Voter Supression a Big Issue in Charlotte

Sept 6, 2012 - Issue 484

Cover Story:  Voter Supression a Big Issue in Charlotte

By Amy V. Simmons - Reporting from the Convention

BC Editorial Board

Note: Ms. Simmons is attending the Democratic Convention as a representative of BlackCommentator.com. Additionally, we welcome her as a member of the BC Editorial Board.

The voter ID issue was on everyone's mind as the Democratic National Convention officially opened in Charlotte NC on Tuesday, September 5. Delegates and politicians alike were in agreement that the recent attempts at voter suppression were as blatant a move that had been attempted since the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Pennsylvanians, in particular, had strong opinions, given the recent voter ID legislation which was challenged and deemed constitutional there, despite strong opposition.

Republicans have proven themselves quite adept at voter suppressions, having twice stolen Florida for George W Bush Dick Cheney.  Voter suppression will likely be rampant once again in Ohio, as urban dwellers (black folks) search high and low for the polling places and then must endure long lines when they find them; same holds true for students going to liberal arts Chc

Although several efforts have been made as a result to assist those most affected to obtain the required ID at no cost, and with some relaxing of normal requirements, there are still strong opinions about this latest blatant and unrepentant disenfranchisement effort by Republicans, spearheaded by Tea Party legislators who rode the wave of 2010 mid-term election victories. A large group particularly at risk by this cynical move, although by no means the only one, are African Americans.

State Representative Curtis Jones (D- PA) summarized both what is happening , and the proper response to it, mirroring what everyone at the convention was discussing amongst themselves.

"This is nothing new", he reflected. "Since Reconstruction, grandfather clauses, dimpled chads and more have been used to disenfranchise African Americans. There are one million more Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania. We are launching a marked effort targeting young people and seniors."

Equal rights for all, regardless of gender and sexual preference, public sector job protections and a strong focus on the middle class seem to be trending as the priorities for this election cycle. And yet, as the 2012 convention opened, aside from some references and examples noted throughout the evening in some speeches, there was no mention of the poor, many of whom are the former middle class or the so - called “working poor”.

The fact that this group is the most vulnerable to the current voter suppression attempts, makes a solution imperative. Without the active participation of the poor and working poor in this election, all of the most pressing concerns of the party are in jeopardy.

The issue of voter intimidation must be taken more seriously or the active campaign by Republican operatives and ideologues to destroy, discourage and suppress voter turnout will succeed.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member Amy V. Simmons is a media professional well respected in many circles; she studied journalism and communications at Point Park College in Pittsburgh , PA, and English at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, PA. The daughter of two lifelong social justice, community and civil rights activists, she is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists, the world's largest journalism organization, as well as its founding chapter, the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. She is also a member of the Native American Journalists Association.

The economy is in the toilet, (and probably headed for recession) mainly because Obama and Co. didn’t have the balls to stand up for what’s right. That’s not to say that the carpetbagging Romney would be a better choice for president. He wouldn’t be. But let’s not delude ourselves about Obama. He is not the man he pretends to be.

The Great Pretender


Did Obama Scuttle the Recovery?

by MIKE WHITNEY

The New York Times believes that Barack Obama is responsible for today’s sputtering economy. In an article titled “Cautious Moves on Foreclosures Haunting Obama”, Times journalist Binyamin Applebaum says that Obama’s failure to seriously address the housing crisis has left the economy weaker than it should be at this point in the recovery.

According to the Times, Obama rejected the idea of “a broad bailout of homeowners” similar to the multi-trillion dollar lifeline he provided for the Wall Street banks. The president figured that his modest mortgage modification program (HAMP) would suffice until the economy rebounded “taking care of the rest.” Here’s an excerpt from the article which illustrates Obama’s uneven approach to the suffering of homeowners who were facing foreclosure in record numbers:

“During his first two years in office, Mr. Obama and his advisers repeatedly affirmed this carefully calibrated strategy, leaving unspent hundreds of billions of dollars that Congress had allocated to buy mortgage loans, even as millions of people lost their homes and the economic recovery stalled somewhere between crisis and prosperity.”

So the money was available, but the administration refused to use it for its designated purpose. Why? And why did Obama decide that it was okay for homeowners to suffer while the perpetrators of the crisis were lavished with taxpayer-funded bailouts and golden parachutes?

Here’s more from the Times:

“The nation’s painfully slow pace of growth is now the primary threat to Mr. Obama’s bid for a second term, and some economists and political allies say the cautious response to the housing crisis was the administration’s most significant mistake.”

