Every Man in This Village IS a Liar

Watch the “Charlie Rose Show” to witness the pretensions in the reporting on the Arab spring. In looking to present a meaning of the system, television journalists too often along the way produce and disseminate culture, reproducing only the values of that culture, instead of being the voice of the Truth for working class people home from work.

There was real irony of people at Duke University, talking about multiculturalism, wrote Camile Paglia. An irony like the strategy the United States has used to advance its anti-democratic policies in Latin America and in the Arab World in the age of television. Look only at the continuation of the School of the Americas under one administration to the next, with the School for the Americas exporting instruction in torture. Not at all unlike American foreign policy in the Middle East.

“Propelled by the beginning of the Cold War and the US strategy to suppress all forms of real and imagined communist-leaning forces around the world, in contrast with its actual anti-democratic policies around the world,” writes Joseph Massad.

When the Cold War ended, the United States has insisted on marketing itself always as a force for global democracy. In line with the public relations campaign. “Between the billions spent on repressing the Arab peoples and the millions spent to explain academically and in the American media the need to repress them, this two-pronged US strategy in the region since World War II has been coming apart at an accelerated rate since January 2011, a development that continues to cause panic in the Obama White House and,” writes Joseph Massad, “manifests in the incessant fumbling of his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who is much despised across the Arab world.”

“Arab culture and Islam are spoken of the way race was once spoken of in India,” writes Nir Tosen. “In order to make the revolutions in Tunisia and especially Egypt seem non-threatening, the nonviolent tactics are emphasized while the many acts of violent resistance to regime oppression are completely ignored.” By the Charlie Roses of television. Telling us all from New York.

Iran continues to feel under siege by the West and Israel, sitting at the epicenter of a geopolitical struggle between two battling regional worldviews, according to Sharmine Narwani, a senior associate at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University – after having endured four rounds of economic sanctions by the UN Security Council. One “bloc” in the geopolitical struggle consists of many of the autocratic male leaders now being swept away in the Arab Spring who were comfortable with the existing US and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East, writes Sharmine Narwani; the second bloc is is the Iran-led “Resistance Bloc” which embraces regional and national self-determination, seeking to end this foreign hegemony. According to Western diplomats and experts, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard dominates foreign policy for the countries of the Middle East and maintains close relationships with the highest levels of Mukhabarat, the Syrian intelligence service, and Syrian security branches. With the emergence of the Arab Spring in Bahrain and Yemen, the wave of reform threatens Saudi Arabia’s dominance – Iran’s biggest regional foe – and fundamentally shifts the regional balance of power toward the the Iran-led “Resistance Bloc”. The anti-Iran bloc extends its aversions to Tehran’s closest allies in Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas – while keeping a tight lid on other regional players such as Iraq, Qatar, Oman, and even Egypt and Lebanon. To justify violent actions against their own populations, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and Yemen have pulled out the “Iran card,” while the Iranian government, with external political pressures mounting – both regionally and internationally, but with no mention of the role of women – does its utmost to promote an image of domestic unity and stability, putting rumors of internal strife to rest. Expect the tensions between the two blocs to result in further crackdowns and political maneuverings.

Television journalists too often also perpetuate the dominant ideology, instead of building a counter narrative with any kind of vision of different perspective. Watch as Charlie Rose and his intellectuals center their perspective on serving the interests of power and gaining proximity to it, aligning their beliefs and priorities with those of the state. Journalists depict the Middle East to their Western audiences with what French scholar Francois Burgat termed as “the facade intellectual”, whose role in society is to confirm already-held Western notions, beliefs, preconceptions, and racism regarding the “other.” See the organic intellectuals of the ruling class represent power as the functional tools for a bourgeois ruling class. As the American public for the most part misses the simmering hatred in the Arab world for Israel, Europe, and the United States. Perhaps about the manner of depiction. Not at all unlike how Duke students went blindly to school around all the surroundings built by slavery.

Those in power know the truth, but they just don’t care. Read Megan Stack’s book, Every Man in This Village IS a Liar. Journalism is about speaking not to those in power, but reporting on the truth. By disseminating illusion, instead of the Truth, a narcissism had become entrenched in the American narrative. When a generation tried to believe in its own culture, like a false art.

So what had happened to meaning? What had happened to institutional meaning? What happens when the medium had lost credibility. In the attempt to reproduce values, with an American narrative, the meaning of its institutions was lost, to the audience. Government, in the age of bailouts, with their own audience. More and more the disbelieving audience, swimming in the culture.

