Phi Beta Iota: It was Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX) that screwed the American public by inserting 200 pages of lobbyist language into a bill five minutes before passage, with no objection from any other Senator The insertion completely deregulated the financial industry and led directly to the meltdown of the American economy.
Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) is now the leader of banking legislation, and protecting outrageous bonuses paid by American taxpayer bail-out funds was evidently not enough for his Wall Street masters–now he has sanctioned a massive loophole as explained by Andrew Cockburn, who together with his wife Leslie, produced the blockbuster documentary movie American Casino.
He also co-founder and editor of Counter-Punch, a gold standard in the public intelligence domain.
EXTRACT: My veteran informant explained the dark significance of these seemingly innocuous changes:
“This language obviously creates a rather significant loophole for voice brokers, as we discussed earlier. It is also very odd that it now says “or trading” after “execution.” This seems to open up the same loophole that the “confirmation facility” language did, as the language now reads that an ASEF is a person or thing that “facilitates the execution” of swaps– which means a telephone, a person on the other end of a telephone, or any thing else that helps a swap get traded (as opposed to actually trades it). In fact it is broader, since now an individual can qualify as an ASEF! Doesn't seem to meet the spirit of transparency and exchange-like trading that was supposedly being advanced earlier.”
Readers who might query the relevance of such arcane issues to the world at large should reflect that such trading practices are key to the gargantuan profits of the relevant banks, in particular JP Morgan, ($3 billion from derivatives in the last quarter alone) and that without them they might not survive in their present inflated form.
Betrayed by Obama: Anti-War Activists Plan ‘Emergency' Rally In D.C. Dec 12 Anti-war activists has announced an “Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally” to protest President Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan. The rally, scheduled for Dec. 12 in front of the White House, will include speeches by former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel and 2008 Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney
Obama, As Predicted Those who bought into the slogans ‘Hope' and ‘Change' last fall should have read the fine print. We were warned. . . . My expectation that Obama would be “Empire's New Clothes” is no small part of why I wrote an inordinately large number of essays and ultimately a book on the Obama phenomenon between the summer of 2004 and the 2008 election.
Liberals Are Useless I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered.
Lead facilitator Naomi Wolf is the author of seven books including Give Me Liberty and the New York Times bestseller The End of America, which has been adapted as a feature-length documentary. Wolf is the cofounder of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership and of the American Freedom Campaign, a U.S. democracy movement.
In a long weekend, a team of professionals will lead a true non-partisan “Democracy 411”. Retreatants will receive a core grounding in the principles of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as well as a refresher on the separation of powers. Furthermore, the retreat will provide participants with intensive modules on how to start a campaign, pressure your representative, create your own media, write op-eds, craft an initiative or referendum, draft a bill, lobby and petition for your most cherished issues, run a protest and excel at public speaking.
SAN FRANCISCO — A big pile of city crime reports is not all that useful. But what if you could combine that data with information on bars, sidewalks and subway stations to find the safest route home after a night out? . . .
“It will change the way citizens and government interact, but perhaps most important, it’s going to change the way elected officials and civil servants deliver programs, services and promises,” said Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, which is one of the cities leading the way in releasing government data to Web developers. “I can’t wait until it challenges and infuriates the bureaucracy.”
Advocates of these open-data efforts say they can help citizens figure out what is going on in their backyards and judge how their government is performing.
Phi Beta Iota: Alvin Toffler called it first, in PowerShift. Governments are now “dumb” in the face of complexity and ambiguity, but the least dumb are figuring out that creating Smart Communities starts with Open Everythiing and makes self-governance smart again. This is consistent with the rise of “Home Rule” across many counties, where corporations chartered by the public are bieng required to waive their inappropriately garnered “personality” if they wish to do business with the people.
