Insider Trading, John Boehner and The STOCK Act Travesty

by Nomad

Even though insider trading is a serious crime, until Obama, government officials were immune from prosecution.

New legislation was supposed to eliminate this oversight and it was supposed to be a major step in the right direction. It didn't quite work out that way.

Investigative journalist John Vibes, writing for the Activist Post, reported recently that less than two weeks before the economic collapse of 2008, several members of Congress took their money out of the stock market.

According to Vibes' sources, many top government officials and staff were given advance knowledge that market was about to melt down in secret meetings with the Fed and the Treasury Department. (For the full story, click on this link.)
With this information, they engaged in insider trading.

It was revealed that Senator Shelley Capito and her husband sold $350,000 worth of Citigroup stock at $83 per share, just one day before the stock dropped to $64 per share. Another shady trader was Congressman Jim Moran, who had his biggest trading day of the year days after the secret meeting, sellings stock in nearly 100 different companies.

Two weeks is a lot of advanced warning. In Washington, as the collapse approached, politicians on both sides were more interested in saving their own skins than protecting the citizens. 

Who Was and Wasn't Above the Law

However, the most amazing part of this tale is that, despite this use of privileged information for private benefit or at least, safeguarding, no laws were actually broken. 

Why The Proposed Ryan-Murray Budget Deal Renders the Tea Party Powerless

by Nomad

Here's a little Interesting news. Reuters is reporting today that:

Budget negotiators in the U.S. Congress have reached a two-year agreement aimed at avoiding a government shutdown on January 15 and setting federal government spending levels through October 1, 2015.

While it might seem like a step in the right direction, it is hard not to be a little cynical about the deal. Even as a first symbolic step toward a real bipartisan compromise, the fine print reveals some horrors for the unemployed. (I'll talk about that at a later date.) What's more interesting is the underlying motive for the Republican party to offer any deal at all.  

This budget deal,  hammered out by Washington Democrat Senator Patty Murray, and Republican Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, may be bipartisan but it is hard to see why anybody would claim it was progress. (One site actually hailed it as "a new era of cooperation." Where have these people been the last five years, I wonder!)

Congressional negotiators reached a modest budget agreement Tuesday to restore about $65 billion in automatic spending cuts from programs ranging from parks to the Pentagon, with votes expected in both houses by week's end.

Now, sixty-five billion might seem like a large figure to you and me but when it comes to government spending it is practically nothing. A superpower can spend that money much faster than you can blow your nose.

In fact, these were spending cuts to the budget which have now been restored. So count that as a step back from the reducing government spending. Shrinking big government, (except when it came to the military) has been the rallying cry of the Republicans since Reagan's day. 

Reducing government spending was supposed to be what the last budget bust-up in Washington was all about. Remember that shutdown thingy?

And that turned out to be a political disaster for Congress, but especially for the Republicans. So it is no surprise that somebody in the party would be happy to avoid a repeat of that disgrace next January. 

Apparently the leader of the House John Boehner-who, in the end, just wants to be loved, sent Pretty-boy Ryan into the thick of the negotiations. It was probably a wise but cynical move on his part.

Clearly the Tea Party will take one look at this and begin frothing at the mouth.

Delusions over Tea Time

Despite the damage done to the Republican party in October, threats of shutting down government -basically holding the government hostage-was the only weapon that the Tea Party minority had. This deal effectively takes that loaded pistol out of the hands of the petulant baby.

And this baby has a nasty disposition and has some old Republicans scared for their political lives.

The Tears of John Boehner and the Coming Devastation of Public Education

by Nomad

For some who watched this 60 minutes clip, (ok, a few people) this could have been Boehner's moment of glory.

Here was a man who, it appeared, sincerely cared about the middle class. The American Dream. Here was a man who cared about the children.
However, to the vast majority of viewers, I suspect they felt that it was a shoddy bit of political play-acting.
Many, like myself, thought it was both amusing and frightening. (In that clip, he looked like the guy you would think twice sitting next to on the subway.)

But, taking a closer look at his statement:

Boehner: I can't go to a school anymore. I used to go to a lot of schools. I used to see all these little kids running around. Can't talk about it.
Stahl: Why?
Boehner: Uhh. (warbling voice) Making sure..uh. That these kids got a fair shot at the American Dream (sniffing) like I did. It's important.

But what does "a shot at the American Dream" actually mean for a man like Boehner?

To the Fiscal Brink: Will the GOP and the 1% now destroy the US economy?

by Nomad

B

rinkmanship is defined by Wikipedia as ”the practice of pushing dangerous events to the verge of disaster in order to achieve the most advantageous outcome.” 

When it comes to the US economy- which has been hobbling along like a forsaken three-legged dog- both parties have been testing the wills of their opposition and how it will end is, at the moment, anybody’s guess. What started out as intransigence on the part of the Republicans soon became open obstruction not only to the president’s proposals but to any good-faith negotiation at all. But sometime last year, things took a strange turn. 
To understand how this escalation happened, we need to return to Wikipedia:

In order for brinkmanship to be effective, the threats used are continuously escalated. However, a threat is not worth anything unless it is credible; at some point, the aggressive party may have to back up its claim to prove its commitment to action.

For the last year- but mostly all through Obama’s first term- the Republican refused to budge when it came to the budget. Austerity ( at least, selectively defined), they claimed, was the only way out of this national debt problem. With the impending automatic and across the board budget cuts called sequestration, that threat is very creditable indeed. 

How the nation could have found itself in such a mess is perhaps an example of the breakdown in the political system. With the defeat of their candidate in the election, the Republicans now find themselves in a bind, an inexcusable situation, largely of their own making.