Titanic Post

It amazes me to hear what I assume to be working class people working hard for their money calling other working class people “whiners” when they speak up in outrage over getting the shaft from giant corporations who can’t cover their losses for high-rate loans they made to low income people caught up in our tanking economy.

Fanny May and Freddie Mac are sub-prime lenders of money to high-risk people who would not otherwise be able to qualify for a loan to buy a house. They were originally funded by the government so that they could cover eventual losses due to the fluctuating market and to the risk involved. This is called “welfare,” corporate welfare. I also think it was a good idea to give poor families the opportunity to buy a home and to start accumulating wealth.

Now Fanny May and Freddie Mac are whining to the government to bail them out, because they were too shortsighted to put enough money aside, even with the high interest rates they charged their customers. Instead they pocketed the profits and underfunded their coverage.

If the government is brash enough to bail them out, as they invariably do with bank and oil companies that are in trouble, the profits are privatized by the rich corporations and the losses are socialized and handed down to the taxpayer.

Instead of complaining about poor people who are rightly complaining about their crappy situation, you should all be outraged at our government for screwing us all to the benefit of the rich. Karl Rove is an evil man and a criminal who should be imprisoned.

Nicholson

While the U.S. oil industry wants access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, U.S.-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries.

A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.

The surge in exports appears to contradict the pleas from the U.S. oil industry and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

(more…)

The following are my notes from the Forum on Substance Abuse held by the Otero County New Mexico Chapter of PDA June 25th – Ken Nicholson

The Otero County chapter of Progressive Democrats of America hosted a panel discussion on the substance abuse situation in the county. Panel members Dr. Gil Heredia, physician and chair of the Otero Libertarian Party, Sharon Hodges of the New Mexico Department of Health, and Ken Larson, Certified Peer Specialist and Recovery Mentor presented a comprehensive survey of the drug problems we are facing in Otero County to an interested audience of local activists. Al Kissling of PDA NM was the moderator.

Dr. Heredia said that the so called “War on Drugs” was having a more devastating effect on our community than the actual use of drugs. He cited the emphasis of the drug war being on law enforcement and leading to incarceration rather than treatment and rehabilitation. When those caught in the system have finished their time, they are released back into the community, still addicted, without the root of their situation being addressed. Heredia noted the high cost of incarceration versus treatment. Also, drug crimes are crimes against oneself and not directly against the community. He said that if drugs were legal, market forces would pressure dealer profits, and the supply of drugs would dwindle. One community activist added that the prison industry has lobbied for mandatory minimum sentences to the benefit of the private prison industry while removing judges’ discretion. (more…)

Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter to the Taming the Giant Corporation conference in Washington, D.C., June 9, 2007.Whether in bodies or injuries or dollars lost, corporate crime and violence wins by a landslide.

The FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery — street crimes — costs the nation $3.8 billion a year.

The losses from a handful of major corporate frauds — Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron — swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined.

Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year. (more…)

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune News Service
Published on Monday, February 12, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

by Holly Sklar

The minimum wage is headed for a raise — back to the 1950s. That’s right, even after rising from $5.15 now to $7.25 in 2009, the federal minimum wage will still be lower than it was in 1956, when it was $7.41 in today’s dollars.

The minimum wage was enacted in 1938 through the Fair Labor Standards Act, designed to eliminate “labor conditions detrimental to the maintenance of the minimum standard of living necessary for health, efficiency and general well-being of workers.”

The minimum wage was never meant to be the minimum the nation’s worst employers want to pay. That would be as absurd as setting environmental policies to accommodate the worst polluters.

Business lobbyists who’d abolish the minimum wage if they could have held it hostage for 10 years — the longest period ever without a raise. Now they want to collect a ransom of tax breaks to let it go. (more…)

Forgotten is the promise of a “peoples party.” In the name of bipartisanship and only twenty-three days after the election, the great sell-out begins.  Read more here.  It’s too painful for me to even think about right now.