New York governor Eliot Spitzer has all but expressly admitted he enjoyed the services of one or more prostitutes. At a hastily-summoned press conference, Spitzer ducked the hard question, saying only that he had violated his obligations to his family, “I failed to live up to the standards I set up to myself. Now I stand to regain the trust of my family,” he added, as his wife, Silda, stood by his side.
What I don’t get is why these guys find it necessary to drag their wives through it when they’re caught. B.C. premier Gordon Campbell did it, so did Bill Clinton. It’s as though they’re saying, “Look, she’s still here beside me, so it’s not all that bad and you – get over it.”
At least Kobe Bryant’s wife got a huge diamond ring out of it when it was her turn to stand by her man.
New York’s former crusading prosecutor turned governor is reportedly linked to a prostitution ring.
The New York Times reports that Eliot Spitzer has informed his senior aides of this and has scheduled a press conference this afternoon to reveal all.
“Mr. Spitzer gained national attention when he served as attorney general with his relentless pursuit of Wall Street wrongdoing. As attorney general, he also had prosecuted at least two prostitution rings as head of the state’s organized crime task force.
In one such case in 2004, Mr. Spitzer spoke with revulsion and anger after announcing the arrest of 16 people for operating a high-end prostitution ring out of Staten Island.”
We Canadians sometimes like to believe American taxpayers have it great thanks to vastly lower tax bites. Well, not so much as you might imagine.
America’s taxpaying public are a prey species at the moment, stuck smack in the crosshairs of a government that has trimmed their ranks, an economic elite that has been set free, and a predatory economic nightmare that may soon be added to their “to do” list.
The George w. Bush regime has been a faithful friend to America’s rich. It began with exempting the “investment class” from much of their traditional tax liability, shifting that burden instead to the remainder, the wage-earners. That was followed up with tax cuts for the wealthiest of those wage-earners, who also happened to be the nobility of the investment class. The burden they slipped also shifted to the middle- and working-class stiffs who were, as the nutjobs say “left behind.”
Now with America teetering on the brink of a massive recession those tax cuts for the rich have shown themselves to be anything but “manna from heaven” bringing wealth and prosperity to all but John McCain and the Republicans remain insistent on making them permanent.
But wait, there’s more. In the name of defunding government, Bush has been running massive deficits propped up by borrowed, foreign money. The money goes out the door just as fast as it comes in, the IOU’s get deposited in a special room reserved for the kids and grandkids of the working- and middle-classes. That’s business as usual.
But wait, there’s more. Every decade or so, a group of prominent American rentiers go on a fiscal raid on the scale of a Genghis Kahn. They rape and pillage the countryside and then disappear as quickly as they arrived leaving nothing but disaster to show where they had been. That’s when the government has to step in with emergency relief, typically borne on the backs of taxpayers, to settle things down, punch the reset button, and await the arrival of the next wave of Huns.
Think “savings and loan scandal” or the “dot.com bubble” or today’s “subprime mortgage scandal.” Enormous wealth is supposedly created, entered on the books, backed by millions of little people and then, in an instant, wiped out. Think Charles Keating, Bernie Ebbers, “Kenny Boy” Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and then put their faces on all those ancient, terra cotta warriors unearthed in China.
The Savings & Loan scandal of the late 80s, early 90s was, for it’s day, “the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time.” $160-billion of depositors’ and investors’ wealth was wiped out of which $124 was made good in bail outs by the government, i.e. the America taxpayer. A few, like Charles Keating, went to jail but many more just walked away with a lot of loot. Enron/Worldcom are more recent but they ended up much the same although not with similar bailouts. By then it was good enough that employees and small-time investors just had their financial integrity shattered. Now we’re into the subprime mortgage and associated fiascos and hold on to your hat, if, as an American taxpayer, you’re lucky enough to still have one.
Paul Krugman, writing in today’s New York Times, warns that America’s mortgage meltdown could massively dwarf the Saving & Loan or Enron/Worldcom collapses. Think of a cross-section of an old grenade. It has a fuse that is stuck right in the middle, surrounded by a sphere of high-explosive, all of it held in place with a metal casing. When the pin is pulled, the fuse explodes, detonating the surrounding explosive that causes the metal casing to break into lethal shards that fly out in all directions in search of victims.
In today’s America, warns Krugman, the subprime market of $200-billion is the fuse planted in the midst of an $11-trillion, potentially volatile, mortgage market main charge.
“One consequence of the crisis is that while the Fed has been cutting the interest rate it controls – the so-called Fed funds rate – the rates that matter most directly to the economy, including rates on mortgages and corporate bonds, have been rising. And that’s sure to worsen the economic downturn.
What’s going on? Mr. Geithner described a vicious circle in which banks and other market players who took on too much risk are all trying to get out of unsafe investments at the same time, causing “significant collateral damage to market functioning.”
A report released last Friday by JPMorgan Chase was even blunter. It described what’s happening as a “systemic margin call,” in which the whole financial system is facing demands to come up with cash it doesn’t have. (A financial joke making the rounds, via the blog Calculated Risk: “Who is this guy Margin that keeps calling me?”)
The Fed’s latest plan to break this vicious circle is – as the financial Web site interfluidity.com cruelly but accurately describes it – to turn itself into Wall Street’s pawnbroker. Banks that might have raised cash by selling assets will be encouraged, instead, to borrow money from the Fed, using the assets as collateral. In a worst-case scenario, the Federal Reserve would find itself owning around $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities.
Some observers worry that the Fed is taking over the banks’ financial risk. But what worries me more is that the move seems trivial compared with the size of the problem: $200 billion may sound like a lot of money, but when you compare it with the size of the markets that are melting down – there are $11 trillion in U.S. mortgages outstanding – it’s a drop in the bucket.”
Will American taxpayers, at the end of the day, find themselves saddled with this one too? Are they going to be used to bail out America’s banks and financial institutions? By the way, just what happened to their Social Security contributions over the past three decades? Oh yeah, their government, that’s now conveniently broke, wrote them IOUs for that. What a relief!
Top European Union officials are warning of a massive migration out of the developing world caused by global warming.
Within a decade they forecast that the advantaged countries will have to cope with millions of what they term “environmental migrants.” From The Guardian:
They point out that some countries already badly hit by global warming are demanding that the new phenomenon be recognised internationally as a valid reason for migration.
The immigration alert is but one of seven “threats” that the two officials focus on in pointing to the security implications and the dangers to European interests thrown up by climate change.
The main message is that the immediate and devastating effects of global warming will be felt far away from Europe, with the poor suffering disproportionately in south Asia, the Middle East, central Asia, Africa and Latin America, but that Europe will ultimately bear the consequences.
This could be in the form of mass migration, destabilisation of parts of the world vital to European security, radicalisation of politics and populations, north-south conflict because of the perceived injustice of the causes and effects of global warming, famines caused by arable land loss, wars over water, energy, and other natural resources.
“Reduction of arable land, widespread shortage of water, diminishing food and fish stocks, increased flooding and prolonged droughts are already happening in many parts of the world.” Fresh water availability could fall by up to 30% in some regions, causing farming losses, surging food prices and shortages, and civil unrest. “Climate change will fuel existing conflicts over depleting resources.”
This isn’t the stuff of some Mad Max movie. It’s real, it’s deadly serious and it’s already happening. Anyone who believes Canadians will remain immune to this is an idiot. We need to begin discussing what this problem means – for the world and for us – and how to address it. Sadly with Harpo at the helm and Baird on the bailing bucket, we’re not in for a great ride.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/10/climatechange.eu
Yeah, I admit I’ve been a bit hard on Hillary but she deserves every bit she gets. I’ve written about her cardinal sin of undermining Obama to the benefit of McCain but it’s obvious, from your vitriolic rebukes, that went over your heads. Okay, here it is again, this time from Gary Hart writing for the
Huffington Post:“It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party’s nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned.
By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party’s nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.
Senator Obama is right to say the issue is judgment not years in Washington. If Mrs. Clinton loses the nomination, her failure will be traced to the date she voted to empower George W. Bush to invade Iraq. That is not the kind of judgment, or wisdom, required by the leader answering the phone in the night. For her now to claim that Senator Obama is not qualified to answer the crisis phone is the height of irony if not chutzpah, and calls into question whether her primary loyalty is to the Democratic party and the nation or to her own ambition.”
There, is that plain enough for you? Do you get it now? She’s a political monster, not just an animal. What matters above all to Hillary Clinton isn’t the Democratic Party and it isn’t America, it’s Hillary Clinton. If she comes to power, hers is an attitude that her country, and others, will pay for again and again.
Oh, before I go, here’s Maureen Dowd’s latest take on Clinton/Obama from the New York Times:
“Hillary successfully recast herself in Ohio as a beer-drinking former waitress. Only after last week’s reversals did the Obama camp raise a louder ruckus about her tax returns. Obviously, Ms. Night Shift does not want to reveal the details of the fortune that Bill Clinton has made, sometimes through dubious associations.
It has taken Obama a year to start seriously rebutting Hillary’s risible claim that she has far more national security experience than he does. Having a first lady tea in Belfast is not equivalent to bringing peace to Northern Ireland.
Obama sounded whiny after his losses, chastising reporters on his plane for asking him hard questions about Goolsbee and Antonin Rezko. Privately, his people conceded that he hadn’t been as fierce about winning as Hillary, once more playing rope-a-dope.
He’s now learned what Hillary learned in Iowa: You can’t cruise to victory on a coronation strategy.
If he thinks Hillary has cut him down to size lately, he’d better imagine what his life would be like as the Clintons’ vice president. “
There are a few things that the Sunni and Shiite militias in Iraq want from the United States. There’s really only one thing they both want, and that’s the withdrawal of American forces from their country. A window of opportunity is about to open for them.
Both sides are well armed. The Shia militias have stockpiled the endless thousands of weapons “liberated” from American arsenals, including Abu Ghraib. The Sunni have been equipped by the Americans voluntarily so that they could fight the al-Qaeda terrorist movement.
Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi army is well rested, having had the past six months to recruit, train, organize and deploy under the guise of a ceasefire that has just been extended by the boss. al Sadr’s men are also believed to have widely infiltrated the Iraqi security and police forces. The Sunnis haven’t had the luxury of a six month leave but they have been getting a lot of “on the job” training in tactics and the use of their new American toys.
Time flies.
Both sides have learned that, for America, even the most powerful foreign policy is vulnerable at home, at the ballot box. If the American people dislike something enough, those who court their favour will, even if reluctantly, agree to do their bidding. That’s raw, ballot box democracy.
So for Iraq’s armed and ready militias, the trick is to shape American public opinion in the runup to November’s elections. After the next president is decided, their leverage plummets. They need to strike while their influence is strongest. Just when will that be?
In order to decide what to do, the Iraqis need to have a good idea who’s likely to win the White House in November. They need to know who will be the Democratic candidate and how likely that person is to prevail over Republican John McCain. The better McCain’s chances the more aggressively they’ll have to act.
Polls have shown that the American people believe the surge has worked. As violence has fallen, particularly in Baghdad, American approval ratings for this war rose steadily. It’s still, on balance, an unpopular war but McCain holds out the promise that, with a new commander in chief, him, this can be turned around, victory can be won and the country spared the ignominy of another Vietnam.
McCain is counting on the improvement in those approval numbers. Without them the Republicans would have been less willing to nominate a war hawk (although they weren’t given many options among their candidates). We’ve already seen, however, that popular support for the Iraq debacle is soft. As violence spikes it evaporates, ebbing until it reaches the hard-right floor.
But what of the Dems? The militias will also be looking closely at them. If somebody comes out of the Clinton-Obama knife fight not too badly wounded and there’s reason to believe the Democratic nominee will trounce McCain, then a much different set of considerations arises.
The less violence there is in Iraq, the easier it could be for a Democratic president to declare victory and pull out America’s troops. It’s a gamble but I think the militias just might choose to lay low if the Dems offer a realistic prospect of a timely American withdrawal.
If, however, McCain seems to be winning or it really is too close to call, the pre-election runup will be the militias’ last best chance to influence events. Then I think they’ll take to the streets and it’ll be open season on American troops whenever and wherever they can be targeted.
For the militias, it’ll be their Tet 68 moment – a mass armed uprising intended to show the vulnerabilities of American forces, inflict heavy casualties and strike a fatal blow to American popular support for the war and any war hawk candidate.
The militias don’t have to win, that’s not how this works. The 1968 Tet Offensive was a mass uprising by the Viet Cong insurgency that was a spectacular failure but a victory nonetheless. It failed militarily. The Viet Cong were all but wiped out. However it was an enormous political victory and that’s what these insurgency/resistance movements are all about.
Tet shattered American support for the Vietnam war. Americans suddenly believed their war was lost. It was a powerful tide change in public opinion. When support collapsed at home the end for the American effort was inevitable.
Nixon came to office on a pledge to get America out on a “peace with honor” plan. Does that sound familiar? It’s what politicians fall back on when there’s no other way to get out of a quagmire. It means “withdrawal under the illusion of not having really lost.” Remember that because you’ll likely see more of it over the next few years.
The Iraqi militias too can rise up to launch their own Tet. They don’t have to win on the streets of Baghdad. They just need to win on Main Street, America. It’s an opportunity they can’t count on ever getting again. In 2004, the American people were still behind Bush’s war on terror and were still solidly behind the Iraq war. These past four years have seen a collapse in American support for the Iraq conflict and conditions right now are about as ideal as they can get.
When could this uprising occur? My guess is that the US elections will determine the timing. The militias need to send shockwaves through American voters and leave some time to let that settle into anti-war opinion.
I could see this beginning in July/August and running for, say, two weeks of intense fighting (Hue comes to mind) followed by another six weeks of steady but scattered attacks. I think they would need to have their impact crest around late September to erase all confidence in the surge and shake loose all soft support for the war.
The Bush factor.
George w. really isn’t helping McCain on this. He’s determined to push through his long-term basing deal with the Maliki government. That agreement can only inflame resistance sentiment inside Iraq, among both Sunni and Shia. Remember, a key reason the Americans invaded Iraq was to find a new location for the US bases in Saudi Arabia that were causing the Saudi rulers so much trouble. If those bases were unviable in a country under the iron hand rule of the Saudis, how palatable will they be in a country beset by enormous, sectarian conflict, where America is seen as an occupier, with a feeble government and a neighbour like Iran?
So, yep, I think that we may see a hot summer of intense conflict in Iraq, battles that could well determine who takes the White House in November.
I sure don’t want to see this happen but, when all these conditions and circumstances come together at this one, brief period, I can’t see how it won’t.
And if you want more, just Google Hillary and “flip flop” to see her (r)evolving opinions on everything from Iraq to immigration to change and whatever else pops up that she thinks she needs to bail out on or claim as her own. I guess that’s her “experience” coming through.
By the way, anybody know where to find Hillary’s tax returns or her papers from the Clinton library? Somebody seems to have buried those damned things. Wonder why that would be?
Jobs are in the news today, in Canada and in the United States.
The good news is here at home where we added 43,000 more jobs last month, a fivefold increase over the 8,000 forecast. This comes atop 46,400 added in January.
The bad news is in the United States. The Americans lost 63,000 jobs in February, following a loss of 22,000 jobs in January. The New York Times calls it the, “…fastest falloff in the labor market in five years.”
“I haven’t seen a job report this recessionary since the last recession,” said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “This is a picture of a labor market becoming clearly infected by the contagion from the rest of the economy.”
So, what’s going on in Canada? Are we defying gravity? From the Financial Post:
“Mind boggling,” said Derek Burleton, senior economist at Toronto-dominion Bank. “I’m obviously a little shocked right now.”
“The last two-months blowout in employment certainly goes against this notion that Canada’s economy is really beginning to slow, especially after the Bank of Canada statement earlier this week.”
The manufacturing sector, hit hard by the strong Canadian dollar, shed 23,700 workers in February but that was partially offset by job growth in the construction sector. The goods-producing sector lost 12,500 jobs while the services sector gained 55,800.”
Nobody seems to be able to account for the disparity between the Canadian and US numbers. With buoyant world grain markets and energy markets, are we better poised to withstand an American recession and, if so, for how long?
Canada’s good news would be a lot more welcome if it wasn’t for the weakening situation to the south. Now that NAFTA and Rust Belt unemployment have become a prominent issue in the presidential campaign I don’t think our job performance is going to be welcome to those who blame NAFTA for their misfortune.
The Mound of Sound 