Professor Smartass

apply methods of War on Terror to Wall Street economic terrorists

The money lost on Wall Street didn't just disappear. Like a street scammer playing the shell game, they move the pea around and around then slip it off the table into their hand so it isn't under any of the shells. In this case, their hand is off-shore accounts, and it is the same hand any bailout money will end up in.

These Wall Street scammers have done far more damage to our economy than any Middle Eastern terrorists have, so we need to use the Bush administration's methods on his buddies:

• No assumption of innocence, especially for execs at companies seeking bailouts. If you buy or sell something that isn't a tangible product or service for a living, you are a danger to society. The less an average person can understand what it is you buy and sell, the greater danger you are to society. If you doubt that, watch the documentary THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM about Enron.
  
  
• No fourth amendment rights to restrictions on searches. If they get the cash, we get to dig through their trash--their personal trash. And bank accounts, phone records, or anything else that would tell us where the money went.
  
  
• Likewise, no fifth amendment right against self-incrimination. We should use every means at our disposal to find out what they know about money laundering, hiding assets, and which politicians and regulators are on the take. There has been some great advances made in lie detection technology in the last decade. Brains scans can determine if someone is lying with 100% accuracy, and even if they won't speak, they can detect whether or not someone recognizes a photo or some other stimulus. We should give those technologies their first real world test.
  
  
• Forfeiture of property beyond what they stole or scammed. This requires borrowing the forfeiture rules from the War on Drugs, were if they find one pot seed in your carpet, they'll take your car or house even if it was from someone who was housesitting for you. If forfeiture is supposed to be a deterrent to drug dealers, it should be equally effective on these equally greedy bastards.
  
  
• Pre-emptive military strikes on countries that harbor Wall Street types and their assets. We cannot wait for the United Nations to act against the Cayman Islands, Seychelles, and Lichstenstein. We must strike before the economic terrorists can move their assets to another safe haven. We cannot wait for the final proof that could come in the form of a Great Depression.
  
  
• Torture. If torture works on ideologically motivated prisoners as the Bushies claim, imagine how much more effective it will be to get off-shore account numbers from some pampered trust fund baby. Hell, you wouldn't even have to strip them naked. Just take away their valets and they won't know how to put their own clothes on.
  
  
• Access to attorneys. If they can contact an attorney, they could use code words or even facial expressions to give approval to shift assets to different shell corporations or off-shore accounts.
  
  
• Renditions. It is very likely that even the Americans most hurt by these assholes won't have the stomach to waterboard or sexually assault a banker, broker, or hedge fund manager. Therefore, we should consider outsourcing this work to a country that has a better track record of dealing with oligarchs run amok: Russia. It would also help stabilize relations after the Bush administration & McCain's saber-rattling in their direction.
  
  Prison sentences could also be outsourced. Imagine how much we could save on gaurds, food, health care, and accommodations if we store these assholes in CHINA.
  

    

By Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich - www.Kucinich.us

Yesterday marked a day that will go down in history, when Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike took on full responsibility to protect the interests of taxpaying Americans, and defeated the deceptive bail out bill, defying the dictates of the Administration, the House Majority Leadership, the House Minority Leadership and the special interests on Wall Street.

Obviously Congress must consider quickly another course. There are immediate issues which demand attention and responsible action by the Congress so that the taxpayers, their assets, and their futures are protected.

We MUST do something to protect millions of Americans whose homes, bank deposits, investments, and pensions are at risk in a financial system that has become seriously corrupted. We are told that we must stabilize markets in order for the people to be protected. I think we need to protect peoples' homes, bank deposits, investments, and pensions, in order to stabilize the market.

We cannot delay taking action. But the action must benefit all Americans, not just a privileged few. Otherwise, more plans will fail, and the financial security of everyone will be at risk.

The $700 billion bailout would have added to our existing unbearable load of national debt, trade deficits, and the cost of paying for the war. It would have been a disaster for the American public and the government for decades and maybe even centuries to come.

To be sure, there are many different reasons why people voted against the bailout. The legislation did not regard in any meaningful way the plight of millions of Americans who are about to lose their homes. It did nothing to strengthen existing regulatory structures or impose new ones at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve in order to protect investors. There were no direct protections for bank depositors. There was nothing to stop further speculation, which is what brought us into this mess in the first place.

This was a bailout for some firms (and investors) on Wall Street, with the idea that in doing so there would be certain, unspecified, general benefits to the economy.

This is a perfect time to open a broader discussion about our financial system, especially our monetary system. Such a discussion is like searching for a needle in a haystack, and then, upon finding it, discussing its qualities at great length. Let me briefly describe the haystack instead.

Here is a very quick explanation of the $700 billion bailout within the context of the mechanics of our monetary and banking system:

The taxpayers loan money to the banks. But the taxpayers do not have the money. So we have to borrow it from the banks to give it back to the banks. But the banks do not have the money to loan to the government. So they create it into existence (through a mechanism called fractional reserve) and then loan it to us, at interest, so we can then give it back to them.

Confused?

This is the system. This is the standard mechanism used to expand the money supply on a daily basis not a special one designed only for the "$700 billion" transaction. People will explain this to you in many different ways, but this is what it comes down to.

The banks needed Congress' approval. Of course in this topsy turvy world, it is the banks which set the terms of the money they are borrowing from the taxpayers. And what do we get for this transaction? Long term debt enslavement of our country. We get to pay back to the banks trillions of dollars ($700 billion with compounded interest) and the banks give us their bad debt which they cull from everywhere in the world.

Who could turn down a deal like this? I did.

The globalization of the debt puts the United States in the position that in order to repay the money that we borrow from the banks (for the banks) we could be forced to accept International Monetary Fund dictates which involve cutting health, social security benefits and all other social spending in addition to reducing wages and exploiting our natural resources. This inevitably leads to a loss of economic, social and political freedom.

Under the failed $700 billion bailout plan, Wall Street's profits are Wall Street's profits and Wall Street's losses are the taxpayers' losses. Profits are capitalized. Losses are socialized.

We are at a teachable moment on matters of money and finance. In the coming days and weeks, I will share with you thoughts about what can be done to take us not just in a new direction, but in a new direction which is just.

Thank you,

Dennis
www.Kucinich.us
216-252-9000 877-933-6647

Watch Paul Grignon's 47-minute Money as Debt animated documentary. This is a useful, though by no means definitive, introduction to the topic of debt and the monetary system. Let me know what you think.

Kucinich Opposes Bailout, asks, "Is this the US Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs?" by Dennis Kucinich

Authors Bio: Dennis Kucinich is a congressman from Ohio and a 2008 presidential primary candidate. http://kucinich.us/ The best way to reach congressman Kucinich is through the information on his congressional website
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

         

Education, Awareness & Action are What's Next.

Killing the (private banker's) Federal Reserve should be the very first move of The People's Representatives.  Using the constitutionally Lawful Right of coining money must be forcefully given back to Treasury.

If Americans could/would take the time to understand how they have been and continually are screwed by the banker elite class, they would understand this latest financially engineered 9/11. 

Click Here The PRE-PLANNED Financial/Economic 911 of 2008

Not just thwarting the Bailout Robbery is necessary; but going after the drivers & profiteers behind the heist in the most meaningful way & must be kept in the forefront of Angry American's Minds. 

It is difficult for Main Street folks to imagine the incredible amount of MONEY pocketed by Wall Street, MIC and Politically-connected parasites.  People that "work" for a living, that are burdened with the daily grind of making it through another day, MUST UNDERSTAND how they are victimized by the blood-sucking class -- and GET ANGRY, and then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!

Understanding that Absolute Greed & Profit drive the people and corporations is key to "getting it" that "they" are not ever going to be about looking out for Joe-American.  All rhetoric wil always be whitewash, and feints to take people's eyes off the pick-pockets.  This is the way of the current world.

Unplugging the mechanisms of Fraud (Federal Reserve), and exposing and removing the individuals feeding off the slave labor of the American work ethic must happen NOW!  Strike while the iron is HOT as the saying goes!  Get up off your back sides as Bob Marley sang!  We're NOT going to take it anymore as the Network heralded!  More of the Same is intolerable.  Change is gonna come...if WE make it!

Even Today, we see that "they" are not going to stop trying to RAM this Bailout Robbery through.  They're going to "color" the PIG up with more make-up and lipstick.  They'll ramp up the FEAR CARD, and play their hand to the hilt.  They'll bribe behind closed doors.  They'll blackmail.  They might even murder.  AMERICANS...WATCH!

by boomerang (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 266 comments) on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 8:44:43 AM

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The Bailout and What's Next

I have almost finished Naomi Klein's book Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Read it. You will see what the IMF and World Bank can do to civil societies. Our government is rife with free market, Chicago Boys.  If Congress passes a bailout you can really kiss your ass goodby. 

Thank you Dennis for your support for the Country.

by Johnny T. (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 16 comments) on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 9:50:06 AM

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Here is the truly scary part of what Dennis said

"The globalization of the debt puts the United States in the position that in order to repay the money that we borrow from the banks (for the banks) we could be forced to accept International Monetary Fund dictates which involve cutting health, social security benefits and all other social spending in addition to reducing wages and exploiting our natural resources. This inevitably leads to a loss of economic, social and political freedom."

I have never thought about the ramifications of this but Dennis brings up a good point. We could effectively, under a worse case scenario, have our economic terms dictated to us by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) like they do to many 3rd world countries. That would effectively bypass the will of the people in this country completely. I don't know enough about the IMF to know how likely this scenario could play out but it certainly does bring up some very good and scary points. 

by E. Nelson (11 articles, 0 quicklinks, 18 diaries, 198 comments) on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 11:03:41 AM

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Fundamently flawed...

when we passed the Federal Reserve Act - watch the video Dennis recommends Money for Debt. Very shortly, I'll have it embedded in this article. Loose Change also discussed this, as does Ron Paul.

by Rady Ananda (109 articles, 255 quicklinks, 22 diaries, 821 comments) on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 12:33:59 PM

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The American Monetary Act

Dennis is featured on the main page of the American Monetary Institute's website (www.monetary.org).  The AMI has a comprehensive proposal to reform the money system of the U.S. called The American Monetary Act. Obviously, if Dennis is on their main page he is aware of the proposal. Since he states in his article that "This is a perfect time to open a broader discussion about our financial system, especially our monetary system," why doesn't he go ahead and bring it up?  Such a discussion is NOT like searching for a needle in a haystack, as he says in the very next sentence.  As is stated in the Introduction to the Act, "This Act – a work in progress – has been in preparation since December 2004 and was placed on our web site for public criticism in February 2006."  I'd say the American Monetary Act is ready for prime time. C'mon Dennis, bring it on stage!

by Jim Eldon (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 54 comments) on Wednesday, October 1, 2008 at 12:57:11 PM

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As usual, DK is way ahead....

Great article. And to think this plan is actually being considered... And that our Senate approved (against the clear wishes of he American people)... It is too disgusting to contemplate. Another clear sign that our government is wholly and secretly controlled by international banking interests which are working towards something that none of the people want.

This is like giving free cash to degenerate, compulsive gamblers: What do you think they will do with it? These people in the Wall St. banking industry NEED to be failed, as in losing THEIR homes, their wealth, their power, their hereditary dynasties, their jobs. Instead, we give them carte blanche to continue to screw us over with their dangerous gambling schemes?? Madness, and it is madness that this is even being seriously considered.

If anyone is still seriously supporting privatizing SS, they should think what this would have done to all our pensions.... If anyone still believes that the economy fares better with no government intervention or regulation to stop the degenerate gamblers from ruining everyone else's future... Then they should have their head examined... And should have to pay for this mess themselves. 

This is situation goes beyond bizarre and into the surrealistic realm. A novel on subject this would be considered too unrealistic to be successful.  

by Steve Windisch (jibbguy) (11 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 170 comments) on Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 8:11:33 AM

    

Proposed Legislation which resolves the current crisis:
     The American Monetary Act   
                                      (pdf)                                     

A further $700 billion scam against America, in addition to the Iraq war? Where is Congress?  Fellows, and ladies, you are supposed to be representng us- please!

The demand for immediate action to avoid a meltdown is misplaced. Immediate and wrong action will accelerate the meltdown. There is only one thing Congress can do to inspire confidence and avoid a meltdown - that is to take deliberate and careful and good workable action to help resolve the crisis. In other words to fulfill its Congressional duty to America.

“A Trillion $ Here, A Trillion $ There - pretty soon …”

Yes we are talking about “real money!”  Or are we?

As the Administration so adept at “shock and awe” takes aim at the American Congress, rushing them to sign on to an ill defined proposal fostering monetary and economic error, to ostensibly resolve a problem they have allowed to fester for years.

Not again folks - Congress job is to get this one right the first time.

Getting it right means requiring several conditions to protect the American people from the gang that’s been financially raping the nation; that gave us the unnecessary Iraqi war. It means facing the facts on where the banking crisis is and how it got there. It means examining the monetary and economic reforms of the Federal Reserve System that will assure that such thievery or foolishness won’t happen again; and taking back from those who improperly benefited from the tragedy and prosecuting them.

Finally it means giving all Americans a financial stake through ownership, of a share of the system that they are being asked to bail out.

Let’s examine just the monetary reform part of this:

Monetary Reform of the Federal Reserve System.

At the heart of the problem is that our money system has been privatized. Naturally it’s being run for the benefit of the “privates” in control, with minimal concern for the public interest..

First all the elements of the Monetary Transparency Act should be a stipulated part of the rescue in a section calling for greater transparency. A section can be added for an arm to investigate monetary crimes. But really, monetary transparency no longer does it. Real reform, not merely information is desperately needed.

Second, rather than borrowing the $700 billion being demanded, and ending up paying back about 3 times that amount after interest charges, The US Government could issue the money the same way the banks do, instead of borrowing it from them. But while the banks issue credit that substitutes for money, the U.S. would issue actual money. Our Government has the power to create the money, in an account, or by simply printing it as “greenbacks.”

There would not be inflationary effects, because it was already believed that those moneys existed in the form of the real estate values and loans. In effect this would stop a deflation which would follow from writing down those assets and loans to their present market values. Some conditions would be needed to assure that the banking system did not use those greenback dollars for further credit creation, as that would be inflationary. In essence the greenbacks would not be “re-discountable” by the banking system to create more loans, but would be legal tender for all debts public and private.

Third, Its important for the bailout legislation to establish a new U.S. Monetary Commission to examine the advisability of making this and additional features a permanent feature of the American Monetary System and report back to congress in the 1^st quarter of 2009. Participants must be carefully selected and not be limited to the kind of economists and market operators who have brought us into the present crisis. Also to be avoided are the Internet agitators who don’t really know what they are doing. We know some of the people who should be there.

Legislation called The American Monetary Act has been in preparation for years. It’s based on well known monetary principles and actual experience from our own, and other countries monetary history.

The Act incorporates the Federal Reserve System into the U.S. Treasury. It removes the banking systems privilege to create money, placing that firmly within government, and it establishes areas for governmentally created money to be introduced into the economy for infrastructure, including the human infrastructure of health care and education. Voila!

Should the situation deteriorate markedly, the American Monetary Act could be put into effect immediately with the reliable understanding that it would be a definite improvement over the current system. Refinements, to this already advanced system will follow using Aristotle’s method, we “learn by doing.”

The monetary system will shift away from credit and debt, to real money. One difference between money and credit is that during uncertain times, credit evaporates, but money does not go out of existence, it is much more stable. A big part of the current problem is that while we have had loads of bank credit circulating, there has been very little “real money” issued by government in circulation mainly our coins and bills.

The AMI has been ready and working on these provisions for years, while realizing that it unfortunately might require a crisis to bring real attention to it. We have the crisis. Let’s make this happen. Let’s get real reform that helps bring humanity forward, out of the ignorance and poverty and warfare, and darkness; and into the light.

  What the administrations proposal is doing is almost identical to what Keynes did during the Great Depression. He insisted that the bailout be in terms of government going into more debt to the banking system, whereas the Chicago Plan by the greatest economists in the nation at that time, was promoting the government to create money (Greenback equivelants) instead of debt.
(See http://www.monetary.org/chicagoplan.html describing Chicago Plan and Keynes)
 Whats that line about repeating actions and expecting a different result?

Keynes won the argument but his program did not work and it was only WW2 and the wartime employment, creating tanks to be blown up, airplanes to be shot out of the sky, and ships to be sunk, that Americans went back to work and we worked our way out of the depression, and into more debt. Thats where this proposal leads. Keynes answer was that "in the long run we are all dead," but not our posterity. Based on what happened following his program before, our descendants, and society that survives become enslaved. (Bob Poteat is presenting a talk on Keynes and Militarism at our conference.)

Serfdom will result, unless we begin putting a stop to the monetary enslavement now.

  Unless Monetary Reform is in the mix now, it could take a tremendous worsening of the situation to come up again soon. If there are any questions on this, Tell me - maybe I have answers.

One articulate friend (George Romero) summed it up for me:

“The private sector has failed. The public sector is expected to rescue them, and it will. Therefore the public sector should be in control of the money system to benefit the country.”

    

Kucinich on the Bailout

Text of the speech by Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on September 28 on the floor of the House of Representatives regarding the proposed Wall Street bailout:

The $700 billion bailout for Wall Street, is driven by fear not fact. This is too much money in too a short a time going to too few people while too many questions remain unanswered. Why aren't we having hearings on the plan we have just received? Why aren't we questioning the underlying premise of the need for a bailout with taxpayers' money? Why have we not considered any alternatives other than to give $700 billion to Wall Street? Why aren't we asking Wall Street to clean up its own mess? Why aren't we passing new laws to stop the speculation, which triggered this? Why aren't we putting up new regulatory structures to protect investors? How do we even value the $700 billion in toxic assets?

Why aren't we helping homeowners directly with their debt burden? Why aren't we helping American families faced with bankruptcy? Why aren't we reducing debt for Main Street instead of Wall Street? Isn't it time for fundamental change in our debt based monetary system, so we can free ourselves from the manipulation of the Federal Reserve and the banks? Is this the United States Congress or the board of directors of Goldman Sachs? Wall Street is a place of bears and bulls. It is not smart to force taxpayers to dance with bears or to follow closely behind the bulls.

    

September 30, 2008

Interview With Senator Bernie Sanders on The Bailout

By Rob Kall         www.opednews.com 

Thanks for the invaluable volunteer help of Jay  Farrington in transcribing the interview.

Kall: So, I'm so glad you could be with us speaking to the Philadelphia area. You're really doing a great job standing up in this conversation and I figure I'm let you talk to the audience and tell them what you want to—make sure you get after them, and then we can have a conversation if there's some time after that.

Sanders: Sure, well, my main concern is that, since President Bush has been in office, what we have seen is a significant decline in the standard of living of the middle class; people's median income's gone down; Six million have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty; seven million people have lost their health insurance; the gap between the very rich and everybody else has gone wild;

Meanwhile, while the middleclass is slipping, the people on top have done extraordinarily well: you have the incredible reality that the top 400 individuals in this country have seen a 670 Billion dollar, that's a B, Billion dollar increase in their wealth since Bush has been president. So when I look at this proposed bailout, the first question that comes to my mind is, "Who's going to pay for this thing?

Given the disastrous impact that Bush's policies have had on the middle class, why should it be the middle class that really has to bail out the excesses of Wall Street, when those guys have done very, very well.

So, my main concern right now is to make sure that this bailout is paid for by those people who have benefited out of Bush's policies. There is the top .01%, who now earn more in income, by the way, than the bottom 50% so, that's my first concern.

My second concern is if we go forward in this proposal, that we make certain that the assets purchased for banks are realistically discounted; in other words, taxpayers of the country don't pay more for assets than they should and I also want to make sure that when taxpayers put money into an asset that in fact, we end up receiving equity stakes in the bailed out companies. If we're going to put up the money we need to own a percentage of those companies.

The other concerns that I have, Rob, are that we have to understand how we got into this precipitous, this very dangerous situation and that has a lot to do with the deregulation that we have seen for the last many years.

I voted while I was in the House (I was on the Banking Committee there) against the Gramm Leach Blithely legislation, which took down the firewalls that had been established since the Great Depression and I think that is one of the precipitating factors that leads us to where we are today.

Also, when we see the tremendous volatility in oil prices, we understand, I believe, anyhow, that there is a great deal of speculation going on there as well. So, what we need to do is do sensible re-regulation; I think we have, if we've learned anything in this crisis, it is that we cannot trust these major financial institutions to do the right thing in terms of protecting consumers. Nor will people who are purchasing oil futures show any concern for people who have to pay $3.70 for a gallon of gas.

So I think the function of government is in fact to protect consumers, protect workers. We have let those principles slide very significantly in recent years on these right wing economic principles which include not only deregulation, but tax breaks for billionaires under the great "trickle down" theory that somehow we all benefit when billionaires get tax breaks and also unfettered free trade—somehow it's going to work wonders for the middle class while we allow companies to throw America workers out on the street, move to China and then bring their products back tariff free  so that's an important part of what I want to see done; I think sensible re-regulation is important and the other thing; a couple of other things that are important to me. 

This is not being talked about is the reason we are where we are today is because you have institutions that are too big to fail, and they have to be bailed out because if they fail, they're going to take down a significant part of the economy with them. I believe, and it seems to me pretty commonsensical, that if an institution is too big to fail, then it is too big to exist.

Kall: Boy, do I agree with that…

Sanders:  But you're not hearing much discussion; let me give you an example and then I'll give it all over to you; right now, which is in the last few weeks, Bank of America which is the nation's largest depository institution has taken over Country Wide, which is the nation's largest mortgage lender and they've absorbed Merrill Lynch, the nation's largest brokerage house. Now you tell me what happens in five years if Bank of America teeters, do you have a doubt for a second that they're going to have to be bailed out?

Kall:  Absolutely, that's what's going to happen; in your petition (here) you say not only that they're too big to exist, but we need to determine which companies fall into this category and then break them up?

Sanders: Right.

Kall:  Wow!

Sanders: Does that seem so radical?

Kall: It sounds wonderfully radical. How do we do it?

Sanders: Well, hopefully we do it by electing a new president; hopefully we do it by developing a strong grass roots movement in this country which demands that a new president and Democratic leadership in the house and the senate move forward in a progressive manner.

But I think especially after the experiences of the last couple of weeks, if people don't understand that we've got to break up some of these huge companies which are too big to fail, if we don't under stand it now, we're never going to understand it; this economy has so many structural problems, but increased monopolization of industry after industry, with fewer and fewer companies owning and controlling one segment of our society after another I mean this is something that we just have to take a look at.

Kall: I've tried to pull back a little and look at this. What Paulson says, and what panicked Paulson and the leaders in the senate was that there was a drying up of liquidity—of availability of money to be loaned for whatever use for last week.

Sanders: Yes.

Kall:  And that's what set off the panic. It wasn't that certain companies were going out of business; it was the liquidity and the availability of loans.

Sanders: well, their argument, for better or worse was that if companies can't get their credit, there is a danger that companies will fold.

Kall: Yeah, but the solution doesn't have to be to protect these loser companies that have failed basically that have gambled away and have gone into extensive risk. That was not successful. The answer was to maintain liquidity by whatever means. Right?

Sanders:  Yep

Kall: So, what I don't understand is—I was talking to my bank; they're doing very well. It's a local bank; it's a decent sized bank. They say that the way they did it was they didn't get involved in a lot of the loans that a lot of the others got involved with.

Sanders: That's right

Kall: It's almost like they're being punished. "You didn't get involved, so you don't get a piece of the pie." Why are we rewarding the ones that did?

Sanders: Well, that's obviously a hotly debated question here. And that gets to executive compensation as well. But it is very clear that this crisis has been caused by a deregulation, which means that trillions of dollars of financial transactions are now taking place in an unregulated area, and frankly, nobody knows what the hell is going on.

What we do know is that it’s the result of the sub prime mortgage crisis; one large inst after another is--we have seen a number of them folding already and others are in danger of folding so the issue now is, according to Bernake and according to Paulson, if the congress does not act in the very near future, very short term, they worry very much about a financial meltdown.

    

Kall: The second half of the hour I have David Korten on. He wrote the Post Corporate World; Life After Capitalism. Are you familiar with his writing at all?

Sanders: I've heard the title, but honestly I haven't read it.

Kall: Basically, what he's saying is all the complicated derivatives that make money on money we've got to get rid of them, too. We've got to get back to Main Street, where people make money making products and services. That's where we should be taking care of business and not with all these "theoretical" constructs.

Sanders: That makes a lot of sense, I mean look at what's happened, right now; you’ve seen a tremendous increase in financial institutions in the amount of money they play with at the same time as we're seeing the loss of millions of good paying manufacturing jobs, we make less and less in America, and we're importing almost everything we use from another country; I think you don't have to be a PhD in economics to understand that there's something a little bit weird that we're not making real products that our people are consuming and that we're losing family farms and so much of our wealth is tied up in these very exotic and complicated financial transactions that are taking place under the radar screen, without transparency.

Just the other day on another issue, not unrelated but a separate issue, is the price of oil went soaring; there's been a big debate in congress as to why the price of oil is as high as it is, why people pay $3.70 for a gallon of gas. The conservatives and the Republicans say it is all supply and demand, But when you see these wild fluctuations that take place in a day, that has nothing to do with supply and demand, that has to do with money being pumped into oil futures and a significant amount of those transactions take place also away from the public eye; they are not transparent, we don't know who controls what, we do know that in recent years, whether it was Enron capturing electricity distribution on the west coast; whether it's BP, who put a corner on propane and Amarand, a hedge fund, putting a corner on natural gas. In all three of those markets: electricity on the west coast, natural gas and propane, there was significant price manipulation.

Kall: What about-- just recently they put a freeze for a couple of days on "short selling". Why can't they do that on speculation in oil?

Sanders: I don't know the answer to that; what I can tell you is that some of us have worked very hard to pass legislation that would do away with the Enron loophole which would allow transparency, where today things are operating underneath the radar screen and there's a lot more that has to be done--

Kall: Who's blocking it?

Sanders: Well, obviously the energy companies, the oil companies have enormous power the Republicans are not interested in (unintell); they'd rather "drill baby, drill," although that won't lower the price of gas, if at all, for another 15 years or so.

Kall: It seems like right now, there's an incredible opportunity we've got a failed system, it's broken. Even the Wall street journal has said that "Wall Street, as we knew it, is dead." Is there any talk in the Senate of really evaluating what's going on and coming up with something "new and different" that makes more sense?

Sanders: It doesn't quite work quite like that (laughs). No. The answer is no to that. But I think on the part of the American people, they are asking those questions, but I can't tell you that's really filtered up to the Senate. What is just stunning—

Kall: I don't get it there: how do we get it up to the Senate? Why—

   

Do you know that by simply quadrupling the number of community health centers in this country, federally qualified community health centers, you can provide primary health care to every man woman and child, low cost prescription drugs and dental care for less than eight billion dollars a year? You could do that for eight billion dollars a year; we're spending ten billion—

Kall: So for eight billion dollars we could be providing health care to every person—

Sanders: Primary health care; I'm not talking about hospital care, I'm not talking abut surgery, but every American would be able to go to see a doctor, or a dentist, regardless of their income and low cost insurance.

Kall: So there's all this leverage; right now, Congress has incredible leverage to get these cessions, why doesn't somebody throw that in there so that at least we make a major step toward taking care of Americans the way we morally should.

Sanders: But what we're trying to do now is to bring forth a major stimulus package. Remember: the fight right now and a lot of people do not understand it, they don't understand it, is that in the last two years, the Republicans have mounted 95 filibusters; did you know that?

Kall: When I went to the Progressive Summit meeting in February, it was up around 60—

Sanders: It's now over 90; it's 95, I believe. Which is an all-time

World's record for one session of Congress. So it's hard to do good things. You've got a president who will veto serious legislation. But what we are trying to do right now is to get a stimulus package which will begin trying to rebuild America; this one doesn't go anywhere near as far as I would like, but it would put money into infrastructure, there's a continuing resolution that was passed in the House today that will be probably passed in the Senate tomorrow-- I hope it will be passed. Which, among other things, doubles the amount of money that we spend for fuel assistance to help people from going cold in the wintertime; that's legislation that I helped write.

Kall: Be about even with the previous year, then.

Sanders: Well, we'll double the amount of funding; so it's going to be doubled in funding from the Lackey Program, which is significant; so to answer your question, when you need 60 votes to get anything done in the senate, and on a good day we have 51, that's hard. When you have a President that will veto anything, it's hard.

I hope very much that this election will give us a new president; I hope that we will have gains in the House and the Senate and most importantly, I hope that we will have mass, grass roots movement that which says to the congress, you've got to be bold, these are tough times. We can have a national health care program for all people we can make college education free or at least affordable. Are these things expensive? Yes they are. But they are a hell of a lot less expensive than the war in Iraq; they are much less expensive that huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. They are much less expensive than spending 540 Billion dollars or whatever on the military. So we need to change our national priorities and I hope that we can move into that direction.

Kall: Amen. One thing I wrote about today is that the amount we're spending on health care is so much more than any other country, even though we're not getting great quality...

Sanders: Yes, certainly.

Kall: But the system that we have is a quarter (25%) of our national budget, and it's getting worse. It seems like we're just looking around the corner for that to become another crisis were going to face and I wonder if it doesn't make sense to look at that at the same time we're looking at this one.

   

Of course we should. And the truth is, we don't have to spend any more on health care and we can provide health care for all our people. But it is certainly not going to happen under George Bush it won't happen under a president Obama unless there's a strong grass roots movement, because don't kid yourself, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, they are going to put money into the Democratic party; they don't care what party they put money into as long as they look out for their interests.

And the only antidote to that is a strong grass roots movement that says to members of congress whether they and Rep or Dem hey, stop looking at your campaign contributors, in fact let's move to public funding of elections and stop worrying about it.

Kall: We have an interesting readership at OpEdNews. This month we're going to see about 700 thousand unique visitors; about 38% are Democrats, about 88% are "Lefties". So these are not necessarily supporting democrats. They're people who—you know, universally they love you, I'll tell you that!

Sanders: Well, thank you.

Kall: I have one last question for you 'cause I know you’ve got to go. I have been developing the idea of "Bottom Up. Bottom up is showing up in campaigns, Joe Trippe talks about how it helped Obama beat Hillary with her Top Down campaign—How do you see Bottom Up applying in your work?

Sanders: That's exactly what we've got to do; we've got to re-vitalize American democracy I think members of Congress are intelligent people, decent people are very isolated from the realities of real life. I can tell you when I ran for the senate two years ago, and I suspect that many of you are—you know, the way we ran; I don't take any corporate PACS (political action committees) we had help from tens and tens and tens of thousands of individual contributors—you know, put in 25 bucks, or 50 bucks; we knocked to win the election, you know, we put money on radio and  television, but you know what, we hired a ton of people to go out knocking; I think we ended up knocking on something like 17,000 doors in the state of Vermont.

So I think what we really need to do is mobilize people to knock on doors to educate people—don't ever underestimate what people in America DON'T KNOW about the political process. Most people probably don't even know the name of their congressman, whether he or she is a democrat or a republican or how they vote; the media is not going to do it. The media covers what goes on here just terribly. They don't know the difference between a huge bill of 500 billion or a small bill of 10 million. So we need Independent Media and that's what you guys are doing. Which is if there's one very positive thing I think is happening is there are many progressive web sites, including yours, that does a great, great job in bringing an independent perspective to people that you're not going to see on CBS or ABC.

So there is an enormous amount of work to be done, but I happen to agree absolutely with you: Trust me, there will not be change even with a new president, and more Democrats unless we see pressure coming from the grass roots who demand that government starts representing everybody rather than the "elite".

Kall: Great. Well, I hope we can have you back here periodically.

Sanders: My pleasure. Thanks very much. Take care.

Kall: Keep it up; great work, bye.

Bernie Sanders. This is the Rob Kall radio show, that's Senator Bernie Sanders, WNJC it's 1360 am.

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=9xQuOjCBV0I&feature=user                             

  Lobbyists footprints all over Wall Street Bailout Plan !! 03:28 VoiceofAmericans2008 
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=54cJtYCoyL8&feature=related
   Resist the Wall Street Shock Doctrine Part 1 of 2 09:57 freedomlost2007 
   http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=dzFVICgTqYI&feature=user 

   Resist the Wall Street Shock Doctrine Part 2 of 2 03:16 freedomlost2007  

  http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=LCvaIcm4-cQ&feature=user 
The Bailout Update 10/1 Economic Warfare? Treason? 09:48 vancerz 
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=us0ht_RfZTc&feature=user
  Goldman Sachs Crony in charge of $700BN SURPRISED?0:42 VoiceofAmericans2008 
  http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=35MErgrZODU&feature=user 

   Goldman Sachs Bribed Senate To Pass Bailout Bill 05:09 gr1m1b 

  http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek7zc0lJxbM&feature=related 
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Is this the U.S. Congress or the Board of Directors at Goldman Sachs1:40 CSPANJUNKIEdotORG
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www.opednews.com   Headlined on 7/30/08:

As America Collapses US Government Secret Plans Revealed

The mass media said almost nothing about the secret meeting of the House, mentioning only one of the items being discussed. (The new surveillance techniques that are going to be used by the U.S. Government to watch all American citizens). The story was first released in a newspaper out of Brisbane, Australia revealing the contents of the secret U.S. Government meeting and plans for America including all of it's citizens. Shortly there after, David J. Meyer from Last Trumpet Ministries found it and made it more available for the world to see.

Here is what was revealed:

**The imminent collapse of the U.S. Economy to occur sometime in late 2008

**The imminent collapse of the U.S. Government finances sometime in mid 2009

**The possibility of Civil War inside the United States as a result of the collapse 

**The advance round-ups of "insurgent U.S. Citizens" likely to move against the     government

**The detention of those rounded up at The REX 84 Camps constructed                        throughout the United States

**The possibility of public retaliation against members of Congress for the collapses

**The location of safe facilities for members of Congress and their families to reside         during massive civil unrest

**The necessary and unavoidable merger of The U.S. with Canada and Mexico                establishing The North American Union

**The issuance of a new currency called the AMERO for all three nations as an                 economic solution.

   

    

Peter Michaelson: Think Economics is Bad --

Take a Look at Psychology

by Peter Michaelson       Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 09/25/2008 - 3:14pm.

The social science of economics has just performed a trillion-dollar flop. The financial chicanery engineered by Wall Street was staged and directed by a circus troupe of economists who graduated from (and taught at) America's top universities. Will some of these economists do the honorable thing and, before they've packed up their tents and pet theories, tell us exactly how their so-called scientific discipline was so removed from reality?

In the three-ring circus of Wall Street, these economists cavorted in an ever-expanding universe of debt, which they called wealth. That debt was heralded, trumpeted, and glamorized. It was also expanded, differentiated, extrapolated, integrated, truncated, and probably anesthetized -- and still they called it wealth.

When it started to contract and collapse in upon itself, our economists finally began, through perspiration streaked with grease paint, to call it "troubled assets." That's a sly euphemism for the elephant dung they're dumping on America's unborn, poor, and struggling citizens.

So we have a legitimate gripe with economics. But we can be equally disgusted with the field of psychology, which is producing its own brand of elephant dung. That's the expanding universe of subprime knowledge and irrelevant factoids that are preventing us from getting to the heart of our personal and national dysfunction.

Psychology's study of human nature has become completely inadequate, writes Dr. J.W. Ehrenfels at his Web site www.fireflysun.com, where he provides evidence of the inferiority of the psychology being taught and practiced in America.

Ehrenfels says the ideas and topics most victimized by the prejudices of the psychological establishment are those phenomena at the heart of the human condition, such as dreams, spirituality, attitudes, emotions, symbolism, and the structure and dynamics of the human mind.

Academic psychologists have run off with their so-called scientific method to count all the correlations dancing on the head of a statistic. In neglecting the heart of the human experience, psychology has created a mirror image of academic economics, which has refused to factor in American capitalism's trouncing of the environment, impoverishment of the people, and fleecing of future generations.

If psychology were living up to its billing, its sacred mission to inform without fear or favor, then in recent years legions of psychologists would have been forcefully opposing the ruthless onslaught of American capitalism, militarism, and empire-building. With a few exceptions, psychologists have been AWOL in warning and educating the public about the abuse of predatory capitalism, the madness of neo-conservatives, and our own widespread passivity.

It's so bad that Mary Pipher, author of the bestseller "Reviving Ophelia" and other books, returned her Presidential Citation award from the America Psychological Association in protest over the group's policy condoning the presence and participation of psychologists at military and CIA torture sites. The "APA has long been a clan," said Pipher, noting that psychologists were the designers of much of the torture programs. (APA membership finally voted recently to reject the policies of their leadership that had abetted U.S. government programs of torture and detainee abuse.)

Just one example of modern psychology's disservice involves its marginalization of Sigmund Freud. He discovered that we all experience everyday situations through the dynamics of transference, projection, identification, displacement, defenses, and denial. These factors influence our capacity for self-regulation of behaviors and emotions, and also affect to what degree we're being rational or irrational. Thanks to modern psychology's refusal to accept the importance and the truth of these psychological tenets, only a small minority of Americans can see and understand the operations of these dynamics in themselves. This limits our intelligence and hinders our evolution.

I believe that these psychologists are choosing, unconsciously, to avoid the study of human nature. They're fleeing into the "scientific method" and abstract studies in getting away from a full examination of their own issues and weaknesses. The deeper one goes into one's own nature, the more that doing so requires a person to make significant changes and improvements in one's own humanity. This is the path less traveled, and it's challenging. People shouldn't become psychologists if they're not going to accept this mission.

In their rush to the false security of denial, psychologists have become ultra-conservative. Psychology professors, writes Ehrenfels, "employ a combination of selection and reinforcement pressures to maintain a like-minded community of individuals intolerant to deviation and dissent and dependent on external sources of guidance, validation, and identity."

He also writes that, "The professors responsible for psychology research and education are intellectually ill-equipped to address, and indisposed to appreciate, the meaning of psychological life. They also lack the mental toughness to endure the ambiguity and ambivalence inherent in their subject matter and lack the thick skin necessary to tolerate opposing points of view."

Clowns and cowards all!

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION