Truth

Greetings good citizen,

Yet another day dawns over our crumbling civilization while our ‘anonymous leaders’ nod with satisfaction as their plans unfold unhindered…

Funny how the ‘prosperity’ of the post WWII era now looks like a propaganda campaign. We were only ‘prosperous’ because we ‘believed’ we were prosperous, (the man on the TV told us it was so!)

Now that we look back on it, not so much…

More interesting is the sudden ‘re-appearance’ of our ancient foe, Poverty.

Like polio and tuberculosis, the welfare state (allegedly) ‘exterminated’ poverty…but both of these medical scourges are back…and why do you suppose that is?

Because their old friend ‘poverty’ has returned and created fertile ground for these scourges to thrive in!

Then Willy Jeff Clinton killed welfare… and look who’s back!

Harrington’s book jolted a nation that then prided itself on its classlessness and even fretted about the spirit-sapping effects of “too much affluence.” He estimated that one quarter of the population lived in poverty -- inner-city blacks, Appalachian whites, farm workers, and elderly Americans among them. We could no longer boast, as President Nixon had done in his “kitchen debate” with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow just three years earlier, about the splendors of American capitalism.

At the same time that it delivered its gut punch, The Other America also offered a view of poverty that seemed designed to comfort the already comfortable. The poor were different from the rest of us, it argued, radically different, and not just in the sense that they were deprived, disadvantaged, poorly housed, or poorly fed. They felt different, too, thought differently, and pursued lifestyles characterized by shortsightedness and intemperance. As Harrington wrote, “There is… a language of the poor, a psychology of the poor, a worldview of the poor. To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society.”

Harrington did such a good job of making the poor seem “other” that when I read his book in 1963, I did not recognize my own forbears and extended family in it. All right, some of them did lead disorderly lives by middle class standards, involving drinking, brawling, and out-of-wedlock babies. But they were also hardworking and in some cases fiercely ambitious -- qualities that Harrington seemed to reserve for the economically privileged.

While I shake a crooked finger at a former president, the problem goes deeper than that. Poverty has ‘resurged’ because we have failed to abolish capitalism!

I almost wrote ‘predatory’ in front of the word capitalism but that infers that there is a non-predatory variety of capitalism and that simply isn’t true!

There’s just no way you can stack ‘fuck you, pay me’ into a non-predatory outcome!

Remember good citizen, if you can’t survive on what they pay you, it’s not their problem but YOURS!

Odd how this little ditty brings us full circle to the crux of the problem, one that few even acknowledge exists. One where if YOU ‘own’ the, er, ‘media outlet’, you get to decide what is or is not ‘true’.

It’s not that the ‘owner’ of the media can’t stand to look in the mirror, often they understand full well that they are ‘propagating falsehoods’.

But they also understand that if they, er, ‘offend’ their advertisers, they’ll starve.

Thus do we encounter the first line of ‘live on your knees’ cycle. You may know you’re doing the job ‘wrong’ but that’s the way the man cutting the paychecks wants it done.

YOU are in no position to question his judgement (if you want to keep that paycheck coming!) You just do it the way he pays you to do it and you shut up.

One of the most prevalent messages one learns down here on the bottom of the food chain is YOU aren’t being paid to think, you’re being paid to DO AS YOU’RE TOLD!

When outsiders question the (often unwise) methods of the owner that same individual is quick to point to the men themselves and claim that’s they way they WANT TO DO the job…(and it’s no skin off of his ass so long as it gets done on time, correctly!)

Things are set up the way they are because that’s the way BONEHEAD PAID to have them set up! But even the most casual observer knows that…so it is unclear whom, precisely, he thinks he’s fooling.

Which brings us to another serious issue, the ‘cattle in the chute’ dilemma.

For all of our (alleged) ‘freedoms’ you actually get to make very few choices ‘on your own’…which is to point out that your choices are limited by other factors that are beyond your control…

Your job on the back of a rubbish truck does not afford you a fully staffed ocean front estate with which to call ‘home’.

Which leads us to the rough edge of an entirely different problem that we won’t go into right here and now…(but I sure would like to!)

Back to ‘cattle in a chute’…and we aren’t talking ‘rodeo’ here good citizen, we’re talking ‘slaughterhouse’, which, ironically, makes those herding the rest of us to our doom, er, ‘cannibals’.

Despite the fact that they don’t ‘eat what they kill’ (not yet anyway.)

Just wait until they put a ‘price per pound’ on what our betters consider the largest ‘pest problem’ challenging their continued ‘rulership.’

Because at the end of the day good citizen it ALWAYS comes down to the question of ‘how far will you go in order to maintain your current level of privilege?’

How sad is it good citizen that the ‘honest answer’ to that question goes way beyond what would normally be considered ‘depraved’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Caged

Greetings good citizen,

Some articles have the effect of waving a red cape at a Bull, it infuriates the animal just as articles like this infuriate me! (although there is some debate as the whether it is the waving motion alone or the color red, since Bulls are supposedly color blind, that incites their ire.)

When this sorry excuse for a human being passed away a few months ago the corporate owned media reacted as though the USA had lost one of its ‘leading lights’ as opposed to one of its greediest psychopaths.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"They could hire 3,000 people overnight. What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?"

JENNIFER RIGONI, Apple's worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, on the advantages of using foreign plants.

The suicide rate at Foxconn is an international scandal…is THIS what ‘employers’ want?

Seriously good citizen, this is what the ‘us vs. them’ mindset is leading to! Animals who live on ‘production farms’ working 16 hour shifts for peanuts…and that may well be precisely what/all they get, peanut butter!

The question has disintegrated from ‘what’s fair’ to ‘who’s worth it’…and I’d hate to be the one without a large caliber, high rate of fire weapon in my hands when that question is being decided…

The human anti-exploitation law does what is necessary. It voids the employer/employee contract out of hand (and believe me, it will be tantamount to killing them!)

Nobody can ‘sell’ their labor just as nobody can buy it (for personal gain.)

But (naturally) this isn’t going to happen on its own.

Um, as the ‘Overton Window’ keeps shifting rightward (towards absolute control) the issue of ‘fairness’ is, er, modified into ‘who deserves fairness’?

Increasingly, good citizen, you are not included in these ‘calculations’.

When your humanity is no longer enough to earn you ‘just consideration’ it is time set the forces of revolution into motion.

For verily you and yours will be slaughtered like animals and with just as much ‘consideration’.

You may consider yourself a ‘child of god’ but those who would exterminate you like vermin don’t count you as a child of THEIR god! (Which is why the whole ‘god thing’ sucks…but that’s another can of worms!)

And God is certainly in the ‘drivers seat’ of the Republican nomination process!

What most of you don’t realize is ‘that god’ is the ‘righteous and angry’ god of capitalism!

Here is a god with few children, a ‘chosen few’ as a matter of fact! So few it is ludicrous to think they could win election (which is why we were switched from the one person/one vote method to the one dollar (share)/one vote system like the one used in the corporate boardroom.)

Speaking of ‘buying’ elections, what do you make of Newt’s come from behind victory in South Carolina yesterday?

Again, while we’re on the subject I’d like to remind you that only ‘one in five’ eligible voters self-identify as Republican, it is the alleged ‘independents’ that keeps swinging them over the top. (Read: allows the corporate media to keep ‘stealing’ elections!)

Um, there is no ‘delicate’ way to phrase this because the disturbingly lopsided coverage of this election process tells us something frightening.

What’s ‘up for grabs’ this coming election cycle is who ‘does’ and who ‘does not’ count as human.

The fucktard from Apple says it straight out, would American workers ‘agree’ to live in a ‘dorm’ (pen/cage) and work around the clock for (virtually) nothing?

Just an opinion here but I think everybody who has an Apple product should discard it immediately…and shun all things Apple (especially their stock!)

Why are we suffering from staggering unemployment? Because Rapacious Employers would rather work a few people 16 hours a day, 7 days a week than spread those jobs around for all who need them!

Did I mention our civilization is EXTREMELY mismanaged? (Funny thing about society, you have to 'participate' to be a member!)

Well, this is not an ‘accident’. This is what happens when ‘hooray for me and fuck everybody else capitalists take over!

They don’t give a shit if it sucks for you! That’s your problem…until YOU make it THEIRS!

And I can’t say it any plainer than that.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

The (abandoned) Rule of Law...

Greetings good citizen,

As usual, yesteday provided a veritable Bonanza of evidence regarding both the moral and physical collapse of our civilization. Today we only have a a recycled piece from yesterday

As the Atlantic inquiry observes, “The decision to kill bin Laden outright was the clearest illustration to date of a little-noticed aspect of the Obama administration's counterterror policy. The Bush administration captured thousands of suspected militants and sent them to detention camps in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. The Obama administration, by contrast, has focused on eliminating individual terrorists rather than attempting to take them alive.” That is one significant difference between Bush and Obama.

The authors quote former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who told German TV that the U.S. raid was ‘quite clearly a violation of international law’ and that bin Laden should have been detained and put on trial.” Contrasting Schmidt with US Attorney General Eric Holder, who “defended the decision to kill bin Laden although he didn't pose an immediate threat to the Navy SEALs, telling a House panel on Tuesday that the assault had been ‘lawful, legitimate and appropriate in every way.”

Like a lot of things in life, people have a problem with ‘due process’, they are all too willing to deny it to those painted as monsters by the Corporate owned media and equally as quick to demand it when the spotlight shines on them.

This is why due process exists in the first place, (not that it can’t be ‘gamed’, in fact they do it all the time, which is why I’m down on ‘judges’.)

Like the improbable label ‘expert’, nobody is qualified to sit in judgement of anyone else.

Juries do not judge the accused, they loan the court their ‘moral compass’ which is used to ‘weigh’ the context and legitimacy of the act in question.

Is the law a ‘slippery slope?’

Only when you have to defend yourself or your actions does it become ‘complicated’, we seem completely at ease when it comes to deciding the rightness or wrongness of another’s actions.

So, should they have ‘executed’ Osama?

Let’s take a walk down memory lane and ask the same question of Adolph Hitler.

Most will agree Herr Hitler was a ‘beast’ when it came to human rights. Should he have been ‘summarily executed’ upon his capture or should he have been granted the same, er, ‘rights’ other members of The Third Reich received?

Hell, we even gave Saddam his day in court…(a kangaroo court) but he got his day in court all the same.

Which is to point out that ‘going through the motions’ doesn’t mean ‘justice’ was served by any stretch of the imagination.

The issue here is NOT for us to decide whether or not Osama deserved to die, none of us is qualified to make that judgement.

What you are being asked here, good citizen is the straightforward question of whether or not you think our ‘justice system’ is broken?

Oh, and P.S. by the way, it is only in pieces like this one that you are asked such questions. Those who make decisions in your name without ever consulting you would sooner take cyanide than ask for your ‘approval’ of their job performance.

Does this matter? Why bring it up if it is meaningless?

Most of you are aware that ‘equal treatment under the law’ is the glue that holds our society together.

So what does it mean when we witness these, er, superjudicial events that make a mockery of that concept?

I know most of you ‘don’t give a fuck’, you’ve got bigger problems to deal with.

It’s one of those ‘frog in the pot of cool water’ problems. It’s not an issue until some asshole decides to put the pot on top of the fire.

Understand, if they don’t do their job properly under ‘normal’ circumstances then they can’t be relied upon to suddenly do it ‘by the book’ the moment you get swept up into the system.

Perhaps more disturbing is to witness top officials claim that the ‘hit’ on Bin Laden was both ‘legitimate’ and perfectly legal.

Um, one of the issues that inevitably surfaces under these circumstances is just how far do US laws extend? Do they extend beyond the borders of the US and do they apply to foreign nationals?

Which is beside the point if the perpetrator/actor is in the US (at the time) and under the jurisdiction of US law.

Understand that this little drama would not have happened if it weren’t first sanctioned by (as it turns out) the President hisself.

(Please forgive my bizarre ‘wit’, I know ‘hisself’ is a misspelling of the pronoun himself.)

Talk about your ‘slippery slope’, just where does a president’s ‘power’ end?

An even more perplexing problem if we take the ‘puppet government’ issue into consideration, (meaning the man making the decision is really just ‘following orders’.)

But, as you know, I digress…

Hell, it wouldn’t be one of my posts if it didn’t go screaming like a liquored up warrior straight off the reservation!

Disturbing BUT it is what it is.

For your consideration is the danger this presents for you and yours good citizen.

The time to act is BEFORE you have been condemned to 30 years hard labor…(for violating the fucking seat belt law!)

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

People don't think...

Greetings good citizen,

Stock markets around the globe are bleeding from the eyesockets (for the second consecutive week.) First it was chalked up to ‘fears’ surrounding the crippled Japanese economy and now it seems we are back to an issue that was supposedly ‘put to bed’ nearly a year ago.

I’m certain it doesn’t help to remind you that there were people saying it wasn’t enough even before the deal was sealed…but they were ‘brushed off’ and not heard from again.

Hell, even I have been saying for more than two years now that there was 'no possible solution'. It is impossible to ‘head-off’ a total financial collapse without a complete overhaul of the financial system.

