Noteworthy entries.

Senator Bernie Sanders proposes changes to America’s corrupt banking system

At Huffpo, Senator Bernie Sanders, who remains one of my heroes, points out that the secret bailout by the Federal Reserve makes the better-known bailout look tiny:

More than three years ago, Congress rewarded Wall Street with the biggest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Simultaneously but unknown to the American people at the time, the Federal Reserve provided an even larger bailout. The details of what the Fed did were kept secret until a provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that I sponsored required the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed's lending programs during the financial crisis. As a result of this audit, the American people have learned that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in low-interest loans to every major financial institution in this country, huge foreign banks, multi-national corporations, and some of the wealthiest people in the world. In other words, when Wall Street was on the verge of collapse, the federal government acted boldly, aggressively, and with a fierce sense of urgency to save our financial system from collapse with no strings attached.
The huge backdoor bailout is a slap in the face to American taxpayers, especially since the big Wall Street banks are bigger than ever and because they are taking more risks than ever, presumably emboldened by the fact that they are "too big to fail," and that the federal government will come bail them out yet again. Here's what Bernie Sanders proposes to clean up this despicable situation: 1) Break up the big banks. 2) Cap credit card interest rates ("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.") 3) Force the Federal Reserve to make low interest loans directly to small businesses. 4) Put an end to speculation that jacks up the price of petroleum products. 5) Demand that Wall Street invest in real businesses instead of "gambling on derivatives." 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." Sanders points out that there was such a fee (.2% tax on all sales and transfers of stock) from 1914 - 1966. Sanders points out that getting these measures passed will be enormously difficult, given that these Wall Street banks spent $5 billion on lobbying over the past decade.  Which leads to another enormous need: to get money out of politics.

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George Carlin’s brutally patriotic criticism

The First Amendment isn’t worth a damn unless it is actually being used. If it is not being used, then politicians and their rich and powerful keepers will continue to utter long and loud streams of nonsense to financially screw the ordinary working people of America in dozens of ways. They will continue to feed us unending misinformation in order to justify their urges to wage unnecessary wars to help them retain their power. They will continue invading our houses and and minds thanks to their many stenographers in the commercial media. Those of us who have resisted drinking much of this country’s spiked elixir of Judeo-Christian-consumerist-warmongering-bigotry know that most of what we hear our authority figures uttering, even those authority figures who we want to believe to be on our side, is flawed. Much of it substantially untrue and quite a bit of it is absolute bullshit.  I hate to be writing these words, but I've lost a lot of faith in the United States in the past ten years.  Misinformation pours into the living rooms and cars of Americans every day, where it too often takes root, perhaps because it is uttered by people wearing fancy suits and flag pins. Americans need an antidote to this unending poison. They need the kinds of people who can effectively challenge these messages and messengers--someone who not only can challenge this propaganda but can do it with sharp fast pinpricks that deflate this bloviation on the spot.  They need much more than "news" reporters who don't have the tools, courage or motivation to challenge all the BS. They need someone who is old enough and thick-skinned enough that he/she doesn’t give a shit about being criticized for being unpatriotic. In fact, this type of person, of whom we actually need many, feeds on the criticism aimed at them by the powers-that-be and even gets even better under attack; he/she feels compelled to speak truth to power because it is the right thing to do, it's in the blood and it's the patriotic thing. The types of patriotic people we need to deliver this blitzkrieg criticism also need to be excellent entertainers in order to maintain the attention of large numbers of Americans. As comedians, they can hone their messages into comical memes that their audience members will pass around in viral fashion long after the original message was delivered. To the extent that these funny social critics portray themselves as jesters, they will have more access to the mass media, enabling them more effectively put their verbal swords in and out of those who own and run this country. Many conservatives consider this iconoclastic feedback to be unpatriotic. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingGeorge Carlin’s brutally patriotic criticism