Paul Newman – through the Hole in the Wall

Paul Newman died yesterday of cancer in Westport, Connecticut at 83, leaving behind his wife, his daughters, and to all of us a legacy of a wonderful career on film and in charitable work that will live on.

I’ve been a fan ever since I was a kid, watching movies like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand Luke, Hud and The Sting, no doubt mangled, err, edited, for television, on my families’ old black & white console.  Paul has,er had, blue eyes?!  OK, I have seen most of these movies plenty of times in color since, as well as his most recent ones.  Still, blue eyes run in my dad’s family (wait a second, that doesn’t sound right. . .), so they wouldn’t be what impressed me.

Actually one of the things that most impressed me about him (and probably precisely why he was such a good actor) was that Mr. Newman wasn’t full of himself, and wanted to stay as far away from the Hollywood madness as possible, living in Westport, Connecticut, racing cars, and staying married to Joanne Woodward, his wife of 50 years, who’s also academy award winning career he supported.  About his faithfulness to Joanne, Paul once said (in a Playboy interview, not less): “I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?”. 

That’s not all though.  There was Paul’s generosity and the charities he set up.  The Newman’s Own packages always made me smile. Here’s a major movie star going around being photographed with a much younger woman, young enough to be his daughter; and she really is his daughter!  Pa and Nell Newman.  My favorites are the Fig Newmans.

All the profits go to charity, so I always feel good about it.  I never really looked into what charities they went to, until yesterday, and I was really impressed.

I was especially impressed by his Hole in the Wall Camps to let children with serious illnesses get outdoors to play and laugh and be children again.

What a legacy to leave behind! 

So, now Paul, too, has gone through that “hole in the wall,” as one boy described it to his mother. Raising some more hell (though hopefully not enough to get in any real trouble)!

Tags: Paul+Newman, Joanne+Woodward, Newman’s+Own, Hole+in+the+Wall+Camps

Nickelsville in Limbo

So, Mayor Nickels did send the police in Friday to clear out Nickelsville, as promised.  Fortunately, the Church Council of Greater Seattle was able to get Ron Judd from Governor Gregoire’s office to negotiate a temporary reprieve and 42 of the tents were moved to a parking lot on state land until Wednesday, according to accounts in the  Times and PI. Twenty two chose to be arrested to make their point while the police tore down the pink tents and wooden shanty town structures residents and their helpers were already constructing.

Where are the people to go, though?  According to the PI, “on Thursday night, about 140 people slept in Nickelsville”.  The Times claims that the city has offered shelter to all that want it and only 14 Nickelsville residents have taken them up on the offer. Thursday’s PI quotes the Mayor’s spokesperson, Karin Zaugg Black, as saying that “shelters beds were ‘available for everyone or anyone.’  ‘We’ve never had to turn anyone away’ from a shelter after removing him or her from a camp, she said.

But according to the Nickelsville website:

Mayor Nickels continues to argue that there are shelters available. Friday night after Nickelsville was evicted from City land, Operation Nightwatch was still unable to find shelters for all who asked despite the Mayor’s statement that 60-80 new beds would be opened that night.  They referred people to the now reduced in size Nickelsville operating in the nearby State of Washington DOT parking lot.

Also according to the Nickelsville site:

During the One Night Count of January 2008, it was found that 8439 people were homeless in King County. 5808 had shelter through existing programs but 2631 were without, a 15% increase over last year. 34 homeless people have died outside this year alone.

While I don’t like the idea of the return of shantytown “Hoovervilles” or a Nickelsville, where are these people supposed to go?  At the rate we’re going, both towards ever increasing rents as Seattle goes condo, and with the economy tanking (couldn’t we turn some of those condos into low income housing?), I fear I may end out on the street some day in the not to distant future.  A shanty would be more comfortable than sleeping outside or in a tent.  It’s becoming in America like it is in the so called third world, isn’t it?  There’s going to be the rich in their condos and gated communities, with a vanishing middle class, and the rest of us living in shanty slums.

Yet, consider this – the dignity and determination of those building Nickelsville, while the Mayor, sitting in his comfortable home and office, does nothing to help, only threatening to evict everyone, claiming to put them in shelter space that doesn’t exist.  Yet, Mayor Nickels always has time to help his friend Paul Allen build another stadium (ironically, where Hooverville in Seattle used to stand) or unneeded trolley to the neighborhood Paul and his friends are developing.

Have a heart, Mayor Nickels.  Let these people stay, or find them real shelter.

 

Tags: Nickelsville, Seattle, homeless, Mayor+Nickels

WaMu: Whoo Hoo? Whoops!

It’s been feeling a bit too much like the start of the Great Depression again in Seattle lately, between the unseemly demise WaMu and dignified raising of Nickelsville in response to the city’s homeless sweeps.

