Yves Smith: Why Does No One Speak of America’s Oligarchs?

Smith at Naked Capitalism ..

Do you ever hear Carlos Slim or Rupert Murdoch or the Koch Brothers described as oligarchs? To dial the clock back a bit, how about Harold Geneen of ITT, which was widely known to conduct assassinations in Latin America if it couldn’t get its way by less thuggish means? (This is not mere rumor, I’ve had it confirmed by a former ITT executive) .. Now many readers may still recoil at the oligarch label being applied to America’s top wealthy[]. But what about the celebrated John Paulson, who became a billionaire by not simply betting agains the housing market, but by [] using CDOs that had the effect of pumping the bubble up bigger? Or the principals of Magnetar, whose CDO strategy played an even more direct role in extending the toxic phase of subprime lending beyond its sell by date? How about the Walton family, whose company is a welfare queen, with employees who depend on Medicare and emergency rooms for health care?

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Monday, March 25, 2013

Three Years Later and Obamacare’s Popularity Still Hasn’t Improved

Jon Walker at Firedoglake ..

Over the years the country continues to remains divided about the law. The most significant shift in public opinion is that after three years of the ACA doing almost nothing some Americans have stopped really caring about it .. I don’t expect opinions about the law to change until it is fully implemented, and even that is not guaranteed to make the law more popular. Because of the patchwork nature of the exchanges and Medicaid expansion, implementation is liking going to be a mess

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, March 22, 2013

The Rancid Honeytrap: Charles Pierce on Assasination Policy – A Vampire’s Tears

RHT ..

Color me unsurprised that [] Charles Pierce, has joined the "Vote for him in November, Protest him in February" club with some histrionics in Esquire about the White House sharing more information with Congressional Republicans on Benghazi than it is sharing with Democrats about targeted killing .. for Pierce, it is ‘we’ who ‘have allowed [powers] to leach away from their constitutional points of origin.’ Of course, like all pundits, when Pierce says ‘we’, he doesn’t really include himself. Shills use ‘we’ this way to promote the quaint notion that an oligarch-controlled government really expresses the collective will, while bemoaning the downside of sharing the sacred rites of representative democracy with people dumber and less principled than oneself

he/she makes good point - i hate it when pundits claim "we" allowed such and such to happen, as if "we" actually live in anything resembling a functioning Democracy anymore, which we don't .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, March 22, 2013

Many Postings

Tough times in the old town nowadays. mb
Posted by Michael Butler, Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Gawker: Wish George W. Bush a Happy Iraq War Day – Here is His Private Email Address

hilarious ..

a hacker calling himself (or herself) Guccifer has penetrated the electronic worlds of George W. Bush .. And it has come to our attention on this, the day of the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq on the orders of George W. Bush, that one of those screengrabs credibly displays Bush's private email address. It is ...

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, March 20, 2013

“Don’t Shoot Me”: Cops Arrest And Pepper Spray Protesters At Third Kimani Gray Vigil

Gothamist reports growing tensions since this weekend ..

Over the course of four hours, people from Kimani's neighborhood mixed with activists from other parts of NYC, [] numbering in the hundreds at the protest's peak .. Some demonstrators threw bottles at groups of officers, pieces of rock or stone at vehicles, and there were other reports of a few bricks being thrown. One marcher threw something at a police van window that caused it to shatter .. One particularly tense stand-off between a female demonstrator and a male police officer began with the cop telling her to get on the sidewalk, and her responding, "Or what, you'll shoot me?"

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, March 14, 2013

Obama’s Poll Numbers Drop As He Tries To Push Cuts To Social Security And Medicare

from Firedoglake ..

President Barack Obama’s approval numbers have dropped down to 50% over all with a serious loss of support among independents .. All this as President Obama is pushing behind the scenes for a “Grand Bargain” based on cutting Social Security and Medicare, two of America’s most popular programs. Which may be his last “achievement” as President, cutting benefits for seniors and shredding the safety net

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, March 13, 2013

AP: Chavez Wasted His Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Built Gigantic Skyscrapers

AP business reporter Pamela Sampson via FAIR blog ..

Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world's tallest building in Dubai

speechless .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, March 8, 2013

Markos Moulitsas: A guide to the conservative movement in one handy chart

Kos - some highlights ..

Neocon on purpose of gov't: "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran"... Neocon on abortion: "I'll pretend to care"; Corporate Con on purpose of gov't: "Make me money, bail me out" ... Corporate Con on gays: "ixnay on the igotrybay"; Theocon on guns: "for shooting doctors"

also paleocons, teabaggers and libertarians .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, March 8, 2013

FAIR: In Death as in Life, Chávez Target of Media Scorn

from the FAIR blog ("His independence, help for Venezuela's poor will not be forgiven") ..

If world leaders were judged by the sheer volume of corporate media vitriol and misinformation about their policies, Chávez would be in a class of his own .. In reporting Chávez's death, little had changed. "Venezuela Bully Chávez Is Dead," read the New York Post's front page (3/6/13); "Death of a Demogogue" was on Time's home page (3/6/13). CNN host Anderson Cooper (3/5/13) declared it was "the death of a world leader who made America see red, as in Fidel Castro red, Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chávez." .. Many reports on Chávez's passing were quick to note the country's oil wealth. NBC's Williams asserted, "All this matters a lot to the U.S., since Venezuela sits on top of a lot of oil and that's how this now gets interesting for the United States."

Maduro has already expelled two US diplomats in the past few days under accusations of planning to destabilize the country - the next few weeks should indeed be "interesting" .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, March 7, 2013

Good News, Bad News

Posted by Michael Butler, Sunday, March 3, 2013

Naked Capitalism: Peak Oil, The Shale Boom and our Energy Future

Yves Smith @ NC Interviews energy expert Dave Summers

This where we stand, and it’s a fairly bleak view: Peak oil is almost here, and nothing new (with the possible but unlikely exception of Iraq) is coming online anytime soon and while the clock is ticking – forward movement on developing renewable energy resources has been sadly inadequate. In the meantime, the idea that shale reservoirs will lead the US to energy independence will soon enough be recognized as unrealistic hype. There are no easy solutions, no viable quick fixes, and no magic fluids. Yet the future isn’t all doom and gloom – certain energy technologies do show promise. We had a chance to speak with well known energy expert Dave Summers where we cut through the media noise and take a realistic look at what our energy future holds

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, March 1, 2013

Yves Smith: Not-So-Smart ALEC – The Right Wing vs. Renewable Energy

Smith at Naked Capitalism ..

Renewable energy is clean, sustainable, non-polluting, reduces our dependence on fossil fuels, improves the health of communities surrounding power plants, and protects the natural environment. Who could be against it? Answer: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) .. ALEC wants to speed up the permitting process for mines, oil and gas wells, and power plants – and to eliminate all state requirements for the use of renewable energy [alleging] immense costs and job losses of renewable energy standards .. The ALEC energy analysis begins with wild overstatement of the costs of wind energy. They develop low, mid, and high cost scenarios, just as if they were doing a reasonable job of reflecting uncertainty. Yet there is more than a decade of data available on actual costs of wind power in the United States – and the ALEC low cost estimate is higher than the costs paid in essentially every real-world transaction to date

here's an ad slogan for today: "capitalism, we just make shit up!".. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, February 23, 2013

Markos Moulitsas: Saturday hate mail-a-palooza – End of a series

Kos ..

With two weeks of thin gruel, I've started to worry that the wingnuts are simply too demoralized and turned off by politics to ever pick up the pace again. It's not just my hate mail, it's Fox News ratings (down to a 12-year low in January), it's the unexpected string of Republican capitulations since the election, it's the fact that House Speaker John Boehner hasn't been able to pass anything of worth with a majority of his own caucus, it's the fact that conservatives are directing their fire at each other, rather than liberals, it's all the gay marrying, the pot, the "demographic winter" (as the racists call it) .. Whatever the reason, I can't have a hate mail feature without content

this is the first time I've read the hate mail that Kos gets - the one about Vince Foster is hilarious - as much as the Dems are annoying/useless, Kos does good work with his pen in holding back the fascist tide .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, February 17, 2013

President Obama Uses State of the Union to Feed Deficit Hysteria

Jon Walker at Firedoglake ..

Instead of trying to tone down the deficit hysteria which has been choking our weak recovery, President Obama fed it. He still seems to believe he can finally solve the issue once and for all and pave the way for other things. This is the same failed logic that has lead to a string of manufactured crises that hurt the economy all the while sucking the oxygen out of Washington. If Obama’s second inaugural address gave some hope we might see a new Obama freed by the constraints of election to be more liberal, this State of the Union should crush that.

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, February 13, 2013

David Swanson: What Mark Warner Asked John Brennan

Swanson @ FDL ..

Brennan might have been asked why he’d lied about the killing of bin Laden or about the murder by drone program. He had claimed that every target was known, even though he was fully aware that people were being targeted without identifying them (using so-called signature strikes). He had claimed that there were zero collateral deaths, even though independent reports have produced hundreds of names, identities, and photographs, and even though the U.S. Ambassador in Pakistan told a delegation of peace activists that there was a U.S. government count of civilian deaths and he wouldn’t reveal what it was. Brennan might have been asked how in the world it can be legal, according to a “white paper” leaked on Monday, for a “high official” to order the murder of a human being, American or non-American, without judicial or legislative or public or international oversight — or even with such oversight. He might have been asked if he is one such high official. He might have been asked whether there was a memo to justify the murder of the three Americans thus far known to have been intentionally murdered, since none of them seem to fit the qualifications laid out in the “white paper.” He might have been asked what the procedure would be if two “high officials” disagreed on the desirability of murdering a particular American. He might have been asked what authority would certify that a targeted victim could not be captured rather than killed. He might have been confronted with the rise in hostility toward the U.S. government being generated. He might have been asked about the United Nations investigation of the murder by drone program as criminal

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, February 10, 2013

Brennan’s CIA Confirmation Hearing as ‘Kabuki Oversight’ & Anwar al-Awlaki’s Posthumous Trial

Jeremy Scahill on the Brennan hearing (c/o FDL) ..

..[I]f you look at what happened yesterday at the Senate Intelligence Committee, I mean, this is kabuki oversight. This was basically a show that was produced by the White House in conjunction with Senator Feinstein’s office. I mean, the reality was—is that none of the central questions that should have been asked of John Brennan were asked in an effective way. In the cases where people like Senator Angus King or Senator Ron Wyden would ask a real question, for instance, about whether or not the CIA asserts the right to kill U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, the questions were very good. Brennan would then offer up a non-answer

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, February 9, 2013

Ian Welsh: The coming catastrophes and the Rawlsian veil of ignorance

Welsh ..

The great problem we have today in improving our society, in fixing our economy, is that so many people don’t want to give up what they have. If you work in the health insurance industry in the US, an evil industry whose job is to deny care in exchange for money, for example, your job needs to go away. It is a job which does more harm than good. If you work in peteroleum extraction, well, most of those jobs need to go away. If you work in a large bank or brokerage, well, your job needs to change in a way that will deprive you of your high bonuses, and which will leave many bankers and traders unemployed, because banking done in a way that build society rather than tears it down probably doesn’t need your skill set. We need a lot less accountants, a lot less administrators at universities, a lot less soldiers, a ton less spies, far fewer people working in the military-industrial complex, and on and on

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Applebee’s Overnight Social Media Meltdown: A Photo Essay

from the R.L Stollar blog ..

A waitress at a St. Louis Applebee’s lost her job for posting online the receipt upon which a pastor had declined to leave a tip, with a snarky note saying she gave God 10 percent .. Applebee’s fired the waitress in question, named Chelsea Welch. This created a fury of rage on the Internet, with social media users taking to their weapons of choice and lambasting away, thousands at a time, against the restaurant’s decisions

people are pissed out there .. read more
UPDATE: Applebee's waitress writes about incident in The Guardian
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Sunday, February 3, 2013

Hagel Hearing: Twilight of the Neocons Makes Senate Armed Services Committee Dysfunctional

Jim White at Emptywheel ..

Much of McCain’s bullying of Hagel was centered on McCain trying to get Hagel to admit that he had been wrong to oppose the Iraq surge. This clinging to the absurd notion that the Iraq surge was a success sums up the bitter attitude of the neocons as the world slowly tries to emerge from the global damage they have caused. And that this view that the surge was a success still gets an open and unopposed position at the Senate Armed Services Committee highlights the dangerous dysfunction of one of the most influential groups in Washington

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, February 1, 2013

Yves Smith: Geithner Finally Leaves Treasury, Blurts a Whole Series of Lies on His Way Out

Smith at Naked Capitalism ..

The unfortunate part about high level government officials who are utter failures leaving government is that when they leave, journalists still fawn over them. Timmy got plenty of interviews from major media outlets but the longest, and thus most nauseating, came from the Wall Street Journal. Reading it is like watching a horror movie where everyone knows what’s about to happen to the character and are trying to warn him/her through the screen. Except in this horror movie I’m throwing my hands in the air and saying “that lie was debunked years ago!” I don’t have the patience to go through each and every lie told in this interview, but I’d like to hit on the major ones

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Kevin Gosztola: ‘Rise of the Drones’ Is Mostly a PBS Infomercial for the Military Defense Industry

Gosztola at FDL ..

Much of the first half is like a military defense contracting infomercial. Multiple statistics are presented so viewers can marvel at the capabilities of the technology. Mary “Missy” Cummings, who works with the MIT Humans and Automation Lab (and appeared on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart the same night of the premiere), says drones are more precise when they bomb if a human is not in the cockpit. Scenes unfold where a drone pilot at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico who is being trained demonstrates how a pilot learns to use the technology. Contractors from a company called Rally Point dress up as “insurgents” and enter a mock village where the pilot flies the drone and attempts to get a lock on them so he can execute them. Chad, an RPA pilot, notes the “error distance” is “less than nine feet.” He adds he can put a weapon through a “window-sized opening with ease.”

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, January 25, 2013

The FBI Wrote A Letter To Martin Luther King Telling Him To Commit Suicide

c/o FDL ..

[from an FBI letter] accompanied by FBI recordings of King having extramarital sexual encounters .. "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation"

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Tuesday, January 22, 2013

Stirling Newberry: Aaron Swartz’ Blood for Oil [interesting..]

Newberry ..

the reality is that control of a few key pieces of capital, knowledge, and resource, dominate over all the others. It was Derrida who quipped that two things would never be viritual: oil and Jerusalem, everyone wants the real thing. In this he encapsulated the problem: control over the keys to the mechanized economy and control over the brand equity of the "game itself" are the basis of all power .. Oil was called by Yergin "The Prize" and it exhibits a unique power because of its property of both creating fungible labor, and portability .. oil's power is that it allows people to avoid paying money to people they compete with. It is a trade off of rents .. everything in the West had to be turned into a rent, and that stream of rents had to match against the rents of oil. To make up the difference between what we sell, and what we buy – and that gap is oil, and oil in drag in the form of cheap exports, we must sell capital and "services," which includes education, and finance. Enter Intellectual Property, and the role of academia

something to ponder .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Saturday, January 19, 2013

Kevin Gosztola: How the Government’s Prosecution of Aaron Swartz Pushed Him Toward Death

Gosztola in FDL ..

Just as the government sought to make an example out of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, made an example out of former CIA officer John Kiriakou for “leaking” a name of an agent and is making an example out of Pfc. Bradley Manning for allegedly providing classified and non-classified information to WikiLeaks, it pursued Swartz hoping to convict him and set a precedent that would limit Internet freedom and the free flow of information. Meanwhile, banks like HSBC received no jail time for terrorist financing, not a single person from a Big Bank on Wall Street was prosecuted for major financial crimes that led to the 2008 economic collapse and those in the Bush administration and intelligence community, who authorized torture, were allowed to roam free. Do not expect his suicide to change anything. The government will continue to take up cases against Internet activists, who do no real harm, while looking the other way as white collar criminals and war criminals receive accolades, enjoy prestige and success and benefit from government welfare

.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Tuesday, January 15, 2013