February 2012
1 post
The wallet
This econ professor is a total genius (his website is here). There’s so much that’s wrong with the wallet-stealing exercise he talks about towards the end of interview. It’s as if he thinks that collecting taxes to fund education and healthcare is like collecting taxes to buy someone a vacation home. They’re all “things people want,” after all, right? That...
November 2011
16 posts
The 352nd wealthiest person in the world
Some noteworthy passages from the NYTimes article:
1. United States tax law allows taxpayers to deduct mortgage interest on one’s homes up to $1.1 million in debt. Households with more than $1 million in income claimed more than $27 billion in such deductions from 2006 to ’09, according to a report this month by Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who said some wealthy taxpayers even deducted...
“The effective federal income tax rate for the 400 wealthiest taxpayers,...”
– From this New York Times piece.
“…the real media bias is authoritarianism: loyalty to those who wield...”
– Same piece from Greenwald as below.
“…most establishment media figures, by definition, are hard-core...”
– From this excellent piece by Greenwald on the alleged “objectivity” of mainstream journalists
Taibbi on the erosion of U.S. principles
In this piece, Taibbi writes:
…when we abandoned our principles in order to use force against terrorists and drug dealers, the answer to the question, What are we defending? started to change.
The original answer, ostensibly, was, “We are defending the peaceful and law-abiding citizens of the United States, their principles, and everything America stands for.”
Then after a...
“..please spare me the claim that the Egyptian-military-backing,...”
– Glenn Greenwald (here)
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
– Rosa Luxembourg (qtd. by Greenwald here)
Woman Gets Jail For Food-Stamp Fraud; Wall Street...
Taibbi’s piece is here.
Promises Made, and Remade, by Firms in S.E.C....
An analysis found at least 51 cases in which 19 Wall Street firms were accused of repeatedly breaking laws. (Story is here).
Social Security is not in crisis
Yet another article from the mainstream press on the supposed looming insolvency of social security. As one commenter rightly points out, “Social Security has a $2.5 trillion dollar surplus at the present and can fund itself entirely for the next 25 years and after that it can continue to be solvent simply by raising the income cap modestly.” The so-called social security crisis is a...
Can anyone create jobs?
That’s from the New York Times (11/4/11). One way to create jobs would be to have everyone who’s currently working eight-hour days work four-hour days instead, the thought here being that something like that would mean that everyone would have a job. In doing this, we’d solve a totally fucked-up problem specific to capitalism—some are unemployed while (and because) others...
Who's behind the financial meltdown?
A resource from the Center for Public Integrity here.
October 2011
21 posts
The real danger of classified leaks
From this piece by Greenwald:
Anyone who purports concern over the harmful leaking of classified information should look first to the Obama administration, which uses secrecy powers as a manipulative tool to propagandize the citizenry: trumpeting information that makes the leader and his government look good while suppressing anything with the force of criminal law that does the opposite....
Countering claptrap
Robert Reich rebutting “the seven biggest economic lies” (here).
Those who cause the most harm don't get prosecuted
From Democracy Now! (here):
AMY GOODMAN: […] What does it mean to be a white-collar criminologist?
WILLIAM BLACK: It means Rodney Dangerfield: we get no respect. Virtually all the funding goes to blue-collar. Virtually all the resources go to it. So it’s a thin group of folks that look at the most elite criminals who cause most of the property and most of the physical damage in the...
Citigroup to pay $285 to settle case
NYTimes article is here. And then here is a page one can use to track financial crisis cases.
A guide to political donations
Check out this interactive feature from the New York Times on how to ensure your political donation goes where you want it to.
It's more profitable to destroy homes than house...
This story from NPR’s Marketplace talks about banks destroying houses because doing so is cheaper than maintaining, refurbishing, and trying to sell them. It makes sense that banks do this. There’s a certain logic, a certain rationality to such behavior. After all, why hold on to something that loses your company money? Yes, the banks are acting rationally, but the economic system that...
Bill O'Reilly vs. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West
This conversation gets heated at times. Note: Tavis Smiley hasn’t a clue what “socialism” is.
"Are you a left-wing nut bar?"
Chris Hedges responds—cogently and eloquently—to the question of whether he is a “left-wing nut bar” here (video is 7 minutes long).
“In the last few years, […] corporate profits (which flow largely to the...”
– Editorial from The New York Times (here).
"Giving away food only encourages the poor not to...
Click here for the comic in a size you can actually read.
Angry man
Watch this guy beating a computer suspended from the ceiling while he explains (yells, actually) what’s wrong with the economy.
Obama's "Millionaire Tax" Collected Over Next Ten...
From Zero Hedge (here):
In order to keep the ongoing class warfare waged by the administration in perspective, today the CBO was kind enough to score the revenue impact of the proposed and much debated Buffett Tax, now appearing in non-populist literature as “Surtax on Millionaires.” According to the Budget Office, said tax which is the source of substantial consternation ...
Unable to order prosecution, President orders...
Two noteworthy remarks from Obama during today’s press conference (transcript here):
1.
Question from reporter: “Just a follow-up on Wall Street. Are you satisfied with how aggressive your administration has been when it comes to prosecuting? Because I know a lot of it was legal, but a lot of IT was not. There was fraud that took place.”
THE PRESIDENT: “Right. ...
Attorneys General Settlement: The Next Big Bank...
From this piece by Taibbi:
…this settlement is not about getting money from the banks. The deal being contemplated is actually the opposite: a giant bailout.
In fact, any federal foreclosure settlement along the lines of what’s been proposed will amount to a last round of post-2008-crisis bailouts. I talked to one foreclosure activist over the weekend who put it this way: “[The AG...
NYPD: Private security force
From this Democracy Now! piece:
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to raise this issue, that we’ve just learned. J.P. Morgan Chase donated an unprecedented $4.6 million to the New York City Police foundation. The gift was the largest gift in the history of the foundation and will enable the New York City Police to strengthen security in New York. The money will pay for 1000 new patrol cars, laptops, they...
On socializing finance
From a piece by Leo Panitch (here):
It was, of all people, the mainstream LSE economist Willem Buiter (the former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, appointed in November 2009 by Citibank as its chief economist) who in his Financial Times blog on September 17, 2008 a few days after Lehman Brothers’ collapse endorsed the “long-standing argument that there is...
Occupy Wall Street
Recent pieces on “Occupy Wall Street” can be found here (Greenwald), here (Taibbi), here (FAIR), here (FAIR’s “Counterspin,” starting around 8min40sec), here (Democracy Now! tour of Occupy Wall Street), and here (New York Times). And the “Occupy Wall Street” website is here.
WatchThanks for the advice, liberal.
Nicholas Kristof, after using a non-argument to dismiss anti-capitalist elements within the Occupy Wall Street movement, proposes changes that in the end wouldn’t do jack.
Next day: Kristof makes some more stupid remarks here. For instance, after noting that the protesters are accepting donations of pizzas ordered from a local pizzeria, he says, “In a...
Astonishing
This brief exchange between journalist Jake Tapper and White House spokesperson Jay Carney reveals that the Obama Administration has no interest in revealing the evidence it allegedly has to prove that the U.S. citizen it just killed was involved in any crimes.
September 2011
15 posts
The U.S. kills its own
From Greenwald’s piece on today’s announcement that the U.S. has successfully assassinatedone of its own citizens:
After several unsuccessful efforts to assassinate its own citizen, the U.S. succeeded today (and it was the U.S.). It almost certainly was able to find and kill Awlaki with the help of its long-time close friend President Saleh, who took a little time off from...
Occupy Wall Street
An excellent piece by Greenwald about the Occupy Wall Street protestors and dissent in the U.S.
Time to go to war against Pakistan
Looks like some people want us to (further) invade Pakistan now. There’s this article from the New York Times this morning. Here’s Glenn Greenwald’s assessment of the situation from a couple of days prior to that.
Justice Dennis Jacobs: total dick
From Glenn Greenwald (click here for piece):
Virtually every ACLU lawyer is very smart and well-educated; for instance, the lead ACLU lawyer in this case, Jameel Jaffer, is a graduate of Cambridge University and Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of its law review. Every one of these lawyers could therefore easily have joined (and could still join) the nation’s most ...
Greenwald on Padilla
From Greenwald’s piece (which is here):
American officials who are responsible for this “inhumane” and “cruel” abuse of detainees act with full impunity, as usual. Those who are its victims are not merely denied all redress (though they are), and do not merely have the courthouse doors slammed in their faces in the name of secrecy, national security and...
Why doesn't David Brooks feel compelled to go on a...
From Matt Taibbi (full piece here):
No doubt people like Wall Street billionaires Stevie Cohen and George Soros and John Paulson do pay well over 30 percent on their “income,” if they have any, from speaking engagements or whatever else they do in their spare time. But the vast majority of the billions in actual money that these hedge-fund guys make is not called...
despite --> because of
From a piece by Greenwald (here):
And just by the way, replacing the word “despite” with the phrase “because of” is — in general — one of the most valuable tools for translating Washington propaganda into reality; here is an excellent example showing how that works, from the first paragraph of a New York Times article two weeks ago:
Documents found at the...
The bleeding cure
A decent piece by Krugman on why bleeding people economically ain’t the best way to heal them economically. His column is here.
Robert Reich
A fine interview with Robert Reich on Media Matters here.
"those who voice prohibited truths are always more...
Greenwald on The Israel Lobby (here).
"Rogue trading"
Taibbi on alleged “rogue trading” at UBS. Click here. Two paragraphs from the piece:
In the financial press you’re called a “rogue trader” if you’re some overperspired 28 year-old newbie who bypasses internal audits and quality control to make a disastrous trade that could sink the company. But if you’re a well-groomed 60 year-old CEO who uses his...
Free to die
Krugman on non-compassionate conservativism here.