Observations on current events

2012 Election:

Matt Taibbi: Rick Perry: The Best Little Whore In Texas
"The Texas governor has one driving passion: selling off government to the highest bidder..."


Income Inequality In The World's Richest Nation:

Glenn Greenwald: Immunity and Impunity in Elite America: How the Legal System Was Deep-Sixed and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land
"...substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in American political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing. The American Founders were clear that they viewed inequality in wealth, power, and prestige as not merely inevitable, but desirable and, for some, even divinely ordained. Jefferson praised 'the natural aristocracy' as 'the most precious gift of nature' for the 'government of society.' John Adams concurred: 'It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors and inferiors, because God has laid in the… course of nature the foundation of the distinction.'
Not only have the overwhelming majority of Americans long acquiesced to vast income and wealth disparities, but some of those most oppressed by these outcomes have cheered it loudly. Americans have been inculcated not only to accept, but to revere those who are the greatest beneficiaries of this inequality.
In the 1980s, this paradox -- whereby even those most trampled upon come to cheer those responsible for their state -- became more firmly entrenched. That’s because it found a folksy, friendly face, Ronald Reagan, adept at feeding the populace a slew of Orwellian clichés that induced them to defend the interests of the wealthiest. 'A rising tide,' as President Reagan put it, 'lifts all boats.' The sum of his wisdom being: it is in your interest when the rich get richer.
Implicit in this framework was the claim that inequality was justified and legitimate. The core propagandistic premise was that the rich were rich because they deserved to be..."


The following is over year old, but relevant nonetheless...

Barry Ritholtz: Top 400 Taxpayers
"The IRS puts out an interesting tax document each year, looking at the returns of the nation’s 400 highest income tax paying people. The most recent year of complete data is 2007, when 143 million individuals filed tax returns.

Some of the data is quite astonishing:

• The top 400 U.S. individual taxpayers got 1.59% of the nation’s household income in 2007 — 3X the p% they got in the 1990s.

• The top 400 paid 2.05% of all individual income taxes in 2007.

• Only 220 of the top 400 were in the top marginal tax bracket.

• Average tax rate of the 400 = 16.6% — the lowest since the IRS began tracking the 400 in 1992.

• Minimum annual income to make the top 400 = $138.8 million.

• Top 400 reported $137.9 billion in income; they paid $22.9 billion in federal income taxes.

• 81.3% of income was from capital gains, dividends or interest. Salaries and wages? Just 6.5%.

• The top 400 list changes from year to year: 1992-2007, it contained 3,472 different taxpayers (out of a maximum 6400)..."

2012 Campaign:

Ruth Marcus: Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan Doesn’t Add Up
"...Cain’s business tax is not like the existing corporate income tax, which applies to profits. Instead, it’s basically a value-added tax in which businesses do not deduct the cost of wages. That means, in effect, another 9 percent tax on income — just as standard economic theory now treats the employer’s share of payroll taxes as reducing workers’ wages.
Cain ignores any impact of the business tax on wages. Meanwhile, he asserts that the 9 percent retail sales tax would not raise the final cost of goods; rather, it would replace existing taxes 'embedded' in the current price. If anything, he asserts, prices will drop.
Simultaneously, however, Cain claims the tax isn’t a problem for lower-income people because they can simply buy used goods, on which the tax would not apply. Slight problem: There’s no such thing as used milk.
Assume Cain is right. Prices won’t go up. Wages won’t fall. Cain simplistically argues that the existing payroll tax adds up to 15 percent and asserts that people will be six percentage points better off under his 9 percent plan.
This is wrong, as explained above. But consider the impact of only the personal income tax on two taxpayers earning $25,000 and $250,000, both married with two children. According to the Tax Foundation’s nifty calculator, the $25,000 earner owes $1,413 in payroll taxes. Thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, his income tax liability is negative. He receives a $5,002 check. Under the Cain plan, he owes $2,250.
Assuming a standard deduction, the $250,000 earner owes combined income and payroll taxes of $60,765. His Cain tax is $22,500. Explain again, Mr. Cain, who wins under your plan?"


