Larry Summers and the Secret "End-Game" Memo - by Greg Palast

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine
Thursday, 22 August 2013

When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn't believe it.

The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy:  that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet.  When you see 26.3% unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.

The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers.  Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank.  If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn’t be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.

The memo is authentic.

To get that confirmation, I would have to fly to Geneva  and wangle a meeting with the Secretary General of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy. I did.  Lamy, the Generalissimo of Globalization, told me,

“The WTO was not created as some dark cabal of multinationals secretly cooking plots against the people…. We don’t have cigar-smoking, rich, crazy bankers negotiating.” 

Then I showed him the memo.

It begins with Summers’ flunky, Timothy Geithner, reminding his boss to call the then most powerful CEOs on the planet and get them to order their lobbyist armies to march:

“As we enter the end-game of the WTO financial services negotiations, I believe it would be a good idea for you to touch base with the CEOs….”

To avoid Summers having to call his office to get the phone numbers (which, under US law, would have to appear on public logs), Geithner listed their private lines.  And here they are:

Goldman Sachs:  John Corzine (212)902-8281
Merrill Lynch:  David Kamanski (212)449-6868
Bank of America, David Coulter (415)622-2255
Citibank:  John Reed (212)559-2732
Chase Manhattan:  Walter Shipley (212)270-1380 

Lamy was right: They don’t smoke cigars.  Go ahead and dial them.  I did, and sure enough, got a cheery personal hello from Reed–cheery until I revealed I wasn't Larry Summers.  (Note:  The other numbers were swiftly disconnected. And Corzine can’t be reached while he faces criminal charges.)

It's not the little cabal of confabs held by Summers and the banksters that’s so troubling. The horror is in the purpose of the "end game” itself.

Let me explain:
The year was 1997.  US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks.  That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks.  It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game:  “derivatives trading.”  JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as “assets.”
Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.

But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?

The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five:  eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet – in one single move.    It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous.

How could they pull off this mad caper?  The bankers' and Summers' game was to use the Financial Services Agreement, an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organization. 

Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods–that is, my cars for your bananas.  The new rules ginned-up by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in "bads" – toxic assets like financial derivatives.

Until the bankers’ re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders.  The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives “products.”

And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives.

The job of turning the FSA into the bankers’ battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organization.

Bankers Go Bananas
Why in the world would any nation agree to let its banking system be boarded and seized by financial pirates like JP Morgan?

The answer, in the case of Ecuador, was bananas.   Ecuador was truly a banana republic.  The yellow fruit was that nation’s life-and-death source of hard currency.  If it refused to sign the new FSA, Ecuador could feed its bananas to the monkeys and go back into bankruptcy.  Ecuador signed.

And so on–with every single nation bullied into signing.  

Every nation but one, I should say.  Brazil’s new President, Inacio Lula da Silva, refused.  In retaliation, Brazil was threatened with a virtual embargo of its products by the European Union's Trade Commissioner, one Peter Mandelson, according to another confidential memo I got my hands on.  But Lula’s refusenik stance paid off for Brazil which, alone among Western nations, survived and thrived during the 2007-9 bank crisis.

China signed–but got its pound of flesh in return.  It opened its banking sector a crack in return for access and control of the US auto parts and other markets.  (Swiftly, two million US jobs shifted to China.)

The new FSA pulled the lid off the Pandora’s box of worldwide derivatives trade.  Among the notorious transactions legalized: Goldman Sachs (where Treasury Secretary Rubin had been Co-Chairman) worked a secret euro-derivatives swap with Greece which, ultimately, destroyed that nation.  Ecuador, its own banking sector de-regulated and demolished, exploded into riots.  Argentina had to sell off its oil companies (to the Spanish) and water systems (to Enron) while its teachers hunted for food in garbage cans.  Then, Bankers Gone Wild in the Eurozone dove head-first into derivatives pools without knowing how to swim–and the continent is now being sold off in tiny, cheap pieces to Germany.

Of course, it was not just threats that sold the FSA, but temptation as well.  After all, every evil starts with one bite of an apple offered by a snake.  The apple:  The gleaming piles of lucre hidden in the FSA for local elites.  The snake was named Larry.

Does all this evil and pain flow from a single memo?  Of course not:  the evil was The Game itself, as played by the banker clique.  The memo only revealed their game-plan for checkmate.

And the memo reveals a lot about Summers and Obama.

While billions of sorry souls are still hurting from worldwide banker-made disaster, Rubin and Summers didn’t do too badly.  Rubin’s deregulation of banks had permitted the creation of a financial monstrosity called “Citigroup.”  Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroup—which went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million.

Then Rubin took on another post:  as key campaign benefactor to a young State Senator, Barack Obama.  Only days after his election as President, Obama, at Rubin’s insistence, gave Summers the odd post of US “Economics Tsar” and made Geithner his Tsarina (that is, Secretary of Treasury).  In 2010, Summers gave up his royalist robes to return to “consulting” for Citibank and other creatures of bank deregulation whose payments have raised Summers’ net worth by $31 million since the “end-game” memo.

That Obama would, at Robert Rubin’s demand, now choose Summers to run the Federal Reserve Board means that, unfortunately, we are far from the end of the game.

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Our thanks to Greg Palast for permission to reprint this article!  Please click on the link to Vice Magazine at the top of the page to get additional links and information.  You may also wish to support Greg Palast in his investigative work.  You won't find this information at our usual media outlets.

Religion and crap

The problem with much of what passes for religion is that there are no filters to tell the crap from non-crap. And when people are filled with crap they become obnoxious, noxious, odious, stinky, hypocritical, stupid, and their brains melt into some kind of spiritual soup.

In Fresno, California recently, a crepe myrtle tree began oozing fluid. The poor tree had the misfortune to be located near the Roman Catholic St. John's Cathedral. As you might surmise, some of the parishioners from the cathedral immediately saw this as evidence of a miracle. This juicy stuff is God's tears claimed at least one woman.

Did the cathedral prelates confront the women to tell them this was not a miracle, and the liquid they saw was not God's tears, because even according to Roman Catholic doctrine, God is a spirit and spirits have no physical flesh or form and therefore cannot "weep"?

So far as I know, the prelates in charge of the cathedral did not do that. And we all know why: They may believe such nonsense themselves and/or are aware that such nonsense drives simple folks deeper into the fold of Roman Catholic piety which usually means they give more of their money to the Church so the Church can continue to peddle its odious doctrines while offering a haven for pedophiles and other abusers.

So what is this fluid oozing from the crepe myrtle? According to an article in The Huffington Post by Cavan Sieczkowski, "an arborist says the liquid is not 'tears' at all, but excrement from aphides, small, soft-bodied insects that suck the juice from plants."  It's excrement or crap!

Contrarily, a Jesuit priest, James Martin, doesn't want to let go of the "miracle" thing so while he notes that this kind of phenomena can be "easily explained by science" he also believes "that God can speak to us through natural means, as a way of reminding us of God's presence. Sometimes God gives us a little nudge -- explicable or inexplicable - as if to say, 'I'm here.'"  Like maybe by weeping "tears" from a crepe myrtle.

