warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Many Holes in Disclosure of Nominees’ Health |
Mon 10/20/08 12:26 AM |
The Doctor’s World
Many Holes in Disclosure of Nominees’ Health
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN, M.D.
Published: October 19, 2008
Fifteen days before the election, serious gaps remain in the public’s knowledge about the health of the presidential and vice-presidential nominees. The limited information provided by the candidates is a striking departure from recent campaigns, in which many candidates and their doctors were more forthcoming.
In past elections, the decisions of some candidates for the nation’s top elected offices to withhold health information turned out to have a significant impact after the information came to light. This year, the health issue carries extraordinary significance because two of the four nominees have survived potentially fatal medical problems that could recur.
If elected, Senator John McCain of Arizona, 72, the Republican nominee, would be the oldest man to be sworn in to a first term as president and the first cancer survivor to win the office. The scars on his puffy left cheek are cosmetic reminders of the extensive surgery he underwent in 2000 to remove a malignant melanoma.
Last May, his campaign and his doctors released nearly 1,200 pages of medical information, far more than the three other nominees. But the documents were released in a restricted way that leaves questions, even confusion, about his cancer.
A critical question concerns inconsistencies in medical opinions about the severity of his melanoma; if the classification of his melanoma is more severe, it would increase the statistical likelihood of death from a recurrence of the cancer.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, 65, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, had emergency surgery in 1988 for an aneurysm in an artery in his brain and elective surgery for a second one. His campaign released 49 pages of medical records to The New York Times late last week showing that he was healthy, but the documents did not indicate whether he had had a test in recent years to detect any new aneurysm.
The two other nominees are younger and apparently in good health, but less is known about their medical history. Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, 47, the Democratic presidential nominee, released a one-page, undated letter from his personal physician in May stating that he was in “excellent” health. Late last week, his campaign released the results of standard laboratory tests and electrocardiograms from his checkups in June 2001, November 2004 and January 2007. The findings were normal.
Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, 44, Mr. McCain’s running mate, has released no medical information.
There may be no serious problems with the health of any of the nominees. But absent fuller disclosure, there is no way for the electorate to know.
The health of the four nominees is a matter of concern because in the past a number of candidates, and in some cases their doctors and aides, have distorted, kept secret or spoken about the facts only at the last minute when medical events forced the issue. Examples include Senator Thomas F. Eagleton (depression), Senator Paul E. Tsongas (cancer), Senator Bill Bradley (heart rhythm abnormality) and, as a vice-presidential nominee, **** Cheney (heart disease).
I am a physician who has covered the health of presidential candidates for 36 years. Since 1980, The Times has made it a practice to question nominees for president and other high political offices and, with their permission, their doctors about their health.
The Times has requested such interviews with Mr. Obama since last spring and with Mr. McCain and his doctors since March 2007. None were granted. More recently, The Times sent letters to all four nominees requesting interviews about their health with them and their doctors. None agreed.
The candidates’ health has drawn little attention for most of this long campaign season despite the importance of the issue. But since Mr. McCain selected Ms. Palin as his running mate in August, questions about his health have intensified. In recent weeks, more than 2,700 physicians have signed a petition that ran as an advertisement demanding that Mr. McCain fully release his health records; the petition is sponsored by Brave New Films, the company led by Robert Greenwald, a Hollywood filmmaker who has contributed $2,250 to Democratic candidates and has made a number of anti-McCain videos. Beyond the advertisement, Mr. McCain’s health has become the subject of both speculation and distortion on the Internet and other media.
The following is a summary of the publicly known medical information about all four nominees and the outstanding questions about each.
John McCain
Mr. McCain’s difficulty raising his arms and his sometimes awkward gait are remnants of severe, untreated injuries he suffered in Vietnam. Mr. McCain, a Navy pilot, broke both arms and his right knee when his jet was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967. He experienced additional wounds while being tortured during his five and a half years as a prisoner of war. Mr. McCain may eventually need joint replacements, according to his doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Mr. McCain has released more details about his health than the other three nominees, though he has done so in a phased way and has apparently not agreed to any extensive interviews about his health. A handful of reporters were allowed to view his records during his bid for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination. Another group of reporters were permitted to see newer records last May. By not allowing reporters to interview him or his doctors extensively about his entire medical history, he has made it impossible to get a complete picture of his diagnoses and treatment.
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Save the economy, Legalize it. |
Mon 10/20/08 12:21 AM |
Netherlands cannabis growers yearly net $2.7b
Agence France-Presse
Published: Saturday October 18, 2008
THE HAGUE (AFP) – Clandestine cannabis growers in the Netherlands net two billion euros (2.7 billion dollars) a year -- worth almost half the country's horticultural sector -- a Dutch newspaper reported on Saturday.
By comparison, according to NRC Handelsblad, country's horticultural sector generates about 5.5 billion euros in annual income.
"There is major demand from England, Belgium, Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries and at the moment the Baltic countries," Max Daniel, the senior police officer who heads the Dutch agency charged with combatting cannabis-growing, told the newspaper.
Police investigations suggested that about 500 tonnes of Dutch cannabis were exported each year.
"We know that at least 80 percent of production is for export. In the Netherlands there are 400,000 users of the drug and of hashish. If it was only them, the problem would be entirely manageable," Daniel said.
"We still have the image of the small producer who grows a few plants in his attic to pay for his holidays in Benidorm (in southern Spain)," but the reality was quite different, Daniel told the newspaper, alluding to "professionals".
He thought the cannabis trade could be found behind most major murder, arms trafficking and drugs cases.
He quoted police sources as suggesting that banks were lending to growers, and that laboratories had ties to universities to increase production.
In July, the Dutch government set up a committee to examine and coordinate the fight against cannabis production, an activity in constant growth and increasingly professionalised.
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Iraq wins right to prosecute crimes by US troops |
Mon 10/20/08 12:18 AM |
Now, for all those propagandized dolts that think Muslims are all evil, is this not a great reason to bring our soldiers home?
Especially condidering it wouldn't take much for an Iraqi to confuse a Soldier for the mercenary Blackwater criminals. |
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Iraq wins right to prosecute crimes by US troops |
Mon 10/20/08 12:16 AM |
Iraq wins right to prosecute crimes by US troops
Agence France-Presse
Published: Sunday October 19, 2008
BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq has secured the right to prosecute US soldiers and civilians for crimes committed outside their bases and when off duty, in the latest draft of a security pact that will set the terms of their deployment beyond this year.
The draft stipulates that the US will have the primary right to exercise jurisdiction over its soldiers and civilians if they commit a crime inside their facilities or when on missions, according to a copy obtained by AFP.
But the arrangement gives Iraqi courts the right to prosecute US soldiers and civilians if they commit "grave and premeditated felonies outside their facilities and when not on missions."
The decision is seen as a hard-won concession for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki who has taken a tough stand on protecting his country's sovereignty in the pact.
The so-called Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) will provide the legal basis for a US troop presence in Iraq after the present UN mandate expires on December 31.
A failure to agree on the terms would force Baghdad and Washington to find another legal framework.
If the agreement is signed by the two sides and approved by the Iraqi parliament, it will become effective from January 1 and last for three years, during which a phased withdrawal of US forces is outlined.
However, senior leaders of Maliki's ruling alliance, the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), who met on Saturday to discuss the current draft with the prime minister said changes still needed to be made.
"There are positive points and others need more time to be discussed, and others need modification," said a UIA statement released Sunday.
A senior parliament member told AFP that the draft will be voted on later on Sunday by the Political Council for National Security, a body made up of top Iraqi leaders, including the prime minister and president.
If approved it would then go before the cabinet and then the parliament for a vote.
US combat forces will withdraw from Iraqi towns and villages by June 2009 and pull out of Iraq completely by December 2011, the document says.
"By this time the Iraqi forces will take over all the security responsibility in the country. After June 2009, US forces will stay in the bases outside the villages and cities," the document says.
The two sides have also agreed that all military operations in Iraq will be carried out with the approval of Baghdad under the supervision of a Joint Military Operation Coordination Committee (JMOCC) to be formed under the pact.
"All these operations must be executed with full respect to the Iraqi constitution and Iraqi laws," the draft says.
The agreement also restricts US military powers by permitting troops to detain Iraqis only through an Iraqi order.
"In case they detain, the detainee must be handed over to Iraqi authorities within 24 hours," the document says.
It also stipulates that any US personnel detained by Iraqis must be handed over immediately to American authorities.
Iraq will also be in control of its air space once the agreement comes into effect.
Iraq will also have the primary right to exercise jurisdiction over US private security contractors.
Iraqi officials had told AFP earlier that this right was conceded to Baghdad without much opposition following the killing of 17 Iraqis in broad daylight by guards from the Blackwater security firm in September 2007.
Maliki said on Sunday that Iraq was keen to negotiate a similar security pact with Britain to provide for a British military presence beyond this year.
"If the SOFA with the US is approved by parliament, it will help signing an agreement with British for their military presence in Iraq," he said in a statement after talks with visiting British Defence Secretary John Hutton.
Hutton, 53, who took over the defence portfolio from Des Browne just over two weeks ago, said that he had brought his team to discuss the Status of Forces Agreement between Baghdad and London.
"We want, in the first months of next year, to see a fundamental change in our military mission in Iraq, moving towards an increased focus on military training and education as part of a broad-based bilateral partnership," Hutton said in a statement.
Earlier this month, Maliki told a British daily that the more than 4,000 British troops are no longer necessary for the security of Iraq and should go home.
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Barack Obama lines up a cabinet of stars |
Mon 10/20/08 12:12 AM |
Barack Obama lines up a cabinet of stars as John McCain struggles on
The Democrat may recruit some big names, including Republicans, to see America through the crisis
Sarah Baxter in Roanoke, Virginia
With the economy on the brink of recession and the country in the midst of two foreign wars, Barack Obama is considering appointing a cabinet of stars to steer America through potentially its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s if he wins the presidency on November 4.
Obama has a well-regarded, close-knit team of domestic and foreign policy advisers who would follow him into the White House and key administration posts. But he is also being urged to make some high-profile appointments who would command the confidence of the country at such a troubled time.
“It’s important to send a signal,” an Obama adviser said. “With a comparatively new person in office and the awful mess we’re in, these appointments are going to resonate around the world.” Obama, 47, has been warning his supporters that the election is not over yet. “Don’t underestimate our ability to screw it up,” he said last week. But should Obama win, he will not be short of big names to choose for his administration.
A host of well-known figures, including some Republicans, have indicated they would be willing to serve in some capacity as Obama begins to acquire a winner’s glow. From Senator John Kerry, the 2004 presidential candidate with hopes of becoming secretary of state, to Larry Summers, a former US Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, and Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator who has been tipped as defence secretary, there are plenty who have signalled their availability.
Obama is thought likely to cherry-pick a few high-profile names, while rewarding the loyalty and discretion of advisers such as his foreign policy expert Susan Rice who have served him so well throughout the campaign.
“He has no patience whatsoever with prima donnas,” said one leading Democrat policy adviser. “He’s surrounded himself with people who are pretty smooth in dealing with each other.” All eyes were on Colin Powell, the former secretary of state under President George W Bush, to see if he would declare his support for Obama in an interview on Meet the Press, the flagship political television programme, today.
Powell is unlikely to return to the cabinet after the mauling he received over the Iraq war, but could serve as a special envoy abroad. He is regularly consulted by Obama on foreign policy and military matters, and said last year: “I always keep my eyes open and my ears open to requests for service.”
In last week’s debate against John McCain, his Republican opponent, Obama indicated that he would adopt a bipartisan approach to government, citing the Republican senator Richard Lugar, who worked with him on a bill to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, and General Jim Jones, the former Nato commander, as figures he admired.
“Those are the people, Democrat and Republican, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House,” Obama said.
If the Democrats win sweeping majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the White House, conservative voters could feel alienated from every branch of government. The McCain campaign is already playing up fears of a Democratic landslide to persuade Republicans and independents to back their man.
An editorial in The Wall Street Journal last week warned of a coming “liberal super-majority”. It is possible Democrats could win a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate, enabling them to pass whatever legislation they wanted, from higher taxes to greater union rights.
“Though we doubt most Americans realise it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in US history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven’t since 1965 or 1933,” the newspaper commented.
William Galston, a former White House policy adviser under Bill Clinton, said: “I don’t think Obama is going to give Republicans much on substance, so he would be well advised to give them some satisfaction on personnel.”
Some leading supporters, such as Kerry, may end up disappointed, even though he launched the then unknown Illinois politician’s career at the 2004 Democratic national convention. “Frankly, how many senators do you want in the cabinet?” wondered one Obama adviser. If he wins the presidency, Obama has to beware of countering his message of “change” on the campaign stump by appointing too many Washington insiders.
Republicans hope the wall-to-wall coverage of the attack by the baldheaded Sam “Joe the plumber” Wurzelbacher on Obama’s plans to increase taxes for those earning more than $250,000 a year has halted the Democrat’s momentum. Some polls have tightened in favour of McCain, 72, but Obama retains an average lead of nearly seven points.
David Plouffe, Obama’s coolly efficient campaign manager, believes his candidate is disproportionately strong in former Republican strongholds such as Virginia and Colorado. This could give Obama enough electoral college votes to push him past the winner’s post, even if he loses the traditional battle-ground states of Florida and Ohio to McCain. The polls suggest that Obama leads by eight points in Virginia, a state that George W Bush won by the same margin in 2004.
In a show of confidence that rattled Republicans, Obama travelled on Friday to Roanoke on the edge of the Appalachian mountains in southwestern Virginia in search of the white, working-class voters who eluded him in the primary campaign against Hillary Clinton.
McCain, in contrast, was fighting a rearguard, defensive action in the northern tip of the state yesterday to shore up his support among the high-tech, white-collar, suburban voters who have been deserting his party.
The youth vote and black vote have been mobilised to an unprecedented degree by the Obama campaign, which has raised $454m – nearly double McCain’s $230m – enabling it to spend on saturation advertising and organisation in areas that were once thought to be unwinnable. It is expected to announce a record-breaking haul of more than $100m in September.
The Democratic voter registration effort has reached far and wide. Althea Patterson, 40, an African-American insurance worker from Roanoke, said: “I’ve got friends who went out and got their criminal records expunged so they could vote for Obama.” Former felons are barred from voting without a judge’s dispensation.
Senator Jim Webb, the Virginia Democrat and former marine who served as navy secretary in President Ronald Reagan’s administration, personally vouched for Obama’s integrity. “You can trust me and I trust him,” he told the rally in Roanoke. He cited the refrain from a country and western song to disparage McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate: “I know what I was doing but what was I thinking?”
With little more than two weeks until polling day, some leading Republicans suspect McCain is doomed. Peter Wehner, a senior White House official under Bush, said: “The Obama campaign is terrific. They’ve got boatloads of money and they’re using it well. I don’t think the race is over, but I always thought Obama would win. I’m a realist and I can read the polls and the electoral map as well as the next guy.” A persistent question for Obama is how to make the most of Hillary Clinton’s talents in government after she has helped to swing women and blue-collar workers behind him. Last week the New York senator put her chances of running again for president at “probably close to zero”, leaving just a little wiggle room in case Obama loses in a fortnight’s time and there is a vacancy.
Clinton added: “There’s an old saying: bloom where you’re planted.” In the event of an Obama victory, she hopes to inherit the mantle of lion of the Senate from Edward Kennedy and steer universal healthcare legislation through Congress.
However, members of Obama’s inner circle believe she would be tempted to accept an offer to become health secretary, which would give her the historic opportunity to devise and implement the policy. “That’s very possible. Senator Clinton would be terrific as health secretary,” said Congressman Patrick Murphy, a leading Obama supporter.
Sorting out the economy is going to be the biggest test of Obama’s presidency. “He’s got to do something bold and a lot of it will be psychological,” one of his advisers said. One of the names in the frame for Treasury secretary is Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve under President Ronald Reagan, who brought inflation under control in the early 1980s.
Admirers admit his age is against him – Volcker is 81 – but suggest he could oversee a financial rescue package before passing on the baton. Glenn Hubbard, the former head of the Council of Economic Advisers under Bush, said: “I can’t think of anyone else with the same stature.”
Volcker endorsed Obama back in January when Clinton was still the Democratic front-runner. “He would provide the confidence necessary to stabilise the markets and put together an economic plan to get the country moving again,” an Obama adviser said. “This is the man who solved the last economic crisis.”
Another leading candidate for the Treasury is Summers, who has been guiding Obama through the Wall Street melt-down. Summers was forced to quit as president of Harvard University in 2006 after suggesting controversially that men had a greater aptitude for science and engineering than women.
At a conference at Harvard Business School last week, Summers defended Obama’s plans to tax the wealthy by pointing to the huge rise in inequality over the past 30 years between the earnings of the top 1% and bottom 80% of the country. “It is immense compared to any discussion of changing the tax system here or there,” he said.
Obama may also want to reward Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F Kennedy, for overseeing his vice-presidential selection and bringing the coveted family name to his campaign. She has been variously tipped as ambassador to the United Nations, the Vatican and even Britain – her grandfather Joseph Kennedy was sent packing from the same job in 1940 after saying democracy was finished. However, she may wish to remain in America and build on her experience as an education reformer in New York.
As Obama ponders his choice of cabinet, he may recall that there is a precedent for appointing well-established “stars” to shore up a relatively inexperienced president. George W Bush brought the powerful triumvirate of **** Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Powell into his cabinet – and all were heavily criticised for their performance.
Wehner has learnt from experience inside the White House that voters can soon tire of distinguished names if they are unhappy with the results. “There will be a lot of talk about bipartisanship and a honeymoon period, but that will disappear if the economy is stagnating or gets worse,” he said. “The public is very pragmatic and will make its judgment on results rather than optics. The acid test is how the country is doing.”
------------------------------------------------
Just a reminder, Hagel owns a fair amount of stock in none other than ES&S, which is a company that makes the programs that run the voting machines... or at least he did since I checked last, nevermind Chucky boy didn't think providing that information when he ran the first time was important...
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: More W.Va. voters say machines are switching votes |
Mon 10/20/08 12:04 AM |
In six cases, Democratic votes flipped to GOP
WINFIELD, W.Va. -- Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week. This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain".
By Paul J. Nyden
Staff writer
WINFIELD, W.Va. -- Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.
This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain".
In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing elections. Both county clerks said the problem is isolated.
They also blamed voters for not being more careful.
"People make mistakes more than machines," said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.
Shelba Ketchum, a 69-year-old nurse retired from Thomas Memorial Hospital, described what happened Friday at the Putnam County Courthouse in Winfield.
"I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican," she said. "I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.
"I asked them for a printout of my votes," Ketchum said. "But they said it was in the machine and I could not get it. I did not feel right when I left the courthouse. My son felt the same way.
"I heard from some other people they also had trouble. But no one in there knew how to fix it," said Ketchum, who is not related to Menis Ketchum, a Democratic Supreme Court candidate.
Ketchum's son, Chris, said he had the same problem. And Bobbi Oates of Scott Depot said her vote for incumbent Democratic Sen. John D. Rockefeller was switched to GOP opponent Jay Wolfe.
"I touched the one I wanted, Rockefeller, and the machine put a checkmark on the Republican instead," Oates said of her experience Thursday.
She said she caught the mistake, called over a worker in the county clerk's office and was able to correct her vote. But she worries other voters may not catch such a mistake.
When asked if she is sure she touched the box for Rockefeller, she said, "I'm absolutely positive."
Putnam County Clerk Brian Wood said on Saturday that he is upset there are "so many negative stories out there and not enough positive ones. We want people to vote. People need to know the facts.
"But we haven't had any major issues. We try to explain to voters how the machines work then they come in," Wood said.
In Putnam County, early voters have the option of asking for either touch-screen machines or optical scan ballots -- paper ballots on which people mark in their election choices.
Wood said some voters might not realize that touch-screen voting machines may take a few seconds to record their choices.
WINFIELD, W.Va. -- Three Putnam County voters say electronic voting machines changed their votes from Democrats to Republicans when they cast early ballots last week.
This is the second West Virginia county where voters have reported this problem. Last week, three voters in Jackson County told The Charleston Gazette their electronic vote for "Barack Obama" kept flipping to "John McCain".
In both counties, Republicans are responsible for overseeing elections. Both county clerks said the problem is isolated.
They also blamed voters for not being more careful.
"People make mistakes more than machines," said Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright.
Shelba Ketchum, a 69-year-old nurse retired from Thomas Memorial Hospital, described what happened Friday at the Putnam County Courthouse in Winfield.
"I pushed buttons and they all came up Republican," she said. "I hit Obama and it switched to McCain. I am really concerned about that. If McCain wins, there was something wrong with the machines.
"I asked them for a printout of my votes," Ketchum said. "But they said it was in the machine and I could not get it. I did not feel right when I left the courthouse. My son felt the same way.
"I heard from some other people they also had trouble. But no one in there knew how to fix it," said Ketchum, who is not related to Menis Ketchum, a Democratic Supreme Court candidate.
Ketchum's son, Chris, said he had the same problem. And Bobbi Oates of Scott Depot said her vote for incumbent Democratic Sen. John D. Rockefeller was switched to GOP opponent Jay Wolfe.
"I touched the one I wanted, Rockefeller, and the machine put a checkmark on the Republican instead," Oates said of her experience Thursday.
She said she caught the mistake, called over a worker in the county clerk's office and was able to correct her vote. But she worries other voters may not catch such a mistake.
When asked if she is sure she touched the box for Rockefeller, she said, "I'm absolutely positive."
Putnam County Clerk Brian Wood said on Saturday that he is upset there are "so many negative stories out there and not enough positive ones. We want people to vote. People need to know the facts.
"But we haven't had any major issues. We try to explain to voters how the machines work then they come in," Wood said.
In Putnam County, early voters have the option of asking for either touch-screen machines or optical scan ballots -- paper ballots on which people mark in their election choices.
Wood said some voters might not realize that touch-screen voting machines may take a few seconds to record their choices.
"The reaction time [on the machines] may be different. And when you hit the screen a second time, it cancels your vote," Wood said. "When you get in a hurry, if you go to fast and hit it again, you can cancel what you just did.
"The main thing people need to remember is that when you are done voting, make sure everybody you wanted to vote for has a check mark beside them," Wood said.
Ketchum said, "I am educated person. I know what I wanted. I am anxious to see who wins.
"My son Chris said, 'Mom, I didn't vote for the people who came up on that machine. I wanted to go back and vote again. I called the lady at the polls and she said it was my fault because of the way I was punching the buttons.'
"I want a paper ballot. I think it was very bad when they did away with paper ballots. I wish you had something in your hand that is a record of how you voted.
"I never felt that way before. It was early voting, so we went over there to get it over with. We won't do that again," Ketchum said.
Last week, three Jackson County residents said they experienced similar problems when they cast early ballots at the county courthouse in Ripley.
Virginia Matheney, one of those voters, said Friday, "When I touched the screen for Barack Obama, the check mark moved from his box to the box indicating a vote for John McCain."
Retired factory worker Calvin Thomas of Ripley said he experienced the same problem.
"When I pushed Obama, it jumped to McCain. When I went down to governor's office and punched [Gov. Joe] Manchin, it went to the other dude.
"After I finished, my daughter voted. When she pushed Obama, it went to McCain. It happened to her the same way it happened to me," Thomas said.
Jackson County Clerk Jeff Waybright, a Republican, said 400 other people voted without reporting any problems.
Wood said he and Waybright are both very careful to guarantee people's votes are recorded properly.
Wood said, "Voting machines are very reliable. I hate the fact that stories like this are printed. It makes everybody get scared.
"That is not good for anybody. Where the fault is, I don't know and the voter doesn't know. There needs to be good communication between the voters and the poll workers."
Wood offered this advice to voters: "The best way to solve this whole problem is that before you leave the voting booth, make sure on the review screen that everybody you want to vote for is checked."
More than 1,000 voters from 48 local precincts in Putnam County cast early ballots in the past three days, Wood said. Putnam County has 36,000 registered voters.
http://www.sundaygazettemail.com/News/200810180251
--------------------------------------------------
Blackboxvoting.org... |
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Another view on Powell's Obama endorsement. |
Sun 10/19/08 10:37 PM |
The Bagman Cometh: Obama Embraces War Criminal's Endorsement
by Chris Floyd
Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.
I.
Democratic Party circles are in raptures over Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama. One can see the heavily-blinkered logic behind their elation; now that our national politics has been reduced to a petty squabble over spoils among shifting factions in the imperial court, a nod from a consummate courtier like Powell is indeed a glittering prize for an ambitious prince.
But out in the real world, where the operations of imperial power have left smoking trails of murder and ruin across the globe, the "endorsement" of a man who played an indispensable role in the slaughter of more than a million innocent people in a war of Hitlerian aggression should be regarded as a thing of shame, and vociferously rejected by anyone with a scintilla of honor or morality.
In fact, it is not too much of a stretch to say that Colin Powell is more responsible for the mass murder spree in Iraq than any other person except George W. Bush, who gave the actual order for the hit. For it was Powell who "made the sale" for the Bush Faction's deceitful warmongering campaign, with his infamous February 2003 presentation to the UN, laying out the false evidence about Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. After that farrago of artfully delivered lies, the American Establishment – urged on by the fawning, bloodthirsty commentariat – lined up solidly behind the war. After all, if Colin Powell – so "reasonable," so "honorable," so "honest" and "bipartisan" – stood foursquare behind the Bush case for war, then it must be ironclad.
This was, again, the logic of courtiers, with little connection to reality. Powell's reputation as a wise, moderate, impartial statesman – the very thing that made him the most effective shill for the war crime in Iraq – was itself almost entirely a fiction. By the time he made his shameless UN appearance, Powell had already spent almost four decades as a bagman – and frontman – for some of the most vicious and ugly elements in American politics and government. From the My Lai massacre to Iran-Contra, from Washington's long and murderous collusion with Saddam to its long and murderous campaigns to remove him, Powell has been instrumental in perpetrating or covering up atrocities and abominations on a gigantic scale. [For details, see Robert Parry's investigation, "The Truth About Colin Powell."]
Since his departure from the Administration – after staying on long enough to see Bush reconfirmed in power – Powell and his legion of apologists have peddled the myth that he was "stabbed in the back" in his UN presentation: given a false bill of goods with assurances they were true, misled and manipulated by incompetent intelligence analysts and Machiavellian White House insiders, etc., etc. Such stories may help Powell sleep better at night, and they have certainly helped rehabilitate his fictional reputation to the extent that his endorsement is once more considered a worthy prize. But they suffer from one small defect: they are blatantly false.
Powell knew – knew beyond a shadow of a doubt – that he was offering rank lies, cooked intelligence and dubious assertion to the world at his UN presentation before the war. Earlier this year, Jonathan Schwarz provided a devastating demolition of Powell's UN testimony, showing how it was belied at almost every point by the actual intelligence reports – which Powell had read before the presentation. Powell knew the case for war against Iraq was riddled with holes – holes patched with outright fabrications and the knowing manipulation of data. He presented it anyway; he made the sale. And a million innocent human beings have die for it.
II.
But Powell was selling aggression against Iraq long before his UN fan-dance in February 2003. In fact, he was the mouthpiece that the Administration used in May 2002 – even before the White House began to "roll out the product" of a concentrated warmongering campaign – to signal Washington's firm intent to invade Iraq even if UN inspectors went into the country and found no weapons of mass destruction. The cat of war crime was out of the bag – and out in open – in the spring of 2002, and it was Powell who untied the strings.
Here's what I wrote on May 17, 2002, in The Moscow Times:
Quietly, without fanfare, in a bland statement issued by its most "moderate" front man, the Bush Regime crossed another moral Rubicon last week, carrying the once-great republic they have usurped deeper into the blood-soaked mire of international criminality.
The move – committing the United States of America to a policy of Hitlerian military aggression – was little noted at the time. A quick soundbite, maybe, on a couple of the more wonky TV news shows; a brief quote buried somewhere in the thick gray sludge of the "serious" papers. The Regime guaranteed its poison pill would go down sugarcoated by picking Secretary of State Colin Powell as its mouthpiece.
It was a masterstroke of propaganda, really. The former general has long been regarded by the "serious" media on both sides of the Atlantic as a "moderate" maverick on Bush's hard-right team. Liberal commentators praise Powell as a "restraining influence" on more bellicose insiders like Cheney and Rumsfeld, and a wise, guiding hand for a president unschooled in the subtleties of world diplomacy.
It's all a sham, of course. Powell is nothing more than a lifelong bagman for powerful interests. His willingness to play ball, to look the other way, has made him a convenient tool for the some of the most violent and undemocratic forces ever to pollute American society.
His first job on the Inside was an attempted whitewash of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam; it didn't quite work, but he won points for his obfuscatory efforts and went on to a plum job in the crime-ridden Nixon White House. Then came Iran-Contra, the criminal conspiracy of drug-running and terrorism operated directly out of the Reagan-Bush White House. Powell illicitly sent missiles to the terrorist regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, then helped with the ensuing cover-up. For this service, he was made head of the entire U.S. military.
He then directed the illegal American aggression against Panama, when President George H.W. Bush killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocent civilians in a hissy fit against his old CIA employee Manuel Noriega. Powell, like Bush, had long known Noriega was a murderous drug dealer, but they found him useful, and plied him with plaudits and cash – until Bush needed to prove his tough-guy cojones to Reaganite critics in the Republican Party....
So what better man to announce George W. Bush's adoption of Adolf Hitler's moral code? Powell sat down with the media sycophants on ABC's "This Week" and calmly – moderately – laid out the new doctrine. The subject, of course, was Iraq. The UN was working on a deal that would allow international inspectors back into the country to verify that Saddam Hussein no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction.
These inspections were vital because, as George W. never ceases to remind us, Saddam Hussein is so evil that he "gassed his own people." ...But Junior always omits the inconvenient fact that one year [the attack], Daddy Bush signed an executive order mandating closer U.S. ties to Saddam's regime. Daddy Bush showered Saddam with endless financial credits and mountains of "dual-use technology" – which the dictator duly used to develop his WMDs – right up until the day before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Needless to say, Powell, as head of Daddy's military, was complicit in this lunatic operation and raised no demur, "moderate" or otherwise.
Flash forward to the present day. Junior Bush is now in the White House. For months, he has threatened military action against Iraq if Hussein fails to verify the destruction of his WMD capacity. (At the same time, of course, Junior undercuts international treaties that would require monitoring of his own biochemical warfare facilities. There's a good reason for that: the Regime is now preparing to develop offensive biochemical weapons, in contravention of international and U.S. law, the Village Voice reports.)
The world braces for another conflagration in the Mesopotamian sands. But then Saddam blinks. He starts talking with the UN. He renounces aggression. He tries to make up with Kuwait. Sooner or later, the inspectors will go back in – no cause for war now, right?
Wrong, Powell told the sycophants last week. The "moderate" secretary said that even if UN inspectors go in and verify compliance, the Bush Regime still "reserves its options" to do anything necessary, including military invasion, to effect a "regime change." Bush himself has already acknowledged that nuclear force is among those "options."
So there it is. The United States now openly claims the right to launch an all-out attack on any nation in the world whose regime it doesn't like – even if that nation is not engaged in active military aggression or terrorism – and even if the mere threat of aggression has been defused by UN monitoring.
No provocation necessary. No legality required. Just a thuggish elite raining death on the world, for profit and power, sowing hatred for the once-great nation they have hijacked – and ensuring more death and terror for its people.
This then is the bloodstained hand that Barack Obama has clasped so warmly, so triumphantly, on his march to power. As for Powell, he has proven himself once more the ultimate courtier. In the latest intramural tussle in the imperial court, his keen and practiced eye has picked out the coming man – and so he has jettisoned the faction he has served for so long, and latched on to the winning side yet again. (As he did previously for a while with Bill Clinton.) And why not? Powell has always been a faithful servant of America's militarist empire – no matter who its temporary manager might be.
October 20, 2008
Chris Floyd is the author of Empire Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime.
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Howard Stern exposes the Obama cult |
Sun 10/19/08 10:29 PM |
QUOTE:
QUOTE:
I think it blows a hole in the fact that alot of people don't seem to actually know what Obama stands for. They're just voting in a form of the Cult of Personality.
Thanks Drivin' I always try to be thought provoking...if nothing else.
I saw him speak in St. Louis Saturday. I went to see him to understand more about him. About 100,000 people were listening with me.
Every time I see him speak and read what he has to offer, the more that I like him.
Okay, why? |
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Your Presidential Choice: |
Sun 10/19/08 10:28 PM |
Your Presidential Choice: Two Names for More of the Same
by **** Clark
On Tuesday, November 4, 2008, voters across the United States will take to the polls in hopes of determining their political and economic futures. Fat chance. The two major party candidates are so close in terms of policy positions that only a two-party system could produce two "opposition" candidates so nearly identical to one another. Both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama advocate managed, rather than free, international trade, although each candidate's rhetoric is expertly designed to appeal to his respective political base. Both candidates voted to again canonize Big Brother government by reauthorizing the USA PATRIOT Act in 2006. Both accept as a given the productivity-discouraging fractional slavery of the federal income tax. As best-selling author and historian Tom Woods snidely remarked in a speech on September 5,
On taxes, the Democrat favors a top income tax rate of 39.5 per cent and the Republican favors a top rate of 35 per cent. Well ain't democracy grand? We get to debate a whole four and a half percentage points. We'd better spread this system around the world!
And indeed, both candidates seem poised to continue spreading away, with each man supporting the expansion of the United States' global hegemony, already enforced by the troops manning the more than 800 U.S. military installations in 140+ countries around the world. The differences between Obama and McCain on foreign policy are nuanced and unsatisfying, especially to the radical anti-war activists that have worked for many long years to bring American service members home to their families and productive domestic lives. Both candidates advocate increasing troop deployments, although Obama's military adventurist aspirations would in part serve to satisfy the pop-interventionists who have been lusting for American involvement in Sudan and would in part show that Obama is a tough guy who can really get the arch-terrorists along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. McCain's hawkishness, on the other hand, alternates between chest-pounding and talk of saving face by "winning," as measured by some undefined standard that, in its vagueness, may as well be synonymous with "make war for as long as possible wherever possible."
Of course, "as long as possible" just may be growing shorter, since the Federal Reserve's enaction of Ben Bernanke's brand of Friedmanite monetarism – mistakenly labeled "free market" – is likely to prolong the current recession by both preventing the full correction needed to adjust for the misallocations of the boom period and by compounding these misjudgements by luring entrepreneurs and consumers alike into even further debt. The plutocrats like United States Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his former financial market colleagues, along with activist central bankers, led by Chicago School true-believer Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, are now in a position to really distort markets, thanks to the extensive new powers granted by the pork-induced congressional "bailout," a clear capitulation to the executive branch's whims.
With the current hyper-interventionist Bush regime often being incorrectly described as laissez-faire, one cannot help but be reminded of the popular but incorrect account of the Great Depression and the Hoover-Roosevelt regime change. The story goes that speculators ran amuck in a too-free market under a free-wheeling do-nothing Herbert Hoover. Then along came Franklin Delano Roosevelt, armed with his New Deal, to rescue the battered proletariat from the merciless jaws of its capitalist abusers. Of course, this account is incorrect. During the 1932 campaign, FDR actually criticized the incumbent Hoover for excessive government spending. Hoover said the following about his own policies:
We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action. No government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times. Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we had found bottom. We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitter-end liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction.
Rather than being a do-nothing president, Hoover was indeed an economic interventionist of the first order. Historian Joseph Stromberg argues that FDR only extended and formalized the corporatist policies of Hoover.
Herbert Hoover was a major architect of peacetime corporatism. As Commerce Secretary he encouraged the cartelistic integration of trade associations with labor unions. As President, he pioneered most of the New Deal measures, which had the unexpected effect of prolonging a depression itself caused by governmental monetary policy. In the election of 1932, important business liberals shifted their support to FDR when Hoover refused to go over to a fully fascist form of corporatism. By contrast, the Roosevelt Administration pushed through the National Recovery Act, which openly sanctioned the cartelizing activities of trade associations, and the Agricultural Adjustment Act, cartelizing the farm sector. The Wagner Act of 1935 integrated labor into the nascent system.
Under the Hoover administration, the American people saw increased inheritance taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, public works spending, extensive stock market regulation, systematic immigration and labor restrictions and regulations, and unsound monetary policy. That last was made possible by the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913. FDR's own interventions certainly extended beyond those of his predecessor, but it should be noted that on March 9, 1933, only five days after assuming office, one of FDR's first acts was to push through a sweeping "Emergency Banking Relief Act" that was largely drafted by the supposedly do-nothing Hoover administration. Austrian School economists such as Murray Rothbard have shown that the actions taken by both Hoover and Roosevelt actually deepened and extended the depression.
In keeping with the tradition of inaccurate portrayals demonstrated by the Hoover-FDR example, George W. Bush, who has presided over one of the largest, most interventionist governments in human history, is largely portrayed by both parties and by uninformed commentators as a champion of free markets. The present crisis is being blamed – mistakenly – on "market failure," when nothing could be further from the truth. The current financial crisis is only the natural result of the meddlesome policies of the federal government, combined with the incentivized responses of market actors responding to manipulations of money and credit. One wonders if those objecting to the operation of economic law would be equally vehement in denouncing physics for interrupting one's upward travel by operation of that pesky law of gravity.
With "freedom" like what we've seen over the past eight years, it is no wonder that many people are seeking an alternative. Unfortunately, the American people are faced with the disconcerting certainty that the next president will preside over an America that is less free, less prosperous, and more inhibited by government intervention in the marketplace than any time since the New Deal. It isn't clear that democratic action can or will prevent the desperate actions of lawmakers who are willing to break any oath in order to appear busy in the face of a looming catastrophe, and who are even more desperate to protect the position and influence of the plutocrats who in many cases played a major role in getting them elected. When it passed the Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933 and the $850 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the Congress leapt before it looked. Both acts were passed by a congressional body before it could fully read and understand what it was approving. Both major party 2008 presidential contenders voted in favor of the latter legislation. Regardless of which candidate succeeds George W. Bush, Americans face the very real threat of the next top executive wielding even broader emergency powers than Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR did.
October 20, 2008
**** Clark , a native Southerner, currently lives in exile in Boston, MA. He is a 2L at Suffolk University Law School.
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Howard Stern exposes the Obama cult |
Sun 10/19/08 10:00 PM |
QUOTE:
I dont think its a cult following as much as people all know what the republican trickle down economics has done. I would say alot of it is what they feel is the lesser of two evils, they know what the countrys state is in..Personally I know there are people I would rather see elected but until we get rid of the two party system its not going to change..To call all people backing Obama a cult is off base.
I never said all Obama supporters are a cult, But they are following a cult of personality. If Obama got up there and presented his speeches, verbatium, like John Kerry... he'd be toast.
This administration has not been following Reagans trickle down, in fact, nothing the last 2 Bushes have done resemble anything Reagan did. Tell me what President in history has grown Government with as much furious, desperate speed than King George?
However, what Obama is proposing sounds to me, alot like the Republican standard of drill baby drill, except it's Spend, baby, spend.
McCain is no better, the difference between the two is where they're gonna do their spending... at the end of the day it's just more money made off the sweat of the American people and off the sacrifice of our childrens childrens childrens future. |
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Grandmother sues McCain for hate speech |
Sun 10/19/08 03:20 AM |
Grandmother sues McCain for hate speechDavid Edwards and Stephen C. Webster
Published: Friday October 17, 2008
A Kansas City grandmother is suing John McCain and Sarah Palin for promoting hate speech. Mary Kay Green told KSHB that some statements at McCain campaign rallies terrify her as much as the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"I know the secret service is on this case, but John McCain and Sarah Palin can stop some of this by a statement that they abhor these death threats and will not tolerate them," said Green.
The 66-year-old civil attorney, a lifelong Democrat, claims in the suit that the McCain campaign has intentionally and recklessly portrayed Barack Obama as a terrorist.
Green said, "You have to take these things seriously."
Green believe that Palin has been working crowds into a frenzy. There have been reports from McCain campaign rallies with words like "kill him," "off with his head," and "Muslim terrorist."
According to Green, her father managed the Nebraska campaigns of John and Robert Kennedy. After both were felled by assassins, her father died "of grief."
"I think John McCain and Sarah Palin have no understanding of what we went through as a nation," she said. "[The lawsuit] will be dismissed as soon as I hear public statements from these two candidates that they abhor these death threats and that they will not tolerate these intruders in their audiences."
KSHB has more details
This video is from MSNBC.com, broadcast October 17, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Grandmother_sues_McCain_for_hate_speech_1017.html |
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: That’ll Teach Her... |
Sun 10/19/08 03:16 AM |
How not to handle your critics:
The ACLU filed the case on April 18, 2006, on behalf of Karen J. Kilpatrick, who claimed that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) violated her Free Speech rights.
Kilpatrick was driving her blue van in Pensacola on April 19, 2004, with the slogans “Remember the Children of Waco” and “Boo ATF” written on some of the windows when she was pulled over by police for questioning by the ATF.
The ACLU argues in the lawsuit that her First Amendment Rights to Free Speech and her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure were violated when officers detained her for an hour, searched her car without consent, and ordered her to remove the writing on the side of her van.
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Torturing Democracy: |
Sun 10/19/08 03:10 AM |
Torturing Democracy: PBS Movie Depicting Bush Administrations Crimes
October 17th, 2008 by sentinel
I just spent the last couple of hours watching this and it's a very concise depiction of the Crimes perpetrated By George Bush and **** Cheney against the Laws of the Geneva Convention, the laws of decency, and the laws of the Constitution.
The Movie is called Torturing Democracy and can be watched for free in it's entirety here. Some very graphic scenes, very high quality video.
http://torturingdemocracy.org/
But mostly just disturbing even if you think you know what was happening during Bush's terms, you probably really have no idea what was taking place until you watch this film.
PBS has been instructed not to show this film until Bush leaves office.
I can see this being used in the prosecution of George Bush, **** Cheney and everyone else involved.
The Link to watch the film is at the top left under ( Watch the Program )
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Not Your Grandfather's Depression : Peter Schiff |
Sun 10/19/08 03:07 AM |
October 17, 2008
Not Your Grandfather’s Depression by Peter Schiff
The current stock market crash has spurred a vital national debate about the causes and catalysts of the Great Depression. The dominant school of thought believes that the stubborn refusal of then president Herbert Hoover to intervene after the stock market crash of 1929, and his preference for free market solutions, led directly to the ensuing decade-long catastrophe. Through this lens, our leaders assure us that the most recent raft of government measures will prevent another episode of bread lines, Hoovervilles and pencil salesmen. As usual they have it completely wrong. In my view, the Depression was created precisely because Hoover followed the path that our government is now taking.
When the stock market bubble of the Roaring Twenties (which was created as a result of the loose monetary policy of the newly created Federal Reserve) finally popped, Hoover would not allow market forces to correct the imbalances. His policies were aimed at propping up unsound businesses, artificially supporting prices, particularly wages, and providing Federal funds for public works projects. These moves went well beyond the progressive reforms of Teddy Roosevelt, and established Hoover as the most interventionist president ever up to that point. In fact, much of what eventually became the New Deal had its roots in Hoover’s policies.
However, at the time, there were those who recommended a different course. Andrew Mellon, the long-serving Secretary of the Treasury whom Hoover had inherited from the prior two Republican Administrations, was labeled by Hoover as a “leave it alone isolationist” who wanted to “liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, and liquidate real estate.” Hoover would have none of it. In fact, during his nomination speech for a potential second term, Hoover bragged “We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitter liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction.”
Hoover chose to ignore the sound advice of his Treasury Secretary (in contrast to today where the current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is actually leading the charge over the cliff) and instead used every tool at his disposal to “fix” the problem. As a result, rather than allowing a recession to run its course, with healthy and rapid liquidations of the mal-investments built up during the boom, Hoover inadvertently created what became the Great Depression.
When Roosevelt took office he continued the same failed policies only on a grander scale. The magnitude and the idiocy of many New Deal programs, such as the wage and price setting National Recovery Administration (NRA), compounded the problems. So while Mellon’s advice would have caused a sharp but relatively brief economic downturn (which occurred after the Panic of 1907, for example), the Depression plodded on for nearly a decade until the country began gearing up for the Second World War.
In an amazing feat of revisionist history, somehow Hoover’s interventionist policies have been completely forgotten. It is taken as fundamental that his inaction led to the Depression and Roosevelt’s “heroics” got us out. Unfortunately, since we have learned nothing from history, we are about to repeat the very mistakes that lead to the most dire economic circumstance of the last century.
A major difference however, is that the structure of the U.S economy today is far weaker than it was in the fall of 1929. Years of reckless consumer borrowing and spending, and enormous trade and budget deficits have resulted in a hollowed out industrial base and an unmanageable mountain of debt owed to foreign creditors. Instead of the support of a strong currency backed by gold, the public now must deal with a modern Fed free to print as much money as politicians want. So rather than getting the benefits of falling consumer prices (as happened during the Depression), consumers today will contend with much higher consumer prices, even as the economy contracts.
With Barack Obama now waiting in the wings to conjure a newer New Deal, far larger than even FDR could have imagined, and at a time when we cannot even afford the old one, this will not be your grandfather’s Depression. It may be much worse.
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Bernanke |
Sun 10/19/08 02:50 AM |
Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War
'Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good decisions make you rich.
'By BRIAN M. CARNEY
New York
On Aug. 9, 2007, central banks around the world first intervened to stanch what has become a massive credit crunch.
Since then, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have taken a series of increasingly drastic emergency actions to get lending flowing again. The central bank has lent out hundreds of billions of dollars, accepted collateral that in the past it would never have touched, and opened direct lending to institutions that have never had that privilege. The Treasury has deployed billions more. And yet, "Nothing," Anna Schwartz says, "seems to have quieted the fears of either the investors in the securities markets or the lenders and would-be borrowers in the credit market."
The credit markets remain frozen, the stock market continues to get hammered, and deep recession now seems a certainty -- if not a reality already.
Most people now living have never seen a credit crunch like the one we are currently enduring. Ms. Schwartz, 92 years old, is one of the exceptions. She's not only old enough to remember the period from 1929 to 1933, she may know more about monetary history and banking than anyone alive. She co-authored, with Milton Friedman, "A Monetary History of the United States" (1963). It's the definitive account of how misguided monetary policy turned the stock-market crash of 1929 into the Great Depression.
Since 1941, Ms. Schwartz has reported for work at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York, where we met Thursday morning for an interview. She is currently using a wheelchair after a recent fall and laments her "many infirmities," but those are all physical; her mind is as sharp as ever. She speaks with passion and just a hint of resignation about the current financial situation. And looking at how the authorities have handled it so far, she doesn't like what she sees.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has called the 888-page "Monetary History" "the leading and most persuasive explanation of the worst economic disaster in American history." Ms. Schwartz thinks that our central bankers and our Treasury Department are getting it wrong again.
To understand why, one first has to understand the nature of the current "credit market disturbance," as Ms. Schwartz delicately calls it. We now hear almost every day that banks will not lend to each other, or will do so only at punitive interest rates. Credit spreads -- the difference between what it costs the government to borrow and what private-sector borrowers must pay -- are at historic highs.
This is not due to a lack of money available to lend, Ms. Schwartz says, but to a lack of faith in the ability of borrowers to repay their debts. "The Fed," she argues, "has gone about as if the problem is a shortage of liquidity. That is not the basic problem. The basic problem for the markets is that [uncertainty] that the balance sheets of financial firms are credible."
So even though the Fed has flooded the credit markets with cash, spreads haven't budged because banks don't know who is still solvent and who is not. This uncertainty, says Ms. Schwartz, is "the basic problem in the credit market. Lending freezes up when lenders are uncertain that would-be borrowers have the resources to repay them. So to assume that the whole problem is inadequate liquidity bypasses the real issue."
In the 1930s, as Ms. Schwartz and Mr. Friedman argued in "A Monetary History," the country and the Federal Reserve were faced with a liquidity crisis in the banking sector. As banks failed, depositors became alarmed that they'd lose their money if their bank, too, failed. So bank runs began, and these became self-reinforcing: "If the borrowers hadn't withdrawn cash, they [the banks] would have been in good shape. But the Fed just sat by and did nothing, so bank after bank failed. And that only motivated depositors to withdraw funds from banks that were not in distress," deepening the crisis and causing still more failures.
But "that's not what's going on in the market now," Ms. Schwartz says. Today, the banks have a problem on the asset side of their ledgers -- "all these exotic securities that the market does not know how to value."
"Why are they 'toxic'?" Ms. Schwartz asks. "They're toxic because you cannot sell them, you don't know what they're worth, your balance sheet is not credible and the whole market freezes up. We don't know whom to lend to because we don't know who is sound. So if you could get rid of them, that would be an improvement." The only way to "get rid of them" is to sell them, which is why Ms. Schwartz thought that Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's original proposal to buy these assets from the banks was "a step in the right direction."
The problem with that idea was, and is, how to price "toxic" assets that nobody wants. And lurking beneath that problem is another, stickier problem: If they are priced at current market levels, selling them would be a recipe for instant insolvency at many institutions. The fears that are locking up the credit markets would be realized, and a number of banks would probably fail.
Ms. Schwartz won't say so, but this is the dirty little secret that led Secretary Paulson to shift from buying bank assets to recapitalizing them directly, as the Treasury did this week. But in doing so, he's shifted from trying to save the banking system to trying to save banks. These are not, Ms. Schwartz argues, the same thing. In fact, by keeping otherwise insolvent banks afloat, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury have actually prolonged the crisis. "They should not be recapitalizing firms that should be shut down."
Rather, "firms that made wrong decisions should fail," she says bluntly. "You shouldn't rescue them. And once that's established as a principle, I think the market recognizes that it makes sense. Everything works much better when wrong decisions are punished and good decisions make you rich." The trouble is, "that's not the way the world has been going in recent years."
Instead, we've been hearing for most of the past year about "systemic risk" -- the notion that allowing one firm to fail will cause a cascade that will take down otherwise healthy companies in its wake.
Ms. Schwartz doesn't buy it. "It's very easy when you're a market participant," she notes with a smile, "to claim that you shouldn't shut down a firm that's in really bad straits because everybody else who has lent to it will be injured. Well, if they lent to a firm that they knew was pretty rocky, that's their responsibility. And if they have to be denied repayment of their loans, well, they wished it on themselves. The [government] doesn't have to save them, just as it didn't save the stockholders and the employees of Bear Stearns. Why should they be worried about the creditors? Creditors are no more worthy of being rescued than ordinary people, who are really innocent of what's been going on."
It takes real guts to let a large, powerful institution go down. But the alternative -- the current credit freeze -- is worse, Ms. Schwartz argues.
"I think if you have some principles and know what you're doing, the market responds. They see that you have some structure to your actions, that it isn't just ad hoc -- you'll do this today but you'll do something different tomorrow. And the market respects people in supervisory positions who seem to be on top of what's going on. So I think if you're tough about firms that have invested unwisely, the market won't blame you. They'll say, 'Well, yeah, it's your fault. You did this. Nobody else told you to do it. Why should we be saving you at this point if you're stuck with assets you can't sell and liabilities you can't pay off?'" But when the authorities finally got around to letting Lehman Brothers fail, it had saved so many others already that the markets didn't know how to react. Instead of looking principled, the authorities looked erratic and inconstant.
How did we get into this mess in the first place? As in the 1920s, the current "disturbance" started with a "mania." But manias always have a cause. "If you investigate individually the manias that the market has so dubbed over the years, in every case, it was expansive monetary policy that generated the boom in an asset.
"The particular asset varied from one boom to another. But the basic underlying propagator was too-easy monetary policy and too-low interest rates that induced ordinary people to say, well, it's so cheap to acquire whatever is the object of desire in an asset boom, and go ahead and acquire that object. And then of course if monetary policy tightens, the boom collapses."
The house-price boom began with the very low interest rates in the early years of this decade under former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan.
"Now, Alan Greenspan has issued an epilogue to his memoir, 'Time of Turbulence,' and it's about what's going on in the credit market," Ms. Schwartz says. "And he says, 'Well, it's true that monetary policy was expansive. But there was nothing that a central bank could do in those circumstances. The market would have been very much displeased, if the Fed had tightened and crushed the boom. They would have felt that it wasn't just the boom in the assets that was being terminated.'" In other words, Mr. Greenspan "absolves himself. There was no way you could really terminate the boom because you'd be doing collateral damage to areas of the economy that you don't really want to damage."
Ms Schwartz adds, gently, "I don't think that that's an adequate kind of response to those who argue that absent accommodative monetary policy, you would not have had this asset-price boom." Policies based on such thinking only lead to a more damaging bust when the mania ends, as they all do. "In general, it's easier for a central bank to be accommodative, to be loose, to be promoting conditions that make everybody feel that things are going well."
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, of all people, should understand this, Ms. Schwartz says. In 2002, Mr. Bernanke, then a Federal Reserve Board governor, said in a speech in honor of Mr. Friedman's 90th birthday, "I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."
"This was [his] claim to be worthy of running the Fed," she says. He was "familiar with history. He knew what had been done." But perhaps this is actually Mr. Bernanke's biggest problem. Today's crisis isn't a replay of the problem in the 1930s, but our central bankers have responded by using the tools they should have used then. They are fighting the last war. The result, she argues, has been failure. "I don't see that they've achieved what they should have been trying to achieve. So my verdict on this present Fed leadership is that they have not really done their job."
Mr. Carney is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
|
|
|
|
warmachine
Joined Tue 04/08/08
Posts: 2500
|
| Topic: Ron Paul Is a Hero and a Patriot. |
Sun 10/19/08 02:32 AM |
We're getting there. Only an idiot would deny the Dr. his due as far as it pertains to telling truth to power and being on the money with projections about where certain decisions will take us.
CampaignforLiberty.com, get informed, thats the best thing you can do in the Infowar. |
|
|
|
