Paul Le Blanc at #OccupyBoston

10 more years in Afghanistan?

How about a solid no... The American people are tired of this war.

TT:

The agreement would allow not only military trainers to stay to build up the Afghan army and police, but also American special forces soldiers and air power to remain.

The prospect of such a deal has already been met with anger among Afghanistan’s neighbours including, publicly, Iran and, privately, Pakistan.

It also risks being rejected by the Taliban and derailing any attempt to coax them to the negotiating table, according to one senior member of Hamid Karzai’s peace council.

A withdrawal of American troops has already begun following an agreement to hand over security for the country to Kabul by the end of 2014.

But Afghans wary of being abandoned are keen to lock America into a longer partnership after the deadline. Many analysts also believe the American military would like to retain a presence close to Pakistan, Iran and China.

Quickly approaching a wall...

With income equality at an all time high Social Security is feeling the strain.  I'm kind of glad the GOP is the party that gets to tell grandma they want to pull the plug on her.

HP:

WASHINGTON — Laid-off workers and aging baby boomers are flooding Social Security's disability program with benefit claims, pushing the financially strapped system toward the brink of insolvency.

Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can't find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs.

The stampede for benefits is adding to a growing backlog of applicants – many wait two years or more before their cases are resolved – and worsening the financial problems of a program that's been running in the red for years.

New congressional estimates say the trust fund that supports Social Security disability will run out of money by 2017, leaving the program unable to pay full benefits, unless Congress acts. About two decades later, Social Security's much larger retirement fund is projected to run dry as well.

Much of the focus in Washington has been on fixing Social Security's retirement system. Proposals range from raising the retirement age to means-testing benefits for wealthy retirees. But the disability system is in much worse shape and its problems defy easy solutions.

The trustees who oversee Social Security are urging Congress to shore up the disability system by reallocating money from the retirement program, just as lawmakers did in 1994. That would provide only short-term relief at the expense of weakening the retirement program.

Claims for disability benefits typically increase in a bad economy because many disabled people get laid off and can't find a new job. This year, about 3.3 million people are expected to apply for federal disability benefits. That's 700,000 more than in 2008 and 1 million more than a decade ago.

Bernie Sander's newest video, where are the jobs?

Matt Taibbi makes a really good point about Rick Perry

Rolling Stone:

Rick Perry vs. Ben Bernanke: Round One

 

Apologies for the long absence – I have a big story coming out tomorrow (definitely come back to rollingstone.com tomorrow around this time) and spent most of last week bogged down in the fact-checking process. I’ll have more on that piece when it comes out.

Lots of stuff going on this week, including many dire predictions about the economy, but the most interesting thing I saw in the last days was the sudden appearance of Quantitative Easing as a campaign issue. For those who don’t remember QE, this is a magical money-printing program the Fed has been using two years in a row to artificially prop up the economy (well, parts of it, anyway).“Helicopter Ben” Bernanke has printed a couple of trillion dollars, just waved a wand and invented them, then used those funds to buy things like mortgages and t-bills.

That this is a terrible idea ought to be self-evident. The irritating thing is that this ought naturally to be a campaign issue for progressives, because the most direct consequence of QE is to magnify the income inequality problem, as this study of the British version of QE  (decried by our witty friends at Zero Hedge as the winner of the “real men of captain obvious genius award”) concluded. The study by Dhaval Joseph of BCA research concluded that QE might have been a factor leading to the British riots.

The reason QE is “good for the rich and bad for the poor” is obvious: by pouring trillions in jet-fuel cash into the inequity engine that is the banking sector, we’ve seen massive increases in share prices and corporate profits, without any resulting increases in wages. As the Joseph study concludes:

Real wages – adjusted for inflation – have fallen in both the US and UK, where QE has been a key tool for boosting growth. In Germany, meanwhile, where there has been no quantitative easing, real wages have risen.

It should be obvious to anyone that printing two trillion new dollars and handing it to the corrupt financial sector to play with will not result in higher wages for ordinary people. This ought to be an issue for the left/progressives, but thanks to Barack Obama’s ownership of the program, it’s now turning into a campaign issue for Republicans. Most notably, Texa-creep Rick Perry came out recently with a uniquely thuggish criticism of QE, essentiallythreatening Bernanke with a Texan mob if he does what everyone expects him to do and enacts a third QE program:

"If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas," said Perry.

To me this whole issue encapsulates the basic failure of the Obama administration. It has surrendered to Wall Street interests, and in doing so has allowed lunatics like Rick Perry to step into legitimate roles as critics of corrupt policy.

Of course Perry’s gripe with QE isn’t that it boosts corporate/banking profits at the expense of the general population, but that it’s unsound economics and fiscally irresponsible – which is true as well, but that’s not the point. The point is that we’re heading into 2012 and Barack Obama is going to be owning a hell of a lot of corrupt policy. Voters who want to break up the Wall Street/government oligopoly are increasingly left with only fringe politicians as champions, and (here's my Captain Obvious observation) that blows.

Bernie Sanders uncovers the capitalist economy cooking the books again, and people are surprised?

Bernie Sanders:

U.S. senator's leak of oil trading information sparks concern

CFTC, Wall Street upset by leak of private oil data

WASHINGTON — Oil trading data that exposed the extensive positions speculators held in the run-up to record high prices in 2008 were intentionally leaked by a U.S. senator, sparking broader concern about industry confidentiality as Congress moves on Wall Street reform.

Senator Bernie Sanders, a staunch critic of oil speculators, leaked the information to a major newspaper in a move that has unsettled both regulators and Wall Street alike.

