Let me describe a few of the photos. In one, two Baum employees are dressed like homeless people. One is holding a bottle of liquor. The other has a sign around her neck that reads: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served.” My source said that “I was never served” is meant to mock “the typical excuse” of the homeowner trying to evade a foreclosure proceeding.

Here are some of the pictures:

When people attack the Occupy protesters or President Obama or Democrats or Liberals for “waging class warfare” that’s because we’ve only just now joined the war. We’ve been under attack, from the inside, for a long time. We’ve only begun now to fight back.

By many indications, the S&P downgrade of America doesn’t make much sense.

Just to make it perfect, it turns out that S&P got the math wrong by $2 trillion, and after much discussion conceded the point — then went ahead with the downgrade.

As others have noted, these are the very same people who were rubber-stamping absolute junk mortgage-backed securities as if they were investment grade material back in 2007 and 2008. This is like an alcoholic advising us on how to be a moderate drinker.

That said, there is obviously something wrong with America’s economy, and it has been for some time. What ails us is conservative in nature. The idea that we can cut the taxes of our richest citizens without investing in the future for the rest of us.

When times get bad, the upper echelon doesn’t really suffer. Sure, their mutual funds may fluctuate, and they may be forced to take one less mediterranean cruise this year, but they aren’t facing the decisions that confront the middle class of America. Decisions like “how much can we eat” or “can we pay our rent/mortgage”. The fact that this is happening while conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation are telling America’s poor to thank God for good they have it is perverse.

It doesn’t help when both parties buy into this economic folly. Sure, the Democrats are somewhat better than the Republicans in that they don’t actively try to destroy the economy, but both President Obama and President Clinton show and have shown an admiration for failed conservative economic policies that sometimes end up being destructive to the middle class in the style of George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan.

At some point it has to end. Clearly the economic collapse of 2008 hasn’t been the jolt our leaders – and our citizens – need to bring about the common sense policies they are just unwilling to enact. The solutions to what ails America and the world aren’t super-complicated. They just need to get done.

But dishonest economic downgrades aren’t helpful, either.

Not surprisingly, Wall Street and the top of corporate America are doing extremely well as of June 2011. For example, in Q1 of 2011, America’s top corporations reported 31% profit growth and a 31% reduction in taxes, the latter due to profit outsourcing to low tax rate countries. Somewhere around 40% of the profits in the S&P 500 come from overseas and stay overseas, with about half of these 500 top corporations having their headquarters in tax havens. If the corporations don’t repatriate their profits, they pay no U.S. taxes. The year 2010 was a record year for compensation on Wall Street, while corporate CEO compensation rose by over 30%, most Americans struggled. In 2010 a dozen major companies, including GE, Verizon, Boeing, Wells Fargo, and Fed Ex paid US tax rates between -0.7% and -9.2%. Production, employment, profits, and taxes have all been outsourced. Major U.S. corporations are currently lobbying to have another “tax-repatriation” window like that in 2004 where they can bring back corporate profits at a 5.25% tax rate versus the usual 35% US corporate tax rate. Ordinary working citizens with the lowest incomes are taxed at 10%.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes. They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%. Moreover, those at the very top have no incentive whatsoever for revealing or changing the rules. I am not optimistic.

I’m intrigued by the ability of the super-rich to get middle and lower class people to do their dirty work, simply with the carrot that they may one day be rich. We’re doomed.

It is a massive failure, not only of progressive politics, but of American politics. The legislation will hobble the economic recovery while hurting the poor and middle class. Anybody who believes in progress for America should loudly vote against this monstrosity.

Everybody should share the blame here.

The Republican Party, for its dogged dedication to policies that enrich the already rich at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Congressional Democrats, for being listless and directionless and spineless at practically every opportunity. Given the reigns of power by the American people, they dithered and dithered and watered legislation down. While in the majority, they allowed the GOP to wield far too much influence, while also making the party’s own conservative wing overly influential. Those choices helped lead to a loss of power in 2010, and even weaker leadership in 2011.

