The Final Lesson of BP, Robert Reich.org, July 28, 2010, by Robert Reich, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

BP is starting over. It just named a new American president and its finances are looking up. BP’s second-quarter report showed surprisingly strong revenues of $75.9 billion, beating Wall Street’s estimates. (This includes a $32.2 billion writedown along with the $20 billion liability fund that the Obama Administration wanted.) The company has started to sell $30 billion of its assets to ensure it has all the money it needs to pay any liability claims. No wonder several Wall Street analysts are suggesting BP stock as a terrific buy.

It doesn’t seem to matter BP was responsible for the worst environmental disaster in American history. Consumers worldwide – including Americans – continue to slurp up its oil.

But wait a minute. If BP emerges from this debacle fatter and happier than anyone imagined a few months ago, whatever happened to the idea of corporate accountability? Does this mean any giant corporation can wreak havoc and then get back to business as usual?

Corporations aren’t people. They have no brains, no consciences, no capacity for intent or guilt. Every one of their moveable parts can be replaced, just like BP’s former CEO Tony Hayward was replaced. Corporate accountability and responsibility are meaningless concepts. Corporations exist for only one purpose: to make money.

If we want corporations to act differently, we have to force them to do so through laws that are fully enforced and through penalties higher than the economic benefits of thwarting the laws.

Here’s the real outrage: In the wake of the BP spill, essentially no laws have been changed – not even a ridiculously low cap on damages private parties can collect from oil companies. Senate Republican leaders said Wednesday they wouldn’t support a bill retroactively removing the liability cap; and not even Democrats Mary Landrieu (D-La) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) will support it.

Why isn’t Congress doing more – not only removing the cap on civil liability but also raising the level of penalties oil companies have to pay for violating safety and environmental regulations, permanently prohibiting deep-water drilling, and enacting a carbon tax?

Because of Big Oil’s political clout.

The same anthropomorphic fallacy that accords human attributes to giant corporations like BP distorts clear thinking about how to limit their political influence.

Consider the grotesque Supreme Court decision earlier this year in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which gave corporations the status of people with First Amendment rights to spend unlimited amounts of money on political ads. Citizens United ranks right up there with Bush v. Gore and Dred Scott as the most brainless and irresponsible Supreme Court decisions in history.

In March, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals decided that in light of Citizens United, there was no longer any basis for limiting contributions to so-called independent committees set up to support or oppose particular candidates. (Such committees are known as 527’s, after a loophole clause in the campaign finance laws.) The old contribution limit was $69,900 every two years. Now even that’s gone.

And the Federal Elections Commission has just interpreted these two court decisions to mean corporations, not just individuals, can now give unlimited amounts of money to 527’s.

To top it off, Tuesday the Senate failed (by only a few votes) to pass the “Disclose Act,” that would have forced corporate sponsors of campaign ads to reveal themselves and not hide behind innocuous sounding names like “Americans for America.” The bill also would have prohibited campaign ads run by U.S. subsidiaries of foreign companies. (Think BP.)

Now all the limits are gone and the gloves are completely off. Even BP, incorporated in the UK, is officially free influence American politics to its heart’s content.

The will of the American people is being subordinated to the demands of giant money-making machines called global corporations that can now spend or threaten to spend unlimited amounts of money in support of any politician willing to help them make more and against any who might cause them to make less.

This is the final lesson of BP.

What should you do? As with the loophole-ridden finance reform law, and the new health law that richly rewards Big Pharma — get angry, not cynical. Commit to getting big money out of politics, even if it takes us years.

Robert Reich was the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton and is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the Ten Most Successful Cabinet Members of the century. He has written eleven books, including “The Work of Nations,” which has been translated into 22 languages. His latest book is “Supercapitalism.” For Professor Reich’s book page for Supercaptialism at Amazon, go here. The above article is from Reich’s new blog, and can be viewed here.

Thanks to Professor Reich for permission to publish his articles on an ongoing basis.

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Bernie Sanders: they are “Hell bent on destroying the middle class and creating an Oligarchy”, Daily Kos, July 26, 2010, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Class War 101. Bernie Sanders is THE MAN.

Senator Bernie Sanders calls it what it is, fabulously wealthy families and their multinational corporations are hell-bent on destroying the middle class and determined to create an Oligarchy.

. . . While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else. This upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country.

TheNation.com

Bold text and italics added by the diarist

Crossposted at The Progressive Electorate.com

More from Bernie Sanders . . .

The truth is that working families have been experiencing a decline for decades. During the Bush years alone, from 2000-2008, median family income dropped by nearly $2,200 and millions lost their health insurance.

Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children. For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.

TheNation.com

Bold text and italics added by the diarist

The average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. And the rich are richer than ever. Anyone guess why? Because when the rich get richer, the EVERYBODY ELSE gets poorer. There is only so many ways you can slice a pie, and if a few people get most of it, everyone else must go hungry.

And, as Bernie Sanders so points out, the richest 400 families in America are richer than ever. Under Bush they raked in the cash while the average media American family saw their income drop by nearly $2,200 a year while the social safety net was slashed and defunded. And why? So very rich people could pay less in taxes and shirk their civic duty to their nation.

Now, I would argue that we already have an Oligarchy now, but certainly Bernie Sanders is already aware of that. I think Senator Sanders is alluding to something worse, like an Oligarchy on steroids. Citizens United fueled, out of control, a Too Big to Fail Oligarchy that would recall to my mind these words written by George Orwell.

So what happens when a few people have more money than medium sized countries? I mean that literally, what happens? Or better, what is happening?

From Forbes.com, where Billionaires are applauded as the Randian heroes they imagine themselves to be.

George Lucas, the famed Hollywood director behind the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises and ILM, the world’s most bankable special effects shop, has a $3 billion fortune, making him worth as much as the GDP of Guyana.

Forbes 400 members with net worths just under $1 billion still possess fortunes that could operate the economies of significant fractions of the globe. Gary Magness, who owns water rights in Colorado through his ranch holdings, has a net worth of $990 million, which barely exceeds Vanuatu’s GDP ($988.5 million).

If this year’s three poorest Forbes 400 members were to combine their wealth (a combined $2.9 billion), their amassed fortune would be worth more than the workings of Belize’s entire economy.

George Lucas? WOW! But George Lucas is a storyteller who brings joy to the world, where as investor John Paulson is worth twice as much as Lucas (6.8 Billion) and all he had to do is profit off the real estate bubble and then short sell the subprime market. John Paulson’s wealth equals all the wealth in Montenegro. And these guys aren’t even in the Top Ten wealthiest people in America. If a few people have wealth equivalent to entire nations is it not possible that a few wealthy people can bribe and manipulate entire nations, thus circumventing and overthrowing the Democratic process? Of course! Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Here is yourTop Ten wealthiest plutocrats in America circa 2009

1   William Gates III 50,000 Million   (Microsoft)
2   Warren Buffett        40,000 Million   (Birkshire Hathaway)
3   Lawrence Ellison 27,000 Million   (Oracle)
4   Christy Walton & family 21,500 Million   (Wal-Mart)
5   Jim C. Walton        19,600 Million    (Wal-Mart)
6   Alice Walton        19,300 Million    (Wal-Mart)
7   S. Robson Walton 19,000 Million    (Wal-Mart)
8   Michael Bloomberg 17,500 Million    (Bloomberg)
9   Charles Koch        16,000 Million    (Energy, FreedomWorks, finances Tea Parties)
9   David Koch         16,000 Million   (Energy, FreedomWorks, finances Tea Parties)
11   Sergey Brin         15,300 Million    (Google)

Did anyone notice that the owners of WALMART are 4 of the top 10 richest people in America? Did Walmart eat the middle class? Is Walmart Too Big To Fail? Looks like it.

And as for the people who work for Walmart and earn just enough to go into debt for the rest of their lives, well, it doesn’t seem that anyone is worried about them does it? If they lose their jobs they are called lazy by rich people who never break a sweat or worry about homelessness, if they keep their jobs and struggle to survive and ask for help they are chided for wanting “handouts”.

For the people who work for Walmart and other huge Corporations the American dream has become a nightmare according to Bernie Sanders, and as someone who has lived that nightmare all my life, I entirely agree with him. The game is rigged, rigged for rich people, and if rich people NEVER lose money, everyone else can never earn enough to prosper.

We must level the paying field and STOP giving a huge advantage to the super rich and multi-national corporations. One way our Democratically elected officials can do this is by progressive taxation. And Bernie Sanders has a plan.

That is why I have introduced the Responsible Estate Tax Act (S.3533). This legislation would raise $318 billion over the next decade by establishing a graduated inheritance tax on estates over $3.5 million retroactive to this year. This bill ensures that the wealthiest 0.3 percent of Americans pays their fair share of estate taxes, while making sure that 99.7 percent of Americans never have to pay a dime when they lose a loved one. It also makes certain that the overwhelming majority of family farmers and small businesses never have to pay an estate tax.

This legislation must be passed because, with a $13 trillion national debt and huge unmet needs, we cannot afford more tax breaks for millionaire and billionaire families. But even more importantly, it must be passed because the United States must not become an oligarchy in which a handful of wealthy and powerful families control the destiny of our nation. Too many people, from the inception of this country, have struggled and died to maintain our democratic vision. We owe it to them and to our children to maintain it.

TheNation.com

Bold text and italics added by the diarist

So who is lazy? The person struggling to find a job after free market corporatists shipped their jobs overseas? Or the person who inherits millions of dollars from a dead relative without earning that money and then refuses to pay taxes on it?

The Responsible Estate Tax proposed by Senator Sanders may not seem much, but it is a start. More importantly, it frames the debate in a way that Progressives can win. Because the truth is, billionaires and all of their wealth are the cause of our societies economic problems, not immigrants or unemployed people or Government spending. All of that is a strawman, they shrieks of anguish over “socialism” is a red herring, designed to shift the conversation away from the fact that this form of multi-national corporate capitalism is driving 95% of the world’s population into poverty, and the few who prosper have enough wealth to corrupt the Democratic process in such a way that they are, in reality, an Oligarchy.

Whether we can curb their absolute power and preserve the notion of a Democracy of a majority of The People, and not a Oligarchy based on who controls the majority of the wealth, is what is at stake. Will we starve and exploit our fellow man for profit, or allow all people to prosper? That is the question. What is your answer?

Because I know what the Billionaires, the “Economic Royalty” as F.D.R. named them, I know what they want. It is obvious if you know where to look, and look hard enough.

Greed is NOT good. Greed is destroying America.

Listen to the Chilling words of Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko:

Gordon Gekko: "Greed is Good!"

And Greed is all the Conservative movement has, greed and hate and lies and fear.

Because they serve the Oligarchy and themselves and no one else.

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

~ George Orwell, 1984

And so we must FIGHT BACK, and the truth is your greatest weapon.

Peace and love to all.

You can follow me on Twitter @JesseLaGreca Thanks to Ministry of Truth for allowing Evans Liberal Politics to republish his works on an ongoing basis.

See Pres. Obama: On issue after issue, we try to move forward and they try to take us back, Daily Kos, July 26, 2010, by Blackwaterdog: about the DISCLOSE Act vote in the Senate tomorrow. Watch President Obama: Limiting the Influence of Special Interests.

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BIG NEWS on Elizabeth Warren!, Daily Kos, July 21, 2010, by Forrest Brown. Mr. Brown has no means to contact him but we knew he would want you to get this news, with apologies for simply republishing without permission:

BIG NEWS: 39 Democratic Reps have signed Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s letter supporting Elizabeth Warren’s nomination to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — over the objections of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and big banks.

We need to keep the momentum going to send a strong signal to President Obama.

Can you help us get to 50 members of Congress by calling your representative and asking him or her to sign on to “The Maloney Letter”?  Click here for the number and a script.

The National Journal describes this as a “major lobbying battle over whether to appoint Elizabeth Warren” — and it’s all due to you.

In less than a week, over 140,000 people joined together to urge President Obama to appoint Warren — making waves in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Together with our friends at Credo Action and MoveOn we’ve made thousands of calls to Democratic members of Congress — and it’s working with 39 reps signing the Maloney Letter supporting Warren. Sen. Tom Harkin launched his own letter supporting Warren’s nomination, and yesterday, SEIU and the AFL-CIO piled on, publicly announcing their support for Warren’s nomination.

But Wall Street isn’t backing down. On Monday, Sen. Chris Dodd suggested Warren was too controversial. David Sirota explains that’s step one in “marginalizing an agent of change”.

This morning TPM reports that key Senate Democrats are hesitant about Warren — we need to act fast before they scare President Obama out of nominating Warren. Tell your Rep to fight back by signing the Maloney Letter.

This congressional letter will be a major boost for Warren if more House members sign it — so your call today is very important.

Can you take a minute to call your Representative? The number and a script are here.

(Forrest Brown is the senior organizing fellow for the Progressive Change Campaign Committee)

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Exposed!: Post 9/11 Privatization & Conservative Failure, Campaign for America’s Future, July 20, 2010, by Terrance Heath, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Where’s the Tea Party when you really need them? There’s a bit of investigative reporting from the Washington Post that ought to have launched a Tea Party protest, complete with signs, slogans, and speeches (from the likes of Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and Rand Paul — just to name a few.)

Tax dollars spend on a Mercedes? For someone on the government payroll? It seems right up their alley. Come on people. The placards and impassioned speeches practically write themselves.

So far, though. Nothing. Maybe they’re too busy demanding that the government hold BP accountable for the oil disaster in the Gulf.

Oh. Wait.

Maybe it’s because the wasteful government spending happened not only on the previous conservatives administration’s (and the previous conservative Congress’ watch), but as a result of a right-wing American article of faith: privatization.

The Post’s two-year investigative reporting project focuses on “The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,” which it describes as having become “so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation’s other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

The first article in the series concerns itself with the government’s role in the “expanding enterprise” of national security. Today’s article, focuses on the phenomenon of private contractors working in the homeland security and intelligence industries.

To ensure that the country’s most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation’s interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called “inherently government functions.” But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post.

What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest — and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. In interviews last week, both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta said they agreed with such concerns.

The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

In particular it tells the story of SGIS, a company that started in its founder’s living room in 2002, won its first defense contract four months later, and by 2006 had revenues of $30.6 million — some of which it invested in hiring employees specializing in government contracts. To help it land more such contracts of course. The company was selected for Inc. magazine’s 2009 list of the 5000 fastest growing companies, coming in at 1,371.

Near as I can tell, the company’s sole client — and thus its sole source of revenue — is the government. So, some of that $30.6 million in 2006 ($88 million by 2008) was spent on getting more contracts — or rather, invested in making sure the company kept its sole client. That is, some portion of the tax dollars paid to the company was spent to make sure that more tax dollars would come SGIS’s way in the future.

Some of it went towards some rather extravagant compensation for the company’s employees.

Eight years after it began, SGIS was up to revenue of $101 million, 14 offices and 675 employees. Those with top-secret clearances worked for 11 government agencies, according to The Post’s database.The company’s marketing efforts had grown, too, both in size and sophistication. Its Web site, for example, showed an image of Navy sailors lined up on a battleship over the words “Proud to serve” and another image of a Navy helicopter flying near the Statue of Liberty over the words “Preserving freedom.” And if it seemed hard to distinguish SGIS’s work from the government’s, it’s because they were doing so many of the same things. SGIS employees replaced military personnel at the Pentagon’s 24/7 telecommunications center. SGIS employees conducted terrorist threat analysis. SGIS employees provided help-desk support for federal computer systems.

Still, as alike as they seemed, there were crucial differences.

For one, unlike in government, if an SGIS employee did a good job, he might walk into the parking lot one day and be surprised by co-workers clapping at his latest bonus: a leased, dark-blue Mercedes convertible. And he might say, as a video camera recorded him sliding into the soft leather driver’s seat, “Ahhhh . . . this is spectacular.”

OK. Stop. Wait a minute. How did we get here? How did we become a country with a that can hand tax dollars to companies that spend them on Mercedes for employees, but can’t won’t extend unemployment benefits to the jobless, and can increase spending on wars in Afghanistan, but can’t won’t spend money to keep teachers on the job or keep 900,000 state government employees employed?

It’s an old story, of course, that 9/11 led to a “big government boom,” and government actually got bigger.

FactCheck.org calculates that the discretionary sums contained in appropriations bills signed by Bush for the current fiscal year — including the $87 billion supplemental appropriation for Iraq — amount to nearly a 36% increase over Clinton’s last year.

Most of the increase has indeed come from military spending (including wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and activities that the administration classifies as homeland security. But that still leaves a 16% increase in funding for other discretionary programs.

That 3-year increase in discretionary spending, including a 180% increase for Homeland Security, tells the rest of the story. Bush started a government spending spree that left Clinton in the dust. (The Cato and WND links are for the teabaggers, so they don’t just have to take my word for it.) Not long after, private companies quickly figures out that fear was a profitable business, and beat a path to Washington to cash in on the huge increase in government spending.

After all, it was a conservative president doing the spending — with the relative silence, if not the blessing, of many congressional conservatives. And big government conservatism comes with a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on which end of the deal you’re on) serving of privatization.

Once in line for the government privatization gravy train, companies also found themselves in the enviable position to profit from government spending without government oversight. The Center for Public Integrity did a great job of researching and reporting on how this played out across the country.

This seems to have been, for the private companies that came to Washington looking for an angle on homeland security, the business equivalent of getting dessert without having to eat their vegetables. According to the House Committee on Government and Oversight Reform that’s exactly what happened.

Under the Bush Administration, the “shadow government” of private companies working under federal contract has exploded in size. Between 2000 and 2005, procurement spending increased by over $175 billion dollars, making federal contracts the fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending.

This growth in federal procurement has enriched private contractors. But it has also come at a steep cost for federal taxpayers. Overcharging has been frequent, and billions of dollars of taxpayer money have been squandered.

At the request of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, this report is the first comprehensive assessment of federal contracting under the Bush Administration. The report reaches three primary conclusions:

1. Procurement Spending Is Accelerating Rapidly. Between 2000 and 2005, procurement spending rose by 86% to $377.5 billion annually. Spending on federal contracts grew over twice as fast as other discretionary federal spending. Under President Bush, the federal government is now spending nearly 40 cents of every discretionary dollar on contracts with private companies, a record level.
2. Contract Mismanagement Is Widespread. The growth in federal contracts has been accompanied by pervasive mismanagement. Mistakes have been made in virtually every step of the contracting process: from pre-contract planning through contract award and oversight to recovery of contract overcharges.
3. The Costs to the Taxpayer Are Enormous. The report identifies 118 federal contracts worth $745.5 billion that have been found by government officials to include significant waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement. Each of the Bush Administration’s three signature initiatives — homeland security, the war and reconstruction in Iraq, and Hurricane Katrina recovery — has been characterized by wasteful contract spending

Anyone who’s not asking how we got here, and demanding that we change course, either isn’t paying attention or doesn’t care.

That brings me — on the off chance that some of them might read — back to the teabaggers with a simple question: Which is it?

Terrance Heath is the Online Producer at Campaign for America’s Future. Prior to his current position he worked as a Blogging and Social Media Consultant for a number of organizations and agencies, as an outgrowth of his work as Blogmaster for EchoDitto, Inc. He stumbled into blogging and social media after starting his own blog, The Republic of T., but cut his teeth as an activist working on LGBT equality and HIV/AIDS issues. In that capacity he worked for the Human Rights Campaign and the National Minority AIDS Council. Terrance has kindly allowed Evans Liberal Politics to publish his works on an ongoing basis. He sums himself up: Black. Gay. Father. Vegetarian. Buddhist. Liberal.

See Report: Tab for ‘War on terrorism’ tops $1 trillion, CNN Politics, July 20, 2010, by CNN Wire Staff.

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DC’s spy establishment in panic mode over Washington Post expose, The Raw Story, July 16, 2010, by Daniel Tencer, used with permission, quoted verbatim, with commentary:

Washington’s intelligence establishment appears to be in panic mode over an upcoming Washington Post series about runaway growth in defense and intelligence spending.

A State Department email has accused the Post of planning to make public “top secret” information about defense and intelligence contractors working for the US, despite an admission in the same email that the Post‘s information came from “open sources.”

The series, by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Dana Priest, will include a TV partnership with PBS’s Frontline and is expected to consist of three articles and an online database of military and intelligence contractors and their projects.It’s that database of contractors that seems to be worrying Washington the most. Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy reports that the State Department sent out an email Thursday warning all 14,574 Washington-area employees of the upcoming reports.

“On Monday July 19, the Washington Post plans to publish a website listing all agencies and contractors believed to conduct Top Secret work on behalf of the US Government,” the email stated. “The website provides a graphic representation pinpointing the location of firms conducting Top Secret work, describing the type of work they perform, and identifying many facilities where such work is done.”

However, the extent to which the Post‘s information will be “top secret” is debatable. The State Department email goes on to say that the information the Post has gathered came from “open sources,” suggesting the information published in the Post‘s database is already publicly available.

The email also tells employees they must “neither confirm nor deny” the claims made in the Post articles.

That line is echoed in a letter to “industry partners” from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. In a blog posting entitled “Is Wash Post Harming Intelligence Work?”, the Washington Times reprints the letter from the ODNI, which asks contractors to “remind all cleared employees of their responsibility to protect classified information and relationships.”

Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic has obtained a memorandum from the ODNI’s communications chief, Art House, in which House lays out what he expects to see in the Post series, and his predictions paint a negative picture of defense and intelligence spending over the past decade. House said while he “can’t predict the content” of the piece, he expects it will draw several conclusions:

The intelligence enterprise has undergone exponential growth and has become unmanageable with overlapping authorities and a heavily outsourced contractor workforce.

The IC and the DoD have wasted significant time and resources, especially in the areas of counterterrorism and counterintelligence.

The intelligence enterprise has taken its eyes off its post-9/11 mission and is spending its energy on competitive and redundant programs.

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House also lays out a strategy for an expected public-relations battle after the series’ publication:

It might be helpful as you prepare for publication to draw up a list of accomplishments and examples of success to offer in response to inquiries to balance the coverage and add points that deserve to be mentioned. In media discussions, we will seek to garner support for the Intelligence Community and its members by offering examples of agile, integrated activity that has enhanced performance. We will want to minimize damage caused by unauthorized disclosure of sensitive and classified information.

And Foreign Policy‘s Rogin reports that the Obama administration is already refuting the Post series, even though it won’t launch until Monday.

“A lot of this is explainable,” an unnamed administration official told Rogin. “You want some redundancy in the intelligence community and you’re going to have some waste. These are things we’ve been aware of and in some instances we agree are troubling. However, it’s something we’ve been working on for a year and a half. It’s something we’ve been on top of.”

The official went on to say that “there will be examples of money being wasted in the series that seem egregious and we are just as offended as the readers by those examples.”

Commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans: Is it time to once again say, “and God Bless the Washington Post,” as we did in the days of Woodward and Bernstein?

Officials, administrators and particularly intelligence officers, hate the sunny skies and truth which emerges when secrecy is lost. In this regard, let me quote Patrick Henry. And the Obama administration has a mixed-at-best record when it comes to their vaunted transparency. I received the following quote in an emailing from a local group I belong to, the Wayne County Progressive Network. Stop by our site and see all about progressives in Wayne County, Ohio. In getting at the truth, I also recommend the Yahoo! Group Progressive, which I recommend if you want to join a truly progressive worldwide group… they are rather radical, but one heck of a lot of truth emerges in their many daily postings:

Patrick Henry: "The Liberties of a people never were, nor never will be secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."

Watch The President’s Weekly Address: Filibustering Recovery & Obstructing Progress, YouTube video — 5:07.

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The New Finance Bill: A Mountain of Legislative Paper, a Molehill of Reform, Robert Reich.org, July 16, 2010, by Robert Reich, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Thursday the President pronounced that “because of this [financial reform] bill the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes.”

As if to prove him wrong, Goldman Sachs simultaneously announced it had struck a deal with federal prosecutors to pay $550 million to settle federal claims it misled investor — a sum representing a mere 15 days profit for the firm based on its 2009 earnings. Goldman’s share price immediately jumped 4.3 percent, and the Street proclaimed its chair and CEO, Lloyd (“Goldman is doing God’s work”) Blankfein, a winner. Financial analysts rushed to affirm a glowing outlook for Goldman stock.

Blankfein, you may recall, was at the meeting in late 2008 when Tim Geithner and Hank Paulson decided to bail out AIG, and thereby deliver through AIG a $13 billion no-strings-attached taxpayer windfall to Goldman. In a world where money is the measure of everything, Blankfein’s power and influence have grown. Presumably, Goldman can expect more windfalls in future years.

Although the financial reform bill may have clipped some of Goldman’s wings — its lucrative derivative business may require Goldman to jettison its status as a bank holding company, and the access to the Fed discount window that comes with it — the main point is that the Goldman settlement reveals everything that’s weakest about the financial reform bill.

The American people will continue to have to foot the bill for the mistakes of Wall Street’s biggest banks because the legislation does nothing to diminish the economic and political power of these giants. It does not cap their size. It does not resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act that once separated commercial (normal) banking from investment (casino) banking. It does not even link the pay of their traders and top executives to long-term performance. In other words, it does nothing to change their basic structure. And for this reason, it gives them an implicit federal insurance policy against failure unavailable to smaller banks — thereby adding to their economic and political power in the future.

The bill contains hortatory language but is precariously weak in the details. The so-called Volcker Rule has been watered down and delayed. Blanche Lincoln’s important proposal that derivatives be traded in separate entities which aren’t subsidized by commercial deposits has been shrunk and compromised. Customized derivatives can remain underground. The consumer protection agency has been lodged in the Fed, whose own consumer division failed miserably to protect consumers last time around.

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On every important issue the legislation merely passes on to regulators decisions about how to oversee the big banks and treat them if they’re behaving badly. But if history proves one lesson it’s that regulators won’t and can’t. They don’t have the resources. They don’t have the knowledge. They are staffed by people in their 30s and 40s who are paid a small fraction of what the lawyers working for the banks are paid. Many want and expect better-paying jobs on Wall Street after they leave government, and so are shrink-wrapped in a basic conflict of interest. And the big banks’ lawyers and accountants can run circles around them by threatening protracted litigation.

Why do you think Goldman got off so easily from such serious charges of fraud?

Reliance on the discretion of regulators rather than structural changes in the banking system plays directly into the hands of the big banks and their executives and traders who contribute mightily to Democratic and Republican campaigns. The flow of money virtually guarantees that regulatory agencies won’t be adequately staffed to enforce the law, that penalties for violations won’t be overly onerous, and that all loopholes (what’s a “derivative”? what has to be listed on exchanges? exactly how much capital must be on hand for which transactions? How are the various forms of predatory lending to be defined?) will be easily stretched in future years. Wall Street lawyers will have a field day. The profit-for-nothing sector of the economy (law, accounting, finance) will continue to grow buoyantly.

Make no mistake: As long as there’s no fundamental change in the structure of Wall Street — as long as the big banks stay as big and are allowed to grow bigger, and have every incentive to invent new financial gimmicks with which to bet other peoples’ money — they will remain too big to fail, and too politically powerful to control.

Goldman’s share price, as well as those of JP Morgan Chase, Citicorps, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America, will no doubt soar the basis of the final bill because their future profits are almost guaranteed. The pay of their executives and traders, and of the managers of hedge funds and private-equity funds they deal with, will likewise accelerate. In the short term the economy will benefit, at least to the extent financial entrepreneurship is now the apex of American wealth and innovation. But over the longer term we will be much weaker for it.

Congress has labored mightily to produce a mountain of legislation that can be called financial reform, but it has produced a molehill relative to the wreckage Wall Street wreaked upon the nation.

See Interview: Elizabeth Warren Says Big Banks Must Stop Blocking Reform, Mother Jones, July 16, 2010, by Lynn Parramore: DC’s top bailout cop dishes on Wall Street’s lobbyist culture and how to restore consumer trust after the Great Recession.

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Feingold explains ‘no’ vote: Washington once again caved to Wall Street, The Raw Story, July 15, 2010, by Agence France-Presse, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

Senate passes sweeping bank reform bill

The US Senate voted Thursday to send President Barack Obama the most sweeping rewrite of Wall Street rules since the Great Depression of the 1930s, handing him a historic political win. The bill passed 60-39.

However, a top Democratic senator who voted “no” is arguing that “Washington once again caved to Wall Street.”

Lawmakers voted 60-38 to end a year of often bitter partisan debate on the 2,300-page measure and set the stage for a final passage ballot expected shortly after a last procedural test at 2:00 pm. (1800 GMT Thursday).

The bill, Obama’s top domestic priority, aims to rein in risky investment practices blamed for the 2007-2009 global financial meltdown and give regulators an arsenal of new weapons against shady big-bank dealings.

“We will fundamentally change the way our financial system is regulated, to rein in Wall Street and create a sound foundation to grow our economy and create jobs,” said Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd, a Democrat and a key author of the legislation.

It creates a new consumer financial protection agency, an early-warning system to predict and prevent the next crisis, and mechanisms aimed at liquidating rather than saving companies once deemed “too big to fail.”

The legislation also closes loopholes in regulations and requires greater transparency and accountability for hedge funds, mortgage brokers and payday lenders, and arcane financial instruments called derivatives.

It also includes a somewhat diluted version of the so-called “Volcker Rule” — named for former Fed chairman Paul Volcker — curbing commercial banks’ ability to make speculative investments that are not on behalf of clients.

Republicans mostly opposed the bill, charging it gives too much more power to regulators who failed to stem the previous crisis and does nothing to rein in activities by government-backed mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

“What we’re going to wind up doing is we’re going to be driving jobs and business overseas with this massive piece of legislation that truly doesn’t address the problem,” Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss charged Thursday.

Dodd said the bill was not “perfect” but underlined: “We must act now. Many of the same risks to our financial sector remain.”

Just three of the Senate’s 41 Republicans — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Scott Brown of Massachusetts — lined up with 55 Democrats and two independents behind the bill, while Republican Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho did not vote.

Democratic Senator Russell Feingold opposed the measure, which he charged did not go far enough to curtail the dealings that led to the international economic collapse.

“I made clear that my test for this bill would be whether it prevents another economic crisis. Unfortunately, this bill falls short,” he said in a statement after the vote.

Feingold’s statement added,

The reckless practices of Wall Street sent our economy reeling, triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression, and left millions of Americans to foot the bill. Despite these cataclysmic events, Washington once again caved to Wall Street on key issues and produced a bill that fails to protect the American people from the pain of another economic disaster. I will not support a bill that fails to adequately protect the people of Wisconsin from the recklessness of Wall Street.

Amid stubbornly high unemployment near ten percent and deep US public anger at Wall Street four months before November mid-term elections, Obama has led Democrats in painting Republicans as opposed to common-sense reforms.

Republicans have repeatedly denounced key planks of the Democratic platform as “job-killing” and accused the president of not doing enough to fix the crisis he inherited from Republican predecessor George W. Bush.

The US House of Representatives approved the legislation on June 30 in a largely party-line 237-192 vote.

Final passage of the bill would hand Obama a second historic legislative triumph after successfully pushing the US Congress to overhaul the US health care system over fierce Republican objections.

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See Obama Pushes Through Agenda Despite Political Risks, The New York Times, July 15, 2010, by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, excerpt quoted verbatim:

WASHINGTON — If passage of the financial regulatory overhaul on Thursday proves anything about President Obama, it is this: He knows how to push big bills through a balky Congress.