In a June 16 e-mail reviewed by Reuters, a senior policy adviser to Sanders discusses how his office received private data with the names and positions of traders and forwarded it exclusively to a Wall Street Journal reporter.

The e-mail, which also attaches two files with the data, was sent to Public Citizen’s Tyson Slocum asking him to review it and speak with the newspaper about his observations.

In a statement from Sanders provided to Reuters, Sanders said he felt the data needed to be publicly aired.

“The CFTC has kept this information hidden from the American public for nearly three years,” he said. “This is an outrage. The American people have a right to know exactly who caused gas prices to skyrocket in 2008 and who is causing them to spike today.”

The leaked information has sparked concern at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is legally prohibited from releasing confidential information that identifies trader positions and identities.

The leak also raises broader questions as U.S. regulators gear up to collect massive new amounts of private data from market players on everything from swaps and hedge funds to blueprints for how large financial firms can be liquidated. The breach of data could make Wall Street less reluctant to hand over sensitive information if they fear it is not appropriately safeguarded.

“This type of incident will have a chilling effect on derivatives trading in the U.S. because market participants will be reluctant to take the risk that their positions will be exposed to the public-and their competitors,” John Damgard, president of the Futures Industry Association, said in a statement sent to Reuters.

Republicans have already raised concerns in recent hearings about the Treasury’s new Office of Financial Research created by Dodd-Frank, and whether its collection of data from hedge funds and banks may constitute a regulatory overreach.

Although the CFTC is barred from releasing confidential data, the law does require the CFTC to hand over such information if a Congressional committee acting within its proper authority requests it. Once it is in the hands of Congress, there is nothing to prevent lawmakers from releasing it publicly.

The leaked data contains long and short positions held by oil traders in 2008, the same year that oil prices spiked to $147 a barrel. Critics at the time accused oil speculators of driving up prices, leading lawmakers to later insert a provision into the Dodd-Frank Wall Street overhaul law compelling the CFTC to place stricter limits on how many commodity contracts any one trader can control.

Among the kinds of traders accused of excessive speculation included passive long investors such as pension funds, which often seek exposure to commodities markets indirectly by going through an intermediary swap dealer such as such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

The data that was leaked to the Wall Street Journal was compiled by the CFTC in 2008 during a “special call” in which the agency sought crude oil position data from swap dealers so they could piece together market activity occurring both on and off the exchange, people familiar with the matter said.

The CFTC first became aware of the breach of the data after a staffer from Sanders’ office sent the agency an e-mail with the information and asked the CFTC’s chief economist to discuss it more.

The agency began exploring internally whether or not any staffers were responsible for the leak, and concluded that no CFTC employees were involved, according to people familiar with the matter.

It is unclear exactly how Sanders acquired the private information, and a spokesman declined to say.

But people familiar with the matter say the data later obtained by Sanders was first formally requested by the U.S. House Energy Committee. From there it somehow migrated over to the U.S. Senate.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald


Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/senator+leak+trading+information+sparks+concern/5276858/story.html#ixzz1VVbXvUy2

Music to my ears...  This is completely biased though, this guys likens Stalin's Russia to Democratic Socialism.  Those of us who are well read know better... The Soviet Union NEVER advocated for the rights of human beings, civil rights, religious ones and economic rights.

"There is no antagonism between the Cross and socialism!  A man can pray to Jesus the carpenter, and be a better socialist for it  Rightly understood, there is no conflict between the vision of Marx and the vision of Christ.  I stand by the Cross and I stand by Karl Marx.  Both Capital and the Bible are to me Holy Books" -James Larkin

Daily Mail:

Capitalism in crisis, a warning from history: Eighty years ago, a banking collapse devastated Europe, triggering war. Today, faith in the free markets is faltering again.

Exactly 80 years ago, international capitalism stood on the verge of meltdown.
The collapse of the banking system in the summer of 1931 sent shockwaves through Europe, bringing governments to their knees and thousands out onto the streets.

In the United States, an increasingly careworn president and his congressional critics fought a bitter battle over government spending and tax rises.

I belly laugh when I hear Obama's a Socialist

The Fiscal Times:  Obama: The Covert Conservative Liberals Have to Love

In a recent column, I argued that Barack Obama has in practice governed as a moderate conservative. Right wingers were, of course, incredulous, and insisted that he is a far left socialist no matter how thin the evidence. The truth is that Obama has always been moderately conservative – a fact that has been obvious to liberals dating back to the beginning of the 2008 campaign. It would be clear to conservatives as well if they weren’t so blinded by their partisanship and occasionally got their news from an unbiased source.

It’s not now remembered, but when Obama initially ran for president he wasn’t the preferred candidate of even the traditionally liberal African-American community. Many remembered Bill Clinton as their friend and someone whose economic policies reduced the black unemployment rate to its lowest level in recent memory – less than half of what it is today. Consequently, many African-Americans were initially inclined to support Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination, not Obama.

Many blacks were also disturbed by Obama’s biracial heritage and wondered whether he was “black enough.” Al Sharpton accused Obama of “grandstanding in front of white people” when he urged nonviolence in the wake of a racially charged court verdict. Jesse Jackson said that Obama talked down to black people when he said that they bear some responsibility for their condition, and Andrew Young joked that Bill Clinton had probably dated more black women than Obama had.

White liberals were no less concerned about Obama’s persistent deviations from their dogma. On June 25, 2008, Sen. Russ Feingold criticized him for supporting legislation giving telephone companies immunity for permitting government surveillance in national security cases, as well as for opting out of federal campaign funds, thereby undermining liberal support for campaign finance reform.