The Art. What happens to self-determinism when there was no “there” there, in the false art of the American narrative on television – in the art of television news from the American Broadcasting Company to Public Broadcasting System, confirming the already-held Western notions, beliefs, and preconceptions?

Journalism. Trying to piece it all together. With words and language to try and get your arms around something. Something invisible that had happened today. Or yesterday. For an audience. The meaning of the art of journalism. For an audience. The culture. The art. With another form of bailout, of Saudi princes and other autocrats. Just as Queen Elizabeth tries this week to amend her life, and that of her ascendants, with the Irish. In her public acts of contrition, as head of the Anglican Church, for the sins of the last two hundred years. About what happens to the power of government, over issues of self-determinism, when government spent so much time on issues of security and defense.

The meaning of incredulous art. In producing art, in trying to reproduce values, and failing, comes loss of meaning and a loss of trust. As television journalism tries to disseminate “culture” and meaning of the system, to the system. For an audience. In the American narrative. Perpetuating for an audience the once dominant ideology. For the “Too Big To Fail” generation which now tries to believe in its own culture, like a false art. What happens to meaning from the bubbles of falsehood, when the medium had lost credibility. What happens to currency of working class people. When money too often reproduce the values of a people.

Trying to piece it all together. The meaning of art, and the art of government. What happens to government and systems of governments which spent so much time disseminating illusion? What happens to governments which spent so much on security and defense? What happens to journalists speaking not to those in power but reporting on the truth?

Producing our values, American media always want to fit events in the region, writes Nir Rosen, into an American narrative. Like the recent assassination of Osama bin Laden. And local news was all about a local narrative directed to the national events. And even those Duke University grads swallowed all the pretensions that the audience was fed. Until the few distinct American values were eroded beyond recognition.

When Every Man in This Village IS a Liar , the art of journalism is about speaking not to those in power who know the truth, but reporting truth to the unwashed masses that they might one day pass something on. An audience empowered to move humanity forward. Even the people who never seemed to care.

Night after night, not unlike those Islamc clerics elsewhere, television journalists perpetuate the dominant ideology, of THE American perspective. It had somehow become the mantra of the theology in the Land of the Free. In 2011, Americans were learning again that the rest of the Free World, in its various degrees, did not see and believe in the mantra. In the world of cable television, the rest of the world no longer subscribed to the theology of the networks. On matters of self-determinism.

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The State of the Union: A New Director of Pork

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota health executive Lois Quam will lead the $63 billion Global Health Initiative which President Barack Obama in 2009 committed to the program at the U.S. State Department, over six years, aimed at helping developing nations provide more aid for prenatal and postnatal care, improve nutrition, and fight disease. This appointment reunites Quam who had been in the 1990s a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton on Hilary Clinton’s health care task force. A State Department spokesman confirmed Wednesday that Quam will be executive director of the initiative under Secretary of State Clinton.

Lois Quam,of St. Paul is a former UnitedHealth Group executive who co-founded a health consulting firm last year. She was one of the executives who worked under Dr.Bill McGuire grossly enriched by the backdating of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of stock options at UnitedHealth Group, the private insurance company whose shareholders have been getting rich off the invasion of disease that threatened people’s lives, for which approximately 70 million took out their health insurance. The exit compensation of McGuire was alleged to be around $1.1 billion, when he immediately stepped down as chairman and director of UnitedHealth Group due to his involvement in the employee stock options scandal.

There is something wrong with this picture. As government leaders work to manipulate people, worldwide under the auspices of the United State State Department. No mention is made in the story if the $69 billion is directed at American citizens overseas, and the issues in their lives of prenatal and postnatal care, the nutrition, and disease on foreign soil.

She is married to Matt Entenza, a former state lawmaker who wanted to be governor of Minnesota but unsuccessfully failed in a primary election for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor nomination for governor in 2010. He was not the endorsed candidate of the party. It was alleged that Ms. Quam financed his campaign.

No mention has ever been made about the issue of clawback for the undue profits that came to the team of UnitedHealth management. Clawback is now being used, under a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, against those who unduly profited in their investments with Bernie Maddoff.

Those ‘give ‘em what they want’ Methods

Markets. The restlessness on display of people, in markets. Amidst the moral hazards. With warnings of worldwide “fragility” in financial systems. With worries about the solvency of Greece involving high deficits, fake budget figures, and low growth. And now worries about Hungary. And then maybe Spain?

It should be about more than just warnings concerning the economies of the world. It is more about real people. It was ten years ago, on the eve of the new millennium, in a tradition of the 50th year (the Jubilee Year) — as quoted in Leviticus where those enslaved because of debts are freed, lands lost because of debt are returned, and community torn by inequality is restored — that Pope John Paul, Bono, Bob Geldof, Muhammad Ali, Quincy Jones, and Youssou N’dour called for debt forgiveness for Third World nations.

After five years on the job, at 6 p.m. on Friday the 13th, in September 2008, Timothy Geithner as the president of the New York Federal Reserve summoned the heads of major Wall Street firms to a meeting in Lower Manhattan to review their financial exposures to a collapse of Lehman Brothers, and to work out contingency plans over the possibility that on Monday, September 15th, the government would need to orchestrate an orderly liquidation of Lehman Brothers, and stabilize the financial markets, according to the New York Times. The journalist at the time seemed to have smelled something. The meetings which involving the top executives from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J P Morgan Chase, Citigroup and other financial companies, had continued through that weekend as Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner first proposed that corporations voluntarily step in and rescue Lehman Brothers. It was how capitalism and markets were supposed to work.

Vikas Baijaj of the The New York Times had reported that same weekend American International Group and Merrill Lynch might be in need of billions of dollars in capital to strengthen their businesses, facing a similar crisis. The world now knows of the spreading troubles and growing concern about the collapse of big financial institutions. And the systemic risk.

Too big to fail. Systemic risk when deliberately borrowing more money than someone can afford to repay. The moral hazards of credit derivatives. With warning of the potential for economic meltdown. In the late 1990s, Brooksley Born, as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tried to convince the country’s key economic power-brokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. “We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” said Ms. Born.

Counting the cost. Of systemic risk. The missing transparency. What is the extent of our power to regulate, in an era of aggressive expansion? After living the good life? Before the good life crashed, who was going to complain about the missing regulation? After a $38 million investigation, Judge James Perk unsealed a 2200 page report about balance sheet manipulations at Lehman Brothers which discussed the failure of Ernst & Young to abide by the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Ernst & Young seemed to have abided by the “give ‘em what they want’ method of accounting. After all, Lehman Brothers had been paying for the report.

On those moral hazards. In public service and to public policy concerns over moral hazards in private business. In big government, in bed with its sponsors. Some economists argue against debt forgiveness on the basis that debt forgiveness would motivate countries to default on debt obligations. Debt forgiveness for pretend banks instead of Third World nations — who would have ever thought. Printing up new currency and demanding reserves be held in what had become pretend banks.

As for public policy concerning the ongoing pay of chief executive officers, government has not stopped the derivatives? What had happened to the world of credit derivatives? It still was here, without reserves backing the financial vehicles? What had happened to the systemic risk? This week in testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Warren Bufffet was asked by a panel member, Brooksley Born, the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, if the derivative market was “still a time bomb ticking away.”

“I would say so,” he said.

After all of the working groups and government-sponsored investment efforts. Of the total $30 trillion funded world-wide bailouts and stimulants, American sources had funded up to $20 trillion dollars, through markets from “direct lending and indirect backstops” with the litany of bailouts, stimulus, conduits, mortgage freezes, and foreclosure programs. According to the New1 York Times, the derivatives market in 2007 was $531 trillion, up from $106 trillion in 2002. And the same people were in charge? While global central banks and government agencies continued policy of creating credit. Cheap money. Where were interest rates set — the Federal Reserve Bank policy that was responsible for this mess? And it has been 5 months since the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission got underway. Where was our own spotlight being shed by the commission on lustration of capitalism?

Following the collapse of communism, the word was “lustrace.” Considering sanctions or penalties designed to purge former party members, or really evil informants, or all the collaborators. Those in various degree of secret service to the system. Instead of letting power stay with the same suspects. The word was LUSTRACE— following the collapse of communism, in the post Berlin Wall days of Czechoslovakia or East Germany. In nations which never had reconciled what had happened since Hitler had come to power. In the days after the Berlin Wall fell, when those in power during Soviet Administrations stayed in power. As the invisible ink became visible, buying up properties. The proponents of the laws of lustrace said that it existed to prevent members of the old regime from exploiting their old advantage in the system and regaining influence. It was an attempt at reducing systemic risk in public service.

Systemic risk with public monies. Systemic risk in public service and to public policy concerns over moral hazards. This was a larger story than the destruction done in one day on September 11, 2001.

