These days, I'll take whatever I can get in the hopes that there might be one decent American willing to stand up against the corruption against the Banks and Wall Street and our totally corrupt system. What I've learned is to be patient and wait for the right time, the right person and the right moment in our history.
Perhaps that person has finally come forward: AG Eric Schneiderman of New York, a Democrat. After doing a great deal of research on him, I believe that this person might actually have an opportunity for real change in our nation.
And yes, I am being 'cautiously optimistic,' but that is my nature, to keep hope alive, but I also believe in the rising momentum of the American people, who are simply sick to death of waiting for AG Holder to deal with this corruption. These 'sleazy Vegas type thugs from the Banks,' are still being allowed to break into people's homes, and put them out on the street, without any recourse or due process.
Andrew Cuomo, was a huge disappointment, who talked a great game, but then never followed up on any of this. We all know what happened to Eliot Spitzer, who got his 'pee pee' into big trouble, and Wall Street took him down, and threw him over the cliff like all the other 'road kill,' they have become so famous for. Of course it did not matter, that the rest of Wall Street was hooked on prostitutes and cocaine or the high life.
That is what I loved about the great, great movie, which won the Academy Award: Inside Job, because in that great truth telling movie, there were several segments of a Psychiatrist who talked about his patients (many of who were Wall Street and Bankers, without of course revealing their names) but had this absolutely stunning view of their malignant narcissistic and sociopathic personality disorders. What a great, film that it, and I hope all of you will take the time to view it.
BTW, just to give you a head's up, the new HBO mini-series, Too Big To Fail coming up is nothing more than a crappy piece of Republican propaganda (bankrolled by Republicans) in an attempt to re-write history, and make all the players in the destruction of our nation's economic calamity out as hero's. Don't even bother. The difference between the two films is so ridiculous, that. Too Big to Fail, might as well have been produced by Fox News.
I have a lot of screen writer friends who live in West Hollywood, who are just laughing about this new piece of shit as a mini-series. Most of all they are amazed at the role that Paul Giamatti took as Ben Bernanke. In this farce of a movie, they've turned Giamatti/Bernanke into Albert Einstein. OMFG.
One of my best friends, who is a fellow screen writer and lives in West Hollywood wrote me this note:
'How in the hell can Paul Giamatti who did such an amazing job as Sam Adams, on the HBO series, play this role?' I guess that means, we are all whores now, in every sense of the word. Everyone in my neighborhood is disgusted at this film. God bless, Charles Ferguson and 'Inside Job.' One film tells the truth, the other is full of lies.'
Back to my central theme of this diary:
Matt Taibbi's great new article on his blog, about the new sheriff in town, AG, Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat from New York is worth reading about:
Got a chance to meet Josh Rosner (co-author, with Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson, of the new book Reckless Endangerment) last night during an appearance on Eliot Spitzer’s In the Arena. We were brought in to talk about the new investigation of the banks that apparently is being launched by New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, which looks like it might be the first for-real attempt at a prosecution of the systemic corruption that led to the financial crisis.
Schneiderman’s probe, news of which came out yesterday in this piece by Morgenson, reportedly targets the banks’ mortgage securitization process during the bubble years. Morgenson reported that Schneiderman is focused on at least three companies: Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and old friend Goldman, Sachs.
This investigation has the potential to be a Mother of All Nightmares situation for the banks for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the decision to go after the securitization process is a total prosecutorial bullseye. This is the ugly heart of the wide-scale fraud scheme of the bubble era. Again, the business model during this time was a giant bait-and-switch scam. Sleazy lenders like Countrywide and New Century first created huge masses of bad loans, committing every conceivable kind of fraud to get people into loans (from doctoring income statements with white-out to phonying FICO scores to engineering fake appraisals). They then moved the bad loans quickly to the big banks, which pooled them and chopped them up (this is the “securitization” process), sprinkled hocus-pocus math on them, and them sold them to suckers around the world as AAA-rated securities.
http://www.rollingstone.com/...
To see a great video follow the link from one of the 'rare times' that CNN put Taibbi on. And also read the full article if you have the time, because this could be a major turning point if 'all of us can support,' State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, of NY. (BTW, I find it amazingly telling, that every single time that Utube puts on any video's from CNN that include information about Goldman Sachs or the Banking/Wall Street industry there is a message that reads when you try to embed it: Disabled by request). Who in the hell is doing that?
Another great article I found was this one that includes a great Q & A report on a great new Democrat, AG Schneiderman of NY:
Q.
During the campaign you embraced the moniker Sheriff Sidemanan In terms of Wall Street, what are your priorities?
A.
My actual statement during the campaign was I want to be the sheriff of Wall Street, Albany and Main Street. I’m going to go after crime and corruption wherever it is. But I did focus particularly on the need to restore public confidence in essential institutions of both the public and private sector. I don’t think it’s any secret that the public has lost confidence in the state government, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on issues related to public integrity. But I also have found as I’ve traveled around the state the people have lost a lot of confidence in essential institutions of the private sector.
Q.
Are there any particular corners of Wall Street you plan to shine a light into?
A.
There are a few. I’m very interested in the more grass-roots consequences of the economic meltdown, issues related to mortgage foreclosures, debt collection and the practices of credit card companies and others who hold a lot of consumer debt. I think the issue of ratings agencies is still not completely behind us. I think obviously the foreclosure crisis is something that has to be addressed immediately and there’s a 50-state action by all the attorney generals relating to foreclosures and bank misconduct, so that’s something that I’ll be in from day one.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/...
What I appreciate most of all about AG Eric Schneiderman, is this: he just blew the entire lid of of the Biggest Whore of them all: AG Tom Miller who was supposedly heading up all the so called 50 State AG's new crappy, crappy deal, whereby Tom Miller was supposedly representing the so called 'deal between the Banks/and Wall Street' has been fully exposed for the total whore he really is: He sold out not only his own state, but managed to think the could actually get away with selling out all the other State AG's while he took in tons of money, his ultimate pay off would be: to push Elizabeth Warren out of the way for her job.
Here is all I can say for this crass low class piece of shit: YOU GOT YOUR CAUGHT, AND YOU SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN CAUGHT, AND I'M GLAD YOU DID. Screw you Tom Miller. Kudo's to AG Schneiderman for putting the big kibosh on that asshole.
Sorry for the caps people, but I really hate this sack of shit.
Although it is typical for candidates to raise large sums of money in the month immediately preceding the election, Miller’s out-of-state donations in 2010 were a significant departure from his two previous campaigns, in terms of the amount of money he raised, where it came from, and when.
Miller raised $785,000 in 2010, more than double the $327,196 he raised for his 2006 and 2002 campaigns combined.
Miller’s 2010 campaign was unprecedented in the amount of contributions received from outside of Iowa: $497,000, or 63 percent of his 2010 total, came from out-of-state donors. This is a significant break from his previous two reelection campaigns, when less than one-tenth of his campaign funds came from outside of Iowa.
To see a total and full and horrifying accounting of this total whore who was more than willing to back of the total MERS whitewash, and destroy centuries of property right for Americans: see this:
http://4closurefraud.org/...
Another person, Congressman Alan Grayson who called it out in the first place deserves a great deal of credit:
Yeah, I know Alan Grayson had his own problems, and he might have rubbed some of the wrong way, but after all this time, I know one thing:
He had the courage to tell the damn truth. $40,000 thousands dollars for every woman, man and child in 18 months. And let's not forget that Congressman Alan Grayson was the first to call for Medicare for All, and had the courage to speak this truth about the real death panels: The Republicans answer for Health Care is pay up or die. Who spoke out louder for the truth than he did? He was a self mad man who who has a beautiful Polynesian wife with 5 children, and what is more, he knew Wall Street backwards and forwards, and he knew exactly where they were stealing from us, he received death threats from phone calls, but hey, let's not go there. It's too truthful. He endlessly defended President Obama over and over again, but because he was way to smart, about how the system was being destroyed, along with Bernie Sanders, was buried by both parties, but hey, don't let that get in your way of thinking. So go ahead, and call him him what you will. I will not. He had guts, and courage, and that is no longer popular in our party is it? Yeah, he was a bit of a showboat, but who do you think Sarah Palin or Donald Trump or Newt Gingrich are? Get over it. You fight fire with fire, of you lay down and let people like Karl Rove destroy and swift boat Johny Kerry and Max Cleland. Those are the new rules of engagement. But instead, we all keep clinging to this old ideology: We are better than they are because we are are so 'civil' and we must raise their scorch and burn politics back where it should be into the so called 'civility' where we can all pretend that this will never happen in our nation again. The Republican's could not give a flying fuck about civility. Lord knows when a member of Congress, called President Obama, for the first time in our history during a major speech: 'You are a liar' and got away it with, that we should know these Republicans are ever going to change their tactics. Yes, they are racists, they are cut throats, and they do not care about out nation.
This is exactly why I never waste my time on doing diaries about Republicans. My emphasis is holding our own Democrat's feet to the fire, otherwise, what does Crashing the Gates really mean? I let the MSM do all their gossiping, and confetti throwing on a daily basis, but to write about what they are talking about is simply enables our own party not to deal with the issues: We need jobs, and we need them now. We need to stop the corruption that has destroyed our housing market, our jobs, our pension funds and savings, now.
This week alone, the Republicans and some Democrats, continued to allow the Oil subsidies continue. This week alone, President Obama talked about giving another two billion dollars to Egypt and other countries, while ours is falling apart and to continue the endless wars. (Why isn't Saudi Arabia who has trillions of dollars from their oil profits paying this money?) This week alone the Patriot Act was extended for another four years. No, this is not change I can believe in.
Three men and more have been duly destroyed, or have just given up and played the game: Andrew Cuomo, Eliot Sptizer, and Alan Grayson. And BTW, I want to give great credence to Matt Stoller, who has moved on to the great Roosevelt Institute who for worked tirelessly for Alan Grayson, and is kind enough to keep me informed on these matters on a daily basis with his emails to me.
