Who Is Obama Playing Ball With?

by Amy Goodman

It looked like it was business as usual for President Barack Obama on the first day of his Martha’s Vineyard vacation, as he spent five hours golfing with Robert Wolf, president of UBS Investment Bank and chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas. Wolf, an early financial backer of Obama’s presidential campaign, raised $250,000 for him back in 2006, and in February was appointed by the president to the White House’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Economic recovery for whom?

Interestingly, Wolf’s appointment came in the same month that UBS agreed to pay the U.S. $780 million to settle civil and criminal charges related to helping people in the U.S. avoid taxes. Not to worry. UBS, an ailing bank with a pre-existing condition, had great insurance coverage. It was actually receiving $2.5 billion in a backdoor bailout from bailed-out insurance giant AIG. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said, “It looks like we’re simply laundering this money through AIG.” UBS, this bank that shelters wealthy tax dodgers, was actually being bailed out by hardworking U.S. taxpayers.

UBS, which once stood for Union Bank of Switzerland, was founded more than a century ago. Its success hinges on Switzerland’s famous banking secrecy laws, allowing people to squirrel money away in untraceable “numbered accounts.” Secret Swiss bank accounts have become a favorite way for wealthy people in the U.S. to dodge taxes. According to the U.S. Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in a July 2008 report, “From at least 2000 to 2007, UBS made a concerted effort to open accounts in Switzerland for wealthy U.S. clients, employing practices that could facilitate, and have resulted in, tax evasion by U.S. clients.”

As part of the settlement, UBS agreed to share client account information with the U.S. government. While there may be as many as 52,000 such accounts, UBS is releasing only about 4,450 client names. Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman said in a press release, “We will be receiving an unprecedented amount of information on taxpayers who have evaded their tax obligation by hiding money offshore at UBS.” UBS will be sending account holders notification that their names may be among those delivered to the IRS, and the IRS, in turn, is granting leniency to tax dodgers who turn themselves in before Sept. 23. Account holders won’t know if their names are included, though, so gamblers among them may keep quiet and hope their accounts stay secret.

Last Friday, as Wolf was preparing for his golf game with Obama, UBS whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld was sentenced to 40 months in prison for facilitating offshore tax evasion through UBS banking schemes, despite assisting federal investigators in exposing the secretive bank.

Above the entrance to UBS’ headquarters in Zurich is a bust of the Greek god Hermes—not only the fleet-footed messenger of the gods, but also the god of thieves and merchants. The symbolism is striking. Whether or not Wolf won his golf game against Obama, UBS has clearly scored a hole in one.

Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of “Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times,” recently released in paperback.

Astroturf: Exposing the Fake Grassroots

And while we're on the general subject....

Here's a little Glenn Beck gallery. Yet another triumph of noise over reason, sheer stupidity over intelligence. 1/4 to 1/3 of the American public feed out of this halfwit's hand.

Scary.











































Now this last one is not of ol' Glenn, but nobody - no less an elected official - so forcefully combines sheer ignorance with outright wingnut lunacy as the Honorable Rep. Michelle Bachman of Minnestota (yes, the same bipolar state that barely elected Al Franken to the Senate).

So, here's my piece of unsolicited advice to all of those first class idiots that swarmed the health care town hall meeting in Tampa the other night, screaming about socialism and nazism:

THIS fat fuck calls Obama a Nazi?!?!?!?

Let us hope that next time Rush the Scumbag comes back from one of his sex tourism jaunts in the Dominican Republic, they find more than an empty vial of Viagra.

Oh ... and as for you so-called dittoheads, do us all a favor and march off in unison into the sea sooner than later.

Evidence of explosives in Twin Tower rubble

"It's not like before"

These aren't two hippies railing against the system. This is one of most insightful mathematicians and one of the most accomplished options traders of our time. Watch it and start making plans. Maybe.

