Geithner’s Fed tried to keep sweet deal for banks a secret: Issa

By Daniel Tencer
Rawstory
Thursday, January 7th, 2010 -- 2:32 pm

The controversy surrounding Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's role in the 2008 Wall Street bailouts was ramped up Thursday with the revelation of emails that show the New York Federal Reserve -- then run by Geithner -- pressured insurance giant AIG to withhold information about payments the company made to its creditors.


Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) obtained emails between AIG employees showing that the company had planned to disclose in its filings to the SEC that it had paid 100 cents on the dollar to creditors like Goldman Sachs and other banks, but "the New York Fed crossed out the reference," Bloomberg News reports.

AIG has received $183 billion in taxpayer relief. The news that the New York Fed attempted to keep from the public how that money was spent will likely increase political opposition to Geithner's appointment as Treasury Secretary.

As Shahien Nasiripour notes at the Huffington Post, a report (PDF) last fall from the inspector general for the TARP bailout found that the New York Fed pressured AIG into paying creditors like Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Wachovia 100 cents on the dollar for failed insurance agreements known as credit default swaps, even though AIG was actively negotiating with those banks to pay them less. If AIG had had its way, it would have saved taxpayers money. But the Fed's intervention ensured taxpayers would be on the hook for all of AIG's bad debts.

The report therefore appeared to be definitive evidence that the Federal Reserve was far more concerned with the well-being of Wall Street than the well-being of the taxpayers bailing out Wall Street firms.

Continue reading here.

Wealthy Developer Wants a ‘Do-Over’ at Taxpayers’ Expense

PRESS RELEASE

FROM: Jeff Rogers
Chair, Pima County Democratic Party
January 7, 2010



One man's grudge would force voters back to the polls for yet another election because he didn't like the results of the last one.


Real estate speculator Humberto Lopez has pulled petitions and will pay for the signatures to force a recall election upon the city of Tucson. His targets are Council Member Karin Uhlich, re-elected just two months ago, and Council Member Regina Romero and Mayor Bob Walkup, who would both face re-election a year after winning the proposed recall election.

The recall is even more bizarre because Uhlich and Romero would run in "ward only" elections after a change last year in state law¹. Both won their wards overwhelmingly. Walkup would still have to face a city-wide special election.

"Mr. Lopez's personal dealings with the City Council have clouded his judgment," said Pima County Democratic Party Chair Jeff Rogers. "One man representing narrow special interests should not keep sending voters back to the polls, if those voters don't deliver the result he likes."

Rogers also wondered if, since newly elected council members are fair game, perhaps Republican incumbent Steve Kozachik would be up for facing all of those Ward 6 Democrats who are unhappy with November’s results. Kozachik won narrowly in a city-wide election last year but lost his own ward in a landslide.

"This is nonsense. The voters would be forced to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a pair of elections and the council has done nothing so detrimental to warrant recall," Rogers said.

"Mr. Lopez stood shoulder-to shoulder with us against Prop 200 two months ago because he knew that it was wrong for a well-financed, narrow special interest to buy an election. But now it appears that Mr. Lopez wants to do just that.

A recall and special election would only serve to distract the council from the governing required to solve the same fiscal crisis every other city in America is coping with. Election time is over. It's time to govern."

¹A.R.S. 19-201 & A.R.S. 9-821.01 C

Read Arizona Daily Star article Recall leader takes out petitions
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Move Your Money: Project Urges People to Transfer Money Out of Nation’s Largest Banks Into Local Community Banks

Democracy Now
January 04, 2010


Economist Robert Johnson, columnist Arianna Huffington and filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, among others, have come up with a new proposal that would allow ordinary people in this country to channel their anger over the Wall Street bailout while also helping invigorate community banking. We speak with Rob Johnson about Move Your Money. [includes rush transcript]

Watch VIDEO

Cantor Aggressively Targets 37 Democratic Lawmakers To Switch Health Care Vote | Giffords On List

By Sam Stein
Huffington Post
Updated: 01- 6-10 09:49 AM

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is releasing the names of 37 Democratic members of the House his office is targeting in an effort to switch their vote on health care reform.

The Virginia Republican, in a memo release from his office, pinned the GOP's prospects of derailing reform on convincing three of those 37 members to switch their vote from a yea to a nay. If Republican leadership secures those votes, it would reverse the narrow margin by which health care reform initially passed the House of Representatives.

26Dems Editorial Note: Gabrielle Giffords is among those targeted because of Sen. Bill Nelson's insertion of language in the Senate version that largely exempts seniors in the state of Florida from cuts to Medicare Advantage. Republicans are betting that Giffords and others who represent states with high Medicare Advantage enrollment will vote against the bill on these grounds. Giffords is also targeted because the bill asks states to pick up the tab for a portion of Medicaid costs. Republicans are exerting pressure on Democrats representing states being forced to cut education funding but which will also be saddled with millions of dollars in new Medicaid costs.

The Real News: Tax the speculators and create a public bank

The REAL NEWS

Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the U.S. and globally, the analysis of financial markets, and the economics of building a clean-energy economy in the U.S. Most recently, he co-authored the reports “Job Opportunities for the Green Economy” (June 2008) and “Green Recovery” (September 2008), exploring the broader economic benefits of large-scale investments in a clean-energy economy in the U.S. He has worked with the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Economic Commission on Africa on policies to promote to promote decent employment expansion and poverty reduction in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. He has also worked with the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and as a member of the Capital Formation Subcouncil of the U.S. Competiveness Policy Council.

60 Minutes: Cyber War: Sabotaging the System

Nov. 8, 2009

Former Chief of National Intelligence Says U.S. Unprepared for Cyber Attacks


(CBS) Nothing has ever changed the world as quickly as the Internet has. Less than a decade ago, "60 Minutes" went to the Pentagon to do a story on something called information warfare, or cyber war as some people called it. It involved using computers and the Internet as weapons.

Much of it was still theory, but we were told that before too long it might be possible for a hacker with a computer to disable critical infrastructure in a major city and disrupt essential services, to steal millions of dollars from banks all over the world, infiltrate defense systems, extort millions from public companies, and even sabotage our weapons systems.

Today it's not only possible, all of that has actually happened, plus a lot more we don't even know about.

Watch VIDEO


Watch CBS News Videos Online

26Dems Editorial Note.Election Integrity Advocates, aware of the vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines, have urged successfully in Pima County that voting equipment be disconnected from the internet. Other jurisdictions, including Maricopa County still are connected. The reality is that security has already been breached at CENTCOM, the power grid, and our banking system. If it is easy to get a generator to destroy itself, or to rob a bank of 10 million dollars in 24 hours with a click of the mouse, it would be just as easy for a foreign entity to hack into our voting systems and interfere with American elections.

Federal Prosecutors: Kentucky Officials Manipulated Clay County Elections for Decades

By Brad Friedman
The Bradblog
1/05/2010

The BRAD BLOG has long endeavored to fight back against the disinformation being put forward by the GOP "voter fraud" charlatans and fraudsters contending that massive fraud is being carried out by voters at the polls, requiring the institution of disenfranchising Photo ID restrictions at the polling place which would result in some 21 million Americans being unable to cast their legal votes, according to the League of Women Voters and most other serious experts on these matters.

Once again, a story out of Kentucky helps us highlight that it's election insiders, not voters themselves, who are, by far, the greatest threat to the integrity of elections.

We reported early last year on the passel of election officials in Clay County, KY, arrested for buying and selling votes, manipulating ES&S electronic voting machines without the knowledge of voters, and otherwise fixing elections from 2002 to 2006.

As their January 19 trial date nears, more motions are being filed by federal prosecutors. The latest, filed last week, alleges that two of the top officials charged --- one, a circuit court judge and the other, the county school Superintendent --- had been fixing elections for decades before their recent indictments...

Click on the text block to read more about vote-flipping ES&S machines.

More on votes disappearing FL-13: GAO Finds Prior Tests Do NOT Offer 'Reasonable Assurance' That Touch-Screen Machines Were Not at Fault in Sarasota's November 2006 Election

Continue reading here.

NYTimes: Inside Obama’s War on Terrorism

26 Dems Editorial Note: This article is a must-read 9-page in-depth narrative that explores the effect of terrorism on President Obama and his policies from inauguration day to the attempted Christmas Day bombing attempt on Flight 253.

MAGAZINE PREVIEW
By PETER BAKER
New York Times
Published: January 4, 2010

The evening before he was sworn into office, Barack Obama stepped out of Blair House, the government residence where he was staying across from the White House, and climbed into an armored limousine for the ride to a bipartisan dinner. Joining him in the back seat were John Brennan, his new counterterrorism adviser, and two foreign-policy advisers, Denis McDonough and Mark Lippert. The three men with the president-elect were out of breath, having rushed more than a mile from transition headquarters on foot after failing to find a taxi in Washington’s preinaugural madness. As the motorcade moved out, they updated Obama on gathering evidence of a major terrorist plot to attack his inauguration. After a weekend of round-the-clock analysis, the nation’s intelligence agencies were concerned that the threat was real, the men told him. A group of Somali extremists was reported to be coming across the border from Canada to detonate explosives as the new president took the oath of office. With more than a million onlookers viewing the ceremony from the National Mall and hundreds of millions more watching on television around the world, what could be a more devastating target?

“All the data points suggested there was a real threat evolving quickly that had an overseas component,” Juan Carlos Zarate, President George W. Bush’s deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, told me in November. As the inauguration approached, signs of a plot “seemed to be growing in credibility and relevance.” Another senior Bush official involved in those tense events a year ago said last fall that protecting the new president was not enough. Even a failed attack would send a debilitating message to the world. “If something happens on the podium and there’s chaos,” this official told me, “that’s the first time you see the new president, and you really don’t want that.”

Continue reading here.

Eye-opening New Book: Huffpost Book Club Pick, Shadow Elite by Janine Wedel

by Arianna Huffington
Huffington Post
January 6, 2010 10:30 AM

My first HuffPost Book Club selection of 2010 is Janine Wedel's Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market. It's a gripping, disquieting book that exposes and explains why it's been so hard to bring about any real change in our country -- why Washington no longer seems capable of addressing the problems our nation faces. Fingers have been pointed at everything from gerrymandering to partisan polarization to the misuse of the filibuster. But, according to Wedel, the real problem is much deeper -- and more disturbing -- than any of these.

As she writes in Shadow Elite, a new "transnational" class of elites has taken over our country: "The mover and shaker who serves at one and the same time as business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and government adviser glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services. It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible."

Wedel dubs this new class of influencers "flexians," and the closed system they've created for themselves the "flex net." She attributes their power, among other factors, to the "embrace of 'truthiness,' which allows people to play with how they present themselves to the world, regardless of fact or track record."

Wedel cites retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey as one example of this new international super-class -- a member of the shadow elite that serves in government posts, moves to the private sector, goes on TV, and collects a healthy paycheck from companies that benefit when the power broker's advice is taken. McCaffrey was one of the Pentagon-pundits-for-pay exposed by two Pulitzer-winning front-page stories in the New York Times last year. Yet even as I write this, he's on TV giving us his wisdom on how to fight terrorism. Because, as Wedel points out again and again, members of the shadow elite keep morphing into their next incarnation no matter how often their conflicts of interest and their undermining of the public interest are revealed.

Another key flexian, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, is on full display right now in Newsweek's special "Issues 2010" edition, in which he pens a lengthy essay on "Getting the Economy Back on Track," failing, in a very flexian way, to explain or acknowledge -- let alone apologize for -- the key role he played in getting the economy off track in the first place.

The book is not on order from Pima County Library system. Click on picture to get your copy from Amazon.com.

Continue reading here.

The degrading effects of terrorism fears

BY GLENN GREENWALD
Salon.com
SATURDAY, JAN 2, 2010 07:03 EST

I never thought I'd hear myself say this, but David Brooks actually had an excellent column in yesterday's New York Times that makes several insightful and important points. Brooks documents how "childish, contemptuous and hysterical" the national reaction has been to this latest terrorist episode, egged on -- as usual -- by the always-hysterical American media. The citizenry has been trained to expect that our Powerful Daddies and Mommies in government will -- in that most cringe-inducing, child-like formulation -- Keep Us Safe. Whenever the Government fails to do so, the reaction -- just as we saw this week -- is an ugly combination of petulant, adolescent rage and increasingly unhinged cries that More Be Done to ensure that nothing bad in the world ever happens. Demands that genuinely inept government officials be held accountable are necessary and wise, but demands that political leaders ensure that we can live in womb-like Absolute Safety are delusional and destructive. Yet this is what the citizenry screams out every time something threatening happens: please, take more of our privacy away; monitor more of our communications; ban more of us from flying; engage in rituals to create the illusion of Strength; imprison more people without charges; take more and more control and power so you can Keep Us Safe.

This is what inevitably happens to a citizenry that is fed a steady diet of fear and terror for years. It regresses into pure childhood. The 5-year-old laying awake in bed, frightened by monsters in the closet, who then crawls into his parents' bed to feel Protected and Safe, is the same as a citizenry planted in front of the television, petrified by endless imagery of scary Muslim monsters, who then collectively crawl to Government and demand that they take more power and control in order to keep them Protected and Safe. A citizenry drowning in fear and fixated on Safety to the exclusion of other competing values can only be degraded and depraved. John Adams, in his 1776 Thoughts on Government, put it this way:

Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.

Continue reading here.

National coordinated campaign unites to revoke corporate "constitutional rights"

Last updated December 30, 2009

ReclaimDemocracy.org and a broad alliance of grassroots pro-democracy groups are preparing to make 2010 a breakthrough year for the Democracy Movement. To accomplish this, we're building the broadest coalition yet to confront and revoke runaway corporate power. The focus: amending the U.S. Constitution to overturn the Court-created notion of applying constitutional rights to corporations.

While we have been calling for this action for almost the entire decade of our existence, we now find the idea reaching a "tipping point" among many other organizations.

A Teachable Moment

The Campaign to Legalize Democracy will debut publicly the day the U.S. Supreme Court announces a ruling in the potential landmark case, Citizens United v Federal Election Commission. Despite enormous anger over public subsidies, systematic credit card rip-offs, and more, it's widely expected the Court will give corporations even greater power over our government by allowing company funds to be spent in efforts to elect or defeat political candidates. If this happens, we will work quickly to channel anger where it needs to go: overruling the Court.

And after campaigning to bring “change” to Americans that included public health insurance and taking on Wall Street, President Obama and Congress have demonstrated they either are unwilling or unable to challenge the power of pharmaceutical, insurance, and financial corporations to correct our nation's most urgent problems.

We don't celebrate this failure, but we recognize the opportunity created by this disillusionment. When people believe in illusions, they are not receptive to confronting reality. One year ago, millions of Americans believed democracy could thrive and some of our worst crises improve if we elected Barack Obama and shifted control of Congress. That illusion is dead, but its demise gives birth to great opportunity.

We provoked debate over corporate "free speech" and personhood in dozens of media outlets that never had previously explored the issue when the Nike v Kasky case reached the Supreme Court. This time, however, we'll have a broad alliance amplifying the message, with a collective reach many times greater than ReclaimDemocracy.org alone.

Within 24 hours of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling (the second week of January is the next potential time for a ruling), we'll post news on the new campaign, as will a dozen or more organizational partners.When we do, we'll be looking to our readers to also jump into action with a barrage of calls to talk radio shows, letters to the editor of your local news outlets or favorite web outlets, and more. Stay tuned!

Read more about the underlying issue of corporate personhood here.

Mayo Clinic in Arizona to Stop Treating Some Medicare Patients

By David Olmos
Bloomberg Com

Dec. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The Mayo Clinic, praised by President Barack Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

More than 3,000 patients eligible for Medicare, the government’s largest health-insurance program, will be forced to pay cash if they want to continue seeing their doctors at a Mayo family clinic in Glendale, northwest of Phoenix, said Michael Yardley, a Mayo spokesman. The decision, which Yardley called a two-year pilot project, won’t affect other Mayo facilities in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota.

Obama in June cited the nonprofit Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio for offering “the highest quality care at costs well below the national norm.” Mayo’s move to drop Medicare patients may be copied by family doctors, some of whom have stopped accepting new patients from the program, said Lori Heim, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, in a telephone interview yesterday.

“Many physicians have said, ‘I simply cannot afford to keep taking care of Medicare patients,’” said Heim, a family doctor who practices in Laurinburg, North Carolina. “If you truly know your business costs and you are losing money, it doesn’t make sense to do more of it.”

Medicare Loss

The Mayo organization had 3,700 staff physicians and scientists and treated 526,000 patients in 2008. It lost $840 million last year on Medicare, the government’s health program for the disabled and those 65 and older, Mayo spokeswoman Lynn Closway said.

Mayo’s hospital and four clinics in Arizona, including the Glendale facility, lost $120 million on Medicare patients last year, Yardley said. The program’s payments cover about 50 percent of the cost of treating elderly primary-care patients at the Glendale clinic, he said.

“We firmly believe that Medicare needs to be reformed,” Yardley said in a Dec. 23 e-mail. “It has been true for many years that Medicare payments no longer reflect the increasing cost of providing services for patients.”

Mayo will assess the financial effect of the decision in Glendale to drop Medicare patients “to see if it could have implications beyond Arizona,” he said. Continue reading here.