well-being,” said Boyce. “Coal Cares™ brings this mission to life, empowering children everywhere to take control of their destinies, beginning with their own lungs.”
“Coal Cares™ is emblematic of the return to self-reliance that healthy entrepreneurship demands,” said James Miasmus, Vice President of Government Affairs at Peabody USA. “Costly ‘scrubbing’ technology, on the other hand, is an untested and heavy-handed intrusion into our still-vulnerable economy. At Peabody, we’re thinking globally but acting locally, and locating preventive action at the point of consumption, where it belongs.”
“Coal Cares™ isn’t just the name of a campaign,” said Kevin Briesslau, Vice President of Communications at Peabody Coal. “It’s a philosophy, a way of doing business in harmony with the community we are a part of. After all, coal is the fastest-growing fuel in the world. We’re part of America’s heritage, and we’re here to stay.”
To learn more about Peabody’s Coal Cares™ initiative, visit: www.coalcares.org.
So-called “solar energy,” on the other hand, refers to the direct use of the violent fusion reactions occurring deep within our nearest star. As you might expect, this kind of “solar energy” naturally comes with a host of dangers that coal’s million-year buffering is designed to avoid. Some scientists refer to so-called “solar energy” as “mainlining the sun”—and it doesn’t take an Einstein to see an overdose looming.
[…]
There are so many varieties of existing solar energy technology, and so many more proposed, that the number and variety of disasters possible simply boggles the mind. The only reason we don’t see more incidences of death and injury from solar today is because it comprises less than 1% of our national energy portfolio. Increasing this amount would only heighten the potential for tragic accidents.
I have to give the pranksters special props for their hilarious invocation of the “butterfly effect” as an argument against windmills:
Every science student has heard of the so-called “butterfly effect” from aptly-named “Chaos Theory”: namely, that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in the wilds of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, can set off a massive, community-shattering tornado in Bunker Hill Village, Texas. If, as scientists state, a mere butterfly can cause a tornado so many thousands of miles away, imagine what a hill-full of wind turbines can do.
Actually, a simple calculation shows precisely how much. Suppose a butterfly flapping its wings, producing about 12.5 W of energy, can unleash a tornado producing approximately 100MW of energy. By this measure, a large wind farm—producing 781.5 MW of energy, or the equivalent of approximately 63 million butterflies—could unleash the equivalent of 63 million tornados, or over 6 quadrillion watts of energy. That’s still less than one one hundred millionth the energy of an asteroid hitting the earth, but it’s nothing to sneeze at, either!
The Coal Cares™ hoax was devised by a group called Coal is Killing Kids (CKK), a small environmental and public health group that aims to challenge Big Coal’s expensive lobbying against sensible updates to the Clean Air Act. “We don’t have their millions, but we do have a knack for incredibly tasteless jokes,” said Veronica Tomlinson, a pediatrician and member of CKK. CKK worked with the Yes Lab, which is a project of The Yes Men to help activist groups carry out media-savvy creative actions on their own.
“Sure, it’s kind of tasteless to say that ‘Bieber’ inhalers are a solution to childhood asthma,” said Janet Bellamy, a spokesperson for CKK. “But it’s a great deal more tasteless to cause that asthma in the first place, as coal-fired power plants have been proven to do.” Added Justin V. Bond, another spokesperson for CKK: “It’s even more tasteless to disproportionately kill poor people.” Coal-fired power plants are very often built in areas populated by low-income citizens, who then bear the brunt of the health effects.
In a typical Yes Men prank, the comedian-agitators labor to infiltrate conferences and media events under the guise of corporate factotums, then give voice to the idealized policies that they wish those organizations would support. This typically forces those actual organizations to walk back the news the pranksters manage to make, which helps to expose the difference between the actual and the wished-for policies. They call this practice “identity correction,” and the best example I can show you is when Yes Men founder Andy Bichlbaum appeared on “BBC World News” impersonating an official from Dow Chemical, apologizing for the Union Carbide disaster and promising to fund a full remediation.
Tuesday’s prank, which was carried out as a part of the Yes Labs project, an incubator for Yes Men-style pranks, is more obviously zany, but nevertheless strives to cause a major corporation some amount of public embarrassment while raising awareness of the issues related to coal production.
UPDATE, 6:41pm: As noted earlier, Peabody Energy was compelled by this prank to issue a press release of their own. That press release contained this paragraph:
Peabody is proud to help hundreds of millions of people live longer and better through coal-fueled electricity. A growing collection of studies demonstrate the correlation between electricity fueled by low-cost coal and improvement in health, longevity and quality of life. The United Nations has linked life expectancy, educational attainment and income with per-capita electricity use, and the World Resources Institute found that for every 10-fold increase in per-capita energy use, individuals live 10 years longer.
Michael Oko, the Director of Media Relations of the World Resources Institute emails me to say that the “WRI never did the analysis that they attributed to us.” They have released the following statement:
The following statement was released today by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in response to a press statement by Peabody Energy:
“In a press statement today, Peabody Energy falsely attributes a conclusion to the World Resources Institute. The incorrect reference is likely drawn from information found on a blog post by the “World Climate Report,” which is not affiliated with WRI.
“The press statement asserts that “the World Resources Institute found that for every 10-fold increase in per-capita energy use, individuals live 10 years longer.” First, WRI has never made such an assertion and has never done analysis to that effect. Second, this conclusion ignores critical factors related to energy production and human health.
“WRI’s long standing support for a global transition to cleaner, low-carbon energy is well-documented. WRI does not support Peabody’s press statement or the related conclusions drawn from this data.”
Edward Snowden is an American hero who has significantly raised public awareness about the United States' government's threat to global freedom by using extreme and illegal measures of surveillance.
