US Economy in the Pocket of 1/100th of 1 Percent

This graphic is jaw-dropping. The yellow ball, representing the wealth of one one-hundredth of one percent (0.01%), doesn't even fit into the graphic. Whereas the bottom 90% of Americans is the tiny blue ball.

How Rich are the Superrich?

The top 400 of America's richest aristocrats hoard as much wealth as the bottom 155,000,000 people. - Michael Moore at a Madison, WI rally, March 5, 2011.

Sources:

Mother Jones, It's the Inequality Stupid, March/April, 2011.

Fitzgerald "Irony" or "poke-in-the-eye"?

Back in late 2008, the most popular question posed on President-Elect Obama's Change-dot-Gov web-Question Box, in 'round 2, came from Bob Fertik, of New York City, which read:

Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?

According to the July/August 2010 Mother Jones magazine, Fitzgerald has been assigned to investigate the CIA and torture. Unfortunately, the investigation is targeted not at the torturers, but at human rights investigators whose trails led them to CIA operatives.

You see, if, as a human rights attorney, your trail leads you to CIA personnel, and you put pictures of them in photo line-ups for your torture-victim clients to identify... then maybe you're exposing the identity CIA personnel even if you don't expose the person's name. Yes, as predicted by George Orwell and others, it's a wicked web that has been woven by the powers-that-be.

But it strikes me... is this simply irony that Fitzgerald would be given this assignment, or is it a poke-in-the-eye of the people calling for a full investigation of the US torture activities?

Sources:

Mother Jones Magazine, July/Aug. 2010.

Iraq War: March 2003?

June 2002:

Iraq bombing begins. US military will fly 21,736 sorties and attack 349 targets between June 2002 and the start of the war.

Sources:

Mother Jones, Chronicle of a War Foretold, Tim Dickinson and Jonathan Stein, Sept/Oct 2006.

This Date in 2004 - Iraq War Plan

On April 18, 2004, Bob Woodward wrote that on November 21, 2001 Bush collared Rumsfeld physically and asked him:

What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.

Source:

Mother Jones, Sept/Oct 2006, "Chronicle of a War Foretold," Tim Dickinson & Jonathan Stein.

April 10, 2001 - Iraq Aluminum Tubes

April 10, 2001 - Lone CIA analyst known only as "Joe" tells top Bush brass that aluminum tubes bought by Iraq can only be used for nuclear centrifuges. The public became aware of this in August 2003.

What Wiki has to say about Iraq Aluminum Tubes.

Source:

Mother Jones, Sept/Oct 2006, "Chronicle of a War Foretold" Tim Dickinson & Jonathan Stein.

What I See in my Crystal Ball

Sources:

Mother Jones Magazine, "The People vs Dick Cheney," Jan/Feb 2009 Issue. Artist: Roberto Parada

Congratulations, Lets Get to Work

Welcome to Washington President Obama. Now we can start sending our e-mails to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when we want to Contact Obama. And today, we can raise our voice in unison on a specific economic issue: Obama's proposed tax cuts.

The Godless Liberal Homo blog lays out some rationals for sending this message to Team Obama:

Bush's tax cuts have been disastrous. The small checks for middle class and poor people did nothing to help our economy. They might have stimulated China's economy marginally, but China doesn't buy much anything from us.

Bush's enormous tax cuts for the rich have played a key role in our desperate economic situation. They contributed significantly to our government and foreign debt while doing nothing to create jobs here in the US. The wealthy used these unearned windfalls in an orgy of speculation, creating bubble after bubble (stocks, subprime mortgages, oil, gold, etc.) leading to crash after crash. Our treasury was looted to a huge extent to create money which mostly disappeared in 2008.

He's not alone. The January/February 2009 issue of Mother Jones Magazine also lays out the most "stimulating" actions that government can take to keep this recession from going further south.

You can read the Mother Jones article Stimulus is for Suckers for an explanation of the chart above. It's hard to see in the graph, but according to this analysis from Moody's Economy.com, an across-the-board tax cut only generates 3-cents of stimulus per dollar in cuts, whereas food stamps generates 73-cents per dollar of stimulus.

A bit wonkish I admit, but when Obama said in his inaugural speech that we need to be more responsible, this level of attention is part of what he was talking about.

