Author Archives: Craig

Local Radio Host Accused of Hit and Run

18 Saturday Feb 2012

Posted by in Conservatives, Politics

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 If it walks like a cover-up and talks like a cover-up…..Video compilation of Houston news reports about local conservative radio host Michael Berry’s involvement in a hit and run (allegedly) at a gay bar,  from Raw Story:

Vodpod videos no longer available.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Click2Houston has more:

“New witnesses have stepped forward to say they saw a talk show host behind the wheel after a hit-and-run crash outside a popular gay bar, and Local 2 Investigates has obtained video from inside the bar that is now in the hands of police.

Houston police obtained video from inside T.C.’s Show Bar on Converse and Fairview in the Montrose to confirm that the conservative activist was inside the club around the time of the Jan. 31 hit-and-run outside the club.

“Videos don’t lie. They don’t paint pictures that don’t exist,” said Tuderia Bennett, whose car was damaged in the hit and run. “I want my money more than anything else.”

[…]

Bennett told police he saw the crash and wrote down the license number, and he also told police he could positively identify Berry as being the man behind the wheel.  Bennett told police he rushed up to the SUV that hit his car right after impact and flashed the beam of his flashlight into the window.

Police officers assigned to the case told Local 2 Investigates that prosecutors from the Harris County District Attorney’s Office declined to file hit-and-run charges against Berry, saying that no one could positively identify him as being behind the wheel.”

So we have multiple eyewitnesses, a license plate number, video of the person inside the bar just before the incident, and “no one could positively identify him?” Seriously?

Berry refused to comment to reporters, but said this on his radio show:

“I’ve always said when you do what I do, the way I do it, you make enemies. When you poke your finger in as many people’s eye as I do every day, you make enemies,” said Berry.

He said that his detractors “will accuse you of most anything” and he added, “You have to trust that in the end, the system works itself out, that there are checks and balances, there are people who will verify. But you also recognize that there are some people who want you to be crushed. There’s some people who hate you.  There are some people who privately would benefit from you not being on the air.”

He said he does not respond to reporters who question him “on their turf” because it is subject to editing.  However, at no point in his broadcast did he deny being behind the wheel and at no point did he address his presence in the club.

“You simply cannot go out there and chase down every nasty thing that is said about you.  Just because someone says something nasty about you doesn’t make it true,” he said.

Kind of like what you do on a daily basis, huh Michael? Having listened to Berry’s program on occasion, one of his favorite targets for scorn and ridicule is Houston Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee. I was just wondering what Berry’s reaction might be to a report that Congresswoman Lee had been identified by eyewitnesses in a hit and run and was not charged? Would he be the very understanding person who is willing to let the system work before jumping to conclusions, or would he rush to the microphone ASAP and start doing what he and his right-wing radio brethren do so well–say nasty things, true or not?

That would be a rhetorical question.

Romney Doubles Down on GM, Chrysler Rescue

15 Wednesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Politics, Romney

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Mitt Romney’s op-ed in yesterday’s Detroit News, doubling down on while at the same time conflicting what he wrote about President Obama’s rescue of GM and Chrysler in November of 2008, pretty much comes down to this: Mitt is upset because union workers got to keep their jobs and health care benefits, the automakers’ “secured creditors” (read big banks) took a bit of a loss, and Mitt’s corporate-raider, Gordon Gecko wannabe buds didn’t get a chance to carve up and liquidate the two automakers (and as the cherry on the sundae put those evil union thugs in the unemployment line) for their own fun and profit.

“Three years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management of the American economy are evident in what he did.”

So Obama’s management style was proven defective even though it worked. What the….?

“My view at the time — and I set it out plainly in an op-ed in the New York Times — was that “the American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing.”

Thus was also Romney’s “view at the time”:

“If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.”

Good call, Mitt. Romney then ventures into very familiar territory: the land of self-contradiction. He says what Chrysler and GM needed at the time was a “managed bankruptcy.” Six paragraphs later he laments the outcome of the…uh…managed bankruptcy:

“By the spring of 2009, instead of the free market doing what it does best, we got a major taste of crony capitalism, Obama-style.

Thus, the outcome of the managed bankruptcy proceedings was dictated by the terms of the bailout. Chrysler’s “secured creditors,” who in the normal course of affairs should have been first in line for compensation, were given short shrift, while at the same time, the UAWs’ union-boss-controlled trust fund received a 55 percent stake in the firm.”

“Free market doing what it does best” as defined by the Bain vulture capitalist who like to fire people. And never mind that in the 2008 piece Romney wrote:

“But don’t ask Washington to give shareholders and bondholders a free pass — they bet on management and they lost.”

The largest of those secured creditors at the time? The ones who “were given short shrift?” JP Morgan Chase. They took a $2 billion loss on loans to Chrysler. Well boo frickin’ hoo for Jamie Dimon and the gang at Chase, who pocketed a cool $68.6 billion in bailout money from the feds.

And about that “union-boss controlled trust fund”:

“He’s complaining, of course, that VEBA (the trust fund run by professionals that allowed the auto companies to spin off contractual obligations–retiree healthcare–to the unions) got a stake in Chrysler while Chrysler’s secured creditors took a haircut.

So, in part, he’s basically complaining that the bailout preserved the healthcare a bunch of 55+ year old blue collar workers were promised. He’s pissed they got to keep their healthcare.”

…Still, the UAW retirees who still have healthcare today instead of Jamie Dimon having another yacht probably don’t feel the same way as Mitt does.”

I just can’t figure out why Romney’s once upon a time commanding lead over Rick Santorum in Michigan is going, going, gone. Pay attention, Mittster. That sound you hear is the fat lady clearing her throat.

Drug Test Grandma

14 Tuesday Feb 2012

Posted by in Politics, Republicans

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Mitt Romney thinks it’s “an excellent idea” to drug test anyone who receives government benefits:

OK Mitt, let’s run with this “excellent idea.” Let’s drug test every member of Congress, all 9 Supreme Court justices. Let’s drug test every one of your buds on Wall Street who received trillions in “government benefits” when they were bailed out by the taxpayers. Let’s drug test every senior citizen who receives a Social Security check or whose health care is covered by Medicare. Drug test every disabled vet. Hand everyone who walks in the door at a VA hospital a plastic cup as a condition to receive treatment. How about every one who claims a mortgage interest deduction on their income taxes. Isn’t that a government benefit? Let’s test ‘em all, Mitt.

Of course, Romney’s not referring to any of those. Only those poor people he doesn’t care anything about and the unemployed who he likes to fire.

Speaking of Romney, Svengali Norquist pretty much endorsed him for president:

“All we have to do is replace Obama…We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. … We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don’t need someone to think it up or design it…Pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen to become president of the United States.”

Well then, the Mittbot is your man, Grover. No convictions, no principles, willing to sell his soul and become whatever the right-wing extremists want him to be just so he can have a shot at the presidency. I’m sure he’ll gladly play Charlie McCarthy to you Edgar Bergen. Severely so.

How far the apple has fallen from the tree. During the race to win the 1968 Republican nomination, George Romney held to the courage of his convictions and stood up to the Party on the issues of civil rights, the Vietnam War, and corporate responsibility. Just imagine how this would fly in today’s GOP:

“As a CEO he would give back part of his salary and bonus to the company when he thought they were too high. He offered a pioneering profit-sharing plan to his employees. Most strikingly, asked about the idea that “rugged individualism” was the key to America’s success, he snapped back, “It’s nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.” He was the poster child for the antiquated notion that corporations have multiple stakeholders: the workers that breathe them life, the communities in which they are situated, and the nation to whom they owe a patriotic obligation – most definitely and emphatically not just stockholders.”

Mitt, you are no George Romney.

Lost in the ’50s

13 Monday Feb 2012

Posted by in Conservatives, health care, Politics

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Is this really the hill Republicans want to die on? Didn’t we already have this argument like…I don’t know…50 years ago? Do their campaign strategerists actually think that ‘Keep ‘em barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen where they belong’ is a winner in the 2012 race for the White House? What’s next on the GOP agenda? Repeal of the 19th Amendment?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday:

“The fact that the White House thinks this is about contraception is the whole problem. This is about freedom of religion, it’s right there in the First Amendment. You can’t miss it — right there in the very first amendment to our Constitution,” McConnell said. “What the overall view on the issue of contraception is has nothing to do with an issue about religious freedom.”

McConnell went on to embellish the argument, claiming Obama is being “rigid in his view that he gets to decide what somebody else’s religion is.” He said that “this issue will not go away until the administration simply backs down.”

…“If we end up having to try to overcome the President’s opposition by legislation, of course I’d be happy to support it, and intend to support it,” McConnell said. “We’ll be voting on that in the Senate and you can anticipate that that would happen as soon as possible.”

That would be the legislation proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the Blunt Amendment, which would, according to the National Women’s Law Center:

“[A]llow employers and insurance companies to refuse coverage of any health care service required under the new health care law based on undefined “religious beliefs or moral convictions.” This creates a huge loophole in the new health care law’s coverage requirements. For example, any corporation whose CEO opposes contraception based on his “moral convictions” could deny all coverage of contraception or any other service to the company’s employees. Even more disturbing, a CEO’s view of “morality” could potentially include concern for the cost of a particular benefit. Such broad, undefined refusals (without any protections for the insured) would result in millions of individuals losing vital health service coverage.”

The NWLC gives a few examples of what that might mean:

“A plan could claim a moral or religious basis in order to refuse to cover HIV/AIDS screenings or counseling.

A health plan in the individual market could refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that the plan believes that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer.
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A small employer could offer a plan that does not cover maternity care for unmarried women in its plan, claiming that such coverage violates its belief that sex and procreation are permissible only within the marital relationship

An individual could object to coverage of vaccines for children, so the plan could then not be required to do so.

An insurer could refuse to provide coverage of any health care service to an interracial couple because of a religious or moral objection to such relationships.

An insurer could refuse to cover routine sonograms during the course of a pregnancy for a single woman even if routine dental X-rays or PAP smears are covered, due to a religious or moral objection to pregnancies out of wedlock.”

Here’s another one. What if a Muslim employer refused to cover his or her employees unless the plan provided that, based on religious convictions, men cannot be treated by women doctors, and vice versa. Do you think Republicans would defend this Muslim employer’s right to religious freedom? I’ll go out on a limb and guess no.

I like this take from Bark Bark Woof Woof:

“Okay, let’s see; the Republicans have already dissed just about every minority there is: the African-Americans, the Hispanics, the immigrants, the Muslims, anyone who’s not straight, anyone who speaks another language besides English, anyone who believes in science, anyone who believes in climate change, anyone who likes Clint Eastwood, and anyone else who’s held a view that isn’t in line with the white, straight, evangelical Christian male patriarchy. Now they’re going after the majority of Americans — women — and anyone who uses any kind of birth control or contraception, which includes everyone in the above-mentioned list.

So who’s left?”

“Merchants Have No Country”

25 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by in Corporations, economy

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Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. ~Thomas Jefferson

Cases in point:

“Some of the country’s best-known multi-national corporations closely guard a number they don’t want anyone to know: the breakdown between their jobs here and abroad.

So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number.”

Call that return on investment.

“The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.

As the country faces an unemployment crisis, President Obama, lawmakers and business lobbyists have all touted the country’s biggest companies as critical to creating jobs.

The head of Obama’s jobs council, General Electric chief executive Jeff Immelt, said during a tour of a company plant in Greensboro, S.C., that firms should be ready to answer questions from the public.

…GE breaks out its employment numbers in company filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2010, about 46 percent of GE’s 287,000 employees worked in the United States, compared with 54 percent in 2000.

But many firms, including some whose executives have counseled Obama on the economy, do not put their number of U.S. workers in their annual reports.

IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano has met a number of times with the president, most recently in July at a lunch with other executives to talk about jobs and the economy. IBM stopped giving its U.S. head count in 2009.

…Data from before 2009 showed IBM rapidly shifting workers to India. Dave Finegold, dean of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, estimates that 2009, when the company stopped sharing its U.S. employment figure, also marked the first time the company had more employees in India than the United States.

You won’t find Procter & Gamble’s U.S. head count in its filings, either. When initially asked for the number, company spokesman Paul Fox wrote in an e-mail: “We do not track nor report U.S.-specific jobs numbers vs. jobs overseas.” After it was pointed out that P&G’s chief executive, Bob McDonald, had cited such figures in a Cincinnati Enquirer op-ed piece, Fox acknowledged the company did track that data. The number of U.S. employees is 35,000 out of 127,000 total, or 28 percent.

Other companies that do not reveal their job breakdowns include Hewlett-Packard, AT&T, Apple and Pfizer, which stopped reporting the number in its SEC filings in 2000.

The latter two are part of a coalition of companies pushing for Congress to give them a tax break on money they have parked overseas, saying that any money brought back to this country would spur hiring.”

But…

“…that’s not how it worked last time.

Congress and the Bush administration gave companies a similar tax incentive, in 2005, in hopes of spurring domestic hiring and investment.

While the tax break lured 800 companies into bringing $312 billion back to the United States, 92 percent of that was used for dividends and stock buybacks, according to the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research. The study concluded the program “did not increase domestic investment, employment or research and development.”

Indeed, 60 percent of the benefits went to 15 of the largest U.S. multinational companies — many of which laid off domestic workers, closed plants and shifted even more profits and resources abroad in hopes of cashing in on the next repatriation holiday.”

“For chief executives of multinational companies who are used to answering only to their shareholders, the country’s jobs crisis has uncomfortably switched the political spotlight onto their decisions about who they employ and where. It has also thrown into relief the fact that when U.S. multinationals chase profits and hire workers anywhere in the world, they become less tied to any one country, including this one.”

Like Jefferson said.

Healthful Happy Meals?

27 Wednesday Jul 2011

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Oxymoron of the day–a healthful Happy Meal:

“Under pressure from health and children’s advocacy groups, McDonald’s Corp. is making changes to its famed Happy Meals. The fast food chain will add a serving of fruit or vegetable to all of the meals, which are aimed at children, and shrink the portion of French fries.The changes, to be announced Tuesday, will take effect in September in some markets and then roll out to all 14,000 McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. by April.

[…]

The new French fry holders in Happy Meals will contain 1.1 ounces of potatoes, down from 2.4. Apple slices will often be included as the healthful side dish, but it could also be carrots, raisins, pineapple slices or mandarin oranges, depending on the time of year and the region in which they’re being served, Fields said.”

Prediction: Kids eat the fries and the apples, carrots, raisins, pineapples, and oranges end up in the trash

GFY, S&P

27 Wednesday Jul 2011

Posted by in economy, Financial Crisis, Wall Street

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As the extortionists at Standard and Poor’s threaten a credit rating downgrade, not just if the debt ceiling isn’t raised but if the deficit isn’t cut by $4 trillion, Robert Reich points out that if the crooks at S& P had done their effin’ jobs the deficit and debt that they demand be cut wouldn’t be where it is today:

“Who is Standard & Poor’s to tell America how much debt it has to shed in order to keep its credit rating? Standard & Poor’s didn’t exactly distinguish itself prior to Wall Street’s financial meltdown in 2007. Until the eve of the collapse it gave triple-A ratings to some of the Street’s riskiest packages of mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.”

A practice from which S&P profited handsomely:

“S&P’s net annual revenues from ratings nearly doubled from $517 million in 2002, to $1.16 billion in 2007.”

And what happened to those securities S&P stamped AAA?

“…90% of the subprime-backed mortgage securities S&P and its competitors rated AAA in 2006-2007 – which means they’re as sound as Treasury notes – were later downgraded to junk bond status.”

Back to Reich:

“Standard & Poor’s (along with Moody’s and Fitch) bear much of the responsibility for what happened next. Had they done their job and warned investors how much risk Wall Street was taking on, the housing and debt bubbles wouldn’t have become so large – and their bursts wouldn’t have brought down much of the economy.

Had Standard & Poor’s done its job, you and I and other taxpayers wouldn’t have had to bail out Wall Street; millions of Americans would now be working now instead of collecting unemployment insurance; the government wouldn’t have had to inject the economy with a massive stimulus to save millions of other jobs; and far more tax revenue would now be pouring into the Treasury from individuals and businesses doing better than they are now.

In other words, had Standard & Poor’s done its job, today’s budget deficit would be far smaller.

And where was Standard & Poor’s…during the George W. Bush administration – when W. turned a $5 trillion budget surplus bequeathed to him by Bill Clinton into a gaping deficit? Standard & Poor didn’t object to Bush’s giant tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor did it raise a warning about his huge Medicare drug benefit…or his decision to fight two expensive wars without paying for them.

Add Bush’s spending splurge and his tax cuts to the expenses brought on by Wall Street’s near collapse – and today’s budget deficit would be tiny.

Put another way: If Standard & Poor’s had been doing the job it was supposed to be doing between 2000 and 2008, the federal budget wouldn’t be in a crisis — and Standard & Poor’s wouldn’t be threatening the United States with a downgrade if we didn’t come up with a credible plan for lopping $4 trillion off it.”  

So why in the hell is anybody listening to what Standard and Poor’s has to say? If we had a Justice Department that was actually interested in justice, the S&P analysts would be behind bars instead of issuing threats.

Wu Resigns

26 Tuesday Jul 2011

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Another Congresspervert bites the dust:

“Democratic Rep. David Wu of Oregon has announced that he is resigning in the wake of allegations that he had a sexual encounter with an 18-year-old girl woman.

Democratic leaders had called for a House Ethics investigation after the initial reports of the allegation. Wu had said that whatever occurred was consensual.

Wu said Tuesday the well-being of his children should come first, so he will resign after Congress resolves the debate over the debt ceiling.”

On behalf of the well-being of other people’s children, thank you soon-to-be-ex-Congressman Wu.

“A Colossal Political Failure”

26 Tuesday Jul 2011

Posted by in budget, Deficit, economy, Politics, Taxes

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Sam Pizzigati at CAF:

“This “debt crisis” in no way had to happen. No natural disaster, no tsunami, has suddenly pounded the United States out of fiscal balance. We have simply suffered a colossal political failure. Our powers that be, by feeding the rich and their corporations one massive tax break after another, have thrown a monstrous monkey wrench into our national finances.

Some numbers — from an Institute for Policy Studies report released this past spring — can help us better visualize just how monumental this political failure has been.

If corporations and households taking in $1 million or more in income each year were now paying taxes at the same annual rates as they did back in 1961, the IPS researchers found, the federal treasury would be collecting an additional $716 billion a year.

In other words, if the federal government started taxing the wealthy and their corporations at the same rates in effect a half-century ago, the federal debt to investors would almost totally vanish over the next decade.

Similarly stunning numbers have come, earlier this month, from MIT economist Peter Diamond and the University of California’s Emmanuel Saez, the world’s top authority on the incomes of the ultra-rich. These two scholars have shared some fascinating “what ifs” that dramatize how spectacularly the incomes of our wealthiest have soared over recent decades.

In 2007, Diamond and Saez point out, taxpayers in the nation’s top 1 percent actually paid, on average, 22.4 percent of their incomes in federal taxes. If  that actual tax burden were to about double to 43.5 percent, the top 1 percenter share of our national after-tax income would still be twice as high as the top 1 percent’s after-tax income share in 1970.

So why aren’t we taxing the rich? Why are we now suffering such fearsome “debt crisis” angst? Why are our politicos so intent on shoving the “fiscal discipline” of layoffs and cutbacks — austerity — down the throats of average Americans?

No mystery here. Our political system is failing to tax the rich because the rich have fortunes large enough to buy off the political system.”