And no, I am not trying to say I was ‘ahead of the curve’ on the European situation (even though I was in the respect of no solution here, by extension, means there is no solution there either.)

Any, onwards with today’s first offering

Investors fretted that the debt crisis was turning more acute because of mounting speculation Greece would have to restructure its debts, a warning from a leading credit ratings agency over Italy’s public finances, and a heavy defeat for Spain’s governing Socialists in regional elections.

The renewed jitters were particularly visible in stock markets, where most leading indexes around the world shed over 1 percent of their value. The euro was also in the firing line, briefly dropping 2 cents on the day to $1.3976 before recovering a bit to $1.4032, the first time since March it traded below $1.40.

Why the big fuss over, of all things, Greek sovereign debt?

You’ll have to shift mental gears with me if you want to chase this improbable chimera down because it really is ‘fuck you, pay me’ at its finest!

Because the biggest question that is continually ‘glossed over’ by the corporate owned media is precisely who (individual(s) or entities) is all of this debt owed to?

The ‘general’ answer is the banks, with no particular bank being painted as any more guilty/responsible than any other.

Um, also ‘not up for discussion/debate’ is who is liable for the bad decision to make these ginormous loans?

And guess who ends up taking it in the shorts regardless of who signed on the line…

Yup, the taxpayer! (Read: non-wealthy resident. Wealthy people don’t pay taxes.)

So, do we have a ‘political problem’ on our hands or do we have a legal problem…or, wait a minute, it could be BOTH!

The greatest ‘scam’ ever pulled is the banks putting the public on the hook for loan(s) it never should have made!

The ‘solution’ here is to prosecute the banks but the banks ‘own’ too many politicians.

Leaving the only viable solution as hanging the politicians for treason!

I keep repeating and honestly believe we will see the day when the key figures involved in this scam are sent to the gallows to be publicly executed.

Um, the ones who manage to survive the not so public lynchings. Sadly we can only hang them once.

In today’s second offering we have a fresh perspective:

On one side, Germany is taking a hard line against anything resembling aid to its troubled neighbors, even though one important motivation for the current rescue program was an attempt to shield German banks from losses.

On the other side, the E.C.B. is acting as if it is determined to provoke a financial crisis. It has started to raise interest rates despite the terrible state of many European economies. And E.C.B. officials have been warning against any form of debt relief — in fact, last week one member of the governing council suggested that even a mild restructuring of Greek bonds would cause the E.C.B. to stop accepting those bonds as collateral for loans to Greek banks. This amounted to a declaration that if Greece seeks debt relief, the E.C.B. will pull the plug on the Greek banking system, which is crucially dependent on those loans.

At the end of the day good citizen, this whole fiasco of transferring all of this ‘bad debt’ onto the taxpayers is being justified in order to ‘save’ the global financial system!

Like it is worth saving!

Hey boys and girls, ‘banking’ is not ‘rocket science’ (as long as your not trying to swindle the average customer.) Push comes to shove the government could ‘step in’ and be our new interim ‘banker’.

It’s not like we will stand there, confounded as to what to do if the banks who made those reckless loans go out of business!

In fact, failing to put them out of business is a major legal/political failure!

The laws are not being upheld, so the public is not being served!

But I belabor the obvious, don’t I ?

With ‘default’ already in the cards in Europe, what do you suppose is the next step in the ‘funny money’ house of cards?

Left to our imagination is ‘who precisely’ gets to decide what each Utah gold or silver coin is worth in, er, ‘real money’?

His idea isn’t to return to the gold standard, when the dollar was backed by gold instead of government goodwill. Instead, he just wanted to create options for consumers.

“We’re too far down the road to go back to the gold standard,” Galvez said. “This will move us toward an alternative currency.”

will the new gold and silver ‘alternative currency’ be payable in Euros, Dollars or Whiskey and Gunpowder?

Bad enough people are losing faith (as well as purchasing power) with their (enforced) reliance on ‘fiat currency’. It is a no brainer that the backers of this devisive legislation are…you guessed it, ‘nothin’ go up top conservatives’ who (obviously) don’t understand money at all.

How sad an indictment is it that the ‘Don’t understand money club’ includes most of the world?

How fortunate is it for the governments of the world that their people DON’T THINK?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Busted!

Greetings good citizen,

Different parts of the country do things differently…so when I stumbled upon an article that detailed ‘outrageous’ behavior by government officials, I forced myself to calm down and learn more. Although one aspect of this situation does sort of jump up and punch you right in the eye, since when did taxpayer funded services become collection agencies? Which is to ask, why should YOU foot the tab so corporate predators can collect, WITHOUT RE-IMBURSING YOU?

What am I ‘babbling about’ this time? read it an weep good citizen, the corporate police state is here!

[I refer you to yesterday’s post for ‘how’ corporate USA pulled this off…]

In jail for being in debt

You committed no crime, but an officer is knocking on your door. More Minnesotans are surprised to find themselves being locked up over debts.

By CHRIS SERRES and GLENN HOWATT , Star Tribune staff writers

Last update: June 9, 2010 - 7:58 AM

As a sheriff's deputy dumped the contents of Joy Uhlmeyer's purse into a sealed bag, she begged to know why she had just been arrested while driving home to Richfield after an Easter visit with her elderly mother.

No one had an answer. Uhlmeyer spent a sleepless night in a frigid Anoka County holding cell, her hands tucked under her armpits for warmth. Then, handcuffed in a squad car, she was taken to downtown Minneapolis for booking. Finally, after 16 hours in limbo, jail officials fingerprinted Uhlmeyer and explained her offense -- missing a court hearing over an unpaid debt. "They have no right to do this to me," said the 57-year-old patient care advocate, her voice as soft as a whisper. "Not for a stupid credit card."

It's not a crime to owe money, and debtors' prisons were abolished in the United States in the 19th century. But people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts. In Minnesota, which has some of the most creditor-friendly laws in the country, the use of arrest warrants against debtors has jumped 60 percent over the past four years, with 845 cases in 2009, a Star Tribune analysis of state court data has found. [Most (arrests) are not for ‘big money’ either, so this is ‘heavy-handedness’ plain and simple.]

Not every warrant results in an arrest, but in Minnesota many debtors spend up to 48 hours in cells with criminals. Consumer attorneys say such arrests are increasing in many states, including Arkansas, Arizona and Washington, driven by a bad economy, high consumer debt and a growing industry that buys bad debts and employs every means available to collect. [This is just more ‘wringing the consumer dry’, the retailer who sells the debt to these phirannas, ‘charges it off’ as ‘uncollectable’ from their income at ‘face value’, then they ‘sell’ the debt for fifty cents on the dollar (probably less these days) so between the tax savings and what the sharks fork over, they end up more or less ‘whole’. You on the other hand, will find yourself in jail because these ‘monkeys’ don’t screw around.]