Some economists argue against debt forgiveness on the basis that debt forgiveness would motivate countries to deliberately borrow more than they can afford, with recurrence of a default on their debts. Moral hazards and public policy concerns over ongoing pay of chief executive officers — and to their cronies, like Timothy Geithner.

In the 1990s, the key economic power-brokers of the United States “were totally opposed to it (regulation),” Brooksley Born said. “That puzzled me—what was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

As Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001), Timothy Geithner had worked for Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Where reportedly, Summers was his mentor, other sources called him a Rubin protégé — the key economic power-brokers of the 1990s. There was no lustrace, on Wall Street or Washington following the total collapse of the investment banking world.

Of all the bad mores. Of the financial rescue of banks. Of institutions, and not people. With little more than
just debt forgiveness for those five investment banks, but all the other financial institutions in the United States. And derivatives still are a perfect way of getting rich, while avoiding taxes and government regulations, in a volatile global market. Derivatives still remain a lucrative business, with all of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. At Ernst and Young. Those terrorists operating within the system who affect my safety inside my own home.

After wide and “robust discussions,” G20 ministers heard this weekend French delegates strongly defending the credibility of the Euro after its recent plunge to a four-year low. In a change of tone from the document produced by G20 finance ministers six weeks ago — the concluding communiqué introduced a call on world governments to put their fiscal houses in order. With differences over how quickly to rein in public spending, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned at the G20 meeting that fiscal tightening won’t “succeed unless we are able to strengthen confidence in the global recovery.”

I wonder from what Geithner these days has begun “to insulate himself? With the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission underway, according to a January 2010 Bloomberg piece by Hugh Son, the Federal Reserve of New York, under the leadership of Timothy Geithner, told AIG to withhold documents and delay disclosures of details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails over a five month span starting in November 2008 between the company and its regulator show.

In November 2008, the New York Fed had taken over negotiations between AIG and the banks as losses on contracts tied to subprime home loans threatened to swamp AIG, weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The New York Fed ordered the crippled AIG not to negotiate for discounts in settling the credit derivative swaps, crossing out the reference to discussion of a discount of up to $13 billion that tax payers funded, according to the e-mails. AIG excluded the language when an SEC filing was made public on December 24, 2008. This was the backdoor bailout of Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks which were owed $62.1 billion of the credit derivatives. A news account reported that a REGULATOR decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid; was this actually a New York Fed official — the New York Fed — deciding that AIG could not discount anything, all to the benefit of Goldman Sachs?

At the time, Geithner “was recused from working on issues involving specific companies, including AIG.” In a separate statement, a spin doctor said that Geithner, after his nomination for Treasury secretary on Nov. 24, 2008, “began to insulate himself weeks earlier in anticipation of his nomination.” Let me see……Former New York Federal Reserve Board member Timothy Geithner who worked at the New York Federal reserve through the Bush years. In a January 2010 statement, a spokesperson said that Geithner, after his nomination for Treasury secretary on Nov. 24, 2008,“began to insulate himself weeks earlier in anticipation of his nomination.” From the New York Federal Reserve Board.

In a world where governments levy taxes not to finance its operations, but to give value to its fiat money as sovereign credit instruments, Timothy Geithner expressed at the conclusion of this week’s G20 meeting concern over the confidence in the system. Whereas French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said yesterday that budget consolidation is “priority No. 1” for most G-20 members. He has seen what had happened in 5 months to the currency. His own currency.

In the United Kingdom, government was actually discussing increasing taxes and cutting spending. Canada this week ACTUALLY raised interest rates. Senior Hungarian government official Peter Szijjarto said Friday the previous government had manipulated budget figures and lied about the state of the economy, leading to a new question if Hungary was June’s candidate to replace Greece in the fiscal peril of 2010.

There would be a massacre in bond markets when interest rates rise, and where there will be no safety in stocks. After all the money which has poured into the perceived safety of bonds.

The rules all changed in September 2008, with government intervention into private enterprise, which was not enough to halt the unraveling of the financial system, not back up by reserves. For the day the losses would come. The clear and present danger, when markets were no longer free. Because political leaders just quit doing what they had always done. Regulating. Detached leaders trying to get re-elected, unable to get a handle on the grieving process of loss. Unable to regulate. In denial over the global economic imbalances.

In a world still trying to deal with loss, the G20 met with noble intentions to grapple with the harsh reality of the depth of the public debt morass, with all of the communal consequences, including risk of global instability.

In once free markets, which were allowed to pursue truth in valuations, what would happen to currency? In the New World Order? To freedom? To all freedom? After the Ponzi schemes called derivatives still were supported by governments. As economies stressed, and became the cause of new wars. When the “law of force” meets the “force of law.”

Director of currency research at GFT Forex in New York, Kathy Lien, said: “You won’t see major players be blatant about increasing their gold exposure and reducing their euro exposure. But it is a trend we’ve been witnessing in the past few months.” In Russia. in Iran. And with those Euro holding in China under review.
According to data on the Russian central bank website, the central bank of Russia trimmed its currency reserves by $6.6 billion in May, increasing its gold reserves by $1.8 billion. With more signs of shifting movement lately of euros and into gold –In an unconfirmed report — an Iranian news agency reported last week that Iran had begun switching €45 billion of its foreign-currency reserves into gold and dollars.

It is all about currency. And bonds. When there was no place to hide. What makes the Dow 10,000 this month look better than the Dow in February 1996 when it was at 6500? When there was a lot less stress in the world over currencies.

It was the currency, stupid. Campaign 2012 was going to be about the currency. Anger was one response. Or actual moves made to protect a currency. Because of the injustice of the bailout. And falling currency values throughout the world. When people no longer trusted government. When confidence was lost in people who messed with the system. Because of greed and power. The greed that financed political campaigns. Of Democrats and Republicans. As most of us looked on helplessly, at the elected transparent Democrats and Republicans. Or with either contempt or disgust. With a brewing restlessness on display over the greed, and the “give ‘em what they want’ method of accounting. Whereas few of those enslaved because of debts were ever freed. And more and more became Third World Nations.

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Where Are You When We Need You, Paul Revere?

Did you notice that Zygi Wilf was, after his purchase of the Minnesota Vikings, as lucky now as Prince Charles? Except for the issue of waiting, with so little hostility directed at the overall process of royalty. “If you got a bill in the mail every year for seven bucks — that’s the cost of a beer at new Target Field — would you consider that a worthwhile contribution for keeping your pro football team?” writes David DeLand in the St. Cloud Times.

Would they ever put the question to the voters in England. About the cost of Buckingham Palace? Or a new house every thirty years? Or about just continued public subsidies to The Royals? In a nation that never believed in royalty, would they ever put the question to Minnesotans?

Where, by the way, had the Kansas City Royals come up with the money to refurbish their stadium, Mr. DeLand of the sports department?

Did you have to be in the souvenir business to notice that licensing fees in the NFL went to the NFL. The NFL that never paid for new stadiums, like was required in Europe. MLB was late to the game over this concept of licensing fees, by about five or ten years. When, beginning in the 1970s and ever since, it was all about the cost of the official logos on your purchases.

Licenses and licensing fees. Driver’s licenses. Fishing licenses. The revenue always went to a government body. Except when it came to sports authorities. In these parts, the local NFL franchises never paid for new stadiums. The one that was demanded in the late 1970s, with a dome. The father of the mayor of Saint Paul spent a lot of time seeing that the bill was passed. Yeah, in a day before there seemed to be franchise rights sold for elected office, which too many politicians somehow had passed along. Since the days of the Kennedys. The Cuomos. The Bayhs in Indiana. All those bleeding hearts. And the Bushes. And the Clintons. Now with their organized ways to show up at every car crash. Or hurricane. Like they cared.

When public service was now something else. About only power. Too many thoughtless if not clueless sons and daughters of politicians. Jock sniffing for votes. Trying to run a show that a Prince Charles could only envy. With real power.

The NFL that never paid for new stadiums, like was required in Europe. Or out east. With too many politicians seeking autographs instead of tax revenue from these athletes. There should be a national tax on MLB and the NFL, for revenues raised to pay for the next sports stadium they felt they needed. And yes on the Player’s Association and the NFL Players’ Union, who got something like 55% or more of the revenue.

Prince Charles could envision himself in the picture, as the role model for local baseball people as they made trips to other fiefdoms in the kingdom of MLB, to view their new palaces. Though Prince Charles had been able once to send his wife, when he was married to a blonde, when he tired of it all.

There was a day when kings and queens gave everything away for free. For loyalty. Before the politicians and manufacture’s reps entered the picture, with blackout rights. Did you notice all the hostility directed at the Goldman Sachs who, like all the reptile oil salesmen at the reptile oil emporium, were making so much? And the ensuing jealousies there. Over money and good looking blondes.