President Obama, who has now shown himself to be a terrible negotiator of epic proportions. With just the House, he gave the Republicans the least terrible of their demands. The right demanded no revenue and all-cuts, and Obama gave them just what they wanted. Sure, they would have rather had even deeper cuts — but Obama played the entire game on GOP territory.

I wish someone would show the President a thesaurus and explain that “capitulation” is not a synonym of “compromise.”

In 2010, Democrats ran on a platform of “the Republicans are worse” and as a result suffered at the midterm elections. You cannot run a strong campaign on that kind of message. People need a reason to vote for you, not just against the other guy.

Democrats have now compounded their 2010 problem. If the bill passes, a Democratic president, along with a Democratic senate, will be enshrining conservative policy as law. While overall it’s still better to have Democrats in power — the Democrats themselves have undercut progressive policy. That’s a crappy way to motivate your progressive base.

And again, besides the politics and the optics, the deal is just bad for America. It is wrong for our country. It hurts an already bleeding nation. And the Democrats helped.

In the past progressives like myself said we needed “more and better” Democrats, please. Now we truly realize that its far better to get better Democrats because a majority with a Democratic president simply unwilling to push forward and do the right thing clearly isn’t getting the job done.

This is a massive failure.

The position of President Obama and the Democrats on the debt ceiling is terrible. It involves cuts to social programs, and a belt tightening philosophy precisely when the economic environment demands almost exactly the opposite sort of policy.

The problem is it is the best worst option available to us. The Republican proposals were even more austere and less useful in shoring up our economy.

The Overton Window refers to the concept of an idea slowly gaining acceptance until it becomes mainstream thought. The Overton Window has so shifted that the crappy Democratic proposal seems like a far better choice.

We are doomed.

We face gigantic problems in the country and in the world. But our political machinery is simply incapable of even acknowledging the problems, much less fixing them. An economy paralyzed by job loss is being discussed as a debt problem, for Christ’s sake.

We are going down the same road to austerity as England, and what they’ve had to show for it is stagnant growth — and oh, lucky for us, England has a far more extensive safety net for the middle class and unfortunate. When our economy seizes up as we feed Grover Norquist’s fetish for starving the beast, there’s not nearly enough of a cushion for those who need it.

We are doomed.

Federal regulators are considering backing off a plan to curb Wall Street’s control over the derivatives market, another potential win for the big banks.

Last fall, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission proposed rules that would prevent a bank or financial firm from controlling more than 20 percent of any one derivatives exchange or trading facility. Now, regulators are discussing lowering the cap, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

STOP THIS. YOU’RE GOING TO DESTROY THE PLANET.

Seriously, deregulated derivative markets have helped to cause one of the largest economic recessions in U.S. history. Sure, Wall Street had a few bumps on the road but they got right back on their feet (with some help from the U.S. taxypayer). That isn’t the case for the average middle and lower class American.

These people were given the keys to the bank, they robbed it, and you’re giving them a second chance.

Do we have a Democratic Republic anymore or a permanent Robber Baron enrichment scheme? Sweet Jesus.

“Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of President Obama’s handling of the economy, but by 2-1 they pin the blame on former President George W. Bush rather than Obama, who is now more than 60 percent through his term of office.”

“Given this public view, it might be reasonable to expect that the president’s re-election campaign will be, as it was in 2008, running against the former president, in addition to the actual GOP nominee,” said Brown. “The key voting bloc, independents, say 49 – 24 percent that Bush is more responsible for the economy than Obama.”

Aside from the politics, it is amazing that the brand of economic brain-deadery the Bushies employed isn’t in the trash. Yet, here are Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell proposing the same old crap that got us in this mess in the first place. Insane. (via)

It was the fifth straight day of talks, but the first in which attendees, speaking on background, were willing to admit that steps were taken backwards. According to multiple sources, disagreements surfaced early, in the middle and at the end of the nearly two-hour talks. At issue was Cantor’s repeated push to do a short-term resolution and Obama’s insistence that he would not accept one.

“Eric don’t call my bluff. I’m going to the American people on this,” the president said, according to both Cantor and another attendee. “This process is confirming what the American people think is the worst about Washington: that everyone is more interested in posturing, political positioning, and protecting their base, than in resolving real problems.”

