Dissolving The Past And Future

What is the past? Is it real anymore? Does it hide like a child from a parent when he/she has done something wrong? When you bring it up driving,is it present like the roses growing on the side of a public wall? Is it shared like an apple with a friend who has just ate potatoes but wants something sweet. Can the past be in two minds equally at the same time?

Why do we remember the past if it's gone? Does it hold value anymore? Who cares about the past? The past can hurt you if you let it. It can grab you when your walking in a park and make you discouraged about the present. If it upsets you,it laughs like someone watching a video of a person getting scared in a dark hallway. The past can dig a hole for you so deep that it controls sunlight. If the past is hurting you,give it the slip and make it wonder where you are. The present has no past if you want it. Tell your mind to stop thinking about it and it will go away. Stay in the present as much as possible. Watch the road..really watch the road...see the clouds come and go. The future and the past are cousins. They play the same game,a game you can never win. If a person comes before you, he/she is the most important thing in the world. Thinking about next month removes you from the beauty before you. When you realize that beauty,you are free.

Without A President In America

A committee should govern the executive branch,not one president. Power should be shared like the other branches of government. Ultimate authority isn't something that can rest in one person but should come from many. A platform should be elected,not a personality. If the Democrats win in 2020, let Harris,Warren,Biden and Buttigieg govern the country. Each could specialize in areas that interest them and interact with the given cabinet members. Each could travel to sections of the country or represent us at international meetings more frequently without difficulty. All would share the office equally and have full authority when speaking to the public after coming to a consensus. They could live outside the White House and open it up to more offices with greater support from advisors. The executive branch could be more transparent with group discussions of the designated leaders televised if appropriate. Power would come from cooperation and open to new ideas that would improve the platform the citizens have elected.

NBA: Just a business?

What is a fan of a sports team like the Brooklyn Nets? Is he or she similar to a movie or music fan? Does a fan always have to have his team win? Is there more to it than rooting for success, championship or bust? Does he or she agree with many that it's just a business like Pannara or Met Life.
I think it's a lot more than just a business and relationships form just as one does in any community. As a fan,I care about everyone on the team and want even the last player in the rotation to display the skills that got him or her to a professional team(I would mandate every player get a least one period to play). I get locked in on all the players within a given year, especially the new arrivals from the draft. I've been a Brooklyn Nets fan for the past eight years,especially the past two.
Mobility for NBA players has been a success for individual players and teams who want to be winners in the league. There is only one winner in the NBA and Toronto was the champion this year. Unfortunately,they lost their best player to free agency. My team got three free agents this year,Kevin Durant, DeAndre Jordan and Kyrie Irving. I should be happy with those moves because it is a big upgrade from last year but I'm not.
I wanted them to stay with DeAngelo Russell.(traded to the Warriors) who I have been critical of for his lack of defense and turnovers. With that said,he has improved offensively and I have seen his desire to be a productive member of the team in the areas that he needed to work on. A few other members of the team are gone who were getting old or didn't perform to their contract. I will miss them as they move on to new teams. I wanted small changes to the team I grew to respect and understand. I knew their strengths and weaknesses. Many older players couldn't be signed to new contracts because all the money went to the expensive free agents.
Winning isn't everything to me. I was a very happy fan with the season the Brooklyn Nets had last year( made the playoffs ). I just wanted to add a few pieces,good power forward and a stretch five. No great changes, everyone was important to me from that team. I like players who are humble and know their place on a team. Superstars,Irving and Durant, scare me because I want to believe in them but they seem to have bad track records, especially with the teams that pay them and the fans that invest time in their games. I hope they play hard and respect their teammates and have joy in their playing. Time will tell if Marks made the right moves.

Saving Migrants From U.S. Border Sins

Nicaragua,El Salvador, Guatemala and Hondorus have thirty-two million people living in their combined countries. Fifty percent of these citizens live in extreme poverty(16 million). Children make up half of that population, so eight million families need assistance.

I want to give them a UBI of four thousand dollars each year to help with their economic hardship. This basic income approach will hopefully stem the tide of migrating to America. Four thousand times eight million equals thirty two billion dollars. That's a good amount but we understand that a new wall would cost that much. Take a look at the defense budget($712 billion) and the number of planes the Air Force has. It has thousands of planes that cost tens of millions plus B-2 Stealth bomers that have a 3.2 billion price tag. We currently have a foreign aid budget of fifty billion and a border patrol budget of seven billion. A fifty billion total budget for Homeland Security. We can find the money in our discretionary budget.

If $4,000 is too high an amount,$2,000(16 billion) could do the trick. The GDP for individuals in these countries is around $7,000 a year. America is close to sixty thousand.  UBI can be a multifier(5x) for consumer spending in the targeted countries. This added revenue in taxes would help their governments help with additional social services.

All this is worth a try..... unlikely,but it's a start to help our neighbors overcome hardship.

Buddhism: My Thoughts

Buddhism is an educational movement.A system that trains the mind and tries to help an individual overcome unsatisfactory periods.The practice is difficult and great effort is needed because our mind has developed habits that generate the same unsatisfactory periods.We tend to believe our thinking even if it might be debilitating to our contentment.How we view the world and our intentions are paramount in overcoming anxiety,discomfort and fear.Buddhists believe,through direct experience,that humans are part of nature and function due to conditions and causes.Just as plants,trees and animals function with the conditions presented to them. The main problem of an unsatisfactory period is our reaction to the present moment.If we cling to a desired outcome,expect pleasure without pain,control our experience in any way,we condition ourselves to cause anxiety.Our reactions to experience are keys that open or close doors to satisfaction.The educational movement is internal, sees the external as sacred,and accepts experience completely, without identification.Being aware,mindful without aversion,brings a peaceful state because one's personality,ego,isn't involved.All humans are mindful,experiencing the world before self generated thoughts.That mindfulness is non-judgemental and doesn't identify good and bad,pleasure or pain.Once we start to identify and desire certain outcomes,unsatisfactory periods begin.We create the unsatisfactory experience through our thinking.Attachment to outcome develops and our mind remembers our reactions and wants to satisfy the personality that created them.These attachments grow and become stronger if one doesn't practice the antidotes.

According to Buddhist beliefs,there is no permanent self.Everything is impermanent,in flux,moving like a river.Just look at nature,our bodies, to see birth,decay and everything between.Our thoughts are the same,they come and go.We change every day ,even every moment.Nothing is permanent.Even if it is in flux,it is a good world,a sacred one with humans who have the potential,Buddha nature,to be happy and content all the time.Because the mind is impermanent,we have the ability to change the conditions we have created.The first precept of the Eightfold Path is Right View.It is a view to be part of something instead of a separate entity.It posits that humans are part of the body of life,parts of a whole.That we should see ourselves as equals with others on a quest to be happy and content.The impermanence of our lives supports the view that we are not permanent islands but interconnected with everyone on many levels.Our personalities keep telling us the world revolves around us and that we are the most important person in the world because of our experience trying to control the sensual world.But doesn't everyone have this similar experience.We share our desire for happiness,comfort and love.The more one looks to dissolve our personality,ego,the more one becomes one with the body of life.All religions support this concept but use other doctrines.The more our personality grows apart from the whole,unsatisfactory periods will last.Appreciation of life,the whole body of life,brings peace to the mind. The ego is diminished by acts of patience and kindness to oneself and others.The lose oneself is to gain insight into liberation,a freedom from a desire to have something or be somebody that you currently want to be.It is an acceptance of everyone as is, without judgement,knowing that humans are just natural conditions.

More to come.

More From Rachel Maddow's" Drift"

Maddow created a to-do list in "Drift"

Going to war,being at war,should be painful for the entire country,from the start.When we ship troops off to battle,we should pay for it.Raise it through taxes and war bonds.

Lets do away with the secret military.The Air Force,not the CIA,should operate the use of drones and we should know about it.The same goes for the policy makers giving them the orders.The chain of command should never be obscured by state secrets.

