Category: Class War

Energy cuts

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

For the poor? Am I misreading this?

Or is this some tactic to wear us down to get us to accept other, “less” drastic budget cuts? (You know, like Social Security and Medicare.)

John Kerry is asking Obama to reconsider. During a Depression and a brutal winter, we have to beg a Democratic president not to cut heating subsidies for the poor?

I mean, WTF?

Economist Mark Thoma:

Don’t you feel sorry for the energy companies since they can’t cut power on deliquent bill payers during weather emergencies? Private business should have a right to freeze people to death if they fall behind on their payments. Especially when there is a recession making it hard for people to get by and a lack of social support to fill the gaps in household budgets.

As for the “subsidy to energy companies” argument, pretty much any spending on the poor can be recast as a “subsidy” to someone. For example, giving people food to prevent starvation is nothing more than backdoor support for those greedy farmers who already get enough help from the government.

Update: I should have also knocked the administration for this move. There are ways for the administration to show it is “serious” about deficit reduction besides going after the poor with cuts that are a drop in the bucket relative to the size of the deficit problem. I’d be much more impressed for example if the administration demonstrated its seriousness by going after powerful vested interests rather than those least able to defend themselves within the political arena.

Attack on WikiLeaks

~ susie ~ 8 Comments

And supporters, proposed by a data intelligence firm that was recommended to the banksters by the Department of Justice!

The proposal starts with an overview of WikiLeaks, including some history and employee statistics. From there it moves into a profile of Julian Assange and an organizational chart. The chart lists several people, including volunteers and actual staff.

One of those listed as a volunteer, Salon.com columnist, Glenn Greenwald, was singled out by the proposal. Greenwald, previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York, has been a vocal supporter of Bradley Manning, who is alleged to have given diplomatic cables and other government information to WikiLeaks. He has yet to be charged in the matter.

Greenwald became a household name in December when he reported on the “inhumane conditions” of Bradley Manning’s confinement at the Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia. Since that report, Greenwald has reported on WikiLeaks and Manning several times.

“Glenn was critical in the Amazon to OVH transition,” the proposal says, referencing the hosting switch WikiLeaks was forced to make after political pressure caused Amazon to drop their domain.

I’ve said before that the average American, much to his disadvantage, is oblivious to the amount of coercive misinformation that’s put out there to mislead us. And even people like us, who pay a lot of attention, are naive when it comes to the sophistication and range of those methods.

We’re a wholly-owned subsidiary of the banksters and their friends. That’s why I can’t wait to see WikiLeaks unleash the banking documents they have.

Goody

~ susie

Bailouts a thing of the past, huh? More presents for AIG! Via Naked Capitalism:

First from Bloomberg, “AIG Has $4.1 Billion Charge on Insufficient Reserves“:

American International Group Inc. said higher-than-forecast claims costs cut fourth-quarter profit by $4.1 billion, and $2 billion previously designated to repay its bailout will be used to bolster the property-casualty unit.

The insurer reached an agreement with the U.S. Treasury Department permitting the company to keep $2 billion of proceeds from the sale of Star Life Insurance Co. and Edison Life Insurance Co., New York-based AIG said today in a statement. Funds will be used by Chartis for losses tied to coverage including workers’ compensation and asbestos liability.

The troubling part is “keep”. Unless the Treasury got some form of consideration back from AIG, this sure looks like a gift.

We see similar ambiguous language at the Journal:

American International Group Inc. said it will book a $4.1 billion charge when it reports results for the fourth quarter, as it adds to reserves at its Chartis property and casualty insurance unit….

AIG also said Wednesday that it signed a letter of agreement with the U.S. Treasury to retain $2 billion of the proceeds from the sale of AIG Star Life Insurance Co. and AIG Edison Life Insurance Co. to support Chartis’ capital.

Now with AIG, a mere two billion must look like mere rounding error, but again, pray tell exactly how this reversal of the TARP payback is being accounted for? We’ve had so much sleight of hand with AIG that nothing would surprise me. And with the Congressional Oversight Panel about to go out of business, any pushback is almost certain to be limited.

HR3

~ susie ~ 8 Comments

I wish everyone would watch this and read this. It is unthinkable that women will be denied the ability to get an abortion, and even more unthinkable that a Democratic president will sign the bill if it passes, but it sure looks like it’s about to happen. Bipartisanship!

Wheee

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

See how well that worked?

WASHINGTON — Economists at the New York Federal Reserve have concluded that a controversial 2005 law backed by banks and credit card companies pushed more than 200,000 people into foreclosure and exacerbated the subprime mortgage crisis.

Consumer advocates fought hard against the law, which made it much more difficult for individuals to alleviate credit card debt in bankruptcy. This inability of homeowners to eliminate other debts, the New York Fed economists conclude, in turn made borrowers unable to pay off their mortgages, spurring foreclosures.

Despite opposition from public interest groups, the 2005 law easily cleared both chambers of Congress and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. In a paper released Tuesday, New York Fed researchers Donald P. Morgan, Benjamin Iverson and Matthew Botsch determined that the law sparked about 116,000 additional subprime mortgage foreclosures a year after going into effect.

What’s more, they note, these foreclosures pushed home prices down, which may have lead to additional foreclosures. When the value of a home drops below what a borrower owes on the mortgage, it becomes nearly impossible to get out of the loan by selling the house or refinancing, making foreclosure more likely if they become unable to afford the monthly payment.

“By making it harder for borrowers to avoid paying credit card debt, [the 2005 bankruptcy law] made it more difficult for them to pay their mortgages, so foreclosure rates rose,” the economists wrote.

Although borrowers have been unable to alleviate mortgage debt in bankruptcy since 1993, they remain able to discharge credit card debts by filing for bankruptcy. But the 2005 law made it much more difficult for consumers to file for bankruptcy at all — and then limited their ability to reduce credit card debt burdens once they did.

My new hero

~ susie

Someone isn’t taking the class war lying down. Good for Mr. Katz!

At last count, Steven Katz owed $80,000 on his six credit cards, and he has no intention of paying any of it off. In fact, he’d like to show you how to be like him—a “credit terrorist” in open revolt against the banking system.

Katz is the founder of Debtorboards.com (“Sue Your Creditor and Win!”), a five-year-old online forum where he’s collected countless tricks and tactics for evading and repelling persistent creditors. He’s written how-tos on shielding your assets from seizure, luring collection agenciesinto expensive lawsuits, and frustrating private investigators looking for debtors on the run. He’s even infiltrated the bill collectors’ forums, where he’s been tagged a “credit jihadist” and his site’s been called a “credit terrorist training camp,” a label he embraces. “Debtorboards is one of the biggest and most successful temper tantrums ever,” the 59-year-old Katz boasts. The site has more than 10,000 members—double what it had in 2009.

Katz wants the millions of Americans buried in debt to stop feeling guilty about not honoring their obligations. “People are brainwashed to think that paying a credit card is more important than paying for the necessities of life,” he says. “Business and morality have nothing to do with each other, according to the bankers.” One of Katz’s mottos is “No one ever went to hell for not paying a debt.”

He wasn’t always an unrepentant debtor. When he first spoke to me from his tax and accounting business in a strip mall in Tucson, Arizona, he recalled how his first job in the ’70s was tromping through Brooklyn making collections for a small loan company. He once threatened to take a woman’s kids to an orphanage if she didn’t pay her bills. He wasn’t serious, but it worked.

The tables were turned in 2003, when a collection agency came after Katz for a debt that had been written off when he declared bankruptcy a few years earlier. The collector wouldn’t relent, and Katz’s credit score tanked. Outraged, he turned to the internet, where he learned how to go after debt collectors for violating consumer protection laws. Eventually, the collector paid him $1,000 in damages. Katz framed the check with the caption “The Steven Katz school of bill collector education is now open for business.”

His tactics may be extreme, but Katz is not alone in his quest to evade the banking system. More Americans than ever are unable—or unwilling—to make good on their debts. Since 2008, banks have “charged off” a record $90 billion in credit card debt—taking it off their books as unlikely to ever be repaid. In the past two years, major banks charged off more than 10 percent of all consumer credit card accounts, on average—two times the pre-recession rate, and the highest in US history. The number of consumer lawsuits filed against collectors, like those Debtorboards encourages, has grown 122 percent since 2008. A backlash against the big banks is ballooning—from the California woman who made a popular YouTube video urging people to stop paying their credit card bills as part of a “debtors’ revolution” to the “Move Your Money” campaign, which encourages consumers to move their money to local banks or credit unions.

By the way

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

I got turned down again for the Media Matters’ Progressive Training Initiative, in which they give people media training to be progressive spokespeople. This is the fourth time; I’m beginning to feel like Susan Lucci.

Actually, I did get invited to the one they had in Vegas last year — but I couldn’t afford to fly there. Oh well!