A Deep Blue Paranoid Moment (DBPM)

“Just Because I’m Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out to Get Me!”

OK, so sometimes I do go off the deep blue end but, I really think that very nearly all of our communications are monitored without warrant or our knowing consent. “So what?” you say, “If you’re not doing anything wrong what do you have to worry about?” If a US citizen cannot have their most private information free from others, we have no civil society but a state where any innocent series of calls or conversations could be made to look as though some wrongdoing were afoot. I’m an attorney and I have to be sure my communications are kept both secret and confidential. If others know what we’re up to in a given case, it sorta takes the wind out of sails and stacks the deck against us. How would they know? Easy! Old analog cell phones, some digital cells and the phones you can walk around with that have a base at work or home and talk can be listened to with a police scanner and the courts have ruled that since the signal is readily available to monitoring there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in your conversations and a warrant isn’t needed to listen or record the calls. The major phone companies just gave up all your calling data to the National Security Agency (NSA) , except Qwest, when the government simply asked for it. The telcos then went to Congress and got themselves a ban on any consumer lawsuits for illegally releasing your private, confidential calling information. We also all heard about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) illegal interception of US citizens’ communications under the Bush administration. Many of the Bush secret “anti-terror” policies have been continued by the Obama administration. Faxes and e-mails from offices should now have a warning notice to recipients that the sender cannot guarantee that some government agency is not intercepting the communication without their knowledge or consent or a search warrant.   And see here. It’s so bad that some citizens, like reporters, use so-called “burner phones” for calls to confidential sources and toss them after one or very few uses so as to not have their locations or sources compromised. Of course, then the reporters or whoever are now acting “suspiciously” and may have their innocent conduct of just wanting privacy used to have some eager beaver go get a roving wiretap on the person under the so-called USA Patriot Act. The US House and Senate just passed a “Defense Authorization Act” for President Obama to sign which includes another “authorization for the use of force” against suspected al Qaeda terrorists and allows for the possible indefinites detention of US citizens without charge, denies such US citizen “suspects” access to US civilian courts, and denies them access to counsel, all of which have never been allowed before in US history. President Obama must veto the bill. I don’t think it reasonable that we have to have any fear that all our communications are monitored by some government agency. So much has been justified in the “war on terror” that maybe I’m not so paranoid after all.

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Four Major GOP Candidates Remain After Cain “Suspends” Campaign

Herman Cain has now “suspended” his campaign for the 2012 Republican nomination for President of the United States. Mr. Cain cited “continued distractions and continued hurt on me and my family.” Mr. Cain had been the target of claims of past sexual harassment and a long standing sexual affair with an Atlanta woman. With Mr. Cain’s withdrawal, there seem to be four remaining candidates atop the GOP Presidential field:  Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Newt Gingrich. Former Republican Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 2012 is running against himself from his race for Governor of the State of Massachusetts. Governor Romney has also lost credibility regarding his efforts as a “job creator.” Romney’s  prior private sector business, Bain Capital, and Goldman Sachs purchased two Florida medical diagnostics firms, closed them and 850 jobs were lost; Bain and Goldman made $250 million on the deal. Romney’s net worth went up to some $250 million during this time. Meanwhile, former Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich is running against what he said as recently as a week before his last statement on some issues. Gingrich is no stranger to controversy as he was cited for ethics violations and fined $300,000 while serving as the Republican Speaker of the US House in January of 1997. Mr. Gingrich has also been criticized for extra-marital affairs and leaving two wives as they suffered from multiple sclerosis and cancer. One ex had to sue Gingrich for child support as she suffered and survived on charity as Gingrich served in the US House. Mr. Gingrich had carried on an affair with his now third wife even as his second wife was suffering from cancer.

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The Aristocracy of our Monied Corporations

“I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations." Thomas Jefferson Much has been written about the causes and the effects of the financial crisis of 2008. The right blames easy home loan credit they claim was mandated by federal laws and Democratic legislators. The left blames corporate greed run amok after the GW Bush administration gave up regulation of the financial sector to the “free market.” It is important to know who the players were that brought us to a world-wide economic crisis in 2008 and another which is working itself out in Europe right now as a result of the sovereign debt crisis in the Southern tier of European Union countries of Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The Irish financial crisis was as a result of an exploded housing bubble much as unfolded in the US. It is important to note there are neither “easy home loan credit… mandated by federal laws” or “Democratic legislators” in Ireland. At the core of the crises is a group of US based banks and financial services corporations, chief among which are Goldman Sachs. Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup, along with Goldman Sachs, are still making massive investments in risky derivatives such as credit default swops and credit default options and currently hold over 95% of such contracts in that market. But, Goldman Sachs has had at the nexus of all the actors its players and yet another has just been appointed as the new head of the European Bank, Mario Draghi. Mr. Draghi’s immediate past position was with the Bank of Italy and just before that Mr. Draghi was with Goldman Sachs. It was during Mr. Draghi’s tenure at Goldman that the firm came under heavy fire for mis-stating Greece’s debts so as to ease its entry into the EU. Italy’s likely new appointed PM, Mario Monti, is also a Goldman Sachs alumnus and will have to leave as the Euro Chair of the Trilateral Commission if he enters government service. Lucas Papademos, the newly appointed PM of Greece, is a technocrat and that’s thought to help Greece and the EU but, resigned (as required) as a member of the Trilateral Commission upon his government appointment. Mr. Papademos served as a member of the Trilateral Commission along with the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and folks from AIG and other major Wall Street players that brought us the 2008 meltdown and now have brought the entire EU sovereign debt crisis to a boil. The very scary reality is that the next economy to falter after the Southern tier is France. France holds the highest amount of any nation of the sovereign debt of the South. Soon, France may lose its AAA credit rating which it has held to even though its debt to GDP ration of 83% is higher than the about 62% of the US. France will next have to enact “austerity measures” such as those already imposed in much of the EU and which have caused riots in Greece. What this all means to us poor average Americans is that while we work hard, pay our taxes, save for our retirements and kids’ college, forces beyond our ken and control are at work around the Western world to make sure that the interests of our monied corporations are those which are served and that our votes, our elections and our very dreams for ourselves and our children just don’t matter any more. And see here and here. There was a war while we slept last night, we lost. Goldman Sachs and its ilk won by removing all our wealth to them, by removing elected officials to be replaced by their former employees and by taking over our dreams and replacing them with their own. "As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." Abraham Lincoln

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Robert Reich discusses corporations as people

“Corporations are not ‘people.’ I’ll believe corporations are ‘people’ when Texas and Georgia execute the next corporation…”

Robert Reich (Reference: 6:00 on the above video) Billionaire hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced recently to 11 years for insider trading in a Manhattan federal court. Mr. Rajaratnam was convicted by a jury of 14 counts of insider trading for illegally conspiring to obtain and using insider information from individuals at Goldman Sachs, among others. Prosecutors argued that Rajaratnam made over $74 million from his scheme. While some might praise the effort to convict Mr. Rajaratnam, how did the folks who he bribed or whatever fare? Why does the name Goldman Sachs keep coming up in all the Wall Street scandals? Did the government get anything from Goldman Sachs or any other bailout recipients for the money used to keep these operations alive? Just what the hell is Goldman Sachs still doing in any investment banking business at all?  Goldman Sachs and 3 other banks are still trading in the risky derivatives which brought down the financial markets in 2008. Goldman and the other 3 banks hold some 95% of those contracts. [More . . . ]

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The War for the Truth-Decision 2012

This is the third article in a series of three (here are the first and second) which are based upon a recent revealing piece published by truthout.org where Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican operative on the Republican staffs of the US House and Senate Budget Committees reveals what lies at the core of contemporary American Republicanism and why he quit after 28 years of service. Mr. Lofgren writes:

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like Robert K. Dornan or William E. Dannemeyer. But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

… I wrote of the current tactics of the Republicans, especially in the US House of Representatives on the debt ceiling “crisis." Mr. Lofgren continues: [More . . . ]

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