Note all the ambivalence of the audience, the ones watching for free, about these thugs who had no investment in the game. Or the carpetbaggers, with only manufacture’s reps working for them as reptile oil salesmen at the reptile oil emporium, until they acquired the local NFL franchise, and entered the picture.

”There’s a critical mass of legislators, fans and business leaders,” said Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ Vice President of Public Affairs and Stadium Development. “Who believe this is the year.” Were they the ones on the bicycles at rush hour, tying up traffic? Mostly on Fridays?

“We know that this is a tough discussion, and the economy is tough,” Bagley said. “But we think we have a good story to tell: What we bring to the community.”

His current neighbor across the street is Hennepin County Medical Center, a hospital in the community that was really bleeding, where they seemed to think 2010 was the year for them. Or hope. Like a lot of Viking fans. With bleeding hearts, over politics and sport. This was finally the year? But at HCMC, those fans would die, actually die, unless something was done about the budget issues. This year.

Just as the Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health, yeah under Prince Charles, was being shut down for fraud, the Redcoats were coming. One if by land. Two if by sea. Or maybe by bike. Or ambulance. Camouflaged in purple.

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The Cultural Revolution

Cultural revolutions. In these secular times.

Life in these United States. In these secular times. In stories around the world about sex abuse cases, in the newspaper. About a certain ambivalence to police investigations of sex abuse, where bishops are required by civil law to comply to report abuse themselves. Turning in a priest by an employer, as it were. Because of allegations of sexual abuse. This was the office manager informing on an employee. Bishops from Latin America consider it a sort of Anglo-Saxon delusion, they say, to believe one can always trust the police and the courts. Like in Chile. Or under any military juntas. Or in the former Soviet Bloc. Or in what was called Red China. During the days of “cultural revolution.” Christians in those parts of the world have through experience seen what happens with an uncritical embrace of “mandatory reporter” requirements.

Cultural revolutions. In these secular times. What Europeans call requirements to “denounce.” Like in requirements to have your child vaccinated. Against any virus. But mostly against the human papilloma virus (HPV). The state deciding what was appropriate child care. As if the state was raising the child. That state who would soon be making decisions about what health measures would or would not be paid for–and how much it should cost.

Were these just a sort of Anglo-Saxon delusion to believe one can always trust the police and the courts, or a national health insurance program to replace the one in existence? We can trust everything in a constitutional government? During the days of “cultural revolution.” Like what happened on Wall Street, reaching the crescendo in September 2008? Or like what happen under a military junta. Or in the coming days when China’s financial might affects public policy everywhere.

Some bishops consider it a sort of Anglo-Saxon delusion, they say, to believe one can always trust the police and the courts. Or even an archbishop, who is conducting the investigation. The ones who wanted to get ahead in the church. Were these just a sort of Anglo-Saxon delusion to believe one can always trust the police and the courts, and a pope like John Paul II. Or even a “hope and change” president who had now increased troops in Afghanistan.

Pentagon officials are now projecting some 20,000 active-duty U.S. troops to be stationed in the United States by 2011. There was a change in the law in the United States during the Clinton Administration in 1994, with a U.S. Defense Department Directive (DODD 3025) which allows military commanders to take emergency actions in domestic situations to save lives, prevent suffering or mitigate great property damage. The Clinton administration set up the Joint Task Force-Civil Support in October 1999 as a “homeland defense command.” In 2002 the Pentagon established the U.S. Northern Command, charged with carrying out military operations within the United States. Prior to this, under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the U.S. armed forces had been barred from domestic operations, except in specific, limited circumstances.

In a recent opinion piece, “What We Learned in Oklahoma City,” in the New York Times , Bill Clinton discussed the increasingly vocal Americans who, in the months and years preceding the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building, advocated smaller government and a belief that “the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them.” Clinton wrote, “The bright line [between civic virtue and violence] protects our freedom. It has held for a long time, since President George Washington called out 13,000 troops in response to the Whiskey Rebellion.”

U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Calif., both said that in September 2008 Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, as he pushed for the Wall Street bailout, brought up a worst-case scenario which might even require a declaration of martial law. In a December 2008 report to the U S Army War College, Nathan Freier, a professor at the college, talked about the possibility with economic collapse and loss of legal order, of using Pentagon resources and troops in Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development,” should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.

Slumdog Millionaire, Part III

Alex Rodriguez violated the unwritten code of conduct in baseball last night in Oakland when after Robinson Cano’s foul ball down the left field line, following his own one out single, he cut across the pitching mound and touched the pitching rubber on his return to first base, infuriating the pitcher Dallas Braden.