On June 30, 2008, Arianna Huffington assailed Obama for abandoning his base, saying it was politically counterproductive. “When Obama kneecaps his own rhetoric and dilutes his positioning as a different kind of politician, he is also giving his opponents a huge opening to reassert the McCain as Maverick brand,” she complained.

The next day, Markos Moulitsas, founder of the widely-read Daily Kos web site, penned a bitter attack on Obama for betraying liberals, taking swipes at left-wing groups and other offenses. “There is a line between ‘moving to the center’ and stabbing your allies in the back out of fear of being criticized,” Moulitsas said. “And, of late, he’s been doing a lot of unnecessary stabbing, betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician.”

On July 13, 2008, the New York Times published an article quoting a number of liberal activists who were deeply disappointed that Obama was giving short shrift to their issues. The article was entitled, “Obama Supporters on the Far Left Cry Foul.”

Simultaneously, some conservatives began warming to Obama. In a July 15, 2008, column, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal editorial page praised his moderate views on race, calling Obama the Mikhail Gorbachev of the civil rights movement.

Fareed Zakaria, in a July 18, 2008, column for Newsweek, praised Obama for his foreign policy realism. “What emerges is a world view that is far from that of a typical liberal, much closer to that of a traditional realist,” he wrote. “It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the historical schools of foreign policy, Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist.”

Even arch supply-sider Larry Kudlow professed admiration for Obama’s pragmatism when he wrote, “Lo and behold, Team Obama is moving toward the supply-side and pivoting toward the political center on key aspects of its tax policy.” He was impressed that Obama had promised not to raise the tax rate on capital gains any higher than 20 percent, a promise he has kept.

Soon, a large number of prominent Republicans and conservative intellectuals were publicly endorsing Obama. Following is a short list:

Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s White House chief of staff;

Charles Fried, Reagan’s Solicitor General;

Ken Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for Reagan;

Colin Powell, Secretary of State under George W. Bush;

Scott McClellan, Bush’s press secretary;

And Jeffrey Hart, former senior editor at National Review magazine and speechwriter for Reagan and Richard Nixon;

Radio talker Rush Limbaugh was so alarmed by conservative defections to Obama that he read the riot act to his “ditto heads.” He said it was “maddening” that Obama “is moving right” and sounding as conservative on many things as McCain. To counter these inroads among conservatives, Limbaugh handed down his marching orders: “We have to portray this guy as inexperienced, far leftist, despite what he’s saying about moving to the center.”

According to exit polls, Obama ended up with 20 percent of the conservative vote in 2008.

After the election, many conservatives who thought that Obama’s centrism was a campaign ploy were shocked when he followed through with appointees that could – and often did – hold positions in Republican administrations. Looking at Obama’s national security team, foreign policy hawk Max Boot professed himself “gobsmacked.” Most of them, he admitted, “could just as easily have come from a President McCain.” On economic policy, many conservatives expressed comfort with Obama advisers Paul Volcker, Larry Summers, Austan Goolsbee, and Jason Furman.

Fred Barnes of the right-wing Weekly Standard spoke for many conservatives when on December 8, 2008, he said: “It’s not that Obama, despite his unswervingly liberal record in the Senate, turns out to be a pragmatist. The point is he’s pragmatic (so far) in one direction – rightward. Who knew?”

Even Jennifer Rubin, now the resident right-winger at the Washington Post, wrote on January 5, 2009, “So far it’s hard to imagine McCain would have been doing more than the incoming Obama team seems to be proposing…to further some key center-Right policy aims.”

No doubt, many of these conservatives would say today that they are disappointed that Obama didn’t follow through on his centrist promise. Nevertheless, it’s clear that Obama’s conservatism, which I believe is fully evident in his policies as president, has long been there to see by those willing to be honest with themselves.

Another strike against the American People

Bernie Sanders goes highlights the attack on the American People with the debt "agreement":

Bernie Sanders, The American People are angry

Another round of class warfare from the top down

From Canadian Business:

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The two Republicans running for lieutenant governor say people receiving welfare or unemployment benefits in Mississippi should be subject to drug testing.

The proposal is part of a policy agenda that one of the candidates, state Sen. Billy Hewes, unveiled Wednesday during a news conference in the state Capitol.

His opponent in the Aug. 2 primary, state Treasurer Tate Reeves, said in a separate interview that he agrees with drug testing for people on public assistance. Reeves questioned why Hewes hasn't already pushed it into law, since Hewes has been in the Legislature 20 years.

"Has he filed a bill to do that?" Reeves asked.

The legislative website shows that Hewes did file such a bill this year, and that it died in the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee.

Hewes said he also wants to repeal the state inventory tax, strengthen vocational training in high schools, consolidate administrative functions for state agencies, order audits of state consulting contracts and require more disclosure about contracts for private attorneys who handle lawsuits on behalf of the state.

Reeves said his priority would be job creation.

"I don't believe government creates jobs," Reeves said. "Government simply creates the environment which encourages the private sector to invest capital and create jobs."

Reeves said he also wants to eliminate the inventory tax but over time. Doing so immediately, he said, could hurt local governments that rely on the revenue. He said he also wants to increase educational attainment in Mississippi and streamline state government by reducing the number of publicly-owned or leased vehicles and cell phones. Reeves said he agrees with requiring more disclosure about public contracts for private attorneys.

Hewes and Reeves both said they'd push for a "Caylee's Law," requiring parents or grandparents to promptly report missing or dead children. Legislators in several states say they'll push for such laws to honor Caylee Anthony, a toddler slain in Florida.