They don’t even seem to know who the heck is in charge over on the GOP side. Is it Boehner? Cantor? Or, more likely, people like Limbaugh?

Hell, even with the blue dogs jammed in her side, Nancy Pelosi got bills through the House. Boehner can’t even get a lightbulb bill passed.

America is a massive country, and besides the legislative process, it takes a lot to keep it working. As such, its always best if you appoint competent, capable people to help you run the government.

In the case of George W. Bush, there were three kinds of people he installed in the government. The smallest group was actual, competent people. Very few of these were in place during the Bush years.

The second group of people were the totally incompetent. That includes people like Michael Brown, who had no business running FEMA or Donald Rumsfeld, who got more American servicemen killed as a result of bungled war planning than probably any Secretary Of Defense in U.S. History.

The third, and often most damaging group, were ideologically conservative zealots — people who drink the right-wing kool-aid so much that they would rather bend reality than face it. This group, of course, included the President and Vice-President themselves.

It is this group of people who perverted the Justice Department, made a mockery of diplomacy at the State Department, botched military operations at the Pentagon, and made a general mess of things while running the country. Granted, some people in the Bush administration were incompetent ideological zealots. Alberto Gonzales comes to mind.

(I would also argue there aren’t nearly enough ideological people in the Obama administration.)

In this third group were the people executing the administration’s policy of supporting deregulated commerce, admittedly a holdover from the Clinton era – showing us that badly conceived conservative economic policy knows no party.

In this NY Times profile of outgoing FDIC chair Sheila Bair, we get a taste of what Bush’s policies had done to actual regulation of the work being done in the mortgage industry:

Arriving at the F.D.I.C. that summer, Bair found an agency that was floundering. “There hadn’t been any bank failures in a long time,” she said. “We were in this so-called golden age of banking, regulation had fallen out of favor and the F.D.I.C., which had a reputation as a tough regulator, had fallen on hard times.” Its budget had been slashed, employees had been let go and morale was terrible. Except for a 10-second handshake, she never even spoke to Henry Paulson her first year or so in office.

Alone among the regulators, though, the F.D.I.C. began to home in on subprime lending. By 2006, the subprime industry was running amok, making loans — many of them fraudulent, with hidden fees and abusive terms — to just about anyone with a pulse. Most subprime loans had adjustable interest rates, which started low but then jumped significantly after a few years, making the monthly payments unaffordable for many homeowners. The lenders didn’t care because they sold the loans to Wall Street, which bundled them into mortgage-backed bonds and resold them to investors.

Curbing subprime-lending abuses should have been the job of the Federal Reserve, which has a consumer division. But the Fed chairman, Alan Greenspan, with his profound distaste for regulation, could not have been less interested. The other bank regulators, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees national banks, and the Office of Thrift Supervision, which regulates the savings-and-loan industry, should have cared, too. But their responses to the growing problem were at best tepid and at worst hostile. (The O.C.C. actually used its federal powers to block efforts by states to curb subprime abuses.) By the time Bair got to Washington, the O.C.C. had spent a year devising “voluntary subprime guidance” for the banks it regulated, but it had not yet gotten around to issuing that guidance.

Ah, “voluntary” regulation, the regulatory version of Bush’s famous “you covered your ass” statement about the threat of terrorism before 9/11. Even Bush’s SEC chairman, Chris Cox (I would place him in the incompetent appointment category) admitted that expecting our modern robber barons to police themselves was the height of folly.

But that’s what they did here, instead of providing oversight of an industry, they left the industry to its own devices – ignoring the warning signs, then using our money to bail out their pals.

If we had in our government people who truly believed their jobs were about helping America, instead of the zealotry of the Bush era, we’d be much better off today.

The answer now is not “cut the deficit.” It never has been. Sometimes you just want to take our leaders and turn their heads away from cable news and the op-ed columnists and say, “Look, dammit, this problem needs fixing and people don’t give a crap if the Wall Street Journal editorial board is happy!”

The really sad thing is, like many of the problems affecting America, we know what the right thing to do is. There are many national problems screaming for us to fix them. We were able to do this in the past, but a witch’s brew of conservatism and Democratic paralysis is contributing to our ship sinking while we slap ourselves on the back for arranging the deck chairs in an impressive orientation.

On problems like employment, economy, education, health care, the environment, national security, etc., we know what has to be done but there hasn’t been the political will and leadership to do them. Our failures to act on the most important issues of today are damaging America in ways we will feel for generations.

This country fought and defeated a depression, the British monarchy, and the Nazis. This country landed on the moon, cured Polio, and created one of the most powerful economic engines in the history of man. We ought to be able to handle the problems we’ve got today.

But we can’t. Or, more honestly, we won’t.

What the Hell?

As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.

We’ve broken enough stones in America on the backs of the middle class and the poor. We bailed out the uber-wealthy and didn’t attach any strings as they collapsed the global economy.

No more.

Poll data by the Democratic-aligned Public Policy Polling released Wednesday said voters in Ohio, Missouri, Montana and Minnesota back hiking taxes on the wealthy — even for people with incomes as low as $150,000.

The respondents were asked: “In order to reduce the national debt, would you support or oppose raising taxes on those with incomes over $1,000,000 a year?”

Nearly 80 percent of voters in the four states backed the idea.

The final figures show that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million. That works out to a 23 percent gain from 2009. The earlier study had put the median pay at a none-too-shabby $9.6 million, up 12 percent.

Total C.E.O. pay hasn’t quite returned to its heady, prerecession levels — but it certainly seems headed there. Despite the soft economy, weak home prices and persistently high unemployment, some top executives are already making more than they were before the economy soured.

They can afford a tax increase. They can live with one less Cessna, one less expensive painting, one less diamond earring, one less big-screen LCD tv, one less Ferrari. They can afford it.

Our democracy can’t afford giving them even more breaks. Not anymore.

The resolution offered by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday asks lawmakers to sign off on a “Sense of the Senate” that “any agreement to wealthier taxpayers should reduce the budget deficit should require that those earning $1,000,000 or more per year make a more meaningful contribution to the deficit reduction effort.”

The measure comes as Democrats argue tax breaks for businesses and the wealthy should be eliminated to help close the deficit. Republicans say such tax increases would hurt the economy.

Reid’s bill, S. 1323, is entitled “Sense of the Senate on Shared Sacrifice.”
It makes a series of findings that set up an argument for why wealthier people should pay more taxes to reduce the deficit.

The very rich have it amazingly easy in America. There is nothing wrong about bringing what they pay in taxes back to what it was in the past. We seem to have done quite well during the economic booms of the 1990s and 1940s, the supposed onerous taxes on the Paris Hilton set didn’t seem to inhibit the great economic engine of America from generating wealth.

Conservatives insist that an increase in taxation on the uber-wealthy would be some sort of shackles on the nation. But reality says otherwise.

From a political point of view, the Democrats would be wise to note that there’s already one party in America that nakedly does the bidding of the robber barons, they don’t need to help.

Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, had between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT. The fund aggressively “shorts” long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, meaning that it performs well when U.S. debt is undesirable. (A short is when the trader hopes to profit from the decline in the value of an asset.)

According to his latest financial disclosure statement, which covers the year 2010 and has been publicly available since this spring, Cantor still has up to $15,000 in the same fund. Contacted by Salon this week, Cantor’s office gave no indication that the Virginia Republican, who has played a leading role in the debt ceiling negotiations, has divested himself of these holdings since his last filing. Unless an agreement can be reached, the U.S. could begin defaulting on its debt payments on Aug. 2. If that happens and Cantor is still invested in the fund, the value of his holdings would skyrocket.

Conservatives on Twitter weren’t having this! How dare Obama say anything about corporate jets, how could he? How could he single out the uber-wealthy instead of promising to throw a low-class minoritiy into a wood chipper? How the heck could he not?

Frankly, Obama was a little too tepid in singling out the people who tanked our economy and didn’t even get so much as a slap on the wrists.