Shame Wall Street

Petulant whining against Occupy misses the most important message of the thousands of people sitting in the parks in cities all over the country protesting, and the many thousands more who support them: more than demands, SHAME on Wall Street.

 Public shaming is, indeed, deserved.

 If you sold or supervised persons selling subprime mortgages made to fail, you are shameful. You are a liar, a fraud and a cheat and you should be in prison.

 If you made short sales on bonds backed by subprime mortgages made to fail or supervised persons making these sales, you are shameful. You are a liar, a fraud and a cheat and you should be in prison.

 If you made money from the sale of toxic derivatives ("bundles" of percentages of bad debts - like %.005 of this debt plus %.025 of this debt, etc which no one can unravel or figure out) to a pension fund or supervised persons making these sales you are shameful. Actually, if you made money from the sale of toxic derivatives, you are shameful. You are a liar, a fraud and a cheat and you should be in prison.

 If you sold "derivatives" or "collateralized debt obligations" or any of those other complicated euphemisms for fraud, you are shameful. You are a liar, a fraud and a cheat and you should be in prison.

 If you sold those fraudulent mortgage investments and then bet against your own investors, you are shameful. You are a liar, a fraud and a cheat and you should be in prison.

If you rated subprime mortgages and derivatives "AAA" - as employees of Moody's, Standard and Poor's and other debt-rating agencies did - you are shameful. You are a liar, a fraud and a cheat and you should be in prison.

Image from http://www.bilerico.com

 If you were anywhere in the food chain of these fraudulent mortgages and investments, you made money on the misery of others.  You made money on other people losing their homes. You made money on thousands of retired, elderly people losing their life savings and facing the rest of their lives with nothing to live on. You made money on families with children being made homeless. You made money on millions of people losing their homes, their jobs and everything they had. You made money on driving other people to suicide. You made money on reducing families with children to sleeping on the sidewalk.

Image from http://southfloridadailyblog.blogspot.com

You are shameful.  The very least you can expect as a result of your actions is more regulation.  If we're lucky, that will be enough.  If we're not, you'll destroy our country.  Please stop yourselves and don't require the rest of the American people to step in and stop you.

 Everything everyone on that food chain of fraudulent transaction got as a result of those fraudulent transactions - pay, bonuses, capital gains, stock options, property, etc - should be taken away from them and used to pay back those fraudulent transactions.

 If you'd like to know more about specifically who caused all this heartache, see this excellent article which names the 25 top companies responsible for the 2008 collapse and the Wall Street firms behind them. You can even go online and look up the names of specific executives of these firms to find out who was responsible:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/economic_meltdown/the_subprime_25/

Bee "Colony Collapse Disorder" caused by EPA-approved pesticide

Beekeepers, scientists, farmers and environmentalists have been alarmed by a huge spike in the number of dead bee colonies since 2006. "Colony collapse disorder," happens when worker bees leave the hive to collect nectar and don't come back. No worker bees, no food for the hive, no hive. Opinions have been leveled that this was being caused by some parasite or a fungus or a virus or climate change, that bees might become extinct.

Bee pollination is the base of our food chain. Bees pollinate all the fruit and almost all the vegetables we eat as well as the fodder we feed our cattle, chickens, pigs and other animals. Without bees there would be no wheat to make bread, no corn, no apples, no tomatoes, no beef, no milk or cheese, no humans. (1)

As reported by Grist, a leaked EPA report reveals that, in 2003, the EPA approved a pesticide its own researchers warned specifically targeted bees and would kill them; three years before we noticed the spike in Colony Collapse Disorder and that US bees were disappearing. (2)

The pesticide, clothianidin, is made by Bayer AG of Germany and Takeda Chemical Industries of Japan. (3) It is used to treat seeds which grow into plants that extrude the poison through their nectar and pollen, which would seem to be perfectly developed to kill pollinators, which are not pests.

Germany banned clothianidin and all other pesticides like it (4), along with France, Italy and Slovenia.

In 2008, the Guardian reported :"This is not the first time that Bayer, one of the world's leading pesticide manufacturers with sales of €5.8bn (£4.6bn) in 2007, has been blamed for killing honeybees. In the United States, a group of beekeepers from North Dakota is taking the company to court after losing thousands of honeybee colonies in 1995, during a period when oilseed rape in the area was treated with imidacloprid. A third of honeybees were killed by what has since been dubbed colony collapse disorder. Bayer's best selling pesticide, imidacloprid, sold under the name Gaucho in France, has been banned as a seed dressing for sunflowers in that country since 1999, after a third of French honeybees died following its widespread use. Five years later it was also banned as a sweetcorn treatment in France. A few months ago, the company's application for clothianidin was rejected by French authorities."

In 2001, clothianidin-treated seeds will grow and flower in millions of acres of American corn, canola, rapeseed and other crops. The EPA has been repeatedly sued by various groups over the use of clothiandin but has so far refused to change its status.

The author of the Grist article attempted to communicate with staff at the EPA but their responses were essentially meaningless and false. There is no good reason for the use of this dangerous pesticide and every reason to ban it.

(1) USDA National Agricultural Library
(2) EPA Report PDF
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothianidin#cite_note-Grist-0
(4) Guardian

Republican Valentines e-cards

The Huffington Post reports that the Republican National Committee is distributing Valentines e-cards making fun of various Democrats. I had a look at them and, except for Rahm Emmanuel's (which I have to admit was pretty darned funny), they were pretty boring, albeit mean spirited.

Republicans, no strangers to outrageous scandals, are in no position to throw stones in their glass house and are far better and funnier fodder for cards so without further ado, free cards you can forward to the Republican of your dreams:

Look Ridiculous to Help the Yes Men Promote Their New Film

I readily admit to stealing this from craigslist ny, it looked fine as is and I completely agree, so here it is:

If you're in or near NYC, sign up to get to wear a YES MEN Survivaball and promote the opening night of the film, The Yes Men Fix the World.

What is a Survivaball, you say? From their website:

"Wait a second. What's a Survivaball?

The Survivaball is a self-contained survival suit that allows the richest people in the world to make it through the worst climate catastrophe. It is a high-concept, high-tech, fabulously expensive 'gated community for one.'™

"What's a Survivaball really?

"The Survivaball is an inflatable costume. It looks stupid. Really stupid. It is designed to get attention - stupid amounts of attention. We (the Yes Men) first used a Survivaball to impersonate Halliburton at a Catastrophic Loss conference in Florida. We gave a speech about Halliburton's plan to save the rich and screw everyone else, and unveiled this new technology. It worked so well to get media attention for the issue, that we decided to take the show on the road, and to breed these balls like rabbits."

Survivaball on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO1Bm8Wrwe8

You, too, can have a great time looking ridiculous, irritating people and improving awareness of catastrophic climate change while earning free movie tickets!

Know Your Enemy - Who Voted to Protect Insurance Companies With Your Money, at the Cost of Your Life and Health Today?

The Senate Finance Committee voted down a public option amendment to the Baucus bill today.

Max Baucus (D-MT) authored the finance committee bill, which contains no public option but requires all Americans to purchase health insurance from private insurance companies and offers some financial assistance to some people to enable them to do so. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) offered an amendment to create a public plan option, to give us the choice to buy public insurance from a government plan if we wanted to buy it.

Every Republican on the committee voted against the public option: Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Orrin Hatch(R-UT), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Jim Bunning (R-KY), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Pat Roberts (R-KS), John Ensign (R-NV), Mike Enzi (R-WY) and John Cornyn (R-TX).

The following Democrats also voted against giving us the choice of a public option for our healthcare and for requiring us to give money to private insurance companies: Max Baucus (D-MT), Kent Conrad (D-ND), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Bill Nelson (D-FL). Democrats voting against the public option did this to protect the interests of private insurance companies who they fear will lose money if we have the choice to pick a public option over a for-profit insurance company.

Fear of loss of profits is fear of competition. The Baucus bill is protectionism of a powerful, bloated industry that preys on the American people and buys Senators to protect its profits. If their product is so good, and we've been hearing non-stop squealing from conservative Republicans that our "system" is the best in the world and nothing else can compare to it, then the health industry has nothing to fear, Americans will buy their product. If it isn't so good, don't we have the right to choose whether or not to buy it? What is less "American", less free - the right to make a choice for ourselves in the market or being forced to buy by law? I would personally prefer to have a Federal employee "between" me and my doctor than a health insurance company which pays its CEO $3million plus, sends its people to party in the Carribbean, defrauds medicare, refuses care to cancer patients and pays its stockholders before paying for my care between me and my doctor.

Members of the Finance Committee together received more than $13,000.00 in donations from the health care industry. Baucus himself has received more than $3Million and ranks as the fourth highest recipient of Big Pharma contributions. (http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/06/baucusled-coalition-receives-h.html)

"It is not just the chairman of the committee who has received massive donations. The full Finance Committee is a gluttonous embarrassment of campaign pay-offs. In 2008 the committee members received a total of $13,263,986 from industries affected by health care reform. Can we trust this committee to put the interests of the people before their donors?". (Kevin Zeese, Baltimore Chronicle, 31 May 2009, http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2009/053109Zeese.shtml)

In addition to receiving piles of health industry money, Baucus runs an office stuffed with former health lobbyists and many of his former staff have gone on to lucrative careers in the health industry.

Baucus is NOT about saving the US any money. Without a public option, this bill is budgeted by him to cost about $900Billion, that's $900Billion of our tax money promised by Baucus to private, for-profit health insurance companies. In addition, Baucus created a provision that proposes FINES for individuals and families who don't buy their insurance, despite the President explicitly stating that no reform plan could include either fines or a requirement that people must buy insurance. Baucus' plan was leaked to the press Tuesday before it was seen at the White House. (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, AP, Sep 29, 2009, http://www.kcby.com/home/related/57816717.html)Baucus was also responsible for legislation the prevents the federal government from dickering for drug prices with Big Pharma - that's right, Baucus made sure that we all have to pay MORE for federal drug costs to protect pharmaceutical profits, that we have to pay whatever they tell us it costs.

During the committee hearings, Baucus blatantly refused to allow single-payer advocates to appear before the committee or permit any testimony on the possibility of a single-payer system, despite the fact that many Americans want and request a single-payer system.

Of course, we'd all have liked to have had a look at the bill before the finance committee served it up, unfortunately Baucus refused to make it available online, he said it would take too long.

The Baucus bill is such a complete disaster, I'd call it an act of treason. Baucus has betrayed and embarrassed his own party and the President, betrayed his constituents and the American people. He promised to sell the health and future of the American people to the private health industry, mainly insurance companies and drug companies. The Baucus requires us all to make them rich at our expense and the expense of our children. It is not a health bill, it is not a reform in any way, it is TREASON.

Rush Limbaugh's Marie Antionette Moment

Today Randi Rhodes made a statement attributed to Rush Limbaugh which I found so outrageous that I couldn't believe it was true and went to the web to track down the actual quote. I never rely on the media to report accurately or on the truth of any provocative statement anyone makes to me without researching it myself until I'm satisfied as to the facts of whatever it is. I thought the best place to check this statement would be Limbaugh's transcripts, on his own site. Amazingly, unfortunately, as usual, Ms. Rhodes wasn't exaggerating and she didn't get it wrong.

Rush Limbaugh compared the US healthcare crisis to choices for care for dogs.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_061509/content/01125107.guest.html

"Animals are, by definition, pets, essentially helpless. They become domesticated they become dependent on human beings. They attach themselves, some might say they fall in love with their human beings, it's a debatable thing but they still do get attached and so they're cared for. I go through this list of options that a dog owner has for its health, for its well-being and they're all in the private sector, and there's no federal dog health care plan out there and it's working just fine. And it's based on the dog owner's ability to pay. There's no insurance involved. Some of them don't even take credit cards. But it works."

Besides the obvious fact that this is just absolute CRAP, "it" doesn't work. If I can't afford to take care of a dog, and many people can't, I don't have one. I don't have that option for my health - if I can't afford health, I don't have it?

Many people never take their pets to the vet because they can't afford it. Craigslist is full of people who can't afford to feed or get vet care for a pet asking for help before they have to kill their pet. We've all known people throughout our lives who've "put down" a pet that needed surgery or was severely injured. It's been my experience that it's pretty standard for the vet to offer to kill your animal painlessly as an alternative to surgery or in case of a severe injury. I NEVER want to see a day when the doctor offers to put down one of my children because they're severely injured and I can't afford surgery.

Legend has Marie Antoinette, queen of France, responding to being told that the peasants were starving because they had no bread, "No bread? Then let them eat cake." This quote was probably falsely attributed to Marie Antoinette to make her look like a better candidate for execution following the French Revolution. Unlike Marie Antoinette, Limbaugh really DID say this.

This statement is either so unbelievable, so clueless, so absolutely out of touch with real people's lives OR he's a completely treasonous media whore who will say or do anything for the Republican cause, regardless of the damage that it does to the rest of us.

Either way, this is a man who doesn't give a tinker's damn about any other American citizen or, indeed, any other human being and who is completely unfit for public life of any kind.

Break out the guillotine.

"Satan Tells Us it's A-OK!" Calling Out Dick Cheney

Cheney's little PR tour is just the most surreal political moment of my life. It's like he's just begging to be prosecuted! Please, can't we put this man out of our misery and grant his unsubtle request?