Reeves questioned the timing of Hewes' releasing a list of policy proposals.

"After 20 years in the Legislature and with only 13 days to go in this campaign, I wonder why my opponent is just now bringing up some of these ideas," Reeves said.

The drug testing proposal is not unique to Mississippi. Other states, including Florida and Missouri, enacted laws this year requiring drug testing for people on public assistance.

The Florida law requires people applying for welfare to pay for their own drug testing. If they pass, they're reimbursed. If they fail the test, they can't receive public assistance for at least a year. The Missouri law requires testing if there's reasonable cause to suspect a welfare recipient is using illegal drugs.

Hewes responded to questions Wednesday about whether he'd require drug testing only for low-income people on public assistance or if he'd also propose it for executives of companies receiving tax breaks or other incentives to bring jobs to Mississippi.

"I think if we're going to do drug testing at one level, we should have it at all. If you're receiving any sort of assistance from the state, it ought to be across the board," Hewes said.

Then, after more detailed questions, Hewes said his drug testing proposal would only be for people receiving welfare or unemployment benefits. He also said he would not kick children off Medicaid, for example, if a parent tests positive for illegal drug use.

"You can't fault the kids for what the parents are doing," Hewes said.

Janis Lane, a Hewes supporter who attended the news conference, said people who work for private companies are often subject to random drug testing and she believes it's fair to put the same requirement on those receiving public aid. Lane, 63, is retired from a telephone company and is president of the Central Mississippi Tea Party.

"I don't spend my money on drugs, and I don't think anyone should because I think we should have clear minds so that we can make reasonable decisions and we can conduct our business appropriately," Lane said. "With drugs, you're taking away from your children, and that money could be used more wisely, being spent on your children."

The lieutenant governor's race will be decided, for all practical purposes, in the Republican primary. No Democrat is running. A Reform Party candidate is expected to be on the Nov. 8 ballot, but the Reform Party has no history of winning elections in the state.

The current lieutenant governor, Republican Phil Bryant, is running for governor this year.

The lieutenant governor presides over the 52-member state Senate, appoints Senate committee chairmen and assigns bills to committees.

Hewes, 49, of Gulfport, is in the insurance business and has been a state senator the past 20 years. Reeves, 37, of Flowood, has been state treasurer for the past eight years.

The face of a human monster

Socialism in it's truest form is about love, and humanity. Capitalism is about greed and envy. The capitalist masters try and divide us based upon religion, race, ethnicity and nationality.

Look at the patch on his left arm.

The never ending debt cycle with this capitalist economy

The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s

William Klein’a story may sound familiar to his fellow graduates. After earning his bachelor’s in history from the College at Brockport, he found himself living in his parents’ Buffalo home, working the same $7.25-an-hour waiter job he had in high school.

It wasn’t that there weren’t other jobs out there. It’s that they all seemed to want more education. Even tutoring at a for-profit learning center or leading tours at a historic site required a master’s. “It’s pretty apparent that with the degree I have right now, there are not too many jobs I would want to commit to,” Mr. Klein says.

So this fall, he will sharpen his marketability at Rutgers’ new master’s program in Jewish studies (think teaching, museums and fund-raising in the Jewish community). Jewish studies may not be the first thing that comes to mind as being the road to career advancement, and Mr. Klein is not sure exactly where the degree will lead him (he’d like to work for the Central Intelligence Agency in the Middle East). But he is sure of this: he needs a master’s. Browse professional job listings and it’s “bachelor’s required, master’s preferred.”

Call it credentials inflation. Once derided as the consolation prize for failing to finish a Ph.D. or just a way to kill time waiting out economic downturns, the master’s is now the fastest-growing degree. The number awarded, about 657,000 in 2009, has more than doubled since the 1980s, and the rate of increase has quickened substantially in the last couple of years, says Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools. Nearly 2 in 25 people age 25 and over have a master’s, about the same proportion that had a bachelor’s or higher in 1960.

“Several years ago it became very clear to us that master’s education was moving very rapidly to become the entry degree in many professions,” Dr. Stewart says. The sheen has come, in part, because the degrees are newly specific and utilitarian. These are not your general master’s in policy or administration. Even the M.B.A., observed one business school dean, “is kind of too broad in the current environment.” Now, you have the M.S. in supply chain management, and in managing mission-driven organizations. There’s an M.S. in skeletal and dental bioarchaeology, and an M.A. in learning and thinking.

The degree of the moment is the professional science master’s, or P.S.M., combining job-specific training with business skills. Where only a handful of programs existed a few years ago, there are now 239, with scores in development. Florida’s university system, for example, plans 28 by 2013, clustered in areas integral to the state’s economy, including simulation (yes, like Disney, but applied to fields like medicine and defense). And there could be many more, says Patricia J. Bishop, vice provost and dean of graduate studies at the University of Central Florida. “Who knows when we’ll be done?”

While many new master’s are in so-called STEM areas — science, technology, engineering and math — humanities departments, once allergic to applied degrees, are recognizing that not everyone is ivory tower-bound and are drafting credentials for résumé boosting.

“There is a trend toward thinking about professionalizing degrees,” acknowledges Carol B. Lynch, director of professional master’s programs at the Council of Graduate Schools. “At some point you need to get out of the library and out into the real world. If you are not giving people the skills to do that, we are not doing our job.”

This, she says, has led to master’s in public history (for work at a historical society or museum), in art (for managing galleries) and in music (for choir directors or the business side of music). Language departments are tweaking master’s degrees so graduates, with a portfolio of cultural knowledge and language skills, can land jobs with multinational companies.

