Sarah Palin Resigns As Governor, Wolves Everywhere Celebrate

Insane Republican's at it Again!!!

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Smearing The Census

July 2, 2009 - ThinkProgress.org

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The 2010 Census will be sent to every American household as mandated by the Constitution. Despite the importance of this decennial event, a number of right-wing figures have begun spinning conspiracy theories about the Census and what the government does with the data it collects. RNC Chairman Michael Steele said last month that President Obama intended to use the Census as part of what he called an "ongoing political campaign." Right-wing talker Neal Boortz declared, "I will respond to the Census, but the only information I will give them is the number of adults who live in my household."

Former Bush speechwriter Meghan Clyne warned that the Census Bureau is "forcing Americans to disclose sensitive information about their finances, health and lifestyles," despite the fact that she gives similar information to the IRS on her tax form every year. So far, the most visible and vocal figure in this baseless fear-mongering campaign has been Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who has been trashing the Census with false and uninformed claims in an attempt to improve her standing with the right wing of her party. An anonymous Republican senator has placed a hold on Obama's nominee to direct the Census, Dr. Robert Groves, which is delaying mission-critical preparations for 2010.

THE 2010 CENSUS:

The 2010 Census will count "everyone residing in the United States: in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Island Areas," as mandated by the Constitution. But the importance of the Census goes far beyond a simple tally of the U.S. population. Conducted since 1790, officials use the data gathered to apportion the seats in the House of Representatives; "distribute $300 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year"; define local school districts; and make many other urban planning decisions including "where to provide services for the elderly, where to build new roads and schools, or where to locate job training centers." To ensure the most accurate count possible, Americans are required by law to fill out the Census.

For the first time, the 2010 Census will make use of wireless handheld computers "with the ability to transmit collected data back to the Census Bureau in near real-time." Further, for the first time, the Census will count same-sex married couples. The Bush administration had ruled out recognizing such couples, citing the Defense of Marriage Act, but the Obama administration reversed that decision last month. The Census has "been simplified to include only 10 questions, the shortest in the survey's 219-year history" with the longer American Community Survey sent to a small subset of Americans to collect more detailed demographic information. Contrary to right-wing claims, the Census Bureau is prohibited by law from sharing non-anonymous data with any other individual or federal agency.

CONGRESSWOMAN MICHELE BACHMANN'S LIES:

Bachmann began her anti-Census campaign in mid-June, declaring on the Washington Times radio show that she would illegally refuse to answer any Census question beyond "how many people are in our home...because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that." Bachmann said that she could not trust the government with any more information than that because "ACORN has been named one of the national partners...and they will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public." The community organizing group ACORN -- one of the contemporary right's favorite boogeymen -- has indeed been named one of over 250 "national partners" in the 2010 Census. But as an ACORN official explained to ThinkProgress, the organization "will not have any role in collecting Census responses." Rather, as PolitiFact explains, the role of ACORN and other national partners will be to "simply promote the availability of temporary Census jobs."

Anyone who applies as a result of promotional work done by organizations like ACORN will be "required to go through a background check that includes an FBI name check and fingerprint check so that felons are not hired to work on the 2010 Census." Despite this, Bachmann continued to make her outrageous claims in subsequent media appearances. On Fox News, she claimed her reluctance to fill out the Census stemmed from a fear that the data would be used to "round up" Americans. She also falsely claimed that the Census Bureau does not ask if respondents are American citizens. Bachmann's fear-mongering was roundly mocked by comedian Stephen Colbert and harshly condemned by the largest newspaper in her home state of Minnesota. Finally, Bachmann's conspiracy-laden concerns have become too much for even her Republican colleagues in the House. Yesterday, three of the four House Republicans on the subcommittee that oversees the Census released a statement calling
her boycott plan "illogical, illegal and not in the best interest of our country." The members first attempted to dissuade Bachmann privately, but to no avail. As one GOP source told CongressDaily, "As long as Fox News keeps calling, she's going to keep going."

