Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 - 3:58 pm:

The Daily Left - Bush Says Torture Still Necessary

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Bush Says Torture Still Necessary; Obama Backs Off Torture Prosecutions; Hate Groups Use Bad Economy As Recruiting Tool; Dangerous Levels of Coal Ash Pile Up Across America.

Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 - 5:49 pm:

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Greed, corruption, and destruction. Those are the best
words we have found that accurately describe corporate America. From
bailouts to buyouts, labor violations to environmental degradation,
corporations are breaking laws and asking for handouts more than ever
before. Robert Weissman, editor of the Multinational Monitor, joins
Ring of Fire's Mike Papantonio to talk about the 10 worst corporations
of 2008.

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• Improper political influence
• Deregulation and non-enforcement
• Short-term thinking
• Financialization
• Profit over social use
• Externalized costs

Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 - 10:42 pm:

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shear?

Posted on Monday, January 12, 2009 - 10:48 pm:

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Improper political influence: Corporations dominate the policy-making process, from city councils to global institutions like the World Trade Organization. Over the last 30 years, and especially in the last decade, Wall Street interests leveraged their political power to remove many of the regulations that had restricted their activities. There are at least a dozen separate and significant examples of this, including the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which permitted the merger of banks and investment banks. In a form of corporate civil disobedience, Citibank and Travelers Group merged in 1998 — a move that was illegal at the time, but for which they were given a two-year forbearance — on the assumption that they would be able to force a change in the relevant law. They did, with the help of just-retired (at the time) Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who went on to an executive position at the newly created Citigroup.

Deregulation and non-enforcement: Non-enforcement of rules against predatory lending helped the housing bubble balloon. While some regulators had sought to exert authority over financial derivatives, they were stopped by finance-friendly figures in the Clinton administration and Congress — enabling the creation of the credit default swap market. Even Alan Greenspan concedes that that market — worth $55 trillion in what is called notional value — is imploding in significant part because it was not regulated.

Short-term thinking: It was obvious to anyone who cared to look at historical trends that the United States was experiencing a housing bubble. Many in the financial sector seemed to have convinced themselves that there was no bubble. But others must have been more clear-eyed. In any case, all the Wall Street players had an incentive not to pay attention to the bubble. They were making stratospheric annual bonuses based on annual results. Even if they were certain the bubble would pop sometime in the future, they had every incentive to keep making money on the upside.

Financialization: Profits in the financial sector were more than 35 percent of overall U.S. corporate profits in each year from 2005 to 2007, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Instead of serving the real economy, the financial sector was taking over the real economy.

Profit over social use: Relatedly, the corporate-driven economy was being driven by what could make a profit, rather than what would serve a social purpose. Although Wall Street hucksters offered elaborate rationalizations for why exotic financial derivatives, private equity takeovers of firms, securitization and other so-called financial innovations helped improve economic efficiency, by and large these financial schemes served no socially useful purpose.

Externalized costs: Worse, the financial schemes didn’t just create money for Wall Street movers and shakers and their investors. They made money at the expense of others. The costs of these schemes were foisted onto workers who lost jobs at firms gutted by private equity operators, unpayable loans acquired by homeowners who bought into a bubble market (often made worse by unconscionable lending terms), and now the public.

What is most revealing about the financial meltdown and economic crisis, however, is that it illustrates that corporations — if left to their own worst instincts — will destroy themselves and the system that nurtures them. It is rare that this lesson is so graphically illustrated. It is one the world must quickly learn, if we are to avoid the most serious existential threat we have yet faced: climate change.

Of course, the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and we do not want them to escape justified scrutiny. In keeping with our tradition of highlighting diverse forms of corporate wrongdoing, we include only one financial company on the 10 Worst list. Here, presented in alphabetical order, are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008.

• AIG
• Cargill
• Chevron
• CNPC
• Constellation Energy
• Dole
• General Electric
• Imperial Sugar
• Philip Morris Int’l.
• Roche

Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 4:50 pm:

The Daily Left - Obama Orders Close Of Gitmo

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Obama Ordering Closure of Gitmo; Bush Gets Misty-Eyed at Press Conference; Burris To Be Next Illinois Senator.

Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 5:16 pm:

Headzup: Blagojevich's New Poem

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After being impeached by the Illinois House, Rob Blagojevich delivers a poem, then goes for a jog. Read more about it here -- Illinois House impeaches Blagojevich.

Download daily Catch and Release Comedy™ political cartoons to your mobile phone or iPod at http://www.headzup.tv.

Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 6:00 pm:

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Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire talks with comedian and cartoonist Matt Filipowicz (Headzup.tv) about some of the craziest and funniest news stories of the new year, including Alberto Gonzalez's claim that he's a victim of the "war on terror," and Ann Coulter's factually deficient new book.

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Posted on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 - 11:14 pm:

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Coulter's books are her opinions (not facts).

Posted on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 4:51 pm:

The Daily Left - "You Are Being Watched"

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White House Used Interns to Fill Empty Press Conference; Justice Department Sues Indiana For Discriminating Against Whites; ACLU Launches "You Are Being Watched" Campaign.

Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 3:29 pm:

The Daily Left - White House Computer Search Granted

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New EPA Head To Actually Rely On Science! ; Bank of America Begging for Bigger Bailout ; Court Grants Motion to Search White House Computers.

Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 3:46 pm:

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A glass of water for Mr. Batson

Posted on Thursday, January 15, 2009 - 4:26 pm:

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The collapse of mainstream media didn't happen overnight. It was the effort of years and years of work by the GOP, which culminated in the 1980's when Ronald Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine and loosened media ownership rules. As Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire explains, this paved the way for media consolidation and the decline of the American press.

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