Impeachment

Say "No" to Paulson's Plunder at "Cash for Trash" sale at Fed Reserve
October 02, 2008
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

JOIN IN A LIVELY "TRASH FOR CASH" sale in front of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta help us say "NO BUSH BAILOUT.""

Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008.
Location: Federal Reserve Bank, 1000 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA, 30309).
Time : 6 pm - 7:30 pm.

If you want, bring some garbage / plastic bags with something in them so they look sorta full. We will hand our Wall St. "trash" (junk bonds / hedge funds / derivatives) to a "Federal Reserve officer" (one of us in a suit). Bring your own slogans on signs or here are some suggestions, "Honk if you want trash for cash," "Say NO to Paulson's Plunder," "Bailout Main St, not Wall St." "We don't want Wall Street's trash." Press may attend.

Psst - pass the word! Let's show these folks emough is enough!
Address:
Fed Reserve Bank, 1000 P'tree St NE
Atlanta, GA 30309

Bush Wants To Bankrupt America: There is Method To His Madness
By Sam Hamod | InformationClearingHouse.com | 07/01/03

Some have wondered if GW Bush knows what he's doing with his tax cut that benefits the corporations and the very rich, and cuts away the remaining money of the poor and the middle class. I say yes, he does know what he'd up to, as do his corporate advisors and his neo-con economist friends and theorists, chief among them Grover Norquist. Norquist has been the chief architect behind the dismantling of the American federal financial structure in terms of benefits for the common citizen, but has helped to create the superstructure of tax breaks for the very rich and the corporatocracy that now has a choke-hold on America.

Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11
by Gareth Porter | InterPressService.com

New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11.

That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

As a result, the United States had far too few troops and strategic airlift capacity in the theatre to cover the large number of possible exit routes through the border area when bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

Senate to vote on financial rescue plan, with sweeteners aimed at gaining House OK
By Andrew Taylor | ABCNews.com

President Bush's plan to rescue U.S. financial markets is headed for a Senate vote Wednesday night after leaders there agreed to add tax breaks for businesses and the middle class and increase deposit insurance in an attempt to revive the legislation rejected by the House.

The surprise move by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared likely to win a big vote in the Senate that would put pressure on the House to go along and send the measure to the White House.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his GOP rival, John McCain, planned to fly to Washington for the Senate vote, as did Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Adding a set of popular business tax breaks and legislation to prevent more than 20 million middle-class taxpayers from feeling the bite of the alternative minimum tax promised to win House GOP votes for the plan even as it angered moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats concerned about the tax cuts adding to the deficit.

Neoconservatives plan Project Sarah Palin to shape future American foreign policy
Neoconservatives whose influence had been waning in Washington have hitched their colours to rising star Sarah Palin in a bid to shape US foreign policy for another decade.
By Tim Shipman | TelegraphUK.com

"In choosing Palin, McCain may also have changed the course of history," he said. "Should this ticket win, Palin will eclipse every other Republican as heir apparent to the presidency and will have her own power base, wholly independent of President McCain."

Special Prosecutor Named in Attorney Firings Case
By Eric Lichtblau & Sharon Otterman | NYTimes.com

DOJ Statement

Full PDF Report

"Our investigation found significant evidence that political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several . . . U.S. attorneys."

An internal Justice Department investigation concluded Monday that political pressure drove the firings of several federal prosecutors in a 2006 purge, but said that the refusal of major players at the White House and the department to cooperate in the year-long inquiry produced significant “gaps” in its understanding of the events.

At the urging of the investigators, who said they did not have enough evidence to justify recommending criminal charges in the case, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appointed the Acting United States Attorney in Connecticut, Nora Dannehy, to continue the inquiry and determine whether anyone should be prosecuted.

The 356-page report, prepared by the department’s inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility, provides the fullest picture to date of an episode that opened the Bush administration up to charges of politicizing the justice system. The firings of nine federal prosecutors, and the Congressional hearings they generated, ultimately led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last September.

Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, The Pentagon Bailout Fraud

Let's start with the money the Bush administration has already thrown at the war in Iraq. According to the June congressional testimony of William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis, the war has cost $646 billion so far. The new defense budget for 2009 tacks on another $68.6 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming year. However, military expert Bill Hartung of the New America Foundation puts a conservative estimate of the costs of a single week of the Iraq War at approximately $3.5 billion (or about $180 billion a year).

Congress to tweak bailout or risk deep recession
By David Lawder and Patrick Rucker | Reuters.com

U.S. efforts to revive a $700 billion bank bailout bill with some new provisions offered hope for battered markets on Tuesday, and economists warned of a long and deep recession if efforts to resuscitate it fail.

The defeat of the bill on Monday in the U.S. House of Representatives left two likely scenarios -- the plan gets tweaked enough to win passage, or Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke return to a limited tool box and piecemeal approach to dealing with the financial crisis.

A complete rewriting of the bill appears unlikely.

"For the near-term, we're going to get some modification on the Paulson plan and pass it or we're not going to get anything," said Michael Mussa, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

"The worry is that if we don't pass the Paulson plan, we could have a steep recession that is among the worst we've seen in the post-War era," said Mussa, now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Senate Democrats, Republicans Agree on Bailout Vote Tomorrow
By Brian Faler and James Rowley | Bloomberg.com

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Democrats and Republicans have agreed to hold a vote tomorrow on a $700 billion financial- rescue plan amid evidence voters and lawmakers regretted yesterday's U.S. House vote to kill the bailout.

``This is an important accomplishment and a way forward,'' Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.

Senators also agreed to include a provision that would raise the limit on federal insurance for bank deposits to $250,000 from the current $100,000, a move demanded by some of the rescue plan's critics.

###

Click here to find contact information for your Senators.

Call your Representatives and Senators at 800-473-6711 or 202-224-3121 and say No Bailout!

MORE VIDEOS BELOW

Grand Theft America
By Stephen Lendman

The crime of the century. The greatest one ever. Author Danny Schechter calls it "Plunder." The title of his important new book on the subprime and overall financial crisis. Economist Michael Hudson and others refer to a kleptocracy. A Ponzi scheme writ large. Maybe an out-of-control Andromeda Strain. An economic one. Deadly. Unrecallable. Science fiction now real life. Potentially catastrophic. World governments trying to contain it. Trying everything but not sure what can work. Maybe only able to paper it over for short-term relief. Buy time but in the end vindicate the maxim that things that can't go on forever, won't.

The world as we know it is changing. Industrial capitalism. The entire global economic system. Interconnected. What affects one nation touches others. If the troubled country is America it reaches everywhere, and if the crisis is great enough, the disease may be fatal and human wreckage catastrophic. Precisely the current dilemma that world leaders and financial experts are scrambling to figure out. Desperate to contain, and not sure what, if anything, can work. How did this happen and why?

A Memo Found in the Street: Uncle Sam the Enabler
By Barry L. Ritzholtz | Barron's Online.com

No Grand Jury for Gonzales
Report to Call for Continued Probe of U.S. Attorneys' Firings
Carrie Johnson | WashingtonPost.com

Former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales will not be referred to a federal grand jury for his role in the 2006 firings of nine U.S. attorneys, but a long-awaited report to be released today will recommend that a prosecutor continue to probe the involvement of lawmakers and White House officials in the episode, according to two people familiar with the case.

You can expect to see that one word, FAIL, at lots of street protests.

That's the second big thing bubbling up online. Activists spread the word of a big rally to be staged near Wall Street last Thursday at 5pm. One email that was forwarded to me came from a group called "Picture the Homeless":

When poor and homeless people ask the government for help, they're told that low-income housing and living wage jobs are not a government priority because this country is built on "personal responsibility" and people need to "make better decisions."

When giant banking corporations are on the brink of total collapse because they have made a systematic series of bad business decisions - because they can - the government gives them a trillion dollars. The Administration even wants to include multi-million dollar "golden parachutes" for the corporate executives who MADE those bad decisions.

Click here to watch a half-hour video on how the US almost went fascist in the Great Depression.

In 1934, Marine Major General Smedley Butler told Congress, according to Wikipedia, that a group of wealthy industrialists had plotted a military coup known as the Business Plot to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Wikipedia:

In a 1995 History Today article Clayton Cramer argued that the devastation of the Great Depression had caused many Americans to question the foundations of liberal democracy. "Many traditionalists, here and in Europe, toyed with the ideas of Fascism and National Socialism; many liberals dallied with Socialism and Communism." Cramer argues that this explains why some American business leaders viewed fascism as a viable system to both preserve their interests and end the economic woes of the Depression.

Prescott Bush is George Bush's grandfather. Wikipedia continues:

On July 23, 2007, the BBC Radio 4 series Document reported on the alleged Business Plot and the archives from the McCormack-Dickstein Committee hearings. The program mentioned Bush's directorship of the Hamburg-America Line, a company that the committee investigated for Nazi propaganda activities, and the alleged 1933 attempt, supposedly

Perhaps this rout, too, will stop at the gates of Rome
Avner Mandelman | GlobeandMail.com

After Hannibal had crossed the Alps and beaten the Roman army twice, the alarmed Roman Senate spent the nation's treasure and sent eight legions against the invader. Up to then, Rome had rarely thrown more than two legions into battle. But when the state was in danger, there was no limit to what the authorities would do.

A Shattering Moment in America's Fall From Power
The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down.
The era of American dominance is over
by John Gray | GuardianUK

Our gaze might be on the markets melting down, but the upheaval we are experiencing is more than a financial crisis, however large. Here is a historic geopolitical shift, in which the balance of power in the world is being altered irrevocably. The era of American global leadership, reaching back to the Second World War, is over.

What's Good for Wall Street Is Only Good For Wall Street
By David A. Love, JD | BlackCommentator.com

One trillion dollars. Now that’s some money. When all is said and done, that is roughly the amount it will take to save that shining beacon for all the world to follow, American predatory capitalism.

What could $1 trillion buy you? Well, you could buy a failed war in Iraq for about that much. In contrast, it would cost $55 billion a year to wipe out child poverty in the U.S. And not doing anything about child poverty costs us $500 billion a year.

Bailout Would Come In Stages That Congress Could Halt
by Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy.com

Congress and the Bush administration reached tentative agreement early Sunday on a sweeping $700 billion rescue plan to take bad assets off the books of banks and other financial firms. The deal is expected to be put on paper in the course of the day and sent to legislators for debate and a vote later in the week.

The two sides were racing a self-imposed deadline to get a deal by 6 p.m. Eastern time before Asian financial markets opened for business. A deal was announced in the wee hours by tired, puffy-eyed lawmakers that had been working almost around the clock to reach accord.

As lawmakers neared the tentative deal, staff members had their phones confiscated to prevent leaks in what had become a heavily politicized negotiation. Lawmakers pledged to post a copy of the deal online later Sunday for an angry American public to take a look at the compromise ahead of a congressional vote.

A tentative deal had been announced last Thursday, only to have House Republicans balk. The new compromise gives Democrats more restrictions on the pay of Wall Street execs and a taxpayer stake if the program actually makes money. Republicans tacked on a parallel insurance plan that can work as an alternative to taxpayer funding and killed provisions that would have let federal judges modify distressed mortgages.

'Un-American' Bailout, Paulson Should Have Quit, Gingrich Says

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., on Sunday described Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's request for billions of dollars to buy debt from struggling Wall Street financial firms as "un-American" and said the secretary should have stepped down.

Gingrich even expressed concern with Paulson's connections to Wall Street. The treasury secretary served as the chairman of a major global investment banking and securities firm before joining the Bush administration.

Read more at: http://www.wakeupandsaveyourcountry.com

Bank Borrowing From Fed Already Exceeded Bailout Total in Last Week
$700 billion figure means nothing
Steve Watson | Infowars.net

Excerpt: The real reason for the bill is the unprecedented transfer of power to the Executive Branch and into the hands of the global corporate elite.

U.S. banks borrowed $188 billion per day on average in the latest week from the Federal Reserve, meaning that the Fed loaned out more money than the Treasury's proposed bailout in just one week, still barely managing to keep the economy afloat.

Ron Paul: Greenspan, Bernanke Should Be Criminally Charged Congressman says civil unrest after meltdown could lead to martial law Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet

Congressman Ron Paul says that the bailout bill is likely to pass, heralding a 10-year plus economic depression for America and the potential for martial law should civil unrest arise as the financial meltdown worsens.

Speaking on The Alex Jones Show, Paul said of the bailout, “They want dictatorship, they want to pass all the penalties and suffering on to the average person on Main Street,” adding, “We will have a depression or recession, it’s locked in place due to previous Federal Reserve actions.”

“When they say that if we don’t do exactly as they say and turn over more of our money and more of our liberties and exempt themselves from any court in the whole nation, they’re trying to intimidate us and lead us into doing the wrong thing,” said Paul.

The Congressman added that serious problems would arise if nothing was done to address the problem, but that more serious consequences would follow should the bailout be passed.

Wall Street Bailout -- 09/26/2008

There is little public support for President Bush's $700 billion bailout. Just 30 percent support Bush's package, according to an Associated Press poll released Friday. More than 4,000 of you have taken our survey, and those results are even more remarkable. Are you confident that taxpayers would be treated fairly if Congress and the Bush administration agree on a bailout? You aren’t. Do you think a bailout would help the economy? No. Do you favor a surtax on individuals who make more than $500,000 a year and couples earning more than $1 million to pay for a Wall Street bailout? More than 91 percent agree with the proposal by Senator Bernie Sanders. What’s more, as of late Friday, more than 40,000 (as of late Friday) of you co-signed Bernie’s letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson suggesting a tax on the very wealthy.

Senator Richard C. Shelby, ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, issued the following statement:

“Last Saturday Secretary Paulson presented Congress with draft legislation that would grant him sweeping authority to spend up to $700 billion in taxpayer money to buy illiquid securities. The stated goal of this scheme is to return confidence and liquidity to our credit markets.

“I do not believe this is the right approach. We did not get into this situation in a matters of days, and we are not going to fix it in a matter of days.

Bailout Bums
Libertarian-minded Republicans are caught with their pants down as Wall Street panics the Capital City
by David Weigel | ReasonOnline.com

To understand how Washington, D.C.’s fiscally conservative and libertarian-leaning Republicans are handling Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial services sector, think of a child who’s just learned that there is no Easter Bunny. Better yet, think of a guy who sunk his portfolio into Lehman Brothers or Bear Sterns and watched everything he was taught to believe about his investments declared moot, wrong, meaningless, at the mercy of the state. 

Democrats, Republicans conspire to remove Wall Street bailout from election debate
By Patrick Martin | WSWS.org

Closed-door talks continued throughout the day Friday between congressional Democratic and Republican leaders and the Bush administration, with all sides pledging to reach agreement on terms of a $700 billion bailout package for the US financial system before the Asian stock markets open Monday morning—Sunday afternoon in the US.

Both parties agree on one fundamental principle: The American people will have no say whatsoever in an arrangement that will compel them to pay for the losses of bankers and speculators who created the financial disaster. That is the content of the demand on all sides that “politics” be kept out of the bailout talks.

Defense contractor claims immunity in Iraq torture
Defense contractor CACI is claiming immunity from an Abu Ghraib torture lawsuit because it was doing the government's work by supplying interrogators to the U.S.-run prison in Iraq, according to court documents.
By David Dishneau | SeattleTimes.com

Defense contractor CACI is claiming immunity from an Abu Ghraib torture lawsuit because it was doing the government's work by supplying interrogators to the U.S.-run prison in Iraq, according to court documents.