Braden yelled at Rodriguez, telling him to get off the mound. Rodriguez characterized the confrontation as “pretty funny, honestly.” According to the New York Times, he did not remember where he was running or whether he did, in fact, step on the rubber as he returned to first. ‘It’s not really a big deal,’ he said.”

According to the New York Times, Braden said of the New York Yankees. “It’s kind of disheartening to see that not show through, or be reflected by somebody of his status. They are an extremely classy organization with guys who always tend to do the right thing every time.”

To Braden, it was big deal. After the game, Braden said: “I don’t go over there and run laps at third base. I don’t spit over there. I stay away. You guys ever see anybody run across the mound like that? He ran across the pitcher’s mound. Foot on my rubber.”

This was the A-Rod who in Toronto in 2007 as a base runner called for a pop fly, violating the unwritten code of conduct. Whether written or unwritten, this A-Rod ignores all codes of conduct. Like with steroids. It was in October 2007 when Selena Roberts wrote: “Do you like the new A-Rod who doesn’t care if he is liked?”

Nothing had really changed.

Those Tea Parties

In his book, “The Three Trillion War,” Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes state that the total economic impact of the Iraq War may be $4 trillion or more. And that was before the United States escalated things in Afghanistan.

Former White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired as economic adviser to President Bush partly because of his estimate of the dollar cost of the Iraq war. In an excerpt of his own book in Fortune magazine five years after, Lindsey wrote his projections were partly right. “My hypothetical estimate got the annual cost about right. But I misjudged an important factor: how long we would be involved.” Mr. Lindsey also stated his belief that one reasons the administration’s efforts were so unpopular was the choice not to engage in an open public discussion of the consequences of war, including its economic cost.”

Congressional Democrats had predicted the Iraq war would cost about $93 billion, not including reconstruction. Peter R. Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said, “It’s clear that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone on longer and have been more expensive than the projections initially suggested,”

So far this has been a tax-free Iraq War, and not included in the Congressional Budget, as I recall a piece that was written in 2002. According to an item that ran on the MSN news page, the cost was carried over. I see little media coverage since that time indicting where the war shows up in the president’s budget.

William Nordhaus from Yale University wrote in the New York Review of Books in December 2002 in an article entitled “The Economic Consequences of War,” about the the long-term management of the economy, with the management of planning cycles. “The fabulous Nineties—with soaring stock market, falling unemployment, declining defense spending, budget surpluses, and bubbly optimism—were followed by the Bush administration which made no serious public estimate of the costs of the coming war. The public and the Congress are unable to make informed judgments about the realistic costs and benefits of the upcoming conflict when none are given. Particularly worrisome is the promise of postwar occupation, reconstruction, and nation-building in Iraq. If American taxpayers decline to pay the bills, this would leave a mountain of rubble and mobs of angry people in Iraq and the region. Closely related is a second syndrome, frequently found in past conflicts, of entering war prepared militarily but not economically. The finances of the nation have deteriorated sharply since George W. Bush took office. The annual federal budget has deteriorated by $360 billion from the spring of 2001 to the fall of 2002, and, even with a short war, budget deficits are likely to mount in coming years. The Bush administration has not prepared the public for the cost or the financing of what could prove to be an expensive venture.”

Nor has the Obama Administration. Market participants, wrote William Nordhaus in “The Story of the Bubble,” at this point do “remember how they lost $6 trillion on absurd and wildly overvalued speculations. A similar exuberance is unlikely to recur in the near future. More likely is an economy in which large federal budget deficits lead to cuts in existing civilian programs and doom critical priorities such as comprehensive health care.”

That tax-free Iraq War, as conceived by the Bush White House, was one ongoing economic consequences of war. There was now the subsequent tax-free Afghan War. These wars would soon change American history. Would you like to come over for tea?

Blog Networking in Real-time

Declarations of Bankruptcy

With the Wednesday anniversary of the $787-billion package of tax cuts and spending in the Recovery Act, in defense of the stimulus, President Obama said, “One year later, it is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second Depression is no longer a possibility.” Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington marked America’s legalized corruption by sniping at each other. Bankrupt after 8 years of the leadership of George Bush, Republican lawmakers stepped up their attacks on what was the Paulson-Bush stimulus plan, calling it wasteful and ineffective.

From an article by Simon Johnson in the Atlantic, America’s Legalized Corruption

“The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.”

From the transcript of Frontline on February 16, 2010:

“We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” says Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — an obscure federal regulatory agency — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.