The Quiet Coup and other things

Wow, has it really been 2 months since I posted anything? Some of it is, of course, the same inertia that has afflicted a sizable number of liberals since election day 2008. I was laughing the other day at an ad from a purveyor of progressive bumper stickers and other paraphernalia, facetiously (or not) begging people to buy from him and help shake the sales slump he's been suffering since the election. On a more somber note, progressive talk radio has evaporated from the south Florida airways.

Complacency? No. Never that. We're still in Iraq; we're killing even more innocents in Afghanistan. We are, no doubt, the Taliban's best recruiting tool, not only there, but in Pakistan, too. The economy is still stuttering, and all anyone wants to do is evaluate recovery by Wall Street! Congress, no matter the Democratic majority, is still the private property of lobbyists.

Hey, President Obama - I'M PISSED!!!!!!! I worked my ass off to win you Florida and you gave me Timothy Geithner, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers! Not to mention Robert Gates.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose ...

Maybe that should have been the title of this post ...

It wasn't until I read an article in the Atlantic by Simon Johnson that I began to understand the pathology of Obama's thrall with Wall Street. Johnson is a professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management and the former head economist (2006-2007) for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Just so you know that we're not talking about some bandana-wearing anarchist. His article is titled "The Quiet Coup," and it is hands down the best piece of analysis that I have read concerning the strange, sorry state in which our nation has found itself.

From the article's lead in:
"The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time."

Read it, and weep. Then send President Change an email and tell him to do the same.

Hey Paul Krugman (A Song, A Plea)

This is just TOO good. Jonathan Mann writes a song each day.

Best news of the first 100 days

The Obama administration has almost made up for the appointment of Timothy Geithner to the Treasury by announcing that Van Jones will be joining the Cabinet as Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). This is just incredibly good news and we should all be celebrating!

Progressive Obama emerges from his centrist shell

... and I for one, rejoice. This is why I gave up my weekends to knock on (sometimes hostile) strangers' doors from September through November 2. Was I worried? You betcha. Why wasn't Joseph Stieglitz and Paul Krugman, both Nobel Prize winners for economics, invited to his economic adviser table along with tired Clintonistas like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin? Robert Rubin?!?!?!? The guy who Marketwatch called one of "ten most unethical people in business," who has profited greatly from policies he enacted while Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury?

So, what is the reason for my (cautious) optimism? It is the following components of his budget, unvieled last week:

Makes a $634 billion down payment on fixing health care that will go a long way toward paying for a more efficient, more affordable health care system that covers every single American.³

Reduces taxes for 95% of working Americans. And if your family makes less than $250,000, your taxes won't go up one dime.⁴

Invests more than $100 billion in clean energy technology, creating millions of green jobs that can never be outsourced.⁵

Brings our troops home from Iraq on a firm timetable, finally bringing the war to a close—and freeing up almost ten billion dollars a month for domestic priorities.⁶

Reverses growing income inequality. The plan lets the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans expire and focuses on strengthening the middle class.⁷

Closes multi-billion-dollar tax loopholes for big oil companies. ⁸

Increases grants to help families pay for college—the largest increase ever.⁹

Halves the deficit by 2013. President Obama inherited a legacy of huge deficits and an economy in shambles, but his plan brings the deficit under control as soon as the economy begins to recover.¹⁰

Dramatically increases funding for the SEC and the CFTC—the agencies that police Wall Street.¹¹

Tells it straight. For years, budgets have used accounting tricks to hide the real costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush tax cuts, and too many other programs. Obama's budget gets rid of the smokescreens and lays out what America's priorities are, what they cost, and how we're going to pay for them.¹²

Now, how do we know these are proposals on the right track. Well, the corporate interests affected by each of these budgetary items are already amassing huge lobbying efforts to defeat them, the surest sign that the peoples' interests just may be served by the Obama administration.

There's more:

1. Stops unnecessary government subsidies to big banks, health insurance companies and big agribusinesses.^13,14,15
   
2. Expands access to early childhood education and improves schools by investing in programs that make sure every child has a qualified, strong teacher.¹⁶
3. Negotiates for better prescription drug prices using Medicaid's tremendous bargaining power.¹⁷
   
4. Expands access to family planning for low-income women.¹⁸
   
5. Caps the pollution that causes global warming, and makes polluters pay to support clean energy innovation.¹⁹
   

Sources:

1. "Climate of Change," The New York Times, February 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/opinion/27krugman.html?em

2. "Obama Calls His Budget Sweeping, Needed Change," The New York Times, February 28, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51201&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=2

3. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51202&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=3

4. "Obama Expects Fight Over $3.55 Trillion Budget Plan," Bloomberg News, February 28, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51203&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=4

5. "Energy Budget Is Sunlight After Eight Years of Darkness," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51204&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=5

6. "The Economic Cost of War in Iraq and Afghanistan," The New York Times, March 1, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/weekinreview/01glanz.html

7. "Tax Cuts," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-tax.html

8. "Energy Budget Is Sunlight After Eight Years of Darkness," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51204&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=6

9. "Student Loans," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-edu.html

10. "Obama unveils budget blueprint," CNN, February 26, 2009
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/26/budget/

11. "Obama budget would boost SEC, CFTC, FBI," Reuters, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51205&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=7

12. "Obama's budget," Los Angeles Times, February 27, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51206&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=8

13. "Student Loans," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-edu.html

14. "Health Insurance Stocks Dive on Medicare Advantage Cuts," The Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51207&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=9

15. "Agriculture," The New York Times, February 26, 2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27web-agri.html

16. "Investing Wisely in Our Children," Center for American Progress, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51208&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=10

17. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51202&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=11

18. "Obama Offers Broad Plan to Revamp Health Care," The New York Times, February 26, 2009
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51202&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=12

19. "Setting 'Green' Goals," The New York Times, February 26, 2009 http://www.moveon.org/r?r=51209&id=15687-630415-XAqpeBx&t=13

A tip of the Mirsky hat to Moveon.org.

Another Idea?

Barack Obama's resume

Are you sick and tired of being assailed by your unrepentant Rethuglican friends and family members about the thinness of President Obama's resume, about how the reason no one could find much meat to hang an attack hook in during the campaign was the fact that he hadn't really done anything?

Well, fear no more. Here is the new president's resume for your rebuke arsenal. Pretty impressive one, too, I might add.

Oh, and if you want Dubya's as counterpoint, head over here.

Thank you, and good day.

Couldn't say it better myself

The George W. Bush Presidency - A Retrospective

Where in the world is Mike Connell? (or the saga of Turd Blossom)

Do you know who this man is?







Is Karl Rove the most dangerous man in America? How does a portly, baby-faced fascist with a predilection for leather bars manage to

1. cheerlead the most presidential administration in American history as it shepherds one disaster after another for 8 mind-boggling years
2. treasonously engineer the outing of a clandestine CIA operative
3. railroad a Democratic governor of a southern state into prison
4. mastermind scads of election fraud scams and schemes in order to secure his moronic doppelganger another term in office
5. thumb his nose at every congressional attempt to get his broad criminal ass in front of a committee under oath
6. enjoy paid gigs with both Fox news and the Tribune Corporation (Newsweek) as a talking head despite the fact that he is a sociopathic lying sack of shit?

And Rove, no matter what he does, comes up smelling like a rose. Could it be what his best bud GW meant when he bestowed the honorific "Turd Blossom" on his loyal wonder boy? Perhaps the one time when Dubya's verbal irony was not accidental.

If you really want to know just how wondrously wretched one damaged human being can be, read these three books by James Moore and Wayne Slater: Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential, Rove Exposed: How Bush's Brain Fooled America, and The Architect: Karl Rove and the Dream of Absolute Power.

But getting back to the lead-in to this post ... Do you know who Mike Connell is (was)?

