The strong stench of corruption at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

What does it tell you when there is no independent Inspector General for a federal agency that oversees $6 trillion in mortgages? This is not a thought experiment. It is undisputed reality. And there is good reason to suspect that something utterly corrupt is going on at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There are pointed allegations jointly made by progressive blogger Jane Hamsher and fiscal ultra-conservative Grover Norquist, who don't see eye to eye on much of anything. But they have come together to urge that we allow the light of day to fall onto Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The allegations are detailed, and you can read them here. The center of the storm is the current White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. A rejected FOIA request only makes these allegations more troubling. The allegations are exacerbated by the fact that the Acting Inspector General was dismissed early this year through the effects of legislation pushed through by Rahm Emanuel. The fact that $800 Billion in taxpayer funds is at stake (more than $7,000 for each one of the 111,000,000 American households) makes this all the more surreal. To put this $800B number in perspective, the Defense Secretary just made a big announcement that we should set aside a "mere" two billion dollars for "nation building." A second set of allegations has also been made: that the White House is facilitating the cover up of potential malfeasance at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac until the 10-year statute of limitations has run out on Rahm Emanuel. All of this incredibly disturbing. If Mr. Obama is the man he portrayed himself to be during the campaign, he will immediately appoint an independent Inspector General in order to get to the bottom of this.

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Veteran speaks out about the military’s greatest weapon: racism

In this video, a military veteran named Mike Prysner spoke out about the military's main weapon: racism. He argues that without racism, none of the military's expensive weapons could ever be used, and there would be no chance that the working people of one country would be convinced to kill the working people of another country. His argument regarding the power of racism is another way of pointing out the explosive power of ingroups and outgroups and the curing power of diversity--a willingness to embrace the humanity of people unlike ourselves. For more on the often-used recipe for going to war, see this post on "War Made Easy."

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More of my favorite quotes

I love good quotes. There's a novel in every sentence. Some of them are explosive. I collect them from many sources, though I see many of them on my homepage, which is set for The Quotations Page. Here are my favorite quotes that I've collected over the past few months: -If you would cure anger, do not feed it. Say to yourself: 'I used to be angry every day; then every other day; now only every third or fourth day.' When you reach thirty days offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the gods. Epictetus (55 AD - 135 AD) -Life is a series of things you're not quite ready for. Rob Hopkins, of the Post Carbon Institute -An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988) -The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking. John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006) -The press is so powerful in its image-making role, it can make a criminal look like he’s the victim and make the victim look like he’s the criminal . . . If you aren’t careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. Malcolm X Speaks, p.93 -As long as people believe in absurdities they will continue to commit atrocities. Voltaire [more . . . ]

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Lengthy bill = mischief

What do Americans think of 2,000 page health reform bills? Here's what Zogby found out:

More than 80 percent of Americans agree that Congress drafts lengthy, complex bills to hide spending on special interests and to prevent constituents from understanding what's in them before a vote is taken, according to a new survey. According to a Zogby poll conducted last week, 83.5 percent of respondents agreed at least “somewhat” with the lengthy-bill premise, and 61.2 percent of Americans agreed strongly. Only 14.4 percent disagreed, and just 5.8 percent did so strongly.

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Lack of broadband competition continues

Free Press recently published a report on the state of national broadband indicating that a central failure of our communications policy is the lack of broadband competition.

For nearly a decade, the debate over broadband competition in Washington has been an increasingly tortured game of pretending we have broadband competition in America when almost any consumer can see that we clearly do not. We used to have competition: In the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress implemented a system that required telecommunications network owners to share their infrastructure with competitive providers. But in the years that followed, the powerful incumbent monopolists used the courts and the FCC to kill this regulatory system. As the rest of the world was successfully adopting this competitive model we invented, our leaders were abandoning it. Instead, they bet that competition between cable and telephone networks using different technologies would work out just as well. It didn’t.

Now the world’s leading broadband nations overseas are enjoying healthy broadband competition that has triggered higher speeds, lower prices, and wider deployment. In the United States, we’re 10 years behind, and we’re stuck with a market structure that is very difficult to steer back to where we were before we went off course. The facts on the ground are stark. Here in the United States, the duopoly phone and cable incumbents control 95 percent of the entire wired and wireless high-speed Internet access market. Prices are on the rise, and the incumbents have executed a deliberate strategy to slow innovation and deployment, hoping to squeeze every last dime out of yesterday’s technologies.

What the FCC should do: First and foremost, the FCC should make a clean break with the policies of the past eight years and declare that our broadband competition policy is a failure.

Continue ReadingLack of broadband competition continues