What struck me this week, as absolutely astounding, as how the former group known as Black Water, has been given a fully amazing and huge contract by Saudi Arabia, (our total and so called friends) to give them this: And BTW, the contract stipulates: These new mercenaries who were destroyed by our own media, as just another Mai Massacre group, and got off by paying a 'feckless fine' now have gotten this great new contract:
WASHINGTON - The crown prince of Abu Dhabi has hired the founder of private security firm Blackwater Worldwide to set up an 800-member battalion of foreign troops for the United Arab Emirates, The New York Times reported on Sunday.
The Times said it obtained documents that showed the unit being formed by Erik Prince's new company Reflex Responses with $529 million from the UAE would be used to thwart internal revolt, conduct special operations and defend oil pipelines and skyscrapers from attack.
The newspaper said the decision to hire the contingent of foreign troops was taken before a wave of popular unrest spread across the Arab world in recent months, including to the UAE's Gulf neighbours Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
Do you know what that contracts includes: NO MUSLIMS ALLOWED.
http://news.yahoo.com/...
And then there is this:
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will announce plans Thursday to funnel billions of dollars in economic aid to Egypt and Tunisia as part of a broader effort to inject democracy into the Middle East and North Africa.
Obama will unveil a massive package of economic measures, including up to $1 billion in debt relief and another $1 billion in loan guarantees, during a speech on U.S.-Middle East policy set for Thursday morning at the State Department. Other pieces of the package include a new trade partnership with the region and a fund for stimulating regional private sector investments.
In a Wednesday preview of the speech, senior administration officials said the U.S. singled out Tunisia and Egypt for economic help because they are the best positioned countries to serve as role models for democratic reform in the area, which has been gripped by anti-government protests in recent months.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Meanwhile, our troops are beyond weary, and morale is at an all time low, as are their mental health conditions:
WASHINGTON -- As fighting and casualties in Afghanistan's war reached an all-time high, U.S. soldiers and Marines there reported plunging morale and the highest rates of mental health problems in five years.
The grim statistics in a new Army report released Thursday dramatize the psychological cost of a military campaign that U.S. commanders and officials say has reversed the momentum of the Taliban insurgency.
The report is a snapshot of the health of the forces in Afghanistan last year, drawn by a mental health team that polled more than 900 soldiers, 335 Marines and 85 mental health workers on the battlefield in July and August, as troops surged into the country under the Obama administration's new strategy for fighting the insurgency.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
And now we yet another 4 year extension of the Patriot Act:
WASHINGTON — Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.
The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government.
Support for the extension was unclear. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wanted tighter restrictions on the government's power and may seek to amend it. In the House, members of the freshman class elected on promises of making government smaller were skeptical.l
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
All of these issues are interconnected: The endless wars, the nation building in support of the MIC by our government, as our own domestic needs are being gutted by both parties. Still there are no jobs on the horizon as our nation is completely falling apart.
I'm more than willing to honestly still believe and put my cynical nature aside, and believe in that old adage: Charity begins at home, and if AG Eric Schneiderman (a true Progressive Democrat) is the right man, for the right job, at the right moment in history, I will support him in his efforts. This is what the term grass roots really means.
Hell is going to freeze over before AG Eric Holder is going to do his job, and BTW, everyone has already done his job for him including, Senator Carl Levin, and the fake Pecora Commission, and Phil Agelides. What else is it going to take? All the gosh dern evidence is out there now, and still no one is doing a damned shit about it, and still we are getting the same treatment: Now there are new 29.9% interest rates on credit cards, and new swipe fees for using your ATM cards. Great.
I hope that this is the moment in time when Americans and Democrats will stand up for AG Eric Schneiderman, of New York, as he takes on Wall St./Banking corruption. Sometimes it simply takes one candle in the wind to set off a bond fire, that has simply been waiting to be ignited. Sometimes this happens at the right time in history, when it is allowed to finally gain the recognition it deserves.
Today I sent AG Eric Schneiderman of New York, $50.00 (I did not have to spend,) and a letter of support for his efforts. That is the way I will spend my money this year, and the only way I will spend my money on behalf of any Democrats. You want my money? Great, stand up for the Middle Class and poor, the Unions and stand against the gutting of our nation by the Corporations and the MIC. No more stripping of the final safety nets for bullshit 'shared sacrifices.'
http://www.ag.ny.gov/
I refuse this dictum of supporting the endless wars, and not returning to ending this corruption any longer, or giving any other nation any more money, when we need it at home. I refuse this dictum of stripping our Safety Nets, to pay for the so called 'shared sacrifice' when President Obama, keeps standing in the shadows and refusing to stand up for the Middle Class and poor. I refuse this dictum, to support other Nation building for the MIC, when our nation is in dire need of help. To me, supporting the troops has become, not supporting the endless wars, and to bring them home, with real jobs that we all need.
Don't lose the faith, and keep going.
Thanks as always.
Ms. B.