Changing Places

Please read Barack Obama’s excellent speech on the economy today…. click on the link for full text.

Over the last few days, we have seen clearly what’s at stake in this election. The news from Wall Street has shaken the American people’s faith in our economy. The situation with Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions is the latest in a wave of crises that have generated tremendous uncertainty about the future of our financial markets. This is a major threat to our economy and its ability to create good-paying jobs and help working Americans pay their bills, save for their future, and make their mortgage payments.

Since this turmoil began over a year ago, the housing market has collapsed. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had to be effectively taken over by the government. Three of America’s five largest investment banks failed or have been sold off in distress. Yesterday, Wall Street suffered its worst losses since just after 9/11. We are in the most serious financial crisis in generations. Yet Senator McCain stood up yesterday and said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

…So let’s be clear: what we’ve seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed. And I am running for President of the United States because the dreams of the American people must not be endangered any more. It’s time to put an end to a broken system in Washington that is breaking the American economy. It’s time for change that makes a real difference in your lives.

…Make no mistake: my opponent is running for four more years of policies that will throw the economy further out of balance. His outrage at Wall Street would be more convincing if he wasn’t offering them more tax cuts. His call for fiscal responsibility would be believable if he wasn’t for more tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and more of a trillion dollar war in Iraq paid for with deficit spending and borrowing from foreign creditors like China. His newfound support for regulation bears no resemblance to his scornful attitude towards oversight and enforcement. John McCain cannot be trusted to reestablish proper oversight of our financial markets for one simple reason: he has shown time and again that he does not believe in it.

What has happened these last eight years is not some historical anomaly, so we know what to expect if we try these policies for another four. When lobbyists run your campaign, the special interests end up gaming the system. When the White House is hostile to any kind of oversight, corporations cut corners and consumers pay the price. When regulators are chosen for their disdain for regulation and we gut their ability to enforce the law, then the interests of the American people are not protected. It’s an ideology that intentionally breeds incompetence in Washington and irresponsibility on Wall Street, and it’s time to turn the page….

Neo-conservative thought has been shown to be a failure at everything else it has attempted - now it is destroying our financial system. Long, hard ride down is ahead, people. The market is now into a dangerous game of Liar’s Poker.

Rattling Apart: Captain Carnage and the Bear | The Agonist

In 2001, as soon as he was made the economic advisor to Bush, I stated repeatedly that Ben Bernanke would be made the Federal Reserve Chairman after Greenspan, and that he would be a disaster. This was based on a reading of his academic work, which was, essentially, a series of attempts to prove that such a neo-conservative system could avoid the collapse that lead to the Great Depression. No Great Depression, no FDR. No FDR, no situation where the rich would have to accept regulation and restriction in return for bailing out. In essence the first problem is the “Great Contraction.” The United States and other nations, to attempt to re-impose the Gold Standard after allowing it to lapse for the First World War, had to at a certain point accept prices at the new levels, or had to dramatically reduce the money supply. They chose the later, creating a massive contraction of the money supply. This was done in the face of a downturn, because it was feared that a downturn would lead to easy money, and this to hyper-inflation of the kind witnessed in Germany, or very high inflation, as seen after the First World War. For them, coming after a two generation period where deflation was the norm during the classical gold standard and the consolidation of the first Conservative Era, globally, inflation was a horror.

Bernanke and others, argued that the Great Depression was not in any way a structural event, but strictly a macroeconomic monetary event. That strictly macroëconomic policy measures could have been used to effect the bailout. There were two major intellectual problems. One of them is the point where monetary policy is “pushing on a string.” Or what Bernanke called “the zero point”. The “bold” steps turn out to be the same sort of maneuvers used in the first decade of this century: finding deep pockets and hiding the losses.

Bernanke’s failures begin as economic advisor to the President and continue in his time on the Federal Reserve. The culminate with his failure to either deal with the liquidity crisis, or to face inflation head on. By allowing the housing bubble, and the financial bubble built on it, to explode he set up the very circumstances. By dragging his feet on raising interest rates, and then by ignoring the expanding monetary crisis, Bernanke has set the stage where neither he, nor anyone else, is in a position to act. With a President who is content to give imaginary orders to imaginary armies, there is no center of power that can move. It also indicates that the opposition party has made a series of gross miscalculations about the situation, believing the rhetoric that things were going well, and that they were getting the best deal they could. They were facing people who were bluffing all the way, and are now realizing that there is no rush to give way on anything.

The “slow” rate raising campaign was a double disaster, it neither headed off inflation nor did it keep credit easy enough. This is because the problem was not the level of interest rates, per se, but what we were spending the money on. As many, many, many commentators, many, many times have pointed out, the US was consuming too much, and exporting too little. The Neo-Conservative happy monsters said that this could go on for ever, giving other people our paper for their oil and goods.

While it is possible that we will emerge from this functional, the likelihood is that we are going to see a continued fall for the next 9 months, as the crisis deepens, a die hard illegitimate executive burns his last brands on our skin, and a feckless opposition folds its cards over and over and over again, allowing ordinary people to bear the brunt of the continued contraction.

We are riding this bucket down a ways farther, because there is nothing to right the equilibrium, and without the stimulus from war spending, on which we are so dependent, there will be no pick up in business activity soon. There will be some increased exports, but not sufficient to take the place of the cratering of housing.

What needs to be done? Re-regulation is obvious. Making the Fed serve elected policy makers is a no brainer. Restating numbers to prevent the white washing of bubbles is essential, a public sense of ownership of the financial system as part of the “high ground of the economy” seems essential. Firing Ben Bernanke is a pink do this to day post it note.

But most essentially there needs to be a change in the basis of money, simply because the obvious stability of real estate assets in the United States will no longer be enough.

So, Republicans can’t even handle their own money, and taxpayers are supposed to trust them with their money?

I don’t think so.

Not even a second sign-off. I’ve NEVER worked for an organization that didn’t require at least two signatures to transfer money. Ever. This is not just fraud - it’s organizational stupidity.

NRCC Treasurer Accused of Campaign Fraud

The former treasurer for the National Republican Congressional Committee transferred as much as $1 million in committee funds into his personal and business accounts, officials announced today, describing a scheme that could prove to be one of the largest campaign frauds in recent history.

For at least four years, Christopher J. Ward, who is under investigation by the FBI, used wire transfers to funnel money out of the NRCC and into other political committees he controlled, then shifted the funds into his own personal accounts, the committee said.

“The evidence we have today indicated we have been deceived and betrayed for a number of years by a highly respected and trusted individual,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), NRCC chairman.

The committee also announced that it had submitted to banks five years of audits and financial documents allegedly forged by Ward, some of which were used to secure multimillion-dollar loans. It is a violation of federal bank fraud laws to obtain loans through false statements; such crimes are punishable by up to $1 million in fines and 30 years in prison.

Prior to today, the committee had not acknowledged that any money was missing. It announced Feb. 1 that it had discovered “irregularities” and had called in federal investigators to pursue a fraud case.

Robert K. Kelner, a lawyer with Covington & Burling, which has been hired by the committee to oversee a forensic audit, told reporters that at this point he could say for certain only that Ward had diverted “several hundred thousand dollars” in unauthorized payments dating to 2004. However, he said that the year-end report filed with the Federal Election Commission in 2006 overstated the NRCC’s actual cash on hand by $990,000.

That might be the upper level of how much money Ward allegedly skimmed from NRCC coffers, but Kelner said forensic auditors need to keep “drilling down” to determine how much was inappropriately taken and how much might have been the result of sloppy bookkeeping.

Kelner said that Ward had the sole power at the NRCC to use wire transfers to shift money into any accounts he wanted. “He was able to get a wire transfer without getting a second sign-off,” Kelner said.

Retailers Taking Their Medicine and Turning Cautious Over Growth - CoStar Group

When asked if this phase possibly creates an opportunity for those smaller local or regional retailers who had a tougher time getting great real estate when the big chains were expanding, Kampler said, “I think this is an opportunity for the ones that would typically have had trouble getting a landlord’s attention. The consumer is bored and does not want to see the same collection of stores in every shopping center from coast to coast. Malls should have more flavor, and stores should reflect the specifics of the geography and natural setting. There’s a small handful of malls around the country that have gone out of their way to have interesting tenant mixes and maybe we’re going to get back to some of that.”

More than happy to be a part of it myself…. ;^)

the choice of a nude generation | The Agonist

there is a conspiracy, of which i am a professed member, to dismantle the petroleum society. the petroleum society introduced a host of concepts, including the nuclear family, in its drive to make labor mobile to the convenient places of production.

the conspiracy is to move production into forms that people can do where and when they want, even stark naked in their own bedroom.

the social forms and norms which came with the mechanized world have not been successes by and large. the divorce rate is high, it has torn apart the african american community entirely - moynihan had it exactly wrong, it wasn’t that african-americans were failing at marriage, it is that nuclear marriage was failing them. one major reason that immigrant communities do better than indigenous african-american ones, is that the immigrants keep the nuclear norm. the parents come over when needed, or the children are shipped back.

the nuclear norm is also one that is lividly more bigotted than the extended one. this is because each partner is the sole source of emotional support for the other. it has lead, directly, to a rise in the consumption of video pornography and use of sex aids, including bondage-discipline and sado-masochism, as ways of keeping the sexual passion alive in the the nuclear couple. it is also why “defense of marriage” becomes more an obsession of the right wing. the nuclear marriage, as more fragile and stressed, needs it.

at the same time, the economic realities which allowed and encouraged the nuclear family are being crushed from both sides - young people are failing to launch, and old people are collapsing back into the home to be cared for. often both at once.

the nude generation enters this reality without an attachment to the nuclear family, without a job picture that encourages the nuclear family, that is moving to someplace and having a long residence there in the employ of one company. the nude generation therefore, neither respects the norms of that system, nor do they have any force impelling them too.

instead, as people who find people by craigslist, facebook, linkedin, friendster, myspace, and even more exotic tools, they are impelled to build networks that are polymorphous, polyamorous in many cases, and polyvalent. multi is the word of the past, poly the word that the nude generation falls upon. the polytropic has become polyagenous, a society made out of things which are indefinite in their form and structure. we don’t buy things as much as we buy things that make things. computers, smartphones, internet service, sites that link us to new content we didn’t know about, websites and so on.

this conspiracy to overturn the past is driven my many things, it make sense because the past really has robbed the nude generation blind. in the last 30 years the end of the GI generation, and the beginning of the baby boom, has spent the money that the second half of the baby boom, the baby bust and the echo boom assumed would be there. they have eaten the air, fouled the economy, spent the credit, burned the oil, used up the land to build, largely, parking lots.

Soros lays it all out on the table…. go read the whole piece, it’s good.

FT.com / In depth - The worst market crisis in 60 years

…

Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an end.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.

Zaphod Beeblebrox

Richard Branson

The resemblance is striking, no?

Virgin’s Branson unveils commercial spaceship model | Reuters

Entrepreneur Richard Branson on Wednesday unveiled a model of the spaceship he hopes will be the first to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis next year.

Branson, whose Virgin Galactic is one of several commercial enterprises vying to offer the ultimate in sightseeing, said his SpaceShipTwo will start test flights later this year.

“Two thousand eight is going to be the year of the spaceship. We’re excited about this, and everything it will do,” said Branson at a media event at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.”

Virgin Galactic, part of Branson’s airline, vacation and retail company Virgin Group, has more than 200 people signed up and $30 million in deposits for the rides, which cost about $200,000 per person.

Zaphod Beeblebrox
He’s the guy you want to vote for
When you get into that Voting Booth
Put an X next to his name

Zaphod Beeblebrox for President
Building bridges between the stars
In no way is he stupid
In no way is his brain impaired
It’s just not true, he’s smarter than you
And he’s better looking too

Zaphod Beeblebrox
Has the longest hair of any candidate
And he’s got the coolest shades
And his teeth are white as snow

So let’s elect him President
He’ll build bridges between the stars
Don’t believe the rumours
Don’t believe those vicious lies
They’re just not true
He’s smarter than you
And he’s better look too

(Spoken)
“Listen. I just wanted to say, y’know.
Whatever presidents say y’know.
Things like, er… the name of people and er, freedom
And I dunno. Democracy, stuff like that. Woo! Come on!”

Let’s face it, Americans have too much stuff. We use 25% of the world’s resources. We want bigger houses and cars and more stuff, and as George Carlin says, then we have to have somewhere to put it.

Health Effects of Clutter - Tara Parker-Pope - Medicine and Health - New York Times

Compulsive hoarding is defined, in part, by clutter that so overtakes living, dining and sleeping spaces that it harms the person’s quality of life. A compulsive hoarder finds it impossible, even painful, to part with possessions. It’s not clear how many people suffer from compulsive hoarding, but estimates start at about 1.5 million Americans.

It also disturbs me that this article doesn’t talk about the other end of the spectrum as a disorder, those who are obsessive about cleaning and order. This is as much of a disorder as the clutter addicted, and just as painful a way to live. It might seem that cleanliness is a virtue, but too much of it is also a sickness.

Hope the family wins their lawsuit against the heartless bastards. Can we PLEASE have single payer coverage and end the madness in this country?

Sadly this denial of coverage happens every day for hundreds of people. And that’s for those of us lucky enough to even have insurance. All so these asshat CEOs can make their millions.

Teen dies after transplant funds nixed - Yahoo! News

- A 17-year old died just hours after her health insurance company reversed its decision not to pay for a liver transplant that doctors said the girl needed.

Nataline Sarkisyan died Thursday night at about 6 p.m. at University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center. She had been in a vegetative state for weeks, said her mother, Hilda.

“She passed away, and the insurance (company) is responsible for this,” she said.

Nataline had been battling leukemia and received a bone marrow transplant from her brother. She developed a complication, however, that caused her liver to fail.

Doctors at UCLA determined she needed a transplant and sent a letter to CIGNA Healthcare on Dec. 11. The Philadelphia-based health insurance company denied payment for the transplant.

On Thursday, about 150 teenagers and nurses protested outside CIGNA’s office in Glendale. As the protesters rallied, the company reversed its decision and said it would approve the transplant.

Despite the reversal, CIGNA said in an e-mail statement before she died that there was a lack of medical evidence showing the procedure would work in Nataline’s case.

“Our hearts go out to Nataline and her family, as they endure this terrible ordeal,” the company said. ” … CIGNA HealthCare has decided to make an exception in this rare and unusual case and we will provide coverage should she proceed with the requested liver transplant.”

Officials with CIGNA could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday night.

OK, today I need a blog called What Devilstower Said.

This is getting ridiculous. ;^) But then, I really enjoy it when everyone else is starting to say all the things I’ve been spouting for years. My husband was really getting sick of listening to my rants. It’s only taken seven years for most people to realize what was obvious to me was going to happen from the beginning. My biggest personal regret is the friends I lost who thought I was crazy and stopped talking to me because they couldn’t accept that Bush and company really would make things this bad. Of course, they won’t bother admitting it now, either.

Americans have needed a wake up call for a long time now, since the seventies when it first really became obvious to some of us that we needed to change the way we live in this country. Going off the gold standard and starting the long downward spiral into debt, cutting deals with the Saudis, could only save us from the reckoning for so long. Unfortunately, we’re about to get it. In spades. Even compact fluorescent lights aren’t going to save us — it’s too little, too late to save us from the choices we made in creating the sprawlconomy.

And here’s yet another great posting on what’s really going down.

Daily Kos: The Enormous Cost of NOT Going Green

It’s impossible to put forward any energy plan, no matter how mild, without facing a deafening chorus of “it’ll cost too much!” That’s the ultimate tool of the burn-everything status quo, the idea that any attempt to limit the damage we’re doing to the world would be so costly that it would sink our economic ship.

But even ignoring the fact that conservative policies celebrating unregulated greed have now brought us to the edge of the biggest economic abyss in a hundred years, there’s something left out of all those dire warnings about the cost of going green. It’s the enormous cost of not going green.

High oil prices are fueling one of the biggest transfers of wealth in history. Oil consumers are paying $4 billion to $5 billion more for crude oil every day than they did just five years ago, pumping more than $2 trillion into the coffers of oil companies and oil-producing nations this year alone.

The total US national debt just hit the $9 trillion mark this week — a value that seems so large as to be incomprehensible. It will take generations to repay even if logical fiscal policies are restored. Yet it’s less than five years worth of what we’re pumping out of our country to preserve the oil industry. $2 trillion is a year is the price we pay for utter cowardice in changing our relationship to energy.

We shy away from changing how we make cars, because we’re concerned about jobs in the auto industry. We hesitate to halt destructive energy extraction, because we worry about trickle of revenue it generates. We never acknowledge that the price of preserving the status quo far exceeds what it would take to break free of the current paradigm. Faced with eminent starvation, we can’t stop fighting over the last can of beans long enough to plant a garden.

Here’s the deal. Terrorism is not the challenge of our lifetimes. Changing our relationship with energy is the challenge we have to face right now.

In the United States, the rising bill for imported petroleum lowers already anemic consumer savings rates, adds to inflation, worsens the trade deficit, undermines the dollar and makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to balance its competing goals of fighting inflation and sustaining growth.

Thirty five years ago, energy companies campaigned that we would all “freeze in the dark” if the Clean Air Act was passed. They were wrong. Now they want to tell you that we’ll all be broke if we try to sever their control over our lives. They’re wrong again. Unless we shake our timidity, twenty years from now they’ll be looking down at a ruined world from the top of their mile-high skyscrapers in Dubai. And they’ll be thinking “Lord, what suckers they were to fall for that.”

I ran across this quote today in Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Sixty Days and Counting”. How true it is again today.

Franklin D. Roosevelt: Acceptance Speech for the Renomination for the Presidency, Philadelphia, Pa. - June 27th, 1936

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over Government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.
…

The savings of the average family, the capital of the small business man, the investments set aside for old age—other people’s money—these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.

Throughout the Nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

An old English judge once said: “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to make a living—a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor—other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government.
…

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business. They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

Robinson’s character, Phil Chase, as president of the United States, then continues:

But then we forgot again. We went back to imagining that things could only be as they were. We lived on in that strange new feudalism, in ways that were unjust and destructive and yet were presented as the only possible reality. We said, “people are like that”, or “human nature will never change” or “we are all guilty of original sin, or “this is democracy, this is the free market, this is reality itself.” And we went along with that analysis, and it became the law of the land. The entire world was legally bound to accept this feudal injustice as law. It was global and so it looked like it was universal. The future itself was bought, in the form of debts, mortgages, contracts — all spelled out by law and enforced by police and armies. Alternatives were unthinkable. Even to say things could be otherwise would get you immediately branded as unrealistic, foolish, naive, insane, utopian.

But that was all delusion. Every few years things change completely, even though we can’t quite remember how it happened or what it means. Change is real and unavoidable. And we can organize our affairs any way we please. There is no physical restraint on us. We are free to act. It is a fearsome thing, this freedom, so much so that people talk about a “flight from freedom” — that we fly into cages and hide, because freedom is so profound it’s kind of an abyss. To actually choose in each moment how to live is too scary to endure.

So we lived like sleepwalkers. But the world is not asleep, and outside our dream, things continued to change. Trying to shape that change is not a bad thing. Some pretend that making a plan is instant communism and the devil’s work, but it isn’t so. We always have a plan. Free market economics is a plan — it plans to give all decisions over to the blind hand of the market. But the blind hand never picks up the check. And you know — it’s blind. To deal with the global environmental crisis we now face without making any more plan than tot rust the market would be like saying, “We have to solve this problem so first let’s put out our eyes.” Why? Why not use our eyes? Why not use our brains?

Because we’re going to have to imagine our way out of this one.

Well, Bernanke, whatcha gonna do now?

Oy.

Stocks Sink; Dow Falls by More Than 300: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped more than 300 points Friday — the anniversary of the Black Monday crash 20 year ago — as investors were frightened by lackluster corporate earnings, credit concerns and rising oil prices.

The market turned sharply lower Friday after Standard & Poor’s again reduced its ratings on residential mortgage-backed securities. The latest reduction, on more than 1,400 types of securities, added to investors unease about credit quality.

In addition, mixed results from Dow components 3M Co., Honeywell Inc., and Caterpillar Inc. gave investors little incentive to take chances on the market. And oil prices added to investors’ list of concerns when they briefly moved above the psychological barrier of $90 per barrel for the first time.

In the final hour of trading, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 315.24, or 2.27 percent, to 13,573.72. The Dow is down for the fifth straight session.

Broader stock indicators also fell. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 33.16, or 2.15 percent, to 1,506.92, and the Nasdaq composite index dropped 62.42, or 2.23 percent, to 2,736.89. The Nasdaq fell below the noteworthy technical level of 2,750, adding to selling pressure.

WakeUpWalMart.com - The Truth About Wal-Mart and Food Safety

Wal-Mart is the #1 importer of Chinese goods. So, after the spree of high-profile recalls and outright bans on dangerous Chinese products, wouldn’t it be logical for Wal-Mart to take the offensive against unsafe imported goods? Shouldn’t Wal-Mart stand up for the safety of American consumers?

Wouldn’t you?

The truth is that Wal-Mart is putting profits over people - again - by blocking laws requiring disclosure of where food comes from. Instead of looking out for consumer safety, Wal-Mart is watching its own bottom line.

Even among nations, Wal-Mart is China’s sixth largest trading partner: it buys more Chinese goods than industrial giants like Germany and Britain. This gives Wal-Mart the power to demand safer products from its Chinese suppliers. Unfortunately, it has demanded nothing more than lower prices, and has tried to cover up the consequences of its race to the bottom.

As consumers, we have the right to know that the products we buy are safe. Don’t let irresponsible corporations like Wal-Mart cut us out of the loop.

Amidst seemingly endless recalls of dangerous products, Wal-Mart has tried to keep American consumers in the dark.

Let’s shine a light.

Actually, I tend to score almost perfectly 50/50 on everything except Introversion, where I’m about 75%….

The REAL Myers-Briggs Personality Types Made Relevant

INTJ: The outside contractor

INTJs are solid, competent personalities who may seem aloof and even arrogant, but who are typically highly skilled in any field which interests them. INTJs are confident in their skills and knowledge, self-assured, and imaginitive; their exceptional problem-solving skills make them ideal architects, auto mechanics, and tools of the evil empire. While it requires the driving will to conquer of an ENTJ to imagine the Death Star and the evil genius of an ENTP to invent its devastating weapons systems, the skill and technical prowess of the INTJ is what makes the whole thing work.

The INTJ sees life as a problem to be solved. For that reason, the INTJ is the person a company brings in from the outside to streamline production processes and identify redundant assets for termination. The INTJ’s combination of analyticial problem-solving skills and complete and utter disregard for the morality or consequences of his actions also make him ideal for the job of hatchet man, CIA operative, and helpdesk operator.

RECREATION: INTJs are often baffled by the strange and incomprehensible recreational rituals of other people, such as going to parties, watching television, and having sex. Instead, they prefer to spend their leisure time installing twin missile launchers in their cars to deter tailgaters and playing chess with megalomaniac CEOs of the Tyrell corporation.

COMPATIBILITY: Silly person, INTJs don’t have relationships! They may, however build their own friends.

Famous INTJs include J. F. Sebastian and Sgt. Apone.

etc, etc….

Oh, and if you know of a copy editor or graphic artist job in L.A., John is available. Thanks to Greenspan and Bernanke and their wonderful care of the economy…..

Heh. When he’s on, he’s on. ;^)

The whole article is well worth a read.

Hi. Can We Talk Greenspanism? | The Agonist

It was Greenspan who advised taking Social Security off of its then break even system, and start accumulating a “trust fund.” This was really a trojan horse for a regressive tax. Cut taxes on upper income, raise taxes on lower income. The trust fund was then spent like all the other money in the treasury. This is a lesson I am going to return to with Uncle Alan: the last 30 years has been the story of Reactionary Zealot Assholes fucking up liberal institutions as Greedy GI and Boomer Consumers stood on and watched, and then blamed Liberals for Not Stopping Them.

This broke the link between capital expenditure and liabilities. The implicit cash basis accounting, which had sort of worked despite the defect, suddenly stopped working. Instead of spending money on real infrastructure, real education, real technology, we started spending on billionaires and the pork barrel projects that keep corrupt cronies happy. There had always been some of that, but now, with the foxes guarding the hen house, it was all waste, all the time.

You know the money to convert American to a non-Carbon economy? You gave it to Bill Gates and Steve Chase and a bunch of Saudi Princes. They are very appreciative. Thank you.

Over in the corner of this page there is an ad for “The Big Con” by Jonathan Chait. It is a pretty good book. It’s also not exactly correct. Sure, the crackpots were allowed into the room for the part of the meeting with sandwiches. But the real damage was done by people who were nominally sane, like Greenspan, but who breathed the air of crackpottery and thought they really could overthrow the evil Lincoln-Wilson-FDR empire by, well, subverting it. On the other side, they are shocked that it didn’t work out that way. Memo to Randroids, Ayn Rand said that everything would be fine if the assholes ran the world. The gag is, they already do. And always have. And always will.

Bush Confident of Market Recovery: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

President Bush struck a reassuring tone Wednesday about recent turbulence on Wall Street, saying he believes the markets will work their way through the turmoil safely and achieve a “soft landing.”

Bush, in his most extensive remarks on a gyrating stock market that has sent investors on a rollercoaster ride, expressed confidence that investors would eventually calm down. The president said he expects investors to reassess their risk and begin to focus more on the economy’s fundamentals, which he said are solid and sound.

“I’m not an economist, but my hope is that the market, if it functions normally, will be able to yield a soft landing,” Bush said. “That’s kind of what it looks like so far.”

What is WRONG with this country that a man who almost cratered one company gets to run another one into the ground? Like Chrysler didn’t have enough problems, they pick THIS asshat to run it?

Geez, I don’t even need my MBA to know this will be another disaster. The man nearly destroyed Home Depot. It’s only now recovering at all. We literally stopped shopping there, it was so bad.

Well, I know I’ll never buy another U.S. made car again anyway. Geez, didn’t we rule this industry once? Too bad the Harvard MBAs can’t figure out that people actually want decently made cars with great fuel efficiency, isn’t it?

Cerberus Capital Management, indeed. A three headed monster for sure….

Ex-Home Depot Chief Taking Reins at Chrysler - New York Times

Robert L. Nardelli, who was ousted as chief executive of Home Depot amid shareholder discontent this year over his enormous pay package, is taking on one of the most prominent jobs in corporate America: revitalizing the troubled automaker Chrysler.

Chrysler’s new owner, the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, chose Mr. Nardelli because of his turnaround expertise, people with direct knowledge of the Cerberus plans said.

How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart - New York Times

Costco’s average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam’s Club. And Costco’s health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco “it’s better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.”

Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street’s assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street’s profit demands.

Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco’s customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers’ expense. “This is not altruistic,” he said. “This is good business.”

Damn skippy! I certainly wish more companies would realize this - take care of your employees, and they’ll take care of your business!

I also like that Costco is “blue”, and donates to Democratic candidates, but really, I shop there because they take care of their employees. I don’t shop where employees are unhappy (listening yet, Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons?) When I got my MBA, it was pretty much drilled into me that you take care of your employees, since they are really all that makes the difference in your business. WalMart had a huge advantage in size, but they have proceeded to destroy their business by not caring for their employees. I won’t even step foot into one any more.

All of us have to start caring about where we shop, and how people are treated as employees. We need to be aware where the goods we buy come from and how they are produced. It isn’t just about price. And that is the failure of our economic system right now. Price doesn’t contain all the information we need to make a responsible purchase. Real prices include the social costs as well. If Walmart’s employees have to be subsidized by public programs because they aren’t paid enough, that’s not a good use of my tax dollars. Shopping at Walmart means supporting billionaires getting richer by using our dollars to enrich themselves at their employees and our expense. It may not show on the receipt you pay that day, but it shows in the way our society slips further and further into economic imbalance. I’m going to shop at companies that take care of their workers, not the ones that take advantage of them - and of me.

Thanks for Labor Day, guys! And thanks to all those working so hard today to improve wages for those who work so hard for so little, and who keep working to provide health care for the 40 million uninsured.

As in the 1880s and 90s, we’re at this point of needing to learn once again that everyone matters to our nation and its economy, not just the wealthy. Happy Labor Day.

“In the Beginning . . .”: A Knight’s Sacred Oath

In the beginning, God ordained that man should labor, not as a curse, but as a blessing; not as a punishment, but as means of development, physically, mentally, morally, and has set thereunto his seal of approval in the rich increase and reward. By labor is brought forward the kindly fruits of the earth in rich abundance for our sustenance and comfort; by labor (not exhaustive) is promoted health of the body and strength of mind, labor garners the priceless stores of wisdom and knowledge. It is the “Philosopher’s Stone,” everything it touches turns to wealth. “Labor is noble and holy.” To glorify God in its exercise, to defend it from degradation, to divest it of the evils to body, mind, and estate, which ignorance and greed have imposed; to rescue the toiler from the grasp of the selfish is a work worthy of the noblest and best of our race.

You have been selected from among your associates for that exalted purpose. Are you willing to accept the responsibility, and, trusting in the support of pledged true Knights, labor, with what ability you possess, for the triumph of these principles among men?

Source: Illustrated “Adelphon Kruptos”: The Secret Work of the Knights of Labor as quoted in Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1890 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 135.

David Sirota in SF Gate today:

U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige labeled one “a terrorist organization.” Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, called them “a clear and present danger to the security of the United States.” And U.S. Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., claimed they employ “tyranny that Americans are fighting and dying to defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan” and are thus “enemies of freedom and democracy,” who show “why we still need the Second Amendment” to defend ourselves with firearms.

Who are these supposed threats to America? No, not Osama bin Laden followers, but labor unions made up of millions of workers — janitors, teachers, firefighters, police officers, you name it.

Bashing organized labor is a Republican pathology, to the point where unions are referenced with terms reserved for military targets. In his 1996 article, headlined “GOP Readies for War With Big Labor,” conservative columnist Robert Novak cheered the creation of a “GOP committee task force on the labor movement” that would pursue a “major assault” on unions. As one Republican lawmaker told Novak, GOP leaders champion an “anti-union attitude that appeals to the mentality of hillbillies at revival meetings.”

The hostility, while disgusting, is unsurprising. Unions wield power for workers, meaning they present an obstacle to Republican corporate donors, who want to put profit-making over other societal priorities.

Think the minimum wage just happened? Think employer-paid health care and pensions have been around for as long as they have by some force of magic? Think again — unions used collective bargaining to preserve these benefits. As the saying goes, union members are the folks that brought you the weekend.

If you’re off work today, or any weekend, thank a union worker.

Harold Meyerson, in the Washington Post:

Ours is the age of the Great Upward Redistribution. The median hourly wage for Americans has declined by 2 percent since 2003, though productivity has been rising handsomely. Last year, according to figures released just yesterday by the Census Bureau, wages for men declined by 1.8 percent and for women by 1.3 percent.

As a remarkable story by Steven Greenhouse and David Leonhardt in Monday’s New York Times makes abundantly clear, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of gross domestic product since 1947, when the government began measuring such things. Corporate profits, by contrast, have risen to their highest share of the GDP since the mid-’60s — a gain that has come chiefly at the expense of American workers.

It can’t continue. Just like in the 1890’s, we need our Knights of Labor again. And all of us need to help them. We can’t wait for the profiteers to suddenly become generous, that isn’t going to happen. It comes from all of us refusing to deal witrh companies that exploit their workforce - stop shopping at Walmart, stop frequenting those places where you know they don’t treat the “help” very well. When they begin to feel it in their pocketbooks, we’ll start to see changes made.

My family is fortunate, we’ve done well. But what kind of jobs can our kids get these days? Minimum wage at a fast food restaurant until they finish college? And then what? How will they be treated in the workplace, even if they follow their dreams to be engineers like their parents are or scientists? We can’t afford to send them to Ivy League schools, and they wouldn’t want to go there anyway. We’re the lucky, lucky upper middle class right now. I hope they don’t have to leave this country to find a decent place to work.

Me, I’m planning to head to Vancouver in a few years if America can’t change its attitudes. I’ve had enough of the selfish, heartless rich bastards that run this country and its corporations.