Who can really afford this!

Besides the unmeasureable damage that hit residents locally and headon to ruin their lives– the radius is being hit with water problems, air pollution and air-traveled-and-breathed toxins. And then– we all get to pay for it while we also endure our personal economys sinking fast. This [among so much stuff everytwhere ] sucks so bad.

 

 

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090108/GREEN02/901080355/1001/RSS01 

TVA’s ratepayers will be saddled with the cost to clean up a massive coal ash slide at an East Tennessee power plant, the agency’s chairman said.

The tab, likely to be tens of millions of dollars or more, will include the cost of extra workers, overtime pay, heavy machinery, and housing and supplies for families chased from their homes, along with the lawsuits that have begun to pile up.

“This is going to get into rates sooner or later,” Tennessee Valley Authority Chairman Bill Sansom told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “We haven’t even thought about going to Washington for it.”

Washington is where Sansom will be today, as Tom Kilgore, the agency’s chief executive, testifies about the spill at a Senate hearing that brings TVA’s operations into their first high-profile scrutiny by Congress in more than a decade.

Also testifying will be Stephen Smith, a longtime TVA watchdog who heads the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, and William Rose, director of emergency management services for Roane County.

The equivalent of more than 1 billion gallons of coal ash sludge cascaded Dec. 22 in a dark avalanche from an aboveground, ash-walled storage structure at the Kingston coal-burning power plant.

When a wall ruptured, the waste barreled out, damaging homes, knocking over trees and power lines and filling two inlets of the nearby Emory River.

The slide has turned into a rallying point for activists, many of whom want national regulation of coal ash ponds and question industry talk of developing “clean” coal for the nation’s energy future.

Several residents who live not far from TVA’s coal-burning plant also have traveled to Washington to lobby their lawmakers with Smith.

“I want to be part of the solution, to get this mess cleaned up,” said Melinda Hillman. “We lived in a little bit of paradise and now it is unbelievable what has been done.”

Much of the gray ash covering almost 300 acres is being sprayed with liquid fertilizer and seeds to try to stop what could be lung-damaging ash particles from drying and going airborne as the cleanup continues.

Lab work on water and ash samples has shown elevated levels of arsenic, lead, thallium and other substances.

State and federal environmental officials say testing shows that drinking water supplies are safe and that treatment plants would remove these materials if they entered the water intakes.

Hillman, who has lived in the area for eight years, said an independent investigation is needed to determine why the pond wall failed.

Forty area families have joined a pending lawsuit along with several environmental groups, demanding that federal courts levy fines and assure the community is made whole.

A TVA official had said earlier that insurance covers such accidents, but just how much had not been determined.

“We are primarily self- insured, but we also have some insurance policy carriers,” agency spokesman John Moulton said Wednesday. “It’s too early to tell what the impact on rates might be.”

Ash pond spills and leaks elsewhere in the country — some smaller than the one at Kingston — have resulted in cleanups of more than $35 million and lawsuits with settlements of $25 million and more.

Tough hearings likely

Pointed questions are expected at today’s hearing, scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. CST.

The Environment and Public Works Committee is led by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who has pushed an aggressive environmental agenda since she took over as chairwoman in 2007. She supported efforts late last year to keep tighter environmental regulations in place for coal-fired power plants.

Kilgore, the CEO and president of TVA, was not available for an interview. But agency spokesman Moulten said Kilgore and Sansom were scheduled to meet before the hearing with the TVA Caucus — members of Congress who represent areas to which TVA provides electricity. That’s virtually all of Tennessee and parts of six other Southern states.

Moulten said Kilgore’s Senate testimony would emphasize cleanup efforts.

“Our focus is entirely on recovery,” Moulten said.

The last major confrontation between TVA leaders and Congress came in the 1990s, when the agency gave up the annual appropriations that had covered the costs of management of the Tennessee River system and economic development projects.

Today, TVA, a federal corporation, finances all its flood control, power generation and recreation operations from the sale of electricity.

Groups call for change

Local and international environmental groups homed in on the spill when it occurred.

The Environmental Integrity Project, along with Earthjustice, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the United Mountain Defense, held a teleconference Wednesday, releasing federal data about nearly 100 largely unregulated wet landfills nationwide that hold arsenic and other potentially toxic substances, like TVA’s Kingston facility.

Heavy metals found in coal can concentrate in the ash when it’s burned, and even more ash is created as pollution controls are tightened on power plants.

The groups object to mixing the dry ash with water to move it into ponds. They want dry landfills, recycling of the materials and regulations requiring liners to protect groundwater.

“This issue has been a sleeper,” said Jeff Stant, with the Environmental Integrity Project. “It’s not a glamorous issue. It’s been dumped where people are poor or aren’t members of environmental groups.”

High stakes and glamour, however, are part of it now — along with the potential for huge claims for class-action damages.

Erin Brockovich, who was made a celebrity by the Julia Roberts movie about a community’s fight against contaminated water, and a New York law firm are coming to meet victims this week.Contact Anne Paine at 615-259-8071 or

apaine@tennessean.com.
Contact Bill Theobald of The Tennessean’s Washington bureau at wtheobal@gns.gannett.com.
Duncan Mansfield of The Associated Press contributed.

Bush & Cheney still have until January!!

Bush and Cheney STILL have things they want to do!

By

Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, October 31, 2008; 12:12 PM

Dan Froomkin 

Did we really expect President Bush and Vice President Cheney to go quietly?

 

R. Jeffrey Smith writes: “The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January. “The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms. “Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining. “Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis. . . . “The burst of activity has made this a busy period for lobbyists who fear that industry views will hold less sway after the elections. The doors at the New Executive Office Building have been whirling with corporate officials and advisers pleading for relief or, in many cases, for hastened decision making.”

Emma Schwartz reports for ABC News: “Every administration tries to pass last minute rules in hopes of leaving a lasting mark. But experts say the Bush administration is expected to approve a greater number more quickly than previous administrations — something they said could lead to bad and costly policy. “‘The administration wants to leave a legacy,’ said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, which has been critical of these proposals. ‘But across the board it means less protection for the public.’ . . . “It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In May, Josh Bolten, then-head of the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees regulatory approval, issued a memo barring new proposals after June. It also required that all new regulations be completed by Nov. 1. proposed rule put forward by the National Marine Fisheries Service that would lift a requirement that environmental impact statements be prepared for certain fisheries-management decisions and would give review authority to regional councils dominated by commercial and recreational fishing interests. Pew Environment Group says the rule “threatens to completely undermine application of the law that protects ocean ecosystems.” OMB Watch reports: “In addition to the hundreds of thousands of public comments opposing the proposed rule, 80 members of Congress have also expressed their opposition, including a letter joined by 72 members of the House of Representatives. The letter states that the proposed rule fails to meet congressional intent made clear during the reauthorization of the [fisheries act]. Hundreds of scientists and environmental organizations have also signed on to oppose the rule.” Siobhan Hughes wrote about in the Wall Street Journal on Monday: “The Bush administration is moving to adopt rules that would loosen pollution controls on power plants, by judging the plants on their hourly rate of emissions rather than their total annual output, people familiar with the matter said. . . . “As long as a power plant’s hourly emissions stay at or below the plant’s historical maximum, the plant would be treated as if it were running more cleanly, even if its total annual emissions increased as plant operators stepped up operations.” “That hasn’t been the case. Many proposed regulations have yet to be finalized and new ones have already come out since the June deadline. “A spokesperson for OMB said in an email response that the Bolten memo ‘wasn’t intended to wholesale shut down work on important regulatory matters after November 1st, but to emphasize due diligence.’ “She added: ‘Ensuring the integrity of the process is important to the Administration.’”

Another example is something I’ve been calling attention to yet more examples of the Bush administration’s midnight rule-making for the past several months. For instance, back in May, Carol D. Leonnig wrote in The Washington Post in July: “Political appointees at the Department of Labor are moving with unusual speed to push through in the final months of the Bush administration a rule making it tougher to regulate workers’ on-the-job exposure to chemicals and toxins.”

Alicia Mundy wrote in the Wall Street Journal two weeks ago: “Bush administration officials, in their last weeks in office, are pushing to rewrite a wide array of federal rules with changes or additions that could block product-safety lawsuits by consumers and states.” And of course there’s the push for a last-minute regulatory overhaul that would effectively gut the Endangered Species Act.

Dina Cappiello wrote for the Associated Press just 10 days ago that Interior Department officials were rushing so hard to ease the endangered species rules before Bush leaves office that they were “attempting to review 200,000 comments from the public in just 32 hours.” And on Monday, And yet another one to add to the list. In today’s Post, The proposed sale, which includes famous areas in the Nine Mile Canyon region, would take place Dec. 19, a month before President Bush leaves office.” Tip of the Iceberg?Keep in mind that rule-making is by definition a public process. So what else is going on, beneath  the surface? I raised a slew of questions in that vein for

* Are appointees in federal agencies trying to cover their tracks? Are documents being properly retained?

* Are Bush political appointees working on last-minute reorganizations within the federal government?

* Are Bush loyalists burrowing into the civil service? Will political appointees engage in a last-minute flurry of hiring and promoting Bush loyalists into key civil service jobs? Will political appointees try to make the jump into the civil service?

Bush in the Rearview Mirror

“‘I would say that the most amazingly bankrupt line of argument that I’ve ever seen in this campaign has been the constant and heavily financed effort on the part of the Obama campaign to make George Bush John McCain’s running mate,’ Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, said in a conference call with reporters. “‘To me it’s outrageous. Everybody who knows John McCain, who has spent any amount of time following his life and times, knows that he has been probably one of the biggest flies in the ointment for the Bush administration on Capitol Hill when it comes to putting his country first.’”

Lauren Vernon writes for The Hill: “John McCain’s presidential campaign on Thursday said the Arizona senator would win the race for the White House if Democratic rival Barack Obama keeps seeking to link the GOP nominee to President Bush. “McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said the attempt of the Illinois senator’s campaign to link the current White House occupant to the new Republican standard-bearer is ‘a desperate attempt at the end of this campaign by Obama to try and stem the flow of people away from his campaign.’”

As Alberts notes, sparking Davis’s ire was “‘John McCain wants to continue George Bush’s economic policies,’ the announcer continues . . . ‘Look behind you: We can’t afford more of the same.’” “And as much as the McCain camp wishes it weren’t so, the fact remains that voters generally don’t see their candidate as enough of a change from Bush.

Gary Langer writes for ABC News: “For all the focus on the economy as John McCain’s greatest problem, there’s another right behind it: George W. Bush. . . . “Fewer than half of likely voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post tracking poll, 47 percent, think McCain would lead in a new direction; 50 percent instead say he’d mainly continue on Bush’s path. McCain has not exceeded 48 percent ‘new direction’ all year, at a time when dissatisfaction with the country’s current course has hit record highs. “It matters: Among those who think McCain would lead in a new direction, 82 percent support him. But among those who think of him as Bush 2.0, 90 percent prefer Barack Obama instead — one of the starkest dividing lines between the two candidates. “Similarly, while McCain overwhelmingly is supported by the relatively few remaining Bush approvers, he loses Bush disapprovers — 72 percent of likely voters — by nearly a 3-1 margin, 71-27 percent.”

Michael Cooper and Dalia Sussman write in the New York Times about the latest New York Times/CBS News poll: “With just days until Americans choose a new president, the survey found them deeply uneasy about the state of their country. Eight-five percent of respondents said the country was pretty seriously off on the wrong track, near the record high recorded earlier this month. A majority said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. And President Bush’s approval rating remains at 22 percent, tied for the lowest presidential approval rating on record (which was President Harry S, Truman’s rating, recorded by the Gallup Poll in 1952). “Mr. McCain’s renewed efforts to cast himself as the candidate of change have apparently faltered. Sixty-four percent of voters polled said Mr. Obama would bring about real change if elected, while only 39 percent said Mr. McCain would.”

CBS Newsreports: “Fifty-three percent expect the GOP nominee to continue Mr. Bush’s policies. Forty-one percent do not.” Even Texans Reject Him> Bush talks a lot these days about how he’s looking forward to going home to Texas. But it may not be quite as warm a homecoming as he was hoping for.

Dave Montgomery writes for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about how Texans are “joining the rest of the nation in registering sharp disapproval of his job performance as the nation’s chief executive, according to a newly released statewide poll. “Only 34 percent of Texans polled in a University of Texas survey approved of Bush’s handling of the presidency, with just under 10 percent approving ‘strongly.’ By contrast, 55 percent disapproved, with 38.7 percent strongly disapproving. “While the approval ratings are somewhat higher than national polls, the Texas findings reflect a significant downturn in popularity for a native son and former Texas governor who drew 61 percent of the Texas vote in his re-election victory over Democratic Sen. John Kerry four years ago. Throughout much of his two-term presidency, Texas has generally provided Bush with a safety net of robust support while he was losing favor elsewhere.”

On the Trail

“McCain . . . appears with the president only in commercials paid for and approved by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama or the Democratic National Committee (DNC). McCain spends most of his days seeking as much distance between he and the president as he can find.” And Youngman notes that “the first lady isn’t the only current occupant of the White House getting in on the act. “Vice President Dick Cheney, who enjoys approval ratings lower than the president’s, is scheduled to attend a Victory rally in Wyoming on Saturday.”

Economy Watch

Alison Vekshin and Robert Schmidt

write for Bloomberg: “The White House and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson are seeking to scale back a proposal by Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair to guarantee mortgages to help stem foreclosures, according to two congressional aides briefed on the matter. “The Bush administration is reluctant to sign off on the plan because of its cost, the two people indicated.”

Daniel W. Reilly

writes for Politico: “A group of Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee sent President Bush a letter Thursday, accusing the administration of not dedicating ‘the time, attention or resources needed’ to address the foreclosure issue. “In the letter, the senators called on the Treasury Department to work with the FDIC to allow banks to restructure mortgages to keep more people in their homes. “‘Mr. President, time is short,’ the senators wrote. ‘Every day we delay, thousands more families face the specter of losing their homes. We cannot afford another delay.’” Gitmo Watch

William Glaberson writes in the New York Times: “In 2002, John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, announced that a plot to detonate a radioactive bomb in the United States had been foiled and an American citizen, Jose Padilla, detained. The Pentagon has claimed that Mr. Mohamed assisted Mr. Padilla. “After Mr. Padilla was held for three and a half years in a naval brig, the Justice Department abandoned its dirty-bomb claims against him. He was convicted of other charges in 2007.” But wait, there’s more. As Robert Verkaik writes for the Independent: “Senior CIA officers could be put on trial in Britain after it emerged last night that the [British] Attorney General is to investigate allegations that a British resident held in Guantanamo Bay was brutally tortured, after being arrested and questioned by American forces following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. Peter Finn writes in The Washington Post: “A military judge has refused to reconsider the sentence of Osama bin Laden’s former driver, forcing the Bush administration to either release a man it insists is a dangerous terrorist in two months or continue to hold him at Guantanamo Bay as an enemy combatant despite his having served his time after a trial and conviction.” Robert H. Reid writes for the Associated Press: “Iraq wants to eliminate any chance U.S. forces will stay here after 2011 under a proposed security pact and to expand Iraqi legal jurisdiction over U.S. troops until then, a close ally of the prime minister said Thursday. “Those demands, which were presented to U.S. officials this week, could derail the deal — delivering a diplomatic blow to Washington in the final weeks of the Bush administration. “Failure to reach an agreement before year’s end could force a suspension of American military operations, and U.S. commanders have been warning Iraqi officials that could endanger security improvements.”

“The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has asked Baroness Scotland to consider bringing criminal proceedings against Americans allegedly responsible for the rendition and abuse of Binyam Mohamed, when he was held in prisons in Morocco and Afghanistan. “The development follows criticism of US prosecutors by British judges who have seen secret evidence of torture committed against Mr Mohamed, including allegations his torturers used a razor blade to repeatedly cut his penis. The Attorney’s investigation is expected to include allegations that MI5 colluded in Mr Mohamed’s rendition. Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian national and British resident, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, when he was questioned by an MI5 officer. “On Tuesday, Government lawyers wrote to the judges hearing Mr Mohamed’s case against the UK government in the High Court. In the letter they said ‘the question of possible criminal wrongdoing to which these proceedings has given rise has been referred by the Home Secretary to the Attorney general for consideration as an independent minister of justice’. Baroness Scotland has been sent secret witness statements given to the court and public interest immunity certificates for the proceedings.” And in news of another case,

Iraq Watch

Olivier Knox

writes for AFP: “The White House on Thursday charged that politics and posturing in Iraq were delaying a controversial US-Iraq security accord but said it remained ‘hopeful and confident’ about the pact. “Days before the November 4 US elections, spokeswoman Dana Perino said ‘on our side, I don’t think that politics is playing a lot of a role in it’ because both US presidential hopefuls were generally supportive of the accord. “‘On the Iraqi side, I can’t say the same when it comes to internal politics there. And they might even be looking at our domestic politics and trying to game that out, some people, maybe,’ she told reporters.”