“They were totally opposed to it,” Born says. “That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

They being the same people advising the current president. Then Assistant Treasury Secetary Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, as well as Alan Greespan heading up the Federal Reserve. And who did Timothy Geithner worked for through this all? As Henry Paulson got his start working in the Nixon White House; was it for Erhlichman or Haldeman? He learned under the best of hatchet men.

It had taken 40 years of the media making us all world experts, and this expertise along with the lobbyists had bankrupted American government. It was why I felt uncomfortable having my retirement accounts with Fidelity, with Merrill Lynch, with Morgan Stanley. They all had hijacked the government of the United States, through the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

One year later, President Obama was sounding a lot like George Bush, announcing victory in Iraq. Or Henry Paulson and Ben Ben Bernanke, with their similar pronouncements all along, when the Bush Administration on July 13, 2008 rescued Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Bear Stearns. When that second Depression “was no longer a possibility.”

The Congressional Oversight Panel, chaired by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, warned on the same anniversary date that it remains “deeply concerned” that commercial loan losses could jeopardize the stability of many banks, particularly the nation’s mid-size and smaller banks. Highlighting yet one more hurdle for this country’s fragile economy, a wave of commercial real estate loan failures could threaten over the next few years America’s already-weakened financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel was formed as part of oversight for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Blog Networking in Real-time

C-span

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is underway.

According to a Bloomberg piece by Hugh Son, the Federal Reserve of New York, under the leadership of Timothy Geithner, told AIG to withhold documents and delay disclosures of details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails over a five month span starting in November 2008 between the company and its regulator show. The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on contracts tied to subprime home loans threatened to swamp AIGr weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The New York Fed ordered the crippled AIG not to negotiate for discounts in settling the credit derivative swaps, crossing out the reference to discussion of a discount of up to $13 billion that tax payers funded, according to the e-mails. AIG excluded the language when an SEC filing was made public on December 24, 2008. This was a backdoor bailout of Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks which were owed $62.1 billion of the credit derivatives. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid. At the time, Geithner “was recused from working on issues involving specific companies, including AIG.” In a separate statement, a spokesperson said that Geithner, after his nomination for Treasury secretary on Nov. 24, 2008, “began to insulate himself weeks earlier in anticipation of his nomination.”

It is hoped that Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is as affective as congressional oversight after the Mitchell Report was released for Major League Baseball. This bipartisan commission has been given a critical non-partisan mission. In the cultural atmosphere of Washington, with its campus as a political utopia. With a week or two of producing in video and interactive content creation for C-Span, the media division for both Democrats and Republicans, funded by your cable television payments.

Because what is said to the new media does have a huge impact on reputations and on careers. Or to Congress. In the new cultural atmosphere where everyone has an agent. Even Bob Costas is represented by IMG, when television journalist used the same system as your professional athlete. IMG also represents Tiger Woods through Mark Steinberg, Senior Vice President and Global Managing Director of Golf. IMG which owns half of Ari Fleischer’s company. Fleischer, the former White House press secretary who operates Ari Fleischer Sports Communications.

In the cultural atmosphere, IMG is the global leader in event management and talent representation. “Our media division is one of the world’s top independent producers of sports and entertainment television across multiple genres and is an emerging leader in video and interactive content creation for broadband and mobile platforms.”

In the cultural span of c-span, of sports, of television, of entertainment. With all of its sponsors.

Burning Bright

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Twas the night of Thanksgiving and all through his house

Tiger came flying, chased by his spouse.

She wielded a nine iron and wasn’t real merry,

After a bimbo’s cell number was found on a Blackberry.

With a harem, he had cheated on Swede wife Elin,

As each day passed by, another floozie came squealing.

On Holly, on Jaimee, on Rachel, on Cori,

On Joselyn, and Kalika, TMZ had the story.

From the top of the world to above the fold,

Tiger Woood’s sorted tale was told.

With waitresses, VIP Services, there was lots of sex,

And when he wasn’t hosing them, he sent them hot texts.

He crashed his Caddy, but didn’t call OnStar,

Yet he played “spank me daddy” with a skanky old porn star.

He’s been so naughty that with Santa he hadn’t a chance,

Except the big lump of coal that matches the lump in his pants.

But despite all his crying and begging and pleading,

Elin went out and bought a new home in Sweden.

As I heard she’s not pouting, in fact she’s of good cheer,

Because the pre-nup made Christmas come early this year. – STOLEN, AUTHOR UNKNOWN

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake