Raise My Taxes!

Well, Warren Buffet has gone and done it again. The Oracle of Omaha has made those right wingers foam at the mouth again with his recent comments about how he should pay more in taxes.

"If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further," Buffett said. "But I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."

No shit.

It's what I've been saying all along. Better than they've ever had it...it's a fucking clam bake right now. The folks who lost 20 trillion dollars (and begged the government for a bail out) still have all their money and none, as of yet, have seen any prison time.

And what does Buffet have to say about you supply siders?

The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on," Buffett explained.

Some like me are. Several who post here aren't. When will you? It hasn't worked and will never work because people are greedy. As many conservative Christians have assured me, man is naturally sinful. So why do they give a break to the money guys then? I don't get it. Unless they are now, as Jesus so clearly warned, worshiping the false god of money...

Right around now, of course, is when the standard line comes out. "No one is stopping Buffet from paying more in taxes." I'm not sure from where this originated but it is wrong. The IRS is actually stopping him from paying more in taxes. In the first place, you can't overpay your taxes. Anyone who has ever done this on accident knows that you get a refund. In addition, the IRS doesn't take donations. Don't take my word for it. Ask someone you know who is an accountant. I did. My wife has been one for almost 30 years.

While I'm certain that Buffet could figure out a way to donate his money to the government, that really isn't his point. Try for a moment to think outside of the box on this one and realize that the system, as it is currently set up, favors wealthy people. This is not only true of the tax system but of the private sector as well. How many average joes do you know that get a chance at an IPO?

For those of you that post here, are not in the top 2 percent, and support the Right (whether it is the current form of the GOP or libertarian views), kindly rid yourself of the fantasy that some day you will get the chance to be as wealthy as those CEOs you worship. The way the system is currently set up, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN. No amount of hard work, financial know how, or wizardry is going to assist you.

The people that are in power right now want to keep it that way. They have spent the last three decades shifting the majority of our nation's wealth to their bank accounts. They spit on the Democrats, like Bill Clinton, who think that the middle class drives this economy. They shit on President Obama who has made at least some effort to change and regulate the system so people like you can get more breaks. Basically that means they spit and shit on YOU.

I'm wondering how much longer you are going to take it.

Giving Thanks

If you are conservative, libertarian, or just plain lean right, happy days are indeed here. Corporations run the world, the government has essentially been neutered in a variety of ways, and our culture is made up of people who think only of themselves...going into anaphylactic shock at the mere mention people working together for the common good. Add in howls of derision at anyone who dare question another's self interest and the age of the rugged individualist (see: Randian adolescent power fantasy) is here.

This, of course, is reality. But in the world of the conservative blogsphere, we are all on a Road To Serfdom.

The Road to Serfdom was book written in the early 1940s by Friedrich von Hayek in which he warned of the coming tyranny of government controlled and centrally planned economies. His ideas have been co-opted today by many on the right in the vain (and sad) attempt to add intellectual shine to a fervent ideology. It's quite pathetic, really, considering how out of date Hayek's ideas are giving our current global and economic framework.

Honestly, his theories were never all that sound to begin with when you consider the clear results of unfettered markets. We've seen it a lot in the last 30 years and we really aren't that far off from Polanyi's chief criticism of Hayek: It's actually Serfdom's ideas that will lead to fascism. In the case of our country, it's the corporate bend of this ideology with a small group of people controlling both our nation's wealth and the government.

Interestingly, the recently defrocked (for not being a pure conservative...whatever that means), David Frum agrees with me. He wrote a column a while back entitled "We're not on a road to serfdom." and I have to say, it's brilliant.

The story of the past 50 years has been that the American economy has become freer and more dynamic.

Think back to 1960. The federal government regulated the price of every airfare. It regulated every rail, truck and shipping route. It regulated the price of natural gas. It regulated stockbrokers' commissions. It regulated the interest rates that could be paid on checking accounts. It told most farmers how much they could grow of what commodity. It regulated what kind of political and religious comment could be expressed on the airwaves. And of course it conscripted millions of young men beginning their careers into the armed forces.

All of that is gone, gone, gone.

It sure is gone and that's why we have all the problems we have today. Of course, Frum would never admit this but that's the narrow tunnel of his ideology entrapping him.

Yet conservatives sell our own accomplishments and principles short when they represent them as so fragile. The fact is: our win-loss ratio is actually pretty good. Free-market ideas have rescued states in much worse trouble than post-Obama America: Mao's China to name one outstanding example.

Of course they do because there always has to be an enemy. Time is always running out and they's always comin' to gin us!

One would think they would be thankful today, on this day of giving thanks, with the current state of affairs...CEOs making ridiculous amounts of money...Wall Street continuing to be up to its old tricks....Warren Buffet being taxed at a rate of half of his secretary...and the wealthiest 1 percent of our nation holding over a third of its wealth...the next four percent making it nearly two thirds. It's just the way they like it, right?

Wrong. They want more.

So who are the fascists again?

Twas the night before Thanksgiving...

....and Mark has a question for all of you.

Would Sarah Palin be as much of a force in politics today if she was 300 pounds and/or ugly?

If the answer is no, what does that tell you about her base? Our culture?

Are the Republicans are Turning Us into China?

For the past two years Republicans have been calling Obama a socialist and a communist, insisting that his policies will destroy the American economy. But if we look at the economies of the world today, who's doing the best?

Without a doubt, it's China. The country run by the Communist Party of Mao has a centralized command economy that has harnessed the capitalist plow horse under the socialist yoke. China has bought hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US Treasury bills, propping up the US economy. China dictates trade policy to the world, coming into their full power during the Bush administration.

So, how is this economic miracle possible? Well, the workers who build all those computers and TVs and iPads get paid dirt, and are treated like dirt. Unions are run by the Communist Party, which also runs management. China has essentially no environmental regulations: remember how they had to shut down all their factories for weeks to host the Olympics? They burn so much coal the skies over Beijing are a perpetual filthy brown. And, finally, American and European companies have turned their backs on their own workers, first shifting production to China and are now sending high-tech design centers to China. Companies like Walmart, with their insistence on constantly-decreased prices (and, incidentally, quality) have forced most of their American suppliers to produce their goods in China.

In other words, China has become what the United States and Britain were in the 1890s: a land where government and big business are one, and workers have no control over their own fates.

The old notions of communism and capitalism no longer make any sense. What matters now is how much control average people have over their own lives, and the quality of life (clean air, clean water, reasonable working hours, decent pay and housing, etc.).

China has reached the point where government has absorbed big business and the two have merged into one. The Republicans and their big business backers are doing the same thing from the other direction: big business is swallowing Republican politicians and therefore government, giving business a free hand to do whatever they please. Big business can spend unlimited amounts of cash to buy elections now; it doesn't always work (ask Meg Whitman), but in a close race it makes all the difference.

And it's not just me saying that this is what Republicans think: remember the heartfelt apology Joe Barton gave BP during the hearings about the Gulf oil spill? All the Republicans were saying the same thing he was, except he that he gushed as much as the oil well in his fawning over BP. And all throughout the election Republicans keep screaming about reducing regulations despite the fact that in the last nine years the lack of regulation and the lack of enforcement of existing regulations has resulted in some of the the largest financial and environmental calamities we've ever seen.

And don't get me wrong. Some Democrats have been co-opted by big business as well. They're too comfortable with Wall Street and Big Energy. But as a party and an ideology, the Democrats clearly want to maintain a healthy separation between government and big business, while the Republicans are running headlong into the government/big business/no regulation singularity.

The Republicans are leading us to the same place that China is today. Just from the other direction.

Helping the Terrorists Win

Recently there's been an uproar over body scanners at airports. People are worried about X-ray dosages and the invasion of privacy. Others are calling for mass protests to opt out of scans and getting a pat-down instead, and many of those same people are then screaming that they don't want to be touched. This will cause massive slowdowns and cost lots of money in delays.

Those people are helping the terrorists win.

The purpose of the 9/11 attacks, the shoe and underwear bombers, and the recent printer toner cartridge bombs is not to inflict maximum carnage. It's to inflict maximum economic distress, to slow down our economy and make us change the way we do business. They want to raise fears in the American public to demand security measures which would then make the cost of doing business so high that it will eventually bankrupt us. They want us to make people fear and hate our government by making our government do things people hate.

The Republicans have aided and abetted the terrorists the whole time. Every time Bush needed a push in the polls in the 2004 election he'd jack up the terror alert level to orange. The Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security (that name still gives me Orwellian chills) and the TSA as sprawling bureaucracies with the mandate to invade our privacy and make us take off our shoes every time we board a plane, tap our phone messages and read our email.

The current scanner brouhaha was started during the Bush administration, which ordered the installation of the machines at airports. So far the whiners are complaining about having their junk touched. But in another few weeks I'm sure we'll be into full-blown nut-case conspiracy mode, where right-wingers insist that Obama's socialist/communist/fascist agenda is behind all this, and Janet Napolitano wants to get pictures of us all naked and let child molesters cop feels.

The terrorists behind the recent package bombing attempts recently published an article about their exploits. They claimed the whole thing only cost them about $4,200 to pull off. Think about it. They only had to spend 4,000 bucks to get us to spend billions of dollars in additional security measures. If terrorism were a business it would have the biggest profit margin ever.

Which really makes you wonder: Bush used the terrorism card to get votes. How many of these guys are using terrorism to get rich? Well, at least one: Michael Chertoff, the former DHS secretary under Bush, has been pushing for full-body scans now for years. It turned out that he also shills for the company that makes the scanners.

To be honest, I'm surprised that the security backlash has taken this long. I've always felt that the reaction to 9/11 was overblown, that we've sold our privacy and our souls and wasted billions of dollars on security measures that do very little, and actually make us feel less safe. I didn't think it would take us nine years to get tired of all this nonsense at airports. We're not as courageous and clear-sighted as I thought we were

And to make matters worse, the scanners are already obsolete. Al Qaeda doesn't bother doing the same thing twice once they've failed. They also take their time plotting their next big thing, often waiting years before the next attempt. The shoe bomb didn't work, and the underwear bomb didn't work. What's next?

Al Qaeda has already attempted an assassination using a bomb hidden in a body cavity. They haven't tried this on a plane yet, but if they do no body scanner will detect it. Another question: are body scanners being used at the foreign airports where the shoe and underwear bombers boarded?

Right now the nexus of terrorism seems to be Yemen, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, all ostensible allies. That tells us something very important: anti-Americanism flows from internal dissent. We're in the middle of a domestic squabble. In a way, that's a good thing. Getting out from between two feuding brothers should be easier than toppling a dictatorship or stopping a madman from getting nuclear weapons.

The terrorists are using attacks on America to coerce us into changing our policies toward their countries. And it works: the prima facie reason bin Laden attacked us was because of the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, where they had been stationed since Gulf War. Bush pulled all our troops from that country in 2003, giving bin Laden exactly what he wanted.

Terrorists attack us because they believe the US is occupying their country, American companies are interfering with their lives and prosperity, or the US is propping up an illegitimate regime. We need to seriously examine what we're doing in those countries and ask ourselves whether it's helping or hurting us.

Worth A Million Words

Our culture is very visual these days so I think it's important that we see the difference between the Democrat's tax plans and the GOP tax plans.

Now, I hear a lot of mouth foaming about how the Democrats are all rich too and they bend over backwards (and forwards) for the wealthy just like the GOP does. But I don't really see it here. Why would they make a tax policy that cut into their profits? Why would guys like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and George Soros promote policies that dictate less tax breaks for the wealthy? I guess there's my answer and then there's the unreality of the fact free zone.

Seriously, though, look at the top bracket. How can you not laugh?

Give Me My Damn Government Health Care...Stat!

In what has to be the finest example of hypocrisy I have EVER seen (and I've seen quite a bit every day on here and in the political world), Andy Harris, the newly elected Maryland GOP Congressmen, demanded his government health care a month early.

Apparently, Rep. Harris, who ran on an anti-Obamacare platform, was at an orientation meeting and wondered when his government run health care was available to utilize. Apparently, it doesn't kick in until Feb 1, 2011 which he was not happy with at all. "He stood up and asked the ladies who were answering questions why it took so long, what he would do without 28 days of health care," a congressional staffer related.

Why, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Dr. Harris!

Dr. Harris then wondered if he could buy his insurance early. No, Dr. Harris, you can't. Sorry...we don't have that option with health care. Remember, socialized medicine is a boiling pit of sewage.

Check out this clip of Dr. Harris demonizing government run health care.



What a tool...

Well, Let's Hear It!

I've done it. I have balanced the United States federal budget.

Click here for Mark's results!

I'd like to see how the rest of you would fair. It's easy to reset and do your own so get on with it. I've heard a lot of griping about the government but now YOU are in charge. What cuts will you make? How will you balance the budget?

Cut and paste your link in comments. I expect to hear from all of my regulars.

Lame Ducks (In Every Sense of the Word)

The lame duck Congress reconvenes this week and the Democrats will have their curtain call. Anyone out there think they will do anything worthwhile?

I don't.

In fact, I think they will do their usual pussy dance and cower in fear of the now much further right GOP. They could repeal "Don't ask, don't tell" but they won't because people like John McCain, who said we would repeal the law if the generals gave the OK, has now gone back on that because he wants to stay in good graces with the anti gay crowd on the right. The Democrats will follow suit and, even though 70 percent of the country favors repeal, give in (once again) to the very vocal and VERY bigoted minority. (side rant: This would be a classic example of how the minority wins time and again for those of you who have wondered. It's related to spinal muscular atrophy.) The Democrats could do something on immigration or energy. But they won't. Again, their complete lack of spine will send them cowering in fear in the face of the likes of the Koch brothers. But these issues aren't even the worst transgression. That trophy belongs to the Bush tax cuts.

I think we can all agree that making all the tax cuts (save for the top 2 percent of nation's earners) permanent is a good thing. It is my view that the middle class drives this economy and letting their tax cuts expire in a recession is a monumentally stupid thing.

But the tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of this country should expire. Why? First, they aren't going to end up paying those taxes anyway because they will move their money around and pay less due to the simple fact that they can afford teams of lawyers and accountants. Second, the MYTH that the less the rich are taxed the more they invest in the economy has been completely torpedoed. They don't invest in shit except derivatives and hedge funds that simply make them more money. Third, they will make the deficit much worse. Cry all you want about spending but until you show me where you are going to stand up and make cuts, we are going to need more revenue. We'll need it anyway.

Finally, they should pay more because they are wealthy.

Now, I know all of you charity-to-the-wealthy lovers just had an epileptic seizure and began to foam at the mouth about redistribution of wealth/socialism/guns/statism blah blah blah. And I know how offensive it is to ask criminals, who risk our money-not theirs, to part with their ill gotten millions. But one of the men that you tout as being an authority on how markets should be run has said as much. That man's name is Adam Smith.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Mr. Smith, he wrote a masterpiece on free market economics called The Wealth of Nations (1776). The basic gist of his treatise is that there should be as little government interference in the market and "the invisible hand" should be allowed to work its magic. This invisible hand is roughly defined as men acting in their own self interest will unknowingly serve the interests of other, less fortunate members of society.

Setting aside the fact (which many libertarians and right wingers conveniently ignore) that the terms "economics" and "capitalism" weren't in use at the time of his writing, those who tout Smith completely fail to point out this line from the piece.

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.

Or this one.

The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Or this one (especially dedicated to those of you who howl at me about your money being taken by the butt of a gun)

Every tax, however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty. It denotes that he is the subject of government;,indeed but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

In other words, progressive taxes are fair, honest, and what work best. Bear in mind that Smith saw all this from a society that was a dominated by feudalism. I wonder what he would think of out little plutonomy today given the similarities....hmmm....

Anyway, the Democrats, in light of these obvious truths, should draw a line in the sand (like the right always does and invariably succeeds) and tell the minority for the next 6 weeks to pound salt up their ass. Bring a vote to the floor for the middle class tax cuts only and, if the GOP has an eight year old boy temper tantrum, let them try to explain to the American people, upon taking over in January 2011, how they let all the tax cuts expire. In other words, play HARDBALL like the right does all the time. Democrats should send a two word message to the GOP in this lame duck session.

"Fuck" and "Off."

Bill channels Markadelphia

On any normal day, I'm the one that usually channels my inner Maher and riffs off of it. A couple of weeks back, though, I think it was the reverse.

During his final New Rule on November 5, 2010, Maher lamented the Stewart-Colbert rally and, at several points during the commentary, he sounded just like me.

You see, Republicans keep staking out position that is further and further right and then demand that the Democrats meet them in the middle. Which is now not the middle anymore.

Sound familiar? It should because I've been saying it for years now. In a non Bizzaro world, I am center left. In a world that has been consumed by the right wing blogsphere and the likes of pathological ideologues like Thomas Sowell, I am condemned as a communist.

Of course, it's not entirely their fault.

And the biggest mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance's sake; that the left is just as cruel and violent as the right; that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism.

Until more people stand up and call the Right for what it is now, we will continue to have this distorted view of reality. Unfortunately, this is going to either require large quantities of cash or for people not care about cash and actually think. The latter is going to be a tough row to hoe.

The simple fact is that these people have convinced millions of American citizens that donating money to rich people is a good thing. And protecting the wealth of rich people against the Big Bad Wolf (government) is the very definition of freedom. Talk about useful idiots....

Here's the full clip:

Martin Luther King spoke on that mall in the capital, and he didn't say, "Remember, folks, those sheriffs with with the fire hoses and the German Shepherds, they had a point too!" No. He said, "I have a dream. They have a nightmare."

Indeed. Make no mistake about it. It IS a nightmare. Like Bill, I'm through pretending.

The Fact Free Zone

I've been quite amused watching the feud between Sarah Palin and the Wall Street Journal. It's a pretty good indicator as to what her presidency might be like.

Air Force General: Madam President., here are the facts. The F-22 can't land on aircraft carriers. It's land based.

President Palin (winking): Oh...c'mon there now, General. Let's just hook up a couple of static lines and we'll be good to go...you betcha!

It still amazes me that people think she is qualified to be president.

Friday Funnies

Why We Fight

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

----General Dwight David Eishenhower

Find a veteran today...take their hand...thank them for the service.

WTF Has Obama Done?

Extended benefits of same sex partners of federal employees.

In A Nutshell

If an alien were to land on our planet and wonder what the difference between a Democrat and a Republican was in how they governed, Andy at electoral-vote.com summed it up perfectly the other day.

The Democratic Party wants government to help the sick, the weak, the poor, and the middle class in their perpetual struggle for a better life against powerful forces that want to exploit them. The Republicans oppose this and believe it is "every man for himself." They want a smaller government that intrudes less in people's lives (except when it comes to anything touching sex, like abortion and homosexuality, in which case the government should dictate acceptable behavior).

I suppose I get why people are against abortion because they see it as murder. That's fine. But why all the anti-contraception stuff then? More importantly, why do they care so much about gay marriage? It makes no sense to me whatsoever coming from the same crowd who is pathologically against government intrusion into people's lives.

In our state we are currently going through yet another recount. Should the battle drag on past January, Tim Pawlenty has vowed to stay on as governor with the Republicans having won back both houses in the state legislature. Their first priority?

A state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

WTF Has Obama Done?

Tax Cuts for up to 3.5 million small businesses to help pay for employee health coverage.

The Sharia Strawman

A judge has blocked the so-called "Sharia law" amendment in Oklahoma. This law, supposedly intended to prevent Sharia and foreign law from taking hold in America, was never about that. It was always about inflaming the electorate, raising up a bogeyman that never existed. In short, another Republican election stunt.

The law, called State Question 775, forbids courts “from considering or using international law” and “from considering or using Sharia Law.”

The US legal system is based on Anglo-Saxon common law. Many of the original thirteen colonies have clauses in their constitutions stating that British common law should be used where state and federal laws have no precedents. The Northwest Ordinance passed by the Congress of the Confederation (the interim Congress before the Constitution was enacted) in 1787 said that common law would be used to adjudicate cases. Every state in the Union uses common law except Louisiana, which uses Napoleonic law.

For centuries -- before and ever since the Revolution -- American courts have cited English common law cases -- international law -- in their decisions. That means that it has always been perfectly reasonable for American judges to cite common law decisions from England, Scotland and Wales. It's also reasonable to consider common law decisions from other common law nations, which include Malaysia, Singapore, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, Ghana, Cameroon, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong and Australia. And since Louisiana is based on Napoleonic law, it's reasonable for them to cite decisions from France and French colonies.

If Oklahoma wants to forbid courts from considering decisions in China, Russia, Myanmar, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Burkina Faso, that's one thing -- we don't have any legal history with those countries. But you just can't toss out four centuries of American judicial precedent because you hate Muslims and "activist judges."

But what about Sharia law? In the original case that sparked this whole mess, a judge decided against a restraining order a wife requested against her abusive husband. The judge said the man was abiding by his Muslim beliefs regarding spousal duties.

First, this decision was overturned. So the application of Sharia law in New Jersey? Not happening.

Second, and more importantly, his decision was not based on Sharia law. This was based on the man's belief. If that man was a Christian or Jew who believed the same thing (and there are plenty of them), the judge would have ruled the same. Courts often take into account the beliefs and fears of the individuals when making decisions and imposing sentences. For example, in many jurisdictions you can shoot someone in cold blood if you are afraid. Don't believe it? Well, consider the case of Yoshihiro Hattori, the Japanese kid who was shot and killed in Louisiana one Halloween. The police didn't even think the shooter should be charged. He was finally tried and acquitted because Louisiana lets you shoot burglars, which of course the Japanese kid was not. But the killer thought he was, and was afraid. So he got 007 status.

Finally, some judges are, to put it kindly, loathe to grant restraining orders against husbands who demand spousal benefits. They pretend that the courts shouldn't get involved in family disputes. So they reach for any handy reason to give for why they think the man should get his way. The growing number of dead wives is a testament to this short-sightedness.

So, if the danger of Sharia law having any effect in Oklahoma is nil, why did they bring this up? Was Rex Duncan, the Oklahoma representative who authored the amendment, woefully ignorant of the huge body of international Anglo-Saxon common law precedents cited in American jurisprudence? Or did he knowingly and willfully ignore this and press ahead with this amendment because it serves his political purposes? The same purposes that were served by all the screaming about the Ground Zero mosque? Which, by the way, isn't a mosque (it has basketball courts!) and isn't at Ground Zero.

It's one thing to spout lies and nonsense on FOX News to get your guys elected. But messing with the Constitution of your state to score political points is unethical, immoral and downright dangerous.

WTF Has Obama Done?

Starting today, and going into the foreseeable future, will be a new prologue to each post. WTF has Obama done so far? is a very wonderful web site that has been making the rounds on FaceBook and it's just too good to not do a similar deal here.

So, just like a "thought of the day" or a "word of the day," I will be showcasing our president's accomplishments here. Today's WTF...

Established a Credit Card Bill of Rights, preventing credit card companies from imposing arbitrary rate increases on customers.

Saving Capitalism

Beginning when in the middle of FDR's first term, strict regulation and oversight of the financial sector of this country began. For nearly five decades, as a result of these policies, our nation's economy suffered no serious financial crises.

But then an era of deregulation began and financial crises have now become a cyclical thing. We have seen several over the last three decades and will continue to see them even with the new financial reform bill passed by the Democrats in Congress and President Obama. Certainly the bill is a start but it's nowhere close to the barriers we need to break the deadly interconnectivity between the various financial institutions in this country. The massive tide of greed and OCD we have in our culture towards money will be an Everest like mountain to conquer.

Adding insult to injury is the fact that deans and professors of our country's most respected economics schools (Harvard, Columbia, Yale) are all whores for the private financial sector--filling up the minds of students with drivel about the benefits of a truly free and unregulated market. The amount of money that these men make from the likes of AIG and Goldman Sachs in sitting on their boards is in direct conflict with their duty, as educators, to be impartial and unbiased when assessing economic trends.

These professors, along with their partners in crime (literally) on Wall Street, have set up a narrative which essentially paints the Democrats, and their leader President Obama, as being socialists who want to redistribute wealth and destroy free market capitalism. Ironic, because it was these same people who begged the United States government to be bailed out of their mess created by blind greed and compulsion. But this is a small irony compared to one very massive and titanic fact.

President Obama saved capitalism.

In a recent piece in the New York Times, Timothy Egan successfully argues that this is exactly what happened.

Suppose you had $100,000 to invest on the day Barack Obama was inaugurated....As of election day, Nov. 2, 2010, your $100,000 was worth about $177,000 if invested strictly in the NASDAQ average for the entirety of the Obama administration, and $148,000 if bet on the Standard & Poors 500 major companies. This works out to returns of 77 percent and 48 percent.

Not bad, hmmm? Imagine investing that money in January of 2007 and seeing the result on Election Day 2008. The drop would give even the strongest heart great pains.

Of course, markets aren't entirely a measure of what drives our economy, as Egan points out. So let's take a look at the banks and the auto industry--the "two motors that drive our economy."

The banking system was resuscitated by $700 billion in bailouts started by Bush (a fact unknown by a majority of Americans), and finished by Obama, with help from the Federal Reserve. It worked. The government is expected to break even on a risky bet to stabilize the global free market system. Had Obama followed the populist instincts of many in his party, the underpinnings of big capitalism could have collapsed. He did this without nationalizing banks, as other Democrats had urged.

These are indisputable facts. What is also not up for debate in how thankless the banks are. They know that they were part of the problem but don't want to admit to it. Nor do they want to admit that this small form of socialism saved their asses.

Saving the American auto industry, which has been a huge drag on Obama’s political capital, is a monumental achievement that few appreciate, unless you live in Michigan. After getting their taxpayer lifeline from Obama, both General Motors and Chrysler are now making money by making cars. New plants are even scheduled to open. More than 1 million jobs would have disappeared had the domestic auto sector been liquidated.

Also, completely indisputable facts although I'm sure many who are highly emotional and sensitive about the government will try.

“An apology is due Barack Obama,” wrote The Economist, which had opposed the $86 billion auto bailout. As for Government Motors: after emerging from bankruptcy, it will go public with a new stock offering in just a few weeks, and the United States government, with its 60 percent share of common stock, stands to make a profit. Yes, an industry was saved, and the government will probably make money on the deal — one of Obama’s signature economic successes.

Interest rates are at record lows. Corporate profits are lighting up boardrooms; it is one of the best years for earnings in a decade.

Profits indeed. Corporations are borrowing at record low rates but they aren't hiring. That's where the problem lies. Why is this? Well, greed is the overriding factor. The real reason, though, is they are seeing how long they can hold out on jobs and hopefully force the federal government to ease the new (and paltry) regulations. They want to see if they can get away with it and the latest election proves that they just might. The champions of deregulation have won again...even though that is the EXACT reason why things got so fucked up in the first place.

“I think corporate America is in fabulous shape,” said, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase told a meeting of The Business Council, a group whose 150 by-invitation-only members personify industrial and financial power.

Really? Huh. I thought the Democrats were destroying capitalism and redistributing wealth. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

Does President Barack Obama deserve credit for the fact that corporate profits have risen faster under him than during any other 18-month period since the 1920s?

Profits have surged 62 percent from the start of 2009 to mid-2010, according to the Commerce Department. That is faster than any other year and a half in the Fabulous ’50s, the Go-Go ’60s or the booms under Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton

Under another president, especially a Republican president, the data on corporate profits would be envied. George W. Bush, who dedicated a good deal of his presidency to tax cuts aimed at boosting business profits, probably would have loved such results. It took Bush nearly four years to post the gains that Obama has managed in less than half the time.

To answer the first question, yes, he does deserve the credit. The more accurate question is why isn't he getting it? The answer, thankfully, is simple.

His opponents don't like him, they hate being wrong, their chief goal is to win the argument regardless of facts, and they want him to fail. In other words, their frustration, which extends to many more emotional issues than just this list (more on that later), propels them to very narrow minded thinking. This tunnel vision is the guide to their pathological ideology.

Obama is wrong. No. Matter. What.

Egan carries this idea further.

All of the above is good for capitalism, and should end any serious-minded discussion about Obama the socialist. But more than anything, the fact that the president took on the structural flaws of a broken free enterprise system instead of focusing on things that the average voter could understand explains why his party was routed on Tuesday. Obama got on the wrong side of voter anxiety in a decade of diminished fortunes.

The three signature accomplishments of his first two years — a health care law that will make life easier for millions of people, financial reform that attempts to level the playing field with Wall Street, and the $814 billion stimulus package — have all been recast as big government blunders, rejected by the emerging majority.

But each of them, in its way, should strengthen the system. The health law will hold costs down, while giving millions the chance at getting care, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Financial reform seeks to prevent the kind of meltdown that caused the global economic collapse. And the stimulus, though it drastically raised the deficit, saved about 3 million jobs, again according to the CBO. It also gave a majority of taxpayers a one-time cut — even if 90 percent of Americans don’t know that, either.

I disagree with him on the financial reform package in light of the evidence presented in Inside Job. But the fact remains that the president took all of the actions that he did to save capitalism-just as FDR did with even more stringent regulations.

And, even though no one has noticed yet, he has accomplished that goal.

They will whine a fierce storm, the manipulators of great wealth. A war on business, they will claim. Not even close. Obama saved them, and the biggest cost was to him.

The Perils of Imprisoning Illegal Aliens

Benson, Arizona is the theme song for the cult classic film Dark Star, produced by John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon (of Aliens fame). It's not all that far from Tombstone. It was also the proposed site of a prison for women and children.

Yeah, a prison for women and children. According to Glenn Nichols, city manager of Benson, last year two men came to him to propose building a private prison to house illegal immigrants. You see, unbeknownst to Nichols, illegal immigrants were about to become big business in Arizona.

This was before all the noise caused by Arizona passing the "driving while Hispanic" law. Somehow these two guys knew that there was going to be a big demand for imprisoning women and children.

According to NPR's research, private prison companies like the Corrections Corporation of America had a hand in writing Arizona's immigration law. The law was drafted last December in Washington by ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). This organization consists of conservative legislators, including Sen. Russell Pearce of Arizona, who sponsored the immigration law, and has members like Reynolds Tobacco, ExxonMobil, NRA and Corrections Corporation of America.

ALEC called the law the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act." This was the same name as the law signed by Jan Brewer that has caused such a stir. It appears that private companies are pushing this whole anti-immigrant thing just to make a buck. And they are disgustingly coy about it.

From the NPR story:

In May, The Geo Group [another private prison corporation] had a conference call with investors. When asked about the bill, company executives made light of it, asking, "Did they have some legislation on immigration?"

After company officials laughed, the company's president, Wayne Calabrese, cut in.

"This is Wayne," he said. "I can only believe the opportunities at the federal level are going to continue apace as a result of what's happening. Those people coming across the border and getting caught are going to have to be detained and that for me, at least I think, there's going to be enhanced opportunities for what we do."

Opportunities that prison companies helped create.

Private prison corporations -- and to be fair, prison guard unions -- have been pushing for harsher punishments for decades, to keep their prisons filled. The draconian drug laws we have on the books fill our prisons with non-violent drug offenders who are quickly turned into hardened criminals by their stints in prison. We have the highest incarceration rate in the world, and coincidentally, we have 264 private prisons.

Of course Pearce and CCA deny the company had any hand in this legislation. But thirty of the 36 sponsors of the Arizona law got money from private prison companies. Two of Jan Brewer's advisors are former prison company lobbyists.

And the whole thing is kind of weird because most people think that when you catch illegal immigrants you just send them back to where they came from and you're done with them. But no, there are billions of dollars to be made while warehousing men, women and children. Billions of dollars that you and I are paying to hunt down guys who just want to make 5 bucks an hour picking tomatoes, which coincidentally keeps you from paying 10 bucks a pound for tomatoes.

You can bicker about how inefficient government-run prisons are. But in the end, it just seems wrong for companies to profit from other people's misery. Because we all know that if there's a profit motive someone is going to take advantage of it. And don't think it hasn't already happened, it has: former Wilkes-Barre, PA judge Mark Ciavarella pleaded guilty in 2009 for accepting kickbacks to send kids to a private for-profit juvenile correctional facility. Ciavarella was finally exposed when he sent a high-school girl to the correctional facility for three months for making a MySpace parody of an assistant principal.

I'm not suggesting that CCA's hand in drafting the legislation was illegal. But why are they trying to keep it secret? Why are they afraid of letting the rest of us know the truth? Why do so many conservatives who complain about government spending always want to funnel more and more government spending into companies like CCA, Blackwater -- excuse me, Xe Services, Halliburton, and Bechtel?

Just as there are places where the government shouldn't intrude, there are places private corporations should stay out of, prisons being one of those places. Inflicting punishment on human beings shouldn't be part of any corporation's bottom line.

Oh, and if you haven't seen Dark Star, it's a hoot: a low-budget science fiction spoof that hilariously shows the perils of imprisoning illegal aliens.