By Simon Johnson
Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS group has launched the first attack ad against Elizabeth Warren, presumably because she is now running hard for the Senate in Massachusetts. This ad is not a big surprise, but the line that Mr. Rove takes could well backfire.
The ad states, “we need jobs, not radical theories and protests,” so we can break the argument down into three separate parts.
First, who destroyed more than 8 million jobs in the United States – and plunged us into the deepest and longest lasting recession since the 1930s? Surely this was not Ms. Warren, who was just a law school professor, in the run-up to 2008.
Mr. Rove is opening the blame game and this is going to go badly for his presumed supporters – the largest banks on Wall Street that took excessive risks, paid their top people well, and then blew themselves up at great cost to the American taxpayer. By all means, let us have a conversation about jobs and the history of job losses in the United States; “too big to fail” banks do not look good in this context.
Second, what exactly is the radical theory here? Ms. Warren’s point has been that we regulate the safety of toasters but not financial products. Basic consumer protection is, of course, still resisted strongly by the less reputable parts of the financial sector. But honestly, what well-run and honest firm fears sensible product standards, which is exactly what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is working on establishing?
Ms. Warren proposed the CFPB and helped oversee its creation and early operation – this is a major contribution to financial stability in the United States. To be sure, some people in the financial sector feel that their track records are exemplary and perhaps they are right – but who was asleep at which switch when mortgage lending went off the ethical rails? The financial sector had plenty of opportunity to restrain is more dangerous participants; instead the misbehavior – or worse – was egregious and incredibly damaging to many Americans.
If there was a radical theory, it was the idea that big banks could manage their risks effectively and must be allowed to bulk up on the basis of large amounts of short-term debt funding, underpinned by only thin slivers of equity. This theory – completely at odds with any sensible reality – is at the heart of the job losses and our current difficulties.
Another radical theory, appearing here implicitly, is that if we let banks make loans now without any oversight, this would somehow give us back jobs. Again, if Mr. Rove wants to discuss crazy theories, let us have that conversation – perhaps with a topical focus on what is going so badly wrong in Europe, including its mad levels of bank debt.
If powerful people on Wall Street want to have the political fight, we should escalate to the main issue lurking here: Too big to fail is simply too big. This is a theme around which right, center, and left can all rally. Hopefully, this is exactly what the broader debate will increasingly focus on.
Third, what do the Occupy Wall Street protesters really want? According to Mike Konczal’s careful assessment of their published grievances, jobs are the number one issue. So again we should ask: Who caused the financial crisis that destroyed so many jobs?
The biggest financial firms have become even larger since the crisis. Their ability to take risk is essentially unfettered. Attempts to roll-back their power have largely been rebuffed. The European crisis now threatens to overcome some of the largest, precisely because they resisted efforts to make them build up larger buffers against losses (shareholder equity). How is this conducive to job creation in any sustained manner?
Elizabeth Warren cannot rein in the most dangerous elements of Wall Street by herself. But she can – and she will – try. We should expect dangerous parts of the financial sector – relatively small in numbers but with enormous financial resources – to push back with drama, disinformation, and perhaps even deceit.
At the end of the day, the voters of Massachusetts will decide. Do they believe in the radical – in fact, ludicrous and manifestly disproven – theory that “too big to fail” banks will generate good jobs for all? Or do they think that such banks, left to their own devices, will plunge us into another crisis, just as profound as what the Europeans are now going through?
If Mr. Rove directs their attention along these lines, that would be helpful.
The Baseline Scenario 
As an active member of Occupy Los Angeles, I have to take issue with your contention that jobs are the number one issue for the protesters. From my conversations with people over the past six weeks, jobs are just one of many grievances that I hear. The overall grievance is the control of economic and political power by the 1% at the expense of the 99%. As for demands or solutions, people want to abolish the Fed, restore Glass-Steagall, have a moratorium on foreclosures, repeal Citizens United, forgive student debt, and a whole host of systemic reforms that go beyond a self-serving interest such as having a job. There are many people in Occupy and who support Occupy who have jobs. For me the movement is all about human need over corporate greed and a sense that we are all in this together versus every man for himself. It is a moral movement in that it is all about economic justice.
Republican favorite Joe Walsh of Illinois. Republican congressman Walsh never states how, or gives examples of how Dodd—Frank has hurt or hindered anyone. It gets back to Republican style rhetoric, if you scream it loud enough and you scream it enough times over and over, “the sky is red, the sky is red, the sky is red” it becomes God’s given truth to your illiterate constituents. Unfortunately for Joe, the people in this bar do not equate volume with fact.
It’s ok Congressman Walsh (Republican), anyone who watches this video of Rick Perry from C-SPAN, sees the tall ash-gray haired man coming in from the left at around the :19 second mark, can understand clearly why you Republicans love banks sooooooo much.
But if Republicans are busy trying to protect banks and hide systemically threatening banks’ mistakes, and whitewash large banks risky behaviors taken with a U.S. taxpayer safety-net, it doesn’t make for good long-term policy. Hell, you might be so busy figuring out what lines will please your banker pals, you forgot your own political platform your advisers designed especially to deceive illiterate Teabaggers.
A “heads up” to consumers who have a relationship or credit card account with Citibank. The big bankers do not intend for their main source of income—your debt and indentured servitude—to be spurned by your intelligence and self-education as a consumer. Warning: The following David Lazarus article is only to be read by those who would like to keep possession of their own hard-earned income. Those into charity for large banks need not read on.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20111111,0,835660.column
(How was my delivery there Miss Warren???)
@ Simon, you came out swinging on this one, and I applaud you.
Your dissection of Rove was spot-on: the best and only way to defeat and disrupt such tactical bluster is to invite a discussion of the facts, because his assertions, invariably, can not withstand the crucible of objective reality. So, yeah, he can be beaten, especially in this way.
Such an old trick, one we grew weary of during the disastrous Bush cabal…vilify the opposition with complete mud-throwing to re-focus the attention of television-watchers with contradictory and confusing messages.
Your post realizes what needs to be done with cads and deviants such as Karl Rove: get in his face with the truth, and keep punching his fat face with more of the same.
Warren will beat Scott Brown here in Mass, because the people who were fooled last time with his plaid-shirt and pick-up truck, and his campaigning in blue-collar South Boston, now realize what a shill he is for the very same interests he asserted during the campaign he would oppose.
It’s a shame Teddy Kennedy couldn’t have lived a few more years in relative good health, he could have really helped Obama against these intransigent GOP MOFOS.
Good for you, Mr. Johnson.
Ms Warren in a September 2011 ‘Economist’ article:
In this bit, Ms Warren states the liberal philosophy with both clarity and passion:
I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”—No!
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear.
You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.
You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.
You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.
You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.
But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/09/elizabeth-warren
Good work, Karl! Obviously you haven’t lived in MA. And thanks for raising the issue of jobs. Even Brown may end up repudiating this ad(?), which will definitely help Warren, since it’s so obviously false and over the top. Rove is obviously living in a time warp, as if the Great Recession had never happened. It will be interesting to see how Brown tries to avoid responsibility for this trashy clip.
“Extreme left…”, huh? Well, this makes me almost want to vote for Warren, since I do not intend to vote for Brown, I was not really keen on her. But hey, I voted for George McGovern in 1972…..and well, so did the majority of Massachusetts. But this is a good example of how we got to the fiscal mess we’re in: the Rove Bush penchant for throwing away money, but I guess we can be glad at least it isn’t taxpayer money this time. The question is: has Warren got the guts to wrap these commercials around Brown’s neck and choke him with them? Let’s see how she handles them.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#45247981
Brown is definitely another “clown at the rodeo”….
However, the fact that this kind of match up exists – a sociopathic Gen X hooligan vs a sincere citizen – speaks volumes about the empowered hooligan class – empowered through abusive TAX LAWS against the producers – the middle class….
President Nixon’s court testimony tapes have finally entered the public domain – his infamous *hit list* command to the IRS is history – imagine what Nixon would have done with The Patriot Act making his request for a hit list not only *legal* now, but sealed in permanent secrecy…
Thanks, Anonymous, for the quotes from Ms. Warren. It’s getting creepier and creepier that there is no one running for President as a Democratic Party challenger to Obama.
Yes, if only Elizabeth Warren could be running in a Democratic primary against Obama, if only to wake him up about his disastrous caving-in to Wall Street insiders like whoever made him hire Tim Geithner. Thank you, please keep up the good work!
Is Mr. Rove even aware that the Newster has recanted and now thinks that repealing Glass-Steagall was a mistake (ABC interview), and that even the dewy-eyed budget architect hero of the GOP, Paul Ryan, agrees with the thoughtful Mr. G?
If ever a marketing expert handed a perfect ad campaign to his opponent Karl Rove just did, If I was hired to create Warren’s TV spots I would simply put Karl Rove, GW Bush and Cheney on the still shot and ask the voters of Mass, “do you want these guys back in charge?”. Now that is a winning campaign.
The ad is vintage Rove — negative scaremongering. One of the key cards he plays here did not get much attention — the saturated sexism. “Eliz Warren is another crazy crusading feminist (a schoolmarm who is not very pretty).” That’s the gender text I read between those lines: it’s a dog whistle message underscored by the way her image is cast (arms flailing, mouth contorted in a rebel yell … etc.) Another thing: it refers to her not as “Elizabeth Warren,” but as “Professor Elizabeth Warren.” Another arrogant denizen of the liberal elite class. Finally, look at the images of violence this ad skips so quickly across. Those are images from the infamous cop crackdown in Oakland of Oct. 25, the one where Iraqi vet Scott Olsen had his skull cracked open and was carried away comatose after being hit with a police projectile of some sort. Everyone who knows anything about that night (I live in the East Bay and have visited #oo numerous times) knows the cops were completely out of line. Just look at the videos — http://bit.ly/tSL2gE — and see what happens when activists try to take the wounded Olsen away from in front of a police barricade — and watch another Iraq vet in Navy uniform, Joshua Shepherd, bravely standing nose-to-nose with the riot-gear-clad cops holding a Vets for Peace flag in one hand, and displaying a copy of the Constitution — flipped to the First Amendment page — in the other (http://bit.ly/vGurFM). These flagrant GOP hypocrites talk about rights and about the destruction of jobs, attacking one movement that honestly (and with imperfect voice and praxis) seeks to have a public discussion about what really went wrong. Rove is just doing his same old Nazi propaganda game — with sexism and lies that twists historical truth out of shape. Pure sleaze.
@Anonymous – On second thought, we DO know what Nixon would have done with Patriot Act financial data – Hank Paulson did it – for *the party* – that 3 page stick up note to the American taxpayer on the way out the door….here, Timmy, next up to bat…
It was said that debating Hillary Clinton during the last Presidential election cycle made him a better candidate. Well, debating Elizabeth Warren on the facts should make him a great candidate :-))
It’s also been whispered that the Pentagon, in its prime directive role of defending the Homeland (btw still the USA, contrary to *holy* book re-interpretations) has expressed *concern* over the damage the financial crisis has brought. I guess someone in the CIA and the Pentagon have done the math and arrived at the same conclusion I did – the Tax Laws have impoverished the very people who ARE the *civil* in civilization! At least there is a faction in the boots on the ground military strategist departments that *believe* that pulling an economic version of Stalin on white women and labor can’t mean continued greatness for the country, much less the world.
Of course, I’d sneak a picture of the *Super Committee* receiving the recommendation and sitting through the numbers presentation and tweet it out so that they can’t use the “I do not recall line” without it meaning that they have to step down due to dementia – not to worry, they have universal health care…
It’s going to get real tricky with China and Russia, no doubt about it.
At least we have proof that it’s still the same hysterical, er, historical storyline – they never head into Africa to create a better standard of living for themselves, AS A RACE, by organizing the resources of that continent – they’re going to *buy* Italy and Greece instead…judging from the footage of what happened in Rome recently, looks like the people are *fitter* than the government who is saying it will enforce *austerity* measures :-) Yup, the Gold Sacks *timmy* plants in those two countries might want to buy a pair of shoes today to last them the rest of their lifetime since THEY are the ones who will be experiencing the *austerity” – no doubt about that….
What is it about that name *Timmy*….? :-))
Haven’t forgotten what happened to Grandma on 5/21/2011…apologies to everyone else, but I know the psychos are reading along….
11/11/11 – on my!
Once Amuricans put the channel changer down and by-pass the conventional media and begin to THINK for themselves, there is a prospect that the clear contradictions that characterize society economically, socially and politically can be tackled and brought down before a military junta takes over. After all, a trillion dollar budget of the military can do much to do what president , Congress and the corporate cancer on Wall St have failed.
Wow, this is unusually astute political commentary for an economist!
Somehow SJ has surmounted the temptation to reduce things to equilibrium models, aggregate factors and difEQ’s. Thank you, sir!
@ECON – try to keep up :-)
we already HAD the *military junta* takeover…the *contractors*….
As one who just lost a clear-cut White Hat/Black Hat local campaign, Econ, Americans seem not to
think for themselves, even locally: money talks. Sadly. Really.
But, I digress: Good job, Simon! I had thought you had forgotten Liz! And principles!
(Really, Simon. I thought that.)
Excellent post. Pls see if the Herald, or the Globe, will reprint it. ….Lady in Red
@Red Lady,
The *money* that talks at a local level is commerce, not delusional derivatives based on physics that didn’t even consider that gravity could travel faster than light. So the gravity of the situation is this, what, exactly, is the problem you have with *commerce* talking on Main Street? We LOVE having the infrastructure of roads and electricity and we go to the mats, as the mafia says, over water quality. Commerce would not happen without the infrastructure! Like, duh.
This economic savagery you want to inflict on STUPID AMERICANS, how smart is that?! More misery for others = more $$$$ for ME ME ME
Where were you running for office – in the USA?
An entire f-ckng CENTURY of millions slaying each other over *isms* – and that blood pouring into a new century. How many visits to the shrink will it take to realize where we are not *perfect* as human beings so that we stop doing the same thing that 99% of the other people on this planet will want to kill you for doing…?
Seriously – what we have – EXACTLY – is this situation – the BIG TIME at the poker table saying everyone else has to show their cards except for him. And they are going to have to TRUST that his un-revealed hand is the winning one.
New *law* in town I just made up today because I’ve got blood soaked money that’s talking…?!
Honey, no one is that stupid.
Good arguments by Simon Johnson, but will these make it through to the “low information” voters (LIVs) who get all of their news from Fox? It’s these LIVs who are the prime targets of these ads, and they are a sizable portion of the electorate. This ad has everything to bait the Fox audience (profiled as older, white and less educated), namely hippies, drugs, trash and commies juxtaposed with images of Elizabeth Warren when her mouth is open. These Karl Rove ads, like all of right-wing visual media, act on a visual and visceral level, not on a rational level. Karl Rove bases his approach on an observation he made many years ago that most working class households have the TV on all of the time with the sound turned down.
Everybody pop in the movie, “You Can’t Take It With You”.
We’re going to be just fine. There are more wizards among us with magic stuff we made in our garages just for fun. We’ll have a contest instead of a Warehouse 13 :-))
Heck, even fun stuff like putting up a residential windmill over by the train tracks to catch that breeze every 20 minutes can be done this weekend…
Energy policy and BURN THE PATRIOT ACT.
11 November 2011 Last updated at 14
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15702015
MF Global liquidator cuts 1,000 jobs at the brokerage
Sign outside MF Global offices MF Global has 2,000 staff worldwide
MF Global filing for Chapter 11
More than 1,000 staff in the brokerage arm of collapsed futures firm MF Global Holdings have been made redundant.
US regulators have begun an investigation into the collapse.
“Karl Rogue” provoked a great deal of angry responses in the comments that follow the video:
http://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=tNxez4ddpa0
There is massive agreement among most all of the professional medium of commentator channels:
http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=webmail-hawaii1-standardaol&q=Rove%20campaign%20against%20Elizabeth%20Warren
TRUTH stands alone:
Elizabeth Warren on Debt Crisis, Fair Taxation
LiveSmartVideos
Thank you, Annie.
It was the USA. It was county govt: incompetent incumbent against, say what, “not the incumbent,”
Daffy Duck, me?
Doesn’t matter, lady. I learned. Small lesson; ok. All lived; no recriminations. It’s the way things work.
And, I’d say: people, as in, the voters, electorate, are *STUPID*, or unlearning, uncaring. It takes a sledge hammer of money/information/name recognition to *begin* to influence The Body Politic. Mostly, they ain’t paying attention — on any level.
(A local pol told me: “You’re smart, better; you should win, but I don’t know about you enough… long enough. You should have started two years ago building the campaign war chest and doing the coffee clatches….)
Ain’t my style.
Am writing an essay: The End of My Political Career.
Probably, The New Yorker won’t run it, but… smile…..
…Lady in Red
Education:
The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class
UCtelevision
Elizabeth Warren: index page @ YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=elizabeth+warren&oq=elizabeth&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=242406l245947l0l248907l9l9l0l4l4l0l521l1661l2-3.1.0.1l5l0
Elizabeth Warren Makes Timmy Geithner Squirm Over AIG and Goldman Sachs Bailouts
Michaelwiseguy
Now let’s check an ad similar to the construct against EW; only here the OWS is attacked with the same Nazi propaganda style montage of fragmented distortions and fear mongering:
OWS Exposed!
mnmajoritydotorg
The Wall Street Testimony on record:
Bernanke confronted about Occupy Wall Street by Senator Bernie Sanders
PlanetEarthAwakens01
My God, between Karl Rove and Dick Armey, we have the Sons of Satan of the Fredmaniac Right Wing. These are the folks who argue that all regulation is defacto bad, period, end of story. It was tragic that Dick Armey and his minions co-opted the Tea Party as a branch of the Republican Party. It certainly didn’t start that way, and those in the TP who have become disaffected (many) are now finding a great kinship with OWS and will mostly vote for Ms. Warren. Karl Rove is the ultimate idiot if he believes that anyone other than the staunchest of the Fox News, Chaney, Bush, Palen toadies will ever be convinced by him, he has another think coming. Let’s face it, his arguments are absurd if one spends about two minutes listening to Elizabeth Warren and has more than one brain cell to rub together. This video is the most amazing view, and should fuel Liz Warren’s campaign, if they simply listen.
Nice Job Bayard Waterbury: Bravo!
Unfortunitly, we do live in a society where the size of your wallet does determine the volume of your message, for the most part. You still have to make sense to the masses or take your hardened views to the poor tongues who financially can not compete with your wallet. And the etchasketch solution to it all does not favor either side to an end, but a reset of the stage so Gods children can once again gain the advantage and attempt to quell the money/power ratio. Try anything and everything, it won’t be enough, but it will show the hands of the arrogant and hypocritical ones who perceive their views correct. And as such can be minimumized to increase the probability of success the next time around. Its called the mind principle.
Professor Warren…….FIGHTING back……keep telling the TRUTH about them, Elizabeth Warren!!
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/11/targeted-by-rove-warren-doubles-down-on-occupy-wall-st-support/
Punch ROVE (minions, too) in his ugly fat smirking face, he deserves it, after what he’s done.
@ Bill Gilwood, perfect analysis~
It’s an occupation that is insistent on not being pinned down to some falsehood that gets morphed into an *ism* by the Roves of politics…
And it’s a war – a cold war, for now, but with flare ups here and there.
Blowing up the global economy isn’t exactly a sign of genius so who are they to call anyone stupid – and the only $$$$ they have that’s not derivative delusions, for real, is blood soaked.
:-)) – I want to take on Timmy in the “thunderdome” – will have to wear a bandana soaked in perfume to avoid being distracted by the smell of oily camel dung he exudes…which I will be happy to kick out of him – mano et mano
In Queen Victoria’s day, it would be mandatory for Elizabeth Warren to slap Rove’s face in front of the whole castle court, a sharp, stinging crack leaving a red hand imprint…and then throw him in the dungeon – hey, there are other ways to get *revenues* – set a really high bail :-) However, one has to speculate that Rove would probably consider such behavior from Elizabeth to be foreplay (Rove thinking to himself, “yea, she wants me…”)
@Annie:
Absolutely hilarious ! With a certain Quixotic truth tone to it as well.
On the futility of debate with liars with an agenda:
Why are we wasting our time and energy
commenting on Rove or anybody, GOP or Democrat or Chamber of Commerce or bought off media hack?
Yes, it is good to spend a little energy to point out these peoples’ lies to correct the record, as Simon has done.
Their repeated behavior over decades demonstrates the GOP and many Democrats have an agenda…..preserve and enhance the wealth of big money and their businesses that generate it. Anything that infers with helping the rich get richer is not politically possible because the rich won’t allow it.
These people are liars who repeat lies endlessly, cherry pick “facts” to support their agenda, have contempt for and fear any genuine exploration of issues….why have we lost so many jobs, why does are financial system rather regularly blow up and wreck the lives of millions of not so rich people.
I agree with Lauren comment 1….the real issue is not just jobs or wall street…it is why do we continue to permit an oligarchy of big money to hire our politicians to make sure they get richer and richer?
The oligarchy is wrecking our economy and our nation’s ability to govern itself for the common good.
I think we should be very careful to focus on this issue and not let the oligarchy and their shils…like Rove and countless others…waste our energies on focus.
If we wanted to make sure we always correct their lies, we should make a top ten list of their lies and the refutation of these lies.
Simon, you could make this top ten list for economics.
Then publish it on your blog. Then we could print it out, use it as our talking points and hand out copies to everyone we meet who repeats these lies.
Let’s get on the same page, refute their lies and then focus on the big question….how do we quickly restore our private manufacturing job base and stop our financial system from wreaking havoc. Stop them now.
Then focus our energies on re-engineering our system of governance and business model so they work for rather than against the vast majority of Americans?
Sources of talking points on jobs creation.
We do not have coherent, reality based talking points on the issue of job creation. We need to create one. I suggest this blog devote its energies to creating one.
I will post one soon, based on my reading and my observations as an executive in a huge multi national consumer goods corporation. The story my corporate
experience about job outsourcing is very different from the conventional wisdom.
I will add to this posting headlines on this issue from Andrew Livernis, Dow Chemical CEO, who’s book “Make It In America” I found a treasure trove of facts
and ideas that also fly in the face of conventional wisdom. And the ideas of Andrew Grove of Intel fame and Paul Craig Roberts.
From Wikipedia: Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist and a columnist for Creators Syndicate. He served as an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration earning fame as a co-founder of Reaganomics.”[1] He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. Roberts has been a critic of both Democratic and Republican administrations.
Some ways back we determined this to be ground ZERO, now you alone can attempt to create one of anything you may ponder. Its been tried here before, without success I might add.
Roberts was key in devising “REAGONOMICS”, yes?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/09-0
Published on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Occupy America
by Michael Parenti
Best summary article on the Occupy Movement to date. Broad based comment stream as well. No more kicking things down the road,….. its time to Occupy that road.
Take to the streets !
Published on Friday, November 11, 2011 by Rolling Stone
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests
Much more than a movement against big banks, they’re a rejection of what our society has become.
by Matt Taibbi
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/11-7
David Brooks from the transcript of his weekly political conversation on PBS News Hour, “My problem with that movement and the Tea Party movement, both of them, is they have no leaders. They have no institutions. And you can celebrate democracy if you think it’s useful to have a movement with no leaders. But if have no leaders and no institutions, you have no direction, you have, I think, no lasting power. But you have nobody to be serious and be rigorous and say, here are the problems we all agree on. Here is what we are offering.”
Having no leaders and having no institutions are two different things.
Not having a *leader*, per se, is perfectly normal in Western Civilization – possibly for a thousand years when Empires were not falling, but building. Witness the PUBLIC debates that are a tradition of government carried on in Parliament in the United Kingdom. WE the People do much better without Stalins and Hitlers and Rands and Kochs. Would Brooks have us believe that when given a choice between a visionary and a dictator, free people will elect a dictator?
Having no *institutions*, as Brookes believes, just means he’s too stupid to realize that he just highlighted what the movement is challenging – the power of the 1% to be the only ones who can institutionalize themselves. :-))
It’s just when they do act from within an *institution* that they bought on behalf of the greatest country in the world, the 99% are convinced that they are crazy.
I think that the moral dimension of the situation, and the one situation that urgently needs to be addressed morally, are key national security issues. I am certain I am not alone in that awareness. A cabal that starts pre-emptive war is mercilessly hunted down for justice by the civilized. THAT is the *institution* that we have, Mr. Brookes. We made it up, just like your brown-nosing opinion – nothing FACTUAL and so shallow as to breezily state that human beings and fellow citizens do not have any *institution* of which HE knows of….
owen and woop pls let me clarify. I think we need some clear talking points to refute the top ten lies about job creation.
My intention is not to set myself up as the creator of the one and only answer.
My intention is to create a working first draft. My hope is all of us will build on it.
But since I feel the need for a focused top ten list of lies and their refutation, I’m actually hoping Simon or Jim will take my first draft and let the best minds they can find in economics and business flesh it out.
If you don’t buy into my sense we need to stop wasting our energy responding to the lies du jour from the oligarchy shils like Rove, that’s fine with me too. I’m hoping some of us will find my suggestion a way to stop wasting our energy refuting these trolls’ lies, especially since they repeat the same ones over and over. They are trapping us into their drain of our brains.
As to woop, yes Roberts was key to devising reagonomics, at least if you believe Wikipedia. While I believe we should view his comments with skepticism because of that, I don’t think we should turn a deaf ear to him. If you read his stuff, you might agree with me that he’s changed his viewpoint radically into a more reality based perspective.
Again, to any and all, I’m not proposing to dictate or limit your criteria as to whose ideas your want to even consider. I think there is value in being skeptical, but open minded in a search for useful ideas.
Just more attack-EW-to-make-her-look-embattled. What’s the upshot here? You think this had any effect on the loony conservatives to whom it was supposedly targeted?
People really don’t understand how propaganda and manipulation work.
Annie, I agree with you. Another consideration. The oligarchy and their trolls would like nothing better than for us to list one or two focused “demands”.
That allows them to ignore the larger issue you and Lauren raise (the 1 percent is screwing the rest of us big time and need to be stopped).
What happens if we give the trolls an “issue” to fix?
Take Dodd Frank. The trolls create an inadequate band aid response they deliberately craft to make it seem they’ve fixed the problem. But the “fix” is inadequate on its face from the start. This will quiet the issue.
Then the trolls will send their lobbyist wonks to Congress to create amendments to further water down Dodd Frank. When this toothless lion reaches the hands of the regulators, the trolls won’t enforce the regulations.
Matt Taibbi has done some excellent work the trolls work process in his article on the SEC.
http://michael-hudson.com/
Full page of Michael Hudson’s latest insights and perspectives (multiple issues on the economic crisis)
Here’s Michael Hudson on the “Job creation Ploy”…the betrayal of Elizabeth Warren, the Committee of 13
(sounds ominously like an old Russian committee doesn’t it?) Geitner…and more. Get it all @
http://michael-hudson.com/2011/10/obamas-look-over-there/ (great article!)
Obama’s Good Cop/ Bad Cop deal with the Republicans
October 7, 2011
By Michael Hudson
Don’t Let Him Get Away With It: Occupy Wall St
“President Obama’s policies have not been the voice of reason. They are even further to the right than George W. Bush could have achieved. At least a Republican president would have confronted a Democratic Congress blocking the kind of program that Mr. Obama has rammed through. But the Democrats seem stymied when it comes to standing up to a president who ran as a Democrat rather than the Tea Partier he seems to be so close to in his ideology.
So here’s where the Committee of 13 comes into play. Given (1) the agreement that if the Republicans and Democrats do NOT agree on Mr. Obama’s dead-on-arrival “job-creation” ploy, and (2) Republican House Leader Boehner’s statement that his party will reject the populist rhetoric that President Obama is voicing these days, then (3) the Committee will get its chance to wield its ax and cut federal social spending in keeping with its professed ideology.
President Obama signaled this long in advance, at the outset of his administration when he appointed his Deficit Reduction Commission, headed by former Republican Sen. Simpson and Rubinomics advisor to the Clinton administration Bowles. They were to recommend how to cut federal social spending while giving even more money away to Wall Street. He confirmed suspicions of a sellout by reappointing bank lobbyist Tim Geithner to the Treasury, and tunnel-visioned Ben Bernanke as head of the Federal Reserve Board.
Yet on Wednesday, October 4, the president tried to represent the OccupyWallStreet movement as supportive for his efforts. He pretended to endorse a pro-consumer regulator to limit bank fraud, as if he had not dumped Elizabeth Warren on the advice of Mr. Geithner – who seems to be settling into the role of bagman for campaign contributors from Wall Street.
Can President Obama get away with it?”
http://michael-hudson.com/2011/10/obamas-look-over-there/
@ Steve….first, hope you’re feeling better.
re: Roberts….yes, he’s even a “truther” these days…..and that is a quantum leap over time….conservative republican to tin foil hat person……:)
His speaking appearances have the intro he was the “reagonomics” guiding light….and you are correct re: WIKILEAKS……caveat emptor.
@Annie:
David Brooks writes narrative script for the intelligence community. He is a total sell out. The purpose of demanding a central agency and an agenda is to create a counter-insurgency. Right out of the Army
counter-insurgency instruction book FM3-24 1996 edition. If there is no center then you can not define a false flag operation. If there are no leaders then you can not corrupt or capture the leadership. If there is no central domain then you can not infiltrate.
That is why the false front have only been provocateurs in a general flare up to give the appearance of potential violence and legitimate intervention and suppression. It has not worked because we can communicate and warn each other. Don’t bother engaging David Brooks …he’s a eggplant!
Obama did take “a dive” on Warren, no doubt in doing this, he was warned that appointing the professor would have negative consequences on getting campaign $$$.
Think how much better things would be without our leaders groveling for cash all the while…..it has poisoned our well, and weakened our country.
@ Steve, i thought you meant well ALL ALONG….and absolutely took no offense, or misunderstanding, so we’re cool, btw.
One more caveat on my comment 41 and/or 49. Annie and Lauren I commented on your comments. If my paraphrase misrepresents or misinterprets you comments, please feel free to correct me. To woop on comment 47. When I wrote “I think there is value in being skeptical, but open minded in a search for useful ideas” it has a sort of insulting tone. What I meant to convey was I think we should look for useful outside the box
ideas and insights on issues where we can find them, being appropriately skeptical and careful in using these ideas. And worst, I forgot to say that’s how I approach issues. I surely don’t expect this to be standard
for how you set your standards for selecting ideas or evaluating the people who express them.