The Environment:

AP: Driller wins approval to halt water to Pa. town
"Pennsylvania environmental regulators said Wednesday they have given permission to a natural-gas driller to stop delivering replacement water to residents whose drinking water wells were tainted with methane.
Residents expressed outrage and threatened to take the matter to court.
Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. has been delivering water to homes in the northeast village of Dimock since January of 2009. The Houston-based energy company asked the Department of Environmental Protection for approval to stop the water deliveries by the end of November, saying Dimock's water is safe to drink...
...Residents who are suing Cabot in federal court say their water is still tainted with unsafe levels of methane and possibly other contaminants from the drilling process. They say DEP had no right to allow Cabot to stop paying for replacement water.
Bill Ely, 60, said the water coming out of his well looks like milk.
'You put your hand down a couple of inches and you can't see your hand, that's how much gas there is in it. And they're telling me it was that way all my life,' said Ely, who has lived in the family homestead for nearly 50 years and said his well water was crystal clear until Cabot's arrival three years ago..."

Technology:

Who knew that fewer distractions allow people to drive better?
I'm sure the Mobile Service Providers know this, but you won't ever see them admit it...

The National (UAE) - BlackBerry outage coincides with reduced number of traffic accidents
"A dramatic fall in traffic accidents this week has been directly linked to the three-day disruption in BlackBerry services.
In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents..."

Occupy Wall St. Protests:

Business Insider: Here Are The Four Charts That Explain What The Protesters Are Angry About...
"Earlier this week, we published a chart-essay that illustrates the extreme inequality that has developed in the US economy over the past 30 years.
The charts explain what the Wall Street protesters are angry about. They also explain why the protesters' message is resonating with the country at large.
Here are the four key points:
1. Unemployment is at the highest level since the Great Depression (with the exception of a brief blip in the early 1980s)...
2. At the same time, corporate profits are at an all-time high, both in absolute dollars and as a share of the economy...
3. Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. In other words, corporate profits are at an all-time high, in part, because corporations are paying less of their revenue to employees than they ever have...
4. Income and wealth inequality in the US economy is near an all-time high: The owners of the country's assets (capital) are winning, everyone else (labor) is losing..."


Success and 'Greatness'

Neeraj Thakur: Steve Jobs wasn’t great; he wasn’t even close
"...The man who invented the polio vaccine, Jonas Edward Salk, decided not to patent his invention. After seven years of rigorous research, when he had the chance to become a billionaire, much like Jobs did, he refused to do so. When someone asked him ‘Who owns the patent of the vaccine, he replied, ‘Can anyone patent the sun?’ In civilisation’s history of one individual bettering the lives of fellow humans, can Jobs stand anywhere close to Salk?
Jobs did not even eradicate poverty with the immense wealth he accumulated by selling his so-called great products, invented by scientists who worked in his company. Instead, he rather stopped all philanthropist activity by Apple in 1997, saying philanthropy can ‘wait until we are profitable.’ Today, Apple is one of the world’s most valued companies (sitting on $40 billion cash) and ironically, it is perhaps the only one in its category that has no philanthropic contribution worth talking about.
I don’t own any Apple product, and most Apple aficionados would accuse me of commenting on something that I don’t use. I am not commenting on the products he sold; I am commenting on the tears that are being unjustifiably shed on the death of a rich man. I am not taking anything away from Jobs as an entrepreneur, and the fact is that he was an inspiration for his company. But I find it difficult to accept the belittling of the very notion of greatness by bestowing it on those who worked for themselves and promoted the noxious idea that ‘profit motivates humans’, a theory that would have never given us the polio vaccine..."

Economics & Social Justice:

Sen. Bernie Sanders: Wall Street Protests
"...Let us never forget that as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, this country was plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes and life savings as the middle class underwent an unprecedented collapse. Sadly, despite all the suffering caused by Wall Street, there is no reason to believe that the major financial institutions have changed their ways, or that future financial disasters and bailouts will not happen again...
...Now that Occupy Wall Street is shining a spotlight on Wall Street greed and the enormous inequalities that exist in America, the question then becomes, how do we change the political, economic and financial system to work for all Americans, not just the top 1 percent?

Here are several proposals that I am working on:

1) If a financial institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. Today, the six largest financial institutions have assets equal to more than 60 percent of GDP. The four largest banks in this country issue two thirds of all credit cards, half of all mortgages, and hold nearly 40 percent of all bank deposits. Incredibly, after we bailed out these big banks because they were 'too big to fail,' three out of the four largest are now even bigger than they were before the financial crisis began. It is time to take a page from Teddy Roosevelt and break up these behemoths so that their failure will no longer lead to economic catastrophe and to create competition in our financial system.

