More info please

They don't really mean it. It's just bluster to make themselves look "serious" and "ruthless" and "intellectually honest." The fact is: a complete meltdown of the U.S. financial sector would devastate the U.S. economy.

Does anyone have last night's Word from Colbert to submit? It was one of the best I've ever seen. He perfectly eviscerates the GOP's cynical attempt to keep people from asking substantive questions to/about McCain/Palin. Please, for the love of FSM, someone post it!

Bush family cleaning up on transfer of public lands to private hands

WMR has learned from a senior Democratic congressional source that the Bush family, most notably former President George H. W. Bush, is reaping windfall profits from the transfer of title of public federal and state lands to private hands. The elder Bush, according to our sources, has a vested financial interest in land title companies that specialize in the transfer of public lands to private interests.

The revelations represent the first evidence that the elder Bush has benefited from the transfer of public lands to private hands in a giant scheme to defraud federal and state governments, as well as the American taxpayers and Native Americans.

The land-grabbing scheme primarily involves the transfer of federal lands, including Native American lands and national forest system lands, in the Rocky Mountain West, state lands in Texas, and both federal and state lands in California, Mississippi, and Florida to private entities. The scheme is also at the center of the scandal surrounding jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff who conspired to privatize federal lands and assets around the country to benefit his corporate clients.

In 2004, under pressure from Abramoff and the White House, Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Jim Gibbons (R-NV) shepherded the passage of the Western Shoshone Distribution Act, which was quickly signed by President George W. Bush. The act settled federal violations of the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 with the Shoshones and compensated them a mere $135 million for 24 million acres of Shoshone land illegally seized by the federal government in Nevada, California, Utah, and Idaho. The Shoshones cried foul, saying their land is rich in gold reserves. Gibbons, who is now governor of Nevada, instantly moved legislation to privatize the former Shoshone lands. Reid, Gibbons, and Senator John Ensign (R-NV), all received lucrative cash contributions to their campaigns from Abramoff clients.

Bush White House official Jennifer Farley urged passage of the bill claiming that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were personally interested in its enactment, further adding that the legislation was considered “hot.” Cheney paid a visit to Nevada as the Senate voted to pass the bill.

The Washington Post reported that Farley and Karl Rove were recipients of sporting event tickets from Abramoff’s assistant Kevin Ring, arrested and jailed this past week for his involvement in the Abramoff bribery scandal. Farley termed tickets as “fruit” in her conversations with Ring. Abramoff, already serving a prison sentence for a guilty verdict from a Florida case, received an additional four years in prison last week for his role in the scandal, which has tainted a number of Republicans in Congress, as well as senior members of the Bush administration. Tony Rudy, another Abramoff assistant and a former deputy chief of staff to former Texas Republican Representative Tom DeLay, pleaded guilty in the bribery scandal.

WMR has also learned that the Bush administration ordered a number of California and other Western state forest wildfires purposefully set with the intention of damaging and destroying federal and state forestlands, thus making them ripe for exploitation and sale to private interests. California Republican Representative John Doolittle, also under investigation in the Abramoff bribery scandal, promoted the passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which permitted national forests to be purposefully thinned by timber companies to make them less susceptible to the fires, exacerbated by global warming, that were being set by others within the Bush administration. The purposeful destruction of federal forests was carried out with the knowledge of top officials of the Interior Department under both Interior Secretaries Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne.

In 2003, California law enforcement concluded that a number of devastating fires that destroyed 718,000 acres in the state were the result of arson. Some within the Bush administration suggested that “Al Qaeda” terrorists could be behind the blazes. It now appears that it was the Bush administration that was the actual terrorists in carrying out the arson to enrich their friends in the real estate, Indian gambling casino, mining, and other exploitation industries.

In Florida, under both Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, the St. Joe Company, a firm that has close financial ties to both Jeb and George H. W. Bush, has steadily encroached on lands adjacent to state and federal wildlife management preserves, state forests and parks, and national forests.

Hey, don't dump on that land developer. Maybe he understood what was going on and didn't participate, or dabbled but wasn't a pig, you gotta eat, and he has been waiting for the expected drop. Saving your money is also a practice of keeping your labor from government consumption. Perhaps he's a Buffett type capitalist.

It's a possibility.

America's fastest growing municipality was Las Vegas @ 10:

Hey, don't dump on that land developer. Maybe he understood what was going on and didn't participate, or dabbled but wasn't a pig, you gotta eat, and he has been waiting for the expected drop. Saving your money is also a practice of keeping your labor from government consumption. Perhaps he's a Buffett type capitalist.

It's a possibility.

You're right he's not a pig...

But he's still a vulture by all accounts....

this is the ultimate distribution of wealth, and something that the new deal was created to stop

i honestly heard a conservative pundit call social security, medicare and the tax credit being proposed by obama as welfare programs

at the same time he opined that obama wanted to raise taxes on those that "create the wealth"

question....can any corporation create wealth without its employees? so who are the true wealth creators?

do all those that make over 250k a year actually create wealth? how does loofa boy create wealth?

btw, can loofa boy be sued for defamation of character? this morning, in attempting to defend palin in regards troopergate, he called wooten a bad guy who tazers kids, then went on to misstate the public facts of the case, saying that wooten has tazed his stepson because the kid was showing bad behavior

I caution anyone here who has a high opinion of George Soros to do no research whatsoever on anything he ever did to take advantage of weak financial markets. Ignorance is bliss.

This reminds me of "zeitgeist the movie". You can watch it online. It kind of creeps into the tinfoil hat territory but is is very interesting. The part about banking reminds me very much of what we see happening now. The ultra rich set up a crash and then buy real assets for pennies on the dollar.

Uncle Joe Mccarthy @ 14:

I'd reverse the argument. A certain amount (and it's always debatable how much) of government redistribution is necessary to ensure the freedom of the markets.

Without capital-gains taxes, without anti-trust regulation, without estate taxes, and so forth, the concentration of wealth is pretty much inevitable. The rich get richer. An unregulated market can be shown to do many things in theory and in practice. But I've never seen any theory or practical example that showed it to distribute or redistribute wealth more evenly, rather than concentrate it.

And that destroys the freedom of the so-called free market. Because a monopoly is anything BUT a free marketplace.

John J @ 8:

Bush family cleaning up on transfer of public lands to private hands

WMR has learned from a senior Democratic congressional source that the Bush family, most notably former President George H. W. Bush, is reaping windfall profits from the transfer of title of public federal and state lands to private hands. The elder Bush, according to our sources, has a vested financial interest in land title companies that specialize in the transfer of public lands to private interests.

The revelations represent the first evidence that the elder Bush has benefited from the transfer of public lands to private hands in a giant scheme to defraud federal and state governments, as well as the American taxpayers and Native Americans.

The land-grabbing scheme primarily involves the transfer of federal lands, including Native American lands and national forest system lands, in the Rocky Mountain West, state lands in Texas, and both federal and state lands in California, Mississippi, and Florida to private entities. The scheme is also at the center of the scandal surrounding jailed GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff who conspired to privatize federal lands and assets around the country to benefit his corporate clients.

In 2004, under pressure from Abramoff and the White House, Senators Harry Reid (D-NV) and Jim Gibbons (R-NV) shepherded the passage of the Western Shoshone Distribution Act, which was quickly signed by President George W. Bush. The act settled federal violations of the Ruby Valley Treaty of 1863 with the Shoshones and compensated them a mere $135 million for 24 million acres of Shoshone land illegally seized by the federal government in Nevada, California, Utah, and Idaho. The Shoshones cried foul, saying their land is rich in gold reserves. Gibbons, who is now governor of Nevada, instantly moved legislation to privatize the former Shoshone lands. Reid, Gibbons, and Senator John Ensign (R-NV), all received lucrative cash contributions to their campaigns from Abramoff clients.

Bush White House official Jennifer Farley urged passage of the bill claiming that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were personally interested in its enactment, further adding that the legislation was considered “hot.” Cheney paid a visit to Nevada as the Senate voted to pass the bill.

The Washington Post reported that Farley and Karl Rove were recipients of sporting event tickets from Abramoff’s assistant Kevin Ring, arrested and jailed this past week for his involvement in the Abramoff bribery scandal. Farley termed tickets as “fruit” in her conversations with Ring. Abramoff, already serving a prison sentence for a guilty verdict from a Florida case, received an additional four years in prison last week for his role in the scandal, which has tainted a number of Republicans in Congress, as well as senior members of the Bush administration. Tony Rudy, another Abramoff assistant and a former deputy chief of staff to former Texas Republican Representative Tom DeLay, pleaded guilty in the bribery scandal.

WMR has also learned that the Bush administration ordered a number of California and other Western state forest wildfires purposefully set with the intention of damaging and destroying federal and state forestlands, thus making them ripe for exploitation and sale to private interests. California Republican Representative John Doolittle, also under investigation in the Abramoff bribery scandal, promoted the passage of the Healthy Forests Restoration Act, which permitted national forests to be purposefully thinned by timber companies to make them less susceptible to the fires, exacerbated by global warming, that were being set by others within the Bush administration. The purposeful destruction of federal forests was carried out with the knowledge of top officials of the Interior Department under both Interior Secretaries Gale Norton and Dirk Kempthorne.

In 2003, California law enforcement concluded that a number of devastating fires that destroyed 718,000 acres in the state were the result of arson. Some within the Bush administration suggested that “Al Qaeda” terrorists could be behind the blazes. It now appears that it was the Bush administration that was the actual terrorists in carrying out the arson to enrich their friends in the real estate, Indian gambling casino, mining, and other exploitation industries.

In Florida, under both Governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, the St. Joe Company, a firm that has close financial ties to both Jeb and George H. W. Bush, has steadily encroached on lands adjacent to state and federal wildlife management preserves, state forests and parks, and national forests.

so basically the Administration sought to rush the transfer of coal and oil from public lands and waters into private hands at bargain prices...............hmmmm

dennis @ 16:

I caution anyone here who has a high opinion of George Soros to do no research whatsoever on anything he ever did to take advantage of weak financial markets. Ignorance is bliss.

I hold Soros in high regard, and I do not have any problems with what he did. If you want, you can do some research and find his justifications for it. But in short: He didn't create the system. He didn't advocate the failed policies that caused the situations he drew advantage of. And the fact is, he wasn't the only one in the game. Others would still have done it, even if he hadn't.

Bush family cleaning up on transfer of public lands to private hands

ohio progressive @ 18:

this is an unfair, irrational post-- about as sane as the baloney we hear/see on limbaugh and hannity...

so what now, you're calling for a bailout? i thought everyone was complaining that bear stearns was bailed out by the bushies, and now the liberal rant is that the bushies aren't bailing out wall street?...

makes no sense....

who is calling for a bail out?

the point is, the bushies allowed this to occur, because it hurts the little guy more than the uber rich...just like during the depression

and please change your nick...you are about as progressive as those aholes on fox

Nada @ 3:

So the goal of "conservatism" is to turn 'merika into the newest feudal country?
The corporate masters will be the vassals and we'll all be their happy little surfs.
For most of us it won't come as a surprise to be told we're property of the country/corporations.

I talking to my cousin the other day and I still think we're all going to be like those migrant workers in "The Grapes of Wrath" (John Steinbeck) except it will be the corporations looking for the cheapest labor migrating country to country. Any country that has a population that is willing to work for the rock bottom price offered by these corporations will get the opportunity to eat.

The surfs had it better (if you can call being one step up from being a slave) because the nobles couldn't run off looking for a better deal.

If it ends up the way I think it will we won't even be "surfs" or "property" just some pitiful group of people competing globally with other desperate people willing to pimp out our services for next to nothing just to basically survive.

I'm afraid I agree with them.

I can't afford a home. I want them to become affordable again.

Joementum @ 22:

See, the market may fail, but it's always right. We will never have another Great Depression. What we'll get instead is the Great Correction, which will make everyone feel better about being destitute.

what we get is worse than the great depression...because back then, there was still a manufacturing base...and there were still ways to regain and remake wealth

we now live in a service based economy, and for the life of me, i cant find another society who has endured as a result of a service based economy

Alexdem @ 13:

Nada @ 3:

So the goal of "conservatism" is to turn 'merika into the newest feudal country?
The corporate masters will be the vassals and we'll all be their happy little surfs.
For most of us it won't come as a surprise to be told we're property of the country/corporations.

Hey now.. as someone of noble heritage I won't stand for slandering feudalism like that! It worked great for us. ;)

Seriously though.. feudalism was in fact more socially responsible than capitalism is. Nobles were tied to their land. They couldn't sell it, much less outsource it. And their serfs/peasants were tied to it as well. The nobleman was dependent on them. He couldn't just lay them off in a year with a bad harvest. On the contrary, they were expected to help 'em out in that situation - out of pure self-interest if for no other reason.

The surfs were also part of the property and you may not have been able to sell them but killing them wasn't a big deal.
Slavery is slavery no matter how nicely the master treats you.

America has always been a nation with a Free Market Economy. It works. If you want Socialism, go to Venezuela and see how they are doing, with incredible crime rates, nothing in the stores, and worthless currency. Distribution of Wealth by Mandate DOES NOT WORK. Never has. Never will. The only people who bitch about capitalism are those who don't think they have a big enough piece of the pie and are not willing to work for it. Don't covet your neighbor's house, or his ox, or his servant, or his potroast, GO GET YOUR OWN!

capnmike @ 36:

America has always been a nation with a Free Market Economy. It works. If you want Socialism, go to Venezuela and see how they are doing, with incredible crime rates, nothing in the stores, and worthless currency. Distribution of Wealth by Mandate DOES NOT WORK. Never has. Never will. The only people who bitch about capitalism are those who don't think they have a big enough piece of the pie and are not willing to work for it. Don't covet your neighbor's house, or his ox, or his servant, or his potroast, GO GET YOUR OWN!

You are wrong. Move on.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5832390545689805144

Is the Coast Clear?--- @ 28:

Nada @ 3:

So the goal of "conservatism" is to turn 'merika into the newest feudal country?
The corporate masters will be the vassals and we'll all be their happy little surfs.
For most of us it won't come as a surprise to be told we're property of the country/corporations.

I talking to my cousin the other day and I still think we're all going to be like those migrant workers in "The Grapes of Wrath" (John Steinbeck) except it will be the corporations looking for the cheapest labor migrating country to country. Any country that has a population that is willing to work for the rock bottom price offered by these corporations will get the opportunity to eat.

The surfs had it better (if you can call being one step up from being a slave) because the nobles couldn't run off looking for a better deal.

If it ends up the way I think it will we won't even be "surfs" or "property" just some pitiful group of people competing globally with other desperate people willing to pimp out our services for next to nothing just to basically survive.

I see it going back to the old 'company store' says. You work for the company. Live in their house. Buy from their store and essentially are their property because there are no other jobs.

The land owners of the past may not have been able to 'run away' looking for a better deal but let me just say that there is something seriously fucked up when people start discussing the virtues of feudalism. ;)
It does suggest that the current situation has almost reached rock bottom. I assume it will reach the point of mass arrests and food riots before anything changes but I am a pessimist of the highest order.
Then again I haven't seen anything in the last ten years that gave me any hope to the contrary. In fact from what I've witnessed it occurs to me that total social break down is the plan. It's easier to control people when you're the only one with the guns and the food.

Joementum @ 22:

See, the market may fail, but it's always right. We will never have another Great Depression. What we'll get instead is the Great Correction, which will make everyone feel better about being destitute.

Now that is funny.

Uncle Joe Mccarthy @ 27:

ohio progressive @ 18:

this is an unfair, irrational post-- about as sane as the baloney we hear/see on limbaugh and hannity...

so what now, you're calling for a bailout? i thought everyone was complaining that bear stearns was bailed out by the bushies, and now the liberal rant is that the bushies aren't bailing out wall street?...

makes no sense....

who is calling for a bail out?

the point is, the bushies allowed this to occur, because it hurts the little guy more than the uber rich...just like during the depression

and please change your nick...you are about as progressive as those aholes on fox

so i don't believe in plunge conspiracies, and i'm not liberal....

so what, you think little bush cousin rigged WTC with explosives?

last i heard, soros was a liberal, and he's likely right there with the rest calling for the melt down so he can pick through the ashes...and if he's not, then he's calling a bailout....(which libs decried in case of bearstears)

and isn't that what spitzer's new career is gonna be-- a vulture as they call it-- buying up foreclosed properties....

i am seeing liberals decry the policies that got us into this mess (and i echo those cries), but also any and everything the administration does--- if they bailout bear stearns, they're out to help the CEO's on wall st....if they draw a line and say, fix it yourselves, they're decried for watching the markets melt down....

i think you've all been hannitized...

or else you're talking your portfolio

capnmike @ 36:

America has always been a nation with a Free Market Economy. It works. If you want Socialism, go to Venezuela and see how they are doing, with incredible crime rates, nothing in the stores, and worthless currency. Distribution of Wealth by Mandate DOES NOT WORK. Never has. Never will. The only people who bitch about capitalism are those who don't think they have a big enough piece of the pie and are not willing to work for it. Don't covet your neighbor's house, or his ox, or his servant, or his potroast, GO GET YOUR OWN!

no disrespect but you have overly simplified a complex
equation......you don't understand the price of having
a democracy/republic.

capnmike @ 36:

America has always been a nation with a Free Market Economy. It works. If you want Socialism, go to Venezuela and see how they are doing, with incredible crime rates, nothing in the stores, and worthless currency. Distribution of Wealth by Mandate DOES NOT WORK. Never has. Never will. The only people who bitch about capitalism are those who don't think they have a big enough piece of the pie and are not willing to work for it. Don't covet your neighbor's house, or his ox, or his servant, or his potroast, GO GET YOUR OWN!

It works if it gets bailed out by our money.

Nada @ 3:

So the goal of "conservatism" is to turn 'merika into the newest feudal country?
The corporate masters will be the vassals and we'll all be their happy little surfs.

You win a cookie.

Billy @ 29:

on FOX and CNBC say to let it all burn down so they can pick the bones off our country…I saw one land developer licking his chops at the prospect of being able to buy a ton of buildings real, real cheap…That’s conservatism at its finest.

Again, this is simple con-artistry. Conservatism has absolutely no connection to it.

Step number one in problem solving, by the way, is correctly identifying the cause.

Agreed. The cause was financial market deregulation. (The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 killed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which prevented these kinds of financial mergers. Yes, Gramm as in Phil "Nation of whiners" Gramm.) Do you deny that financial market deregulation is part of the conservative philosophy?

If the Glass-Steagall Act was still in place, the present financial crisis wouldn't have been possible. At the moment progressives are claiming that this crisis occurred because the financial market was deregulated, and the conservatives are claiming it happened because the market was NOT DEREGULATED ENOUGH. Given the horrible track record of conservatism, all the way from Herbert Hoover to George W. Bush, I'm going to throw in with the progressives.

uhhhh... that was kind of my plan all along?? that would ultimately be the free market at its finest.

while the rest of American businesses get their revenue from selling Chinese made goods, IBM gets a fat chunk of their revenue by providing consulting to Chinese businesses. this was part of the deal they made with the nation of China when they sold their "Think" brand to Lenovo. they have first-tier status with pretty much every Chinese business for the next 15 years, and Chinese businesses need to go along with this agreement because.... well, China's a communist nation.

I get my revenue by providing a service to IBM that nobody else in the world can provide.

soooo... even though I got really shitty credit, my revenue is going to increase and my job is going to maintain its stability while the rest of these motherfuckers are making a panicked run on their bank before desperately looking for work.

I had big big big plans to buy my dumb neighbor's house out from under him after he got foreclosed on and the bank was desperate to get somebody, anybody back in there making mortgage payments.

I had big big big plans to tell my arrogant baby boomer parents and in-laws "I told you so" when they warned me to focus on my credit instead of my assets, and to quit bouncing from job to job looking for a raise instead of showing long-term stability on my resume.

I saw this shitstorm brewing 5 years ago, and I've been licking my chops for 5 years now.

this whole "bailout" thing is a crock of shit. dammit. either bail my neighbors out, and make me a humbler man.... or let the market come to its ultimate demise. this cutesy pootsy game of handing CEOs a welfare check with no restrictions and billing the American taxpayer for the check is a bunch of bullshit though.

Folks...it's not rocket science....

Free Market = Alice in Wonderland...its a fairy tale, there is no 'free market'...never has been, in the history of humankind...they can't point to one single time in human history when it has worked...well, at least for the majority of people....

Con-servatives don't see Oliver Twist as a work of social commentary or a cautionary tale...they see it as an instruction manual
Con-servatives view the film Caligula and think, hey....why not? What could go wrong with that way of governing? Instead they PR market that as 'you can have a beer with that guy'
Con-servatives believe there's nothing wrong with the confluence of business and state...which coincidentally is the goal of their evil driven 'free market' hocus pocus/supply side/Reaganomics/Bushonomics reverse Robin Hood BS and happens to fit the exact definition of fascism from the two individuals that created and implemented the concept...Giovanni Gentile & Benito Mussolini (PS....don't bother asking a con-servative about the history of fascism...you'll get the yearbook Jonah Goldberg rewrite version).

Re: Bush family...

Shrub, Sr. is as crooked and corrupt and foul as they come. (Details omitted, but they're readily available). He looks OK to some only because of comparison to Shrub, Jr., who makes each and every failed president of the past look OK.

Behold the McCain miracle: He invented the Blackberry!
(McCain doesn't really know what the Blackberry is or does. But, he created it anyway.)

Seems like the McCain campaign's claim that McCain invented the Blackberry isn't really going over that well. You can practically hear the snickering in the articles. Here's AP, which, for the most part, has been hyper-supportive of McCain:

Move over, Al Gore. You may lay claim to the Internet, but John McCain helped create the BlackBerry.

At least that's the contention of a top McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Waving his BlackBerry personal digital assistant and citing McCain's work as a senator, he told reporters Tuesday, "You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create."

McCain has acknowledged that he doesn't know how to use a computer and can't send e-mail, one of the BlackBerry's prime functions.

*Note:Blackberry was developed by Research in Motion, a Canadian company.

A readers wrote, "Not only did McCain invent the BlackBerry -- he outsourced it!"

Nikola @ 51:

Nada @ 3:

So the goal of "conservatism" is to turn 'merika into the newest feudal country?
The corporate masters will be the vassals and we'll all be their happy little surfs.
For most of us it won't come as a surprise to be told we're property of the country/corporations.

Vassals are also servants, though. The corporate masters will be the Lords.

The guvmint will be the lords. The vassals are given tracts of land/businesses and surfs to "care for" for the lords. The corporate heads already own most of everything and employ everyone so there would be almost no change when they switch over to straight feudalism.

Dhalgren @ 5:

But John, markets have to bleed so that people can ride the next wave of prosperity. Think back to NYC circa 1989. The NYC housing market went bust. People could buy entire brownstones in Brooklyn for less than $200K. Today, they can be sold for over $4 Million each. And no, they are not solely owned by Republicans. Quite a lot of Whole Foods munching / Starbucks slurping Democrats got rich off of the last housing bubble.

Here's to the next wave.

If this comment doesn't summarize the sheer stupidity and unutterable mean-spiritness of (what I can only assume is knee-jerk) Republicanism: 'Whole Foods munching? Starbucks slurping?' These are all Democrats? Have you ever been to a Starbucks or Starbucks type coffee shop or a Whole Foods or other organic store or market in a small town or in a red state? Not a Republican or a religious believer among the customers? Every one of them a godless America-hating liberal? Not a single veteran? Not a single decent human being? Every one of them a stereotype ripe for mental lynching. Grow up. Get your head out of your limbic system and into some kind of analytical intelligence. Whichever way you vote, or swing, or express you views, for God's sake - whether he or she exists - do it as a human being and not as a smooth-brained, pre-conditioned fool.

Naomi Klein could sum this all up in 5 minutes:
Disaster Capitalism at its finest.
America is just an old rust belt factory, take it over, run it into the ground, break it up and sell the pieces.

Gordon Gecko in 2012!