Greg Palast: Grand Theft Auto -- How Stevie the Rat bankrupted GM

Palast on "irregularities" in the GM bankruptcy, on BuzzFlash. Capital shall be served.

Here's the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replaced by GM stock. The percentage may be 17% of GM's stock -- or 25%. Whatever, 17% or 25% is worth, well ... just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.

Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada -- $6 billion right now and in cash -- from a company that can't pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

and

The law is darn explicit that grabbing pension money is a no-no. Company executives must hold these retirement funds as "fiduciaries." Here's the law, Professor Obama, as described on the government's own Web site under the heading, "Health Plans and Benefits."

The primary responsibility of fiduciaries is to run the plan solely in the interest of participants and beneficiaries and for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits.

(The law in question is Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), circa '74)

and

Filching GM's pension assets doesn't become legal because the cash due the fund is replaced with GM stock. Congress saw through that switch-a-roo by requiring that companies, as fiduciaries, must

...act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses.

By "diversify" for safety, the law does not mean put 100% of worker funds into a single busted company's stock.

and finally

And it's been a good year for Señor Rattner. While the Obama Administration made a big deal out of Rattner's youth spent working for the Steelworkers Union, they tried to sweep under the chassis that Rattner was one of the privileged, select group of investors in Cerberus Capital, the owners of Chrysler. "Owning" is a loose term. Cerberus "owned" Chrysler the way a cannibal "hosts" you for dinner. Cerberus paid nothing for Chrysler -- indeed, they were paid billions by Germany's Daimler Corporation to haul it away. Cerberus kept the cash, then dumped Chrysler's bankrupt corpse on the U.S. taxpayer.

("Cerberus," by the way, named itself after the Roman's mythical three-headed dog guarding the gates Hell. Subtle these guys are not.)

While Stevie the Rat sold his interest in the Dog from Hell when he became Car Czar, he never relinquished his post at the shop of vultures called Quadrangle Hedge Fund. Rattner's personal net worth stands at roughly half a billion dollars. This is Obama's working class hero.

Sympathy minus empathy

I feel bad for you, but I don't really know why.

Those ignorant atheists

Andrew O'Hehir's review of Reason, Faith, and Revolution, by Terry Eagleton.

Seems to be religion more as metaphor or symbolism or an analytic framework concerning the good life than as concrete reality.

Karen Armstrong, interviewed. Historian and former nun Karen Armstrong says the afterlife is a red herring, hating religion is a pathology and that many Westerners cling to infantile ideas of God.

Perceptions/impressions of classical music

Thesis: Carl Stalling has for-ever-after altered our experience of classical music.

Casual Fridays: Can we really tell what a musical work is "about"?, especially Sammy's comment and following.

Also, Even isolated cultures understand emotions conveyed by Western music.

Both from Cognitive Daily.

Great Society?

Chip Ward on homelessness.

Makes me want to rub people's noses in it. Hard.

Including my own.

Where's LBJ when we need him?

Dopamine

Dopamine is a:

• neurotransmitter
• precursor of norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and epinephrine (adrenaline)
• member of catecholamine family

Functions in brain include:

• behavior and cognition
• motivation and reward
• mood
• attention
• learning

Dopaminergic neurons chiefly in:

mesocorticolimbic system (?) (reward, cognition, motivation)

• mesolimbic pathway
  • ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the midbrain
  • nucleus accumbens
  • amygdala
  • hippocampus
  • medial prefrontal cortex
• mesocortical pathway
  • ventral tegmentum
  • cerebral cortex
  • frontal lobes
  • dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

substantia nigra

Motor control

arcuate nucleus

lactation, growth hormone and appetite involvement

More?

• reinforcement
• anticipatory (wanting) vs consummatory (liking)(the reduction in dopamine did not reduce the rat's consummatory pleasure, only the desire to actually eat)
• motivation
• anhedonia
• social anxiety/withdrawal
• pain
• salience

Obama's still just the lesser evil...

...so I'll vote for a third party candidate. Why Criticize Obama, on Digital Underground, gives some reasons.

The only good thing about the winner-take-all electoral college system is that I live in a fairly safe Democrat state. Hence I have the luxury of voting my conscience instead of being forced to vote strictly to repel the barbarians at the gates.

Would that everyone were so lucky.

Some may be missing the point

From Impeach Bush Now by Elizabeth Holtzman, in The Nation.

Impeachment is one of the few ways Congress can draw limits around presidential power and educate the country about those limits. And without the people's support for those limits, they will be breached again and again by future Presidents.

The important things about this question aren't punishment or politics, they are precedent and deterrence. We prosecute the accused to find the facts of the matter, to reduce future crime, and to help determine the kind of society we inhabit. Whether we acquit or convict, we don't turn a blind eye and tacitly condone, or we deserve what we get.

A little light reading

The Green Light by Philippe Sands, In Vanity Fair.

Torture, war-crimes, and the neo-con cabal--I say Hang 'em. It'll teach 'em a lesson.

Believe Me, It's Torture by Christopher Hitchens, in Vanity Fair.

Hitchens waterboarded--I may think he's an ass, but at least he seems honest.

It Takes a School, Not Missiles by Nicholas D. Kristof, in the New York Times.

Decent people may yet prevail.

The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008 by Frank Rich, in the New York Times.

What we don't impeach, we condone.

Rangel Calls Rent Bargain Legal and Fair by David Kocieniewski, in the New York Times.

You don't have to be white to be a jerk.

FISA bad, Feingold good

FISA, Feingold, and a Filibuster?:

"It doesn't simply have the impact of potentially allowing telephone companies to break the law," Feingold said. "It may well prevent us from getting to the core issue, that I've challenged since December 2005, which is the president ran an illegal program I think that was essentially an impeachable offense."

&

I think the big story is ultimately not going to be that the telephone companies got immunity... it's that our personal conversations are now in a giant database somewhere over which we have no control.

MSM economic coverage

Big Bump in Post's Budget Reporting: It Doesn't Add Up

From Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in his Beat the Press blog on TAP.

A critique of a WaPo article concerning, in part, budget and deficit numbers, projected and past.

The numbers tend toward uselessness, he says.

As does the WaPo site mark-up, sez I, off-topically. And serendip coincident surprise, somebody agrees:

the Post's website could be better

How's that for context-free quotation?

OMG!

From a Politico interview:

For the first time, Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf.

I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf, he said. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.

Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization’s high commissioner for human rights.

I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life, he said. I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, It's just not worth it anymore to do.

Health, economics and public policy in Alameda County

Via Google News:

Comment by Tony Iton, M.D., J.D., MPH, Director, Alameda Co. Public Health Dept.

Life Expectancy Gap Is Not The Result Of Bad, Stupid, Or Lazy People

The news coverage of these provocative research findings has thus far focused on the "health behaviors" (i.e. smoking, diet and physical inactivity) of the populations in these communities as an explanation of the increasing life expectancy gap in the U.S. This logic seems to suggest that these unhealthy behaviors occur in a vacuum and are somehow regionally distributed. There is abundant research, including the recently released Alameda County Health Equity Report, that suggest that federal, state and local policies that shape the social consequences of being poor in America are as important if not more important than individual health behaviors, and may in fact, indirectly influence the prevalence of these unhealthy behaviors.

There are a constellation of social policies affecting the lives of people in low income communities that effectively conspire to deprive them of opportunities to achieve a healthy life. These include policies related to minimum and living wage, health insurance access, education funding, housing, land use, incarceration, transportation and others. Central among those policies, and certainly among the most pernicious, is the low quality of public education that results from underinvestment in public pre-school and K-12 education systems in many of these same counties that are demonstrating falling life expectancies. Education is supposed to be the ultimate equalizer that gives poor kids an opportunity to achieve the American Dream. It is ostensibly the ladder out of American poverty.

The effect of this systematic deprivation of important social resources and opportunity is a profound sense of despair and hopelessness that has become pervasive in these communities and contributes to a state of chronic stress among many individuals. Chronic stress has detrimental physiological consequences leading to higher rates of high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and a cascade of related chronic diseases such as heart disease, kidney failure and stroke. This is not primarily the result of bad, stupid or lazy people; it is the failure to recognize how social policy and its consequences are inextricably bound to health consequences. Disease and death are not randomly distributed in populations, to a large extent, the distribution is socially patterned and consequently, predictable.

This study is a harbinger of things to come. It is foreseeable that life expectancy will continue to decline in these communities until a concerted effort is made to systematically identify and strengthen the core social determinants of health that plague these communities. We need not feel that these are insoluble problems. Focused efforts and policies directed to improving the social consequences of poverty will serve to decouple the tight linkage that presently exists in America between being poor and having poor health. We are smarter than this; we can do better as a Nation if well-intentioned people come together and work on constructive solutions.

Great names in the news

Susan Weed opposed Daquarii Rock

for an open seat on the Pullman, WA school board.

Weed won.

Pat Buchanan's Right Again. Dammit.

In Why the Antiwar Democrats Will Retreat, he nails it.

Bush is winning today because he has jettisoned the jabber about global democracy and argues that a U.S. withdrawal risks a strategic disaster, national humiliation, massacre of our friends and triumph for al-Qaida. Democrats, fearing he may be right, are in paralysis.

Scourged for 20 years over Who Lost China? they don't want to spend the next 20 years answering Who Lost the Middle East?

Thus the rout of the peace Democrats. But the movement will be back. For, Petraeus' good news notwithstanding, there is no light yet visible at the end of this tunnel.

Agreeing with Pat tends to give me that icky feeling inside, but sometimes it has to be done.

Fear and Loathing

According to a FOXNews.com PR piece for the batch of thugs and school-yard bullies (with nuclear weapons) currently in power in the good 'ol US of A, our collective hands will soon be even gorier. Considering how well it's worked elsewhere, why not bomb Iran back to the Stone Age? If they don't do what we tell 'em, they deserve what they get.

If we let our current ruling regime get away with this, we deserve what we get.

Our victims don't.

Here's a simple mnemonic for the solution: ICICI.

• Impeach
• Convict
• Indict
• Convict
• Imprison

Repeat as needed.

Murder, war crimes, treason, desertion--no shortage of grounds. Mix and match, or pick a personal favorite.

More Murder On The Way

In:

U.S. Officials Begin Crafting Iran Bombing Plan

From:

FOXNews.com

By:

James Rosen

Man the barricades.

A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime, FOX News confirmed Tuesday.

...and...

The Germans voiced concern about the damaging effects any further sanctions on Iran would have on the German economy — and also, according to diplomats from other countries, gave the distinct impression that they would privately welcome, while publicly protesting, an American bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear facilities.

and

Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, the most ardent proponent of a diplomatic resolution to the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions, has had his chance on the Iranian account and come up empty.

Most relevant parties have concluded such a comprehensive attack plan would require at least a week of sustained bombing runs, and would at best set the Iranian nuclear program back a number of years — but not destroy it forever. Other considerations include the likelihood of Iranian reprisals against Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centers; and the effects on American troops in Iraq. There, officials have concluded that the Iranians are unlikely to do much more damage than they already have been able to inflict through their supply of explosives and training of insurgents in Iraq.

and

Vice President Cheney and his aides are said to be enjoying a bit of "schadenfreude" at the expense of Burns. A source described Cheney's office as effectively gloating to Burns and Rice, We told you so. (The Iranians) are not containable diplomatically. The next shoe to drop will be when Rice and President Bush make a final decision about whether to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and/or its lethal subset, the Quds Force, as a terrorist entity or entities. FOX News reported in June that such a move is under consideration.

You don't have to hit me over the head with a shovel....

In:

Key GOP Senator Breaks With Bush

From:

washingtonpost.com

By:

Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane

The six-term lawmaker, party loyalist and former staunch war supporter represents one of the most significant GOP losses to date. Speaking to reporters at a news conference in Albuquerque, Domenici said he began to question his stance on Iraq late last month, after several conversations with the family members of dead soldiers from his home state, and as it became clear that Iraqi leaders are making little progress toward national reconciliation.

Once more, with emphasis: Domenici said he began to question his stance on Iraq late last month, after several conversations with the family members of dead soldiers from his home state.

So, Senator Pete is so dim, or callous, or out of touch, or--what?--that finally, in the last few weeks, after the reality of the last several years, after tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents dead, all it takes is having his nose rubbed in the Iraq mess via the grieving families of murdered soldiers. I had a dog like that once, but she grew out of it in six months or so. That's pre-kindergarten in dog years. Pete seems a bit developmentally delayed.

Whaddaya think, New Mexico? Are YOU going to trust this guy with OUR lives, come next re-election campaign?

Some People Made a Movie

I think it's good.

Join Spout | Buy DVD | Watch Video Podcast | Get Code

our own malevolent tyrant

In:

The Madness of Our King George Has Even Texas Friends Worried

From:

The Niagara Falls Reporter Opinion

By:

Bill Gallagher

President George W. Bush is miserable and mad. He's off to Europe this week for the G-8 summit, and the prospect of meeting with peers who refuse to hang on his every word and bow to his whims makes him moan.

He also has to eat foreign food, sleep in an unfamiliar bed and pretend he's engaged and interested in what the other heads of state have to say. For Bush, this is pure torture, though richly deserved.

He'll probably restrain himself and not repeat his condescending, sexist shoulder rub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. His buddy British Prime Minister Tony Blair is a lame duck, but the two will chuckle together, slap each other's knees and try to forget the disaster they brought to Iraq.

Bush can't bully the leaders of the world's major industrial nations and convince them of his righteousness the way he can his staff and friends. He is becoming increasingly unhinged and even more dangerous.

...and...

American troops have been in Korea for 57 years. Since the truce in 1953, only 90 U.S. troops have died in border clashes with the North Koreans. By contrast, in the four years since the "Mission Accomplished" proclamation, more than 3,000 American soldiers have died in Iraq, and the casualty trend lines are going up in the futile "surge" strategy.

The Iraqi bomb-makers are boosting production, and no matter what we do militarily, they cannot be stopped. More money and more troops won't change that grim reality. More Americans died in April and May than in any other two-month period since the war began. In May alone, more than 2,000 Iraqi civilians died.

...and...

Even our own malevolent tyrant knows there will be no ease this summer for those living in Iraq. He recently said, "It could be bloody -- it could be a very difficult August." He should know because, as he likes to remind us, "I am the president! I am the president! I am the president!"

Nailed it, eh?