Just A Quickie

Today, the governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, signed into law a complete piece of crap ("Immigration Reform Bill") that requires cops to stop anybody they think might be in the US illegally.  "I best be checkin'  them papers there, Chico".

For me, the fact of it is bad enough, but part of the governor's remarks afterward were to the affect: "we've been waiting and waiting for someone in Washington to do something about illegal immigration; they weren't getting it done, so we had to do it ourselves".

So OK, just for a moment, let's ignore the fact that you've enacted a law that basically makes it illegal to be deeply tanned, and try to concentrate on the remarks.  Am I to understand that this governor has NEVER criticized a political opponent for "wanting a government solution to all our problems"? ..."always looking to Washington for help"?  This kind of politician is true a set of core beliefs only when it is necessary to collect dollars or votes.

These people have no soul and no honor.

We Are So Fucked

We've legalized bribery; we've integrated bribery into the system. It doesn't look quite like what we've always assumed bribery looks like and so we don't call it bribery, but that's what it is. It's bribery.

We won't get anything of real value out of Washington, or any other legislature, until the enormous flow of cash is throttled back. And that will take our elected officials too long to accomplish. As soon as somebody stands up in the speakers' well and declares his intent to change this corrupt system, the monied interests will come down on him like The Lord's burnin' rain (courtesy of SCOTUS and the Citizens United decision). The dirty tricks and the slander and the negative ads will make him out to be the worst thing since Herpes, and the next election will see him replaced by somebody who is a little more pliant and open to the manipulations of our corporate masters.

Gotta Love This Guy

I wonder how long it'll take our "leaders" to shove him over the cliff and get back to suckin' Wall Street's dick.

Bring The Stupid

Hands Up

I'm just gonna run this whole post from Balloon Juice.  It pretty much says it all.

Via Memeorandum, this interview with FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, which had this snippet:

If this had been law prior to 2008, would we have seen the bailouts that took place? Would we have seen capital injections into banks?

BAIR: No. You could not do an AIG, Bear Stearns, or any of that. Those were all one-off things, capital or asset guarantee transactions. This bill would only allow system-wide liquidity support which could not be targeted at an individual firm. You can’t do capital investments at all, period. It’s only liquidity support. No more capital investments. That’s banned under all circumstances.

You can do systemwide liquidity support. But you can’t do anything on an individual basis. They would have to be generally available.

Do you see any way left for the government to bail out a financial institution?

BAIR: No, and that’s the whole idea. It was too easy for institutions to come and ask for help. They aren’t going to do that. This gives us a response: “Fine, we will take all these essential services and put them in a bridge bank. We will keep them running while your shareholders and debtors take all your losses. And oh, by the way, we are getting rid of your board and you, too.”

The whole idea is to get market discipline back.

That’s what ending “too big to fail means.” It means debtors and shareholders understanding their money is at risk and especially the debtholders starting to look at the balance sheet of these big institutions and asking their own hard questions instead of relying on government support.

When Mitch McConnell took to the cameras spewing his Frank Luntz talking points, this is what pissed me off the most (once you get past the instant “CAN’T YOU MOTHERFUCKERS EVER TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING!”)- what he was doing was trying to kill a bill that would end the bailouts. And if he succeeded, he would be doing the banksters bidding.

They don’t want what Bair just described. They like things just the way it is right now- they can put a gun to the head of the economy and tell us “If I go down, I’m taking everyone of you with me.” They like how things went down the last time- Goldman got every penny off their bets with AIG, all paid for by you and me. Then they went around and lavished huge bonuses on themselves when they weren’t busy writing whiny op-eds about how unfair it is everyone hates them.

With this bill, if the legislators and regulators have it right, these scumbags screw up again, they get wiped out. Shareholders get destroyed, and the board is replaced.

Wall Street and the bankstas don’t want that- which is why they flew Cornyn and McConnell to NY, told them they would bankroll the Republicans if only they killed this bill, and McConnell went right to the Senate podium and lied his ass off. Not only was he lying, but he was doing everything he could to make sure there would be bailouts forever. Understand what he was doing.

It’s just that simple. McConnell was selling the country and the American taxpayer down the river for a chance at flooding the airwaves with campaign ads funded by Wall Street, made possible by the right wing Supreme Court.

Spoiler Alert

The Young Turks

Not usually this straightforward; and not quite the perfect articulation, but damn - we're gettin' closer.

What's Wrong With The South?

We've had more than our share of cringe-worthy moments of late; especially here in Virginia where we get to stand in slack-jawed stupefaction every few weeks watching our Governor and our Atty General make themselves (and the rest of us) look like complete dicks.

They started out by issuing an executive order telling the whole state bureaucracy that they don't have to worry all that much about discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Next up: Ken Cuccinelli decides to sue the Obama Administration to prevent implementation of Healthcare Reform.  And to top it off, his office then says it only costs us the $350 filing fee.  I called his office 6 times and can't get anybody to answer any questions or call me back.

Then Governor Bob issues a proclamation designating April as Dumbass Redneck Month.

Most recently, any ex-felon in Virginia who wants to get back his right to vote has to write a letter to the government in Richmond explaining why he deserves the same rights as everybody else, now that he's paid his debt to society.  Can you say, "literacy test"?  I knew you could.

I get a weird feeling that there's something about the culture down here that makes this kind of Fantasy-Land-Alternate-Reality thing more probable.  It's certainly not particular to The South, but maybe Southerners are a little more susceptible to the temptation to revise the parts of their history that don't fit well with the basic human need for self-esteem.

A few examples:
Slavery was and still is often referred to as "our peculiar institution".
Secession and armed rebellion (aka Treason) becomes "defense of our homeland against an invasion from the north".
Rob't E Lee - a slave owner fervently in favor of beating slaves to keep them in line - is later said to be an abolitionist.

I think it also has something to do with wanting to let yourself off the hook.  If the truth about who you are and where you came from always seems to point up the fact that you're just the latest in a long line of assholes, you have to be looking for a little relief.  If somebody comes along and spins out a version that helps you feel a little less shitty about it all, then you're probably not going to be overly concerned that he's just makin' shit up.

It still makes me a little nuts, but I think I can understand it.  And that gives me a slightly better chance to counter it.

Read this from Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The Logical Extreme

Ten Years Of Hell

These posts are usually about bad news or warning signs, but this one looks like a win - at least they've managed to forestall a real meltdown in Greece for a year or so.  Unfortunately they haven't fixed the problems of the debt itself - problems that could still bring it all crashing down - problems that the banks are helping to create.

The biggest threat to our economic wellbeing is our inability to deal with all the debt we're piling up.  We can't just push "The Reckoning" farther down the road.  We can't keep borrowing, thinking it'll get better if we just wait for inflation to catch up with us; or that the economy will "grow us out of trouble".  We can't go on thinking we never have to worry about paying any of it back.

So Greece is settled down a bit, and now everybody seems to be worried about Portugal, but the real problem may be right here at home.

We dodged a bullet (for now anyway) by pouring massive amounts of dollars into the banks. We haven't fixed anything yet, but we're still standing - so far.

I've been mostly worried that the next shoe to drop will be Commercial Real Estate - one estimate is that by next year, half of all commercial real estate loans will be underwater.  We'll see; and it'll be a big fuckin' problem if it comes to pass, but it's nothing compared with everything bad that can happen if there are many more stories like this one in Birmingham AL.

In 1996, the average monthly sewer bill for a family of four in Birmingham was only $14.71 — but that was before the county decided to build an elaborate new sewer system with the help of out-of-state financial wizards with names like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The result was a monstrous pile of borrowed money that the county used to build, in essence, the world's grandest toilet — "the Taj Mahal of sewer-treatment plants" is how one county worker put it. What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human shit into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street

As usual, I hope I'm wrong, but I fear I'm not.