greed

Ezra Klein lays out the odds of the GOP reducing the deficit should they regain control of Congress:

If Republicans take the House and the Senate, how much likelier is a full extension of the Bush tax cuts? I'd say it goes up to 70 percent, and the only reason I don't say 100 percent is that President Obama has more incentive to pick a fight with Congress. Nevertheless, the compromise will almost surely include a temporary extension of the tax cuts for income over $250,000.

Now, if Republicans take the House, how much likelier is a deficit-reduction deal that increases revenues or cuts spending by at least$700 billion over the next 10 years, thus making up for the tax cuts? Maybe 10 or 20 percent? And I think I'm being generous here.

What if the Republicans take the Senate, too? I'd think the chances might actually go down, as Obama would need to fight on behalf of his base if he's going to remain viable for 2010. You might see some changes made to Social Security, but nothing on the order of $700 billion over the next 10 years.

When you have a closely divided Congress you end up with another gray elephant that increases the deficit – earmarks. This is mostly evident in the Senate and something we have already seen come into play with the GOP’s “filibuster it all” attitude.

Now that the American people have bailed out the banking system and our leaders are looking at ways to recoup the hundreds of billions of tax dollars we have spent, Wall Street is starting to look at ways to get out of paying us back.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which is the main lobbying arm of Wall Street, sent a e-mail to the heads of Wall Street’s legal departments last week saying that the tax may be unconstitutional since it would single out big banks. They have also hired Carter G. Phillips of Sidley Austin, an attorney who is no stranger to the Supreme Court, to review the proposal and determine if it could be considered unconstitutional.

When introducing this proposal last week, President Obama sent a warning shot to Wall Street, saying: “Instead of sending a phalanx of lobbyists to fight this proposal or employing an army of lawyers and accountants to help evade the fee, I suggest you might want to consider simply meeting your responsibilities.” Now it seems like Wall Street isn’t intent on doing that and instead wants to fight their responsibilities.

This becomes another gloomy chapter in corporate America’s milking of the people. They stood with their hands out when is was time to pass out money from the stimulus, but now that the government wants to take action to recoup costs and maybe prevent further failures, Wall Street is turning their noses at us. You can just hear Gordon Gecko muttering those famous words: “greed is good.”

Bernie Sanders does what others should have done:

Sen. Bernie Sanders Wednesday placed a hold on the nomination of Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve.  “The American people overwhelmingly voted last year for a change in our national priorities to put the interests of ordinary people ahead of the greed of Wall Street and the wealthy few,” Sanders said. “What the American people did not bargain for was another four years for one of the key architects of the Bush economy.”  

As head of the central bank since 2006, Bernanke could have demanded that Wall Street provide adequate credit to small and medium-sized businesses to create decent-paying jobs in a productive economy, but he did not.  He could have insisted that large bailed-out banks end the usurious practice of charging interest rates of 30 percent or more on credit cards, but he did not.  He could have broken up too-big-to-fail financial institutions that took Federal Reserve assistance, but he did not.   He could have revealed which banks took more than $2 trillion in taxpayer-backed secret loans, but he did not.

At the beginning of the week the health industry was all gung-ho to work with the administration to ease to costs of healthcare. Now it looks like they are yelling out “SIKE!”

Hospitals and insurance companies said Thursday that President Obama had substantially overstated their promise earlier this week to reduce the growth of health spending.

Mr. Obama invited health industry leaders to the White House on Monday to trumpet their cost-control commitments. But three days later, confusion swirled in Washington as the companies’ trade associations raced to tamp down angst among members around the country.

After meeting with six major health care organizations, Mr. Obama hailed their cost-cutting promise as historic.

So can we stop the game of make believe and acknowledge that fact that these people really aren’t going to fix the problems themselves? Greed trumps common sense any day of the week. We have seen it in the auto industry, banking and now health care. If we want it fixed then we have to fix it – not them.

The TARP was passed as an emergency life line to troubled banks, but read this:

A small but growing number of community banks are backing out of the government's bailout, which they see as fraught with hidden strings and government interference.

About 20 banks so far that applied for or had been approved to receive about $1 billion combined in taxpayer money have reversed course in the past month and refused to take the money. That's just a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars the government already has spent, but it shows that taxpayers aren't the only ones anxious about the financial bailout.

So they needed this money to stay in business, as the TARP was supposed to be used for, but they decided they didn’t want the money since it wasn’t just given to them. Sounds like these banks didn’t really need the money, but rather wanted it. In other words, the greed that got us into this huge mess is just being amplified with the TARP. Perhaps the feds should go in and check the ledgers of these banks to make sure they really aren’t getting ready to fail.

We all know billions of dollars have gone missing in Iraq and Bush hasn't batted an eye about it. I suspect we will see the same lack of concern over the billions wasted in Iraq:

After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

Billions go missing in his foreign policy blunders and that's ok, but spend money to help our children? That is uncalled for in the eyes of the Bush administration:

The Bush administration yesterday eliminated about $700 million a year in Medicaid reimbursements to schools, sidestepping an attempt by Congress to block such a move.

The new rule, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is expected to save the federal government $3.6 billion over five years, transferring those costs to school districts.

See $5 billion is nothing, but $700 million is too much! That is Republican math right there.

Tis' the Season for Republican greed and lack of compassion!

The party of life - unless it involves corporations. Then the true meaning of the GOP comes out; the party of greed:

Seven House Republicans have urged Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) to postpone a hearing about Blackwater USA until the State Department and a separate commission report on the most recent incident involving the North Carolina-based security firm in which Iraqi civilians were killed.

The Republicans sent Waxman a letter Friday, urging him to reschedule a Tuesday hearing into Blackwater's role protecting U.S. government officials in Iraq.

They want Waxman to postpone the hearing until the State Department and the U.S.-Iraq Joint Commission unveil their own separate reports about a Sept. 16 shooting in the Mansour district of Baghdad in which nine Iraqi civilians were reported killed and another 15 were wounded.

Of course they want you to believe that this should be delayed so the State Department can investigate. Like this administration has been good at investigating anything. If these members of Congress do not want to do their constitutional job of oversight then they need to quit. They are violating the simple oath they took when they were elected.

It is time to look at the Catholic League's president, Bill Donahue. On Friday night, Donahue was on Anderson Cooper arguing why the chocolate Jesus should not be allowed. Here is his exchange with the artist who created the tasty tribute, Cosimo Cavallaro.

Donahue was in great form. He was handing out threats to Cavallaro, like talking about a beheading. He then resorted to the holiest of thou art of name calling. These are all things that Jesus preached about (intolerance, violence, hate).

Yeah right.

Donahue is a disgrace to any religion. Any person who has read the Bible, or even gone to a real church, would know that Jesus would not want to be associated with Donahue. In other words - Donahue is everything Jesus preached against. This is not a man of God, but rather a man of greed. All Catholics should denounce this man. True if he really believes in the Bible and Jesus, then he is facing an eternity burning in hell for his sins. Of course if he believed that, he would not be acting the way he does.