Slumlord Millionaires

If you have millions to burn and are sick and tired of plunking it down for kitschy overpriced art, and you retain some of that dim, genetic memory of the good old days when plutocrats were still allowed to own people, then JP Morgan Chase has such a deal for you.

You can now indulge your primal urge of sucking the life out of ordinary people and extracting the value out of 5,000 foreclosed properties at the same time! JPMC, that too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-jail bank with a GDP bigger than most countries, recently stole some real estate for a second time, again on the cheap, in such blighted states as Nevada, Florida and California. You know, the very same places whose economies tanked when the Wall Street subprime bubble burst, and never recovered. Those same poor slobs that JPMC and its brethren swindled out of house and home just a few short years ago will be back, eating out of your hand, giving you an immediate 8% return on your investment. Heads you win, tails they lose.

Be advised that only families with a net worth of over $5 million are under consideration for membership in the exclusive Slumlord Millionaires Club. So hurry in! You will be able to declare your rental income at the same rock-bottom tax rates just re-gifted to you by the Fiscal Cliff Aversion Act. Your tenants will never bother you, either, because they won't ever know who you are. If something breaks, and they attempt to call Jamie Dimon to get it fixed, they will be put on terminal hold. And naturally they will not be allowed to deduct the rent from their own income taxes. That is because in the Banana Republic of America, the cost of living is something only the little people have to pay for. Plus, their work is valued a lot less than your wealth.

A few years or so from now, when the Slumhoard Millionaires Club has fully cornered the residential real estate market, and home prices have once again been artificially inflated to near-bursting, you can cash in quick as you kick the proles out. The cycle of greed goes round and round, much like the wheels of the bus you throw them under.

Meanwhile, do your patriotic one percentish duty and continue crowding all those first-time home buyers right out of the market. Realtors always give preference to hedge fund operators and other shadowy financiers, who can plunk down the whole purchase price in cash. Mortgages and down-payments are only for the little people. There's a logical reason why ordinary people applying for a mortgage often don't get approved, and it has very little to do with their credit scores. When the banks cheat people in this latest rent scam, they will do so through third parties. Their culpability will have been sliced and diced through the Oligarchy. DOJ heads will explode just with the effort of thinking what crime irresponsible behavior could possibly have committed this time by those wascally wanker bankers.

It's the paper trail, stupid. Even though the mega-banks have gotten off lightly when the government occasionally bothers to notice the paperwork that proves they've been defrauding people out of a trillion dollars in household wealth, there is the little matter of a cover-up of epic proportions by government watchdogs, causing a few Senators to blink and actually write a polite letter asking for particulars.

But don't let that worry you. You're a member of The Club -- a/k/a the Legal Protection Racket.

Breaking News: Alphabet To Be Privatized

Guest Post by Elizabeth Adams

In a bold yet unsurprising move, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has begun crafting legislation to pave the way for privatization of the English/American alphabet. The ease of drowning out dissenting speech since the Citizens United ruling of 2010 has just whetted the appetites of the corporatocracy. 

First, a little history.

The rich white guys, after fighting against the occupation of the English crown's corporations in the early days of the North American takeover, formed corporations of their own in order to protect their hard-stolen riches. Natural resources were deemed ripe for the taking, by any means possible, and so the r(e)aping of the earth commenced: trees, minerals, degraded fossils, water....all taken out of public hands. Electricity, another profitable resource, spawned many more capitalizable ventures, such as appliances (TVs, computers, radio) and media.

The corporations have used their vast wealth to spawn and see to fruition legislation which benefits them, with little to no consideration of the effects on society.  Currently, the mainstream media, delivered mostly via the television, internet and radio, is owned by very few, but likeminded, corporations. The Citizens United decision of 2010 (the Supreme Court's nondemocratic ruling that conferred personhood on corporations and defined speech as whatever one can afford) started the ball rolling toward this next step: privatization of the alphabet, which, technically, is the basis for speech, which, thanks to the Supreme Court, is more free if you have lots of money.

There are many questions that need to be answered about this development, and an anonymous ALEC spokesperson slithered forward to give us some answers.  Here are a few examples:

How the fuck can something like this happen? 

ASP (Anonymous SpokesPerson): Well, first of all, I'd like to say your question would run you     about twice the proposed going rate for a declarative sentence.  Questions are extra.  And if you aren't in the 0.01%, you will only be allowed to use lower case letters.  Only the rich will be allowed to capitalize in the future "word" order.  Ha ha -- get it!  Word...world.  Anyway, to  answer your question:             Blahblahblahwaronterrorblahblahabortionblahblahgaysexblahblahblahstealyourgunsblahblah....              look!  Squirrel!

What's next?  charging me for every breath I take?

ASP: You learn quickly!  No, that would be truly ridic-- er...no comment.

Will I have to pay to use sign language?

The potential for maximized profits is there: facial expressions, body language....and double meanings!  At this point, we are trying to determine how we would capture the use of language this way. Drone technology is advancing rapidly....

Should I learn Chinese?

 ASP: Well, you could. The stock in foreign language software has gone up in price, so word is already out. We are in communication with several foreign entities who have expressed interest in our mission.  Our previous efforts to have "English only" laws passed may gain further steam,      especially when we charge more for Spanish, for example.

If the 99% of us can barely afford basic necessities, how are people going to be able to afford to speak?  In any language?

ASP: We have already started to deal with this by privatizing community libraries.  People who can't afford to speak because of credit card debt or kids to feed, for example, can spend time at  their local corporate-owned library and put "money in the bank", so to speak. Reading certain literature will grant more speech, as will watching certain video materials. We realize how important it will be for people to be able to say "I love you" to their loved ones at the end of the day.

 And we will make available a list of words -- subject to change -- that will be free to use at any time. Heck, we might even give people a little pocket change for certain words and word combinations (e.g. "free market") -- we are still working on that.

So will we be charged by the letter? Or the word?

ASP: Ppl wn't gt to sav mny by shrtning wrds.  The collective pool of the 0.01% will actually have  shares in certain letters of the alphabet, and the massive data collection centers will determine  the compensation based on usage.  The Kochs, for example, have already expressed their desire  for "p".  You can't say "paper products" without "p".

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Elizabeth Adams is a family nurse practitioner living in Marysville, CA. She currently divides her practice between long-term care and women's health. 

 

Groundhog Day Roundup / Open Thread

Whether he saw sunshine or he saw shadow, the groundhog is now predicting Sequestration Spring will be sprung upon us right on schedule. Austerity does appear to be in our future, after all, even though it has been proven not to work. For society as a whole, that is.  But if it works out for the plutocrats, then it's all good. The poor can never be too thin, or the rich too rich.

But there's more important stuff to talk about. For instance, a pile of squishy little purple balls has been found in the Arizona desert! Nobody knows what they are or how they got there, although some people think a plant food prankster dumped them there as a joke, since they resemble those little fertilizer globules you stick in your potting soil. Or they could be deep space excreta, or genetically modified grapes. Maybe Governor Jan Brewer will announce they are the long-lost innards of those desert torsos she once claimed to have seen. You decide:

From the Department of Tell Us Something We Don't Already Know: President Obama shoots clay pigeons. It seems that a national scandal had been brewing about the possibility that Obama is just another slimy politician who merely claims to love guns in order to appease the NRA. The national corporate media had kept up a cacophany of demand until the White House finally released the photo to prove Obama's gun cred. Too bad the courtiers of the press don't make a similar outcry about his Kill List and drone assassinations and demand that he produce his alleged User's Manual.

From the Department of Delicious Irony: About 70 Harvard University students have been disciplined after they were caught cheating in a class called "Introduction to Congress." Their defense is that they didn't really cheat because it was a take-home test and besides, you learn about Congress by emulating Congress. Congress critters, too, mainly do their cheating out of C-Span view. But rest assured that at least Harvard treats its cheaters the same way Congress treats its own bad apples. The kids are getting off with warnings or temporary suspensions. There is no mass expulsion.  They will be allowed to stay or return after a brief sabbatical. It is rare that a person of privilege ever gets kicked out for life. Congressional punishments for such transgressions as graft and bribery range from public embarrassment to a slap on the wrist to, at worst, a censure. See: Charlie Rangel, and now, potentially, Bob Menendez. (D-Boardwalk Empire.) Meanwhile, the New York Times is concerned that senators are not being polite to one another.

From the Department of Entomology: Paul Krugman gingerly compares the philosophy of austerity (not the scolds themselves) to cockroaches who keep coming back even when you flush them down the toilet. In my reply, I am not quite so circumspect:

Another thing about cockroaches and deficit scolds: they'll initially scurry away when you startle them with a bright light, But once they realize that the glare of truth and facts can't really hurt them, they come back for more, more and more. They wave their tentacles at us with impunity.

Like most insects, cockroaches and deficit scolds only work in teams. You never see just one cockroach all alone against the world, just like you never see only one austerian being attacked by five Keynesians in any typical panel discussion. It's always the opposite, to give the impression that the anti-austerians are an endangered species. Or that the can of Raid has lost its oomph.

Be they literal or figurative, cockroaches always leave behind a noxious trail in order to quickly rediscover their food source. They are omnivorous and insatiable. They crave media attention, they crave tax breaks, they crave even the tiniest leftover crumbs of whatever meal they last managed to steal from their starving victims.

They may be stupid. But predatory vermin that they are, they have a keen olfactory sense. They can smell the weakness in the alleged guardians at the gate a mile away. And then they swarm.
 

 
From the Department of Pure Evil: yet another high-ranking honcho in the Cult of the Red Beanie (credit, Charles Pierce) has been exposed as an accessory before, during and after the fact of the  priest sexual abuse scandal. I think we should finally just call out this cabal out for what it is: an International Pedophile Ring. In a just world, they'd all be taking refuge in the Vatican Embassy as Interpol surrounded them. In the real world, only Julian Assange is surrounded by Interpol as he is held hostage in an embassy for the crime of speaking truth to power.

Pathetic, or Just Cynical?

The New York Times published an unsigned editorial today bemoaning the lack of spunk in the Democratic Party. They place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Harry Reid and Max Baucus, with the powerful Reid once again misrepresented as a Mr.Peepers milquetoast and Obama consigliere Max Baucus cast as the slimy corrupt renegade from a Wild West red state.

Not once does the editorial so much as wag a pinkie finger at President Obama. It embraces the same tired old canard that fear and timidity are at the root of inaction by the erstwhile party of the people:

 That’s particularly evident in the Senate, which the party controls. Last week, Democrats had a rare opportunity to change the Senate’s rules by majority vote and reduce the routine abuse of the filibuster by Republicans, which has allowed a minority to slow progress to a crawl. But there weren’t enough Democrats to support real reform, so a disappointing half-measure was approved. The reason was fear: Fear that they might return to the minority one day, fear that a weakened filibuster might hurt them, fear that Republicans might change the rules to the disadvantage of Democrats if they regain a majority. 

Come on. Do you really think Harry Reid and his cabal would have signed off on watered-down reform unless they got the big thumbs-up from The Boss? Here is my published comment: 

President Obama is the leader of the Democratic Party. Not Harry Reid. Not Max Baucus.

Liberal groups were rightly upset about the pathetic filibuster deal. Republicans were rightly pleased. But then, so was Obama! Here's what he said about continued gridlock and failure of the Congress to follow the will of the people for the next several years:

"In my State of the Union last year, I urged Congress to take steps to fix the way they do business. … And today, I am pleased that a bipartisan group of senators has agreed to take action."

Reid never would have made this tepid agreement without the president's okay. You have to conclude that the president's goal for the next four years is to be seen as trying to get things done, and then conveniently being able to blame Republicans when they don't get done. Meanwhile he is backing down on his promise in another past State of the Union -- to fight against the Citizen United decision.

Not only that. He now even has his own 501(C)(4) fund-raising machine, Organizing for Action. It is touted as a grassroots successor to his campaign apparatus, but it is also accepting anonymous corporate donations in order to "further the President's agenda." Why more liberals are not expressing shock and outrage at what amounts to an influence-peddling scheme by a sitting president is beyond me.

The inability of the Democrats to "get things done" may well be more cynical ploy than a sign of weakness. Follow the money.

Actually, a few liberal groups have been expressing outrage and demanding that Obama shut down his slush fund. From The Hill:

Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, this week said Obama should shut the group down “and remain true to the repeated warnings he has given the nation about the dangers of corporate influence-money and business as usual in Washington.”

Organizing for Action has pledged to reveal its donors to the public, and as a nonprofit group, can accept unlimited contributions from corporations, unions and wealthy individuals.

Former Rep. Bob Edgar (D-Pa.), the president of Common Cause, said Organizing for Action would be an avenue for special interests to gain access to the White House.

“I think labor is going to give to them. Corporations are going to give to them. Huge wealthy donors are going to give to them. They have no problem with that being known and will want to call up the White House for access,” Edgar said.
 

Labor unions, meanwhile, are holding on to their pocketbooks, waiting to see what Obama does about such inhumane ideas as Chained CPI for the sole purpose of further impoverishing Social Security recipients. They will not donate, they vow, if the president turns against the working stiff. You don't say!

Here is what my cynical little mind thinks about the rationale behind government by passive aggression.  By prearrangement, filibuster reform fails. Obama then sets himself up as lone crusader for the common man, entering full campaign mode as he endorses gun control (which absolutely horrifies Harry and Max). He goes on trips and energizes the crowds. Meanwhile, the White House directs the grassroots supporters to the OFA website where, right after they hit you up for money, you are urged to "have the president's back!"  They even provide you with a script to recite when you call your congress critter to "demand action." Meanwhile, the lobbyists pour into Congress, and the bribery coffers are stuffed to bursting as the bickering and the gridlock prolong the lucrative process for as long as possible. The NRA is as generous to the Reid Democrats as it is to the Republicans, of course. Everybody applauds Gabby Giffords and she goes to the White House for a photo-op. The corporate media mouthpieces do their own propaganda duty, and the suffering masses are corraled into the arena to mindlessly root for either the Democratic "humanistic" home team or for the GOP militia movement.

You may think that you are taking a side. But you are really just a pawn in the Money Party's games of Divide and Conquer and Winner Take All. And the winner, people, will never be you as long as the PTBs have their way.

Ignore what they say and watch what they do. Follow the money, and then get mad. Get very, very mad. And above all, create your own scripts.

  

When Unexpected Contractions Strike

Ouch. The economy is contracting and apparently catching all the experts by surprise. Well, you know what that means, people. Pain, and lots of it. For us, not them.



Eat Your Peas and Tighten Your Belt!

 In a sane world, the Great Unexpected Shriveling would be cause for a mighty injection of some stimulative hormones in the form of a massive government-run jobs program, a financial transaction tax, a living wage law, appropriating the excessive wealth of the entire Walton Family with a special 90% Surtax Law enacted just for them, the breaking up of the too-big-to-fail/jail banks, Medicare for All and etcetera and so forth. We've shouted the solutions from the rooftops till we're hoarse.

What should be a wake-up call to the Austerity Cult will no doubt cause the deficit scolds to double down and call for even more cuts, leading to a recession or worse. Stay tuned for an amping up of their belt-tightening talking points. Paul Krugman is calling it the incestuous amplification effect. A group of elites in a bubble feed off one another's propaganda and then give birth to an unviable, genetically disenfranchised monster of an austerity policy. Pain for thee, riches for me. It's all about the perpetuation of the worst wealth inequality since the Gilded Age.

Meanwhile, Dean Baker is debunking one of the great economic myths of the Age of Obama: that the Bush tax cuts and two unfunded wars caused the deficit. They didn't. It was the market bubble. The much-ballyhooed "surplus" of the Clinton era was anything but. The revisionist history of "Clinton Paradise Lost" is only a fairy tale. Also see Gramm-Leach-Bliley. 

It also turns out that a reduction in military spending was a big cause of the unexpected contraction. So the endless wars have been artificially bolstering the economic numbers all this time! It was a War Bubble! No wonder it never felt like a real recovery to most of us. But now that the American Empire has extended its phony war on terror to the African continent in order to contain China, perhaps the contractions will ease when the market gives birth to yet another freak of nature to add to its already diseased, extended family.

Immigration Kabuki

The best part of President Obama's ballyhooed immigration reform speech in Vegas today is that he'll lose his usual victimization angle. He won't be able to frame it in terms of "you and me against the world." (Congress) That is because one of those creepy bipartisan Gangs beat him to the punch yesterday with their own plan, with John McCain senilely admitting on behalf of the GOP that it's just a cynical ploy to shill for the Hispanic vote.

Of course, the Republicans' (and many Democrats') idea of immigration reform is to ramp up the 3,000-mile border militarized zone, concentrating first and foremost on stopping the Hispanic hordes with drones and guns before actually getting around to policies that are humane. Shoot or capture first, hand out the e-verify cards later. How much later is left up in the air. It depends on how profitable the enhanced border security is to the Military-Industrial Complex.

(Obama, according to the New York Times, likes the Senate plan, although he is said to be less than thrilled about more border security. But he'll go along with it anyway. Because it's bipartisan. And he'll talk about immigration reform as being "a call to arms." You can say that again, Mr. Gun Control Prez.)

It also boils down to how cheaply labor can be exploited. And as for the 11 million people already here without papers, they'll have to pay vague fines and back taxes before getting in line. They will still be subject to deportation, imprisonment in private, for-profit detention centers, still be ensnared by Obama's draconian "Secure Communities" police sweeps. Even those accepted as probationers will be denied public health benefits. They will be required to learn English and pass a civics test. (notwithstanding the fact that civics is no longer even part of the public school curriculum in many states.)

In insisting on the paranoid securitization of the borders, the Senators are of course ignoring the fact that fewer Latinos are even choosing to come here any more. Our economy sucks. The economies of Latin America are improving. Their income inequality is decreasing, while ours keeps getting worse. So I can't help but think that our politicians' pivot to immigration reform smacks of a ploy to enrich the CEOs and the defense contractors and Agribusiness and the gun manufacturers -- not to mention enhancing and further cementing the Homeland Security spy state. Xenophobia remains at the core, despite the Gang's claiming to be against ethnic profiling.

More Enforcement Against Fewer Immigrants?

Their border enforcement plan is not getting high grades from immigration activists. It is, they say, a typical wedge issue that appears designed to make immigration reform fail before it even gets started. Writes Vicki Gaubeca of the ACLU's New Mexico Regional Center for Border Rights, "Border enforcement policy decisions must include mechanisms that holds agencies accountable and provides oversight as well as reflecting the perspectives of border communities. Now is the time to halt further construction of costly, deadly and ineffective border infrastructure or unproven technologies, and stopping the expensive, overzealous prosecution of migrants through programs like Operation Streamline. This operation is a 'zero tolerance' border enforcement program that orders federal criminal charges for every person who crosses the border without documentation, overloading U.S. courts and undermining the best values of our judicial system."

It is telling that the reform plan being put forth gives precedence to both low-paid migrant farm workers and highly educated scientists and tech professionals who were trained at another country's expense. Follow the money. If you can serve the needs of the  plutocracy for cheap, you will be given a place at our great table of American exceptionalism. Otherwise, get in line and listen to the sound of a thousand Predator and Reaper drones buzzing over your heads.

The Brilliance of These United States

My favorite dead curmudgeon, Andy Rooney, was talking inside my head again. "D'ja ever wonder," he groused,"why Congress is pretending to do immigration reform and gun control but nobody is touching climate change with a ten foot pole?"

I think I may have the answer. It can be found in a NASA photo. You can now see, from the vantage point of space, that enough homegrown American gas is being burned off -- wasted -- to heat all the homes in Chicago and Washington!

 From The Financial Times:

The volume of unwanted gas being flared off in North Dakota, the state leading the shale revolution transforming the outlook for US energy, rose about 50 per cent last year. The surge at the state’s Bakken formation is being replicated in other shale regions with the Texas state regulator issuing 1,963 permits to flare in 2012, more than six times the number of 306 in 2010.    

The rapid increase has made the US one of the world’s worst countries for gas flaring. The volume of gas flared in the US has tripled in just five years, according to World Bank estimates and is now fifth highest in the world, behind Russia, Nigeria, Iran and Iraq.
 

Follow the money. Climate change is not being addressed because pollution is not being regulated. It's not being regulated because our taxpayer-subsidized oil companies are profiting and depositing a teensy little fraction of their ill-gotten gains into the campaign coffers of congress critters and into the inauguration slush funds of presidents. It's cheaper to spew vast quantities of a precious natural resource into the atmosphere than it is to build pipelines to not only contain it, but to use it to power homes and businesses. The propaganda you see being spewed in those annoying "Learn More" TV commercials sponsored by the oil and gas industry is not only mendacious, it's evil. They want you to believe their rape of the earth has a humanistic purpose. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It gets worse. ExxonMobil, Chevron and other conglomerates are taking a page from the Walmart playbook of vulture capitalism. They're hiring temporary laborers for only a few dollars above the minimum wage and not covering them with medical or accident insurance for one of the most dangerous jobs in the country. The New York Times is running a story today about the horrific accident rate in the North Dakota oil fields, and a medical infrastructure ill-equipped to deal with it. It's the high cost of low price. Bloated corporations foist the responsibility for their workers onto the government. Bleeding bodies and bleeding land and tainted water and dirty air abound. Guess who pays with their lives and their health? Guess who will pay when the polluters are sued for their malfeasance? Guess who will get a slap on the wrist and no jail time?

ExxonMobil has nothing to fear. It just donated $250,000 to President Obama's coronation celebration, matching what it gave to industry-loving oilman George W. Bush's inauguration slush fund.

D'ja ever wonder why Obama is keeping mum on campaign finance reform, and has said nary a word about trying to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling? Here's why: