Hi everyone,
I’ve just completed work my book, Corporatocracy: An Introduction to the New American Government and the website is now up and running. Visitors can preview the text, purchase a PDF copy ($5) or buy the physical version ($10). Here is the site: CorporatocracyBook.com.
Judge Jed Rakoff is probably one of the few honest judges we have left. He recently refused to accept an SEC settlement with Citigroup in which they sold mortgages and then bet against them, saying that the $95 million they were asked to pay was “pocket change” and required no admission of guilt.
“If the allegations of the complaint are true, this is a very good deal for Citigroup; and, even if they are untrue, it is a mild and modest cost of doing business,” he said.
The judge is right. If fraud charges are too lenient, businesses will make the calculation that not only that they above the law, but that they can commit the same acts again and receive another slap on the wrist. This can and has happened again, and again and again. See this chart from the New York Times: Read More
Are we about to take another major step toward tyranny? According to the ACLU, on Monday or Tuesday, the Senate will vote on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which includes a provision which they say will allow the US Military to permanently detain American citizens indefinitely and without trial, akin to the Japanese internment camps during World War II.
The Senate has rejected the ban to stop indefinite detention without trial. The bill is now likely to reach President Obama. He has promised a veto if these provisions were included, but civil liberties were not a consideration in the memo. The president has not made any other public statements on the measure. If President Obama does decide to issue the veto, it will be the third of his presidency.
Here is a list of every Senator who opposed the Udall Amendment that legal scholars believe would have stopped the military from having the power of indefinite detentions without trial. In addition, the Feinstein Amendment to NDAA which would have also stopped the provision allowing indefinite detention also failed, 45 to 55.
Update 12/2/11:The bill passed 93-7 and according to CNN, there was a compromise that prevented Americans from being included in the indefinite detention policy. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, senators can’t even agree on whether or not that’s even true!
“Both parties emerged disagreeing over whether the law allowed or disallowed indefinite detention of Americans. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), an architect of the compromise, said it didn’t. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who helped negotiate it, said he believed it did.”
The ACLU has stated that the media jumped the gun and that the compromise “does not prohibit its application to American citizens or others in the United States. ” Read More
We’ve known for some time now that the financial services industry has been “livid” with Democrats who’ve tacitly supported the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Politico reported last month:
Banking executives personally called the offices of DCCC Chairman Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and DCCC Finance Chairman Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) last week demanding answers, three financial services lobbyists told POLITICO.
“They were livid,” said one Democratic lobbyist with banking clients.
Well, a new memo has leaked (and posted on MSNBC’s website) in which a lobbying firm linked with Republican leadership is advising The American Bankers Association on ways to disrupt and counteract the Occupiers. Read More
The UK’s Telegraph reported yesterday on the leak of a German memo in which the economic powerhouse intends to create a new “super state,” whereby they will be able to control the economies of European nations. So much for national sovereignty.
This is the kind of arrangement that only a few years ago would have been tin-foil hat material, but as many are coming to realize, this debt crisis has a way of exposing some very nasty sausage making that has come to define modern European politics. The emerging system is one of empire and control, but certainly never, ever democracy. Read More
About 2 months ago, I was wandering the pit of despair and intellectual ruin that is Facebook only to stumble upon a new protest who’s mission was to target Wall Street with one single goal. They left it open to the protesters what that goal would be. This way, people with different concerns might have been able to focus on something that could provide a path for greater changes without dividing people based on trivialities. Read More
If you want to know why people are protesting on Wall Street, it’s very simple. Author and former IMF official Jon Perkins said it very succinctly: “Elected officials – including the President – no longer write the laws; the corporate lobbyists write and pass them through our elected officials, whose campaigns they finance.”
Any insinuation that says the protester’s demands are not clear, or that they just want to provoke “class warfare” are either foolish or inherently dishonest. Its clear what the protest are about, even if you disagree with some of the signs, there’s a strong sense that what goes on in Washington DC is little more than theater. We have to pass laws so that we can find out later that the “jobs bill” privatizes our infrastructure. Read More
Just got done watching it tonight with some friends, and I wanted to write something up about it quickly while it was still fresh in my mind. If this seems a bit less formal than usual, that’s probably why.
I was amazed (yet again) how ahead of its time it is. One of the things I often hear about it is how “overrated” it is. Often this comes from my idiot friend who’s often trying to impress others with his edginess, but what really bothers me is the condemnation that comes from the elite. They say the movie is far too violent, fascist, and ultimately pointless dribble. Vapid philosophical nonsense. Certainly nothing of value here. No “useful truths.” Could it be that someone writing for a major metropolitan newspaper who gets paid double the median income might not be the best judge of what is essentially a study of social problems among regular people? Read More
This is a repost of an article by Paul Craig Roberts, originally posted at LewRockwell.com. Paul Craig Roberts [send him mail], a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He is an economist and is also known as the co-founder of Reaganomics. He regularly criticizes both Republican and Democratic administrations, especially on the abuse of power. His important article on the assassination of Anwar Awlaki is reprinted here in full.
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September 30, 2011 was the day America was assassinated.
Some of us have watched this day approach and have warned of its coming, only to be greeted with boos and hisses from “patriots” who have come to regard the US Constitution as a device that coddles criminals and terrorists and gets in the way of the President who needs to act to keep us safe.
In our book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, Lawrence Stratton and I showed that long before 9/11 US law had ceased to be a shield of the people and had been turned into a weapon in the hands of the government. The event known as 9/11 was used to raise the executive branch above the law. As long as the President sanctions an illegal act, executive branch employees are no longer accountable to the law that prohibits the illegal act. On the president’s authority, the executive branch can violate US laws against spying on Americans without warrants, indefinite detention, and torture and suffer no consequences. Read More
Just a little history for those not following the fraud in Social Security: In the recent negotiations, just about the only thing the administration and Republicans could agree on was the introduction of a new measurement device for inflation, which would be applied to the Social Security program. To summarize, over time the new measurement of inflation would have payment increases at a level lower than the rate of inflation, cutting cost (as well as the program’s payouts to seniors and the disabled). Read More
