Lou Dobbs goes for the throat

I haven't been able to catch Lou lately (and I grew tired of the immigration rants; I'm much more concerned with saving our Constitution and democracy.) But when Lou Dobbs takes off the immigration hat and puts on his anti-corpocrisy helmet... he's 'everyman' with a bullhorn.

Judging from my latest CNN email alert, tonight is going to be fun.

From CNN: Tonight on Lou Dobbs

* Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brother and AIG under federal investigation. The FBI is investigating the companies as part of a broader look into deceptive mortgage lending and possible fraud in creating the current market mess. At least 26 firms are under investigation as well

* For years, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac feasted on public trust and the promise that their stocks were backed by a line of Treasury credit. As they grew bloated, and executive salaries skyrocketed, some experts warned that the U.S. economy was being put at risk. But that was drowned out by a virtual army of lobbyists.

* Lawmakers in the House of Representatives finally passed a Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights yesterday after months of waffling, partisan bickering, and holding meaningless hearings while failing to address the issue with legislation. But that doesn’t mean regular men and women are suddenly going to get a fair shake against the greedy mega-companies that can boost fees and change the rules at any time. After all, the Senate still has to pass the bill and the president has to sign it – both have said they oppose legislation that helps the middle class and not multi-billion dollar financial companies.

Lay waste to them Lou! If we all keep pounding on them from every direction, we may save this country yet.

By the way... this is what real patriotism looks like. Its not a bumper sticker. Its not even a flag.

Patriotism is a unified sea of Republicans, Democrats and Independents - united by our love of freedom, Constitution and democracy - rising up as one wave; and crashing down on any attempted tyranny (be it financial or otherwise.)

All of us, together.

To hell with this 'blue' and 'red' BS the political machines use to divide, then conquer us. The word 'biparisan' is completely empty in the face of our united, collective wrath. They can't beat us if we stick together. Nation before party! (Finally!)

The Great American Swindle

Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.

- Grover Norquist ('Field Marshal' of the Bush Plan)

Has the government drowned yet? (Can we finally shut off the water?)

Good piece from The Nation, by William Grieder:

Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses--many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What's not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

Actually... if they're brought down, perhaps we can start over. Its probably time to let these two bloated, corrupt parties crash with their buddies in the bloated, corrupt financial market. They all sleep in the same bed. The Republicans are now Neocons; the Democrats... Neocon collaborators. Any semblance of their former party platforms has long ago vanished.

While the growing ranks of angry Independents watch both parties hang themselves with their own neckties (you can make that a purse strap for Palin,) Greider talks about what our government could be doing... if it wasn't in bed with Wall Street lobbyists:

Let me be clear. The scandal is not that government is acting. The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough--using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets. Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system. The step-by-step rescues that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have executed to date have failed utterly to reverse the flight of investors and banks worldwide from lending or buying in doubtful times. There is no obvious reason to assume this bailout proposal will change their minds, though it will certainly feel good to the financial houses that get to dump their bad paper on the government.

A serious intervention in which Washington takes charge would, first, require a new central authority to supervise the financial institutions and compel them to support the government's actions to stabilize the system. Government can apply killer leverage to the financial players: accept our objectives and follow our instructions or you are left on your own--cut off from government lending spigots and ineligible for any direct assistance. If they decline to cooperate, the money guys are stuck with their own mess. If they resist the government's orders to keep lending to the real economy of producers and consumers, banks and brokers will be effectively isolated, therefore doomed.

Since both parties serve their campaign financiers - corporate and banking lobbyists - of course nothing substantial will be done... other than dumping the entire thing on the backs of the already-struggling taxpayer.

The tub is overflowing. Can we turn off the water now?

Gingrich calls the War on Terror 'phony'

Gingrich is up to something. Oh yes, he is definitely up to something.

Newt Gingrich is now publicly claiming that the War on Terra is 'phony.'

Come again?