Let's quit asking the military to do things best left to our State Department,or the Peace Corps or FEMA. Also stop military leaders from making judgments and decisions about policy.Presidents shouldn't defer to military commanders as whether or not to bomb Iran,etc.It's no favor to the military and it's an affront to the Constitution.

The life of the National Guardsman or Guardswoman should be mostly peacetime,civilian .When we ship these men and women off to war,civilian communities all over America should feel that loss.Today,they are really full time soldiers.

Let's wind back the privatization of the war and the military's dependence on contractors for what use to be military functions.Private contractors are not cheaper and should be held accountable for rape,murder or fraud and be prosecuted.Troops need to peel their own potatoes again,drive their own supply trucks,build their own barracks and guard their own generals.

Our military and weapons prowess is a fantastic and perfectly weighted hammer,but that doesn't make every international problem a nail.

Let's ensure that our nuclear infrastructure shrinks to fit our country's realistic nuclear mission.Let's decide exactly what we mean to deter with our nukes,and expend just exactly what we need to do that and nothing more.

Going to war is not one man's responsibility.The "imperial presidency" malarky that was invented to save Ronald Reagan's neck in the Iran-Contra,and that played as high art throughout the career of Richard Cheney,is a radical departure from previous views of presidential power,and it should be taught and understood that way.It isn't a partisan thing.Republicans and Democrats alike have options to vote people into Congress who are determined to stop with the chickenshittery and assert the legislature's constitutional prerogatives on war and peace.

Executive Power,Privatization And Drifting Into War(Drift/Rachel Maddow)

Maddow dedicates her new book"Drift" to Dick Cheney who refuses to be interviewed by Rachel.9/11 has led us into Kabul at a rate of $5 billion a month over ten years and counting.It is still one of the four poorest countries on earth.In Kabul,there is a rich neighborhood(Wazir Akbar Khan) built by the Afghan elite with profits from the international influx of cash that accompanied the mostly American influx of war that is used to house Western aid agencies,journalists,politicians,diplocrats and private contractors who need a place to stay.You'll find properties renting for $7,000 to $25,000 a month.Of course,the elite who built these mansions are absent landlords living in Dubai,U.S and Europe.

One could also consider the water treatment plant built in Fallujah by a South Carolina company with an initial $33 million contract that was completed for $108 million seven years after its start.The project only managed to support one fourth of the city as residents labeled it "the big stink".

In the U.S.,9/11 has produced the crown jewel of sprawling intelligopolis called Liberty Crossing that houses the National Counterterrorism Center.After 9/11,the annual intelligence budget of $30 billion was increased 250% that has info gathering from 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies coordinated by the Center.The Center is slated to double in the next decade.All this,with little or no debate.

Thomas Jefferson was against a standing army.He was guided by history.The Greeks and Romans didn't have standing armies the majority of the time.As President,he cut the army by a third and left the defense of the nation to militias under the control of municipalities.He understood armies were expensive and the country's resources could be easily exhausted.Jeffersonian prudence held sway for 150 years. The professional military was an institution of limited reach and power;in times of peace we kept the regulars busy building defense works,ports and bridges.When the country went to war,the entire U.S went to war.No nation's military demobilized faster when the fighting was over.

