A good part of what kept republicans in office in my opinion has been prosperity. A lot of people in the exurbs and suburbs got a big ass house, a big ass TV, two porsche SUVs and a trip to Mexico. That prosperity has been largely financed by cheap credit. People that make a household income of $70k have been buying $600,000 houses. But it looks like the party might be over.

I don’t know enough about this to know what comes next, but one has to imagine that an entire nation this deep in debt is not in a sustainable situation.

Check out this video of a direct action at the meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of Minnesota today. And more pictures here. I wrote up the following press releases about it:
STUDENTS TO ADMINISTRATION: WE STAND WITH THE UNION! GO BACK TO THE TABLE IN GOOD FAITH!

In their first major show of support for striking AFSCME workers at the U of M, students will join strikers at a rally on Friday morning at 9:00 in front of the McNamara Alumni Center, where the University Board of Regents will be meeting. Eli, a grad student at the U, said, “We will demand of the Regents – the leaders of our university – that they use their power to get the University administration back to the bargaining table with the union, to negotiate in good faith to reach an agreement that is fair, equitable, and respectful to the workers, without whom this place wouldn’t work!”
Read the rest of this entry »

“fixed gears are for jerks and lesbians”

Someone came here based on that google search. Awesome.

M.I.A.’s new album, Kala, is hot. Check out this interview in which she confronts the haters…
“I find it kind of insulting that I can’t have any ideas on my own because I’m a female, or that people from undeveloped countries can’t have ideas of their own unless it’s backed up by someone who’s blond-haired and blue-eyed.”
…
“You know, hip-hop came out of having the right stuff, and you had to have a slavery and you had to have a war and you had to have all these things in order for Sean ‘Puffy’ Combs to be singing about fucking Bentleys. You had to have that journey. That takes a long time, and in America it took three generations for that to happen. And for me to come from a mud hut and to be here and shouting in front of a disco, it took me 15 years. And that’s all I represent. Everything boiled down is that, that’s all it is. If I get it back to Africa, this is what I’ve accomplished.” Link.

I want a bailout!

UPDATE: read this, these are the people getting rich while people lose their homes:

The consumer has to be an idiot to take on those loans,” he said. “But it has been one of our best-performing investments.”

Right now there is a lot of talk going around that the government should somehow bailout people in sub-prime mortgages who are losing their homes. First off, I am against people losing their homes in a situation where they we basically scammed into a loan they could not afford. And no one should be punished with homelessness for what was basically a scam rich people came up with to make more money from middle and lower class people (mortgage-backed securities). But there are better ways to prevent homelessness than this.

I am not a finance guru, but here is how mortgages work, or rather worked (oversimplified). The old way was this: a lender has a lot of money. In the case of a bank this is actually the money deposited by the banks customers. The theory of any loan is that a bank loans money as an investment, because the interest rate guaranties that they the money they invest (the loan) will earn a certain return. The risk is reduced because the bank has the house in case the home buyer cannot pay their mortgage. Still, banks traditionally manage this risk, because it is not certain that house will retain the value to cover the loan. In addition foreclosure usually means that a bank will lose a lot of the potential profit of the loan in lost interest payments. This is way traditionally getting a mortgage was not simple. You needed to prove you could pay the payments now and in the future, you needed good credit and a large down payment, all to reduce the risk a bank takes.

The new way is different. A lender (sometimes a bank) sells a mortgage to a home buyer. They then immediately sell the loan to someone else for a profit. The buyer of the loan then packaged it with many other loans and sold it as a security, like a bond. The risk was then bought by a variety of large investors, mostly hedge funds because they securities were considered high risk. The first tier lender and the bank took no risk because they sold the risk off. As you can see, for lenders it was very hard to see any mortgage as too risky, because the next sucker in the chain would buy it anyway. As a result very aggressive sales took place, because the goal of the lender wasn’t to make sure they would not lose their money, but to make sure that they sold a mortgage. So they started selling them with no down payment, very poor credit and with outrageous terms to get the monthly payments low enough to convince the buyer they could afford a house way out of their range.
Read the rest of this entry »

Or rather, they don’t respect the continuing presence of an imperialist army in their country.

Bombings Mar Soccer Celebrations in Baghdad [nicely understated title, AP]

BAGHDAD (AP) — Two suicide car bombings struck soccer fans in Baghdad as they were celebrating Iraq’s victory in the Asian Cup semifinal on Wednesday, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 100, officials said.

On the imperialist character of the U.S. occupation, see “”Democracy Promotion” and Resistance: Imperial Delusions” By TARIQ ALI, etc.

Dear Sir,

Despite your insistence that I “get the fuck out of the road” bicycles are actually allowed on the road. Further, if you had taken the time to read the signs on the street you would have noticed that you were driving on a road that is also a bicycle route, and that bicycles are allowed “full use of the lane”. (despite the fact I was using far less than that).

I will assume your mother was killed by bicycle, which led to this hostility. I am sorry for your loss, and sorry to have to bring you the bad news that bikes are allow on roads that by all rights should be reserved for your car.

-Stephen

Today, Judge Lewis Kaplan derailed a major criminal prosecution against former partners of KPMG for an illegal tax shelter they promoted in the early part the century.  Kaplan is a Clinton appointee.   So at first blush it might seem bizarre that he would dismiss these charges against formerly wealthy defendants when the indigent get screwed everyday.  But it was the right call and Kaplan was correct to be indignant.

A common and persistent republican theme is lower taxes.  The mechanism may change (eliminating “double”-taxation on corporate dividends, instituted a “flat tax,” creating a consumption tax), but the message has always been the same: smaller government and lower taxes will make the world a better place.  Of course, government costs money.  And republicans are acutely aware of this fact.  So to pander to their base they find ways to reduce taxes without completely bankrupting the federal government.  For example, we have pretty low corporate tax rate, which makes corporations happy.  But our federal income rates are still reasonably high.  So although we lose some taxes on corporate gains, we make up a lot of it by taxing really rich people that own corporations.  But what happens when really rich people figure out how to avoid paying taxes?  Well, then you have two choices: 1) prosecute these people and fess up and admit that we need taxes and higher tax rates or 2) go ape-shit on these rich people and treat them as an aberration so you can continue the charade that lower taxes are better for everyone.  Obviously, the Bush administration chose the latter and aggressively and unconstitutionally pressured KPMG to cut off their partners’ legal fees to make it easier for the justice department to prosecute them.

Now, this isn’t a pure consequence of republican duplicity.  Our “tough on crime” culture plays a part and creates incentives to prosecute people outside the boundaries of the law.  But lying is part of it.  When you tell people one thing that you know is demonstrably false, you have to cut corners to prevent people from finding out you are full of shit.  Thankfully, Judge Kaplan called them on their lies.