As I wrote initially, religion is often a problem where there are no filters to siphon the crap from the non-crap. The filters in this case ought to be the cathedral poohbahs and people like the editor-at-large of America magazine, Fr. James Martin.

But, unfortunately, that isn't the case. The prevailing philosophy in this and in too many other similar situations is "Let the people live with their delusions and ignore reality because we need them to continue to believe in our own special delusions thereby keeping the Roman Church afloat and thereby saving our jobs."

What all of this does prove, however, is that too often religion is simply crap!

And here ends the lesson for the day.

Rick Perry's legacy in Texas

The above from Timeline Photos, Daily Kos Facebook.

Today's Republican Party does not believe in democracy, freedom or our Constitution.

It is a sad fact but true, that the Republican Party in the year 2013 C.E. is hard at work shredding our democracy, our freedom, and our Constitution.

It is no secret that the Republican Party is the party of the rich, the very rich and the super rich. It is also the party of the powerful. While some Democrats have fallen victim to the theory that might makes right or the ends justify the means or those with the most money win, it is by and large the Republicans in Congress who are routinely bought and paid for by the corporations, Wall Street, and other pooh-bahs who control and manipulate our system. Freedom, democracy and our Constitution are all at risk when this corrupt state of affairs prevails.

From the first day President Obama stepped into the Oval Office, the Republican Party, open and unabashedly, stated their goal for his first term was to do everything possible to bring him down. They would not cooperate. They would use whatever smear tactics worked best. Their would be no compromise for the good of the country. Their goal, above the good of the country, was to destroy Mr. Obama and ensure he would not be re-elected.

Although Mr. Obama was re-elected, they are continuing their desperate attacks on his person, his ideas, and his programs. Looking ahead to the Congressional elections of 2014, the Republicans have redoubled their efforts to cast aspersion on the leader of the Democratic Party and the leader of our Country in order to serve their need for power.  Senate Republicans continue, through the threat of the filibuster among other things, to refuse to confirm the president's nominees for many important positions in the government.  In recent weeks, various prominent Republicans have threatened to shut down the government if they are unable to defund or otherwise destroy Obamacare!

Democracy can work only when opposing sides treat each other with respect and when they recognize that compromise is not only important but crucial. Ideology must be abandoned in favor of pragmatism. The important things are not philosophical or religious beliefs for these most often have no basis in fact or in science and can change at a moment's notice. What's important is that which works, which functions, which has proven value. Furthermore, while majority "rules" in our system, our system cannot work unless the rights of the minorities are upheld and respected. The prize upon which each of us must keep his or her eye is what's best for the country.

Because the Republican Party openly disavows such an approach they are destroying our democracy in a display of arrogant partisanship more reminiscent of the Roman Church in the Middle Ages than a political party in the 21st Century! The Republican Party speaks much of freedom, but they're not talking about freedom for those with whom they disagree. What they want is the freedom to impose their belief system upon the rest of us. Thus, on a national level and on state levels we are experiencing unprecedented attacks on Roe v. Wade, on a woman's right to choose, on the right to use contraceptives and on the Constitution principle of separation of church and state.

In state after state, well-funded right-wing groups with Republican legislators in their pockets are forcing through attempts to privatize our schools, to demand that religious nonsense such as creationism be presented as a valid alternative to evolution, to pass draconian gun laws that would make the outlaws of the Old West quake in fear! We have seen the United States Supreme Court, dominated by conservative Republicans appointed by conservative Republican presidents, openly side with those factions that would take over control of our government. The Supreme Court opened the floodgates relative to campaign funding by allowing secret corporate/political organizations to infuse huge amounts of cash into our election process thereby controlling the message and electing their candidates. The Supreme Court has also seen fit to do away with one of our Constitutional controls which functions to ensure that every eligible person is allowed to vote.

Again, moneyed entities are leading this attack on democracy in our state legislatures by gerry-mandering state districts to ensure that conservatives are most likely to win; and by passing draconian voter ID laws which effectively deny the vote of persons likely to vote Democratic.

But perhaps the most egregious example of the Republican Party's hatred for freedom and fear of democracy, is the recent threat by the Republican National Committee to withhold the right to film the 2016 GOP primary debates if CNN and NBC does not cancel a documentary movie in the works dealing with the life of Hillary Clinton. CNN is intending to show this documentary in theaters and on TV. NBC is developing a miniseries on Clinton's life starring Diane Lane.

Evidently, the GOP is afraid that these programs will help Ms. Clinton should she decide to attempt a run at the presidency in 2016. The Republicans are afraid, very afraid. Ms. Clinton could be a formidable candidate and would probably make any Republican running for presidency look like a complete fool which would most likely be the case.

What the chairman of the RNC, Mr. Priebus, would have us forget is the fact that the GOP has its own television network - FOX News. FOX News promotes the Republican line all down the line and has done so for years! Do you think he would object if FOX News was to show a documentary about a possible Republican candidate? Would the RNC threaten FOX News if it planned a miniseries on Chris Christie?

Of course not. But then the Republicans are not about freedom or democracy or the right of free speech - they work against the good of the country every day to gain a partisan advantage! And mark my words, in the coming election cycle the RNC and Republicans throughout the country will do anything, literally anything, to try to gain a political advantage in the White House and in Congress. The RNC's threat is just the tip of the iceberg.

They're afraid; they're very afraid

I hope CNN and NBC do not cave to the GOP.  It is highly unlikely that the RNC would follow through on their threat.  They want people to see those primary debates.  Which is quite funny, actually, for it is very likely that watching those primary debates might just cause most people to vote Democratic! 

Human sacrifice and appeasing God

The ancient Hebrews, like their neighboring tribes in the Fertile Crescent, practiced human sacrifice in order to appease their god.  But they eventually quit.  The story of Abraham being ordered to sacrifice his son on the mount is reflective of that fact but was also told as an explanation why human sacrifice was no longer needed. Animal sacrifice was deemed to be sufficient to satisfy God's blood lust.


At the time of the legendary Jesus, animal sacrifice was practiced in Israel. The various "Christ"
groups of the time also believed in the efficacy of animal sacrifice. For example, in Mithraism, a bull became the "sacrificial lamb" and in some cases initiates stood in a reservoir beneath the bull to be baptized in its blood thereby becoming a full member of the sect.

The Christ sect, as promoted by the apostle Paul, reverted to a belief in the efficacy of human sacrifice and Christians have honored that tradition in various ways up to the present day. Although the theology is inconsistent and confusing it basically evolved in this manner: Yahweh, the Hebrew god, sent himself in the form of a human, who was his "son," conceived by the Holy Spirit in a young Israelite girl who was already betrothed to a man named Joseph.

[How a "spirit" could produce human or human-like sperm is not usually addressed. A spirit is a spirit is a spirit, without flesh and form and could not impregnate a pomegranate much less a teenage girl.]