BACHMANN'S ANONYMOUS SENATE ALLY:

A lower-profile, but arguably just as significant issue, confronts the Census in the Senate: "With little more than six months before the start of the next count, the Census Bureau still doesn't have a director." This is occurring even though the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs unanimously approved Groves, Obama's nominee, nearly two months ago. The full Senate has yet to vote on Groves because one anonymous member has placed a hold on his nomination. Before being nominated, Groves served as director of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center and before that served as the "Bureau's associate director of statistical design from 1990 to 1992."

Mother Jones speculated that the hold was the result of right-wing fears that Groves might use statistical-sampling to adjust the Census results. As the Wall Street Journal explained, Groves "was among a group of Bureau officials who advocated [the use of sampling] after it became evident that the 1990 Census had failed to count nearly five million people." Indeed, despite agreement among social scientists that sampling would be a more accurate way to conduct the Census, the right wing has long feared the use of such sampling. Polling expert Nate Silver explains that this fear stems from the likelihood that such adjustment would better represent harder-to-count Americans living in urban areas who are more likely to vote Democratic. But this fear is unfounded, as Groves has already ruled out the use of such techniques in both the 2010 and 2020 Census. If that were not enough to mollify the anonymous senator delaying mission-critical preparations for next
year's Census, the Supreme Court ruled as unconstitutional the "use of statistical sampling methods to obtain population figures for determining how many of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives go to each of the 50 states" in 1999.

Ignoring Propethic Predictors

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Ralph Nader
July 2, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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I've wondered often why people who go to "town meetings" held by campaigning politicians rarely ask fundamental questions.

Here is one that should have been asked of presidential candidate Barack Obama: "If you get to the White House, will you appoint to top positions Americans who have a track record of making the right decisions in their respective fields?"

"Of course, I will," Obama would have undoubtedly replied.

Of course, he did not when it came to the collapse of the corrupt Wall Street casinos and the bailout of these gamblers by the American people. Obama chose the very Wall Streeters and Wall Street servants who were involved in, condoned, or profited from the speculative binges that led to the biggest government bailout scheme in world history. The President's explanation is that he wants experienced people who know how Wall Street works. Yeah, right! In reality, he wanted political cover.

Something very important is missing when even people who are part of the ruling establishment are ignored, marginalized, or ridiculed even though their detailed, public warnings prove to be all too accurate.

Consider billionaire, Ross Perot. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, Ross, as everyone calls him, was right on General Motors, right on NAFTA trade, and right on the federal deficits.

In 1984, he joined the Board of Directors of GM after selling his successful company, EDS, to the auto giant. He could scarcely believe how stodgy, bureaucratic, and insensitive GM executives were in running the company. He tried to shake up the boys at the top to meet the fast-growing competition from Asia and Europe.

The GM brass couldn't stand Ross "at large" probing up and down the company, so in 1986 they bought out his shares in return for him leaving the Board.

Two years later, reflecting on his experience at GM with a reporter from Fortune, Perot called the "General Motors system a blanket of fog that keeps people from doing what they know needs to be done."

Warming up, Perot continued: "One day I made a speech to some senior executives. I said, 'Okay, guys, I'm going to give you the whole code on what's wrong. You don't like your customers. You don't like your dealers. You don't like the people who make your cars. You don't like your stockholders. And, to a large extent, you don't like one another. For this company to win, we're going to have to love our customers. We're going to have to stop fretting about dealers who make too much money and hope they make $1 billion a year though us. The guys on the factory floor are the salt of the earth-not mad-dog, rabid, burn-the-plant-down radicals. And all this sniping at one another-the financial guys vs. the cars guys-is terribly destructive.'"

GM didn't listen to Ross. Now, after a long, relentless slide, GM is bankrupt, abandoning their workers, two thousand of their dealers, and their customers' grievances. Moreover, GM is into the U.S. taxpayer for over $70 billion.

Perot devoted much of his 1993 published book Save Your Job, Save Our Country to NAFTA and trade. Looking back, he was right most of the time. NAFTA cost more U.S. jobs than it created, generated a huge U.S. trade deficit with Mexico, and mainly benefited the "36 businessmen who own Mexico's 39 largest conglomerates or over half of Mexico's Gross National Product."

The border-located maquiladora factories have high worker turnover and squeeze the laborers in often unsafe conditions for little pay.

Here is how Perot described the scene behind the boasting of Washington, DC, and corporations about the large increase in trade after NAFTA:

"Most of the goods produced in the maquiladoras are shipped into the U.S. market. Consequently, most of the so-called trade between the U.S. and Mexico is not trade as trade is commonly understood. Rather, it is primarily U.S. companies shipping their own machinery, components, and raw materials across the border into their Mexican factories and then shipping their finished or semi-finished goods back over the border into the U.S."
A good deal of the U.S. auto industry went south after NAFTA, leaving workers and communities stranded in Michigan and other states. Bankrupt Chrysler is planning to move a modern, award-winning engine plant in Wisconsin to Mexico after receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts.

On Perot's nationally-televised deficit warnings (with charts), what more need be said? Even he did not envision what would pile up after his clarion calls. The burden on the next generation and the tax dollars diverted from our country's needs to pay the interest on these trillions of dollars of debt were pointed out again and again nearly twenty years ago by the Texas entrepreneur. He even has a website (perotcharts.com) updating the red ink.

In Bush's and Obama's Washington, there is no room for Perot to gain visibility and recognition.

It is one thing for the Washington politicians to ignore prescient progressive commentators, like William Grieder, who have been prophetically right on. It is quite another escape from reality to turn their backs on leaders within the business establishment itself.

There are many like Perot who must be watching the day's news and saying "we told you so, but you didn't listen then and you are not listening now."

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Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book is The Seventeen Traditions.

Chamber of Commerce Launches $100 Million Campaign to Protect Wall Street's Power at Our Expense

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The CoC is the world's most powerful lobbying machine and it's working to make sure our money gets funneled to corporate execs.

Zach Carter
July 2, 2009 - AlterNet

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Perhaps the greatest public deception surrounding today's financial meltdown is the notion that it is unique -- a once-in-a-lifetime crisis that reflects bad luck rather than any fundamental problem with the U.S. banking system's sway in global politics.

The truth is that throughout the 1980s, the major money center banks were in much the same situation they find themselves in today.

But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans to spend $100 million on a lobbying push to tell you the otherwise. It's a very careful strategy designed to ensure that Wall Street maintains the power to hijack the economy and demand epic bailouts from ordinary citizens as a reward for its own greed.

The name may sound like a coalition of your friendly neighborhood small-business proprietors, but in truth, the CoC is the world's most powerful lobbying machine for the corporate executive class.

Between 1998 and 2009, the CoC's campaign contributions dwarfed those of every other interest group in the United States -- over $447 million, more than double the next closest political influence peddler, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. If you add up the total contributions of Exxon Mobil, tobacco giant Altria (formerly known as Philip Morris) and GE, you won't even get close to what the CoC spends on congressional favors.

"The Chamber," as the group ominously refers to itself, opposes key issues like universal health care, expanded unionization, efforts to curb global warming and even pay restrictions for the CEOs of bailed-out banks. Their new lobby assault is an attack on regulation and any other attempt to control the economic wrecking crew in the U.S. banking sector.

"Our biggest worry is the issue with the Congress and then the follow-on regulations," CoC President and CEO Thomas Donohue said in a recent Fox News interview. "We supported the TARP funds, we supported issues to clear up the issues on General Motors, because this is a most extraordinary time. But now it is a moment to say 'OK, we've gone there, let's stop.' "

Donohue's argument is simple. With the economy on the verge of collapse, the government needs to funnel trillions of dollars to failed businesses just this one time, and then leave corporate execs to their own devices once the storm passes. Of course, Donohue's story is also a complete lie. Big bank bailouts have happened before, and without radical changes to the government's oversight of the financial sector, they will happen again.

In 1982, JPMorgan, Bank of America and Citibank were all facing financial ruin. They had made billions in expensive, high-interest loans to developing nations in Latin America, and the nations simply could not afford to repay them. These loans accounted for more than double the amount of money that the banks had set aside as a cushion against losses, according to FDIC data. Accounting for the loans accurately would have meant filing for bankruptcy.

"They were a lot like subprime mortgage loans," says William Black, a senior bank regulator from the 1980s, who now teaches law and economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. "They were never very good loans to begin with, so the borrowing never made a whole lot of sense."

But compliant U.S. regulators didn't make the banks record losses on the loans that were never going to be paid back. Between 1982 and 1987, no major money center bank realized any loss on a loan to a nation in Latin America. As the crisis dragged on, the International Monetary Fund eventually stepped in, amid heavy negotiations between foreign governments, the banks and the U.S. Treasury Department.

"The banks were permanently in conversation with IMF or the Treasury, it was part of the game," says Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, who served as finance minister for Brazil during the height of the debt crisis. "The debtors had to negotiate with this coalition."

The Treasury Department was intensely devoted to protecting the interests of U.S. banks and refused to sign off on rescue plans that required banks to reduce the amount that foreign governments owed. To make sure that banks were paid, the Treasury and the IMF worked out a plan where the IMF served as a bailout conduit, funneling money from the U.S. Treasury to the major banks such as Citi and Bank of America.

"Whenever the accountants are about to say to Citi, 'you have to recognize a loss,' the U.S. increases its contribution to the IMF, the IMF promptly makes a loan to Brazil, and Brazil promptly makes a payment to Citi," Black says.

"In a lot of ways, the IMF really can be blamed for this whole story," says economist Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "They always wanted to lay down the law for everyone else, but when it comes to the banks, they're happy to come to the rescue."

Eventually the Treasury and the IMF began orchestrating "troubled-debt restructurings" between banks and overburdened nations. The result was an under-the-table bailout achieved by exploiting weak accounting rules.

Here's how the scam works: Banks get to say they've made a lot of money when they issue a loan with a 20 percent interest rate -- a lot more than if they extend the same loan with a 5 percent interest rate. Even if the borrowers have no hope of repaying these loans over the long term, bank executives get to pay themselves huge bonuses for a few years based on these illusory, short-term profits. But when the borrower finally runs out of financial rope, the bank is supposed to book a big loss -- the loan is not being paid back. It has extended money that is never coming back.

Under a troubled-debt restructuring, U.S. banks agreed to reduce how much foreign governments owed them on a particular loan. Instead of demanding their full 20 percent payment, they would dramatically reduce the payment -- to say, 5 percent.

But the IMF and the U.S. Treasury didn't require the banks to reflect these changes on their accounting statements -- so far as their balance sheets were concerned, the banks were still receiving a full 20 percent payment. Since they had previously accounted for these loans at full value, the banks were actually losing money and marking accounting statements as if they were still raking it in. The IMF and U.S. regulators were bailing them out.

This is precisely the dynamic that Donohue and the CoC want to preserve: CEOs book giant bonuses on debts that can never be repaid, and then turn to the taxpayer when the bet inevitably turns south.

But while the IMF went to great lengths to placate big banks, it was much harder on the countries who received its "assistance."

When the IMF provided countries with emergency funding, it attached a brutal set of strings to the loans known as "austerity measures." These were basically severe restrictions on government spending. For developing countries, much of this spending takes the form of absolutely crucial poverty-alleviation programs that provide basic necessities to citizens. Cutting off these funds meant deepening the recession and forcing the most vulnerable members of society to bear the brunt of the blow.

The IMF's economic strategy here was essentially the opposite of what President Barack Obama is doing with today's economic stimulus package. Instead of boosting government spending to make up for the drop-off in private-sector demand and counteract the recession, foreign governments were required to cut back dramatically, making the recession worse.

The IMF never imposed any penalties on the banks it bailed out. Management teams were not forced out, shareholders continued to enjoy high returns and no reforms in bank-lending practices were required.

This wasn't just unfair. It taught the banks that they could book big short-term profits on risky loans and rely on governments and the IMF to save them if the bets ever went bad. Economists call this phenomenon "moral hazard" -- the tendency for actors to behave recklessly if they are insulated form the consequences of their bad bets.

"We continuously propagate the moral hazard by bailing these institutions out," says William Darity, an expert on the Latin American Debt Crisis, who teaches economics at Duke University. "It always struck me as odd that we're more willing to sacrifice the moral hazard issue on the side of these big lenders than on the part of the borrowers."

So it's no surprise that today the big banks are coming back to both the taxpayers and the IMF for support. After gorging themselves on a different kind of predatory, high-interest debt -- the subprime mortgage -- banks find themselves on the brink of collapse.

And once again, with the global economy in crisis, political leaders in the U.S. and Europe want to bolster the IMF's funding to give it a broader role in the international bank bailout scam. Obama has pledged $108 billion in fresh financing for the global finance machine.

The irony is that the IMF's own destructiveness nearly wiped it out entirely. By 2007, the IMF had just $10 billion in loans outstanding, down from $105 billion four years earlier, as countries simply refused to work with the lender.

But despite a host of promises and rosy press releases from the IMF about its plans to treat countries fairly, its standard policies remain in place.

"The major source of demand for those funds is East Europe, and that's really a story about bailing out the banks," Baker says.

When the dot-com bubble burst earlier this decade, banks went searching for other places to charge high interest on loans, and Eastern European economies were a prime target.

Today, with the global economy slumping, banks are watching the mirror image of the U.S crisis unfold in developing countries. Here, banker excess fueled a massive recession. In much of Eastern Europe, the recession brought on by troubles in the U.S. is fueling a financial crisis -- the banks aren't getting paid because the economy is slowing down.

The IMF is still up to its old tricks. According to an analysis by Bhumika Muchhala of the Third World Network, the IMF has attached similar austerity measures it has used for decades to the emergency loans it made in 2008 to Georgia, Ukraine, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Pakistan, Serbia, Belarus and El Salvador.

If we give money to the IMF, we know what will happen: Eastern European nations will be forced to cut social-welfare programs and pay off big banks in the U.S. and Western Europe.

"I think the IMF could serve many purposes, but not without changing very significantly, and I don't see those changes happening," says Aldo Caliari, coordinator of the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project for the think tank Center of Concern.

The IMF helped create today's economic crisis by teaching U.S. banks that wrecking the economy could be profitable. We shouldn't give them money to do it again. But the argument launched by Donohue and the CoC is even more laughable. In the eyes of "The Chamber," the government's proper role in the economy is to funnel public money to corporate executives.

If we don't ban fake profits and fake bonuses, the bailout cycle will never end.

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Zach Carter writes a weekly blog on the economy for the Media Consortium. His work has appeared in the American Prospect, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and on CNBC.

FBI says Saddam's weapons bluff aimed at Iran

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JoAnne Allen
July 2, 2009 - Reuters

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Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader.

"Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction.

He believed Iraq was being threatened by others in the region and must appear able to defend itself, the report said.

The FBI reports, released on Wednesday, said Saddam asserted that he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq's weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for blocking the return of UN weapons inspectors who were searching for WMD.

"In his opinion, the UN inspectors would have directly identified to the Iranians where to inflict maximum damage to Iraq," according to the documents obtained and released by the National Security Archive, a nongovernmental research institute.

Saddam began a bloody border war with Iran in 1980 that lasted until 1988, during which Iraq used chemical weapons.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush launched the Iraq war in 2003, citing a threat of weapons of mass destruction from Saddam's government, but no such weapons were ever found.

FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least five "casual conversations" with the former Iraqi leader

after his capture by U.S. troops in December 2003, according to the documents.

Saddam, identified as "High Value Detainee #1," shared Bush's hostility toward the "fanatic" Iranian mullahs, according to the FBI records of conversations from February through June 2004 between Saddam and Arabic-speaking agents in his detention cell at Baghdad International Airport.

Saddam also denied any connections to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who he called a "zealot," and cited North Korea as his most likely ally in a crunch, according to the documents.

He also takes personal responsibility for ordering the launching of SCUD missiles against Israeli targets during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, because he blamed Israel and its influence in the United States for "all the problems of the Arabs," the reports said.

During the interviews, Saddam rejects some examples of what he viewed as myths, like his purported use of body doubles. According to the notes, Saddam said he could recall using the telephone only twice since March 1990 and that he communicated primarily through couriers.

Saddam was executed in December 2006 after being convicted of crimes against humanity by an Iraqi court for the killing of 148 Shi'ite men and boys following a 1982 assassination attempt.