GOP kills effort to help save jobs of teachers and firefighters in order to protect millionaires

They want the economy to stay bad until after the presidential elections. And they'd never do much to help anyone beyond the rich even after the elections. Read the rest of this post...

OWS unimpressed with Goldman setting aside billions for bonuses

Something tells me the rest of the country feels the same way. How is it possible to have declining numbers yet still have such bloated bonuses? This is why Americans are fed up with Wall Street.

As a share of overall revenue, these expenses are actually up 1% from last year, despite Goldman's weaker performance.

Those at Occupy Wall Street didn't need to parse the bank's earnings report to rail against its perceived profligacy.

"Do they really need all that?" asked Stephen Crawn, 22, who called for "more strict regulation" of the financial industry.

"For the future of our nation, there needs to be a change," he said.

Read the rest of this post...

GOPer Tommy Thompson seems to endorse (literally) "death panels"

Wow.

Monday, in Tommy Thompson’s press conference in which he announced himself a “candidate” free of all disclosure laws because he wasn’t “officially” saying he was a “candidate,” he pronounced himself just all down with Paul Ryan’s plan to destroy Medicare as we know it .

Thompson also spoke candidly on the role of end of life costs play in the Medicare budget. He said costs incurred in the last six months of patients’ lives account for 28 percent of it. “What happens? Mother or father or grandpa and grandma, you’ve been away, you haven’t done very much. Children come home, mother or father’s on their deathbed, they feel guilty because they haven’t being paying attention to mother or father. Let’s face it. So they say “let’s do everything we can for mother or father. Don’t spare the costs.”

And the alternative is... wait for it... death panels. Read the rest of this post...

Steve Jobs told Obama he was going to be a one-termer

HuffPost got a hold of the new not-yet-out biography of Steve Jobs.  The revelation that he scolded Obama - for not being pro-business enough! - will surprise some people.  This is is how HuffPo recounts the story:

Jobs, who was known for his prickly, stubborn personality, almost missed meeting President Obama in the fall of 2010 because he insisted that the president personally ask him for a meeting. Though his wife told him that Obama "was really psyched to meet with you," Jobs insisted on the personal invitation, and the standoff lasted for five days. When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.

Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.

Do read the rest of the HuffPo summary, including what Jobs thought of Bill Gates (not much) and how he always believe he was going to die young. Read the rest of this post...

GOP Sen. Marco Rubio’s harrowing family immigrant story that never happened

Wash Post:

During his rise to political prominence, Sen. Marco Rubio frequently repeated a compelling version of his family’s history that had special resonance in South Florida. He was the “son of exiles,” he told audiences, Cuban Americans forced off their beloved island after “a thug,” Fidel Castro, took power.

The speech drew heavy coverage in Florida, for it was a momentous event. Rubio was the first Cuban American to become speaker of the House in the Florida Legislature. In Florida, being connected to the post-Revolution exile community gives a politician cache that could never be achieved by someone identified with the pre-Castro exodus, a group often viewed with suspicion.

When Rubio’s parents left the island, Cuban migration to the United States was a trickle compared with what it would become in the years after Castro’s victory. “The vast majority of people who emigrated in the 50s went for economic reasons, not for political reasons,” said Maria Cristina Garcia, an expert on Cuban migration at Cornell University.

Multiple documents signed by Rubio’s parents, including their petitions for naturalization, show that Mario and Oriales Rubio arrived in the United States on May 27, 1956, bringing with them their five-year-old son, Mario Maternal grandfather Pedro Victor Garcia also came to the United States around the same time.

I suppose it's possible he didn't know the correct year that his family came to America, but it's not like they came over on the boat 100 years ago. It was the mid 1950s. And it's a rather salient detail as to whether the family came over to the US casually before Castro took over, or whether "the thug" kicked them out after he took power. Either Rubio lied to us or his parents lied to him.

According to the Washington Post, Rubio is now claiming that he was just repeating "family lore." But they have all the documents, including the brother's documents showing that the brother immigrated along with mom and dad in 1956, not after 1959. The brother never said anything when he heard Marco repeatedly saying they had fled Castro, and knew it was wrong?  The parents never said anything to correct him?  Seriously?

According to Wikipedia, Rubio's father only just died in 2010. His mother is still alive. As is his brother Mario. They all knew when they came here. None of them heard Marco tell the family story wrongly?  And if they did, none of them bothered telling him?  It's just not a credible explanation.  These aren't ancient documents we're talking about - the three key players were still alive last year, and they never said a thing?  Come on.  (And his Wikipedia page still says, incorrectly, that his parents were Cuban exiles.)

PS According to the Post, some people are comparing this controversy to the contrived controversy about President Obama allegedly being born in Kenya.  Uh, except that in Obama's case, it was his attackers telling the lie, while in Rubio's case, he was the one fibbing.  Kind of different. Read the rest of this post...

An origins story for Occupy Wall Street

This comes from David Graeber, publishing at Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism.

It's fascinating, not just as story, but as concept. Here's a bit of the morphing moment (my emphasis on the conceptual part):

On August 2, I showed up at a 7 PM meeting at Bowling Green, that a Greek anarchist friend, who I’d met at a recent activist get together at 16 Beaver Street, had told me was meant to plan some kind of action on Wall Street in mid-September. At the time I was only vaguely aware of the background: that a month before, the Canadian magazine Adbusters had put out the call to “Occupy Wall Street”, but had really just floated the idea on the internet, along with some very compelling graphics, to see if it would take hold; that a local anti-budget cut coalition top-heavy with NGOs, unions, and socialist groups had tried to take possession of the process and called for a “General Assembly” at Bowling Green. The title proved extremely misleading. When I arrived, I found the event had been effectively taken over by a veteran protest group called the Worker’s World Party, most famous for having patched together ANSWER one of the two great anti-war coalitions, back in 2003. They had already set up their banners, megaphones, and were making speeches—after which, someone explained, they were planning on leading the 80-odd assembled people in a march past the Stock Exchange itself.

The usual reaction to this sort of thing is a kind of cynical, bitter resignation. “I wish they at least wouldn’t advertise a ‘General Assembly’ if they’re not actually going to hold one.” Actually, I think I actually said that, or something slightly less polite, to one of the organizers, a disturbingly large man, who immediately remarked, “well, fine. Why don’t you leave?”

But as I paced about the Green, I noticed something. To adopt activist parlance: this wasn’t really a crowds of verticals—that is, the sort of people whose idea of political action is to march around with signs under the control of one or another top-down protest movement. They were mostly pretty obviously horizontals: people more sympathetic with anarchist principles of organization, non-hierarchical forms of direct democracy, and direct action. I quickly spotted at least one Wobbly, a young Korean activist I remembered from some Food Not Bomb event, some college students wearing Zapatista paraphernalia, a Spanish couple who’d been involved with the indignados in Madrid… I found my Greek friends, an American I knew from street battles in Quebec during the Summit of the Americas in 2001, now turned labor organizer in Manhattan, a Japanese activist intellectual I’d known for years… My Greek friend looked at me and I looked at her and we both instantly realized the other was thinking the same thing: “Why are we so complacent? Why is it that every time we see something like this happening, we just mutter things and go home?” – though I think the way we put it was more like, “You know something? F--- this sh--. They advertised a general assembly. Let’s hold one.”

So we gathered up a few obvious horizontals and formed a circle .... almost everyone abandoned the rally and come over to our side.

And they're off. A real present-at-the-birth story, engaging and instructive.

Two notes:

■ David Graeber is this guy, an interesting fellow with an interesting history. His recent book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, is very well received.

■ When you go to OccupyWallStreet.org, you end up here. Adbusters and their role is mentioned in the first paragraph above. Here's their main site; and here's their magazine.

(Update: I'm reminded in the comments that the "official" Occupy website is www.OccupyWallSt.org.)

GP Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senator proposes new stimulus package... for Libya

That's sweet.  Maybe some day the Republicans will care about America too.  And putting that aside for a moment, how cute that the GOP is refusing to fund infrastructure projects at home (a number of Republican governors have actually turned back federal money for railways), yet they have no problem touting infrastructure projects for Libya - either they help build an economy or they don't. TPM:

But why spend there when austerity in the United States means workers are getting laid off and infrastructures decaying. We asked Graham in the Capitol after a vote on Thursday and he explained.

"I would say this is a loan, not a gift," Graham said. "It is in our interest to get their oil back online, so we can have more supply, which will help our consumers, it is in our interest to get their economy moving forward, so a vacuum won't be filled by extremists, and we will get the money we invest back.

Yeah, I think we know a thing or two about vacuums in economies being filled by extremists. Read the rest of this post...

Wheeler in The Atlantic: "Significant holes in U.S. legal case against alleged Iran plotter"

Marcy Wheeler, now writing for The Atlantic as well as at emptywheel.net, has a nice piece about the latest terrorist du jour, the alleged would-be destroyer of Saudi Ambassadors and DC restaurants.

As usual for Wheeler, the piece is well researched and nicely logicked. Seems Mr. Arbabsiar is not the reason-for-war some want him to be. Here's a taste:

In the wake of the Obama Administration's announcement that an Iranian-American used car salesman had set up a plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., a number of Iran and intelligence experts have raised questions about the plausibility of the alleged Iranian plot.

But few have commented on problems in the legal case presented against the used car salesman, Manssor Arbabsiar, and his alleged co-conspirators from Iran's Quds Force, a branch of its special forces. There is a handful of what appear to be holes in the complaint. Though individually they are small, taken together they raise difficult questions about the government's case. The apparent holes also seem to match up with some of the same concerns raised by skeptical Iran analysts, such as Arbabsiar's rationale in confessing and the extent of his connection to the Quds Force.

The government claims that Arbabsiar sought out someone he thought was a Mexican drug cartel member in May; he was actually a Drug Enforcement Agency confidential informant. Over a series of meetings, the government alleges, Arbabsiar arranged to forward $100,000 to the informant as down payment for the attack, promised $1.5 million more, and agreed that the informant should kill Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir with a bomb blast at a DC restaurant, one that would possibly be full of civilians and U.S. members of Congress.

Wheeler lists four pieces of evidence in the government's complaint, and identifies problems with each. For example, there are significant holes in the list of conversations taped by the paid informer, which means we must rely on the word of the informer for the nature of the original agreement between the "plotter" and the informer that led to money changing hands.

There are other problems as well; Wheeler does a good job detailing them.

She agrees that the government could fix those holes — for example, by unsealing the original complaint. But, she adds, "[U]ntil the government does those things, it has offered not just a plot that appears implausible to a number of Iran experts, but one with significant weaknesses in the legal case."

Haven't we seen this movie before? This is just the opening bit, but the plot is starting to sound a little familiar.

GP Read the rest of this post...

The latest floated mortgage settlement is a bad deal

There have been new reports of an evolved deal between Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, the Obama Department of Justice, and the nation's five largest banks regarding the 50 44 state investigations into robosigning and other fraudulent behavior by the banks. New developments include expanding the release beyond robosigning to cover fraudulent mortgage orgination as well. Professor Adam Levitin has a pretty definitive takedown of the various components of the deal that have been leaked.

One of the pieces of the deal, according to Shahien Nasiripour of the Financial Times, is to include about $2 billion for refinancing borrowers who are current but underwater.

About 150,000 borrowers could benefit from the refinancings, as the vast majority of US home loans are owned by investors and government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. By comparison, nearly 11m US borrowers are underwater, according to CoreLogic, a data provider. The average underwater homeowner owes $258,000 on his mortgage.

So the plan here is to help at best 1% of homeowners who are underwater. That's before we give any consideration to the administration's horrible track record when it comes to actually implementing programs aimed at helping homeowners to their full capacity. Levitin thinks it will, at best, help around 60,000 homeowners.

And again, what are the states and the federal government giving up in exchange for a couple billion that will barely help any homeowners? Levitin:

now we learn that this settlement is going to include a release of origination fraud claims against the banks in exchange for an additional $2B-$4B. It's Keystone Cops -- worse than Keystone Cops. For a while the AGs just looked incompetent in the settlement negotiations. But now it's gone from incompetence to outright malfeasance. To contemplate a release of origination claims that have never been investigated for an additional $4B is so shocking that I have trouble finding genteel words to say about it. To paraphrase Rep. Elijah Cummings, "Is Tom Miller a chump?" Why on earth does he feel compelled to even discuss such a patently bad deal?]    

It's truly hard to capture how bad a deal this is on many levels. It's a bad deal for homeowners, who aren't going to get the help they need to keep their homes. It's a bad deal for the rule of law, where yet again massive corporate criminality is swept under the rug (remember FISA in 2007-2008?). It's a bad deal for investors, who will likely lose out by not having the knowledge that would come from attorneys general bringing civil suits in every state. It's just a bad deal.

I'm not convinced that this will actually happen. We've heard about imminent deals coming out of the Miller talks for almost as long as they've been going on. Thanks to the leadership of AGs who care about their job responsibilities - people like Eric Schneiderman, Beau Biden, Catherine Cortez Masto, Lori Swanson and others - the odds of their being a deal is greatly reduced. But the fact that Miller and the Obama administration keep trying to give away more to get any deal for the banks is sickening. This won't help anyone, that is, unless you think providing protections to keep bank executives rich and out of jail an important service of government. Read the rest of this post...

Video purporting to be Gaddafi captured, injured, before death

It's obviously somewhat gruesome video.  This does appear to be the same man in video posted earlier showing a body that appeared to be Gaddafi. Read the rest of this post...

Airlines made $32.5 billion from luggage (etc) fees. Time we Occupied United?

That's a lot of checked in luggage and boxed sandwiches. While it's easy to understand the financial problems of the older airlines, it's hard to swallow as a customer. On my most recent travels in the US I've had to cough up a few hundred dollars more for luggage fees. Somehow the airlines must think that I've unloaded luggage along the way and now have smaller bags that can fit in the overhead bins, since international travel does not (yet) charge for normal luggage.

What is most annoying about the fees is the inability to show flexibility by the airlines. When I questioned Delta about the $25 fee on a recent flight that was canceled and delayed for two days they refused to even respond. I spent a lot of my own money and two days of work time to travel back and forth to the airport yet they were uninterested in waving the luggage fee. Even better, it took a day for them to get my luggage to me after the travels.

The budget airlines of Europe slap on a lot of fees but they're also charging a lot less -- there's a quite fair quid pro quo. Something about these massive fees the American companies charge is wrong and it needs to change.

A $10 in-flight meal here, a $25 bag fee there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

As in $32.5 billion, which, according to a just-released analysis, is the estimated amount the global airline industry will make in ancillary revenues this year. According to the Amadeus Worldwide Estimate of Ancillary Revenue for 2011, that’s a 43.8 percent increase over the year before.

And in the US market, the increase is a whopping 87% increase since 2010.

NOTE FROM JOHN: The airlines basically made a windfall by taxing you during an economic crisis.  Maybe someone should be Occupying United. Read the rest of this post...

Herman "Sanger" Cain: Pro-choice and gonna lose

So a pro-choicer, a Mormon bishop and a closet case go into a bar...

From Greg Sargent:

Last night, Herman Cain made a big splash when he backed into pro-choice language on abortion last night on CNN — apparently by accident — when he said he is personally fully against abortion but doesn’t think that the government should tell women what to do. This is already shaping up as a very big deal. Cain is leading in some polls, so other Republicans may use this slip up to try to take him down, and he’ll have to address it.

In an effort to backtrack, Cain just tweeted:

I'm 100% pro-life. End of story.

Uh, no. We know you're personally pro-life, you said that last night. But as President your policies would be pro-choice, that's also what you said last night. So this isn't a clarification at all.

So now the big choice for far-right GOP primary voters is whether they vote for a black guy who's secretly pro-choice, a Mormon bishop who's secretly a Democrat, or a George Bush wannabe who's rumored to have a lot more secrets than Cain and Romney combined. Read the rest of this post...

Video: "Deb will you occupy my life?" Marriage proposal at OWS NYC (adorable)

Click image to watch video.

(h/t Greg Mitchell) Read the rest of this post...

When John met Muammar

Read the rest of this post...

Graphic video, purports to be Gaddafi’s body

There still is some lingering uncertainty about whether Gaddafi is dead (I imagine it's hard to confirm in all the turmoil), though most seem to think he is. JoeMyGod has posted a video that's going around, purporting to be Gaddafi’s body. Per se it's graphic.

The Libyan Prime Minister says he's dead.

Washington Post's Chris Cillizza looks at the election impact here at home. I think the impact is more subtle. Yes, these things can potentially cause a temporary bump in the polls, but over time they have a more subtle impact. Osama's, and now Gaddafi's, deaths do help burnish Obama's foreign policy image, which helps inoculate him on whatever foreign policy dirt the GOP plans to throw at him during the general election. And more generally, it feeds a sense of competence about the president, to counter, even slightly, discontent about the economy. Yes, the economy is the public's number one concern, but every little bit on every other issue still helps.

Devastating photo of Sirte, Gaddafi's home town.

Video of Hillary getting the news on her Blackberry.

The Republicans point out that only recently the President shook hands and yucked it up with the dictator. Read the rest of this post...

Gaddafi is dead

Breaking news this morning:

Abdul Hakim Belhaj, a NTC military chief, has confirmed that Muammar Gaddafi has died of his wounds after being captured near Sirte.

Another NTC commander said that Moussa Ibrahim, former spokesman for Muammar Gaddafi's fallen government, was captured near the Sirte.

Abdul Hakim Al Jalil, commander of the 11th brigade, also said he had seen the body of the chief of Gaddafi's armed forces, Abu Bakr Younus Jabr.

"I've seen him with my own eyes," he said and showed Reuters a picture of Jabr's body.

Al Jazeera is broadcasting scenes of celebration from Libya. Read the rest of this post...

Occupy Wall Street to start airing branding ads in response to GOP smears

As DailyKos notes, this may be in response to the GOP's attempt to brand all the protesters as anti-Semites or whatever.

Conservative groups are currently running ads on cable news accusing Occupy Wall Street of anti-Semitism. Right-wing media, and even the Republican National Committee, are piling on those attacks.

Soon, however, Occupy Wall Street will begin running a television ad of its own. The ad features a diverse set of protesters speaking directly into the camera what they hope the movement will achieve. Here it is...

You can watch a copy of the ad over at DKos.  It is interesting that the GOP propaganda machine has gone into high gear to tarnish the OWS protesters.  Their protests haven't been particularly partisan.  So it's interesting that the GOP is making things partisan by, yet again, defending rich people behaving badly.  Considering that a majority of American supports OWS, this seems like a risky move. Read the rest of this post...