I would imagine, that by now, you have
heard and seen all that you want to regarding the inauguration.Therefore, I am not going to say a lot about
it.The reviews that I have been reading
and seeing seem to think that Obama is laying down the gauntlet. I believe we are going to see a different side
of President Obama than we have seen during the past four years.
On the other hand, sometimes he makes
statements that sound like he will compromise on the big three, Medicare,
Medicaid, and Social Security.
Therefore, we all need to
watch closely as to what he says and does.We will need to write him frequently to let him know we are supporting
him, so don't back down on the big three.I will watch this very closely and keep you advised as to when I think
we need to get letters to him and to our Representative and Senators.
Of course, there are many other issues,
besides the big three, that we need to support him on, such as clean energy,
the problems with pipelines, relief for storm victims, reduction in the
military budget, etc.He seems to be
going in, what I think, is the right direction in appointments to his cabinet,
and that will go a long way in moving his agenda forward.
ONE MAIN THING WE NEED TO
KEEP IN MIND, IS TO ALWAYS PROVIDE SUPPORT, IN ANY MANNER YOU CAN, DIRECTED
TOWARD THE ELECTIONS IN 2014.THAT IS
GOING TO BE VERY IMPORTANT.WE MUST TAKE
BACK THE HOUSE AND STRENGTHEN OUR POSITION IN THE SENATE.SO, ANY OF YOU WHO HAVE A REPUBLICAN
REPRESENTATIVE and/or SENATORS, TRY TO GET BEHIND A DEMOCRAT IN YOUR DISTRICT
AND STATE THAT WILL WIN THOSE SEATS BACK
FOR US.
You see, I take it that any of you who
read my blog are Progressive Democrats, or you wouldn't be reading my
blog.SO, we have to start now to
recruit candidates now and start financing them now for 2014.
~~~
MY OPINOIN ON GUNS
By Floyd Bowman
Publisher
"Opinions Based On Facts"
Up to now, I
have not written anything about guns.This is going to be my first and, I think, my last writing about guns.
The position of the NRA is absolutely
ridiculous and they have really gone over the line in this last ad, where they
referred to the President's daughters, and then to have the audacity, to say
that they did not mean, the President's daughters.
The statements that bugs me
the most, is when they, meaning anyone, refers to the President as a traitor,
because he has no respect for the second amendment and that he is going to take
away our guns.His plan has nothing in
it that, evenly remotely, is adverse to the second amendment.There is not one single part of his plan that
alters any part of the second amendment.
When the second amendment was passed,
there were no such arms as we have today.There can be a number of different interpretations of the meaning behind
the phrase, "....the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not
be infringed."Personally, I don't
think they meant to bear arms to freely kill one another.Our founding fathers meant for your
protection, and for hunting for food (not hunting for a sport, as now.)
The President's plan says nothing about
taking the firearms away from what you have now.The plan fully allows for every type of
weapon you need for hunting, self-protection, and for target shooting.Those uses do not need automatic weapons with
30 to 100 rounds of ammo in a clip.
Anyone, who is in an uproar about the
President's plan, would be honest about what is in the plan all their arguments
would be gone.These high-powered rifles are made for one
purpose and one purpose only, to kill people.
~~~
Filibuster!
Thomas Magstadt
NationofChange
/ Op-Ed
Published: Tuesday 15 January 2013
At the end of 2012 we were hearing a lot of noises about
filibuster reform, remember? Noise from liberal pundits, noise in the liberal
press, noise from our newly elected insurgent liberal senators. What happened
to all the noise? The war cry is sounding more like a whimper lately.
Is the silence a signal? Is the issue dead – again? If
so, expect another season of partisan gridlock, political dysfunction, and
rising public discontent.
According to the
Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Ballin (1892),
changes to Senate rules can be made by a simple majority, but only on the first
day of each session. Like most everything that happens in Washington, D.C.,
what you see (or think you see) is not necessarily what you get. To wit: Harry
Reid, the sad-sack Senate majority leader is using a parliamentary tactic that
shelves rule changes indefinitely but suspends a sword of Damocles over the
Republicans. Under Reid's rule, each new day is still being considered as the
“first day” of the new Congress so the rules can be changed at any time by a
simple majority vote. Leave it to the highest rule-making body in America
to f*@% with the rules!
Here's writer,
George Packer ("Senatus Decadens", The New Yorker, 1/4/13) on the very day
when what might have been – namely, the long-overdue death and joyful burial of
the filibuster – wasn't:
"Several proposals are circulating. The most
intriguing is the one introduced by Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon (the same
Jeff Merkley who told me, back in 2010 when I was writing about the Senate, that he winces every time he hears the phrase
'world’s greatest deliberative body'”). [Senator] Merkley would simply require
filibusterers to be present on the Senate floor and speaking, just like Jimmy
Stewart or Strom Thurmond. No more waivers, no more silent filibusters, the
kind that take place multiple times every legislative week. (The Senate has
sunk so low that there’s a nostalgia for the good old days when southern
senators used to stand and read from the phone book for days on end…in order to
block civil-rights legislation.)"
That's it? That's the "most intriguing"
filibuster reform proposal being floated in the Senate? Uh huh.
Congress met on January 3 and (surprise!) the issue of
filibuster reform was conspicuously absent. But does that mean it's too late,
that 2013 is going to be a grim replay of the gridlock we've come to expect; a
permanent procedural paralysis that condemns the country to a fate "the
people" of no other self-respecting republic in the world would tolerate?
Not necessarily. Read on...
Who really gives a fig
about the Senate's rules? That's just dull procedure, right?
Wrong. For any serious deliberative body the rules of
order are the gateway – or roadblock – to policy. The U.S. Senate, however, has taken
this principle to a new level, one so low that no light can ever reach it, a
place where one rule trumps all the others. Inference: the Senate isn't
serious.
If the first day of each
new session of Congress really is the only time Senate rules can be changed it
would undeniably be the day that can make or break each and every national
election. It is (or would be) a particularly crucial day in the life of a
dysfunctional republic which will (would) continue to be dysfunctional so long
as the Senate neglects to change the most idiotic, anti-democratic rule ever to
enter the addled brain of a bibulous legislator, namely the filibuster.
Typically, on the first day the pre-existing rules of the
new session are adopted in part or in full by a simple majority vote. In other
words, rules do not automatically continue
from one session to the next. On this day, the Senate can abolish the
filibuster or place strictures on its use and abuse – what rightwing
extremists, who insist (against all logic and evidence) that a rule once made
remains in force forever, ludicrously refer to as the "nuclear
option". In Congress, however, the definition of "forever" (like
"first day") is purely a matter of political convenience, not
semantics or moral conviction, so anything and everything could change if and
when the Tea Party caucus, for example, or some other lunatic cabal takes
control.
The Democratic
majority in the Senate can abolish the filibuster at any time, but there is no
indication that so "radical" a move is being seriously considered. As
noted earlier, the insurgent position in the Senate, the one proposed by
Senator Merkley of Oregon and supported by several other self-professed
populists, including Elizabeth Warren, is to require a
filibuster-bent senator to be present and babbling in order to do so.
Present. As in not absent. In
other words, if you get elected to the U.S. Senate and you want to shut
down the government or do something similarly wicked you just have to show up!
That's a sign of the times, folks; of the culture of corruption and cynicism
that now poisons our public life and pervades Congress; of the decay and
decline at the core of the body politic. You know, the one founded on the
principle of majority rule.
The Senate in its wisdom not only allows its members to
thwart the will of the majority with impunity but makes it super-convenient for
the heirs of Strom to obstruct the business of the most powerful legislative
body in the land. They don't even have to show up for "work" to do
it.
As things stand, a senator can prevent a proposed bill
(maybe to raise the debt ceiling or fund disaster relief for victims of
Hurricane Sandy) from coming to a vote while, say, cheating on his wife in a
secret hideaway across Key Bridge in Rosslyn or sitting in a bar in Key West.
Welcome to Fantasy LandUSA, the land of the "silent
filibuster".
So here's where things stand. The most far-reaching change
the reformists in the Senate
can get behind is a "reform" that would require a latterday Strom
Thurmond (Mitch McConnell?) or some other Senate blowhard (Jerry Moran, Ted
Cruz, James Inhofe, among others, come to mind) to be present and blowing. You
wingnuts want to make a mockery of majority rule? You want to subvert the
election results? Sabotage the economy? Shut down the government? No problem.
But don't think you can get away with playing hooky. We're the Democrats, we
won, and we're in charge. This time around things are going to be different;
this time around if you want to walk all over us and trample on the
Constitution, fine!, but you'll have to come to Washington to do it. Take that!!
It's clearly not
too late for the Senate to change the rules. The tattered old Constitution
says nothing about the filibuster. The hang-up is political, not legal.
Let's be honest: Democrats in the Senate don't want to
abolish the filibuster any more than Republicans and they're using filibuster
reform to camouflage this fact. Oh, they'd like to get some much-needed reform
bills passed; it would make them look good and help them get re-elected. But
they can imagine a time when the Republicans will be in the majority and then
what? Without the filibuster what will happen to the country? It's a scare
tactic, pure and simple.
Ask yourself this: What has happened to the country with the filibuster?
Senate Democrats would do well to consider what will
happen to them if they don't
get something done in the next two years. If they don't do right by the people
for a change (they've done quite enough for the plutocrats). If things look no
better in 2014 than they did in 2012. If they lose the next election and the
rightwing extremists who control the Republican party abolish the filibuster.
Let's send a
message to the Democrats in the Senate. Let's tell 'em this: A lot of us out
here in the real America
(aka the electorate) have totally given up on the Republicans, but that doesn't
mean you can count on getting our votes. You think we have nowhere else to go,
but you're wrong. The so-called silent filibuster is a farce, dear senators, a
kind of metaphor for the feckless assembly of which you are a part. If you
don't kill the filibuster you'll continue to get
little or nothing accomplished, we'll continue to pay the price, and the nation
will continue to slide deeper into recession, debt, and disgrace. And the next
time an election day rolls around we, the voters, just might stage a
"silent filibuster" of our own – by staying home. If that happens,
we'll all be losers. But you'll be the biggest losers of all.
~~~
Why
Obama’s Gamble on the Debt Ceiling
Depends on the GOP Being More Sane Than it is
Robert Reich
NationofChange / Op-Ed
Published: Tuesday 15 January 2013
A week before his inaugural, President Obama says he
won’t negotiate with Republicans over raising the debt limit.
At an unexpected news conference on Monday he said he
won’t trade cuts in government spending in exchange for raising the borrowing
limit.
“If the goal is to
make sure that we are being responsible about our debt and our deficit - if that’s the
conversation we’re having, I’m happy to have that conversation,” Obama said.
“What I will not do is to have that negotiation with a gun at the head of the
American people.”
Well and good. But what, exactly, is the President’s
strategy when the debt ceiling has to be raised, if the GOP hasn’t relented?
He’s ruled out an end-run around the GOP.
The White House said over
the weekend that the President won’t rely on the Fourteenth Amendment, which
arguably gives him authority to raise the debt ceiling on his own.
And his Treasury Department has nixed the idea of issuing
a $1 trillion platinum coin that could be deposited with the Fed, instantly
creating more money to pay the nation’s bills.
In a pinch, the Treasury
could issue IOUs to the nation’s creditors — guarantees they’ll be paid
eventually. But there’s no indication that’s Obama’s game plan, either.
So it must be that he’s counting on public pressure —
especially from the GOP’s patrons on Wall Street and big business — to force
Republicans into submission.
That’s probably the reason for the unexpected news
conference, coming at least a month before the nation is likely to have
difficulty paying its bills.
The timing may be
right. President is riding a wave of post-election popularity. Gallup shows him with a 56 percent approval
rating, the highest in three years.
By contrast,
Republicans are in the pits. John Boehner has a 21% approval
and 60% disapproval. And Mitch McConnell’s approval is at 24%. Not even GOP
voters seem to like Republican lawmakers in Washington, with 25% approving and 61%
disapproving.
And Americans remember the summer of 2011 when the GOP
held hostage the debt ceiling, bringing the nation close to a default and
resulting in a credit-rating downgrade and financial turmoil that slowed the
recovery. The haggling hurt the GOP more than it did Democrats or the
President.
But Obama’s strategy depends on there being enough sane
voices left in the GOP to influence others. That’s far from clear.
Just moments after the President’s Tuesday news
conference, McConnell called on the President to get “serious about spending,”
adding that “the debt limit is the perfect time for it.” And Boehner said “the
American people do not support raising the debt ceiling without reducing
government spending at the same time.”
The 2012 election has shaken the GOP, as have the post-fiscal
cliff polls. Yet, as I’ve noted before, the Republican Party may not care what
a majority of Americans thinks. The survival of most Republican members of
Congress depends on primary victories, not general elections — and their likely
primary competitors are more to the right than they are.
The 3 Percent Cut to Social Security, Aka the Chained CPI
According to inside Washington gossip, Congress and the
President are going to do exactly what voters elected them to do; they are
going to cut Social Security by 3 percent. You don’t remember anyone running on
that platform? Yeah, well, they probably forgot to mention it.
Of course some
people may have heard Vice President Joe Biden when he told an audience in Virginia that there would
be no cuts to Social Security if President Obama got re-elected. Biden said:
“I guarantee you, flat
guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security. I flat guarantee
you.”
But that’s the way things work in Washington. You can’t expect the politicians
who run for office to share their policy agenda with voters. After all, we
might not like it. That’s why they say things like they will fight for the
middle class and make the rich pay their fair share. These ideas have lots of
appeal among voters. Cutting Social Security doesn’t.
While the politics of
cutting Social Security are bad, it also doesn’t make much sense as policy. In Washington, the gang who
couldn’t see an $8 trillion housing bubble until its collapse sank the economy
has now decided that deficit reduction has to be the preeminent goal.
They don’t care that we are still down more than 9
million jobs from our growth trend; deficit reduction must take priority. These
whiz kids apparently also don’t care that the cuts that have already been made
are slowing growth and costing us jobs.
If we actually did have to
reduce the deficit it’s hard to see why Social Security would be at the top of
the list. After all, the vast majority of seniors are not doing especially well
right now. Our defined benefit pension system is disappearing and 401(k)s have
not come close to filling the gap. Retirees and near retirees have lost much of
the wealth they had managed to accumulate when the collapse of the housing
bubble destroyed much of their home equity.
From a policy
standpoint it would make far more sense to tax Wall Street speculation.
Congress’ Joint Tax Committee estimated that a 0.03 percent tax on each trade
could raise almost $40 billion a year. Such a tax would also make the financial
sector more efficient by eliminating a huge volume of wasteful trading.
It also is bizarre that Social Security would even be
considered in the context of the deficit. In law and in practice it is a
separate program, financed by its own designated stream of revenue. Cutting
benefits as part of a deficit deal means that we will be making cuts to Social
Security with zero quid pro quo in the form of increased revenue. That hardly
makes sense if the point is to protect the program.
What’s more the cut in fashion in Washington is especially poorly targeted.
The idea is to reduce the annual cost-of-living adjustment by 0.3 percentage
points annually by using a different inflation index. That translates into a
cut in benefits of 3 percent for those who have been retired 10 years, 6
percent after 20 years, and 9 percent after 30 years. The people who have been
retired the longest and therefore the poorest will see the largest cuts.
And remember those pledges not to cut benefits for those
currently retired? Oh right, no one meant that to be taken seriously.
The benefit cutters argument is another nice piece of
D.C. humor. The argument is that the current index overstates inflation.
However, there is an experimental index produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
that shows the current index actually understates inflation for seniors.
That is just an experimental index but if the concern
really is accuracy then the obvious answer would be to construct a full index
to examine the cost of living of the elderly. But that suggestion just draws
contempt from the Social Security cutters.
In order to avoid feeling too badly about their plan to
cut Social Security, many of the cutters want to protect some programs for
low-income people. For example, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) a program
for the disabled and low-income seniors will be protected. The word is that SSI
will continue to be indexed to the current inflation index.
If we believe the claim that the chained CPI is the more
accurate measure of inflation, this is a proposal to increase SSI benefits each
year by an amount that is 0.3 percentage points more than annual rate of
inflation. That may make sense to inside Washington
types, but anywhere else this is loon tune stuff. If SSI benefits are too low
(they are), then raise them. What possible logic can there be to have benefits
rise each year by a bit more than the actual rate of inflation?
The bottom line is that President Obama and many leading
Democrats are prepared to give seniors a larger hit to their income than they
gave to the over $250,000 crowd. And the whole reason it is necessary is that
the Wall Street types who wrecked the economy say so. Is everybody happy?
~~~
If the good Lord is willing and the
creek don't rise, I'll talk with
you again on Tuesday, January 29, 2013
if not sooner.
2.A
different view on Social Security = A must read.
3.Senate
Demos. = President, act unilaterally on debt.
4.Last press conference of first term.
5.No
body believes Obama.
6.GOP
promotes government shut down.
7.What's next.
8.Corporations must pay fair share.
9.Drones are not new.
10.The Soul of America.
11.Washington
Insiders at work.
TID BIT
I don't profess to be a
good writer.Some may think I can't
write at all, but take a look at a statement, that appeared on the internet
from a, supposedly responsible news organization.
"USA TODAY:Lance Armstrong plans to confess to doping in
Oprah Winfrey interview."
Now, my question: Is
he confessing to doping while he is on Oprah Winfrey's interview, or is he
confessing to doping, in Oprah Winfrey interview?You see how different that statement is when
you just put in a comma.Oh, I miss them
sometimes too.
Also, instead, how
about this?During an interview with
Oprah Winfrey, Lance Armstrong plans to confesses to doping.
~~~
A DIFFERENT
VIEW FROM MINE
ON
SOCIAL
SECURITY
&
OUR DEBT
By Floyd Bowman
Publisher
"Opinions Based On Facts"
First, a correction
to a point I made in "Part 16 EXTRA."In two places, I referred to the amount of money that had been stolen
from the Social Security Trust Fund, as $3.2 trillion.That amount is incorrect and I apologize for
the error.The correct amount is $2.7
trillion, as is referred to in the article printed below.
In Part 16 EXTRA, I
provided you my take on facts relating to Social Security.At that time, I told you about a retired
Economist by the name of Allen W. Smith, Ph.D., that has spent the past 12
years of his life, and many, many of his own dollars, trying to educate the
public about what has happened to Social Security (SS) over the years.My association with him is the basis for my,
rather extensive, knowledge on the subject.
Since my posting of
Part 16 EXTRA, Dr. Smith and I have been corresponding and I have learned that
he has a bit of a different view than I have, regarding the fact that SS is not
now and never has contributed to the budget deficit.I have tremendous
respect for Dr. Smith's opinions and, even though I still feel the same about
the matter, he does have a different view point and, as usual, he is right. I want you to read what he has written
me.It follows:
Floyd,
I agree
that there would be enough money to pay full benefits until 2036 if the
government had not stolen the $2.7 trillion. And I agree that the
government should pay back all of that stolen money. I also agree that
money the government owes its citizens should be taken just a seriously as debt
owed to foreigners. That is why I have fought so hard for the
past 12 years to end the government theft of Social Security. If the
looting had stopped in 2000, when I first started reporting it, the trust
fund would have a substantial amount of real assets today--not the whole $2.7
trillion, but a lot more than zero. And I will continue to use
these talking points in pointing out what the moral obligations of the
government are.
But for
purposes of understanding the problem, we need to recognize the harsh
reality. That reality is that Social Security does not have a dime in
real assets that can be turned into cash. The only thing Social Security
really has is its annual tax revenue. Instead of saying Social
Security has enough money to pay full benefits until 2036, the harsh reality is
that Social Security does not have enough money to pay full benefits even for
the current year.
As for
the government, itself, it is more than broke. It cannot operate without
borrowing massive amounts of money. The obvious solution in the past to a
situation like this would have been to raise taxes enough so that the
government could pay all of its bills, including its debt to Social
Security. That would be economically possible today, but it is not politically possible with so many crazy people
in the Congress led by a nut like Grover Norquist, who should be arrested and
put on trial for treason. I'm sure it is a violation of the Constitution
for members of Congress to ignore the needs of their constituents and pledge
their allegiance to a madman like Norquist.
I believe
we may be facing a crisis worse than anything this great nation has
ever faced since its founding. The Republican party has in recent
years controlled enough state governments to gerrymander many
Congressional districts in such a way as to make it almost impossible for
Democrats to win in these districts. That is why we have a Republican
House of representative and a Democrat Senate. You can't gerrymander
Senate districts. The Congress has become dysfunctional.
The
bottom line is that Social Security does not have any real assets except its
tax revenue. It has been the victim of a $2.7 trillion theft, but the
thief is on the verge of bankruptcy and has a dysfunctional Congress. At
this point I don't see how the government can or will repay its
massive debt to Social Security.
A number
of years ago, I was owed a substantial amount of money by a local
realtor. I took the case to small claims court and won. The
following day I received a letter from a lawyer for the realtor stating that
his client had filed for bankruptcy and it would be unlawful for me to attempt
to collect the money. There was nothing I could legally do about
this.
I fear
that the government's debt to Social Security may end up in a similar
way.
I'm sorry
to be so pessimistic but that is the way I see it at this time.
Friend
Allen
Dr. Smith is certainly
right of course.My concern is, that the
way Republicans lie, they will convenience the public and other legislators
that SS does add to the budget deficit.Of course, it does now, in accordance with Dr. Smith's statements, BUT it is not the program of SS that has caused
it.My statement that SS is the most
successful program the government has ever developed is true and it should not
be changed.
I want to add a, "right
on," about Dr. Smith's reference to Grover Norquist.You might want to read Dr. Smith's comments a
second time, so as to really absorb his valuable thinking.Thanks so much Allen.
~~~
Senate
Democrats Urge Obama to Act Unilaterally on Debt Ceiling if Necessary
MySlate
is a new tool that lets you track your favorite parts of Slate. You can follow
authors and sections, track comment threads you're interested in, and more.
Senate
Democratic leaders sent what Politicodescribes
as a “strongly worded letter” to President Obama Friday, urging him to go at it
alone and raise the debt ceiling without Congress if a bipartisan agreement
can’t be reached in time. The letter is
the latest illustration of how Democrats in Congress are increasingly convinced
Obama has the legal power to raise the debt ceiling unilaterally through the
14th Amendment. So far, the White House has not been too eager to discuss the
option. In the summer of 2011, Obama said he wasn’t convinced. “I have talked to my lawyers,” Obama said
then, according to the Hill. “They
are not persuaded that that is a winning argument.”
Obama’s other main
choice for acting unilaterally if he’s not comfortable with the 14th Amendment
argument is the now-famous “platinum coin” option. But a Democratic aide tells the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent that
Senate Democrats see the 14th Amendment as the preferable choice because the
coin idea simply wouldn’t play very well with the public.
Whatever the legal
arguments for and against it, the imagery will be difficult to combat,” the
aide said. “What better symbol of
out-of-control government spending could you have than a trillion dollar coin?”
Reuters reports that
Democrats in the Senate are exploring other legal possibilities that could help
the president act without Congress.
In the letter, Senators
Harry Reid Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, and Pat Murray make it clear they will
support the president if he decides to circumvent Congress, insisting that
Obama “must make clear that you will never allow our nation’s economy and reputation
to be held hostage.” Failing to raise
the debt ceiling could have disastrous consequences for the economy, according
to the senators.
“In the event, that Republicans make good on
their threat by failing to act, or by moving unilaterally to pass a debt limit
extension, only as part of an unbalanced or unreasonable legislation, we
believe you must be willing to take any lawful steps to ensure, that America
does not break its promises and trigger a global economic crisis — without
congressional approval, if necessary.,” the Friday letter to Obama says.
~~~
LAST PRESS CONFERENCE
OF
FIRST TERM
By Floyd Bowman
Publisher
"Opinions Based On Facts
On Monday, January 14, 2013, President Obama held his
final press conference of his first term with some profound statements.As Jason Sattler of The National Memo,
reported on January 14, the President started noting that the economy is
growing and would keep growing “as long
as Washington politics don’t get in the way of
America’s
progress.”
His tone
was stern and confrontational, as he declared his intention to use the
beginning of his second term to stop the trend of America moving from “crisis to
crisis to crisis.”
“The issue
here is whether or not America
pays its bills,” Obama said. “We are not
a deadbeat nation.”
“These are
bills that have already been racked up, and we need to pay them,” he insisted. “So, while I’m willing to compromise and find
common ground over how to reduce our deficits, America cannot afford another
debate with this Congress about whether or not they should pay the bills
they’ve already racked up.”
Though
some Republicans have argued that hitting the debt limit wouldn’t necessarily
trigger a default, the President was definite that refusal to raise the limit
would have catastrophic effects.
“If
congressional Republicans refuse to pay America’s bills on time, Social
Security checks, and veterans benefits will be delayed,” he said.
“We might
not be able to pay our troops, or honor our contracts with small-business
owners. Food inspectors, air-traffic
controllers, specialists, who track down loose nuclear materials, wouldn’t get
their paychecks. Investors around the
world will ask, if the United States of America is in fact a safe bet. Markets could go haywire, interest rates would
spike for anybody who borrows money. To
even suggest such a scenario, the President argued, hurts the economy.
He pointed
out that he already had signed on for $2.5 trillion in cuts toward deficit
reduction and that he would
continue to work for more reduction, but, again, he said he would not negotiate
when it come to raising the debt limit.
“What I will not do is to have that
negotiation with a gun at the head of the American people — the threat that
unless we get our way, unless you gut Medicare or Medicaid or you know,
otherwise, slash things that the American people don’t believe should be
slashed, that we’re going to threaten to wreck the entire economy. That is not how, historically, this has been
done. That’s not how we’re going to do it this time.”
"While I will negotiate over many things," he said, "I will
not have another debate with this Congress over whether or not they should pay
the bills they've already racked up, through the laws they have passed."
Current
Republican leaders in Congress voted to raise the debt limit 18 times as
President George W. Bush led America
from projected surpluses to the trillion-dollar-plus deficit President Obama inherited.
It is
interesting to note, that Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), House Majority Leader
Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) voted for
debt limit increases in June 2002, May 2003, November 2004, March 2006 and
September 2007. Senate Minority Whip
John Cornyn (R-TX) voted to increase the debt limit in May 2003, November 2004
and March 2006.
Watching the president
talk about the debt ceiling and his unwillingness to give up any ransom in
exchange for it, I find it impossible not to confront the point that as of now
nobody seems to believe him.
And the reason isn't
hard to identify: the fiscal cliff deal. Not because the fiscal cliff deal was
a bad deal; I think it was a good deal. But whatever you think of the deal, it
wasn't the deal that Obama said he would agree to. The administration put a lot
of emphasis on the $250,000 cutoff point, and the administration also claimed
for a while that they wouldn't agree to a deal that didn't address the debt
ceiling. But when push came to shove, they decided neither of those things were
red lines, which is fine. Maybe those were dumb red lines. But they were the
lines Obama drew. And then he backed down.
So now there's a
credibility problem.
~~~
GOP Rep Promotes
Shutting Down the Government: It’s a ‘Good Thing’
Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (TN) insisted
that shutting down the government should be “on the table” as Congress and the
Obama administration deal with passing a continuing resolution, raising the
debt ceiling, and addressing the sequestration cuts.
Appearing on MSNBC on Monday, Blackburn echoed a growing
consensus within the Republican party, insisting that lawmakers should close
the federal government or allow the United States to default on its
debt if President Obama does not agree to drastic spending cuts. “We are going to look at all of these options,”
Blackburn insisted. “You know, there is the option of government
shutdown. There is an option of raising the debt ceiling in short-term
increments”:
CHRIS JANSING (HOST): [But
are your constituents] willing to see the government shut down? Are you hearing that, Congresswoman?
BLACKBURN: Yes, they are. Yes, they are. But they want us to be
thoughtful in what is done. And this is the good thing. You know, maybe it’s better to keep it open
so we can keep cutting it. [...]
JANSING: Would you be willing
if you don’t get the kind of cuts that you think are necessary, would you be
willing to go into default or to shut down the government?
BLACKBURN: I think that there is a way to avoid default. If it requires shutting down
certain portions of the government, let’s look at that. Let’s put these options
on the table, be very thoughtful, but get this spending pattern broken. We cannot afford a $4 billion a day deficit
and trillion dollar plus deficits every single year.
Jansing warned that should
the government shutdown, the FBI would stop working, “prisons won’t operate,
the court system closes, tax refunds won’t go out, the FAA would go off line.” But Blackburn
dismissed these concerns by arguing that Republicans will set priorities for
government spending and start eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
The line of thinking has caught fire with “more than half” of the
Republican House caucus. As House Republican
Conference Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) told Politico, “I think it
is possible that we would shut down the government to make sure President Obama
understands that we’re serious.” “We always talk about whether or not we’re
going to kick the can down the road. I think the mood is that we’ve come to the
end of the road.”
~~~
What's Next?
By Senator Bernie Sanders
So what comes next? President Obama’s initial proposal called for $1.6 trillion in new revenue. The bill that passed only brought in $620 billion – 40 percent of what the president originally requested.
This not only means
that no progress was made on deficit reduction, but that the Republicans (and
some Democrats) will be increasingly aggressive about wanting to cut Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ programs and other vitally important programs for
working families.
Bernie intends to lead the fight against these
devastating cuts. As soon as the new Congress reconvenes, he will introduce
legislation that will require corporate America to start paying its fair
share of taxes.
Corporations Must Pay
Their Fair Share
Today
corporate profits are at an all-time high, while corporate income tax revenue
as a percentage of GDP is near a record low.
In
1952, 32% of all of the revenue generated in this country came from large
corporations. Today, just 9% of federal
revenue comes from corporate America.
At
1.6%, corporate revenue as a percentage of GDP is lower than any other major
country in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)
including Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Norway, Australia, South
Korea, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Ireland, Poland, and Iceland.
In
2011, corporations paid just 12 percent of their profits in taxes, the lowest
since 1972.
In
2005, 1 out of 4 large corporations paid no income taxes at all even though
they collected $1.1 trillion in revenue over that one year period.
Large
corporations and the wealthy are avoiding more than $100 billion in taxes every
year by setting up offshore tax shelters in places like the Cayman Islands,
Bermuda and the Bahamas.
In
2009, Exxon Mobil made $19 billion in profits. Not only did they not pay any federal income
taxes, they actually received a $157 million rebate from the IRS.
In
2010, Bank of America
received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS, even though it made $4.4
billion in profits. Bank of America
operated 371 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens in 2010. 204 of these subsidiaries are incorporated in
the Cayman Islands, which has a corporate tax
rate of 0%.
At
15.7%, revenue as a percentage of GDP is at or near the lowest level in sixty
years.
~~~
DRONESARENOTNEW.
By Floyd Bowman
Publisher
"Opinions Based On Facts"
Recently, there has
been some discussion about the use of Drones.I'm sure you have heard about the manless aircraft that is still
controlled by man.It carries lethal
weapons and a camera that provides a pilot, somewhere in the world, pictures so
that he knows where he is flying the Drone and when he wants to drop
weapons.Some have questioned the humane
aspect of using this type of warfare.
Drones were used in
World War II by Germany,
they just weren't called Drones and they were much less humane than the
sophisticated Drones of today.They were
called Buzz Bombs, because you could here them coming. Germany
would launch them from their land with just enough fuel to get to London.Then they would run out of fuel and land
somewhere in and around London.London
developed underground shelters all over, so that people could get in one
wherever they might be.
Thousands of innocent
people were still killed and, at the time, it was thought that this was simply
one ofwar weapons that the enemy used.
Since World War II,
there have been various opinions about the justification for U. S. to drop atomic bombs on two cities in Japan, Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.Anyway, those bombs killed many thousands of
innocent people and many more died an agonizing death, as a result of
radiation.
The U. S. position has always been that
it was justified, because it ended the War and saved many more lives than were
killed by the bombs.
WE ARE IN A WAR
NOW.IT IS A WAR AGAINST TERROR.We have never been in a war on Terror before
and there are no set rules on how you conduct this kind of war.I believe that the justification for using
Drones might be that while they do kill innocent people, they also kill
terrorist personnel.
The debate will
continue and the war will go on.There
is no question that both the U.
S. and our enemies have used questionable
weapons in war.But then, what are the
rules of war, and particularly a new type of war, a war on Terror.
There is a rather
detailed article about Drones and their use, that can be found on "Nation
of Change" web site.If you are
interested, it will bring you up to date.
~~~
The Soul of America
Sen.
Bernie Sanders
Posted: 01/09/2013
Despite such terminology as "fiscal cliff" and
"debt ceiling," the great debate taking placein Washington
now has relatively little to do with financial issues. It is all about
ideology. It is all about economic winners and losers in American society. It
is all about the power of Big Money. It is all about the soul of America.
In America
today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major
country on earth, and more inequality than at any time period since 1928. The
top 1 percent owns 42 percent of the financial wealth of the nation, while,
incredibly, the bottom 60 percent own only 2.3 percent. One family, the Walton
family of Wal-Mart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans.
In terms of income distribution in 2010, the last study done on this issue, the
top 1 percent earned 93 percent of all new income while the bottom 99 percent
shared the remaining 7 percent.
Despite the reality that the rich are becoming much richer while the middle
class collapses and the number of Americans living in poverty is at an all-time
high, the Republicans and their billionaire backers want more, more, and more.
The class warfare continues.
My Republican colleagues say that the deficits are a spending problem, not a
revenue problem. What these deficit-hawk hypocrites won't talk about is their
spending. They won't discuss what they did to dig the country into this $1
trillion deep deficit hole. They waged wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq
without paying for them. They gave away huge tax breaks for the rich. They
squandered taxpayer dollars on the pharmaceutical industry by making it illegal
to let Medicare bargain for lower drug prices. They also rescinded financial
regulations that enabled Wall Street to operate like a gambling casino, leading
to a severe recession that eroded tax revenue and left more than 14 percent of
American workers unemployed or underemployed.
Now, despite the deficits their policies helped to create and despite the
enormous suffering which exists in our society, the Republicans want to cut
Social Security, veterans' programs, Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition
programs, and virtually every program which benefits low- and moderate-income
Americans. They choose to turn their backs on the economic reality facing a
significant part of our population: high unemployment, reduced wages, 50
million without health insurance, college graduates saddled with enormous
student debt and elderly people living in desperation. And they have tried to
slam the door on any further discussion about how to raise revenue by ending
tax loopholes and unfair tax breaks.
Republicans like Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who say the revenue
debate is over don't want you to consider these facts:
• Federal revenue today, at 15.8 percent of GDP, is lower today than it was 60
years ago. During the last year of the Clinton
administration, when we had a significant federal surplus, federal revenue was
20.6 percent of GDP.
• Today corporate profits are at an all-time high, while corporate income tax
revenue as a percentage of GDP is near a record low.
• In 2011, corporate revenue as a percentage of GDP was just 1.2 percent --
lower than any other major country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, including Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Norway,
Australia, South Korea, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Ireland, Poland, and
Iceland.
• In 2011, corporations paid just 12 percent of their profits in taxes, the
lowest since 1972.
• In 2005, one out of four large corporations paid no income taxes at all while
they collected $1.1 trillion in revenue over that one-year period.
We know where the Republicans are coming from. What about the Democrats? Will
President Obama fulfill his campaign pledge to "protect the middle
class" or will he surrender to right-wing blackmail? Will Democrats in the
House and Senate stand with the vast majority of our citizens and such
organizations as AARP, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and
Medicare, the AFL-CIO, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and
every other veterans' organization in the fight against cuts to Social Security
and veterans' programs, or will they agree to a disastrous corporate-backed
"chained CPI" concept which makes major benefit cuts to those
programs and raises taxes on low-income workers?
The simple truth is there are relatively easy ways to deal with the deficit
crisis -- without attacking the elderly, the children the sick or the poor.
For example, we have got to eliminate loopholes in the tax code that allow
large corporations and the wealthy to avoid more than $100 billion in taxes
every year by setting up offshore tax shelters in places like the Cayman
Islands, Bermuda and the Bahamas. This situation has become so absurd that one
five-story office building in the Cayman Islands
is now the "home" to more than 18,000 corporations.
Further, we must also end tax breaks for companies shipping American jobs
overseas. Today, the UnitedState government continues to reward companies that
move American manufacturing jobs abroad, despite the fact that millions of
American jobs have been outsourced to China,
Mexico,
and other low wage countries over the past decade. The Joint Committee on
Taxation (the official revenue scorekeeper in Congress) has estimated that we
could raise more than $582 billion in revenue over the next decade by
eliminating these offshore tax loopholes.
We must also recognize that Wall Street recklessness caused the economic
crisis, and it has a responsibility to reduce the deficit. Establishing a 0.03
percent Wall Street speculation fee, similar to what we had from 1914-1966,
would dampen the dangerous level of speculation and gambling on Wall Street,
encourage the financial sector to invest in the productive economy and reduce
the deficit by more than $350 billion over 10 years.
We are entering a pivotal moment in the modern history of our country. Do the
elected officials in Washington
stand with ordinary Americans -- working families, children, the elderly, the
poor -- or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors
and Big Money prevail? The American people, by the millions, must send Congress
the answer to that question.
~~~
Two New Fraud Deals Show
Wall StreetWashington
Insiders at Work
This article is so disgusting, that I
thought a long time about including it.I finally decided to include the article, because it does show what goes
on and, apparently, we seem to be unable to stop it.Take note of the musical chairs of regulators
now, supposedly, regulating companies and banks they use to work for.God help us, we need you.
It must’ve been like old home week when the old gang of
Wall Street and Washington insiders finalized a couple more cushy settlements
last week.
Everybody knew the drill: Ignore the potential criminal
charges and agree on settlement figures they think the public will swallow –
figures that are big enough to sound impressive but far smaller than the banks’
ill-gotten gains. They’ve done this
dozens of times before.
But there was an empty chair at the negotiating table.
Bank of America was there, as it has been so many times
before. So were the other too-big-to-fail banks. Representatives from the
Attorney General’s office were undoubtedly there, too. The Attorney General was
a high-priced Wall Street attorney.
The banks’ “independent” reviewers were there, too, or at
least their reports were. Those reports said that there were very few problems
with the banks’ transactions. That should’ve have raised some red flags around
the negotiating table: An audit in San Francisco found that 84 percent of
foreclosures were performed illegally, while another in North Carolina found “singular
irregularities” in roughly three-quarters of the mortgages reviewed.
So i shouldn’t have been such a surprise when an as-yet
unpublished GAO report showed that these rosy reviews were
disastrously flawed.
But then, the insiders had it wired. The reviewers
included Promontory Financial Group, whose CEO
was Comptroller of the Currency under President Bill Clinton. Then he became a
senior attorney at Wall Street defense firm Covington & Burling. Small
world: The Attorney General of the United States worked at Covington
& Burling too.
Promontory and the other
reviewers have an underlying conflict of interest: they’re reviewing their own
client base. That’s the same conflict of
interest that corrupted the for-profit “ratings agencies,” leading them to rate
their clients’ toxic mortgage-backed securities as “AAA.”
Promontory was also the
firm that said “well over 99.9 percent” of the loans
issued by Standard Chartered bank complied with the law and only $14 million of
them were illegal. Then the bank admitted that $250 billion of its deals, not
$14 million, were illegal. That’s 17,000 times as much illegality as Promontory
found in its ‘review.’ (17857.142 as much, to be precise, but who’s counting?)
Promontory kept the foreclosure gig anyway, with no
objection from Washington’s regulators or law enforcement officials.
But then, who around that table would question
Promontory? We know them, they probably thought. We’ve always known them.
Promontory and the other “independent” reviewers
collected $1.5 billion in fees for worthless work, from a settlement that was
supposed to help the occupant of that empty chair.
But of course the chair was empty. The
occupant’s invitation was never sent out. It never is.
The Securities and Exchange Commission has attended many
such meetings – meetings in which senior bankers bind their shareholders to
billions in fines and restitution, sometimes as penalty for fraud against those
very same shareholders.(The banks also have a knack for covering their obligations with money from
investors they’ve already defrauded, including working people’s pension funds)
The SEC’s senior attorney always has a seat at the table,either literally or
figuratively, whenever a big bank settlement is negotiated.
A new person was appointed to that position just today. The SEC’s new chief counsel held a
senior regulatory position under President Clinton, too. But if you think he
went to work for Covington & Burling after leaving public service like his
colleague did, you’re wrong.
He worked for Arnold & Porter.
After joining Covington’s
biggest competitor the SEC’s new legal chief moved on to another law firm,
still defending banks and bankers from the agency he now represents. He had one
last high-profile case before rejoining the government: MF Global. That’s the
firm that stole its investors’ money instead of investing it. He defended one of its’ executives.
One of this weekend’s settlements with Bank of America
addressed the fraudulent sale of mortgages to Fannie Mae. (Fannie Mae: That’s
the government agency that was “privatized,” ruined by privatized greed, and
then rescued by the taxpayers who now own it.) The agreement was undoubtedly
hammered out between Bank of America
and Fannie Mae’s CEO, who represented the people’s interests in this case.
Fannie Mae’s CEO hasn’t been there long. His last job was
as General Counsel for … Bank of America. In fact, he was BofA’s top
attorney in 2008, at the height of its foreclosure misdeeds. Now he’s settling
those misdeeds as part of a wave of deals that will allow the bank’s executives
to escape criminal prosecution. So he had a seat at both sides of the table.
That happens a lot in these deals. Get used to it.
Bank of America’s
agreed-upon payment to Fannie Mae sounds big – $3.6 billion. But that comes to
exactly one percent of the outstanding debt on those loans – debt that’s still
owed by the occupant of that empty chair. The bank’s total settlement costs are
roughly 0.75 percent of the total loan value.
BofA also agreed to sell the servicing rights to these
mortgages … undoubtedly to another one of the banks sitting around that
frequently-used table. The buyer will need to recoup their investment, of
course — and loan servicers boost their income by overcharging the occupant of
that empty chair.
So whose chair is it? You already know. That chair
belongs to the borrower whose home value was artificially inflated by a
bank-hired appraiser. It belongs to the homeowner who paid her mortgage on time
every month, but was still hit with unjustified ‘servicing charges’ that caused
her to fall behind … and lose her home.
That empty chair belongs to the minority communities
targeted for predatory lending, then left to wither and die. It belongs to the
bedroom communities whose residents invested their life’s savings in real
estate whose value had been artificially pumped up by by bank speculation. It
belongs to millions of families – in Hendersonville,
in WestGarfieldPark, in Baltimore
and Jacksonville and Bakersfield and thousands of other
communities across the country.
That chair belongs to the family who lost $50,000 or
$75,000 or $100,000 when they lost their homes, and then got $1,200 back in
that “big” $25 billion deal - and only then if they were “lucky.” It belongs to
all the Americans who lost trillions of dollars in housing value when the
bank-created bubble finally burst, and who were then left holding the debt.
That chair belongs to all the people who can’t find work
because nobody’s hiring. Nobody’s hiring because nobody’s buying. And nobody’s
buying because so many people are struggling to pay their overpriced loans.
That chair belongs to you, and it belongs to me. And as long as it’s empty these deals will all
turn out the same. A small circle of
friends will keep cutting the same cushy deals over and over again until we go
to Washington
and demand a change, thischange:
No more deals, no more negotiations. Not until we’re in the room. Not until we’re seated in the chair, at the
table, in the chambers of justice, that have always rightfull belonged to us –
and only us belonged to us – and only us
~~~
If, the good Lord is willing and the
creek don't rise I'll talk with you again next Tuesday January 22, 2013 if not
sooner.
