U.S. Manufacturing: A Matter Of National Security

Forget about liberal v. conservative, Progressive v. Tea Party.  Bringing back manufacturing to U.S. soil is a matter of national security, and I’ll tell you why.

Let’s start with an A.P. article on P.7B of today’s Denver Post about how China just raised their tariffs again on imports of all U.S.  larger cars and SUV vehicles. They did this in retaliation for the U.S. warming of economic and strategic relations with other parts of Asia, Australia, and the E.U.

For those of you who keep up with this sort of thing, you know that China has already imposed a 25% tariff on all goods entering their country, while enjoying a 2.5% tariff on all goods they exported to the U.S. No, the decimal point is not a typo.

The idea behind the U.S. strengthening economic ties with other parts of Asia and the E.U. (sans China) is that, together, we may be able to offset China’s increasingly enormous economic clout and voracious appetite for world political domination.

Former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brezinski strongly advocates such an alliance, not only on economic grounds, but in order to help broker an equitable reconciliation of China with India, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, so they don’t end up going to war with each other and start WWIII.

So that this alliance may stand on its own and stand up to China, the strategy necessitates that we are able to supply our trading partners with valuable goods and technology over the next couple of decades, independently of China’s influence.

Mr. Brezinski has the right idea, but according to Peter Navarro and Greg Autry, authors of a book called Death By China, we may no longer have the manufacturing capacity to get the job done, because U.S. manufacturers have shipped their factories overseas, mainly to China.

According to Navarro and Autry, the book “documents the myriad ways that a powerful, wealthy, and corrupt Chinese Communist Party emboldened by a growing nationalistic frenzy is becoming the biggest threat to global peace, prosperity, and health since Nazi Germany.

From currency manipulation and abusive trade policies, to slave labor and deadly consumer products, China’s ruthless rulers threaten the livelihood of the citizens of every developed nation.

These thugs have created a frightening amoral society ruled by a constant fear hidden to outsiders and bought off with the ill gotten profits of a myopic quest for economic advantage at any cost – social, environmental, or civil rights concerns be damned.

Worse, as with everything else, China is scaling and exporting the model around this world, threatening their neighbors and exploiting developing nations across the globe with a new imperialism.

While America worries that Al-Qaeda or Iran may get their hands on a weapon of mass destruction, China is using our Wal-Mart dollars to build them by the score; filling brand new nuclear submarines with missiles aimed at our heartland and building stealth planes designed to obliterate our friends in Japan, Korea, and Taiwan.”

Assuming that these guys are correct, and I believe that they are, how are we supposed to strengthen our economic ties with Asia and the E.U. to go up against the monolithic power of China, when we either make our goods in China or buy all our parts from China?

Think about that for a moment, and then think about how our U.S. multinational corporations have beat feet for the Orient to make a buck and left us vulnerable to a threat that makes Al Qaida look like the cast from The Breakfast Club.

If we don’t bring manufacturing back to our shores very soon, and I mean yesterday, our children can kiss what is left of the American dream goodbye.

A meaningful response to this very real threat should transcend every domestic political ideology. Both sides of the aisle and the middle should be immediately changing tax, trade, and banking policies to incentivize the return of U.S. manufacturing to our shores and to disincentivize outsourcing to countries that refuse to support a fair and balanced trade policy.

We can sit a listen to the Cheney family telling us how in danger we are by getting our troops out of Iraq, like we really have anything to fear from Iraq alone, or even Iraq and Iran together, except that Haliburton's loss of military contracts may reflect negatively on their quarterly dividends. But, since Iran is currently good buddies with China, that particular alliance is something about which we should be very concerned.

Please then, let us pause for a moment from our incessant arguments about what is  morally a better domestic policy for the U.S. and concentrate together about how to meet what I firmly believe is nothing less than an existential threat to this country.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

It’s A Small World After All: Why Incomes Have Gone Down In Colorado

The U.S. Census Bureau just announced that the adjusted median income in Colorado went down 9% during the years 1999-2010. A friend asked me why. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I do read a bit, and I think there are lots of factors that contributed to the income decline and are probably inter-related.

I will list what I can remember. I would suggest that you use my ideas as a template for further research on your own or discard them as you choose. Those of you who read my posts regularly know that my political leanings are somewhat left-of-center. There may therefore be factors that I have missed, dismissed, or have discounted, due to my tree-hugging bent of mind:

1. Trade imbalance with China. They pay a 2.5% tariff on everything they ship to the U.S., but we pay 25% (please note the decimal placement) on everything we ship to them so…

2. Large corporations ship their manufacturing plants to China or Brazil, or India, etc. Why should a tractor company selling tractors to China pay American wages and a 25% tariff, when they can buy really cheap subsidized Chinese steel, pay virtual slave-labor wages in China, and sell directly intra-China with no tariff?

Large corporate CEOs, in general, outsource labor and services to boost their bonuses and stock value for wealthy investors but…

3. Smaller companies with plants in the U.S., especially start-up companies, will not or cannot pay decent wages to U.S. workers, because they have to compete with both large corporations and a foreign trade policy that puts them at a double disadvantage, so you get paid less and…

You can say it’s the union’s fault or the greedy corps. Take your pick, but keep in mind that only about 7% of the U.S. workforce is represented by unions, while corporations currently have $2 trillion in the bank upon which they are just sitting. So you would think that the killing these major corporations are making would at least add to the U.S. government revenue stream but…

4. Our tax structure is designed to allow the wealthiest/corporations among us to pay taxes at lower rates than the secretaries who answer their phones. Between the general system of corporate loopholes/credits and the Bush tax cuts, Exxon/GE and at least the top 20 Fortune 500 companies got billions in subsidies from us, paid zero in taxes, and the median income folks got the bill.

You would also think that the big corporations would use all that extra cash to put some people to work, but you heard me right the first time. Corps have made more money than at any time in history and are sitting on $2,000,000,000,000 but refuse to invest it in hard capital like materials and labor “until they feel more secure.”

Again, we can argue why exactly it is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is telling all of its members to hold off on capital investment until the next election. But please, let's not. At any rate, because of the loss in revenue to the government over the last 12 years…

5. Federal, state, and local government coffers have been cash-strapped, so they had to stop building and lay off workers who used to buy houses and cars and other stuff in Colorado.

When people can’t spend money, local businesses suffer and sales taxes go down too.  With less revenue, more government services are cut and workers are laid off, etc. This is what is known as a negative spiral. But let’s not forget about…

6. Healthcare costs which have spiraled upward astronomically, far outpacing inflation.  The health insurance/pharma industries have consistently made truly obscene profits and guess who is paying for their stockholder’s dividends? And then there are…

7. The two“off the books”wars of the 2000’s, now on the books that have to be paid for, uh again by us suckers in the median group. Of course, a biggie was...

8. The whole banks/hedge fund/Fanny/Freddy/lack of regulation that allowed Wall Street to bet/lose our money at the track, lie about it to Congress, and then make us cover their losses, just before they started charging us more in banking fees, services, and interest on credit cards and such (as our reward for bailing them out.) But the good news is…

9. The private sector has created 120,000 “new jobs” this year, (which is more jobs than during the entire W. administration). Unfortunately, most of these “new jobs” are replacements for the same jobs that were downsized/outsourced from last year. You know, the ones that used to be full-time salaried positions, with benefits? Corporations, uh, converted them to contract labor jobs.  

With contract labor, employers don’t have to pay payroll taxes, unemployment, family leave, disability, Workers Comp, pensions; and contract laborers can’t use this time toward Social Security retirement. And then there is always…

10.        Government sanctioned waste/fraud. Why do people making $500K a year get Medicare/Medicaid? Why do we allow the drug companies to take government subsidies and then mark up their pills 1000%? Why do we keep paying $5 billion a year to oil companies that have cleared record profits for the last 30 years? The richest corps in the world start with Exxon Mobil, as numero uno.

Why do we allow the FBI/DEA/CIA/NSA/TSA/DHS/DOD to have separate massively bloated budgets for doing the same job when they often operate in conflict with each others' missions and our national interest?

And then there is the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. As only one example, big-time military government contractor, Halliburton, “lost” $8 billion (in cash) of our tax money in Iraq. Literally lost huge planes (C-130’s) full of huge pallets full of heaps of money. Oops! And yet…

11.        Government did nothing to stop any of the above from happening. From Enron to Exxon, to Goldman Sachs, to BP, to Blackwater, to foreign trade policies, to tax shelters, instead of being able to count on our government to look out for the median income folks, we have a three-ringed circus playing two shows a day in the D.C. Beltway and we can’t even afford a ticket for a seat in the nose-bleed section.

Both sides are to blame, though it would appear that the vast majority of corporate-money-funded, anti-median-income-earner legislation and the filibustering of pro-worker bills seem to have come from the GOP side of the isle.

12.        The crisis in Europe does not help any either, because things like 401Ks suffer, especially when our financial institutions are allowed to play the foreign markets and lose your retirement savings. Moreover, our largest trading partner is the E.U. How are they going to buy our stuff, if they are broke?

Billionaire and Democratic politician/hedge fund manager, John Corsine, can’t find $1.2 billion that he blew, betting on foreign government securities in Greece and Italy. And the GOP wants to get rid of the new legislation that is designed to stop similar abuse in the future.

You may say, “What does all that national/international stuff have to do with my job in Colorado?” My view is that all politics may not be so local after all, and hopefully, I have given you an idea about how our welfare in Colorado is inextricably linked to national and international economics…

And that crap rolls downhill. This is the only version of “trickle down economics” that I can see working in Colorado and the U.S., and the whole process does not seem to inure to the benefit of median income-earners.

The only counties in Colorado that did well were the ones whose residents already had a butt-load of money. The rich got really richer, and the median folks and the working poor are now working two contract labor jobs for less pay, no job security, and no benefits.

That’s all I could think of off the top of my head. I am sure that there are more factors. I hope that this little primer gives you more or different ideas, which you are welcome to share with me (or argue that I am wrong) on this blog or in the social media.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

P.S. It would be great if Congress would modify the payroll tax bill for 160 million Americans before the holiday recess. I know that we could all use the $1,500 in our paychecks next year and millionaires and billionaires would not miss the tiny increase in taxes (oh heavens, I said it! Taxes!) to pay for it.

Happy Holidays!

JBS

Herman Cain: A Déjà Vu Moment For Clarence Thomas?

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Alternate Universe, Or Are We Just Idiots?

I am now semi-convinced that an alternate universe really does exist and that it occasionally intersects with our own, giving us brief but precious glimpses of startling clarity, illumination, and insight.

I found evidence of at least one other parallel dimension on pages 6B and 7B of today’s Denver Post.  I thought it only fitting that I share my brief nirvana-like experience with you.

As I turned to page 6B, my first foray suddenly thrust me into an inter-dimensional void that eventually led me to a surreal land with a plan offered by U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue to fund what he had previously agreed were sorely needed continental infrastructural projects and job creation.  In this alternate universe, Mr. Donohue opined that a $.10/gal tax on gasoline would suffice to put an estimated 14 million U.S. citizens back to work. Wow, I thought! 14 million people are out of work in the U.S. of his universe too. What are the odds?

Alternate-Donohue offered his idea as an alternative to the allegedly “misguided” alternate-Progressive’s proposed surtax on alternate-millionaires and billionaires, because, in his view, the Progressive’s plan would stifle current efforts of the super rich to create more jobs for the unemployed. Reading this otherworldly diatribe gave me a sudden inexplicable feeling of déjà vu.

Then, as if the rubber band of credulity had been stretched beyond its limit, I was violently snapped back to my own universe where I instantly realized that extraterrestrial Donohue’s gas tax plan in our universe would just place yet another burden upon the backs of the middle class, small businesses, and the working poor and that the job creating rich folks in my universe are currently sitting on over two trillion dollars, instead of creating jobs. And they have had low taxes for the last ten years!

Nice idea, alternate-Donohue, but could it ever work here? We already tried stuff like that from 1980-1989 and again from 2000-2008. It was called “trickle-down” economics; only the wealth never trickled down, it just trickled up to the wealthy. In fact, from 1979-2007, people at the top saw their incomes rise by about 275%, while people at the bottom only saw18%. Only a complete futah would buy that line again in our universe, no matter what all those Tea/GOP presidential candidates are saying.

I also knew that titans of financial wealth here on earth had previously been instructed by our own Terra Prime Commander Donohue to hold on to that two trillion until President Obama is defeated, and The Affordable Health Care Act/FDA/EPA/banking government regulations are permanently abrogated.

At this point, I began to be vexed by an eerie suspicion that our Thomas Donohue and the alternate universe Donohue might be one and the same individual! That would explain how our Donohue has so little understanding about, or regard for such a large majority of the populace. He obviously thinks we are all a bunch of blithering idiots. Then I began to wonder about Michelle Bachman’s spooky eyes and New Gingrich’s enormous head and…

At any rate, I was busy trying to process the enormity of all these revelations, still a bit shaken from the stimulus overload of my quantum-leaping experience and was looking forward to some rest, when I was suddenly thrust back into the void and again transported (on page 7B) to a universe where energy giant Exxon/Mobile just announced a 10.33 billion dollar quarterly net profit. In their universe, Exxon got this windfall, despite falling crude oil prices, by simply charging the consumer more for refined oil and natural gas. Apparently, in their dimension, when prices fall on crude oil, it is legal to subvert the normal rules of supply and demand by simply capping existing wells, limiting supply, and then jacking up the price to everybody who needs to fill their car with gas or heat their home!

I was just beginning to wonder about how many jobs might have been created by cutting the production of oil when I was again snapped back to my own reality. Strangely, in my universe, I found that our Exxon /Mobile also just made 10.33 billion in net quarterly profit by similarly standing Keynesian economics on its ear. But on my planet, Exxon also pays zero in taxes and gets billions in corporate welfare from the government.

Since The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that corporations are people, I began to wonder if this Exxon dude also shuttled between universes, just like Thomas Donohue and Herman Cain. That must be why Cain won’t let any of his staff speak to him unless he speaks to them first. He might inadvertently blow his cover!

At this point, I had to close the newspaper, so I could make a mental list of suspects. And that’s when a flash of clarity hit me. I mean, who, but inter-universal overlords, could keep snagging such mega-gigs, keep screwing the American people, and keep doing it again and again right under our noses? Mass mind-control, maybe? Are they spiking our water?

Unless, of course, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue, Karl Rove, the Koch Brothers, Grover Norquist, and most of U.S. Congress are simply correct in their assumption that the rest of us are all a bunch of bleeding idiots who will just continue to sit back and play with our electronic toys and pay them to take over this universe…and the other one too.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

P.S. This is yet another day upon which some have predicted the end of the world. I hope you have a chance to read this before the, uh, whatever.  Just in case they are wrong... yet again, have a great weekend!

JBS

Occupy Denver Needs A Dose of Focus

The Occupy Denver, General Assembly is just beginning to discover why there have been no sustained direct democracies since ancient Athens. After spending many hours at the protests, I can report a lot of heart, a bit of testosterone, and a growing sense of frustration at the almost complete lack of organized messaging. It frustrated me personally as well.

By example, at one point, in a crowd that ranged in age from the Beat Generation to the children of iPhone junkies, I found myself arguing with a young man, who was so full of himself and hormones, that he felt it was necessary to endanger everyone around him by erecting a tent on the sidewalk, as about 10 armed members of local law enforcement were closing in.

I was not the only person telling him to take it down, but I was only one of two people who had the guts to actually get right in his face and remind him that his little tent and his little stunt would figure prominently in the next media cycle and serve only to de-legitimize the efforts of the hundreds of other people who came to peacefully and legally air their grievances. I was right, of course, but he didn’t care. He was more concerned with increasing the size of his genitalia than expressing any substantive idea. It is also quite possible that he was a right-wing plant. The crowd was also laced with not-so-under-cover police. There are always a few of each at every protest, I guess. 

But there were also hundreds of decent people who were there for a legitimate purpose. And let’s get one thing straight. The vast majority of these protesters were folks with whom I would be proud to sit down at Thanks Giving dinner.

The main problem that I see with Occupy Denver, and I believe that this problem may be endemic to the Occupy movement in general as well, lies in it’s lack of focus. I find it troubling, that a movement whose members commonly use so many high tech, informational/communication/media tools would allow these events to present so confused and disorganized to the degree that their purpose (they actually do have one) largely remains an enigma to the general public. As a result their ability to engage and enlist the public remains ineffectual.

Yeah, I know, the General Assembly is trying to be all democratic, but it is not working. This is just a  (paraphrased) sample of some of the signs I saw at the Denver rallies in the last week:

Get Corporate Influence out of Government

Get Corporations Out Of Elections

Koch Brothers Stay Out Of Colorado (mine)

Don’t shaft The Middle Class (also mine)

Jobs, Not Cuts

Income Inequality
Indict The Banks
Eat The Rich

No More Corporate Greed

No More Wall Street Bailouts

No More Assault on Worker’s Rights

No More Union Busting

Tax The Rich

Cut The Deficit

Balance The Budget

Don’t Cut Medicare

Don’t Cut Medicaid

Don’t Cut Social Security

Health Care For All

No More War(s)

No More Human Rights Violations Abroad

Can’t Pay My Student Loans

No GLBT Bashing

Choice/Abortion

Child Care For All

Immigration Reform

End Homelessness

And so many of the protesters, mostly the young ones, acted as if the subject of their personal signage could be easily addressed and fixed immediately, like it only required an ap that they could upload to their iphones. I heard tons of different ways in which people were getting screwed in and by this country and almost nothing about how to effectively use the Occupy movement to redress those grievances.

No, I am not jonesing to become the de-facto leader of Occupy Denver, but I do think that they could benefit from a little strategic advice and here goes:

Please focus a bit more. If you took the time like I did to look at all the signs, you would see that the message on every single serious sign is a subset of the singular desire for government to start working for them again. When I talked to individuals, each seemed to get, but many of their signs did not express, the simple but profound idea that government is not working for them (and 99% of the country) because corporate and/or otherwise moneyed interests have literally bought so many politicians in government but, if we worked together to get the big money out of government, the wheels of progress for the rest of us could start rolling again. 

How can the Occupy movement gain any credibility with the general public, (and they need the general public) when the news media can pick from attention-starved ranters on the fringes to fill insatiable news cycles? The unfortunate answer is the movement can’t gain credibility under those conditions and it will wither and die as the leaves fall from the trees…or,

The General Assembly can advertise on all social media in advance of the next rally, that the messaging must be tightly focused around getting big money out of government. There are plenty of different catchy, clever, heartfelt signs that can be made and displayed about subset issues, but only insofar as they expressly relate to getting big money out of government.

The General Assembly can and should empower some of their more assertive members at each site to tell the “cojones guys” to get with the program or go back to the sports bars from whence they came.

Those same members must have the discipline to tell the person who says, “it’s a free country and I can say what I want,” to go start her own friggin movement somewhere else, because this one is about getting big money out of government. For every disgruntled stoner/boomer who toddles home, you will gain 20 more who dare to show up, once they are sure what the movement actually stands for.

If the public cannot easily digest the method, they will assume only madness and will stay away. You need large numbers to attain an effective political force for change. Right now, you are on a road to becoming trivialized and then brutally suppressed.

Please believe me. Millions of other old fogies and I have fought and won this same kind of fight before.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

P.S. The next Occupy Denver rally will be on Saturday, October 22, 2011, at noon, in Civic Center Park.

The Time For Cowardice is Over

Progressives, (now that we have allowed the term liberal to be trashed by Fox News pundits), have indulged in a bit of what has been generously referred to as political noblesse oblige for the last 30 years or so. I am not so generous. I call it cowardice, and I think it should stop, and right now.

For far too long, we have allowed fact-challenged, fearful, angry, bigoted, double-digit I.Q. types to have their little rants without suffering idiot-quashing rebuttal and, in so doing, have allowed the bar for serious political discourse to be to be set just millimeters above the ground.

And, for consistently sitting back in muted shock and awe while garbage-in inevitably produced garbage-out in Washington, our tacit acceptance condemns us as complicitors in the resultant disastrous political and economic consequences.

We sat back while a B-movie-co-star-to-a-chimp, spewed memorized ideological propaganda to an ignorant, impressionable public (yes, let’s also admit that humanity has not progressed as far as our technology would lead us to believe) starting with the line: “government is not the solution. Government is the problem.”

The Gipper was right, of course, but the only problem that government actually posed at the time was as an impediment to big business hegemony and the destruction of the middle class. And progressives saw it coming but just lowered their eyes and bared their bums rather than fight against the massive deficit spending, gutting of unions, and a tax structure jerry- rigged to benefit only the wealthy.

The Death Valley Days veteran proclaimed in his best down-home-Hollywood-speak, that lowering taxes for the wealthy/corporations and eliminating burdensome government regulation of business would “trickledown” wealth to the middle class and the poor. So we sat patiently, stupidly, waiting for a flow that turned out to be all trick and no trickle.

And what little wealth did once belong to the middle class actually began to trickle up to the super rich and corporations. Middle class incomes flat-lined, then declined in real terms, and job benefits mutated from rule to exception. We allowed unions to become a dirty word, just like liberals, and the number of unprotected workers skyrocketed like pregnancies after prom night.

Thirty years later, and we are still cowering like sheep, inaudibly complaining (bleating maybe) among the herd that that first drop of wealth from above, never dripped, yet we can’t seem to tear ourselves away from Dancing With The Stars long enough to prevent the new wave of snake oil salespeople from cementing the identical double-speak policy far into our increasingly abysmal future.

As the religious right crazies began taking over media outlets, persecuting gays, and sanctioning the murder of abortion providers, we cowered and did nothing to effectively shame them then and are doing nothing now. You may feel uncomfortable with the notion of someone who blindly obeys the will of divine voices in their head in charge of our nuclear arsenal,  but that is what may happen for real next year.

And when the greatly strengthened corporate interests and the religious right picked a guy for their standard-bearer who could not finish a sentence, we clucked our tongues, but little else…and we did this twice. Look where our cowardice got us.

Yet, two unfunded wars, thousands of American kids dead or disabled, corporate hegemony, rampant unemployment, and a collapse of the world economy have had little effect on the behavior of we cowards who knew better, and did nothing, even as we were being screwed from 2000, to 2008, in every orifice imaginable.

And now that corporate financed “grass roots” politicians are altering state laws to disenfranchise the young and the old and the sick and the poor and minorities, what are we doing to stop it? If you think that it can’t happen to you, it may already have.

And now that those same corporate-financed “grass roots” politicians are firing teachers, firefighters, cops, and other government workers, what are we doing to stop it? How many folks on your block have to go into foreclosure, before you will turn off the Jersey Shore and do something to defend your fellow Americans?

And now that those same corporate-financed “grass roots” politicians are spewing the same 30-year-old garbage that health care reform, clean air and water, worker safety, a fair shake for the poor and the middle class, closing tax loopholes for the super rich are all nasty “job killers,” why are we so afraid to openly expose these lies as lies and the spewers as liars?

And when the new crop of Tea/GOP crazies pan Social Security as a “ lie and a Ponzi scheme,” and tell us that we have to turn Medicare over to Wall Street, we can actually spot the mendacity, pouring from their pores like sweat off a racehorse, but what are we doing to send them back to their stables?

How bad does it have to get before we finally lose the Stockholm Syndrome and start answering back: to friends on the social media, on blogs like this one, and during the debate on each and every bull-pucky bill proposed by those corporate-funded “grass roots” politicians.

I, for one, am tired of the self-loathing that necessarily accompanies a life of cowardice. I have always been happy to discuss issues with anyone and everyone who wants to chat and will continue to try and find common ground with those who honestly feel differently than me.

But I will no longer sit back and let the insane run the asylum, and that includes telling a friend, colleague, or politician that he/she is wrong and why, and not backing down when they quote Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, or any of the Tea/GOP presidential candidates in support of their misguided views.

And I am asking all Americans to beg, borrow, or steal a spine and join in a national discussion, which is long overdue.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Our President is offering a common sense jobs plan called the American Jobs Act, which will help in the short run and will work in the long run, if combined with, a sensible trade policy and the abrogation of tax-loopholes for the super rich and corporations.  A vast majority of Americans are already in favor of the proposals within this plan.

Most of its provisions were based upon GOP or bipartisan ideas, but the Tea/GOP congress has already opposed the plan, because it includes closing tax loopholes for the super-rich/big corporations. And they have already said that they would rather pass nothing, than “give Obama a win.”

Now may be a perfect time to get off your rump and bump, don’t you think? AmericaJobsAct.com

JBS

Lessons Learned From Denver Cop Reinstatements

In a city known for the most violent police force per capita, for a city of its size, you would think that the newly appointed Denver Manager of Safety, Ashley Kilroy, would have offered at least one feeble rationale for reinstating the two officers who were caught on camera gratuitously beating an innocent citizen Michael DeHerrera into unconsciousness and then lying about it while under an official investigation.

We get a hint in the Denver Post report that Mr. Kilroy did not exactly agree with the decision of the Denver Civil Service Commission to reinstate Officer Devin Sparks and Cpl. Randy Murr, for assaulting Mr. DeHerrera with a black jack into unconsciousness, just because DeHerrera was on his phone and might have been filming them from across the street gratuitously beating up one of his friends. 

I am sure that Mr. Kilroy was also concerned that the two cops confiscated and conveniently “lost” De Herrera’s camera, and then unlawfully cited the hospitalized DeHerrera for interference.

It must have also bothered Mr. Kilroy that, when the officers were busted by another incriminating video source which they had neglected to destroy, they continued to lie to officials and claim self-defense, even after the video clearly showed that the officers behaved more like NAZI Brownshirts, than commissioned officers of the law.

Actually DeHerrera was on the phone and with with his dad, a Pueblo County Sheriff’s deputy, at the time the officers came all the way across the street to harass, tackle, and inflict serious bodily injury on this harmless young bystander.

Former Denver Manager of Safety, Charles Garcia was totally right to fire these thugs and one wonders what arcane provision of the civil service code was used to sleaze in their reinstatement.

Though, the more important issue to me is the message that this sends to the rank and file of the most violent police force in the country and to the residents of Denver.

No, I don’t expect that the two reinstated officers will get a ticker tape parade in their honor, but I suspect that police violence will now resume unabated as the only lessons learned by fellow officers were:

1.  Destroy ALL of the evidence and by any means necessary.

Flushing just one camera down the toilet is not enough. People will have to believe you, if there is no video.

2.  Confab and get your stories straight BEFORE you make your reports.

Nothing is more incriminating than inconsistent reports.

3.      Don’t worry about the psychopaths in your ranks. It is more important that you

stick together and ride out the process in silence and solidarity. The last thing you need is an officer who “forgets” to watch your back, because you sided with management…even if he almost

killed someone…again and then lied about it…again.

4.      Always pay your dues to the Denver Police Protective Association, so they too

will pay for your legal fees, when you unlawfully pummel a citizen into the asphalt.

And what lesson did the rest of us learn? We learned that we can not trust the folks who were sworn to serve and protect us. People in the poorer neighborhoods have always maintained that cops where they live indulged in gratuitous harassment and violence but suburbanites have always discounted this view because we tend to devalue the word of poor people who have to live in high-crime neighborhoods. Looks like they were right all along.

We learned that we had better warn our children that the most dangerous thugs on the street wear  badges. We now have to tell our children “never approach cops, put away your cell phones, never run, never speak, and  crouch into a ball to protect your head as best as you can.”

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

America: Let’s Use Money To Make Things Again

The financial services industry makes money by taking money and making more money out of it. Although they claim to loan money to the American people, you would not know it these days, because they seem to only be loaning money to their other moneyed buddies. Oh, right. Corporations are people too. I keep forgetting.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, 50 states Attorney’s General, and private investors are just now finally suing the 17 biggest banks for negligently making billions in worthless loans, bundling the tripe and calling it securities, lying about its tripedness and selling it to unsuspecting investors, insuring the smelly innards against the inevitable failure, and (when their little shell game tanked the economy) lying to congress about a fraudulent scheme to make billions and billions out of rotted cow guts.

The reaction from the banks?

1.   Not our fault! It was…uh…the economy’s fault! Yeah, that’s it! The economy!

2.   Caveat Emptor! (let the buyer be ware). Investors should have known that we were lying through our collective capped teeth.

3.   Best not to come after us, because, if we have to pay this money back, you’ll be “pushing us guys off a cliff” and we’ll go under again and you’ll “just have to bail us out again.”

Oh, gosh, in as much as I really fear that suing the criminal banks might “sap earnings and contribute to losses in the financial services industry,” I have to look on the bright side.

Firstly, I think that, in general, corporations that lose money by taking money, and loaning that money out to thin air and then lying about it repeatedly, when caught in flagrante delicto, ought to be held to their own caveat emptor, or e pluribus unum, or et tu Brute or whatever.

Secondly, since the financial services industry has not been in the business of loaning money to businesses that actually put people to work making something for quite some time, I am even less moved by their crocodile tears. Bail you out again? Seriously?

Thirdly, I am not an idiot. I know (and we all are learning) that the financial services industry can make more money by dealing in money with other money-people, than by loaning it to companies that make widgets (actual stuff) and that their investors (other bankers, hedge-fund managers, and the super rich) might not see the usual double-digit quarterly returns on their stock portfolios, if the financial services industry went back to helping start-up entrepreneurs, builders, farmers, inventors, and personal service providers. But, being a glass-half-full kinda guy, I see change as a good thing.

So the mega-corps and super rich make slightly less profit and small and medium businesses get the money they need to invest in creation and expansion, which will mean jobs making goods, jobs growing food, jobs providing personal services, jobs building buildings, jobs inventing technology for the 21^st Century, and jobs marketing all these new businesses to the public.

To me, people are people too and this would be a good thing for those people.

A little less of the whole oligopoly-world-hegemony thing, and more of the American Dream. 

J. Brandeis Sperandeo  

Forced To Read The Business Section!

I am compelled to give my late mother-in-law her due. I can only do this now and still save face, because it is a posthumous acknowledgement.

During our many protracted debates, I had always attempted to feign a complete knowledge of politics, based upon my two fancy degrees and a daily perusal of the newspaper’s main sections.

She (we will call her Shirley, because that was her name) always claimed that I was an idiot and reminded me (at least 4,357 times, by my last and final count) that any intel which was at all relevant to government, politics, and hence our daily lives, would first appear, if at all, in the business portion of the various news media. It was only after she went to her ultimate reward (Bloomingdales, I am certain) that I began to see that she was right and I was wrong.

As a hypothetical example, if you wanted to get to the heart of, say, why so many people are unemployed, you would first need to read the business section to learn that mega-corporation A, (instead of creating new jobs with the gobs of cash that they got in tax breaks, welfare subsidies, and bail-out money), took all that cash and bought up major corporation B, (merger/acquisition/buyout/hostile takeover) then fired ½ of the workers in the combined company, (restructuring/downsizing/optimizing capital) to inflate the stock value (uh, value of the stock); most of which they had already owned.

In reality, this is a consistently recurring scenario among the movers and shakers of big business and you can read all about it in the business section of your local newspaper. Of this information you may already be aware, if you have recently been restructured, downsized, or optimized.

Once you know about this all-too-common corporate strategy/business practice, then it makes sense why mega-corporation A (say the billionaire Koch Brothers) might give millions to political think-tank or front-group C (say, Americans For Prosperity) that might then bankroll the allegedly grassroots campaigns of certain politicians (say the Tea/GOP) who might then fight like rabid dogs to keep those tax breaks and welfare subsidies for the mega-corporations in place, while fighting with the same viral vigor against a payroll tax cut for the middle class.

After defining and then solving the entire equation, (corporate hegemony + ass-kissing politicians = we get screwed) only then may you fully appreciate why the politicians you elected don’t give a flying fandango about your lousy working conditions with no job security and no pensions and health insurance, or your lost job, or your discontinued unemployment insurance, or your usurious mortgage payments, or your kid that can’t go to college, or the million military vets who have come home after multiple tours of duty but can’t find work.

As intuitive as it seems to simply blame the politicians, it turns out that they are only the pawns, the toadies, the court jesters, or at most, the chorus in this little Greek tragedy. But you can read all about who’s really running the show in the business section!

On the top of page 8B of the business section of today’s Denver Post, there are three related business articles, which really involve political issues, which really answer a lot of questions about why things are so screwed up in this country today:  

Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, you can read in the business section that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke (appointed by W. and kept on by Obama) secretly loaned out $1.2 trillion of our tax dollars to 10 major U.S. banks and to banks all over the world.

And that is on top of the bailout money they got and roughly represents the amount of dough that the Tea/GOP wants to cut from government programs for the middle class and working poor and homeless people and old people and young people and sick people and veterans.

Why did Bernanke dole out $1.2 trillion? Well, because, since 2006, City Group and BofA and Morgan Stanley and seven other major American banks had all been raking in hundreds of billions a-piece by making really crappy sub-prime loans that they knew could never be re-paid.

After knowing full well that these loans were never worth the paper they were printed on, these banks bundled up all this crap and lied about the valuelessness to investors and then made more hundreds of billions selling this crap in bulk, but not before they insured the crap against being crappy, and so made more hundreds of billions off of the insurance claims.

Then the world found out when everything when to *%&$, but the big banks kept lying to congress about the scam anyway. Problem was, once everything went to *%&$, if we had allowed all of these  Diamond-Jim-criminal-banks to fail, the other banks would have tumbled too and the whole world would have tumbled into the Greatest Depression ever.

Yes, $1.2 trillion in additional loans to the same banks that we tax-payers had already bailed out; the same banks that are buying up other companies and firing employees all over the world; the same banks that are currently tightening any and all credit on the same Americans who bailed them out (apparently twice), while still enjoying a zero-percent rate on the loans they got from us without our knowledge or consent.

Mitt Romney (who says he is “unemployed,” but is currently bulldozing one of his four, $12 million homes, to make it four-times as large) says that corporations are people too. They may be people but these people get billions in welfare subsidies, pay zero taxes, ship jobs overseas, and then we are forced to give them a $1.2 trillion, interest-free payday loan when they lose at the track. Even the business section doesn’t try to justify our continuing co-dependent relationship with these gambling addicts, but I guess the right or wrong of that depends upon which team you are rooting for.

Also in today’s business news, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO has just hired a big-league criminal defense law firm because of the “multiple investigations and subpoenas on federal, state and local levels” about his role in the whole make, bundle, lie, sell, insure, lie again to congress, almost destroy the world economy, thingy that I described above.

Lastly, the business section reported today that Deven Sharma, the CEO of credit-rating company Standard & Poor’s has just abruptly resigned. The Standard & Poor’s chief had recently downgraded the U.S. credit rating, but enquiring minds still want to know how he failed to spot the worldwide game of Russian Roulette that his buddies at the major banks had been playing since 2006. As with the CEO of Goldman Sachs, the U.S. Justice Department is currently investigating.

Thanks, Shirley. I finally get it. I am sadder, wiser, and actually wish that you were still with us, so you could say “I told you so” and I could sit there quietly, with a pained smirk on my face and just take it!

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

Banker Integrity: An Oxymoron

I almost shot coffee through my nose with laughter while reading a Sunday Denver Post op-ed piece by Don Childears (President and CEO of the Colorado Bankers Association). His piece was written in response to two previously written op-ed pieces by columnist Mary Winter.

The subject of contention surrounds the dilemma of homebuyers, with jobs, who are about to default on their ARM (adjustable rate mortgages) or otherwise outrageously repressive mortgages, when their home is now worth less than what they owe on the loan.

Ms. Winters believes in what she describes as “strategic default,” or, more accurately put, walking away from the house and the loan. Banker CEO, and upstanding pillar of the community Childears warns against such skullduggery.

Ms. Winter believes that most home owners caught this position are dupes who have been set up by the whole realtor/mortgage lending racket; that glosses over shifting soil, ground water, shoddy workmanship and developer ponzi schemes; that employs unscrupulous property appraisers who (for a fee) grossly over-inflate housing values, so the developer/seller/realtor/lender can jack up the price; that uses blind, deaf and dumb home inspectors who couldn’t spot mold, if it was growing out of their noses; that falsifies credit scores to qualify folks for loans they have no business making; that hides the pitfalls of ARMs, within a mind-numbing mass of boiler-plate gobbledygook.

For Mr. Childears, it is all about that lack of integrity…of the borrower and those bad boys on Wall Street, from whom he now totally disassociates himself. Never mind that those thousands of toxic sub-prime (ARM) mortgages were bundled together and made into securities by numerous criminal bankers and then knowingly unloaded by bankers onto unsuspecting customers and then bankers insured the garbage against obvious collapse, so they could make more money when the toxic garbage became more generally known to be  toxic garbage, and then bankers lied about it to congress. Banks all across this country.

Every week, you can read about another bank that feels compelled to pay out a tiny percent of their ill-gotten gains in civil fines to the SEC for their part in the debacle, and they are not just Wall Street banks either, Mr. Childears. But Childears and his banks want us to know that they had nothing to do with the Big Fraud or with any unconscionable mortgages in general. Right. Uh, huh.

Yes, Fanny & Freddy were complicit or at least grossly negligent in the 2005-2009 criminal enterprise, but Mr. Childears, the conniving, conspiring offenders who thought up and put into motion the whole filthy shell game were banks, with bankers, who were banking, by means of bank fraud.

Yes, Mr. Childears, we know! Your colleagues, your friends, your business partners. And PUHLEEZE don’t try to tell me that you didn’t make your own little private stash in the Caymans without crappy mortgages.

Ms. Winter naively assumes that every homebuyer eventually caught in the above Hobson’s scenario is a neophyte or otherwise blameless paragon of virtue who has been swindled into the crappy home, with a crappy loan. Right. Uh, huh. Yeah, like no one knowingly lives beyond their means (livin large!) on the tenuous promise of better times ahead. If Ms. Winter were correct, we would have no stock market or any market for most of the crap that people currently rush out to buy on credit.

I almost forgot the funny part:

This banker mucky-muck guy Childears spent almost the entire article trying to scold/ shame/threaten homeowners into sticking with their crappy home/mortgages. He didn’t mention the thousands of folks who really were swindled by the time-honored caveat emptor scam that is designed by bankers/lenders to put the entire onus on the homeowner and none on the lender/bank. Master & Commander Childears did not mention the thousands of borrowers who, as actual human beings, were having to choose between making the recently ballooned monthly mortgage payments and buying groceries for the family.

For Childears, his banker’s appeal to integrity consisted of threatening those home- buyers, who are currently in debt up to their eyeballs, that defaulting on their mortgage might prevent them from qualifying to get in debt up to their eyeballs in the future. I kept reading and kept laughing, until I almost fell victim to the aforementioned coffee aspiration. On the planet where which Mr. Childears resides, life-long-debt is the Spice! The Spice is life! We must protect the Spice!

No, I am not saying that everybody who has gotten into serious debt should simply skip town, nor am I saying that everybody who finds themselves in that position, is a victim of the system. It was always a devil’s bargain before it became a Hobson’s choice. On the other hand, guess who plays the devil in my little scenario?

But it is an interesting truth that the power of the lender is only assured if the borrower continues to pay the debt. As a people, we are enamored and in awe of these American titans of banking and finance, but we forget that their titanic status depends entirely upon the continued cooperation of the American serfdom (i.e. us), that they have created and seek to propagate. I am reminded of the old adage that “you can’t get blood out of a turnip,” or perhaps better said, “when you got nothing, you go nothing to lose.”

Childears came down from Mt. Olympus just long enough to tacitly acknowledge this truth. He neglected to mention it, but power people only resort to open threats, when they are experiencing unaccustomed perspiration. He and his ilk are hoping like hell that nobody will make the connection.

If more homebuyers walked away from their worthless houses with unconscionable mortgages, the banking/mortgage industry would discontinue their present practice of bamboozling. Right. Uh, huh. I am sure that banks would then simply write off all of the bad loans, resell the homes at the actual value, with a full discloser as to any and all defects going to express or implied warranties of habitability, with low, easily comprehensible, fixed 30-year mortgages, and to well-qualified homebuyers only.

Okay, now I just made a funny joke. Feel free to resume sipping your coffee as soon as you stop laughing.

J. Brandeis Sperandeo

P.S. Please feel free to express your thoughts on this issue, whether they agree with mine or not. It will make for an interesting discussion, I think.

JBS

P.S. As of last week, (one day after Mr. Childears tried to characterize his banker buddies as a bunch of stand-up, regular folks) credit card companies (banks) changed their financing policies.

The interest that you pay for item purchased on credit (APR) had always varied wildly, depending upon the bank’s calculation of your “credit worthiness,” a big part of which included your total family income. But now you can no longer combine you and your spouse’s household income on the application.

This means that the banks will count your entire monthly mortgage bill against your “credit worthiness,” but only part of your actual household income to support it. This little accounting gimmick assures that millions of credit card users will now pay a much higher APR to the banks, as soon as they start a line of credit, while the banks get double-covered.

Please remember that these are the same banks that currently pay virtually zero interest, when they borrow from other banks or from the government, because those banks that we bailed out have really great “credit worthiness.”

JBS