The Wall Street TARP Gang Wants to Take Away Your Social Security

By Dean Baker

TalkingPointsMemo

November 9, 2010, 8:01AM

Just over two years ago, the Wall Streeters were running around Congress and the media saying that if they don't immediately get $700 billion the world will end. Since they own large chunks of both, they quickly got their money.

Even more important than the hundreds of billions of loans issued through the TARP was the trillions of dollars of loans and guarantees from the Fed and the FDIC. This money came with virtually no strings attached. It kept Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America and many others from collapsing. As a result, folks like Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein are again pocketing tens of millions a year in wages and bonuses, instead of walking the unemployment lines. Instead, 15 million ordinary workers are being told to just get used to being unemployed; it's the "new normal."

But wait, it gets worse. The thing about Wall Streeters is that no matter how much money you give them, they always want more. Now they are using their political power and control over the media to attack Social Security.

This effort is being led by billionaire investment banker Peter Peterson. Mr. Peterson has personally profited to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from the "fund managers' tax subsidy," an obscure provision of the tax code that allows billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than schoolteachers and firefighters. However, Peterson believes in giving back. He has committed $1 billion to an effort that is intended to take away the Social Security benefits that people have worked and paid for.

As part of this effort, Peterson set up a whole new foundation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. He and/or his foundation created a "news service," the Fiscal Times, which is intended to promote the view that we have no choice but to cut Social Security. The Fiscal Times has entered into agreements with the Washington Post and other credible newspapers to provide material.

Peterson is also funding the creation of a high school curriculum which is intended to tell our children that the in the future the country will be too poor to finance Social Security. He funded a silly exercise called "America Speaks," which was supposed to convince an assembly of selected participants that we must cut Social Security after a daylong immersion in Peterson-style propaganda. (The people didn't buy it.) And now his crew is spending $20 million on an ad campaign to convince people the world will end if we don't cut Social Security.

Attacks on Social Security have been fended off in the past and it is possible that this one will be too. It is an incredibly popular and successful program. It does exactly what it was supposed to do. It provides a modest income to the retired and disabled, and their families, to ensure that people who have spent their lives working will not fall into poverty. It is also extremely efficient, with administrative costs that are less than 1/20th as large as the costs of private insurers.

Continue reading here.

Dickens' Father Was in a Debtors' Prison: Now the GOP are Putting Americans in Jail for Owing Money

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG BY MARK KARLIN
Buzzflash.com
Tue, 11/09/2010 - 4:42pm.

When the Republicans promise to take us back to the past, they mean it, including such horrors as prison for debtors.

The headline for an article earlier this year in the Minneapolis Star Tribune says it all, "In Jail for Being in Debt." The article paints the dire picture of being poor and suddenly being arrested in your home: "You committed no crime, but an officer is knocking on your door. More Minnesotans are surprised to find themselves being locked up over debts."

"It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found."

The debtor laws vary from state to state, but the trend is not promising: "In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man 'to indefinite incarceration' until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt."

At the height of the dark days of industrial age exploitation in the 1800s in England, debtors' prisons were common. In fact, much of Charles Dickens' social consciousness is attributed to the imprisonment of his father for debt in the infamous Marshalsea jail in London.

Until recently, the abolition of abominable debtors' prisons in England was considered great social progress and a movement toward a more just society.

Now, the GOP is heralding a return to the wretched past, where owing a few bucks is a crime punishable by incarceration.

It's a dreadful, almost incomprehensible injustice that should have been locked up forever.

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Van Jones: We Must Prepare for Battle

By Adele M. Stan

 AlterNet

 November 6, 2010  |

We went from We Are One to We Are Done, Jones tells a D.C. audience; it's time to stop waiting for cues from Washington.

 

In a darkened space bedecked with impressionistic portraits of the progressive movement's great heroes, Van Jones -- community organizer, environmental activist and erstwhile presidential adviser -- steps onto a tiny stage that has just been warmed up by two local teenage poets and graced by Amy Goodman, the voice of Pacifica Radio's "Democracy Now!" The audience is filled with Washington activists, including the comedian and civil rights leader Dick Gregory, CodePink founder Medea Benjamin and Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president of the Hip-Hop Caucus.

The room is packed, and a line snakes along the sidewalk outside Busboys and Poets, a restaurant designed as a gathering place for progressives, even as the event begins.

