Bullitt list -- 05.05.10

Today's category:
Hope & Change update

I remarked once upon a time that the famous Hope and Change campaign that swept the current president into office on a tide of schmaltz and triteness wouldn't actually change anything. Well, I've been seeing some headlines lately that indicate that things actually have been changing...

..for the worse.

• One of the things Comrade Obama promised to "change" was the general lack of transparency among government agencies. After all, we're supposed to have a government of the people, by the people, for the investment banks people. Hard to achieve that when the people aren't allowed to know what's going on with the government.
  
  Luckily, Obama put his best people on the task of increasing government transparency. That's why, after a year and a half, federal agencies are NOT more transparent.
  
  In fact, some agencies in the Obama Administration are using trumped up exceptions to Freedom of Information requests more than they did in the previous year.

  Major agencies cited the "deliberative process" exemption at least 70,779 times during the 2009 budget year, up from 47,395 times during President George W. Bush's final full budget year... Obama was president for nine months in the 2009 period.

  I guess we'll just have to rely on the Ministry of Truth to tell us what we need to know.
  
  
• But hey, at least we still have a free press in our country, right? In fact, we have the most open journalistic culture in the world. Our reporters have more access to more government officials than any other country in the world, free or otherwise, right?
  
  Well, not so fast my friend. According to the annual report from Freedom House, press freedom around the world declined for an 8th consecutive year, and the United States press now ranks 24th in press freedoms (PDF). And that's before factoring in recent events wherein CEOs of major U.S. corporations who lost their latest techie toy pull strings to have law enforcement authorities harass poor, hard-working journalists.
  


• And speaking of law enforcement authorities, the Obama Administration has has the dubious distinction of overseeing a new record for people under wiretap surveillance. Wired recently reported a 26 percent jump in police wiretapping.

  Courts authorized 2,376 criminal wiretap orders in 2009, with 96 percent targeting mobile phones in drug cases, according to the report. ... Not one request for a wiretap was turned down.
  
  Each wiretap caught the communications of an average of 113 people, meaning that 268,488 people had text messages or phone calls monitored through the surveillance in 2009, a new record. Only 19 percent of the intercepted communications were incriminating...

  This sort of thing shouldn't be surprising given Obama's history of supporting domestic spying. Still, you might want to be careful who you criticize when you're on the phone with your crazy, conspiracy theory uncle.


• Not that you're worried about the government spying on you. Why would they care who you are? As long as you mind your own business, go to your job every day, pay your mortgage, do what the authorities tell you, pay your taxes.... oops. You forgot to mail your tax return, didn't you. Well, I guess there's a satellite-based missile with your name on it...
  
  



• Okay, maybe saying there's a satellite-based missile with your name on it is a bit of an exaggeration. Because despite the spying, censorship and opaque bureaucratic machinations, if there's one thing our government never does it's assassinate its citizens.
  
  Well, almost never. It turns out the Obama administration has ordered a hit on a U.S. citizen, effectively approving a death penalty sentence without a judge or jury or due process of law.

  The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them.

  Kind of surprising that there haven't been any protests or marches against the administration's abuse of a citizen's civil liberties. Maybe it's because al-Awlaki is a legal US citizen and not a illegal alien.
  

tagged: Bullitt, hitman, Obama, freedom, hope, change, Anwar al-Awlaki, spying, wire tap

YouTube Tuesday: Tears of a clone

I like this short film from the Independent Online Cinema team in London who imagine a dystopian not-too-distant future when clones, and clones of clones, struggle for a sense of identity and the last remaining green goo.

IOC shows that you can have pretty high production value for web-based video and still not break the bank.

Let me know what you think.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, movie, short film, clone, dystopia, Independent Online Cinema

Racing Arizona

Politicians and their sheeple have done a great job this year of bringing back race as a wedge issue.

We were all really concerned that once a black president was elected we would all finally move beyond race and racism, but it's a relief that they have recognized that race as a political wedge issue is still very valuable.

Just look at how well it has been used. If you think we're over taxed, it's because you're racist. If you think the government is spending money on the wrong thing, you're a racist. If you disagree with passing a law mandating 30 million new customers for the insurance industry, it must be because you are a racist.

If you think hundreds of teens should be home studying or working at a productive job on Friday nights instead of rioting on the Country Club Plaza? Well son, you're a damn racist.

Yes sir. Despite all of the hope and change, the race card is alive and well in politics today. Just look at all of mileage the race baiters are getting out of this new Arizona Illegal Immigration law.

Before even reading or understanding the law at all, Koolaid drinkers flew off the handle calling it unfair and racist. I'm no lawyer, and I haven't gone through the legislation with a fine toothed comb, but my friend R.Sherman is, and he has. He's a great guy despite being a lawyer and he points out that the Arizona law essentially takes current federal law and makes it Arizona State law, except that the Arizona law is more lax than federal law.

Look, I'm on record as being pretty status quo on illegal immigration.I certainly don't condone it anymore than I condone any other illegal activity. But then again, of all the problems we have in our country, I don't think illegal immigration is the worst.

To the people who are acting all outraged about the supposed racial injustice of the Arizona law, I question your sincerity. I don't think you're really worried about the rights of illegal immigrants. More likely, your worried about your voting blocks and creating a wedge issue.

That's to bad because there are real, legitimate reasons to not like the Arizona law. Just from what I've read I don't think it's racist, I just don't like the idea of giving the police more excuses to hassle us. Frankly, I think we're putting ourselves at more and more risk when we give the government more reasons to stop us and demand identification.

I mean let's face it. The human rights train left the station long ago. We've already pretty much established that the Bill of Rights is more of a punchline than a protection against government abuses.

But rather than trying to limit government abuses, we've done everything we can as a society to encourage it. We basically said "Here Uncle Same, take half my income. Take care of my neighbors so I don't have to. While you're at take care of my health and retirement planning as well. What? You say you need to read my emails and listen to my phone calls so that you can keep me from doing something that it bad for me? Well, okay. You know best."

And now you're worried about abuses in Arizona? Well, you should be. But as I've said before, we have ourselves to blame. When we put too much faith in "the authorities" to look out for us you can't be too surprised when those abuses inevitably occur. If we make the government collectively responsible for everything, then the governed aren't individually responsible for anything.

You can't have a nanny state without also having a police state.

tagged: race, politics, Arizona, immigration, law, illegal

Random Photo XXVII: Cardinal

This guy and his wife have made my backyard and the backyard of two of my neighbors their home for the last few years. Nice to see that they survived the winter.

tagged: Random, Photo, cardinal, bird, Kansas City, Johnson County, spring

Eat the rich

There was something I wanted to keyboard about a couple of weeks ago, but because I've got a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day, I didn't have time to get to it.

That's what happens with us salary types sometimes. Gotta punch the clock so you can bring home the Benjamins and, more importantly, pay the taxes without which everyone would get sick and die, starve and die, not have roads and die, or just generally freak the fuck out and die.

Ah, yes. That's what it was. I wanted to keyboard something about taxes. It was around April 15, Tax Day ... or as I call it, Pull Down My Pants and Slide On The Ice Day.

At the time there was a pretty concerted pro-tax increase public relations effort put forth by... well, who knows but the source was probably somewhere deep in the bowls of our bloated federal bureaucracy. Even a media avoider like me couldn't dodge the bevy of stories featuring "rich" people who want to pay more taxes. I first heard the NPR version of the story, but it was also pretty common in print and on blogs.

And I take the stories at face value. I mean, if the Washington Post reports …

"I'm in favor of higher taxes on people like me," declared Eric Schoenberg, who is sitting on an investment banking fortune. He complained about "my absurdly low tax rates."

… I'll take their word that this guy Schoenberg exists and that he wants to pay more taxes. According to the reporting, he's not alone.

But there's something fishy about such a sentiment. For one thing, what people like Schoenberg are saying (if they actually exist) is that they want the government to raise taxes on other people. This is a pretty common liberal viewpoint. And by liberal, I mean the current Democrats and Republicans who seem to think we can continue buying everything for everybody without having to eventually pay for it.

That's all well and good. I've pretty much started to come to grips with the fact that the battle is over and the forces of fiscal restraint have lost. Americans (those who bother to pay attention anymore) have discovered that it's easier to vote themselves other people's money and outsource their social responsibility for their neighbors to the government.

I just find it a bit silly that they feel like they have to wage a PR war to assuage their guilt. They're trying to convince me that raising taxes will be a good thing. That even the rich people want their taxes raised because they want to pay more taxes. Okay. Fine. Let the good times roll.

But here's the thing. If rich people want to pay more in taxes, they can. Now. Without any acts of congress or anything. If you're a rich bastard, you don't have to shelter all of your earnings. You don't have to hide your assets. You don't have to take the millions of deductions on your tax return.

Hell, I bet you could even write out a check for $50,000, take it to your local IRS office and just plain donate it to your government that is cash strapped because of its investments in General Motors and insane foreign wars. You'd probably even get a tax deduction for your donation.

So yeah rich people. If you're feeling guilty about not paying enough taxes, then by all means pay more. Just don't expect me to buy in to the BS that I'm getting a good value for my tax dollar.

tagged: Rich, income tax, policy, General Motors, government, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett

YouTube Tuesday: Beck

Well, it looks like nobody is going to respond to my request for free tickets to tomorrow's Jeff Beck concert at Starlight.