2) Put a cap on credit card interest rates to end usury. Today, more than a quarter of all credit card holders in this country are paying interest rates above 20 percent and as high as 59 percent. When credit card companies charge 25- or 30-percent interest rates they are not engaged in the business of 'making credit available' to their customers. They are involved in extortion and loan-sharking. Citigroup, Bank of America, and JP Morgan Chase should not be permitted to charge consumers 25- to 30-percent interest on their credit cards, especially while these banks received over $4 trillion in loans from the Federal Reserve.

3) The Federal Reserve needs to provide small businesses in America with the same low-interest loans it gave to foreign banks. During the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve provided hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign banks and corporations including the Arab Banking Corporation, Toyota, Mitsubishi, the Korea Development Bank, and the state-owned Bank of Bavaria. At a time when small businesses can't get the lending they need, it is time for the Fed to create millions of American jobs by providing low-interest loans directly to small businesses.

4) Stop Wall Street oil speculators from artificially increasing gasoline and heating oil prices. Right now, the American people are being gouged at the gas pump by speculators on Wall Street who are buying and selling billions of barrels of oil in the energy futures market with no intention of using a drop for any purpose other than to make a quick buck. Delta Airlines, Exxon Mobil, the American Trucking Association, and other energy experts have estimated that excessive oil speculation is driving up oil prices by as much as 40 percent. We have got to end excessive oil speculation and bring needed relief to American consumers.

5) Demand that Wall Street invest in the job-creating productive economy, instead of gambling on worthless derivatives. The American people have got to make it crystal clear to Wall Street that the era of excessive speculation is over. The 'heads, bankers win; tails, everyone else loses' financial system must end. Most important, we need to create a new Wall Street that exists not to reward CEOs and investors for the bets they make on exotic financial instruments nobody understands. Rather, we need a Wall Street that provides financial services to small businesses and manufacturers to create decent-paying jobs and grow the economy by productive means. Think of all of the productive short- and long-term investments that could be made in our country right now if Wall Street used the money it has received from the federal government wisely. Instead of casino-style speculation, Wall Street could invest in high-speed trains; fuel-efficient cars; wind turbines and other alternative energy sources; affordable housing; affordable prescription drugs that save people's lives; and other things that America desperately needs. That is what we have got to demand from Wall Street.

6) Establish a Wall Street speculation fee on credit default swaps, derivatives, stock options and futures. Both the economic crisis and the deficit crisis are a direct result of the greed and recklessness on Wall Street. Establishing a speculation fee would reduce gambling on Wall Street, encourage the financial sector to invest in the productive economy, and significantly reduce the deficit without harming average Americans. There are a number of precedents for this. The U.S had a similar Wall Street speculation fee from 1914 to 1966. The Revenue Act of 1914 levied a 0.2-percent tax on all sales or transfers of stock. In 1932, Congress more than doubled that tax to help finance the government during the Great Depression. And today, England has a financial transaction tax of 0.25 percent, a penny on every $4 invested..."

A video collage of the president & Sec. of State talking about the rights of individuals in a free society. Should these really be seen as 'taken out of context'?

CounterPunch.org - Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll
"...If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.
The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.
The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program..."


The War On Terror As A War On Citizen's Rights:

Michael Ratner: Anwar al-Awlaki's extrajudicial murder
"The law on the use of lethal force by executive order is specific. This assassination broke it – that creates a terrifying precedent..."


On Torture:

McClatchy Newspapers: U.N. says Afghanistan routinely tortures war suspects
"The United Nations on Monday said that suspected Taliban detainees are routinely beaten and tortured in detention centers run by Afghanistan's police and spy agency.
The U.N. said it based its findings on interviews conducted with 379 pre-trial detainees and convicted prisoners at 47 detention centers in 22 provinces between October 2010 to August 2011.
The 74-page report said the interviews uncovered evidence of 'the use of interrogation techniques that constitute torture under international law and crimes under Afghan law, as well as other forms of mistreatment.'
It said beating and torture was applied 'systemically' in detentions centers run by the National Directorate of Security, Afghanistan's spy agency.
Forty-six percent of 273 detainees interviewed in the Afghan spy agency's detention centers told U.N. interviewers that they had been subjected to different forms of torture while the were interrogated. The abuse often included sexual humiliation..."

Rules? Those Are For Others...

Bloomberg: Koch Brothers Flout Law Getting Richer With Secret Iran Sales
"In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts...
...What many people don’t know is how the Kochs’ anti- regulation political ideology has influenced the way they conduct business.
A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism..."


The Scourge of Money In Politics:

Jane Mayer: State For Sale
"A conservative multimillionaire has taken control in North Carolina, one of 2012’s top battlegrounds.."