If my tone and lots of comments suggests I think I’m a know it all, its is not my intention. I’ve just decided to try to use this blog as a resource to come up with a way for me to come up with a focused and personally
efficient way to correct the big lies. I view Jim and Simon’s help as very necessary. BTW, when I noted that I’d like Simon or Jim to get the best minds in economics/business to “flesh out” my ideas, what I really meant
was I’d like them to get reality based, non partisan, non ideology (even economic ideology) driven minds not to flesh out my ideas, to consider how some of the stuff I share might be useful in their top ten lie refutation.
The lies I’m trying to refute is the current job crisis is just a momentary bump in the road, that the free market would produce tons of jobs here if we gave them “certainty”, even lower taxes and even less regulation
and that the market will naturally recreate a lot of private sector manufacturing jobs (say 10-15 million) so 1) we recreate tax revenues from workers that aren’t funded by public investment alone, 2) so we can manufacture enough stuff here so we are trapped in a multi trillion dollar cumulative trade deficit I read many economists say is unsustainable and 3) so we don’t have to borrow $1 billion a day or more to put
toasters and tvs and shoes on our retail shelves. Or course, an energy policy that got us off foreign energy imports without the pollution of coal, oil shale and natural gas fracking would be necessary too.
Uncle Billy Mental Widget. Yes. That’s my frustration. Why waste anymore energy commenting on the propaganda the trolls use to whip up their loonies? IMO these people will never accept reality because they
are trapped in their my way or the highway style thinking. Waste of time to try to share anything with them. And you’re right. We have to understand how their propaganda and manipulation work.
Given the futility of arguing with manipulative liars and their following of dittoheads who have sealed off their minds from reality, I’d like Simon and Jim to give us talking points to refute their top ten lies.
No, the top ten list won’t shut them up, but it will save all of us who want to use the list the energy of creating talking points every time they repeat their lies (which is 365/24/7 decade after decade).
That’s it. Promise. Except I will create and share my first draft on what’s driving job offshoring. I’d like feedback anyone on the blog who would like to give it. Then when I share it with friends, relatives and neighbors.
I’ll maybe have the benefit of some your thinking. I won’t try to push my ideas off as an answer for you or cite the blog or any person on it in anyway. Just an answer for me with maybe some extra insight from the blog.
“As to woop, yes Roberts was key to devising reagonomics, at least if you believe Wikipedia. While I believe we should view his comments with skepticism because of that, I don’t think we should turn a deaf ear to him. If you read his stuff, you might agree with me that he’s changed his viewpoint radically into a more reality based perspective.”
Skepticism? That’s it?
I see this as recalcitrant sheistering – akin to this sell – “…okay, so I said I’ve done brain surgery before when I hadn’t, everybody puffs up their curriculum vitae. Now I know that I can’t do brain surgery, but I am good at getting the most money for myself, and maybe an occasional brain surgeon we let into the inner circle, based on the *BIG TIME business* generated by people needing brain surgery….”
That kind of radically different thinking…?
You FORCED people who earned their status in life through honest work into POVERTY.
And, there is a 30 year gap of talent that never got the chance to earn what they were perfectly capable of achieving through honest work because everyone was making sure the *neighbor* never got the chance by using the IRS and TAX LAWS to keep them pinned down to one paycheck away from POVERTY and homelessness.
I will also NOT be open-minded about blood soaked money have a BIG TIME voice at this *Camelot* table of job creation….the mercenaries want to start mowing down students in city squares instead of using *government* – even in the abusive way of taxation power? Really? They’re not worse than internet trolls?
I do not believe commerce is corrupted. It is actually in acute danger from the LOUDNESS of the hypocrites. Do NOT allude to the moral superiority of any economic position of vested interests.
I got that whole *economic* lecture about the empty oil barrels being filled with whiskey going back to Arabia and then re-filled with opium and round and round it goes…that circle has broadened out to include slaves, human organs, cocaine, pot, weapons and god-knows-what-else – metal bending rays :-)
THOSE *global interests* have a brighter financial future than public servants in a bona-fide government OF THE PEOPLE.
PC-ism is SO over…the mortgage mess has imprisoned American families and vicious organized crime has used that tearing down of infrastructure to keep getting richer at the same pace as the 1%….
The Just War wikipedia entry is accurate even if *reagonomics* is not.
Live from NEW YORK………it’s SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here’s what the “financial sector” did to Greece…..
Steve, I applaud your efforts to raise the peoples conscousness of today ills. However, if you could see far enough back into history you would have found that these/and those efforts are futile. Our last effort (the debt ceiling debacle) failed miserably [we do have automatic cuts installed but as the timer runs out the need for a quick temporary fix should allay that] and we won’t get another opportunity until after the elections. GL w/efforts though.
Hi, A very cogent and compelling argument. Whose mind did it change? Truth and Facts are of no benefit when dealing with misinformed and brainwashed masses. Scaremongering, lies and propaganda are much more powerful weapons. Arrayed against you, are most of the richest and most powerful Americans.They control a media, whose main purpose is to serve their interest. They are ruthless, greedy, self-seeking persons, who have no compunction about invoking the name of God in promoting their baseless agenda. They use the patriotism.of the ordinary American in cynical ways to serve their ends. Tragedies are opportunities to be exploited. Social Justice would hurt their pockets. Your well reasoned piece will be of little benefit in the face of their ranting, name-calling, lying demagogy.. As Jesus said, “the children of darkness are wiser in their way than the children of light”
Caveat Emptor:
The “Warm Handshake” approach is the hand of the devil selling details. It too is a counterinsurgency tactic (even if it is “innocently” stumbled upon by non-suspecting tea party diplomats). There is no conceding to a “gentle more compassionate” message from the seditious 1% propaganda teams. You cannot sugar coat the poison pill of supply side in any way shape or form. This thinking is what brought us to our knees:
“…The lies I’m trying to refute is the current job crisis is just a momentary bump in the road, that the free market would produce tons of jobs here if we gave them “certainty”, even lower taxes and even less regulation
and that the market will naturally recreate a lot of private sector manufacturing…”
You can not mesh this formula into a “let’s just talk nice” approach. It is proven wrong. There is no “market” to adjust things. Markets are made, they don’t make anything. Financial “markets” are devouring and burning “commercial markets” for scrap wood in global financial wars where centralized private banking regimes are acting like governments and are being touted under the cover of TBTF which codes the language in the direction of systems failure rather than systems corruption and deceit. We are talking about global power dynamics and the “jobs” issue will not be resolved unless we pull the veil from the financial demigods who are capturing not just the on/off switch of entire economies, but playing pump and dump with commercial interests under a control fraud called TBTF political economics.
Let’s jump ahead of the rhetoric and really go outside the box. The commercial genius of our American entrepreneurs are being stifled by big political finance for “Other” interests of the 1% to take command of our national labor markets. The infrastructure has been gutted for profit. How are you going to look for “job” growth in that kind of hostile environment?
Well there is only one way out of this mess. We must recognize that there is an enormous potential from our own middle class corporate culture that has been stuck in limbo by their identification with the 1%.
The system has been captured and they are as much victims as the rest of the 99%.
We need to FREE THEM!
1ST. DEMAND RESTORATION OF GLASS-STEAGALL LEGISLATION:
http://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_it=webmail-hawaii1-standardaol&q=%2C%2C%2Csteagle%20act
This will restore the finance to our middle class corporate interests and redirect the revenue streams back to our own production interests.
2nd. A HEAFTY transaction TAX on financial speculation with HEARTY tax incentive breaks for domestic commercial revenue transactions that back REAL infrastructure innovations and critical needs of our domestic economic independence for energy and essential needs. Let the tax pay down the National debt and provide a progressive reduction to the tax to do just that as an intrinsic incentive to move in the right direction.
3rd If not a public option for utility necessities in banking, at least a reinforcement for co-op banks that serve communities and bring in micro-finance to our rudimentary local communities and regional hubs in rural America. If we are going to outsource…let the city sprawl outsource to our own rural options (as Walmart started when it was at its rural inception…the correct model…not the sprawl model that can not be replicated from the top down process of modelling growth after it is already sprawling all over the world and underminging our own legitimate competitors into doing the same or failing).
4th Demand a complete and comprehensive accounting of all OFFSHORE hidden money circuits that not only hide money but undermine the entire terrestrial corporate economy and even pension funds to do the same thing to survive. (Be forewarned…the excuse for this cheating false economy is that “taxes” made them do it! This is a self-fulfilling deception…it was bottom line greed and contagion).
5th Enforce the law and bring justice to this country. Put the corruption out of business and the crooks (however RICH !!!) in jail.
6th Stop making differential economic scale an excuse for “inequality” for social justice and protect the rights of real people not corporations that become leviathans in the political economy for special interests that profiteer and scavenge our democratic economy under the false flag of libertarian freedom.
7. Proposition 7: Revamp the think tank political industry and put it on the tax sheets.
Any two of these things will reverse the trend of deception and defeat that is subverting the American People and the greatest economy on the face of the earth…and for all history… for 1% privileges gained under looting and executive control fraud that is pandemic and threatening the very stability of the entire world economy in its race to supremacy and dominant controls.
But JUST IMAGINE…JUST STOP AND IMAGINE…OR CALCULATE YOUR GAME PLANNING SKILLS…
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF ALL 7 OF THESE CORRECTIONS WERE INACTED!
GET REAL PEOPLE;
JOIN THE STREET: OCCUPY AMERICA!
Now we have Drones over Texas!
HIT Country Western song (2012) of the future:
I woke up to Drones over Texas
Of course they were not after me…
Johnny Cash might have made up some Lyrics…
for the Drones in the Home of the Free…
Let’s just hope there’s no “collateral damage”
They are programed by hacks don’t you see,
but those Mexicans don’t have no savy
when it comes down to technology…,
so let the Drones drop their ass at the Border,
to protect our secured Texas Tea;
and to hell with who gives the orders…
cause our liberty’s armed to the teeth!
copyright November 13, 2011
Bruce E. Woych
for sale!
A toast to the Texas Tea, even though the line towers are well dug in, there strenght and numbers have been affected. This can only work against them in time, but time, it seems is something they still have,[and enjoy] as well as a stock pile of fuel, for the lucky ones. Once their #’s are whittled down, the country can be taken in a new direction of truth or consequences the likes of which he has never experienced before. I like the suddenness of fatality, but also know there is saftey in numbers.