The "son" who later theologians insisted was actually Yahweh (God) in human form, is reported in the Gospels (which are not historical records but evangelical tracts created to give Paul's "Christ" a foundation in history, for Paul's "Christ" lived not on earth but in the first of his seven heavens) to have lived between one and three years, teaching and preaching, acting as a prophet, sometimes exercising Zealotry, inconsistent and often angry, petulant (killing the fig tree even though it wasn't the season for figs), and contradictory.

The story is a familiar one to most people in the western hemisphere, telling how the Jesus figure is hauled before an illegal Jewish court and condemned and then brought to the Roman governor, Pilate, who orders him crucified. None of this is historical, either, but the point is that before long the "Christ" people who evolved in the sacrifice-rich culture of the Mediterranean in the first and second centuries (C.E.) under the guidance and gradual dominance of the "orthodox" accepted the doctrine that Jesus (called now the Christ or Messiah or Anointed One) who was crucified by the Romans was the sacrifice the Hebrew god demanded for the sins of human beings. This notion was based on the prior belief (assuming also that Adam and Eve were real historical figures) that because Adam and Eve (the progenitors of the human race) had sinned, everyone was tainted with what was called "original sin." This, in spite of the fact, that even the ancient Jews had tossed the belief that the children are responsible for the failings of their fathers/mothers.

To sum up:  Orthodoxy taught that everyone is a sinner and destined to spend eternity being tortured by fire in a place called Hell. [The development of the doctrine of hell is also interesting but that's for another time.] The ONLY way that God can forgive our sins is by a human sacrifice, ergo the sacrifice of Jesus on the Roman cross.

In the later view developed by protesters in the Middle Ages known as Protestants, that sacrifice is a one-time thing, its efficacy made available by those who believe this story and accept God's love and forgiveness and try to live holy lives. The Roman Catholic Church, disagreed vehemently, for they from early on had developed (probably borrowing from Mithraism) an act of worship which was known as the Eucharist and then the Mass in which Christ is offered up for sacrifice each time the mass is performed. Followers of Romanism receive the benefits of that sacrifice each time they partake of the bread and wine in the mass, for the bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ when the priest says the magic words.

The point is this: human sacrifice is still the central salvatory act for the human race in the Christian religion in whatever form that religion is practiced. Without the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross there is no Christian religion.

Again the theology behind all this is incredibly murky and can be swallowed only with a huge dose of mythical castor oil. Jesus is not just God's son, says the writer of the Gospel of John, he is God himself, the creator of all that exists. So, the so-called human crucified on the cross was not a human at all but God himself. [God, of course, is without gender but is usually referred to as a "he".]

Furthermore, if God was on the cross, then he couldn't die because God can't die, nor can he experience pain as that is beyond God's purview and he would not need to be raised from the dead for he never died in the first place. In the end, the circle closes here: God sent himself into the world by being born from the womb of a Jewish teenager after being artificially inseminated by God himself (for the Holy Spirit is also God). He walked around the ancient ground of Palestine for a few years, healed a few people, did some other miracles, told some interesting stories, but sometimes ignored the needs of people and was downright mean to his mother and family. Evidently he made the Jewish leaders angry and they hauled him to the Roman ruler who ordered him crucified which was done, but shortly thereafter God appeared again on earth only in a more mystical form and then was whooshed up to heaven after promising he'd come again and make everything right, something he failed to do on his first trip.

That mythology still reigns. Christians of whatever stripe insist that Jesus' death on the cross was and is essential for salvation (getting into heaven). In Christianity, people would go to hell without the sacrifice of God's son on the cross, and will go to hell if they do not acknowledge this sacrifice and live by the rules God laid out so many years ago. Roman Catholics take all of this a step further by re-enacting that sacrifice at every mass and offering the opportunity for believers to participate in that sacrifice by the ritual eating and drinking of the actual body and blood of Christ.


Today there appeared in the Huffington Post an article telling about the finding of a skull which was probably from a human sacrificed according to the beliefs and rituals practiced by the Aztecs of Mexico some 500 years ago.

The article concludes with this sentence: "A formidable people, the Aztecs believed the sun god Huitzilopochtli required human blood in order to move the sun across the horizon [...] Sometimes volunteers would give themselves up for the honor, and other times prisoners were sacrificed.

Well, it is important that the sun moves across the horizon and if it takes human sacrifice to do that, so be it. A perfectly reasonable conclusion considering the fundamental beliefs of the people.

But I would be willing to bet that millions of Christians today would read that story and think of how awful human sacrifice was and what nonsense it was to think that the Aztec gods could be appeased by the offering of human blood.

Obama's Accreditation Reforms on Higher Education

It is my understanding that there are a number of so-called colleges in our country that are making big bucks by participating in student federal aid programs.  Some of these colleges are little more than diploma mills and the education they provide is far from satisfactory.  This is not surprising, of course, for federal money attracts all sorts of unsavory folks.

A way to correct this situation is to make federal aid dependent upon a school's proper accreditation.

The following article was written by Irene White, a contributor to Accredited Online Colleges; the original article can be found by clicking here.  In it she outlines President Obama's "proposals to reform and improve higher education ... "  I believe that because higher education is so important, this article deserves a wider audience.  Obama's proposals are reasonable and attainable.

Another reason I am publishing this article is because it shows that we could and should be doing many fine things in this country but the President is stymied by a Congress that is openly hostile and as one Republican representative said the other day, the Republicans would rather shut down the government than let any Obama program, such as The Affordable Care Act stand.  From day one, Republicans have chosen partisan politics aimed at gaining power rather than governing the land.  From day one, these Republican traitors (I use that term purposely for what else are they when they choose to deliberately harm the nation in order to serve their own agenda?) have fought every attempt by the President to move forward on numerous issues.


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July 12th, 2013

In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama outlined several proposals to reform and improve higher education, including putting the brakes on the spiraling costs of college tuition. One method for achieving this, an initiative that has resonated with students and parents alike, is to make a school’s participation in certain federal aid programs dependent on it being affordable and effective. This new form of accreditation, linked hand-in-glove with the Department of Education’s College Scorecard has received broad public support.

How Accreditation Works Now Accreditation is a process through which private associations evaluate either an entire school or a particular program to ensure the education provided meets a high standard. The complicated process involves peer evaluation and significant data reporting by the institution to ensure necessary standards are met.

Criteria for accreditation differ depending on whether an entire college is seeking accreditation or just an individual program. Typical standards that must be met for an entire institution include:

* A well-articulated mission that guides the entire institution’s operations

* Integrity and responsibility in the administration of the institution

* High-quality education, guided by well-articulated goals Sufficient faculty, staff and resources to ensure a high-quality education

* Sufficient student support, in terms of infrastructure, technology, advising and guidance to ensure a high-quality education

* A well-functioning continuous improvement system of evaluation and assessment of teaching and learning

*Sufficient institutional resources and planning to ensure effective education


Depending on the field, the criteria for accreditation of a particular program may vary widely.

Nonetheless, any program will require the following standards to be met:

*A clear mission and plan for governing and administering the program fairly and effectively

*  Curriculum that teaches core competencies and values to enable students to develop requisite knowledge and succeed in the field

*Diversity is fostered and the program is inclusive

*Sufficient faculty are employed to achieve the unit’s mission for teaching

* Faculty do scholarly research and engage in professional activities that contribute to advancement of the field

* Sufficient services are provided to ensure students complete the program in a timely fashion

* Sufficient resources are employed to achieve the unit’s mission

*Faculty engage in public service for the alumni and community

* Ongoing assessment and continuous improvement are woven into the program

Some are surprised to learn accreditation in the United States is performed by dozens of private associations, each specializing by type of institution, region or field. The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) does not accredit any institution, but remains involved. It publishes a list of reliable accrediting agencies and also maintains a database of accredited programs and institutions.

You may have noticed that financial responsibility and helping students reach their goals are both typically included in criteria for accreditation. In fact, institutions that wish to participate in federal financial aid programs must meet certain financial benchmarks. Schools that fail to meet and maintain these standards cannot offer their students federal aid.

Obama’s Proposal to Increase Efficiency 

The president’s plan to increase access to high-quality, affordable education can be broken down into three major strategies. They involve granting more money to efficiently-run schools and improving access to education for high-needs and underprivileged groups.

1  Reward Efficient Schools- Building on the requirements for financial responsibility, the President’s new accreditation plan takes the process a step further. The initiative would tie a school’s access to federal aid programs to its capability to provide an affordable and complete education. Criteria the administration has already identified as relevant to this determination may be found on the College Scorecard; the scorecard ranks schools and programs on graduation rates, costs, average amount borrowed, employment and student loan default rates.

This plan to hold institutions of higher education more accountable is part of the President’s plan to strengthen the middle class.

President Obama believes that this starts early – in preschool; studies have shown, in fact, that spending dollars on education early in life saves money in the long run. Acknowledging that most American four-year-olds do not attend a high-quality, free, public preschool, and only 10 states and Washington, D.C. provide free, full-day kindergarten, the President has proposed programs to provide this early education for low, moderate and middle-income children.

Later in the education process, the President believes that we have not been adequately preparing students with the skills they need to obtain the available, high-quality jobs. It was recently reported that in 2012, nearly 600,000 high-quality manufacturing jobs went unfilled because unemployed workers lacked the skills to do them. To eliminate this discrepancy, the President has proposed that we fund a program to create a STEM Master Teacher Corps to improve STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education in the public schools.

The President has also proposed modernizing high schools with real-world learning through partnerships with employers and colleges to offer more vocational, technical and career opportunities.


2  Reform Immigration Policies- Another piece of the President’s plan involves common sense immigration reform. Today’s system of uneven enforcement effectively allows companies to hire undocumented workers at low wages. This pulls down wages for everybody and hurts the employment opportunities of legal residents.

While at the high end of the employment spectrum, complex immigration requirements prevent necessary talent from entering and remaining in the U.S. to work. These hurdles often cause high-tech businesses to move part or all of their operations overseas – depriving Uncle Sam of necessary jobs and revenue. The President proposes we crack down on the hiring of undocumented workers, strengthen border security, establish a path to citizenship for millions of hard-working immigrants and streamline the immigration process for workers and families, particularly those with the high-level skills our economy needs.


3 Prioritize Veteran Reintegration- Finally, the President has again called for strong action to help our veterans reintegrate into American society. Wounded veterans need to have better access to physical and mental health care and military families need stronger support. In particular, programs which help veterans obtain sustainable, fulfilling employment need to be bolstered, perhaps with tax credits and public-private partnerships. Shamefully, the unemployment rate among veterans who served since 2001 was 9.9% in 2012 – 46% higher than the average unemployment rate for all Americans, which was only 6.8%.


The President’s proposals are relatively new and little if any headway has been made on implementing these initiatives. However, if enacted, these programs could bring about major changes not only in the way colleges and universities are accredited, but to U.S. higher education as a whole. Prospective students researching colleges and universities should look into President Obama’s initiatives, which will make choosing a college and starting a career just that much easier.

Rick Scott plays GOP hypocrisy game

The Republican Party's and its minions work to protect an ideology that is fundamentally flawed and undemocratic! It focuses on protecting those who have by beating on those who have not; by a total lack of empathy or compassion for human beings who differ from them; by believing there is absolute truth which they have have grasped and are destined to use to police the rest of the world; by seeking power over righteousness; and by being hypocritical in their core!

The criminal governor of the state of Florida provides an up-to-date example of all of the above. ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) is an extremely powerful lobbying group consisting of persons and corporations that work through, among other venues, state legislatures to get bills passed which promote their particular extreme-right views. ALEC actually writes bills which are then utilized by cohorts in state legislatures. The great majority of its funds come from corporate groups and from such dangerous extremists as the Koch brothers (and all the groups affiliated with them) as well as other right-wingers like the Coors family.

One of these bills was passed by the Republican dominated right-wing Florida legislature and has now been signed by the criminal governor of Florida, Rick Scott. It is a bill designed, as all such bills are designed, to fill the coffers of the rich by ensuring that the poor get a lesser slice of the financial pie. The bill says in essence that city governments cannot force business to provide paid sick leave for businesses in their jurisdiction.

The Orlando Sentinel put it this way: "The Republican governor [note they left out the "criminal" designation] sided with Walt Disney World, Darden Restaurants [including Olive Garden and Red Lobster], the Florida Chamber of Commerce and a broad array of powerful business interests that argued the ban was needed to avoid a patchwork of local employment rules for companies."

As if they gave a damn about "a patchwork of local employment rules for companies." The bill says they do not have to provide sick leave for their employees. That's one for the rich guys and ZERO for the poor guys! It's all a crock and one more example of how the poor and almost poor have no representation in our political bodies.

Unfortunately, many of these people vote into office the very morons who would take away their livelihoods and even their lives if they could. Why anyone in the state of Florida would vote for a Republican is beyond understanding!

But, the real hypocrisy is evident. Those who represent the GOP has always talked about their love for democracy, for local rule, for less government intrusion in peoples lives. Since the advent of that "B" grade, no goodnik movie actor, Ronald Reagan, government has become the "problem" and acts as a heavy chain hanging on the necks of states and cities and corporations and small businesses and education and ... blah, blah, blah. The government, says Scott of Florida and Perry of Texas, as well as a whole host of other really bad Republican governors, cannot be trusted and wants merely to take control of their states and their people.

Perry even went so far as to suggest that Texas might secede if this situation could not be controlled. The sad thing is that millions of people hear this crap coming from these crooked, hypocritical Republicans, and believe them. Especially when, like Perry, they pretend to be Jesus-lovers and good Christians. That's a crock, too. Good Christians don't lie. Good Christians don't beat up on poor people to help rich people! Perry and Scott are about as good Christians as was Caligula or Atilla the Hun!

Perry runs on about how the government in Washington is making life miserable for the people of Texas by demanding more and more in taxes. The truth is that for every dollar in taxes that is sent from Texas to Washington, Texas gets more than a dollar in return! In Florida, Rick Scott is just one more Republican hypocrite who speaks out of both sides of his mouth; one more Republican hypocrite who whines and cries about how government is bad and tries to force good Christian people to do things they shouldn't have to do. We hear this mantra over and over again, especially in an election cycle.

So what does Scott and his ragtag bunch of Republican bums do? They pass a law which forbids cities to do the right thing by the people who live in their jurisdictions in order to put more profits into the pockets of corporations. On a national level, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives strives daily to pass legislation which would take away a woman's reproductive rights and right to an abortion. This same bunch votes over and over again to repeal Obamacare and thus force their nastiness on the entire nation.

All of which shows that Republicans really don't think of the government as being bad, it's matter of who gets what. If the government can enforce Republican ideology through passing laws, that's a good thing. If the government passes a law which contradicts Republican ideology (which again is based upon more riches for the rich, and less of everything for everybody else) then that's a bad thing. Republican ideology is based is hypocritical to the core!


A side note: One of the worst, nastiest, ugliest Republicans to come along in many years in Ted Cruz, a senator from Texas. He revels in exactly the same kind of smear tactics that Joe McCarthy employed. Have you noticed how much he looks like Joe McCarthy? My god, they could be twins! It's like the evil McCarthy rose from his grave!

Valedictory Hypocrite in South Carolina

These days we often hear Christian fundamentalists whine about the persecution they suffer because they can't force their religious beliefs upon the rest of us.  This, in spite of the fact that they are busily and too often successfully, promoting the placement of Ten Commandment plaques in public places, prayer in public schools, the teaching of Creationist nonsense instead of the vitally important subject of evolution, etc.

One of the things I've noted over and over again is that Christian fundamentalists are so often hypocritical.  That could be due to the fact that most of them are biblical illiterates even though they profess to love and trust the Good Book.

Consider the example of prayer in public schools.  Quite often Christianists of various stripes decide that prayer in public schools or other public places is of vital importance for the well-being of the country.  God won't bless the good ol' U.S. of A. unless people are pleading to him on a regular basis in public places.  And the biggest reason we have so many problems in this country, such as the Boston bombing, is that we've taken God out of the public sphere.

Ironically, neither prayer nor God have been taken out of the public sphere nor have they been removed from the public schools.  A student in any public school in our country can pray to God at any time he or she so desires.  The only qualification is that, because we are a secular country and we are committed Consitutionally to the separation of church and state, one cannot pray publicly to one's deity at a gathering which includes people of all religions or no religion.   One cannot hold an entire student body hostage to a sectarian prayer uttered every morning over the sound system, although I know schools that try to do that!

The hypocrisy comes in here.  It is clear from a reading of the Gospel stories in the New Testament that the Jesus figure was adamantly against any form of hypocrisy.  He castigated some of the religious leaders of his time for their attention to religious detail while forgetting to live out their religion in daily life.  Thus, Jesus noted that those who passed by the beggar, Lazarus, at the gate, will meet a miserable fate in the underworld no matter how "righteous" they pretended to be.

Jesus knew the human propensity for pretention.  He knew how some religious leaders liked to stand in the market place and pray loudly so that all could hear and congratulate them on their piety.  Jesus said, very emphatically, they have their reward and it's not going to be pretty.

Rather than engage in such hypocrisy, Jesus behooved his followers to pray to God in secret.  Go into a closet.  Get away from the crowd.  Don't flaunt your phony piety in public.  You just make an ass of yourself.  God knows you're not really as pious as you pretend and he demands action not words!


Roy Costner IV was this year's valedictorian at Liberty High School in South Carolina.  He was to give a speech at the school's graduation ceremony.  The school, in keeping with the U.S. Constitution, had previously banned sectarian prayers at such ceremonies, a move for which those in charge should be applauded.

Mr. Costner had other ideas.  He wrote a speech and submitted it for approval.  It met the approval of those in charge of the graduation ceremony.  Unfortunately, when it came time for Mr. Costner to give his speech, he stood before the crowd, tore up his pre-approved speech, and proceeded to recite the Lord's Prayer.

For real Christians, this is blasphemy.  For Mr. Costner, it was just another exercise in Christianist hypocrisy which often results from following the notion that when it comes to Jesus, "the ends justify the means."

Mr. Costner is a sorry example of what happens when ignorance prevails over human decency;  when the need to propagate one's religious views takes precedence over the rules and the rights of others to be spared such propagation!

You're a liar and a fraud, Mr. Costner.  But then, as Jesus said, you'll receive your reward and you probably won't like it!

On gun control and adults

Today I read about a four-year old accidentally shooting and killing his father in Arizona; about a crazed gunman who killed five and wounded a bunch more at Santa Monica College in California; about multiple gun deaths in Chicago over the weekend; about a bullet hole found near a baby's crib.

Then on TV, there was a story about a minor-league town in central Florida trying to entice at least five gun makers to relocate by renovating several properties to be gun manufacturing friendly.

These are just a few of the "gun" stories that have hit the news recently.  Every day brings dozens of similar stories.

The NRA thinks that such incidents are insufficient.  The NRA, serving as the mouthpiece and lobbyist for the gun manufacturers, wants everyone to own a gun.  Some cities with semi-adult leaders agree and have gone so far as to make it a requirement that every resident own a gun.

The NRA is pleased.  But not totally. Why, even Jesus would own a gun!  Let's put guns in the hands of our school children, says the NRA.  Let's let everyone carry a gun, everywhere!  If everyone carries a gun, says the NRA, then the bad guys would be so threatened, they wouldn't shoot anyone anymore and there would be fewer gun deaths.

Oh, stop laughing.  That's the argument!


The NRA is a sick organization run by a cadre of very sick persons.  Thus it is understandable that they insist on putting a gun in the hand of every man, woman and child in the country.

What's frightening is that we have a Congress full of simpering idiots who promote the NRA's beliefs and desires because the NRA provides them with money to get elected and re-elected and they fear the wrath of the NRA if they cross the sickos.


When, I wonder, will the adults in this country stand up and say "Enough is enough!"?  The 2nd Amendment does not and never did mean that everyone has a right to own a gun!  The 2nd Amendment was to ensure that Americans had rifles to help defend the COUNTRY!  It had to do with militias for national defense at a particular point in history, an historical point which no longer prevails.  Today we have the Department of Defense to do the job for us!

Furthermore, even if someone is so dense as to believe that the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right of every person to be armed to the teeth, it is still true that none of our so-called "rights" are absolute.  "Time makes ancient good uncouth," says the old hymn.  The Constitution is a living document to be understood and interpreted in such a manner as to uphold the well-being of the Commonwealth.  The authors of the Constitution understood that what worked at one time may become inappropriate at another time.  Thus, it has been amended on numerous occasions.  Not even the right to free speech is absolute.  You can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, for example. 

Gun violence is epidemic.  Can you imagine what would happen if our children went to school with guns hanging from their belts?  Anyone who would suggest such a thing should be committed to a mental institution!

It's important, I suppose, to propose the usual, expected disclaimer:  First, there may be instances where a weapon is needed for self-protection, such as an isolated area in the mountains which contains certain dangerous critters.  And, yes, I think it's OK to own a weapon for hunting or target shooting.  But, in reality, who the hell needs to hunt these days?  And you can shoot at targets with BB guns which are a lot less lethal.  Or throw itty bitty stones at targets if you find that you need target shooting to make you more of a man or woman!


Please, if you are a real, live adult with a modicum of common sense, stand up and demand that this nonsense stop.  Demand that stringent and enforceable gun controls be put in place such as the following:

Every gun purchase requires a background check!  Automatic weapons are banned.  Nobody needs an automatic weapon.  Large caliber pistols are banned.  One gun per person and that person must be trained and licensed.  (Hey, think of the jobs such a law would create!).  No more gun shows!  No more purchasing of weapons at pawn shops.  Guns can be sold only by persons who themselves have gone through a background check and are licensed to sell weapons.  No one under the age of 18 may own a gun!    

I'm sure there are other controls which would be effective.

Finally, ensure that penalties for violating these gun laws are severe - felonies!


Let's hear it for the adults in this country who are willing to take on the NRA and its minions; who are willing to take a stand for what is right and good for the country.
 

NFL Chump Matt Birk

[Photo by Baltimore News Journal]

The NFL's Baltimore Ravens were invited to visit the White House and hang out with the President.  Matt Birk, called by some a "champ," by others a "chump," refused to go.

This football player (he's just a football player for God's sake!) essentially claimed he could not be in the presence of the president because the president is pro-abortion and he, a famous football player, is anti-abortion!

The president, said the chump, actually defended the funding of Planned Parenthood.  Omigod, said the chump (which is reasonable as he doubtless thinks he has a pipeline to the deity), that's awful.  How could anyone with his high moral standing be in the same room with such a despicable person as the president of the United States?

This bit of trivia shows, I think, how far we have fallen.  The far-right goofballs and christianists have descended into a world of idiocy; a world where nothing matters except for their opinions; a world where scientific fact is shuffled off into the corner in favor of ancient mythologies; a world where if people disagree they cannot be in one another's presence because one disagreement nullifies their common humanity.

I mean, when you're right, you're right.  Unless you're not right!

Now, Mr. Birk has every right to be not right.  And he has a right to voice his non-right opinions - his religious prejudices.  And he has a right not to meet with the president.

All of which says nothing about Mr. Obama, but it makes Mr. Birk look like a chump - a moron, for Mr. Birk has proudly joined the parade of nogoodniks helping to bring our country to its knees.  I have little doubt he'll run for a seat in Congress just as soon as his body gets as battered as his brain and he can no longer beat up his cohorts on the gridiron.

And there he will join the ever-growing group of chumps that festoon those hallowed halls where they fester and infect the body politic until it grows too sick to function!

Ocala, Florida wants a baseball stadium

 [Photo from Wikipedia]

The powers-that-be in the fair city of Ocala, located in the rolling hills of central Florida, are thinking about instituting a half-cent sales tax in order to raise enough money to build a baseball stadium to house a New York Yankees minor league team.

Isn't that wonderful?

Other powers-that-be have spent almost $200,000 of taxpayer funds to put "In God We Trust" on the county seal!  And that, some think, is another really wonderful thing.  But not all.  Some of us think it is a monumental waste of money and totally unnecessary!  Oh, yes, it's also unconstitutional in that it clearly suggests that the government favors Christianity over all other religions.

Back to the baseball stadium.  Why in the name of all that's holy or profane, should a city have to finance a place to play baseball for a for-profit enterprise?  And don't spout that old refrain about all the jobs such a deal would bring to the city.  That's bull.  It's going to cost a fortune and most times the teams get a cut of everything until they pull out leaving the hapless citizens holding the proverbial bag (empty, of course!).

If the New York Yankees, a team that is wallowing in money, needs a baseball stadium, tell them yes, provided they can find suitable property that is approved by the powers-that-be and they can put up the cash to build it and sustain it.

But don't give them a dime of taxpayer money!

Especially in light of the fact that the schools are letting several hundred teachers and aides go because there is no money to pay them and that our roads are being neglected because there's no money to fix them, and because the County Sheriff's department is bleeding from lack of funds...there are lots of things we need and perhaps a half-cent sales tax would help.  A baseball stadium sure as hell isn't one of them!

 

Bikinis a "no-no"

There may be legitimate reasons for banning bikinis at beauty pageants.  Some critics, for example, have argued that these skimpy outfits place too much emphasis on the physical and that other qualities of the contestants get short shrift.

This year, however, at the Miss World pageant being held in Indonesia, bikinis have been banned from the swimsuit competition in deference to the sensitivities of the Muslim population. 

That's what is being reported by FAUX News. 

Assuming this is true, I'd like to suggest that the Miss World pageant move the contest to another country where Muslims are not in the majority and where it matters not whether their sensitivities are battered.

Perhaps Miss World could come to the United States.  We need the money such a contest would engender and we like half-naked girls and we don't give a damn if a religious group's sensitivities
are threatened.

At least that's what I would like to think. 

Billionaire Bankster
Breaks into Obama's Cabinet
By Greg Palast 
Thursday, 2. May 2013

You made fun of me when I suggested that President Barack Obama would nominate a confessed bank scammer, a loan-sharking mortgage predator, to his cabinet.  But thar she blows!

Today, Obama has named Penny Pritzker Secretary of Commerce. As the President says, It’s a milestone:  the first female fraudster to hold that post. No longer will criminal bankers have to lobby the administration - because now they'll have one of their own in the Cabinet.
     
The following is taken from the Chapter, “Penny’s from Heaven?” you’ll find in my bestseller, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits.  [Get a copy, I’ll sign it, and you send it to the President.]

We never heard of this guy Barack Obama until 2004. Less than three years before taking the presidency, he was in the Illinois state senate, a swamp of scammers, backhanders, and party machine tools - not a stellar launch pad for the White House. And then, one day, state Sen. Barack Obama was visited by his fairy godmother. Her name is Penny Pritzker.

Pritzker's net worth is listed in Forbes as $1.8 billion, which is one hell of a heavy magic wand in the world of politics. Her wand would have been heavier, and her net worth higher, except that in 2001, the federal government fined her and her family $460 million for the predatory, deceitful, racist tactics and practices of Superior, the bank-and-loan-shark operation she ran on the South Side of Chicago.

Superior was the first of the deregulated go-go banks to go bust - at the time, the costliest failure ever. US taxpayers lost nearly half a billion dollars. Superior's depositors lost millions and poor folk in Sen. Obama's South Side district lost their homes.

Penny did not like paying $460 million. No, not one bit. What she needed was someone to give her Hope and Change. She hoped someone would change the banking regulators and the Commerce Department so she could get away with this crap.

Pritzker introduced Obama, the neophyte state senator, to the Ladies Who Lunch (that's really what they call themselves) on Chicago's Gold Coast. Obama got lunch, gold and better - an introduction to Robert Rubin. Rubin is a former Secretary of the Treasury, former chairman of Goldman Sachs and former co-chairman of Citibank. Even atheists recognized Rubin as the Supreme Deity of Wall Street.

