Free Speech for Larry

I for one am disappointed "that Larry Person" was bounced. I did not realize we all had such sensitive ears. I understand what bothered people so. I looked at his page today. Whew, that boy is out there, but amazingly he has over 3,000 FB friends! How does someone even do that?!  He would not be my choice for a cross country trip, but I recall others like him of different political stripes that have come and gone. These people seem to drop in from time to time, spew some vile crap for a few days, are properly ostracized, and move on of their own volition.  With my ideas and beliefs as foundation I personally have gone after some of these people pretty forcefully. I might even have told some to shut up. Even some people I dialogue here with pretty regularly may have felt that a little but, Andy, for example.

Bouncing anyone from the group, though I know it is an option, would have never occurred to me. It is unfortunate to say the least that a page that seems to me at least to be a beacon of dialogue would choose to handle someone like that by banning him rather than proving him of her to be the fool we all know he is. I know that many of us are not here to entertain dialogue on varying political points of view, and look at this page as a haven from Fox News, and conservative or caustically left wing yahoos in general, but that’s my opinion. Yet, it seems to me that by virtue of the weight of opinion most people get that and outliers don’t usually hang around for long. The last time I checked words do not actually cause physical harm, and most of us are free to chew on them or ignore them as our beliefs and temperament allow.

“That Larry Person’s” chosen candidate, Jill Stein of the Green Party, owes no allegiance to Larry, though he clearly is over the top in his allegiance to her. That should not prevent more people—apart from Larry-- from listening to and considering her platform as Green Party Candidate.

As I said yesterday in my piece, I would not consider Ms. Stein if I lived in one of a dozen swing states, but for a New Yorker deeply disappointed with this Presidency of Hope and Change there is much here to think about.  http://www.jillstein.org/text_psou

I understand the deep allegiance many of you feel to President Obama. But when that allegiance is complete and unadulterated by any practical criticism I sort of disconnect. The Republicans we all oppose are a brutal socially Darwinian lot, with allegiances to wealth that are both damaging to the country and staggering in their scope. That being said this President has been until lately timid in his response to them, and leaving Party politics aside much too passive in proposing solutions to the great challenges we face. While many, I assume, would be much happier to see another four year term of mediocrity than to even consider four years of the rich bastard from Massachusetts—and I guess that would be me too—I cannot help but wonder what truly dynamic leadership in this time in our history would have meant. Ms. Stein could hurt Obama in some swing states, so I’m not all in, but speaking personally, I only hope that if the President is re-elected-- freed from the burden of facing voters again-- he turns into the president most of thought he would be in 2008.

It is not for me to determine the rules of the page and I understand that I reside here at the discretion of others. I merely meant to point out that Larry would have left on his own if he weren’t bounced. They all do.

In 2000 Gore carried New York with 4.1 million votes (60%), Bush got just 2.4 million votes (35%), and Nader 244,000 votes (3.6%).  By Contrast Texas went for Bush with 3.8 million votes (59%), whereas Gore won only 2.4 million (38%), and Nader 138,000 (2.15%). Nader won 4% of the Vote in California, where Gore won 53%, and Bush Trailed with just 42%, closer than the other states I mentioned, but not really a contest.  Bush carried Mississippi with 58% of the vote and so on. Some states are not competitive.

Is it possible to be both hopeful that Obama will win and deeply disappointed with what has been attempted, even less so with what has been accomplished? Is it possible that some of the blame for the lack of accomplishments lies partly with the very timid President himself and not only with the evil Republicans? FDR was a great President partly as a result of the heat he took on his left flank, and that primarily from Eleanor, his brilliant, devoted, committed, wife. No President is well served by idol worship.

As far as addressing the gridlock in Washington, Americans in my view ought first to address their role in it. The evisceration of campaign finance laws since the mild reforms imposed after Watergate has created an entrenched two party system which favors incumbency, feeds corruption, and rewards the stagnation of ideas. Because of these three factors more than 80% of campaigns for the House are not competitive. The Cook Report counts maybe 56 House seats out of 435 are truly competitive. The primary reason for this is NOT political, it is financial. Incumbents from either Party enjoy huge (typically 2 to 1 at minimum) advantages by entrenched interests trying to influence their vote. This also reverberates to the benefit of the rich and powerful. Americans focused on the right-left divide are missing the whole point:  The system has been corrupted by well-funded and powerful interests all more than willing to donate and/ or buy votes from legislators in either party.

Citizens United was not the break-through event in this area, it was the culminating event.  McCain Feingold attempted to set back the decades long loosening of the Watergate reforms which had reached the point that money was pouring into the system. Citizen’s United was a small case about whether some right wing ideologue could run a derogatory film about Hillary Clinton on the cusp of an election. Chief Justice Roberts used that case to eliminate almost all controls on campaign spending up to and including allowing foreign entities to donate without registration with US government agencies.  

Even without Citizens United still in effect during the last Presidential election cycle, Obama was still able to raise tens of millions of dollars on Wall Street. There are those who may choose to see all that giving as strictly benevolent. I am not among them. One has to ask why Dodd Frank was a such mild bill, why so many of the enforcement regs have yet to be written, and why Geitner sits at Treasury. Even the friggin’ prince of darkness himself, former Citibank CEO Sandy Weill, is now talking about reinstating Glass-Steagall.  But for Americans Chase loses a quick $5 billion on more foolish bets, and our collective response was yeah, but that Dimon guy is a smart character, refusing even now to learn from our mistakes.

In the crisis Obama stepped into I believe the American people would have accepted a far more aggressive response, both in terms of regulatory push back and stimulus. Rather than take his case to the American people, Obama instead chose to try to orchestrate deals with Republicans which 1) Were not available and 2) Left the Democrats, The President, and Republicans in a pissing war which now confuses most Americans. If they are going to call you a liar during the State of The Union, is there really any room for accommodation? At each opportunity to stand his ground this president either has been or at minimum has appeared to be weak. This has allowed the Republican opposition to stall both the economy and almost his entire legislative agenda.

