brainiac conspiracy

The Day President Gingrich is Sworn In

It's a safe guess this will be the first piece of legislation he'll sign. The only question is, who gets the no-bid contract? Halliburton? Bechtel? How about Massey Energy?

---Vitelius

Deep-Dish Lynching

I am guessing that someone put in some serious OT at Crossroads over the weekend to drag this out of the memory bin. Of course it will be blamed on that damned liberal media, but now the stage is set for earth's rightful ruler to claim what is justly his.

---Vitelius

Light Blogging This Week

On the road for the next three days, work-related crap with much schmoozing of America's job creators involved. Hopefully they'll create something for me, or I'll convince them to.

So if you want to keep me happy while I'm away, leave a comment or two. Or, go find some rich people, and give them all of your money.

---Vitelius

Give Them Everything That They WantAnd Call it a Victory for Homeowners

Looks like those negotiations our leaders are having with lenders and servicers over mortgage modification bear a strong resemblance to the negotiations they've had with pharmaceutical companies over health-care reform, with banking lobbyists over financial-services reform, and with Congressional Republicans over the stimulus bill, the federal debt ceiling, and deficit reduction:

[A] mountain of troubled mortgages would not be covered by this deal. Borrowers with loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be excluded, for example. Only loans that the banks hold on their books or that they service for investors would be involved.

One of the oddest terms is that the banks would give $1,500 to any borrower who lost his or her home to foreclosure since September 2008. For people whose foreclosures were done properly, this would be a windfall. For those wrongfully evicted, it would be pathetic. Roughly $1.5 billion in cash is expected to go into this pot.

The rest of the cash that would be paid by the banks is expected to be split this way: the federal government would get about $750 million, state bank regulators about $90 million. Participating states would share about $2.7 billion. That money is expected to finance legal aid programs, housing counselors and other borrower support. If 45 states participated, that would work out to about $60 million apiece.

For those keeping score, that's about half of what the state of California spends each year simply to operate its off-road vehicle parks. Not too inspiring if you're trying to solve a problem of systemic magnitude, now, is it.

Obviously, the loan modifications would make up a majority of the deal. And this is where real questions arise. For example, how can we be sure this plan won’t reward banks for modifications that they would have agreed to or should already have done absent the deal?

Perhaps most important, will the banks change the terms of loans enough to ensure that borrowers can actually meet their obligations over time? Or will these modifications default again, as is often the case? If so, the banks will have received a lucrative credit, even though borrowers fall back into trouble.

Such concerns are justified because past settlements promising big help to borrowers have failed to live up to their hype. An example is the 2008 settlement with Countrywide Financial that was struck by Illinois and California. Characterized as providing $8.7 billion in relief to troubled borrowers, it turned out to generate nowhere near that benefit.

The deal being discussed now may also release the big banks that are members of MERS, the electronic mortgage registry, from the threat of some future legal liability for actions involving that organization.

I think we all knew going in that there would be no admissions of wrongdoing. There never are anymore. But we didn't know going in that they would strike a deal so lopsided and so tone-deaf to public sentiment, they'd virtually assure each of themselves a one-way plane ticket home on January 20, 2013. But that's what's going to happen if this deal goes down, so hopefully, this leak helps to preempt it. Otherwise, we might as well start planning for that war with Iran because that's what President Gingrich will give us.

---Vitelius

What a Ponzi Scheme Looks Like

Promise your investors a reliable product for their investment dollars. Then take their money and leave them holding nothing but air. That's one type.

Or, you can take people's quarters and dimes on the promise of delivering reliable information, and leave them reading wish-list agenda items from the Peterson Foundation catalog instead. I mean, you really have departed the journalistic reservation when your entire analysis can be debunked in one sentence:

The system is self-financed under the law.

Even if the article were true, there are ways to make up the "shortfall" by reducing spending on other less-productive policy initiatives. Off the top of my head, here's one.

---Vitelius

Grifters and Philanderers

We can never take them seriously enough.

We really are led by some truly awful people.

---Vitelius

Always Look on the Bright Side

This just in: Most of the world is brutally impoverished. Who knew? And even if you're jobless, homeless and penniless in America, you're still better off than some guy in Namibia. So what are all you liberal malcontents complaining about?

Also too, Cameroon.

---Vitelius

Fairness and Balance

When you stop to think about it, we still have plenty of decent journalists in our country, digging through the policy weeds to demonstrate what inveterate liars conservatives are on every known subject in the universe. The problem is that none of the serial bullshit will disqualify these same people from being invited onto the major networks' Sunday talk shows, where they will repeat the same lies without fear of correction. I guess it's the difference between being a garden-variety political reporter and a Village All-Star.

---Vitelius

Also Too, the Rothschilds

Our lofty media ideal:

The National Press Club, a private club for journalists and communications professionals, has been a Washington institution for more than a century. It is also a world-class conference and meeting facility that hosts thousands of events each year for sophisticated clients from around the globe. And while these are the Club’s functions, its mission is to be The World’s Leading Professional Organization for Journalists. It is a social and business organization dedicated to supporting the ongoing improvement of the profession of journalism.

Our failed media experiment:

Talking at DC’s National Press Club on Thursday, Kincaid spoke of “the good Wall Street and the bad Wall Street.”

“Soros is the bad Wall Street,” he said. “But what’s interesting is that the Occupy Wall Street movement hasn’t been targeting him. Well, that’s interesting. That’s a fascinating development.”

Kincaid is a leading member of the group behind TheSorosFiles.com, a Web site aimed at delegitimizing Soros by posting files relating to his political contributions and personal life. The site is sponsored by America’s Survival, Inc.

Kincaid broadened his attacks on Soros to include accusations that the wealthy philanthropist intended to levy a global tax on financial transactions.

“We’ve got chapter and verse,” he said. “We’ve got the hardcore documentation about how a global tax […] has been the ultimate objective that will generate not only more money for, I guess, more stimulus plans here at home, but for international financial institutions and international agencies like the UN itself, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and so on and so forth.”

Because nothing says "ongoing improvement in the profession of journalism" like providing a forum for insane conspiracy theories.

I'm not talking about First Amendment issues here. If this crank wants to peddle this quasi-Bilderburger crap, he has every right---and every opportunity to share his message for an audience of millions with Glenn and Rush and Sean and Mark and countless B- and C-listers. What I am talking about is exercising some common sense and realizing that opting not to invite certain members of the political fringe to play on your stage does not qualify as an example of "liberal media bias." It qualifies, actually, as an example of maintaining high standards of journalistic integrity---which, if memory serves, was reliant on the sharing of accurate and verifiable information, not the hallucinations of paranoids, to retain high levels of public fidelity. But I guess we don't apply those same standards anymore. Maybe Sullivan's onto something here---it's certainly plausible that the ongoing rightwing media freakout is pretty much a rolling Fox reality show. If that's the case, perhaps our media watchdogs are simply members of the production crew.

---Vitelius

Question of The Day

Do you think anyone in the White House ever wonders:

How can a securities fraud of this nature and magnitude be the result simply of negligence?

It can't. But if the SEC were to admit it, some of Tim Geithner's tennis buddies America's job creators might be looking at prison time instead of a remittance that's barely pennies on the dollar. And since such an outcome would risk unsettling the markets, it simply can't ever be done.

Read the entire court order. If it doesn't explain in simple English how blatantly the regulators are colluding with the regulated, I'd sure like to know what does.

---Vitelius

Random Thought

Isn't Halloween the signature holiday of looters and moochers? I mean, people who have produced nothing of material value in their lifetimes (i.e., kids) run around their neighborhoods from door to door, looking to extort the hard-earned wealth of their more virtuous betters, and threatening unspecified "tricks" if they don't get what they want. Why, it's the ultimate rebellion of the takers against the makers, and our paganized secular society has not only tolerated this party of parasites but has actually instilled it in our youth as a generational rite of passage. So why are Real Americans upset that it might be coming to an end?

---Vielius

Gets Old Having to Repeat the Obvious

But this outfit is capable of much better work than this crap:

After weeks of relentless presidential pressure and congressional votes and debate, the stalemate in Congress between Democrats and Republicans over jobs legislation shows no signs of easing.

Partisan politics and deep philosophical differences just can't be bridged.

"It truly is remarkable that even on parts of the president's package they can't come to an agreement," said Burdett Loomis, a professor of political science at the University of Kansas.

No end to the bickering is in sight.

Neither, apparently, is the inability or unwillingness of many members of our DC media class to confront the reality that one of our two major political parties has been commandeered by a gang of nihilist fanatics who have already proven that they will do anything to stop any administration initiative that might actually lower unemployment from even coming up for a vote, let alone being passed, no matter how beneficial it might be to the economy. Because they don't want lower unemployment, or better economic numbers, until January 2013 because it would fuck up their political plans.

There have always been partisan philosophical differences between the two parties in Washington. What's different now is that one party no longer respects the other party's Constitutional right to exist. This really isn't difficult to comprehend.

Honestly, this kind of analysis is disappointing coming from McClatchy. This "partisan bickering" bullshit is supposed to be the exclusive province of the Post.

---Vitelius

What Do They Want?

A simple answer to the question du jour: To put these assholes out of business.

Also too, stop stealing our homes.

That is all.

---Vitelius

There is no Nation so War-Torn and Battered

That America's jobs creators can't devise new and ingenious ways to extract more money from its inhabitants.

I have no idea who's going to run Libya, but whoever it is, I really hope they express their gratitude to their Western benefactors by nationalizing their oilfields and hiring companies from some country that didn't bomb them (the Chinese, maybe?) to handle security and infrastructure for them. We already know what happens when you let the Europeans and the Americans run your country.

---Vitelius

Contain Your Surprise

When you learn our Democratic leaders are ready to piss away the party's legacy---giving voters no reason whatsoever to trust them with their votes ever again---for a sack of magic beans. Or was it a unicorn?

The Democratic plan contains $92 billion more in Medicare and Medicaid cuts ($475 billion) than Bowles-Simpson ($383 billion), and the same or a greater amount of cuts in this area than the Gang of Six plan.

At the same time, the Democratic plan contains $800 to $900 billion less in revenue increases than the Bowles-Simpson and Gang of Six plans.

The cuts in discretionary programs are as deep in the Democratic plan as in Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six.

When considered in conjunction with the discretionary program cuts enacted in the Budget Control Act of this past summer and measured against the baseline that Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six used, the Democratic plan results in a much greater ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases---at least 6 to 1, as Table 2 shows---than Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six, both of which had 2-to-1 ratios, including debt-service savings. Bowles-Simpson and the Gang of Six used a baseline that assumes that the Bush upper-income tax cuts will expire as scheduled. Relative to that baseline, those plans had $1.2 to $1.4 trillion in revenue increases, while the Democratic plan has about $400 billion. Relative to a current-policy baseline that assumes that Congress will extend all of the Bush tax cuts, the Gang of Six and Bowles-Simpson had $2.1 to $2.2 trillion in revenue increases, and the Democratic plan has $1.3 trillion [...]

The Democratic plan has $200 billion in Medicare beneficiary cuts, a level that exceeds the beneficiary cuts in Bowles-Simpson (the Gang of Six is not specific on this point) and is eight times the level of Medicare beneficiary cuts in the budget plan that President Obama released on September 19. Since half of Medicare beneficiaries have incomes below about $21,000, it would be extremely difficult to secure $200 billion in savings from increased Medicare beneficiary charges without requiring significantly larger out-of-pocket payments by beneficiaries with incomes as low as $12,000 or $15,000.

Go easier on the rich. Fuck the sick and elderly. And especially fuck the poor. Nice attempt at a compromise, boys.

Good thing the opposition has morphed into a tax-death cult, otherwise we'd really have something to worry about.

I've written recently that the ideological balance of power in our country rests somewhere between a corporatist party with a few liberal guiding domestic-policy principles, and the National Teabilly Front. I'm ready to amend that: the balance of power in our country currently exists somewhere between the Republican Party of the 1980s and the National Teabilly Front. As hard as I can be on Barack Obama, there are times like this when I think we don't really deserve him. Not with friends like this in the Congress, anyway.

On the other hand, you'd think the President would know better than anyone by now the perils and limitations, however well intended, of outsourcing so much of the legislative process to, well, the Legislature. I realize that's not it's supposed to work that way in a legislative body of sane and sober mien. Unfortunately, we don't really have one of those now, so the heavy lifting's on the White House. I think that's what perhaps makes things like the latest fiddling-at-the-margins Big Thing, i.e., the mortgage-relief agenda, so disappointing: the country is still crying for radical departures from the political status quo, and the guy's who supposed to personify the Zeitgeist just hasn't completely managed to embrace that mandate. When he does, shit might actually start to get done.

---Vitelius

Also Too, Islamofascists

First they were hippies. Then they were potheads. After that, anti-Semites, and shortly afterward, hooligans. Now, right on cue, racists.

Someone's getting worried about these demonstrations, and for some reason, I don't think it's the black and brown folks who are the ones losing sleep.

---Vitelius

Three-Piece Sadists

Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes working for an overleveraged company in the private sector could tell our leaders that there's no such thing as cost-cutting our way to prosperity. This doesn't require an advanced degree in Economics to figure out, and more often as not, cost-cutting is simply employed to scrounge up interest payments to creditors, or as a mechanism to stave off bankruptcy proceedings when it's become such a bad credit risk that no one will lend it any more money. One thing it's not is a precursor to expanding the business or increasing market share. Government, on the other hand, doesn't face the same dilemmas that private corporations do, since government can always lend itself money by firing up the printing presses, and yes, while deflating the currency carries certain risks, it certainly doesn't seem to have been a problem for us up to now. All of which must mean that our leaders' insistence on pursuing policies that reward reckless capital allocation while punishing honest labor must be due to their belief that inflicting pain and suffering on us is a moral virtue. I'm not sure what term you would use to describe this mode of thinking, but "sociopathy" would seem to be a good place to start.

---Vitelius

Police Beatings: Good News for Republicans!

It never ends:

Just as Democrats tried to tie Republicans to the most extreme tea party activists, the Massachusetts Republican Party is already attacking Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren as the “Matriarch of Mayhem” for saying she helped create an intellectual foundation for the protests.

There's always gotta be an equivalency, doesn't there? Even when the "most extreme Tea Party activists" have been embraced by Republican leaders and integrated into the party's ideological mainstream. Democrats don't have to "try" to link the two---the Tea Party is simply a re-branding of the Republican Party base. Watched any debates lately?

Also too, remember all the times a couple of years ago when police in riot gear waded into crowds at nonviolent Tea Party rallies and began firing off tear gas and pepper spray at the protestors? And all the Democratic political operatives who accused Tea Party candidates like Scott Brown of being "Merchants of Mayhem" afterwards? What an outrage that was! Oh, wait.

But some guy in the Massachusetts GOP mints a fresh phony talking point and, well, it's just like what some Democrats did somewhere. Even if they didn't.

It is difficult to see how our style of liberal democracy can endure when its chroniclers in official Washington can no longer discern the difference between bomb-throwers and reformers, or simply don't care to be be bothered by it.

Oh well, at least there's one guy at the Post who's still interested in doing his job.

---Vitelius

Grift Me With Your Best Shot

The hustle is wingnut boilerplate, but this is priceless:

Gingrich, a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, has wanted to hold a debate fashioned after the famous traveling match-ups between Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln in 1858. The Gingrich-Cain debate will be a modified version of the 19th-century forum in which one candidate spoke for an hour, followed by a 90-minute rebuttal from the second contender and finished with a 30-minute speech from the first candidate.

This event, however, will only last an hour and half, and will be simulcast online.

Okay, which one of these clowns is going to argue that Dred Scott was rightly decided? Better yet, who's going to argue that the Federal government has the Constitutional right to compel the states to observe and obey its mandates, using force of arms if necessary? That oughta go down well at the Teabilly Legion Hall. But if anyone can figure out a way to turn Honest Abe into a movement conservative, I gotta give the nod to Newt here. Of all the crazies in this year's field, he's got by far the most experience at verbalizing some of the craziest shit you've ever heard.

---Vitelius

Another Easy Fix

Just have the government pay them to build some other stuff that we can actually use, like wind farms and high-speed rail lines and desalination plants. It actually makes sense. I mean, why go to the trouble and/or risk of funding a bunch of smaller start-ups a'la Solyndra, which might go belly-up before they deliver a single widget, when you've already got large and well-oiled corporate entities with the proven resources to deliver ambitious mega-tech projects? Yes. there'd be some significant re-tooling/re-training costs, but these could be ameliorated easily enough via the tax code. As far as the CEOs and board members go, I don't see why they'd care what we paid them to build as long as the money's coming in and the dividends are paying out. Some of the best engineers and physicists work in the country for these companies, so why not turn them loose to work on R&D programs that can deliver some social utility for a change? We do want Americans to accomplish Big Things, right?

Would we overpay? Probably, to a degree. But we could actually get big shit done in a much more compressed timeframe than the glacially slow rate we are going with infrastructure projects right now. And besides, We Can't Wait™! Who knows, maybe Lockheed and Northrop might even need to hire some additional talent to get these projects built.

I know, swords-to-ploughshares is just a hippie pipe dream, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. Maybe one of these years, we'd consider giving it a try.

---Vitelius