Washington Mutual (WaMu) was the major bank in Seattle; especially after SeaFirst (Seattle First) merged into Bank of America some years back.  Now, as WaMu employees were told, according to yesterday’s Seattle PI, “Welcome to JPMorgan Chase.”

Washington Mutual Inc. came to an ignominious end Thursday, with federal regulators seizing the company and selling its branches, deposits and loans to New York-based banking giant JPMorgan Chase in the largest bank failure in U.S. history.

Largest bank failure in U.S. history?  Washington Mutual, where I used to have my money?  According to yesterday’s PI, “depositors had lost confidence” and “$16.7 billion in deposits had been pulled from the company just since Sept. 15.” “Whoo hoo!” as their ads go, or “Whoops!”? 

Whoops, especially for investors who seem to have lost everything, while deposits are safe in the now Chase Bank branches (especially if they’re under the $100,000 insured by FDIC).  As for shareholders, according to today’s Seattle Times:

Against all odds, WaMu shares continued to trade Friday. That’s because, while JPMorgan bought the company’s banking subsidiary, it left behind the parent holding company — a shell containing little more than a passel of nonbanking subsidiaries. The shares fell to 16 cents as 102 million changed hands Friday.

Apparently, shareholders aren’t likely to see anything anyways, as they have to stand in line behind other creditors.  To add more injury to insult, many WaMu employees who may be loosing their jobs soon had stock options or a lot of WaMu stock in their 401k plans.

Meanwhile, what about the CEOs?  According to the Times:

Alan Fishman, chief executive for 18 days before the federal government took control, is eligible for $11.6 million in cash severance and can keep his $7.5 million signing bonus, according to an analysis by James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation-consulting firm in New York.

Fishman, a former CEO of New York-based Independence Community Bank, took over WaMu on Sept. 8 after the ouster of longtime CEO Kerry Killinger. Fishman remains CEO of WaMu’s holding company, spokeswoman Darcy Donahoe-Wilmot said.

Killinger, who presided over WaMu for 18 years, was entitled to $16.5 million in cash severance, $14.9 million in deferred compensation and $7.5 million in estimated pension benefits, according to Reda. Killinger also left WaMu with company stock then worth about $5.1 million.

All told, Killinger received take-home pay totaling $98 million from 1994, the earliest year for which data is available, through 2007, according to Equilar, an executive-compensation research firm in Redwood Shores, Calif. He pocketed a total $22 million in 2006 and 2007 alone.

Nice.  The ones who messed up get richly rewarded, while the hard working employees. . .?  Well, there’s always Nickelsville. Or is there?

PS: On an amusing note, my spell checker wanted to replace Killinger with Dillinger.  A bank robber.  Hmm, maybe Killinger is just a different kind of bank robber!

Tags: Washington+Mutual, WaMu, Seattle

Does Innocence Matter?

Should innocence be considered as a reason not to execute someone?  That it should may seem self-evident.  Yet, apparently innocence is not considered a valid reason for a federal appeal for a death penalty case at the moment.

I was surprised to learn this when I received an e-mail from the regional office of Amnesty International about the Supreme Court’s stay of execution for Troy Davis an hour and a half before his scheduled execution in Georgia pending a ruling on whether to hear his case Monday. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear Troy’s case, it could affect many others.  If they refuse to hear it, he could be executed as soon as Monday evening. 

According to Amnesty International:

If the case is heard, it would likely be in October with a spring ruling.  The case potentially has huge ramifications.  Currently, the federal appeals process has been closed to Troy due to the ‘96 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which only allows habeas petitions when there is a constitutional question.  Believe it or not, the courts have not ruled whether it is a constitutional violation to execute the innocent, although they did hint in this direction in a ‘93 decision.  As a result, this case could carve out a constitutional right for the innocent and reopen federal appeals courts to capital cases.  It is very far-reaching, and it shows how important Troy’s case could become. 

Reading up more about Troy’s case on Amnesty’s death penalty page, I was struck when reading the report by the questions raised by a number of eye witnesses who have recanted their testimony or come forward since, saying Troy is innocent; some saying they were coerced by police, others frightened by the man they say did it.

I was also moved by the interview with Troy’s sister, Martina Davis-Correia, about the affect Troy’s arrest, trial and sentence to death has had on their family. 

“I know Troy is innocent,” she resolutely affirms. “Me and my brother are really, really close, where we can finish each others sentences and whether he was guilty or not I would stand by him, but the fact that he’s innocent and in this position, it’s like stabbing me in the chest.”

 

Her family was not allowed into the court during the trial until the sentencing phase, apparently a common technique in death penalty cases to make the jury believe the defendant has no one who supports him.  It was especially hard on their mother, and their father died within months of the verdict. 

 

Martina Davis, a long time Amnesty International member, is currently AI’s State Death Penalty Abolition Coordinator (SDPAC) for Georgia and Chair of AIUSA’s Program to Abolish the Death Penalty Steering Committee. 

 

“I joined Amnesty when I was a teenager in the army when I was in Colorado Springs, I think I was like 19 years old,” she recalls. “That was 1986. I joined Amnesty never thinking that I’d be involved as far as death penalty work or have my brother involved in a death penalty case. I was in the library and I saw something about Amnesty International and how they work with the UN to help people around the world, so I signed up by mail.”

 

Currently, everyone is waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday. Amnesty International is asking people to take action through their web page on Troy’s case:

 

After consulting closely with Troy’s legal team, the best course of action will be to continue writing letters targeting the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, but have those letters delivered to Amnesty International’s Atlanta office, so that they can be hand delivered at the appropriate time if it becomes necessary. Please direct all such actions to our website – www.amnestyusa.org/troydavis – so that we can keep an accurate count of all the letters that are written on behalf of Troy.

 

They also warn that some other actions may not be helpful:

 

Please direct all such actions in this way. More letters, phone calls, emails or faxes to the Board would not be helpful and could be counterproductive. Actions to other Georgia authorities, like the Governor or Attorney General, would also not be helpful. And, of course, actions directed at the U.S. Supreme Court would be counterproductive as well. So, please do NOT plan any rallies or demonstrations in front of the US Supreme Court as such actions have the potential to jeopardize a positive outcome in this case.

Also, if you know of any high profile figures (especially Conservatives) who would be willing to write an op.ed. regarding Troy’s case, please let us know ASAP.

 

Video from a rally in Georgia earlier this month:

 

 

Troy’s is not the only death row case where innocence is an issue. Death row exoneree Juan Roberto Melendez will be speaking at colleges in Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia next week.  Juan was released after nearly 18 years on death row in Florida for a crime he didn’t commit.  He was the 99^th death row inmate in the U.S. to be exonerated and released.  There are currently 127.  How many who are innocent have been executed? That should be reason enough to abolish the death penalty.

 

 

Juan’s speaking schedule for the Puget Sound area:

 

October 1: Talk at University of Seattle School of Law, Sullivan Hall, at 6:00 p.m. -7:30 p.m.

October 2: Talk at University of Washington School of Law at 12:30 p.m.-1:30 p.m.

October 2: Talk at University of Pudget Sound at 7:00 p.m. -8:30 p.m.

October 3: Talk at St. Martin’s University, Lacey, WA at 4:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m.

Tags: Troy+Davis, death+penalty, Juan+Roberto+Melendez

Nickelsville Opens

In the wee hours of this Monday morning, the homeless, with the help of their supporters, moved into Nickelsville, envisioned as a future shanty town, currently a sea of pink tents (donated by the Girl Scouts, according to most reports, although KIRO just said they’re from the Race for the Cure). 

Mayor Nickels is not amused, and the city has already posted Nickelsville with a 72 hour eviction notice.  The Mayor “reiterated his policy” (of bulldozing homeless encampments and throwing away the poorest of people’s meager belongings), according to KIRO 7. 

These are not healthy places. These are not safe places for people to be. It’s just wrong in a city in the richest country, America, for people to be living in encampments in our greenbelts and our parks,” Nickels said. 
 
The mayor said he wants to help those who need shelter to find it.
 
“We are committed to ending homelessness,” Nickels said.

 

So why hasn’t he? According to Real Change: “This past January’s “One Night Count” found 2,631 homeless men, women, and children living outside after all available shelters had filled up.”

 

Where are people supposed to stay? 

The Seattle Displacement Coalition has documented that the City continues to lose affordable housing faster than it is created. The overall supply of housing affordable to low-income people is less now than it was at the start of the “10-Year Plan.” According to 2008’s One Night Count, 80 percent of the homeless in King County became homeless when their housing in King County became unaffordable.

 

What are people supposed to do?  People who aren’t upscale condo dwellers? Some have taken matters into their own hands (video from the Seattle Weekly blog):

 

Tags: homeless, Nickelsville, Mayor+Greg+Nickels, Real+Change

Buttonpalooza & Why I’m So Enthusiastic About Barack

So, I spent part of both Wednesday evening and this afternoon making Buttons for Obama.  Here’s a photo set from an earlier button making session at the Espresso Vivace on Capitol Hill (currently in the process of moving because of the future light rail station).  Some of the volunteers have been making them since the primaries and caucuses. 