Whether a debtor is locked up depends largely on where the person lives, because enforcement is inconsistent from state to state, and even county to county. [So, just because you haven’t been locked up (yet) doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen…]

In Illinois and southwest Indiana, some judges jail debtors for missing court-ordered debt payments. In extreme cases, people stay in jail until they raise a minimum payment. In January, a judge sentenced a Kenney, Ill., man "to indefinite incarceration" until he came up with $300 toward a lumber yard debt. [Which begs a different question…how are you supposed to ‘earn’ the money to repay the debt if you’re locked up? Jackass doesn’t care where the money comes from so long as you get it…leaving most people ‘susceptible’ to predatory lenders who charge…er, outrageous interest rates, which solves what, precisely? You couldn’t pay in the first damn place! Adding more debt only makes matters worse!]

"The law enforcement system has unwittingly become a tool of the debt collectors," said Michael Kinkley, an attorney in Spokane, Wash., who has represented arrested debtors. "The debt collectors are abusing the system and intimidating people, and law enforcement is going along with it."

How often are debtors arrested across the country? No one can say. No national statistics are kept, and the practice is largely unnoticed outside legal circles. "My suspicion is the debt collection industry does not want the world to know these arrests are happening, because the practice would be widely condemned," said Robert Hobbs, deputy director of the National Consumer Law Center in Boston. [Interesting ‘source’…and, as a ‘Bostonian’, I am unaware of anyone being jailed in connection with the collection of a debt…in this neck of the woods anyway…]

Debt collectors defend the practice, saying phone calls, letters and legal actions aren't always enough to get people to pay. [This is a bogus argument because the ‘debt’ has already been ‘charged off’ before it was ‘sold’…the ‘buyer’ of the debt is hoping to collect a 50% plus ‘premium’ for their ‘trouble’. This is a ‘fuck you’ to the underpaid, cash strapped consumer.]

"Admittedly, it's a harsh sanction," said Steven Rosso, a partner in the Como Law Firm of St. Paul, which does collections work. "But sometimes, it's the only sanction we have." [Bozo isn’t being honest here, is he? Option one would be not to buy charged off debt in the first place, wouldn’t it?]

Taxpayers foot the bill for arresting and jailing debtors. In many cases, Minnesota judges set bail at the amount owed. [Headline caught my eye, I am quite (pleasantly) surprised to see this point made in print! Makes you wonder what the hell is wrong with the NY Times?]

In Minnesota, judges have issued arrest warrants for people who owe as little as $85 -- less than half the cost of housing an inmate overnight. Debtors targeted for arrest owed a median of $3,512 in 2009, up from $2,201 five years ago. [This still doesn’t answer the question of ‘who’ is footing the tab for this brand of ‘heavy-handedness’…but it’s sure looking like it falls on you! If the fuckers had to absorb the cost it wouldn’t be happening nearly as often! (And it shouldn’t be happening at all. We aren’t talking ‘bad people’ here, were looking at a ‘bad system’.)]

Those jailed for debts may be the least able to pay.

"It's just one more blow for people who are already struggling," said Beverly Yang, a Land of Lincoln Legal Assistance Foundation staff attorney who has represented three Illinois debtors arrested in the past two months. "They don't like being in court. They don't have cars. And if they had money to pay these collectors, they would."

The collection machine

The laws allowing for the arrest of someone for an unpaid debt are not new.

What is new is the rise of well-funded, aggressive and centralized collection firms, in many cases run by attorneys, that buy up unpaid debt and use the courts to collect. [‘The laws are there, use them’ is these people’s ‘argument/justification’; which is a pretty fucking bizarre display of lack of judgement considering how both the government and the banking sector have made such a mockery of ‘justice’! People being jailed for a few hundred dollars while bankers walk free after bilking the nation for trillions! Not the signal I’d want to be sending when the public already ‘suspects’ globalization wasn’t all it was cracked up to be…]

Three debt buyers -- Unifund CCR Partners, Portfolio Recovery Associates Inc. and Debt Equities LLC -- accounted for 15 percent of all debt-related arrest warrants issued in Minnesota since 2005, court data show. The debt buyers also file tens of thousands of other collection actions in the state, seeking court orders to make people pay.

The debts -- often five or six years old -- are purchased from companies like cellphone providers and credit card issuers, and cost a few cents on the dollar. Using automated dialing equipment and teams of lawyers, the debt-buyer firms try to collect the debt, plus interest and fees. A firm aims to collect at least twice what it paid for the debt to cover costs. Anything beyond that is profit. [Understand, the original creditor has already ‘charged off’ 100% of the debt against income, that is why lenders aren’t particularly ‘careful’ about extending credit. They ‘win’ if you pay and they ‘win’ if you don’t pay. And we haven’t even taken ‘margins’ into consideration! For some products, margins are 500 to 700% The ‘price’ you are charged often has little to do with how much an item ‘cost’ to produce!]

Portfolio Recovery Associates of Norfolk, Va., a publicly traded debt buyer with the biggest profits and market capitalization, earned $44 million last year on $281 million in revenue -- a 16 percent net margin. Encore Capital Group, another large debt buyer based in San Diego, had a margin last year of 10 percent. By comparison, Wal-Mart's profit margin was 3.5 percent. [Don’t be mis-lead, Wally Mart may be ‘averaging’ three percent but many of the products they sell have considerably higher ‘margins’…they simply don’t sell a lot of ‘high margin’ items. Which is not to be confused with not ‘carrying’ such items…]

Todd Lansky, chief operating officer at Resurgence Financial LLC, a Northbrook, Ill.-based debt buyer, said firms like his operate within the law, which says people who ignore court orders can be arrested for contempt. By the time a warrant is issued, a debtor may have been contacted up to 12 times, he said.

"This is a last-ditch effort to say, 'Look, just show up in court,'" he said. [Nice ‘dodge’ Mr. Lansky. Claim that you’ve exhausted your ‘legal remedies’ while ‘side-stepping’ the legality of buying debt that has already been ‘charged off’…and making the public pay to collect it!]

Go to court -- or jail

At 9:30 a.m. on a recent weekday morning, about a dozen people stood in line at the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis.

Nearly all of them had received court judgments for not paying a delinquent debt. One by one, they stepped forward to fill out a two-page financial disclosure form that gives creditors the information they need to garnish money from their paychecks or bank accounts.

