Saturday, March 28, 2009

The Big Turn Off

Join us for one hour tonight!

Earth Hour is almost upon us -- 8:30 p.m. local time on Saturday, March 28.

Don't know what Earth Hour is? Organized by the World Wildlife Fund, it is a worldwide effort to raise awareness about climate change with the hopes of spurring political action. Individuals, businesses and governments are encouraged to turn off their lights for an hour. It is estimated that 36 million people in the U.S. participated in Earth Hour in 2008.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Reagan: The Great American Socialist

Ravi Batra comments that if Democratic President Barack Obama is a "small" socialist, then Reagan was the "Great American Socialist." (Photo: University of Texas)

   
Socialism has been much in the news for some months. Recently, some GOP stalwarts charged President Obama with preaching the heresy. John Boehner, the House minority leader, characterized Obama's stimulus package as, "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment."
    
"Socialism" is a pejorative term in American politics and needs to be carefully examined. It usually refers to increased government control over the economy, or policies that promote the redistribution of wealth. There is no doubt that President Obama's economic measures, passed and proposed, will raise tax rates on the richest Americans to pay for increased government funding of health care, green energy and education. So the new president is indeed a redistributionist, but so was Ronald Reagan, except that Obama's plans will transfer wealth from the rich to the poor, whereas Reagan's bills transferred wealth from the poor and the middle class to the opulent. In fact, Obama's measures are puny, whereas Reagan's were massive. If the Democrat is a "small" socialist, Reagan was the Great American Socialist.

Let's go back to the early 1980's. In 1981, Reagan signed a law that sharply reduced the income tax for the wealthiest Americans and corporations. The president asserted his program would create jobs, purge inflation and, get this, trim the budget deficit. However, following the tax cut, the deficit soared from 2.5 percent of GDP to over 6 percent, alarming financial markets, sending interest rates sky high, and culminating in the worst recession since the 1930's.

Soon the president realized he needed new revenues to trim the deficit, bring down interest rates and improve his chances for reelection. He would not rescind the income tax cut, but other taxes were acceptable. In 1982, taxes were raised on gasoline and cigarettes, but the deficit hardly budged. In 1983, the president signed the biggest tax rise on payrolls, promising to create a surplus in the Social Security system, while knowing all along that the new revenue would be used to finance the deficit.
   
The retirement system was looted from the first day the Social Security surplus came into being, because the legislation itself gave the president a free hand to spend the surplus in any way he liked. Thus began a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class, especially the self-employed small businessman, to the wealthy. The self-employment tax jumped as much as 66 percent.
   
In 1986, Reagan slashed the top tax rate further. His redistributionist obsession led to a perversity in the law. The wealthiest faced a 28 percent tax rate, while those with lower incomes faced a 33 percent rate; in addition, the bottom rate climbed from 11 percent to 15 percent. For the first time in history, the top rate fell and the bottom rate rose simultaneously. Even unemployment compensation was not spared. The jobless had to pay income tax on their benefits. A year later, the man who would not spare unemployment compensation from taxation called for a cut in the capital gains tax. Thus, Reagan was a staunch socialist, totally committed to his cause of wealth redistribution towards the affluent.
   
How much wealth transfer has occurred through Reagan's policies? At least $3 trillion.
   
The Social Security hike generated over $2 trillion in surplus between 1984 and 2007, and if it had been properly invested, say, in AAA corporate bonds it could have earned another trillion by now. At present, the fund is empty, because it has been used up to finance the federal deficits resulting from frequent cuts in income tax rates. If this is not redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich, what else is?
   
Thus, Reagan was the first Republican socialist - and a great one, because his wealth transfer occurred on a massive scale. His accomplishment dwarfs even FDR's, and if today the small businessman suffers a crippling tax burden, he must thank Reagan the redistributionist. However, FDR took pains to help the poor, while Reagan took pains to help the wealthiest like himself.
   
Reagan's measures were similar to those that the Republicans adopted during the 1920's, which were followed by the catastrophic Depression. More recently, such policies were mimicked by President George W. Bush and they are about to plunge the world into a depression as well. Ironically, the Reagan-style socialism or wealth redistribution is about to destroy monopoly capitalism, the very system that he wanted to preserve and enrich.
   
Wake up America and elect leaders with a heart - not those who would tax your unemployment benefits and cut the capital gains tax.
    -------
    Dr. Ravi Batra, a professor of economics at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, is the author of five international best sellers. He was the chairperson of his department from 1977 to 1980. This article is based on Batra's two books, "The New Golden Age" and "Greenspan's Fraud." His web site is Ravibatra.com.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Hey GOP! Just go the hell away....for a long time.

Just when you think it can't get any worse.....

A romp through the Republican ... budget?
 


P.M. Carpenter  Friday, March 27. 

I'll also offer Republicans a little sincere advice: Go away. Just go away for a long, long while. Grab whatever cash you have in the RNC account and hasten thee to a faraway exotic spa, or go on a year-long drunk, or simply hide yourselves at home, shutter the blinds, and shut the f*ck up. It's not your critics doing you harm. It's you and your non-budgeting budgets which advocate spending freezes during a deep freeze. It's Dick Cheney running around defending torture and denouncing social progress. It's Sarah Palin babbling about deficiently prayerful McCainites. It's your Cantors and Pences and Boehners looking and sounding so insufferably goofy. It's Michael Steele strategizing with God but genuflecting before Rush. For those fond of reifying brevity, it can even be just two words: Michele Bachmann.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

It's Time To End The War On Drugs

In case no one has noticed, the war on drugs was lost almost before it began, but it has been an extremely expensive war even so. Apparently we learned nothing from prohibition.

As with prohibition, the war on drugs has created a whole new way to make gazillions for organized crime, not to mention criminal lawyers and prison corporations who love nothing better than recidivism.

As with prohibition, ordinary, work-a-day citizens have been turned into criminals where no tendency toward a criminal life-style was evident. Lives have been ruined; the lives of people at a young age, unfortunately. If parents want to assure themselves that their kids will, at least, experiment with drugs, they should be thankful to the drug warriors, because making drugs illegal assured that very thing. Once a society makes a substance illegal, it has lost all control over it and the profit motive is there for others to sell said substance.

Courts across America are jammed up. A big part of the problem is drug related crime.

The last time I checked the statistics, it costs tax payers an average of $47,000 per year to incarcerate one individual. The vast majority of Americans are lucky if they make that much in a year. Of course, the amount varies from state to state just as the cost of living does, but is anyone really interested in spending anywhere near that much money to incarcerate a person who prefers cannabis in the evenings to a glass of wine or a few beers?

Legalize it and tax it, but please don't give the market to the tobacco industry. They have already proved to everyone that they have no integrity. If anyone can find a way to make cannabis truly addictive, it would be the same people who took an already dangerous, addictive drug, nicotine, and manipulated the content in cigarettes in order to hopelessly addict even more people, while lying for decades about their knowledge of the addictiveness of nicotine, which is, by the way, worse than addiction to the many illegal drugs.

Time To Restore The Fourth Amendment

Whenever there is any kind of war, civil rights watchers had better be on their toes. Even a cursory knowledge of history tells us that. The 4th Amendment began being shredded in earnest when the war on drugs was declared. Today I'm not sure that it actually exists anymore except on paper (no matter what they say on Law and Order.). It is time that we restore it completely. I wonder if there are any statistics on how many doors have been kicked in and people at the address killed because the police had the wrong address while trying to make a drug bust? We have all heard on the news (usually local) that it has happened, probably more times than the police want to count, that's for sure. How many cops have been killed by new organized crime created by these new prohibition law?. How much time is wasted by police doing paperwork on a cannabis case while people are being raped, murdered and robbed on the streets of America? I've spoken to countless cops in many cites over the years who wish the government would legalize cannabis.

Too many people have died, too many lives have been ruined by this senseless war, probably far more than would have been lost to or ruined by the drugs themselves. Perhaps we should stop declaring war on inanimate objects or highly charged emotional states. It doesn't make any sense and it never did. Declaring war on a plant that grows just about anywhere anything else will grow has got to be one of the most incredibly stupid things I have ever heard.

So who was behind some of the most incredibly stupid laws ever written? The cotton industry for one, who didn't want to have to compete with the much stronger, durable fiber, hemp. It is still illegal to this day to grow hemp in America. Of course that was ages ago. The lobbyists who really wanted cannabis outlawed belonged to the alcohol industry. ( Since Holland de-criminalized cannabis years ago, the biggest drug problem in the Netherlands is still alcohol.)

Nevertheless, if we insist on continuing these ridiculous policies, everyone from the president, his staff and cabinet, members of congress, to the bail out babies on Wall Street should have to submit to the piss police. After all, if people who flip burgers need to be clean and sober to do their jobs, surely the highest ranking officials of the nation and the irreplaceable thieves on Wall Street certainly do. Oh, by the way, lets test for alcohol too. After all alcohol is more of a problem when it comes to exercising good judgment. Even hangovers from alcohol impair a person's judgment. Can't test for alcohol, you say? Maybe not, but since the liver cannot completely metabolize alcohol, it leaves another quite toxic substance in the system for quite some time. As a matter of fact it is the substance that causes hangovers; acetaldahyde.

Time for the insanity to end.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

States consider drug tests for welfare recipients

CHARLESTON, W.Va.




Want government assistance? Just say no to drugs.

Lawmakers in at least eight states want recipients of food stamps, unemployment benefits or welfare to submit to random drug testing.

The effort comes as more Americans turn to these safety nets to ride out the recession. Poverty and civil liberties advocates fear the strategy could backfire, discouraging some people from seeking financial aid and making already desperate situations worse. (It could backfire in an even worse way for the drug warriors and everyone else using our tax dollars to fight an endless, extremely expensive "war on drugs" which we lost years ago. Wars are expensive, even if they are already lost. In this case, especially if the war has already been lost.)
 .
Those in favor of the drug tests say they are motivated out of a concern for their constituents' health and ability to put themselves on more solid financial footing once the economy rebounds. But proponents concede they also want to send a message: you don't get something for nothing. (Yeah right, we all know how concerned these people are for their so-called constituents. That's why many of them voted for policies which led us over an economic cliff for campaign support from their real constituents, some of whom may not even be in the state they represent, not to mention their districts, but all of whom stood to get wealthier of said policies.)


"Nobody's being forced into these assistance programs," said Craig Blair, a Republican in the West Virginia Legislature who has created a Web site — notwithmytaxdollars.com — that bears a bobble-headed likeness of himself advocating this position. "If so many jobs require random drug tests these days, why not these benefits?" (Of course they aren't being forced into assistance programs. Neither are the crooks on Wall Street, but are they being asked to submit to the piss police?)

Blair is proposing the most comprehensive measure in the country, as it would apply to anyone applying for food stamps, unemployment compensation or the federal programs usually known as "welfare": Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Women, Infants and Children.

Lawmakers in other states are offering similar, but more modest proposals.

On Wednesday, the Kansas House of Representatives approved a measure mandating drug testing for the 14,000 or so people getting cash assistance from the state, which now goes before the state senate. In February, the Oklahoma Senate unanimously passed a measure that would require drug testing as a condition of receiving TANF benefits, and similar bills have been introduced in Missouri and Hawaii. A Florida senator has proposed a bill linking unemployment compensation to drug testing, and a member of Minnesota's House of Representatives has a bill requiring drug tests of people who get public assistance under a state program there.

A January attempt in the Arizona Senate to establish such a law failed

In the past, such efforts have been stymied by legal and cost concerns, said Christine Nelson, a program manager with the National Conference of State Legislatures. But states' bigger fiscal crises, and the surging demand for public assistance, could change that.

"It's an example of where you could cut costs at the expense of a segment of society that's least able to defend themselves," said Frank Crabtree, executive director of the West Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Drug testing is not the only restriction envisioned for people receiving public assistance: a bill in the Tennessee Legislature would cap lottery winnings for recipients at $600. (Perhaps they should be sterilized as well...snark. After all, kids are expensive.)
 
There seems to be no coordinated move around the country to push these bills, and similar proposals have arisen periodically since federal welfare reform in the 1990s. But the appearance of a cluster of such proposals in the midst of the recession shows lawmakers are newly engaged about who is getting public assistance.

Particularly troubling to some policy analysts is the drive to drug test people collecting unemployment insurance, whose numbers nationwide now exceed 5.4 million, the highest total on records dating back to 1967.

"It doesn't seem like the kind of thing to bring up during a recession," said Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "People who are unemployed, who have lost their job, that's a sympathetic group. Americans are tuned into that, because they're worried they'll be next."

Indeed, these proposals are coming at a time when more Americans find themselves in need of public assistance.

Although the number of TANF recipients has stayed relatively stable at 3.8 million in the last year, claims for unemployment benefits and food stamps have soared.

In December, more than 31.7 million Americans were receiving food stamp benefits, compared with 27.5 million the year before.

The link between public assistance and drug testing stems from the Congressional overhaul of welfare in the 1990s, which allowed states to implement drug testing as a condition of receiving help.
But a federal court struck down a Michigan law that would have allowed for "random, suspicionless" testing, saying it violated the 4th Amendment's protections against unreasonable search and seizure, said Liz Schott, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

At least six states — Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Virginia — tie eligibility for some public assistance to drug testing for convicted felons or parolees, according to the NCSL.
Nelson said programs that screen welfare applicants by assigning them to case workers for interviews have shown some success without the need for drug tests. These alternative measures offer treatment, but can also threaten future benefits if drug problems persist, she said.

They also cost less than the $400 or so needed for tests that can catch a sufficient range of illegal drugs, and rule out false positive results with a follow-up test, she said.
___
Associated Press Writer Lawrence Messina in Charleston contributed to this report.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

A.G. Cuomo (N.Y.): Was AIG Re-Capitalizing Banks All Over The World?

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Thursday afternoon that he was widening his investigation of the American International Group to examine whether its trading counterparties improperly received billions of dollars in government money from the troubled insurer. 

Those counterparties include Goldman Sachs, which received $12.9 billion, as well as Société Générale of France and Deutsche Bank of Germany, which each received nearly $12 billion. 

Why is the AG of New York Doing the Investigating Geithner and Holder Should be Doing of the Wall Street Crooks? 

“Our investigation into corporate bonuses has led us to an investigation of the credit default swap contracts at A.I.G.,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “CDS contracts were at the heart of A.I.G.’s meltdown. The question is whether the contracts are being wound down properly and efficiently or whether they have become a vehicle for funneling billions in taxpayers dollars to capitalize banks all over the world.” The Obama Administration Would Want to Know, Don't You Think?



The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

We Are Back


After taking a few months of well deserved rest, when not working on some projects we put off due to time restaints during the political season and the campaign for Obama, we are back. 

In the meantime, we have added a new blog to our Pelican family of blogs: Independent Light can be found at http://independentlight.blogspot.com


Geitner: Prepared to regulate hedge funds


It's about time. Regulations and tranparency in financial dealings are a MUST, if we hope to avoid meltdowns like the one in which we currently find ourselves. Of course, what few regulations we had left to keep in-line the functional psychotics who reign supreme on Wall Street after 12 years of Reagan/Bush, 8 years of Clinton, 8 years of Bush and Cheney and 12 years of a Republican lead Congress ('94 -'06) were not enforced by the Bush administration. Laws don't work to protect the peoples' interest, if enforcement of those laws is not encouraged (if not out-right discouraged) by the executive.

A snippet from ABC News:

The administration is proposing that hedge funds and other private pools of capital, including private equity funds and venture capital funds, be required to register with the SEC if their assets exceed a certain size. The threshold amount has yet to be determined, officials said.

The proposal on credit default swaps and other derivatives would require the markets on which they are traded to be regulated for the first time, and for the buying and selling of these instruments to be conducted in ways that will foster greater oversight.

Credit default swaps, which trade in a $60 trillion global market without government oversight, are contracts to insure against the default of financial instruments like bonds and corporate debt. They played a prominent role in the credit crisis that brought the downfall of investment banking giant Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. last fall and nearly unraveled AIG, forcing the government to provide more than $180 billion in support.

Hedge funds, vast pools of capital holding an estimated $1.5 trillion in assets, operate mostly outside of government supervision. As the market crisis deepened last fall, hedge fund selling was widely cited as one of the reasons for increased volatility that pounded stocks and bonds. Hedge funds also suffered huge losses last year, notably from investments in securities tied to subprime mortgages.

The outline of the regulatory reform was being unveiled a week before President Barack Obama was scheduled to meet for discussions among the Group of 20 major industrialized and developing countries in London to assess what needs to be done to deal with the global financial crisis.

While the administration is pushing other nations to follow the U.S. lead in putting together sizable economic stimulus programs to jump-start global growth, many in Europe are resisting those calls and arguing that the United States needs to do more to toughen financial regulations. They believe the current troubles can be traced to lax regulation in the United States in such key areas as hedge funds and credit default swaps.

Requiring hedge funds to register would open their books to inspection by regulators. The SEC sought that authority several years ago but was stymied by a federal appeals court in 2006.

Hedge funds have grown explosively in recent years while operating secretively. They have lured an increasing number of ordinary investors, pension funds and university endowments — meaning millions of people now unwittingly invest in hedge funds indirectly.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.