In a passionate speech focused mainly on the costs and horrors of America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Goodman sets the stage for Jones' talk by imploring activists to organize. While a portrait of Rosa Parks by Anna Rose Soevik glimmers behind her, Goodman debunks the mythology surrounding the woman whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus sparked the civil rights movement. 

"Yes, she was a tired seamstress," Goodman says, "but Rosa Parks was an organizer."

It's the evening after the big Rally to Restore Sanity hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and an odd mixture of exhilaration and anxiety fills the room -- the thrill of having been part of a gathering of like-minded people who flooded the National Mall in a repudiation of the harsh rhetoric of the Tea Party and cable news media, and anxiety about the Republican tide about to come crashing into the nation's capital in the midterm elections.

Jones has taken the temperature; he knows the score. But he's not about to let anybody off the hook.

"Now, here's our problem," he says. "Most of the people who are in this room have given away, over the past two years, almost all of our power. The reason the country is in the shape that it's in is not just because bad people created a hate machine; it's that good people shut down the hope machine."

Hard as it is to argue with that, Jones makes no mention of the impact on hope machine operators by his own ascendence to the White House and abrupt purge from its ranks, thanks to a smear campaign conducted against him by Fox News and Americans for Prosperity, the astroturf group that organizes Tea Party activists.

Perhaps no one in the progressive movement can ignite the passions of his listeners like Van Jones; that's one reason why AlterNet's Don Hazen welcomed his untimely exit from the White House because it returned Jones to the community, releasing him from the bonds of rhetorical restraint that come with a job inside the power structure.

 Continue reading here.

Bush's Empire Struck Back: Book Bomb, Family of Secrets, Exposing The Bush Empire

• Bob Fertik
  Democrats.com

  November 06, 2010

Amazon rank 11/7/10: 238 191 179

After Barack Obama won the White House in 2008, many thought George Bush's political empire was over - like Darth Vader's Galactic Empire at the end of the original Star Wars.

But in last week's election, Bush's Empire Struck Back.

The "Architect" of stolen election 2010 was Karl Rove. He raised and spent hundreds of millions in secret money, sat at FOX spinning lies, and ran smear attack ads to defeat Democrats and elect a new generation of rightwing Republicans who are loyal to him.

Who is Karl Rove? The mastermind of the Bush Empire and strategist for the billionaires and bureaucrats behind it. Where did Rove's money come from? The same billionaires and bureaucrats who put the Bushes in power for 12 years - and are determined to do it again.

If we want to stop them we must know the truth, which is exposed in Russ Baker's brilliant book, just $13.60 on Amazon:
Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years

George W. Bush himself struck back this week with the pre-release of "Decision Points," which hit  #1 on Amazon even before its release. He's desperate to rewrite history since he created such historic disasters during his eight long years in power.

Here's one key rewrite you may have heard: Bush insists he was against conquering Iraq, but Rumsfeld and the Neocons made him do it. But Bush's own ghostwriter revealed to Russ Baker how candidate Bush was already talking privately in 1999 about invading Iraq - an action he believed would gain him "political capital" as president (chapter 21).

That's why we're doing a "Book Bomb" to replace Bush's lies now at the top of Amazon with Russ Baker's truth (just $13.60 on Amazon):
Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years 

Despite 12 years in the White House, Americans never got the real story about the Bush Empire. Who is really behind their power? Why, despite election rejections, do they play permanent role in our lives?
Russ Baker, perhaps the most important investigative reporter of our era, reveals the truth. Gore Vidal called it one of the most important books of the decade. Russ Baker's work is also praised by Dan Rather, Sydney Schanberg, and Bill Moyers.
For just $13.60, let's make it #1 on Amazon:

Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years

REPORT: More than 30 Fox Newsers support GOP in 600-plus instances during midterms

October 27, 2010 9:29 am ET
Mediamatters.com

During the 2009-2010 election cycle, more than 30 Fox News personalities have endorsed, raised money, or campaigned for Republican candidates or organizations in more than 600 instances. The Republican support has been given to more than 300 different races or party organizations in at least 47 states. Fox News personalities and hosts have also helped start pro-Republican organizations, which have raised tens of millions of dollars.

Continue reading here.

Shocker: Keith Olbermann Suspended Indefinitely Without Pay

By Tana Ganeva | Sourced from AlterNet
Posted at November 5, 2010, 11:18 am


MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann, host of the network's highest-rated show, following revelations that he donated to three Democratic candidates in the midterm election. In a brief statement Phil Griffin, President of MSNBC, said: "I became aware of Keith’s political contributions late last night. Mindful of NBC News policy and standards, I have suspended him indefinitely without pay."

Griffin didn't go into why other MSNBC on-air personalities have not faced disciplinary action for contributing to political campaigns: Joe Scarborough donated to a Republican House candidate in 2006. Atrios notes that Pat Buchanan, an official MSNBC contributor, made 5 political donations between 2005 and 2008.

Also, as Steve Benen points out, Olbermann gave money -- a total of $7,200 -- from his personal account, disclosed his contributions, and did not lobby for the candidates on air. Compare that to the election activities of Fox News' and its  parent company News Corps:

News Corp made multiple undisclosed donations to the Republican Governors Association, totaling at least $1.25 million, in addition to a $1 million contribution to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for its pro-Republican election-year activities. Fox News has helped GOP candidates raise money on the air; Fox News personalities are featured guests at Republican fundraisers; while other Fox News personalities continue to help generate financial support for Republican candidates now, even after the elections.

 A "Let's Bring Keith Back" Facebook page has already been created. 

Election Day Poll: Voters Weren't Backing Extreme Right Agenda

By Isaiah J. Poole
Campaign for America's Future
November 5, 2010 - 11:37am ET

A poll released today by the Campaign for America's Future and Democracy Corps proves what we've been saying this week about the message voters were sending to the White House and Congress.

Conservative leaders in both parties are flat wrong to claim they have a mandate for the dramatic government retrenchment that top congressional Republicans are calling for.
What a majority of Americans want is for the government to step up to the plate, repair the economy and set the stage for creating new jobs—not by stepping back and lavishing tax cuts on the wealthy but with policies that revive American manufacturing, fix bad trade deals, and invests in the basics we need for a thriving domestic economy and a growing middle class.

"We were rather surprised in many ways at the fact that the voters in large numbers are still looking for larger answers to an economy that is not working for therm in a situation that they find for the country very worrisome," Robert Borosage said during a presentation of the poll earlier today.
"People are not looking for a cramped vision," pollster Stan Greenberg said. "Folks are not looking for a period of austerity. They are looking for a period of growth and for America not being in decline but being on the rise."

The survey covers interviews with 1,000 people who voted in 2008 on Nov. 2 and Nov. 3, including 114 who decided not to vote in the 2010 election, to determine the issues driving both voters and nonvoters on Election Day.

Some noteworthy poll findings:

• Fifty-eight percent of respondents who voted said they were trying to send a message about how dissatisfied they are with things in Washington. But they were not necessarily embracing the Republican party and its policies: Both political parties received equally poor favorability ratings, as did the Tea Party movement. Twenty-six percent of voters said they were trying to send a message to "both parties" with their vote, while only 20 percent cited President Obama and 15 percent said Democrats in Congress.
• "Too much bickering in Washington" was the top complaint of voters in the poll (39 percent), followed by "too much spending, taxes and deficits" (35 percent). 
• A majority opposed the Republican plan to cut $100 billion from domestic spending programs while extending the Bush tax cuts to those earning more than $250,000, while 51 percent said they agreed that those top-end tax cuts should expire and with proposals offered by Democrats to reduce the deficit over time. That's particularly bad news for House Republican leader John Boehner and Senate counterpart Mitch McConnell, who are making perpetuating the Bush top-end tax cuts plus deep domestic spending cuts the centerpiece of their legislative agenda.
• Likewise, 69 percent said that "politicians should keep their hands off Social Security and Medicare" as they attempt to address the national deficit.
• Fifty-eight percent of voters said they were much or somewhat more likely to vote for a candidate that promised "to change Washington for the middle class. That means eliminating the special deals and tax breaks won by corporate lobbyists for Wall Street, paid for by American taxpayers and workers' outsourced jobs. Republicans have pledged to protect those breaks. We should cut taxes for the middle class and small business to create jobs."
• Compared to a candidate who attacked Democrats for the economic stimulus and health care reform, 57 percent of voters said they were much or somewhat more likely to support a candidate with a "made-in-America" campaign message that points out that Republicans have "pledged to support free trade deals and protect tax breaks for companies that send American jobs to India and China."
• Eighty-nine percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement that "America is falling behind" in the global economy and that "we need a clear strategy to make things in America, make our economy competitive, and revive America's middle class.
• Significant majorities in the poll also supported new investments in infrastructure through a national infrastructure bank, and a five-year strategy for reviving manufacturing in America.

Many of the poll results show that progressives have a lot of work to do to convince a broad majority of voters that they can once again trust government to act in their interests. But progressives have an opportunity to make that case and to get voters to embrace their vision for how the economy can work for everyone.

It can't be stressed enough: the Democrats got a "shellacking," to use President Obama's word, on Tuesday not because America has fallen in love with so-called "Tea Party" policies, but because Democrats failed to offer their own compelling vision for restoring the economy.

The White House and Democrats in Congress would do well to study this poll. The election would clearly have turned out differently if Democrats had presented a more populist, more progressive and more coherent message about the road ahead.

‘There are no rich,’ Senator-elect Rand Paul claims

By David Edwards
Raw Story
Friday, November 5th, 2010 -- 11:48 am


Following his big win in Tuesday's midterm elections, Senator-elect Rand Paul explained his economic philosophy in about 30 seconds during a CNN interview, claiming he wants to shield the wealthiest Americans from paying higher taxes -- in the name of protecting the working class.

"I would say that [Democrats] must be in favor of a second American depression, because if you raise taxes to that consequence, that’s what will happen in this country," Paul told CNN host Wolf Blitzer.

"What if they just raised taxes on the richest, those making more than 250,000 dollars a year?" Blitzer asked.

"Well, the thing is, we're all interconnected. There are no rich. There are no middle class. There are no poor," Paul explained. "You remember a few years ago, when they tried to tax the yachts, that didn’t work."


Continue reading here.


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Keith Olbermann Donated To Raúl Grijalva, Gabrielle Giffords Reelection Bids

Keith Olbermann Donated To Three Democrats: Politico

By Jack Mirkinson


The Huffington Post  First Posted: 11- 5-10 08:35 AM   |   Updated: 11- 5-10 09:33 AM

Politico reports that Keith Olbermann made campaign contributions to three Democratic candidates during the midterm elections.

Olbermann donated the maximum legal amount of $2,400 each to Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, and to Kentucky Senate contender Jack Conway. All three were in tight races with their Republican counterparts. The MSNBC host made the donations on Oct. 28, the same day that Grijalva made an appearance on "Countdown."

Olbermann released the following statement to Politico:

"One week ago, on the night of Thursday October 28 2010, after a discussion with a friend about the state of politics in Arizona, I donated $2,400 each to the re-election campaigns of Democratic Representatives Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords. I also donated the same amount to the campaign of Democratic Senatorial candidate Jack Conway in Kentucky...I did not privately or publicly encourage anyone else to donate to these campaigns nor to any others in this election or any previous ones, nor have I previously donated to any political campaign at any level."
Politico quotes NBC News' official policy on political activity by employees. The policy does not ban staffers from donating to political campaigns, but it does require them to "report any such potential conflicts in advance to, and obtain prior approval of, the President of NBC News or his designee." It is not clear whether Olbermann obtained such approval.

In recent weeks, Fox News has been criticized for Sean Hannity's on-air fundraising for Republican John Kasich; earlier this year, however, network boss Roger Ailes pulled Hannity from a starring role in a Tea Party event.

Taking America Back to the Gilded Age

By William Loren Katz
Consortium News
November 5, 2010

Editor’s Note: This week's Republican electoral victory was driven by the GOP's ability to sell many American voters on the idea that over-reaching government -- not under-regulated business -- was primarily at fault for the nation's economic pain.
 
So, the solution, according to the victorious Republicans, is to curtail the efforts of government to ameliorate the suffering of the working- and middle-classes while further deregulating corporations and sparing the rich from paying higher taxes, a Gilded Age solution that harkens back to a century ago, says William Loren Katz:

In 2010, with the blessing of a five-to-four U.S. Supreme Court decision, unlimited money from anonymous corporate sources was allowed to call the nation’s political tune and decide the fate of American candidates for office.

It is hardly surprising that the party best able to tap these funds scored major gains and that reformers, the likes of Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, were turned out of office.

While suspicious of a repentant witch like Delaware Republican Christine O’Donnell and some other Tea Party zanies, the voters fell for pro-corporatist Republicans who spouted a heroic narrative of capitalist individualism and a nostalgic version of the supposedly vibrant early 20th Century.

Rand Paul, the clearest voice of the victorious Republican Party, championed the tried-and-true values of American individualism, extolling the unregulated freedoms and robust capitalism from this earlier time.

Politicians often evoke warm and fuzzy feelings for “the good old days,” but this nostalgia is usually for a past that never was. Some pols make up the history while others “misremember” it.

In 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan fondly recalled the 1920s and 1930s when “we did not have a racial problem.”

Others might think back more accurately on a South of lynching, legal discrimination and disenfranchisement for Blacks, and on a North of de facto discrimination, anti-Black race riots and all-white Major League baseball.

In praising the early 20th Century, Rand Paul was correct that it was a time of few government efforts to regulate business. But he also might have mentioned there were no pure-food-and-drug laws, no progressive income tax, no votes for women, and a U.S. Senate called “the Millionaires’ Club.”

He also did not discuss how “robber barons” amassed fortunes with scant regard to legalities, how government protection of “free enterprise” made corporations masters of the political and economic landscape, how working families lived in misery, and how middle-class aspirations rarely flowered.

In 2000, when George W. Bush came to power (by another five-to-four Supreme Court vote), he also gazed nostalgically at this earlier era when a politician’s wealthy patrons (what Bush might call his “base”) had no taxes to worry about and the protection for consumers amounted to the slogan, “let the buyer beware.”

When Bush advocated privatizing Social Security as a chief goal of his presidency, my wife, Professor Laurie Lehman, and I thought it was time to remind everyone what life was like for real people in the early 20th Century.

We put together a collection of 22 autobiographical writings by ordinary people of the day – a coal miner, sweatshop operator, union organizer, policeman, farming wife, shoe-shine boy, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Japanese and Mexican immigrants, and Black sharecroppers.

Casting the book from their standpoint, we called it The Cruel Years: American Voices at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. My Introduction filled in the background sounds and stress of an unlamented era for most.

Continue reading here.

Boehner and the Republicans Didn't Win a Majority to Deny Our Care

By Ethan Rome,Executive Director, Health Care for America Now!
Huffington Post
Posted: November 3, 2010 11:22 AM

Here's a crucial fact that should not be obscured by the ballyhoo surrounding the shift in control of the House: Most of the Republicans who won last night got a lower percentage at the ballot box than the percentage of Americans who support the new health care law's requirement that insurance companies cover people regardless of pre-existing medical conditions.

That's why yesterday was hardly a repudiation of the health care law.

Furthermore, this election was clearly dominated by voter worries about the economy and jobs. Only 19 percent of voters named health care as their top concern, a distant second to the 61 percent most focused on the economy, according to CNN. There were winners and losers among both supporters and opponents of health reform. For example, more than half of the 34 Democrats who voted against the health care legislation still lost their races.

After a wildly toxic political debate over the issue, people are split over the larger question of "reform" and key components of the law enjoy overwhelming public support. Specifically, over the last several months, even as the public has been divided on reform, two-thirds of Americans have supported the outlawing of pre-existing condition exclusions (Anzalone Liszt Research poll conducted for the Herndon Alliance of 1,000 2010 likely voters, conducted April 19-25, 2010. Margin of error +/-3%). For example, while a recent New York Times/CBS poll showed the public split over on the new law, only one-quarter of repeal supporters stuck with their position when told repeal would mean that insurance companies would no longer be required to cover people with medical conditions or prior illnesses.


Continue reading here.

Jimmy Carter: Fox News is ‘totally biased,’ implants ‘completely false images’

By David Edwards and Eric Dolan
Rawstory
Monday, November 1st, 2010 -- 10:00 am
   
Former President Jimmy Carter slammed Fox News Channel for their coverage of President Barack Obama and said the Tea Party does not realize it is financed by oligarchs.

"With the discussion groups, for instance, on Fox News, that are totally biased, and they implant completely false images not only of the facts about legislation that's passed, or doesn't get passed, but also about the character of President Obama," Carter told CNN's Howard Kurtz on Sunday.

Fox News' opinion shows cater almost exclusively to conservative audiences and the network has been a vocal critic of Obama since he won the election in 2008.

"When conservatives such as myself and others pointed out that we felt Barack Obama had radical ties and socialist, radical views, we were laughed at, made fun of, people thought we were too harsh on the president," Fox News' host Sean Hannity said in October. "Now a full, you know, 60 percent of the American people view him as socialist."

In July of 2009, another Fox News' host, Glenn Beck, claimed that the president had "a deep-seated hatred of white people or white culture."

Continue reading here.



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