“Americans really are good folk. The government isn’t. It’s the gravest problem we face, both internationally and domestically.
(6) The Constitution really is going away, or has gone. It never did work as well as it should have, but few things human ever do. Habeas corpus is dead, right to an attorney, congressional right to declare war – it’s not even worth listing the list……
(7) The increasing, detailed, intrusive regulation of life, the national desire for control, control, control. Everything is the business of some form of government. Want to paint your shutters? The condo association won’t let you. Let dogs in your bar? Never. Decide who to sell your house to? Racial matter. Own a dog? Shot card, pooper-scooper, leash, gotta be spayed, etc. Have a bar for men only, women only, whites or blacks only? Here come the federal marshals. What isn’t controlled by government is controlled by the crypto-vindictive mob rule of political correctness. This wasn’t always in the American character.
Add the continuing presence of police in the schools, the arrest in handcuffs of children of seven, the expulsions for drawing a picture of a soldier with a gun. Something very twisted is going on.
How much of the public knows what is happening, or even knows that something is happening? I don’t know. But I don’t think that it’s going to go away. In ten years it will be an entirely different place with the same name. Almost is now.”
War Pigs
War Pigs – Nothing’s Changed
Hat-tip to Brad Spangler
It’s still the bankers making money from debt and war…
While the sheeple swing their woolly heads back and forth, hypnotized –
left-right
black-white
public-private
socialist-capitalist
gay-straight, feminist-patriarchal, Muslim-Christian, East-West, poor-rich, working-class-middle-class, urban-rural, blue-state-red-state…
back-forth…democrat-republican…
Pfizer Rapped With Largest Criminal Fine in US History
Pfizer is in the news, not for its take-over of rival Wyeth (the deal that Hamilton Project co-founder Roger Altman’s Evercore group was advising), but for getting nailed on civil and criminal charges relating to its drug promotion. A step in the right direction. Now, if we could just go after the insurance companies as thoroughly.
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Pfizer Inc., the world’s largest drug maker, will pay a record $2.3 billion civil and criminal penalty over unlawful prescription drug promotions. Announcing the settlement Wednesday, the Justice Department said that it included the largest criminal fine in U.S. history — $1.2 billion. The agreement also included a criminal forfeiture of $105 million.
Authorities called Pfizer a repeat offender, noting it is the fourth such settlement of government charges in the last decade. They said the government will monitor the company’s conduct for the next five years to rein in the abuses.To promote the drugs, authorities said Pfizer invited doctors to consultant meetings at resort locations, paying their expenses and providing perks. “They were entertained with golf, massages, and other activities,” said Mike Loucks, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts.
Loucks said that even as Pfizer was negotiating deals on past misconduct, they were continuing to violate the very same laws with other drugs. Six corporate whisteblowers who first brought the misconduct to light will share $102 million of the settlement money.”
Vanity UnFair’s “Me and Mrs Palin” Is a Bit of Odious Fluff (Updated)
Vanity Fair has a piece on Sarah Palin through the eyes of her daughter Bristol’s boyfriend, Levi Johnston. The title itself is slimy, implying that there are cougar-like revelations to be had..
[Please note also the cover with its title, “Keeping up with the Johnston,” the positioning of Levi’s hand on his stomach and Sarah’s photoshopped face over his hand].
O la la – Mrs. Palin is a glass-eating, baby-making monster because, get this, in her family of five with two working parents, the kids do the cooking and the older kids look after the younger kids. Sheesh. Hang the woman.
You can hear the VF staff tinkle – These conservatives are such hypocwites! (Thanks to whichever lefty writer I saw use that little howl of derision). Don’t they know real “family values” means parents should slave for kids so the kids never learn to take care of themselves?
Yep. We get it. “Family values” means helpless, dependent kids, so teachers and counselors can have harder jobs and state social workers can take over their guardianship and create yet another disenfranchised group in need of governmental protection.
And on another point, who invented the hideous word “kids” for teenagers? There was a time not to long ago when girls of 15 and 16 were married and mothers and boys of that age were working like responsible adults.
Dear Vanity UNFair, the piece said more about you than about the Palins, or the wretched adolescent who’s learned how to father kids out of wed-lock and trash the grandparents of the kid all while still just a precious little “kid.”
What a role-model for a young man. Or maybe he’s just another establishment media hack in training….
Note: Shows you how much the media actually cares about children..or anyone in need of consideration. Nice job to have the father of an out-of-wedlock baby (no moral judgment here, merely a recognition that it’s a baby deserving of a little adult sensitivity to its needs) trash the grandparents with whom dad lived not so long ago.
Smacks of those stories of communist spies or Hitler youth turning children against their parents.
Note:
Here’s a good take by Bill Kristol on an earlier Vanity Fair trash piece on Palin. Not that I see eye to eye with Kristol on foreign policy…or much else… but Kristol, unlike the author of the earlier piece, Todd Purdum, is smart.
Note:
Purdum (husband of Clinton press secretary Dee-dee Myers), was called a “scum-bag” by Bill Clinton….who probably knows whereof he speaks..
Further Note:
Check this fawning piece on Henry Paulson, at Vanity Fair. Funny how Todd Purdum, who finds it so easy to pick on a woman’s child-bearing and rearing decisions, her clothes and social class, has nothing except flattery for Paulson:
“It was February 2008, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a prince of Wall Street turned secretary of the Treasury, was reflecting on his biggest achievement to date: a $168 billion economic-stimulus package that had passed Congress four days earlier after swift, bipartisan prog ress through both houses. In light of all the later twists and turns that the global financial system and the national economy took, this measure would come to seem quaint and fainthearted. But at the time, it was a very big deal indeed, and Paulson felt justifiably proud. The stimulus had been his baby. Paulson had persuaded George W. Bush, whose relations with both parties in Congress were by then close to toxic, to articulate only the broadest principles, and not to present a detailed plan. Paulson himself, in endless night and weekend negotiations with congressional leaders, had delivered the final package.”
Notice the reference to Paulson’s “delivery” of the treacherous bail-out of America’s fattest cats.
Does the Government Do a Better Job Than the Private Sector?
An excerpt from Bill Blum’s latest anti-Empire report below.
Blum is perfectly correct in his analysis up to a point…and then he misses it.
The “crazed” anti-healthers, while no doubt wrong on many details, and no doubt mixed up in their use of the word socialist (they should say collectivist), are actually more right than he sees…
And the only reason they are wrong at all is because of government intervention in the first place.
I’ll come back to the reasons why later, but meanwhile, here’s the piece. ( I ended up interspersing my comments within the piece).
Note:
It makes all the usual left-liberal mistakes, but since it’s the kind of argument you hear all the time, I’ll post it here anyway – since the best antidote for this kind of thing is free debate.
BB: These good folks wanna get their health care through good ol’ capitalism; better no health care at all than godless-atheist commie health care; better to see your child die than have her saved by a Marxist-Stalinist-collective doctor who works for the government.……
LR: False alternative. . And ad hominem.
What those “screaming crowds” are getting at in confused language is that they want the government out of health care, as well as all the so-called private corporations, lobbyists and professional associations (they’re just a bit confused about the second part). They want to go back to the time when there were simple country doctors who knew their patients individually, helped poor people in their extra hours, and charged what people could afford to pay.That’s how it was before the government, insurance companies, professional associations and the rest of the racketeers got into the debate.
BB:
A common refrain, explicit or implicit, amongst the recent health-care hecklers is that the government can’t do anything better or cheaper than private corporations. Studies, however, have clearly indicated otherwise. In 2003, US federal agencies examined 17,595 federal jobs and found civil servants to be superior to contractors 89 percent of the time.
LR: Earth to Bill Blum – government contractors are not the private sector. They’re part of the government’s rent-seeking, dependent constituencies because they’re responding to an artificial market.
BB:
Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Boys of Capital have been chortling in their martinis about the death of socialism. ….. Not one socialist government or movement — from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.
LR: The Boys of Capital aren’t Austrian free-marketers. They’re statists. But surely, I hope Blum isn’t arguing that the Soviet Union and Communist China killed and robbed their own people, defensively?
BB:
It’s as if the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly..”
LR: Flying was a productive technological innovation. Communism is a fatuous theory of social organization that’s been tried on a small-scale (and a few times on a large scale) without any great success.
In any case, who’s stopping anybody from voluntarily sharing his goods, his food, his medicine, his house or his wife with anyone else? People object to being forced into the scheme. Voluntary socialism might well be the most admirable idea ever. But the Soviet Union or Korea or China or the US government aren’t exactly voluntary, are they?
Money Dominates India’s Ruling Class
From Sainath at Counterpunch, an analysis of MPs (Members of Parliament) in the Lok Sabha (the lower house, or House of Commons, as opposed to the Rajya Sabha or House of Lords) in India:
“NEW is a coalition of over 1200 civil society groups working across the country. Their “Analysis of MPs of the 15th Lok Sabha (2009)” makes great reading and is the product of fine research and much hard work.
There were 3,437 candidates in the polls with assets of less than Rs. 1 million, says the report. Of these, just 15 (0.44 per cent) made it past the post. But your chances soar with your assets. Of 1,785 candidates in the Rs. 1 million to Rs. 5 million group, 116 (6 per cent) won. This win-ratio goes up to 19 per cent of candidates for the Rs.5 million to Rs.50 million segment. And of 322 candidates in the Rs.50 million plus or platinum tier, 106 (33 per cent) romped home.
The higher you climb the ladder of lucre, the better your chances. That’s obvious. But what’s striking is how bleak things are for non-millionaires. Even a modest improvement in your wealth helps. Say, you move from the below Rs. 1 million group to the Rs. 1-5 million group — your chances immediately improve at a higher rate than your wealth. (Of course that works only if you are already close to the Rs. 1 million mark.) So it’s not just that wealth has some impact on election outcomes — it influences them heavily and disproportionately as you go up the scale.
All of a piece with a society that only last year had 53 dollar billionaires (pre-meltdown), one that still has 836 million human beings who “get by” on less than Rs. 20 a day and which ranks 66th amongst 88 nations on the Global Hunger Index (just one notch above Zimbabwe). India has plummeted to rank 132 in the United Nations Human Development Index (one slot below Bhutan) as our billionaire count has risen. That wallows below Bolivia, Botswana, the Republic of the Congo and the Occupied Territories of Palestine in the HDI rankings. And never mind being worth billions – 60 per cent of adult rural Indians simply do not have bank accounts….”
Bastiat On Roman Rule
Many thanks to Kevin Duffy for pointing me in the direction of this essay by Bastiat. It’s a marvel, filled with ideas, each of which could be developed into a full book in its own right.
“What is to be said of Roman morality? And I am not speaking here of the relations of father and son, of husband and wife, of patron and client, of master and servant, of man and God—relations that slavery, by itself alone, could not fail to transform into a whole network of depravity; I wish to dwell only on what is called the admirable side of the Republic, i.e., patriotism. What was this patriotism? Hatred of foreigners, the destruction of all civilization, the stifling of all progress, the scourging of the world with fire and sword, the chaining of women, children, and old men to triumphal chariots—this was glory, this was virtue….It is from Rome undoubtedly that this adage comes to us, true in regard to theft, false in regard to labor: one nation’s loss is another nation’s gain—an adage that still governs the world.
To acquire an idea of Roman morality, imagine in the heart of Paris an organization of men who hate to work, determined to satisfy their wants by deceit and force, and consequently at war with society. Doubtless a certain moral code and even some solid virtues will soon manifest themselves in such an organization. Courage, perseverance, self-control, prudence, discipline, constancy in misfortune, deep secrecy, punctilio, devotion to the community—such undoubtedly will be the virtues that necessity and prevailing opinion would develop among these brigands; such were those of the buccaneers; such were those of the Romans. It may be said that, in regard to the latter, the grandeur of their enterprise and the immensity of their success has thrown so glorious a veil over their crimes as to transform them into virtues. And this is precisely why that school is so pernicious. It is not abject vice, it is vice crowned with splendor, that seduces men’s souls.”
Hans Hoppe on Citizens as Public Property
Lew Rockwell cites some arresting insights from Hans Hoppe on the Constitution and on the ultimate nature of democracy and the total state:
“History bears this out. Hoppe dates the onset of modern democracy to World War I and following, and he has scandalized many by calling the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany all democracies, but he means this in his special sense: the people neither own themselves nor are owned by anyone. The citizens are public property and are said to all participate in their own governance understood as an elected executive state. This was a modern form of government that displaced the old form – and it goes a long way towards explaining the advent of total war and the total state.”
The End of Locational Privacy…
Adam Cohen has a great piece at the New York Times on the end of locational privacy:
“Verizon online knows when I logged on, and New York Sports Club knows when I swiped my membership card. The M.T.A. could trace (through the MetroCard I bought with a credit card) when and where I took the subway, and The Times knows when I used my ID to enter the building. AT&T could follow me along the way through my iPhone.
There may also be videotape of my travels, given the ubiquity of surveillance cameras in New York City. There are thousands of cameras on buildings and lampposts around Manhattan, according to the New York Civil Liberties Union, many near my home and office. Several may have been in a position to film dinner on Elisabeth and Dan’s roof.
A little-appreciated downside of the technology revolution is that, mainly without thinking about it, we have given up “locational privacy.” Even in low-tech days, our movements were not entirely private. The desk attendant at my gym might have recalled seeing me, or my colleagues might have remembered when I arrived. Now the information is collected automatically and often stored indefinitely.
Privacy advocates are rightly concerned. Corporations and the government can keep track of what political meetings people attend, what bars and clubs they go to, whose homes they visit. It is the fact that people’s locations are being recorded “pervasively, silently, and cheaply that we’re worried about,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a recent report.
People’s cellphones and E-Z Passes are increasingly being used against them in court. If your phone is on, even if you are not on a call, you may be able to be found (and perhaps picked up) at any hour of the day or night. As disturbing as it is to have your private data breached, it is worse to think that your physical location might fall into the hands of people who mean you harm….”
My Comment
And of course, that’s what I’m liking about my stay down south. The feeling of having someone always looking over your shoulders diminishes a lot once you leave the country.
To add to Cohen’s litany of surveillance, take Google accounts. There’s an option that lets Google keep track of your web browsing, of every site you opened, and all it takes is a check against the box. Say someone hacks your Google account. Or a Google employee decides to do it as a prank or from malice. They could check that box and keep tabs on what it was you were reading and investigating.
That’s only one possibility. Obviously, someone could also hack your account and browse through it to create a fake history of what you were investigating or browsing. You could without your knowledge have been reading “jihadi” sites….or racist sites…or hate sites of some other type…or child pornography…or anything else your enemies might want to recreate you as.
People who think Google and wiki are going to bring down the establishment have got to be kidding or very naive. Google and wiki can, have, and will work with the establishment when it suits them.
Commercial Real Estate Worsening..
Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (financial instruments backed by debt derived from commercial real estate mortgages) are in growing trouble, says the Wall Street Journal:
“The CMBS sector is suffering two kinds of pain, which, according to credit rater Realpoint LLC, sent its delinquency rate to 3.14% in July, more than six times the level a year earlier. One is simply the result of bad underwriting. In the era of looser credit, Wall Street’s CMBS machine lent owners money on the assumption that occupancy and rents of their office buildings, hotels, stores or other commercial property would keep rising. In fact, the opposite has happened. The result is that a growing number of properties aren’t generating enough cash to make principal and interest payments.
The other kind of hurt is coming from the inability of property owners to refinance loans bundled into CMBS when these loans mature. By the end of 2012, some $153 billion in loans that make up CMBS are coming due, and close to $100 billion of that will face difficulty getting refinanced, according to Deutsche Bank. Even though the cash flows of these properties are enough to pay interest and principal on the debt, their values have fallen so far that borrowers won’t be able to extend existing mortgages or replace them with new debt. That means losses not only to the property owners but also to those who bought CMBS — including hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds and other financial institutions — thus exacerbating the economic downturn...”
My Comment
So there you have the reality under the green shoots hype. The economy might be showing good signs – why wouldn’t it, the amount of money that’s been thrown into it – but in the long-run, the refusal to let the underlying problem correct itself only drags out the crisis and makes it worse. And that’s just CMBS, one part of the entire commercial real estate market. The whole market is $6.7 trillion.
The failing loans make up about 1/60th of the entire market, but since they’re widely dispersed in individual and institutional portfolios, their impact will be far greater and more cumulative than their numbers would suggest. That was what happened with residential ARMs.
We explain the whole crisis in “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets” (check out the new paper-back edition that came out from John Wiley, August 24, 2009) – look at the financial sections – “Flattening the Globe” (that explains the un-Friedmanesque facts behind globalization) and the section called “Bubble Kings.”
It’s a quick and easy but thoroughly researched run-down of what happened in the financial markets. You’ll be able to figure it out, even if you never took a course in economics.
In fact, it might be harder for you if you did take college economics, where the underlying premise is that static models can do better than real world analysis in predicting what’s going to happen.
How many of these academic experts, including Ben Bernanke, anticipated what might happen and explained clearly and accurately why it would happen? None, it looks like.
There’s a lot of revisionism going on now..People are rewriting what they said two years ago or five, or even farther back. But the truth is, the emperor (expert opinion) has been caught out wearing a g-string. And nothing much else.
The experts are buck (excuse the term) naked….