But Mr. Obama’s legislative success poses a paradox: while he may be winning on Capitol Hill, he is losing with voters at a time of economic distress, and soon may be forced to scale back his ambitions.

The financial regulatory bill is the final piece of a legislative hat trick that also included the stimulus bill and the landmark new health care law. Over the last 18 months, Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress have made considerable inroads in passing what could be the most ambitious agenda in decades.

Mr. Obama has done what he promised when he ran for office in 2008: he has used government as an instrument to try to narrow the gaps between the haves and the have-nots. He has injected $787 billion in tax dollars into the economy, provided health coverage to 32 million uninsured and now, reordered the relationship among Washington, Wall Street, investors and consumers.

But as he has done so, the political context has changed around him. Today, with unemployment remaining persistently near double digits despite the scale of the stimulus program and the BP oil spill having raised questions about his administration’s competence, Mr. Obama’s signature legislation is providing ammunition to conservatives who argue that government is the problem, not the solution.

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Naked Capitalism: “Time to Investigate Blankfein and Paulson”, Daily Kos, July 1, 2010, by Bob Swern, used with permission, quoted verbatim: Thanks Bob, for allowing Evans Liberal Politics to republish your work on an ongoing basis. Email Bob Swern here.

If you’ve been following the AIG-Goldman Sachs travesty over the past 20+ months, then you know it’s already on the top-10 list of “Greatest Conflicts of Interest of All Time.” Indeed,  IMHO, it’s at the heart of everything that was, and still is, wrong as it relates to the deep capture and regulatory capture — with our legislative branch’s ongoing evisceration, playing out before our very eyes, of most of the financial reforms that are desperately needed right now to put an end to this culture of greed that’s been prevalent in our society since Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and then some — of our government by the status quo. When I think of modern-day examples of “corporate kleptocracy,” I think of this story first.And, when it comes to everything that economist Simon Johnson was discussing in his seminal piece, “The Quiet Coup,” it’s this story that was–and still is–number one on the “greatest societal pillaging hits” of all time, as well.

This week, once again thanks to the Pulitzer-worthy efforts of the NY Times’ Gretchen Morgenson (Ms. Morgenson’s already won a Pulitzer, and is considered by many to be the best business journalist in the U.S.) and her colleague, Louise Story,  we have a pair of pieces that go into even greater detail and substantiation of just how pathetically compromised our government was (and still is) when it opted to put the interests of Wall Street over the interests of Main Street during the financial collapse of our economy, which all came to a head in September 2008, and (if you’ve been reading my posts for the last 2-1/2 years) still persists to this day.Here are the links to the NY Times’ most recent coverage of the “bailout story that just won’t go away:”

“In U.S. Bailout of A.I.G., Forgiveness for Big Banks,” Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, NY Times, June 30th, 2010.

“Documents Show Goldman Pressure on A.I.G.,” Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story, NY Times, July 1st, 2010.

Yes, like all critical transgressions of society through time, this episode and case-in-point concerning the elite’s pillaging of the masses will be posted in historical works for generations to come.  The question now, IMHO, is, “How will it all end?” (The answer, at the moment, is: “Badly, for most of us.”) But, as Yves Smith, who’s been on top of this since day one reminds us, it’s still playing out: “Time to Investigate Blankfein and Paulson (More AIG Shenanigans Edition).”

Sometimes, eventually, even in this day and age, the truth does come out. (Thanks to the persistence of journalists like the NY Times’ Gretchen Morgenson and bloggers like Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith.)

(Note: Naked Capitalism Publisher Yves Smith has provided written authorization to the diarist to reproduce her blog’s posts in their entirety.)

#            #            #

Time to Investigate Blankfein and Paulson (More AIG Shenanigans Edition)
Yves Smith
Naked Capitalism
June 30, 2010

The New York Times has unearthed a damning tidbit about the bailout of AIG:

When the government began rescuing it from collapse in the fall of 2008 with what has become a $182 billion lifeline, A.I.G. was required to forfeit its right to sue several banks — including Goldman, Société Générale, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch — over any irregularities with most of the mortgage securities it insured in the precrisis years.

Yves here. How one reacts to this depends in no small measure as to how one views the salvage operation. For all intents and purposes, the rescue of AIG was merely a way to save the banks; the credit default swaps had been too big a source of faux capital (for US firms, via risk-dumping, and for Eurobanks, as part of a regulatory arbitrage) to let the insurer go. So any effort by the officialdom to aid the banks, most notably by paying out 100% on credit default swap exposures (which had already been written down by counterparties to less than par) was simply an effort to funnel more cash to the banks. Since we’ve had massive backdoor bailout mechanisms in addition to the overt ones, this orientation should come as no surprise.

But then we get to the funny business. Why a broad waiver? Why shouldn’t AIG (and by extension, taxpayers) not recover in the event of fraud? And we turn again to the ambiguous standing of AIG. By all rights, it ought to be owned by the government. The reason it isn’t is that we don’t do nationalization in America, and full ownership would require AIG’s debts to be consolidated with government debt. So another way to read this requirement is that the Fed and Treasury were opposed to having fraud at the banks exposed, period.

That is a very troubling stance for bank regulators to take. And experts agreed:

“Even if it turns out that it would be a hard suit to win, just the gesture of requiring A.I.G. to scrap its ability to sue is outrageous,” said David Skeel, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “The defense may be that the banking system was in trouble, and we couldn’t afford to destabilize it anymore, but that just strikes me as really going overboard.”"This really suggests they had myopia and they were looking at it entirely through the perspective of the banks,” Mr. Skeel said.

Yves here. Also note that the banks mentioned by the Times account for a significant proportion of the Maiden Lane III exposures (the $62.9 billion CDO portfolio; note this does not include all CDO guarantees assumed by the Federal Reserve; seven Goldman Abacus trades stayed with AIG and were salvaged via credit extensions to AIG). An analysis by Tom Adams and Andrew Dittmer showed the significance of Merrill, Goldman, and SocGen (percentages based on par amount):

1. Merrill as both packager and counterparty 7.7%
2. Goldman as both packager and counterparty 7.4%
3. Merrill as packager, Goldman as counterparty 9.6%
4. Goldman as packager, SocGen as counterparty 15.9%

We thought these interrelationships were potentially significant; they account for 40.6% of the Maiden Lane III exposures. Then add in:

5. Anyone else with a pulse as packager, SocGen as counterparty 11.0%
6. Anyone else with a pulse as packager, Goldman as counterparty 5.5%

That bring you to 56.5% of the total.

Goldman, either as packager or as swap counterparty, was involved in 38.4% of the Maiden Lane transactions, plus had additional AIG exposure through seven Abacus trades (we only have tranche exposure on three of these transactions):

Abacus 2004-1
Abacus 2004-2
Abacus 2005-2
Abacus 2005-3
Abacus 2005-CB1
Abacus 2006-NS1
Abacus 2007-18

Yves here. The time is long overdue that Lloyd Blankfein’s early and extensive involvement in the AIG rescue be investigated in detail. The legal waiver no doubt was particularly beneficial to Goldman, and given that it is now being sued by the SEC, it is fair to ask if he put the idea of the waiver forward. It is highly unlikely to have occurred to the Fed and Treasury officials unprompted, particularly given the fevered pace at which the AIG rescue was cobbled together.

Moreover, in noting the officialdom’s deference to Wall Street, Blankfein features prominently:

In that regard, the newly released Congressional documents show New York Fed officials deferring to bank executives at a time when the government was pumping hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the financial system to rescue bankers from their own mistakes. While Wall Street deal-making is famously hard-nosed with participants fighting for every penny, during the A.I.G. bailout regulators negotiated with the banks in an almost conciliatory fashion.On Nov. 6, 2008, for instance, after a New York Fed official spoke with Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, about the Fed’s A.I.G. plans, the official noted in an e-mail message to Mr. Blankfein that he appreciated the Wall Street titan’s patience. “Thanks for understanding,” the regulator said.

Yves here. This obsequiousness is noteworthy because the Times also stresses that the Fed’s own advisors (Morgan Stanley, Black Rock, and Ernst & Young) were advocating a tough stand with the banks, including haircuts on their guarantees with AIG. But Treasury appears to have carried the day:

For its part, the Treasury appeared to be opposed to any options that did not involve making the banks whole on their A.I.G. contracts. At Treasury, a former Goldman executive, Dan H. Jester, was the agency’s point man on the A.I.G. bailout. Mr. Jester had worked at Goldman with Henry M. Paulson Jr., the Treasury secretary during the A.I.G. bailout.

Yves here. And in an astonishing lapse, Jester still owned Goldman stock. By any standard, he should not have been involved at all in the process, much less in a crucial role. But because he was a contractor, and not a government employee, this arrangement was kosher. Not surprisingly, Jester opposed measures that would require Goldman and other banks to take any pain.

The Times reminds readers it pays to be a bankster:

All of this was quite different from the tack the government took in the Chrysler bailout. In that matter, the government told banks they could take losses on their loans or simply own a bankrupt company; the banks took the losses.

Yves here. The Audit the Fed investigation will shed even more light on the AIG rescue, but the seamy dealing of Treasury means that investigations need to extend into its role as well. But it will take a public hue and cry for that to come to pass.

#            #            #

If you’d like to read more about this, checkout some of my past coverage on the matter (in particular the links contained in those posts, of course):

2010–

How Paulson’s People Colluded with Goldman to Destroy AIG… (1/28/10)

Fed-AIG Scandal For Dummies: Corporate Kleptocracy Edition (1/27/10)

Is Geithner Toast? Barofsky Announces 2 New Fed-AIG Probes (1/26/10)

Reuters: SEC Considered AIG Bailout National Security Matter (1/25/10)

Naked Capitalism Guest Post: AIG Bailout Secrets Exposed! (1/23/10)

Breaking (Update): Fed Denies House Subpoena For AIG Docs (1/12/10)

2009–

3 Fraud Probes Target Goldman, AIG: Is It “The” Story of 2010? (12/28/09)

“The AIG-Wall St. Bailout Corruption Story That Won’t Go Away” (12/23/09)

“Breaking WSJ: Massive Goldman-AIG Bailout Conflict Of Interest” (12/12/09)

“New Economic Travesties: GDP Revision, Goldman/AIG, Reform” (11/24/09)

“Goldman’s Eviscerated In NYT; Admits Geithner’s ‘AIGenerosity’ (11/22/09)

Gretchen Morgenson, over at the NY Times: Revisiting a Fed Waltz With A.I.G.” (11/22/09)

“Fed’l Reserve, IG Barofsky: Paulson, Treasury Lied To Public” (10/6/09)

One of Gretchen Morgenson’s (NYT) best pieces of the entire recession: “Member and Overseer of the Finance Club” (4/27/09)

“Is it the largest betrayal of public trust in history?” (3/15/09)

“Doesn’t Geithner’s Middle Finger Look Just Like Paulson’s?” (3/12/09)

“Wall St. Bailout: Is A Massive Scandal About To Unfold?” (3/8/09)

“On Geithner, NYT Leak and TARP II Drama: Kuttner Nails It” (2/13/09)

2008–

“Fed Refuses to Name Recipients of $2 Trillion Bailout” (11/10/08)

“Paulson/Fed Gives O.K. To Banks To Steal Your Money! (For real!)” (9/16/08)

“BREAKING: NY Times, ‘AIG joins Merrill and Lehman in Wall Street Collapse’” (9/15/08)

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Who is a Progressive? by Teddy Roosevelt, Daily Kos, June 30, 2010, by Ministry Of Truth, used with permission, quoted verbatim:

In a speech that is just as true of today as it was in the days when it was first spoken, Teddy Roosevelt, before he became President, opined on who Progressives really are. I strongly suggest that everyone read the whole speech, but I have included a few excerpts of what I think are the key parts, beginning with this.

The Republican party is now facing a great crisis. It is to decide whether it will be, as in the days of Lincoln, the party of the plain people, the party of progress, the party of social and industrial justice; or whether it will be the party of privilege and of special interests, the heir to those who were Lincoln’s most bitter opponents, the party that represents the great interests within and with out Wall Street which desire through their control over the servants of the pubic to be kept immune from punishment when they do wrong and to be given privileges to which they are not entitled.

We all know how that one turned out, don’t we?

The speech itself can be read in it’s full form here.

It begins . . .

In his recent speech at Philadelphia President Taft stated that he was a Progressive, and this raises the question as to what a Progressive is. More is involved than any man’s say-so as to himself.

A well-meaning man may vaguely think of himself as a Progressive without having even the faintest conception of what a Progressive is. Both vision and intensity of conviction must go to the make-up of any man who is to lead the forward movement, and mildly good intentions are utterly useless as substitutes.

The essential difference, as old as civilized history, is between the men who, with fervor and broad sympathy and imagination, stand for the forward movement, the men who stand for the uplift and betterment of mankind, and who have faith in the people, on the one hand; and, on the other hand, the men of narrow vision and small sympathy, who are not stirred by the wrongs of others. With these latter stand also those other men who distrust the people, and many of whom not merely distrust the people, but wish to keep them helpless so as to exploit them for their own benefit.

“To keep them helpless so as to exploit them”

Nothing could better sum up the modern Republican party and their alliance with Big Business and the Special Interests.

So, who is a Progressive in the eyes of Teddy Roosevelt?

Every man who fights fearlessly and effectively against special privilege in any form is to that extent a Progressive. Every man who, directly or indirectly, upholds privilege and favors the special interests, whether he acts from evil motives or merely because he is puzzle-headed or dull of mental vision or lacking in social sympathy, or whether he simply lacks interest in the subject, is a reactionary.

Every man is to that extent a Progressive if he stands for any form of social justice, whether it securing proper protection for factory girls against dangerous machinery, for securing a proper limitation of hours of labor for women and children in industry, for securing proper living conditions for those who dwell in the thickly crowded regions of our great cities, for helping, so far as legislators can help, all the conditions of work and life for wage-workers in great centers of industry, or for helping by the action both of the National and State governments, so far as conditions will permit, the men and women who dwell in the open country to increase their efficiency both in production on their farms and in business arrangements for the marketing of their produce, and also to increase the opportunities to give the best possible expression to their social life. The man is a reactionary, whatever may be his professions and no matter how excellent his intentions, who opposes these movements, or who, if in high place, takes no interest in them and does not earnestly lead them forward.

We have entered into an era of American history that is very much like the days of Roosevelt. Income distribution and the inequality in wealth distribution have led to another era much like the days that came before the Great Depression, and while we listen to the John Boehner’s of the world harp upon the woes of Corporations like BP and Too Big To Fail banks, while griping about the laziness of the unemployed and the need to sacrifice today so that the War Profiteering can go on and on and on, we should remind ourselves who are true enemies really are. They are, indeed, the same men who “uphold privilege and favor the special interests” as they were almost 100 years ago.

And while Roosevelt’s speech was critical of then President William Howard Taft, who called himself a Progressive yet was not nearly as Progressive as he could have been in Roosevelt’s eyes, Roosevelt’s goal was not to simply bash President Taft.

In much the same way, those who claim the title of “Progressive” for themselves should not simply bash our current President for not being Progressive enough. I have been guilty of this myself.

Rather, we Progressives should start making the case against our true enemies, those who would “uphold privilege and favor the special interests” over the best interests of the citizens of America, such as every person who claims the title “Conservative” does today, whether they be registered as a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, or any other political affiliation. The people who blame the poor for their poverty, the unemployed for their lack of quality work, those who blame the hungry for their hunger are NOT walking in the footsteps of Jesus, nor are they anything but the enemy of their suffering countrymen.

What do Democrats stand for? We see who Republicans stand for, and it is indeed the same enemies of President Lincoln, the wealthy and the special interests. Republicans stand only for wealth, power, and themselves, this is plainly obvious to everyone outside of the Republican party itself, but what do Democrats stand for? This is sometimes a mystery, moreso now that there are so many ideologically “Conservative” Democrats pushing the party to the right and in agreement with the special interests.

I do not know what Democrats stand for. If we knew, we could make a better case for Democrats and Democratic policies to the public, a public that the Republican party clearly does not care for when asked to choose between special interests and the American public.

But I do know what Progressives stand for, and it is what I fight for, and why I count myself among those who stand with the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt.

We who stand for the cause of progress, for the cause of the uplift of humanity and the betterment of mankind, are pledged to eternal war against tyranny and wrong, by the few or by the many, by a plutocracy or by a mob. We stand for justice and for fair play; fearless and confident we face the coming years, for we know that ours are the banners of justice and that all men who wish well to the people must fight under them. We fight to make this country a better place to live in for those who have been harshly treated by fat; and if we succeed, it will also be a better place to live in for those who have been treated? None of us can really prosper permanently if masses of men and women are ground down and forced to lead starved and sordid lives so that their souls are crippled like their bodies and the fine edge of their every feeling is blunted.

I ask that those of us to whom Providence, to whom fate, has been kind, remember that each must be his brother’s keeper, and that all must feel their obligation to the less fortunate who work beside us in the strain and press of our eager modern life. I ask justice for the weak for their sakes, and I ask it also for the sake of our own children, and of our children’s children who are to come after us. This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in if it is not a reasonably good place for all of us to live in. When I plead the cause of the crippled brakeman on a railway, of the overworked girl in a factory, of the stunted child toiling at inhuman labor, or all who work excessively or in unhealthy surroundings, of the family dwelling in the squalor of a noisome tenement, of the worn out farmer in regions where the farms are worn out also; when I protest against the unfair profits of unscrupulous and conscienceless men, or against the greedy exploitation of the helpless by the beneficiaries of privilege in all these case I am not only fighting for the weak, I am also fighting for the strong. The sons of all of us will pay in the future if we of the present do not do justice in the present. If the fathers amuse others to eat bitter bread, the teeth of their own sons shall be set on edge. Our cause is the cause of justice for all, in the interest of all. Surely there was never a more noble cause; surely there was never a cause in which it was better worth while to spend and be spent.

Peace and Love to all.

You can follow me on Twitter @JesseLaGreca

Crossposted at The Progressive Electorate.com

Email MinistryOfTruth here.

See Bennett: The GOP Is A Party Of Slogans, Not Ideas (VIDEO), Talking Points Memo, June 30, 2010, by Eric Lach.

Rough Riders in Florida, 1903

Peace Action West: Please call to stop war funding

When you call Rep. Marcia L. Fudge and (202) 225-7032, leave a message,
and please ask for a no vote on the funding
and a yes vote on the McGovern-Obey amendment. Here is the script again:

My name is _________ and I’m calling from ___________. I am calling to
urge Rep. Marcia L. Fudge to vote against the $33 billion to escalate the war
in Afghanistan, and in favor of the McGovern-Obey amendment requiring a plan for withdrawal.”

Please add your personal thoughts about why ending this war is so
important to you. (Tip: Rep. Obey’s name is pronounced “Obee”)