by anthony freda
We’d been seeing memos that Herr Trump was about to “gut Dodd-Frank banking regulations”, not that guttin’ something with no guts would be possible. “The most significant banking regulations since the 1930’s” Obama had called it. Well, yay-uss, not to mention “the only”, etc. So when I’d clicked into the Trotskyites’ place and read this title by barry grey, ‘Trump issues orders to roll back bank regulations’, wsws.org, I wondered what he might be about to say.
The essential points:
“Trump’s actions target in particular the 2010 Dodd-Frank bank regulations and a Labor Department rule set to take effect in April requiring financial advisers to put the interests of retired clients before their own monetary rewards.”
“Among the dozen or so corporate executives in attendance were Jamie Dimon, another billionaire, who heads JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank, and Laurence D. Fink, the mega-millionaire chief of the investment firm BlackRock.” (yes, how many blowjobs did Obama give Dimon?)
Then a section on anti-regulatory orders across the board, EPA, OSHA, infrastructure windfall to private investors projects, cuts to the social safety net (I haven’t seen those yet, myself) hiring freezes galore; you get the drift. But finally he got to this:
“Trump and his aides have denounced the 2010 Dodd-Frank law as a “disaster” and an “overreach” of government authority, and they have questioned its constitutionality. In fact, it is a largely token measure passed mainly to provide political cover for Obama’s multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and the financial elite.
Under Obama, not a single leading banker was prosecuted for the criminal activities that led to the biggest financial disaster and deepest slump since the 1930s, destroying the jobs, life savings and living standards of tens of millions of workers in the US and around the world.
Despite the minimal restraints imposed by Dodd-Frank, during the Obama years bank profits soared, the wealth of the richest 400 Americans increased from $1.57 trillion to $2.4 trillion, the Dow rose by 148 percent, and the concentration of income and wealth in the hands of the top 10 percent, and above all the top 1 percent and 0.01 percent, reached historically unprecedented levels.
But the financial oligarchy, whose grip on the country increased under Obama, will brook not even minor limitations on its “right” to plunder the American and world economy. The Obama years paved the way for the emergence, in the Trump administration, of a government that embodies the oligarchy not only in its policies, but also in its personnel, beginning with the billionaire real estate speculator and reality TV star at its head.”
Then he lists the billionaires in his cabinet, and their “to-do” list attacks on banking regs, including trashing the Volcker rule on FDIC-insured proprietary trading, and further nasties, in the name of “unshackling the banks”. Oh, my; they’ve been so shackled, haven’t they? Damned DOW just hit 20,000 again on the ‘Big News!’
After noting the new Congressional R’s secrecy provision re: Big Oil lobbying ‘contributions’ to governments around the globe, Grey ends with:
“The Democrats will do nothing to oppose these policies. Their opposition to Trump is focused on differences over US imperialist foreign policy, not opposition to his assault on the democratic and social rights of working people.
But workers looking for an alternative to the political establishment who may have entertained hopes in Trump’s promises to restore decent-paying jobs will be rapidly disabused. The realization that they have once again been conned will have socially explosive consequences.”
Whooosh; I’m glad he got there in the end.
There are some excellent comments, especially Jason Howell’s. I tweaked one from an Aussie for this title.
Tell it, Buffy.
A somewhat similar message to partisan Ds, Rs, and the pressitute media is Paul Street’s ‘Unspeakable: the Black Book of Imperial Terrorism’. feb. 3. at Counterpunch.
His finale is the message:
“In the meantime, here’s something CNN will never tell Donald Trump, his fan Dr. Cook, and the many Democrats and Republicans who’ve been trained to stick their heads in Orwellian sand on Superpower’s crimes: the simplest and most reliable way to stem the Muslim refugee flow is to stop waging criminal wars against Muslim countries. The vast taxpayer largesse squandered on these unwarranted and racist wars should instead be given to the nations the U.S. and NATO have destroyed – and to addressing social, civic, and environmental needs at home.”
But along the way he quotes Mike Lofgren’s book on the Deep State:
“Even as commentators decry a broken government that cannot marshal the money, the will, or the competence to repair our roads and bridges, heal our war veterans, or even roll out a health care website, there is always enough money and will, and maybe just a bare minimum of competence to overthrow foreign governments, fight the longest war in U.S. history, and conduct dragnet surveillance over the entire surface of the planet (p.4)…It is as if Hadrian’s Wall was still fully manned and the fortifications along the border with Germania were never stronger, even as the city of Rome disintegrated from within and the life-sustaining aqueducts leading down from the hills began to crumble.” (p.216
then writing:
“A Proven History of Terrorism
Also unspeakable is the criminality of what the America Empire – accurately described by Dr. King in 1967 as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” – does abroad. It is unthinkable that CNN might challenge Dr. Cook’s notion of the U.S. as a nation that tries to “rescue the rest of the world.”
The correction would include confronting Washington’s role in criminally devastating some of the very nations from which Trump has tried to ban travelers and refugees. Iraq, for one leading example, has been subject to two mass-murderous U.S. invasions along with an intervening decade plus of deadly economic sanctions that have combined to kill millions, maim millions, and displace millions more.” then Libya, Syria, Sudan, and Yemen.”
The following sections make one too sick to bear; be warned, including, but not limited to, by any means:
Highway of Death
“Journalists and others looking for proven histories of terrorism might also want to reflect on the hideous carnage wreaked by the U.S. military on Iraq’s notorious “Highway of Death,” where U.S. forces massacred tens of thousands of surrendered Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait on February 26 and 27, 1991” (the rest is here.)
But he didn’t mention the thousands of Iraqi National Guard who were pushed into bulldozer-dug mass graves and…buried alive. Post war coverage deep inside the Denver Post at the time.
“For all I know, we could have killed thousands,” said Col. Anthony Moreno, commander of the 2nd Brigade that led the assault on the heaviest defenses.
“I came through right after the lead company. What you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with peoples’ arms and things sticking out of them.”
“I know burying people like that sounds pretty nasty,” Maggart said, “but it would be even nastier if we had to put our troops in the trenches and clean them out with bayonets.”
It’s how the corrupt, war-mongering US late-stage capitalism seeks to extend its Empire.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
2 weeks into trump & we are not all dead yet? get outta here. some of us barely survived obama, to be sure.
trump is to hitler as obama is to who again? yeah, chancellor hindenberg von chamberlain, is that how to complete the analogy?
if your completed analogy means close to: O helped create T rule…but if not, do spell it out for me. but the chamberlain part?
the foreign policy blustery bombast is iran now that china welcomes a diplomatic solution to the south china sea issue (not to mention that japan said “nah, we won’t join the patrols, but thanks anyway”). but hell, w/ fukishima conditions, and the hanford campus still leaking, who knows what’ll kill us first.
on edit: O ‘appeasing iran’?
Card Check Revamped?
America’s cosmopolitan wealth of Scribes and Pundits have been positing the affirming advice that the ‘rank and file’ among Democrats should become highly focused on the important issues to our future engagement in politics and less and less on the mindlessness of President Trump. However, congressional Republicans are continuing to advance their meme for the destruction of all that implies from the legislation that personified the War on Poverty and the Civil Rights Act.
And into this arena of “high” issues should include the ever-important challenge to the Right to Work Laws that are legislatively in-place among the majority of states. And writing for the Guardian, a British-owned newspaper, Michael Paarlberg, author’s the following:
“A national right to work law has been a pipe dream of corporate lobbyists, the chamber of commerce, the Koch brothers, and the politicians on their payroll for decades, and is about to become a reality. Right to work laws already exist in more than half the states in the country where unions are weak or nonexistent, wages are correspondingly disposable. In theory, these laws are about guaranteeing workers’ freedom of association. In practice, they’re about keeping workers from forming unions, by making unions financially unsustainable.”
With the recent introduction of legislation and as defined as the The National Right to Work, the two Republican House members, Joe Wilson of South Carolina and Steven King of Iowa, have this to say, respectively:
From Joe Wilson,
“As a long-time advocate of South Carolina’s right to work law and the Employee Right Act, I am grateful to introduce national right to work legislation with my colleague, Congressman Steve King. At least 80 percent of Americans are opposed to forcing employees to pay dues as a condition of their employment, and our bill would protect workers by eliminating the forced dues clauses in federal statute.”
From Steve King,
“Today, around 80% of Americans overwhelmingly believe that every worker and their employer should have the power to negotiate the terms of their employment” said King. “Unfortunately when Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, this right was taken away from the people and Americans were forced to pay union dues and abide by the union’s rules just to get or keep a job.
“As early as 1947, Congress tacitly admitted that this concept of “monopoly bargaining” does indeed violate the rights of workers. As a result, they allowed states to “opt-out” if they passed Right to Work laws while making “forced unionization” the default. Twenty-seven states have now done so, effectively mitigating the negative impact of this misguided federal labor law. However, the fact remains that Congress created the problem in the first place, and it is Congress’s responsibility to correct it. The National Right to Work Act will succeed in doing so simply by listening to the majority of American workers by erasing the fored-dues clauses in federal statute—without adding a single letter to federal law.”
And from here in our wonderful Sonoran Desert, we see future or within the next 25 years, the demographic shift will introduce into our America, a multicultural and multilingual Democracy and much to the political detriment for the fervency of the neo-liberal Right.
Consequently, we, as Chicano military vets and Native American vets, collectively, we are advocating that in our over 400 Native American societies that are federally-recognized, the National Labor Relations Act should be effectively utilized in a manner the leads to the equality of self-empowerment. Thusly, requiring the Fortune 500 companies to and through economic development with the affective tribal councils, establish factories that will lead to long term employment opportunities among these Native American social constructs, starting with the historical or indigenous meme of the “natural” Democracy Further, both Tribal Councils and the affective members of these communities can utilize a newer version of Card Check of the then 2009 proposal presented by organized labor and rejected by the Obama administration.
As such and in our proposal, the participants in the Trans-National Technology Centers, would provide Native Americans to conduct a face-to-face confab with employers and where employment and the all-encompassing wages, salaries, and training opportunities and in keeping with a future that is best deemed necessary by the Native Americans themselves, can become effectively realized.
In closing, we invite the Elders to join us in determining our national future and where the Chicano and Native American, practicing our historical progressivism becomes concretized and leading to our “newer and better” Democracy and within these next 25 years. And lest one forget easily, Chicanos and Native Americans are the “majority” component of today’s Progressive Movement.
Jaango
might you mean ‘right to work’ revamped, jaango? did O ever come out for card check? i remember he was silent about it during his first four years. but yes; i’d seen that crap; the Rs really do mean to run the table, but then O never put on his walking shoes, did the con man?
Here we go again back to “normalcy”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'm_Forever_Blowing_Bubbles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_normalcy
Love that stratospheric 20,000-point Dow. What could possibly go wrong?
Won’t be long before the duopoly parties come hat in hand and say that farewell W question. “Miss me yet?” And the resounding answer will be, “You’ve been gone?”
Strange times in which the political bedfellows are getting madly scrambled.
BTW, it seems that the water protector movement is spent in the iteration that we have seen for the past 9 months. The tribe is wondering where the money that the fancy-pants NGOs is. The camps are wondering where the money that was sent to the tribe is. There are divisive actions going on among the tribal representatives of the various geographies of the rez. The districts not Cannon Ball have suffered collateral damage and likely retaliation from the actions and Morton County Sheriff’s Department response at the northern end of the rez boundary. Likely to see the folks in Sacred Stone Camp bank the fires and hang on. How soon there is a resurgence is a matter of the improbabilities of movements.
The spontaneous reaction to the cancellation of 100,000 visas with demonstrations at airports was a resistance that had some immediate effects in postponement. The Women’s march turns out to have been complicated at the feet-on-the-ground level no matter how much the leadership wanted to channel it into established patterns.
Milo Yiannopoulos has put his tweezers into the electric socket of a weird tacit alliance of people who show up to shut him down. Outing and doxing transgender folks right in front of his audience stokes the outrage.
The Democrats (and of course the Republicans–Ha!) all of a sudden have a warm spot for Mario Savio.
When you put billionaires directly in the government, you don’t need no stinking parties. Or the political elite who will increasingly understand they are just the hired help.
At the moment, we ordinary schmoes just spectators riding in this handbasket tour of Dante’s Inferno. It starts with the faux normalcy of limbo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights
Judgement turns us all into voyeurs of what is lost.
i’m editing this a bit, as my hair was on fire over another medical emergency w/ mr. wd’s ‘old man’. i’ll be brief. cool on the bosch, and i’ve had a catching up on standing rock diary ready to post for a day or so. talk about: ‘conflicting reports’! more soon as i can breathe.
oh, but for berkeley, this is just about right for me:
jeezum crow; did you know that the antifas hit would-be milo attendees with rocks, sticks, and flag poles? yeah, the free speech movement. breitbart linked to buzzfeed’s live streaming and coverage, and one woman was claiming that some of the nazis had stabbed her and others. wth? all sorts of ‘funding’ for this protest have been claimed, but er…why would it have taken funding? the antifa flags? how many are agents provocateurs, in any event? why didn’t the berkeley PD make any arrests of the ‘black bloc’ hooded ones damaging stuff downtown?
and again, the ‘let them in’ protestors don’t seem to get whose foreign debacles/destabilizations were the reason for the massive crises (not to mention ‘isis’ iterations, and that O’s policies were a bit less draconian, from what i’ve read. so: fuck both herr T and obama; glad he’s gone to his greater monetary rewards in the heights. ;-)
took me some time to grasp doris day’s bubbles. sorry i missed teh funny. ;-) i edited in the hieronymus bosch cuz: yes.
the standing rock diary is up; i need to do a bit of medicare/medicaid research before i zzzzleeeep. night, all.
Wendy,
Sorry for not responding to you comment up-thread and in a timely manner.
My Card Check ‘revamped is just my emphasis for the notional for Self-Empowerment. In contrast, the Right to Work is another approach to the diminishment of the employee. And take for example, an auto mechanic at a new car dealership, has little if any opportunity to increase his or her salary and benefits. And in a parallel relationship, Arizona’s teachers, for these past five years, have yet receive a wage or salary increase, even though voters have affirmatively voted to increase the teacher’s wage or salary along the appropriate benefits and are now tottering and for participating in Medicaid.
Jaango
so your calling for fortune 500 firms to train the indigenous is what you reckon is ‘card check revamped’? i’m sorry i tangled it up. all i can say is ‘beware the corporate contributors; they’ll want their pounds of flesh’. see the ‘private (pretend) entrepreneurial and charitable foundations’, for instance. clinton, gates, omidyar, now obama has created one.
but yes, AZ and WI must be two of the states most likely to F-over workers people of color, and schools. and we’re supposed to hear today if betsy devos will be confirmed by the senate as ‘dis/mis-education secretary. arrrgh. pence may get to break the (so far) tie vote.
ye gawds and little fishes: