Freddie/Fannie Pay to Prevent Regulatory Reform

Posted on October 20, 2008 by RagBlog


Mortgage firm arranged stealth campaign
By Pete Yost / October 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — Freddie Mac secretly paid a Republican consulting firm $2 million to kill legislation that would have regulated and trimmed the mortgage finance giant and its sister company, Fannie Mae, three years before the government took control to prevent their collapse.

In the cross hairs of the campaign carried out by DCI of Washington were Republican senators and a regulatory overhaul bill sponsored by Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. DCI’s chief executive is Doug Goodyear, whom John McCain’s campaign later hired to manage the GOP convention in September.

Freddie Mac’s payments to DCI began shortly after the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee sent Hagel’s bill to the then GOP-run Senate on July 28, 2005. All GOP members of the committee supported it; all Democrats opposed it.

In the midst of DCI’s yearlong effort, Hagel and 25 other Republican senators pleaded unsuccessfully with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to allow a vote.

“If effective regulatory reform legislation … is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole,” the senators wrote in a letter that proved prescient.

Unknown to the senators, DCI was undermining support for the bill in a campaign targeting 17 Republican senators in 13 states, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. The states and the senators targeted changed over time, but always stayed on the Republican side.

In the end, there was not enough Republican support for Hagel’s bill to warrant bringing it up for a vote because Democrats also opposed it and the votes of some would be needed for passage. The measure died at the end of the 109th Congress.

McCain, R-Ariz., was not a target of the DCI campaign. He signed Hagel’s letter and three weeks later signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill.

By the time McCain did so, however, DCI’s effort had gone on for nine months and was on its way toward killing the bill.

In recent days, McCain has said Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were “one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire” of the global credit crisis. McCain has accused Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama of taking advice from former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and failing to see that the companies were heading for a meltdown.

McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, or his lobbying firm has taken more than $2 million from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac dating to 2000. In December, Freddie Mac contributed $250,000 to last month’s GOP convention.

Obama has received $120,349 in political donations from employees of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae; McCain $21,550.

The Republican senators targeted by DCI began hearing from prominent constituents and financial contributors, all urging the defeat of Hagel’s bill because it might harm the housing boom. The effort generated newspaper articles and radio and TV appearances by participants who spoke out against the measure.

Inside Freddie Mac headquarters in 2005, the few dozen people who knew what DCI was doing referred to the initiative as “the stealth lobbying campaign,” according to three people familiar with the drive.

They spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying they fear retaliation if their names were disclosed.

Freddie Mac executive Hollis McLoughlin oversaw DCI’s drive, according to the three people.

“Hollis’s goal was not to have any Freddie Mac fingerprints on this project and DCI became the hidden hand behind the effort,” one of the three people told the AP.

Before 2004, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Democratic strongholds. After 2004, Republicans ran their political operations. McLoughlin, who joined Freddie Mac in 2004 as chief of staff, has given $32,250 to Republican candidates over the years, including $2,800 to McCain, and has given none to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

On Friday night, Hagel’s chief of staff, Mike Buttry, said Hagel’s legislation “was the last best chance to bring greater oversight and tighter regulation to Freddie and Fannie, and they used every means they could to defeat Sen. Hagel’s legislation every step of the way.”

“It is outrageous that a congressionally chartered government-sponsored enterprise would lobby against a member of Congress’s bill that would strengthen the regulation and oversight of that institution,” Buttry said in a statement. “America has paid an extremely high price for the reckless, and possibly criminal, actions of the leadership at Freddie and Fannie.”

Nine of the 17 targeted Republican senators did not sign Hagel’s letter: Sens. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Christopher “Kit” Bond and Jim Talent of Missouri, Conrad Burns of Montana, Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and George Allen of Virginia. Aside from the nine, 20 other Republican senators did not sign Hagel’s letter.

McConnell’s office said members of leadership do not sign letters to the leader. McConnell was majority whip at the time.

Eight of the targeted senators did sign it: Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Jim Bunning of Kentucky, Larry Craig of Idaho, John Ensign of Nevada, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, George Voinovich of Ohio and David Vitter of Louisiana. Santorum, Crapo and Bunning were on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and had voted in favor of sending the bill to the full Senate.

On Thursday, Freddie Mac acknowledged that the company “did retain DCI to provide public affairs support at the state and local level.” On Friday, DCI issued a four-sentence statement saying it complied with all applicable federal and state laws and regulations in representing Freddie Mac. Neither Freddie Mac nor DCI would say how much Goodyear’s consulting firm was paid.

Freddie Mac paid DCI $10,000 a month for each of the targeted states, so the more states, the more money for DCI, according to the three people familiar with the program. In addition, Freddie Mac paid DCI a group retainer of $40,000 a month plus $20,000 a month for each regional manager handling the project, the three people said.

Last month, the concerns of the 26 Republican senators who signed Hagel’s bill became a reality when the government seized control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae amid their near financial collapse. Federal prosecutors are investigating accounting, disclosure and corporate governance issues at both companies, which own or guarantee more than $5 trillion in mortgages, roughly equivalent to half of the national debt.

Freddie Mac was so pleased with DCI’s work that it retained the firm for other jobs, finally cutting DCI loose last month after the government takeover, according to the three people familiar with the situation.

Freddie Mac’s problems began when Hagel’s legislation won approval from the Senate committee.

Democrats did not like the harshest provision, which would have given a new regulator a mandate to shrink Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae by forcing them to sell off part of their portfolios. That approach, the Democrats feared, would cut into the ability of low- and moderate-income families to buy houses.

The political backdrop to the debate “was like bizarre-o-world,” said the second of three people familiar with the program. “The Republicans were pro-regulation and the Democrats were against it; it was upside down.”

Sen. Richard Shelby, the committee chairman at the time, underscored that in a statement Wednesday, saying that with Democrats already on their side, it was not surprising that Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae went after Republicans. “Unfortunately,” said Shelby, R-Ala., “efforts then to derail reform were successful.”

In a sign of bad things to come, Freddie Mac was already having serious problems in 2005. Auditors had exposed massive accounting issues, so improved regulation was one obvious remedy.

Once Freddie Mac’s in-house lobbyists failed to keep Hagel’s bill bottled up in the committee, McLoughlin responded by secretly hiring DCI.

DCI never filed lobbying reports with Congress about what it was doing because the firm was relying on a long-recognized gap in the disclosure law.

Federal lobbying law only requires reporting and registration when there are contacts with a legislator or staff.

“To have it stealthy, not to let people know who is behind this, in my opinion is unethical,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University who long has taught courses about lobbying.

Goodyear is a longtime political consultant from Arizona who resigned from the Republican convention job this year after Newsweek magazine revealed he had lobbied for the repressive military junta of Myanmar.

McLoughlin, Freddie Mac’s senior vice president for external relations, was assistant treasury secretary from 1989 through 1992 in the administration of President Bush’s father. McLoughlin served as chief of staff to Sen. Nicholas Brady, R-N.J., in 1982 and to Rep. Millicent Fenwick, R-N.J., from 1975-79.

Seven of the 17 targeted Republican senators were in the midst of re-election campaigns in 2006, and according to one of the three people familiar with the program, Freddie Mac and DCI hoped those facing tough races would tell their Republican colleagues back in Washington that “we’ve got enough trouble; you’re making it worse with Hagel’s bill.”

Five of the seven DCI targets who ran for re-election in 2006 lost, and Senate control switched to the Democrats.

A Freddie Mac e-mail on May 4, 2006 _ the day before Hagel’s letter _ details the behind-the-scenes effort that Freddie Mac and DCI generated to hold down the number of Republicans signing Hagel’s letter urging a full Senate vote. It said:

“What I’m asking is that DCI get a few of their key well-connected constituents from each state to call in to the DC office of their Republican senators and speak to the (legislative director) or (chief of staff) and urge them not to sign the letter. The following could be used as a short script.”

The proposed script read: “We can all agree that Fannie’s and Freddie’s regulator should be strengthened but unfortunately, S.190 goes too far and could potentially have damaging effects on Georgia’s _ example _ home buyers.”

According to the third of the three people familiar with the program, “DCI was asked to help keep senators from signing; it was a big part of their effort that year and it was viewed as a success since many DCI targets did not sign the letter.”

DCI’s progress after the first four months of the campaign was spelled out in a 19-page document dated Dec. 12, 2005, and titled, “Freddie Mac Field Program State by State Summary Report.”

A snippet of a senator-by-senator breakdown of the efforts says this about Maine’s Snowe:

“Philip Harriman, former state senator, co-chair of Snowe’s 2006 campaign, personal Snowe friend, major GOP donor and investment adviser, has written the senator a personal letter on this issue. Dick Morin, vice president Maine Association of Mortgage Brokers, has been in direct contact with Sen. Snowe’s committee staff, has sent a letter to Snowe, and is pursuing a dozen(s) of letters from his members.”

On Wednesday, Snowe’s office issued a statement saying that she “literally gets hundreds of ‘Dear Colleague’ letters seeking support for their positions that she does not sign. Had this legislation come up for a vote in 2006, she certainly would have considered it on its merits _ as she does every vote. Just last July, she voted for the housing bill that established a new, stronger regulator.”

Rosario Marin, a staunch McCain supporter who spoke at the GOP convention in September, was among the people DCI used in carrying out the campaign.

Marin, the U.S. treasurer during the first term of the Bush administration, went to Missouri and to Montana, Burns’ state, where she spoke out against Hagel’s bill.

At the time, Burns, who ended up losing his re-election bid, was caught up in a Washington influence peddling scandal centering on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Marin’s visit triggered a local newspaper story in which the reporter contacted Burns’ staff for comment. Burns’ office told the newspaper the senator was not supportive of the latest version of Hagel’s bill.

On Wednesday, Marin, now state consumer services secretary in California, issued a statement confirming that her trips to Missouri and Montana were in her capacity as a DCI consultant.

The December 2005 summary listing 17 Republican targets outlines the inroads DCI was making.

“On day one” of the effort, Sen. George Allen of Virginia had not addressed Hagel’s bill and his legislative aide for housing was not assigned to it, the report said.

“Today,” the report added, “the senator is aware of the issue and … at the moment he is undecided.” Allen’s deputy chief of staff “has said that the senator will take into consideration before he decides that Freddie Mac is located in Virginia and is one of the largest Virginia employers.”

“Grasstops/opinion leaders James Todd, president, the Peterson Companies wrote to both senators,” the report added. “Milt Peterson, the founder and CEO of the company is one of Allen’s major donors.”