But there is something else going on here, something more pernicious and devestating. The electorate is deeply polarized. People on both sides of the divide have become unwilling to be confronted with the stories the other side tells. Much of what Fox does is indefensible, and I loved Olberman, but much of what I hear on MSNBC is unlistenable. How many more leading and inartful questions do we need to listen to?  There are some really smart people there, especially Maddow and some of the younger ones on the weekend, but even a rabid lib like me can punch holes through a lot of the drivel they produce. Each day with a wink and a nod they seem to suggest, “We’re all of like mind here, right?” Don’t bother thinking we have it all figured out. When did Americans become so fearful of political discourse? It seems to me that there is more of it available than ever, but less of it that really matters, less of it that cuts through the bullshit and really means something. What I wouldn’t give for the second coming of Malcolm X or Bobby Kennedy, political leaders with the willingness to tell painful and uncomfortable truths about ourselves.  Americans no longer want the truth, we want the Foxercized or MSNBC’ed version of it. That fear, that blind loyalty to our side in the great divide, in my view is reason #1 there is gridlock. There is little doubt that money reinforces the lack of accommodation (Gridlock) , but most of the electorate would be just fine if campaigns were allowed to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, so long as their side lead in the  cash race.

 “It’s not the greatest country in the world professor, that’s my answer.

 Sharon, the NEA is a loser, yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paycheck but he gets to hit you with it any time he wants. It doesn’t cost money, it costs votes, it costs air time, it costs column inches. You know why people don’t like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so god damn always?

 *Turns to conservative pundit*

 And with a straight face you’re going to tell students that America is so star spangled awesome that we’re the only ones in the world that have freedom? Canada has freedom. Japan has freedom. The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, BELGIUM has freedom.

 So, 207 sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.

 And you, sorority girl, just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day there’s some things you should know. One of them is there’s absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we’re the greatest country in the world. We’re 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, Number 4 in labor force and Number 4 in exports, we lead the world in only three categories: Number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending where spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies.

 Now none of this is the fault of a 20 year old college student, but you none the less are without a doubt a member of the worst period generation period ever period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Yosemite?

 It sure used to be. We stood up for what was right. We fought for moral reasons. We passed laws, struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were and we never beat our chests. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy. We reached for the stars, acted like men, we aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it, it didn’t make us feel inferior.

 We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed, by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore. Enough?” Aaron Sorkin, Opening Monologue Newsroom

It’s Not Easy Being Green, Just Ask Jill Stein

More than once in my life I have voted hope over pragmatism, anger over practicality. I voted for Ted Kennedy in the 1980 primaries and then sat out the Presidential election in which Reagan routed Carter who received just 41% of the vote. I was riveted by the Jesse Jackson campaigns in 1984 and 1988. Even though Jackson’s “Hymietown” remarks should have given pause as to his lack of discipline, I probably invested more time and energy into those two campaigns than any others in my life.  I thought Mondale was the most milquetoast of candidates, totally inadequate to the challenge Reagan posed—he lost in a historic landslide in 1984 and managed to garner just 41% of the vote. Though one would not have thought it possible Dukakis was an even worse candidate in 1988. Jackson won 30% of the Democratic primary vote that year (Dukakis won just 43%). Jackson was considered the front runner for a brief span after a big win in Michigan, and was even touted seriously as a candidate for VP. Bush, running a heinous race based campaign, “Willie Horton(ed)” Dukakis into oblivion. Dukakis, the progeny of New England cool, had no sense for the hot all around him, refusing to even show emotion to a deplorable debate question as to what his response would be if his wife was raped.  Once he climbed into the cab of the tank, opening himself to endless parody, it was all over. Bush captured 53% of the vote to Dukakis 46%. In today’s terms that was the third landslide in a row for Republican candidates.

Jackson, on the other hand, was an inspiring, spell-binding, speaker and he stood for a lot of the things I believed in then and still believe in now. Obama ran a campaign on the theme of single word, “Hope”. Jackson’s theme was “Keep Hope Alive”. After eight years of heartless Reaganism, Jackson stood with strikers at an International Paper Co in Maine where jobs were being replaced with non-union workers.  It would not have mattered if he didn’t do that, but I remembered being inspired in that moment. The idea that a Presidential candidate would stand with union members on strike seemed bravely surreal. I was all in. Jackson’s 1988 platform was a manifesto of progressive politics:

·         Reversing Reaganomics-inspired tax cuts for the rich, and reinvesting that money in Social Programs—Though Unemployment stood at just 5.5% in 1988, roughly 1 in 3 were Americans  below the poverty rate

·         Create a Works Progress Administration-style jobs program

·         Cutting the Department of Defense budget

·         Creating a single-payer system of universal health care

·         Increasing federal funding for education at all levels and providing free community college to all

·         Applying stricter enforcement of the Voting Rights Act

·         Reprioritizing the War on Drugs to focus less on harsh jail sentences for users and more on treatment

·         Declaring Apartheid-era South Africa to be a rogue nation

·         Instituting an immediate nuclear freeze and beginning disarmament negotiations

·         Supporting family farmers

·         Ratifying the ERA

·         Supporting the formation of a Palestinian state

After 12 years of Pottersville politicians of the right, trickle-down economics, and belligerent foreign policy often used to ramp up xenophobic domestic political power (something Bush used masterfully in his 2004 re-election campaign) in 1992 Clinton was elected. Finally America found its way to electing a politician with a liberal streak, and a gift for the political game that matched Reagan. Clinton had both great oratorical skills as well as the right wing machine’s take-no-prisoners proficiency for political warfare. Clinton gave as good as he got until his personal weaknesses ground his Presidency to a sparks-flying, grinding, halt. Clinton presided over a largely peace-time economy that ushered in dramatic growth in job creation, cuts in defense spending, and reductions in poverty rates, and he managed to pass progressive tax legislation. He tried and failed on Health Care, but most Americans look back on the accomplishments of those eight years if not the Presidency itself with some longing and some fondness. Clinton got things done.

The less said about the dangerous, heartless (excepting AIDS policy), catastrophic, foolish, deceitful, profligate, wasted and wasteful, Bush Presidency the better.

That pretty much brings us up to the present, three years into a Hope and Change Presidency which has provided precious little of either. When the media and the right bloviate about the President’s job approval ratings they seldom mention the portion of that disapproval that comes from the left’s deep disappointment with the corruption and malaise of our current political circumstances, and in a larger sense this President’s inability to move the political dial. In plain terms Obama has been rolled by the right. The mishandling of the debt ceiling negotiations is only the most egregious example. Rather than include the debt raise in the deliberations to extend the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2011, Obama waited, hoping vainly for Republican wisdom. One would think he would have learned after ceding the dialogue on healthcare reform to the surreptitiously well-funded right wing attack machine, with their hysterical granny murdering death panels and “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”, but he did not. 

Obama, though he has sharp oratorical skills, possesses none of the political skills that allowed Clinton to triangulate his way to a successful Presidency. Taken together with the crudeness of billions of dollars in corrupt, though lawful, political giving, America finds itself in a gridlocked state of acrimony and fear. It is quite clear that we will be battered with the most extreme and negative campaign of our lifetimes. Americans face a near certainty that the eventual winner will have no mandate for governance or change, both by virtue of the closeness of the election and also, but more importantly, by their unwillingness to spell out with any specificity what they will actually do to address the nation’s problems.  

For all the truth laurels hung on it by right wing chattering class, the Ryan budget plan is long on specifics when it comes to tax cuts, but short on particulars on the tax loopholes he would close, or even the specific budget cuts he would make. Candidate Romney has endorsed it wholeheartedly, often using the same language about “eliminating deductions and cutting rates”—without specifics. Today in an interview on the radio Kudlow report, Romney laughably went so far as to say he had no intention of reducing the amount of taxes paid by the wealthy class. The Ryan plan  proposals include dramatic cuts in government spending, but provides so little detail that Republicans have been able to brush back Democratic attempts to paint the cuts as draconian by claiming those particulars—food stamps as an example--are not included.  On Healthcare, no American should allow candidate Romney  to get away with calling for repeal without demanding to know what he will do to provide for the uninsured while also reining in costs, in which America outspends other industrialized nations almost two to one per-capita. No politician has any chance to manage deficit reduction without proposing deep and lasting reductions in government expenditures on health care, which currently run at 17% of GDP. Endorsing the status quo is neither serious nor sustainable.

Obama to his credit has put forward more serious and detailed proposals, but in his case he has left out the political calculations that will make any of it work in a grid-locked capital. Both candidates clearly plan to run I’ll let-you-know-when-I’m-elected campaigns, which by their nature will emphasize petty personality crap that will have everyone holding their nose by the fall. While there was great optimism in the air after the election of 2008—even with the economic calamity—one now senses that America will awaken on the morning of November 7 to the stench of scorched earth and rotted, meaningless, promises.

So in these circumstances one MUST ask “Where to from here?”

Recently I had the opportunity to read the “People’s State of the Union” http://www.jillstein.org/text_psou, presented by Jill Stein, the Green Party Candidate for President. Even with memories of Ralph Nadar’s disastrous participation in the 2000 elections which swung Florida, and so the nation, away from Gore and gave us Bush, curiously I thought who more than I aspires for an alternative among this sea of dreck? Sensing the closeness of that election, despite Gore’s goofy though now apparently prescient “Social Security lockbox” rhetoric, I voted Gore somewhat enthusiastically that year. Now I’m not so sure about the Democratic candidate.

I am once again considering voting hope over pragmatism, anger over practicality. Would I? Could I? Jackson’s campaigns, after all, were not totally quixotic. More than two decades later Health Care legislation was passed. Despite Reagan’s do-nothing “constructive engagement” policy Apartheid’s embers are scattered on the ash heap of history, and many of the virtuous planks of Jackson’s platform are still on the progressive wish list. Hell, even Republicans know they are going to need to cut defense—though they want to use the money for deeper tax cuts. 

Stein and the Green Party call for the creation of 16 million jobs by “ensuring” a job to every able bodied person that wants one.  These programs would emphasize green energy, renewable resources, infrastructure, and education. The platform proposes free education through college. Housing would be limited in cost to no more than 25% of income. The Greens would provide healthcare for all through an improved Medicare for All program, the single payer system that more than 50% of Americans support. That in itself is pretty amazing since I sincerely doubt that what with all the repeats of “The Kardashians” and all much more than 50% of all Americans know what a single payer system is. On taxes the Greens propose a more progressive income tax system based on income, and on corporate taxes they would “make subsidies transparent in public budgets where they can be scrutinized and not hidden as tax breaks in complicated tax codes”.

Stein’s statement points out The Obama administrations shortcomings on the environment, particularly on climate change, while proposing a “World War II mobilization to transform the way we produce and use energy”.  They would re-direct government energy subsidies from fossil fuels towards wind, geothermal, and solar.

Stein also notes that Wall Street Regulatory reform is currently bogged down By a “ bipartisan failure in Washington” to pursue vitally needed reforms.  Here they propose moving on several fronts.

·         An Immediate halt to all foreclosures

·         Reduce mortgage and student debt loads, I guess merely by forcing the banks to just write it down

·         Nationalize the private bank-dominated Federal Reserve Banks and place them under a Monetary Authority within the Treasury Department, along the lines proposed in the National Emergency Employment Defense – or NEED -  Act of 2011 (HR 2990), sponsored by Representatives Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr2990

·         Break up the big Banks, something former Citibank CEO , architect of the Wall Street catastrophe of 2007 and all around Prince of Darkness, Sandy Weill has proposed. 

·         Regulation of the derivatives market

·         90% tax on banker bonuses, i.e. elimination of same

Beyond the economy the Greens and Stein propose real electoral reform, without which America will remain trapped in the purgatory/ pseudo hell of a gridlocked political system. Here they propose obvious and necessary reforms such as same day voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday, public financing of elections, and abolition of the Electoral College in favor of direct election. They would also grant DC statehood, something that would have immediate impact for the balance of power in the Senate and The House.

The platform contains goals and reforms that given our current political climate are probably decades away. This is in my view no reason not to consider full throated support, but there are other considerations. A goal which envisions the creation of 16 million jobs is worthy. “Ensuring” a job to everyone who wants them is not. Though the issues they address are laudable, limiting housing costs to 25% of income, or wiping out college, consumer or mortgage debt with a stroke of a pen, are neither realistic or practical goals. The cause of the economic meltdown of 2007 and 2008 was the increasingly laissez faire relationship between government and business. The Greens in my view propose to deal with that with a full frontal attack on Free Enterprise. I would be more comfortable with a return to the balance that existed before repeal of Glass-Steagall. A return to Pre-Reagan tax levels is not feasible, but a return to pre-Bush tax levels particularly for family income above $250,000 is.  

The Greens present other problems. They espouse the kind of rhetoric that makes it impossible for most Americans to even consider a real turn towards progressive politics. What Stein refers to as “A People’s State of the Union: A Green New Deal for America” is sprinkled and to my taste over spiced with idiomatic language that leaves me, ironically, cold. Still, once I read through it all, I have to say I am still more aligned to what Stein and the Greens are saying than I am to the rhetoric of either Party. Moreover, there is nary a word about personalities, nor any of the boiler plate bullsh** which already makes my eyes glaze and my ears turn to stone. 

In the news everyone will tell you that it comes down to the 12 swing states:  Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.  My home state New York, as well as most of the Northeast, and all of the West Coast, is already in the pocket for Obama. The states of the bible-belt south, so many believing as they do that Obama is actually an oxymoronic closet Muslim/ Communist will not even consider the president.   For the electorate in both of these entrenched pockets these elections are all about the House, and to a lesser extent the Senate. Citizens United makes any real competition a bit of a mockery even in the House, but let’s go with that for a moment. The degree to which a few of us (outside those 12 key states) may stray to a third party will matter little in the presidential tallies. I understand that the Republican Congresswoman from my District, “The Fightin’ 19^th as Colbert called it last election, may have some competition, so I will be concerned there. Polls for the Senate Race in New York pitting incumbent Democrat Gillibrand a totally unknown Republican opponent Wendy Long show a 30+ point gap in support.   

So my vote might only matter if I vote the Green, Stein, for President and whoever is eventually chosen to run against Hayworth. Still something holds me back. I do wonder at the absurdity and the sincerity of my posture, but I guess I still believe in the principles of small “d” democratic politics. It’s not easy being Green, but I am seriously considering it.

Aurora, A Few Days Later

I will say it 5,000 times, there is nothing going to happen on gun control as a result of this heinous act. For chrissakes Obama is using NRA language talking about supporting enforcement of laws already on the books.  Nothing is going to move as result of this. Alright I got that.
But then…

I keep hearing gun supporters talk about what might have happened if someone, or more than one person, had been in the theatre when the shooter went batsh**. I am conjuring a picture in my head of three or four people-- also armed-- dodging behind seats in the dark and gassed theatre. I think we can be sure that man in the front of the theatre with full, head-to-toe, body armor might have gone down with a single shot to the 3/4" of his body which was not covered.  Surely no other people would have been shot by some yahoo (or yahoos) with a John Wayne complex and bad aim. What a pile of crap.

I love Ice T but his pressed linen gangster routine confuses. He told an interviewer that guns are the last thing we have to “fight “tyranny” and specifically to “…Protect yourself from the police”.  Well maybe in some fantasy ain’t I a tough SOB world, but for the Ice of “Ice and Coco”, or “Law and Order SVU”, really? The fact is that the bullets kill thousands of young black men, and Ice T knows full well how close he was to being one of those statistics. The sight of the rich, well pressed OG, encouraging young black men to hold onto their guns to protect themselves is 1) Not helpful and 2) Something more like a posture than anything remotely real.

Finally there are those that point to DC or Chicago with their intense inner city gun crime and say, “See, look how restrictive the gun laws are there and that doesn’t seem to help.” Since guns are not actually manufactured in these cities can we assume they actually come from somewhere else? Could it possibly be that lax gun laws in some of these other states leads to gun trafficking where straw buyers purchase 20,30 or more guns and then transport them to these urban environments where overlapping issues allow a culture of violence to persist. Poverty is a dirty word for both parties. No one gives a shit or will risk anything politically to address the near thankless and so relentless issues which plague these communities. Once this posture is extended and extrapolated out I assume these people would then suggest that the answer to all that violence and all that waste is more guns and more violence. But inner city kids are expected to rise above that. No jobs, no training, horrific educational institutions, poverty, drugs, all of it swallowed up by a sea of prosperity on every border in a mindlessly consumerist society.  Gun proponents that point to crime in Chicago and DC could give a crap about those cities or the people living there. If they did they might do something besides point their little white finger and say, See…”

Aurora

Really heartbreaking day. I have kids. I worry for them always. On days like today that worry becomes something more akin to actual pain. The person who did this right or left, muslim or christian,  insane or completely lost, has not one spark of human decency in him. I have no heart to look for political points in the midst of this tragedy. I care not if he is a right wing zealot or a left wing anarchist. All I know is that he was a person with too much confusion, or too much hate, or a lethal combination of both. I do not hate him, but I hate the hatred in him that led to this heinous and violent act. Mostly though like most everyone else, I just grieve. Something as a nation it seems we find the need to do far too often. When will it end? How can we make this string of tragedies stop? For those that will call for  more guns or less I tell you that you miss the mark. Our guns show the limits of our humanity, our inability to see, love and protect what is sacred in ourselves and those around us. I for one believe when we learn how to love again, if we can learn how to do that, we will know what to do with our guns. For those who desire to talk about guns (or politics) today I say can we talk about love? Tonight, before I sleep, I will pray for love. Nothing else will be adequate.

The Aquarium Incident

A post from a FB friend: “Generally speaking, kids, when you put a hole in my wall, you need to tell me. Trying to cover up the evidence will only make matters worse. Just sayin.”

Your story reminds me of an incident which happened when my brother and I were nine and ten or so. My mother and father both worked, the income necessary even then to piece together the ability to pay the bills for three kids and a small house.  I am the middle child and my sister, a year and a half older than I, was assigned the role of babysitter and though she took it quite seriously that often did not work out well. She was perhaps a bit distracted by the phone and all, and my brother and I were as untamed as the wild horses of Ocracoke Island. Rough housing, raised voices, door slamming and other assorted knocks and bangs were common sounds around the house. My brother and I loved each other like, well brothers, and we are best friends to this day, but we were constantly fooling around, wrestling and so forth, until one or the other of us would receive some sort of minor injury, which inevitably escalated to the previously mentioned raised voices and door slamming.

It was a small house and in the aftermath of whatever petty incident a tinker toy was picked up and hurled by one of us at the other. I think I may have been the thrower, but with years of memory in between it matters not who did the throwing and who was doing the escaping. It could have been either of us on either side. Alas the little wood toy missed its mark, but blasted through the side glass of a 25 gallon aquarium, maybe two inches from the bottom of the tank. Within seconds there was water and fish flopping all over our parents prized and long sought after wall to wall living room carpeting. Believe me there was no covering up of the evidence. If I try I can still recall the absolute terror at the calamity of it.

The hours leading to Mom and Dad’s arrival home were torture. We had an electric garage door opener, easily heard in our back bedroom, which my father dutifully used every night. When you knew you had done something wrong and heard that grinding door open slowly well it might as well have been Green Mile time with the door clanking closed and the echo pervading the house.  

Neither of my parents were uncomfortable with physical discipline, but for “special occasions” like this it normally would have fallen to my father to hand out justice. That night though all we got was a long talking to and the dreaded “We are very disappointed in you…. I am very disappointed in you.”  Believe me, I would have rather had the belt. Even at the age all three of us kids had the understanding vague that it may be that both Mom and Dad were struggling hard to create a safe and warm place for themselves and their children. It was a house with inexpensive, but very comfortable, furnishings. It was lovely and lived in and safe and wonderful. And it sat in a neighborhood of houses butted up against it on all sides which were exactly the same. Even now I can recall a number of little bric-a-brac items my mother selected with love and care, placed carefully here and there, which did not survive the youth of my brother and I.  A colored-water blown glass swan set, very popular in the day, was met with demise and my mother’s now famous utterance, “I can’t have anything nice around here.” Later in anticipation of a disaster which never came, my father would tell us, as well as some of the neighbor boys who were part of some of the destruction over the years, that he would “come down on us like a black cloud” if we broke a glass framed picture poster hanging in the stairwell of the second bigger home. All in all you have to give credit to my parents. Despite the relative destruction my brother and I wrought they remained forever optimistic and continued to buy things to make our home look and feel nice.

Those are memories of 45 years ago or so. Both Mom and Dad are gone now, but the aquarium incident was retold from our various perspectives over the years. Each time small elements are remembered with slight variations, all of it now part of our family lore. Who threw the toy, the punishment dispensed, how each of us responded are all elements of the story recalled somewhat differently by each of us. But at the center there is so much love these small details matter little.

You seem like a good mom, so I’m sure you know this, but it’s all good. These are the things that weave the fabric of your family, indeed the tapestry of your lives together. In the years that follow your memory will mist over and some part of the story will be less clear than others, but what will remain will be the love that enveloped all of you in these years. At least that’s the case with me. What I wouldn’t give to go back there just for the shortest of stretch of time, to drink it all in again, just to be around that noise, that chaos, and that love.

Super PAC Fundraising- It Isn't Even Close

Neither the essential political dialogue we need to have nor Americans in general are well served by pretending that there are an equal number of billionaires and well-funded special interests supporting both sides, or that the final tallies will be close. Walker survived his recall vote, not because his ideas were better, and not because Wisconsin, the home of Progressive Party, suddenly had an anti-union epiphany. Walker won thanks to having a substantially higher war chest, much of it provided by the usual suspects. We have all heard conservatives argue that their ideas are carrying the day and did so in Wisconsin, suggesting that money is a side issue. I always find that ironic, considering the right’s vociferous defense of Citizens United and its central and corrupting principle that money is equal to speech much in the same way corporations are equal to people.

The country may be evenly divided politically and the dems will certainly raise a staggering amount of money, but the reality is that a few dozen billionaires now control more wealth than the bottom 95%. A few dozen of them, aided substantially by the Robert’s Court, have set their sights on unfettered control of every level of political power at both the state and national level.  

It is because of this unprecedented power that Americans ought to take a deeper look anytime one of these moneymen comes up in the news as Sheldon Adelson and his questionable Macau casino dealings did this week. In addition to Adelson (Casino, Conservative)  other names to watch for are the Koch Brothers, David and Charles (Energy, John Birch Conservative), Harold Simmons (Nuclear Waste Disposal, Conservative), Bob Perry (Construction, Conservative), Jeff Katzenburg  (Media, Dreamworks, Liberal- also under SEC investigation for business dealings in China),  and Jerry Perenchio (Media, Univision, Conservative). All of these people contributed in the multi millions. Of the next 15 donors on the list all gave more than $1 million and except for a Morgan Freeman and Bill Maher, all gave to conservative groups. The Koch Brothers and Adelson dwarf all other contributions even on this list.

http://www.ranker.com/list/largest-super-pac-donors/keaton?page=1

Annual spending on lobbying runs about $2.5 billion. But the illicit super PAC money that has been released as a result of Citizens United has infiltrated the entire political system in ways that may take years to unravel. With so much reporting on the greyhound race to see who raises the most, any contextual understanding has been at best poorly explained to the American people.

The SC Citizens United decision created a poorly regulated marketplace of covert campaign corruptions-- ah… contributions-- that while not yet at the size of the lobbyists ($2.5 billion in 2012) in raw dollars, more than rivals it in terms of the punch delivered to politicians and the electorate. This is because the money is spent in such a focused way and doled out by so few. Citizens United allowed two things to take place. Super PAC’s were set free to raised unlimited amounts from corporations, individuals, and unions. It gives those groups wide leeway in running ads so long as they operate independently from the candidates. Independence from the candidates is distinction without a difference. The primary Romney Super PAC, Restore Our Future, is operated by three of his former fundraisers and Romney has spoken at ROF events.

While these super PACs are required to name their donors, the reporting requirements are not close to real-time, which hollows out their effectiveness in terms of informing the public. Recently the Senate tried to move forward legislation that would have required notification within 24 hours. Republicans voted it down. The second, more heinous and less talked about provision of law resulting from Citizens United is that nonprofit issues groups like Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS need not make public the source of their funds ever. While the media tends to refer to all of the groups as “super PACs” the critical difference is that the “non-profits” don’t need to report the source of their donations. This creates an opaque veil, a grimy curtain of secrecy for these groups. In the years to come this will become a breeding ground for corruption and/ or international involvement in American elections. Congress has the right even under Citizens United to tighten these restrictions. To date no meaningful attempt has gathered support in either house.  While many decried the lifting of restrictions on the size of donations, the dual corruption of late and/ or non-existent reporting as to the source of the money exacerbates an already dangerous attack on the voices of everyday citizens.  

Conservative groups powered by a few zealots have a stupefying amount of money and there is no comparable or countervailing force. The Washington Post reported just a few days ago that in 2011 half of the money raised by Super PACs came from 17 people. 17 friggin’ people out of a country of 300 million? That is not democracy; it is something more akin to a capitalist politburo. As I said in the Adelson piece yesterday, between Adelson and the Koch Brothers, 10% of all moment raised and spent in this cycle could come from 3 people. THAT is not even the Capitalist Politburo; That is the Central Committee of the Politburo.

While I am more than willing to cast a stony eye of disgust on both the Democratic and Republican party money machinery, I am not stupid enough or naïve enough to believe that corruption is an equal opportunity employer. I have said that liberals who hold out hope that their billionaire is better than the other guys are grasping a slim reed. But by the same measure moderates and independents who cast a pox on both houses, never to be bothered to actually ascertain the facts are missing a fundamental truth. The way it’s stacking up it ain’t even close.

This is one of the reasons despite repeated efforts to compromise on taxes and spending, something moderates in both parties are willing to do, a small core of Tea Party Republicans has blocked any compromise. While there is certainly an ideological hurdle to cross with the TP, America ought to know that money is the foundation on which that ideology rests. The Tea Party acolytes raised much of their early seed money from Americans for Prosperity (AFP). Americans for Prosperity receives nearly all of its money from The Koch Brothers.  Michelle Bachman has raised more loot than the rest of the Republican candidates for the House in Minnesota combined.  Could it be that campaign cash is at the root of her anti-Muslim slur campaign? Could it also be that much of the vitriolic rightwing rhetoric we hear from the right is also just a product of the need for campaign cash, a plea to the master(s) by Tea Party members to stay in office. I do not doubt their righteous anger, but money-- in politics above all-- is money. 

To the billionaire boys who set out to subvert the American political process within the letter of Citizens United law environmental and worker safety rules are obstacles to ever greater wealth. Republican job plans passed in the House present a full frontal assault on the EPA.

Conservative elements are bent on protecting and promoting the Republican Party which attacks any effort at regulatory reform that would rein them in politically or in their businesses, all the while protecting a wholly uneven tax system which benefits them obscenely at the expense of 300 million Americans.

Open Secrets. Org reports the money raised to date for the top ten Super PACs is as follows. These totals do not take into account the $20 Million Adeslon and his wife just pledged, nor do they account for the fact that Adelson and The Koch Brothers have pledged to spend up to $100 million each.

Restore our Future, Conservative, Romney $62 Million

American Crossroads, Karl Rove’s Super Pac, $35 million

Winning Our Future, Shelly Adelson’s Gingrich Super Pac, $24 million

Priorities USA, Obama’s Super Pac, $15 million

Majority Pac, Liberal, $10 million

American Bridge 21st Century, Liberal, $9.0 Million

Club for Growth, Conservative, $9.0 million

Red White & Blue, Santorum, $9.0 Million

AFL-CIO, $7 Million

Congressional Leadership Conservative, $7.0 Million

Koch and Adelson-- Corruption 'R' Us

Shelly Adelson is in the s*** and absolutely as corrupt as our friends the Koch brothers. Think about this. Upwards of $2.0 billion with a "B" will be raised and spent this election cycle. Of that amount Adelson has already spent something north of $30 Million supporting Gingrich. Just in the last two weeks he and his wife have committed $20 Million additional to the Romney super-pac. Adelson has vowed to spend more, and there have been various press reports that he will spend upwards of $100 million of his totally corrupt Macau casino fortune supporting Republicans this fall. The Koch brothers have vowed to spend as much. That would mean that these two totally amoral businessmen-- Romney is a saint in comparison--between them may contribute as much as $1 of every $10 in this political cycle, roughly $200 million out of $2 billion. The main stream media is not reporting this story with any complexity or nuance. It's all money, money, money, who's leading in the grab game and by how much.

The real story, the important story is that the overwhelming majority of the money raised is coming from a handful of hyper millionaires and billionaires. And these people are not spending this money wildly. Scott Brown, who survived the recall selection in Wisconsin, raised $37 million, $8 million from the Koch brothers and their front political organizations. Adelson kicked in at least another $1 million. At least half a dozen other donors kicked in $500,000 or more, meaning half of the overwhelming war chest Brown commanded came from maybe less than $10 donors. While Democrats raised plenty of outside money, mainly from pissed off unions, Walkers opposition gathered no more than 1/3 of what Walker himself spent .

Following are two articles. The first is the joint Propublica/ Frontline report on Shelly Adelson, his recent legal concerns, and the source of his money—Macau the largest gambling center in the world, substantially larger than Vegas, thanks to Adelson. Macau is known as a playground for rich Chinese and has a thriving and decades old gangster (Triad) culture. The story makes clear that much of Adelson’s current fortune arises from his activities in Macau. The history of how he gained his fortune there is now under investigation. Whether or not he can be found guilty of criminal activity is always problematic, but we can be sure that at minimum Adelson has looked the other way and is sitting on a highly corrupt and corruptible pile of cash—which he has not been afraid to spend. It is almost certain that Adelson approved payments to surrogates in Macau and China in order to get favorable treatment from Government officials.

The Bloomberg article is an excellent backgrounder on the Koch empire, how it works, and more importantly why they are spending their billions trying to influence elections and regulators.

Please remember these two people are looking to fund about one of every ten dollars spent this election cycle. This is what Citizens United has wrought.

http://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-investigation-of-leading-republican-money-man-sheldon-adelson

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-02/koch-brothers-flout-law-getting-richer-with-secret-iran-sales.html

LIBOR, Part II

A Response to a FB Friend:

Michael, with respect because I know we are on same page this is all so much more than the wealthy slanting the playing field in their favor. American society, Western Society really is beset with levels of opulence and corruption unseen since the time of the robber barons in the latter part of the 19^th century. As Mark pointed out there was tremendous movement on the rates as a result of what these big banks did. Even stealing on the fringes would have meant huge swings. This was so much more than that. And critically it was not perpetuated by a couple of rogue bankers, but appears to be systematic. Though the jury is still out, everything I have read seems indicate an industry wide fraud.

The biggest issue to me is that there is no consensus at any level for reform. Historically America has found ways to pull itself back from the brink, but now as Mr. Dylan might say, everything is broken.

After a generation of shameless, wanton corruption America entered into the Progressive Era in the 1890 or so and for 30 years reform was popular and expected. By my light we are nowhere near that sort of consensus and Americans can talk about politicians that will not compromise and do not legislate, but they must know, they simply must know, that they themselves are to blame as well. WW I changed the equation in terms of the expectation of reform, and for ten years after, until the depression, hedonism sort of became fashionable again, and reform was pushed to the back burner.

Cycles follow from there. The Depression is followed by the New Deal, then WW II, then the McCarthyite, socially comatose 50’s, then the 60’s Rock & Roll, Peace, Civil, Women, and Gay Rights movements. Then comes Reagan. In the 32 years since the social contract between the haves and the have nots has been torn to near complete separation. Make no mistake what is called conservatism today would have been intolerable to the public in 1968 when Nixon was elected, or 1980 with Reagan, or 1988 with Bush. Through that entire time the only (short-lived) effort at reform was in response to the venal crimes of Richard Nixon. But in the current environment we operate in where a grass roots movement, The Tea Party, springs up in response to perceived corruption and is quickly swallowed up by the most corrupt political and business entities in the country, the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity, reform in today’s lexicon is nearly non-existent.

Democrats in general and the President in particular are not really part of any solution and the Affordable Car Act, notwithstanding, this presidency has been a pale shadow of anything that could be considered Progressive. I believe there are two reasons for this. The first is money. For all the talk about being outspent the President and the Dems will likely raise close to two billion dollars. That money flows because it wants something. And what that something is sure not programs to aid the poor, sick and hungry among us.  Capital at that level is the enemy of reform, everyone knows it. Liberals and Dems that hold onto the hope that our billionaire is better than theirs are grasping a thin reed.

The second reason that Obama’s call for Hope and Change have amounted to so much less is a flaw in the president himself. While he has been hamstrung by a recalcitrant Congress bent on protecting the perks of their obscenely rich benefactors at almost any cost, the President made a huge miscalculation early on and that was that he could make a deal with the devil if he just talked nice to the old fiend. The President (by his own admission this past week) has done a poor job of explaining the what and whys of his policy proposals and in case after case after case has refused to take on the conservative establishment.

High gas prices made the raising of CAFÉ  standards palatable, but unless there is a dramatic shift in a potential second term the Obama presidency will make little movement on global warming and this will be a huge opportunity lost. Wall Street reforms are stalled and hundreds of regulations growing from Dodd-Frank are yet to be written. Of most immediate urgency the stimulus plans that he has put forth have been lackluster and ineffective. Blame it on Congress, sure, but the president politically has been outmaneuvered. What I wouldn’t give to if Obama had cajones comparable to either of the Clinton’s.  

But even with my deep frustration with the President the bigger issue it seems to me is the American people who do not care for or about reform. Political leaders respond to the demands of the people, since Egyptian times they always have and they always will. Americans vote against their interests all the time. The South, with their serial social problems, poor education, healthcare, and the lowest standard of living (nine of the bottom ten in median income) votes reliably Republican. This is true even in the states of the deep, deep south with HUGE blocks of African American voters. Ironically, if the Tea Party movement, ugly though it was in some ways, had remained independent and so viable, and the Occupy movement and retained more of its muscularity before the winter and changing police tactics softened its bite, reform might have been possible. The point is that there was some consensus, right and left for reform, and some real anger, so change is possible.

When?  I don’t know. For now, at least in my opinion we are locked in between a charade of reform, which isn’t really anything like it, and total “catastrophe” as Dr. West called it last week. It is an easy choice as to whether or not to vote for this President over his rich, spoiled, arrogant and disconnected opponent. Just don’t have any illusions that this represents progressive change. Sadly, at least based on the first time it does not. IF I am wrong and freed from running for a second term the President really goes after entrenched, and now nearly omnipotent power, no one will be happier than me.

The LIBOR Scandal: What It Means and Why It Matters

It’s really hard not to quantify Mitt Romney’s white-man elitist remarks to the NAACP as the foulest outrage of recent days.  Romney first went in front of the NAACP with a supercilious grin and sort of talked past the audience in front of him and explained to the Republican base that does not trust him or particularly like him that he was going to show these Negroes who’s boss. He was predictably booed, and then deified by the bitter angels of the right for his bravery. Then compounding the outrage he went on to Montana the next day and said, “When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare they weren't happy, I didn't get the same response. That's ok, I want people to know what I stand for and if I don't stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that's just fine. But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy-more free stuff. But don't forget nothing is really free.” Obamacare, like Romneycare, forces those who can afford it, who visit emergency rooms for more often than not government paid treatment, to actually get insurance and so pay their share into the system. Yesterday’s Times, reporting on Florida’s hotly contested but likely opt out of the Medicaid expansion reported that a single hospital in South Florida dispensed half a billion in such treatment last year. So the free part sort of mystifies. As usual Matt Taibi has the best most withering take: “He’s like a teenager who stays up all night thinking of a way to impress the prom queen, and what he comes up with is kicking a kid in a wheelchair. Instincts like those are probably what made him a great leveraged buyout specialist, but in a public figure? Man, is he a disaster.”
Well at least we can agree with Romney that “nothing is really free”.  Just yesterday, the Times reported that the Agriculture bill is stalled in the House owing to disagreements between Republicans over how and where to make cuts. The Senate already passed the bill, which included $16.5 billion in cuts to the Food Stamp program over 10 years, but some in the House want to go deeper and have proposed doubling that to $33 billion. Meanwhile, thanks to House Republicans sugar producers will not see any cut to their subsidy program. Cotton and peanut farmers who got little support in the Senate managed to get fallaciously budget conscious Republicans to add lobbyists provisions in support of their industries. By Romney’s calculation we can assume that food stamps are not free, but subsidies to commodity producers, subsidies which are in place regardless of whether or not some crops are even grown, are without cost to government.  It does not appear that children in need of basic nutrition have the same well-funded lobbyists as sugar, peanut, and cotton producers. American democracy in 2012 is a lie, a facade, a grimy curtain, behind which the legal corruption of lobbyists and totally unregulated and unreported campaign cash buys votes, loyalty and policies favorable to the well fed and powerful, at the expense of those both weak and hungry.

But even with the cascading stories of corruption at all levels of American government The LIBOR scandal, now rumbling around the financial press, has an even greater stench of outrage and a dizzying level of corruption. LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate) is the primary benchmark for short term interest rates around the world. The facts are still being ascertained, but what we do know is that at least one British Bank, Barclay’s, has already admitted their role in manipulating the rates and has agreed to a $450 million USD fine. Bob Diamond, Barclay’s CEO who initially called the charges of LIBOR manipulation “terribly unfair” and “unfounded” resigned. Barclay’s was not the only bank to be involved, and 12 other marquis brand international banks including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Royal Bank of Scotland, are also thought to be involved.

As we have seen with other financial crimes of late the stakes here are so much larger. The LIBOR rates affect the cost of virtually all consumer and business loans. The London Mail notes that “a family with a $100,000 mortgage would have been $50 to $100 worse off a month because of the fixing.”

So when we look at the home mortgage market for the last several years the collusion and corruption within the banking community seems to know no limits. So much of the corruption has taken place and intensified just in the past few years. From just 2004 to 2006 the number of sub-prime loans went from just 8% of the total to more than 20%. By 2006 more than 90% of the sub-prime loans were adjustable. The run-up in the creation of these high-risk loans was a direct response to the desire for them as investment vehicles. The loans were bundled and sold as investment grade bonds, which were often opaque in their structure. Bond agencies such as Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s gave the esoteric packages A-A-A ratings and gathered their commission for the “researched” effort, and insurance companies like AIG, certain that real estate values would never decrease, sold credit default swaps that would compensate the banks in the event of a loan default. All of this was largely unregulated because so many big and powerful entities were making so much money—showering much of it in return on Congress which – Democrat and Republican alike--for their ransom gladly turned a blind eye.

Then immediately before the crisis and certainly during the crisis the banks started to collude to manipulate LIBOR rates. This helped their bottom lines in multiple ways.  In Barclay’s case the manipulation was done at least in part to make the bank look healthier by making the cost of its borrowing appear to be less.  In addition fractional manipulation of the rates in a trillion dollar market could result in hundreds of billions in capital gains. According to the Mail, “$360 trillion dollars in loans around the world are indexed to the LIBOR, a figure which is five times the value of the world's entire annual GDP.” These manipulations would not only affect the cost of loans but would also weigh heavenly on the hedges or bets these thirteen big banks were making in the market. This is robbery on a gargantuan scale, largely carried out in secret by the same banks and Wall Street firms that brought on the catastrophic financial crisis in the first place.

Once again the role of the regulators has come into question. In today’s Washington Post Zachary Goldfarb reports “…in April 2008, the New York Fed was explicitly warned by an employee of the British bank Barclays that it was participating in a ruse”.  The NY Fed at the time was run by Obama’s current Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geitner. Goldfarb goes on to report that “The manipulation by Barclays did not end until some point in 2009.” Sometime in late 2007 or early 2008 according the British Banking Authority (BBA) which brought the charges and levied the fines against Barclay’s, a senior Barclay’s treasury manager called the BBA and warned them that rates were not accurate, but that Barclays was not the worst offender. "We're clean, but we're dirty clean, rather than clean-clean," the Barclay’s treasury manager was quoted as saying. To which the BBA representative responded, "No-one's clean-clean." So regulators knew that there was a year’s long, at least, conspiracy underway to illegally and artificially manipulate LIBOR rates. These rates which affected trillions of dollars in loans and had the potential to add billions to the bottom line of the too big to fail banks that were at the time being bailed out by American tax payers to the tune of a trillion dollars.

In the aftermath of the crisis millions of people were thrown onto the streets, their loans hastily foreclosed, often illegally. US based banks agreed in February to pay $25 billion to settle claims that they processed foreclosures without verifications, sometimes with forged signatures, and generally in an accelerated process by which they took possession of homes illegally, thus exacerbating a housing crisis already well underway. Just imagine the consequences across the country of this. Reuters reported that in San Francisco that audits of almost 400 foreclosures “found that 84 percent of them appeared to be illegal”. I’m not sure that anyone is suggesting that 84% of all foreclosures were illegal, but in 2009 there were 2.8 million foreclosures across the United States.  What if a third were illegal? Imagine the impact on a community of homes where two of ten houses are abandoned and vacant rather than four or five of ten. The banks created the crisis, made it worse in their mad rush to cut their losses, and manipulated rates and costs before, during and after the crisis. All the while regulators stood (and stand) on the sidelines with a “Gee, I don’t know” look on their face.

In comparison to the $700 billion TARP bailout of the banks, and the $3.3 trillion the Fed Loaned to the banks at near zero interest through the Discount Window, as reported by Bloomberg in March-2011, the corresponding effort to save actual homeowners from losing their homes has been minuscule and infective. HOPE for Homeowners (In return for reducing the balance on the mortgage, the Federal Housing Administration will insure the loan), HAMP (Housing payment -- mortgage, property taxes, homeowners and mortgage insurance -- demands more than 31 percent of pay),  UP ( Unemployed Homeowners), and HAFA (lender incentives to let homeowner give up the deed or sell the house as an alternative to foreclosure) have touched maybe hundreds of thousands in a market which saw millions of families lose their homes.

In this environment no one with the possible exception of Cornell West and Tavis Smiley, God bless them, are talking about the poor and poverty in America. Even then no one seems to understand or can be bothered to care. Sighting a Heritage Foundation study on how well the poor in America live, Carol Costello on CNN had the audacity to ask West and Smiley in 2011, "What are they (the poor) complaining about?" Everyone talks about the middle class, of course, that’s where the votes are, but much of that is just talk. The real action is taking place in the banks and on Wall Street. There a gathering storm of self-interest and glad-handing back-slapping golf-buddy bravado obliterates any effort at reform. Everyone knows the game is rigged, but too often the focus is more about the race then what victory would mean, what policies would be pursued and what wolf-like special interest would be tamed. The mendacity, to use Dr. West’s term, has reached epic proportion, the size of the corruption almost immeasurable, the scope of the crime almost unseen. It is like trying to see Rushmore clinging to the edge of Lincoln’s nose. One knows there is something of immensity before them but cannot quite make out the image.