Yes, Gingrich says its all a sham. "We’re about to enter the seventh year of this phony war...and we’re losing."

Yes - not only is the War on Terra phony... but we're losing.

Gingrich added, "None of you should believe we are winning this war. There is no evidence that we are winning this war."

What the hell has gotten into him?

In a speech to a group of 'young conservatives' in Washington, D.C. on Thursday:

Instead of the current strategy to fight terrorism, Gingrich said we should focus on energy independence. "We have to have a national energy strategy, which basically says to the Saudis, 'We’re not going to rely on you.'"

Gingrich also attacked the current administration and former Republican Congressional leadership in saying "We were in charge for six years...I don’t think you can look and say that was a great success."

Yes, his lips were moving. I don't have tape or a YouTube, but it does appear that there were witnesses.

What's with the sudden truthfulness? A desperate attempt to save a sinking GOP Titanic?

Declaration of Independence... from all parties

I was just out on Daily Kos reading comments, and I must say I have never before seen such unleashed anger against the Democratic party. Lifelong Democrats are declaring that they have quit the party over this final betrayal - and I don't blame them.

If I hadn't already quit, I'd be quitting too.

The Democratic party no longer represents the people. The Democratic party has lost its way. Actually, the Republican party no longer represents anyone but big business either -- but at least they are up front about it. The betrayal of the Democratic party comes from their promises, followed closely by spineless capitulation, cowering then caving.

I imagine the ranks of Independents in this country have swelled to a staggering number. Time for a new poll. Time for a new party.

No more Republicans. No more Democrats. No more corpocracy, fear-mongering and capitulation. Any elected official who will not protect and defend the Constitution should be removed from office. This is not negotiable.

Conservatives fed up with power grab

Disaffected conservatives set a litmus test for '08
Want vow to curb presidential power

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | June 12, 2007

WASHINGTON -- A new political group recently asked Mitt Romney to promise not to wiretap Americans without a judge's approval or to imprison US citizens without a trial as "enemy combatants." When Romney declined to sign their pledge, the group denounced him as "unfit to serve as president."

Bravo!

Note to Republicans and Democrats in Congress: this means you too, all of you.

Such rhetoric might be expected from liberal activists. But these critics, who call their organization American Freedom Agenda, are hardly leftists. They represent what they insist is a growing group of disaffected conservatives who are demanding that the Republican Party return to its traditional mistrust of concentrated government power.

"Mitt Romney's ignorance of the Constitution's checks and balances and protections against government abuses would have alarmed the Founding Fathers and their conservative philosophy," said Bruce Fein, one of the group's co founders and a Reagan administration attorney, in a press release last month attacking Romney for not signing the pledge.

The American Freedom Agenda, which intends to put all candidates in both parties to the same test, is aiming to revive a strand of conservatism that they say has been drowned out since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The conservative principle of limited government, they say, means not just cutting the budget, but imposing checks and balances on those who wield power.

"Conservatives have to go back to the basics," said co founder Richard Viguerie , a veteran direct-mail strategist and author of "Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause." "We have to go back and re launch the conservative movement. And for traditional conservatives, it's part of our nature to believe in the separation of powers."

People of every party; Republican, Democrat and Independent -- we're on the same page here. I actually feel badly for my Republican friends, because they feel betrayed by their party. This 'big government' and mounting debt was what they came to expect from the Democrats. Imagine their surprise to see a Republican administration take it to this extreme.

34,750 lobbyists ran off with our democracy

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. - Thomas Jefferson

Do you realize that the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since Bush took office? Is it any wonder Congress is thrashing around, sneaking coal and oil-friendly legislation into unrelated bills and struggling mightily to clean up its own act?

There is an aggressive cancer eating at the heart of our Federal government, and a vast majority of Democrats are standing around, wringing their hands - and occasionally offering an aspirin. They really can't do much more than that, because most of them ran for office using cash contributed by the very corporations who are now demanding repayment of their investments. The candidates are happy to accept our votes, but the real representation goes elsewhere.

de·moc·ra·cy Pronunciation Key - [di-mok-ruh-see] – noun, plural -cies.
1. government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
2. a state having such a form of government: The United States and Canada are democracies.
3. a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges.
4. political or social equality; democratic spirit.
5. the common people of a community as distinguished from any privileged class; the common people with respect to their political power.

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. - Thomas Jefferson

cap·i·tal·ism Pronunciation Key - [kap-i-tl-iz-uhm] – noun

an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

Hmm.

Doesn't take long to see why this isn't working out very well - for us anyway.
Its too bad our forefathers weren't able to slip in a little constitutional language about separation of corp and state.

Its that whole sticky issue of representation. Who is heard? The voices of the common man, or the few, influential power brokers who can afford to buy legislators and votes? If you've misplaced your di-mok-ruh-see lately, try looking on K Street.

Lobbyists now outnumber legislators :

The number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled since 2000 to more than 34,750 while the amount that lobbyists charge their new clients has increased by as much as 100 percent. Only a few other businesses have enjoyed greater prosperity in an otherwise fitful economy.

The lobbying boom has been caused by three factors, experts say: rapid growth in government, Republican control of both the White House and Congress, and wide acceptance among corporations that they need to hire professional lobbyists to secure their share of federal benefits.

They may soon have their own candidate for president: Fred Thompson, the cigar-smoking, tough-talking, 'oh please be our next Reagan' actor the GOP pundits are all swooning over. What the GOP doesn't want you to know is that he spent 18 years as a Washington lobbyist.

Thom Hartmann did a piece on this - and I saw that David Sirota has one on Alternet too - but of course the mainstream media won't touch it. Thompson is already their golden boy.

After Thom Hartmann brought this up, I started doing some digging and couldn't believe the things (asbestos, savings and loan deregulation) that came to light. I'm actually glad there is a little extra time before the upcoming election. Maybe some of this dirt will come out in time, if only via blogging and by word of mouth.

This from Wikipedia:

From 1975 to 1992 Thompson worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C. He represented such clients as Westinghouse, General Electric (the current corporate owner of the NBC Universal-NBC television network), and the Tennessee Savings and Loan League.[8]

By 1982, Thompson was lobbying the U.S. Congress for passage of the Savings and Loan deregulation legislation. The federal deregulation legislation allowed for additional government support of ailing S&Ls; gave U.S. thrifts the freedom to invest in potentially more profitable, but riskier, ventures; and eliminated interest-rate ceilings on new accounts. Thompson's recommendations were incorporated into the Garn - St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982.[8]

In 1991, he began work with the Washington, D.C. firm of Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin, & Kahn, representing overseas business entities as a registered foreign agent.

All the NY Times had to say about him was 'he took on some lobbying clients:'

"Mr. Thompson came into the public eye -- and ear, considering his distinctive voice -- in the early 1970s when he served as Republican counsel to the Senate Watergate committee. He then took on some lobbying clients, and was later asked to investigate a parole scandal in Tennessee. That episode led to a book and a movie, 'Marie,' in which Mr. Thompson played himself, kicking off his acting career. Elected to the Senate in 1994 to fill the remaining two years of Al Gore's term after he was elected vice president."

According to this workingassetsblog post, Politico reported a month ago that:

"Over about two decades of lobbying (during which he also acted and practiced law), Thompson made nearly $1.3 million and represented clients including a British reinsurance company facing billions of dollars in asbestos claims, Canadian-owned cable companies, and deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, according to government documents and media accounts from his first run for the Senate in 1994...'There's nothing wrong with lobbying. It's an honorable profession,' Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo said...A year after stepping down [from the Senate], he registered to lobby for British reinsurance company Equitas Ltd. The company paid him $760,000 to guard its interests against several bills seeking to protect businesses from asbestos lawsuits."

Move over Rudi - even you can't beat that track record.

