Credit rating for Greece cut to lowest possible level

Welcome to the bailout world, if you're not a bank.

Moody's Investors Service on Friday cut Greece's sovereign debt rating to the lowest possible level after a debt-restructuring deal that imposes hefty economic losses for private creditors. Moody's lowered Greece's local and foreign-currency bond ratings a notch to C from Ca, becoming the third credit rating agency to downgrade the country following the announcement of the swap deal to lighten its debt burden. Moody's says that bonds rated C "are the lowest rated class and are typically in default, with little prospect for recovery of principal or interest." The rating agency added that it did not assign any future outlook.

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"I've spent the past 2 days trying to convince my 16 y.o. she is not a 'sl-t'

Beantown Mom at Daily Kos:

I can hardly type, can hardly put this into words! I have been writing and rewriting this because if I don't break down in tears, I get so angry that I can't think straight! I know that so much has already been written about this whole issue, but I am writing this diary from a very personal point of view; forgive me if I find no humor in any of this, excuse me if I take no part in celebrating the loss of sponsorship for that pig's radio program. You see, my 16 year old daughter came home from school on Friday in tears and has been in a state of utter despair since. She was told, in no uncertain terms, that she is a sl-t, a prostitute, a horny piece of trash that is out to sleep with every guy in school!

The horrid little monsters who started harassing my daughter had the audacity to tell her their mothers were the ones who labeled her with these despicable opinions - they were just "telling it like it is, you know, like that guy on the radio! The one who isn't afraid to tell the truth!" Who does this?! How does Rush Limbaugh or anyone else have the right to do this, to say these things about anyone?

Because far too many greedy companies still support the man's bigotry, racism and sexism. Read the rest of this post...

Axelrod: Limbaugh only gave a "quasi-apology"

USA Today:

It doesn't sound like the Rush Limbaugh/birth control flap is going away any time soon.

President Obama's top political aide said this morning that Limbaugh made only a "quasi-apology" to the law student he called a "sl-t," and that his initial comments were "predicated on a lie."

"The lie was that somehow she was asking that taxpayers pay for contraception," Axelrod said on ABC's This Week. "The policy is that in basic insurance policies, contraception -- contraceptive services, birth control, should be included."

Axelrod added, "even in his sort of quasi-apology last night, Mr. Limbaugh continued that falsehood, and it needs to be challenged."

USA Today goes on to note that in Limbaugh's "apology" he says he "chose the wrong words." Yeah, one can only imagine what words Limbaugh intended to use.

It's fascinating that Limbaugh quasi-apologized at all. He doesn't do that. And the GOP has no ability to influence the man by pressure. Remember, it's Limbaugh who influences the GOP - every time a Republican has criticized him, he's forced THEM to apologize to HIM. So what's up? I think Limbaugh finally saw a real threat to his advertisers, a number of them walked over this scandal, and money talks with Rush. It is sad, however, that it took this long for his advertisers to wake up and smell the hate. And that several advertisers have continued to stick with the hate, the racism, the sexism. Read the rest of this post...

Two ways of looking at a Snowe-bird (Olympia edition)

Count this as a Quick Hits. Olympia Snowe retired recently, amid speculation that ... well, no one knows why.

Here are two comments on Ms. Snowe, gathered by yours truly from around the iNet.

■ First, Jonathan Chait (h/t the Professor; my paragraphing):

When George W. Bush proposed a huge, regressive tax cut in 2001, Snowe, sitting at the heart of a decisive block of centrists, used her leverage to support the passage of a modestly smaller and less regressive version.

When Barack Obama proposed a large fiscal stimulus in 2009, Snowe (citing fears of deficits that she had helped create) decided to shave a nice round $100 billion off his figure and call it a day.

If a Gingrich administration proposed spending a trillion dollars to erect a 100- foot-tall solid-gold Winston Churchill statue on Mars, Snowe would no doubt decide, after careful deliberation, that the wise course was to trim the height down to 90 feet and perhaps use a cheaper bronze alloy in the base.

A Village "moderate" (or what passes for one on TV).

■ Next, Susie Madrak, commenting on a piece by the Sunlight Foundation (my emphasis):

The real reason?

This certainly sounds like a big factor, if not the main reason, for Snowe’s decision not to run for reelection. Maybe it was the final straw, since Snowe was also facing a primary challenge from the Tea Party:

Last August, while Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, was in the midst of an intensive round of fundraising for her 2012 reelection bid, a four-year-old civil lawsuit alleging fraud by an education company in which she and her husband are heavily invested became public.

Nationally, most of the coverage of Snowe’s decision to drop her reelection bid has focused on the centrist Republican’s frustration with the polarized politics on Capitol Hill. But in Maine, a few newspapers have speculated that her husband’s legal entanglements had a role in Snowe’s sudden and surprising decision ...

According to the senator’s most recent financial disclosure form, she and her husband, former Maine Gov. John McKernan Jr., have investments worth between $2 million and $10 million in Education Management Corp., a Pittsburgh-based company that operates for-profit higher education institutions. McKernan is chairman of the board of directors of the company, now embroiled in a lawsuit in which the federal gover[n]ment, 11 states and the District of Columbia are seeking to recover a portion of the $11 billion in federal student aid that the education firm has received since July 2003.

Originally filed in April 2007 by a pair of whistleblowers, the lawsuit alleges that the company violated a federal law that prohibits schools from paying admissions officers based on the number of students they recruit and enroll. ...

The complaint names Snowe’s husband, noting that in December 2006, while he was the company’s chief executive officer, McKernan personally signed [false] certifications that Education Management Corp.’s schools complied with the ban on offering compensation to admissions officers based on the number of students they recruit.

Now here’s where it gets interesting ...

Nice; it was already interesting.

Read the whole thing at Susie's site. I think she and the Sunlight group are onto something. (We wrote about for-profit schools here, by the way; a truly wicked bunch).

■ And finally, for those who wondered what the title of this post is about, a taste:

            II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

            XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by one of this nation's geniuses. Sunday fun; the other eleven ways are just as good.

(I was tempted to tag this a Music post, but I didn't.)

GP Read the rest of this post...

Cato Institute: Koch Bros are engaged in a "hostile takeover"

Apparently, being almost completely bent to their will is not enough. These days there's always room for more.

The Cato Institute is complaining of a "hostile takeover" by the Koch Bros (Wash Post, my emphases and some reparagraphing everywhere):

The Cato Institute’s president, Edward Crane, released a statement responding to the lawsuit filed yesterday by billionaires Charles and David Koch, calling the move “an attempt at a hostile takeover.”

Crane accuses Charles Koch of attempting to “transform Cato from an independent, nonpartisan research organization into a political entity that might better support his partisan agenda,” and vowed to keep the think tank “an independent, nonpartisan research organization.”

Although the lawsuit names Charles and David Koch as the plaintiffs, Crane’s statement only names Charles Koch. According to the Cato website, David H. Koch remains a member of the board of directors.

If you're aware of this story, this is probably all you know. Let's look a little deeper.

■ What does a "hostile takeover" mean in terms of a "think" tank like Cato? For starters, the Cato Institute has owners:

Although it is a non-profit, as initially incorporated, Cato is effectively owned by a board of shareholders. Until recently, this board consisted of Cato President and founder Ed Crane, Charles Koch, David Koch, and the late William Niskanen, each holding equal shares in the corporation.

According to a related Wash Post story:

At the heart of the dispute is the fate of the shares owned by Niskanen, who died in October at age 78 of complications from a stroke. The Koch brothers believe that they have the option to buy Niskanen’s shares, while Cato officials believe that the shares belong to Niskanen’s widow, Kathryn Washburn, according to the complaint.

So it's lawsuit-on-lawsuit violence. (Aren't these the people who think too many people file suits? Maybe it's just too many "other" people.)

■ But why a lawsuit at all, you ask? Why does it matter?

No one knows for sure, but here's one possibility, from yet a third Post story, quoting Cato board chair Bob Levy (who may or may not be right):

Cato’s board chairman, Bob Levy, said in an interview that the Koch brothers, who have the power to appoint half of the board, have been choosing “Koch operatives” for members, with an eye to push Cato toward support of the Republican Party.

“None of the new directors, with the exception of one, has a reputation as a libertarian,” Levy said. “There are a lot of murky areas between actively supporting candidates and what Cato does now, which is working on issues.”

Cato scholars often differ with Republicans, holding an noninterventionist foreign policy, for example, and more liberal positions on immigration, same-sex marriage and several other social issues.

Levy's a Randian true believer, and he sees through that rosy lens. My outside eye will say what he says differently.

If Levy is right, this means that the Billionaire Coup has reached a stage where it's no longer a semi-loose alliance between the Movement Conservative Project and the Republican Party, with friendly allied interests like "libertarianism" hanging in the satellite circles.

It means that one of the prime forces in the Billionaire Coup is starting to combine its diverse organs into a larger singularity, one where there's little discernible difference between something called a "libertarian think tank" and something called the "Republican party."

In other words, MoveCon corporate HQ is starting to fold its subsidiaries into one giant conglomerate — call it We Own Everything, Inc. Bye-bye separate brands.

And this separately-branded "think" tank — which pretends to independence the way a client state pretends to independence — is upset that its nominal ruler is being replaced by a mere provincial procurator.

Think I'm wrong about that client status? Read on.

■ Cato is not an "independent, non-partisan research" organization, contrary to its self-branding. Cato is and always was a Movement Conservative propaganda organ that sometimes does good work and sometimes just advances Movement goals, just as Heritage and AEI do. Cato does enough honest work to make it and their "scholars" credible, and enough propaganda to make you say, "Hmm."

A fog shop, in other words. As I wrote a while back:

Cato advances a lot of curious positions, such as Social Security privatization and climate-change denial. Cato funds a large group of like-minded think tanks, and they're pretty good friends with a guy named "Phillip Morris" — still.

Cato was created by Charles Koch (with help from Edward Crane); it was a Koch brothers' joint from the start:

The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. It was founded as the Charles Koch Foundation in 1974 by Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the conglomerate Koch Industries, Inc., the second largest privately held company by revenue in the United States. It changed its name to the Cato Institute in December 1976.

The Institute's stated mission is "to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace. The Institute will use the most effective means to originate, advocate, promote, and disseminate applicable policy proposals[.]"

And here's David Brock, from the invaluable first chapter of The Republican Noise Machine (which details the creation of MoveCon Project institutions like Cato):

Edward Crane, president of the Cato Institute, another important right-wing think tank founded in the mid-1970s, described the Republican Right's goal this way: "As we grow, I don't want us to shift toward the mainstream. I want the mainstream to shift toward us, and that's our challenge." [page 46] ... Cato officials have said they won't print any studies that come out favorably toward government programs. And right-wing think tank researchers have been fired for failing to follow the party line. "My contact with [Cato] was strange," colulmnist Nat Hentoff has said. "They're ideologues, like Trotskyites. All questions must be seen and solved within the true faith of libertarianism[.] [page 54]

Of course, there's more where that came from; just check Brock's index. Like I said, your basic MoveCon fog shop — it dresses like a chicken to confuse you when it quacks.

■ As a side note, keep in mind a slight discrepancy. Charles Koch is the nominal founder of Cato, along with Ed Crane. Further:

Charles Koch was the largest financial backer of Cato in its formative years. More recently, however, the brothers have cut back on their giving to the organization, donating nothing last year, according to Cato officials. The Kochs have given millions of dollars to a new libertarian center at George Mason University [Mercatus, a name to keep in mind].

A Cato spokeswoman last year said that Charles Koch and Crane had a “falling-out” in 1991.

And as the first quote of this piece noted above:

Although the lawsuit names Charles and David Koch as the plaintiffs, Crane’s statement only names Charles Koch. According to the Cato website, David H. Koch remains a member of the board of directors.

Both Kochs are suing him, but Crane's only calling out Charles. Retainer-on-billionaire violence? If so, we'll see who wins. (My money's on Money every time, but you knew that, right?)

GP Read the rest of this post...

R.E.M. - Orange Crush

I'm pretty much sorted now for tickets to the rodeo on Tuesday in Houston. The closest thing that I have experienced would be the state fair in Ohio, but that was mostly about seeing what cow won a prize and maybe a concert or two. (I don't think they have tractor pulls at the rodeo, but again, it's all new to me.) They have a BBQ cook-off but I don't think I will make it for that this time. Pity though because I love good BBQ. The weather really feels like summer for me and when I get home it will be cold again, so I need to enjoy the warm weather while I have it. Read the rest of this post...

Obama calls for end to billions in subsidies to Big Oil

If Big Oil hasn't figured out how to make money at this stage, then there's a problem. But of course, they have figured it out and a big part of it is squeezing taxpayers for handouts. If we can't afford a real safety net or affordable health care (and we have neither), how can we afford to keep funding the most profitable industry on the planet? NY Times:

With his re-election fate increasingly tied to the price Americans are paying at the gas pump, President Obama asked Congress on Thursday to end $4 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies and vowed to tackle the country’s long-term energy issues while shunning “phony election-year promises about lower gas prices.” Mr. Obama, in an appearance at Nashua Community College here, took a page out of his jobs strategy of last year, calling on Americans to contact their Congressional representatives and demand a vote on the oil subsidies in the next few weeks. “You can either stand up for the oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people,” Mr. Obama said. “You can keep subsidizing a fossil fuel that’s been getting taxpayer dollars for a century, or you can place your bets on a clean-energy future.”

While he's at it, Obama needs to shut down the free money (also known as quantitative easing) for Wall Street and let them fend for themselves. Read the rest of this post...