1. “The conservative group’s remarkable demand — black-and-white proof of the longtime Washington practice known as “pay for play” — was contained in a private letter to FedEx , which was provided to POLITICO.
The letter exposes the practice by some political interest groups of taking stands not for reasons of pure principle, as their members and supporters might assume, but also in part because a sponsor is paying big money.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0709/25072.html
2. “No one in Russia is buying tickets to the traveling Obama road show.
This is the road show whereupon Obama flies into a foreign country and makes a pretty speech that all two of our allowed political viewpoints will pretend to bicker over and then he flies home and US policy continues on the same as before… as this news story from the other day makes clear. So much for that “reset button.”
Americans, especially liberals, line up for tickets to the Obama road show. The lines are around the block.
Outside of cocoon America, however, sales are dead
.
But the backers of the Obama road show, the Beltway (or what our press would call “oligarchs” when talking about Russia’s government) don’t care about foreign ticket sales.
They just want to mollify Americans with the appearance of “change” while everything pretty much stays exactly the same. From troop “pullouts” that haven’t really happened to detention policies that haven’t really changed to defense spending that isn’t decreasing Americans are subjected to an Obama regime that must pretend to be different while actually being so only in the most cosmetic and substance-less of ways. “
http://original.antiwar.com/christopher-dowd/2009/07/17/russias-sickness%C2%A0anti-americanism/
3. Yet another thing Obama is getting wrong. Scholar Das says Today, Das says the new credit default swap regulations not only won’t help stabilize the economy, they might actually help to destabilize it:
“Proposals for over-the-counter (OTC) derivative regulations are consistent with H. L. Mencken’s proposition that: “there is always a well-known solution to every human problem–neat, plausible, and wrong.”
4. “Congress Woman Introduces Bill to Ban All Credit Default Swaps
I’m a little late to this story, but last week Congresswoman Maxine Waters introduced a bill to ban all credit default swaps.
As Waters said:
Preventing all credit-default swaps is essential to bringing stability to the market and preventing a similar crisis in the future.
Many top experts – including nobel prize winning economists and numerous other well-known PhD economists – agree.
Indeed, just today, Credit Sights published a report documenting – as I have previously pointed out – that CDS drive companies into bankruptcy.
But aren’t Obama’s new regulation of CDS good enough?
I have repeatedly argued that they aren’t.
But don’t listen to me. Satyajit Das is one of the world’s top credit default swap experts. Yves Smith says of Das:
Satyajit Das is a hard core derivatives expert, having worked with them in enough markets and enough vantage points to be very well versed . . .
This is Das’ area, and if he says it’s an issue, it is …
….
Indeed, the only people that are for CDS and the current half-baked regulations are the handful of giant banks that are making a killing from them. Everyone else is against them (indeed, the economy is the thing “being killed”).
Call your Congress member and demand he or she support Waters’ bill to ban all credit default swaps.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/congress-woman-introduces-bill-to-ban.html
5. And ANOTHER Obama mistake:
“Barack Opharma issues the ultimate bad news during his weekly Friday night bad news dump: Legal immunity set for swine flu vaccine makers 17 Jul 2009 The last time the government embarked on a major vaccine campaign against a new swine flu, thousands filed claims contending they suffered side effects [paralysis, death] from the shots. This time, the government has already taken steps to head that off. Vaccine makers and federal officials will be immune from lawsuits that result from any new swine flu vaccine, under a document signed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, government health officials said Friday. The document signed by Sebelius last month grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies“
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14430
6. “Celebrating Cronkite while ignoring what he did
It’s impossible even to imagine the likes of Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw and friends interrupting their pompously baritone, melodramatic, self-glorifying exploitation of Cronkite’s death to spend a second pondering what he meant by that.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
7. NOW we learn why there was a coup in Honduras”
“Chiquita in Latin America
When the Honduran military overthrew the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya two weeks ago there might have been a sigh of relief in the corporate board rooms of Chiquita banana. Earlier this year the Cincinnati-based fruit company joined Dole in criticizing the government in Tegucigalpa which had raised the minimum wage by 60%. Chiquita complained that the new regulations would cut into company profits, requiring the firm to spend more on costs than in Costa Rica: 20 cents more to produce a crate of pineapple and ten cents more to produce a crate of bananas to be exact. In all, Chiquita fretted that it would lose millions under Zelaya’s labor reforms since the company produced around 8 million crates of pineapple and 22 million crates of bananas per year.
When the minimum wage decree came down Chiquita sought help and appealed to the Honduran National Business Council, known by its Spanish acronym COHEP. Like Chiquita, COHEP was unhappy about Zelaya’s minimum wage measure. Amílcar Bulnes, the group’s president, argued that if the government went forward with the minimum wage increase employers would be forced to let workers go, thus increasing unemployment in the country. The most important business organization in Honduras, COHEP groups 60 trade associations and chambers of commerce representing every sector of the Honduran economy. According to its own Web site, COHEP is the political and technical arm of the Honduran private sector, supports trade agreements and provides “critical support for the democratic system.”
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23088.htm
8. “Press Has Become Virtual “Escort Services” for Moneyed Elites
More and more mainstream media are brokering cozy relationships between politicians and lobbyists.”
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23087.htm
