Day: December 10, 2008

Mr. “O” and Blago

How many morons does it take to become a party?

Repubs are scrambling around trying to connect Obama with Blagojevich.  But they are suspiciously silent on the possiblity that he could be violating the Constitution.  Why is that?

Apparently the Constitution only means something if it can generate votes for them.  You know the crap about guns and marriage?

Looks like the end of partisanship that all say that want to end, is not gonna end anytime soon.  It is just the desparate grasping at straws by a Party with no course and no plan.

Kinda does my old radical heart good to see the conservs flounder around looking so dazed and confused.

The Bush Legacy

On topics as diverse as Iraq, veterans care, education and AIDS relief, Bush has been using his final days in office to help shape how he is remembered.

Bush lauded his own administration for beefing up and reshaping its intelligence community, cutting off the assets of terrorist groups, and employing diplomacy to attract world partners. He even gave a rare shout out to his former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, for leading the charge for a more nimble military.

Bush, who has recently expressed regret over the false intelligence that led to the Iraq war, did not mention the issue Tuesday. Instead, he characterized the U.S.-led invasion as a necessary act to remove a dangerous dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Bush also said that the results of his strategy of promoting democracy and civil societies to counter the ideology of extremist Islam — rather than taking what he called the easy option of installing “friendly strongmen” in places like Iraq — were “unfolding slowly and unevenly.”

Finally, while Bush mentioned the killing or capture of hundreds of al-Qaida members around the world, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, he also noted that Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri, whom Bush did not identify by name, have evaded capture.

The Washington Post and New York Times contributed to this report.

Is anyone really listening? Better yet, is anyone buying this line of bovine fecal matter?

Racism, Immigration and Profit

The nation’s economic crisis could make it tough for President-elect Barack Obama to deliver on his pledge to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, some analysts predict.

With unemployment rising, foreign workers are less welcome, say immigration restrictionists, who have vowed to oppose offering legal status to the nation’s estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants.

But as the presidential transition goes into high gear, Democratic political insiders still believe that immigration reform has a good chance. Until a comprehensive bill is introduced in Congress, Obama’s pick to head the Department of Homeland Security, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, will play a key role in refocusing the way the government handles immigration.

Let’s take a good look at the immigration issue.

From an article written by Shamus Cooke.

The immigration debate is often tinged or even marred by racism – usually subtly, sometimes openly. This feeling finds a receptive audience not because of prejudice, but out of fear. Indeed, racism cannot exist without fear. We believe that, at bottom, recent immigration-related topics — from ballot measures to border fences — directly or indirectly contain elements of racism and fear. Unraveling the basis for this fear, as well as those in charge of creating it, is essential if one is to make an informed decision on the immigration question. While doing this, we will attempt to uncover the deeper reasons that have created the atmosphere that has projected this issue on to center stage.

There are two main slogans that rally people against immigrants. Both contain elements of truth. The first is simple: “immigrants are illegal.” Crossing the border without proper documentation is in fact illegal in the United States, and becoming a citizen is becoming increasingly difficult for political reasons. Therefore, immigrants are given the loaded label of “criminal,” even though their crime is largely an administrative one — akin to a parking ticket. Because of their generally darker skin, Latino immigrants are easier to target and isolate than others. Negative feelings towards these people are encouraged and eventually accumulate; action is demanded to punish the “felons.” (The 2005 Sensenbrenner bill attempted to make undocumented entry into the US a felony.) Since it is impossible to know who is a citizen, documented, or undocumented, Latinos as a whole are often times labeled “criminals” — the subtle seed of racism has fully sprouted.

The second anti-immigration slogan is the more profound of the two, and is the real reason behind the intense interest in the subject: “They’re taking our jobs.” This motto is effective for many reasons. Some of them are true. If the surface is scratched, the real fear behind the slogan reveals itself: the average American worker is very nervous about the economy and the ability to make a living wage. The negative energy that emerges from this feeling must be channeled somewhere; something must be done, someone must be blamed. Immigrants are being made the scapegoats — the interest groups responsible for blaming them are infinitely guiltier for the problems the country is facing.

The immigration debate also serves as a convenient distraction device for a government — Republican and Democrat alike — that continues to wage an unpopular war, destroys civil liberties, and allows corporations to accumulate billions while the average worker is steadily impoverished. The specific groups that are the most consistent advocates of corporate greed are also the ones most eager to obsess about the immigration debate. These groups are typically conservative, corporate oriented foundations or business groups that channel millions of dollars into television ads, politicians’ hands, and think-tanks in an effort to artificially focus the countries attention on the immigration debate. They are able to publish books, finance radio stations, and promote speaking tours to advance their ideas.

While pushing their anti-immigrant agenda, these elite-driven groups are profiting handsomely from immigrant workers — directly or indirectly. The fact is that immigrant workers are good for corporate profits: they have no legal protection from being paid below minimum wage; or being paid at all! They have no way to defend themselves from unsafe working conditions, or being worked inhuman hours (it is safe to assume that an employer will call the INS if he suspects an immigrant of organizing a union).

To recognize the immigration issue for what it is — a classic example of the divide and conquer tactic — is the first step toward approaching the topic with an informed perspective. Employers benefit from a divided workforce, with the categories of “legal” and “illegal” being especially useful. In the same vein, the mega-corporations who control the government benefit from a divided society. They would rather we fight each other than question their rule or privileges. For the US worker, there can only be one effective response: to fight for equal rights for all working people in the country. The old saying, “an injury to one is an injury to all” has never been more relevant a slogan, nor as necessary to put into action, since the political polarization in the country will continue to match the rapid widening of economic inequality.

What Not To Do With A Stimulus Package

Obama has proposed a massive stimulus package to revive the American economy, only they have outlawed the use of the word “stimulus”.  But let us take a good hard look at what this package, whatever they decide to calkl it, will entail.

There are three types of expenditure categories. Income may be used for consumption, for investment, and it can be wasted. Waste is defined as the destruction of goods value other than that planned by the person who earned the funds used. When a fire burns down a building, for example, that is waste, and when a government builds some project that few people find useful or desirable, that is also a waste, a destruction of the utility that could have been gained from alternative spending.

Investment is the creation of capital goods. Net investment is gross investment minus depreciation. In common language, people say they invest in land or in bonds, which can yield financial returns. But in economic terminology, only the creation of new capital goods is investment. When someone buys a bond or land, money simply changes hands, since no new land is created, and a bond is simply a debt.

These categories can now be put together as follows. First, the factors of land, labor, and capital goods are hired from households by firms, which create wealth in the three sectors, primary, manufacturing, and service. This wealth goes to their owners as factor payments by firms in the form of rent, wages, and capital yields, all of which constitute income. Governments obtain some of this income either from rent or from taxes. This income is spent in the three categories, consumption, investment, and waste.

There is also a money side, with the money supply a function of income, interest rates, and other variables, including monetary policy. In a classical model, the amount of money does not matter, since real output is determined independently of money; the price level will adjust to whatever the money supply is. In other models, especially of the Keynesian school, money does influence the real output. Both are right. In the short run, money can indeed influence output, but over the long run, inflation will simply increase prices, distorting relative prices in the process.

Ideas from Foldvary’s book “Science Of Economics”.

What Did They Know?

And when did they know it?

Military leaders knew the dangers posed by roadside bombs before the start of the Iraq war but did little to develop vehicles that were known to better protect forces from what proved to be the conflict’s deadliest weapon, a report by the Pentagon inspector general says.

The Pentagon “was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) … and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003,” says the 72-page report, which was reviewed by USA TODAY.

The report is to be made public today.

Marine Corps leaders “stopped processing” an urgent request in February 2005 for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles from combat commanders in Iraq’s Anbar province after declaring that a more heavily armored version of existing Humvee vehicles was the “best available” option for protecting troops, the report says.

When field commanders first began requesting MRAPs, military officials saw the armored Humvees as a more immediate option to countering IEDs, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. “The threat has evolved and our force protection measures have evolved with it,” he said.

The Marines requested the inspector general’s investigation in February after an internal report accused the Corps of “gross mismanagement” of the urgent request for MRAPs. Hundreds of Marines died unnecessarily because of delays in fielding the vehicles, said the Jan. 22 study by Franz Gayl, a retired Marine officer and civilian science adviser.

Mayors Join The Bailout

Please, call it what it is….a BAILOUT!

Big city mayors visited Capitol Hill Monday to urge congressional leaders to pass a Main Street Recovery plan funding “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects during the first 100 days of President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.

According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, there are 11,391 infrastructure projects ready to go in 427 cities across the United States. The conference estimates that these projects represent an infrastructure investment of $73 billion that would be capable of producing an estimated 847,641 jobs in 2009 and 2010.

“We are not here for a bailout. We’re here to help build out America,” Manny Diaz, the mayor of Miami and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said at a press conference on Monday attended by a dozen U.S. mayors.

Everybody is seeing dollar signs dance around their heads.

A Sign Of The Times

From pricey luxury sedans to popular hybrid cars, automobiles made overseas are stacking up at ports and parking lots around the United States as supplies far outstrip demand amid the nation’s worst auto market in more than 25 years.

At the Long Beach port near Los Angeles, Toyota Motor Corp vehicles including Prius hybrids, FJ Cruiser sport utility vehicles and Lexus IS 250 luxury sedans are being stored on a vast construction site that will one day be a new container terminal.

The site became a gigantic parking lot when Toyota and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz asked the port for space to store thousands of vehicles that dealerships have not been able to take on due to sluggish sales.

Other ports are also seeing a buildup of cars, though not all of them are leasing large tracts of land to automakers. The San Diego port, which brings in Honda Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Mitsubishi Corp vehicles, has about 14,000 cars on its property. That’s about 2,000 more vehicles than usual, according to spokesman John Gilmore, who said the additional cars belong to a range of manufacturers.

Will these cars become like the FEMA trailers stored in Mississippi?  Few have any idea what to do with them.