That seems to be the message we are hearing from Washington these last few weeks. If the “best and brightest” of the new administration’s nominees cannot be bothered to accurately pay their taxes we can only wonder about those passed over for consideration for a senior post in the Executive Branch.
Who would have thought that the “cleanest” one of the bunch would be Hillary Clinton. It looks like the White House needs to get the people that vetted HRC before her campaign to work for Obama’s team now.
And rememeber, if these folks had not been nominated to head an Executive Branch agency, they likely would never have paid the taxes that we now find were long due.
A recent AP Story, picked up by a number of outlets, details that lots of those giant banks that taxpayers are now bailing out have sought government permission to bring in thousands of foreign workers, even while they were laying off lots of American workers.
Why would they do this – because it is cheaper. If you can’t offshore the whole company, then bring in cheaper offshore labor and dump the US workers. These are some of the same giant banks that are pinging us with sudden jumps in credit card interest and incredible fees. Am I shocked and surprised that giant banks are behaving this way? No. Despite tons of public relations efforts from stadium naming rights to landscaping the public roads to anything else that will show banks as good citizens and neighbors, we are still talking about the business of usury. Banking is about one thing – MONEY. Whether you are talking about money changers from centuries past, or Potter’s Bank in “It’s a Wonderful Life” or Shylock from the “Merchant of Venice”, they are all fixated on money – or their pound of flesh in lieu of the money.
It is sad and disappointing that the very banks that came rattling their tin cups to the Treasury to save them from their own rampant greed were also going to great lengths to save money by bringing in foreign workers to fill jobs in U.S. offices while they were dumping U.S. workers. This is a the worst type of abuse of the whole H1-B visa program. This is way below bringing in scabs during a strike to keep the plant or mine running.
It is sad, but unfortunately not terribly surprising. It is the nature of the beast, no matter how much glitter or community relations they try to dress it up with.
The apparent imminent election of the liberal Democrat Barak Obama with a Democrat-controlled Congress should be the final nail in the coffin of the far-right wing’s ability to dominate the Republican party. As Michael Bates observes, we are about to elect a far-left liberal with almost no track record at a time when the liberals in Congress are bursting at the seams to “fix” all the perceived inequities in our country.
How is this possible? Has the U.S. electorate suddenly gone socialist? I think not. The answer is that the far-right and religious-extremist wing of the Republican party has simply gotten out of control as kingmakers. This was clear in the 2000 election, when McCain, a strong leader with a solid background, a mind of his own and heroic military service was passed over for an empty suit with a bankable name, and the “correct” religious reprogramming that could be easily shaped and formed to suit his backers.
Unfortunately for McCain, he waited too long in this campaign to try to get the far-right on board with him and had to do it at the time when he really needed to be talking to the undecided moderates and independents that actually decide the election. Picking Gov. Palin for the VP and hearing her on the campaign trail is a constant reminder to the moderates of how powerful the extremists are in the party. Her scolding tone and self-righteous manner are exactly what many fear about the Republican party. It is also a constant reminder of the last eight years of ideology and religion trumping knowledge and experience. It also has not helped that many of the Republicans in Congress have acted and voted a lot like the Democrats when it comes to spending and protecting sacred contributors.
Hopefully, this stunning loss of a seasoned statesman with solid conservative credentials to a smooth-talking liberal with little more than magic beans will be enough to make the Republican party wake up and realize that a major house-cleaning is in order if they want to win the White House any time soon. It took the Democrats a few cycles to also realize that they had let the extremists take over. But they finally decided that they wanted to win more than they wanted to continue to appease the ” ban all guns and save the transgender spotted owls” set in their party.
The Republican Party is a natural place for the religious right, but there is more to it than that. For many Libertarians, middle-class working families and entrepreneurs the Republican party is also a logical home because of the same basic beliefs in keeping government restricted to certain “legitimate” roles while allowing the populace a maximum of individual freedom. But in recent years, the Republican party had been so dominated by religious/morality issues that it has driven out many of us. David Brooks has a very good piece on this called “Ceding the Center.”
Here’s hoping that it doesn’t take the Republican party any longer to figure out that abortion and gays aren’t the issues that matter to a lot of Americans, especially when the economy is on the brink and we are fighting wars in two distant countries.
As election gets nearer and nearer I can’t shake the feeling that we have been here before. It sure seems like Dole vs. Clinton all over again. A young energetic voice with little national political history, who actually is black this time, vs. the aging war veteran who’s turn finally came up. And, once again, the elder statesman McCain cannot seem to close the deal with the voters.
Even with a major national/world crisis ongoing, too many of us are afraid to let someone who has a some things in common with the administration of the last eight years come in and try to fix what his peers allowed to happen. Apparently the feeling is that we really need a fresh leader in there to shake things up. Even though McCain has some distinct differences from the W. gang, the resemblance is still close enough to frighten many into trying someone with no real leadership or executive experience.
MY strongest feeling on this race is serious disappointment that these two are the best this huge nation can come up with. This is a nation that has many fine examples of leadership in many realms from many different viewpoints. It is very sad that the requirements for massive amounts of money and the media-frenzy of micro-analysis of what key someone belches in keep out so many highly qualified leaders.
One good thing that will probably come from this is that the Republican party will have to reasses itself. There are just not enough hardcore Christian conservatives and millionaire business people to give them enough votes to win any more. They are going to have to do the same sort of internal analysis that led the Democrats to through open the tent flaps and silence their own extremists in order to bring in the working people who just want to make a decent living for themselves and their family. The Democrats have finally learned to keep their rabid anti-gun crowd and transgender spotted owl supporters in a back room somewhere until after the election.
Likewise, a lot of us that have voted Republican in the past, the ones David Brooks calls “Patio Man” have had to take a long hard look at our own situation and try to decide if this Republican candidate really offers us anything. The last one told us he did, and then turned everything inside out chasing a white whale into Iraq before deciding to have his minions rewrite or reinterpret much of the Bill of Rights. Meanwhile others on his pick-up team watched idly as Katrina roared through and the greed hounds destroyed our financial system.
Can you really blame a lot of us for wondering how a President Obama could be worse? Sure, taxes will likely go up and there will be some wealth transfer for social programs that have questionable results, but we may actually get some progress in the healthcare morass. If you think the healthcare system is only broken for those at the bottom end that do not have any medical insurance, ask anyone who is self-employed or owns a small business. There is a lot wrong with our healthcare system or more precisely how it it paid for. If there is a chance that the next administration will push the insurance giants aside and actually shame Congress into making some real changes, then I’m for it.
Quite simply, the Republican party no longer represents those of us who are just trying to go to work, do our job and take care of our family . . . unless we are millionaires or evangelical Christians or both. I’m a Marine vet, and an NRA Life Member, but I may have to hold my nose and vote for Obama. Although respect McCain and his service a great deal, I’m just afraid that more of the same protection of the millionaires is going to force me to sell my guns for food, house payments and medical care before Obama, Schumer, et. al. get around to confiscating them.
I know that retail credit cards are a long way from the millions and billions in mortgage-backed securities that are bringing down one institution after another, but it’s why Main Street is not behind what looks like bailing out Wall Street. I would have been surprised if the $700 billion deal had successfully passed the House, despite the all-weekend sessions to get the leadership behind it and supposedly their members as well.
The entire House is up for election in a little over 30 days and neither the Administration nor the Congress has made their case to the voters of exactly how this gigantic deal is going to work a miracle in the finance world. We all see the news and understand that some of the biggest players like AIG, WaMu, Fannie/Freddie, Lehman Bros., have gone under due to this mortgage-backed securities fiasco. And we understand that similar things are happening in other nations for the same reason. However, no one has provided the information that would close the deal. News reports say the calls, faxes, emails, etc. are running 100:1 against the package. Any why not. We have not seen anyone held to account for this monstrosity. Sure, lots of workers in the failed investment banks have lost their jobs, but so far, no one, from mortgage brokers to securities packagers to bankers to executives to government agency watchdogs has been charged, indicted or even lost their job.
So far Sen. McCain is the only voice calling for SEC Chairman Cox to be cashiered. Instead its hard not to wonder if Cox isn’t going to get a Bush “heckuva job Brownie,” and go right on until the next President takes over.
Yes, I realize that the finance mess is indeed going to affect all of us. I’ve certainly seen my IRA nosedive over the last several months, then go free-fall today. And since most US workers no longer have pension plans, these IRAs and 401Ks are all we will have to live on besides a meager social security payment, if that’s still around. For those that do work for a firm with a pension plan, the short term could be even worse. As the investments in those pension plans lose value , the employer will have to pony up more cash to maintain the required reserve – if they have the cash. For some of the big guys, they may end up facing bankruptcy because they cannot borrow enough cash to pump into their pension funds.
Yes, I understand that there is a serious financial crisis. Yes, I understand that it may well take strong action by Washington to avert much more serious consequences. BUT, despite a good deal of research online and reading a variety of news sources, I do NOT understand how this plan and only this plan is clearly the solution. If the voters understand, then they can support their representatives’ voting for whatever measure seem justified. Until the members of Congress, especially the House, feel they can count on support for this unprecedented action back home, how can anyone expect them to just go along with it.
Yes, there were actually four credit card and/or convenience checks offers in today’s mail, including one from WaMu. Most of us would be more than willing to help a recovering alcoholic get back on their feet, but we have to feel like that they are in recovery and the money we contribute won’t just go for more liquor.
With the current financial system crisis or regulatory failure crisis, or greed crisis, depending upon your perspective, it is once again abundantly clear that we are losing jobs and much of the middle class due to an economy that has shifted from making things and selling them, to charging fees and commissions for moving numbers on a spreadsheet.
There has always been a place for finance professionals and there still is, but this century has seen financial services come to so dominate our economy that we are now facing a nearly trillion-dollar taxpayer-funded bailout of the U.S. finance system’s drunken orgy while countless Americans are trying to feed their family and pay their bills and stay in the house that they used to be able to afford with the jobs they used to have.
I’ve just finished reading an excellent book that examines how we got here and what may well lie in store for us, with abundant supporting data. Unless we make some major shifts in what moves our economy we are headed for the same fate that has caused several other formerly great nations to dwindle to a fraction of their former status.
Video of Kevin Phillips speaking on the topic April 28, 2008 (approx. 90 min.)
This book is available at the Tulsa Library in audio download and print versions as well as the various book sellers. I listened to the audio version, but realize that I missed a bit by not having the many charts and tables of data to refer back to as it went on.
Before you dismiss Phillips as another liberal Bush-hater, know that Phillips is a former Republican strategist going back to the Nixon campaign and has been credited for coining the term “silent majority.”
What makes this time in our history so hard is that a great many people that are not unemployed are very much underemployed. They have had to take jobs that pay much less and have less benefits as our economy shifts from innovation in creating things to build and sell to innovation in credit marketing, fee generation and the creation of financial instruments that nearly no one can really understand. Meanwhile we are inundated with offers for credit cards so we can buy all the stuff that is churned out in factories overseas that few of us really need to buy anyway. As our amount of disposable income diminishes, it will become impossible for this nation of consumers to buy much of anything outside of food, housing and utilities even with our pocketful of credit cards. That is the real looming train wreck.
People that are just trying to get by will not be buying an HD TV for every room in the house or a new car every three years or a $4 coffee and $3 scone for breakfast every day. You can’t make a consumer-driven economy work when a larger and larger share of your consumers are working $10/hour jobs with no benefits. Eventually they can’t even make the minimum payments on their credit cards and all those shiny things from the factories overseas just sit in the stores waiting for their turn on the clearance aisle. Even Henry Ford, not exactly a socialist, understood that he needed to make a car that his own workers could buy.
Financial services just don’t employ enough people to keep a large consumer-driven engine fed. They don’t buy raw materials, patent new ideas, do R&D or ship products. Not everyone in this country can work in health care or retail or government and keep a consumer-driven economy running.
I’m not saying that the government should stop the financial services business and force companies to open buggy whip factories and employ us all at $50 an hour. But, government tax policies can and do make a difference in what gets outsourced and offshored and what stays at home.
However, the biggest part of the answer lies with the tremendous innovation and creative ability of the people in this big free melting pot. What made the 20th century America’s century was not just factories, but the creativity that figured out new ways to make and do things and new things to make and do. There’s a reason that the international language of air traffic and the oil and gas industry among others, is English, and the answer is not the UK, much as I do like their ales and quaint roadsters.
Several other commentators, as diverse as Thomas Friedman and Boone Pickens have called for a new surge of American innovation in finding and delivering new sources of energy and much improved efficiency in currently available sources. When voices with this kind of knowledge and background yet divergent political perspectives start agreeing on a big issue, it’s time for the rest of us to consider it.
Like most of you I have been seeing and hearing about the Pickens Plan for energy. I’ve read through most of it and it seems to me that it is saying we could do a lot to reduce our dependence on foreign oil by better utilizing wind and natural gas energy that we have here. While the plan I read does not pretend to end dependence on oil, foreign or domestic, it sure looks like it is a good idea.
I can remember seeing a good deal about using compressed natural gas (CNG) as a transport fuel around here nearly 20 years ago. Everything I saw about it then looked very promising. I was doing some photo work for a compressor company that ONG was using so I got to see and hear several presentations on CNG motor fuel. Click to continue »
Last night I made an observation that helped me put things back in their true perspective. Looking up into the southwestern sky, I can see our big, bright, neighborhood giant, Jupiter. With only the aid of a 45x spotting scope I can clearly see several bright points around the large sphere. Those bright points are four of Jupiter’s moons. These four, the Galilean moons, are: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. These can be seen through a good set of binoculars, if you can hold steady enough.
Looking up and seeing these and knowing that these are the same four bright points observed by Galileo and others helps to remind me that this whole world is both tiny and yet long enduring, at least on man’s time scale. When I get too wound up about the latest plans of the local oligarchy to construct a great and wonderful downtown, whether we like it or not, it helps to step back, look up and think about the big picture. These annoyances about process in a supposedly free and open government will pass and we will likely eventually accept the completed trails, stadiums, carefully crafted developments and the like, even though they may be nothing like what “we” would have liked.
Do we really know or care about the volcanic activity on Io? Does Ganymede know or care that there are political conventions or stadium trusts on Earth? No, I think to both questions. So I remind myself to relax and remember the Golden Rule, “those with the gold make the rules.” Little has changed on the blue planet for thousands of years. Technology advances, but man is pretty much the same.