Yes, this is Wall Street's dream candidate for 2008. Maybe he can rebuild our schools with asbestos, and change 'No Child Left Behind' to 'No Child Left Alive.'

Wonder why impeachment isn't taken seriously (especially considering the constitutional offenses,) by more than a handful of faithful representatives - even though the populace and many lawyers are screaming for it? The masters don't approve. I mean, that's really only logical, when you think about it from their point of view. It's hard to imagine that the lobbyists and their corporate employers would take kindly to an impeachment process that would shut down their gravy train of government contracts and government privatization. They've never had it so good!

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. - Thomas Jefferson

A gradual takeover

It is obvious how we got here: corporate interests. Oil. The lucrative 'war contracting' business, and the Military Industrial. Washington has changed. Its now completely over-run with lobbyists.

But it didn't happen over night. Most lobbying growth occurred after the end of Nixon administration, and during the rise of Reaganomics: which may explain why we are seeing a return to Nixon-era behavior in the White House, without the Nixon-era opposition from Congress. Throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s - while we were busy eating, sleeping, working and watching TV - capitalism ate democracy. We are reeling in the aftershocks of an explosion that started decades ago.

Founder and editor of The Washington Monthly, Charlie Peters came to Washington D.C. with the Kennedy campaign in 1961. Peters recalls:

When I came here [in the early 1960s], I had many young friends on Capitol Hill who ... worked on the staff of congressmen and senators, ... but they were mostly very idealistic people and what they were up to all the time was they were trying to get legislation changed for the good. They were trying a phrase in the bill here or there that would make it better. Or even if they were conservative, it was ideologically driven and they were not sold out.

Now, suddenly, in the '80s, as the culture of greed began to take hold in the whole country and you began to get this great growth in executive salaries and all those things that manifested that greed, the congressional staff members began to think not about doing good, but about currying favor with lobbyists who could give them $300,000 a year jobs so that they could eat lunch every day in those fancy restaurants and wear those Italian suits and all that went with it. And drive the Mercedes. All of those things, those guys began to want and so they began to behave in a way that was designed to please lobbyists and that has caused terrible corruption on Capitol Hill.

It's not a corruption where people are bribed directly. They are bribed indirectly by the possibility of future lucrative employment. So, that's the sad story. Those are the great ingredients I think in the sad story of the growth of Washington to its present position of dominance.

The 80s... under the Reagan administration. No wonder Wall Street is drooling over Fred Thompson. Bush is drawing way too much fire with his cowboy act and inability to speak clear English. Maybe a nice, suave, macho, comforting cloud of cigar smoke can cover the smell of stinking pork wafting through the air from the back rooms of Congress.

We must quickly become a lot smarter about the way we choose our presidential candidates. Rather than simply listening to their spin, we may have to actually do a little digging to figure out what promises they might have traded for campaign cash, behind the political fund-raising curtain.

According to Dean Baker, we can all do a quick test to determine if our favorites candidates have been bought out from under us by Wall Street:

Just call or email your favorite presidential candidate, and ask their staff whether he or she supports a securities transactions tax (STET). You will probably have to explain to the candidate's staffer what a STET is. You can tell them that a STET is a small tax placed on a trade of a share of stock or other financial asset (e.g. bonds, options, futures, etc.).

Or of course, another easy way is to simply look them up on Open Secrets. The list of contributors may surprise you... just take a look at Hillary...

To be Republican... Democrat... or American.

Cindy Sheehan quit the Democratic Party yesterday.

I and many others happily welcome Cindy into the freedom of 'Independent-hood' with open arms.

Leaving the Democratic Party was a very empowering experience for me. I became an Independent after placing a call to Nancy Pelosi's office last winter. I asked the aide who answered Pelosi's phone just what - exactly - it would take for Nancy to put impeachment 'on the table.' The aide became flustered, angry, said something snippy and hung up on me.

I was stunned, furious and speechless. Something snapped: I felt it break. It was the cord that tied me to this broken party.

No voter (let alone active supporter) should ever tolerate this kind of abuse from a representative that we supported and carried into her vaulted position as House Speaker.

The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men (and apparently the women) who pervert the Constitution. - Abraham Lincoln

After a lifetime as a Democrat, I quit the party on the spot. I felt a heavy weight lift from my soul. Suddenly I was no longer powerless. I have opted out of the lie. I refuse to play this 'if you don't want them, you're stuck with us' game anymore. Anyone who wants my vote will have to earn it.

I highly recommend this - it really has changed my perspective, on everything. I can think of no better way to end this childish, partisan behavior than to simply walk away from it.

Neither a Republican nor a Democrat be; be rather, a true American citizen. Swear allegiance to no party with small-minded, selfish interests, but rather save your devotion for the high-minded ideals of true patriotism, democracy and liberty. - me, trying my best to sound grave and historical.

Lincoln left the Whig party and became a Republican, in a time when being 'Republican' meant believing in freedom for all people, regardless of race. He walked away from the Whigs - and we can walk away from these two corrupted parties.

The only way we will save our democracy is to turn our backs on these corporate pawns and build a coalition that represents the will of the people. I use the word 'coalition,' because no one should be left out, from either party.

No one will do this for us - no one else will magically fix our government. We must do this ourselves, as our forefathers did it before us, and for us.

In her Memorial Day letter to Congress, Cindy wrote:

The Camp Casey Peace Institute is calling all citizens who are as disgusted as we are with you all to join us in Philadelphia on July 4th to try and figure a way out of this "two" party system that is bought and paid for by the war machine which has a stranglehold on every aspect of our lives. As for myself, I am leaving the Democratic Party. You have completely failed those who put you in power to change the direction our country is heading. We did not elect you to help sink our ship of state but to guide it to safe harbor. We do not condone our government's violent meddling in sovereign countries and we condemn the continued murderous occupation of Iraq.

Cindy is right. There must be a third alternative. Not a weak alternative, or fragmented, divided groups that only undercut other progressives, including those still within the Democratic Party. Gore would have been a terrific president, and hopefully we will get another shot at electing him. When discussing his new book, "The Assault on Reason" recently, he described many current politicians as 'good people trapped in a bad system.'

Strangely, these 'good people' can't seem to get together and actually fix the 'bad system' that has shut them down. It appears our only hope is to somehow fix it from out here, by electing representatives free of ties to either of these partisan parties.

My version of 'becoming an Independent' doesn't preclude voting for progressive Democrats, or Republicans for that matter. What it does mean is that I - we - no longer endorse these parties as a whole. We no longer serve the interests of their lobbyist toadies. We have opted out of the game, as played by their rules - which are not the rules of our nation's founders.

Both parties have sold their souls to corporate interests, and in doing so, both parties have sold out the people... and apparently now, the planet. We need a third party that can be embraced by enough people to actually win.

In our particular case and in our time, winning is everything. The winner restores democracy and fights climate change - hopefully in time to make a difference. Time is running out. If Gore had been in office the past 6 years, we could be reversing harmful greenhouse emissions right now, at this very moment. Instead, the Bush administration only made it worse. He and his corporate minions have corrupted and infiltrated the very watchdog departments within our government that served to protect us from tainted food, poisoned water, and environmental calamity.

We can't afford to let another Necon walk away with the White House. Whatever we do, we can't afford to let that happen again. It will avail us nothing if we try to claim some sort of ideological high ground while our democracy - and all of humanity - are destroyed in the process.

We must commit to actually win.

This will undoubtedly mean pulling together to back an Independent candidate, an Independent Bipartisan ticket, or a Progressive Democrat - and invite all angry Republicans and Democrats to join us. The only way we will win, is by throwing out those divisive 'wedge' issues and coming together in this common cause.

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. - Abraham Lincoln