Bloomberg reports:

The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or guaranteed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s... 

The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. The nation’s gross domestic product was $14.2 trillion in 2008. 

Look at the table:

MENDOTA, Calif. — The customer seemed interested in a black blouse offered for $1 at the thrift store. But instead of buying it, she set it on the front counter.

Maybe tomorrow, she told the cashier, she would have the money. Or the next day. But not now.

"That is the way people are now," said the cashier, Alicia Reyes, as she watched the middle-aged woman walk out of the store. "They just come in here and look. They just come in here to kill the time. And then they take off."

Welcome to life in Mendota — the unemployment capital of California. With a 41 percent jobless rate, the town's social fabric is tearing at the seams. Alcoholism and crime are on the rise. To save money, some mothers wash and re-use disposable diapers. Unemployed men with nothing to do wander the streets and sit on benches....

The national Katrina is here and now.

I caught this off Huffingtonpost.com about Jim Cramer and his boasting of what he did as a hedge fund manager:

-On manipulating the market: "A lot of times when I was short at my hedge fund, and I was positioned short, meaning I needed it down, I would create a level of activity before hand that could drive the futures,"

-On falsely creating the impression a stock is down (what he calls "fomenting"): "You can't foment. That's a violation... But you do it anyway because the SEC doesn't understand it." He adds, "When you have six days and your company may be in doubt because you are down, I think it is really important to foment."

Check it out

Josh Marshall, Talkingpointsmemo.com, found this little backgrounder about Tim Geithner:

...Sandy Weill, the guy who in the 1990s built Citi into the mammoth systemic risk Death Star it is today wanted the job [CEO] to go to Tim Geithner.

So if Geithner is ousted from Sec. of Treasury then he could simply jump on the Citigroup ship?   This is what Felix Salmon, Portfolio.com, thinks. 

What a marvelous stinking revolving door.  While we the taxpayers are stuck with people like Geithner who still talk of "free market" and "private companies" as being the be all and end all for the American economy.

BTW- Meanwhile, President Obama thinks of the netroots and bloggers in this light:

And part of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another – well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine, or this or that or the other. 

Duncan Black, Eschaton blog, writes:

I find it more amusing than annoying that Obama has joined with many others in employing the rhetorical trick of attributing any views you wish to marginalize as coming from bloggers.

I guess we, the netroots and bloggers, are just too darn new, still!   Perhaps Obama is still an intermediary step in the new political landscape and political process; i.e., Dean for America as version 1.0 then MyBarackObama as version 2.0 but what will version 3.0 look like?

Isn't it about time to have our government start a new financial system?  Bloomberg News has estimated that we are now in debt to the tune of over 11 trillion dollars for bailing out grifters.  The biggest rip off in history.

Sign this to tell Congress no more bailout money for con men.  It is time to start a new financial system.

Firedoglake.com has a petition to sign. 

• The Fed's Vice Chair Donald Kohn has refused to comply with requests from both the House and the Senate for the names of banks receiving federal funds, angering Republicans and Democrats alike.
• Bloomberg estimates that the government has spent more than $11.7 trillion to save the financial system since the crisis began, but Fed has refused to comply with Bloomberg's requests for details under the Freedom of Information Act.
• We know now that $80 billion of the $162 billion used to bailout AIG went to pay off its derivative trading partners at the full value of their contracts, despite the fact that values had tumbled. Economist Nouriel Roubini calls it "a nontransparent, opaque and shady bailout of the AIG counterparties: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other domestic and foreign financial institutions.
• The House passed the TARP Reform and Accountability Act on January 16, which would provide increased conditions, transparency and accountability for Wall Street bailout funds. The Senate is refusing to take up the legislation."

Paul Krugman:

What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses?

Answer: Susan Collins, Ben Nelson and Arlen Specter. And it's Obama's fault for being bipartisan.

If you want to see how Republicans govern during an economic crisis at the state level then look to California.  From Robert Cruickshank, the Courage Campaign, writes:

When we watched the helicopter carry George W. Bush away from our nation's capital many of us hoped we had finally seen the end of lawlessness as governing policy by Republicans in our country. And though President Obama has moved to restore the rule of law in Washington D.C., California Republicans are demonstrating the problem persists here in the Golden State.

David Dayen has written about how Mike Villines' insistence that Republicans would only vote for a budget deal by trading votes on new taxes for votes to gut labor and environmental protections were a likely violation of Section 86 of the California Penal Code

Sign their petition to UpHold The Law.

If this is true then we, progressives and liberals, have our work cut out for us.

Progressive Breakfast: Light Up The Phones

"Here in Washington, D.C., the word on the street is that the Right is killing us with phone calls to Congress. One congressperson said the calls are running 100 to 1 against the Obama economic recovery plan.

Now is the time to call Senator Udall and Bennet or visit your local Senate office to let them know that we stand for economic recovery by investing in America's future and not the failed economic policy of the past- tax cuts for the corporations and rich.

One great hidden story that should see the light of day is the increasing use of tasers.  The humor of "Don't tase me, bro" had shed a tiny bit of light on this weapon, which should be categorized as deadly force.  Digby has been relentless in highlighting tasers and the use of those weapons on children and adults.  To wit, Digby writes this:

...Police said at the time that Margaret Hiebing was "kicking and screaming" when officers tried to handcuff her. "That's when one of the officers discharged a Taser weapon on her," said UW Police Sgt. Jason Whitney.

This 54 year old woman was a threat to the seven officers who were trying to subdue her and so she had to be repeatedly tortured with electricity. Sure, I'll buy that.

This is actually quite interesting. It's one thing when police tase mental patients, protesters and alleged criminals. Most Americans figure they probably deserve it. But when they start torturing white, middle aged, female pillars of the community at football games, things could get sticky.

Or this medical report by Digby on in-custody sudden deaths in California.

Or the use of tasers on youth by Digby:

Here are two stories about the torture of teenagers by police, one of whom died.

In the first case, you can see perfectly how the government now views the use of electrical shock as a benign tool to force compliance:

Salt Lake City police used a stun gun on a 14-year-old boy after they say he refused to leave the Gateway Mall and resisted arrest on Saturday night. 

It's time for these leathal weapons to classified as such.

Joe Sudbay, AmericaBlog.com, states it:

The Republicans, under the leadership of George Bush, destroyed the American economy. We're on the precipice -- facing a depression. But, the House Republicans are being petulant - they got 33% of the House stimulus bill devoted to questionable tax cuts, but that's not enough. Obama tried...

Bi-partisanship only works when both sides come to the table. The GOP leaders are like little children. If they don't get their way 100%, they won't play. They don't seem to understand the precarious situation we're in. Or, maybe they don't care. The message from today should be pretty simple: A "NO" vote is a vote for a depression.

Simple, huh?

What me panic or fearful?  Well, where I work, which is a nonprofit, there has been jobs eliminated, jobs consolidated and some positions going from full time to part time, with 401k contributions cut (not eliminated yet) on the employer side.

Will some of Obama's picks turn out to be moles for the previous discredited and criminal Bush administration?

Glenn Greenwald writes about the suspension of the kangaroo court called military commissions at GitMo:

This is only a first step and a temporary one at that.  Subsequent actions that the Obama administration is clearly considering could severely undermine both the symbolic and substantive value of this act, particularly if they go and create new "national security courts" of the kind aggressively advocated by newly-appointed Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, which would likely enable coerced evidence to be used in order to obtain convictions of accused Terrorists.  Even with Obama's order yesterday, many of the most vital questions surrounding the closing of Guantanamo remain unanswered.

Why do I say criminal because the laws against torture were broken.  Furthermore it is not a matter of choice for President Obama to not investigate.  He has a legal obligation to investigate.

Glenn writes:

Harper's Scott Horton notes that the leading U.N. official in charge of torture conventions, such as the Convention Against Torture (signed by Ronald Reagan and ratified by the U.S. Senate), just stated that the Obama administration is obligated by that treaty and by international law to criminally investigate Bush officials for torture....

Rachel Maddow interviews law professor Johnathon Turley:

Rachel Maddow:  If the administration has confirmed that they tortured people -- and they have, they have used the "t" word; they have described what they have done, which is recognized as torture, it is something for which we have prosecuted people -- are we literally looking at the possibility where administration officials from this administration cannot travel abroad to the other 145 countries that have signed the torture treaties because they might get arrested?

Jonathan Turley:  Most certainly. The status of George Bush is not that different from Augusto Pinochet. They've both been accused of running a torture program.  Outside of this country, there is not this ambiguity about what to do about a war crime.  There are four treaties that make this an international violation.  So if you go abroad, and try to travel, most people abroad are going to view you not as "former President George Bush" -- they're going to view you as a current war criminal.

Rachel Maddow:  And they're going to view us as an outlaw regime for not arresting him on our own soil.

I have argued that Bush like Pinochet will become a wanted man throughout the world.

The problem with the NYT's report, "Intelligence Court Rules Wiretapping Legal", is that it is about the legality of international wiretapping which was never in question.  The problem is that the NYT gives the impression that the domestic wiretapping program(s) authorized by Mr. Bush as being constitutional which they are expressly not.

NYT reporter Eric Lichtblau writes:

In validating the government’s wide authority to collect foreign intelligence, it may offer legal credence to the Bush administration’s repeated assertions that the president has constitutional authority to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping.

The appeals court is expected to uphold a secret ruling issued last year by the intelligence court that it oversees, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, court. In that initial opinion, the secret court found that Congress had acted within its authority in August of 2007 when it passed a hotly debated law known as the Protect America Act, which gave the executive branch broad power to eavesdrop on international communications [my emphasis], according to the person familiar with the ruling.

There never was any constitutional or legal question on tapping international calls.

The problem is that Mr. Bush authorized programs that allowed to tap domestic calls on a "dragnet" or "driftnet" basis; i.e., hardware installed on telecom switches allowed for capture of millions of telephone calls- both land line and mobile- by citizens without any probably cause by a court order from a judge.  This is the crux of the illegal spying programs that are the basis of class action lawsuits against the telecom giants like AT&T.

For a quick background go here or here.

Now is the time to strike for a progressive "shock and awe" to remake the economic landscape that is balanced and fair for all parties.  This means a wholesale rejection of the policies of the Republicans that created this economic nightmare of "free market" pirates.

Josh Marshall gets it:

...a couple centuries of our history and you'll see that there are just no examples of administrations that started small and did big things in year 2 or 4 or 6. That doesn't happen. Look at Roosevelt, Johnson, Reagan, presidents pack their biggest punch on day one. And even though many big things can happen in subsequent years, the presidencies are almost always defined at the beginning. Later triumphs and reforms grow from the changed political terrain created at the outset.

The time is now to remake this nation into a nation for all.  The Republicans is the party of old ideas and old men who cling to the racist past for their success.

BTW- I will point out this incisive critique of "IOUSA" documentary that aired on CNN over the weekend. The Center for Economic and Policy Research shows clearly that one of the root enconomic problems is health care costs.

The Republican led investigation in Bill Clinton's sex life was tagged by the DOJ at 40+ million dollars.

Elana Schor, Talkingpointsmemo.com, writes:

H.R. 104, a bill introduced on Tuesday by House judiciary committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) and nine other lawmakers. The measure would set up a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties, with subpoena power and a reported budget of around $3 million, to investigate issues ranging from detainee treatment to waterboarding to extraordinary rendition. The panel's members would hail from outside the government and be appointed by the president and congressional leaders of both parties.

Now tell me that there is a grave wrong in which a sitting President and his administration has committed egregious crimes against the Constitution, U.S. statutory laws, and international conventions that the United States of America are signatories to but the new Congress may only allocate 3 million dollars to investigate those crimes? 

I am outraged that those policies by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet (and supported by illegal theories promulgated by Yoo and Bybee) led directly to the interrogations and wrongful deaths of many human beings in my name as a citizen of the United States of America.  

Call our Colorado representatives- DeGette, Perlmutter, Salazar, Polis, and Markey and tell them that they need to become a co-sponsors of this important legislation to get to the bottom of what Mr. Bush and his cohort were actually doing in our name.  

Write to Barack Obama's www.change.gov website and tell him that the past sets precedent for the future:  Prosecute the torturers.   This will be the the clearest and strongest action for all of the world to see that America can repudiate the horrors of Mr. Bush and his actions.

What does this trial balloon mean?  The is longstanding precedent for a barrier between NASA and Department of Defense is due in part to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.  Bloomberg.com news reports:

President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China...

The potential change comes as Pentagon concerns are rising over China’s space ambitions because of what is perceived as an eventual threat to U.S. defense satellites, the lofty battlefield eyes of the military.

The article then describes that launch vehicles would be shared and emphasizes the rivalry between Chinese deep space goals and US fears for its state of the art, real time battlefield command, control and communications systems.

However what is being left out of the equation of rivalry is "why not cooperation in space" like the International Space Station project.  Are we, as a people, still stuck in the old 20th Century way of aggression and war making for a nation state to behave?

What can be said about Republicans from Bush on down who disobey the laws of the land?

This is just the latest example of Republicans who cannot abide by the laws that were created.  From Bloomberg.com reporting:

The November Fund marked the chamber’s first foray into presidential politics. Some of the best-known independent groups in the 2004 presidential election, including Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and America Coming Together, paid more than $3 million in fines.

The commission initially agreed in March 2005 that the November Fund illegally accepted contributions in excess of the $5,000 limit for political action committees and that the chamber made illegal corporate contributions. In November 2007, the commission authorized its counsel to negotiate a settlement, including an agreed-upon fine...

Four new members joined the commission the following year, and in October 2008 the three Republicans balked at approving the final agreement.

“The law has not changed,” Ryan said. “All that has changed is the commissioners themselves.”

What can be said that Republicans will protect scofflaws to the detriment of the body politic?  Republicans thy name is lawlessness and coddling criminals.

A mass grave site in Afghanistan is plundered.  The remains of upto 2000 bodies were removed and disposed of into a near by river.  What is significant is that this atrocity was the subject of a documentary film, "Caravan of Death" by Irish filmmaker Jamie Doran in 2002.

This report by the Timesonline.com states:

The mass grave at Dasht-e-Leili in northern Afghanistan is thought to contain the remains of between 1,000 and 2,000 Taleban prisoners massacred by fighters loyal to the Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum in November 2001. The killings occurred in the remote Leili desert as General Dostum’s forces fought alongside US special forces....

The problem is that there has been no U.S. corporate media coverage of this attempted coverup of a war crime by Afghan warlord Gen. Dotsum.  

Also, there was a U.S. Special Forces unit that was operating in the same area when the massacre of captured Taliban fighters occurred.  Questions have arisen as to how much the 5th Special Forces Group was aware of and if that unit had any knowledge and/or control of the war crime.

I found this from Uruknet.info by Ted Rall:

When the containers were unlocked at Sheberghan, the bodies of the dead tumbled out. A 12-man U.S. Fifth Special Forces Group unit, Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, guarded the prison's front gates and, according to witnesses, controlled the facility in the hopes of picking key prisoners for interrogation and possible transportation to Guantnamo Bay. (This is how Lindh was singled out.) "Everything was under the control of the American commanders," a Northern Alliance soldier tells Doran in the film. American troops searched the bodies for Al Qaeda identification cards. But, says another driver, "Some of [the prisoners] were alive. They were shot" while "maybe 30 or 40" American soldiers watched.

Members of OPA 595, interviewed for the PBS program "Frontline" on August 2, 2002, confirm their presence at Sheberghan but cagily deny participating in war crimes. "The prisoners were being treated the exact same way as Dostum's forces were," said master sergeant "Paul." "I didn't see any atrocities, but I easily could have. Some prisoners may have died because they were sick or ill, and Dostum's forces just couldn't give them any care because they didn't have it."

So in the U.S. corporate media there has been a near total black out of this war crime. 

You can see the entire documentary here.

The Frontline documentary transcript here.

A crime committed.  Evidence destroyed.  But it will not be forgotten.

The most recent addition to the GOP dog-pack nipping at the heels of Congresswomen-Elect Betsy Markey, CU Regent Thomas J. Lucero, is having an identity, or at least residency, crisis. According to his CU Regent biography he lives in Johnstown. But, the press release he sent to the Loveland Reporter-Herald includes (R-Loveland) after his name (see the extended text).

According to the Managing Editor of the Reporter-Herald those 10-characters between parentheses are sufficient evidence to tout him as the "home town" candidate.  This is the second time that the Reporter-Herald has announced his candidacy in the past two-weeks crediting him as a Loveland resident.

Since the newspaper doesn’t seem to understand investigative journalism, or even the need to confirm information sent by politicians in a press release, I made a few checks.  First of all other Colorado newspapers have reported Mr. Lucero’s home as Johnstown.  Then there is the information on his CU Regent biography that lists his home as, surprise, Johnstown.

The CU Regent biography goes a little further to specify that Mr. Lucero is a Johnstown businessman and civic leader.  So while it is getting hard to figure out which former dairy farm is now part of Johnstown, or which corn-field is Loveland’s $6 Million dollar investment in the future, a person with ambitions for the US Congress should know what address to go to at the end of the day.

When he ran for CU Regent Tom knew that he lived in Johnstown.  The Colorado Secretary of State record shows his campaign committee address from the 1997 campaign season as 1015 WS 1ST ST/PO BOX 921 JOHNSTOWN, CO 80534.  That’s the same Post Office box that’s on the CU Regent Biography.

Further evidence of Mr. Lucero’s inaccuracy in the press release to the Reporter-Herald is found through the Dex.com online telephone directory.  No surprise here that there is no listing for Thomas J., Tom or “T” Lucero in Loveland.  This is inconclusive since Dex doesn’t account for the phenomenon of people with only a cellphone and no landline at their home.

Next in my bag of tricks is the Larimer County Assessor website for property records.  It’s reasonable to believe that an independently wealthy pizza magnate would own his home.  Curiously, a search for any person with the last name of Lucero owning property in the County doesn’t show a Thomas in Loveland, but there is one in Fort Collins.  Sorry, for dragging that guy into this mess.

So, I guess it comes down to this.  Almost a month before Betsy Markey is even provided the respect and courtesy of being sworn-in as a Member of Congress ( “MC” as my former Congressman and professor is known to say) we have the curious case of a GOP wanna-be getting ready for the 2010 contest.

The hatred that was flamed during the McCain/Palin campaign is a growth from 2005.  Why would I date it 2005 because Hurricane Katrina happened.  The destruction of New Orleans and the subsequent anarchy that prevailed showed what still lies in the heart and soul of many whites if given a chance to unleash their desires.

The Nation's A.C. Thompson has written a compelling report:

Immediately after the storm, the media portrayed African-Americans as looters and thugs--Mayor Ray Nagin, for example, told Oprah Winfrey that "hundreds of gang members" were marauding through the Superdome. Now it's clear that some of the most serious crimes committed during that time were the work of gun-toting white males.

So far, their crimes have gone unpunished....

Is it any wonder that the racist, neo-Nazi, Stars n Bars lover would do what they desire if there is no society to control them?

Remember there was the conspiracy to assassinate Obama at the DNC by racist neo-Nazis.  But the US Attorney Troy Eid did not prosecute them for that but only on much lesser charges.

When government fails to do its duty then it is a green light for racists.  One can only be vigilant when racists-militia-skin heads conspire to foment a race war.