Around the Horn: Reaction to the Aerial Attack on the IRS Offices in Austin

As many of you are aware, yesterday a man named Joseph Stack flew an airplane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas. The crash killed Stack and one other person who was in the building.

Stack left behind what is being called a suicide manifesto where he railed against the government, taxes and the bailouts.

I thought that this would be an appropriate topic to take a look at reactions from around the blogosphere.

Curt at Flopping Aces:

From a quick perusing of the letter it appears the guy is quite good at blaming everyone and everything instead of the poor decisions he made.

He blames “the puppet” George W. Bush and capitalist greed for his downfall. Good enough reason to try and murder your wife, kids, and those just trying to do their jobs eh?

How long until the left starts blaming the tea party movement for this? I know….crazy, since it appears the guy was anti-Christian and a communist but why let facts get in your way.

The Angry Anarchist:

These aren’t the words of an unintelligent lunatic IMO, he actually comes across as being very well educated and extremely aware of the hypocrisy and injustice occurring everyday in America. What makes this so upsetting is that everything that drove him into the side of that building will now be heightened for those of us that are still here on Earth. I can already see the ‘Patriot Act’ being warmed up by the government in an effort to “save good Americans from the terrorists that walk amongst us on our own streets and boulevards”.

Glenn Greenwald:

All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity.

[...]

In sum: a Muslim who attacks military targets, including in war zones or even in their own countries that have been invaded by a foreign army, are Terrorists. A non-Muslim who flies an airplane into a government building in pursuit of a political agenda is not, or at least is not a Real Terrorist with a capital T -- not the kind who should be tortured and thrown in a cage with no charges and assassinated with no due process. Nor are Christians who stand outside abortion clinics and murder doctors and clinic workers. Nor are acts undertaken by us or our favored allies designed to kill large numbers of civilians or which will recklessly cause such deaths as a means of terrorizing the population into desired behavioral change -- the Glorious Shock and Awe campaign and the pummeling of Gaza. Except as a means for demonizing Muslims, the word is used so inconsistently and manipulatively that it is impoverished of any discernible meaning.

Kempite at Politics 24/7:

Let’s make this pefrectly clear from the onset. Any acts of viloence are inexcusable, unaceptable and intolerable. Nothing can legitimize ones attempt to carry out revenge or try to carry out their own personal sense of justice on society. Therefore, no one….no one…….should see the events that took place today in Texas, as anything but tragic and deplorable. It was to a great degree, an act of terrorism.

That said, before anyone tries to claim that the Tea Party protestors or those on the right condone, excuse or prompted the insane flying of a private plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas by one Joe Stack , let it be known that that such is not the case. I do not believe that any rational person could ever reach such a conclusion.

E. Messamore at The Humble Libertarian:

As the Editor-in-Chief of The Humble Libertarian, I unequivocally and without qualification, condemn this brutal, senseless, and stupid act of violence. As a libertarian, I am incensed that Joe Stack took it upon himself to take innocent lives in the name of less government spending and lower taxes.

[...]

Joe Stack committed his violent crime just a few short hours after I published these words at The Humble Libertarian: "We need to be good representatives of libertarianism. Ultimately people are concerned about whether a libertarian society will be a good society, and we must show them it will be a good society by being good people." Joe Stack doesn't speak for me or the millions of other Americans who correctly support more fiscal responsibility in Washington. We are good people, law-abiding citizens, and peace-loving activists.

Paul Krugman: Obama's Bank Rescue Plan will not Work

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is slated to give the long anticipated details on the Obama Administration's bank rescue plan today. Details of the plan were leaked over the weekend and economist Paul Krugman has some strong opinions:

Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing.

It’s as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street. And by the time Mr. Obama realizes that he needs to change course, his political capital may be gone.

Uh-oh! That doesn't sound good. Please tell me that this plan will work to help get us out of this mess:

But the real problem with this plan is that it won’t work. Yes,
troubled assets may be somewhat undervalued. But the fact is that financial executives literally bet their banks on the belief that there was no housing bubble, and the related belief that unprecedented levels of household debt were no problem. They lost that bet. And no amount of financial hocus-pocus — for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to — will change that fact.

You might say, why not try the plan and see what happens? One answer is that time is wasting: every month that we fail to come to grips with the economic crisis another 600,000 jobs are lost. Even more important, however, is the way Mr. Obama is squandering his credibility. If this plan fails — as it almost surely will — it’s unlikely that he’ll be able to persuade Congress to come up with more funds to do what he should have done in the first place.

All is not lost: the public wants Mr. Obama to succeed, which means that he can still rescue his bank rescue plan. But time is running out.

Are you Enraged, but a Little Confused Over This 'AIG' Controversy?

Are you as enraged as Stephen Colbert at AIG?

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Or perhaps you are kind of confused. Republicans slamming Democrats, the Obama Administration blaming Chris Dodd, the media trying to react to react to a complex situation by finding bad guys to blame...when will the madness end? Glenn Greenwald breaks things down pretty well today:

The controversy of the AIG bonuses -- which, strictly as a quantitative matter, is rather trivial in the scheme of things -- illustrates how warped our political discourse is. Here is the hierarchy of positions regarding executive compensation limits back in February:

Chris Dodd -- advocated full-scale, no-exceptions limits on executive compensation for bailed-out companies


Obama administration -- supported limits but advocated exceptions for already-existing employment contracts


GOP leaders -- opposed all executive compensation limits as Socialist tyranny

Yet everything is exactly backwards in this controversy. The Obama administration has been trying to blame Dodd for the carve-out that allowed the AIG bonus payments, a carve-out that came into being because Geithner/Summers demanded it and because they opposed the limits Dodd wanted as too onerous. And now, the GOP -- which opposed limits of any kind -- wants to blame the Obama administration and Dodd because the limits weren't stringent enough to stop the AIG bonus payments. And the media is playing along perfectly, having clearly decided that the person who led the way in fighting for absolute compensation limits -- Dodd -- is the real villain responsible for the AIG bonuses.

Wow. It is hard to NOT be confused with a situation as backward as this.

Conservatives, Progressives, and Bailouts...Oh My!

If you are like me then all of this talk of bailouts and economic disaster in the media has given me a giant headache. Conservatives are taking the same stance as progressives, talking heads are telling us that our economy is going to collapse if we do nothing, and others have claimed that we are on our way to becoming a socialist country. It is enough to make your mind spin and wonder what exactly is going on. Suddenly up is down and the next day down is up. Perhaps some comments from some leading minds on this crisis will help to filter out the madness.

We are getting hit with opinions from pundits and talking heads who have been wrong time and time again and only add to the absolute confusion of the current economic situation. Peter Bronson wrote a piece in the Cincinnati Enquirer today stating that using the term "bailout" is wrong in this situation because "A bailout is the kind of thing that happens when your brother-in-law calls at 3 a.m. from the county slammer, where's he locked up for mowing down mailboxes with his drinking buddy Jack Daniel's." He says that we should be using the term "rescue" because "A rescue is what the Red Cross does for victims of earthquakes, hurricanes and other calamities. A rescue is heroic - a selfless act of lifesaving courage. A rescue is for someone like me who deserves it. A bailout is for someone else who deserves a night in jail." He continues, "Nearly every headline and every glitzy graphic on the news calls it a "bailout." And it's wrong. We are way past welfare for Wall Street. Now we're talking about a loan to rescue Pension Street, IRA Boulevard and 401(k) Avenue." How could anyone be confused with that crystal clear analogy?

Lucky for us, Ken Blackwell has put his finger on the root problem of this whole economic mess. From his latest piece Blackwell says:

But we must look to the root cause. It is not the loosening of regulations from the Clinton years, or the push for home ownership by the administration and certain congressional leaders, or the corrupt practices at Fannie and Freddie, or the greed of financiers. All of those played a role. But those factors could not cause a collapse by themselves.

We have become a culture addicted to instant gratification and a fixation on the material. Increasingly, concepts such as duty, self-denial, hard work, delayed gratification, and patience have been swept away.

Wait a second, all of those factors (de-regulation, a push for a home ownership society, corruption, and greed) couldn't cause a collapse by themselves? Tell me more Mr. Blackwell!

The instant-gratification culture that has run rampant at the consumer end of the equation has now seeped into the lending end. Suddenly, when people apply for a loan for twice as much house as they could afford, the bank says yes...

...It may not be exciting to talk about teaching and following sound principles regarding debt management and prudent planning. It is even less exciting to talk about finding contentment and happiness in ways other than always needing to lunge after something newer, better - and more expensive.

Blackwell's solution, that of talking with people about "finding happiness" in other ways which run counter to the way our very society functions, is not helpful. Not only is his solution not helpful, but it implies that the population's actions have run independent from the very system that encourages the behavior of rampant consumerism. After all, I thought it was patriotic to go shopping? Let's interject some clarity into this discussion and turn to some voices that have been absent from the corporate media during this debate.

Economist Dean Baker, one of the people who accurately predicted this meltdown, recently wrote a piece in which he said:

There is no way that the failure to do a bailout will lead to more than a very brief failure of the financial system. The worst case scenario is that we have an extremely scary day in which the markets freeze for a few hours. Then the Fed steps in and takes over the major banks. The system of payments continues to operate exactly as before, but the bank executives are out of their jobs and the bank shareholders have likely lost most of their money. In other words, the banks have a gun pointed to their heads and are threatening to pull the trigger unless we hand them $700 billion."...


...There has been a mountain of scare stories and misinformation circulated to push the bailout. Yes, banks have tightened credit. Yes, we are in a recession. But the problem is not a freeze up of the banking system. The problem is the collapse of an $8 trillion housing bubble. (It was remarkable how many so-called experts somehow could not see the housing bubble as it grew to ever more dangerous levels. It is even more remarkable that many of these experts still don't recognize the bubble even as its collapse sinks the economy and the financial system.) The decline in housing prices to date has already cost the economy $4 trillion to $5 trillion in housing equity. This would be expected to lead to a decline in annual consumption on the order of $160 billion to $300 billion.

Or how about the words of New York University economist Nouriel Roubini:

...the claim by the Fed and Treasury that spending $700 billion of public money is the best way to recapitalize banks has absolutely no factual basis or justification. This way of recapitalizing financial institutions is a total rip-off that will mostly benefit – at a huge expense for the US taxpayer - the common and preferred shareholders and even unsecured creditors of the banks. Even the late addition of some warrants that the government will get in exchange of this massive injection of public money is only a cosmetic fig leaf of dubious value as the form and size of such warrants is totally vague and fuzzy...

...Instead, the restoration of the financial health of distressed financial firms could have been achieved with a cheaper and better use of public money. It is pathetic that Congress did not consult any of the many professional economists that have presented alternative plans that were more fair and efficient and less costly ways to resolve this crisis. ... and it is a scandal that even Congressional Democrats have fallen for this Treasury scam that does little to resolve the debt burden of millions of distressed home owners.

It is quite interesting that throughout all of this bailout discussion, much of the reporting being done by the corporate media has been within the framework of the Paulson Plan. There has been little to no talk of any alternative plans outside of amendments to the existing framework. Too often is it presented that a bailout is 100% needed and if decisive action is not taken soon, it could lead to a greater disaster. I have seen hardly any talk of alternative ideas and I have yet to see a roundtable discussion of different solutions between leading economists on a major network. Wouldn't this be an appropriate time to have this conversation to make absolute sure that we are taking the best road out of this mess? I tend to agree with Josh Silver of FreePress when he states:

The result is an American public that is fundamentally uninformed about the issues that matter most - like economics, health care, and war - and over-informed about those that matter least: sports, celebrity, the latest campaign ad, and horserace analysis of elections. We have no reason to believe that the press -- and along with it, most politicians -- will ask the tough questions, expand the range of debate, and bring the facts to the American people. But until they do, our economy - and our democracy -- will continue its race to the bottom.

We are a confused public and we are viewing the "solution" through a single framework that is being presented by the media as only one that we can consider. We need to expand the debate on this issue, but with the House set to vote (and potentially pass) the bailout plan on Friday, it looks like some of these voices will go unheard.

This article also available at: http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com

Our Deregulated Disaster

The moment has finally arrived. This moment, that of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, has been brewing for some time and was predicted by those who had the long-term vision to look beyond the rhetoric of deregulation. This is the same concept of deregulation that has its roots in Reaganomics and manifested itself in the form of the legislative efforts of Phil Gramm. Gramm worked to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 ; both of which attributed to the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and ushered in the deregulatory practices which have contributed to the crisis that the U.S. finds itself in today.

In response to the collapse of numerous institutions, President Bush has proposed a plan that would effectively give Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson complete control over $700 billion of taxpayer money to bail out some of the major financial institutions. Not only would this plan give Paulson complete control over this money, but there would be no oversight and no accountability for any actions that Paulson may take with this money. From Section 8 of the plan:

"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

It is language such as this that has led some to describe this bailout plan as an economic version of the PATRIOT Act. This parallel references the speed with which this act is being pushed through Congress after a crisis, as well as the sweeping power that would be invested in one central figure, in this case regarding economic policy. In the following paragraphs I will use this opportunity to discuss the viewpoints of three individuals who have given some insight into this recent crisis and will hopefully work to form a more productive narrative in the discussion of these issues.

Naomi Klein is a journalist and the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In this book, her primary thesis is that during times of crisis, the right has pushed through radical economic policies that are otherwise publicly unpopular. It is during this time of crisis where the public is "shocked" and the window for debate on these policies is often very small. Klein argues that this is exactly what is happening with this current financial crisis. This bailout plan is being touted by the government as a necessary fix and there are claims that this plan needs to be approved within the next week in order to prevent further damage from occurring. Meanwhile, this crisis is being used in an attempt to push through policies that Klein claims would worsen the problem. She wrote a recent piece for the Huffington Post in which she describes this:

"The best summary of how the right plans to use the economic crisis to push through their policy wish list comes from Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. On Sunday, Gingrich laid out 18 policy prescriptions for Congress to take in order to "return to a Reagan-Thatcher policy of economic growth through fundamental reforms." In the midst of this economic crisis, he is actually demanding the repeal of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which would lead to further deregulation of the financial industry. Gingrich is also calling for reforming the education system to allow "competition" (a.k.a. vouchers), strengthening border enforcement, cutting corporate taxes and his signature move: allowing offshore drilling."

With the attempt to push through this massive bailout for the financial corporations, Klein also insists that this is a ticking time bomb that will eventually explode on the next administration. Klein was on Democracy Now! earlier this week and explained how this bailout plan may only be the first shock. From the transcript:

I’m also arguing that this is only stage one of the shock doctrine. They’re getting this—they’re lobbying for this huge bailout, obviously, but this bailout is a kind of a time bomb, because it’s all these bad debts, and they are going to explode on the next administration. I mean, we know that the Bush administration has already left the next administration with huge debt and deficit problems. They’ve just exploded those, expanded them. And what that means is that whoever the next president is is going to be inheriting this economic crisis that is being exacerbated by this bailout.

It is predictable, Klein argues, how a John McCain administration would handle this scenario because he has already expressed his support for privatizing Social Security and his willingness to cut social programs. An Obama Administration would also face very serious pressure from the corporate interests which have funded his campaign as well as from campaign advisers such as Robert Rubin. Klein claims that we can learn a lot from the candidacy of Bill Clinton. He ran a populist campaign during the primary season, but when he found himself in the middle of economic troubles, he took a turn towards policies that favored Wall Street at the urging of his advisers tied to corporate interests. There will be immense pressure upon an Obama Administration to do the same, which is why Klein calls for massive grassroots pressure on all the candidates and members of Congress to not pass this bailout plan in its current form and bend to the corporate interests that caused this problem in the first place.

Glenn Greenwald is a former constitutional law and civil rights litigator. He is also the author of a few books and currently writes daily for Salon.com. Greenwald has written a few pieces in the recent week regarding this financial crisis and brings an interesting look into some of the issues of hypocrisy surrounding this crisis. From his piece this previous Saturday:

What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism -- where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We've retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses.

This proposed bailout plan does exactly that. It creates a win-win system for those who have engaged in practices and policies which have enriched those on Wall Street to the detriment of the working class. This is a plan that would justify these actions through not only saving these institutions, but by providing no oversight or accountability for the way that the Treasury Secretary will handle the process of bailing these companies out. Needless to say, in light of this it has been confusing to watch members of the right voice grave opposition to the Paulson Plan. We now see the likes of Bill Kristol, Michelle Malkin, and Newt Gingrich vehemently opposed to a bailout plan that would save Wall Street at the expense of the taxpayer. Greenwald explains the reason for this outrage:

They say it themselves: with the looming prospect of an Obama presidency, they may no longer be in charge of that Government and these "small government conservatives" have thus suddenly re-awoken to the virtues of checks and balances, oversight and other restraints.

This very re-awakening that Greenwald describes outlines the very hypocrisy of those on the right who are suddenly interested in regulation and oversight. Many of these figures (including John McCain) have worked for the majority of their careers to limit government regulation and free the market from any kind of oversight. Now, with the very real possibility of the power structure shifting, these same figures are suddenly calling for regulation and oversight. There is sudden concern that too much power would be concentrated in the hands of the Treasury Secretary and these right wing opponents are expressing the need for checks and balances so that one man does not have too much concentrated power. These are the same people who have spent the last eight years voicing their support for legislation such as FISA, the PATRIOT Act, and the Military Commissions Act; all of which had the radical affect of, you guessed it, concentrating power into the hands of one man. Oddly enough, to quote Greenwald: "Right-wing opposition to the Paulson plan is vital for having any meaningful chance to stop it." So we now find ourselves in the odd situation where it is necessary for the right-wing's hypocrisy to help save us from the incompetence of the Congressional Democrats. This would seem to point us toward the conclusion that there could be more wrong with this country than this financial crisis lets on.

This leads me to Dan La Botz. La Botz is a Cincinnati born writer, teacher, and activist who has written numerous books and a recent paper on "Who Rules Cincinnati". The Beacon did an interview with him recently on this topic and I attended his lecture this past week at the main branch of the Cincinnati Public Library. While La Botz's primary focus was on corporate influence in Cincinnati, he also spoke to the recent financial crisis because, as he put it, it would be silly for him to give a financial talk the day after the stock market crash of 1929 and not mention the stock market crash.

La Botz began with the point that this current financial problem is part of a bigger crisis of the American Capitalist system. He gave several reasons for why he believes this is so. Two of which were:

1. The United States embarked upon a plan to control a central source of petroleum in order to expand American interests and control a region of the world from which they would be able to protect these interests. This plan, La Botz argues, has failed. The War and occupation of Iraq have ended up costing the United States, by some estimates, over a trillion dollars and has left the U.S. in debt to several foreign nations (most notably China and Japan).

2. There is a disjuncture between the envisioned economy and what we see around us. As a people, we have been continually told that our economy is strong and that the United States is a top player in the world markets. This contradicts what people see around them. People are experiencing a damaged infrastructure, job loss due to globalization, and the lack of basic needs to members of our society.

These points lead to the conclusion that this crisis is not only about finance, but about the status of our society and our place in the world. Now you have a situation where you have governmental leaders and those on Wall Street running around trying to save capitalism by proposing sticking a band-aid on a gaping wound. It is because of this that Dan La Botz does not think that we have the forces to fundamentally change things. Similarly, Naomi Klein cautions those who think that capitalism is dead:

So, we should be really, really wary of this claim that we’re hearing that free market ideology is dead, that this marks the end of, you know, of capitalism. You know, I’m sorry, that is not the case. It may be going dormant for a little while to rationalize these massive bailouts, but it will come roaring back, and the crisis that is being deepened right now through these bailouts will be invoked for even more radical deregulation, privatization, tax cuts and so on.

In spite of the massive evidence that deregulation and a lack of oversight have caused the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression, you still see the same giant corporate forces trying to bailout the very system that led us to this very moment in time. While it may be slightly encouraging to see members of Congress voicing their displeasure with the Paulson Plan it will not be enough to simply amend the plan and end up passing another so-called compromise bill. These are the times when we need to be engaged in a serious discussion about what brought us to this point. We can not afford to make decisions that will lead this country back down the same road which will continue to leave those who have the least suffering the most. Massive public pressure must be applied to the leadership of this country demanding a fundamental examination of these policies and we must begin to have a conversation about the danger of concentrating even more power into the hands of the few and the necessity of returning more power to the people.

This article can also be found at: http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/