"In the struggle of the Iranian People to be able to Peacefully disagree with their government ... today I and all Americans pay tribute to a brave young woman who was trying to exercise her fundamental human rights and was killed on the streets of Teheran." John McCain June 22,2009
I believe, I hope, I pray
that for the Iranian People
there too
are MANY brave guardsmen and officers
filled with God's love of justice
who will stand for what is Right
stand unwilling to shoot nor beat nor harm
their own People of Iran
walking in Peaceful disagreement
Hugh Sykes, BBC NEWS, June 22,2009 : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8111695.stm : "They want to be able to sing and dance. They wonder why the Iranian leadership continue to ban such expressions of human joy. ... "The Iranian leadership is falling into the same trap that their arch-enemy the Shah of Iran fell into in the 1970s. They are not listening to the people."
President Barrack Obama, June 23,2009, 12:30 noon:
"The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost."
"I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not at all interfering in Iran's affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. We deplore violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place .... This is not about the United States and the West; this is about the people of Iran, and the future that they - and only they - will choose." ..... "the most important thing for the Iranian government to consider is legitimacy in the eyes of its own people..."
"I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it."
HUFFINGTON POST, June 23,2009 : click link below to read more http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/13/iran-demonstrations-viole_n_215189.html
10:34 AM ET -- Clerical association releases statement. The NIAC has the full statement by the Organization of Combatant Clergy released today.
"Millions of informed and decent people who believe that their votes have been tampered with, and that their intellect has been insulted, and for the defence of their rights and dignity have in a spontaneous manner come into the streets to express their pain and sense of oppression. You (the regime) insult them, and have stolen thousands of them from the streets and from their homes and taken them to unknown places. You have attacked the students and to these people who call out God is Great or Ya Hossein - you attack them like Moghuls. "
"This damage is the responsibility of those who turned our city into a barracks. They should be identified, arrested and charged."
9:39 AM ET -- The power of Iran's women. In the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum
Via reader Chas, the National Iranian American Council prints a note from Tehran :
"I cannot sleep and not write this. "
"Today in Haft-e Tir, there were so many members of basij that they outnumbered the demonstrators 3 or 4 to 1. They were less focused on women. This must be related to the murder of poor Neda. ... whenever they got hold of a man, women would surround them and shout don't beat him, don't beat and they would turn and say we didn't beat him. It was astonishing....... They explained; they talked."
@
\/ hopefully there will be more dialogue - rather than violence
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
New Tabaco Legislation signed Today June 22 by President Obama
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1904250,00.html by Kate Pickert / TIME - The U.S. Senate on Thursday struck the most devastating legislative blow in history to Big Tobacco ... The new bill, ... which passed the House in April, includes tough new restrictions on advertising like allowing only black-and-white text ads in magazines with substantial youth readerships, mandates that manufacturers prove or stop using claims like "light" and "low tar," bans flavored cigarettes (except menthol) and makes provisions for large, graphic warning labels.
The company's main rival ... is still in dismay over Philip Morris' reversal from regulation opponent to champion. ... the new restrictions cut off most remaining avenues available for advertising and ban marketing stunts like free-sample cigarette giveaways, the companies' ability to "communicate" (i.e., gain market share) with potential and existing smokers about their products will be blocked. In addition, the administrative costs of complying with FDA regulations favor large manufacturers over smaller ones.
"Philip Morris wants the public-health community to join them in finding the holy grail: the safe cigarette," says Gregory Connolly, a tobacco expert and professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.
- Smart Regulation -
- limiting the growth of a damaging product -
- and they did it without impacting current jobs -
http://www.tobaccofreedom.org/issues/specials/mccain.html - Friday, February 4, 2000 The Washington Post, Page A04By John Mintz / Washington Post Staff Writer - At a news conference in Seabrook, S.C., McCain said he welcomed assaults by the tobacco industry and said they underscored his call for changes in the campaign finance system. "I'm honored by the attacks by the people who addicted our children and lied to Congress," he said.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
To My Fellow Cuban Americans:
We who have loved and lost an entire nation by our own hands... The widespread corruption of Batista's government opened the door to the things the nation suffered under the So Called Revolutionary government. We must uphold with special strength a perserverance the ideals of INTEGRITY of this nation that gave us welcome and provided us with every opportunity to prosper within its borders and Laws.
Search your hearts and minds for the God given courage, integrity and goodness that is Every People's inheritance.
Fellow Immigrants:
We have been the beneficiaries of the whole hearted integrity and openness of a nation who offered us their representative liberties and gave us refuge in our darkest hours. We share a debt of gratitude to this nation, that has come due. You have friends across this nation in every industry. Call them. Remind them of the good fortune we are all inheritors in. This nation must mean to the generations of the distant future the same that it has meant to us, a refuge and a haven of Liberty, Hope, Law, and Opportunity in a stormy world of uncertainty. We must today uphold with particular vigor the principles of integrity and diligence in private and public affairs that the forefathers espoused and have guided this nation for over 200 years.
Tomás Estrada-Palma: LocaAnnapolis, MD, United States’‘ Let entrepreneurs into Cuba, keep the tax low and watch the economic explosion happen. Whenever there are more jobs than workers the wages and benefits are driven upward. That's because entrepreneurs compete for a limited supply of workers. Those who lose the competition will not be as successful because they can't grow without more laborers. Finally, the first modern society on the planet will be populated by people who are neither slaves to the pharaohs of industry nor government. Cuban workers will have the best job security in the world!' http://adamsmithslostlegacy.com/ASLLBlog.htm
We who have loved and lost an entire nation by our own hands... The widespread corruption of Batista's government opened the door to the things the nation suffered under the So Called Revolutionary government. We must uphold with special strength a perserverance the ideals of INTEGRITY of this nation that gave us welcome and provided us with every opportunity to prosper within its borders and Laws.
Search your hearts and minds for the God given courage, integrity and goodness that is Every People's inheritance.
Fellow Immigrants:
We have been the beneficiaries of the whole hearted integrity and openness of a nation who offered us their representative liberties and gave us refuge in our darkest hours. We share a debt of gratitude to this nation, that has come due. You have friends across this nation in every industry. Call them. Remind them of the good fortune we are all inheritors in. This nation must mean to the generations of the distant future the same that it has meant to us, a refuge and a haven of Liberty, Hope, Law, and Opportunity in a stormy world of uncertainty. We must today uphold with particular vigor the principles of integrity and diligence in private and public affairs that the forefathers espoused and have guided this nation for over 200 years.
Tomás Estrada-Palma: LocaAnnapolis, MD, United States’‘ Let entrepreneurs into Cuba, keep the tax low and watch the economic explosion happen. Whenever there are more jobs than workers the wages and benefits are driven upward. That's because entrepreneurs compete for a limited supply of workers. Those who lose the competition will not be as successful because they can't grow without more laborers. Finally, the first modern society on the planet will be populated by people who are neither slaves to the pharaohs of industry nor government. Cuban workers will have the best job security in the world!' http://adamsmithslostlegacy.com/ASLLBlog.htm
- Tears for beautiful dreams lost -
- Thank God for second chances -
http://frontpagemagazine.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4625 . Andy Garcia and screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante knew full well that "the working poor" had NO role in the stage of the Cuban Revolution ... The Anti-Batista rebellion was led and staffed overwhelmingly by Cuba's middle -- and especially, upper -- class. In August of 1957 Castro's rebel movement called for a "National Strike" against the Batista dictatorship -- and threatened to shoot workers who reported to work. The "National Strike" was completely ignored. Another was called for April 9, 1958. And again Cuban workers ignored their "liberators," reporting to work en masse.
Abraham Lincoln:
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
- Thank God for second chances -
http://frontpagemagazine.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=4625 . Andy Garcia and screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante knew full well that "the working poor" had NO role in the stage of the Cuban Revolution ... The Anti-Batista rebellion was led and staffed overwhelmingly by Cuba's middle -- and especially, upper -- class. In August of 1957 Castro's rebel movement called for a "National Strike" against the Batista dictatorship -- and threatened to shoot workers who reported to work. The "National Strike" was completely ignored. Another was called for April 9, 1958. And again Cuban workers ignored their "liberators," reporting to work en masse.
Abraham Lincoln:
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
'La Negra tiene tumbao. Ella no camina de lao' Celia Cruz
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
What is the question ? My son asked me:
"Mom...., if we live, all the animals on the planet may die,
but if we die.... they'll live.
Why should we live? "
I'm afraid we are giving all the wrong answers
Over and over, we seem to be silently screaming, "SELF-DISTRUCT"Everywhere I see written and spoken ......... so called "SOLUTIONS" For the Environment, for the Financial Systems, Solutions whose proponents are really only pushing for their personal benefit while paying for these minimal benefits with damage to the system and the society as a whole, walking us all closer to Societal Suicide.The Market participants yell "FREE MARKETS!" as if it were a magic word, just say it and it'll happen. Lets not forget they also yelled that housing pricing would keep going up forever; They even grew to belive it themselves. But as we've seen, simply saying and believing doesn't make things true, only Acting like a free market creates a true free-market, whose prerequisite is freedom from government protectionism and manipulation, including freedom to fail, freedom for workers to gain for themselves the best possible contracts, and freedom for the public to invest its monies in products that are not Mis-represented, but rather meet their true needs.
What is the Role of Government? To PROTECT the citizenry from those who would Steal their monies, properties, and liberties. In Economic terms, it can be summed up in one phrase: Consumer protection.
(1) Transparecny: Enforce Transparent Financial Statements and Financial Instrument which would prevent investors from being scammed by deliberately confusing and mis-leading numbers and terms.
(2) Establish and Enforce Investor voting rights to set executive pay in the corporations they own. Corporate Executives are NOT the owners of the corporations.
(3) Funds must actively manage the monies handed over by pensioners and individuals, and not be allowed to hand them over to another fund, like Mardoff's, to do the work they are being paid for. In this way, funds that fail to produce results will be sidelined and fail and successfull fund managers will be rewarded and prosper.
(4) Re-couple Loan Origination with Loan-ownership, at least upto 50%But what have we been doing instead for the past 8 years ? Forget about an even playing field, small government, or a balanced budget. Heck, reduce taxes and increase spending.... it sounds good... it'll all work out... Ignore that this is just another name for borrow and spend consumerism... pretend it's working toward bi-partisan change, rather than the reality of working toward bi-partisan more of the same... say it enough and everybody will believe it... and once you've said it enough, even you'll believe it.
The market's invisible hand will do its job, the invisible hand will now or eventally wipe them out and the rest of us with them: Oil Industry, Financiers, and the rest for intense shortsightedness and greed and us for blindness, indiference, and lack of will. What is the Market's Invisible hand? Unproductive companies, products, and methods fail and productive things succeed, productive companies and ideas gain resources, the un-productive loose resources, and successful methods, products, and ideas get copied and therefore spread through the society. Theft is unproductive and so fails, even if it appears to succeed in the short run. Lies fail, such as false or misleading financial statements and convoluted instruments. If we continue to fill our financial system with unproductive products, the financial system will fail.. But we should all
Abraham Lincoln "You can't fool all of the people all the time...
THE GOLD PIECES AND THE FIRE ON THE ROAD:
Its weird... like watching some crazy person heading straight for a fire that's clearly in their path, while the crazy person is only seeing the gold littering the road. Hey, it's ok to pick up the gold pieces, but just not by throwing kindling on the fire. First we have to put out the fire, build some fire stations, and then continue along the road. But we have to safeguard the community so we can spend the gold somewhere we love.
This crisis is strangely like watching history play itself out in shortened time..... like waking from a dream of calm and prosperity to see that the society we have built has deep and spreading cracks of error and corruption, and watching it disintegrate right in front of us all, in slow deadly steps. I guess this is how some Romans felt in 400 a.d.... seeing it all unravell in steps of corruption, knowing exactly why, and watching those around them act as if it were impossible and invisible. Wondering, what words could stop the tide and turn back the current.... and finding more evidence daily that it may not be possible, because the current is carrying so much trash and momentum.
........read the book PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL on : the high cost of small thefts..........
In the News:
Chinese Government spyware slicing through corporate,government, and user firewalls .... we have it and everybody wants it..... the creativity of a Free People..
Unauthorized Russian and Chinese software found on our electric grids............................. maybe they make it sing...
CAPITALISM:In a democracy, Capitlism sublimates the will to power, transforming it into creative energy, Empowering a society to build an unimagined future while maximizing individual freedom.
Drive and ambition has been an engine of productivity and improved living conditions, as long as it was coupled with the freedom to fail., free from government privelledge for the few .. controlled individual corporate failures rather than mass destruction of the system!
Privatizing profits while socializing losses is the ultimate weapon of economic mass destruction... but only where it is accompanied by the general public's faith in the system. Once the public's faith in the system is wiped out to be replaced by cynicism and the recognition that the deck is stacked to favor those who would use bribes, then it looses its ability for mass destruction and becomes only a force of mass mediocrity, where the trickle down theory actually works to spread lack of integrity and mediocrity to an entire system of life and government, as more and more mental and creative resources are redirected toward bribery, theft, and playing the system, and away from creativity and advance... at best, the fall from greatness toward mediocrity and meanness. As always, some will continue to create and produce, but the rate of productivity's spread will be greatly slowed by the weight of inefficient companies and methods.
What an ingnomious end to the great experiment in self-determination and self-government started by men of vision and faith... ended by men of greed and small dreams...
And what was the agent of infection?"He's doing it too" or SuccessEmulation-'
Our competitors are using Securitized loans to rake in the bucks, we can't be left out of the bonanza'-'Everybody donates money to Congress and state and local representatives and gets laws that favor them and is awarded subsidies and no-bid contracts'
except all of these were short-sighted gains
It's like gravitiy:
An even playing feild, where bribery doesn't work and government doesn't subsidize businesses with industry tax rebates, bid-free contracts, and the rest, means failed ideas cause business failures and the best ideas, companies, and processes rise to the top and are copied and spread. Government's largest role should be in the area of consumer protection, protecting again fraud and unfair practices, protecting us from misleading financial statements, convoluted financial instruments, and the rest.I think that we recognize integrity, honesty, dilligence, preserverance, justice, and all the other virutes as virtues because they ARE the requirments for a natural system to work..
If one bee LIES, or could lie, to the rest about where the pollen is so that its family gets more of the polen, it may survive but the community dies...
If the lion, in greed, could eat every animal, he either blows up (eye roll) or kills off all his food source, and so dies and then he, the destructive element, disappears.
It's been shown that if the wolves in an area are all killed off, the deer overpopulate the area and eat allthe grasses and then start dying of famine. Sound familiar?
Over and over, nature uses destruction to elliminate everything that is too greedy, dangerous, slow, inflexible, or stupid, or all of the above........ Nature has this interesting knack of using the destructive elements themselve to self-terminate the system and open a blank space for new creation, a spot on the evolutionary chain, or an area for a new society to develop..etc...
Nature eliminates the distructive forces, and we are proving to be a destructive force. We will in effect destroy ourselves if we can't talk ourselves out of it..... if there aren't enough of us without excessive greed, and without over inflated self-opinions which place temporary individual monitary success before the success of the whole (individuals, societies, species) ...., if those of us with vision and empathy have not enough ambition and diligence to push for the right path with force, and I don't mean violence, then the human species is the failed experiment... But more likely, some other form of government will come to replace us, quickly or slowly... hopefully I won't be around to see it, as I love this experiment in self-government and self-determination... but if as a species we are still too imature to use it successfully, then democracy will die off for now, again, and for some genereations more the specie will suffer, to greater or lesser extent, through tyrany or chaos or mediocrity, till we again try for self-determination or till we have failed enough times that another species will have risen to take up the struggle toward individual self-awareness, then species self-awareness, and then inter-species self awarenes..
The more often and longer that Unproductive methods and businesses are protected, the Worse and Longer will be the eventual fall....
The only question is how long will it take, whether days or years or decades or generations, and how hard and painful will be the fall. The eventual re-surgence will come! Only the timing is in question. Well, unless we make the planet uninhabitable for humans in the meantime.... then it will still come, just not for us.And we'll be blindsided by it worse than we recently were by the so called Financial Collapse, like Rome in 400ad as it was overrun by barbarian invadors, an INCONCIEVABLE event to the Romans of the time - they, too, couldn't see how their internal corruption had weakened their system of government, weakened their very WILL to fight off invasion.
Remember that commandment about "Don't Lie"? Maybe we should try it for a little while, as an experiment, to shut up with the bull, speak only the truth, and print only the facts, so we could for a moment take a clear look around and see where we are really standing and be sure that only the forest is burning. Maybe we should have an 'only the truth' week, just to test it out. And, if the species is one biological whole, what better way to find out? At least a possibility of finding out. Did I mention I was a science fiction buff?
On a lighter note for the Anti-Feminists:
Like the Natural animals we are, we are bound to the Laws of Nature and mother nature only gave us some light slaps on the wrist with the recesion of the 80s and the Asian Credit Crisis and... now she gave us a nice hard slap with the ongoing Financial Collapse of 2008, but soon Mother Nature is going to really get angry.... what was the name of those 4 renowned horsemen? I think first there was Peace (I guess he's the calm before the storm) and then there was Famine, and then.... you know how it goes, it ends with the horseman with the big sword... the one that brings a swath of misery and destruction... like those warlords of Africa who, in the absence of Real lLaws that offer Real Protections, swoop down, cut off limbs, carry off children, and bring misery to everything in their path (the boogeyman). Ps. DIOS INEXPRESABLE - the rest is and expression of our own limited expression.
I've always found it interesting how all the people of Vision see clearly how life and man is bound by Laws, whether its the prophets of the Bible, or Mohamed or Confucsius or Buddha or Lincoln... all of them pushing for integrity... and warning of the miseries found outside the Law.
And the rest of us poor blind scrappers haven't figured out that the reason that being outside the Protections of Law is so horrible, is that we love the Law..... we hate living in chaos... we are disgusted by liars and cheats... and yet , we're them, the liars and cheats.
The Law or the Laws of Nature or the Laws of Science... everywhere we recognize that even the movement of inanimate objects are bound by Laws, every molecule and atom of our bodies follows those Laws... we follow those laws, even when we think we're standing beyond them.
We're either a productive part of a greater system or a cancer that will eventually kill the system and the cancer with it, even if in the short-term the cancer seems to be gaining resources and growing ever bigger.
But this story need not end like this. We are bound by Laws greater than those we write for ourselves, but WE ARE MORE than unthinking strings of data or biology. We are the ultimate creation, a Self-Transforming creation.
Already those who led us here are changing course, re-thinking ways, and working to self-regulate. A system in which each industry self-regulates. If we manage this step, and do it as if the very future of the nation and more hinges on it, then we will truly be stepping into the 21st century with tools of maximum effectiveness, a system that regulates not from the top down, but internally by independent sections. Aligned with Transparency and simplicity in methods and products, all market participents would be acting in self-regulating ways, strengthening the system as a whole while maintaining its individual and independent flexibility and creativeness, requiring minimal though still necesary government oversight. A system of maximum flexibility and creative power. Even Phillip Morris is agreeing to new regulations !
Instinctively, from the beginning of human society, we start to walk in this direction, even if later diverted. Parents encourage children to regulate their own actions and find their way. Families determine their own values and systems of learning and protections. Schools, hospitals, grocery stores and all businesses determine their internal cultures and rules. Industries form associations. Cities and nations develop their own individual flavor and laws. The greater the internal, independent, self-regulation, the smaller the role left for government, which is as it should be, and the greater the ability of each section to adapt, react, create and grow. Governments that grow too large, grow cumbersome, slow and inflexible, and are slow to adapt to new circumstances and threats, weak to attacks both internal and external, fiscally oppressive to the citizenry.
DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM:What does it provide?
Prowling the world like the Cougar, following his own dream.
Swift and cunning like the fox
Organized in productive super structures of the anthill
Massing, like the great buffallo heards, toward an idea or product
Like the wolf pack, loyal to its small group and unwavering in its hunt for resources.
Riding the waves like the dolphin
The dual Principles of Democracy and Capitalism frees the individual to be all of Natures bounty and its unlimited creative vision. A Free People, able to be all things at all times, any thing at any time.... changing, growing, always new, always creating...
In one elective moment, transformed... And may 4 years come again, and again, and again... our collective vision re-formed///expressed/re-chosen//re-established. A system of ultimate flexibility.
Must we choose between extremes, socialism or oligarchy ?
Why not just choose a rational system ?
We have an amazing example to follow. What system has stood impregnable against all comers? NATURE ! Which system does Nature use? Checks and Balances...
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton were able to devise a system for a Free People that has stood for 233years. Can we do less? Washington refused the powers of a tyrant and chose instead to believe that a Free People could guide themselves, to believe that a governent of the people, by the people, and for the people was both possible and feasible. We who have seen Democracy at work, can we believe less?
We are a nation of Laws, but when those Laws cease to protect us and become instead a yoke, what path will we choose then?
What did the forefathers of the nation answer?
We write the future in the actions of today..... maybe we should be careful to write ourselves the best of all possible futures?
happy blogging
elizabeth Julia Diaz Rosell
on CHARLIE ROSE 042809 : charlie always picks the best
BILL ACKMAN (Pershing Square Capital Management): This past weekend Larry Summers was on Meet the Press and he talked about Asset/Liability Swaps as a means to raise capital for the banks. I translate that as.. Debt for Equity swap, Junior Debt for Equity swap, Preferred stock for Equity Swap. ..the banks in this country have all the Capital they need. The problem is too much is in the form of Debt (like to Bond Holders).. They way we solve that problem typically in America is through the REORGANIZATION PROCESS, where a judge adjudicates a bankrupcy or some other form of Conservatership or ReOrganization. They figure out the value of the firm, how much Equity needs to be raised, and they compromise the Bond Holders, until the Bond Holders end up owning the Firm. Imagine a bank that needs $100 Billion of Capital. You can put $100BIllion in from the Tax Payer, in the case Joe the Plumber, ..money which unfortunately is going out the door to pay Interest to .. Bill the Bond Holder. That doesn't seem quite fair to me. What You can do instead is Bill the Bond Holder has to convert $50 BIllion of his debt (Debt the bank owes him- a Bond) to Equity and that magically raises $100 Billion of Capital because for every $1 of Debt that becomes Equity your canceling a $1 of debt, your creating $1 of Equity....Once you do that, now the banks are adequately Capitalized, and you restrict dividends, and you restrict the only way the banks can earn an adequate return on its capital is by... MAKING LAONS." Great Explanation!.. Larry, Go For It !! This is worth forgiving all the errors of the past. Dump that PPIP garbage. Please Mr President, if more is needed for the banks do this !!!
JOSEPH STIGLITZ co-winner 2001 Nobel Prize of Economics: "It's what they should have been doing all along... Financialy reorganized.. the bond holders don't like it. They would prefer the tax payer give them the money... But it's not in our National Interests. The banks would be stronger after they go through this kind of financial reorganization... The Toxic Assets.. they want to take all that trash and dump it on the US taxpayer (even if it's thru PPIP guarantees).. and it doesn't make it disappear. That's why you need to convert the Debt Into Equity. If it turns out then that the banks are right, and the toxic assets are woth alot more, then the Equity of the banks will go up automatically and they (ex-BondHolders) get fully compensated. The issue here is WHO'S GOING TO BEAR THE RISK OF THE UNCERTAIN VALUATION? IS IT THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE THE MONEY TO THE BANK (BOND HOLDERS) OR IS IT THE US TAX PAYER? As simple as that." He definitely deserve that Nobel Prize, thank you!
BILL ACKMAN (Pershing Square Capital Management): Think of a bridge, the bridge collapses thetruck that was going on it falls and kills a thousand people.. When they go rebuild the bridge that had a 10,000lbs capacity.. before people feal comfortable crossing that bridge again, what you do is make the bridge 40,000lbs capacity, knowing that only 10,ooo lbs trucks are going to travel on it. You create an enourmous margin of safety. What doesn't work is to create a stress test which is not the exteme stress and say that a bunh of banks passed. We don't need well capitalized banks under historic conditions. What we need is EXTRAORDINARILY WELL CAPITALIZED banks. Ask yourself, what is the downside if the US banking system is the best capitalized banking system in the world? The beauty of converting Debt for Equity is that it's NOT a taking from the tax payer and it's NOT a taking from the Bond Holder. THE BOND HOLDER IS GETTING EXACTLY WHAT THEY OWN. They don't have an opption and here's why... The Ultimate test on whether our banks can survive going forward is whether they can stand on their own 2 feet; Can they raise Capital on their own. No private sector person is willing to take the risk of investing in a bank. So what we need to do is we need to build the 40,ooo lb bank. The bank the can withstand the stress of 4 trucks even though only 1 is allowed. The alternative is we have more AIGs." YES YES YES. Thank God for Creative People!
PRESIDENT BARRACK OBAMA 042909:
"I am surprised by the number of critical issues that appear to be coming all to a head at the same time. I'm ....sobered by the fact that change in Washington comes slow, that there is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place even when we're in the middle of really big crisis. I would like to think that everybody would say, you know what, let's take a time out on some of the political games, focus our attention for at least for this year, and then start running for something next year, and that hasn't happened as much as I would have liked."
We happen to have gotten a big set of chalenges, but we're not the first generation this has happend to and I'm confident we are going to meet those challenges just like our grandparents and our forebears before us."
"It's been said before, 'The ship of State is an ocean liner; it's not a speed boat.' And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue, of how to bring about the changes that the American people need, is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, you may not see all the Consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now but 10 years from now or 20 years from now, our kids will be able to look back and say that's when we started getting serious on clean energy, that's when health care started to become more efficient and affordable.... I have a much longer time horizon."
"With respect to the auto companies, I believe America should have functioning Competitive auto industry. I don't think we should simply attach an umbilical cord between the US treasury and auto companies, so they are constantly getting subsidies. But I do think helping them restructure at this unique period... I don't think there is anything inappropriate about that." (me: NO more subidies for anyone, unless New Industry that's in the PUBLIC'S CLEAR INTEREST ! Like Green Energy - to save the planet and ourselves !)
"When I meet our service men and women,... I am so profoundy impressed and grateful to them for what they do. They're really good at their job. They're willing to make extraordinary sacrifices on our behalf. They do so without complaint. They are fiercely loyal to this country." President Barack Obama
GENERAL DAVID PATRAEUS: MAY 2007 LETTER TO THE TROOPS:
'Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right. Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we -not our enemies- hold the moral high ground.'
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER TO CONGRESS: 042309
'I have faith in the system... The system and how we deal with those people at dfferent ends of the spectrum, says a lot about who we are as Americans. It seems to me that if we have faith in the system, as I do, we should have confidence that that system can handle in a fair way Kahlid Sheik Mohamed and deal with him appropriately. Jorge Washington said, after the victory at Trenton, ...he said to his troops that the British soldiers that were captured had to be treated in a certain way even though our soldiers were not being treated in an appropriate way by the British. '
"Mom...., if we live, all the animals on the planet may die,
but if we die.... they'll live.
Why should we live? "
I'm afraid we are giving all the wrong answers
Over and over, we seem to be silently screaming, "SELF-DISTRUCT"Everywhere I see written and spoken ......... so called "SOLUTIONS" For the Environment, for the Financial Systems, Solutions whose proponents are really only pushing for their personal benefit while paying for these minimal benefits with damage to the system and the society as a whole, walking us all closer to Societal Suicide.The Market participants yell "FREE MARKETS!" as if it were a magic word, just say it and it'll happen. Lets not forget they also yelled that housing pricing would keep going up forever; They even grew to belive it themselves. But as we've seen, simply saying and believing doesn't make things true, only Acting like a free market creates a true free-market, whose prerequisite is freedom from government protectionism and manipulation, including freedom to fail, freedom for workers to gain for themselves the best possible contracts, and freedom for the public to invest its monies in products that are not Mis-represented, but rather meet their true needs.
What is the Role of Government? To PROTECT the citizenry from those who would Steal their monies, properties, and liberties. In Economic terms, it can be summed up in one phrase: Consumer protection.
(1) Transparecny: Enforce Transparent Financial Statements and Financial Instrument which would prevent investors from being scammed by deliberately confusing and mis-leading numbers and terms.
(2) Establish and Enforce Investor voting rights to set executive pay in the corporations they own. Corporate Executives are NOT the owners of the corporations.
(3) Funds must actively manage the monies handed over by pensioners and individuals, and not be allowed to hand them over to another fund, like Mardoff's, to do the work they are being paid for. In this way, funds that fail to produce results will be sidelined and fail and successfull fund managers will be rewarded and prosper.
(4) Re-couple Loan Origination with Loan-ownership, at least upto 50%But what have we been doing instead for the past 8 years ? Forget about an even playing field, small government, or a balanced budget. Heck, reduce taxes and increase spending.... it sounds good... it'll all work out... Ignore that this is just another name for borrow and spend consumerism... pretend it's working toward bi-partisan change, rather than the reality of working toward bi-partisan more of the same... say it enough and everybody will believe it... and once you've said it enough, even you'll believe it.
The market's invisible hand will do its job, the invisible hand will now or eventally wipe them out and the rest of us with them: Oil Industry, Financiers, and the rest for intense shortsightedness and greed and us for blindness, indiference, and lack of will. What is the Market's Invisible hand? Unproductive companies, products, and methods fail and productive things succeed, productive companies and ideas gain resources, the un-productive loose resources, and successful methods, products, and ideas get copied and therefore spread through the society. Theft is unproductive and so fails, even if it appears to succeed in the short run. Lies fail, such as false or misleading financial statements and convoluted instruments. If we continue to fill our financial system with unproductive products, the financial system will fail.. But we should all
Abraham Lincoln "You can't fool all of the people all the time...
THE GOLD PIECES AND THE FIRE ON THE ROAD:
Its weird... like watching some crazy person heading straight for a fire that's clearly in their path, while the crazy person is only seeing the gold littering the road. Hey, it's ok to pick up the gold pieces, but just not by throwing kindling on the fire. First we have to put out the fire, build some fire stations, and then continue along the road. But we have to safeguard the community so we can spend the gold somewhere we love.
This crisis is strangely like watching history play itself out in shortened time..... like waking from a dream of calm and prosperity to see that the society we have built has deep and spreading cracks of error and corruption, and watching it disintegrate right in front of us all, in slow deadly steps. I guess this is how some Romans felt in 400 a.d.... seeing it all unravell in steps of corruption, knowing exactly why, and watching those around them act as if it were impossible and invisible. Wondering, what words could stop the tide and turn back the current.... and finding more evidence daily that it may not be possible, because the current is carrying so much trash and momentum.
........read the book PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL on : the high cost of small thefts..........
In the News:
Chinese Government spyware slicing through corporate,government, and user firewalls .... we have it and everybody wants it..... the creativity of a Free People..
Unauthorized Russian and Chinese software found on our electric grids............................. maybe they make it sing...
CAPITALISM:In a democracy, Capitlism sublimates the will to power, transforming it into creative energy, Empowering a society to build an unimagined future while maximizing individual freedom.
Drive and ambition has been an engine of productivity and improved living conditions, as long as it was coupled with the freedom to fail., free from government privelledge for the few .. controlled individual corporate failures rather than mass destruction of the system!
Privatizing profits while socializing losses is the ultimate weapon of economic mass destruction... but only where it is accompanied by the general public's faith in the system. Once the public's faith in the system is wiped out to be replaced by cynicism and the recognition that the deck is stacked to favor those who would use bribes, then it looses its ability for mass destruction and becomes only a force of mass mediocrity, where the trickle down theory actually works to spread lack of integrity and mediocrity to an entire system of life and government, as more and more mental and creative resources are redirected toward bribery, theft, and playing the system, and away from creativity and advance... at best, the fall from greatness toward mediocrity and meanness. As always, some will continue to create and produce, but the rate of productivity's spread will be greatly slowed by the weight of inefficient companies and methods.
What an ingnomious end to the great experiment in self-determination and self-government started by men of vision and faith... ended by men of greed and small dreams...
And what was the agent of infection?"He's doing it too" or SuccessEmulation-'
Our competitors are using Securitized loans to rake in the bucks, we can't be left out of the bonanza'-'Everybody donates money to Congress and state and local representatives and gets laws that favor them and is awarded subsidies and no-bid contracts'
except all of these were short-sighted gains
It's like gravitiy:
An even playing feild, where bribery doesn't work and government doesn't subsidize businesses with industry tax rebates, bid-free contracts, and the rest, means failed ideas cause business failures and the best ideas, companies, and processes rise to the top and are copied and spread. Government's largest role should be in the area of consumer protection, protecting again fraud and unfair practices, protecting us from misleading financial statements, convoluted financial instruments, and the rest.I think that we recognize integrity, honesty, dilligence, preserverance, justice, and all the other virutes as virtues because they ARE the requirments for a natural system to work..
If one bee LIES, or could lie, to the rest about where the pollen is so that its family gets more of the polen, it may survive but the community dies...
If the lion, in greed, could eat every animal, he either blows up (eye roll) or kills off all his food source, and so dies and then he, the destructive element, disappears.
It's been shown that if the wolves in an area are all killed off, the deer overpopulate the area and eat allthe grasses and then start dying of famine. Sound familiar?
Over and over, nature uses destruction to elliminate everything that is too greedy, dangerous, slow, inflexible, or stupid, or all of the above........ Nature has this interesting knack of using the destructive elements themselve to self-terminate the system and open a blank space for new creation, a spot on the evolutionary chain, or an area for a new society to develop..etc...
Nature eliminates the distructive forces, and we are proving to be a destructive force. We will in effect destroy ourselves if we can't talk ourselves out of it..... if there aren't enough of us without excessive greed, and without over inflated self-opinions which place temporary individual monitary success before the success of the whole (individuals, societies, species) ...., if those of us with vision and empathy have not enough ambition and diligence to push for the right path with force, and I don't mean violence, then the human species is the failed experiment... But more likely, some other form of government will come to replace us, quickly or slowly... hopefully I won't be around to see it, as I love this experiment in self-government and self-determination... but if as a species we are still too imature to use it successfully, then democracy will die off for now, again, and for some genereations more the specie will suffer, to greater or lesser extent, through tyrany or chaos or mediocrity, till we again try for self-determination or till we have failed enough times that another species will have risen to take up the struggle toward individual self-awareness, then species self-awareness, and then inter-species self awarenes..
The more often and longer that Unproductive methods and businesses are protected, the Worse and Longer will be the eventual fall....
The only question is how long will it take, whether days or years or decades or generations, and how hard and painful will be the fall. The eventual re-surgence will come! Only the timing is in question. Well, unless we make the planet uninhabitable for humans in the meantime.... then it will still come, just not for us.And we'll be blindsided by it worse than we recently were by the so called Financial Collapse, like Rome in 400ad as it was overrun by barbarian invadors, an INCONCIEVABLE event to the Romans of the time - they, too, couldn't see how their internal corruption had weakened their system of government, weakened their very WILL to fight off invasion.
Remember that commandment about "Don't Lie"? Maybe we should try it for a little while, as an experiment, to shut up with the bull, speak only the truth, and print only the facts, so we could for a moment take a clear look around and see where we are really standing and be sure that only the forest is burning. Maybe we should have an 'only the truth' week, just to test it out. And, if the species is one biological whole, what better way to find out? At least a possibility of finding out. Did I mention I was a science fiction buff?
On a lighter note for the Anti-Feminists:
Like the Natural animals we are, we are bound to the Laws of Nature and mother nature only gave us some light slaps on the wrist with the recesion of the 80s and the Asian Credit Crisis and... now she gave us a nice hard slap with the ongoing Financial Collapse of 2008, but soon Mother Nature is going to really get angry.... what was the name of those 4 renowned horsemen? I think first there was Peace (I guess he's the calm before the storm) and then there was Famine, and then.... you know how it goes, it ends with the horseman with the big sword... the one that brings a swath of misery and destruction... like those warlords of Africa who, in the absence of Real lLaws that offer Real Protections, swoop down, cut off limbs, carry off children, and bring misery to everything in their path (the boogeyman). Ps. DIOS INEXPRESABLE - the rest is and expression of our own limited expression.
I've always found it interesting how all the people of Vision see clearly how life and man is bound by Laws, whether its the prophets of the Bible, or Mohamed or Confucsius or Buddha or Lincoln... all of them pushing for integrity... and warning of the miseries found outside the Law.
And the rest of us poor blind scrappers haven't figured out that the reason that being outside the Protections of Law is so horrible, is that we love the Law..... we hate living in chaos... we are disgusted by liars and cheats... and yet , we're them, the liars and cheats.
The Law or the Laws of Nature or the Laws of Science... everywhere we recognize that even the movement of inanimate objects are bound by Laws, every molecule and atom of our bodies follows those Laws... we follow those laws, even when we think we're standing beyond them.
We're either a productive part of a greater system or a cancer that will eventually kill the system and the cancer with it, even if in the short-term the cancer seems to be gaining resources and growing ever bigger.
But this story need not end like this. We are bound by Laws greater than those we write for ourselves, but WE ARE MORE than unthinking strings of data or biology. We are the ultimate creation, a Self-Transforming creation.
Already those who led us here are changing course, re-thinking ways, and working to self-regulate. A system in which each industry self-regulates. If we manage this step, and do it as if the very future of the nation and more hinges on it, then we will truly be stepping into the 21st century with tools of maximum effectiveness, a system that regulates not from the top down, but internally by independent sections. Aligned with Transparency and simplicity in methods and products, all market participents would be acting in self-regulating ways, strengthening the system as a whole while maintaining its individual and independent flexibility and creativeness, requiring minimal though still necesary government oversight. A system of maximum flexibility and creative power. Even Phillip Morris is agreeing to new regulations !
Instinctively, from the beginning of human society, we start to walk in this direction, even if later diverted. Parents encourage children to regulate their own actions and find their way. Families determine their own values and systems of learning and protections. Schools, hospitals, grocery stores and all businesses determine their internal cultures and rules. Industries form associations. Cities and nations develop their own individual flavor and laws. The greater the internal, independent, self-regulation, the smaller the role left for government, which is as it should be, and the greater the ability of each section to adapt, react, create and grow. Governments that grow too large, grow cumbersome, slow and inflexible, and are slow to adapt to new circumstances and threats, weak to attacks both internal and external, fiscally oppressive to the citizenry.
DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM:What does it provide?
Prowling the world like the Cougar, following his own dream.
Swift and cunning like the fox
Organized in productive super structures of the anthill
Massing, like the great buffallo heards, toward an idea or product
Like the wolf pack, loyal to its small group and unwavering in its hunt for resources.
Riding the waves like the dolphin
The dual Principles of Democracy and Capitalism frees the individual to be all of Natures bounty and its unlimited creative vision. A Free People, able to be all things at all times, any thing at any time.... changing, growing, always new, always creating...
In one elective moment, transformed... And may 4 years come again, and again, and again... our collective vision re-formed///expressed/re-chosen//re-established. A system of ultimate flexibility.
Must we choose between extremes, socialism or oligarchy ?
Why not just choose a rational system ?
We have an amazing example to follow. What system has stood impregnable against all comers? NATURE ! Which system does Nature use? Checks and Balances...
Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton were able to devise a system for a Free People that has stood for 233years. Can we do less? Washington refused the powers of a tyrant and chose instead to believe that a Free People could guide themselves, to believe that a governent of the people, by the people, and for the people was both possible and feasible. We who have seen Democracy at work, can we believe less?
We are a nation of Laws, but when those Laws cease to protect us and become instead a yoke, what path will we choose then?
What did the forefathers of the nation answer?
We write the future in the actions of today..... maybe we should be careful to write ourselves the best of all possible futures?
happy blogging
elizabeth Julia Diaz Rosell
on CHARLIE ROSE 042809 : charlie always picks the best
BILL ACKMAN (Pershing Square Capital Management): This past weekend Larry Summers was on Meet the Press and he talked about Asset/Liability Swaps as a means to raise capital for the banks. I translate that as.. Debt for Equity swap, Junior Debt for Equity swap, Preferred stock for Equity Swap. ..the banks in this country have all the Capital they need. The problem is too much is in the form of Debt (like to Bond Holders).. They way we solve that problem typically in America is through the REORGANIZATION PROCESS, where a judge adjudicates a bankrupcy or some other form of Conservatership or ReOrganization. They figure out the value of the firm, how much Equity needs to be raised, and they compromise the Bond Holders, until the Bond Holders end up owning the Firm. Imagine a bank that needs $100 Billion of Capital. You can put $100BIllion in from the Tax Payer, in the case Joe the Plumber, ..money which unfortunately is going out the door to pay Interest to .. Bill the Bond Holder. That doesn't seem quite fair to me. What You can do instead is Bill the Bond Holder has to convert $50 BIllion of his debt (Debt the bank owes him- a Bond) to Equity and that magically raises $100 Billion of Capital because for every $1 of Debt that becomes Equity your canceling a $1 of debt, your creating $1 of Equity....Once you do that, now the banks are adequately Capitalized, and you restrict dividends, and you restrict the only way the banks can earn an adequate return on its capital is by... MAKING LAONS." Great Explanation!.. Larry, Go For It !! This is worth forgiving all the errors of the past. Dump that PPIP garbage. Please Mr President, if more is needed for the banks do this !!!
JOSEPH STIGLITZ co-winner 2001 Nobel Prize of Economics: "It's what they should have been doing all along... Financialy reorganized.. the bond holders don't like it. They would prefer the tax payer give them the money... But it's not in our National Interests. The banks would be stronger after they go through this kind of financial reorganization... The Toxic Assets.. they want to take all that trash and dump it on the US taxpayer (even if it's thru PPIP guarantees).. and it doesn't make it disappear. That's why you need to convert the Debt Into Equity. If it turns out then that the banks are right, and the toxic assets are woth alot more, then the Equity of the banks will go up automatically and they (ex-BondHolders) get fully compensated. The issue here is WHO'S GOING TO BEAR THE RISK OF THE UNCERTAIN VALUATION? IS IT THE PEOPLE WHO GAVE THE MONEY TO THE BANK (BOND HOLDERS) OR IS IT THE US TAX PAYER? As simple as that." He definitely deserve that Nobel Prize, thank you!
BILL ACKMAN (Pershing Square Capital Management): Think of a bridge, the bridge collapses thetruck that was going on it falls and kills a thousand people.. When they go rebuild the bridge that had a 10,000lbs capacity.. before people feal comfortable crossing that bridge again, what you do is make the bridge 40,000lbs capacity, knowing that only 10,ooo lbs trucks are going to travel on it. You create an enourmous margin of safety. What doesn't work is to create a stress test which is not the exteme stress and say that a bunh of banks passed. We don't need well capitalized banks under historic conditions. What we need is EXTRAORDINARILY WELL CAPITALIZED banks. Ask yourself, what is the downside if the US banking system is the best capitalized banking system in the world? The beauty of converting Debt for Equity is that it's NOT a taking from the tax payer and it's NOT a taking from the Bond Holder. THE BOND HOLDER IS GETTING EXACTLY WHAT THEY OWN. They don't have an opption and here's why... The Ultimate test on whether our banks can survive going forward is whether they can stand on their own 2 feet; Can they raise Capital on their own. No private sector person is willing to take the risk of investing in a bank. So what we need to do is we need to build the 40,ooo lb bank. The bank the can withstand the stress of 4 trucks even though only 1 is allowed. The alternative is we have more AIGs." YES YES YES. Thank God for Creative People!
PRESIDENT BARRACK OBAMA 042909:
"I am surprised by the number of critical issues that appear to be coming all to a head at the same time. I'm ....sobered by the fact that change in Washington comes slow, that there is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place even when we're in the middle of really big crisis. I would like to think that everybody would say, you know what, let's take a time out on some of the political games, focus our attention for at least for this year, and then start running for something next year, and that hasn't happened as much as I would have liked."
We happen to have gotten a big set of chalenges, but we're not the first generation this has happend to and I'm confident we are going to meet those challenges just like our grandparents and our forebears before us."
"It's been said before, 'The ship of State is an ocean liner; it's not a speed boat.' And so the way we are constantly thinking about this issue, of how to bring about the changes that the American people need, is to say, if we can move this big battleship a few degrees in a different direction, you may not see all the Consequences of that change a week from now or three months from now but 10 years from now or 20 years from now, our kids will be able to look back and say that's when we started getting serious on clean energy, that's when health care started to become more efficient and affordable.... I have a much longer time horizon."
"With respect to the auto companies, I believe America should have functioning Competitive auto industry. I don't think we should simply attach an umbilical cord between the US treasury and auto companies, so they are constantly getting subsidies. But I do think helping them restructure at this unique period... I don't think there is anything inappropriate about that." (me: NO more subidies for anyone, unless New Industry that's in the PUBLIC'S CLEAR INTEREST ! Like Green Energy - to save the planet and ourselves !)
"When I meet our service men and women,... I am so profoundy impressed and grateful to them for what they do. They're really good at their job. They're willing to make extraordinary sacrifices on our behalf. They do so without complaint. They are fiercely loyal to this country." President Barack Obama
GENERAL DAVID PATRAEUS: MAY 2007 LETTER TO THE TROOPS:
'Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right. Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we -not our enemies- hold the moral high ground.'
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER TO CONGRESS: 042309
'I have faith in the system... The system and how we deal with those people at dfferent ends of the spectrum, says a lot about who we are as Americans. It seems to me that if we have faith in the system, as I do, we should have confidence that that system can handle in a fair way Kahlid Sheik Mohamed and deal with him appropriately. Jorge Washington said, after the victory at Trenton, ...he said to his troops that the British soldiers that were captured had to be treated in a certain way even though our soldiers were not being treated in an appropriate way by the British. '
In Tehran, a Rallying Cry: 'We Are the People of Iran'
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090616/wl_time/08599190476400
By NAHID SIAMDOUST / TEHRAN Nahid Siamdoust / Tehran – Tue Jun 16, 5:55 am ET
"From revolution to freedom" - that was the message that spread among supporters of Iranian opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi today. The phrase refers to the two main squares in midtown Tehran, where a large demonstration took place to protest what millions of Iranians believe was a rigged presidential election. And although the Interior Ministry kept broadcasting a communiquÉ warning that no permit had been issued for the rally, 2 million to 3 million Iranians from a broad cross section of society converged on Freedom Square to demand a recount.
"Until you return my vote, I won't be going home tonight" was one of the chants at the demonstration, which was organized on the Internet and by word of mouth. While the police and special security forces have dealt harshly with demonstrators over the past few days, today's rally was held peacefully with an almost total absence of any crowd-control forces, at least until dark. After sunset, there were reports of government militia firing on demonstrators, purportedly killing at least one.
Although the Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei initially congratulated incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election and called the elections a "divine assessment," he took a surprising step Monday by asking the Guardian Council to investigate Mousavi's allegations "with precision," and called on Mousavi to follow existing concerns through "legal means." The move, an attempt to assuage concerns over the alleged fraud, was unprecedented.
But Mousavi supporters are incredulous. "They have stolen our vote, and now they're showing off with it," went one of the main chants at the rally Monday. After the demonstrations, loud cries of "Allahu akbar" could be heard from rooftops and windows until late into the night.
Now the Guardian Council has invited Mousavi as well as Karroubi to a meeting Tuesday to discuss their concerns. The Supreme Leader has expressed hope that the dispute can be resolved peacefully.
IRAN'S LESSON:
EVEN IN A TAINTED ELECTION VOTING STILL MATTERS
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1904876,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-world-related
That summer of 2005, many Iranians actually heeded Ebadi's call and boycotted the vote. This helped the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand leader who proceeded to gut the country's economy and sully Iran's reputation in the world. Reformist politicians, whose candidates had fared badly at the polls, told moderate Iranians that they were to blame for Ahmadinejad's victory. If the so-called silent majority — the millions of middle-class, educated Iranians who seek more freedom and economic opportunity — had voted, the emerging wisdom went, then the country wouldn't have been lost to the lunatic with the peculiar Windbreaker.
Even as recently as six months ago, many in Iran were ambivalent about voting in this election. "Why should I bother to vote when my vote isn't respected?" a shopkeeper in eastern Tehran said to me. His wife, he said, was already hectoring him to vote. "She thinks it will make a difference. She'll probably make me in the end."
In the four years that followed, many Iranians bitterly regretted their decision not to vote. I was living in Beirut in 2005, and failed to cast my ballot at the Iranian embassy there. When I moved to Iran later that year and began to suffer the slowly emerging consequences of Ahmadinejad's victory, I scolded myself daily. Ambivalence and laziness had gotten the better of me, and I deserved to suffer the consequences. I also scolded all my friends and relatives who hadn't voted. When they complained about double-digit inflation, a real estate price hike of 150%, five-hour lines for gas (the government had botched a plan to drop gas subsidies), Internet censorship, government plans to facilitate polygamy and gender segregation in classrooms, I told them they were to blame, not Islamic theocracy. They had chosen not to elect a better leader.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090616/wl_time/08599190476400
By NAHID SIAMDOUST / TEHRAN Nahid Siamdoust / Tehran – Tue Jun 16, 5:55 am ET
"From revolution to freedom" - that was the message that spread among supporters of Iranian opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi today. The phrase refers to the two main squares in midtown Tehran, where a large demonstration took place to protest what millions of Iranians believe was a rigged presidential election. And although the Interior Ministry kept broadcasting a communiquÉ warning that no permit had been issued for the rally, 2 million to 3 million Iranians from a broad cross section of society converged on Freedom Square to demand a recount.
"Until you return my vote, I won't be going home tonight" was one of the chants at the demonstration, which was organized on the Internet and by word of mouth. While the police and special security forces have dealt harshly with demonstrators over the past few days, today's rally was held peacefully with an almost total absence of any crowd-control forces, at least until dark. After sunset, there were reports of government militia firing on demonstrators, purportedly killing at least one.
Truly Courageous Free People
True Inheritors of Cyrus - who won Battles without Wars
Although the Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei initially congratulated incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his re-election and called the elections a "divine assessment," he took a surprising step Monday by asking the Guardian Council to investigate Mousavi's allegations "with precision," and called on Mousavi to follow existing concerns through "legal means." The move, an attempt to assuage concerns over the alleged fraud, was unprecedented.
But Mousavi supporters are incredulous. "They have stolen our vote, and now they're showing off with it," went one of the main chants at the rally Monday. After the demonstrations, loud cries of "Allahu akbar" could be heard from rooftops and windows until late into the night.
Now the Guardian Council has invited Mousavi as well as Karroubi to a meeting Tuesday to discuss their concerns. The Supreme Leader has expressed hope that the dispute can be resolved peacefully.
IRAN'S LESSON:
EVEN IN A TAINTED ELECTION VOTING STILL MATTERS
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1904876,00.html?xid=feed-yahoo-full-world-related
That summer of 2005, many Iranians actually heeded Ebadi's call and boycotted the vote. This helped the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand leader who proceeded to gut the country's economy and sully Iran's reputation in the world. Reformist politicians, whose candidates had fared badly at the polls, told moderate Iranians that they were to blame for Ahmadinejad's victory. If the so-called silent majority — the millions of middle-class, educated Iranians who seek more freedom and economic opportunity — had voted, the emerging wisdom went, then the country wouldn't have been lost to the lunatic with the peculiar Windbreaker.
Even as recently as six months ago, many in Iran were ambivalent about voting in this election. "Why should I bother to vote when my vote isn't respected?" a shopkeeper in eastern Tehran said to me. His wife, he said, was already hectoring him to vote. "She thinks it will make a difference. She'll probably make me in the end."
In the four years that followed, many Iranians bitterly regretted their decision not to vote. I was living in Beirut in 2005, and failed to cast my ballot at the Iranian embassy there. When I moved to Iran later that year and began to suffer the slowly emerging consequences of Ahmadinejad's victory, I scolded myself daily. Ambivalence and laziness had gotten the better of me, and I deserved to suffer the consequences. I also scolded all my friends and relatives who hadn't voted. When they complained about double-digit inflation, a real estate price hike of 150%, five-hour lines for gas (the government had botched a plan to drop gas subsidies), Internet censorship, government plans to facilitate polygamy and gender segregation in classrooms, I told them they were to blame, not Islamic theocracy. They had chosen not to elect a better leader.
We need to allways keep this lesson in Mind
Voting is both a responsibility and blessing
Iran proved they know it Bigtime
!
Relatives and friends that I never expected to vote decided to participate. From Tabriz to Tehran to Mashhad, from Bonn to London to Virginia, they waited in long lines at polling stations, determined not to let the country slide further into penury and isolation, not to let 2005 repeat itself. I was thrilled when some friends e-mailed to say I had helped encourage them to vote.
CLINTON VOWS TO HELP HAITIANS CHART DESTINY
BY jACQUELINE Charles from The Miami HeraldJune 16, 2009
Haiti's newest envoy (Bill Clinton) made his rfirst pitch on bahalf of the impovrished Carribbean nation Monday, outlining and ambitious list of priorities he plans to tackle on bejal;f of the United Nations.
I'll do my best. It's a formidable task," former President Bill Clinton sait at a U.N. news conference in New York alongisde secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Haitian Foreign Minister Alrich Nicolas. "This is the best chance the Haitians have every had."
**** THANK YOU PRESIDENT CLINTON ***
Haiti - first nation in the world to Free itself from Colonialism through a Slave Revolt
-per wikipedia
BY jACQUELINE Charles from The Miami HeraldJune 16, 2009
Haiti's newest envoy (Bill Clinton) made his rfirst pitch on bahalf of the impovrished Carribbean nation Monday, outlining and ambitious list of priorities he plans to tackle on bejal;f of the United Nations.
I'll do my best. It's a formidable task," former President Bill Clinton sait at a U.N. news conference in New York alongisde secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Haitian Foreign Minister Alrich Nicolas. "This is the best chance the Haitians have every had."
**** THANK YOU PRESIDENT CLINTON ***
Haiti - first nation in the world to Free itself from Colonialism through a Slave Revolt
-per wikipedia
Lone Voices AGAINST REPEAL of Glass-Steagal in 1999
against Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11/glass-steagall-act-the-se_n_201557.html
The footage of him speaking on the Senate floor has become something of a cult flick for the particularly wonky progressive. The date was November 4, 1999. Senator Byron Dorgan, in a patterned red tie, sharp dark suit and hair with slightly more color than it has today, was captured only by the cameras of CSPAN2.
"I want to sound a warning call today about this legislation," he declared, swaying ever so slightly right, then left, occasionally punching the air in front of him with a slightly closed fist. "I think this legislation is just fundamentally terrible."
The legislation was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (alternatively known as Gramm Leach Bliley), which allowed banks to merge with insurance companies and investment houses. And Dorgan was, at the time, on a proverbial island with his concerns. Only eight senators would vote against the measure -- lionized by its proponents, including senior staff in the Clinton administration and many now staffing President Obama, as the most important breakthrough in the worlds of finance and politics in decades.
"It was more like a tidal wave in 1999," the North Dakota Democrat recalled of that vote in an interview with the Huffington Post. "You've seen the roll call. We didn't really have to deal with push back because they had such a strong, strong body of support for what they call modernization that the vote was never in doubt... The title of the bill was 'The Financial Modernization Act.' And so if you don't want to modernize, I guess you're considered hopelessly old fashioned."
Ten years later, Dorgan has been vindicated. His warning that banks would become "too big to fail" has proven basically true in the wake of the current financial crisis. He seems eerily prescient for claiming then that Congress would "look back ten years time and say we should not have done this." But he wasn't entirely alone. Sens. Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulski, Richard Shelby, Tom Harkin and Richard Bryan also cast nay votes.
As did Sen. Russ Feingold, who, in a statement from his office, recalled that "Gramm-Leach-Bliley was just one of several bad policies that helped lead to the credit market crisis and the severe recession it helped cause."
The late Sen. Paul Wellstone also opposed the bill, warning at the time that Congress was "about to repeal the economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place."
against Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/11/glass-steagall-act-the-se_n_201557.html
The footage of him speaking on the Senate floor has become something of a cult flick for the particularly wonky progressive. The date was November 4, 1999. Senator Byron Dorgan, in a patterned red tie, sharp dark suit and hair with slightly more color than it has today, was captured only by the cameras of CSPAN2.
"I want to sound a warning call today about this legislation," he declared, swaying ever so slightly right, then left, occasionally punching the air in front of him with a slightly closed fist. "I think this legislation is just fundamentally terrible."
The legislation was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act (alternatively known as Gramm Leach Bliley), which allowed banks to merge with insurance companies and investment houses. And Dorgan was, at the time, on a proverbial island with his concerns. Only eight senators would vote against the measure -- lionized by its proponents, including senior staff in the Clinton administration and many now staffing President Obama, as the most important breakthrough in the worlds of finance and politics in decades.
"It was more like a tidal wave in 1999," the North Dakota Democrat recalled of that vote in an interview with the Huffington Post. "You've seen the roll call. We didn't really have to deal with push back because they had such a strong, strong body of support for what they call modernization that the vote was never in doubt... The title of the bill was 'The Financial Modernization Act.' And so if you don't want to modernize, I guess you're considered hopelessly old fashioned."
Ten years later, Dorgan has been vindicated. His warning that banks would become "too big to fail" has proven basically true in the wake of the current financial crisis. He seems eerily prescient for claiming then that Congress would "look back ten years time and say we should not have done this." But he wasn't entirely alone. Sens. Barbara Boxer, Barbara Mikulski, Richard Shelby, Tom Harkin and Richard Bryan also cast nay votes.
As did Sen. Russ Feingold, who, in a statement from his office, recalled that "Gramm-Leach-Bliley was just one of several bad policies that helped lead to the credit market crisis and the severe recession it helped cause."
The late Sen. Paul Wellstone also opposed the bill, warning at the time that Congress was "about to repeal the economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place."
Thursday, June 11, 2009
some very good words
Sebastian Castellio's Erasmian Liberalism,
by Edwin Curley, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Americans might have hoped, as we enter the 21st Century, that after more than two hundred years of debate about the meaning of First Amendment to our Constitution, we would have achieved some consensus about the proper relationship between government and religion. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," the Amendment says. Does this mean that ‘faith-based’ organizations must be eligible to compete for federal funds to support their social-service programs? Are we, in fact, violating their right to the free exercise of their religion if we do not permit religious organizations to apply for tax money for those purposes? So the present administration urges.
I am skeptical about this. The administration concedes that it would be a violation of the establishment clause if the government used tax money to support worship services, religious instruction, or proselytization, because these activities are ‘inherently religious.’ If faith-based social-service programs are nonetheless permissible, that suggests that they must not be inherently religious. But if they aren’t, how can it be a violation of the free exercise clause not to fund them? And in any case, how does the failure to fund faith-based programs constitute a prohibition on the free exercise of religion?
All this is very puzzling, and may suggest that the administration’s position is not very clearly thought out. I make no attempt to resolve that question in this paper. I mention these contemporary issues of public policy only to indicate that, however deeply we may be attached, as a people, to the First Amendment, we may not have a clear and agreed understanding of the values it expresses. The state, we say, may not use its coercive powers to favor one religion over another, or to favor adherence to some religion over adherence to no religion at all.
...By the end of the 18th Century it had come to be accepted in most of Western Europe that every decent society must embrace some principle of religious toleration.
But as late as the 16th Century most Europeans, I think, regarded it as self-evidently false that it was desirable to tolerate significant differences of religious opinion. I want to know how this change came about and I want to know if the arguments people used to support toleration were good ones.
For most philosophers serious discussion of this topic begins with Locke's first Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). But the first substantial defense of religious toleration by a major philosopher in the Western tradition came in 1670, when Spinoza published his Tractatus theologico-politicus, as part of his broader defense of freedom of thought and expression. And the first book defending religious toleration in Western Europe was Sebastian Castellio's De haereticis, published in 1554. Readers familiar with Locke’s work on toleration will find that many of his arguments, both good and bad, were already present in Castellio.
Michael Servetus. Servetus was a Spaniard, born in 1511, who entered the service of the king's confessor, Juan de Quintana, at some time in his mid-teens. Michael Servetus for heresy prompted [Sebastian] Castellio to write his work.
Michael Servetus
'You will not be damned if you do not know whether the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son has one or two beginnings, but you will not escape damnation if you do not cultivate the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long-suffering, mercy, faith, modesty, continence..... The sum of religion is peace and unanimity, (LOVE) but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible, and in many things leave each one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters...'
read more at http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/emcurley/files/castellioerasmianliberalism.doc
i gues it took a while but we finally eventually heard this and stopped going on crusades
Sebastian Castellio's Erasmian Liberalism,
by Edwin Curley, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Americans might have hoped, as we enter the 21st Century, that after more than two hundred years of debate about the meaning of First Amendment to our Constitution, we would have achieved some consensus about the proper relationship between government and religion. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," the Amendment says. Does this mean that ‘faith-based’ organizations must be eligible to compete for federal funds to support their social-service programs? Are we, in fact, violating their right to the free exercise of their religion if we do not permit religious organizations to apply for tax money for those purposes? So the present administration urges.
I am skeptical about this. The administration concedes that it would be a violation of the establishment clause if the government used tax money to support worship services, religious instruction, or proselytization, because these activities are ‘inherently religious.’ If faith-based social-service programs are nonetheless permissible, that suggests that they must not be inherently religious. But if they aren’t, how can it be a violation of the free exercise clause not to fund them? And in any case, how does the failure to fund faith-based programs constitute a prohibition on the free exercise of religion?
All this is very puzzling, and may suggest that the administration’s position is not very clearly thought out. I make no attempt to resolve that question in this paper. I mention these contemporary issues of public policy only to indicate that, however deeply we may be attached, as a people, to the First Amendment, we may not have a clear and agreed understanding of the values it expresses. The state, we say, may not use its coercive powers to favor one religion over another, or to favor adherence to some religion over adherence to no religion at all.
...By the end of the 18th Century it had come to be accepted in most of Western Europe that every decent society must embrace some principle of religious toleration.
But as late as the 16th Century most Europeans, I think, regarded it as self-evidently false that it was desirable to tolerate significant differences of religious opinion. I want to know how this change came about and I want to know if the arguments people used to support toleration were good ones.
For most philosophers serious discussion of this topic begins with Locke's first Letter Concerning Toleration (1689). But the first substantial defense of religious toleration by a major philosopher in the Western tradition came in 1670, when Spinoza published his Tractatus theologico-politicus, as part of his broader defense of freedom of thought and expression. And the first book defending religious toleration in Western Europe was Sebastian Castellio's De haereticis, published in 1554. Readers familiar with Locke’s work on toleration will find that many of his arguments, both good and bad, were already present in Castellio.
Michael Servetus. Servetus was a Spaniard, born in 1511, who entered the service of the king's confessor, Juan de Quintana, at some time in his mid-teens. Michael Servetus for heresy prompted [Sebastian] Castellio to write his work.
Michael Servetus
'You will not be damned if you do not know whether the Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son has one or two beginnings, but you will not escape damnation if you do not cultivate the fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, long-suffering, mercy, faith, modesty, continence..... The sum of religion is peace and unanimity, (LOVE) but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible, and in many things leave each one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters...'
read more at http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/emcurley/files/castellioerasmianliberalism.doc
i gues it took a while but we finally eventually heard this and stopped going on crusades
Kanjorski to Conduct Hearing on Systemic Risk and Insurance Washington, DC – June 11, 2009
Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski (D-PA), Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises, today announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing to further explore how to improve oversight of the insurance industry in order to protect insurance consumers from risks in the system and prevent insurance companies from posing a systemic risk and threatening the American financial system. “It is now clear that we must restructure the federal government’s role with regard to insurance oversight,” said Chairman Kanjorski. “At the very least, the federal government must have in-house expertise on this significant sector of the financial services industry and have an ability to watch over insurers as part of broad systemic risk and consumer protection authorities. A federal office, focused on collecting and analyzing insurance information, would provide the minimum role for the federal government in ensuring that insurance is not at a disadvantage as compared to other financial products by helping Congress and the federal government make better decisions regarding insurance policy matters.” Chairman Kanjorski added, “We must also further examine the ultimate role of the federal government in overseeing insurers, insurance holding companies, and reinsurers. The bond insurance crisis, the near-collapse of American International Group (AIG), numerous insurers requesting TARP funding, and the need for mortgage insurers to obtain more capital to underwrite new business have all shown that insurance is both an important part of the national economy and certain lines may require more comprehensive and consolidated oversight. I look forward to hearing from a variety of witnesses during this hearing and learning their thoughts on this important issue.”
Congressman Paul E. Kanjorski (D-PA), Chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises, today announced that the Subcommittee will hold a hearing to further explore how to improve oversight of the insurance industry in order to protect insurance consumers from risks in the system and prevent insurance companies from posing a systemic risk and threatening the American financial system. “It is now clear that we must restructure the federal government’s role with regard to insurance oversight,” said Chairman Kanjorski. “At the very least, the federal government must have in-house expertise on this significant sector of the financial services industry and have an ability to watch over insurers as part of broad systemic risk and consumer protection authorities. A federal office, focused on collecting and analyzing insurance information, would provide the minimum role for the federal government in ensuring that insurance is not at a disadvantage as compared to other financial products by helping Congress and the federal government make better decisions regarding insurance policy matters.” Chairman Kanjorski added, “We must also further examine the ultimate role of the federal government in overseeing insurers, insurance holding companies, and reinsurers. The bond insurance crisis, the near-collapse of American International Group (AIG), numerous insurers requesting TARP funding, and the need for mortgage insurers to obtain more capital to underwrite new business have all shown that insurance is both an important part of the national economy and certain lines may require more comprehensive and consolidated oversight. I look forward to hearing from a variety of witnesses during this hearing and learning their thoughts on this important issue.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090611/ap_on_bi_ge/us_bank_of_america_merrill_lynch;_ylt=AvCdtuUB49UunLL_1NttIQda24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTNnaXN0Yjc5BGFzc2V0Ay9hcC8yMDA5MDYxMS9hcF9vbl9iaV9nZS91c19iYW5rX29mX2FtZXJpY2FfbWVycmlsbF9seW5jaARjcG9zAzUEcG9zAzUEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNjZW9zYXlzZ292dHA-
WASHINGTON – Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis says his bank decided to buy Merrill Lynch partly because it was pressured to do so by the Federal Reserve. Lewis says the Federal Reserve threatened to remove top executives at his bank if it reneged on its promise to acquire Merrill Lynch, despite Merrill Lynch's crumbling financial state. Lewis told a House committee Thursday that it concerned him that federal officials would make that threat to a bank in "good standing."
The panel is investigating claims that top government officials, including then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, pressured Lewis and urged him to keep quiet about Merrill Lynch's financial problems.
To Senator Max Bauchus: Who are you? i heard that after you kept the groups representing all sides on health care out. They came to be heard and you had them taken away, but now you want to keep them from talking for 6month???? that you are not dropping the charges? Is this tru? or have you had a change of heart
Oh Oh Say can you see
does our flag still stand
For the land of the Free
and the Home of the Brave
From Sir Randall Creech in San Jose
Victor of many battles
tell the truth
i don't tell you this because i am the such a perfect person
i tell you this
because it works
brilliant guidance
Barney Frank on Executive Compensation
Jun 10, 2009 at 4:31 PM
Frank Statement on Administration’s Announcement on Executive Compensation
Washington, DC – Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank today released the following statement in response to the Obama Administration’s announcement on executive compensation:
“I am very pleased that the Secretary of the Treasury, on behalf of the Obama administration, is proposing significant action to deal with the problem of compensation packages that encourage excessive risk taking and have contributed to the current financial crisis.
“It is not the role of government to set policy regarding the amounts that are paid in compensation to top executives, nor to deal with the question of how that compensation is allocated among salary, bonuses, retirement packages, etc. But as Secretary Geithner’s remarks recognized, there are two very important points that we should address.
“First, shareholders must be empowered to have a major role in the process of setting overall compensation. While it is not the government’s role to say that a certain amount is too much, it is very much the right of the people who own the company to speak out if they think excessive compensation is being proposed. The system of say-on-pay that was piloted in England is a reasonable way to do this, and I was proud that the House adopted the bill that came from the Financial Services Committee to institute this in 2007. Unfortunately, the bill did not go forward in the Senate, but I am optimistic that with the support of the President, we will be able to enact this important principle into law. Recent evidence in England shows that when shareholders are in fact troubled by excessive compensation, say-on-pay is an effective tool for them.
“I also agree with Secretary Geithner’s annunciation of the principles that should guide the structure of compensation – not the amount. But I differ with his view that this can be accomplished by strengthening the independence of compensation committees. Given the inherently close relationship that exists between CEOs and other top executives on the one hand, and boards of directors on the other, it is very unlikely that you will ever get the degree of independence that will allow the boards of directors to be left completely on their own to set compensation. That is part of the reason for say-on-pay. But it is also the reason why legislation should be adopted that instructs the Securities and Exchange Commission to set principles which prevent boards from providing compensation systems that lead to excessive risk taking.
“It is not the government’s business to discourage risk taking, but neither should we allow systems which have existed up until now whereby decision-makers are handsomely rewarded if they take big risks that pay off, but suffer no penalty whatsoever if those risks result in losses to the company. CEOs and others have defended incentive systems as ways to align the interests of the decision-makers with those of the company. That is entirely correct, but one-way bonus systems do not do this.
“Therefore I believe that we should be going beyond the proposals the Secretary makes with regard to the compensation structure, and adopt legislation that mandates that the SEC adopt appropriate rules that embody these principles.”