This process happens several times a week in Hennepin County. Those who fail to appear can be held in contempt and an arrest warrant is issued if a collector seeks one. Arrested debtors aren't officially charged with a crime, but their cases are heard in the same courtroom as drug users.

Greg Williams, who is unemployed and living on state benefits, said he made the trip downtown on the advice of his girlfriend who knew someone who had been arrested for missing such a hearing.

"I was surprised that the police would waste time on my petty debts," said Williams, 45, of Minneapolis, who had a $5,773 judgment from a credit card debt. "Don't they have real criminals to catch?"

Few debtors realize they can land in jail simply for ignoring debt-collection legal matters. Debtors also may not recognize the names of companies seeking to collect old debts. Some people are contacted by three or four firms as delinquent debts are bought and sold multiple times after the original creditor writes off the account.

"They may think it's a mistake. They may think it's a scam. They may not realize how important it is to respond," said Mary Spector, a law professor at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law in Dallas.

A year ago, Legal Aid attorneys proposed a change in state law that would have required law enforcement officials to let debtors fill out financial disclosure forms when they are apprehended rather than book them into jail. No legislator introduced the measure.

Joy Uhlmeyer, who was arrested on her way home from spending Easter with her mother, said she defaulted on a $6,200 Chase credit card after a costly divorce in 2006. The firm seeking payment was Resurgence Financial, the Illinois debt buyer. Uhlmeyer said she didn't recognize the name and ignored the notices.

Uhlmeyer walked free after her nephew posted $2,500 bail. It took another $187 to retrieve her car from the city impound lot. Her 86-year-old mother later asked why she didn't call home after leaving Duluth. Not wanting to tell the truth, Uhlmeyer said her car broke down and her cell phone died.

"The really maddening part of the whole experience was the complete lack of information," she said. "I kept thinking, 'If there was a warrant out for my arrest, then why in the world wasn't I told about it?'"

Jailed for $250

Greg Williams, who is unemployed and living on state benefits, said he made the trip downtown on the advice of his girlfriend who knew someone who had been arrested for missing such a hearing.

"I was surprised that the police would waste time on my petty debts," said Williams, 45, of Minneapolis, who had a $5,773 judgment from a credit card debt. "Don't they have real criminals to catch?"

Few debtors realize they can land in jail simply for ignoring debt-collection legal matters. Debtors also may not recognize the names of companies seeking to collect old debts. Some people are contacted by three or four firms as delinquent debts are bought and sold multiple times after the original creditor writes off the account.

"They may think it's a mistake. They may think it's a scam. They may not realize how important it is to respond," said Mary Spector, a law professor at Southern Methodist University's Dedman School of Law in Dallas.

A year ago, Legal Aid attorneys proposed a change in state law that would have required law enforcement officials to let debtors fill out financial disclosure forms when they are apprehended rather than book them into jail. No legislator introduced the measure.

Joy Uhlmeyer, who was arrested on her way home from spending Easter with her mother, said she defaulted on a $6,200 Chase credit card after a costly divorce in 2006. The firm seeking payment was Resurgence Financial, the Illinois debt buyer. Uhlmeyer said she didn't recognize the name and ignored the notices.

Uhlmeyer walked free after her nephew posted $2,500 bail. It took another $187 to retrieve her car from the city impound lot. Her 86-year-old mother later asked why she didn't call home after leaving Duluth. Not wanting to tell the truth, Uhlmeyer said her car broke down and her cell phone died.

"The really maddening part of the whole experience was the complete lack of information," she said. "I kept thinking, 'If there was a warrant out for my arrest, then why in the world wasn't I told about it?'"

Jailed for $250

One afternoon last spring, Deborah Poplawski, 38, of Minneapolis was digging in her purse for coins to feed a downtown parking meter when she saw the flashing lights of a Minneapolis police squad car behind her. Poplawski, a restaurant cook, assumed she had parked illegally. Instead, she was headed to jail over a $250 credit card debt.

Less than a month earlier, she learned by chance from an employment counselor that she had an outstanding warrant. Debt Equities, a Golden Valley debt buyer, had sued her, but she says nobody served her with court documents. Thanks to interest and fees, Poplawski was now on the hook for $1,138.

Though she knew of the warrant and unpaid debt, "I wasn't equating the warrant with going to jail, because there wasn't criminal activity associated with it," she said. "I just thought it was a civil thing."

She spent nearly 25 hours at the Hennepin County jail.

A year later, she still gets angry recounting the experience. A male inmate groped her behind in a crowded elevator, she said. Poplawski also was ordered to change into the standard jail uniform -- gray-white underwear and orange pants, shirt and socks -- in a cubicle the size of a telephone booth. She slept in a room with 12 to 16 women and a toilet with no privacy. One woman offered her drugs, she said.

The next day, Poplawski appeared before a Hennepin County district judge. He told her to fill out the form listing her assets and bank account, and released her. Several weeks later, Debt Equities used this information to seize funds from her bank account. The firm didn't return repeated calls seeking a comment.

"We hear every day about how there's no money for public services," Poplawski said. "But it seems like the collectors have found a way to get the police to do their work."

Threat depends on location

A lot depends on where a debtor lives or is arrested, as Jamie Rodriguez, 41, a bartender from Brooklyn Park, discovered two years ago.

Deputies showed up at his house one evening while he was playing with his 5-year-old daughter, Nicole. They live in Hennepin County, where the Sheriff's Office has enough staff to seek out people with warrants for civil violations.

If Rodriquez lived in neighboring Wright County, he could have simply handed the officers a check or cash for the amount owed. If he lived in Dakota County, it's likely no deputy would have shown up because the Sheriff's Office there says it lacks the staff to pursue civil debt cases.

Knowing that his daughter and wife were watching from the window, Rodriguez politely asked the deputies to drive him around the block, out of sight of his family, before they handcuffed him. The deputies agreed.

"No little girl should have to see her daddy arrested," said Rodriguez, who spent a night in jail.

"If you talk to 15 different counties, you'll find 15 different approaches to handling civil warrants," said Sgt. Robert Shingledecker of the Dakota County Sheriff's Office. "Everything is based on manpower."

Local police also can enforce debt-related warrants, but small towns and some suburbs often don't have enough officers.

The Star Tribune's comparison of warrant and booking data suggests that at least 1 in 6 Minnesota debtors at risk for arrest actually lands in jail, typically for eight hours. The exact number of such arrests isn't known because the government doesn't consistently track what happens to debtor warrants.

"There are no standards here," said Gail Hillebrand, a senior attorney with the Consumers Union in San Francisco. "A borrower who lives on one side of the river can be arrested while another one goes free. It breeds disrespect for the law."

Haekyung Nielsen, 27, of Bloomington, said police showed up at her house on a civil warrant two weeks after she gave birth through Caesarean section. A debt buyer had sent her court papers for an old credit-card debt while she was in the hospital; Nielsen said she did not have time to respond.

Her baby boy, Tyler, lay in the crib as she begged the officer not to take her away.

"Thank God, the police had mercy and left me and my baby alone," said Nielsen, who later paid the debt. "But to send someone to arrest me two weeks after a massive surgery that takes most women eight weeks to recover from was just unbelievable."

The second surprise

Many debtors, like Robert Vee, 36, of Brooklyn Park, get a second surprise after being arrested -- their bail is exactly the amount of money owed.

Hennepin County automatically sets bail at the judgment amount or $2,500, whichever is less. This policy was adopted four years ago in response to the high volume of debtor default cases, say court officials.

Some judges say the practice distorts the purpose of bail, which is to make sure people show up in court.

"It's certainly an efficient way to collect debts, but it's also highly distasteful," said Hennepin County District Judge Jack Nordby. "The amount of bail should have nothing to do with the amount of the debt."

Judge Robert Blaeser, chief of the county court's civil division, said linking bail to debt streamlines the process because judges needn't spend time setting bail.

"It's arbitrary," he conceded. "The bigger question is: Should you be allowed to get an order from a court for someone to be arrested because they owe money? You've got to remember there are people who have the money but just won't pay a single penny."

If friends or family post a debtor's bail, they can expect to kiss the money goodbye, because it often ends up with creditors, who routinely ask judges for the bail payment.

Vee, a highway construction worker, was arrested one afternoon in February while driving his teenage daughter from school to their home in Brooklyn Park. As he was being cuffed, Vee said his daughter, who has severe asthma, started hyperventilating from the stress.

"All I kept thinking about was whether she was all right and if she was using her [asthma] inhaler," he said.

From the Hennepin County jail, he made a collect call to his landlord, who promised to bring the bail. It was $1,875.06, the exact amount of a credit card debt.

Later, Vee was reunited with his distraught daughter at home. "We hugged for a long time, and she was bawling her eyes out," he said.

He still has unpaid medical and credit card bills and owes about $40,000 on an old second mortgage. The sight of a squad car in his rearview mirror is all it takes to set off a fresh wave of anxiety.

"The question always crosses my mind: 'Are the cops going to arrest me again?'" he said. "So long as I've got unpaid bills, the threat is there."

In the vast scheme of things good citizen it is extremely doubtful that ANY of these ‘debts’ are ‘collectable’ never mind ‘legal’.

What isn’t nearly as doubtful is the moral issue here of ‘overcharging’ a customer for that which is free from nature. This is where ‘debt’ is born, it is born of the act of putting an artificially high price on an object and then ‘offering’ the buyer to ‘carry’ the largely inflated cost (for a considerable fee.)

What the market will bear is not necessarily what the market can pay…as the current economic crisis has taught us. In fact, if we were to adhere to a strict ‘market model’, prices would fall considerably to match a much smaller pool of buyers...which would eventually dwindle to zero.

Which brings us to a second, larger issue. Since ‘rarity’ drives price, extreme scarcity eliminates all would be buyers…leaving you where? Is the object ‘priceless’ or is it ‘worthless’?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Pay to Play

Greetings good citizen,

Sometimes it’s just too funny! Didn’t I go off the rails in yesterday’s post on the issue of ‘access’ and today we have this story which I assume I’m not alone in being totally ignorant of until it was scrubbed…

So, once again, I fall victim to ‘foot in mouth disease’…you CAN get ‘access’, all you need is a quarter of a million bucks and a politically ‘neutral’ issue.

Or have I been ‘spared’ the humiliation of being ‘wrong’ because the Washington Post has withdrawn its ‘pay to play’ offer?

WaPo cancels paid White House-Congress-lobbyist hook up

Submitted by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any more questionable in Washington, along comes this (hat tip Tom).

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth said today she was canceling plans for an exclusive "salon" at her home where for as much as $250,000 the Post offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record access to "those powerful few" — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

This is not a joke, it was a serious plan whereby the Washington Post was set and ready to use its publisher’s home to bring together lobbyists on the one side and White House and congressional people on the other. Boy, I wish I had that kind of access. But, then again, I would have to pay a lot of money. On second thought, maybe it’s not a good deal. But, hey, if you are a health care lobbyist (the type of lobbyist this event was designed for), then you’ve got the dosh. Why not? Apparently, not every lobbyist felt that way.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff."

To sum up, the Washington Post, which lost nearly $20 million in the first quarter, has made bringing people together another proposed revenue source. In this case, it was to bring together lobbyists and government and was to be paid by the lobbyists for doing so. When some invited lobbyists felt this was a conflict of interest, Politico was able to get its hands on an invite. As a result, the Post cancelled the event. [snip]

Somewhere down the line, I strongly suspect you don’t need the Washington Post’s ‘connections’ if you’re dripping in cash and want an audience with a powerful politician.

The higher up the ‘food chain you are, the likelihood it will cost you a red cent for such access diminishes geometrically.

Naturally, access is not nor has it ever been a ‘problem’ for the connected…it’s not the ‘fuckers’ but the ‘fuckees’ that lack access or anything that even remotely resembles ‘the protection of representation.’

I need to include a different dimension here that makes the lack of access thing simultaneously less urgent and more disturbing at the same time.

You may not be able to gain ‘access’ to your elected representative but that doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean he’s ignorant of the ‘conditions on the ground’ on his or her ‘turf’.

Just because she/he won’t talk to you doesn’t mean they aren’t watching…and again I don’t mean watching you specifically! (Although they might be, depending on how vigorously you’ve pursued ‘access’…) They may not return your calls but they do keep tabs on who is pushing for what, in case ‘something’ happens.

Bizarrely, when a ‘fuckee’ finally achieves access/recognition by their elected representative, it has usually become a ‘police matter’.

In the rarest of cases, the fuckee gets his/her ‘fifteen minutes’ of fame (usually ‘posthumously’, which defeats the whole idea of gaining access…)

Yes, our elected representatives are not ‘required’ to communicate with us either directly or individually…then we encounter that very fuzzy line between ‘confronting’ someone and ‘attacking’ them, with our elected representatives having the upper hand when it comes to deciding between one or the other.

So, how ‘participatory’ is our fine political system now?

Which is to ask what the point is of electing someone that has no compunction or desire to communicate with you (even before they’re elected?)

If they won’t hear your views, why should you permit them to make laws you must obey?

There’s a simple solution to this conundrum too and it is part in parcel with a plan to eliminate the rampant corruption that has infested every level of our society.

Let those who must live under the laws, make the laws.

Legislatures exist to cheat the public and execute the will of the elite (along with unjustly enriching the legislators themselves in the process.)

While that’s a pretty cynical point of view, it sure passes the ‘sniff test’ of truth as well as being ‘verified’ repeatedly by history, the gage against which all ‘truths’ are tested.

It is a concept whose time has come. The system we have been using has failed repeatedly and the corruption gets worse with each passing day.

If you truly want freedom good citizen then you must vote to free yourself from the tyranny of a form of government that is neither responsive nor attentive to either your requirements or your plight.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

Obama's 'Make or Break' Summer

Happy Father’s Day, good citizens, (to those of you who are so blessed!)

I won’t hesitate for an instant to put forth the idea that ‘continuing the race’ is what it’s all about! It’s the ‘reason’ we exist. If you aren’t all about the kids and their future, you membership in society is seriously in question.

Because if it’s not about the kids, then it’s all about YOU! And you’ll be gone someday leaving humanity with precisely what? A bunch of unpaid bills and environmental desolation that made your small life a tiny bit more enjoyable!

As a species, we can’t afford that brand of economic shortsightedness to prevail any longer.

Sadly, the battle to save the planet for future generations isn’t going too well. You’d think the father of two precious little girls would be thinking about the kind of future they’ll have more so than the kind of future his (major) campaign contributors want to saddle us with…

So we arrive at tonight’s offering and the sinking ‘approval ratings’ of the current administration…

Obama’s Make-or-Break Summer

By FRANK RICH
Published: June 20, 2009

THAT First 100 Days hoopla seems like a century ago. The countless report cards it engendered are already obsolete. The real story begins now. With Iran, universal health care, energy reform and the economic recovery all on the line, the still-new, still-popular president’s true tests are about to come.

Here’s one thing Barack Obama does not have to worry about: the opposition. Approval ratings for Republicans hit an all-time low last week in both the New York Times/CBS News and Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls. That’s what happens when a party’s most creative innovations are novel twists on old-fashioned sex scandals. Just when you thought the G.O.P. could never match the high bar set by Larry Craig’s men’s room toe-tapping, along came Senator John Ensign of Nevada, an ostentatiously pious born-again Christian whose ecumenical outreach drove him to engineer political jobs for his mistress, her cuckolded husband and the couple’s son. At least it can no longer be said that the Republicans have no plan for putting Americans back to work. [But only if they’re sleeping with you!]

But as ever, the lack of an adversary with gravitas is a double-edged sword for Obama. It tempts him to be cocky and to coast. That’s a rare flaw in a president whose temperament, smarts and judgment remain impressive. Yet it is not insignificant. Though we don’t know how Obama will fare on all the challenges he faces this summer, last week’s big rollout of his financial reform package was a big punt, an accommodation to the status quo. Given that the economy remains the country’s paramount concern — and that all new polling finds that most Americans still think it’s dire — this timid response was a lost opportunity. It violated the Rahm Emanuel dictum that “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” and could yet prompt a serious political backlash.

A tip-off to what was coming appeared in a Washington Post op-ed article that the administration’s two financial gurus, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, wrote to preview their plan. “Some people will say that this is not the time to debate the future of financial regulation, that this debate should wait until the crisis is fully behind us,” they wrote by way of congratulating themselves on taking charge.

Who exactly are these “some people” who want to delay debate on the future of regulation? Not anyone you or I know. Most Americans were desperate for action and wondered why it was taking so long. The only people who Summers and Geithner could possibly be talking about are the bankers in their cohort who helped usher us into this disaster in the first place. Both men are protégés of one of them, Robert Rubin, the former wise man of Citigroup. [Yet for the grace of ‘Team Obama’ were supposed to ignore this stunning conflict of interest! As I have said before, I don’t really give a shit what Obama ‘says’, it’s what he’s ‘done’ (as well as the way it’s been done) that pisses me off! Deeds, not words!]

There are some worthwhile protections in the Summers-Geithner legislation, especially for consumers, but there’s little that will disturb these unnamed “people” too much. I’ll leave it to financial analysts to detail why the small-bore tinkering in the administration blueprint won’t prevent another perfect storm of arcane derivatives, unchecked (and risk-rewarding) executive compensation and too-big-to-fail banks like Citi. Suffice it to say that the Obama team has not resuscitated the Glass-Steagall Act, the New Deal reform that Summers helped dismantle in the Clinton years and that would have prevented the creation of banking behemoths that held the economy hostage. [Although I’d posit a tiny bit of grit and a generous helping of backbone would have worked just as well in heading off the current abomination…if Obama had ‘rallied the people’ (like FDR) we’d have answered his call…but that didn’t happen, did it?]

A particularly dramatic example of how the old Wall Street order remains intact can be seen by looking at the fate of credit-rating agencies like Moody’s, which gave triple-A grades to some of the cancerous derivatives at the heart of the economic meltdown. As Gretchen Morgenson of The Times reported last year, Moody’s sins during the subprime frenzy included upgrading its rating of securities underwritten by Countrywide Financial, the largest mortgage lender, after Countrywide complained that the ratings were too tough.

Since then, more details have emerged in this unsavory narrative. When the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Countrywide’s former chief executive, Angelo Mozilo, with securities fraud and insider trading this month, it produced e-mails from 2006 in which Mozilo referred to his company’s subprime loan products as “toxic” and “poison.” Mozilo wrote that “we have no way, with any reasonable certainty, to assess the real risk of holding these loans on our balance sheet.” Yet Moody’s didn’t warn the public by downgrading Countrywide’s securities until the summer of 2007. Meanwhile, this supposed watchdog for investors, which, like other credit-rating agencies, is paid by the very companies it monitors, took its own tranche of the bubble. Moody’s profit margins even surpassed Exxon’s. [There’s more going on here than a mere ‘oops!’ This wasn’t a ‘slip-up’; it was a damn premeditated crime! A crime no one has (or likely will ever be) prosecuted for.]

And how have it and its peers in the credit-ratings game fared in the Obama regulation crackdown? Incredibly enough, they can still collect fees from the companies they grade. “It is as if Hollywood studios paid movie critics to review their would-be blockbusters,” wrote Eric Dash in The Times. [‘Same as it ever was’, yet more ‘Change you can believe in!’]

Non-Wall Street Americans who signed on to Countrywide’s toxic loans are doing far less well. The White House stood by passively this spring as banking lobbyists mobilized to castrate the administration’s Helping Families Save Their Homes Act. The final version eliminated the key provision that would have allowed judges to lower the principal for mortgage holders whose homes are worth less than their loans. Dick Durbin, the Democratic senator from Illinois, correctly observed in April that the banks are “still the most powerful lobby” in Congress and that “they frankly own the place.” [Is Mr. Rich being ‘unfair’ here? Isn’t this due to congressional Republicans trying to ‘sabotage’ the new administration? Methinks the voting record shows otherwise.]

The banks’ influence at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue is also conspicuous. The revolving door between the government and Wall Street is as greasy as ever in this White House. It’s all too depressing that the administration enforced its no-lobbyists policy to shun a human-rights advocate, Tom Malinowski, a lobbyist for genocide victims in places like Darfur, but granted Geithner a waiver to appoint a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist, Mark Patterson, as his chief of staff.

Obama is very eloquent in speaking of the “culture of irresponsibility” that led us to the meltdown, but that culture isn’t changing so much as [it is] frantically rebranding[itself]. A.I.G. is now named A.I.U., and has employed no fewer than four public relations firms, including one whose bipartisan roster of shills ranges from the former Hillary Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn to the former Bush White House press secretary Dana Perino.

Taxpayers are paying for that P.R., having poured $170 billion-plus into A.I.G. But we still don’t have a transparent, detailed accounting of what was going down last fall when A.I.G. and its trading partners, including Goldman, snared that gargantuan cash transfusion. Perhaps if there had been a thorough post-crash investigative commission emulating the Senate investigation led by Ferdinand Pecora after the crash of 1929, we would now have reforms as thorough as F.D.R.’s. It was because of the Pecora revelations that Glass-Steagall was put in place.

If you watch CNBC, of course, the recovery is already here, and the new regulations will somehow stifle it. The market is up, sort of. Even some bank stocks are back. Unemployment, as Obama reminds us, is a lagging indicator. And so, presumably, are all the other indicators that affect most Americans. One in eight mortgages is now either in foreclosure or delinquent, with the share of new mortgages going into foreclosure reaching a record high in the first quarter of 2009. Credit card debt delinquencies are up 11 percent from last year in that same quarter.

The test for Obama is simple enough. If the fortunes in American households rise along with Wall Street’s, he is home free — even if his porous regulatory fixes permit a new economic meltdown decades sadly, months hence. But if, in the shorter term, the economic quality of life for most Americans remains unchanged as the financial sector resumes living large, he’ll face anger from voters of all political persuasions. When the Fox News fulminator Glenn Beck says “let the banks lose their tails, they need to,” he illustrates precisely where right-wing populism meets that on the left.

It’s still not too late for course correction. Before rolling out his financial package, Obama illustrated exactly what’s lacking when he told John Harwood on CNBC: “We want to do it right. We want to do it carefully. But we don’t want to tilt at windmills.”

Maybe not at windmills, but sometimes you do want to do battle with fierce and unrelenting adversaries, starting with the banking lobby. While the restraint that the president has applied to the Iran crisis may prove productive, domestic politics are not necessarily so delicate. F.D.R. had to betray his own class to foment the reforms of the New Deal. Lyndon Johnson had to crack heads on Capitol Hill to advance the health-care revolution that was Medicare. So will Obama for his own health-care crusade, which is already faltering in the Senate courtesy of truants in his own party, not just the irrelevant Republicans.

Though television talking heads can’t let go of the cliché that the president is trying to do too much, the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll says that only 37 percent of Americans agree. The majority knows the country is in a crisis and wants help. The issue has never been whether Obama is doing too much but whether he will do the big things well enough to move us forward. Now that the hope phase of his presidency is giving way to the promised main event — change — we will soon find out.

One can’t help but notice that while our attention is fixed on the economy, the real action is taking place in the ‘coup’ behind the scenes.

Laws are being broken left, right and center, all in the name of ‘rescuing’ the financial sector from a mess of their own making.

Mr. Rich is a smart cookie but like all pundits, his job is not to draw our attention to what’s really happening but to aid in drawing our attention away from the real issues.

You’ll notice there isn’t a single word of criticism for the stupefyingly idiotic plan to hand the keys to the economy over to the Federal Reserve, a ‘privately held corporation’ that is solely ‘owned’ by a consortium of banks!

Geez Bub, we can only wonder who thought this is a ‘good idea’?

What do you suppose the prospects are now that Glass-Steagal will be re-enacted or that any of the criminal financial instruments created to defraud investors out of their retirement funds will be prosecuted for their evil deeds?

Putting an entity that is ‘solely owned’ by the banks in charge of bank regulation represents such a huge ‘conflict of interest’ as to render the ‘rule of law’ meaningless.

The entire banking industry has ‘overstepped’ its chartered purpose, the reasons that banks exist at all.

Banks don’t exist as an ‘intermediary’ that unites savers with borrowers, it has turned into a vehicle to maximize the profits of the lenders, at the expense of those who need to borrow.

Understand good citizen the root cause of the homeless situation is the rich income stream housing provides for the banking system, our ‘true’ permanent ‘landlords’.

This isn’t simply predatory, it is both criminal and evil as well.

Let us return for a moment to the issue of the blatant ‘subversion’ of the ‘rule of law’. Once the legal system has been ‘hijacked’ there isn’t a ‘simple’ way to restore an unbiased system.

The old system must be swept away and a new one created to replace it. As we will quickly see, the banking system will prove ‘incapable’ of policing itself any more than the markets succeeded in policing themselves.

We are currently living with the end results of ‘self-policing’ markets and ‘non-existant’ bank regulation. How will making the banking system ‘self-regulatory’ improve matters?

Not only did our elected officials not ‘blink’ when a ‘bank owned’ entity was granted supreme authority over the banking system, not one of them ‘balked’ either.

The President may ‘appoint’ the Chairman of the Fed but you can bet your bottom dollar that the board of directors of the Fed has reserved the authority to sack any political appointee that refuses to act in the ‘best interests’ of the ‘corporation’ that cuts the Chairman’s salary!

It’s bullshit like this that has landed us right where we are today. It has produced a government that has repeatedly failed to protect society in favor of protecting legislators ‘personal income streams’.

It is precisely this thoroughly corrupt ‘hooray for me, screw everyone else!’ super secret, underhanded sort of ‘free for all’ that exists in the ‘halls of power’ that has hollowed out our economy and brought this nation to its knees!

And apparently the healing power of ‘sunshine’ can be denied with the stroke of a pen…failing that, requests for information that keep getting ‘lost’.

As we all know, only scoundrels and thieves require the ‘cloak of secrecy’, this is no way to conduct the people’s business!

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner