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Sunday, September 30, 2012

Guided by the Koch brothers, Republicans have installed czars to run Michigan's cities

What they didn't know -- because the campaign never hinted at it, much less spoke of it out loud -- was that a cabal of corporate-funded, far-right extremists behind Snyder would soon spring a secret plan on them. It was to be a horrific "Spring Surprise" that literally would reinvent Michigan -- along with negating the very idea that the American people have a democratic right to be self-governing. 

 

September 29, 2012 at 22:58:56

 Guided by the Koch brothers, Republicans have installed czars to run Michigan's cities

  By (about the author)

Cross-posted from Hightower Lowdown

Why is this dictatorial coup not a huge national media story?


Here's a political storyline that might seem familiar to you: With economic pain and political discord ripping across the land, he appeared to have the ideal resume to become the Republican contender for the top job. Not just another career politico from the dysfunctional Congress, he was a son of heartland Michigan who had founded his own venture capital firm. He looked like the image-perfect "job creator," and he'd achieved notable financial success in the no-nonsense corporate world. That success, he figured, would now catapult him to electoral victory, for it demonstrates that he's a can-do fellow with the know-how to run government like a business and fix the economy.

Mitt Romney? Yes, but before him, Rick Snyder played the lead role in this made-for-TV political drama -- and it hasn't worked out well at all for the people of Michigan. Two years ago, this former corporate chieftain and founder of two venture capital outfits stepped into Michigan's political arena, snatching the GOP gubernatorial nomination from the grasp of a congressman, the state attorney general, and a couple of other experienced pols. The times were right for a Mr. Fix-it -- with Michigan's key auto industry in the ditch and middle-class wages decimated, working families were struggling, poverty was on the rise, and whole cities were on the brink of broke.

Backed by bales of corporate cash, Snyder won the general election by ceaselessly running a series of "job creator" ads (never mind that he had been a top executive and director of a computer corporation that relentlessly shipped thousands of American jobs out of the country until 2007, when the corporation itself was shipped to Taiwanese owners). Snyder said he had a plan to "reinvent Michigan," the essence of which he expressed in one of his campaign ads: "Eliminate Michigan business tax. Cut taxes on job creators $1.5 billion. Slash needless regulations. Help small business."

That's not a plan, it's a scam -- essentially the same ol' Republican same ol', now being regurgitated by the Romney-Ryan duo. However, Michiganders were desperate enough for a way out of the state's economic doldrums that 58 percent of voters cast their ballots that November for the "Businessman with a Plan."

What they didn't know -- because the campaign never hinted at it, much less spoke of it out loud -- was that a cabal of corporate-funded, far-right extremists behind Snyder would soon spring a secret plan on them. It was to be a horrific "Spring Surprise" that literally would reinvent Michigan -- along with negating the very idea that the American people have a democratic right to be self-governing.

Michigan goes berserk
 
One of our nation's finest political satirists, cartoonist Garry Trudeau, has created a buffoonish character named Trff Bmzklfrpz for his "Doonesbury" comic strip. A caricature of despotic thugs everywhere, Bmzklfrpz is presented by Trudeau as the ruler of the aptly named Greater Berzerkistan.

Rick Snyder must've studied there, for he had barely taken his oath of office before suddenly teaming with leaders of the Republican-controlled statehouse and senate to ram into law an astonishing measure of despotic rule. It only took two weeks in March of 2011 for the ponderously titled "Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act" to be rushed through both houses of the legislature and signed by Snyder. Before the public knew it -- BAM! -- the governor was authorized to establish his own autocratic republic: Michiganistan.

At bottom, the LGSDFA Act is a doozy of autocratic mischief-making. It lets the governor seize control of any local government he deems to be in fiscal trouble, suspend the people's democratic authority, impose a corporatized version of martial law, and install his own "emergency financial manager" to govern by diktat (like some hybrid of Soviet czar and tinhorn potentate -- a Bmzklfrpz, in other words).

The official rationale is that many Michigan cities and school districts are in dire financial straits, requiring extraordinary intervention to "save" them from their own people and elected officials. "It's about helping communities," Snyder dissembled, as he began installing EFMs.

Helping? This is the kind of "help" a fox brings to the henhouse:
  • Emergency managers begin by usurping the power of all elected officials or simply "firing" them.

  • They can then rewrite the public budget without any public participation, unilaterally eliminate various services, cancel contracts, seize and sell off public assets, privatize government functions, and dictate new laws.

  • They can even dissolve a city's charter.
This isn't merely un-democratic -- it's aggressively anti-democratic.
Yes, there are some severe fiscal messes in Michigan's local governments, but the big debts that have piled up are not caused by too much democracy, bloated bureaucracies, or reckless spending by hometown officials. That's just mendacious political claptrap spewed by those wanting an excuse to impose their anti-union, government-shriveling, privatizing, partisan agenda on vulnerable people. It's no accident that the cities presently under state siege (including Benton Harbor, Detroit, Flint, and Pontiac) are heavily populated with low-income, union, African American, Democratic-voting households. While it's true that these places are in deep budgetary holes, there are real reasons for their fiscal woes, including:
  • The implosion of the auto industry that's central to these local economies, resulting in massive joblessness and drastically downsized family incomes.

  • The tanking of housing values, destroying the one source of wealth that working people had, creating a sudden plummeting of property tax collections that finance schools and city services.
  • The grim (and largely successful) corporate campaign to crush unions and bust middle-class wages.

  • US trade policies and tax subsidies that encouraged Michigan corporations to move manufacturing offshore, eliminating good jobs and forcing a large number of former taxpayers to leave their cities in search of work.
Oh, let's not forget another major cause that Snyder & Company don't want discussed: His $1 billion cut in corporate taxes. This increased the state's budget hole, which he helped fill by slashing or eliminating state funds and tax credits that went to local school districts, low-income workers, and seniors.

The LGSDFA coup against local democracy does absolutely nothing to address -- much less fix -- these actual causes of the financial crises that mayors and other elected officials face. And by the way, since when did self-styled, small-government "conservatives" become such gleeful champions of using centralized governmental power to whack the once-hallowed Republican tenet of local control? Indeed, to see the irony of their governor trampling their democratic rights, Michigan citizens need look no further than the website of the state Republican Party. Right up front, it proudly posts a list of nine inviolate GOP principles, including this gem: "The most effective, responsible, and responsive government is government closest to the people."

Spawn of the Kochs
 
While corporate plutocrats rant about out-of-control government regulators, they do not really hate big, invasive, authoritarian government -- as long as they can own it and use it for their own needs. This is why such multi-billionaire corporatists as Charles and David Koch have been pumping truckloads of money into dozens of front groups like the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan. Set up 25 years ago and linked to a network of Koch-headed centers in nearly every state, Mackinac is an idea factory and advocate for shrinking people power and enhancing corporate control.

While it refuses to name its super-wealthy individual backers on the absurd grounds that disclosure "would be a tremendous diversion," the Center does have to report donations from "charitable funds," which includes money from a host of corporate foundations tied to the Koch brothers -- Domino's Pizza, Amway, Coors, GM, ExxonMobil, JPMorgan Chase, and Walmart, among others.
In 2005, one of Mackinac's grand ideas was put forth in an essay written by a privatizing enthusiast named Louis Schimmel, who was the Center's director of municipal finance. Noting that Michigan already had a limited program for sending state managers to aid cities engulfed in a fiscal crisis, he argued that the law should be radically expanded to create an emergency financial manager with autocratic power to take control of Detroit's troubled budget. Specifically, Schimmel's Mackinac proposal called for four fundamental changes: (1) the financial overseer would "replace and take on the powers of the governing body"; (2) have sole discretion to alter the governing charter; (3) be immune from lawsuits; and (4) have the power to alter and ultimately abolish union contracts.

After Snyder won and the GOP gained big majorities in both legislative chambers in November 2010, the Mackinac Center moved quickly to reprint and circulate Schimmel's paper. Lo and behold, the governor's LGSDFA proposal, which seemed to come out of the blue three months later, actually came out of the Koch boys' Mackinac machine. Snyder's bill included all four of Schimmel's democracy-usurping components, as well as other authoritarian add-ons presumably drafted by the Center.

With a solid, lock-step majority in both the state senate and house, Snyder and Republican legislative leaders were able to railroad the full extremist package into law. The GOP slapped down even the most token gestures to local governance -- for example, a little amendment that merely would've required EFMs to hold monthly public meetings -- so locals could be told what changes their czar was making -- got crushed in the senate.

Respect the rule of law? Ha! For half a century, Michigan has had a constitutional rule that a new law doesn't take effect until 90 days after the legislative session ends -- thus giving affected citizens time to adjust or try to repeal it. By a two-thirds vote in each house, however, a law can be declared an emergency and allowed to take effect immediately.

With a super-majority in the senate, GOP members easily rushed their EFM measure into effect, but in the house, the party is 10 votes short of the necessary two-thirds tally. No problem -- they simply cheated by pulling a quick count and lying about the result. The presiding officer of the house barked out the following in one breathless, three-second sentence:

"Themajorityleaderhasrequestedimmediateeffect AllthoseinfavorpleaseriseImmediateeffectisordered."

We're to believe that in only three seconds, he called for a vote, the members got to their feet, he was able to count two-thirds of them standing in favor, and he gaveled the law into effect. Magical!

Plutocrats in action
 
Let's go to Pontiac, a once proud city boasting that one of America's iconic cars was named after it and made there, employing 23,000 auto workers in the General Motors factory. Today, though, those jobs have been moved out-of-state or eliminated, the Pontiac brand itself has been jettisoned by GM, the city's population has dropped, property values have plummeted, and the city government has been left in a fiscal wreck. To add to its miseries, Gov. Snyder's cutbacks in revenue sharing mean that Pontiac's funds have been slashed by a third.

The governor did give something to the people of Pontiac, though: An emergency manager. Appointed last September for an indefinite period (he's still there), he promptly relieved the city council of their powers and salaries. Then he fired the city attorney, clerk, and director of public works before acting on his own to outsource the work of various departments. Next, he offered up about half of the people's property in a fire sale of assets -- including city hall, police and fire stations, the library, water-pumping stations, a golf course, and two cemeteries. More recently, he has issued five edicts undermining contracts with union workers and retirees.

Who is this guy? Louis Schimmel, the privatizer man from Mackinac!
Asked last year if the EFM law made him a dictator, Schimmel conceded with a sigh: "I guess I'm the tyrant in Pontiac."

On to Benton Harbor, the home of Whirlpool Corporation and once the major producer of that giant's appliances. Whirlpool's executives, market analysts, and other top-paid employees still are based in Benton Harbor, ensconced in the corporation's brand-new, gleaming, tax-subsidized $68 million corporate campus in this town on the shores of Lake Michigan. But, beginning in the 1980s, the bosses have steadily emptied out all of their local factories, moving Benton Harbor's manufacturing jobs abroad to cut labor costs.

This has decimated the local economy, cutting the town's 20,000 population in half, destroying its tax base, and leaving it with chronic unemployment. Benton Harbor is now the poorest city in Michigan, with a per capita income of about $10,000.

The town's major asset, a public park overlooking the lake, is being absorbed into "Harbor Shores," a $500 million Whirlpool-backed resort project that includes a sprawling, Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. Of course, impoverished locals can't live or golf there, but the developers (who got government subsidies for the project) are hoping that Chicago weekenders will make the two-hour trek to the place.

These people are losing their park, but worse, a fellow named Joe Harris has taken a more valuable asset from them: Their democracy.

Harris is Snyder's EFM and literally the Dictator of Benton Harbor. A former Detroit auditor, he began by summarily stripping all power from elected officials, decreeing that city commissioners can meet, but the only action they can take is to approve minutes of their last meeting and then adjourn. When commissioners made a mild (but clever) protest by proclaiming this past spring that the city would observe Constitution Week, Harris monocratically nullified their action. What perfect symbolism! He then expressed surprise that this had upset townspeople: "All I told them was, 'Hey, guys, you have no authority.'"

With unfettered control, Harris has kicked elected officials out of their city hall offices, fired the city manager and other administrators, dismissed the planning commission and installed his own loyalists, merged the police and fire departments, and sold the com-munity's public radio station (which had criticized him). He also intends to privatize the water system (after raising residents' water rates by up to 40 percent) and has jacked up annual garbage fees by about $300 per home.

Harris is proud and happy to be a commissar for the Koch-Mackinac vision of a privatized America with a neutered democracy, and he definitely likes being in charge with no fussy checks and balances on his decisions: "I don't have to worry about whether the politicians or union leaders like what I'm doing. I love this job. I am the mayor and the commission, and I don't need them."
Meanwhile, Benton Harbor is still deep in debt -- and absolutely nothing has been done to address its real problems of joblessness, poverty, inadequate education, inequality, and civic depression. As for an actual plan to boost the economy, Harris points excitedly to his idea of economic development: Selling "I <3 and="and" benton="benton" bumperstickers="bumperstickers" harbor="harbor" p="p" souvenirs="souvenirs" t-shirts="t-shirts" to="to" tourists.="tourists.">
Rebellion
 
City after city in Michigan -- including Flint, Highland Park, and even Detroit -- are presently under assault by this mind-numbing, right-wing, ideological stupidity. Dangerous stupidity -- Detroit Mayor Dave Bing had to surrender control of his city's finances this year to a Snyder austerity czar, who has sought to increase the number of students in each classroom to 61, and the czar's budget cuts are so severe that the fire chief says if empty buildings catch fire, he'd have to let them burn down.

Is this America? It no longer will be if these social-engineering autocrats prevail. But, good news: Michiganders are in full rebellion! As always, though, battling the bastards is never easy, because... well, they're bastards. And they're very well-funded. And sneaky. Yet the people keep pushing, as we see in this chronicle of the 2012 Michigan Rebellion:
  • Feb. 29--A broad grassroots coalition (ranging from union workers to tea party members) that was organized under the umbrella of "Michigan Forward" filed more than enough citizen petitions to put the repeal of Snyder's EFM nonsense on the ballot for this November's election.

  • April 19--At the last minute, just before the repeal question would have been certified for the ballot by the state board of canvassers, a complaint by Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility is filed to stop certification. Reason? "The font size of the [petition's] heading" is claimed to be too small to comply with state law. Font size!

  • April 9-25--Legal jockeying takes place, and digging by journalists and coalition members reveals that (1) CFR is not a real group, but a creature of the Sterling Corporation, a GOP political consulting firm -- same address, phone number, and staff; and (2) a Sterling partner, Jeff Timmer, was a chief executive of the Michigan Republican Party and now happens to be one of the four voting members of the state board of canvassers. There are widespread calls for Timmer to recuse himself from the board's petition decision, but the secretary of state (a Republican) says no one can force him to do that.

  • April 26--Decision day for the board. Timmer does not withdraw, so the board deadlocks two-to-two, which kills the repeal referendum.

  • June 18--Timmer resigns from the board.

  • June 29--Citizens coalition appeals the board's rejection to Michigan's Supreme Court.

  • Aug. 3--In a four-to-three decision, the court majority (including one Republican) rules that the font size does not disqualify the petition, so the board must put the repeal question on the ballot.
This victory means that American democracy literally will be up for a vote in Michigan on Nov. 6! The Republican and Koch political networks are going all out to win -- and if they do, your state/city could well be next on their Berzerkistan anti-democracy agenda.


Jim Hightower is an American populist, spreading his message of democratic hope via national radio commentaries, columns, books, his award-winning monthly newsletter (The Hightower Lowdown) and barnstorming tours all across America.
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Monday, August 20, 2012

Plutocrats For Inequality endorse Romney/Ryan

Daily Kos







Sun Aug 19, 2012 at 08:16 PM PDT

Americans For Inequality endorse Romney/Ryan



Americans For Inequality is a group dedicated to keep America as unequal as possible. They don't mince words about their beliefs. Although they are a fairly new organization, they have been working tirelessly to assure that the people on the top of the income ladder don't slip off of it. Tomorrow, they will officially endorse Mitt Romney in New Hampshire. And you're invited!
August 20, 2012

Americans for Inequality to Endorse Mitt Romney for President
(Manchester, New Hampshire)-The Board of Directors of Americans for Inequality, a citizen’s advocacy group which promotes the benefits of inequality, voted to endorse former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) for President. “The Board of Directors voted to emphatically endorse Governor Romney’s candidacy for President” said Warren Bancroft, interim Chair of Americans for Inequality. “Americans for Inequality is prepared to commit considerable resources to help make Mitt Romney the next President of the United States.”

In the 2012 Presidential campaign, Americans for Inequality has been the first organization to educate voters about the benefits of vast inequalities. Americans for Inequality has been a pioneer in changing the narrative away from the costs and perils of inequality---and toward a new appreciation of how inequality plays an important and beneficial role in our economy.

“For far too long the poor, unemployed, and elderly have been coddled by America’s generous welfare system and exempted from contributing their fair share in taxes, while banks and companies have suffered under an oppressive regime. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s budget plan will mostly rely on ending the era of entitlement and providing tax relief for upper-income households. That’s the beauty of the Romney/Ryan plan: the higher the income, the higher the tax break. Their budget plan will ensure that inequality will remain with us, as it should, for many years,” said Bancrof
I'm sure they will keep up the good work. If only the rich will stand up for the rich, where will that leave us as a country? We need to keep our elbow grease up at work so that they can continue to spend money on their interests, even if that means loosening up labor and environmental laws, because America stands for freedom, and we need to do whatever it takes to increase inequality and make us more free. I hope you feel the same way. So please, donate your time to this historical moment when Mitt Romney gets recognized for being a tireless crusader of keeping America divided and unequal, just like it should be.
Attend and spread the word.

Tags

It's the Inequality, Stupid: Eleven charts that explain what's wrong with America.

Mother Jones



Plutocracy Now

Eleven charts that explain what's wrong with America.

Want more charts like these? See our charts on the secrets of the jobless recovery, the richest 1 percent of Americans, and how the superwealthy beat the IRS.

How Rich Are the Superrich?

A huge share of the nation's economic growth over the past 30 years has gone to the top one-hundredth of one percent, who now make an average of $27 million per household. The average income for the bottom 90 percent of us? $31,244.

The richest controls 2/3 of America's net worth

Note: The data (the most current) doesn't reflect the impact of the housing market crash. In 2007, the bottom 60% of Americans had 65% of their net worth tied up in their homes. The top 1%, in contrast, had just 10%. The housing crisis has no doubt further swelled the share of total net worth held by the superrich.

Winners Take All

The superrich have grabbed the bulk of the past three decades' gains.

Aevrage Household income before taxes.

Out of Balance

A Harvard business prof and a behavioral economist recently asked more than 5,000 Americans how they thought wealth is distributed in the United States. Most thought that it’s more balanced than it actually is. Asked to choose their ideal distribution of wealth, 92% picked one that was even more equitable.

Average Income by Family, distributed by income group.
Download: PDF (large) | JPG (smaller)

Capitol Gain

Why Washington is closer to Wall Street than Main Street.

median net worth of american families, median net worth for mebers of congress, your odds of being a millionaire, member of congress's odds of being a millionaire
member max. est. net worth
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) $451.1 million
Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) $435.4 million
Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) $366.2 million
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) $294.9 million
Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) $285.1 million
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) $283.1 million
Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) $231.2 million
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) $201.5 million
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) $136.2 million
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) $108.1 million
combined net worth: $2.8 billion
10 Richest Members of Congress 100% Voted to extend the cuts
Congressional data from 2009. Family net worth data from 2007. Sources: Center for Responsive Politics; US Census; Edward Wolff, Bard College.
Download: PDF (large) | JPG (smaller) 

Who's Winning?

For a healthy few, it's getting better all the time.

YOUR LOSS,THEIR GAIN

How much income have you given up for the top 1 percent?

 

WANT MORE CHARTS LIKE THESE?

See our charts on the secrets of the jobless recovery, the richest 1 percent of Americans, and how the superwealthy beat the IRS. Some samples:

YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR GAINS

Productivity has surged, but income and wages have stagnated for most Americans. If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.



MEET THE ELITE

ONLY LITTLE PEOPLE PAY TAXES



Sources

Income distribution: Emmanuel Saez (Excel)

Net worth: Edward Wolff (PDF)
Household income/income share: Congressional Budget Office
Real vs. desired distribution of wealth: Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely (PDF)
Net worth of Americans vs. Congress: Federal Reserve (average); Center for Responsive Politics (Congress)
Your chances of being a millionaire: Calculation based on data from Wolff (PDF); US Census (household and population data)  
Member of Congress' chances: Center for Responsive Politics
Wealthiest members of Congress: Center for Responsive Politics
Tax cut votes: New York Times (Senate; House)
Wall street profits, 2007-2009: New York State Comptroller (PDF)
Unemployment rate, 2007-2009: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Home equity, 2007-2009: Federal Reserve, Flow of Funds data, 1995-2004 and 2005-2009 (PDFs)
CEO vs. worker pay: Economic Policy Institute
Historic tax rates: Calculations based on data from The Tax Foundation
Federal tax revenue: Joint Committee on Taxation (PDF)

Read also: Kevin Drum on the decline of Big Labor, the rise of Big Business, and why the Obama era fizzled so soon.
More Mother Jones charty goodness: How the rich get richer; how the poor get poorer; who owns Congress?
Do you appreciate fair and factual reporting on Occupy Wall Street? Please donate a few bucks to help us expand our coverage.

Dave Gilson

Senior Editor
Dave Gilson is a senior editor at Mother Jones. Read more of his stories, follow him on Twitter, or contact him at dgilson (at) motherjones (dot) com. RSS |

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Saturday, August 11, 2012

Romney Has the Plutocrat Ticket





Content Section

Paul Begala: With Ryan, Romney Has the Plutocrat Ticket



By choosing Paul Ryan—the guy who wants to slash taxes on the rich and gut the government—Romney shows he’s decided to go nuclear in the class war. 

n selecting Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has doubled-down on the one thing he has never flip-flopped on: economic elitism. Romney, born to wealth, has selected Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, who was also born to wealth. As the former University of Oklahoma football coach, Barry Switzer, once said of someone else: both these guys were born on third and thought they hit a triple.
 
There's nothing wrong with inherited wealth. Lord knows great presidents from FDR to JFK came into their fortunes through the luck of birth. But there is something wrong with winners of the lineage lottery who want to hammer those who did not have the foresight to select wealthy sperm and egg.

Finally, we have peered into Mitt Romney's core. It is neither pro-choice nor pro-life; neither pro-NRA nor pro-gun control; neither pro-equality nor antigay. But it is pro-wealth and very anti–middle class. Mitt Romney has decided to go nuclear in the class war.

Paul Ryan, the darling of the New York–Washington media elite, is almost certainly not the most qualified person Romney could have picked. Unlike governors like Chris Christie or Tim Pawlenty, or a former high-ranking White House official like Rob Portman, Ryan has never run anything larger than his congressional office or the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. The elite love Ryan because he speaks for more cowardly members of their class; his stridently anti–middle class policies are music to their ears.

You will often hear people who ought to know better dress up Ryan's savage economic priorities with euphemisms. Ryan wants to "fix" Medicare. No, he doesn't. He wants to kill it. Saying Paul Ryan wants to "fix" Medicare is like saying the vet wanted to "fix" my dog Major; that which used to work very well no longer works at all—and Major is none too happy with the procedure.
Ryan's budget is the fiscal embodiment of the deeply evil, wholeheartedly selfish so-called philosophy of Ayn Rand. In fact, Ryan has described Rand as "the reason I got involved in public service," and reportedly makes staffers read her works.
Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney
U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan waves with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney after he introduced Romney at a Wisconsin campaign stop last March. (Scott Olson / Getty Images)

Think about that. As my buddy James Carville has said, what would all the Best People say if Nancy Pelosi made her staffers read, say, Margaret Sanger? Or if Barack Obama made interns study Das Kapital? Sure, a few months ago, facing Catholic protestors at Georgetown University, Ryan said he renounced Rand. But as the national Catholic weekly, America, wrote, he did not change the substance of a single policy. Some renunciation. It seems to me Ryan has renounced Rand's politically incorrect atheism, not her morally bankrupt philosophy of Screw Thy Neighbor.

Politically, the choice does the one thing Romney needed least of all: it shifts the focus of the 2012 presidential election away from the soft economy and onto the Ryan—now, Romney-Ryan—budget. The most radical governing document in a generation, the Romney-Ryan budget would dramatically alter America's basic social compact. No less an expert than Newt Gingrich called it "right-wing social engineering".

Don't be fooled. Ryan is no deficit hawk. He voted for all the policies that created the current ocean of red ink: the Bush tax cuts for the rich; the war in Iraq; the Bush Medicare prescription-drug plan, the first entitlement without a dedicated revenue source. Ryan cloaks his brutal budget in the urgent rhetoric of fiscal responsibility, but that's a Trojan Horse. As the Center for American Progress has noted, under the Romney-Ryan budget, "the national debt, measured as a share of GDP, would never decline, surpassing 80 percent by 2014, and 90 percent by 2022."

Ryan's real goal is to destroy the ladder of opportunity for the poor and the middle class. Look at his budget: Medicare would be shattered and replaced with a voucher system wherein seniors would be given a stipend and told to negotiate with the health insurance goliaths. According to the Congressional Budget Office, ten years after the Ryan plan was enacted, seniors would pay $6,400 per year more for the same health care, as the stipend would fail to keep up with projected cost increases.

And that's just for starters. One out of every four dollars spent on transportation—which is already underfunded—would be cut. Veterans' benefits would be cut 13 percent from what President Obama says is needed. Young men Paul Ryan voted to send into combat would suffer once more on the home front. Education would be cut, food safety, air traffic control, environmental protection—almost everything that makes us safer, smarter or stronger—would get hammered.

How can a budget so brutal not make a dent in the debt? If you have to ask you have not been paying attention. What is the holy grail for princelings like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan? Of course: tax cuts for the rich. The Tax Policy Center crunched the numbers and found that under Romney's proposal, 95 percent of Americans would see their taxes go up by an average of $500, but millionaires would receive an extra $87,000 tax cut. The net result: an $86 billion annual shift in the tax burden away from those making over $200,000 a year and onto those making less.

And so Romney Hood has his Friar Tuck. And somewhere in hell, Ayn Rand is cackling with glee.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Crime of the Century



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Crime of the Century






Posted on Jul 6, 2012
AP/Mark Lennihan

Robert E. Diamond Jr., newly resigned as the CEO of Barclays.

Forget Bernie Madoff and Enron’s Ken Lay—they were mere amateurs in financial crime. The current Libor interest rate scandal, involving hundreds of trillions in international derivatives trade, shows how the really big boys play. And these guys will most likely not do the time because their kind rewrites the law before committing the crime.

Modern international bankers form a class of thieves the likes of which the world has never before seen. Or, indeed, imagined. The scandal over Libor—short for London interbank offered rate—has resulted in a huge fine for Barclays Bank and threatens to ensnare some of the world’s top financers. It reveals that behind the world’s financial edifice lies a reeking cesspool of unprecedented corruption. The modern-day robber barons pillage with a destructive abandon totally unfettered by law or conscience and on a scale that is almost impossible to comprehend.

How to explain a $450 million settlement for one bank whose defense, in a plea bargain worked out with regulators in London and Washington, is that every institution in their elite financial circle was doing it? Not just Barclays but JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and others are now being investigated on suspicion of manipulating the Libor rate, so critical to a $700 trillion derivatives market.

Caught as the proverbial deer in the headlights, Barclays Chairman Robert E. Diamond Jr. resigned this week and offered a plaintive defense to the British Parliament that he learned only recently that his bank was manipulating the index on which so large a part of international trade is based. That is plausible only if we assume he was paid $10 million a year to be deliberately ignorant. The Wall Street Journal had exposed this scandal fully four years ago but his bank continued to participate in it nonetheless.  

“Study Casts Doubt on Key Rate” was the headline on the May 29, 2008, investigative report, which concluded: “Major banks are contributing to the erratic behavior of a crucial global lending benchmark, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows.” Even then, according to the report, it was known that the Libor rate was being manipulated “to act as if the banking system was doing better than it was at critical junctures in the financial crisis.”

Fast-forward four years to Diamond’s testimony before Parliament this week in which the CEO claimed his recent discovery of a pattern of interest manipulation by Barclays had made him “physically sick.” Who was to blame? According to the executive, subordinates acting behind his back.

The American-born banker, who has dual citizenship in the United States and Britain, is well versed in financial chicanery, having started by putting together derivatives packages at Credit Suisse First Boston back in 1996. He was compelled under parliamentary questioning Wednesday to admit that “I can’t sit here and say no one in the industry [knew] about the problems with Libor. There was an issue out there and it should have been dealt with more broadly.” 

He couldn’t deny widespread chicanery within his bank because, as in the collapse of Enron a decade ago, investigators had uncovered an email record of market manipulation so glaring that if the top executives were unaware, it was because they didn’t want to know.  

As The New York Times editorialized: “The evidence, cited by the Justice Department—which Barclays agreed is ‘true and accurate’—is damning. ‘Always happy to help,’ one employee wrote in an email after being asked to submit false information. ‘If you know how to keep a secret, I’ll bring you in on it,’ wrote a Barclays trader to a trader at another bank, referring to their strategies for mutual gain. If that’s not conspiracy and price-fixing, what is?”

The U.S. Justice Department made a deal with Barclays, and although it may prosecute some individuals in the scam, it agreed not to go after the bank itself. “Such an agreement makes sense only if that cooperation will allow prosecutors to nail other banks that have been involved in setting the rates, including potential cases against Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBC ... ,” the Times editorial said.

Both Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase were reported by The Wall Street Journal years ago to be suspected of rigging the Libor interest rate. The leaders of those banks, despite such media exposure, clearly remained confident enough to continue on their merry way.
The sad reality is that they will probably get away with it. The world of high finance is by design as obscure and opaque as the bankers and their political surrogates can make it, and even this most recent crack in their defense of deception will soon be made to go away.

Click here to check out Robert Scheer’s new book,
“The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street.”


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Thursday, July 5, 2012

The Elite Coup is Complete (Part 2)

Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice

The Elite Coup is Complete (Part 2)

The thirty-year bloodless coup, taking over America, conducted by the political, academic, and financial elite is a fait accompli as evidenced by the failure to charge anybody for the horrendous, and well documented, criminality behind America’s housing/financial bust of 2008 as described in “The Elite Coup is Complete,”  June 27th, 2012.

Now, for the next step, a leader is needed to implement the final stages of the coup, and all signs point directly at the U.S. presidential election scheduled for November 6th.  This election will likely be the crowning stroke for plutocratic America.

Aside from known political leaders, like President Reagan and Majority Leader Tom “The Hammer” DeLay, for over three decades now, the elites have been led by shadowy, amorphous figureheads that are as perplexing to understand as the Smoking Man in The X-Files TV series, meaning: Things happen to advance the elite’s interests, but, often times, nobody knows how, or by whom. However, now that the elites have completed their coup, they need to elect a leader who understands the business culture of High Net Worth Individuals, which is defined by Forbes Magazine as somebody worth over $30 million, and Mitt Romney qualifies eight times over. This article intends to explore the workings behind the scenes to assure his victory.

There are approximately 300 million television sets in U.S. households and, on average, people watch TV four hours per day; it is a way of life in America, and repetitively, it reinforces messages with images and sound bites. In that regard, and with unlimited amounts of money for political advertising now available, America is about to experience its first-ever presidential election competing for airtime with televangelists.

The question is: Will the political tide turn to a new presidency in 2012 based upon television ads? If the recent Wisconsin recall vote is a prognosticator, which vote included a flawed candidate (Republican Gov. Scott Walker) who overcame a 10-point deficit in the polls as the first governor in U.S. history to withstand a recall vote, the answer is a resounding yes, without a doubt. The Wisconsin experience is proof positive.

Henceforward, ever since the Citizens United decision, the august Supreme Court justices have done more than toss a bone (a very big bone indeed) to wealthy political interests; they have ‘branded’ media as the Tammany Hall of America’s political future. No doubt, Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity and author, or co-author, of 11 books, including The Buying of the President series, will now write a new book, but his research efforts will be a real pain in the gluteus maximus because the Citizens United decision forces him to wear a miner’s hard hat with an attached lamp now that politics have gone deep underground within labyrinthine tunnels that are almost impossible to navigate, thus, bringing forth a new democracy for a new age, redefining democracy, the institution, as purely a tool of ‘who has the most money’ like never before. Henceforth, elections are won as reliably as “throwing a fight” in Las Vegas, circa the1950s.

To understand the challenge for Lewis’ new book, consider the struggle as described by OpenSecrets,  which is the database for the pre-eminent investigative body, Center for Responsive Politics, Washington, D.C., that follows money in politics. They have an on-going strategy; i.e., “Shadow Money Trail,” to locate and catalog contributions to politically active nonprofit organizations that are not required to disclose their donors to the public. Since the Citizens United ruling, OpenSecrets’ experience in discovering information has been similar to traveling in a maze that leads from one dead end to another.

Nevertheless, the Shadow Money Trail has already unearthed some juicy information, but trying to understand the serpentine flow of the various relationships they uncovered gives rise to a migraine headache because: One 501(c)(4) gives funds to another 501(c)(4) and, in turn, to others, and others, and to others to the point where the layers make it nearly impossible to connect the dots {501(c)(4)s are tax-exempt “social welfare” organizations that must operate exclusively to promote social welfare in order to retain their special IRS status and not violate the law.}* An example of a registered 501(c)(4) is Center to Protect Patient’s Rights (“CPPR”) out of Arizona, a secretive well-funded group that masquerades as an organization concerned about health care but which, in reality, funnels money to other secretive groups that spend millions on TV adds attacking Democrats running for the House and Senate. It is entirely possible, and probable, the only patients they protect are right-wing-leaning politicians.

* In 2010, Senate Republicans filibustered, and prevented, a vote on a bill, the DISCLOSE ACT, passed by the House that addressed identification of donors of 501(c) (4) s.

CPPR provides grants to clusters of well-known conservative groups that also operate under 501(c)(4)s classified as “social welfare” groups like American Future Fund, which is based in Iowa. They run hard-hitting ads against Democrats across the country. In turn, American Future Fund funds other hard-hitting 501(c)(4)s, and those recipients fund other funds. You get the picture; however, organizations that have nothing to hide do not need to funnel money from one shadowy group to another to another, leaving “social welfare” in the dust and creating a daisy chain whereby it is impossible to connect the dots. Somehow, this interminable Alice in Wonderland fable never reveals who’s behind the curtain. On the surface, the whole affaire appears so blatantly contrived it stinks like putrid fish in the hot sun! These are grownups playing Ring Around the Rosie.

The executive director of CPPR is Sean Noble of Arizona, a PR/Political consultant and former GOP chief of staff to former Republican Rep. John Shadegg (AR). Noble takes no salary from CPPR, but his firm, Noble Associates, is paid $340,000 for management services. Wow! These people cannot get past the concept of shuffling money from one fund to another fund; everything is shifty!  Sean is also director of a robo-calling service (talk about symbiotic businesses!) called DC London Inc., probably referencing a direct connection to Rebekah Brooks. According to Politico, Noble is a Koch operative. CPPR’s stated mandate is: “…educating the public on issues related to health care with an emphasis on patient’s rights.” Ahem!

This is where the IRS enters the picture because, according to Reuters as of June 29, 2012, the IRS is investigating such groups to determine whether their fundraising or advertising runs afoul of tax law. Here’s the issue in a nutshell: Super PACs, which must disclose their donors, operate independently from campaigns but may release ads that boost or attack specific candidates. Whereas tax-exempt groups qualifying under the U.S. tax code as, for example, “social welfare” groups, which are 501(c)(4)s, are allowed to keep their donors private (secretive) as long as most of their money is spent on so-called “issue ads.” Unlike regular political ads, such ads cannot use a candidate’s name or likeness and are supposed to be used to educate the public on broad issues or positions. There’s a lot of gray area within that mandate, and here’s guessing the law may be violated via convoluted relationships! But, nobody will know for sure until the IRS investigations are completed after the upcoming elections.

Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (America’s most powerful Republican political force) is another beneficiary of CPPR.  The names of these groups that play Ring Around the Rosie are always couched in patriotism or social welfare; e.g., 60 Plus Association, Americans for Job Security, US Health Freedom Coalition, Americans United for Life Action (who came up with this one?), Freedom Vote, and Concerned Women 4 America (honestly, these are not fictitious names). The list goes on, and on, with rah-rah all-American-sounding names for organizations that, in reality, conduct operations like 1930s Brown Shirt cells opaquely operating in dark shadows. One has to wonder who they think they are fooling (hopefully, not the IRS), but yet, this is the problem; they are fooling a lot of people! The entire affaire has the odor of impish pranksters, and oh, please… the names of the groups are so embarrassingly phony, trite, spurious, and juvenile, but regardless, and herein lay the ugly truth: Their efforts do influence voters in a very profound way. Just ask Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, whose transparent (“legal”) funding groups outspent his Democratic challenger 2-to-1. But, the tentacled non-reporting groups attached to CPPR spent who knows how much? Nobody will ever know, but according to Mike McCabe of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, “We have a level of outside interference in this election that the state has never seen before.” (Sources claim Walker outspent his opponent 7-to-1.)

This type of stealthy underground, behind-the-curtain politicking carries a particular stench unique to weak-kneed minions that grovel at the feet of insipid moguls. Herein one sees the unseemly underbelly of this upcoming political campaign. One would think the disgust amongst voters would register a strong backlash, but then again, the voters do not know who is behind which curtain… connecting the dots is such a problem. Governor Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin proves this in spades.

According to the Center for Media and Democracy: One year ago, 54% of Wisconsinites disapproved of Walker’s job performance. Over the following months, “Walker spent unprecedented sums on a seamless eight-month public relations campaign that dwarfed the television expenditures of his opponent.”

Here’s how Walker did it, as one example: Walker went on air in November 2011 (seven months before the June 2012 recall) with an ad featuring “Kristi,” a high school teacher who effectively frames the issue. “In my opinion, it feels a little bit like sour grapes,” says Kristi with a killer Wisconsin accent, “It feels like — we didn’t get our way, we want to change the outcome.” This message was hammered, and hammered, again, and again, with dark money ads in the final weeks of the election by an unknown group with unknown donors called Coalition for American Values (here we go again with another immature name), featuring actors who “did not vote for Walker,” but brought the message that recalls “are not the Wisconsin way.” Since Coalition for American Values files as a 501(c)(4), the question for the IRS is: Does Kristi’s ad represent money spent for “social welfare” purposes and/or was spending for her ad disproportionate to spending on actual “social welfare” campaigns conducted by Coalition for American Values?

The Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity (here’s another one of those infantile-sounding organizational names, transparently phony and stupid… oh please!) also spent serious money with an intensive ad campaign attempting to convince Wisconsinites that Walker’s budget cuts were working…not! (See: “Will Gov. Scott Walker Ever Come Clean on Wisconsin’s Budget Deficit?”) Eventually, the Koch’s alone would outspend the democratic candidate $10 million to $3.9 million, or over 2:1.

Well… now that the Walker test case was so unbelievably successful, there’s no guessing what happens in the general election coming up in four short months, but the writing is on the wall. If a flawed candidate like Walker can win by coming back from 10 points down in seven months, then just imagine what the underground propagandists can do for Governor Romney, whose race against President Obama is already looking like a photo finish!

With Romney in control, one day it’ll be repeal of Obama’s health care plan, the next day putting people to work on the Keystone XL Pipeline (to read about America’s most under-reported oil spill, Google: “Observer Michigan oil spill”), and followed the next day with carte blanche fracking all across the land to achieve energy independence by forcing/blasting carcinogens deep underground to pressure the release of oil or gas from centuries-old tight formations in the general vicinity of America’s underground fresh water aquifers.

All of this begs the question: What safeguards will be exercised or will the Romney team follow the path of least resistance so characteristic of the Right, eliminating federal governmental regulations, a 100% laissez faire economy with self-regulating private enterprise. This is the mantra of all of the above-mentioned funding groups, but look at what happens when they are regulated…   BP/Gulf of Mexico!

• Read Part 1 here.

Robert Hunziker, a former hedge fund manager, is a professional independent negotiator for worldwide commodity actual transactions and a freelance writer for progressive publications as well as business journals. Mr. Hunziker earned an MA degree in economic history at DePaul University/Chicago, and he resides in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

The Elite Coup is Complete


Dissident Voice: a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice



The Elite Coup is Complete

The American plutocratic revolution is now complete. The proof is: There are no criminal charges for the housing bust and financial meltdown of 2008. Starting with Reagan in the 1980s, as of today the Right has won their decades-long overthrow for complete control of America. An elite corps of wealthy now run the country. Their bloodless rebellion, a coup d’etat whereby the Left was nullified by a tripartite (bankers, academia, and politicians) cabal’s tour de force, is a sharp contrast to the old-fashioned traditional bloody coup d’etats we’re accustomed to in South America; e.g., the Chilean September 1973 military coup against President Allende conducted by ultra right wing General Pinochet, who, after bombing the presidential palace, massacred the Left (See the film Missing, by Costa-Gavras, Universal Pictures, 1982.). Of course, Pinochet’s old-fashioned coup had the advantage of speed and efficiency, completed within hours, whereas America’s bloodless coup took decades to accomplish, but on the other hand, America has not yet condoned military occupation on domestic soil.

The proof of a successful coup by the plutocratic elite is everywhere on display because it is absolutely remarkable how much we know about their unethical and/or criminal behavior behind America’s 2007-08 financial meltdown without knowing what to do about it!

As Charles H. Ferguson, winner of the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Inside Job, says, “There is overwhelming evidence of massive criminal behavior” in the 2007-08 real estate bust and financial meltdown, but nobody has been charged with a crime. This, in part, is why his recently published Predator Nation, Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America (Random House, 2012) footnotes/documents the virulent combination of unchecked greed and criminal behavior behind the financial collapse of 2008. Ferguson identifies leading bankers, academics, and politicians who collaborated to pillage the American public. The book has been called a “roadmap for prosecution,” naming the culpable, stating the crimes, referencing laws that were broken.

How this tragedy occurred right under the country’s collective noses is a lengthy and nefarious story. Charles Ferguson’s new book covers this story with remarkable detail. Ferguson’s diatribe is laced by a book cover depicting a one hundred dollar bill folded into the image of a hand, flipping the bird, an obvious reference to the perpetrating financial, political, and academic elite’s haughty attitude towards the general public, emphasizing the dauntless, depraved lawlessness behind their theft committed in broad daylight. And, part of Ferguson’s thesis is exactly that; i.e., criminal acts led to, and were the cause of, one of history’s worst financial meltdowns. He also paints the picture of how America has been hijacked by a financial elite, an oligarchy that operates at the expense of the entire American population: “The financial sector is the core of a new oligarchy that has risen to power over the past thirty years, and that has profoundly changed American life.”

Ferguson’s ingenious work is, without a doubt, on target because we, as a nation, know it is true. Not only have oodles of articles and books already flushed out this repugnant story but intuitively, the citizens of the country know it is true because of how the disaster came down; namely, governmental policy and Wall Street chicanery turned the housing industry into a gigantic Las Vegas craps table and dispensed free playing chips to beginners. Millions of unsuspecting Americans bought into this deal-of-a-lifetime, and when the house of cards tumbled, unsuspecting American taxpayers rescued the culprits, but the bankers already tucked away gargantuan fees.

We also know it is true because it happened in broad daylight, right before our eyes, caught on camera was the U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, on one knee before a stern-faced, but dismayed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, pleading congressional approval for $700 billion (taxpayer funds) to bail out his buddies (so sorry Richard S. Fuld, Jr., CEO, Lehman Brothers, no jerks allowed.) Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve turned the SWIFT international wire system white hot, spreading trillions of US Dollars around the globe to foreign banks and multinational corporate interests in order to keep the worldwide ship of state afloat, and surrounding these horrifying events, the housing market crumbled apart like broken tinker toys, credit dissipated, and Wall Street crashed with the durable S& P Index registering a nasty, and ominously devilish, 666 low print early in March 2009.

As of today, people who are not normally schooled in the language of the Wall Street know names of people and of programs, like Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Lehman, Freddie Mac, credit default swaps, and derivatives. Wall Street and big banks are the butt ends of crass jokes on late night TV, and inequality of income/wealth has never been so obvious. According to a recent Survey of Consumer Finance by the Federal Reserve, median family net worth fell 40% from 2007 to 2010. Meanwhile, according to Forbes Magazine, billionaires and multi-millionaires set all-time records. The discrepancy between Middle America and Wall Street has never been so radiantly exposed, and the general public has finally learned how Wall Street makes a killing off their backs. Most likely, Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein, whose firm bet against (short sales) toxic securities they sold to other institutions, would not survive a stroll down Main Street in certain parts of the country.

The American public is overly informed about how and why one of the most corrupt and stupidest-ever financial schemes body-slammed the world economy, but as Charles Ferguson astutely declares, “Nobody has gone to jail” (poor ole Bernie Madoff must feel like he’s carrying the burden for everybody.)  Mortgage brokers, Wall Street investment bankers, commercial bankers, credit rating agencies, accountants, and politicians are complicit in the world’s biggest-ever ponzi scheme, taking advantage of the entire population of the country and sticking it to foreign banks/institutions by selling them toxic housing securities. The pure ugliness, brazenness, and gall of the perpetrators is enough to turn one’s stomach. As for CEO Fuld, he was attacked shortly after it was announced Lehman was bankrupt: “He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold.” (The Telegraph, October 7, 2008.)

According to Ferguson, there is overwhelming public evidence in (1) lawsuits, (2) depositions, (3) government investigations, and (4) whistleblowers of highly illegal conduct in the housing bubble and financial crisis. There is a staggering amount of evidence that CEOs of Wall Street firms, like Lehman Brothers, were warned that their financial controls were inadequate and their accounting was wrong, or to put in it in plain English: ‘their books were cooked’. A prime example is a memo warning to top Lehman executives by Senior Vice President Matthew Lee, “I feel it is my ethical and legal responsibility to point out to you that there are billions of dollars of unjustified assets on our balance sheet.” (To see the memo, Google: “Matthew Lee and Lehman.”) A month later Lee was dismissed from the firm and the CEO of Lehman continued to stand by the firm’s financial statements even though warned of extreme problems, inaccuracies, and overstatements; e.g., ‘Repo 105’ transactions artificially boosted the firm’s balance sheet by $50 billion! This is illegal corporate behavior of the first order, but where are the criminal charges?

Furthermore, according to Ferguson, “Over the last thirty years, in parallel with deregulation and the rising power of money in American politics, significant portions of American academia have deteriorated into ‘pay to play’ activities. The sale of academic expertise for the purpose of influencing government policy, the courts, and public opinion is now a multibillion-dollar business,” academia has become embedded within the finance industry and its greatest apologist, Exhibit A, is Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary, former President of Harvard, former Head of the Council of Economic Advisors, former Mister Everything Economics, a proponent of the deregulation of financial services; i.e., elimination of the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept commercial bankers out of the risky securities business ever since 1933, stating, when significant parts of Glass-Steagall were overturned: “With this bill, the American financial system takes a major step forward towards the 21stCentury.”  Thus, Summers was directly behind the entire meltdown, but as a highly endorsed hedge fund/banking consultant raking in millions, before and after his stint with Clinton, he had to follow his true conscience; i.e., benefactors, and push to kill the 1933 Act, which successfully, and responsively, protected bank depositors from risky commercial bank shenanigans for over 60 years.

Summers is the one who dressed down Raghuram Rajan (Finance Professor, University of Chicago; Chief Economist IMF), who presented a paper about credit default swaps at the Federal Reserve Jackson Hole 2005 Conference, Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier? accusing firms of “goosing up returns” with latent risk, which proved to be precisely what cratered A.I.G., asking the prescient question: “If firms today implicitly are selling various kinds of default insurance to goose up returns, what happens if catastrophe strikes?” Rajan’s critique was thoughtful, balanced, and very obviously on point; it is indeed a sad commentary that Summers immediately stood up, lambasting Rajan and calling him a “Luddite,” but on the other hand, since Summers planned to be or was/is in the pockets of hedge funds and Wall Street, he flippantly overlooked the most obvious of dangers to the entire financial system in concert with the “profits now” mentality that bends to Wall Street’s every wish.

The real mystery is how and why they get away with it when their crimes and/or despicable ethical behavior prove so hideous… and so obvious, and thus, many astute progressive mouths dropped wide open with dismay when President Obama insanely appointed Summers as the Director of the National Economic Council, which only goes to prove what a tight clique exist amongst academia, politicians, and Wall Street whereby bad judgment and/or unethical practices are overlooked in favor of companionship-to-profits.

Nobody has gone to jail and as Ferguson explained in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, “There is overwhelming evidence of massive criminal behavior.” Ferguson says: “the American people need to take their country back.” He suggests some kind of nationwide movement but without stating specifics. Indeed, the stench of the entire cabal, including academia, politicians, Wall Street, and rating agencies is so loathsomely squalid, and rotten to the core, it would not surprise if perpetrators are dragged into the streets in the middle of the night, stripped naked, tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail, assuming some daring citizens become so fed up with the ‘system’ they take matters into their own hands.

Otherwise, and because nobody has been criminally charged, one can bitterly assume the country is now firmly in the hands of a wealthy elite, including academicians who, similar to guns for hire, will say or publish anything for a buck. With 20/20 hindsight, it is now clear the citizenry of the country cannot trust, but also cannot do anything about (other than revolt in the streets), the tripartite cabal that stole their country in broad daylight right under their noses. And, really…  isn’t it a crying shame the intelligentsia, who we trust to educate our society, is so deeply involved… but… come to think about it, they probably saw what happened to their colleagues in Chile under Pinochet, concluding life is much better, and easier, when one is part of the Inside Job.

By definition … if no criminal charges are filed, the coup is complete.
Robert Hunziker, a former hedge fund manager, is a professional independent negotiator for worldwide commodity actual transactions and a freelance writer for progressive publications as well as business journals. Mr. Hunziker earned an MA degree in economic history at DePaul University/Chicago, and he resides in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.