Our Impossible Republic

I’m Tim Hogan. I am a husband, a father of two, a small businessman and I am one of the 99%.

The day will come when our Republic will become an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. When that day comes, we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation. - James Madison

Our Republic is at such an impossible time because the fewest have the wealth of our nation. The gap between the richest and poorest in America is at its greatest ever. The income of the top 1% of Americans has increased by nearly 300% since 1979 while wages and salaries of average Americans have barely, if at all, kept up with inflation over the same period. Americans suffer poverty at the highest rate ever. 46.3 million Americans have household incomes below the federal poverty line, with one in six children in America living in poverty, right now. The percentage of wages as a percentage of our nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is at its lowest since 1947 when the government began keeping such statistics while corporate profits are at an all time high. Corporations have more than $2 trillion in cash reserves while unemployment is endemic and worker productivity is at all time highs. The financial crisis of 2008 spawned efforts to stop the excesses of the banking and investment communities but, those valiant efforts have been to no avail as the laws and regulations which would prevent a re-occurrence of the financial crisis have been stymied and blocked by the financial industry’s stranglehold on the US House and Senate and threats of lawsuits. Meanwhile the four largest financial institutions which took over $100 billion in bailout money from US tax payers have doubled and redoubled down on the risky derivatives which caused the financial collapse. Bank of America, Citicorp, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs as insured commercial banks now hold some 95% of risky derivatives as investments after they collectively received over $135 billion in federal bailout monies. Yes, the bailout monies were repaid with interest but, right now banks continue the very same risky activities which caused the 2008 financial meltdown in the first place.  And see here and here. [More . . . ]

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God’s candidates

God called Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan to run for President of the United States of America. The only problem is that Bachmann, Cain, Perry and Santorum are all declared Republican candidates for President in 2012. In a Republican presidential primary season so far filled with over a dozen candidates, the numbers called by God to run are ever increasing and may give us an all time high for those to whom the Almighty has spoken. With what appears to be a record number of Republican candidates called by God to run for President in 2012, Mike Lofgren’s characterization of the GOP and its relationship with the Almighty rings ever more true. This article is the second in a series of three analyzing recent statements by Mr. Mike Lofgren, who spent 28 years on the GOP staff of the US House and Senate Budget Committees. He had some interesting things to say about the Republican love affair with the Almighty as the guide for its members’ ambitions. For instance, Mr. Lofgren says the following:

Give me that old time religion. Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs.

I guess the rest of us, not called by God to run for President, have some less lofty calling or are just somehow less morally upright than those chosen few of the GOP. But, I just wonder what really is going on here? I mean can God have called all these people to run for President? How did they receive their call? Is it the height of hubris to claim the allegiance of the Almighty or just another day on the 2012 Republican Presidential campaign trail? I can honestly say that I have not been called by God to run for President and that fact does not upset me in the least. [More . . . ]

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Derivative madness

Thought we bailed them out, Wall Street banks continue with much of their destructive behavior. Exhibit A: They hold 95% of Derivatives. How can we stop the madness? Large U.S. bank speculation in derivatives, the very thing which caused the economic crisis of 2008, is going on more than ever. JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have some 95% of such exotic investments, with only a small percentage being held by the tens of thousands of other banks in the US. Each of the current large bank holders of derivatives were recipients of bailout funds under the TARP. The federal law (Glass-Steagall) which had prevented banks from involving themselves in such ultra-risky transactions was repealed in 1996, and its replacement was a hard fought losing battle to pass the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. The proposed CFTC regulations to limit the type and numbers of such positions taken by commercial banks on such financial investments are being challenged even before they are made final. One of the new items proposed to be regulated is the type, number and amounts of positions taken on West Texas Light Crude oil which is a benchmark for the international price per barrel of oil. Previously, the WTLC market was regulated in Dubai and the UK and not in the US, so speculators could do as they pleased with those oil prices and not be subject to US regulation or even US scrutiny. It is commonly agreed that speculators add as much as 40% more to the price of a barrel of oil. The proposed CFTC regulations anger large speculative investors and they have threatened lawsuits even before the regulations go into effect. One method of suppressing speculation is a financial transaction tax. Some experts say that a broad series of financial transaction taxes will provide additional revenues to countries and also serve to prevent the kind of wholesale speculation in derivatives and other such exotica which gave us the world economic crisis in 2008. Taxing authorities could also provide regulators real-time information on the positions of various investors to monitor and avoid abuses. The European Community is about to impose such a tax on financial transactions to deter speculators and to raise revenues. Perhaps we in the US may do likewise.

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Republican Presidential Candidates Meet With Hitler

I was running work errands yesterday and happened to snap on the radio. The NPR feed wasn’t my style the music so I punched the last button on the radio, 97.1 Talk, the Fox affiliate in St. Louis. Sometimes I listen in to “The Dave Glover Show,” where Mr. Glover liked to opine how badly he sucked as a lawyer when he previously had pursued that career. I wish Mr. Glover had let me know that before we had become law partners. Immediately, the screaming was shrill and studied; it was as though a playbook were being read from by yet another cog in the anti-Obama hate machine. Apparently, Andrew Breitbart, who brought us edited films of ACORN folks and federal employees and criminal cronies in search of edited films, had the goods on Mr. Obama. It seems that in a celebration of the “March on Selma” in 2007, some of the members of the three member New Black Panther movement showed up and spoke at an event which also had then-Senator Obama as a speaker. Bill and Hillary Clinton were also speaking at another location for the event. Other major civil rights figures were in attendance and they gave speeches. There was a grainy photograph of Mr. Obama somewhere near a guy from the new Black Panther Party, so Mr. Breitbart’s photographs were proof positive, according to Dana Loesch of “The Dana Show,” of Mr. Obama’s “racism!!!” WTF? I got home, went to the trusty computer and Googled the issue. Sure enough, it appeared that the New Panther Party folks appeared at the same event. The story didn’t tell us that Mr. Obama organized the event, supported any of the viewpoints of any of the other speakers at the event, or that Mr. Obama was even aware of any of the other speakers at the event. Mr. Obama just happened to speak at the same event along with a bunch of other folks in commemoration of the sacrifices of a past generation of brave Americans seeking racial justice in America. What was the flap? [More . . . ]

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Republicans and Jobs: More of the Same-Sop the Rich, Screw the Middle Class and the Working Poor

The current political climate is one fraught with conflict and controversy promulgated and continuously created by the most extreme elements of the lunatic fringes of the right and the Republican Party. The Republican Party cares “solely and exclusively about its rich contributors” in America and the Middle Class and the working poor be damned. Republicans will say anything, do anything, lie, cheat and steal about everything to protect the so-called “job creators.”  I’ve accused Republicans of puerile partisan political chicanery before but, the proof is in the charge made by a senior GOP Budget Committee staffer who quit Capitol Hill because of Republican “lunacy.” This article is the first in a series of three analyzing the evidence of Mr. Mike Lofgren who spent 28 years on the GOP staff of the US House and Senate Budget Committees, and had much, including this, to say about the Republican love affair with only the corporations, millionaires and billionaires.  Mr. Lofgren says:

The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy. Their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public.

I wrote of the current tactics of the Republicans, especially in the US House of Representatives on the debt ceiling “crisis.” Mr. Lofgren continues:

Republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. John Boehner is fond of saying, "we won't raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an Olive Garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether Warren Buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. Another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; Apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. So, where are the jobs?

Mr. Lofgren poses the best question to for Democrats to ask of his former Republican colleagues. Where are the jobs from the “job creators” among the corporations, millionaires and billionaires, Mr. US House Speaker Boehner? Eight years of George W. Bush and Republican “leadership” of the US economy led the nation into the Great Recession and the Lost Decade. The “Lost Decade” because there were only losses of private sector jobs under Bush and his tax giveaways to corporations, millionaires and billionaires. Mr. Lofgren goes on to point out additional Republican rhetorical scams. [More . . . ]

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