The ever-prescient Naomi Klein prognosticates again:
I wrote The Shock Doctrine in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place…).
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.
It would be a grave mistake to underestimate the right’s ability to use this crisis — created by deregulation and privatization — to demand more of the same. Don’t forget that Newt Gingrich’s 527 organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future, is still riding the wave of success from its offshore drilling campaign, “Drill Here, Drill Now!” Just four months ago, offshore drilling was not even on the political radar and now the U.S. House of Representatives has passed supportive legislation. Gingrich is holding an event this Saturday, September 27 that will be broadcast on satellite television to shore up public support for these controversial policies.
Read the rest…
UPDATE (9-21-2008):
NEW YORK TIMES financial columnists Floyd Norris and Gretchen Morgenson discussed what bailouts entail. Morgenson said:
“The ugly thing about this is privatizing gains and socializing losses. So when things are going well, the managements make out, the shareholders make out, the counterparties are fine. All the private sector people do well. But when something goes wrong, when decisions are made that turn out to be bad decisions, the U.S. taxpayer has to take on the problem. And there’s something very wrong about that.”
(SOURCE)
Amy Goodman’s latest column, “Wall Street Socialists,” exposes the hypocrisy of the wealthy elite classes of this land of so-called equality.
The financial crisis gripping the U.S. has the largest banks and insurance companies begging for massive government bailouts. The banking, investment, finance and insurance industries, long the foes of taxation, now need money from working-class taxpayers to stay alive. Taxpayers should be in the driver’s seat now. Instead, decisions that will cost people for decades are being made behind closed doors, by the wealthy, by the regulators and by those they have failed to regulate.
If I wanted a bailout from my present formidable credit debt crisis, I cannot ask for taxpayer funds because I am not as important or valuable as AIG, Lehman Brothers, or Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Even though the risky practices those financial giants were practicing was of the same character as that of my own, in the over-reliance upon credit which the future cannot guarantee my own ability to pay back.
[transmission continues, read more ]
This can’t be good. If Alan Greenspan can’t find anything good to say about the economy, it must be pretty bad. Not a pleasant thought, but deep recession and/or depression may be just around the corner.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan offered a woeful outlook of America’s economic situation on Sunday, saying the crisis with the country’s financial institutions was as dire as he had ever seen in his long career, and predicting that one or more of those institutions would likely collapse in the near future.
“Oh, by far,” Greenspan said, when asked if the situation was the worst he had seen in his career. “There’s no question that this is in the process of outstripping anything I’ve seen and it still is not resolved and still has a way to go and, indeed, it will continue to be a corrosive force until the price of homes in the United States stabilizes. That will induce a series of events around the globe which will stabilize the system.”
REASONS TO DOUBT THE OFFICIAL STORY OF SEPTEMBER 11th, 2001
… An outline in simple talking points …
911Truth.org is home to articles backing virtually every point made below. Much of the basic research is available at the Complete 9/11 Timeline (hosted by cooperativeresearch.org), the 9/11 Reading Room (911readingroom.org), and the NY Attorney General Spitzer petition and complaint (Justicefor911.org). For physical evidence discussion, see Point 7.
THE DAY ITSELF - EVIDENCE OF COMPLICITY
1) AWOL Chain of Command
a. It is well documented that the officials topping the chain of command for response to a domestic attack - George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Myers, Montague Winfield - all found reason to do something else during the actual attacks, other than assuming their duties as decision-makers.
b. Who was actually in charge? Dick Cheney, Richard Clarke, Norman Mineta and the 9/11 Commission directly conflict in their accounts of top-level response to the unfolding events, such that several (or all) of them must be lying.
2) Air Defense Failures
a. The US air defense system failed to follow standard procedures for responding to diverted passenger flights.
b. Time lines: The various responsible agencies - NORAD, FAA, Pentagon, USAF, as well as the 9/11 Commission - gave radically different explanations for the failure (in some cases upheld for years), such that several officials must have lied; but none were held accountable.
c. Was there an air defense stand-down?
[transmission continues, read more ]
I hate to be pessimistic, but I am inclined to agree with the outcome predicted in this fine essay by Adam McKay:
“Stop saying that!” my wife says to me. But this is not a high school football game and I’m not a cheerleader with a bad attitude. This is an election and as things stand now, we’re gonna frickin’ lose this thing. Obama and McCain at best are even in the polls nationally and in a recent Gallup poll McCain is ahead by four points.
Something is not right. We have a terrific candidate and a terrific VP candidate. We’re coming off the worst eight years in our country’s history. Six of those eight years the Congress, White House and even the Supreme Court were controlled by the Republicans and the last two years the R’s have filibustered like tantrum throwing 4-year-olds, yet we’re going to elect a Republican who voted with that leadership 90% of the time and a former sportscaster who wants to teach Adam and Eve as science? That’s not odd as a difference of opinion, that’s logically and mathematically queer.
[transmission continues, read more ]
Philip E. Johnson makes a good point about the connection between creationism and equality. In his article “The Creationist and the Sociobiologist,” Johnson observes that the contemporary secular university is immersed in the flux state of post-Modernism. In such environments, the “nature and even the very existence of objective knowledge is in question.”
He then notes that our national reverence for the Declaration of Independence is well-deserved, and reminds us that it speaks out on behalf of our Creator early on, crediting Him with a “self-evident” truth. (The very idea of self-evident truth throws post-Moderns into spasms). And the truth is that we are all created equal.
[transmission continues, read more ]
I was so tickled today to receive an email from my sister Sherry. Sherry was second born of us five, an occupational therapist living in Colorado with her husband, Gary. They love hiking and taking pictures of their adventures. She often sends me pictures and albums. But today she pointed me to a very interesting picture of my father, Robert Miles.
She had recently asked our dad about the ship he had served on during his Korean War days in the U. S. Navy. During Thanksgiving visits to my dad’s place in Las Vegas, I had heard the story about the tender ship before; it was the USS Hamul, and dad’s job was to repair radios and electronic equipment. Tender ships were like floating repair shops and ammo warehouses, tending to the needs of the battle group.
Well, the idea struck her to check the Internet for history of the USS Hamul. Turns out somebody made a website dedicated to the ship: www.usshamul.com, and had posted a few pictures of the various crew compliments. His crew is pictured on this page: http://www.usshamul.com/photo_013.html, and I reposted it below.
That’s my dad, Robert Miles, on the front row, 5th from the left.
