Category: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Republicans always improve our quality of life

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

IMG_9248.jpg

You have to admire how they assert mandates where none exist. Sure wish Dems would do more of that!

Senate Republicans are gearing up for a war against the Obama administration’s environmental rules, identifying them as a top target when they take control in January.

The GOP sees the midterm elections as a mandate to roll back rules from the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies, with Republicans citing regulatory costs they say cripple the economy and skepticism about the cause of climate change.

Incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) identified his top priority come January as “to try to do whatever I can to get the EPA reined in.”

McConnell made his defense of coal a major piece of Kentucky’s economy, a highlight of his reelection bid, which he won easily over Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.

He said he feels a “deep responsibility” to stop the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants, as it proposed to do in January for newly built generators and in June for existing ones.

But those are far from the only rules the GOP wants to target.

Republican lawmakers are planning an all-out assault on Obama’s environmental agenda, including rules on mercury and other air toxics from power plants, limits on ground-level ozone that causes smog, mountaintop mining restrictions and the EPA’s attempt to redefine its jurisdiction over streams and ponds.

The Interior Department is also in the crosshairs, with rules due to come soon on hydraulic fracturing on public land and protecting streams from mining waste.

Many of the rules are part of the “war on coal” that Republicans have accused Obama of waging. They charge that Obama has tried to revive cap-and-trade rules for carbon emissions despite the 2009 failure of legislation when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress.

A senior GOP aide didn’t take any of Obama’s major environmental rules off the table, saying they all could get scrutiny under Republican control of the Senate, depending on how the regulations develop.

The staffer said Republicans have a series of tools available to them to fight Obama with different degrees of severity.

“It’ll be a combined effort of using the appropriations process and the legislative process and the oversight process to put pressure on the administration prior to finalization,” the aide said.

Voters to Chevron: Up yours

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Maybe we should all move to California!

In a surprise victory, Tom Butt was elected Richmond Mayor tonight after a multimillion-dollar campaign by the Chevron Corporation failed to defeat Butt or elect a slate of candidates the giant oil company had supported.

According to tallies as of Wednesday morning, Butt received 51.43 percent of votes, beating his nearest opponent Nat Bates, whose campaign was supported by Chevron, by 16 points.

An ecstatic Butt, speaking from his headquarters, praised his campaign workers and marveled at the unexpected margin of victory: “I’ve never had such a bunch of people who are dedicated and worked so hard. It’s far away above anything that I’ve ever experienced.”

Butt’s election also helped bring victory to a slate of progressive candidates including Jovanka Beckles, Gayle McLaughlin and Eduardo Martinez, who each won a seat on the City Council.

The progressives’ sweep of city hall and the city council further means they’ll be able to fill Butt’s vacated council seat.

A number of observers said that Chevron’s aggressive spending may have backfired.

Uche Uwahemu, who ran third in the mayoral race, said, “The election was a referendum on Chevron, and the people obviously made it clear they did not appreciate the unnecessary spending by Chevron, so they took it out on the rest of the candidates.”

Thanks to Attorney David Benowitz.

Another slap on the wrist

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Retail Bank of America

Of course! We wouldn’t want to send the wrong message, would we?

Bank of America is nearing a deal with federal regulators to settle an investigation into the bank’s suspected manipulation of the currency market, the latest sign that Wall Street is bracing for another crackdown on its misbehavior.

Bank of America disclosed the development on Thursday in a news release, saying that it had increased its legal costs to deal with the currency market investigation. Although the bank did not name the regulators, people briefed on the investigation identified the agencies as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve

In the news release, Bank of America said it recently had “advanced discussions” with the regulators about a potential settlement, forcing the bank to increase its legal reserves to pay for the expected fine. A settlement is not final, the people briefed on the matter said.

The increased legal bill resulted in a $400 million charge that cut into the earnings that Bank of America reported for the third quarter a few weeks ago. The charge resulted in the bank reporting a loss of $232 million, or 4 cents a share, in the quarter.

Bank of America becomes the latest bank ensnared in the foreign exchange investigation to retroactively increase its expected legal costs — and lower its earnings — after reporting third-quarter results last month. Banks are required to set aside legal reserves once they have a clear picture of the costs they are likely to pay in a potential settlement.

H/t Immigration Attorney April Cockerham.

This is why I believe in cheap, accessible abortion

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

In hopes that women like this will terminate their pregnancies:

WEST CALN TWP., Pa. — Police say a man and his girlfriend are charged with murdering the girlfriend’s 3-year-old son.

Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan announced the arrests of Gary Fellenbaum and Jillian Tait Thursday morning. He says Fellenbaum, his wife, and girlfriend, Tait, all lived in a trailer park on Hope Lane in West Caln Township.

On Tuesday authorities were called to their residence for the report of an unresponsive child. Responding EMTs found 3-year-old Scott McMillan suffering from bruises, lacerations and puncture wounds all over his body.

Police say Fellenbaum, Tait, and another witness confessed that the little boy had been beaten with blunt and sharp objects, whipped, taped to a chair with electrical tape and beaten, hung up by his feet and beaten, leading to his death.

Authorities say they beat Scott to death using homemade weapons, like a whip, a curtain rod, and an aluminum strip.

Police say Tait explained that the fatal beating began when the boy wouldn’t eat his breakfast.

Hogan said, “Little Scotty McMillan is dead. Over a three day period … he was systematically tortured and beaten to death. He was punched in the face and in the stomach. He was scourged with a homemade whip. He was lashed with a metal rod. He was tied to a chair and beaten. He was tied upside down by his feet and beaten. His head was smashed through a wall.”

Tait allegedly told police that Fellenbaum beat her 6 and 3-year-old boys on a number of occasions. He would allegedly hit them with a closed fist in the head, face, chest and buttocks, and on one occasion she says he strung the boys up by their feet and beat them, while she and Fellenbaum laughed.

H/t Nicole Naum.

Bombshell: JPMorgan Chase witness breaks her gag order

~ susie ~ 5 Comments

alayne

I’ve said it before: Rolling Stone is the only major publication digging into these stories. If you can afford it, buy a subscription. And now Matt Taibbi is back with a huge bombshell of a story: The main witness in the JPMorgan Chase settlement is breaking her gag order!

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn’t take it anymore.

“It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street,” she says. “I thought, ‘I can’t sit by any longer.'”

Fleischmann is a tall, thin, quick-witted securities lawyer in her late thirties, with long blond hair, pale-blue eyes and an infectious sense of humor that has survived some very tough times. She’s had to struggle to find work despite some striking skills and qualifications, a common symptom of a not-so-common condition called being a whistle-blower.

Fleischmann is the central witness in one of the biggest cases of white-collar crime in American history, possessing secrets that JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon late last year paid $9 billion (not $13 billion as regularly reported – more on that later) to keep the public from hearing.

Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as “massive criminal securities fraud” in the bank’s mortgage operations.

Thanks to a confidentiality agreement, she’s kept her mouth shut since then. “My closest family and friends don’t know what I’ve been living with,” she says. “Even my brother will only find out for the first time when he sees this interview.”

Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it’s not exactly news that the country’s biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That’s why the more important part of Fleischmann’s story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.

She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. “Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way,” Fleischmann says.

This past year she watched as Holder’s Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called “statements of facts,” which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts.

And now, with Holder about to leave office and his Justice Department reportedly wrapping up its final settlements, the state is effectively putting the finishing touches on what will amount to a sweeping, industrywide effort to bury the facts of a whole generation of Wall Street corruption. “I could be sued into bankruptcy,” she says. “I could lose my license to practice law. I could lose everything. But if we don’t start speaking up, then this really is all we’re going to get: the biggest financial cover-up in history.”

Bernie Sanders on looming oligarchy

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

MY GOODMAN: [This is] Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, on this day after. That’s right. Last night, Tuesday night, during Democracy Now!’s five-hour special broadcast, Juan González and I spoke with Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, just as it started to become clear from early election results that the Senate was clearly going to be controlled by Republicans.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: What I do know is that if in fact the Republicans carry the Senate and control the Congress, as they may, I think it will be a disaster for the middle-class and working families of this country. And we’re just going to have to figure out how we can fight back as effectively as we can.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what do you see as the options for—in case that does turn out to be the result tonight, what do you see the options in terms of how President Obama can move forward any kind of a Democratic or progressive agenda in the remaining two years?
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I think it’s quite far-fetched to believe that he can move forward a progressive agenda. I think the immediate effort will be to stop to have more tax breaks for the wealthy and large corporations, which the Republicans will certainly bring forward. I think under the guise of, quote-unquote, “entitlement reform,” they will be making efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare. They’ll go after Medicaid. They’ll go after education. They’ll go after nutrition. They’ll probably want to increase funding for the military. And my guess is, with all of the money from the Koch brothers coming in and the other fossil fuel industries, they’ll continue to ignore scientific evidence about climate change. So, I think we’re going to be more of a defensive mode trying to prevent bad things than having illusions at this point about doing good things.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders, your state has struggled with your Obamacare website. It has caused a very major issue particularly in Vermont, because of the quest by Governor Shumlin and many others to make Vermont the first single-payer state. Can you talk about the significance of this and what it will mean?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, it’s obviously a negative. I mean, I am a strong advocate of a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. I think if you want to provide quality care to all people in a cost-effective way, that is the approach you have got to go. Clearly, it is not a good thing for a state government, or in fact federal government, not to be able to run a website which is accountable and works well for people. So, that’s a negative. But I hope very much that despite that, we’ll go forward and be the first state in the country to pass a single payer.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, one argument that even Governor Shumlin has used is that, you know, Obamacare is complicated—

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: —and that that is not the ultimate answer. And this, the downing of your website, proves this.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Look, what you need—the American healthcare system is enormously complicated. And when you have a system that is complicated, it becomes very, very expensive,
and we end up spending approximately 30 percent of every healthcare dollar in the administration and profiteering and everything else. Clearly, in my view, and I think the view of a whole lot of Americans, healthcare should be a right. We should fund it through public funding in a progressive way, and people should be able to go to the doctor they want in the hospital they want. And it turns out that in our country we spend—and people don’t understand this—we spend almost twice as much per person on healthcare as do the people of any other nation, precisely because it is a complicated, bureaucratic, confusing and profit-oriented system.

AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders, the issue of the minimum wage, in all the states that it is being introduced, the ballot initiative being voted on in Alaska, in Arkansas, in Nebraska, in South Dakota, even if they’re Republican states, it is overwhelmingly, two, three to one, being voted for. What message does this send to your Democratic colleagues?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Well, Amy, that’s an excellent point, and it’s a very important point. And it’s not just the minimum wage. On economic issues, whether it’s raising the minimum wage, whether it’s pay equity for women workers, whether it’s investing in rebuilding our infrastructure and creating millions of decent-paying jobs, whether it is making college education affordable and ending this burden of student indebtedness that so many young people have, guess what. The vast majority of the people want change.
Continue reading “Bernie Sanders on looming oligarchy” →

Overview

~ susie ~ 6 Comments

Man on the street

I’m too tired to really get into the numbers yet, but here’s what I can say: We lost some races, but they were all squeakers. Which means, no matter how the Repugs will try to spin it, that they don’t exactly have a mandate. They will act as if they do, but I imagine they’re going to have to put the brakes on at least a little.

But the Dems have a problem. Notice how, even in the states where the Republicans took the governor’s mansion AND the Senate seats, they passed minimum wage increases? You’d almost think that, if the Dems had run campaigns as Democrats, they’d have won a lot more of these races!

And honestly, I’m so sick of progressives acting like we’re not in a deep economic hole. I don’t care what the GDP is, or the Dow, or the unemployment rate. People are hurting. They have shitty jobs that pay a lot less and uncertain futures. You can’t sell them this bullshit, it’s insulting!

It’s gotten a lot worse in my neighborhood – hell, the entire city. Every time I stop at a light, there’s someone with a sign and a coffee can, begging for money. I’ve never seen it this bad. And Democrats want to brag about the GDP? They got what they deserved.

Wingnut cardinals undermine Pope Frank

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square-1
Photo by Gabriel Sozzi via Wikimedia Commons

As a fallen-away “cradle Catholic,” one who used to love arguing with my religion teachers about things like reincarnation, or women priests (“But if only men can be priests because Jesus only picked male apostles, shouldn’t priests have to be Jewish, too?”), I get a kick out of Pope Francis. He reminds me of that all-too-brief reign of Pope John XXIII, the last “people’s Pope.” He is a compassionate man who radiates the best qualities of the Church — namely, a strong foundation in social justice and mercy.

He hasn’t gone as far in liberalizing the Church as I’d like, but he shows signs that he’s getting there.

But the same Catholic conservatives who were so eager to snuggle under the covers with the worst elements of the right wing have learned a thing or two from U.S. politics — basically, how to undercut and erode the authority of a duly-elected leader. This is actually serious, and I’m only slightly kidding when I say I fervently hope this pope avoids small planes.

Matters came to a head last week when Pope Francis removed the extremely conservative U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke from his influential post as head of the church’s highest court, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. (Think of him as Tony Scalia, making distorted pronouncements about “original intent.”) Burke proclaims his version of what the Pope can or can’t do, and Pope Francis is supposed to fall into a worshipful crouch in front of Burke’s embroidered slippers.

It’s not working out that way. Pope Francis has his own ideas, and when a recent report indicated that an upcoming church synod might loosen church policies on divorce and gay marriage, conservatives led by Cardinal Burke went on the attack. German Cardinal Walter Kasper hit back:

In an interview this week, Kasper expressed confidence that bishops at the back-to-back synods would ultimately back some change, and he hit back at critics like Burke, saying they are engaged in political maneuverings. He said they are afraid that any changes would lead to a “domino effect.”

“This is all linked to ideology, an ideological understanding of the gospel that the gospel is like a penal code,” Kasper, who is retired from a curial job but lives in Rome, told America magazine.

Heh. See what I mean? Scalia!

Burke is, to me, the worst kind of Church prelate, known not only for his rigid views on abortion and gays and his willingness to aid the Republican right wing, but for his love of the kind of gaudier ceremonial frippery most cardinals had the taste to leave behind a half-century ago. (All for the greater glory of God, I’m sure.)

As an authoritarian, of course, he was not so quick to address the sexual abuse scandal. As the National Catholic Reporter noted last month:

Cardinal Burke would do us all a favor to examine the second component of the clergy sex abuse scandal, that component that deals with his episcopal colleagues. He might ask why canon law has not come to the aid of the children in a forthright and active manner. He might ask how church law has allowed his fellow bishops to cover up the scandal rather than bringing to public. He might examine how church law has played a role in driving many Catholics, disaffected by the scandal, from the church.

And since he got demoted, he’s doing his best to damn Francis with faint praise:

American Cardinal Raymond Burke, the feisty former archbishop of St. Louis who has emerged as the face of the opposition to Pope Francis’ reformist agenda, likened the Roman Catholic Church to “a ship without a rudder” in a fresh attack on the pope’s leadership.

In an interview with the Spanish Catholic weekly Vida Nueva, published Thursday (Oct. 30), Burke insisted he was not speaking out against the pope personally but raising concern about his leadership.

“Many have expressed their concerns to me. At this very critical moment, there is a strong sense that the church is like a ship without a rudder,” Burke said.

Hey, we’ve seen “The Borgias,” Cardinal Burke. We know what you’re doing! (We’ve also seen Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, and Fox News in action.)

Conservatives have privately labeled Francis “the anti-Christ” and illegitimate, just as Obama was “the Kenyan” who couldn’t legally be president. In the National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters calls them “Tea Party Catholics” and writes:

Regrettably, I suspect those who disapprove of Pope Francis constitute a larger share of the clergy and the episcopate than the laity. When bishops temporize in public, as we have seen for example in Bishop Robert Morlino’s ill-advised interviews, or in comments from Cardinal Raymond Burke, you can bet that those same prelates, in private, are hearing, or saying, the kinds of things Fr. Longenecker records in this remarkable piece. And, before he got booted off the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Burke was able to place many like-minded prelates in some prominent sees.

Longenecker writes:

Some have given up on Pope Francis. Others say he is “the false prophet” who will accompany the anti Christ in the end times. Others don’t like his dress sense, grumble about his media gaffes and some think they are all intentional and that he is a very shrewd Jesuit who wants to undermine the Catholic faith.

Clearly, Father is not speaking to the same Catholics I speak with, although I did hear a bishop speculate on the fact that “we can’t dismiss the possibility that there could be another anti-pope.” I like the way Fr. Longenecker, following a model set forth previously by Archbishop Chaput, and by the Wizard of Oz before that, places these concerns in the mouths of others, nonetheless giving them oxygen by reporting them. The idea that Pope Francis “is a very shrewd Jesuit who wants to undermine the Catholic faith” really did not need to be reported in order to continue with the article, did it? And, the observation reads like something you would find in an early eighteenth century Jansenist tract, an analogy that bears further reflection because of the Jansenist tendencies of the anti-Francis brigade.

It sounds so familiar, doesn’t it? The sly words, the implication of weakness, the veiled accusations of undermining the very foundations of the institution?

I remember enough of my twelve years of Bible study to know that Jesus, asked about the greatest commandment, reportedly replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

I could be wrong, but I think Pope Francis comes a lot closer to that spirit than Cardinal Burke. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

H/t Karin Riley Porter Attorney at Law.

Corbett pins hopes on deadbeat Democrats

~ odd man out ~ 1 Comment

I was telling Swamp Rabbit that the key to re-election of unpopular Republican incumbents such as Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett is to keep down the turnout among registered Democrats. That’s why the Republican Party, with help from the U.S. Supreme Court, is trying to impose restrictive voter ID laws in as many states as possible.

The rabbit, floating on his back in the swamp, said, “I don’t get it, Odd Man. Why bother passing laws? Most Dems don’t vote anyway.”

He reminded me that a GOP-backed law requiring PA voters to show a state-approved photo ID at the polls was struck down by a judge earlier this year. Which means the GOP is still pinning its hopes for victory in PA on voter apathy rather than voter suppression, especially in midterm elections.

“Here’s a fun fact,” the rabbit said after crawling onto the porch of my shack in Tinicum. “Voter turnout in heavily Democratic Philadelphia was about 700,000 when Barack Obama ran in 2008, but it was only 450,000 in 2010, when Corbett snuck in. No way Corbett wins if deadbeat Dems in Philly and other counties get off their asses.”

“You’re blaming the victims,” I said, watching the rabbit wipe pond scum off his fur. “Corbett won in 2010 because of the hick vote. I’m thinking of what James Carville said back in the day — Pennsylvania is Philly and Pittsburgh, and Alabama in between.”

“That’s a cute quote,” the rabbit said, grabbing the bottle of Wild Turkey he’d left on the windowsill. “But it don’t mean nothin’ if Dems vote for the Dem instead of just whining that Corbett is bad news for poor and fair-to-middlin’ people.”

The rabbit guzzled bourbon and rattled off facts. Corbett remained a rabid foe of tax increases even as the state sank deeper into debt. He took care of his friends in the fracking industry by taxing them next to nothing while he was cutting close to a billion dollars from the education budget. He endorsed vaginal probes in supporting crusaders against abortion. He blamed drug users for the state’s unemployment rate. He wasn’t even very popular with Republican voters.

All true, I said, but  why assume Democrat Tom Wolf would undo any of the damage, especially given the fact that so many state legislators are as reactionary as Corbett? And what about all those voters who are registered as independents?

“No way of knowing how they gonna vote,” the rabbit conceded. “But you don’t change nothin’ by bitchin’ about Corbett on Facebook. You cannot win if you do not play.”

He had me on the defensive. “You talk a good game, rodent, but you aren’t going to vote, are you?”

He spat in the swamp and said, “I would if I was a human. What’s your excuse?”