“Mistake”? Was it a mistake because it undermined Obama’s chances for reelection or because the people he was supposed to serve ended up losing their homes or seeing their equity wiped out in the bat of an eye?

More from the Times: “They were not aggressive in taking the steps that could have been taken….And as a consequence they did not interrupt the catastrophic spiral downward in our economy.”

Precisely, which is why it is ridiculous for Obama loyalists to argue that this is still Bush’s economy. It’s not. This is Obama’s economy. The reason unemployment is high, growth is anemic and the economy is on the brink of another slump, has to do with the policies that were implemented by the current administration. That’s where the buck stops.

Obama only wanted to help “responsible borrowers”, a standard that was never applied to the thieving class that runs the Wall Street banks and brokerages. For them, it was carte blanche– unlimited loans, subsidies and bailouts amounting to trillions of dollars. Everyone knows what happened.

Obama also wanted to modify loans, to tweak the interest rate or extend the life of the loan, instead of reducing the principal which would have prevented millions from losing their homes, but would have also dug into the windfall profits of crooked bankers. So, he nixed the idea outright. Is there any doubt whose interests were being served?

As a result, Obama’s mortgage modification program was a spectacular flop that kept less than 1 million people in their homes while nearly 6 million homeowners got the boot. Even so, the administration still hasn’t changed its approach. Policy is largely in the hands of the bankers who communicate their demands through their agents in the White House.

Here’s more from the Times:

“Mr. Obama sponsored cramdown legislation as a senator, endorsed it as a presidential candidate and called on Congress to pass it in the Arizona speech.

But he also repeatedly pressed the pause button. When proponents sought to add a cramdown to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act in September 2008, Mr. Obama, who had flown back to Washington from the campaign trail, persuaded them to postpone the “partisan” effort as an example to Republicans, who said the measure would violate existing contracts.

In February 2009, after Mr. Obama became president, the White House asked Democrats not to attach the measure to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, fearing it would cost votes. In March, a watered-down version finally passed the House, but the mortgage industry rallied opposition to block it in the Senate.”

Can you believe it? Obama repeatedly torpedoed the one measure that the experts agree would have kept more people out of foreclosure and stabilised prices after promising that he would support it! Incredible! This is what it means to be a “creature of the banks”; only the interests of big finance matter. Everything else is dismissed as claptrap.

The Times article points out that even crackpot senator John McCain would have done more to spare delinquent homeowners and mend housing than Obama. McCain wanted to put $300 billion into a Home Owners’ Loan Corporation-type operation that would have bought and refinanced distressed mortgages in the interest of keeping people in their homes and normalizing the market. But, as the Times notes, “Obama, … dismissed the idea as a “risky” giveaway to mortgage companies. “Taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to pick up the tab for the very folks who helped to create this crisis,” he said at a rally two days later in Dayton, Ohio.”

In truth, Obama’s chief economic advisors, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, opposed ANY additional spending on housing. They simply did not want to help the victims in this massive mortgage-ponzi-fraud at all. In fact, according to the Times, “Mr. Geithner told Mr. Obama that if even if an additional $100 billion were available, he still would not spend it on housing.”

That says it all, doesn’t it? The people who are actually pulling the strings are opposed to helping ordinary working people whether they have the money or not. Isn’t that what you call class warfare?

So now the economy is in the toilet, (and probably headed for recession) mainly because Obama and Co. didn’t have the balls to stand up for what’s right. That’s not to say that the carpetbagging Romney would be a better choice for president. He wouldn’t be. But let’s not delude ourselves about Obama. He is not the man he pretends to be.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

The Flight of the Young Chicken Hawk

The Flight of the Young Chicken Hawk

How Mitt Dodged the Draft

by H. BRUCE FRANKLIN

May 1966. Mitt Romney is just finishing his first—and only—year at Stanford. I’m a 32-year-old ex-Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer, now an associate professor in Stanford’s English Department and something of an anti-Vietnam War activist.

(Franklin would be fired from his tenured position at Stanford University because it was believed (by the powers that be) that his political view points were so far afield from the then "mainstream" that he could not be sufficiently "cured" of his "non-mainsteram" views that termination rather than re-orientation was required.)

 

About a quarter of a million young American men are already being abducted each year to fight the rapidly-escalating Vietnam War. Many college students, however, are protected by their 2S student deferments, which blatantly discriminate against all those millions of other young men unable to afford college. As if this privileging of the relatively privileged were not sufficient, an outcry about “inequity” arises from administrations of some elite universities. Since the 2S deferment is contingent on relatively high class rank (meaning, of course, academic class rank), they argue that this unfairly discriminates against some of the “best” students, i. e., all those attending schools like Stanford. A man in the bottom quarter at an elite university might end up being drafted, even though he might be more “intelligent” than a man in the top quarter of some state college.

To address such claims of injustice, the Selective Service was rolling out that month the College Qualification Test, a.k.a. the Selective Service Examination, an “objective” assessment of each test taker’s verbal and mathematical skills, to be used by local draft boards, together with college grades and class rank, to determine who was entitled to that precious 2S deferment and who should be shipped off to Vietnam. But this deferment test actually spotlighted the true inequities of the draft. It also offered an opportunity for direct action against the war itself, right on the college campus.

One of the many myths that have buried the true history of the Vietnam War is that the anti-war movement was motivated by selfish desire, especially among college students, to avoid the draft (a view that conveniently ignores the movement’s throngs of female participants, whose gender automatically exempted them from the draft). Quite to the contrary, students demonstrating against the draft deferment tests were specifically undermining and targeting their own privileges and exemptions, which, as they passionately argued, came at the expense of poor and working class people. At Stanford, a number of people actually disrupted the test. The young men involved thus proved that their goal was not to avoid the draft but to end it, since they had been explicitly warned that their actions would jeopardize their own deferments. When students filed in to take the Selective Service test, other demonstrators handed them the SDS “alternative test” on the history of U.S.-Vietnam relations. About ninety students organized a sit-in in the President’s office. In a manifesto issued from the sit-in they denounced their own privileged status: “We oppose the administration of the Selective Service Examination . . . because it discriminates against those who by virtue of economic deprivation are at a severe disadvantage in taking such a test. . . . [The] less privileged, Negroes, Spanish-Americans, and poor whites, must fight a war in the name of principles such as freedom and equality of opportunity which their own nation has denied them.” “Conscription,” they declared, has throughout American history “invariably been biased in favor of the wealthy and privileged.”




Enter young Mitt Romney, right on cue, waving a sign denouncing the anti-war students. He, like his fellow almost all-male participants in this pro-war demonstration, fervently argued in support of the war and the draft. But not, of course, for himself.

When Mitt enrolled at Stanford back in the spring of 1965, the official and overt U.S. war (as distinct from the previous forms of proxy, clandestine, and “adviser” warfare waged in Vietnam for more than a decade) had just begun. Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained U.S. bombing of the north, had started on March 2. The first officially acknowledged U.S. combat units were the Marines who went ashore at Da Nang on March 8 (joining the 24,000 U.S. military personnel already fighting in Vietnam). Draftees were not yet being used in combat. So Mitt and his dad clearly intended the fall of 1965 to be the beginning of a fine four-year career at Stanford for the young man. But Mitt’s last month as a Stanford student was May 1966. Why?

Although the Selective Service Exam radically reduced the chances of college men, especially those with the test-taking skills of most Stanford students, to be conscripted into the Vietnam War, it was no guarantee of long-lasting deferment. There were other, surer, escapes from the Vietnam nightmare. One of the very best was the ministry. In 1966, young men flooded into divinity schools, embarking on careers to be ministers, priests, and rabbis. The Mormons had an even better deal than most religions, because The Church of Latter-Day Saints required each and every one of its young men to become, for at least two years, a “minister of religion.” Thus all Mormon young men could claim deferments as ministers. When the inequity of this arrangement became too blatant, the Selective Service entered into an agreement with the LDS that required the church to specify just one “minister” for each geographical district. Since there were relatively few Mormons in Michigan, and Governor George Romney had considerable influence in the church, Mitt quickly received an official appointment as a Mormon “minister of religion,” consecrated by a draft deferment from the Selective Service. So instead of returning to Stanford, Mitt went off to become a Mormon missionary in France, where he would spend the next two and a half years—while Vietnam became a slaughterhouse for the Vietnamese and many Americans drafted to slaughter them.

So who says that Mitt Romney is inconsistent? After all, what may have been his first recorded public political act was supporting the draft for ordinary Americans, forcing them to participate in a war waged in the interest of his own class.

H. Bruce Franklin is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University. His most recent book is The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America.

Signs of Extreme Distress

Weekend Edition Aug 31-Sep 02, 2012

Signs of Extreme Distress

Why You’re a Lot Poorer Than You Thought You Were

by MIKE WHITNEY

You’re a lot poorer than you thought you were.



According to a report by Sentier Research “real median annual household income… has fallen by 4.8 percent since the ‘economic recovery’ began in June 2009.”



That’s worse than the 2.6 percent decline that took place during the recession itself. (between July 2007 to June 2009) All told–from the beginning of the slump in 2007 until today–median household income has dropped an eyewatering 7.2 percent. (“Changes in Household Income During the Economic Recovery: June 2009 to June 2012″, Sentier Research)



Like I said, you’re a lot poorer than you thought you were.



The Sentier Research report comes on the heels of a similar report from the Fed which was released in June showing that middle class families saw a nearly 40 percent decline in their net worth between the years 2007 to 2010. The Fed’s 80-page tri-annual Survey of Consumer Finances, points to the Great Recession as the putative cause of the overall decline in wealth, but the Fed’s lopsided policies could be as easily blamed. Low interest rates, lax lending standards and outright fraud generated asset-price bubbles that wiped out 2 decades of economic gains for working people in the US.



The Fed’s survey found that the median net worth of families in the US fell by 38.9 percent between 2007 and 2010, from $126,400 to $77,300. Also, the median value of a US home dropped by 42 percent, from $95,300 to $55,000 in the same period. Plunging housing prices have increased the burden of mortgage debt leaving more than 20 percent of all homeowners with negative equity which greatly increases the probability of default.



Is it any wonder why consumer confidence is at its lowest point since November 2011? Or why mom and pop investors are still fleeing the stock market in record numbers 4 years after Lehman Brothers failed? Or why the yields on 10-year Treasuries are still hovering below 2 percent? Or why bank deposits now vastly exceed loans?



All of these are signs of extreme distress, which is why working people have grown so gloomy about the future. Did you know that (According to the Pew Research Center) 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971, while, today, the number has been shaved to 51 percent? That explains why 85 percent of the people surveyed said “that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today compared with 10 years ago.” The majority of the people also admitted that they’ve had to reduce their spending in the past year.



What all of these reports indicate is that the US middle class is being drawn-and-quartered by economic policies which serve to enrich the few at the cost of the many.



Of course, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke is going to “put things right” by launching another round of quantitative easing (QE) which is supposed to boost growth and lower unemployment. Unfortunately, QE doesn’t really work like that, in fact, the Bank of England just released a report that proves that central bank asset purchases disproportionately benefit the rich. Here’s a clip from an article in the Washington Post:



“The richest 10% of households in Britain have seen the value of their assets increase by up to £322,000 [$510,000] as a result of the Bank of England‘s attempts to use electronic money creation to lift the economy out of its deepest post-war slump. …



The Bank of England calculated that the value of shares and bonds had risen by 26% – or £600bn – as a result of the policy, equivalent to £10,000 for each household in the UK. It added, however, that 40% of the gains went to the richest 5% of households.”



It’s not hard to see why this happens. One way the bank’s quantitative easing program works, in theory, by pushing up asset prices in order to support the broader economy. And, according to the Bank of England, the median British household only holds about $2,370 in financial assets. So the direct benefits largely accrue to wealthier households.



What about the United States? Much like in Britain, the distribution of financial assets are also heavily skewed. …. So any move by the Fed to push up asset prices is likely to increase wealth inequality in the short term.” (“Will the Fed’s efforts to boost the economy only benefit the wealthiest?”, Washington Post)



So QE is just a scam to line the pockets of the investor class. Imagine that! It took 4 years and a research team of financial geniuses from the BOE to figure that out.



And here’s something else that’s worth mulling over; working people are getting totally screwed in the deal. Not only are savers and fixed-income retirees being robbed of the puny gains they would have seen if rates were in their normal range instead of zero, but also the prospect of more QE has sent gas futures spiking, while food prices are sure to follow. This is from Bloomberg in an article titled “Bernanke Boosts Oil Bulls to Highest Since May: Energy Markets”:



“Hedge funds raised bullish bets on oil to a three-month high on signs that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke will take measures to bolster U.S. economic growth and spur a rally in commodities.



Money managers increased net-long positions, or wagers on rising prices, by 18 percent in the seven days ended Aug. 21, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitments of Traders report on Aug. 24. They were at the highest level since the week ended May 1.” (Bloomberg)



Higher prices at the pump. That ought to rev-up consumer spending, don’t you think?



Still, Bernanke and his fellow doves at the Fed aren’t going to be deterred by something as inconsequential as the travails of working people. Oh no. After all, he has his real constituents to consider, the parasitic Wall Street robber barons. Their needs come first, and what they want is another round of funny-money so they refill the larder at the Hamptons with Beluga and bubbly. That’s why members of the Fed have already started chirping for more “more accommodation”. Here’s what Chicago Fed President Charles Evans had to say last week in his ominous-sounding bulletin titled “Some Thoughts on Global Risks and Monetary Policy”:



“Finding a way to deliver more accommodation… is particularly important now because delays in reducing unemployment are costly. An unusually large percentage of the unemployed have been without work for quite an extended period of time; their skills can become less current or even deteriorate, leaving affected workers with permanent scars on their lifetime earnings. And any resulting lower aggregate productivity also weighs on potential output, wages and profits for the economy as a whole. The damage intensifies the longer that unemployment remains high. Failure to act aggressively now could lower the capacity of the economy for many years to come….



Given the risks we face, I think it is vital that we make such moves today. I don’t think we should be in a mode where we are waiting to see what the next few data releases bring. We are well past the threshold for additional action; we should take that action now.”



What gall! Does anyone really believe that a Fed president gives a rat’s ass about lower unemployment? It’s a joke.



And where’s the proof that QE lowers unemployment, increases wages or benefits the economy as a whole? Nowhere. Evans idea of “accommodation” is just another way of shoveling money to his rich friends.



Now get a load of this in the Wall Street Journal:



“During the recession, people who lost long-held jobs struggled to find new employment and often took substantial pay cuts if they did find new work. Little appears to have changed after the recession ended, a new Labor Department report shows.



From 2009 to 2011, 6.1 million workers lost jobs they had held for at least three years. Just over half — 56% — of them were reemployed by this January, the department found in its latest survey of displaced workers. Two years ago, the survey found that 49% of people who lost such jobs from 2007 to 2009 were reemployed.



People lucky enough to find new work are often taking steep wage cuts. Of the displaced workers who lost full-time wage and salary jobs from 2009-2011 and were reemployed by January, just 46% were earning as much or more than they did in their lost job. A third of them reported earnings losses of 20% or more.” (“New Jobs Come With Lower Wages”, Wall Street Journal)



So even the people who were “lucky enough to find work” are worse off than they were before. Hey, but at least they found a job, right? What about the people who weren’t able to find work at all? What will happen to them?



No worries. Obama and his deficit-slashing buddies in the congress have that all figured out. As soon as the election’s over, President Socialist is going to start kicking people off extended unemployment benefits as fast as humanly possible leaving millions of working people without enough money to house or feed their families. Here’s how it’s all going to go down:



“Over 500,000 people have lost extended unemployment benefits since the start of the year, and two million more are scheduled to lose their benefits on January 1, 2013…. Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC), is scheduled to end completely on January 1, ending unemployment payments for 2 million more people overnight.



With the start of the new year, there will be no part of the country that offers more than 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. This is far less than the average duration of unemployment, which has hovered near 40 weeks for over a year…..



Despite the disastrous impact of the cuts, it has been largely ignored both by the major media and in the US elections. Moreover, the Obama administration has already let it be known that it will not seek a renewal of extended jobless benefits.” (“Extended jobless benefits end for 500,000 US workers”, World Socialist web Site)



Can you see how nicely this segues with Michelle’s anti-obesity campaign? The administration plans to increase worker “flexibility”, by putting millions of jobless people on a crash diet.



And, don’t kid yourself, unemployment is just one of the many programs that Obama plans to eviscerate following the vote-count. He’s also going to zero-in on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They’re all on the chopping block, every last one of them. That’s what the so called Fiscal Cliff is all about; it’s a public relations hoax to conceal Obama’s plan to dismantle the vital programs that provide medicine, shelter and a meager retirement for the sick, the needy and the elderly, you know, the folks the Republicans refer to as “useless eaters”.



All of these reports (Sentier, Pew, the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances) underline the same point, that the middle class is embroiled in a war-to-the-death with carpetbagging vermin who plan to deprive them of work, strip their assets, foreclose their homes, and leave them penniless to face old age. It’s just good old class warfare–and as Warren Buffett opined–his class is winning.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.

The U.S. labor movement is itself greatly fragmented, with two competing houses of labor (the AFL-CIO and Change to Win) as well as divisions even within these two confederations. That the Solidarity Center would presume to be able to unite any union movement outside its borders is laughable. Indeed, only imagine the reception from the labor movement in this country if China’s labor confederation purported to intervene in the U.S. to help unite the labor movement here.

September 04, 2012

Diatribes and Curious Silences

Democrats and U.S. Labor Delusional About Latin America

by ALBERTO C. RUIZ

The Democrats just put out their platform on Latin America, and it demonstrates only the loosest connection to reality. Thus, while praising the “vibrant democracies in countries from Mexico to Brazil and Costa Rica to Chile,” as well as “historic peaceful transfers of power in places like El Salvador and Uruguay,” the Democrats continue to point to Cuba and Venezuela as outliers in the region in which the Democrats plan “to press for more transparent and accountable governance” and for “greater freedom.” Of course, it is their Platform’s deafening silence on critical developments in the region which says the most about their position vis a vis the Region.

Not surprising, the Democrats say nothing about the recent coups in Honduras and Paraguay (both taking place during Obama’s first term) which unseated popular and progressive governments. They also say nothing about the fact that President Obama, against the tide of the other democratic countries in Latin America, quickly recognized the coup governments in both of these countries. Also omitted from the platform is any discussion of the horrendous human rights situation in post-coup Honduras where journalists, human rights advocates and labor leaders have been threatened, harassed and even killed at alarming rates.

As Reporters Without Borders (RWR) explained on August 16, 25 journalists have been murdered in Honduras since the 2009 coup, making Honduras the journalist murder capital of the world. In this same story, RWR mentions Honduras in the same breath as Mexico (a country the Democrats hold out as one of the “vibrant democracies” in the region) when speaking of the oppression of journalists and social activists, as well as the general climate of violence which plagues both countries. As RWR stated, “Like their Mexican colleagues, Honduran journalists – along with human rights workers, civil society representatives, lawyers and academics who provide information – will not break free of the spiral of violent crime and censorship until the way the police and judicial apparatus functions is completely overhauled.” And indeed, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 38 journalists have been killed in Mexico since 1992, and it has been confirmed in 27 of these cases that the journalists were killed precisely because they were journalists. Meanwhile, in Mexico, over 40,000 individuals have been killed due to the U.S.-sponsored drug war – hardly a laudable figure.

Of course, in the case of Honduras, and Paraguay as well, things are going fine for U.S. interests post-coup, with Honduras maintaining the U.S. military base which President Manuel Zelaya, overthrown in the coup, had threatened to close. Similarly, in Paraguay, one of the first acts of the new coup government was agreeing to open a new U.S. military base – a base opposed by Porfirio Lobos, the President (and former liberation Bishop) overthrown in the coup. The other act of the new coup government in Paraguay was its agreement to allow Rio Tinto to open a new mine in that country, again in contravention of the deposed President’s position. The Democrats simply do not speak of either Honduras or Paraguay in their Platform.

Instead, the Democrats mostly focus on their alleged desire to bring freedom to Cuba, saying nothing about the strides already made by Cuba itself where, according to a January 27, 2012 story in the Financial Times, entitled, “Freedom comes slowly to Cuba,” “there are currently no prisoners of conscience.” This is to be contrasted with Colombia, the chief U.S. ally in the region, which houses around 10,000 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. The Democrats, shy about such unpleasant facts, simply say nothing about Colombia – this despite the fact that Colombia just announced historic peace talks with the guerillas which have been engaged in a 50-year insurgency in that country. Apparently, this does not deserve a mention amongst the Democrats’ anti-Cuba diatribe.

Meanwhile, the Democrats also single out Venezuela as a country in which it is hoping to free from its alleged chains. What the Democrats fail to note is that Venezuela already has a popular, democratically President in Hugo Chavez who is making life better for the vast majority of Venezuelans, and who appears poised to receive the majority of the votes of the Venezuelan people in the upcoming October elections as a consequence. Thus, according to Oxfam, “Venezuela certainly seems to be getting something right on inequality. According to the highly reputable UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, it now has the most equal distribution of income in the region, and has improved rapidly since 1990.” Again, contrast this with the U.S.’s chief ally Colombia and with Mexico, the two countries with the worst problems of inequality in the region. As the Council on Hemispheric Affairs noted earlier this year, “both Colombia and Mexico suffer from some of the world’s most unequal distributions of wealth. In 1995, Colombia was ranked the fifth most unequal country (of those with available statistics), with a Gini coefficient of 0.57, while Mexico was ranked the eighth worst with a Gini coefficient of 0.52. Between 2006 and 2010, Colombia’s inequality ranked 0.58, while Mexico’s coefficient was 0.52, qualifying them as two of the lowest ranked countries in the world.” The Democrats, uninterested in such trivialities as social equality, simply ignore such inconvenient data.

For its part, U.S. labor, as represented (albeit very poorly) by the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, continue to march in step with the U.S. government and the Democrats in their imperial delusions about the Region. Thus, while for some time simply hiding the fact that it has been working in Venezuela at all, the Solidarity Center, in response to pressure about this issue, has recently admitted on its website that it has been continuously working in Venezuela these past 13 years – i.e., to and through the coup in 2002 which the Solidarity Center aided and abetted by funneling monies from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to the anti-Chavez CTV union which was a major player in the coup.

Stinging from the just criticism over this, the Solidarity Center now claims — reminiscent of George W. Bush who fancied himself a “uniter” as opposed to a “divider” – claims that it is in Venezuela to unite the divided labor movement. Thus, the Solidarity Center states: “[g]iven the political fragmentation and divisions between unions in Venezuela, Solidarity Center activities work to help unions from all political tendencies overcome their divisions in order to jointly advocate for and defend policies for increased protection of fundamental rights at the workplace and industry levels. The Solidarity Center currently supports efforts to unite unions from diverse political orientations (including chavista and non-chavista, left and center) to promote fundamental labor rights in the face of anti-labor actions that threaten both pro-government unions and traditionally independent unions.” In its statement, the Solidarity Center says nothing about the progressive labor law which President Chavez just recently signed into law without any help from U.S. labor. This law, among other things, outlaws outsourcing and subcontracting, shortens the work week, increases minimum vacation time, increases maternity leave and requires employers to provide retirement benefits.

The Solidarity Center statement about Venezuela is laden with irony as well as hubris. The U.S. labor movement is itself greatly fragmented, with two competing houses of labor (the AFL-CIO and Change to Win) as well as divisions even within these two confederations. That the Solidarity Center would presume to be able to unite any union movement outside its borders is laughable. Indeed, only imagine the reception from the labor movement in this country if China’s labor confederation purported to intervene in the U.S. to help unite the labor movement here. Aside from wondering how exactly the Chinese unionists planned to do this, many would wonder about the ends to which such unity, once miraculously created, would be applied. And, one must wonder the very same about this in regard to the Solidarity Center’s role in Venezuela. First of all, the so-called “chavista” unions want nothing to do with the Solidarity Center, funded as it is by the NED and U.S.-AID, especially after the 2002 coup. Again, they would have to question what the Solidarity Center, which just received a massive grant of $3 million for its work in Venezuela and Colombia, would want to “unify” the Venezuelan union movement to do. The question appears to answer itself, and it is not a pretty one.

A modest proposal for the AFL-CIO and its Solidarity Center is to focus on uniting the labor movement at home in the U.S. to challenge the power that capital has on our political system; pressing for better U.S. labor law (on this score it could learn a lot from Venezuela and its labor movement); abandoning its labor paternalism (if not imperialism) and leaving it to the Venezuelans to unite their own labor movement. Similarly, the Democrats, instead of worrying about ostensibly bringing U.S.-style democracy (more like social inequality and militarism) to other countries in the Region, should spend more time trying to make this country less beholden to corporate and monied interests, and thereby more democratic in the process. But again, this is not what the Democrats are about. What the AFL-CIO is about, aside from blindly supporting the Democrats, is anyone’s guess.

Alberto C. Ruiz is a long-time labor and peace activist.

Obama’s Secret Plan to Prop Up Housing Prices - Surprise U.S. tax payers get screwed!

September 04, 2012

Discounts for Speculators,

Foreclosures for Mom and Pop!

Obama’s Secret Plan to Prop Up Housing Prices

by MIKE WHITNEY

Private Equity firms are piling in to the housing market to take advantage of bargain basement prices on distressed inventory. The Obama administration is stealthily selling homes to big investors who are required to sign non-disclosure agreements to ensure that the public remains in the dark as to the magnitude of the giveaway. Aside from the steep discounts on the homes themselves, the government is also providing “synthetic financing to reduce the up-front capital required if they agree to form a joint venture with Fannie Mae and share proceeds from the rental or sale of properties.” (Businessweek)

In other words, US-taxpayers are providing extravagant financing for deep-pocket speculators who want to reduce their risk while maximizing their profits via additional leverage. The plan resembles Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s Public-Private Partnership Investment Program, (PPIP) which Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz denounced in an op-ed in the New York Times. Here’s what he said:

“The Obama administration’s $500 billion or more proposal to deal with America’s ailing banks has been described by some in the financial markets as a win-win-win proposal. Actually, it is a win-win-lose proposal: the banks win, investors win — and taxpayers lose.”

The same rule applies here. Speculators are getting lavish incentives (gov financing, low rates, and severe discounts) in secret deals to buy distressed inventory which should be available to the public at market prices. If that’s not a ripoff, then what is?

Now take a look at this clip from an article in Nuwire Investor:

“Single-family homes are on the radar with private equity investors for good reason. There is a robust pipeline of distressed properties that is allowing owners to buy property at a steep discount—typically 30 percent to 50 percent of replacement cost.

The volume of foreclosure filings in the U.S. totaled more than 2.8 million per year in both 2009 and 2010. Although the volume of home foreclosures dropped to 1.9 million in 2011, there were approximately 1.5 million active home foreclosure filings recorded during the first six months of 2012, according to data from RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based listing service. The current volume is about five times higher than the rate of foreclosures that were occurring prior to the housing bust. In 2005, for example, home foreclosure filings reached just 532,833, according to RealtyTrac.

That inventory includes an ample supply of quality middle-class homes in good neighborhoods. Investors are finding that they can buy three-bedroom, two-bath homes, many of which were built in 2005 or later. At the peak of the market, these homes were selling for about $250,000, and now investors are able to buy them at prices averaging between $100,000 and $130,000.” (“Private Equity Funds Prey On Distressed Housing”, NuWire Investor)

Read that again. Obama’s preferred customers are getting discounts of up-to 60 percent of the home’s peak value and generous gov-backed financing to boot! Where can Mom and Pop get a deal like that?

Nowhere.

As we have noted in previous articles, housing prices are going up for two reasons. First, because the banks are withholding their distressed inventory (delaying foreclosures) to keep prices artificially high. And, second, because of Private Equity firms are buying up the available stock of distressed homes in special “bulk sales” deals that are pushing up prices on lower-end homes. Housing analyst Michael Olenick sheds a bit of light on these secret transactions in a recent post on Naked Capitalism. Here’s a clip:

“Besides lower foreclosure activity, the government is going all out to give away houses to private equity firms. Recently Fannie Mae sold 275 properties across metro Phoenix in one sale to a mystery buyer, according to a report by Catherine Reagor of the Arizon Republic. All Fannie disclosed is the buyer is an LLC, which Fannie apparently helped create, based at 135 N. Los Robles Ave., in Pasadena, CA. Google shows that is the US address of EastWest Bank, a bank whose tagline is “Your Financial Bridge,” presumably between Asian money and Phoenix real estate. Fannie’s decision to sell Phoenix to Asian investors keeps 275 houses off the local market, which drives up prices for Phoenix homes people intend to actually live in, rather than flip. (Update: Nick Timiraos points out by e-mail that Fannie’s address in Pasadena is the same as EastWest’s, and Bloomberg has reported that Colony is the buyer. But this still raises the question of why Fannie cooperate with what appears to be an effort to hide the identity of the buyer.) (“Still Looking for a Housing Bottom”, Michael Olenick, naked capitalism)

So, why all the cloak and dagger? Why is the public being kept in the dark? And, most importantly, why are taxpayers providing financing for moneybags PE firms on discounted homes that would sell on Day 1 if they offered to the general public? This whole operation stinks to high-heaven.

As the article above indicates, there’s no shortage of delinquent homes that will eventually be foreclosed. That means the process is being dragged out so the banks don’t have to fess-up to the losses on their fetid pile of nonperforming loans Here’s a little more background from an article in Businessweek:

“About 6 million U.S. borrowers will lose their homes in the next five years because of inability to pay their mortgages, creating demand for as many as 4 million new rental households, according to Scott Simon, head of mortgage bonds at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach, California….

Single-family rentals are priced to deliver unlevered total returns in the range of 7.5 percent to 8 percent, or about 0.5 percentage point to 1 percentage point higher than institutional-quality apartments, according to a June 8 report by Ray Huang, senior associate at Green Street Advisors in Newport Beach, California. (“Colony Said to Win Foreclosed Homes Sold by Fannie Mae”, Businessweek)

If “6 million homeowners” will lose their homes in the next five years, then why are clownshoes media dupes touting a “bottom” in prices and a “market rebound”?

It’s all hype. And look at how calculatingly fiendish Obama’s foreclosure-to-rental program really is. The big boys have figured out the nearest penny how much they can make by throwing people out of their homes. (7.5 percent to 8 percent) Talk about heartless. And, of course, this whole process is being orchestrated by President Fairydust and his Wall Street Pranksters to keep prices artificially high and preserve the illusion that the banks are solvent.

It’s infuriating!

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.