Hullabaloo

Friday, August 26, 2011

 
War of Independents

by digby

There's been a lot of chatter today (aside from the hurricane) about the new Pew poll's finding that large numbers of Americans don't want compromise at all costs after all. Indeed, more and more of them say they want the President to confront the Republicans.

But Greg Sargent homes in the really important part of this:

The poll finds that there's been a six point rise, up to a plurality of 36 percent, among overall independents who want to see Obama stand up to the GOP. Only 21 percent of indys say he should go along with Republicans more often, and 27 percent say he has the balance right.

But more crucially, the poll breaks down Dem-leaning and GOP-leaning independents — and it finds that 51 percent of Dem-leaning independents want him to more aggressively confront the GOP.

Dem-leaning independents are the ones it’s crucial Obama not lose. As Alan Abramowitz noted the other day, there’s a myth out there that holds that independents are a bloc of free-floating, wholly independent voters. Rather, they mostly lean towards one party or the other.

And the Dem-leaning independents want Obama to fight the GOP harder, rather than be too compromising with Republicans. That’s the way to hang on to them.

That sounds right. Republicans have shown themselves to be willing to take the country over the cliff and a fair number of people are catching on. And as Greg points out the President is never going to appeal to GOP leaning Independents --- it's the Democratic leaners who are in danger of defecting. And they're just as fed up with this appeasement as the rest of us.

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digby 8/26/2011 05:00:00 PM |

 
A planet is forever
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Our economic woes are over! All we need to do is take a chip off this old block:

Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Lying 4,000 light years away, or around an eighth of the way toward the center of the Milky Way from the Earth, the planet is probably the remnant of a once-massive star that has lost its outer layers to the so-called pulsar star it orbits.

Who cares if it's 4,000 light years away, or if the value of diamonds would plummet if humanity were ever to somehow bring chunks of it back to earth? It's a more viable idea for fixing the economy than the austerity crowd has dreamed up.


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thereisnospoon 8/26/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
Same old good ole boys

by digby

If anyone needs any more proof that the Tea Party is nothing but the same old conservative movement types, check this out:

Rick Perry’s candidacy has attracted strong initial support from Republicans who identify themselves as supporters of the Tea Party movement. Perry leads by 21 percentage points over the closest contenders among this group, Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann. Among Republicans who say they do not support the Tea Party movement, Romney and Perry are essentially tied.

He's a pro-war, gun nut, social conservative southern Governor, who believes in small government for regular people and big government for the security state. What else is new?

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digby 8/26/2011 02:01:00 PM |

 
Just do something

by digby

Not that anyone cares what we think, but this seems meaningful to me. From the new Pew Poll:

Changing Economic Priorities. As many Americans (47%) place a higher priority on spending to help the economy recover as on reducing the budget deficit (46%). In June, 52% said reducing the deficit was the higher priority while 42% said spending to help the economy recover was the higher priority.

Disgruntled Democrats. Currently, 61% of Democrats and Democratic leaners say their party is doing only a fair or poor job of standing up for its traditional positions, such as protecting the interests of minorities and helping the poor. Last fall, shortly after the midterm election, 50% said the party was doing only a fair or poor job in supporting the party’s traditional positions.

I think it's fairly amazing that in an environment where there is absolutely no public discussion about government spending to help the economy recover that more and more people are demanding just that. It's a tribute to the common sense of many Americans that they are able to see past the mountains of horseshit that's being piled on daily and come to the obvious conclusion: people are hurting and it's their government's job, its raison d'etre, to use the tools at its disposal to try to fix the problem. Apparently it has not escaped the notice of half of Americans that this mumbo jumbo about the deficit and "confidence" and the rest isn't addressing their concerns.

Moreover, and perhaps more interesting, is the fact that self-identified Democrats are finally waking up to the fact that their leaders aren't acting like Democrats. After all, if you don't believe in marshaling government power to mitigate the pain of average citizens in a time of crisis, then you should probably be in the other party.

I actually feel rather uplifted by this. If this much of the public can figure this out without anyone's help, perhaps there's some hope they can make the politicians listen.


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digby 8/26/2011 01:00:00 PM |

 
Batten down the hatches

by digby

hoo boy:



Watching from the left coast, hoping for the best.

Don't be stupid, be a smarty, follow directions and skip the party.


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digby 8/26/2011 11:30:00 AM |

 
Self-fulfilling austerity

by digby

Consumer confidence has dropped to a three year low. Fed Chairman Bernanke spoke this morning and said this:

"Bouts of sharp volatility and risk aversion in markets have recently re-emerged in reaction to concerns about both European sovereign debts and developments related to the U.S. fiscal situation, including the recent downgrade of the U.S. long-term credit rating by one of the major rating agencies and the controversy concerning the raising of the U.S. federal debt ceiling," Bernanke said.

"It is difficult to judge by how much these developments have affected economic activity thus far, but there seems little doubt that they have hurt household and business confidence and that they pose ongoing risks to growth," he added.

Perhaps he's right. Everyone's always talking about a lack of "confidence" and "uncertainty" as being the reasons growth is so sluggish. How about the fact that more than 10% of the nation's workers can't find enough work? And how about the fact that at the same time, "consumers" (otherwise known as citizens) are being pounded, day after day, with the notion that the nation's debt is so crippling that they are going to have to basically live like animals if they suffer the least little setback? Does it occur to anyone that these non-stop discussions of a "debt crisis", at a time of great financial insecurity in the present, are a self-fulfilling prophesy?

I'm not arguing for happy talk. But the entire public conversation over the past year has been dominated by this hand wringing and fear mongering over the deficit, with endless rending of garments over the need for "sacrifice" as if our financial doom was imminent. Why would any person of average means take a financial risk at a time like this? Our leaders all seem to believe that collapse is imminent unless every last person relinquishes their financial security in some measurable way, so common sense dictates that people hunker down and hope the storm passes them by.

Confidence? You'd be a fool to have confidence in the future. According to all of our most sagacious national commentators, the best case scenario is that our political leaders get past their minor differences on the scope of the cutting and come together to destroy the safety net. If they don't, well ... apparently it will be very, very bad.

Uncertainty? Average people don't have uncertainty. As far as they are concerned they're screwed no matter what happens. Our leadership demands that people buy into the silly notion that giving up their personal financial security is a patriotic duty and that high unemployment and underwater mortgages are niggling little problems that will be solved by putting more of their "skin in the game."

But the rubes aren't buying it. They're frozen, hoping against hope that this is all a bad dream and they'll wake up in a country with sane leaders who aren't inexplicably obsessed with inflicting increasing amounts of pain on its people while lying prostrate before the filthy rich, babbling incoherently about austerity. And who can blame them? If you listen to our elite leadership, the American Dream is a ridiculous artifact of another time. It's every man for himself.

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digby 8/26/2011 09:43:00 AM |

 
No Consequence for Extremism
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

One of the most remarkable political developments in recent years has been the GOP's open willingness to directly attack Social Security. Social Security has long been considered the "Third Rail" of American politics because anyone who touched it, wouldn't live to tell about it. It used to be that rhetorical assaults on this most popular of government programs even among Tea Party types would be relegated to the edges of the conservative fringe. But not so today. Today, a majority of Republicans voted for conservative darling Paul Ryan's Social Security-killing budget. GOP presidential frontrunner Rick Perry called Social Security an unconstitutional disease in his book. And much ballyhooed Great Latino Hope for the GOP Marco Rubio thinks Social Security has weakened us as a people. This is no longer the fringe. The GOP establishment has embraced a direct assault on Social Security.

This development is doubly strange when one stops to consider that the GOP's gains in 2010 were almost entirely made on the backs of seniors, for whom Social Security (along with Medicare) are the top electoral issues. Even despite the Ryan plan's attack on Social Security and Medicare, seniors are so strongly conservative overall that they are still likelier to support the Ryan budget over anything Democrats produce. Seniors are the GOP's bread and butter, and the GOP is openly declaring war on the programs nearest and dearest to them. Even if Republicans find it advantageous for their wealthy donors to throw Americans' healthcare and retirement savings into the gaping jaws of Wall St., the political risk to their demographic base is enormous once Democrats begin their attack ads in earnest. The danger to the GOP was already proven earlier this year in NY-26, which is why Republicans have been so desperate to get Obama and Democrats to also propose Medicare and Social Security cuts in order to muddy the water. So how do we account for the GOP's apparent shortsightedness and/or political recklessness on this issue?

Well, one way of looking at it is that the GOP has figured out that there is no consequence for extremism in American politics. America has a de facto two-party system. And as much as both parties dream of building the electoral coalition that will turn the other into a "permanent minority", the truth is that in a binary system with sophisticated political strategists and media machines on both sides, no party will hold office forever at a national level. Scandal, recession, and general malaise will ensure that the Party in power will be voted out by a disgruntled electorate, and that by default the beneficiaries of that event will be the Party currently out of power. It is easier to create electoral dominance in ideologically homogeneous states, but even then we often see the odd Republican elected in a solidly Democratic state, and vice versa. Electoral swings in America are increasingly more a naturally oscillating effect, than a statement of national ideological allegiance.

What this means is that in America, a smart political party occupying one of these two binary positions will worry less about trying to win every single election--an obvious impossibility--and more about making sure that they do as much as possible to push their favored policies while elected, while doing as much as possible to stymie the other party when they find themselves temporarily out of power. Total lack of cooperation with the political party in power has the added benefit of ruining the leadership's ability to accomplish anything for the people, which in turn makes it likelier that the leadership will be thrown out of power while the intransigent minority reaps the electoral benefits.

In this context, seeking to achieve "compromise" and please "moderate voters" is politically stupid. "Compromise" only helps one's opponents achieve legislative victories, while truly "moderate" voters swing with the political tide.

The GOP has figured out that it is much more intelligent in American politics to consolidate an unassailable ideological voter and donor base, win what elections they can essentially by default, and push the Overton Window as far as humanly possible toward conservatism while in office. And when Democrats hold office, as they inevitably will? Then prevent them from governing as Democrats:

At our 25th college reunion in 2003, Grover Norquist — the brain and able spokesman for the radical right — and I, along with other classmates who had been in public or political life, participated in a lively panel discussion about politics. During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America.

One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, “C’mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House.”

Norquist immediately replied: “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.”

Far from being insane, this approach is actually eminently rational. The GOP needn't hold the presidency every cycle. All they need to do is prevent a Democratic President from accomplishing much of anything progressive while forcing him or her to clean up Republican messes. Then when they inevitably get back in office, they can continue to ratchet public policy as far to the right as possible until they inevitably lose again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Insanity is what Democrats do: try to win every election and remain popular in the polls by compromising and appealing to the moderate voter while insulting their natural base, whether they're in office or out of office. If Democrats were smart, they would figure out that voters didn't suddenly love Democrats in 2006 any more than they suddenly loved Republicans in 2010. The Democrats' job should be to push policy in as far a progressive direction as possible and build the base while in office, and then prevent Republicans from governing as Republicans when they naturally oscillate out of the majority.

In American politics, there is no consequence for extremism. Extremism is, in fact, constantly rewarded. In a binary system, the media will always say that "both sides do it", and voters will always think the grass is greener on the other side.

The one and only thing that matters is who can shift policy farther in the direction of their natural base while in office. In this, Republicans have figured out the game masterfully, while Democrats are left constantly chasing a fickle moderate voter they cannot hope to keep in their column. The GOP knows it can get away with attacking Social Security, because it knows it can count on fickle, angry seniors to vote for them anyway in their disgruntlement over Democratic rule.

In this context, who wins or loses individual elections matters far less than how much ideological shift the winner can make in terms of public policy when they do win. As long as the opposition can remain remotely electable when the public sours on the incumbent Party, there is simply no consequence for ideological extremism.


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thereisnospoon 8/26/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Thursday, August 25, 2011

 
Powerful crazy

by digby

There are lots of interesting tid-bits in Dick Cheney's memoir, but I find this one most amusing. He's speaking of Iran-Contra:

In his memoir, Mr. Cheney writes that the enterprise was “ill conceived” but accuses Democrats of overreaching by trying to “turn the scandal into another Watergate” even though there was no evidence that President Reagan “was guilty of anything except inattention or absentmindedness.” He and other Republicans on the committee “noted many times that we were critical of the administration's conduct, but we nonetheless worked vigorously to defend the president against the extreme charges made by his critics. I thought it was also crucial to defend the presidency itself against congressional attempts to encroach on its power.”

Sure that makes sense. The congress is supposed to accept not only that the president was completely out to lunch but in that event they are also supposed to let him do whatever he pleases. I have a sneaking suspicion that the founders -- former subjects of Mad King George --- didn't exactly plan it that way.


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digby 8/25/2011 06:00:00 PM |

 
Perry and the dead peasants

by digby

Now this is what I call constituent service --- if your constituents are wealthy Wall Street donors:

Two weeks before Thanksgiving in 2003, top officials from Texas Governor Rick Perry's office pitched an unusual offer to the state's retired teachers: Let's get into the death business.

Perry's budget director, Mike Morrissey, laid out a pitch that was both ambitious and risky, according to notes summarizing the meeting provided to The Huffington Post.

According to the notes, which were authenticated by a meeting participant, the Perry administration wanted to help Wall Street investors gamble on how long retired Texas teachers would live. Perry was promising the state big money in exchange for helping Swiss banking giant UBS set up a business of teacher death speculation.

All they had to do was convince retirees to let UBS buy life insurance policies on them. When the retirees died, those policies would pay out benefits to Wall Street speculators, and the state, supposedly, would get paid for arranging the bets. The families of the deceased former teachers would get nothing.

The meeting notes offer the most direct evidence that the Perry administration was not only intimately involved with the insurance scheme, but a leading driver of the plan.

Those of you who saw Capitalism: A Love Story, will recall the part about dead peasants, right?

And people say America doesn't produce anything anymore.

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digby 8/25/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
When did Ken become a Jonas brother?

by digby





I know. Click through to see what it's all about. I bet you can't guess.

I wonder if Ken is similarly equipped as this fellow?


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digby 8/25/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
Lazy old losers

by digby

The wingnuts all believe they're going to live forever and nothing bad can ever happen to them. Here's the GOP's Great Hispanic Hope on Medicare and Social Security:

These programs actually weakened us as a people. You see, almost forever, it was institutions in society that assumed the role of taking care of one another. If someone was sick in your family, you took care of them. If a neighbor met misfortune, you took care of them. You saved for your retirement and your future because you had to. We took these things upon ourselves in our communities, our families, and our homes, and our churches and our synagogues. But all that changed when the government began to assume those responsibilities. All of a sudden, for an increasing number of people in our nation, it was no longer necessary to worry about saving for security because that was the government’s job.

Isn't that nice? If only we could go back to the days of Ward and June Cleaver when everyone took care of each other and didn't need things like money or health insurance when they got old and sick and couldn't work. Back in the good old days everyone took care of the poor and there was no suffering or pain. It was one big happy family. Except, of course, that's just crap.

Think Progress reports:

[P]rior to Medicare’s enactment in 1965, “about one-half of America’s seniors did not have hospital insurance,” “more than one in four elderly were estimated to go without medical care due to cost concerns,” and one in three seniors were living in poverty. Today, nearly all seniors have access to affordable health care and only about 14 percent of seniors are below the poverty line.

Listening to Rubio's rhetoric takes us all the way back to Ronald Reagan's famous jeremiads against these "socialist" programs. But there used to be another way of talking about this which people seemed to understand quite well. Here's an excerpt of the comments by President Johnson on the signing of Medicare into law in 1965:

It was a generation ago that Harry Truman said, and I quote him: "Millions of our citizens do not now have a full measure of opportunity to achieve and to enjoy good health. Millions do not now have protection or security against the economic effects of sickness. And the time has now arrived for action to help them attain that opportunity and to help them get that protection."

Well, today, Mr. President, and my fellow Americans, we are taking such action--20 years later. And we are doing that under the great leadership of men like John McCormack, our Speaker; Carl Albert, our majority leader; our very able and beloved majority leader of the Senate, Mike Mansfield; and distinguished Members of the Ways and Means and Finance Committees of the House and Senate--of both parties, Democratic and Republican.

Because the need for this action is plain; and it is so clear indeed that we marvel not simply at the passage of this bill, but what we marvel at is that it took so many years to pass it. And I am so glad that Aime Forand is here to see it finally passed and signed--one of the first authors.

There are more than 18 million Americans over the age of 65. Most of them have low incomes. Most of them are threatened by illness and medical expenses that they cannot afford.

And through this new law, Mr. President, every citizen will be able, in his productive years when he is earning, to insure himself against the ravages of illness in his old age...

No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. No longer will young families see their own incomes, and their own hopes, eaten away simply because they are carrying out their deep moral obligations to their parents, and to their uncles, and their aunts.

And no longer will this Nation refuse the hand of justice to those who have given a lifetime of service and wisdom and labor to the progress of this progressive country.

[...]

President Harry Truman, as any President must, made many decisions of great moment; although he always made them frankly and with a courage and a clarity that few men have ever shared. The immense and the intricate questions of freedom and survival were caught up many times in the web of Harry Truman's judgment. And this is in the tradition of leadership.

But there is another tradition that we share today. It calls upon us never to be indifferent toward despair. It commands us never to turn away from helplessness. It directs us never to ignore or to spurn those who suffer untended in a land that is bursting with abundance...

And this is not just our tradition--or the tradition of the Democratic Party--or even the tradition of the Nation. It is as old as the day it was first commanded: "Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, to thy needy, in thy land."

And just think, Mr. President, because of this document--and the long years of struggle which so many have put into creating it--in this town, and a thousand other towns like it, there are men and women in pain who will now find ease. There are those, alone in suffering who will now hear the sound of some approaching footsteps coming to help. There are those fearing the terrible darkness of despairing poverty--despite their long years of labor and expectation--who will now look up to see the light of hope and realization.

What, no paeans to the free market defensively thrown in there to ensure that nobody thought he was some kind of a liberal squish? How odd.

So we're back to arguing first principles with silly young men embarrassingly proclaiming that our great nation requires that (lazy) old people depend on their children to support them or go begging in the streets, like they used to do, essentially so "productive" people won't have to pay taxes for anything but lots of cops and lots of soldiers. Isn't that what America is really all about?


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digby 8/25/2011 01:49:00 PM |

 
DSK: secrets and lies

by digby

I haven't written all that much about the DSK matter, preferring to wait until the evidence was formally presented before coming to any conclusion about what happened. As I wrote earlier, my instincts as a civil libertarian often come in conflict with my innate sympathy for rape victims so I choose to be very, very, very careful in these cases.

Well, there's not going to be a trial and it seems to me that this is the right decision. It's awful to think that this woman won't get justice if her claims are true, but our legal system requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt and in the case of rape, the victim's credibility is paramount. If they'd dropped the case because it turned out she'd had one night stands or some such, it would have been a travesty. Luckily, we seem to have come to the point (at least some of the time) that a rape victim's credibility isn't based upon her being chaste. But to convincingly lie over and over again to the prosecutors about another rape that didn't happen? That goes directly to her credibility. They had to drop the case.

Katha Pollit, a feminist with impeccable credentials, agrees:

The prosecutors did what they had to do when they dropped the charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn. As they wrote in their motion to dismiss, Nafissatou Diallo had told too many untruths, and told them too persuasively. Supporters have put forward explanations for her shifting stories—rape trauma, mistranslation, distrust of the DA’s office, fear of job loss and even deportation—but what comes through the motion to dismiss is that the prosecutors just got fed up. It wasn’t just that they didn’t think they could get a conviction with such a flawed complainant. It was that they themselves had lost confidence in her: “The nature and number of the complainant’s falsehoods leave us unable to credit her version of events beyond a reasonable doubt, whatever the truth may be about the encounter between the complainant and the defendant. If we do not believe her beyond a reasonable doubt, we cannot ask a jury to do so.”

But she provides a necessary note of caution about out vaunted legal system nonetheless:

The real credibility problems with Diallo shouldn’t make us forget how many women lose out in the justice system because behind them lurks the suspicion that they are lying, or crazy, or slutty or fair game, or a woman scorned, or out for money, fame or “attention.” The onus is always on her to disprove these powerful cultural myths, and it’s remarkable how hard it can be. Something. There’s usually something.

That's right. I don't know of any other crime where so much is required of the victim in order to make the case, even where DNA is present. Unfortunately, there's no good answer for this. Convicting someone of a crime they didn't commit is a horror of its own magnitude, done in the name of the people. We are all implicated when it happens.

There is a silver lining in all this. The French have awakened to the fact that sexual harassment and assault are not laughing matters. DSK's aggressive behavior toward women was legend and they never took it seriously. Since the charges,however, women have come forward and the nation has done some soul searching.

It always takes something like this for otherwise modern cultures to understand that sexual freedom doesn't equal coercion. That seems definitional to me, but some people seem to have a really hard time with it.


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digby 8/25/2011 11:30:00 AM |

 
Following folly with folly

by digby

Ezra Klein quotes Herbert Hoover this morning and notices that it sounds remarkably familiar. Hoover said this in 1932:

Nothing is more important than balancing the budget with the least increase in taxes. The Federal Government should be in such position that it will need issue no securities which increase the public debt after the beginning of the next fiscal year, July 1. That is vital to the still further promotion of employment and agriculture. It gives positive assurance to business and industry that the Government will keep out of the money market and allow industry and agriculture to borrow the monies required for the conduct of business.

I don't know why people are saying exactly the same words today. It's one of more startling phenomenons I've seen in my lifetime. On the other hand, the Iraq war had the same surreal quality to it as well.Recall this crazy blather:

Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?

Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles — far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations — in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) for missions targeting the United States. And of course, sophisticated delivery systems are not required for a chemical or biological attack — all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.

And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein's links to international terrorist groups.

Of course, nothing quite beats this, after the fact:

"The larger point is and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power ..."

Government's lie and even very smart people get caught up in what later appears to have been some sort of mass hysteria. I don't know why this happens -- it appears to be a psychological phenomenon. (And it seems to me to be happening more lately (or maybe it's just that the stakes are getting higher) But this willingness --- eagerness -- to throw hard won knowledge and plain common sense out the window in these elite stampedes is disorienting and weird even for the most skeptical among us.

One thing I will say for Iraq --- people always react to perceived physical threats emotionally and are easily manipulated, as they were after 9/11. The economic hysteria, on the other hand, stems from an esoteric debate that should see a lot more courage on the part of academics and others who know better. But then, many of those who led the cheerleading for the Iraq war came from academic circles as well -- assuring all of us that "the storm was gathering" and we had to get him before he got us. So maybe that's just par for the course after all.

The press, however, should always, every time, without question be skeptical of whatever powerful people tell them. Their job is to demand proof, pin them down, work them hard to prove what they're saying. Unfortunately, in this world of access journalism and TV celebrity and establishment consensus, the press is usually part of the problem too.

So, we the people watch from our living rooms as the political elite lead us once again into hell, knowing that what Herbert Hoover said in 1932 is no more right today than it was then. And yet, this time we're going to follow his advice and live through the consequences for reasons that are obscure and unfathomable. And I'm sure we'll soon have some austerity apologists come forth as David Ignatius did in 2005, to explain that we should be grateful for such deception because in the long run everything will be hunky dory:

Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn't so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn't be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn't provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.

The good news, you see, is that life goes on. Unfortunately, as someone who knew something about Herbert Hoover's prescription said, we'll all be dead. Too bad for us.

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digby 8/25/2011 10:11:00 AM |

 
Just a heartbeat away
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

This is the man the Republicans put one heartbeat away from the Presidency for eight years:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney says in a new memoir that he urged President George W. Bush to bomb a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor site in June 2007. But, he wrote, Mr. Bush opted for a diplomatic approach after other advisers — still stinging over “the bad intelligence we had received about Iraq’s stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction” — expressed misgivings.

“I again made the case for U.S. military action against the reactor,” Mr. Cheney wrote about a meeting on the issue. “But I was a lone voice. After I finished, the president asked, ‘Does anyone here agree with the vice president?’ Not a single hand went up around the room.”

Mr. Bush chose to try diplomatic pressure to force the Syrians to abandon the secret program, but the Israelis bombed the site in September 2007. Mr. Cheney’s account of the discussion appears in his autobiography, “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir,” which is to be published by Simon & Schuster next week. A copy was obtained by The New York Times.

Mr. Cheney’s book — which is often pugnacious in tone and in which he expresses little regret about many of the most controversial decisions of the Bush administration — casts him as something of an outlier among top advisers who increasingly took what he saw as a misguided course on national security issues. While he praises Mr. Bush as “an outstanding leader,” Mr. Cheney, who made guarding the secrecy of internal deliberations a hallmark of his time in office, divulges a number of conflicts with others in the inner circle.

If had McCain won in 2008, we could have had Sarah Palin succeed this nutcase in sitting one breath away from the Presidency. It should be fun seeing which yahoo the GOP will send America's way in 2012.



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thereisnospoon 8/25/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

 
Norman Rockwell, radical

by digby

I don't think anything can illustrate how far the country has moved to the right than the fact that Normal Rockwell, once considered the very definition of straight-laced, conservative, middle America, is now controversial among the DC chattering classes:

President Barack Obama has taken a decidedly low-key approach to racial issues since he became America’s first black president two years ago. But in a hallway outside the Oval Office, he has placed a head-turning painting depicting one of the ugliest racial episodes in U.S. history.

Norman Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With,” installed in the White House last month, shows U.S. marshals escorting Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old African-American girl, into a New Orleans elementary school in 1960 as court-ordered integration met with an angry and defiant response from the white community.

The thrust of the painting is not subtle. America’s vilest racial epithet appears in letters several inches high at the top of the canvas. To the left side, the letters “KKK” are plainly visible. The crowds, mostly women who gathered daily to taunt Bridges as she went to a largely empty school, are not shown in the picture. But the racist graffiti and a splattered tomato convey the hostile atmosphere.

The commie bastard. It's not as if these people literally spray painted racist epithets on the wall. How dare Rockwell suggest that anything like that actually happened:

In November 15, 1960 The New York Times reported: “Some 150 white, mostly housewives and teenage youths, clustered along the sidewalks across from the William Franz School when pupils marched in at 8:40 am. One youth chanted “Two, Four, Six, Eight, we don’t want to segregate; eight, six, four, two, we don’t want a chigeroo.”

“Forty minutes later, four deputy marshals arrived with a little Negro girl and her mother. They walked hurriedly up the steps and into the yellow brick building while onlookers jeered and shouted taunts.”

“The girl, dressed in a stiffly starched white dress with a ribbon in her hair, gripping her mother’s hand tightly and glancing apprehensively toward the crowd.

Ruby Bridges in her award winning childrens book Through My Eyes writes: “The author John Steinbeck was driving through New Orleans with his dog, Charley, when he heard about the racist crowds that gathered outside the Franz school each morning to protest its integration. He decided to go see what was happening.”

“He especially wanted to see a group of women who came to scream at me and at the few white children who crossed the picket lines and went to school...

John Steinbeck wrote: “The show opened on time. Sound the sirens. Motorcycle cops. Then two big black cars filled with big men in blond felt hats pulled up in front of the school. The crowd seemed to hold its breath. Four big marshals got out of each car and from somewhere in the automobiles they extracted the littlest negro girl you ever saw, dressed in shining starchy white, with new white shoes on feet so little they were almost round. Her face and little legs were very black against the white.”

“The big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of jeering shrieks went up from behind the barricades. The little girl did not look at the howling crowd, but from the side the whites of her eyes showed like those of a frightened fawn. The men turned her around like a doll and then the strange procession moved up the broad walk toward the school, and the child was even more a mite because the men were so big. Then the girl made a curious hop, and I think I know what it was. I think in her whole life she had not gone ten steps without skipping, but now in the middle of her first step, the weight bore her down and her little round feet took measured, reluctant steps between the tall guards. Slowly they climbed the steps and entered the school.” -Travels With Charley

Yes, that all really happened. And 50 years later, we are apparently supposed to forget it did. Clearly the Politico sees something odd, if not downright sinister, about the President putting this picture up in the White House. The fact that he is an American, born in the year that painting was done --- and has two little girls himself --- can't possibly be reason enough. I'm fairly sure he's cynically doing it to insult the tea party.


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digby 8/24/2011 08:00:00 PM |

 
Sit down and shut up

by digby

Yesterday the unity 08 No Labels group put out a study showing that politicians of both parties are failing to hold Townhalls this August in the face of confrontational citizens. That's really sad. But it isn't stopping the people from turning out in droves to those that are --- or finding other ways to let their representatives know what's on their minds. What dday has dubbed the Invisible Townhall Revolution (I called it the Hidden Rebellion, but it didn't catch on ... c'est la vie) continues apace with reports of very unhappy constituents all over the country.

Here's one dispatch from the district of Ohio GOP stalwart Steve Chabot, (via the Political Carnival):

It is not supposed to happen in America where we value free speech and proudly revel in our history of men and women standing up and speaking to their elected representatives. But…once again, just last night, as they did in June, Congressman Steve Chabot, his staff and security team made sure that there could be no genuine human interaction or spoken question from the audience or any recorded documentation of what was said. And this occurred in a public meeting, in a public place, conducted by a public official, who while speaking to the public refused over 100 people who disagreed with him the opportunity to speak. And he had the police there to physically enforce his own private rules for public discourse.

Last night it was supposed ‘security reasons” that they again not only banned citizen speech, but the photographing and filming of the Congressman speaking as well. Chabot’s security team enlisted the help of the on-duty Cincinnati Police (car # 05313) to enforce this policy with the threat of arrest and the actual confiscation of two video cameras until the conclusion of the meeting.

When exactly did this become normal? The last I heard we had a democracy and a bill of rights that guaranteed the people the right to free speech, assembly, petition their government --- all kinds of good stuff. At what point did it become ok for Representatives to tell their constituents to shut up or get out?

And considering the amount of anger across the country, how does he know this isn't going to impact his ability to get votes? It could just as easily be Republicans as Democrats who want to express themselves these days.

This strikes me as a very bad development. These politicians are barricading themselves behind closed doors and only seeing what they want to see and they communicate with the voters through expensive advertisement financed by wealthy donors. This is not business as usual, particularly for congressional reps who are supposed to stay close to the people.

This is unhealthy. We have disagreements in this country and we are allowed to air them loudly and even rudely --- even Tea Partiers (who I mostly criticized for their unpleasant little habit of showing up to meetings wearing guns and talking about spilling blood.) But rudeness? Let 'er rip. These politicians are paid by the people and the least they can do is listen.

Update: Doh. Chabot has a progressive opponent.And a good one:

You can read Connie's strong guest editorial about standing up to John Kasich and his reactionary Republicans' attack on working families and watch her passionate defense of women's right to choice here.

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digby 8/24/2011 06:00:00 PM |

 
Picture this

by digby

Somebody tell me again that the culture war is over.

David Limbaugh, the conservative author and brother of Rush, tweets an image you're likely to see again.

Hmmm. I've been told that it's very wrong to make fun of this guy:



Yeah, that's the same studly man in uniform.

Never mind the fact that Perry was 22 in 1972, when all the true blue cadets of his age were still trying to evade the draft. Obama is 11 years younger than him and was 22 in 1983, when Ronnie Reagan was single handedly winning the cold war.

Look, I have plenty of respect for the military. I grew up in it. But the idea that this costumed fool deserves some kind of special dispensation to punch hippies because he wore a (closetful of) uniforms is a very sad comment on liberalism. They aren't playing by the same rules:

UPDATE: Perry spokesman Mark Miner emailed this response: "A picture is worth a thousand words.

Yes it is. That letterman sweater is just dreamy. I think it looked better on Frankie Avalon though.


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digby 8/24/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Confidence Fairies and Attorneys General
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Attempting to follow the mortgage fraud foreclosure story is like going down Alice's rabbit hole: the farther you go in, the weirder and more convoluted everything starts to become, the more confusing the details get, and the less you know what or whom to trust in terms of sources.

That is why context is so important. The essential details are basically that lenders transferred the deeds of ownership from one servicer to the next in order to create the mortgage-backed security bundles that crashed the entire economy. In so doing, they had shoddy or nonexistent documentation of the transfer of ownership of the mortgages. As any student of property rights knows, you can't foreclose on a property for which you cannot prove ownership. We already know that courts have been papering over the problem in allowing banks to illegally foreclose on properties. But homeowners are fighting back, causing a massive legal and financial liability for the banking industry both in terms of properties they cannot legally foreclose on, and lawsuits for improper handling of documentation and illegal evictions.

So the Administration and state Attorneys General have been working for months on a multi-state compact that would allow the major banks to make a slap-on-the-wrist settlement in exchange for immunity for their various criminal and criminally negligent behaviors. But why do that? Why not let the banks assume the responsibility for the mess of their own creation? Tim Geithner explained the Administration's thinking back in March:

A comprehensive settlement between U.S. authorities and banks over alleged mortgage servicing abuses needs to be reached quickly to help the housing market heal, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday.

Geithner said such a settlement will help dispel legal uncertainty that has been plaguing mortgage lenders and clogging the foreclosure process.

"It is very important that we try to bring this to bed as quickly as we can," Geithner told the Senate Banking Committee. "I think all parties, not just the servicers, but the state AGs and the federal agencies have a strong stake in doing that."

A group of 50 state attorneys general and 12 federal agencies are probing bank mortgage practices that burst into public view last year, including the use of "robo-signers" to sign hundreds of unread foreclosure documents a day.

The negotiators are struggling to reach a single agreement on financial penalties and higher standards for banks handling troubled home loans.

The Administration's argument is that the economy cannot rebound unless the housing market rebounds, and the housing market can't rebound unless the foreclosures are processed, and the foreclosures can't be processed until this inconvenient ugliness is out of the way. This argument assumes that the only path to economic prosperity is through higher home prices.

The only problem with that is that, as the Wall Street Journal points out, housing prices are still overvalued:

The analysis underscores a broader point: While the nation's housing markets largely fell and rose together during the housing boom and bust, they aren't likely to hit bottom and begin recovery at the same time or pace. The Zillow analysis shows that many markets still appear to be overvalued.

For the U.S. as a whole, home prices were around 2.9 times incomes from 1985 to 2000. But during the housing boom, values increased at a much faster rate than incomes. The price-to-income ratio peaked at around 5.1 in 2005. Home prices have since fallen so that on average, nationally, prices are around 3.3 times incomes, or about 14% above the historical trend.

In short, the Administration's argument boils down to the idea that Americans need to re-inflate a still overinflated housing asset bubble to reinvigorate the economy, because the idea of making gains through wage increases, jobs programs and burden-lightening social programs are off the table. In fact, not only are those things off the table, but it's actually time for austerity measures that will contract wages and employment.

That's why the Administration is dead set on hoping we get lucky by boosting the confidence fairy, because they have no other plan for boosting the economy. None. And if that means papering over massive criminal activity on the part of the financial industry to make the confidence fairy perk up her little wings, then so be it.

That, then, is the context for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's removal from the group of nationwide Attorneys General seeking a settlement with the banks. Schneiderman isn't keen on the deal being sought to grant immunity and a slap on the wrist for these institutions, and wants significantly more accountability to protect both investors and homeowners. Particularly since no one yet knows the full extent of the criminal negligence involved:

And so, the moral of the story is, the robo-signing/chain of title/overall mortgage securitization liability issue is a bear of a problem. It isn’t going away. So here’s a tip to journalists writing about the housing market. Don’t trust what Bank of America, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, various Federal regulators, Obama officials, and probably other bank-associated parties tell you.

Don’t trust the bank-friendly conventional wisdom, because it will end up making otherwise good stories inaccurate (this goes for headline writers as well). The banks don’t know their legal liability and the regulators don’t know how to fix this problem. And everyone’s suing everyone.

There is no reason for anyone to be hurrying to a settlement on this. Questions of moral hazard and basic justice aside, indemnifying the banks won't automatically clear out the foreclosure backlog. The housing market is still overvalued, and attempting to re-inflate it is simply bad economic policy. Geither's plan, in addition to being flagrantly immoral, is also doomed to fail from a purely economic perspective.

What needs to happen is for the long-planned indemnification deal to die a well-deserved death, and for each state to make a full investigation of the criminal negligence involved. Efforts should be made to work out deals between homeowners and banks to move to negotiated settlements, including own-to-rent scenarios. And the Administration needs to start focusing on ways to jump-start the economy that don't involve pumping up asset bubbles and providing more giveaways to an already overfed and bloated financial sector.

Democratic Attorneys General in states across the nation should abandon the multi-state compact, and join with Schneiderman to demand real investigations and full accountability for the financial sector in its handling of the mortgage mess. Once they have assessed the extent of the damage, then the nation can work out solutions that are based on wage and jobs growth, rather than asset bubbles and confidence fairies.


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thereisnospoon 8/24/2011 02:12:00 PM |

 
Goodbye yellow-brick road

by digby

On a day when the financial news is all about gold, my thoughts inevitably turn to Ron Paul. If, like me, you have not spent years studying monetary policy, much less absorbed the reasoning behind his and Glenn Beck'sinsistence on returning to the gold standard, this well written piece on the issue (by a conservative critic, btw) explains it well. And he points, rightly I think, to why it's gaining traction, which should be a lesson for Democratic politicians if they choose to listen:

IF Representative Paul has been agitating for a return to gold for the better part of four decades, why have his arguments now begun to resonate more widely? One might point to new media—to the proliferation of cable-television channels, satellite-radio stations and websites that allow out-of-the-mainstream arguments to more easily find their audiences. It is tempting to blame the black-helicopter brigades who see conspiracies everywhere, but most especially in government. There are the forces of globalization, which lead older, less-skilled workers to feel left behind economically, fanning their anger with everyone in power, but with the educated elites in particular (not least onetime professors with seats on the Federal Reserve Board).

There may be something to all this, but there is also the financial crisis, the most serious to hit the United States in more than eight decades. Its very occurrence seemingly validated the arguments of those like Paul who had long insisted that the economic superstructure was, as a result of government interference and fiat money, inherently unstable. Chicken Little becomes an oracle on those rare occasions when the sky actually does fall.

Read the whole thing for the history of goldbuggery and the holes in Paul's thesis.
(This is interesting too.)

The way I see it, it's not so much that the good doctor's diagnosis is so wrong, it's the snake oil prescription. Sure, the Fed is too powerful, too obscure and too bound to protect the interests of the financial elites. But returning to the gold standard would actually make things much worse for average people.

But then, the goldbugs' obsession has little to do with economics and everything to do with ideology and politics. Libertarian ideology and politics to be precise, half of which is perfectly reasonable. It's the crazy, economic half that's the problem.

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digby 8/24/2011 01:30:00 PM |

 
Bargains and Tiger and whores, oh my

by digby

Going after Thomas Friedman is like shooting fish in a barrel, so I'll just recommend that you go and read his silly column today and I'm sure you'll recognize every stale, centrist point in it for the nonsense it is. Let's just say that rallying the nation around the idea of the Grand Bargain with its "shared sacrifice" and "skin in the game" isn't up there with "Happy days are here again" or "Morning in America" as politics' most inspirational slogan. Somehow I doubt that Average Joe's are going to be energized by the idea that wealthy people are going to be asked nicely to kick in some tip money in exchange for them giving up their financial security. (But hey, it's probably better than WTF.)

On Morning Joe today, Howard Dean said Thomas Friedman is writing "opinion page blather" and blames Wall Street for being miscreants. Watch the Villagers turn on him with the ferociousness of rabid dogs:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Right. The only thing wrong with Friedman's column was the comparison to Tiger Woods. The rest of it made very good sense. For millionaires anyway. (Just listening to Harold Ford defend Wall Street is enough to ruin my lunch. Is there a bigger whore anywhere on the planet? ) But at least Andrea Mitchell was there to step in and help us understand Tom Friedman better from a personal perspective. He's an exceptional golfer, you see. That explains everything.

The good news is that they all agree that what the President has to do is go to the country with the Grand Bargain and sell it as hard as Kevin Costner golfed in Tin Cup. Or something.

All these wealthy TV celebrities know that the only thing that matters is that we clear this debt as quickly as possible. And some of them undoubtedly feel very righteous and pure in their willingness to pitch in and endure the necessary "shared sacrifice" to get that done. It's quite inspirational to see people so willing to do their part. Now if only all those millions of old, sick, poor and struggling people would get with the program and be as patriotic we could lick these problems and move on to something interesting, like war or blow-jobs.

You'll notice that none of them mentioned the 800 pound unemployed gorilla in the room. But then they all have extremely well-paying jobs, don't they?


h/t to @RockDot
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digby 8/24/2011 11:30:00 AM |

 
Historical interlude

by digby

Check out this tape of Lyndon Johnson on the phone talking about the Alaska earthquake in 1964. What amazes me the most about it is the extent to which he's directing the action (or thinks he is, anyway.)

This Presidential Recording Program is fascinating, by the way. It makes you realize that these presidents' openness to being recorded reflects a very different time. They simply assumed that they were protected by their status, position and place in history. They weren't. I think that's a good thing overall. They shouldn't be so sure of themselves. On the other hand, history has lost something extremely valuable: an unbiased inside view of the presidency during times of crisis.

Now we're stuck with Bob Woodward.

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digby 8/24/2011 10:00:00 AM |

 
Alternate Universe

by digby

There are so many jokes I could make about this, but I think it speaks for itself:

Setting aside the silliness of the ad, when you listen to what he's saying you can see a very defined, explicit worldview that is at seriously odds with reality. And millions of people think this way. The problem with our politics isn't just corruption, although that lies at the heart of it. It's important to acknowledge that a whole lot of our fellow Americans believe very, different things than we do and the fight we are having is real and substantial. Fixing the money in politics problem will help stabilize it, but unraveling the rightwing propaganda that's been pumped into this populace over the past 30 years must be at the top of the list as well. We will always have disagreements with conservatives. But this is bizarroworld, know-nothingism. Different animal (so to speak.)


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digby 8/24/2011 09:00:00 AM |

 
Will the state Attorneys General stand up to Wall St. and the White House?
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

I know the financial industry runs the country top to bottom, but even this is hard to believe:

Eric T. Schneiderman, the top prosecutor in New York, was removed on Tuesday from a committee of state attorneys general investigating mortgage abuses.

In recent months, Mr. Schneiderman has voiced concerns over a proposed settlement between major banks and a coalition of federal and state officials over claims of foreclosure abuses. He has come under increasing pressure to approve the deal.

The Iowa attorney general’s office is leading the investigation and on Tuesday sent an e-mail to other lawyers involved in the investigation to announce the decision. “Effective immediately, the New York attorney general’s office has been removed from the executive committee of the robosigning multistate,” a lawyer from the Iowa office wrote, using the shorthand for the investigation, which is looking into so-called robo-signing of mortgage documents and other abuses.

Word on the ground is that Scheiderman won't exactly be taking this slight lying down, and fully intends to fight for accountability for the mortgage lending racket. Good for him.

You have to feel for the Administration. They're faced with a dual revolt on their hands: on the one hand, they have angry progressives and liberals who expect something remotely approaching governance on behalf of the people instead of Wall Street. And on the other, they have banksters threatening to give all hard stolen earned money over to Mitt Romney.

Faced with that hard choice, the Obama Administration has chosen to protect the banksters. Not surprising: they expect irrelevant liberals to fall in line, and they know Wall St. cash is a more fickle mistress.

The only question now is what state Attorneys General are going to do about it. They're accountable to their people, too, and more importantly they aren't usually beholden to financial sector cash.

David Dayen has a good rundown of the status of the rest of the relevant attorneys general as well:

Democrats Madigan, Schneiderman, Delaware’s Beau Biden (the VP’s son, who has joined Schneiderman on his intervention into the Bank of America settlement with investors over mortgage backed securities), Massachusetts’ Martha Coakley and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto are on the record against a broad liability release in one way or another, and others like Washington’s Rob McKenna (R), Colorado’s John Suthers (R), California’s Kamala Harris, and even Utah’s Mark Shurtleff (R) and Michigan’s Bill Schuette (R) have active investigations or lawsuits on this issue.

Of particular interest is what newly elected California Attorney General Kamala Harris will do. California is an extremely powerful player nationally, and many of the greatest excesses of the mortgage fraud business took place here. Ms. Harris won election to Attorney General in a surprise over a formidable Republican candidate, in spite of being an anti-death-penalty female African-American. Quite an extraordinary feat, but one that was accomplished with much blood, sweat and tears from the California Democratic Party's liberal base. So far she has done good work on mortgage fraud, but her efforts have mostly centered on small-to-medium sized mortgage scammers rather than on the big boys.

Ms. Harris and the other Democratic Attorneys General across America would do well to join with Mr. Schneiderman in refusing to bow to the Obama Administration's pressure. The needs of the people and the demand for accountability are more pressing concerns to New Yorkers and Californians than President Obama's need to win a few more bankster millions away from the Mitt Romney campaign.
thereisnospoon 8/24/2011 07:30:00 AM |