SJ’s arguments are all well and good, and yet they are devastatingly wrong in two crucial aspects.
“Warren has no radical theories” is telling, because at the end of the day, Warren is a structure conservative that is intellectually unable to reform the system. You cannot by means of consumer protection polish the turd of inequality and inbred wealth, at levels incompatible with an open, just society. We are witnessing pervasive corruption of democratic institutions to the point if dysfunction, and an abrogation of the rule of law through oligarchy. You can’t fix that the way you fix a toaster.
“No radical theories” is idiotic, because not only could the case be made that this is reinforcing Rove’s long-term objective – limit the discourse to “conservative theories”, keep fundamental, “radical” reform off limits, it also reinforces his obfuscation that we are dealing with revolutionary, radical, anarchist, eat-your-children finance. The radical theories are advanced by the elites, their bankers, and their political retainers – radical theories such as Cheney’s pseudo-Keynes “debt does not matter” on supply-side tax cuts, or the concept that a sovereign nation should opt to default voluntarily for political gain.
The question is not whether we need radical theories – we bloody well needed them yesterday – the question is, which radical theories are matching the structure of the crisis. Because when you are facing systemic failure, you need to reform the system at the root, not patch it up at the tail end, and any systemic reform is by definition “radical” to both those that benefit from the system, and those that abhor any proposition of change because of cognitive deficiencies.
That is why Warren is ultimately a sideshow, and Rove certainly knows that. Whatever her ultimate impact on his and his masters’ bottom line, her tireless efforts to improve the system – to make it suck less – are serving no purpose but to extend its lifetime – no matter that trends that cannot go on forever, won’t. The oligarchs have moved beyond profit maximization, and are destroying the host society that they themselves depend on. Inbred wealth, intellectually as well as genetically, is always characterized by short-sighted greed and wanton sadism.
Too Big To Fail banks are not the radical theory advanced here – the radical notion is the same as it has been for thousands of years of post-tribal “civilization”, it is the notion that there is no wealth that is Too Big To Afford, Too Big For Liberty. That notion has been with us for so long, it has become the conservative position, conserving nothing but the privilege of the privileged.
@”b”
………………………………………………………..BRAVO !!!!!! …………………………………………………………
The same glo-ball cabal that opened the gates of hell with pre-emptive war are the same people as the TBTF crowd.
Crimes against humanity. Imagine if there was NO trial in Nuremberg – well, that’s what we’ve got because there never was a trial accusing a *leader* like Stalin of crimes against humanity in either *communist* giant – Russia or China.
When I look around me at the second and third wave of immigrants moving in, it’s DEFINITELY the sneering psychopaths establishing CRIME syndicates – burrowing in like maggots both INSIDE the international mega corps and outside as they attend Catholic Church to see what’s left for them to steal after all the scandals….USA with all the foreclosures is glo-ball PSYCHO Heaven being built before our eyes.
Where does *political correctness* fit in on the scale of OWS *crowd control*?
Right, don’t say anything about the SCUM BAG PSYCHOTIC *foreigners* – but go after Elizabeth Warren with propaganda guns ablazing – paint hippies and poor people on her because a hippie is human filth, not the REAL human filth dude who is RICH RICH RICH from selling 5 year old children to men with enough money to use 5 years olds as masturbation machines…
War count of dead bodies on the Texas – Mexico border – 50,000.
Isn’t the question who are the drones protecting?
Mark your calendar – November 23 – super-committee day – yeeha, y’all…
@ b…A second, loud Bravo here…..absolutely mangificent “thought-piece”!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/european-ponzi-goes-full-retard-efsf-found-monetize-itself
anyone else on this board think these gyrations are hopeless?
@”b” – “That is why Warren is ultimately a sideshow, and Rove certainly knows that. Whatever her ultimate impact on his and his masters’ bottom line, her tireless efforts to improve the system – to make it suck less – are serving no purpose but to extend its lifetime – no matter that trends that cannot go on forever, won’t. The oligarchs have moved beyond profit maximization, and are destroying the host society that they themselves depend on. Inbred wealth, intellectually as well as genetically, is always characterized by short-sighted greed and wanton sadism.”
Warren has every right to exist as a LEADER in support of the sanity that every human being has the right to make their lives less miserable through honest work.
Who are you to deny her that RIGHT to exist as a LEADER? If she was not having a BIG TIME impact on the *future* bottom line of unearned wealth, blood-soaked wealth, and sadistically acquired wealth, you wouldn’t be *suggesting* she’s a freak side show that doesn’t matter.
Here’s a *suggestion*. Considering that every post-tribal civilized country on the planet has got some problems right now, themselves, with the damage from Global Crime, Inc., don’t BOTHER spreading around either derivative-based *money* or slave based *money* on influencing the Presidential cycle in USA. Go spend your *money* putting your own houses in order.
Can’t wait what deserving *poor* hordes move into Greece now that the ownership of the country has changed – they leveraged 100 to 1 to become the landlord – FAIR PLAY, right?
Wow, what a good night’s sleep can do for a person – here’s the spinned Brookes this morning:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/#45277173
@Anonymous – good article, but the way the discussion evolves in the *comments* section on that blog answers your question…
Indeed, this blog is *tame* – we use the word *crap* :-))
Wonderful post! I really like the way you have presented your point of view. Looking forward to more from you!
Rove will spew his garbage knowing his smiling-shite-eating base will regurgitate loudly on command!
Funny thing happens on the way to reality.. truth.; not that that has ever been a problem for sycophants.
This may yet turn out well.. thank you Simon, Ann and all those that posted (Videos especially)
Somewhere in America, a banker is crapping a ring around himself, all over his taxpayer funded expensive rug.
Remember Bankers: its never to late to pull a Kenny-Boy exit.
The Radical-est theory was to put Wall St and The Banks on the honor system. Sadly there is no honor there. I wouldn’t let them keep their own golf cards!
The VERY FIRST thing people have to remember is that NOBODY NEEDS A JOB! What people need is food, clothing, shelter, health care. These things don’t come from “jobs”; they come from people doing them for each other and caring for the land, air, and water. Humans have been taking for far too long and it’s time to learn to give back what we have taken from the future. If that means we have to really learn to sacrifice (give up our wasteful technologies and unnecessary comforts), then the Occupy movement is demonstrating that at least some people are willing to do so. Will they be willing to permanently live without money or a System of systems that is based on consumption instead of generosity? Only time and catastrophe will tell. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren is not the enemy: the Republicans are stupid, but their sin is also your sin: ignoring how bad our Malthusian pyramid is skewed right now and then arguing about the semantics and the luxuries instead of working on the basic needs.
Yay, auntiegrav!.. Someone gets it. Take 99% of the jobs that will be offered and shove them. Work should be playful (ludic), practical (producing sustainable food, energy and shelter) and build prosperity (develop and apply new technologies) –not slavery that shoves profits into other people’s pockets, and cheap, non-essential products into every shopping cart.
@steve from cranbury
I think we are in agreement about ignoring troll propaganda from think tank institutions delivering spins like like “NOBODY NEEDS A JOB”.
At the Catholic Grammar School I attended, 6th, 7th and 8th graders were treated, once a month, to a field trip to local farms and manufacturing facilities, and since we were situated, geographically, between Philadelphia and New York City, there was a wealth of places to visit to learn about the arts of LIFE maintenance, so we can move on from the 11 year old school lesson about *sustainability*.
Crimes against humanity and stealing from labor to gain *theoretical* amounts of unearned wealth like derivatives go hand in hand…unlike Brookes ( a 40 something GenXer), there is a surprising number of people who know what is a *sin* and *evil*, and we still have a playbook to follow.
99% of what jobs Rob, they have mostly been sent overseas as the cheapining of America continues. You’ll break a few camels backs trying to get them to return too.
@owen owens – astounding ignorance on your part, as usual, we don’t NEED or WANT those jobs that scurried away oversees when the environmental and labor pitch forks and torches came out….
Take the camels and go survey the land SOUTH of the kingdom – you need to expand your agricultural base to feed your out of control population growth instead of indulging in slum lord rent seeking from the entire country of Greece.
@Per – they leveraged 100 to 1 and now *own* Greece….sanity?
Manufacturing POVERTY at the speed of light – a *sin*? *Evil*?
Quite the new *god* in town….
Robin Hood Tax Gains Ground at the G-20
Submitted by Mary Bottari on November 4, 2011 – 05:49
http://banksterusa.org/content/robin-hood-tax-gains-ground-g-20
Nurses Hold Geithner’s Feet to the Fire
“The news reports hit the wire almost at the exact same moment that thousands of nurses took the fight for a fair economy right to Tim Geithner’s doorstep with signs demanding “An Economy for the 99%” and “Tax Timmy’s Friends.” Nurses and other groups are fed up with Geithner’s soft pedaling every action that might hold the big banks accountable for the meltdown of the global economy. The noon rally at the Treasury marks an increased effort by unions to convince the Obama administration that more needs to be done to fix the country’s broken financial system and create jobs.”
more (a lot more):
http://banksterusa.org/content/robin-hood-tax-gains-ground-g-20
Robin Hood Tax Gains Ground at the G-20
Submitted by Mary Bottari on November 4, 2011 – 05:49
I’m not sayin you need or want them, i’m sayin there aint a damn thing you or anyone else can do ABOUT it but cry 96 tears. Well the bath tub is full baby, and you’re a slave to money until you meet your reward. A lucky dog is as rare as a white CROW. s.a.d.
@Annie
http://www.primitivism.com/abolition.htm
Even Lincoln feared what people would become once enslaved (to money). Although voice after voice is spoken to prove enslaved people are very good things, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, [by being a slave himself]. The contention that slavery offered labor the greatest real freedom ran into the inescapable fact {that the most dumb and stupid slave that ever toiled for a master, does constantly KNOW that he is wronged}. Defences of producing slaves to money were, in fact, reversible arguments. If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right enslave B. — why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A.? If slaves to money were justified on the ground that masters were white while slaves were black, he warned, By this rule you are to be slaved to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. Now, if it were defened on the grounds that masters were intellectually the superiors of blacks, the same logic applies. By this rule, you are to be slaved to the FIRST man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. So you see Annie, the people you trust/ed, misled you, conned you into becoming todays slave/s to money. Sort of an intellectual ponzi sceme that left a scar on your neck, and a kink on the books.
Hey, where have all the trolls gone? These comments are decidedly one-sided (not that that is bad, but I miss the heterogeneity). Surely bill munny has something acerbic to contribute?
@Black – didn’t read it past the first paragraph. If you sincerely believe that you have discovered something about LIFE that no human being discovered before you about work vs play, then please be kind enough to identify what species you hail from so that we can send a different level of expert to be very careful in not stepping on any of your sacred cows as we learn more about what planet you call *home*. This is Planet Annie….we are merciless in hunting down savage cabals that launch pre-emptive wars for UNEARNED WEALTH. Innocent until proven guilty – you didn’t have anything to do with that cabal, did you, Robert Black?
The convolution in spelling and meaning that you give your discovery as a name – ludic – is what was called *lucid* the last time it was trotted out for *ism* contention…
The Dodd in the *Dudley D’Wrong and Franken Stein* financial regulation bill is the head of the Motion Picture Association. Sure, go ahead and trade oil for a filming crew to document the stupendeous accomplishments of the African Continent’s great spiritual awakening and how they make their lives less miserable through honest work as free men. It’s a thrilling epoch in any culture’s history and to know it is still such a vital link in bringing truth, beauty and goodness to all culture’s even at the beginning of the 21st century, well, great, eh?…75 trillion in derivatives should cover the cost…Egypt has an agricultural civilization under its belt as a previous accomplishment….please don’t try and change any of the names that the Egyptians gave it – what? 7,000 years ago as a *idea* – BIG TIME words like *agricultural civilization* is one of the things loved best by English speakers – precision in designation – there is no room for errors in translation to other languages on earth….
@steve from cranbury – we will not get distracted by word games with possible sociopaths from alien planets, either, okay? Yes we take note of their existence which is something they have a hard time doing when it comes to our existence as a species of 7 billion people – they’re not impressed with Mother Earth doing the wash for 7 billion diapers every day – hmmmm, what consumer product did THEY invent – must spy of them for that knowledge….
Sure, send in the Motion Picture Association to do a documentary….paychecks for all the extras – the Lewdicks? Now we’re talking *commerce* again….
just playing around, folks….our understanding of cosmic math insists that when things get ever more complicated, that growth in complication needs to be matched by an equal and opposite force of *controlled confusion*….don’t worry, nothing will blow up if we do our math – it’s Planet Annie, why would I want to blow it up?
I think I changed 7 billion diapers, once upon a time….hehe :)
@anonymous – the *ludics* are somehow not impressed with your “work” – go figure…
you know Annie……that kinda threw me for a loop a few hrs back…..I almost looked in up in my electronic “dic”, as my 8th grade English teacher referred to it….:)
@ Lauren Steiner — Nicely summed up!
I agree with others that the Dems are making a BIG mistake in embracing Obama as their candidate for 2012.
As a Progressive Independent, I WILL NOT VOTE FOR OBAMA AGAIN, under any circumstances.
Of course, it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY I will be voting for a RepublicRAT either.
At this point, I’d say I will vote for Bill Still (still2012.com), if he is the Libertarian candidate. Alternatively, I will write in Bernie Sanders.
Fractal math – every advance, every discovery – all brought to ruin by man’s ego
More misery for others = more $$$$ for ME ME ME
Revenge going back and forth now inside NYPD – the internal drug pushing faction who took a hit after the last *raid* on OWS still has the BIG TIME puppeteer in place – hence the second *raid* – and definitely straight out of the military handbook.
Point keeps getting illuminated, don’t it? Bright shining financial future for Crime Inc. franchises of slaves, weapons and drugs – electricity black outs in *middle class* neighborhoods during/after every nor’easter…
Tax Laws made it all possible.
I feel like goin insane today, anyone want to join me?
@btraven
Unfortunately we don’t get to vote no confidence. But there is still time to demand that the Democratic Party wake up and offer at least a contestant to challenge Obama directly on democratic principles. Right now we only hear the Republicans telling us how much of a liberal he is and make him out to be their arch enemy…all the time getting every policy alignment they’ve wanted (but could not get) for 3 decades.
This is pure deception and none of the Democrats are coming forth to take a true lead against this false front executive capture.
Simon has focused on the theories and whose theories are more or less reputable, but I would like to point out that the ad is trying to tie Warren to OWS and claiming OWS does not represent mainstream America. This is where Rove is wrong. Factually, OWS (in NYC) has been peaceful and resonably effective at self-policing. His characterization of it as violent and dangerous (placard with Che) seeks to evoke fear. However, who are Americans most afraid of now and who constitutes the biggest threat to their well being? The ad panders to old fears that have lost their relevance.
@Woych – I agree, it’s completely creepy that there are no Democrat Party Presidential candidates. Isn’t that a Romney sell – he gets better as a candidate with every race he loses :-) Still wanna know if Romney and Huntsman believe we landed on and walked around the moon….? Especially since China is going next…
Where is the nurturing of a *deep bench* of Democrats? PUBLIC debates among candidates would coordinate the Democrat Party Platform and pin Obama to have, not a *lame duck* 2nd turn, but a series of mandates to accomplish…
Total political meltdown of the 2 party system – “….clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, stuck in the middle with you….”
@Lauren – what’s the replacement…? *Ludic* ideals such as we don’t need jobs? And what about symbolic paper currency – AKA *money* – no need for *money* since no one needs *jobs*?
You’d think with Rand Nihilists burning down the house, an *occupation* by the 99%ers of the house so that it doesn’t get burnt down would not be using the same *nihilistic* strategy, tactics and language….
Bright shiny future for Criminal Inc. franchises. Complete dismantling of USA infrastructure (transportation, water, electricity, FAMILY HOMES – and with that go hospitals, libraries, watershed land, schools, PEACE officers) through the TAX LAWS
about to be handed down on November 23 by the *super committee
Timmy is so stupid he cheated himself by cheating on his taxes – LOL.
It’s a FETISH with the 1% – TAXES…
But true, no jobs, no taxes.
And as we are pushed all the way back to swinging through the trees in order to reach cultural equilibrium among nations according to the *ideals* of the 1% cult
a LAW will promptly be drafted by the modern pharisees proclaiming *no tents or zip lines allowed in OUR trees*…
trees they *own* by leveraging 100 to 1 – IN SECRET….
NYC economic *survival* plan – ala *moosse-ad* – so prophetic that Warsaw, Poland protest group’s banner I saw in 2009 – “Is Poland the next Palestine?”
@Annie:
“Total political meltdown of the 2 party system – “….clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, stuck in the middle with you….”
More like:
Clones to the left of me, Brokers to the Right; stuck in the middle with Obama!!!
@Woych – good one :-)
I shoot at the top – here’s a contrast *art* message to the blood money in NYC *talking* at the *hippies*…
(My Godchild delivered a beautiful baby last week – it goes deep, this *have no fear* – heck, even Lennon talks about “saying a little prayer”…)
@serious:
http://www.uta.edu/huma/agger/fastcapitalism/2_2/fisher.html
“Upgrading” Market Legitimation: Revisiting Habermas’s ‘Technology as Ideology’ in Neoliberal Times
Eran Fisher
U. without Borders / The U. in Exile.
Hello,
I am Kavin Matthews and I am a member of some financial communities. I just visited your site (baselinescenario.com). The articles of your site is really worth reading. The quality of your content is excellent. After seeing this, I would like to request you something. I love to write financial articles and I would like to contribute something for your site if you’ll give me the permission. I can give you an original guest post and I assure you that it will be published only in your site. If you want, you can suggest me the topic also and I will write accordingly. Please let me know your thoughts. Waiting for your positive reply. Reach me at: kavin[dot]matthews25[at]gmail[dot]com
—
Thanks & Regards,
Kavin matthews
I’ll pass a second time there Kavin. Regards, Mr. Amusing.
Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis (Portfolio) [Hardcover]
James Rickards (Author
Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis (Portfolio)
Dear Prof
boy, are you an egghead
Did you actually watch the ad
remember, this ad is targeted for American electorate, on which no one lost money underestimating.
To put it another way, someone once asked P Noonan about Reagan’s debate bloopers; she said, so what, millions *saw* him say it on TV; thousands read the correction the next day in the Times
And Warren has not helped herself at all by the way she started her campaing, with a tone deaf, invitee only “listening tour”, then that incredibly stupid perry level comment that sshe provided the intellectual basis of OWS
TV is about perception; the Rove ad works well with the hole warren has dug herself as an elitist harvard prof
Oh, and did I mention that she makes a half million dollars a year,, 350K to teach a course and another 150K as a “consultant” (and god knows, she probably consutls for the koch brothers)
and I’m a liberal
Warren is starting to look like Coakley, an out of touch liberal egghead who is actually a typical dem pol in thrall to industry
and, like I say, I;m a liberal – god knows what the avg MA voter thinks of her
Great thinkers somehow always end up looking like E. Warren, they make good enough money, at the cost to themselves. Egg head or not, others love to take advantage of thinkers talents so they don’t have to do the thinkin themselves. Now i’m certain old ezra is as linear as a pole but is angry at his/hers inability to make as much as a certified egg head does in these hard economic times. Or they would not have had to bring up the subject of egg heads to begin with. and i’m your average stranded voter.
@Woych – all that *perfection* of information collection (technology ideology) and no one knows anything about the *derivatives*…..who holds them, what do they represent, are they *alien* $$$…
The internet is more like a city sewer than an ideology – virtual crap production.
Like all ideologies, the *data* is a lie – everyone lies on the internet…no one is THAT stupid as to provide true information for pollsters….
@Steve from Canterbury ,”Their repeated behavior over decades demonstrates the GOP and many Democrats have an agenda…..preserve and enhance the wealth of big money and their businesses that generate it. Anything that infers with helping the rich get richer is not politically possible because the rich won’t allow it.
These people are liars who repeat lies endlessly, cherry pick “facts” to support their agenda, have contempt for and fear any genuine exploration of issues….why have we lost so many jobs, why does are financial system rather regularly blow up and wreck the lives of millions of not so rich people.”
Buffet’s PR machine has him saying today, “We won.” Yup. Congrats. And so now what?
Let’s take a look at recent events. Still some good PR coming from the city government camps that aren’t insane with embedded Rovians.
The OWS – the peaceful “hippie” protestors, with soul-full dreamy eyes listening to songs like Lennon’s “Beautiful boy” that they email to each other to announce a birth in their circle – they needed to be woken-up at 1 AM (time to make the doughnuts) and be rousted because their camp had suddenly become dangerous – they were INVADED by drug dealers and sociopaths (the pre-emptive crowd).
Basically what had happened was that the Wall Street techno-boyz lost their *tolerance* and decided to crack heads after a night of rabble-rousing partying.
So yet another grievance of the OWS people was brought into play. Based on the TAX LAWS, the *middle class* of empire builders and maintainers are at a political and social disadvantage because they have LESS $$$$ than all the franchises of global business that are NOT taxed – mercenaries, slave tradors and drug dealors….let me guess, yet another *intelligence failure* on the part of the CIA et al? Didn’t do double-entry accounting? Shoot, plane loads of cash just being thrown out of the sky – wtf was that?! Now you put up the savings and homes of teachers and nurses as the *collateral* you had in some 100 to 1 banking leverage scheme?
Pentagon is *concerned* about the amount of damage done.
@Jed Clampett – heck, send in a resume to that Pentagon to *consult* for them about *propaganda* that could make the Orks disappear….
Money talks.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/15-8
Chris Hedges: This Is What Revolution Looks Like
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/15-8
@ Thurston Howell 3rd: tell the truth, WHO did you like best…Maryanne or Ginger, or was the mrs. your Numero Uno?
Thurston
What do you think Prof Warren does for 150K a year in consulting – help deworm ophans in somalia (nod to legally blond there)
Do you think it wasn’t insulting for her to start her campaign with a “listening tour” that, so far as i can tell, was at mansions with rich people ?
was or was not her comment tone deaf in the context of a campaign ?
and if you think i’m mean to M Coakley, let me give you a story told to me by a friend who lives in somerville, a working class town adjacent to zip 02139:
This is during the Coakley/Brown Senate race, at the height of the recession.
So my friend goes down to the union hall, where Coakley has a meet and greet; you got all these union construction guys, nervous as hell that they are gonna loose their houses, and what does martha talk about ? Feminism…there is a time and a place for all my friend
As to your comment that great thinkers always do well (financially), I think it would look suspect to anyone who has more then one neuron firing at the same time
But clearly, I didn’t express myself well
Elections are about what people SEE (that is the verb, see) on TV, a cool medium – did you ever notice that Reagan and young Bush, and Palin, masters of the medium are always smiling ? same thing about J Carson.
So, ya gotta ask yourself, in that context, what do you see in the Rove ad ?
I see something that works cause it fits with the *narrative* that has begun to emerge about warren
you can complain, as in any mainstream media story, that the narrative is incredibly unfair and thin on facts; thats life.
In any event, why is everyone so hot on Warren ? the last thing she did in the news was insult a sitting House Committee Chair; if Obama had had any doubts as to her unsuitability to be head of a major agency that episode should have made him stop worrying , I mean, do I really have to tell you that agency heads don’t insult sitting Chairs ??
that sitting Chair had it coming, and enuff with your disinfo project on warren
I don’t really know much of her beyond what I see, she looks as if she could cave in at any moment just like the current economy. There are signs of stress everywhere in life, just as there are folks wanting to stay warm during cold northern hemishpere windy winter nights.
I am a big fan of Elizabeth Warren. We need more folks who are willing to stand up to the 1% and begin to pass laws that address the inequality that is dragging us down. So I have decided to join the debate, though I am not a politician.
My Pledge to You
Pledge to Voters: Neither I nor any of my staff will accept a position that involves lobbying or requires using institutional knowledge gained while serving our constituents for a minimum of five years after serving in Washington. (Excluding taking a position in education or with a community non-profit organization).
Pledge from Voters: I (any donor giving more than $100 during the campaign) agree not to contact Congressman Yale or his staff on any issue in which I have a direct financial interest.
http://www.yaleforcongress.com/the-pledge.html
@Woych – the Harvard Divinity School graduate wrote a good piece, thanks for sharing.
I would wrap a different timeline around it, though. It started with the killing of Kennedy, and pre-emptive violence is STANDARD SOP for how they TAKE everything. We’re in the place now where there’s absolutely nothing left to take from 40 million *middle class* born and bred, empire-building and maintaining USA citizens (I’m first generation born and bred, so I am acknowledging all the people who came here over 200 years ago – homestead farmers who never stop tilling the soil, engineers, scientists, architects and on and on).
I don’t know, what is the polite and politically savvy way to tell the Chair that that is one hell of a math mistake someone made – hitting *enter* and – voila! – the lives of 40 million are no longer *real* – they don’t OWN what they built?
I haven’t given up hope on having a *Nuremberg*-like trial. It’s the only thing that will save our future. Let’s throw somebody under the bus who deserves it for a change.
All we have since Kennedy is a lame history of lone wolves assassinating leaders who advance the POSITIVE agenda of humanity. The case for the genius of Rove being made on this thread indicates a savvy about increasing the potential for the lone wolf to be the one to do the dirty work without any proof of connection to the *power* behind the propaganda.
I just saw this:
‘The internet is more like a city sewer than an ideology – virtual crap production.”
LMAO
http://unitedrepublic.org/about-us/
This is the material missing from 13 BANKERS
Exile on Wall Street: One Analyst’s Fight to Save the Big Banks from Themselves
by Mike Mayo
http://www.amazon.com/David-C.-Korten/e/B001JP3MR8/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 (LIST OF WORKS PAGE)
BY
David C. Korten
David C. Korton writes on community economics and a sustainable pragmatic agenda is presented in his latest book.
His critiques of corporate driven market economy is also worth noting, and the link above will lead you to his line of works over the past years…check it out. Here’s the latest two that bridge his frameworks most completely:
Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
and
When Corporations Rule the World
@Woych
I don’t get the red herring of RATigan and all these other internet links of virtual organizations focused on getting money out of politics….put up a roster of candidates who were never corrupted and truly represent the 99% – what part don’t you understand…?
All conditions for a Just War have been met – especially #3 – the chance for SUCCESS:
Here’s the list from wikipedia – “…..lists four strict conditions for “legitimate defense by military force”:
1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
3. there must be serious prospects of success;
4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power as well as the precision of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.”
We know that Prince of Blackwater would shoot to kill his neighbors in Detroit – he’s a PROFESSIONAL mercenary….guess now it all depends on the 1% in uniform – will they open fire on their brothers and sisters…?
It’s a WAR, Woych, because condition #1 is what everyone has been blathering about for 2 years as if they’re watching a fictional TV soap opera…
Merciless in hunting down and bringing to justice those who use pre-emptive war to steal unearned wealth….ask the Big Giant Head of the 1% elite if this is TRUE :-))
@owen owens – LMAO at investing in roads in Brazil…good one….
Once again, astounding ignorance about the POWER of Mother Earth – she never loses a battle when you attempt to tame her with brutal, monkey brain force….
I feel the same way, about the power of mother Earth that is. You nailed it solid.
If there was anything resembling a strategy in the *global economy*, it would be clear that you do not want to hand your *enemy* the moral advantage by conducting a pre-emptive strike. The accusation being made by many other countries as an observation of fact that USA *secret economic leadership* takes decisions not IN FAVOR of its own crucial interests is VALID. Are we exhibiting irrational unconditional love for the other’s *existence* because we can find no other way to be so loyal as a friend other than to hurt ourselves?!
Had a moment of mirth when a talking head snuck in the observation that the crop of Republicans who threw their hat into the ring for President are from the bar scene in Star Wars, and the two Mormons are the only ones who stand out as *normal* and everyone wants to hear those two side by side. Progress, we have a definition of *normal* for the candidates…
All I wonder about, besides the moon-landing conspiracy :-), is what does the average Mormon have to neglect in studying science because of the extensive amount of detail they have to study about Smith’s visions in order to belong to the Mormon organization. There is, I was informed, a test to pass.
My test was easy – all I had to answer to the Bishop’s question at Confirmation, “Who is God?”, was “God is Love”. Considering how little love there is, at times, operating in the world, it’s not hard to believe that “love” is more a God thing than a human thing :-)
I also did not have to study the reams of religious stuff written by many people of *catholic* faith over 2000 years of time. I learned enough about the dewey decimal system for organizing vast libraries containing all that richness of intellectual life devoted to ethics, morality, and how crucial both are in providing a happier life experience for every individual if they take it to heart. I can research anything I want, at will, as a library member if I need to broaden the ethical view on the human condition to include success in pre-iPod human epochs.
So just as there is, was and will be very worthy challenges to church authority coming from state authority – especially against Catholics (Jack Kennedy – again), I want to know about the *elders* running a Mormon presidency – will they be *popes*? Fair question. Does anyone ever wander into a Mormon news website and read their stuff? Stuff like a second “Moscow Russia Stake” was laid by the Elder in June 2011….?
Gosh, I would not know how to answer Putin if he asked whether I, as President of the USA, support stake-driving Mother Russia! I don’t have the 24/7 lucid brain time left after my priority list is checked off to get into so much *religion*. All I got, as explanation to a Putin-level dignitary, is that freedom to establish a new religion is a *right* USA people hold dearly and the Mormon religion grew out of that right. You can be free in USA to be a one man pope show.
However, over time most Prophet based religions, like Mormonism, become problematical because they destabilize the security of an empire, if you will, because the process of garnishing converts is *politics*. Theoretically, God is Sovereign in the spirit realm and can’t be represented by a Prophet playing a role of spiritual statesman. Man solves his problems of living as a man, not as a god.
USA people really are feet-on-the-ground practical. We like a practical visionary trait in our Statesmen/women – our President of a Free People.
Granted, what would so many economists have to bet on if not for *prophecy* from ITS own Prophets – ie. whether food prices can go up overnight by 50% while salaries and food stamps disappear proportionately for the 99% so that the 1% can call as their own *privatized stuff* 60% of the GDP of America without anyone noticing because, as we all know, Americans are really stupid….just tell them it’s *god’s work*….
Always a problem – a *religion* set up around what a Prophet sez….
Civilization demands constant attention because it is always a MEASURABLE quality of life for a great many people of all talents that contribute to collective LIFE maintenance – science, coordinating philosophy, applied art in home and health maintenance….we can group all people (AKA *jobs*) into major categories – not too complicated, actually….
Back to Putin :-) What does he know about what a *stake* is going to end up being when planted in Moscow by a Mormon Elder? *Stake* is not an elegant word in the English language. There could be a very bad diplomatic incident if there is a literal translation of a “Stake being placed by a Mormon Elder in Mother Russia.” Think about it. Is Mother Russia a big juicy cow that can be rustled into the Elder’s pen like he was able to do in USA?
Simon, I’m a bit surprised that you’re asking the question, “what do the Occupy Wall Street protestors really want?” I think at this point, that question is the province of lazy journalists and leaders who aren’t interested in trying to understand. I’m also a bit surprised that Konzcal concludes that jobs are the number one priority to the movement (maybe this is actually so), but the occupiers regularly recite a litany of other priorities, as I’ve observed from my time down there: reinvigorate financial regulation, end too-big-to-fail by bteaking up the largest banks, prevent financial firms from taking on outrageous risks and imperiling the American economy anew, and so on. In fact, I don’t doubt that you are an intellectual hero of more than a few protestors. (That’s not something to be ashamed of, by the way.)
Fortunately, you conclude the same paragraph by asking who is responsible for taking on the risks that led to the catastrophe that cost so many jobs, greatly worsening the magnitude if not also the duration of the recession. My belief is that that question is getting lost in the discussion the protests have successfully reinvigorated. I think we need to really wave the flag for this issue, and to the extent that it’s getting lost as a rationale for urgent reform, it’s our responsibility to bring it to the fore.
That must be the fastest that anyone’s contradicted themselves. Glass-Steagal actually gave more power to the Fed to regulate interest rates.
http://www.statecraft.org/index.html
Excerpt: From Chapter 11…Tactical Totalitarianism
“The Cold War provided the international framework and ideological rationale for the new U. S. role. Counterinsurgency doctrine would provide a substitute for the Europeans’ imperial policies and an alternative to repetition of the United States’ own neocolonial experience in the Philippines and Latin America before World War II. U. S. doctrine presumed that in a world of limitless menace, internal disorder reflected external aggression, and so legitimized an unlimited response. The unilateralism of colonialism would yield to joint action on the invitation of “host” governments, thereby relieving the United States of responsibility for actions taken. The ease with which intervention and illegal action could be plausibly denied, or hived off on the indigenous “host,” encouraged its proliferation.”
So when you bring this up to date you get the “crazies” in D.C. writing up the planning blueprint for the “Great Game” by usurping the opportunities of lawless capital petro-stroika. The instrument of looting and monetarization can hide money better than cumbersome offshore machination, while the driving ideology of market base fosters the controlling interest in the global enterprise of political-military domination. All this in the name of global financial security and domestic assurances that this pain will be rewarded; all the while insuring capture and control fraud by its secret operations community under National Security and Intelligence doctrines that manipulate the meaning of stability and instability. In terms utilized by Edward G. Lansdale..a .”demotic strategy” that entraps entire peoples to work directly for the interests that bound them…under the great lie of a more compassionate rule of order…as we deregulate the LAWS that restrict them from acting out the endgame plan they like to call realism and the end of history..
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MI20Df02.html
Obama sears the arc of instability
By Nick Turse
“It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the George W Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability”. It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them – from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia – Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace. …”
Read More on this fascinating reveal:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MI20Df02.html
————————————————————————————————————————
also take a look at:
It’s Obama vs infinite war
By Pepe Escobar
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LI25Df01.html
————————————————————————————————————————
and then review and consider this summation of real politik in Amerika:
Aug 25, 2011
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MH25Df01.html
George W Obama?
By David Bromwich
“perhaps even deceit” ??? I would say that deceit is the stock and trade and fundamental tenet of BOTH major political parties. To think otherwise is simply delusional.
This guy Rove sounds like Gaddafi describing the protesters as ‘drugies’.
Colbert Fans Email The FEC About Karl Rove’s Super PAC Request
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/11/the_funniest_emails_colbert_fans_sent_to_the_fec_a.php
“Stephen Colbert’s “super PAC” Americans For A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow last week asked supporters to write the Federal Election Commission in “support” of American Crossroads’ request to, essentially, coordinate “non-coordinated” campaign advertisements with politicians.
Colbert was mocking a request for an advisory opinion sent to the FEC on behalf of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads which stated: “While these advertisements would be fully coordinated with incumbent Members of Congress facing re-election in 2012, they would presumably not qualify as ‘coordinated communications.”
This is the front-line defense against Karl Roves’ Corrosion of Democratic Principles for Profit. The article is informative and dangerously humorous.
You may decide to write to the Federal Election Commission yourself after reading what others have sent.
Source Watch: Karl Rove;
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Karl_Rove
———————————————————————
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/mar/09/uselections2004.usa1 (early review The Guardian)
“The brains”
He masterminded George Bush’s transformation from boozing brat to national leader, and has been called the most powerful adviser in the White House. Now Karl Rove is in charge of the $150m campaign to re-elect Bush. Who is the man the president calls his ‘boy genius’? By Julian Borger The Guardian, Monday 8 March 2004
which includes some details on the “warmonger” Karl Rove the Rogue Hawk ready to commit American lives to combat? ….Well here’s the Guardian on that self promoting patriotism:
“Like Dick Cheney, he avoided the Vietnam draft with a college deferment, but gave up his education to work on Republican campaigns, and never got a degree…”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/mar/09/uselections2004.usa1
————————————————————————————————————
and as far as his involvement in dirty tricks you can follow a good deal of that at the Guardian source, which also includes an interesting perspective from one of his benefactors …get this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/mar/09/uselections2004.usa1
“It is a dangerous moment for Rove, but he has escaped from a litany of political scandals unscathed, and even enhanced. Bush’s other nickname for the Boy Genius is “Turd Blossom” – a Texanism for a flower that blooms from cattle excrement. This year, there should be ample opportunity for him to earn the title.”
Pretty much sums it up nicely for today as well! Still up to his dirty tricks and full of excrement to fuel the fires to burn down our house.
@Woych – so where are the Presidential candidates? And other candidates at local and state?
Why am I the only one noticing that an oligarchy of *prophets* have an army of brainwashed nihilists out and about destroying *THINKING* among people. Do we need a book and an Ivy League political science course to discuss whether THINKING comes along with speech and so ipso facto that means that thinking is protected by the First Amendment?
And so who is doing the thinking?
Let’s CENSOR Rove the way I am suddenly being censored….
And where are the REAL Presidential candidates?
@Annie : Story of the Week! (Exclusive): Lobbyists target Occupy Wall Street
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45366471#45366471
Says it all!@
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/45366471#45366471
more:
http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/
http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/19/8896362-exclusive-lobbying-firms-memo-spells-out-plan-to-undermine-occupy-wall-street-video
Exclusive: Lobbying Firm’s Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street (VIDEO)
Sat Nov 19, 2011 8:53 AM EST
by Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky
Here’s their general all video page:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/#searchSearch%20all%20video
@Woych – saw that – Rove needs to be censored. Seriously, he needs to have someone claim that there’s a technical problem with his phone line and we can’t hear him…
anonymous nov 16
quote
“that sitting Chair had it coming, and enuff with your disinfo project on warren”
1) are you really advocating public insults to congressional committe chairs ? As a path to win friends and influence enemies ?..meanwhile, I have a bridge in brooklyn I can sell you
2)re disinfo, tell me where I’m wrong
hey, EZRAAAA, Congress has an 8% approval rating, largely derived from family members taking the poll…so take your bridge, and cram it, clown.
EZRAAAA, people like you, NEVER think they’re wrong, so, it’s a waste of time, no matter what.
finally……take a hike jack
now, let’s see your intellectualized response.
http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-colleges-now-students-new-public-intellectuals/1321891418
Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org)
Occupy Colleges Now: Students as the New Public Intellectuals
Monday 21 November 2011
by: Henry A. Giroux, Truthout | News Analysis
(excerpt)
“The police violence that has taken place at the University of California campuses at Berkeley and Davis does more than border on pure thuggery; it also reveals a display of force that is as unnecessary as it is brutal, and it is impossible to justify. These young people are being beaten on their campuses for simply displaying the courage to protest a system that has robbed them of both a quality education and a viable future.
Finding our way to a more humane future demands a new politics, a new set of values, and a renewed sense of the fragile nature of democracy. In part, this means educating a new generation of intellectuals who not only defend higher education as a democratic public sphere, but also frame their own agency as intellectuals willing to connect their research, teaching, knowledge, and service with broader democratic concerns over equality, justice, and an alternative vision of what the university might be and what society could become.”
(Read it ALL)
http://www.truth-out.org/occupy-colleges-now-students-new-public-intellectuals/1321891418
Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org)
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/mark-ames-how-uc-davis-chancellor-linda-katehi-brought-oppression-back-to-greece’s-universities.html
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2011
Mark Ames: How UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi Brought Oppression Back To Greece’s Universities
Yves here. Reader sidelarge raised the issue yesterday in comments, of UC Davis chancellor Linda Katehi’s role in abolition of university asylum in Greece. The story is even uglier than the link he provided suggests.
By Mark Ames, the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine. Cross posted from The eXiled
(Introduction excerpt)
“A friend of mine sent me this link claiming that UC Davis chancellor “Chemical” Linda Katehi, whose crackdown on peaceful university students shocked America, played a role in allowing Greece security forces to raid university campuses for the first time since the junta was overthrown in 1974. (H/T: Crooked Timber) I’ve checked this out with our friend in Athens, reporter Kostas Kallergis (who runs the local blog “When The Crisis Hits The Fan”), and he confirmed it–Linda Katehi really is the worst of all possible chancellors imaginable, the worst for us, and the worst for her native Greece.”
see what is coming here next: read the article. No more LIES ! The CAT is out of the BAG!
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/11/mark-ames-how-uc-davis-chancellor-linda-katehi-brought-oppression-back-to-greece’s-universities.
Medicine, higher education, airlines, computer companies…..none have orbited outside the fascist nexus…..with worsening effects to be realized going forward.
Even KODAK in Rochester, NY appears to have played a MAJOR ROLE in the doctoring ( alteration ) of the “ZAPRUDER” film…..at the behest of CIA…….and this was way back in ’63.
More recent examples are United and American.
Dwight Eisenhower really understood where the country was going, but no one paid sufficient attention.