Psssst... Do Something

• Contact the Broadcast Media
  
• Contact the Newspapers
  
• Contact the US Senate
  
• Contact the House of Representatives

War Crimes and Pop Culture

I know nothing about the CBS show "NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service," which airs on Tuesdays at 8pm. Here's the preview of tonight's show:

Preview of 'NCIS' 6.13: Broken Bird

One of the team members takes the fall in the next episode of "NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service". In "Broken Bird", Ducky (David McCallum) will be stabbed at a crime scene, leading to a revelation of his disturbing past that occurred more than 30 years before.

After Ducky is attacked while on duty, the NCIS team must delve into his clandestine past and they uncover a horrible truth about him. He was accused as a war criminal, torturing and killing citizen of Afghanistan.

How many more people like Ducky has the Bush administration turned into low-level war criminals? People who will be haunted by guilt for the rest of their lives? According to a Mother Jones article, Torture Comes Home, Ben Allbright (photo) watches The Daily Show, worships Dave Eggers—and still wound up "softening up" prisoners in Iraq. He now has to ask himself, "Am I a Torturer?"

If we are a just nation, and anyone should face prosecution, it should start at the top with George W. Bush.

Iraq War Plan Delivered to Bush

On August 7, 2002, President George Bush received the Iraq war plan from General Tommy Franks.

Although general contingency plans exist for many places around the globe, it takes a long time to develop an operational war plan. Bush had his in hand seven months before invading Iraq. According to the National Security Archives, Bush sought an update on the status of Iraq war planning from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in November 2001, suggesting that he had ordered the development of an operational plan prior to September 11, 2001.

Source:

Mother Jones Magazine, Lie by Lie, How Our Leaders Used Fear and Falsehood to Dupe us Into a Mideast Quagmire: A Timeline.

Top Secret Polo Step, National Security Archive.

August 2002: White House Iraq Group

August 2002: White House Iraq Group created to market war. Members include Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice as well as spinmeisters Karen Huges and Mary Matalin. It was only on August 10, 2003 that the public became aware of the Iraq Group.

Source:

Mother Jones Magazine, Lie by Lie, How Our Leaders Used Fear and Falsehood to Dupe us Into a Mideast Quagmire: A Timeline.

Justice Department Memo on Torture

August 1, 2002: A Justice Department memo asserts that Bush's wartime powers supersede international anti-torture laws and treaties, defines torture as only that which is "equivalent in intensity to teh pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failur, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

The public only became aware of this memo on June 8, 2004.

Sources:

Mother Jones Magazine, Lie by Lie, How Our Leaders Used Fear and Falsehood to Dupe us Into a Mideast Quagmire: A Timeline.

Subprime Crisis: Old News

Subprime mortgage defaults have been moved into the news spotlight as a result of recent stock market "corrections." The recent stock drops were caused, in part, by concern that major US commercial banks, pension funds and trusts might be financially exposed to subprime mortgage woes.

But the "news" about a crisis in the subprime mortgage market is actually old. The Oct-Sept issue of Mother Jones magazine carried a piece entitled, "Prime Suspect." It exposes the makings of another Savings and Loan crisis that might be unraveling.

The piece opens:

Cleveland is on the front lines of a housing boom gone soure. So how are the bankers, brokers, and speculators still generating massive profits?

Good question. Meanwhile, the article describes people's lives being ruptured. Robert Perry's mortgage holder, Bank One, moved to foreclose on his home of 14 years when he came up $250 short on a debt settlement payment of $2,565. Barbara and Rober Anderson, in Cleveland's Slavic Village, watched the houses in their neighborhood go vacant as 376 houses were foreclosed upon in 2005. For all of Cuyahoga County, there were 11,000 foreclosures.

Sheriff's auctions of homes are common, and the banks are buying back some houses at bargain prices. The courts are so full, and the predatory stories so sad, that some judges are throwing out cases for typos and minor errors in a show of resistance. Referring to defaults, Chief Magistrate Stephen Bucha says, "It started because of changes in lending practices," enabled by the U.S. Congress.

Since Congress won't want to take the blame, they will down-play the growing significance of the corrupt real estate market, and pass off the costs to the tax-payer... unless we don't let them.

Contact the Media:

You can be sure the right-wingers would be firing off e-mails to corporate media offices if they were in our shoes. So, tell the media outlets that "we want you to cover the corruption associated with the unraveling Subprime Mortgage Crisis."

CLICK: Media Contacts

Sources:

Mother Jones Magazine, "Prime Suspect," By Alyssa Katz, September/October 2006 Issue.