I was punching the round designs out both times.  We made buttons for Montana State University, Penn State, and, of course, University of Washington Students for Obama; Educators for Obama; colorful red, white & blue Obama/Biden buttons; ones with Obama’s photo; and dove designs with Hope.  Quite a few other designs were on display, including some Pennsylvania Dutch ones as well.

Actually, these button making sessions are very popular and hard to get into (and the next couple ones are already full)!  Sign up for MyBarackObama.com to find volunteer events near you.  I’ll keep my eye open for more volunteer opportunities and events.  Still thinking about the Neighbor to Neighbor one.  I don’t know, especially with the 80 names mentioned below. . .

Why am I so enthusiastic about Obama, though?  It’s the combination of two things.  First, there is his plan.  All of his well thought out positions on issues like the economy, healthcare, foreign policy, and women’s rights.  That, combined with the fact that he can motivate people, which will be necessary for real success in many of these areas.

While those two things have been played in the media in opposition to each other (either he’s said to have no plan and be a celebrity; or once he starts talking about the plan, is accused of sounding like Michael Dukakis), both are important.

I’ve talked about his inspiring plan for education before, for instance.  He’s calling for training new teachers, higher standards, more math and science so America’s children will be ready to compete in the 21st Century.  He’s also talking about the kids needing to apply themselves, and parents needing to have them turn off the tvs and other entertainment and go do their homework.  Here’s where Barack’s motivating people is going to really help. 

Jesse Jackson wrongly dissed Barack for bringing this up when talking to the black community.  But, Jesse, it’s not just black families, and really, it’s not even just the poor or working class families; although there often is a lack of prioritizing education, or maybe just of seeing it as a possibility for developing potential in some poor and working class families.  While my parents did consider education important, growing up in a working class/borderline poor family, many of our neighbors didn’t (and their kids influenced my brother not to).  It’s also more important, the less money your family has.  Rich kids who are D students will still have a lot of opportunities (although, thinking of the last 8 years, maybe we should motivate them to get more education as well).

Quite frankly, though, the equity of the education system has to be improved as well, which is also what Barack is proposing.  I was a working class student in a middle class school in upstate New York, moving to a poor (economically) student in a working class school in Oregon.  Guess which school prepares you better for college? You can even get A’s and not be prepared for college level work. Then consider the difference between an inner city school and a school in a wealth suburb. 

That’s why we need both – a plan to improve things, and the inspiration for people to take advantage of those improvements, and join in on improving America.  That’s why Barack inspires me.  I’m not saying he’s perfect (and you know there are things I do question him on not taking a stronger stand on), or that it won’t take the rest of us, too.  That’s the point, and it’s what he helps inspire.  Democracy in action.

Just think, all these people:

(from BarackObamadotcom on Flickr)

and all these people:

and it’s been going on around the country!

I have hope. . .

Tags: Barack+Obama, Buttons+for+Obama, Jesse+Jackson

Golden Parachutes

The Bill Moyers Journal on PBS did a whole episode on the economic crisis last night. Bill Moyers paints this picture near the end of his show (reprinted on Thuthout (Moguls Steal Home While Companies Strike Out):

From our offices in Manhattan, we look out on the tall, gleaming skyscrapers that are cathedrals of wealth and power – the Olympus ruled by the gods of finance, the temples of the mighty, the holy of holies, whose priests guard the sacred texts of salvation – the ones containing the secrets of subprime lending and derivatives as mysterious and elusive as the Grail itself.

    This last couple of weeks, ordinary mortals below could almost hear the ripcords of golden parachutes being pulled as the divinities on high prepared for soft, safe landings – all this while tossing their workers like sacrificial lambs into the purgatory of unemployment.

While I know I shouldn’t be surprised, it is astounding how the very CEOs and board chairs who brought their financial corporations to disaster are so richly rewarded.

During the last five years of his tenure as CEO of now-bankrupt Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld’s total take was $354 million. John Thain, the current chairman of Merrill Lynch, taken over this week by Bank of America, has been on the job for just nine months. He pocketed a $15 million signing bonus. His predecessor, Stan O’Neal, retired with a package valued at $161 million, after the company reported an $8 billion loss in a single quarter. And remember Bear Stearns’s Chairman James Cayne? After the company collapsed earlier this year and was up for sale at bargain basement prices, he sold his stake for more than $60 million.

    Daniel Mudd and Richard Syron, the former heads of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – aka the gods who failed – are fighting to keep severance packages of close to $24 million combined – on top of the millions in salary each earned last year while slaughtering the golden calf. As it is written in the Gospel According to Me, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Guess we won’t find this bunch on street corners selling apples in the coming Depression.

According to the New York Times, the Bush administration wants Congress to “grant it far-reaching emergency powers to buy hundreds of billions of dollars of distressed mortgages despite unknowns on how the plan would work.”  Bush’s treasury secretary says “that the upfront cost of the rescue proposal could easily be $500 billion,” while “outside experts predicted it could reach $1 trillion.” Locally, WaMu is holding their breath that this will bail them out.  Why do I not feel very reassured about all this?

Moyers interviewed first Grethchen Morgenson and Floyd Norris, business and financial columnists from the New York Times.  None of what’s going on with Wall Street makes a lot of sense, especially, as much as I can make out, common sense.

Morgenson describes part of the situation (from the transcript):

There was a lack of accountability where a banker didn’t care whether the loan was repaid. And the Wall Street firm that sold the securitization trust didn’t care if it ever got paid back, because they were happy with their commission. The broker making the loan didn’t care, because he got, all the way up the ladder to the CEOs of these companies, who are allowed to walk away from a financial cataclysm with huge payments.

Then there was the speculation by companies like Lehman:

FLOYD NORRIS: I believe Lehman believed it. Lehman, consistently during this, has believed that the bottom was upon us.

So they were buying as this started down last year, taking advantage of what they believed to be a temporary ridiculous decline. And they never quite realized that they were wrong. The prices on many of these assets now probably are ridiculously low. But buying them on heavy leverage is risking if you’re a little wrong, you can die. And that’s what happened to Lehman.

Gambling on borrowed money is probably never a good idea.  Ironically, though, Lehman’s biggest problem, given the way the current situation is set up, is that they weren’t big enough.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Well, the problem is that now, everything in our financial markets is super-interconnected. And so, one failure has the potential to push over other dominos.

BILL MOYERS: But why AIG and not Lehman?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Because AIG was so enormous, it’s almost a paradox. It’s almost perverse. Lehman was not big enough in the derivatives market.

That has counterparties, where if you fail, then they might then push over another domino. Lehman was not large enough in those areas. AIG was enormous. AIG had those derivatives from European banks, which may have failed. And so, you see, it’s a worldwide problem.

FLOYD NORRIS: To let AIG go under now would have created an awful lot of problems for an awful lot of other institutions. And the government doesn’t have any way to know exactly who and how much. And they were scared. And they probably were right to be scared.

Moyers then interviewed Kevin Phillips, author of Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism.  Phillips is pretty harsh on the roles of Alan Greenspan and both the Republicans and Democrats in their bi-partisan creation of the conditions that led to this mess.

Again, from the transcript:

BILL MOYERS: You’re very hard in here on Alan Greenspan’s tenure at the Fed.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Well, I know Alan from the Republican campaign back in 1968. He was always a very scholarly, data-driven guy. But I think, for some reason or other, his chairmanship will be remembered as turn on the spigots.

BILL MOYERS: Turn on the spigots?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Turn on the spigots. He started in 1987 with a crash that was a wicked one in one day in 1987. And he turned on the spigots. And they had the huge growth of the tech bubble in the 1990s. And then right after the tech and the stock market bubble blew up in 2000, you had 9/11. So there was a need for more stimulus. And they ginned up the stimulus again hugely.

And the upshot is that during Greenspan’s tenure from 1987 to 2006, what they call total credit market debt in the United States quadrupled, quadrupled from about $11 trillion up to $44, $45, $46 trillion. And finance got the great bulk of it. And Greenspan would do nothing to disturb finance.

He wouldn’t puncture a bubble. He wouldn’t crack down on the exotic mortgages. He really wouldn’t do much of anything except give obscure speeches in which, you know, he mumbled the different directions so nobody would know what he meant. But basically he gave finance what they wanted.

Then on the bi-partisan mess, especially Robert Rubin from the Clinton administration (and currently one of Obama’s economic advisors; and with McCain’s campaign being run by Phil Gramm, who also pushed through all this, it’s still a bi-partisan mess):

BILL MOYERS: And you write also that during this period the Clinton Administration aided and abetted this kind of speculation. Bill Clinton’s economic advisor, Bob Rubin, who later became Secretary of Treasury — wanting to fuel this, right?

KEVIN PHILLIPS: It’s been a bipartisan phenomenon. You can go back to the 1980s and say Reagan and George Bush, Sr., got a bubble started. Clinton got in and got an even bigger bubble going. And then George W. Bush with the biggest bubble of all. But it’s not that the Clintonites didn’t play. They did. Bob Rubin as Secretary of the Treasury — I mean, if he was a Hindu and he was being reincarnated, he’d come back as a pail because this guy bailed out everything you can imagine. They had the Mexican loan bailout. They had the long-term capital management bailout, the Russian Southeast Asian currency bailouts.

Then this:

Rubin was also central — Democrats more than Republicans in a lot of ways with the Clinton Administration — in getting rid of Glass Stiegel, was the old restriction that the banks couldn’t tie up with brokerage firms and insurance companies. Well, basically after they made their reform led by Clinton and by Bob Rubin, you had like four-color linguini here in a bowl. It’s all mixed up together.

BILL MOYERS: So you have it — for this disaster has bipartisan parentage.

KEVIN PHILLIPS: Absolutely.

Do we have hope?  I will say, from his statement on the economic crisis and bailouts (from a Truthout article), that Obama seems to not only get the crisis, but expresses his outrage at what’s going on.  He’s calling for help for Main Street, not just Wall Street (and, indeed, he has been speaking about these issues all along).  He’s calling for responsibility on Wall Street (and calling out the golden parachutes).  Obama is also calling for “tough new oversight and regulations of our financial institutions.”

Then he really nails how we got into this situation:

One last point. We did not arrive at this crisis by some accident of history. What led us to this point was years and years of a philosophy in Washington and on Wall Street that viewed even common-sense regulation and oversight as unwise and unnecessary; that shredded consumer protections and loosened the rules of the road. CEOs and executives got reckless. Lobbyists got what they wanted. Politicians in both parties looked the other way until it was too late. And it is the American people who have paid the price. The events of this week have rendered a final verdict on that failed philosophy, and it will end if I am President of the United States. We must build upon the ideas I have laid out over the last several years about how to modernize our financial regulation in this country, and establish commonsense rules of the road for our financial system to help restore confidence in our financial system.

Which is all really great, but. . . Obama’s financial advisors are still Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, who helped bring us this mess during the Clinton administration (with the bi-partisan help of people like Phil Gramm).

Kevin Phillips doesn’t hold out much hope for real change from Obama (though he has considerably less hope for any change from McCain):

KEVIN PHILLIPS: He doesn’t seem to have anything very specific to say. That’s part of the problem. A second problem is, for me at least, you know, just as I can’t believe that John McCain ever wanted to get his economic advice from Phil Gramm. I mean, Phil Gramm, a former Texas Senator, appalling. He and his wife were known as Mr. and Mrs. Enron because they were so flagrant, that’s McCain.

But then you’ve got Obama with Bob Rubin and he doesn’t have any problem with the hedge fund types. I mean, one of the Chicago people was a major financer of his. He gets a guy to pick his vice-president. Turns out to be somebody who was part of the Fannie and Freddie mess.

So I don’t exactly see Obama as this fellow riding in on a horse who represents all kinds of reformism. It’s an important thing probably to have to change from the Republicans but I don’t see that he is free of the ties to finance and Democratic Party financial types.

Phillips does mention Obama in the past telling him he read one of Phillips’ books, and said he would be impressed if Obama came in January and leveled with the American people (but doesn’t hold out much hope for Congress really wanting to deal with it other than a New Deal quick fix). 

Here’s a thought for Obama.  Why not have Kevin Phillips as one of your campaign economic advisors and/or Treasury secretary?  Or Gretchen Morgenson or Floyd Norris? 

Or is there really hope for that kind of change, when the reality is the Wall Street money helps fund both parties?

Don’t get me wrong.  I still think Barack Obama is our best hope, and will be the best President I’ve had a chance to vote for in my lifetime.  It’s just that the realities of who really funds the campaigns and has any politician in their back pocket, no matter how many of us send in $25 donations when we can afford it, makes real change really doubtful. 

 

Tags: Bill+Moyers, Gretchen+Morgenson, Floyd+Norris, Robert+Rubin, Barack+Obama, economy, Kevin+Phillips

It’s the Economy (and it’s really scary. . .)

This election really coming down to the economy again, as it was for Clinton the first time.  It’s hard to lie about the economy to the American public, because people know what’s in their own wallet. I know I’ve been hurting for some time, as have many others.  Then there’s the failure of so many major financial institutions at rates not seen since the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, McCain is looking very out of touch, and  said the economy was fundamentally sound on Monday, even as Lehman Brothers went into bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch was sold.

So, what does he do Tuesday, but try to spin it (as noted in a NY Times editorial):

He said that by calling the economy fundamentally sound, what he really meant was that American workers are the best in the world. In the best Karl Rovian fashion, he implied that if you dispute his statement about the economy’s firm foundation, you are, in effect, insulting American workers. “I believe in American workers, and someone who disagrees with that — it’s fine,” he told NBC’s Matt Lauer.

Mmm, right, when we say you’re clueless about the economy, we’re attacking the American workers, Senator McCain?  Wait a second, I am an American worker, that’s why I’ve known for a long time the economy was unsound, long before Wall Street.  You can’t put lipstick on that bull, Senator.

As the Times went on to say:

In clarifying his comments, Mr. McCain lavished praise on workers, but ignored their problems. That is the real insult.

For decades, typical Americans have not been rewarded for their increasing productivity with comparably higher pay or better benefits. The disconnect between work and reward has been especially acute during the Bush years, as workers’ incomes fell while corporate profits, which flow to investors and company executives, ballooned. For workers, that is a fundamental flaw in today’s economy. It is grounded in policies like a chronically inadequate minimum wage and an increasingly unprogressive tax system, for which Mr. McCain offers no alternatives.

Barack really gets it, and his economic plan, was one of the issues in his plan that really impressed me back when I bookmarked his website when it was his exploratory committee’s.

As Robert Scheer notes in Truthdig about McCain:

He voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. The two main bills accomplishing that, bills which McCain enthusiastically supported, were the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Gramm is former Sen. Phil Gramm, who was chair of the Senate Banking Committee when he acted as chief sponsor of both pieces of legislation. The same Gramm that McCain picked to co-chair his presidential campaign.

On the other hand:

Barack Obama has been way ahead of McCain in grasping the severity of the problem and back in March offered a scorching criticism of the deregulation mania, in particular the Gramm-Leach-Bliley law, which allowed the stockbrokers, insurance companies and banks to merge for the first time since the 1930s, ushering in this era of irresponsibility. But that was in the primaries, and now he has turned for advice to Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, who both served as treasury secretaries in the Clinton administration and talked the president into signing that wretched legislation.

 I’d be lying if I said the last part doesn’t concern me.  Even Obama seems to have trouble keeping the special interests out of the process.  He is recommending some (hopefully serious) regulation, however; and all McCain is offering is to form a national commission to ignore, err, study the problem.

All these mergers, buyouts and bailouts are putting the financial institutions and the U.S. taxpayers who are bailing them out, on real shaky ground.  As the New York Times noted:

During the Depression, Congress separated commercial banks, which take deposits and make loans, from investment banks, which underwrite and trade securities. The investment banks were allowed to do business with less oversight, while commercial banks operated with tighter supervision.

But after Congress repealed those Depression-era laws in 1999, commercial banks began muscling in on Wall Street’s turf. As the new competition whittled down profit margins, investment banks used more of their capital to trade securities and also began developing financial derivatives to fuel profits.

As Amy Goodman points out, this all came about because “President Clinton and his treasury secretary, Robert Rubin (now an Obama economic adviser), presided over the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act, passed after the 1929 start of the Great Depression to curb speculation that caused that calamity. The repeal was pushed through by former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm, one of McCain’s former top advisers.”

Those laws were passed for good reason during the Great Depression, now we’re back to where all that can happen again, aren’t we?  Yes, we have the FDIC now, which insures accounts up to $100,000.  Still, what happens when we have to actually have to use it at rates of bank failures approaching (or passing) Depression Era levels?  Along with all these other bailouts, and are already huge debt?  Can American declare bankruptcy?  Will we be auctioned off to the highest bidder?  China?  Saudia Arabia? 

OK, maybe my speculation is too far here, but, seriously, what happens?  We definitely need someone in there to turn this around.

Locally, WaMu (Washington Mutual) is looking for a buyer, and some people are getting jittery and taking their money out of the bank.  Actually, I took mine out and put it in a credit union several years ago over their $40 overdraft fees.  WaMu’s stock price closed at $2.01 Wednesday.  It turns out that was a 94% drop from where it had been one year earlier, of $35.96 a share.

Pretty scary. . .

Tags: election, economy, John+McCain, Barack+Obama, Lehman+Brothers, Robert+Scheer, Gramm-Leach-Biley+law, Robert+Rubin, Lawrence+Summers, Phil+Gramm, Amy+Goodman, Glass-Steagall+Act, WaMu

Dining, Dancing & Immigrant Rights

Saturday night I attended the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project dinner at the Westin as a guest at the Amnesty International Puget Sound table, which was, as usual, very inspiring.

There was a silent auction in the lobby area outside the ballroom before the dinner.

Then Brazilian dancers provided entertainment just before the dinner and auction, leading everyone into the room.

I had the fish dinner, with a delicious tart, and wine at the table.  We heard from NWIRP’s staff, lawyers and clients about the wonderful work NWIRP does (and in a very bad political climate, even the Democrats aren’t too keen on standing up for immigrant rights).  It seems to me that many people conveniently forget what it was like years ago for their ancestors first immigrated to American.  How they, too, fled some other country for for freedom and opportunity, only to be exploited and discriminated against.

There was another, live auction, this one of higher priced items and vacations; then a round for donations.

We heard an especially moving story from a woman who fled her abusive husband who threatened her with her immigration status.  After seeing Sleepless in Seattle, she decided this was going to be where she made her break to. NWIRP helped her file for her green card as a survivor of domestic violence, only to be denied and delayed for five years during the name check because she had a common name.  A NWIRP attorney was finally able to clear that up for her, too, and she now has a green card.

Awards were then given to lawyers and volunteers who donated time and photography expertise to NWIRP.

Following the awards, there was Brazilian dancing again, this time with the dinner guests learning.

Tags: NWIRP, Northwest+Immigrant+Rights+Project, immigrant+rights

Grassroots Organizing for Change

While I should have thought it over a bit and realized the event was a bad fit (and I probably wouldn’t follow through), I don’t regret going to Renton for the Canvassing for Change event Saturday morning.  I was inspired after a discouraging week, not so much by Howard Dean’s speech, as by the 400 or more people who crowded the room (and that was for the 1^st shift). 

I think Howard Dean is right, Obama is going to win this election by grassroots organizing.  That being said, I don’t know if I’m going to be one of the people knocking on doors.  I’m a shy person, and truly, even with someone to go with, I’m not sure if I could handle it or be at all articulate.  There’s a reason why I write.  It’s an easier form of communication for me (though sometimes I even get shy writing).

I was at first encouraged Saturday when they mentioned being able to canvass your own legislative district.  I found the 43^rd was not represented, though, and it was just as while they brushed me off to come back during the break between speakers when I was trying to figure out what might be close.  The more I thought it over, the more I realized that it looked like the situation was that I would be getting my own packet to go out and knock on doors myself.  There didn’t seem to be pairing off, as most people had someone.  With a smaller event, maybe I would have asked.

I did have one friend who could have made the second shift (2–5pm), but that wouldn’t have worked out as I had long before committed to being at the Amnesty International table that night for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project Dinner (more tomorrow on that).  That was my other problem, and after the hour trip home (with a half hour wandering around Renton snapping photos, as I had just missed a bus), I realized I only had a couple hours to get ready for the dinner as it was.  Over scheduling, obviously, another problem for me.

After checking later on the King County Democrats website, I realized there would have been another problem, as it looks like all the Legislative Districts were outside Seattle, in south or east King County.  Which would make it rather difficult, as I’d have to figure out how to get to a neighborhood in another city by bus from Renton, then back from Seattle.  Do that without a computer to find that information, and then all the time that would take.  It was the 41^st and 48^th that were suggested to me as being closest (which may well be, without Seattle districts in the mix), but those were in Bellevue (so an hour back to Seattle, another hour to Bellevue, and probably another half hour wait or two).  So, it probably wouldn’t have worked anyways if I waited around for a packet. 

Then, there’s the idea of me, knocking on strangers doors and trying to convince them how to vote.  Would I have even followed through if I did get a packet?  No matter how much Barack inspires me, it’s pretty hard to go against my basic nature as an introvert. Believe me, I’m already beyond my comfort zone much of the time as it is, especially with my activism, and sometimes I think I should become a recluse. I know I would be happier.

Going out to Renton for the canvassing was a little crazy anyways (given the lengthy bus trip both ways, including waits).  I just so wanted to do something after the nastiness of the McCain attack ads.  I could have canvassed closer, either through the 43rd District Democrats or the new  Neighbor to Neighbor feature on Barack Obama’s website (informational video below).  I’m still not sure if I could do it, and definitely not by myself.

That being said, there are other things I can do, and the My Barack Obama feature, state pages (here’s Washington’s) and groups are helpful for finding those.  I’ve already written some postcards for Obama, and may do a shift at a Buttonpalooza or a voter registration drive.

Buttonpalooza?   Do I live an exciting life, or what? 

Well, life is going to get more exciting one way or another, whoever wins this election.  I’d just like it to be a positive excitement.  Let’s see, encouraging children to learn, creating more American jobs, tax breaks for working people and small businesses; vs cronyism, turning back the clock to the 19^th century, and if John’s ticker doesn’t hold up, all White House cabinet positions held by Sarah’s old school chums from Wasilla.  Will that be fun, or what?!

Love the part about her friend who’s the head of the State Division of Agriculture, a former real estate agent, who now draws a $95,000 a year paycheck because of her qualification of “her childhood love of cows.”  Why do the words, “Heck of a job, Brownie” come to mind?

As noted in a previous blog, the time is getting short for people to register to vote or update their registration addresses, generally by the end of the month (and the vote caging continues).  Make sure you’re registered, and get all of your friends to register by checking Vote for Change:

http://www.voteforchange.com/

Then vote for change November 4^th (or sooner for those who vote by mail).

Vote for real change (and if you live in Seattle, buy a copy of Real Change, the long running homeless newspaper)!

Tags: Barack+Obama, Howard+Dean, Democrats, Sarah+Palin, John+McCain, Real+Change