There was a time when I wouldn't really think twice about drop a couple of c-notes to go see one of the last true guitar heroes. But for now, my economic priorities are firmly placed on a Supermodel Wife and two beautiful daughters. So for now, I'll be satisfied watching YouTube videos of the master at work.



tagged: YouTube, Tuesday, movie, music, guitar, Jeff Beck, Starlight Theatre

Monday punch

Ever have one of those days?




tagged: Monday, punch, blood, humor, animated gif

Random Photo XXVI: This bud's for you

The flower-works show we've enjoyed over the past couple of weeks has almost been worth the long winter wait and the tree pollen allergy attacks from which I may never recover.

tagged: tree, flower, spring, Random Photo, Kansas City

TARPitecture

Don't you hate it when you're trying to have a conversation, trying to reply to a comment, and you realize you've gone passed the character limit?

Happens to me quite often no matter how brief and economical I try to be with the words.

Anyway, there's this awesome cat, Lodo Grdzak, who classes up my joint every once in a while. I always appreciate when he stops by to leave a comment because even though we disagree on a lot of things, he's always thoughtful and writes intelligently. Seriously, this guy has some great perspective, an original voice, great stories and amazing taste in music. Really, if I wasn't already married... Well, I highly suggest you make his blog a regular stop in your RSS reader.

So why do I bring this up? Well I'm glad I asked.

Lodo dropped by recently and commented on my previous post re: Goldman Sachs. Here it is in it's entirety:

As a bit of a digression, I couldn't help but notice you failed to mention the billions of dollars made by the government in the TARP bailouts. Not only was all TARP money paid back; but at a huge profit to the government. Even Citi's loan (the most volatile of the banks) would yield a $10 billion profit to the government if we cashed-in our Citi stock now. But the government's waiting 'cause we'll make a lot more money than that. Obama's handling of the financial crisis (the worst since the Depression--'caused by Libertarian speculators that didn't want SEC oversight within the financial institutions) has been nothing short of genius. Particularly when you consider he handled it while planning war strategy in Afghanistan, passed health care reform (easy task I know), and had to appoint a Supreme Court judge. GM has paid back close to $2 billion dollars of their loan, and once they start selling stock again, the government's gonna clean up on that deal. All while maintaining 900,000 jobs. When you're wrong, you're wrong. And you should admit that the bailouts worked and retract comments you've made in the past that said they wouldn't.

I started to respond, but again ran out of characters. So I wanted to get this out there as a new post because, wow, there are a lot of claims in all of that.

I'll try to respond to each the best I can. But let me start by saying everyone should go easy on the Obama Koolaid. It's potent stuff.

I won't call the TARP campaign a "success" as such. Yes, companies have been saved. But we have succeeded in saving companies that should not have been saved in the first place. We have continued a precedence that started in the 1970s, where the government puts a ton of money behind a failed busies keeping it alive long after it should have died. These zombie corporations only serve to encourage bad/risky behavior by other business down the line.

If a company has no fear of being buried, it has no reason to act responsibly. John Q. Taxpayer is always there to bail them out as long as you grease the right palms in Washington. Hey, don't take my word for it. People much smarter than me have already pointed this out. I'm just the messenger, man.Secondly, in regards to the success of the bailouts, I think it's important to note that the TARP program was "only" $700 billion. Yes, that is an insane amount of money to waste on zombie corporations. But keep in mind that amount is a fraction of the $12 TRILLION committed in all of the bailout schemes.

The assertion that GM has totally repaid it's TARP loan is somewhat true. The problem is that, of the $50 billion that GM borrowed, it repaid only $6.7 billion in cash. The rest, was "repaid" in equity in the company, which means that the US Government owns 60 percent of post-bankruptcy GM. Since that stock is no longer traded, you can't really peg a value to that 60% holding, but it sure as hell isn't worth $43 billion (last trade was for 75 cents a share).

Furthermore, I'm sorry but saying that TARP has been totally repaid is just incorrect. According to ProPublica, just over $391 billion was disbursed, of which more than $186 billion is still outstanding. If you include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in that, there's another $119 billion outstanding, bringing the total to over $300 billion that still needs to be repaid.

Regarding Citi, I'm not sure what Lodo's source was, but again according to ProPublica, Citigroup took $45 billion from the government and has returned about $23 billion, leaving them $22 billion in debt to us taxpayers. It's difficult to accept that we would realize a $10 billion profit "if we would cash in our stock" because the stock would immediately resume its downward spiral if the government decided to sell it.

Lodo also points out that the government-owned companies have seen nice stock gains, or at least stable stocks. This shouldn't be a surprise. Taking the investor's point of view, buying stock in a company owned by the US Government is pretty much a sure thing. Since we have a couple of years before our government is crushed under the fiscal weight of entitlements, bailouts and pork spending, investors can rest assured that companies owned by the government have been and will be bailed out of any mismanagement. At least until society completely breaks down in 2012 and we all get jobs as Road Warriors.

However, you should keep you eye on those stocks if/when Uncle Sam decides to sell.

As for the jobs situation, The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that nearly half of states are still reporting increases in unemployment. Unemployment is still above 9 percent nationally, so it's still too soon to congratulate Obama on his masterful handling of jobs and employment policy.

The war stuff? Well, we're still at war, we'll have troops in the Iraq and Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, and Obama supporters don't seem to care about that now that it's their guy in office.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this it that we're a long way from me admitting I was wrong about the bailouts.

---

EDTI. — In response a question about citing Pro Publica as as source, they are an independent group of journalists and one of the few highly credible information sources on the Internet. Here's what they say in their About page:

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

I strongly suggest you begin frequenting their website.

---

tagged: Obama, bailouts, TARP, Doomsday Cycle, economy, General Motors, unemployment

Springtime for Goldman

A bloggy friend recently twitted me that I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with Goldman Sachs.

And honestly, I don't have much of a defense. I do think Goldman Sachs is one of the groups most responsible for the global financial meltdown of the last two years. They've got their greedy little fingers in pretty much every nefarious deal that has been brought to light.

Goldman Sachs employees or former employees are in positions of power in multiple governments (just ask the Greeks how well that works out). They masterfully pulled strings to get bajillions of dollars in government bailouts for themselves and their sweetheart business partners (courtesy of what every Obama apologist I meet tells me is a lower tax burden for myself). The result of that bailout? How about a second quarter of record profits

Goldman Sachs said today its first-quarter earnings almost doubled to $3.3 billion as its trading business again surpassed the rest of the financial industry. … It was Goldman's second most profitable quarter since going public in 1999. In the fourth quarter, Goldman Sachs earned a record $4.79 billion.

So yeah, I don't think I'm alone when I took a little delight in seeing that Goldman Sachs was the target of a civil fraud lawsuit from the SEC (although I do wonder what took the SEC so long. Must have taken longer than they thought to bury the worst evidence connecting Goldman to the Obama administration… but that's a different post.)

There's a lot of financial industry jargon and legalese involved in the complaint by the SEC. NPR's Planet Money does a great job of explaining it, but I'm going to try to make it even simpler.

It basically breaks down like this:

1. A hedge fund scumbag named John Paulson wanted to make a huge bet against the ability of suckas to pay their NINJA mortgages, hoping to make a ton of money when the real estate bubble (that Goldman helped create) burst and people started losing their homes. To do this he needed a kind of bond that would be composed of high risk mortgages that were sure to fail soon.
   
   
2. Goldman stepped in and said their buddies at ACA Management, a kind of wholesale company in the bond business, would be happy to build this bond (or else!) and then Goldman Sachs would sell it for them.
   
   
3. So Paulson and ACA got together, picked out a shit-ton of absolute crap mortgages and built the bond, also called a CDO (collateralized debt obligation). The mortgages in the bond were carefully selected so that Paulson and Goldman Sachs could be sure the CDO would fail.
   
   
4. Paulson then bought a bunch of insurance on the CDO that would pay him off big when the CDO eventually when tits up.
   
   
5. In the meantime, Goldman sold the CDO to institutional investors like banks, pension funds and orphanages. Note, they raked in a lot of cabbage in commissions from these deals.
   
   
6. When the housing market collapsed, the CDO failed just like it was designed to, and Paulson and Goldman Sachs made a fuckwad of money from their insurance bets (their short positions).

This scheme may sound vaguely familiar, especially to you Broadway and/or Mel Brooks fans. It's basically the same thing Max Bialystock was trying to do in The Producers, except Goldman Sachs succeeded in failing.



So, the SEC says Goldman Sachs and Paulson defrauded investors by saying that the CDO was built to succeed when in fact they themselves had engineered it to fail.

Of course, it also looks like they engineered a patsy in this whole scheme as well. They've bought a witness to say that he told ACA that Paulson's hedge fun planned to bet against the CDO, thus putting the responsibility on ACA to disclose how crappy of an investment it would be.

So apparently Goldman will get away with defrauding investors and the public. But that's okay, at least the Obama administration can claim that they tried.

tagged: SEC, lawsuit, Goldman Sachs, CDO, The Producers, Max Bialystock, John Paulson