Jonathan S. Landay writes for McClatchy Newspapers: “Two years ago, President Bush hailed

Najim al Jabouri as a symbol of success in the battle to curb Iraq’s sectarian violence. Today, Jabouri is a symbol of how uncertain that success is. “Last month, Jabouri quietly left Tal Afar, an ancient city near Iraq’s desert border with Syria where he was the police chief and the mayor, collected his wife and four children and flew to safety in the United States. . . . “His decision underscores the fragility of the relative calm that’s settled on Iraq, obscuring the unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions, political infighting and anger at the U.S. occupation, economic paralysis and continuing terrorism.” Syria Watch

But as Salon blogger

Syria Comment blogger

Jonathan Karl reports for ABC News that Gen. David Petraeus “proposed visiting Syria shortly after taking over as the top U.S. commander for the Middle East. “The idea was swiftly rejected by Bush administration officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon. “Petraeus, who becomes the commander of U.S. Central Command (Centcom) Friday, had hoped to meet in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Petraeus proposed the trip, and senior officials objected, before the covert U.S. strike earlier this week on a target inside Syria’s border with Iraq.” Glenn Greenwald points out, this is not the exclusive Karl claims. Joshua Landis writes that he “has been writing since August 2008 that Petraeus tried to go to Damascus in the fall of 2007, but was refused permission by the Vice President. It wasn’t the president. (That little bit of info is an SC exclusive told to me by a top intelligence officer.)” Ken Herman blogs for Cox News Service: “President Bush hasn’t held a news conference since July 15. And that one ended with this comment from Bush: ‘OK, I’ve enjoyed it. Thank you very much for your time. Appreciate it.’ “Apparently he didn’t enjoy it and appreciate all that much. He hasn’t had a news conference since then and generally has ignored questions lobbed his way at White House events. . . . “Can we expect a presidential news conference anytime soon?” Not likely. From yesterday’s press briefing > Q. “Dana, looking ahead to the election, you said a while back that the President was trying not to give any press conferences while the campaign was going on, to let the candidates sort of have their own spotlight. When will we hear from the President once the election is over?” :

Peter Finn and Del Quentin Wilber write in The Washington Post: “A federal judge yesterday questioned the motives of Justice Department lawyers for withdrawing allegations linking a Guantanamo Bay detainee to a ‘dirty bomb’ plot in the United States shortly before they were required to hand over exculpatory evidence to the defense. “‘That raises serious questions in this court’s mind about whether those allegations were ever true,’ said U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who is overseeing a lawsuit brought by Binyam Mohammed, 30, a resident of Britain who is challenging his detention at the U.S. military facility in Cuba. Sullivan warned that ‘someone is going to rue the day those allegations were made’ if it turns out that the government had evidence that they were unfounded. . . . “Mohammed said the CIA rendered him to Morocco weeks after he was arrested in Pakistan in April 2002. His attorneys argue that the government’s allegations are based on confessions their client made after his detention and torture in Morocco, where, they say, he was slashed with razors. “‘He parroted what his torturers wanted him to say,’ said Zachary Katznelson, one of Mohammed’s attorneys. ‘All they have are Mr. Mohammed’s own words, and they were extracted at the tip of a razor blade.’ “The government said Mohammed voluntarily confessed to a number of terrorist crimes, including the dirty-bomb plot, in 2004 at Bagram air base in Afghanistan before his transfer to Guantanamo Bay. The government has never acknowledged that he was in Morocco.” Sam Youngman writes for The Hill: “While President Bush has conspicuously stayed on the sidelines in the final days until the election, others close to him are venturing out on behalf of embattled Republican candidates. “First Lady Laura Bush, always a popular draw for Republicans, was in Mississippi on Thursday to stump for Sen. Roger Wicker (R), and on Monday she will do the same for House candidate Brett Guthrie at a rally in Kentucky. “That the first lady is hitting the road while the president stays in Washington speaks volumes to this election season’s dilemma: Republican candidates have to run away from the administration and its policies while still looking for help in races that were considered runaways in once-reliably red states. . . . Jennifer Loven writes for the Associated Press: “Under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike, the White House on Thursday defended giving billions of bailout dollars to banks that plan to reward shareholders and executives — or even buy other banks. “Allowing banks to engage in such normal business activities actually could help loosen lending and revive the sagging economy, said Ed Lazear, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. He said the administration would not impose any conditions on banks beyond those required when Congress created the bailout program, which authorized the government to buy stock in financial institutions. . . . “Lazear was put before the cameras in the White House briefing room amid a rising chorus of complaints from lawmakers about the latitude that banks will have when they receive bailout money from Washington. “That bailout was originally sold by the administration as a plan for the government to purchase toxic mortgage-based assets from financial institutions, to get them off their books and inspire the resumption of normal lending. After passage, though, the administration decided the better course would be to devote $250 billion into buying ownership stakes in banks. “With taxpayers’ money flowing into their vaults, banks are going ahead with paying dividends to shareholders, giving bonuses to top executives and acquiring competitors. Lawmakers are asking why banks with the money to do those things need taxpayer-funded help.” this ad- titled Rearview Mirror – that the Obama campaign plans to air heavily in key battleground states this weekend. In the ad, images of Bush keep popping up in the rearview mirrors of a car as road signs outside highlight criticisms of McCain’s economic policy. CBS News: “‘Wonder where John McCain would take the economy? Look behind you,’ an announcer says as the spot opens. Onscreen, a man driving his car is shown looking in his rearview mirror, where he sees Mr. Bush’s face. Cappiello reported that — surprise! — the administration had concluded “that changes it wants to make to endangered species rules before President Bush leaves office will have no significant environmental consequences.” Juliet Eilperin writes: “The federal Bureau of Land Management is reviving plans to sell oil and gas leases in pristine wilderness areas in eastern Utah that have long been protected from development, according to a notice posted this week on the agency’s Web site. NiemanWatchdog.org back in June. Among them: * Are major contracts being let out that have long-term ramifications? And are any of those related to outsourcing? S heldon Alberts writes for the Canwest News Service that Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s camp responded furiously to a new ad from the Barack Obama campaign linking McCain to Bush. Juliet Eilperin wrote in The Washington Post in August that the new rules would “allow federal agencies to decide whether protected species would be imperiled by agency projects, eliminating the independent scientific reviews that have been required for more than three decades.” Juliet Eilperin wrote in The Washington Post: “The Bush administration is on the verge of implementing new air quality rules that will make it easier to build power plants near national parks and wilderness areas.”

 

No Presser for You

Perino: “You’ll probably hear from me that night, and then we’ll see after that.”

Q. “In terms of, you know, a press conference, obviously many of these questions were questions we’d love to direct to him.”

Perino: “How long have you covered the White House, this White House? Do we ever forecast when we’re going to have press conferences? No. And I really don’t think that’s going to change after November 4th. So you’ll just have to keep dressing up everyday, and then we’ll see.”

40 years… and still protesting the same friggin’ things!!

 

Speak Your Peace

In 1968, people were willing to take to the streets to tell the country’s leaders, and Presidential candidates, how they felt about the war in Vietnam, civil rights and other key issues. Now, it’s time to channel that same spirit of activism and “Speak Your Peace” by voicing your opinion on the issues that are most important to you, getting those around you to register to vote, advocating for voter protection initiatives and most importantly, exercising your right to vote this Nov. 4th and in every election!!

http://prod.takepart.com/social_network/action/chicago10/

The Documentary Chicago 10 is well worth the watching– I saw it on PBS Independent Lens. Powerful… and memorable, moving… and looking at times I lived through.

 

Retro Essay– “…Under God…”

Retro Essay  from ‘Letters from America’

The pledge of allegiance

Monday mornings in almost every public elementary school in America the children rise and then they recite (or they could choose to listen to the class chanting) the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States. It’s a single sentence and this is how it goes:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Last week it was announced in Washington that next February 2004 the nine justices of the Supreme Court will meet one morning and begin to consider the complaint of an atheist parent who says it’s against the Constitution that he should have to make his daughter listen to “a ritual proclaiming that there is a god”.

When it does come up I imagine the young atheist will have a hard time restraining himself from a cry of shame as he stands and watches the nine justices bow their heads in prayer, as is their custom.

What clause in the Constitution does he believe is being violated? Why the very first amendment, the first item in the Bill of Rights.

It is written in the most guileless English: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

What could be simpler? What could be also vaguer? – The moment you reflect what the 18th Century meant by “establishment” for instance.

So many words have changed their meaning drastically since the 17th and 18th centuries – much of the Bible, much more of Shakespeare, is not understandable without explanatory footnotes.

To the Founding Fathers who wrote it “establishment” meant a religious sect.

