What Corporate America Values Most

I watch movies at home on DVDs from time to time as do many others. Each time I start a disk, there's always a big ugly FBI notice that cannot be skipped or fast-forwarded past, a notice of penalties for copyright infringement. I've read the text many times but until lately they were just words, words I'd merely blip through and not notice their underlying message. Then I read them one more time -

"FBI WARNING - Federal Law provides severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized reproduction, distribution or exhibition of copyrighted motion pictures, videotapes, DVDs or video discs. Criminal copyright infringement is investigated by the FBI and may constitute a felony with a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine."

Yeah, that's right, making a copy of my $10 copy of Garfield the Movie could subject me to a maximum penalty of up to five years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine. And I am certainly aware of what the RIAA has been doing to people it claims have been illegally sharing music, suing people for 10s of 1000s of dollars simply because the people may have links to certain filenames on their computers or networks.

Compare & contrast the protection given by the Government of the United States to Garfield the Movie versus the protection given to domestic IT & engineering jobs. Send my job to India by in effect making a copy of that job and outsourcing it, what does the FBI do? Prison? Fines?? -heh- Odds are the corporates end up with a tax cut or similar subsidy.

Kinda makes their priorities clear, eh?

President Barack Hussein Obama...

Wow, I like the sound of that title. And once again, am thrilled to have been wrong in my pessimism and that Barack Obama is now actually & officially President of the United States. No, I am not certain he & his administration can restore this country to where it was on January 19, 2001, but on that I am not certain anyone can. Best of luck, Mr. President, your country needs you.

I Was Wrong...

... & am very glad to have been. Back in post #3, 24 October 2007, I predicted a Cheney-ordered attack on Iran by this time. Instead, I woke up this morning to find Barack Obama to have become the winner of this ugly presidential election. Now it remains to be seen if he will be allowed to take office let alone the sheer magnitude of problems he will find once he takes power and what range of solutions he will find available, that is still in the future. But as of today I am quite relieved to find there is no attacks on Iran at present and that this endless election is finally over.

Not sure where I'm going with this weblog. Originally it was an experiment to see if I had the discipline to maintain a weblog and a year later I see that I do. The problem now is that I do not feel compelled to coment on most items I first see elsewhere, most of the time those that see them first have better or at least more insightful comments than mine and I feel no urge to "join the crowd" as it were. Furthermore I find that I'm either burnt out on or just do not care about all that many political items these days. Yes, Obama won and for that I am grateful, of the two presidential candidates we ended up with he was by far the better person and a leader I could be inspired by. But what am I to make of (AK) Senator Ted Stevens winning re-election despite his recent 7 felony convictions for corruption? As cynical as I am these days, I simply cannot muster enough cynicism to explain that little item, let alone comment on it or on the multitudes of other head-slappers in the results many as 'WTF-worthy'.

Ah well, time will tell...

20 January 2009 - corrected some stupid spelling errors...

How the Chicago Boys Wrecked the Economy

Found an absolutely brilliant interview over at Jesse's Café Américain under the same title (which I 'borrowed') which you may find here. I've been following http://www.naomiklein.org/main after reading most of her shock doctrine book in which she goes on to explain much of the last 40 years' economics nastiness caused by Milton Friedman and his 'Chicago School' of economists. When I say nastiness I'm referring to situations like Chile under Pinochet, Russia when it 'privatized', New Orleans after Katrina - massive deregulation, crony capitalism, public assets pretty much given away to the connected and the general public stuck with the bill after the dust settled.

Jesse quotes an article by Mike Whitney over at counterpunch in which Mike interviews Michael Hudson, a respected & highly accomplished former Wall Street economist, a distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and an author of many books on economics. I will not quote the entire article but here's what for me are the money graphs:

MW: The housing market is freefalling, setting new records every day for foreclosures, inventory, and declining prices. The banking system is in even worse shape; undercapitalized and buried under a mountain of downgraded assets. There seems to be growing consensus that these problems are not just part of a normal economic downturn, but the direct result of the Fed's monetary policies. Are we seeing the collapse of the Central banking model as a way of regulating the markets? Do you think the present crisis will strengthen the existing system or make it easier for the American people to assert greater control over monetary policy?

Michael Hudson: What do you mean “failure”? Your perspective is from the bottom looking up. But the financial model has been a great success from the vantage point of the top of the economic pyramid looking down? The economy has polarized to the point where the wealthiest 10% now own 85% of the nation’s wealth. Never before have the bottom 90% been so highly indebted, so dependent on the wealthy. From their point of view, their power has exceeded that of any time in which economic statistics have been kept.

You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards; it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite.

If this catches your interest I highly recommend you read the whole thing!

I Am A Statistic

I may be intelligent but sometimes I'm quite slow. Case in point, although I was fired/'laid off' back at the end of April, I did not until a couple of days ago realize that there are people right now being paid to do the exact same job I used to do on the exact same equipment for the exact same employer. Problem is, those people are in Bangalore, India. I have been outsourced. The tax dollars I pay each & every year were used in part to subsidize the very same people who stole my livelihood. Anger doesn't come close to describing what I am feeling.

(No, I'm not interested in the upcoming election. I'm sick of the horserace and the bullshit that passes for 'issues' these days. Worse I'm pretty certain that regardless who wins, nothing much will change and that no matter who wins, Bushco will walk free w/all their ill-gotten gains intact. Justice? Rule of law? Hardeharharhar.)

Why The Silence?

Frankly, all I post here are stories & commentary about things that interest me and these days that isn't much. I am disgusted at the rush to remake this country into a fascist dictatorship and see no signs this will stop nor will the situation improve in my lifetime. The best thing I can say is I'm glad I do not have children.

Someone I've read for years, Skimble, recently shutdown his blog leaving us with these words:

Outrage fatigue. I have ceased to care about McStupid's Britney video and Obama's acting presidency. Or the New Yorker cover. Or Cindy McCain's 20 painkillers a day. Or the endless hand-wringing about the fucking narrative.

The 24/7 minutiae of yet another artificial campaign horserace cannot captivate me. The big story is this: The Democrats have failed to hold the existing administration accountable for its flagrant and abundant crimes against Americans and Iraqis and Afghanis and all humanity. History will not be kind to Nancy and Harry, thanks to their perfect ineffectuality. History will also judge the present crop of American citizens as unbearably privileged and hopelessly idiotic for sitting complacently watching CNN while the oily machinery behind this administration waltzed off with the contents of the US Treasury and whatever coin it found in the pockets of the American working class.

If McCain wins, it will be because Americans deserve him, just as we have deserved Bush Junior. If Obama wins, he will be a glorified janitor for the endless piles of shit the GOP left in its wake. Just as Bill Clinton was for Reagan and Bush Senior.

Our complacency will be our downfall, and I no longer care. Let Rush Limbaugh and ExxonMobil have America — it's becoming a crumbling shithole anyway.

And on that happy note, we end the blog.

Unfortunately, I concur wholeheartedly...

I Won't Make A Habit Of This, But,,

Today's post is "What Digby said" WRT to Nancy Pelosi on The Daily Show recently. Just read her, ok?

Her money graph -

And, by the way, one thing she says is undoubtedly true: the Democratic congress will give President Obama a much harder time than they ever gave Bush. No rubber stamps, that's for sure. The only time Democrats ever put up a fight is against their own.

Mandatory Binding Arbitration

Ever read the tiny print at the end of your credit card agreement? Did you notice the clause that "all disputes with the issuing credit card company had to be settled via mandatory binding arbitration" meaning that you couldn't take the credit card company to court? Did you ever wonder if that might be fair to you, the consumer? Did you think that a private arbitration firmed paid for by the credit card company might rule solely based on the merits of your case? Psst - 1, it's not, 2, they don't, they rule in favor of them what brung 'em as the arbitration companies depend on repeat business which they will only get from the companies, not the consumers. Better yet, the arbitration companies are only accountable to companies & not the public as you, the consumer, signed away your right to sue when you signed up! Slick, 'eh?

Via Credit Slips this AM I stumbled onto to Senate Judiciary Committee testimony from a Professor Elizabeth Bartholet of Harvard Law School on July 23, 2008 about this very issue. It seems Professor Bartholet was for a brief time herself an arbiter for the National Arbitration Forum, her service ending when she dared to rule against a credit card company. Her testimony is here and excerpted from that link are what I think to be two important point she makes:

"My own experience over the past two decades as an arbitrator has led me to conclude that in many instances corporate players are in fact benefitting from a system of purchased justice in both the employment and the consumer credit areas. My experience as an arbitrator for the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) is but one example, although it may be the most telling."

"All this, together with my other experience as an arbitrator, and my reading of the literature, is what has led me to conclude that the Supreme Court’s approval of pre-dispute arbitration has led to a private justice system in which banks and credit card companies are able to purchase the results they want, at the expense of the debtors forced into the system."

I read the news quite closely but didn't find this anywhere else for some reason. Sure found lots of garbage WRT to Brittany Spears, et al., though. Do ya' think that might be the point? "We the people' are the mushrooms of this land?

Original Intent

At least that's what four of the Supremes, Thomas, Scalia, Roberts & Alito seem to blather on & on about WRT to the criteria they claim to base their decisions on. Funny, though, when you pick and chooose exactly which founder's words to use & when and even funnier, when the words you pick seem to support the decision you wanted to make all along, it seems as if Original Intent is just another code word. Stare decis indeed.

Obviously I read way too much, couple that with too much free time and you've got me wandering through all sorts of treasure troves finding all sorts of things.

Today I stumbled on a fascinating paper by Nathan Newman & J.J. Gass entitled A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM: THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF THE 13TH, 14TH, AND 15TH AMENDMENTS (pdf). It's relevant today as the Rehnquist court cited many of the decisions used to restore white supremacy in the 1870's south when his court overturned many civil rights laws starting in the 1990's. Rather than excerpt the paper, here's the introduction & if you're a student of history and interested in history that's been disappeared, you'll follow the link. (are you amazed I found republicans I have good things to say about? But they're not today's version)

"THE FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF THE 13TH, 14TH, AND 15TH AMENDMENTS

The Supreme Court’s recent turn away from civil rights and toward states’ rights claims legitimacy from a familiar – but false – history: the Constitution of 1787 carefully preserved the states’ sovereignty; Congress operated for 150 years within narrow constraints on its enumerated powers; the courts zealously policed the boundaries of proper federal action; and the half-century starting with the New Deal, when the Supreme Court allowed the federal government to do more or less what it wanted, was an anomaly.
None of this is true. If there is an anomalous period in the relationship between the Court and Congress, it began shortly after the Civil War and ended with the “switch in time” of 1937. The Court commenced its first sustained campaign to cut back on congressional power by striking down civil rights statutes passed during Reconstruction. These decisions betrayed Lincoln, who had promised a “new birth of freedom” at Gettysburg, and the people who enacted the constitutional amendments and legislation to make that promise a reality – not to mention the thousands of blacks slaughtered while defending their rights and the millions condemned to live under Jim Crow in the wake of the Court’s rulings.
Whatever else might be said of “originalist” constructions of constitutional provisions adopted in 1787, the Rehnquist Court’s decisions on the New Birth Amendments are utterly indefensible as a matter of history. Like the reactionary Court of the 1870s – whose infamous precedents it unabashedly cites – the states’-rights bloc on today’s Court has struck down federal civil rights legislation enacted pursuant to the New Birth Amendments without regard for the widely understood meaning and purpose of those amendments at the time they were ratified. This paper aims to revive the memory of the New Birth Framers and their work and to debunk the claim that the Court’s anti-equality agenda has any support in the history of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments."

Who Caused The Current Financial Crisis?

Say you're in the business of making loans. Say you offer me a $500,000 mortgage with a low adjustable interest rate and do not require a down payment. Even better, say you offer me an option ARM note with an adjustable payment that can be low enough to not only not pay back the principal which I borrowed but not even cover the month's interest with a net effect that after paying for a couple of years I'll owe more money than I originally borrowed! (negative amortization) And for the clincher, you're not even going to check my income or my credit history!

Why would you, the loan originator want to do these things? For starters, it's not your money, you'll make your money upfront by large fees & commissions then you'll take my loan along with a number of others and, have one of your 'associates' at one of the rating companies declare it to be 'AAA' rated and sell it to "someone else" as an 'investment security' (at another fat commission, of course).

Uh, oh, bad news, I can't make the payments and the note goes into default & foreclosure, looks like it's time to blame somebody. Is this debacle my fault for being greedy in wanting, say, a nice house and lazy or confused by the sheer complexity of the loan you made me? Or is it your fault for being greedy (remember all those fat fees & commissions?) and irresponsible as you didn't require a down payment or a credit/income verification? Should I get a bailout? Maybe I'm too small to help? Or should the note-holder get a bailout as they're likely too big to fail? These are taxpayer funds that will pay for this bailout, should we then 'privatize the profits' yet 'socialize the risk'?

Numerian at the Agonist has an excellent albeit lengthy post that gives a clear, concise & detailed explanation at the slow-motion collapse of the enormous Ponzi scheme that is our economy these days. If this is something that you find interesting (and no doubt confusing as well) it would be well worth your time to read the post, the comments and the linked articles.

"By the time the scheme collapsed, the averaged household had $115,000 in total debt, was using as much as 40% of disposable income each year to service this debt (and all the fees involved), and had only $392 each year to put away as savings. You can see now how ridiculous it is to call the consumer equally at fault in such a system."

At the risk of seeming sanctimonious, other than needing another job I don't have a lot at risk these days, everything I own is paid for and we have savings, not debt. I had a beloved grandmother who survived & prospered through the depression of the 1930s and what I learned about the importance of savings and the avoidance of debt, I learned from her.