The Nattering Nabob

http://twitter.com/ignatzz

2010-01-13T20:41:00.001-05:00

Should anybody still check this blog, I am now tweeting my little head off at http://twitter.com/ignatzz

Why are we so SURPRISED?

2009-03-20T22:29:00.002-04:00

All this outrage over AIGs bonuses. People are FURIOUS at the behaviour, the greed, the theft, and the brazenness of these corporations.

Where was it before?

June 29, 2008

Firms Owe Billions In Unpaid Payroll Taxes
By REUTERS

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 1.6 million U.S. businesses owe the Internal Revenue Service more than $58 billion in unpaid taxes for Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance, a government watchdog agency said on Tuesday.

Did anybody seem to mind?

January 5, 2007:

Contractor Fraud Unchecked In Iraq
Jan. 5, 2007
by Christine Lagorio

(CBS) The U.S. has currently spent at least $437 billion on the Iraq war, according to the Congressional Research Service. An estimated $100 billion will be spent in 2007. Much of that money is going to 60,000 civilian contractors involved in reconstruction and providing services to the troops.

But recently, the Pentagon admitted it has a hard time accounting for how billions of your tax dollars are being spent and the billions that may be lost to contractor waste, fraud and abuse.

Did anybody seem to mind?

If you want to know why AIG seems completely surprised that people object to their ripping off millions from the taxpayers - it's because corporations have been doing it for YEARS. Openly. And it was considered completely OK. In fact, it was lauded and it was defended as the best way of doing business.

2009-02-23T09:51:00.000-05:00

My New Deal

2009-02-15T20:30:00.001-05:00

Some Republicans are complaining that they don't support the stimulus package, but will have to pay for it anyway.

So here's the deal:

The $787 billion stimulus works about to about $2,623 per American citizen. Yes, that's a lot of money and if you don't support the bill, I agree, you should get that back. Agreed?

Okay. I don't support the $5.7 trillion in new debt racked up by the Republicans for a war and tax cuts for the rich. That works out to $19,000 per citizen. So, the Republicans can write me a check for $16,377 and we'll call it even.

2009-02-15T14:47:00.001-05:00

2009-02-10T21:21:00.001-05:00

Ok.

This is from the Onion News Network, and must be posted.

This is NOT from the Onion

2009-01-21T19:44:00.000-05:00

Former French President Chirac hospitalised after mauling by his clinically depressed poodle

And Stand-Up Comics everywhere are looking up to the heavens and saying "Thank you."

Well, that's hitting the ground running

2009-01-21T18:53:00.002-05:00

(CBS/AP) - The Obama administration announced salary freezes for White House employees making over $100,000 a year, placed new limits on lobbyists' White House access and had aides circulate a draft executive order that would close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay within a year.

The new lobbying rules will not only ban aides from trying to influence the administration when they leave his staff. Those already hired will be banned from working on matters they have previously lobbied on, or to approach agencies that they once targeted.

The rules also ban lobbyists from giving gifts of any size to any member of his administration. It wasn't immediately clear whether the ban would include the traditional "previous relationships" clause, allowing gifts from friends or associates with which an employee comes in with strong ties.

This I'll believe when I see it. Bribery and graft (excuse me - "contributions") have become de facto legal on Capitol Hill. He should also use his influence to push for its end in Congress.

Quoth the Bush: "I have political capital, and I intend to spend it." It would be nice to spend it on something that's actually GOOD.

Hillary is Secretary of State

2009-01-21T18:34:00.001-05:00

Vote was 94-2.

How now, down Dow?

2009-01-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

The Dow.

Bush takes office
$10578.20

Bush leaves office:
$7949.09

George W. Bush is the first President since Herbert Hoover to leave office with the market lower than when he took office.

And it's a LOT lower than when he took office.

2009-01-20T10:52:00.001-05:00

"Well, Doctor, what have we got — a Republic or a Monarchy?"

"A Republic, if you can keep it." - Benjamin Franklin

I guess it's still there

2009-01-20T10:50:00.000-05:00

2009-01-20T10:48:00.001-05:00

From the Onion:

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job

November 5, 2008

WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America. In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged with such tasks as completely overhauling the nation's broken-down economy, repairing the crumbling infrastructure, and generally having to please more than 300 million Americans and cater to their every whim on a daily basis. As part of his duties, the black man will have to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind. The job comes with such intense scrutiny and so certain a guarantee of failure that only one other person even bothered applying for it. Said scholar and activist Mark L. Denton, "It just goes to show you that, in this country, a black man still can't catch a break."

Keith Olbermann - 8 years in 8 minutes

2009-01-18T10:34:00.001-05:00

Post mortem of the last eight years

2009-01-16T13:43:00.003-05:00

What really bothers me about Republicans isn't what they stand for. It's that they don't stand for ANYTHING. They have absolutely no principles and no core beliefs.

See, they sometimes actually say stuff I agree with. But then, when push comes to shove, they don't mean a word of it.

For years, they've been talking about the danger of Big Government, and how we shouldn't trust the Government. I agree totally. We shouldn't trust the Government.

But once they got into power, they threw that right out the window, didn't they?

Once Bush took office, the same people who said we shouldn't trust the Government sat supinely while the Government created "Free Speech Zones" and said that we only had First Amendment rights if we were too far away for the Government to hear what we were saying.

When the Government said that they didn't have to respond to subpoenaes; that they didn't have to answer questions; that they should be allowed to operate in total secrecy and that what they did was none of the American Peoples' business - the people who once said we shouldn't trust the Government went along like docile sheep, and verbally attacked any American who had the nerve to say that we shouldn't trust the Government.

When Bush tried to invest absolutely authority in himself with absurd legal mumbo-jumbo called the "Doctrine of the Unitary Executive," the same people who said that we shouldn't trust the Government said that we must place TOTAL trust in the Government, or we were traitors.

The people who said we shouldn't trust the Government tried to stack the Government top-to-toe with partisan hacks who would do nothing but obey orders like automatons, and who would ask no questions and never differ.

The people who said we shouldn't trust the Government tried to prevent the citizens of the United States from having any say in the Government.

In the next four years, any time Republicans complain about the Government having too much authority, they should be laughed at and ridiculed as the hypocrites that they are.

When the rubber hit the road; when it counted; when it actually might have cost them something, the Republican Party turned out to not believe ANY of the stuff they claimed to believe.

They are the biggest lovers of Big Government and the greatest promoters of Absolute Government Authority in this nation. And they should not be allowed to pretend otherwise.

How the hell do they justify their actions of the last eight years? How can they justify trying to hand over all authority to a SINGLE human being? How can they justify trying to strip the American People of having any say over their own nation? How can they justify trying to turn America into an Authoritarian Regime - a nation in which the Bureaucracy has absolute power and the people have none?

Are they just going to pretend that it didn't happen?

How must it feel to have gutted all your principles for the sake of a failed, unfinished, childish human being like George W. Bush?

I am still alive, you know

2009-01-16T08:45:00.001-05:00

2008-12-31T17:04:00.000-05:00

Pardon? What pardon?

2008-12-26T09:11:00.002-05:00

Bush pardoned a guy named Robert Toussie, and then took it back (can you IMAGINE how much that sucks if you're Robert Toussie?) See, Toussie's father had contributed to the Republican party, and Bush thought there might be the appearance of impropriety.

So, in Bush world, pardon a guy who is related to someone who contributed to your party has the appearance of impropriety - but pardoning your own Vice-President's chief of staff doesn't?

Oh, yeah - that makes LOADS of sense.

2008-12-25T07:36:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas

2008-12-24T21:41:00.000-05:00

Warm out there.

2008-12-24T18:21:00.001-05:00

2008-12-24T18:16:00.001-05:00

2008-12-23T08:54:00.002-05:00

"History will note that the point of the Constitution is that the ends don't always justify the means -- and that nowhere in the document can be found the phrase 'so what?'" - Eugene Robinson

We have our allies back

2008-12-23T08:46:00.003-05:00

I will never, until the day I die, understand why the Bushies thought it was a good idea for America to antagonize her allies. But they pursued antagonism as though it was part of a grand master strategy. "Look how clever we are - we've pissed Europe off! Isn't that GREAT?" And that's the sort of thing where the people doing it don't seem to just have wrong opinions: they seem flat insane.

But this is an example of WHY it's actually a good thing to have some friends in the world.

Guantanamo prisoners may head to Europe
Several countries consider taking detainees after Bush leaves White House

European nations have begun intensive discussions both within and among their governments on whether to resettle detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as a significant overture to the incoming Obama administration, according to senior European officials and U.S. diplomats.

The willingness to consider accepting prisoners who cannot be returned to their home countries, because of fears they may be tortured there, represents a major change in attitude on the part of European governments. Repeated requests from the Bush administration that European allies accept some Guantanamo Bay detainees received only refusals.

The Bush administration "produced the problem," Karsten Voigt, coordinator of German-American cooperation at the German Foreign Ministry, said in a telephone interview. "With Obama, the difference is that he tries to solve it."

It's time to bury laissez faire

2008-12-22T23:16:00.002-05:00

Thus spake Arianna:

The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.

The only place you can find an American Marxist these days is teaching a college linguistic theory class. But you can find all manner of free market fundamentalists still on the Senate floor or in Governor's mansions or showing up on TV trying to peddle the deregulation snake oil.

If a politician announced he was running on a platform of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" he would be laughed off the stage. That is also the correct response to anyone who continues to make the case that markets do best when left alone.

It's time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is.

In a comprehensive piece on what led to the mortgage crisis and the subsequent financial meltdown, the New York Times shows how the Bush administration's devotion to unregulated markets was a primary cause of our economy to ruin. But the otherwise fascinating piece puts too much focus on the "mistakes" the Bush team made by not paying attention to the warning signs popping up all around them.

"There is no question we did not recognize the severity of the problems," claimed Al Hubbard, Bush's former chief economic adviser. "Had we, we would have attacked them."

But the mistake wasn't in not recognizing the "severity of the problems" -- the mistake was the ideology that led to the problems. Communism didn't fail because Soviet leaders didn't execute it well enough. Same with free market fundamentalism. In fact, Bush and his team did a bang-up job executing a defective theory. The problem wasn't just the bathwater; the baby itself is rotten to the core.