The Revolving Door between DC and Wall Street swings again

Elizabeth Warren is better than most but this same old story is nonsense. One gets the impression the Wall Street types come back into Washington to help smooth the path to their next job, back on Wall Street. In theory, sure, they probably know the tricks from Wall Street better than anyone but in practice it's hard to find an example of where they've utilized that knowledge to help improve the situation for most Americans. This is an abusive system that is only open to the governing elite, who use it to maintain power and privilege.

The country has been screaming for more representation from Freddie Mac and Deutsche Bank and their prayers have been answered.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair Elizabeth Warren has named a former Freddie Mac official alongside two bankers as senior hires at the organisation.

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Protests scheduled today in Algeria

The last round was met with a massive police force and this one will likely be the same. The dynamics in Algeria are somewhat different in than in neighboring countries. While there's no doubt about the firm grip on power at the top, Algeria has struggled with extreme violence for years from radical extremists. If anything, that violence has helped the government look reasonable. It's not to say people wouldn't like a better government, but with what the country has been through, anything stable looks better. Al Jazeera:

Algerians are planning an anti-government protest in the capital, Algiers, a week after thousands of demonstrators were confronted by 30,000 riot police at the same venue.

The protest, scheduled to take place on Saturday around May 1 Square, the site of last week's rally, has been organised by the National Co-ordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD).

The month-old umbrella group is made up of the political opposition, the Algerian human rights league and trade unions.

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Making it real: Recall in Wisconsin

Politics is largely a lizard-brain thing. That means most politicians act or react in response to simple impulses -- pain or pleasure. Deliver unto them one or the other and watch them scurry this way or that.

That's what came to mind when I read a post over at DailyKos today. The idea in the post -- launching a recall drive against those state senators supporting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's effort to destroy public-employees' collective bargaining rights -- struck me as exactly the right idea. First-time DK diarist fcphantom makes it clear and concise, so I won't recreate it here -- just go read it.

And the idea excited a lot of other people, too, judging by the recommendations and number of comments. And be sure to read the comments, too, where the diarist's idea gets massaged, refined and improved. They convinced me: such a recall effort, whatever the outcome, is sure to help the progressive cause. Flexing muscles build strength. Make no mistake: hitting the pavement, turning out in the thousands in Madison, is tangible work. But the gathered masses need something productive to pursue amidst the chanting and sign waving and after they go home. Recall makes it real. Read the rest of this post...

Feds dropping case against Countrywide's Mozilo

As Matt Taibbi said, they are the unjailables. The US system of justice becomes more of a sad joke by the year. Torture? No problem. Invade a country based on lies and kill 100,000? Things happen. Spy on American citizens and then continue the program from one administration to the next? It's fine. Trigger a global economic meltdown causing the loss of trillions plus millions of jobs? For gosh sakes, don't worry about it. Justice usually only works if it's the elite screwing everyone else. What a pathetic system of justice.

Federal prosecutors have ended a criminal investigation of Countrywide Financial Corp. co-founder Angelo Mozilo, a person close to the investigation said Friday.

The federal official told The Associated Press that the probe launched in 2008 into the actions of the former chief executive of the housing giant during the mortgage meltdown has been closed with no indictments. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation was never publicly announced, and the Department of Justice as a policy does not announce the closing of investigations.

In October, Mozilo agreed to a $67.5 million settlement to avoid civil trial on fraud and insider trading charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, but prosecutors pursuing the criminal case against him found that his actions did not amount to crimes.

And as you may recall, a substantial portion of the $67.5 million dollar settlement was funded by Bank of America and not out of Mozilo's pocket. Bank of America has been one of the biggest government welfare queens in the banking business, which means the taxpayers funded much of this. Read the rest of this post...

CBO: Health care repeal would add $210 billion to deficit

But we all know the Republicans couldn't care less about the deficit. They proved that during the Bush years when government and spending (and the deficit) soared -- remember, Clinton handed Bush a budget surplus. For the GOP, it's all about their protection of business and their odd fixation on social wedge issues. If they were serious about the deficit they would have been much more serious about job creation instead of abortion. The New Republic:

The Congressional Budget Office has delivered an official estimate of what repealing the Affordable Care Act would do to the federal budget. According to CBO's estimates, the deficit would rise by $210 billion in the first decade:

H.R. 2 would, on net, increase federal deficits over the next decade because the net savings from eliminating the coverage provisions would be more than offset by the combination of other spending increases and revenue reductions.

In total, CBO and JCT estimate that H.R. 2 would reduce outlays by about $604 billion and reduce revenues by about $813 billion over the 2012-2021
period.

This is twice the estimate the CBO made last year, when it projected the effects of a similar repeal bill. Why the difference? Because it's a year later and the projection period extends through 2021 rather than 2011. Remember, the law is designed to save more money as time goes on.

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Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa, the King of Bahrain, is a murdering thug

The royal family of Bahrain is murdering the people of his country. This is beyond stunning, especially from a close U.S. ally. Al Khalifa's government is trying to prevent coverage of the carnage, but the story is getting out.

Nicholas Kristof is in Bahrain -- and he's witnessing the carnage first-hand. His column today is especially compelling

:A column of peaceful, unarmed pro-democracy protesters marched through the streets here in modern, cosmopolitan Bahrain on Friday. They threatened no one, but their 21st-century aspirations collided with a medieval ruler — and the authorities opened fire without warning.

There are many people in Bahrain who want this story told:

It turns out that members of Bahrain’s medical community have been reading my Twitter postings, and doctors and nurses rushed me from patient to patient so I could see and photograph the injuries and write messages to the world and get the news out right away. They knew that King Hamad’s government would wrap its brutality in lies.

The doctors spoke in enormous frustration about what they termed butchery or massacres, but they encountered evidence of the danger of speaking publicly. In the midst of the crisis, a democracy activist staggered in for treatment from a fresh beating by security forces. He had made public statements about police brutality he had witnessed, and so, he said, the police had just kidnapped him and brutalized him all over again.

The hospital’s ambulance drivers had been beaten on Thursday morning by Bahrain’s army and police for attempting to rescue the dead and injured, and some had been warned that they would be executed if they tried again to help protesters. But they showed enormous courage in rushing to the scene of the carnage once again.

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Wilson Picket - The Midnight Hour

It's rainy but still relatively mild over here. The weather forecast for the coming week looks like more of the same as well. If we had a few days of sun, the daffodils would surely open but with this gloomy weather, we're still probably a week or so away. Our forsythia has a few flowers that have opened. Last year we didn't see them until later in March because of the long, cold winter. It looks like we're still two weeks out for the camellia blooms, but the buds are growing. Even on a soggy day, seeing signs of spring is a real charge. Read the rest of this post...

Death count in Libya could be at least 70, possibly many more

The Egyptian military was hardly neutral during the uprising, but they were not nearly this violent. It's amazing to think that the UK government did a deal with that government last year for the return of a convicted murderer. Al Jazeera:

Security forces in Libya have killed scores of pro-democracy protesters in demonstrations demanding the ousting of Muammar Gaddafi, the country's long time ruler.

Human Rights Watch said on Saturday that 84 people had died over the past three days.

A doctor in Benghazi told Al Jazeera that he had seen 70 bodies at the city's hospital on Friday in one of the harshest crackdowns against peaceful protesters thus far.

"I have seen it on my own eyes: At least 70 bodies at the hospital," said Wuwufaq al-Zuwail, a physician.

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