In the end, Allen, who lost his bid for re-election in 2006, did not sign Hagel’s letter.

Source / Huffington Post

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John McCain’s Medical Records : The X Files

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Why is McCain stonewalling?
By Larry Ray / October 18, 2008

There are only a couple of weeks before we vote for a new president. Americans deserve to see the current medical records of both candidates before making up their minds. Senator McCain still refuses to provide his current medical records. Senator Obama fully complied just a few months ago, undergoing a complete medical checkup. His publicly available records describe Obama as “in excellent health, lean and muscular with no excess body fat.” Senator Biden released a current update, Monday, Oct. 20th, and appears in good health for a guy his age. Sarah Palin, has released no medical information on herself whatsoever.

In McCain’s U.S. Navy aircraft carrier flying days, passing a flight medical exam was easy for him. But as we get older it can become harder to pass that annual flight physical. I am only a few years younger than Sen. McCain and am a private pilot, so I know all about having a “current medical.” I am in decent health but am not “current.” McCain is tough. But it is also tough to imagine being shot out of the air by an enemy missile, surviving a bail-out with broken bones, then enduring five and a half years of torture as a POW some 41 years ago and today being in a third remission from melanoma cancer. All that could certainly make getting a clean bill of health tougher, but not impossible. I have several pilot buddies McCain’s age who are “current” and still having a dandy time flying. But none are running for president.

Remember why the pilot and co-pilot on commercial airliners eat different in-flight meals off the menu? If one meal is tainted, like bad tuna salad, both pilots don’t become incapacitated, leaving one to fly and land the plane safely. But we are not talking about toxic tuna salad here. And we are not talking about United Airlines. We’re talking about the United States, with John McCain as our possible president and his VP candidate, Sarah Palin, as our potential co-pilot. Showing us all he has a clean bill of health would clearly help the 72 year old McCain’s faltering campaign right now. It’s fair enough to ask why he doesn’t. Ms. Palin’s lungs do seem to be in tip top condition, but that’s all we have been permitted to know about her state of physical health.

While McCain invokes his discredited folk hero, “Joe the Plumber” and Palin whips up “the base” with her nasal, hate-tinged talking points, the noise they are making still can not drown out that basic question in voters’ minds, “Is candidate McCain healthy enough to take over an America which has just lost power in its engines and is flying in a fog of uncertainty? And what about his co-pilot?”

Source / The iHandbill

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American Indians and the CIA : Buying Silence With Advertising

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Hopi elder Dan Evehema, sitting on a couch at his home on the Hopi mesa in 1996, warned: “Don’t take grant funding, they will control you.”

How advertisers like the CIA and FBI use dollars to control and silence people.
By Brenda Norrell

In case you noticed the alarming, large advertisements by the CIA Clandestine Services on the front web page of a national American Indian newspaper this week, or the ad by the FBI as one of the main sponsors of the National Congress of American Indians annual convention [Oct. 19-24] in Phoenix, it is good to remember how advertisers and funders control the media and organizations.

First, for newspapers, there is the outpouring of dollars for large ad spaces in prime sites. For Indian organizations, there is financial backing for events or programs.

When the newspaper, or Indian organization, does something the funder doesn’t like, they often threaten to halt the advertising dollars. “We can’t go along with that,” they say, or “We can’t support you if you do this …”

If it means losing a large sum of money, the publisher or Indian organization is likely to concede to the demands. This may mean refusing to publish an article, firing a staff member, dropping a columnist or speaker, or halting the spread of certain ideas and issues. This is one reason that the media in the United States is heavily censored now, as advertising dollars dry up and sales decline.

Sometimes, the funder doesn’t have to say anything, by accepting the dollars, compliance is bought and sold.

Along the US/Mexico border, the threat of the loss of US dollars in appropriations often means that elected Native American officials will not voice the truth about Homeland Security and the construction of the US border wall. The issues of Indian sovereignty, desecration of burial places and the violation of federal environmental laws are silenced.

During NCAI’s convention in Phoenix in October, will those border issues be presented? Will the truth be told about the worldwide carbon scam, which offers fictional carbon credits to enrich the World Bank?

Will the assassinations of Indigenous Peoples by mining corporations in the Americas be exposed, or the diseases resulting from mining, power plants, drilling and pollution in Indian country in the US and Canada be addressed?

Will the casino rich tribes in southern Arizona, with the crowds pouring into their casinos, explain why so many of their own members are still living in poverty?

Years ago, one of the Hopi elders, Dan Evehema, sitting on a couch at his home on the Hopi mesa, warned: “Don’t take grant funding, they will control you.”

Urging Hopi to resist the formation of the US puppet tribal council, Evehema was among the Hopi Sinom that warned if coal mining was carried out on Black Mesa, and Navajos were relocated to make way for the mining, calamities would occur in the world, including natural disasters.

Meanwhile, watch the advertisements for sponsors and financial backers. These will tell you a great deal about who is really in control and why you are reading, hearing and seeing, what is in front of you.

As always, follow the money and resist.

Source / Censored News / Posted Oct. 11, 2008

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Dialing for Dollars : Hang Up on War

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Hey Bush! Here’s where all the money went!

Members of MDS/Austin, CodePink and Iraq Veterans Against the War demonstrate outside the state capitol in Austin Friday, Oct. 16, as part of the national monthly Iraq Moratorium. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.

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Mariann Wizard: García Lorca’s Grave

Posted on October 19, 2008 by RagBlog


García Lorca’s Grave

García Lorca’s grave
has been found, they say,
in Spain –
           in Spain, where the rain
           fell on Abel and on Cain –
           where those without fear
           were shortly seen to disappear –
           in Spain, where the brave
           fell mainly into mass graves –
in fascist Spain.

García Lorca’s grave has been found
just where it should be, of course, in Spain!
For people don’t just “disappear”,
not him, nor any of the tens of thousands of
           poets, patriots, shopkeepers,
           communists, loudmouths,
           troublemakers who didn’t know
           when to Shut Up
           and who still, it seems,
           have something to say.

His books were burned, then banned; what’s left to save?
Ah, but words don’t need books; they whisper on the waves!

Federico, hermano, ¿que dices?
           “The bull does not know you, nor the fig tree,
           nor the horses, nor the ants in your own house.
           The child and the afternoon do not know you…
           “Because you have died for ever…
           like all the dead who are forgotten
           in a heap of lifeless dogs.”
So he wrote, and so it was;
he was no wraith to walk in wishful dreams,
but a man full of bullets, covered with dirt.

As Whitman sang, of himself, of the body, of fragile Life,
of ordinary people and ordinary strife,
and, in the hearing, self-awareness rose –
so in García Lorca’s work this ferment grows:
           “Nobody knows you. No. But I sing of you.”
           Now the faggot poet’s bones are rising,
           entwined with all the bones with which our “Spain” is paved,
           for nothing hidden is ever truly lost,
           and nothing true remains forever hidden,
           nor will the people’s voice be silenced in the common grave.
García Lorca’s grave has been found
in Spain, where shells fell, in an uncivil hell,
and bells tolled, for the young and the bold –
in Spain, in this bloody, hallowed ground.

— © Mariann G. Wizard
October 19, 2008

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The Newest Presidential Candidates

Posted on October 19, 2008 by RagBlog


Announcing the Candidacy of Plumber/Sixpack
By Daniel O’Brien / October 17, 2008

This announcement was inevitable. Frankly, I’m surprised it took this long. These two possibly-real figures have been brought up in more speeches and on more news shows lately than Joe Biden. With all the attention that both Joe’s have been getting, it’s pretty clear that America, in general is more concerned about Plumber and Sixpack than anyone else on the planet.

They made their announcement late last night and we saw an almost immediate dramatic shift in the polls. The Joe Dream Team is now up by 15 points.

I recently sat down with the candidates so they could tell their stories, in their own words. Before we go any further, I’d like to point out that, when asked what party they’d be running under, Joe Sixpack said “Party…Til You Puke.” I asked him if he was referring to 2000 EP from Andrew WK and he stuck his tongue out and swung his head around, so to suggest that yes, he was.

Let’s meet our new candidates, shall we?

Joe The Plumber

Everybody’s been talking about me a lot lately, because of some stuff I said to Obama. I don’t really follow the polls that much, to be honest, but I assume that since everyone’s talking about me so much, they must want me to be president, so I’ll do that. What’s my campaign about? Money, mostly.

As I said in a recent Times interview that I was asked to give for no discernible reason, it’s my discretion who I want to give my money to, it’s not for the government to decide I make a little too much and so I need to share it with other people. That’s not the American dream. That is a belief I will hold until the day I die: The government doesn’t decide who I give my money to. I do.

Also, I’ve decided not to give it to anyone.

“I’d like to see you try to take my money, Senator Obama”

Senator Obama thinks of himself as a “Robin Hood” figure, taking money from the greedy, evil corporations and redistributing it to the peasants. Again, as stated in the Times, I resent being called a “peasant.” And if, as some have pointed out, Obama meant that I’m the greedy, evil corporation, I resent that, too. Hell, even if I’m supposed to be Robin Hood in this tricky, poorly-conceived metaphor, I’m still full of resentment. Basically I just don’t want anyone touching my money.

America, I’m a simple man. All I want in this life is all of the money in the world. That’s it. I want to be rich, and I just don’t want anyone screwing with my hard-earned toilet money. I’m just your average plumber earning a quarter of a million dollars a year, looking to expand my empire and make sure the government isn’t involved in any way. So what if I refuse to pay taxes and am not technically a licensed plumber? Should that stop me from being a plumber who wants the government to play fair? If I’m president, it will not.

This is, really, the only issue I can concretely say I’m running on. If elected, I promise the American People that no one will touch my money. Not a God Damn cent. The other issues, as well as your money, aren’t really concerns of mine. I only really get inspired to raise my voice when someone is indirectly suggesting that I should have less money than I think I should, which is to say, “assloads.”

“I’d like to see you try to take my money, banker from Deal or No Deal”

Joe Sixpack

Hey, I’m Joe Sixpack, and I think I should be your president, I guess. I don’t really think I’d be a good president, but according to the news, America wants “someone like Joe Sixpack” to be president, and I’m more Joe Sixpack than anyone I know, so I figured Hell, why not go with the real deal, you know? Got shit else to do.

Anyway, ever since she got the nomination, Sarah Palin’s been talking about how much she cares about Joe Sixpack, and everyone’s calling her The Joe Sixpack Candidate. As a response, it turns out that Biden’s pretty Sixpacky too, because he’s from a small town in Pennsylvania and often rides on the train, or whatever. Basically, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden are two people who claim to be very in touch with blue-collar, hardworking “Joe Sixpack types.”

Hey, here’s a thing. Let’s play a little game. Let’s say someone asked you to come up with a list of occupations that a blue-collar, hardworking “Joe Sixpack type” would have. I could come up with a few things. Carpenter. Construction Worker. Plumber, like my esteemed running mate, Joe. But you know what jobs wouldn’t make that list?

Governor and Senator.

Laying rat traps is a blue collar job. Cleaning out gutters is. Building stuff, that too. Being in charge of Alaska is not.

I don’t care what town you were born in; the second you show up on CSPAN wearing TV-makeup and expensive clothing, you’ve officially abandoned your right to call yourself the “Joe Sixpack Candidate.”

“This might be a shovel. Isn’t that blue collar? I just dig holes, like, all day. “

Oh, and let’s talk about riding trains, since that’s evidently an important factor in deciding who should lead our country. So, Biden rides trains to get from Point A to Point B. Great. But, if Point A is the floor of the Senate and Point B is an interview with Larry King, it doesn’t matter what you take to get there. If you load up a shopping cart with some kitchen appliance and push it around your mansion, does that mean you’re in touch with homeless people?

So, when you take a train—and then use it as a talking point—all it means is that you’re aware of just one superficial aspect of blue collar life.

Folks, I am not Joe Biden or Sarah Palin. I am Joe Sixpack. That is, legally, my name. My dad made me change it when I crashed his car. Something about not deserving the family name. I don’t quite remember. I was pretty blitzed. But ask yourself this: do you want a down-to-earth candidate, or do you want some rich, out-of-touch yuppy who does a good job at feigning down-to-earthness? If it’s the second one, you’ve got two options there.

If it’s the first one, vote for me. I’m Joe Sixpack. I work hard. I eat lunch and whistle at women who walk by. I take the train if I can afford it, but mostly I just wander around. I drink cheap beer out of an empty Jelly jar and I scream at my television when a black quarterback makes a mistakes. I gamble on dog fights. I might have a kid somewhere. Sometimes I just like to get drunk on a set of stairs and put on a hat I found. I’m just like you.

I’m aware that my running mate also said he’s running for president, and I’m cool with that. We’re both kinda running for president, I guess.

“We’re both kinda running for president, I guess.”

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / Source / Cracked

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On Voting, the Economy, and the Stock Market

Posted on October 19, 2008 by RagBlog


The Record: Stock Market, Economy Do Better Under Democrats
By Avenging Angel / October 15, 2008

On Wednesday, the New York Times performed an election year public service with an analysis that was part history lesson and part thought exercise. Taking the example of the S&P 500 going back to Herbert Hoover, the Times rightly concluded that the Democratic Party “has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole.” But the Democrats’ proven track record isn’t limited to the S&P index. As history has proven time and again, Wall Street and the economy overall simply do better under Democratic presidents.

To make its case, the New York Times asked readers to imagine having put their money where its mouth is. Contrary to Republican mythology, Americans fare better – much, much better – under Democratic administrations:

As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover’s presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.

(For the eye-popping chart of the S&P’s performance under each of the presidents from Hoover through Bush 43, visit here.)

As the broader record shows, the best path to prosperity is to elect Democratic presidents.

The superior performance of Democratic presidents covers virtually the entire spectrum of economic indicators. As Elliott Parker of the University of Nevada, Reno detailed in a 2006 paper, since 1949 Democratic administrations have done better than Republican ones when it comes to unemployment (5.2% to 6.0%), job creation (-.0.4% decrease in unemployment, compared to 0.3% increase), GDP growth rate (4.2% to 2.9%), and even corporate profits as a share of GDP. And to be sure, he found the Dow benefits from Democrats in the White House.

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / Read all of it here. / Daily Kos

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Cuba: New Petroleum Player on the Field

Posted on October 19, 2008 by RagBlog

A worker walks at an oil rig in Havana, Cuba. Photograph: Enrique De La Osa/Reuters

20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league
By Rory Carroll / October 18, 2008

• Self-reliance beckons for communist state
• Estimate means reserves are on a par with US

Friends and foes have called Cuba many things – a progressive beacon, a quixotic underdog, an oppressive tyranny – but no one has called it lucky, until now.

Mother nature, it emerged this week, appears to have blessed the island with enough oil reserves to vault it into the ranks of energy powers. The government announced there may be more than 20bn barrels of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba’s share of the Gulf of Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate.

If confirmed, it puts Cuba’s reserves on par with those of the US and into the world’s top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba’s state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.

“It would change their whole equation. The government would have more money and no longer be dependent on foreign oil,” said Kirby Jones, founder of the Washington-based US-Cuba Trade Association. “It could join the club of oil exporting nations.”

“We have more data. I’m almost certain that if they ask for all the data we have, (their estimate) is going to grow considerably,” said Cupet’s exploration manager, Rafael Tenreyro Perez.

Havana based its dramatically higher estimate mainly on comparisons with oil output from similar geological structures off the coasts of Mexico and the US. Cuba’s undersea geology was “very similar” to Mexico’s giant Cantarell oil field in the Bay of Campeche, said Tenreyro.

A consortium of companies led by Spain’s Repsol had tested wells and were expected to begin drilling the first production well in mid-2009, and possibly several more later in the year, he said.

Cuba currently produces about 60,000 barrels of oil daily, covering almost half of its needs, and imports the rest from Venezuela in return for Cuban doctors and sports instructors. Even that barter system puts a strain on an impoverished economy in which Cubans earn an average monthly salary of $20.

Subsidised grocery staples, health care and education help make ends meet but an old joke – that the three biggest failings of the revolution are breakfast, lunch and dinner – still does the rounds. Last month hardships were compounded by tropical storms that shredded crops and devastated coastal towns.

“This news about the oil reserves could not have come at a better time for the regime,” said Jonathan Benjamin-Alvarado, a Cuba energy specialist at the University of Nebraska.

However there is little prospect of Cuba becoming a communist version of Kuwait. Its oil is more than a mile deep under the ocean and difficult and expensive to extract. The four-decade-old US economic embargo prevents several of Cuba’s potential oil partners – notably Brazil, Norway and Spain – from using valuable first-generation technology.

“You’re looking at three to five years minimum before any meaningful returns,” said Benjamin-Alvarado.

Even so, Cuba is a master at stretching resources. President Raul Castro, who took over from brother Fidel, has promised to deliver improvements to daily life to shore up the legitimacy of the revolution as it approaches its 50th anniversary.

Cuba’s unexpected arrival into the big oil league could increase pressure on the next administration to loosen the embargo to let US oil companies participate in the bonanza and reduce US dependency on the middle east, said Jones. “Up until now the embargo did not really impact on us in a substantive, strategic way. Oil is different. It’s something we need and want.”

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / Source / The Guardian

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Yellow Dog Time? These Repugs Gotta Go…

Posted on October 19, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘What I’m bitching about is not disagreement over policy. It’s knowing how to do things, ANYTHING, using the tools of political science.‘
By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / October 19, 2008

For the second time in my life, I have voted a straight ticket.

I’m a little surprised at myself that I am missing the emotion with which I did it the first time. I promised myself that I would vote straight ticket until everybody is home from Iraq or the Dems begin to own the war.

But, damn, there’s been so much disaster since the last time I did this, so much more revealed incompetence, that the war feels like it’s almost in the rear view mirror even though Paul [the author’s son] is supposed to deploy again early next year.

The mismanagement of securities regulation by appointing people to the SEC who do not believe in securities regulation is right up there with Katrina–just unbelieveable incompetence.

A sidebar to the economic tragedy is that a big reason we are dragging Europe and Asia down with us is because since the New Deal the world has had a high regard for the quality of American securities regulation. Notice that’s now in the past tense, but institutions overseas thought that if paper was legitimate enough to trade publicly on the US market it must be pretty safe.

Bet they won’t make the mistake of trusting us again, eh?

Makes me embarrassed for the country, just like when Bush “unsigned” the Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court, but in an area where the Repugs were supposed to be competent–finance.

International relations, disaster response, securities regulation….it all reminds me of the famous Casey Stengel line re the early Mets: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

This game is government. And what I’m bitching about is not disagreement over policy. It’s knowing how to do things, ANYTHING, using the tools of political science.

Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, Bush I—they were Repugs and I did not always agree with them about what government ought to do but at least they knew how the damn thing worked!

Bush II has brought us to places I thought we’d never see.

And I hope we never see again….

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Singin’ on Sunday – Joanna Newsom

Posted on October 19, 2008 by RagBlog

A good Friend introduced me to this remarkable musician recently, and I felt compelled to share her here. Joanna Newsom’s style is unique in my experience, but her wit is appropriate for the Rag Blog. The tune is Inflammatory Writ, from the album The Milk-Eyed Mender. I hope you enjoy her as much as I do.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Joanna Newsom. Photo: John Hart.

Joanna Newsom
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joanna Newsom (born January 18, 1982) is an American harpist, pianist, harpsichordist, and singer-songwriter from Nevada City, California.

Career

Newsom was first taught to play the Celtic harp by a local teacher in Nevada City. Later on she moved on to the pedal harp and started composing.

Newsom studied composition and creative writing at Mills College, Oakland, California.

After touring with Will Oldham, she was quickly signed to Drag City and released her debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender in 2004. Shortly thereafter, Newsom toured with Devendra Banhart and Vetiver and made an early UK appearance at the Green Man Festival in Wales, returning to headline in 2005.

Newsom’s work has become prominent on the indie rock scene, and her profile has risen, in part due to a number of live shows and appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC.

Her second album Ys was released in November 2006. The album features orchestrations and arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, engineering from Steve Albini, and mixing by Drag City label-mate Jim O’Rourke. On a road trip, Bill Callahan recommended she listen to the album Song Cycle by Parks, which led to his being chosen to arrange her work on Ys.

During her 2007 fall tour, Newsom began performing a new as yet untitled seven-and-a-half-minute song. In January 2008, Newsom debuted another new composition in Sydney, Australia. Then in July 2008 she debuted her third new song, a 7-minute piano piece at Latitude Festival in Suffolk, England, and later the same day debuted a fourth new piano composition in London.

Several of the songs on The Milk-Eyed Mender have been covered by her peers: “Bridges and Balloons” was covered by the Decemberists on their 2005 EP Picaresqueties. “Sprout and the Bean” has been covered by The Moscow Coup Attempt and Sholi. “Peach Plum Pear” has been covered by Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) on the 2006 EP Young Canadian Mothers.

Style

Although her harp playing is not completely divorced from conventional harp techniques, she considers her style distinct from that of classically focused harpists. She has been strongly influenced by the polymetric style of playing used by West African kora players.[2] Her harp teacher, Diana Stork, taught her the basic pattern of four beats against three, which creates an interlocking, shifting pattern that can be heard on Ys, particularly in the middle section of “Sawdust & Diamonds.”

The media have sometimes labeled her as one of the most prominent members of the modern psych folk movement, although she does not acknowledge ties to any particular musical scene.[3] Her songwriting incorporates elements of Appalachian music, avant-garde modernism, and African kora rhythms.

Newsom’s vocal style (in the November 2006 issue of The Wire she described her voice as “untrainable”) has shadings of folk and Appalachian shaped-note timbres. Newsom has, however, expressed disappointment at comments that her singing is “child-like.”

Thanks to Betsy Gaines / Source of biographical information / Wikipedia

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Obama Rally : Bigger Than the Average Bear

Posted on October 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

As far as the eye can see:

Rally for Barack Obama on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008, in St. Louis, draws a crowd estimated by police at more than 100,000.

Source / Wall Street Journal.

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G. Gordon the Plumber : McCain’s Personal Terrorist

Posted on October 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Portrait of Special Agent George G. Liddy (now known as G. Gordon Liddy). Item from Record Group 65: Records of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1896-1994.

McCain has openly supported Liddy, an ‘unrepentent terrorist who plotted the assassination of a journalist and encouraged the murder of federal law enforcement agents.’
By John K. Wilson / October 17, 2008

It’s not Joe the Plumber that matters, it’s G. Gordon Liddy the “Plumber” of Watergate fame. David Letterman’s interview with McCain last night should prove to be absolutely devastating to the McCain campaign, if we don’t let the mainstream media ignore McCain’s relationship to Liddy while they obsess about Bill Ayers.

John McCain has defended Liddy, an ex-felon who was part of Watergate, one of the worst abuses of executive power in American history.

John McCain has knowingly attended a fundraiser at the home of Liddy, an unrepentent terrorist who plotted the assassination of a journalist and encouraged the murder of federal law enforcement agents. Yet John McCain just a year ago declared that he was “proud” of this man.

Here’s a summary of all the crimes of G. Gordon Liddy, the responses of John McCain, and the questions that need to be asked:

Last night on Letterman, here’s what McCain said.

DL: But did you not have a relationship with Gordon Liddy?

JM: I met him, you know, I mean…

DL: Didn’t you attend a fundraiser at his house? JM: Gordon Liddy’s?

“I met him”? “I met him”? And when you’re asked about attending a fundraiser at his house, you don’t answer? You don’t admit that Liddy hosted a fundraiser for you in 1998? You just say, “Gordon Liddy’s?” as if you don’t know what Letterman’s talking about?

After the commercial break, McCain quickly tried to explain himself:

JM: I know Gordon Liddy. He paid his debt. He went to prison, he paid his debt, as people do. I’m not in any way embarrassed to know Gordon Liddy. And his son, who is also a good friend and supporter of mine.

DL: But you understand that the same case could be made of your relationship with him as is being made with William Ayers.

JM: Everything about any relationship that I’ve had I will make completely open and give a complete accounting of. Senator Obama said that he was a guy who lived in the neighborhood. OK, it was more than that.

Note this: McCain said that Liddy’s son is “also a good friend and supporter of mine.” That means McCain is saying that Liddy himself is friend of his. Contrast that with Obama, who has never called Ayers his friend (David Axelrod described them as “friendly,” which is much different).

Liddy did go to prison for Watergate. Does McCain mean to say that it’s okay to pal around with criminals so long as they’ve served time in prison? (Ayers, by the way, did turn himself him; he was never convicted of a crime due to technicalities. Would McCain claim that it would be okay to hang out with Ayers if he had spent time in prison?)

But Liddy’s never served any time in prison for urging the murder of federal law enforcement officials, or for plotting the assassination of a newspaper columnist, or for encouraging the murder of possible burglars, or for illegally using firearms despite being an ex-felon. So by McCain’s logic, Liddy has never paid his debt for those actions.

McCain claims, “Senator Obama said that he was a guy who lived in the neighborhood. OK, it was more than that.” It was.

As Obama actually said: “This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis.” There’s nothing false about that.

According to a McCain TV ad, “Obama’s blind ambition. When convenient, he worked with terrorist Bill Ayers. When discovered, he lied. Obama. Blind ambition. Bad judgment.” The Washington Post fact checker concluded, “The McCain campaign is distorting the Obama-Ayers relationship, and exaggerating their closeness. There is no evidence that Obama has ‘lied’ about his dealings with Ayers.”

But you could make the same exact argument that when McCain said about Liddy, “I met him,” it was definitely “more than that.” If somebody hosts a fundraiser for you, do you honestly describe your relationship as “I met him”? McCain, unlike Obama, was lying about his relationship. McCain, unlike Obama, was actually defending an unrepentant terrorist.

Liddy (with mustache) in disguise.

In 2007, McCain went on Liddy’s radio show and told him:

I’m proud of you, I’m proud of your family….It’s always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great.

By contrast, Obama has never said that he’s “proud” of Bill Ayers

What are Liddy’s crimes? Let’s go through the details. G. Gordon Liddy is a lunatic who grew up admiring Hitler. But what really matters are his crimes. Watergate alone should be a good enough reason for any presidential candidate to avoid any association with the man whose criminal activities helped to bring down Richard Nixon.

However, Liddy’s plotting of crimes went far beyond the Watergate break-in.

At the Committee to Re-Elect the President,

Liddy concocted several plots, some far-fetched, intended to embarrass the Democratic opposition. These included firebombing the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. (where classified documents leaked by Daniel Ellsberg were being stored), kidnapping anti-war protest organizers and transporting them to Mexico during the Republican National Convention (which at the time was planned for San Diego), and luring mid-level Democratic campaign officials to a house boat in Baltimore where they would be secretly photographed in compromising positions with call girls. Most of Liddy’s ideas were rejected, but a few were given the go ahead by Nixon Administration officials, including the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office.

Liddy has Source revealed that he was prepared to murder someone “if necessary” during the Ellsberg break-in. He also said that he “plotted with a ‘gangland figure’ to murder Howard Hunt to prevent him from cooperating with investigators.”

Does John McCain support murdering people? How about kidnapping protesters? Firebombing liberal think tanks? Why is McCain defending this man?

Liddy also plotted the assassination of a journalist:

“In 1980, Liddy published an autobiography, titled Will, which sold more than a million copies and was made into a television movie. In it he states that he once made plans with Hunt to kill journalist Jack Anderson, based on a literal interpretation of a Nixon White House statement we need to get rid of this Anderson guy.”

Liddy has never expressed regret for this. In fact, in 2004, Liddy explicitly embraced the idea of murdering columnists: “If they were traitors as Jack Anderson was, directly helping the enemy, then yes.”

So, does John McCain support the murder of journalists?

Liddy also openly violates gun laws. As an ex-felon, he’s banned from owning guns. In 1990, I heard him speak at the University of Illinois and brag about how his wife owned a large collection of guns which she conveniently keeps under his side of the bed. Later in the 1990s, “he mentioned labeling targets ‘Bill’ and ‘Hillary’ when he practiced shooting.” Does McCain think that ex-felons like Liddy should have guns? Does he approve of Liddy naming his shooting targets after the President and First Lady?

And then there’s this well-known terrorism advocated by G. Gordon Liddy on his radio show, August 26, 1994:

“Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they’re going to be wearing bulletproof vests….They’ve got a big target on there, ATF. Don’t shoot at that, because they’ve got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots…. Kill the sons of bitches.”

And September 15, 1994:

“If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms insists upon a firefight, give them a firefight. Just remember, they’re wearing flak jackets and you’re better off shooting for the head.”

Here’s how Liddy later explained himself:

“The law is that if somebody is shooting at you, using deadly force, the mere fact that they are a law enforcement officer, if they are in the wrong, does not mean you are obliged to allow yourself to be killed so your kinfolk can have a wrongful death action. You are legally entitled to defend yourself and I was speaking of exactly those kind of situations. If you’re going to do that, you should know that they’re wearing body armor so you should use a head shot. Now all I’m doing is stating the law, but all the nuances in there got left out when the story got repeated.”

Of course, that’s not true (you’re not legally entitled to kill law enforcement officers, even if they are in the wrong). But it’s also not what Liddy said. Remember: “if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms.” Liddy was talking about ATF agents “bearing arms,” not shooting at people. He was talking about ATF agents trying to “disarm” people, not kill them.

In 1998, Liddy hosted a fundraiser for McCain, and has given his campaigns $5,000, including $1,000 to McCain’s current presidential campaign.

By contrast, Ayers never hosted a fundraiser for Obama (it was a meet-and-greet in 1995), and at the time Obama didn’t know about Ayers’ past. Ayers gave Obama a small donation in 2000, but nothing recently.

John McCain not only knew about Liddy’s criminal past, he knew about Liddy’s 1994 comments urging listeners to shoot law enforcement agents in the head when he attended that 1998 fundraiser at Liddy’s home.

How do we know that McCain knew about Liddy’s comments? Because it was mentioned in a Washington Post story on May 18, 1995, which noted that Liddy had been “disinvited from a recent GOP fund-raiser because of his embarrassing exhortations to shoot pesky federal law enforcement officers.” That same article discussed McCain joking around at an event with Liddy about his psychotic propensity to burn himself.

Is it really possible that McCain was unaware of the controversy about Liddy? Is it really possible that McCain didn’t hear anything about the national outrage over Liddy’s remarks? Is it really possible that McCain never heard about his own party banning Liddy from a fundraiser? Is it really possible that McCain didn’t read the Washington Post story mentioning his own name that directly addresses Liddy’s remarks? No, it’s not possible. And if McCain conveniently forgot that his buddy urged the murder of federal agents, what does that say about his judgment?

Let’s be clear-cut about this:

If you urge people to shoot federal agents in the head, you are encouraging terrorism.

If you plot the firebombing of a liberal organization, you are plotting terrorism.

If you plan the assassination of a journalist and thirty years later still embrace the idea, you are an unrepentant terrorist.

Do you disagree, John McCain?

You say, “Everything about any relationship that I’ve had I will make completely open and give a complete accounting of.” So let’s hear it: do you think this is terrorism? And why are you “proud” of this unrepentant terrorist?

McCain claims, “I think not only a repudiation but an apology for ever having anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist is due the American people.” We’re waiting for our apology, Senator McCain.

Source / The Huffington Post

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