Our Socialist neighbor to the north took his discriminatory act to court:

COLUMBUS, Ohio(CGE) -

The Ohio Socialist Party candidate who tried but failed to enter last year's three televised debates hosted by Ohio's big eight for-profit newspapers, between losing candidate Lee Fisher, a Democrat, and the winner, Rob Portman, a Republican, has now filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Federal Elections Commission, alleging its criteria for selecting candidates to be included in the debates were unlawfully kept secret from him and all other minor-party candidates and that the debates therefore constituted an illegal contribution to the candidates respective campaigns.   

 

Dan La Botz, an elementary school teacher in Cincinnati who got himself on the ballot and found over 25 thousand Ohioans who voted for him and not the other four candidates on the ballot, hopes this legal ploy will remedy the FEC's wrongful dismissal of the administrative complaint he filed at the time against the Ohio News Organization (ONO), its corporate members, the senatorial campaign of Robert Portman, and the senatorial campaign of

Lee Fisher. 

 

The ONO is a for-profit, unincorporated business association consisting of the eight largest newspapers in Ohio, which are all for-profit corporations organized under the laws of Ohio: The Toledo Blade, the (Canton) Repository, the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the Columbus Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Dayton Daily News, the Akron Beacon Journal, and the (Youngstown) Vindicator. 

 

La Botz filed his administrative complaint with the FEC in late September of 2010, alleging that ONO and its corporate members had scheduled a series of televised debates between Portman and Fisher in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA).

 

In his filing, La Botz alleges that ONO and its corporate members made illegal campaign contributions to the Fisher and Portman campaigns by financing and organizing a series of televised debates including only those two major-party candidates without establishing and announcing permissible “pre-established objective criteria to determine which candidates may participate in the debate” and by categorically limiting the debates to these two major-party candidates. 

 

Acting on advice of its General Counsel, the FEC subsequently dismissed La Botz's administrative complaint on May 19, 2011.  

 

La Botz argues he was never afforded an opportunity by ONO and its corporate members, prior to its selection of only the two major-party candidates, to present evidence or argument showing that he should be included in the debates or otherwise satisfied ONO’s secret standards.   

 

"The Commission’s dismissal of Plaintiff’s administrative complaint is contrary to law, an  abuse of discretion, and arbitrary and capricious," La Botz's law team of Mark Brown of Capital Law School and Oliver B Hall of the Center for Competitive Democracy in Washington, D.C. wrote.

 

A collection of corporations like ONO that selects the Republican and Democratic candidates for televised debates, and categorically excludes all other ballot-qualified candidates, thus makes illegal contributions to those two major-party candidates, in violation of the Federal Election Campaigns Act, the lawsuit states.

 

Citing Buchanan v. Federal Election Commission, La Botz said that “[t]aken together, these statements by the regulation’s drafters strongly suggest that the objectivity requirement [of 11 C.F.R. § 110.13(c)] precludes debate sponsors from selecting a level of support so high that only the Democratic and Republican nominees could reasonably achieve it.”

 

La Botz, who told CGE via email Sunday that he won't be a candidate in next year's contest involving incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, his Republican challenger or another minority party candidate, said he qualified for Ohio’s 2010 United States Senate ballot in May 2010 by winning the Socialist Party of Ohio’s (a ballot-qualified party in Ohio) political primary.

 

The Socialist Party USA, of which the Socialist Party of Ohio is a member, is a direct descendant of Eugene Debs’ Socialist Party of America. Eugene Debs ran for President five times from 1900 to 1920.

 

The debates negotiated by ONO, its corporate members and the Fisher and Portman campaigns were scheduled to be held (and in fact were held) in Cleveland, Toledo and Columbus during the month of October 2010, the lawsuit said. It noted all three of ONO’s debates between Portman and Fisher were broadcast live on local television, either through independent broadcasters or broadcasters affiliated with ONO’s corporate members.   

 

Socialist Party candidates have only won a handful of votes in Ohio, compared to major party candidates. For example, in 1912, Debs won 8.69 percent of the vote (90,144 votes) in Ohio’s presidential election. A Gallup Poll from February of 2010 reports that “socialism” is viewed favorably by 36 percent of Americans.

 

La Botz argues, using several examples to make his point, that Ohio has unconstitutionally excluded minor-party candidates for sixty-plus years from its ballots. This, he says, has "led Ohio’s primary news outlets, including the eight corporate members of ONO, to habitually and presumptively focus exclusively on the two major parties. Ohio news organizations, especially those corporations that have joined to form the ONO, regularly ignore candidates who are not affiliated with either the Democratic or Republican Parties."

 

These organizations also control the Ohio Statehouse press corps, which is a creature of the legislature, who ultimately decides which media outlets gain access to the floors of the House or Senate, the sole perk of membership in the group that is now as outdated as the 1893 mission of the group is in today's Twitter- and Facebook-driven world of news.

 

In is filing, La Botz offered a response from Bruce Winges, editor and vice-president of the Akron Beacon Journal, one of the eight corporate members of ONO, describing ONO’s criteria for inclusion in the debates: "The Ohio News Organization generally follows the structure used by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which allows for only the major-party candidates to debate. The logic is sound: In a television debate format, when time constraints limit the number of questions and answers to be heard, it is of the utmost importance that voters hear from the two candidates who are clearly the front-runners for the office. While we have and will continue to write about third-party candidates when warranted, including them in debates limits Ohioans’ ability to hear answers from the top candidates on issues critical to the state’s future."

 

One counter argument to Winges' is that if voters never hear from minority party candidates, they won't vote for them, and not voting for them will maintain the supremacy Democrats and Republicans have enjoyed since the Civil War, but which Americans have grown weary of, as the rise of the tea party last year showed. Sufficiently inspired, Americans will vote for other candidates, albeit in small numbers, but maybe with more reporting on them, more voters might think their positions more sensible than what Democrats and Republicans have been foisting on the electorate over the decades.

 

CityBeat, a Cincinnati weekly that caters its content on topical issues, art and culture to young professionals, endorsed La Botz last year over Portman or Fisher.

 

Recently, in Columbus, the first ever We the People Convention took place, at which over a thousand motivated advocates and activists tired of the on-going gridlock and self-serving actions put both parties on notice that they intend to have an effect on next year's elections, if not sooner.

 

One Independent Candidate for U.S. Senate from last year, Dr. Michael Pryce, upgraded his status from Independent to Republican, just so he can take on whomever Republican powerbrokers choose to run against Sen. Brown. So far, it looks like the new, young Republican Auditor of State, Josh Mandel, has been anointed to be that candidate.

 

Dr. Pryce told CGE in an interview at the WTP convention that he doesn't intend to bow out, as GOP chairman Kevin DeWine told him to do. Last year, running as an Indepdent, Pryce, like La Botz, his political polar opposite, also said the decked was stacked for the major party candidates.

 

Last year, La Botz netted 26,454 votes, a puny amount compared to the 3.7 million votes the majority party candidates won. The four minority party candidates, combined, won 143,059 votes.

 

Minority party candidates didn't win any seats last year, but in the race for governor, the votes they did get - 151,224 - was almost twice the margin John Kasich defeated Ted Strickland by, a skinny 77,127 votes. Kasich could only muster 49 percent of 49 percent of the voters who turned out to vote. Had the three minority party candidates not run, it could be argued that Strickland would have won. Polls show that if Kasich and Strickland were to run again today, based on Kasich's track record so far, Strickland would win going away in a second runoff.

 

But while La Botz may have leverage using FECA, the new campaign financing landscape made possible with the Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court can create its own leap-frog-scenario, where another funding source other than ONO can pay for debates, invite ONO members and majority party candidates to it and likely not be in violation of FECA.

 

La Botz wants the court to declare the FEC's dismissal of his complaint "contrary to law, an abuse of discretion and arbitrary and capricious." He also wants it sent back to the FEC and for awarding attorney's fees and litigation expenses.

 

Liberals have their points, but they're arguing over yards not miles

The whole system needs to be rethought, 401k's should be a choice for external revenue for retirement, not it's main means, all retirement should be guaranteed through state coffers:

The banks, bailouts and ultimate failure of capitalism

Marxism-Leninism Today:

The Crisis and Speculative Capitalism

Billionaire investor George Soros, writing in the Financial Times, calls it “the worst financial crisis in 60 years.” In The New York Times, liberal economist Paul Krugman speaks of “a sort of minor-key reprise of the banking crisis that swept America in 1930 and 1931.” For economist and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, contributing to the same paper, the crisis deepens because the US consumer is “totally spent.” Chalmers Johnson sees the “debt crisis” as the “the greatest threat to the American Republic.” The Wall Street Journal on March 17, 2008 ominously stated “The last six days have shaken American capitalism.”

The desperate meeting of Federal officials, JP Morgan Chase chiefs, and Bear Sterns executives on Sunday, March 16 only underscores the chorus of dire assessments. The Fed chairman, the Treasury Secretary, their staffs and their corporate counterparts sought to salvage the pieces of the collapsing Bear Sterns giant brokerage house and secure a firewall against further disaster in the financial sector.

Finally the depth and breadth of the economic crisis has set in. Fear and panic have replaced a hollow confidence that markets will restore order with time and careful attention from the authorities at the Federal Reserve. Instead, the smug, arrogant pushers of market fundamentalism are beginning to creep toward the exits. You can hear it in the uneasy jokes and halting comments of the media talking heads.

We began writing and warning of the seriousness of this disaster last April.

How did we get here?

I suppose we, too, are fundamentalists – Marxist fundamentalists. In volume III ofCapital, Marx writes of the role of foreign trade in maintaining or increasing – temporarily – the rate of profit. Bear in mind that Marx believed that capitalist accumulation led, all things being equal, to a decline in the rate of profit within the capitalist system. For reasons that we will not discuss here, he maintained that this tendency of the rate of profit to fall was the primary cause of capitalist crisis. Yet he recognized that there were countertendencies – events that would restore vigor to a system headed for the historical junk pile. An expansion of trade was one such countertendency. Marx’s world was different than ours, but we can apply the same thinking to trends in our time. After the demise of the socialist community, the entire world, with the possible exception of Cuba and The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, was drawn into a single global market. World trade organizations and trade agreements greased the rails for this development. Many countries joined this global market eagerly, some reluctantly under the weight of inevitability (“There is no alternative”), and a few, like Yugoslavia, under coercion. This has been vulgarly described as “globalization” – vulgar, because the word masks the underlying process. The radically enlarged market had one fundamental trait that benefited capital enormously: the cost of labor was radically reduced. In Marxist terms, the rate of surplus value (rate of exploitation) exploded. Put another way, the mass of value captured by the capitalist class grew while the value secured by the working class diminished sharply, especially in the US. This trend has been ably reported in the mainstream press, though one has to put the two facts next to each other to appreciate Marx’s point. While Marx argued that in the long run the rate of profit (capitalist surplus divided by labor costs and other factors of production) would fall, he recognized that, on many occasions, the rate of surplus value could spike with a consequent restoration or growth in the profit rate. This is precisely what occurred through jost of the decade after the elimination of the socialist economic union.

The seeds of the current crisis spring from this period of expansion, high profits, low labor costs and great expectations. One might think that, under the weight of competition, labor militancy, or government policy, capitalism would settle into a period of measured, blissful growth. But that is not how this system works. The motor driving capitalism is accumulation – acquisition of more and more and an ever greater share of the whole of society’s wealth. Gordon Gekko in the movieWall Street put it simply and crudely: “Greed is good.” Without this powerful drive for accumulation there would be no capitalism.

While in Marx’s time there were, of course, banks, he knew nothing of the giant financial engines of our time that pool huge sums of capital to invest and lend in pursuit of profit. With the world market-based surge of profits playing out at the end of the twentieth century, capitalism, and especially its financial sector, refused to be weaned from the unusually high profits secured during this period. The spike in productivity generated by computerization, robotization, and information technologies played out at the same time, with incremental investments in these areas producing decreasing growth in productivity. As Marx would predict, this had a dampening effect upon profit growth. Nonetheless, the financial sector refused to accept a diminishing growth in profit. Billions of dollars of investment capital flowed into the high technology sector with the faith that either a new technology revolution was around the corner or the old one was still alive. Of course, the hyperbole of the surge drew investors like honey, creating a bubble with no relation to the realities of the actual profitability of the high technology sector. Any sense of real value was spurned for the hope of high returns. The collapse of this high-tech bubble is now widely recognized, spawning the recession of 2000-2001.

With the economy stagnating, the Federal Reserve, under Alan Greenspan’s leadership, lowered interest rates dramatically, flooding the US economy with cheap – nearly free – credit. Thus, even the jost marginal enterprises were able to borrow their way out of the recession. Losses were covered by debt with aljost magical affect.

The financial titans pounced on this period of easy credit, leveraging assets to borrow vast sums and investing in every imaginable scheme from buyouts to complex security trades. Because of the easy credit, the acceptance and manipulation of debt became the centerpiece of financial activity.

In Marx’s time, loans were largely the exchange of real assets for deferred assets; a lender surrenders an agreed upon asset with the understanding the asset or something of equal value plus interest will be returned within a fixed time. Burrowers assumed debt for productive activity calculating that the success of the productive activity would outweigh the costs of debt.

But today’s financial capitalists view debt differently. Complex financial strategies – more and more often deeply buried in opaque hedge funds – resemble gambling. This speculative capitalism, growing inversely to the decline of productive capitalism, has become decisive in the US economy. The easy money of the Greenspan credit splurge only accelerated this trend. The language and the mechanism are complex and challenging, but the idea is simple: establish market wagers on the performance of other actors in the market and back these wagers with as much borrowed money as confidence will allow. For example, if research reveals that a peak in soybean futures prices always coincides with the opening date of the Illinois State Fair, borrow money, buy the futures well in advance of that date, and sell them off immediate after the Fair opens. Repay the debt and enjoy a fat return. 

Two factors separate speculative capitalism from traditional investment. Firstly, the speculative capitalist has no vested interest in the outcome apart from achieving a return on a predicted outcome. If thousands of buyers and sellers in the soybean market lose millions because of the speculative wager, if the soybean market collapses after future prices declines, the speculative capitalist could care less. He or she has moved on to the next wager.

Secondly, speculative capitalism distorts markets. The millions of borrowed dollars entering the market before the Fair will accelerate the rise in soybean futures and the quick exit after the Fair will speed their fall. Other investors’ positions will be affected in ways that are not reflective of the supply and demand or the real value of soybeans.

Of course there’s nothing new about people speculating in the market, but the scope and manner of today’s speculative capitalism is different. The following features separate contemporary speculative capitalism from its predecessor:

1. Contemporary speculative capitalism relies more on the tools of game theory, computational speed, statistical analysis, and, in far too many cases, inside or privileged information. It is one thing to acquire all the public information about market entities and weigh it in investment decisions, quite another to possess and use tools that guarantee an advantage in investment speculation. The former allows for everyone to be a winner short of foolhardiness; the latter succeeds only if some win and others lose. Using Black Jack as our model, card counters win because others are not using their strategy. If all players are card counters, no one accrues an advantage.

1.  Contemporary speculative capitalism has devised and expanded new vehicles for market wagers. Hedge funds – mysterious, private entities –  have been in existence for less than fifty years. Unlike other funds, they are free of outside scrutiny, open to only select players, and based upon cutting edge betting strategies. When they were new and small in number, they achieved returns far greater than any other kind of fund – they enjoyed the advantages of a card counter in the game of Black Jack. But the number of hedge funds grew exponentially because of this success. From the early 90’s through now, their capital grew from $200 billion to $2 trillion. As a result, the advantage of individual hedge funds over other investment vehicles has been diminished. Thus, their ability to remain advantaged over others has declined and their capability of amplifying crisis has grown. In time of crisis, they begin to more ruthlessly seek advantage, a development that The Wall Street Journal aptly calls “Crunch Capitalism.”

1. Today, speculative capitalism depends overwhelmingly on borrowed money. It’s a simple truth that if you have a winning strategy, the more money bet, the more money won. Thus, speculators incur debt in order to bet far greater sums than they can draw from their own coffers. The powerful brokerage houses and investment banks both devise their own hedge funds to make these bets and preference hedge funds for loans. The Greenspan period of low interest rates provided an opportunity of nearly cost-free borrowing. It was as if a gambler could approach the Black Jack table with nearly unlimited chips. Obviously, having both limitless stakes and little personal risk can court betting disaster.

1. Contemporary speculative capitalism lives and dies on immediate investor return. Unlike productive capitalism, speculative capitalism must produce instant and satisfying results. Intense competition shifts investment aljost instantaneously in the speculative market. The current credit seizure was preceded by an ocean of liquidity. At first glance this may appear paradoxical, but it explains how speculation brought the system into crisis. More than two years ago, we explored the ocean of capital (and potential credit) existing in the world. We explained elsewhere that it was increasingly difficult to find an investment haven for the enormous mass of wealth accumulated in the hands of the capitalists. We noted that only by taking greater risk could the customary profit be maintained. It was this thirst for the accustomed rate of profit in an environment of fewer high profit opportunities that spawned the crisis that now plagues the US economy. The logic of capitalist accumulation drove financial institutions to make new use of this pool of capital, including loans to millions who were unlikely to find the means to repay. The imperative of instantaneous and high yields demanded it.

Several conclusions are recommended by our discussion of speculative capitalism and its role in the current economic crisis. jost obviously, speculative capitalism is parasitic. It is a growth feeding off of and expanding from the nourishment of the productive sectors of the economy. As in Marx’s time, the creation of means of production and, broadly speaking, the means of consumption (the maintenance and enrichment of the lives of human beings) remain the fundamental basis for economic activity.

For the vast majority of people – working people – speculative capitalism plays no direct role in their lives beyond some clerical and maintenance jobs and an occasional blip in their retirement accounts. Despite the impression left by the media, financials – especially, the stock market – are no true barometer of the health of economic life except in their capacity to absorb wealth or disrupt the economy’s normal function. We see that clearly in the current crisis. The effects of speculative capitalism run amok are disrupting, corrupting, and distorting all other healthier sectors of the US economy. Moreover, federal, state and local public officials bear the blame for inviting speculative capitalism into the public sector through privatization, contracting out, and public-private partnerships. Bond issuance counts as another insidious device for enriching speculative capitalism and burdening working people collectively with long term debt. All of these policies are explained by the Marxist concept of State-Monopoly Capitalism as we have argued.

Distracted by the credit meltdown, jost people have failed to notice the latest result of the insatiable appetite of speculative capitalism. As The Wall Street Journal noted on February 29, 2008, investors have fled the stock and bond market and turned to commodity speculation. The recent spike in inflation so worrisome to consumers “has been fueled by institutions, hedge funds, and individual investors. These investors are pouring money into new investment vehicles that let investors quickly and easily make bets in relatively small markets.” And so the disease infects another area of the economy.

In another move sparked by speculation, hedge funds disrupted the municipal bond market recently. As The Wall Street Journal reported on March 1-2, 2008, “Months of turmoil in the municipal-bond market, long a placid haven for individual investors, reached a boiling point on Friday – as hedge funds were forced to unwind complicated bets and in the process dump billions of dollars of the securities. As a result of that surprising forced selling, yields on debt from municipalities and other tax exempt issuers jumped to their highest levels in history…”

Does any sane person believe that this insatiable foraging for profit serves the public good?

No working class program of action can ignore the dangers of speculative capitalism. Like any parasitic growth, speculative capitalism should be excised from the economic body.

We are at a critical juncture. Even the jost optimistic, true believers see the current crisis stretching well into 2009 and the next administration. Depending on public policy, this could prove to be far too short-sided. As we have argued, the crisis is deeply seated in the political shifts of the last century, changes that generated a moment of substantial recovery for a flagging capitalist world economy. These gains have been exhausted. The desperate attempts to rekindle this “gilded” era have produced speculative orgies that have brought mountains of debt and a falling standard of living upon the working class. The ruling class response has been to ignore the consequences for the vast majority of people and shore up the collapsing parasitic, speculative financial system. With millions facing home loss, financial ruin, unemployment and battered personal savings, the elite consensus cares only to offer life support to the perpetrators of this fine mess.

It takes little insight to see that the recent government sponsored rescue of the sinking Bear Sterns financial empire was a weekend stealth mission to restore the confidence of the financial bandits that plundered the US economy. As a result, the bandits are once again remorselessly on the prowl seeking new victims. Out of the shambles comes a new, invigorated JP Morgan Chase proud owner of Bear Sterns assets and $30 billion in federal loans. In exchange, the public treasury now owns the dregs that brought Bear Sterns down: the jost worthless securities in the company’s portfolio.

If that were not enough, the Federal Reserve offered up to $200 billion in exchange for depressed securities to the 20 jost rapacious Wall Street wolves. In the ensuing week the gluttonous carnivores tapped on average $13 billion per day! This is the same Federal government that can never find money for AMTRAK and public transportation systems. This is the same Federal government that starves social programs from Social Security to veteran’s benefits. This is the same federal government that dismantled welfare and scrapped affirmative action. Different administrations come and go, but show the same fealty to monopoly capitalism.

A true working class program would call for the elimination of parasitic speculative capitalism. The jost fatal and effective weapon against these destructive creatures is the weapon of nationalization. Public ownership of financial institutions would insure that savings, credit, and investments were protected and directed towards the good of all. The foolish notion that private individuals and corporations, motivated by an insatiable drive for profit, could guide these important functions in a socially beneficial way is soundly discredited by the raging crisis. The current crop of Presidential aspirants has offered no solutions that even remotely seek to tame the ravages of speculative capitalism. There is absolutely no recognition of the class aspects of the speculative debacle. A long hard road lies ahead.