Remembering AIG

Bill Moyers asked in 2009, "Are we chumps?" Former chief IMF economist Simon Johnson responded saying that depends on how we react, in other words, it depends on whether or not we let the investment bankers get away with it.

The following observations on AIG is a reminder not to let them get away with it.

1. AIG's insurance of exotic Wall Street derivatives helped give the false sense of security that allowed the financial industry house of cards to grow so astoundingly large, ... where were the regulators?
2. The argument that bonus contracts are sacrosanct is bogus on two levels: First, the sanctity of contracts is applied hypocritically to the white collar financial industry, but not blue collar auto industry... an industry that actually produces something tangible. More important, AIG is effectively bankrupt and survives only because tax-payers are propping it up. AIG should be treated like a bankrupt corporation and the contracts should be voided.
3. Most of the money going to AIG is actually going to.... the huge financial institutions, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs. Thus, A) the dollar figures of tax-payer bailout funds you hear begin quoted for these monopolistic banks should also count the pass-thru money going to them via AIG. And B) Why are our tax dollars going to pay the insurance on bad gambles? ... insurance payments on gambles that, under further investigation, might actually be founded on fraudulent financial actions?
4. If you're not angry enough already, DemocracyNow reports: "As AIG faces the loss of its bonuses, it’s quietly filed a lawsuit to recoup more than $300 million in what it says are overpaid taxes. The company says it overpaid the government in charges for using offshore tax havens. The suit effectively means AIG is using US taxpayer money to sue its majority owner, the US taxpayer. The government owns an 80 percent stake in AIG following its $170 billion bailout."
5. I heard a disturbing idea from Brian of WakeUp AM blog.... he posits that all of these bonuses, not just to AIG, smell like hush money.... "You get your million-plus and promise not to talk about what you know."
6. Finally, a disturbing AIG factoid: Again from Democracy Now: "A top Obama administration official is coming under scrutiny for his ties to AIG. Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, served on AIG’s board from 2001 until early last year. Holbrooke is believed to have collected up to $800,000 during his AIG stint."

That last point is prime material for the Challenge the Establishment blog, which often probes the ills of Republicrats.

For Your Convenience:

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

Sources:

GDAE Podcast Episode 9, March 2009

Activism in 2010

Came across an impressive, organized set of lists that support activism.

Sources:

The Poetry Man

Strategic Framework for Challenging Establishment Power

It's difficult to ponder changing the status quo... the powerful establishment seeks, in general, to maintain the staus quo. Where does one start? Having a strategy helps. Here's a strategy shared with me by a college friend who has committed his life to promoting deep social change.

A Three-Element Strategy for Personal Activism:

It's certain that many of us share the sense that we need to move "beyond" the status quo, but we don't know how to do that. This sentiment is, in part, a reflection of the fact that our social construct is strongly defined by corporate power. An example of this might be that a corporation commits clear abuse, yet it is practically impossible to challenge that abuse because the channels to do so are filled with barriers that have been accumulated over decades of insider corporate tinkering with our judicial and legal systems. Add to that a pervasive control of mass media, and hence public awareness, that effectively isolates progressive activists from the rest of society.

So, how do we go forward? Here are three broad strategic elements by which to invest your activist energies:

Element 1: Invest part of your time in the multi-generational struggle to retract corporate constitutional rights that have been accumulated over decades. This sounds abstract, but think of it as being similar to ending slavery, which was once a legal business practice until the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution were adopted. (Ironically, corporations have abused these amendments by getting the US Supreme Court to recognize them as "persons" within this Constitutional context.)

Element 2: Invest part of your time on time-sensitive issues, like saving that 700-year-old tree in your neighborhood that "needs to be chopped down" to widen a road. It's easy to become solely devoted to urgent issues of the day, so making linkages between this element and the other two is a helpful way to integrate your activism into this holistic strategy.

Element 3: Invest part of your time in identifying and promoting alternatives to status quo systems. It's easy to expose the flaws in the current "system," but difficult to develope and implement workable alternatives. Concrete steps in this regard include educating yourself and others about alternatives models of social interaction, supporting fledgling experiments into alternative models, like worker-owned businesses and so on.

By working within this construct on our own, we will be working together in a distributed way. It is a low-cost way to be organized, in the broad sense of the word.

Sources:

Dave Henson, one of the founders of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy (POCLAD).