Schneiderman for President

We need leaders like Eric Schneiderman, because he's willing to pursue the big banks for driving us into the Great Recession.

I do mean that. The banks created the Great Recession. People were thrown out of work; people were thrown out of their homes, because big banks played such high-stakes fraud with all the nation's mortgages. They sliced them and diced them, sold them and resold them, and cut a lot of corners when they did all this, starting with the higher than usual number of fraudulent mortgages on which these securities were based.

Unemployment still has barely fallen to an official 9%, or a real 16%, the wave of foreclosures on homes seems unending, and is about to get even worse, now that "the paperwork" has been cleared up. Ordinary people are hurting, but it's because of the insane gambling by the banks, with depositors money, their money and money the Fed, a quasi-government entity, virtually gave to them, through extremely low cost loans.

When the banks were in danger of going bankrupt, the Government and the Fed offered $700 billion to bail them out with TARP, and then gave them extraordinary access to virtually costless money from the Fed. The program worked --for the banks and bankers. They're having one of their best years, bonuses are higher than ever, profits are soaring--

But we still have 9-16% unemployment, and we still have a sinking housing market, with millions of people ejected from their homes. During normal times, construction jobs are relatively plentiful. Now they are not; housing starts have fallen off a cliff.

All of this started because the wise-asses at places like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan thought they could play fast and loose with everybody's money. They thought they couldn't lose: until they did, beginning in mid-2007, when the bottom almost fell out of the whole global financial system, and it was because of their reckless behavior.

So far, no one has gone after the banks even for the fraud. I think they're responsible for much more, but at least the fraud has been documented. Still, neither Obama's DOJ, nor the 50 states attorneys general in their suit, have pursued the banks' massive fraud, even though it dwarfs any financial crime in history. That is, until now.

Enter Eric Schneiderman, New York's progressive Attorney General: he's going after Goldman, JP Morgan and Bank of America! I voted for him twice (first, in a five-way primary). The man's been busy in his first year: going after tobacco companies, Medicare fraud, corruption in state contracts, but now? Schneiderman has spurned the "deal" other AG's are negotiating. Instead, he's demanding documentation on the mortgage securitization that destroyed the housing market: he's looking for fraud. Finally, someone is!

Alert to Roman Senators! Slip some coke in Schneiderman's suit-coat; get a pimp to hook him! Your predatory schemes are suddenly at risk!

Obama and Class War

In his deficit-cutting address Wednesday, Obama's approach to the Defense budget was vague, but at least he pointed to Defense as a large target for cuts that must be made, some by re-examining the mission and role of our military in a "changing world."

Here's an example of his problem: while the administration considers transferring some Egyptian aid from military to economic programs, "some lawmakers fear that would mean cutting sales of U.S. military hardware." [Just Foreign Policy 4/13]. When there's peace, we can't sell arms. That's one reason why the US sticks its nose in globally: to sell arms. Our adventures are not only investments in future arm sales; they are also driven by the defense industry's insatiable appetite for ever-larger Defense budgets.

The arms dynamic is hard to overcome, as our sudden involvement in Libya demonstrates. Our allies are urging a more active role on the US, after it stepped back, making way for Europeans to lead (and pay the costs). But they want us because our huge Defense budget gives us capabilities no one else can bring to bear--in Libya, or elsewhere.

As a Medicare recipient, I've always felt Medicare should negotiate drug prices, but Bush banned negotiated prices; pharmaceutical corporations charge Medicare outrageous prices because they can. Obama proposes allowing Medicare to negotiate prices as a deficit-cutting measure, a clever move. His vision to change the way providers are paid makes sense, too. Real deficit-cutters should like both reforms: they would cut the deficit considerably. Medicare was set up to be a financial train-wreck by Bush/Cheney's prescription drug and privatization schemes (Medicare Advantage programs, etc.).

Obama's deficit cutting approach is reassuring; his riposte to Republican Ryan's deficit-cutting budget proposal was pointed. He declared he'd never permit Ryan's proposed voucher-ization of Medicare.

Even more heartening was Obama's recognition that the wealthy have done well while others still suffer, and they owe it to the nation to make a proportionally greater contribution (through tax hikes), to enable necessary services and investments in the future. The tax cuts proposed by Ryan, he noted, would take from those who needed help and give to those who didn't: not the kind of America Obama (or I) believe in.

Did Obama blame Wall Street? No, but his DOJ is simultaneously pursuing mortgage fraud by Goldman, JP Morgan, Washington Mutual and others--even possible criminal prosecution.

Obama claimed his proposal would cut $4 trillion from the debt--as much as Ryan, but with high-end tax increases, not draconian slashes to services and tax cuts for the wealthy.

It's class war part II. Who will prevail: the new Roman Senators, billionaires like the Koch brothers, represented by Republicans, or Obama, now representing ordinary people? It's a classic choice: Obama's way maintains democracy; Ryan's would usher in something comparable to Rome's last years, with Senators dominant and everyone else impoverished and powerless.

If They Were Really Democrats

There's a class war going on, and instead of siding with the so-called 'middle class', Democrats are saying, "Okay, okay, cut that nasty ol' deficit! Okay, okay, don't tax people with money, we'll sock it to the kids, seniors, poor--and public employees."

The Republicans were voted in on a wave of anger driven by the falsehoods of Foxvestia, and Limbaugh/Pravda, and by the billions from people like the Koch's and the executive class controlling corporations like Goldman Sachs and Exxon.

Democrats can't win the deficit-cutting game. Whatever concessions Democrats make, they are only furthering the agenda of the class that wants to destroy them, and wants to subject the rest of us to their maleficent control. That's what Walker's war on collective bargaining is about.

What Democrats should be doing, if they really are the Party of the People-- their perennial slogan--is fighting loudly for tax increases on the wealthy. The wealthy may have lost a bit in the recession, but they've amassed more wealth in the last two decades than all the rest of the nation combined. The wealthy made off with all but about 10% of US productivity gains since the 1970's: those gains have been prodigious. That's why the top 1% earns as much income as the bottom 95%. Wages and salaries below the top have been nearly flat since the 1970's, yet the size of our economy has doubled.

Why have Democrats caved? The debate is completely one-sided: Republicans say, cut taxes, period, and cut government spending on programs that help people not corporations. Democrats only counter with: let's not cut it that much.

The anger propelling Republican wins has subsided, according to polls: majorities oppose high-handed policies pushed by Wisconsin Governor Walker and other anti-union Republicans.

Democrats should campaign single-mindedly on growing jobs. They should point out: the stimulus worked, but not enough; more is needed: to go from 190,000 new jobs a month to 300-400,000, to get people back to work, to get the economy moving again. Democrats should point out that Republican deficit-cutting policies: gutting programs, laying off workers, will actually increase deficits and cut jobs since they will likely slow growth. They will also impoverish the nation in the future. Democrats should argue that tax-cuts for the wealthy will go mostly to speculation and investments overseas, not more jobs.

Instead, Yeats describes the Democrats: "the best lack all conviction," while their opponents "are full of passionate intensity." "And what rough beast, its hour come round at last/slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Democrats shouldn't cave; they should organize, speak smarter and shout louder than Republicans--truth and the issues are on their side, if only they'd champion them.

Why Dismantle the US?

It doesn't seem to make sense that Americans, many from old families living in this country for many generations, would want to dismantle the country that nurtured them.

In my Dec. 7th blog-post, "Come-on to Apocalypse," I showed how a libertarian/conservative list was promoting relocation to any of "80 beautiful countries." Allegiance to the US seems absent among the moneyed. Their attitude: take your fortune somewhere else, where you won't be so heavily taxed/regulated/controlled. The assumption is that the US is all of these things, although our tax burden is lower than almost all other developed nations. In many developing ones, however--and some developed ones like Greece--taxes and regulations are not enforced.

I expect the emigres would evade taxes of both their new abode and their former one, but it's ironic that the site promoting emigration also highlighted free medical care, something most conservatives complain about when it's "Obamacare."

So, the financiers, or other wealthy, have places to go. Their means of enrichment, however, might even suggest a parallel to fugitives from the law, who flee the country to escape imprisonment. For example, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et al, get virtually free money from the Fed, which they use to speculate through computer programs and algorithms, doing split-second trades for billions of dollars, and profiting with fractions of a cent. Actually what they are doing is ripping off millions of dollars daily, from everyone else. How different are they than the cyber-criminals who siphon unnoticeable fractions of a cent from millions of transactions? There have been crime movies, in which super-criminals invade bank security networks and do the same thing.

But Goldman, et al aren't criminals, at least in the legal sense: they're Wall Street operators. Why do they want to dismantle the US? Because they can: they can come away fabulously wealthy, but at the expense of everyone else.

The same ethos rules many American businesses: military contractors who overbill, "frackers," who don't care if they ruin our drinking water, for-profit prisons gaining "clients" from corrupt judges and manufacturers who outsource to avoid taxes and union wages.

This isn't just economics, it's politics: the effect of trade treaties. Mexican or Chinese workers undercut American labor. Trade barriers were lowered or eliminated enabling corporations to break unions and force American workers to compete with the lowest-paid labor globally.

Again, why? There is strong anti-union feeling among those who earn from capital: after all, the more a worker gets, the less they get--and vice-versa. Additionally, workers without unions can't resist the boss.

It boils down to class struggle. Capital is winning, never mind if it's destroying the country. With their money, the wealthy can always go somewhere else: one of those "80 beautiful countries." They can even find new victims.

In Rome, Senators voted to hand Italy and the Emperor over to the Ostrogoths, rather than raise taxes on themselves.