Rubin opened the doors to finance industry vaults for Obama. Extraordinarily for a Democrat, Obama in 2008 raised three times as much from bankers as his Republican opponent.

---

This article is based on the chapter Penny's from Heaven? From Palast's New York Times Bestseller Billionaires & Ballot Bandits with comics by Ted Rall.
Donate and get a signed copy.

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So what did Citibank's Rubin get for showering Obama with gold? Obama agreed to take care of Rubin's poodles, Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. They became Obama's first cabinet picks: Summers as Economics Czar and Geithner as his czarina, Secretary of the Treasury.

Geithner and Summers were the gents who, under Treasury Secretary Rubin, designed the deregulation of banking. In effect, they had decriminalized the kind of financial flim-flammery that brought the planet to its knees while bringing Rubin, Pritzker and the banksters loads of lucre.

So, in 2008, Summers and Geithner were put back in the saddle - Obama's horse but Rubin's saddle.

Rubin received more than $100 million from Citigroup, the gargantuan commercial bank/investment bank/casino created by deregulation. It is worth a mention that Rubin's centi-million-dollar payoff went unchallenged by Citi's new owner, the US Treasury, which had put up more than a trillion dollars in loans and guarantees to pull Rubin's creature out of bankruptcy.

Rubin rocked, but Penny was pissed off. Pritzker had taken this state senator/community organizer from the ghetto, made him a US Senator, then, as Obama's campaign finance chairwoman, raised a mind-blowing three-quarters of a billion dollars to make him president.

In return, in 2008, Obama decided to make his patron Penny the Secretary of Commerce. But then, in November 2008, just as Obama was about to submit her nomination to Congress, a bunch of Pritzker's victims marched on Washington. They were not from her busted bank, but unhappy workers from the lucrative nursing homes that her family owns through a string of complex offshore trusts. Obama slammed the door on Penny pronto.

The Pritzker family made its billions mostly from Hyatt Hotels and Hyatt nursing homes. Penny, on the Hyatt board of directors, is an infamously combative anti-union apostle. UNITE HERE, the union that represents Hyatt workers, has called for an international boycott of Hyatt hotels. In 2012, UNITE HERE and its parent, the AFL-CIO, were crucial to Obama's winning Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. So, in this last campaign, Obama had to keep his billionairess heiress on the down-low.

Obama appeared to keep the door shut on Pritzker throughout the 2012 campaign, reducing her to hosting an election fundraiser at her Gold Coast digs, which she had to bill as a Goldman Sachs PAC event. This marks possibly the first time and last time anyone used Goldman Sachs as a PR cover.

But today, with the unions' money and votes already pocketed and counted, Obama can give working folks The Finger and give Penny her pound of flesh: the Commerce post.

The New York Times says that, "At Commerce, Ms. Pritzker could provide the president with a new way to reach out to the business community." The last time Pritzker reached out to the business community was to sell them sub-prime mortgage securities, worthless bags of financial feces manufactured by Superior Bank.

By giving Penny, the Piggy Banker, Commerce, we have to change Obama's rating to sub-prime.

I do note that some woman’s organizations are applauding the appointment of the first female to the Commerce post.  But I prefer to honor the victims of the Chicago femme fatale.  Most of Penny’s victims, busted bank borrowers and underpaid health care workers, are women, too. But, unlike those wounded and destroyed by Pritzker, she worked hard for her money: it was not easy inheriting her first billion from her daddy.


Note:  This article is used with permission.  For more information and investigative reports, please go to GregPalast.com

Forgetting the Holocaust?

A friend of mine sent me this just today.  It portrays perfectly the perpetual mind-numbing insensitivity of so many people toward the Jews.

Mrs. Clare Booth-Luce, the wife of Henry Luce, the founder of TIME magazine, was a well-respected and highly informed writer and journalist.

It must have been in the late ‘60’s that she said, at a gathering of academics and politicians, to a prominent Jewish leader, it may have been Nachum Goldman:

"I really feel that the Jews should stop commemorating the Holocaust. Why don’t you get on with life, put all those experiences, however painful they may be, behind you and concentrate on the future.”

Nachum Goldman stood silent for a moment, then, with brightly shining eyes and warm smile on his face he said:  “Mrs. Luce, these are exactly my sentiments when I hear people talk about the Crucifixion!


[Thank you, Bob Poris!]

Wealth Inequality in the U.S.

If you missed this video, it's worth a few minutes of your time.  Remember that the Republican Party serves as the sponsors and enablers of the richest Americans.  Remember that the so-called Sequester is kicking in because the Republicans in Congress believe that the burden of erasing our nation's debt should fall on those who are the least among us.  God forbid that the wealthy should have to give up a little scrap of their largesse!

What is amazing is that many of our wealthiest citizens and a goodly number of Republicans in Congress claim to be Christians yet fail to see the dichotomy between their religious confession and their actions.  I know many of them proudly confess "Jesus as their Lord," completely oblivious to the fact that Jesus did not give a whit about money and said quite clearly that the rich will never, ever, make it into the Kingdom of Heaven! 




Video produced by Politizane.

Hunger in America

Something's Always Wrong

By Toad the Wet Sprocket

Welcome to our Self-Made Crisis Period, number the fifth in the last six months. I'm well past outrage fatigue. I'm just done with these buffoons in DC. I'm done with David Brooks and John McCain being interviewed about the sequester but not one economist.

I'm tired of privileged white men like Scalia denigrating voters' rights as a racial entitlement. I'm tired of climate change being the single most pressing issue in the entire world, and yet the New York Times declares its Green Blog defunct. I'm tired of good liberal bloggers like Steve Gilliard losing his life because he couldn't afford health insurance and Josh Trevino got paid $400,000 to pimp Malaysian politics AND got published in HuffPo (maybe it's time to start looking at newsman Bob Woodward's extra income).

I'm tired of Mitch McConnell and John Boehner lying about the spending cuts that have already happened and demanding that those who can afford it the least largely bear the burden of their terrible administration. I'm sick of living in a post-fact America where no media outlet assumes the responsibility of informing their audience and keeps playing the "both sides do it" card.

I'll say this until I'm blue in the face: WE HAVE THE SOLUTIONS TO THE PROBLEMS FACING US. But our elected representatives are operating with a completely different agenda, and that's to carry us to the next Self-Made Crisis Period. I'm not being overly morose, really I'm not. I'm just done with this stupidity. I think it's time for us to get rid of the petulant brats and get some adults at the table.

(The above from Crooks & Liars, here.)

President Obama on the Sequester

The people voted into office those morons who currently hold the majority power in the House of Representatives.  They are responsible for this horrible mess, not the president.  Only they can fix it, not the president.  The Republican majority in our Congress said loudly and clearly, "We care only about our rich friends and to hell with the rest of you!  Our main objective for the past four years has been to bring down the president even if we have to destroy out country to do it!"

Ronald Reagan on Social Security and the Budget

This is what Reagan said: “Social Security, let’s lay it to rest once and for all…Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. Social Security is totally funded by the payroll tax levied on employer and employee. If you reduce the outgo of Social Security, that money would not go into the general fund or reduce the deficit. It would go into the Social Security Trust Fund. So Social Security has nothing to do with balancing a budget or raising or lowering the deficit.”

h/t to The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare

"I want my fair share--and that's ALL OF IT." - The Kochs & the XL Pipeline

"I want my fair share–and that's ALL OF IT."

The Kochs & the XL Pipeline

By Greg Palast for Vice Magazine 
Thursday, February 14, 2013

Activists alert:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his son Connor Kennedy were arrested Wednesday in Washington while protesting against approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. 
 

A rally in Washington, DC, protesting the Pipeline, has been called by Forward on Climate for Sunday, February 17. 

Bobby Kennedy, my partner in these investigations, is a contributor to Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: Greg Palast investigates Karl Rove, the Koch Gang & their Buck Buddies, the book on which this report is based.  

According to the transcript of the secretly recorded tape, Charles Koch was chuckling like a six-year old.  Koch was having a hell of a laugh over pilfering a few hundred dollars’ worth of oil from a couple of dirt-poor Indians on the Osage Reservation.

Why did Koch, worth about $3 billion at the time (now $20 billion) need to boost a few bucks from some Indian in a trailer home?  Koch answered:

“I want my fair share – and that’s all of it.”

Now “all of it” includes a pipeline, the Keystone XL, which would run the world’s filthiest oil, crude made from tar sands, down from Canada to his family’s refinery on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

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This is Part 2 of “The Koch Brothers, Hugo Chavez and the XL Pipeline.”  Part 1 explains that the Koch Oil refinery can only “crack” heavy crude from Venezuela—which costs $33 a barrel more than tar sands heavy oil.  But Canada’s cheap crude cannot get to Texas without a new, giant pipe.  XL would save the Kochs nearly $3 billion a year.

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Problem:  the Keystone XL tar-oil tube would endanger the largest US water sources, vastly increase pollution in the USA and measurably heat the planet.

Solution:  Congressman Tim Griffin.

Congressman Griffin is sponsoring the bill to force the Obama Administration to approve the XL Pipeline without the environmental review now required by law.

What’s odd is that Griffin represents Arkansas, a state with no stake in the Pipeline.

But the Kochs have a stake in Griffin.  In his maiden run for Congress, Griffin was elected with an eye-popping $167,000 donation from the Kochs.  For $167,000, any congressman will wash your car – with their tongue.

For the Kochs, $167K is peanuts.  Their political action operation, Americans for Prosperity, built a quarter billion dollar fund this past year, a sum never seen even in the US politics cash swamp.

Global Warming Denial as a Profit Center
To answer the concerns about global warming raised by the XL and the Kochs’ oil business, the billionaire brothers have bankrolled a gold-plated campaign of global warming denial.

For example, Americans for Prosperity funded “Hot Air Tour” rallies across the US with the slogan, “Global Warming Alarmism:  Lost Jobs, Higher Taxes and Less Freedom.”  More rallies were held by the Koch-funded FreedomWorks, a foundation which has seized control of the Tea Party movement—and redirected populist rage against plutocrats. FreedomWorks transformed the Tea Party into a used tea bag, dangling from the Kochs' string.

Break the Law then Re-make the Law
States on the pipeline’s route could block the Keystone XL, but the crucial extension will originate in Oklahoma where the Kochs have cowed all resistance to their needs.

The Kochs’ power to terrorize politicians in Oklahoma and the West originates in that case of Osage tribe’s missing oil.

FBI agents filmed Koch Oil men pilfering the crude, had witnesses to Koch’s directives to siphon the oil, and more. The US Justice Department drafted a criminal indictment of Koch Industries and Defendant “67C” (reportedly Charles Koch himself) for “Crime on an Indian Reservation” and racketeering, big-time jail-time offenses.

That’s when Koch Oil drilled down and struck Bob Dole, the nation’s most powerful Senator, the Republican Majority Leader.

Dole (representing Kansas), joined by a Koch-funded Senator from Oklahoma, Don Nickles, had the federal prosecutor who brought the case fired.  Case closed except for a few million paid to the Osage for some of their stolen oil.

Dole ran for President using Koch money given to Dole’s not-for-profit foundation.  It was a cheap buy for the Kochs because it was illegal – so Dole, when caught, had to give it back.

But one Senator wouldn’t let the oil theft go: Dennis DeConcini, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Investigations whose report concluded, “Koch Oil is the most dramatic example of an oil company stealing by deliberate mismeasurement and fraudulent reporting.”

The Kochs didn’t like that.  And when the Kochs don’t like something, or someone, it’s notably more serious than a ‘thumbs down’ on your Facebook page. In 1996 (yes, I’ve been investigating the Kochs for that long), DeConcini told me the Kochs warned him that if he published and stood by the Senate’s and the FBI’s findings, the Kochs would destroy the Senator’s political career.  They did.

Then there was the matter of the 97-count criminal indictment of Koch Oil for dumping poisonous crude sludge into rivers in six states.  The Kochs didn’t merely want to beat the rap—they wanted to continue dumping.

That would require buying a whole new Congress.  No problemo, Pardner.  In 1996, Koch Industries, through a fake front called Coalition for our Children’s Future, secretly funded millions of dollars in vicious attack ads against vulnerable Democrats just days before the election.

As a result, Republican Newt Gingrich kept his post as Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Gingrich pushed an agenda he called "The Contract with America", which would eliminate criminal sanctions for pollution and slash rules against polluting.  The Center for Public Integrity said it “seems to have been drafted and designed for Koch interests.”

Wrong.  The Contract was drafted by the Kochs and crafted at the Heritage Foundation, a think-tank the Kochs founded.

Bill Clinton’s Administration, though nominally Democratic, went easy on Koch interests. Vice-President Al Gore especially, head of the Reinventing Government Commission, attacked regulations with more verve than Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher.  Gore’s anti-regulation guidebook was the “Mandate for Change” drafted by the Democratic Leadership Council.  It was the DLC that had launched the career of the previously unknown Bill Clinton, its first chair, and Al Gore’s career as well. The DLC was created with $100,000 of Koch money.

The Kochs use of fronts for corporate donations to politicians was plain illegal—until, in 2010, the US Supreme Court decriminalized this game in the Citizens United case.  The lawyer for Citizens United is Ted Olson, whose day job is representing Koch Industries.

Note:  The Kochs are bi-partisan employers.  They also retain lawyer Bob Strauss, former Chairman of the Democratic Party.

The Themis Machine
As if their billions, their think tanks, lawyers, fronts and political action fund were not enough to scare the bejeezus out of politicians, there is Themis.  Themis, created by the Kochs, is the nation’s most sophisticated, detailed database on every American living, surpassing the most demonic dreams of the FBI.

Themis, for example, knows the last time you, Jack, downloaded porn.

Given their power and their Themis, is it really possible for a few greenies and some fact-afflicted scientists to stop the Kochs from jamming their pipeline right up our aquifers?

Absolutely.  Indeed, that’s the only way it will be stopped, because the Kochs have already put the politicians in their pipe and smoked them.

...

Note:  This article by Greg Palast was originally written for Vice Magazine, and is used with permission.