Calm Down, Wingnuts--No One Is Going to Confiscate Your Hardly Won Gains

Leave it to the people who write about how difficult it is for the mega-rich in this country to get through each day to find fault with a mega-rich Senator who realizes that the economic health of this country is actually tied to how fair our system is for everyone:

"Why Democrats Scare Me to Death"

Drama queen hysterics are hardly necessary. If those of us who proudly call ourselves Democrats scare you to death, you should put on a fedora and go live in Switzerland.

VARNEY: If this kind of help goes through, then a poor and moderate income people will indeed get help with their home heating. They'll get help with rent. They'll get help with their healthcare. They'll get help with their food through food stamps. I mean, if you put it altogether, are you comfortable with the kind of redistribution and the level of income transfer that will represent? are you comfortable with that?

SEN. KERRY: No, and I'm equally uncomfortable with the income transfer that's taken place in the last 15 years in America to the wealthiest people in the country, myself among them. It's simply not fair. It's not the way that it's traditionally worked in America and we've seen, you know in the 1980's top 1% of income earn earns in America took home 8 or 9% of America's income. in the '90s the top 1% went up to about 16% of America's income and now the top 1% takes home about 22% of America's income. so, there's been an enormous redistribution of wealth from average Americans to the wealthiest people in the country. And they just can't make it. They can't pay their tuitions, they can't pay their healthcare costs, they can't pay for gasoline tank. You've got people who can't even pay to fill up a full gasoline tank today because their credit cards get cut off. So, what we need to do is obviously, make our economy work more effectively for everybody and that means you're going to get back to a system where when you work hard your wages can go up and you can actually live off the wage you earn.

Sounds to me like Kerry is just making it clear that a system that redistributes wealth upwards is just as unhealthy as a system that would redistribute wealth downward. What we have right now is a form of the robber baron economy of the late 1800s--and if we made more crap in this country it might actually be worse because they would be able to control prices on manufactured goods. The wags say that the Republicans are leading us all back to serfdom; I think they're trying to turn this country into Mexico.

Karl Rove wanted one dominant political party; the policies he enacted created an enormous income gap that squeezed the middle class and allowed the mega-rich to increase their holdings. Bankruptcy reform made it harder for the people on the bottom to reorganize their debt and stay afloat, driving more and more people into what was intended to be a large single underclass. In Mexico, you're either mega-rich or just like everyone else, and you either have your gated compound and segregated area from the poor or you don't. Political and economic reform is long overdue in Mexico, and if it happens, look for a drastic reduction in so-called illegal immigration.

All John Kerry is saying is that the current trend destroys our middle class and all the wingnuts want to do is apologize for Karl Rove's insane economic theories. Now that the American people have had a healthy dose of being soaked, they're going to reject, en masse, the insanity of Republican economic theory. The people at the top were moving their wealth overseas anyway--witness the UBS bank scandal that is going to engulf quite a few patriotic mega-rich people who likely broke the law and avoided US taxes. Arguing that raising taxes will cause them to take their money overseas is a joke--they already have. We must cut entitlements and spending and live within our means. And, we have to stop the handouts to the mega-rich.

--WS

No, We Don't Need Hummers

UPDATE: The link takes you to a column by Matthew DeBord at the WashingtonPost.com. If you have trouble with it, I apologize profusely and promise to do whatever it takes to rectify the problem.

You know, if you're going to do a (satirical? No, too earnest) ode to a vehicle that might disappear, you do it to an actual vehicle that is worth driving. And the Hummer isn't that vehicle. Let it go. Let it die. The commercial version is worthless and the HUMVEE used by our troops has been an awful vehicle. Too many went to war without the right armor and too many troops have been injured or killed in what I, personally feel is an underpowered lemon not worth driving anywhere but to the junkyard.

When General Motors announced that it would subject its Hummer division to what in the automotive business is known as a "review," you could hear the tree huggers, the unreconstructed hippies, the postmodern Greens, Al Gore's organic peanut gallery, every single customer at the Pasadena Whole Foods and the United Prius Owners of America shove aside their alfalfa sprouts and commence clapping.

No set of wheels since the hapless Edsel has been as persistently reviled as the Hummer. Just recall the Hummer damaged by masked eco-vigilantes in the District last year.

GM probably didn't see that coming when it purchased Hummer as a brand name from AM General Corp. in 1999. AM General developed the Hummer in the late 1970s as the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, for tactical military applications. On the battlefield, it has enjoyed a successful 20-year run, despite issues regarding armor that have emerged during its service in Iraq. The civilian version that AM General builds for GM is another story.

Still, it would be a mistake for GM, assisted by the raving grease-monkey CPAs of Citibank, to sell the brand to an upstart carmaker in India or China or to breed it as a hybrid, as some have suggested. GM desperately needs an obnoxious, attention-grabbing brand to keep from turning into a dreary shadow of its former self. And America needs the Hummer to remind us of what has always made our automobiles stand out, from the tailfin 1950s to the muscle car 1960s and '70s: swagger. Americans don't just drive their cars -- they proclaim something about themselves by driving them.

He goes on to say that there's something manly about driving and owning a Hummer. Well, if you're an idiot, sure. If you're insecure about your penis size, all the better. I know some people just love slapping that "sorry about your penis" decal on Hummers. But unless you've driven something that can actually go off road or something that resembles a vehicle with a working suspension, I don't know why there is this fascination for the box on wheels with the overly-high profile. It's not a toy--it's actually an awful vehicle to try to drive and ride around in.

I guess I spent too much time riding in them--that probably explains my bias. The ambulance version of the HUMVEE was, and always will be, something I will revile all of my life.

If you gave me one of these things, I wouldn't take it from you. I wouldn't.

--WS

Next We'll See People Selling Apples in the Street

I can believe it. I think it's sad, but I believe it.

Grave robbing has become an above-ground affair.

Gone are the days when enterprising thieves would dig up an old grave and pillage for gold teeth and rings. Today, it's mostly the bronze markers and flower vases that draw their attention.

Rising scrap metal prices, coupled with the lagging economy, have triggered a string of cemetery thefts both locally and across the nation.

"I can't think of anything lower," said David Evans, general manager for Valhalla Gardens of Memory in Belleville. "Nothing's worse than stealing from the dead."

But grave robbers beware: The authorities are getting wise. States are passing laws and police are cracking down.

In March, the Madison County Sheriff's Department arrested three people for stealing 40 vases from two Metro East cemeteries. The owner of a Granite City scrap recycling center turned them in.

What I don't think people understand is this--in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, for example, every single piece of metal that isn't welded down has been hauled to the massive scrap metal recycling plants. There is one on the Southwest side of Baltimore, in one of the poorest neighborhoods, and the flow of trucks in and out of it all day chokes the city and causes congestion as the metal scrap junkmen in their beat-up vehicles haul metal into the center all day long. The junkmen scour abandoned homes, open lots, construction sites--virtually any place where they might find something made out of metal.

If it's made out of metal, someone is going to break it off, peel it off, cut it off or unbolt it and take it to the recycling center. And it doesn't matter if it's indoors or outdoors--they're going to haul it to the center and recycle it for almost next to nothing.

It's a massive transfer of material wealth--items that can cost thousands to replace, like copper pipes or iron grates or material found in a cemetery--is being converted into dollars for a fraction of their original cost or their replacement cost.

All in the name of staying afloat in today's economy. Don't tell me we're not going to see hard times for a while--$4 a gallon gas is wiping people out left and right.

--WS

Everyone Can Stay At Alphonso's Place

Homeless? Alphonso Jackson will let you crash on his couch. Disgruntled regulator? Hey, it's all good. Have a free portrait of Jackson to put on your wall. Left holding the bill? Too bad, sucker. You should have left town when Alphonso left town. After all, this happened on his watch:

In 2004, as regulators warned that subprime lenders were saddling borrowers with mortgages they could not afford, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development helped fuel more of that risky lending.

Eager to put more low-income and minority families into their own homes, the agency required that two government-chartered mortgage finance firms purchase far more "affordable" loans made to these borrowers. HUD stuck with an outdated policy that allowed Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to count billions of dollars they invested in subprime loans as a public good that would foster affordable housing.

Housing experts and some congressional leaders now view those decisions as mistakes that contributed to an escalation of subprime lending that is roiling the U.S. economy.

The agency neglected to examine whether borrowers could make the payments on the loans that Freddie and Fannie classified as affordable. From 2004 to 2006, the two purchased $434 billion in securities backed by subprime loans, creating a market for more such lending. Subprime loans are targeted toward borrowers with poor credit, and they generally carry higher interest rates than conventional loans.

Today, 3 million to 4 million families are expected to lose their homes to foreclosure because they cannot afford their high-interest subprime loans. Lower-income and minority home buyers -- those who were supposed to benefit from HUD's actions -- are falling into default at a rate at least three times that of other borrowers.

As these people lose their homes, the ripple effect through the economy will carry well into the next administration--and we need to remember that. Jackson is gone, but his "service" to this country will live on.

--WS

No one has the political courage to take the actions to bring relief at the pump

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them." ~~Albert Einstein

As gas prices head toward five bucks a gallon, the republicans crank up the noise machine in support of drilling in ANWR to solve our energy woes (for about three months in ten years at a prohibitive cost to the environment - they conveniently forget that part). McCain is still stuck on his "gas tax holiday" nonsense, rather like an old, old man or a young, young toddler who has decided he wants pudding and isn't going to shut up about it until he gets it. Never mind that the odds seem pretty good that such an action would likely prove counterproductive by encouraging consumption.

Everyone has ideas that will offer some measure of relief eventually, not one of them has the political courage to advocate for any of the three steps that would offer immediate relief. Not bu$h, not McCain, not even Obama.

From McClatchy:

Perhaps the quickest action, the experts said, would be ordering curbs on financial speculation. Financial industry heavyweights have acknowledged in recent testimony before Congress that such speculation is driving oil prices higher.

Pension funds, endowments and other big institutional investors are pumping big money into index funds linked to commodities, including oil, driving up demand — and prices. The popular Goldman Sachs Commodities Index attracted $260 billion in investment last year, compared to $13 billion five years earlier.

Complicating any effort to harness that, about 30 percent of the trading in crude oil is done in "dark areas" — markets in London and Dubai — that aren't regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

President Bush could order the CFTC to regulate U.S. investments in those markets with a snap of his fingers, said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and a former director of trading for the CFTC.

"Essentially this could be ended this afternoon if the Bush administration had the stomach to do it," he said. "Those abdications of responsibility and allowing these exchanges to trade in 'dark' markets ... provides an environment for speculators to thrive."

The CFTC is investigating the link between speculation and oil prices but hasn't scheduled any action.

A second partial solution would be to boost the supply of oil available on the market by releasing as much as 1 million barrels a day of oil now held in the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That step is being pushed by, among others, the Center for American Progress, a Democratic think tank run by several former Clinton administration officials.

Do that for 90 days — through the summer driving season when consumer demand for gasoline is highest — and the reserve would lose less than 15 percent of the oil held in case of national emergency.

"Put that on the market, and the price of oil will fall," said Daniel J. Weiss, a senior fellow at the center.

It's not entirely clear that U.S. refineries could handle all that extra oil, but it would signal to traders of oil contracts that the U.S. market is adequately supplied.

Finally, the Federal Reserve could act to boost the weak dollar, which has led oil producers to demand higher prices for oil, because oil generally is traded in dollars. Oil producers want higher prices to offset the cost of converting dollars into euros and other currencies that have grown stronger against the dollar.

The best way to bolster a currency is to boost interest rates, but the Federal Reserve has been reluctant to do that with America teetering on the brink of recession. The central bank in Europe, where growth is more robust, is poised to raise rates, however. That could weaken the dollar further, and drive oil prices even higher.

Later today, the Senate will try to muster the 60 votes necessary to thwart republican obstructionists led by Mitch McCionnell to move forward legislation that would mandate CFTF regulators require investors to put up more of their own wealth if they want to speculate on oil markets.

Obama, speaking at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina yesterday repeated his calls for a windfall tax on oil companies. "I'll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we'll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills," he said.

in the long term, however, Obama said the only answers were to increase the use of alternatives such as solar, wind, biodiesel, and even clean coal - coupled with tougher CAFE standards for vehicles and development of plug-in hybrid vehicles.

By contrast, McCain would just go after less accessible (off shore) and less desirable (sand-tar) oil deposits, and puts no emphasis on alternative energy production or technological developments.

And isn't that something of a puzzler, coming from the guy who insists that his willingness to deal with global warming sets him apart from der chimpenfurher?