Mike Connell is/was Karl Rove's brain. Or at least his IT whiz kid. You see, Connell was a Republican consultant accused of involvement in alleged vote-rigging in Ohio in 2004. This case, which was being heard in Ohio, was the result of a civil suit brought by two civil rights lawyers. Though at first he refused to appear, Connell eventually was forced to cave and was expected to fully testify. It was the hope of the plantiff attorneys that Karl Rove himself would eventually have to appear in court as part of their suit.

And that's where things start to get ... well, meaningfully coincidental. Because, you see, Michael Connell -- founder of Ohio-based New Media Communications, which created campaign Web sites for George W. Bush and John McCain -- died instantly after his single-prop, private aircraft smashed into a vacant home in suburban Lake Township, Ohio on December 19, 2008.

"The plane was attempting to land around 6 p.m. Friday at Akron-Canton Airport when it crashed about three miles short of the runway," reports the Akron Beacon Journal.

Connell's exploits as a top GOP IT 'guru' have been well documented by RAW STORY's investigative team. You can also read about it on Brad Friedman's Blog. In fact, Brad's offshoot org, Velvet Revolution, had been offering a $100,000 reward for information lining Karl Rove to the shady shenanigans of the 2004 presidential election, a scandal which VR calls: "Rove Cybergate."

It gets nastier:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Michael Connell, the Bush IT expert who has been directly implicated in the rigging of George Bush's 2000 and 2004 elections, was killed last night when his single engine plane crashed three miles short of the Akron airport. Velvet Revolution ("VR"), a non-profit that has been investigating Mr. Connell's activities for the past two years, can now reveal that a person close to Mr. Connell has recently been discussing with a VR investigator how he can tell all about his work for George Bush. Mr. Connell told a close associate that he was afraid that George Bush and Dick Cheney would "throw [him] under the bus."

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell's life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR's attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell's not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

So, the question that nags at the back of my feverish and Rove-hating brain is this: is Turd Blossom a murderer, or is Mr. Connell enjoying a new life on some private Caribbean island owned by ... let's say, Rupert Murdoch?

The myth of the over-paid union auto worker

In a prepared statement for his December 4, 2008, appearance before the Senate Banking Committee, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said:

Contrary to an often-repeated myth, UAW members at GM, Ford and Chrysler are not paid $73 an hour. The truth is, wages for UAW members range from about $14 per hour for newly hired workers to $28 per hour for assemblers. The $73 an hour figure is outdated and inaccurate. It includes not only the costs of health care, pensions and other compensation for current workers, but also includes the costs of pensions and health care for all of the retired workers, spread out over the active workforce. Obviously, active workers do not receive any of this compensation, so it is simply not accurate to describe it as part of their "earnings."

Yet, both the Big Three CEOs (for whom over-compensation IS the shoe that fits), abetted by the media, continue to promote this fiction in an effort to cast the blame of their titanic mis-management and poor strategic decisions on the people whose job it is to put together their low quality products, not design them. Here is a fine review article from Media Matters for America.

Jeb Bush momentarily emerges ...

... from underneath whatever rock in Miami this fiercely partisan* foil for his dimwit sibling has been hiding.

His call to arms? That Republicans should form a "shadow government" to thwart the Obama agenda.

Wait a minute. "Shadow government?"

What the hell have we had for the past 8 years?

In this same interview Bush reiterates the myth that America is a "center-right" country. Well, if you only converse with millionaire Republicans, I am sure that is the perspective engendered.

No doubt, the Jebster will be running for Mel Martinez' Senate seat, now that the latter has announced his retirement. My greatest pleasure will be helping to usher in his defeat.

*According to my state assemblyman, for the eight years he was in office as Florida's governor, Jebimiah never even so much as knocked on a Democratic legislator's door.

Economy in Crisis

In case you never scroll down the length of my blog page, I have added a new feed in the left panel, Economy in Crisis. This extraordinarily informative web site "is a news blog dedicated to educating legislators and the American public in regards to the destruction of our country's industrial base, the impact on national and economic security, and the effect on our standard of living. We publish critical but overlooked facts and figures, keeping our readers up-to-date with daily articles regarding the U.S. economy.

"Out of concern for America's deteriorating economic condition, the individuals responsible for www.EconomyInCrisis.org donate their expertise and time. EIC does not support any political organization or corporate interest."

As a testament to the even-handedness of EIC, one can read plaudits on their web site from a diversity of pundits of all spectrums, from reactionary Pat Buchanan through Reaganite Paul Craig Roberts to liberal intellectual Air America host Thom Hartmann.

Idiotocracy

And that's exactly what they are doing. Barack Obama isn't in office yet, but the right wing radio voices are already making references to "Obama's recession." My local pinheads write into the newspaper proclaiming how the economic shitstorm that we have entered is -- of course -- the result of Democratic party policies and, most specifically, Bill Clinton. Of course the oxygen-starved brains of the wingnut brigade forget two salient facts: 1) that Bill Clinton, zealous centrist that he was, left the ecocomy of our nation with a budget surplus, a declining deficit, and an expanding job market; and 2) that it was the capitalist wet dream of deregulation ushered in by Ronald Reagan where the seeds of today's corporate implosion were sown. But the right will forever excel at one thing and one thing only: re-writing history to justify their sorry ass gospel of greed, hypocrisy and intolerance.

Last tag

I might have thought that after last week's electoral victory I would be willing to cast a little slack George Bush's way. But the little thug is determined to be a miscreant to the very end of his sad, larcenous administration, not content to merely fade into history's dustbin.

The sociopath intends to finalize 90 Federal regulations, and do so in a way that will insure that the Obama administration must spend hours, weeks, months, embroiled in the process of undoing them.

According to constitutional scholar John Turley, Bush's moves are "akin to fouling a water-well ... almost a sign of contempt for the results of the election."

From a Raw Story article by David Edwards and Muriel Kane:

In an appearance of Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show, Turley explained, "This is the ultimate dead-hand control. ... What a president can do is, by finalizing a regulation, he can force his successor to go through an entirely new regulatory process that can take years."

"What the means in real terms," Turley noted, "is that you can have an Obama administration that continues to carry out George Bush's directives. And for people who elected Obama for change, that's a particularly obnoxious reality to accept."

Turley explained that the regulations in question are not the same as executive orders, which "are easier to undo. A President Obama can come in with his own superseding executive orders." However, once a federal regulation has been in effect for 60 days it can no longer simply be reversed by presidential action. This means that as of January 20, President Obama will be unable to undo any regulations finalized by November 22.

"We're talking about environmental regulations, a lot of issues that the public clearly indicated they wanted a change on," Turley continued. He observed that "President Bush has a certain benefit in being the least popular president in modern history. ... That seems to, in a strange way, have freed up his subordinates, where they are trying to just run the table and move every regulation, executive order they can to try to create this control."

However, as Politico pointed out on Wednesday, the "little-known" Congressional Review Act (CRA) of 1996 was passed to address just such a situation and will allow Congress to undo these last-minute regulations "with a joint resolution that can’t be filibustered in the Senate."

"It creates something of a fiction," Turley said of the CRA. "It says if you push it through in the final days of your administration, it won't be considered final until the new Congress comes in. ... Congress gave itself extra time to reverse it."

"The key here, however, is time," Turley continued. "We're not going to have a lot of time, and we're talking about a lot of regulations and a lot of executive orders. And that's why Obama reportedly has a team of dozens of people who are trying to unravel this very complex web of executive orders and regulations."

Olbermann asked whether late January will see Congress handling "a flurry of legislations in which a dozen of these are repealed at the same time -- or one giant Get Rid of Bush Bill?"

"They could do it in an omnibus manner like that," stated Turley, "and I suspect that they may have to."

"Congress ... is going to be dealing with literally hundreds of executive orders and regulations and also hundreds of signing statements by this president," Turley concluded. "And eventually, they going to have to tackle each one of those individually to give Obama the right to direct his own administration."

Here's the video: