Party like it’s 1999? From commondreams.org:
Today marks the 10-year anniversary of the passage of the repeal of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and related legislation. [...]
The repeal of Glass-Steagall removed the legal prohibition on combinations between commercial banks on the one hand, and investment banks and other financial services companies on the other. Glass-Steagall’s strict rules originated in the U.S. government’s response to the Depression and reflected the learned experience of the severe dangers to consumers and the overall financial system of permitting giant financial institutions to combine commercial banking with other financial operations.
[...]
What lessons should be learned from the 10-year debacle?
First, Glass-Steagall’s key insight was in the need to treat regulation from an industry structure point of view. Glass-Steagall’s authors did not set out to establish a regulatory system to oversee companies that combined commercial banking and investment banking. They simply banned the combination of these enterprises. Cleaning up the current mess, we need strategies that focus on industry structure — meaning, especially, that we must break up the big banks — as well as more traditional regulation.
Second, we need to return to Glass-Steagall’s more particular understanding: depository institutions backed by federal insurance protection cannot be involved in the risky, speculative betting of the investment banking world. (Notably, the Glass-Steagall problem is now worse than it was before the financial crisis, following JP Morgan’s acquisition of Bear Stearns, and Bank of America’s takeover of Merrill Lynch.) Moreover, we need not just to reinstate Glass-Steagall, but infuse its underlying principles throughout the financial regulatory scheme. Commercial banks should not be in the business of speculation. They have a job to do in providing credit to the real economy. They should do that. Their job is not to engage in betting on derivatives and other exotic financial instruments.
Third, giant financial institutions exercise too much political power, and for that reason alone must be broken up.
Fourth, we need broad reform in the area of money and politics. We need public financing of Congressional regulations, even stronger lobbyist reforms, and tight restrictions to close the revolving door through which individuals spin as they travel between positions in government and industry.
[Source: commondreams.org]
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Surprise, surprise! What a joke NY politics has become. Ain’t nothing extraordinary about these “extraordinary” sessions.
From Gotham Gazette:
The Senate yesterday decided to table a vote on same-sex marriage during its extraordinary session. Supporters said they were worried they didn’t have enough votes for the bill to pass. Gov. David Paterson said he wanted the bill to come to a vote regardless of the head count. The Senate has also been locked in negotiations over a plan to reduce the deficit, but they failed to come to an agreement on this, too. Paterson scheduled two more extraordinary sessions for next week.
Continue reading about Lazy New York Legislature Accomplishes Nothing
From Gotham Gazette:
NY Governor David Paterson will address the State Legislature today to urge it to approve a round of state health and education cuts to close a $3.2 billion deficit. But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Carl Kruger came up with his own plan over the weekend, which calls for refinancing tobacco settlement bonds and extending hours for video slot machine parlors instead of many of the governor’s controversial cuts. The governor’s office said Kruger’s plan avoided the necessary proposals to deal with the state’s fiscal crisis. The legislature is scheduled to enter an extraordinary session tomorrow to consider the governor’s cuts and some other issues, including gay marriage.
From the NYT:
One whiz, Anthony W. Crowell, the mayor’s counselor, went beyond legalisms. He trivialized the two plebiscites in the 1990s that established a two-term limit for major-office holders.
To underline how unimportant the mayor considered them, Mr. Crowell noted that the 586,890 people who formed the majority in a 1996 referendum represented a trifling 17 percent of all registered voters in the city. Others in the Bloomberg administration invoke a different standard. Term limits, they say, had support at the polls from only 1 of every 15 city residents.
O.K., then what is one to make of the 557,059 votes that Mr. Bloomberg received on Tuesday to win his coveted third term? They amount to a mere 13 percent of registered voters. The 1-in-15 standard for all residents also applies.
Might I add that the narrow 5% margin of victory cost $200 per vote for the well-known, incumbent figure with all kinds of institutional privileges and connections.
From the New Geography:
Among the media, academia and within planning circles, there’s a generally standing answer to the question of what cities are the best, the most progressive and best role models for small and mid-sized cities. The standard list includes Portland, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Denver. In particular, Portland is held up as a paradigm, with its urban growth boundary, extensive transit system, excellent cycling culture, and a pro-density policy. These cities are frequently contrasted with those of the Rust Belt and South, which are found wanting, often even by locals, as “cool” urban places.
But look closely at these exemplars and a curious fact emerges. If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.
In fact, not one of these “progressive” cities even reaches the national average for African American percentage population in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group.
Donna Smith from commondreams.org writes:
Why does H1N1 call for a Presidential designation as a national emergency while the preventable deaths of 45,000 Americans every year (122 every day) is not?
Swine flu leads the news. You can die from swine flu, or should we say H1N1, even if you have no underlying health conditions. Young people have died, and pregnant women are at risk. People are lining up to be vaccinated. Health professionals are at risk due to poor preparations at some health facilities. As many as 1,000 deaths have occurred due to this flu outbreak. It’s scary out there.
But the swine flu is no match for the killing going on at the hands of the for-profit healthcare system in these United States. We bury kids, pregnant moms, babies, teens, young fathers, mid-lifers and older folks too without even batting an eye in the chambers of power in this nation.
Read the rest of this piece here.
Continue reading about Why Isn’t 122 Dead Americans Every Day a National Health Emergency?
From the Albany Times Union:
As the fate of state Sen. Hiram Monserrate moved from the courtroom toward the Senate chamber, Friday brought a flurry of news releases from his Democratic colleagues. Most of them called for him to resign or — if he refused — for the chamber to boot him from his seat.
The Queens Democrat was found guilty Thursday of misdemeanor assault despite being acquitted of much more serious felony charges stemming from a December 2008 incident in which his girlfriend’s face was slashed by a broken glass.
After the verdict in the non-jury trial, Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson released a statement saying that the majority Democrats were exploring their options for taking action against Monserrate.
On Friday, a half-dozen members of Sampson’s conference became much more vocal about what that action ought to be.
“Being an elected official is an honor and a privilege, not a right,” said Sen. Liz Krueger of Manhattan in a statement. “As a state legislator, the voters give you the power to decide what laws all 19 million of us live under. And as such we are obligated to hold ourselves to the highest standards of our laws.
” … The Senate is exploring our institutional legal options now that the courts have ruled, but haven’t yet issued a sentence,” Krueger continued. “For me, the length of the sentence does not matter – domestic violence is domestic violence, guilt is guilt.”
“We, the Senate, have been through so much this past year,” said Sen. Neil Breslin of Bethlehem. “It is time for us to take the steps necessary to earn back the public’s trust. Hiram Monserrate remaining a member of the Senate contradicts this effort.”
“I have followed the developments in the domestic violence abuse case … and been disgusted by what I have seen and heard,” wrote Sen. David Valesky of Oneida. “Domestic violence is a serious matter and a violent crime that cannot be ignored or dismissed.”
From nojojojo over at Angry Black Woman:
“…25 million Americans are underinsured and I know full well I’m not the only brown one of those. Consider the number of us who are disproportionately affected by poverty, and compare that against the fact that health insurance premiums keep rising by as much as 150% per decade while wages remain essentially flat (note: PDF). Consider how little media attention, medical research, and government funding is accorded to health issues that primarily or disproportionately affect people of color, like sickle cell anemia. Consider also how the intersection of race with gender or other factors, and the lingering effects of colonialism, cause literal epidemics of poor health care, addiction and/or violence in some PoC communities, like ongoing rape and involuntary sterilization among American Indian women. (See also unusualmusic’s insightful linkspams on women in prison, intersexed women of color, and more.)
This is killing us. It is killing us. The current health care system of the US kills people across the board, yes. But it’s killing more of us. And it’s leaving a greater proportion of us in abject poverty or lifelong trauma if we survive.
So we, especially, need to fight back.”
From ABA Law Journal:
The state of New York has cut off unemployment benefits for a 2008 law grad after she reported collecting $1.30 a day in advertising income from her blog.
The lawyer, who allowed only her first name of Karin to be used, was laid off from her job at a New York City law firm after working there only six months, Forbes reports. Karin publishes a blog called STL Meal Deals highlighting dining bargains in St. Louis, where she moved to take advantage of more affordable rent.
The agency told Karin it’s investigating her business, and she won’t get any benefits while the probe is under way, the story says. State law provides that anyone who earns less than $405, the amount paid in weekly benefits, will have their checks reduced by 25 percent.
Continue reading about Lawyer Loses Unemployment Because of $1.30 Daily Blog Income
To recap, my main point in the entry yesterday was some often-missed points: That the Nobel Peace Prize is in fact, activist by its very nature. That it is often used not only to reward efforts, but to support them.
Since then a few omissions have come to mind, so just to add to the list:
“Obama’s being rewarded just for not being Bush”So? And you could say: “Nelson Mandela got the prize simply for not being P. W. Botha”. Unless you take into account the ideological differences between the two, and why the Nobel committee thought those differences were important, it’s a fairly meaningless statement.
The fight against racism, BTW, has long been a topic of the Peace Prize. Ask Mandela, or Desmond Tutu or Martin Luther King. The former two have praised Obama highly of course, and Tutu has explicitly commended Obama’s Peace Prize. It’s hard to imagine MLK being of a different opinion.
Okay. But let’s just pretend that Obama doesn’t deserve the prize. The Norwegian Nobel committee went nuts. Temporarily insane. They were blinded by his message and imagery.
If he’s that potent a symbol – that he can seduce the entire Nobel committee, isn’t that worth something in itself? Symbols are not unimportant, and the Nobel Prize itself is evidence of that. What’s Aung San Suu Kyi done lately? Not much. Symbols are important, and the Nobel Prize has recognized plenty people ‘merely’ for what they stand for, rather than what they’ve accomplished in practice.
The committee, are all professional politicians. The chairman, Jagland, has served as Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of his country. In the terms of accomplishment that the pundits now give such import, he’s got them beaten by miles. (How many nations have you lead, Joe Scarborough?). Anyone who claims that they’re ignorant or politically naive in any way needs to back that up with some very solid merits, or take a slice of humble pie.