What a pity they didn’t write the sentence the other way round: “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Oh but by the way, we’re not going as a nation to have a preferred sect, it’s too late for that, it would lead to endless dissension between the Congregationalists of Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Catholics of Maryland, the Quakers of Pennsylvania..

“So, to be clearly understood, gentlemen, let’s make it plain: we shall not have a national religion like the Church of England.

“That being so it must be made equally plain that no law of Congress can prohibit any man or woman practising his/her own religion freely, everywhere – in church, in the street, in Congress, at home, away – freely.”

For 150 years this reading was simply assumed by most people. As a learned history of the Supreme Court tells us: from the founding era at the end of the 18th Century, well into the 20th Century, religion was thought to be a significant and legitimate component of American public life.

By the 1940s, however, American public life had become largely secular.

One short, offhand sentence covers a tremendous fact: the decline of religious belief in the general population of the Western nations, deeper still in Europe.

In France in 1960 one family in three were weekly churchgoers. Today it’s one in eight.

In England today only six people in a hundred claim to be devoutly religious. In the United States the comparable devout figure is 65%.

But there’s been a dramatic increase in the Americans who don’t want religion to appear in any shape or form in public life.

Hence these continual appeals to the courts, from keeping religious symbols of any public building, all the way to banning the use of the word god in political speech.

To put it more formally, the atheists have gone bananas in the extent to which they misinterpret the first amendment – as you’ll see from the final appeal of this young father who wants “under God” taken out of the pledge of allegiance.

Well, let’s go back to the pledge and its invention.

It was composed by an ex-minister and published in a magazine called The Youth Companion.

When? That’s the point – 1892.

The Congress leapt at a happy idea. Since the upcoming 12th October marked the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America, that would be the perfect day to introduce the chanting of the pledge as a daily ritual in the elementary schools.

And so it was. But no mention of under God. “One nation under God” did not appear until 1954.

Why 1954 I wondered? I never saw a story explaining why. I thought some digging was necessary and it’s turned out that a little digging produced a load of pay dirt.

In early 1954 at a conference of the four allied powers occupying Germany, the United States, Britain and France were all for reunifying Germany under one government.

The Soviets were absolutely opposed and had in Europe armies five times the size of the combined allied armies. So that was that.

Far away in French Indochina the French were collapsing against Vietnamese guerrillas fighting to be independent.

The French begged President Eisenhower to help with American troops. Eisenhower said no troops.

But he made an impassioned public assertion that the defeat of Communism in South East Asia was vital. That if one country went Communist the neighbours could fall too, like a row of dominoes.

This was a pressing fear in Washington at that time, fears for Malaysia, Indochina, for Burma and India.

Also 1954 was the heyday of a middle western senator who, after a high State Department official had been convicted of passing papers to the Soviet Union, launched an immensely popular campaign to root Communists out of American government.

He gave us alarming numbers but he never actually came up with a positive Communist who had not declared himself.

Nevertheless, such was the fear of the time that from Moscow to Asia “godless Communism” might prevail.

President Eisenhower, many public men and women, used that phrase over and over.

And it was by executive order on Flag Day 1954 that President Eisenhower ordered the pledge now to read “I pledge allegiance to the flag” and so on, “and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible.”

So far as the young protesting father’s concerned, the villain of the peace is not – as most people think – the Congress of the United States but the late, great Ike, supreme commander of the invading forces in Europe and later president of the United States.

If the young father wins surely somebody will then mount a crusade to have erased from all dollar bills of every denomination the sentence printed in brazen capital letters: “In God we trust”.

And if he wins that will entail destroying every bill and totally reprinting the United States currency.

It would cost the Treasury – the taxpayer, that is – well, it’s been figured maybe $7-8bn.

But what’s that to the average taxpayer? He’s already going to have to find 20 billions for tidying up Iraq.

A recent visitor from Europe remarked at some point how often in daily conversation here he had heard the passing phrase “just before 9/11″, or “about a month after September 11″, or “Oh, 11 September changed all that.”

I tried to explain to him how we felt personally outraged, what a traumatic event it was and perhaps one you could not feel if you saw it on television from 3,000 miles away.

To have had this feeling and find it still there deep inside, since we were never told that American intelligence agents had foiled plotted atrocities as large and murderous as the bombing of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

How I wish I had read two years ago a piece I came on the other night when I picked up one of my standby bedtime books, Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi.

He’s writing about a recollection of life in the South where he’d spent so much time of his youth.

This passage, however, is about a sharp distinction between social conversation in the North and the South in the decade after the end of the Civil War. I imagine this piece must have been written about late 1870s or 1880.

“In the North one hears the war mentioned in social conversation once a month, sometimes once a week but as a distinct subject for talk it has long been relieved of duty.

“Given a company of six gentlemen, four possibly five were not in the field at all. Add six ladies and you will have added six people who saw little of the dread realities of the war and ran out of talk about it years ago.

“The case is very different in the South. There every man you meet was in the war and every lady you meet saw the war. The interest in the war is still vivid and constant, it’s what AD is, elsewhere they date from it.

“Things happened ‘since the war’ or ‘during the war’ or ‘about two years after the war’.

“You can’t talk pale, inconsequent matters when you’ve got a crimson fact in your head that you’re burning to fetch out. This gives the inexperienced stranger better than anything else the sense of what a vast and comprehensive calamity invasion is.”

Invasion is the key word. We felt that the bombing of the Towers and the Pentagon was an invasion of this country.

We came, as perhaps Europeans could not, to feel that this was the beginning of a war, of the Third World War and an alarming novelty of war: one against a worldwide enemy who is invisible

Shall we oust the electorial college?

“In 2000, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, seen here campaigning in Miami Beach, won more votes nationwide than his opponent, George W. Bush.”

MIT: 10/08

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Is the Electoral College, America’s quirky system of choosing its presidents, on its way to extinction?

Americans do not vote directly for president. They vote for slates of electors in each state.

Collectively, the electors are called the Electoral College. Each state gets a number of electors equal to its membership in the House and Senate. (The District of Columbia gets three.)

Minnesota, for instance, gets 10 electors. If Republican candidate John McCain wins the most votes in Minnesota on Nov. 4, the slate of 10 Minnesota McCain electors is chosen.

All but two states (Maine and Nebraska) use the winner-take-all system. This means that the candidate who gets the most popular votes in a state gets all of its electoral votes.

The next president will be the candidate who gets at least 270 of the total 538 electors.

The system can be idiosyncratic. Four times in the nation’s history, the winner of the largest number of popular votes did not win the largest number of electoral votes, and therefore did not become president.

It happened in 2000, when Al Gore got more popular votes, but lost the election to George W. Bush.

It also happened in:

1824, when popular vote winner Andrew Jackson lost the presidency to John Quincy Adams.

1876, when Samuel Tilden lost to Rutherford B. Hayes.

And 1888, when Grover Cleveland lost to Benjamin Harrison.

A relic of the early republic
The system is a relic of the early days of the republic when electors were supposed to be independent agents exercising their judgment in choosing a presidential candidate from a list of several contenders.

Today, electors are party loyalists who almost always vote for their party’s nominee.

On Friday, a group of legal scholars, political scientists, and systems specialists gathered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a conference on the Electoral College. Their focus? How to better engineer the system.

Scrapping the electoral vote system would likely require a constitutional amendment since the Constitution itself created the electoral system (Article II, section 1).

But a group called National Popular Vote says it has found another way.

So far, it has persuaded four Democratic-controlled legislatures (in Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii, and New Jersey) to pass a law which commits those states to give their electoral votes to whomever wins the national popular vote.

The accord takes effect once states with a combined 270 electoral votes agree to it.

The states would pledge to award their electoral votes to the popular vote winner even if he or she had not been the majority choice in their state.

Take Maryland as an example. Say 80 percent of voters in that state cast their ballots for the Democratic presidential candidate. But if a Republican candidate wins the national popular vote, under the state law, Maryland’s 10 electoral votes would go to that candidate.

Stop, Drop and Roll–

Let’s see– a war with losses that can not be calculated either humanly nor financially, recession/depression, our stock market gone to hell, the banking system crumbled, morale low, unemployment high, gas nearly rationed and out of sight per gallon— what healthcare we even had in the toilet. Humm– haven’t we been here before!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t know about you, but I grew up at the knee of those who spoke about times like these… and how they endured, of those who didn’t… and the climb back up.

The trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange just after the crash of 1929. On Black Tuesday, October twenty-ninth, the market collapsed. In a single day, sixteen million shares were traded–a record–and thirty billion dollars vanished into thin air. Westinghouse lost two thirds of its September value. DuPont dropped seventy points. The “Era of Get Rich Quick” was over. Jack Dempsey, America’s first millionaire athlete, lost $3 million. Cynical New York hotel clerks asked incoming guests, “You want a room for sleeping or jumping?”

Police stand guard outside the entrance to New York’s closed World Exchange Bank, March 20, 1931. Not only did bank failures wipe out people’s savings, they also undermined the ideology of thrift.

Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.

World War I veterans block the steps of the Capital during the Bonus March, July 5, 1932 (Underwood and Underwood). In the summer of 1932, in the midst of the Great Depression, World War I veterans seeking early payment of a bonus scheduled for 1945 assembled in Washington to pressure Congress and the White House. Hoover resisted the demand for an early bonus. Veterans benefits took up 25% of the 1932 federal budget. Even so, as the Bonus Expeditionary Force swelled to 60,000 men, the president secretly ordered that its members be given tents, cots, army rations and medical care.
In July, the Senate rejected the bonus 62 to 18. Most of the protesters went home, aided by Hoover’s offer of free passage on the rails. Ten thousand remained behind, among them a hard core of Communists and other organizers. On the morning of July 28, forty protesters tried to reclaim an evacuated building in downtown Washington scheduled for demolition. The city’s police chief, Pellham Glassford, sympathetic to the marchers, was knocked down by a brick. Glassford’s assistant suffered a fractured skull. When rushed by a crowd, two other policemen opened fire. Two of the marchers were killed.

Philipinos cutting lettuce, Salinas, California, 1935. Photographer: Dorothea Lange. In order to maximize their ability to exploit farm workers, California employers recruited from China, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the American south, and Europe.

Farmer and sons, dust storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936. Photographer: Arthur Rothstein.
The drought that helped cripple agriculture in the Great Depression was the worst in the climatological history of the country. By 1934 it had dessicated the Great Plains, from North Dakota to Texas, from the Mississippi River Valley to the Rockies. Vast dust storms swept the region.

The photograph that has become known as “Migrant Mother” is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month’s trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:
I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.


Dorothea Lange’s , now famous– “Migrant Mother,” destitute in a pea picker’s camp, because of the failure of the early pea crop. These people had just sold their tent in order to buy food. Most of the 2,500 people in this camp were destitute. By the end of the decade there were still 4 million migrants on the road.

Part of an impoverished family of nine on a New Mexico highway. Depression refugees from Iowa. Left Iowa in 1932 because of father’s ill health. Father an auto mechanic laborer, painter by trade, tubercular. Family has been on relief in Arizona but refused entry on relief roles in Iowa to which state they wish to return. Nine children including a sick four-month-old baby. No money at all. About to sell their belongings and trailer for money to buy food. “We don’t want to go where we’ll be a nuisance to anybody.” Children of migrant workers typically had no way to attend school. By the end of 1930 some 3 million children had abandoned school. Thousands of schools had closed or were operating on reduced hours. At least 200,000 children took to the roads on their own.  Summer 1936. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.

During the Great Depression, unemployment was high. Many employers tried to get as much work as possible from their employees for the lowest possible wage. Workers were upset with the speedup of assembly lines, working conditions and the lack of job security. Seeking strength in unity, they formed unions. Automobile workers organized the U.A.W. (United Automobile Workers of America) in 1935. General Motors would not recognize the U.A.W. as the workers’ bargaining representative. Hearing rumors that G.M. was moving work to factories where the union was not as strong, workers in Flint began a sit-down strike on December 30, 1936. The sit-down was an effective way to strike. When workers walked off the job and picketed a plant, management could bring in new workers to break the strike. If the workers stayed in the plant, management could not replace them with other workers. This photograph shows the broken windows at General Motors’ Flint Fisher Body Plant during the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37.

Waiting for the semimonthly , stipend relief checks at Calipatria, Imperial Valley, California. Typical story: fifteen years ago they owned farms in Oklahoma. Lost them through foreclosure when cotton prices fell after the war. Became tenants and sharecroppers. With the drought and dust they came West, 1934-1937. Never before left the county where they were born. Now although in California over a year they haven’t been continuously resident in any single county long enough to become a legal resident. Reason: migratory agricultural laborers. March 1937. Photographer: Dorothea Lange.


Lincoln Brigade Ambulance Corps. Group photo in New York of sixteen volunteers, American Medical Bureau. 125 American men and women served in the Spanish Civil War with the American Medical Bureau as nurses, doctors, and support staff. 1936-1939. The Spanish Civil War was the great international cause of the 1930s. Aided by Hitler and Mussolini, the Spanish military led a revolt against the progressive elected government. About 3,000 Americans volunteered to fight on behalf of the Spanish Republic. Spanish Civil War demonstration in New York. Press photo. They returned home with no funds, medical care… homes or jobs.

Members of the picket line at King Farm strike. Morrisville, Pennsylvania. August 1938. Photographer: John Vachon. In contrast to a frequently racist society, several unions were militantly integrationist.

Selling apples, Jacksonville, Texas. October, 1939. Photographer: Russell Lee. Many tried apple-selling to avoid the shame of panhandling. In New York City, there were over 5,000 apple sellers on the street. Durham, North Carolina, May 1940

I do not have the answers– BUT I know I do not want to bail out anything. I say let her fall!! It wasn’t built on anything ‘real’ to start with. I do not desire to bail out financial institutes that have a majority foreign interest. Too bad for their bad investments. — let the American and I mean AMERICAN PEOPLE,  100%–  hold the notes.
People are presenting many diverse plans, and that is a good thing– and I think we need to look at them with a sheer eye and mind– and not knee jerk ourselves quickly into Hades any further!! We can do this– I know the best of OUR COUNTRY can do this. We have made, or allowed to be made, too many fast, stupid and dangerous choices. Made quickly and made out of fear or exhaustion and confusion. Let us not do this again. We need to stop, drop and roll folks. Unite, stay focused, be patient… seek sound advice that has the 100% goal of making our country sound again, not lining the pockets of the few who have loyalties that reach beyond our shores and borders.

We can not dilude ourselves individually into thinking that these times can not impact us at these levels. All of us, no matter what are living daily on the slippery slope of crumbling system of foreign borrowed monies — and the note is due folks, the note is due. We, because of living on credit are all one or two pay checks from the street. Think about it.

Women, are you voting!!???

Just askin’…

This ever so short time until the historical November Election is a good reminder of the women’s suffrage movement–

[and if you haven't seen Iron-Jawed Angels yet, you should definitely see it-- I heard it's excellent! But I haven’t a clue where in Knoxville I would get to see it…. And I do not have HBO!]

Did you know that the movement was the first to picket the white house?  Did you know that it was inspired by the women’s suffrage movement in Great Britain, which taught and inspired Gandhi when he was studying law in Britain?  Definitely an amazing & inspiring tale–pass it on!

And really think about this—-
WHY WOMEN SHOULD VOTE

This is the story of our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. Many shunned by their families and many lost their jobs.

During the first night in jail…………….

(Lucy Burns)

…………and by the end of that night, they were all barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic.’ They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.

(Dora Lewis)

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cell mate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the ‘Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.
For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms.

{Alice Paul)

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, the men tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid in to her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections … soners.pdf

So, refresh my memory…. Some women won’t vote this year because–why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?… did you even register TO VOTE yet??? I guess we won’t talk about being an ‘informed voter’. That is another topic.

The articles about HBO’s new movie ‘Iron Jawed Angels‘… and it’s graphic depiction of the battle these women waged , just so I; all women– could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have our say… reminded me of Women’s History Class in College– and my own living history growing up in the DC area. I am ashamed to say I needed this reminder of how hard fought my right to vote was– and I didn’t bleed once, someone else did.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. It has never been just a right I have, it is also a responsibility and priviledge. Even if sometimes is inconvenient.

‘What would those women think of the way we use, or don’t use, our right to vote? All of us take it for granted seemingly, not just younger women. I am hoping your American right and obligation becomes valuable and priceless ‘all over again.’

It was also jarring to recall that Woodrow Wilson and his cronies had tried to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And thank God that doctor refused. Alice Paul was strong, the doctor said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’
It was also due to many courageous women like this– [women in your families pasts] — that contributed to another cause that needed addressing– The Civil Rights of ALL MANKIND! And their right to have a voice also!

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party – remember to vote.

History is being made. Set an example for your children and grandchildren. It is their future we are talking about.

A Radical Shift for Goldman and Morgan …

Actually it isn’t a shift at all–if you review Beaulmans previous post!!!! They were ready and waiting!
review:    Brasscheck TV: The Financial Meltdown Explained

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last big independent investment banks on Wall Street, will transform themselves into bank holding companies subject to far greater regulation, the Federal Reserve said Sunday night, a move that fundamentally reshapes an era of high finance that defined the modern Gilded Age.
The firms requested the change themselves, even as Congress and the Bush administration rushed to pass a $700 billion rescue of financial firms. It was a blunt acknowledgment that their model of finance and investing had become too risky and that they needed the cushion of bank deposits that had kept big commercial banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase relatively safe amid the recent turmoil.
It also is a turning point for the high-rolling culture of Wall Street, with its seven-figure bonuses and lavish perks for even midlevel executives. It effectively returns Wall Street to the way it was structured before Congress passed a law during the Great Depression separating investment banking from commercial banking, known as the Glass-Steagall Act.
By becoming bank holding companies, the firms are agreeing to significantly tighter regulations and much closer supervision by bank examiners from several government agencies rather than only the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, the firms will look more like commercial banks, with more disclosure, higher capital reserves and less risk-taking.
For decades, firms like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs thrived by taking bold bets with their own money, often using enormous amounts of debt to increase their profits, with little outside oversight.
They were the envy of Wall Street, dominating the industry’s most lucrative businesses, landing headline-grabbing deals and advising companies and governments around the world on mergers, stock offerings and restructurings.
But that brash model was torn apart over the last several weeks as investors lost confidence in the way they made those bets during the recent credit boom, when investment banks expanded with aplomb into esoteric securities, the risks of which were not easily understood.
Over several harrowing days, clients started pulling their money, share prices plunged and these banks’ entire enterprises were brought to the brink.
In exchange for subjecting themselves to more regulation, the companies will have access to the full array of the Federal Reserve’s lending facilities. It should help them avoid the fate of Lehman Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy last week, and Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch — both of which agreed to be acquired by big bank holding companies.
The decision also raises questions about whether the Federal Reserve will seek to regulate hedge funds, many of the largest of which closely resemble investment banks like Goldman.
Just a year ago investment banks, the titans of global finance, considered bank regulation a millstone to be avoided at all costs. Commercial banks have to subject themselves to restrictions on how much money they can borrow and what kinds of businesses they can be in. Lobbyists for firms like Goldman spent years fending off closer supervision of their business.
As bank holding companies, the two banks, whose shares have lost about half their value this year, will have to reduce the amount of money they can borrow relative to their capital.
That will make them more financially sound but will also significantly limit their profits. Today, Goldman Sachs has $1 of capital for every $22 of assets; Morgan Stanley has $1 for every $30. By contrast, Bank of America’s has less than $11 for every $1 of capital.
JPMorgan Chase acquired Bear Stearns this spring in a fire sale brokered by the federal government, while Bank of America has agreed to buy Merrill Lynch for $50 billion.
As bank holding companies, Morgan and Goldman will have greater access to the discount window of the Federal Reserve, which banks can use to borrow money from the central bank. While they were allowed to draw on temporary Fed lending facilities in recent months, they could not borrow against the same wide array of collateral that commercial banks could. The discount window access for investment banks is expected to be phased out in January.
It will take time for Goldman and Morgan to transform into fully regulated banks because they cannot quickly reduce how much money they borrow relative to their assets. The Fed and the Securities and Exchange Commission have had examiners at investment banks since March, giving regulators huge insight into their operations.
Both banks already have limited retail deposit-taking businesses, which they plan to expand over time. Morgan Stanley had $36 billion in retail deposits as of Aug. 31 and Goldman Sachs had $20 billion in deposits.
“We believe that Goldman Sachs, under Federal Reserve supervision, will be regarded as an even more secure institution with an exceptionally clean balance sheet and a greater diversity of funding sources,” Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive of Goldman, said in a statement on Sunday night.
John J. Mack, the chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley, said: “This new bank holding structure will ensure that Morgan Stanley is in the strongest possible position — with the stability and flexibility to seize opportunities in the rapidly changing financial marketplace.”
In recent days, Morgan Stanley had sought other ways to bolster its capital and had been in advanced talks with China’s sovereign wealth fund and others about raising billions of dollars, people briefed on the matter said Sunday night. It had also been talking about a merger with Wachovia, a large commercial bank based in Charlotte, N.C.
With their transition to operating as bank holding companies, those talks are likely to take a different form, because now Morgan Stanley can buy a commercial bank.
Meeting the Big-Boys:
For decades, one investment bank in Lower Manhattan has churned out a golden list of corporate executives and statesmen, wealthy financiers and nonprofit managers.
In many ways, Goldman Sachs is seen as the financial world’s equivalent of General Electric, the corporate powerhouse, or McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm. It is a training ground — and finishing school —from which other companies, along with quite a few governments, have frequently plucked their own top leaders.
And it has seeded some of the most successful private investment funds, many of them extending Goldman’s shadow from Greenwich, Conn., to London and beyond.

Goldman claims among its alumni Henry M. Paulson Jr., the current Treasury secretary; Robert E. Rubin, a Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and now Citigroup’s chairman; and Mario Draghi, the Bank of Italy’s governor. Jon S. Corzine, New Jersey’s governor, led Goldman for several years. Joshua B. Bolten, the current White House chief of staff, is a Goldman alum, and John A. Thain, the new chairman of Merrill Lynch, was Goldman’s president before he left to help rescue the New York Stock Exchange.
To insiders, all this is a result of Goldman’s elite culture, a sense of close-knit partnership that has endured despite the firm’s decision in 1999 to turn itself into a publicly owned corporation. To detractors, the firm is alternately a cult or a secretive fraternity like Skull and Bones at Yale, one focused on profits and power.
The bottom line on Goldman is that it is stocked with bright people who practically mint money. Even as the implosion of the subprime mortgage market forced many of its rivals to take multibillion-dollar write-downs in the summer of 2007, Goldman reported an increase in profit.
As 2008 progressed, Goldman avoided the deepening economic crisis that consumed two of its rivals – Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. In September, the company reported modest, though diminished, profits for the third quarter, beating expectations.
Morgan Stanley traces its roots back to the House of Morgan, the grandest name on Wall Street. But its last decade of operation has been one of recurrent turmoil.
In 1997, Morgan Stanley merged with Dean Witter, a retail brokerage firm, in the hopes that the reach of Dean Witter’s brokers and the sophisticated stock offerings of Morgan’s investment bankers would combine to create a nationwide powerhouse. The merged company was led by Philip J. Purcell, a Wall Street outsider whose leadership was been marked by a series of legal clashes and bitter internal dissent. Mr. Purcell was forced out in 2005; his place was taken by John J. Mack, a company veteran who had been unceremoniously dumped by Mr. Purcell.
Mr. Mack has revitalized a demoralized firm and achieved progress in weak areas like asset management and brokerage. But by encouraging a newly aggressive attitude toward trading — from his first days as chief executive, he said often and publicly that the firm would deploy its own capital more aggressively and enter higher-growth and riskier areas like mortgages and leveraged loans — he also laid the groundwork for the firm’s next round of trouble, which hit home when the subprime mortgage market melted down in 2007.
In two write-downs in late 2007, Morgan Stanley lowered the value of its subprime holdings by $9.4 billion, one of the largest devaluations on Wall Street. The investment bank announced on Dec. 19 that it would sell a $5 billion stake to the China Investment Corporation, that country’s sovereign wealth fund, to shore up its capital.

For God’s Sake Citizens!!! WAKE-UP!!!
Congress is on the brink of making a one-sided deal to give George W. Bush a blank check — offering nearly (or perhaps more than) a trillion taxpayer dollars to Wall Street to cover its bad debts. That works out to somewhere between $2000 and $5000 from every American family. So what do the taxpayers get in return?
Nothing. No new regulation or oversight to help avoid this kind of crisis in the future. No public interest givebacks to help people whose homes are in the hands of the banks. Perhaps most shockingly of all, the taxpayers get absolutely no share in the profits if and when these finance giants bounce back, even though we are now assuming a great deal of the risk.
This is worse than a bad deal — this isn’t a deal at all. This is a blank check to some of the richest companies in the world.
Congress doesn’t have to agree to a blank check. Instead, it can choose to impose a few sensible conditions on the bailout to ensure that it will be used responsibly. Here are a few suggestions
If the taxpayers are shouldering the risk, the taxpayers should reap any eventual benefits. We accomplish this by giving the government an equity stake in every company we bail out proportionate to the amount we give them.
If we’re paying (more than) our fair share, the CEOs and executives should have to, too. All of the fat cats who got us into this mess should relinquish their stock options and salaries until they start showing us, their investors, that they can once again be profitable. Future salaries should be linked to profitability.
No more campaign contributions from Wall Street executives and PACs. Taxpayer dollars should be used to get our nation out of a crisis. They cannot be used to fund giant, powerful lobby operations that will be used to strong arm Congress into making bad policy.
Better regulations start right now. Wall Street can’t expect to take thousands of dollars out of your paycheck without agreeing to increased transparency and more stringent oversight — the kind that might have helped avoid this mess to begin with.
Bankruptcy judges get broader leeway to help homeowners. Why should we lose our homes so the CEOs can keep theirs?
If Wall Street doesn’t like these conditions, then it is welcome to find private investors to help it out of this debacle. But if the American people are going to take this hit, then we must have a say in the terms of the deal — even if we don’t have an army of high-paid lobbyists at our disposal like they do.

Contact your Congressperson today! Make your voice heard.

TELL THEM–
I strongly urge you not to issue a blank check to the Wall Street giants who have steered our country into financial dire straits. You must address this crisis quickly and prudently. Do not give these companies a dime of taxpayer money unless they agree to the following conditions:
If the taxpayers are shouldering the risk, the taxpayers should reap any eventual benefits. We accomplish this by giving the government an equity stake in every company we bail out proportionate to the amount we give them.
If we’re paying (more than) our fair share, the CEOs and executives should have to, too. All of the fat cats who got us into this mess should relinquish their stock options and salaries until they start showing us, their investors, that they can once again be profitable. Future salaries should be linked to profitability.
No more campaign contributions from Wall Street executives and PACs. Taxpayer dollars should be used to get our nation out of a crisis. They cannot be used to fund giant, powerful lobby operations that will be used to strong arm Congress into making bad policy.
Better regulations start right now. Wall Street can’t expect to take thousands of dollars out of your paycheck without agreeing to increased transparency and more stringent oversight – the kind that might have helped avoid this mess to begin with.
Bankruptcy judges get broader leeway to help homeowners. Why should we lose our homes so the CEOs can keep theirs?
A blank check without these conditions would be nothing more than a reward for bad business practices. If the bailout does not include these conditions, you must oppose it.

Freedom of speech my ass…

found this online this morning, and my first thought…….martial law has arrived!!! There is a video at the link…

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/99433

more about “Incredible Documentary Footage of Mas…“, posted with vodpod

Now that we’ve had a few weeks to settle, a look back at Labor Day in the Twin Cities. Labor Day was of course also Day One of the Republican National Convention. Video was released today of an apparent mass arrest of utterly peaceful concert goers at the SEIU Labor Day concert.

My personal favorite moment in the tape is an off-camera exchange. Police in riot gear have surrounded loungers in a waterfront park. They announce, “Ladies and Gentlemen, You’re Under Arrest” and you hear one young woman say incredulously “Are you serious?”

Yep, I’m afraid they are.

Here’s the press release that came with the video, from the Glass Bead Collective:

BURIED TAPE REVEALS USE OF FORCE AND AN UNWARRANTED MASS ARREST OF BYSTANDERS DURING THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (September 18, 2008) Video released today shows the indiscriminate arrest of a crowd of two hundred at the waterfront across from a concert on Harriet Island Regional Park during this month’s Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The video includes multiple angles of the event as well as an interview with the cameraman who buried his footage and was one of almost two hundred people arrested for rioting without probable cause.

More than eight hundred people were arrested in St. Paul during the Republican National Convention. This video shows that at least twenty percent of the eight hundred plus arrested were seized without due cause.

Don’t know about any of you, but I didn’t see ANYTHING that warranted someone being arrested……either the footage was edited in favor of the protestors or this was a typical heavy-handed republican response to descent…..my guess would be the latter.

FREEDOM OF SPEECH MY ASS!!!

This Week is Constitution Week…

Mayors Declare Sept. 17-23 as “Constitution Week”

September 16, 2008 – Mayor Bill Haslam and Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale presented the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Knox County Council of Regents with proclamations declaring Sept. 17-23 as “Constitution Week” in Knoxville and Knox County.
The presentation took place during a meeting in Mayor Haslam’s office on Tuesday, September 16.

The DAR was instrumental in the creation of Constitution Week successfully petitioning Congress in 1955 to set aside this week each year to commemorate the document that is the foundation of our liberties and form of government.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed it into law the following year.

The United States Constitution was adopted on Sept. 17, 1787 and this year’s Constitution Week commemorates the 221st anniversary of that event.

According to the Knox County Council, the goals of the Constitution Committee of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution are to emphasize, understand, study and promote the historical events that led to our freedom.

In addition to supporting Constitution Week the DAR is also active in supporting the naturalization ceremonies in Knoxville during which several hundred people become new citizens of the United States.

During this week all schools receiving federal funds devote part of their curriculum to teaching students about the Constitution and what it means to the nation and its citizens.

The DAR Regents who met with the mayors on Tuesday included, Martha Cummings of the Emory Road Chapter; Carol Robbins of the Andrew Bogle Chapter; Martha Kroll of the Samuel Frazier Chapter; Nancy J. Montgomery of the James White Chapter; Caroline Murphy of the University of Tennessee Chapter; Alycia Truett of the Cavett Station Chapter; Nancy Webb of the Admiral David Farragut Chapter and Margaret Kensinger of the Bonny Kate Chapter.

Since they are having such a rough time in Iraq writing a new Constitution– we should just give them ours! We aren’t using it anymore.

The Guilty Speak– and write

The Guilty-Speak: Too bad it takes retirement to give someone the balls to speak out and up about things , they too did, that must change!! No wonder Obama had to go overseas– it is clear that ANYONE in the political arena evidently must play the game dictated by the ‘Party’ or they end up sitting on the bench only allowed to voice their opinion and stand. ie: Dennis and Ron.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07252008/watch3.html

Putting Government Back To Work

For more on money and politics, let’s go now to a man who saw first hand how the city’s money chase has crippled and corrupted Washington.

His name is Ernest ‘Fritz’ Hollings, and he spent 38 years in the United States Senate – a long and colorful run during which he made a name for himself as a passionate advocate for the hungry, a champion of balanced budgets, and a fighter for jobs in the textile industry. He called it quits four years ago and went home to South Carolina. But he was back in town recently, to see old friends and sign his new book, MAKING GOVERNMENT WORK. I talked with

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

 at a Senate office building on Capitol Hill just before his book party. Why did you write this book now?

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

I wrote the book because I could see what was wrong. I was raising money. I wasn’t running for reelection.

BILL MOYERS:

As a senator in your last term.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

As a senator in the last two or three years that’s all I was doing was raising money. And working for the campaign and for the party. The hardest working people in the world are the congressmen and senators. We work from early morning ’til late at night and all weekend and everything else. But we are working now, not for the country, but for the campaign.BILL MOYERS:

What do you mean?

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

All the time is fundraisers. All the time is money, money, money, money. In 1998, ten years ago, I ran and had to raise 8 an a half million. The record is there. Eight and a half million is 30,000 a week. Every week for six years. Each and every week for six years. Oh Dick Russell of Georgia-

BILL MOYERS:

Former senator.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

He says, “Now a senator is given a six year term rather than a two year term. He’s given six years, the first two years to be a statesman. Then the second two years to be a politician. His last two years a demagogue.” We use all six years to raise money. That’s why I wrote the book. To try to get the government off its fanny and cut out all the politics and let’s work for the country for a change.

BILL MOYERS:

What do you mean, it’s not working? You say you can’t get anything done in Washington anymore. What’s not getting done?

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Legislation. Anything meaningful. They fill up the tree both sides, it’s nothing wrong with Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell, they’re durn good leaders and they’re doing what the senators want done. And they’re all smart senators and they’re all responsible people. But they’re playing the game and the media hadn’t exposed. That’s why I wrote it. I’m trying to expose-

BILL MOYERS:

The game? What’s the game?

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

The game is money. I got to get the money to heck with constituents, I gotta get contributors.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

I’ve talked to the senators; you ask ‘em, they know they’re not gettin’ anything done. And they grown men and they’re conscientious women and everything else, they’re outstanding. But they know that all they’re doing is on a money treadmill. That’s all it is.

BILL MOYERS:

You write, “When I first came to the Senate 40 years ago, Senator Mansfield,” he was the majority leader then.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Yessiree.

BILL MOYERS:

“Had a vote every Monday morning to make sure”

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

To get a quorum.

BILL MOYERS:

“To get a quorum. And we worked until five o’clock on Friday every week.”

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

That’s right. We didn’t go home on the weekends. We tried to get out Thursday afternoon or night or at least early Friday morning to go to the West Coast for fundraisers. That’s why Hollywood and that’s why Wall Street has got that much influence. I’m not going to South Carolina. They got no money for a Democrat. I have to travel all over the country.

BILL MOYERS:

Years ago, you write, “On Washington’s birthday, a freshman senator would read the farewell address at 12 o’clock noon and then we’d have votes in the afternoon.”

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

We’d have votes. Now we have merged Lincoln’s birthday with Washington’s Birthday and take ten days off in February for fundraising. We have St. Patrick’s Day, ten day break for fundraising. Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, the month of August, Labor Day, Yom Kippur and Columbus Day that’s ten days gone in October. September, October, is fundraising. Everything is attuned for the campaign, the hell with the country.

BILL MOYERS:

A constant permanent campaign.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

That’s exactly what it is.

BILL MOYERS:

Commercial television is the big winner in this because that’s where so much of the money goes.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

That’s right; the rich have got all the speech they want. The poor got lockjaw. He can’t articulate out onto the television. And-

BILL MOYERS:

The poor can’t. They have no voice.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Yeah, and that’s the trouble. They tell you, don’t go waste time and don’t go see people and everything. Get on television and get a little tricky television and everything else like that. All these artists have got all kinds of different ways and different things like that to bring up and tricks to play.

BILL MOYERS:

The clear message is money has a stranglehold on our democracy.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

You gotta untie that money knot and then begin the government will begin to work.

BILL MOYERS:

So, you conclude therefore, if we limit the money, Congress will have time to work for the country, rather than–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

The campaign. That’s exactly right. They can talk to each other, they can deliberate. There’s no, you fill up the tree with amendments; the leaders know– legislation is made down on K Street. They tell you when to vote, when they got the votes.

ILL MOYERS:

Lobbyists.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

The leader brings it up, he knows where it’s going. And it’s not going anywhere, but he’s goin’ to get a vote, to make ‘em embarrassed about immigration, or about energy or about sub-prime mortgages. The votes are made for the campaign. It’s not to get anything done, bah humbug. You can forget about that. They’re not doing anything up here. And the senators and congressmen know it.

BILL MOYERS:

What do you make of the fact, as you point out in your book, three days before the first presidential primary in Iowa; The New York Times listed the positions of all the candidates on eight important issues. Not one of them on trade or outsourcing of jobs.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

That’s right. And they came way out. We had, in South Carolina, since President George W. Bush has been in; we have lost 94,500 manufacturing a net loss. We’re getting’ some more jobs in BMW in Spartanburg, but a net loss. And they never mentioned it in the early Democratic primaries. They’re-BILL MOYERS:

Why?

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Because they gotta get the money.

BILL MOYERS:

And who gives them the money?

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Wall Street, the banks, and business

 BILL MOYERS

Yeah, you say presidents negotiate trade agreements not to open markets, but to protect corporate America’s foreign investment. That’s how you see it.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Well, I know it. I mean look at the Congress. Under article one, section 8, the Congress shall regulate. Not free-

BILL MOYERS:

Regulate–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Congress regulates trade both domestic and foreign.

BILL MOYERS:

And you say in your book that Congress is not doing that.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

They can’t do it because they’ve gotta get the money. You put in a trade bill and down on your head comes THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and the big banks and The Business Round Table and The National Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufactures they’re not for domestic. They’re for Chinese and Indian manufacturer even The National Chamber of Commerce is not worried about Main Street, Peoria, Illinois; Main Street, Shanghai. You see, Henry Ford built up the middle class along with organized labor. He said I want the fellow making the car to be able to buy the car. So, he doubled the minimum wage. He put in health care and retirement costs and everything else of that kind, benefits. And so we had a good working relationship between labor and that– now, all of these trade agreements for the investors to protect their investment in China and India, but, uh-uh forget about labor.

BILL MOYERS:

You write–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS:

Your country and mine, that’s the United States of America, is going out of business?

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Oh yeah. What hasn’t been outsourced is being bought with that cheap dollar. Vodophone is gone to the Germans. Bell Labs is gone to the French with all their research and everything else. Westinghouse Nuclear with all of their research and technology and everything, is going to Toshiba, Japan. And Anheuser-Busch, the Belgians. Anheuser-Busch is beholden to the stockholders but nobody’s beholden to the people other than the congressmen and senators. And they’re not doing their job.

BILL MOYERS:

But they’re voting for NAFTA. They’re voting for these trade agreements.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Yeah, we’ve gone to an outright trade war and globalization and that’s were we’re AWOL. The way to get free trade is raise a barrier to a barrier and remove them both. Then you got free trade.

BILL MOYERS:

But when you were chairman of this very powerful Commerce Committee, here in the Senate, you’d make these cases.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS:

They would call you protectionist, they would call you–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Yeah, I am a protectionist. You– you got Social Security to protect you from the ravages of old age, Medicare to protect you from ill health. You got food and drugs and clean air, the water we drink, the food we eat, antitrust to protect the openness of the market and everything else. Before I open up Moyer Manufactory, you gotta have clean air, clean water, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, plant closing notice, parental leave, safe working place, safe machinery, antitrust. You can go to China for 58 cents an hour. They’d get you the plant, they own the workers, and you don’t have any investments so you don’t have to worry about it.

BILL MOYERS:

You say all we need to do to make the country work, is follow the lead of the forefathers to compete in globalization. To build the country’s economy Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, and Madison, made sure the first bill to pass the Congress in its history on July 4th 1789–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Seventeen eighty nine.

BILL MOYERS:

Was a–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Protectionist bill, tariff bill on 60 articles. We financed the country’s development with tariffs. That’s how we–that’s the Treasurer’s Building is the best building here in Washington. The best building in Charleston is the custom house. The best building in Brooklyn is the custom house. Treasury had the money. Teddy Roosevelt said, “Thank God I am not a free trader.” Oh, Lincoln, everybody says, I’m either for Roosevelt, I’m a Lincoln Republican. He was a big protectionist. Oh, he raised tariffs. They were gonna build a transcontinental railroad on the Abraham Lincoln. And they said we could get the steel cheap from England. He said, ah – wait a minute, we’re gonna build our own steel mills, and then we’ll have not only a steel capacity, but we’ll have the railroad. And so he was a builder. Everybody was a builder. Eisenhower, he protected oil. Jack Kennedy, I went to him, and he protected textiles. Ronald Reagan, he protected computers and Harley Davidson. He saved it. I saw George W. the other day about three weeks or a month ago, he was at the Harley Davidson plant, but protectionism saved it. That’s why they were making money at Harley Davidson. Oh, he got–

BILL MOYERS:

That’s because of–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Voluntarily restraint. Reagan got on steel, computers, machine tools, and automobiles. He got voluntary restraint and that’s the only way to do it. Sober up

BILL MOYERS:

Do you take any hope on this issue on money in politics? From McCain and Obama? Are they saying anything that or doing anything that–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

I happened to hear and I don’t know, but the finance chairman for Obama was just told to get up 300 million for the rest of the campaign till November. Also, get up millions for the Denver convention. And that’s all they’re doing is raising money.

BILL MOYERS:

You and John McCain sat on the same committee. You were chairman of the Commerce Committee–FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Oh yeah

BILL MOYERS:

He was a member of the committee–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

We were good friends. And I love him.

BILL MOYERS:

And how does he–

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

I know him, yeah.

BILL MOYERS:

And he used to be thought of as being an advocate of campaign finance reform.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Exactly right. And he was an advocate against these tax cuts. But now they’ve taken the maverick McCain and trying to make him the Christian right and the money raiser and everything else like that. They’re trying to make him an ordinary Republican. And you can tell he’s ill at ease. He, John McCain is not happy campaigning right now. I can tell you that. He’s– the media loves him. He had a room up there by the commerce committee with donuts and coffee and all and the press wouldn’t go to the press gallery. They’d go to McCain because they could get a statement out of him. And he was honest. He’d tell you how he felt. So, the press loves him and everything else. But they’re disappointed in him now, because they’re trying to change him over to qualify him as a Republican.

BILL MOYERS:

What would you do about the power of the press in our society today?

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Tell them that by gosh, tell the truth. You know the debate between Walter Lippman and John Dewey. And Walter Lippman said, what we oughta do is get the experts in finance and defense, and education and the various elements of government, and let them determine the company’s the country’s needs, and give it to the Congress and let ‘em pass it. John Dewey, the educator said, no, no, let the free press report the truth to the American people and the needs will be reflected, to the congressmen and senators in Washington. And he was right. But they’re not telling the truth anymore. They all were doing the headlines rather than headway. They’re all getting by with perceptions; they’re all getting by with pollster politics. They’re not talking about the needs. The country is ready, willing, and able to work, the government’s not working.

BILL MOYERS:

And the book is, MAKING GOVERNMENT WORK. Senator Fritz Hollings, it’s been good to see you again.

FRITZ HOLLINGS:

Good to be with you.