David Cay Johnston: Closing Wall Street's Casino

A superb example of a sound rule in law and economics that needs reviving, because it can halt the rampant speculation in derivatives, is the ancient legal principle that gambling debts are not enforceable through court action.

Not so long ago — before casinos, currency and commodities speculation, and credit default swaps became big business — U.S. courts would not enforce gambling debts.

Restoring this principle offers a simple way to shrink the rampant speculation in derivatives that was central to the 2008 meltdown on Wall Street.

15 Tea Party Caucus freshmen rake in $3.5 million in first 9 months in Washington

'Business as usual,' one election watchdog says.

By Aaron Mehta and Bob Biersack
6:00 am, November 18, 2011 Updated: 10:36 am, November 18, 2011

 

On her website, Rep. Diane Black asks constituents to join advisory panels in her Tennessee district. “I believe the best ideas to solve our nation’s problems will come from people like you,” Black writes, “not Washington bureaucrats and special interest groups.”

Black is one of the new Republicans who rode a wave of anti-Washington sentiment into town in 2011, a self-identified member of the tea party wing that has been cast as a new kind of conservative— fiery, unwilling to compromise and determined to downsize the government. But while many say Black and her companions have created a split in the Republican Party, it is not visible among the companies and interest groups that are donating to members of Congress.

Why your vote for Congress might not matter

By James Polk, CNN

updated 10:19 AM EST, Fri November 18, 2011

 

Philadelphia (CNN) -- Outside Independence Hall, ask a graduate student in line to see the Liberty Bell what he thinks of gerrymandering, and you might get this answer:

"I think Gerry Mandering is a great guy."

No, he isn't.

Gerrymandering is the term for the way politicians draw boundary lines for legislative districts in a way designed to keep one party or the other in power in that particular district.

Gabrielle Giffords' Office Urges Super Committee To Cut Lawmakers' Pay

First Posted: 11/18/11 05:16 PM ET Updated: 11/18/11 05:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) may not be back in Congress yet, but her staff is leading a bipartisan effort to pressure the super committee to slash lawmakers' salaries as part of deficit reduction.

In a Thursday letter put together by Giffords' office, 25 lawmakers call on the 12-member super committee to "send a powerful message to the American people that Congress should not be exempt from the sacrifices it will take to balance the budget."

The letter notes that House and Senate lawmakers are paid $174,000 per year -- 3.4 times what the average American with a full-time job earns. A 5 percent cut, which Giffords proposed in January legislation, would save $50 million over 10 years. Adjustments to members' benefit packages, which can be worth 47 percent of salaries, could result in millions of dollars in additional savings.

Looking Closer at Congressional Insider Trading

George Zornick on November 18, 2011 - 2:46pm ET

 

Last Sunday, 60 Minutes had an explosive piece about what appears to be insider trading conducted by members of Congress. It looked at various examples of when elected representatives used non-public information to buy or sell stocks accordingly, thus profiting from their privileged status.

Washington took notice of the story in a major way. It was the subject of several floor speeches this week, and bills were introduced in both the House and Senate—including one sponsored by Republican Senator Scott Brown—to bar such deals, which are currently well within legal limits and probably even within Congressional ethics rules.

OWS-inspired activism

By Glenn Greenwald 

 

It was only a matter of time before a coordinated police crackdown was imposed to end the Occupy encampments. Law enforcement officials and policy-makers in America know full well that serious protests — and more — are inevitable given the economic tumult and suffering the U.S. has seen over the last three years (and will continue to see for the foreseeable future). A country cannot radically reduce quality-of-life expectations, devote itself to the interests of its super-rich, and all but eliminate its middle class without triggering sustained citizen fury.

Debunking Economics: An Interview with Steve Keen – Part II

Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland


Part I of the interview can be found here.

PP: Let’s move on to another interesting point about neoclassical economic theory. It’s my understanding that the whole system is assumed to be, at its very essence, one of ‘truck and barter’. In that I mean that they tend to ignore the fact that capitalist economies are, in reality, monetary economies and have nothing to do with barter-based economies. Yet, am I correct in saying that the neoclassicals abstract away from this in order to get away from all sorts of things that make their type of analysis more difficult? I’m thinking in particular of where profits come from and the role of credit in the capitalist system of production. Could you talk about this a little?

SK: That’s actually a strange point of the theory. There was no need to assume the non-existence of money in building a model of capitalism – fundamentally, it makes as much sense as assuming the non-existence of wings when building a model of flight. But this was an established aspect of pre-neoclassical economics long before Walras came on the scene.

Big Banks have abandoned small businesses

Bank of America and company ... funding "small businesses" that make $20 million per year.

The numbers are just staggering.

Bank of America and Citibank, who collectively control about 20% of all deposits in the country, only made .6% of all SBA 7A loans in 2010.

What the hell? Those numbers are insane! Why do we bank with institutions that have completely abdicated any semblance of supporting small businesses? And it's not just BoA and Citi.

Paul Krugman: Failure is Good

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a complete turkey! It’s the supercommittee!

By next Wednesday, the so-called supercommittee, a bipartisan group of legislators, is supposed to reach an agreement on how to reduce future deficits. Barring an evil miracle — I’ll explain the evil part later — the committee will fail to meet that deadline.

If this news surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention. If it depresses you, cheer up: In this case, failure is good.

Why was the supercommittee doomed to fail? Mainly because the gulf between our two major political parties is so wide. Republicans and Democrats don’t just have different priorities; they live in different intellectual and moral universes.

The Brutal Politics Of Super Committee Failure

Brian Beutler November 18, 2011, 6:10 AM

 

Super Committee Democrats and Republicans and the leaders of both parties will work through the weekend to avoid missing their fast approaching deadline to cut $1.2 trillion from federal deficits over the next decade. Though the 12 members officially have until Wednesday to reach an agreement, the more realistic deadline is Monday evening, by which time they must have word back from CBO about the impact any plan they send to Congress will have on the budget.

Failure is very much an option. And if failure happens, Capitol Hill politics will take a severe turn heading into the 2012 election.

Privatizing Liberty

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

November 17, 2011 - 8:46pm ET 

As Mayor Bloomberg's forces swooped down on Occupy Wall Street, news reports described the "hundreds of police and private security guards" who had re-taken Zuccotti Park. Those private guards were used against public citizens who had been exercising their civil liberties in a public area.

That's not just wrong. It's un-American.

The Crash of 1929 Was Just a Prelude: Truthout Interviews Whistleblower-Novelist Nomi Prins

Thursday 17 November 2011

by: Mark Karlin, Truthout | Interview 

 

Mark Karlin: Given your expertise in understanding the corruption of Wall Street, what did you find in the practices of the financial world leading up to the 1929 crash that presaged the 2007 crisis?

Nomi Prins: Into the crash of 1929, there were six big banks. Their leaders controlled most of the market activity, sat on each others' boards and owned large chunks of stock in each others' firms. They inflated the values of stocks through "trusts" (financial mechanisms by which many investors could "pool" together their money, and borrowed money, to purchase or sell various stocks in bulk).

ALEC Exposed: Voter ID

Posted on November 14, 2011 by admin

 

This week, we take a look at another in a series of model legislation written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Voter ID Act. Make no mistake about it, this legislation was written to hack away at a very specific segment of the voting public. ALEC and its allies invoked the specter of voter fraud, a wholly manufactured crisis, to justify a series of measures designed to erect barriers to voting among Democratic-leaning demographic groups.

Dodd-Frank’s Derivatives Reforms: Clear as Mud

by Jesse Eisinger
ProPublica, Nov. 16, 2011, 12:11 p.m.

When the architects of the Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul flinched from the most effective solution — breaking up the banks so that none would be too big to drag down the financial system — they forced regulators of the derivatives market into a cumbersome and potentially dangerous workaround.

Those regulators are feverishly making lots of important, arcane rulings that are being followed only by insiders. They are replacing an opaque system prone to failures with a new, huge Rube Goldberg-like system that may reduce global financial risk. Or it may not. Nobody knows, not least the regulators themselves.

Mark Ames: Austerity & Fascism In Greece – The Real 1% Doctrine

See the guy in the photo there, dangling an ax from his left hand? That’s Greece’s new “Minister of Infrastructure, Transport and Networks” Makis Voridis captured back in the 1980s, when he led a fascist student group called “Student Alternative” at the University of Athens law school. It’s 1985, and Minister Voridis, dressed like some Kajagoogoo Nazi, is caught on camera patrolling the campus with his fellow fascists, hunting for suspected leftist students to bash. Voridis was booted out of law school that year, and sued by Greece’s National Association of Students for taking part in violent attacks on non-fascist law students.

Denial of Service Attack Takes Down United Wisconsin's Recall Walker Website! Updatex2=Recall Polka

A computer professional from Milwaukee was called in to United Wisconsin's office in Milwaukee this afternoon to see why its website, which is a main portal for the recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, crashed. The website hosts pertinent information regarding field coordination, contacts, FAQs and other information pertinent to the recall campaign. The computer scientist stated, via email that "The site was brought to its knees. I was asked to take a look, and there is an insane amount of requests hitting the server... which is the hallmark of ddos… still working on details."

The Budget Chronicles: The Super Committee’s Predestined Failure

Wednesday, 11/16/2011 - 4:33 pm by Bo Cutter

All signs point to empty political posturing without real solutions. And that was always the expected outcome.
 
The super committee, set up after the debt limit debacle in early August, is due to report on November 23. This report is supposed to tell us how Congress will meet its self-inflicted requirement to reduce future deficits and the growth of the country’s debt by at least $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years. If this goal is not met, then automatic cuts — called sequestrations — will go into effect, divided equally between domestic and defense expenditures. This report was actually due to the Congressional Budget Office well before now so that the CBO could score the proposals. But if you knew anything about congressional negotiating, you knew that would never happen; it was always doomed to be strung out until the last minute.

A Decade of Missed Chances Bedevils U.S. Prospects: Ezra Klein

By Ezra Klein Nov 16, 2011 7:00 PM ET

After the failure of the 1973 Geneva Peace Conference, the Israeli diplomat Abba Eban sighed that “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” In recent years, the same could be said of Americans.

Two months ago, the U.S. marked the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Sadly, we commemorated a tragedy without celebrating much triumph. The post-9/11 moment was an unheralded instance of national -- even global -- unity. The Bush administration could have used it for almost anything. And, to be fair, it did. The nation burned trillions of dollars in two wars and a budget-busting round of tax cuts. The president told us to go shopping, and the Federal Reserve held interest rates at extraordinarily low levels. The result? Deficits and a credit bubble. That was missed opportunity No. 1.
 

Romney staffers wiped out records in ’06

Ex-governor’s aides say they did nothing wrong 

By Michael Levenson and Matt Viser, Globe Staff / November 17, 2011 

Just before Mitt Romney left the Massachusetts governor’s office and first ran for president, 11 of his top aides purchased their state-issued computer hard drives, and the Romney administration’s e-mails were all wiped from a server, according to interviews and records obtained by the Globe.

Romney administration officials had the remaining computers in the governor’s office replaced just before Governor Deval Patrick’s staff showed up to take power in January 2007, according to Mark Reilly, Patrick’s chief legal counsel.

As a result, Patrick’s office, which has been bombarded with inquiries for records from the Romney era, has no electronic record of any Romney administration e-mails, Reilly said.

How Conservatives Exploit the Myth of "Wealthy Elderly" to Justify Gutting Social Security

By Dean Baker, AlterNet
Posted on November 15, 2011, Printed on November 17, 2011

The austerity gang seeking cuts to Social Security and Medicare has been vigorously promoting the myth that the elderly are an especially affluent and privileged group. Their argument is that because of their relative affluence, cuts to the programs upon which they depend is a simple matter of fairness. There were two reports released last week that call this view into question.

The first was a report from the Census Bureau that used a new experimental poverty index. This index differed from the official measure in several ways; most importantly it includes the value of government non-cash benefits, like food stamps. It also adjusts for differences in costs by area and takes account of differences in health spending by age.

Philip Pilkington: Debunking Economics – An Interview with Steve Keen – Part 1

Steve Keen is an Associate Professor in economics and finance at the University of Western Sydney. The second expanded edition of his popular book Debunking Economics is available now.
Interview conducted by Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland.

Philip Pilkington: One cannot help but be struck by the reaction of the economics profession to the recent financial crisis. In the first edition of your book, Debunking Economics, you warned that a crash was probably coming – and in this you weren’t the only one. And yet now, post-crash, neoclassical economists have simply buried their heads in the sand and pretended that rational criticism of their theories simply doesn’t exist. The crash discredits almost all these theories and yet they continue to insist that they remain valid.

They remind me of Christian fundamentalists rabidly arguing against evolution in face of what appears to be insurmountable evidence against their assertions. Could you talk a little about this? How can these people be so deluded? Why won’t they listen to reason?

How Income Inequality Undermines Social Security's Finances

By Daniel Marans

November 15, 2011 - 11:39am ET 

A recent study reveals how rising income inequality is jeopardizing Social Security’s finances.

It is by now common to hear Social Security advocates demand that we “scrap the cap” on earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax.

This is an important appeal. Few Americans realize that millionaires only contribute to Social Security on the first $110,100 they earn. If they did, perhaps they’d be even more adamantly opposed to the benefit cuts many in Washington are proposing.

Stop the Great Firewall of America

by Rebecca MacKinnon

 

China operates the world’s most elaborate and opaque system of Internet censorship. But Congress, under pressure to take action against the theft of intellectual property, is considering misguided legislation that would strengthen China’s Great Firewall and even bring major features of it to America.

The legislation — the Protect IP Act, which has been introduced in the Senate, and a House version known as the Stop Online Piracy Act — have an impressive array of well-financed backers, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the Directors Guild of America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Screen Actors Guild. The bills aim not to censor political or religious speech as China does, but to protect American intellectual property. Alarm at the infringement of creative works through the Internet is justifiable. The solutions offered by the legislation, however, threaten to inflict collateral damage on democratic discourse and dissent both at home and around the world.

Digby: Future Shock and Awe

By Digby

November 14, 2011 - 1:36pm ET 

Listening to Newtie blather on about foreign policy last night reminded me of his gooey, wannabe relationship with the military over the years. I wrote about it back in March of 2003:

Last week I wrote a post about the likelihood that Newt Gingrich is heavily involved in the actual war planning for the Iraq invasion. I had no proof other than some gossipy items in newspaper columns. However, I have since been informed that Newt has had almost unequalled influence in long term strategic military planning for many, many years.

And, when he introduced the Generals to his intellectual mentors in the early 1980's he began a revolution in military affairs that is playing itself out in the Iraqi desert at this very minute.

Newt Gingrich Wants to Kill the CBO Messenger

By Stan Collender

November 15, 2011 - 1:05pm ET 

Former Speaker and current GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich might well have said that he wants to kill his personal physician because he didn’t like being told his blood pressure was too high.

But that’s the equivalent of what Gingrich did say during a recent debate, when he made it clear that the Congressional Budget Office has to be eliminated if health care reform is going to be repealed.

4 Ways the Poor Get Screwed That Everyone Takes for Granted

By William Hogeland, AlterNet
Posted on November 11, 2011, Printed on November 17, 2011

I'm not in the 1%. At the lower end of what I think of as the upper middle class, I nevertheless take daily advantage of a raft of systems intended to ensure that people who have less money than I do pay more than I do. Since my economic advantages result from public policy, it's fair to call them taxes, levied on people least able to afford them and applied upward for the benefit of people like me. Since the glory days of feudalism are long over, and we don't like to revel in high position, matters are arranged to keep me and people like me from noticing the systemic nature of our economic advantage.

Paul Krugman: Vouchers for Veterans

American health care is remarkably diverse. In terms of how care is paid for and delivered, many of us effectively live in Canada, some live in Switzerland, some live in Britain, and some live in the unregulated market of conservative dreams. One result of this diversity is that we have plenty of home-grown evidence about what works and what doesn’t.

Naturally, then, politicians — Republicans in particular — are determined to scrap what works and promote what doesn’t. And that brings me to Mitt Romney’s latest really bad idea, unveiled on Veterans Day: to partially privatize the Veterans Health Administration (V.H.A.). 

The Two Documents Everyone Should Read to Better Understand the Crisis

As a white-collar criminologist and former financial regulator much of my research studies what causes financial markets to become profoundly dysfunctional. The FBI has been warning of an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud since September 2004. It also reports that lenders initiated 80% of these frauds.¹ When the person that controls a seemingly legitimate business or government agency uses it as a "weapon" to defraud we categorize it as a "control fraud" ("The Organization as 'Weapon' in White Collar Crime." Wheeler & Rothman 1982; The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One. Black 2005). Financial control frauds' "weapon of choice" is accounting. Control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crime -- combined. Control fraud epidemics can arise when financial deregulation and desupervision and perverse compensation systems create a "criminogenic environment" (Big Money Crime. Calavita, Pontell & Tillman 1997.)

The FBI correctly identified the epidemic of mortgage control fraud at such an early point that the financial crisis could have been averted had the Bush administration acted with even minimal competence. To understand the crisis we have to focus on how the mortgage fraud epidemic produced widespread accounting fraud.

Scalia and Thomas dine with healthcare law challengers as court takes case

By James Oliphant

November 14, 2011, 3:50 p.m.

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.

The occasion was last Thursday, when all nine justices met for a conference to pore over the petitions for review. One of the cases at issue was a suit brought by 26 states challenging the sweeping healthcare overhaul passed by Congress last year, a law that has been a rallying cry for conservative activists nationwide.

Study proves regulations killed practically no jobs

By David Edwards
Monday, November 14, 2011

In three straight recent weekly addresses, Republicans have asserted that “excessive government regulations” are keeping businesses from creating jobs.

On the contrary, recent government data proves that in the third quarter of 2010 only 0.4 percent of jobs were lost due to government regulations or intervention.

“With our economy struggling and red tape still piling up, these nuisances have become full-blown government barriers to job creation,” Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) said in an early October video.

The edible battery that's too good for electric cars

Here's the problem with electricity: it costs 5 cents to make a kilowatt-hour, but it costs $150 worth of batteries to store a kilowatt-hour. And it's only that cheap if you use lead-acid batteries, which are (a) very heavy; and (b) made with toxic materials.

And that's the rub for electric cars, because the heavier the car is, the more batteries it needs to move. So if you use cheap lead-acid batteries for electric cars, the car weighs two tons, and needs more power, which makes it heavier, so it needs more power, which makes it heavier.

Obama’s Flunking Economy: The Real Cause
Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President
by Ron Suskind
Harper, 515 pp., $29.99

Ron Suskind’s Confidence Men is not a calm first draft of history. It is not an impartial or unbiased look at the Obama administration’s first two years. Rather, it is an investigation. The crime is homicide, and the victim is the promise of Barack Obama’s presidency. But this isn’t a suspenseful whodunit. Suskind tips his hand in the first pages.

He’s describing the press conference in September 2010 where President Obama announced that Elizabeth Warren would help set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren is one of Suskind’s heroes. She’s introduced as “the nation’s town crier” and “a leading voice for tough, restorative reforms.” The mystery of the initial chapter is why Obama seems to be holding her at arm’s length.

Oberlin, Ohio: Laboratory for a New Way of Life

An environmental-studies professor tries to reinvent his town for a future of scarcity

By Scott Carlson

Oberlin, Ohio

This northern Ohio college town is barely a blip on a map, far away from national centers of power. And yet people here are working on a plan that could make it a model for fundamentally reshaping the American economy and its society.

The architect of the plan is David W. Orr, a professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College. More than a decade ago, he helped inspire a "green building" trend when he dreamed up the Adam Joseph Lewis Center for Environmental Studies, which remains one of the greenest college buildings in the country.

Slouching toward a bananapocalypse?

by Heather Smith
11 Nov 2011 1:00 PM

For years journalists have warned of imminent banana extinction. "Get bananas while you still can," wrote New Scientist over five years ago. "The world's most popular fruit ... is in deep trouble," it went on to say, adding that the banana would probably be out of supermarkets by 2013, and would soon exist only in backyard gardens and other places the Panama Race IV, a pathogen taking out plantations in Southeast Asia, couldn't reach.


But today -- just a few years from the banana's supposed demise -- one can walk down the street and find bananas in the nearest corner store, hanging out between the cash register and the lottery tickets. What gives? Are we still heading toward bananapocalypse? Or has it been cancelled? And what can the banana tell us about the evolution of our global food supply?
 

Atmospheric rivers caused the UK's worst floods

YOU may not even know they are there, but their impact is immense: huge atmospheric rivers that wind their way through the skies have been linked to the 10 largest winter floods in the UK since the 1970s. A study of similar systems in California suggests that such floods could become more frequent and severe if greenhouse gas emissions accelerate.

Atmospheric rivers (ARs) are giant ribbons of moist air, at least 2000 kilometres long and several hundred kilometres across, which move water across the mid-latitudes. They flow in the lower troposphere, where winds with speeds in excess of 12.5 metres per second can carry as much water as the Amazon river. At any given time, four or five ARs carry nearly 90 per cent of the moisture that is moving towards the poles.

Commentary: Putting religious group's campaign against contraception into context

By Sarah Lipton-Lubet | American Civil Liberties Union

First marketed in 1960, the birth control pill soon became the most popular form of contraception in the United States.

However, the pill was still not available to every woman who wanted it. Religious groups lobbied in favor of laws that banned all contraception, and it was not until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the right to contraception was protected by the Constitution.

Today, virtually all sexually active women — no matter what their religion — have used contraception.

The Global Super-Rich Stash: Now $25 Trillion

By Sam Pizzigati

Created 11/12/2011 - 2:58pm

 

Another super-slick global financial analysis firm has just tallied how much net worth is sloshing around in the pockets of the world’s most spectacularly wealthy. So when will the time finally come to stop the counting — and start the taxing?

In today’s astoundingly unequal global economy, banks can go either of two routes — or both — to bag ever bigger returns. They can squeeze the 99 percent with nuisance fees and penalties. Or they can cater to the richest of the rich.

But both routes have bumps. The 99 percent can squeeze back, as they did earlier this month when Americans by the tens of thousands shut down their Bank of America accounts to protest the bank’s $5 debit card greed grab. And the richest of the rich? To cater to these fortunates, you have to first find them.
 

Iceland’s New Bank Disaster

By Olafur Arnarson, an author and columnist at Pressan.is, Michael Hudson, a Professor of Economics at University of Missouri- Kansas City, and Gunnar Tomasson, a retired IMF advisor

The problem of bank loans gone bad, especially those with government-guarantees such as U.S. student loans and Fannie Mae mortgages, has thrown into question just what should be a “fair value” for these debt obligations. Should “fair value” reflect what debtors can pay – that is, pay without going bankrupt? Or is it fair for banks and even vulture funds to get whatever they can squeeze out of debtors?

The answer will depend largely on the degree to which governments back the claims of creditors. The legal definition of how much can be squeezed out is becoming a political issue pulling national governments, the IMF, ECB and other financial agencies into a conflict pitting banks, vulture funds and debt-strapped populations against each other.

Regime Change in Europe: Do Greece and Italy Amount to a Bankers' Coup?

By Stephan Faris Friday, Nov. 11, 2011

The voice of the people isn't something the markets seem to want to hear these days. First there was Greece, the cradle of democracy itself, where early this month, the merest mention of a referendum offering its citizens a say in a series of severe austerity measures was enough to send the markets into a tailspin. The ultimate result: the collapse of Prime Minister George Papandreou's ruling coalition, the rejection of any notion of bringing the proposal before the people, and the installation of a caretaker government under the leadership of Lucas Papademos, a former vice president of the European Central Bank and, until earlier this week, a visiting professor at Harvard.

Richard Nixon’s Darkest Secret

Exclusive: In just-released Watergate grand jury testimony from 1975, ex-President Richard Nixon complained that his 1968 campaign was bugged by the Johnson administration. But there was little curiosity then – or now – as to why that surveillance was justified, reports Robert Parry.


By Robert Parry

Thirty-six years ago, as former President Richard M. Nixon dodged grand jury questions about his illegal wiretapping of political enemies, he briefly referenced a dark secret about his 1968 campaign’s sabotaging of Vietnam War peace talks, actions which President Lyndon Johnson at the time privately labeled “treason.”

Without providing that historical context, Nixon complained that he and his 1968 campaign had been victims of surveillance and wiretapping, too, as he tried to persuade Watergate prosecutors and the grand jury that bugging opponents was just part of hardball politics.

The New Progressive Movement


By JEFFREY D. SACHS

OCCUPY WALL STREET and its allied movements around the country are more than a walk in the park. They are most likely the start of a new era in America. Historians have noted that American politics moves in long swings. We are at the end of the 30-year Reagan era, a period that has culminated in soaring income for the top 1 percent and crushing unemployment or income stagnation for much of the rest. The overarching challenge of the coming years is to restore prosperity and power for the 99 percent.

Thirty years ago, a newly elected Ronald Reagan made a fateful judgment: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Taxes for the rich were slashed, as were outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income. Only the military and a few big transfer programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ benefits were exempted from the squeeze.

Reagan’s was a fateful misdiagnosis. He completely overlooked the real issue — the rise of global competition in the information age — and fought a bogeyman, the government. Decades on, America pays the price of that misdiagnosis, with a nation singularly unprepared to face the global economic, energy and environmental challenges of our time.

Conservatives Plot to Burn, Shred, and Sabotage Scott Walker Recall Effort

By Andy Kroll on Fri. November 11, 2011 1:00 PM PDT

A group of self-identified conservatives say they plan to sabotage the effort to recall Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker, which begins on Tuesday, by burning and shredding recall petitions they've collected and misleading Wisconsinites about the recall process.

These plans, discussed in Facebook posts that were first reported by the blog PolitiScoop, entail posing as recall supporters and gathering signatures, only to later destroy the petitions. They also include telling Wisconsinites that they can only sign one recall petition (which is false—they can sign different petitions as long as they each correspond to a different organization) and directing signature collectors to the homes of registered sex offenders. (Requests for comment were sent to each of the Facebook posters who allowed messages from other users.)

Corporations Hate Regulation, Until They Love It

—By Kevin Drum  | Fri Nov. 11, 2011 3:00 AM PST

The "Volcker rule" is a simple thing. Basically, it says that if you're a bank that takes deposits and benefits from federal deposit insurance, you can't also make risky trades that might blow up your bank and cost the taxpayers a bundle. Wall Street never liked the rule, because banks make a lot of their money these days trading for their own accounts and didn't want their trading profits cut off. They fought the idea in Congress, but in the end, the Dodd-Frank bill that passed in 2010 included a version of the Volcker rule in its final draft.

Was this a victory for common sense? Hardly. Last month regulators unveiled their first take on the actual implementation of the Volcker rule, and it had become a monster. "Only in today's regulatory climate could such a simple idea become so complex, generating a rule whose preamble alone is 215 pages, with 381 footnotes to boot," complained American Bankers Association Chief Executive Frank Keating.

Paul Krugman: Vouchers For Veterans

Oh, boy. Mitt Romney wants to privatize the VA.

This is awesome on multiple levels. First, you know what voucherization would mean in practice: the vouchers would be inadequate, and become more so over time, so that veterans who don’t make enough money to top them up would fail to receive essential care. Patriotism!

The Ratchet Effect

by David Atkins

Kudos due to Digby and Atrios for keeping a keen eye on the planned cuts to middle class benefits, made in exchange for cuts to wealthy benefits that will quietly disappear when the bright spotlight is off after the Presidential election.

This phenomenon is part of what Hacker and Pierson refer to as a ratchet effect: one in which the institutions of government are squared more and more firmly against the interests of the 99%, usually through policies made through toothless "compromise" measures. Think big tax cuts for the wealthy with "expiration" dates that are never really meant to expire, in exchange for little-noticed middle-class tax cuts that barely make a dent. Or trading short-term unemployment benefits and treaties for long-term tax cut extensions. Or changing the structure of Medicare and Social Security in exchange for closing easily re-insertable and malleable loopholes in the tax code. Or handing over the entire health insurance market to private industry in exchange for more universal coverage that continues to increase in cost regardless. Or the recent institutional acceptance of the 60-vote filibuster threshold, which makes real reform to help the 99% almost impossible, but is accepted by Democrats partly because it helps them stop things like Social Security privatization should Republicans take a Senate majority--without realizing that Social Security and programs like it will die a death of 1,000 cuts without institutional reform.

Europe’s Crash Landing

by MIKE WHITNEY

“Italy is now mathematically beyond the point of no return.”
–Barclays Capital 

The situation in Europe gets more depressing by the day. Policymakers have waited too long and now events are beyond their control. The only way to avert a disorderly breakup and another Great Depression is by deploying the European Central Bank (ECB) to backstop the debt of the individual countries, and even that might not work. New ECB chief Mario Draghi must announce his intention to keep interest rates down regardless of the cost. Blanket guarantees are the only way to stop the bleeding. But acting as lender of last resort will not stop the contagion; it will merely minimize the damage. The dissolution of the eurozone is a foregone conclusion. It’s only a matter of time.

Paul Krugman to Paul Ryan: "The Truth Hurts"

During a recent speech, Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, expressed outrage over what President Obama has been saying lately.

“Just last week, the president told a crowd in North Carolina that Republicans are in favor of, quote, ‘dirtier air, dirtier water and less people with health insurance,’ ” Mr. Ryan said at a gathering at The Heritage Foundation on Oct. 26. “Can you think of a pettier way to describe sincere disagreements between the two parties on regulation and health care?”