After WWI, Congress completely dismantled The American Expeditionary Forces and reduced the active-duty military from four million to pre-war numbers of less than three hundred thousand.In 1945,there were twelve million active duty soldiers;five years later there were one and a half million.Of the 535,000 troops in Vietnam,1% were national guard and reserves.A political decision by Johnson kept them home and away from danger.He increased the draft instead avoiding the clamour from congressmen and prominent constituents who didn't want their sons in the jungles of Southeast Asia.We went to war in Vietnam in a way that we'd never gone to war before and no one liked the way it turned out.Creighton Abrams,US commander from 1968-72, changed this direction with what is known as the Abrams Doctrine-The Total Force Policy-put American politicians in the position of being"designed out"of waging war in a way that was dislocated from the everyday experience of American families.The War Powers Resolution of 1973 would be an explicit reassertion of the prerogative spelled out under Article 1,Section 8,"to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States" that Congress-and Congress alone-had the power to declare war.The Congress had allowed Johnson to push more than a half million troops without taking the case through Congress and the American people.An incensed Nixon vetoed the War Powers Resolution,but the House and Senate overrode that veto with votes to spare.The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had to go the the next President in 1975,Gerald Ford,to rein his ambitions in and disallow the executive request for $722 million to continue supporting the war.Forty years later,Ford's chief of staff,Donald Rumsfeld,would still be complaining bitterly about that "congressional backlash" and the War Powers Resolution.

Reagan increased the military budget by 20% in 1981(peacetime) and announced a strategy to double the defense budget in five years.He did so while reducing taxes by the largest amount in American history.That strategy increased the deficit by $62 billion and was sure to hit $112 billion in five years.According to Reagan,the 'evil empire"Russia,had to be stopped.

In Reagan's eight years in office,military expenditure doubled as projected from $150 billion to $300 billion which represented 30% of our overall annual budget( not counting health,medical injuries,previous debt and retirement benefits that pushed that percent towards 50%.).At the same time,Soviet general Secretary Leonid Brezhnev stated"It is dangerous madness to try to defeat each other in the arms race and to count on victory in nuclear war".Russia was already teetering badly by the time Reagan took office.Reagan ignored CIA reports that felt increasing threatened by the U.S. during this time period.Reagan's annual budget deficit ballooned from 2% to a record 6.3% of GDP in his first two years in office.His yearly budget shortfalls grew from $50 billion to $100 billion to $220 billion as the self-proclaimed conservatives just kept asking for and getting more dollars for more weapons.As a result, the country neglected its schools,cities,roads, bridges and health care system.From the world's greatest creditor nation to the world's greatest debtor nation.America during these years also imported twice the amount of oil than 1973(33% to 60%).They didn't listen to Jimmy Carter who wanted to reverse these percents.

More from Maddow soon.

Selflessness

If one conceives of 'self', then one must also conceive of 'other'. Attachment and aversion arise as a result of these two conceptions- 
of self and other. As a result of relationships accompanied by feelings of attachment and aversion, all faults are generated. It should be understood that the root of all those faults is this view- that the transitory aggregation called I and mine has an inherent existence."
Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen, from the Pramanavarttika, quoted in 'Garland of Mahamudra Practices'

In Buddha's Words

The thought manifests as the word
The word manifests as the deed
The deed develops into habit
And habit hardens into character
So watch the thought and its ways with care
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.

We are what we think
All that we are arises with our thoughts
With our thoughts,we make the world
Speak or act with an impure mind
And trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart
Speak or act with a pure mind
And happiness will follow you
As your shadow,unshakable

Notes:Back To Full Employment..Robert Pollin

Do you want full employment,with decent pay, for all our citizens? Robert Pollin has some strategies in his book"Back To Full Employment" that might help us along the way to reach this goal.Creating full employment was a national goal coming out of the Great Depression and WWII until the neo-liberal revolution that was more concerned with inflation than jobs for all.This revolution included macroeconomic policies focused on maintaining low inflation,reducing the public sector(including welfare state programs),eliminating or weakening pro-worker labor laws,eliminating barriers to international trade and deregulating financial markets.It has brought with it an income inequality that increased two and a half times for the top 1% since 1946 and a 17% growth for the top 10% since 1970(50% of all income), 25 million citizens unemployed after the Great Recession of 2008 with 71% of the our families making under $50,000 a year.

A decent job,living wage job,according to Lawrence Gillman, is one that pays a wage level that offers workers the ability to support families,to maintain self-respect,and to have both the means and leisure to participate in the civic life of the nation.In addition to paying living wages,the job must include workplaces that are safe and healthy.Workers also need to be able to participate meaningfully in the decisions that affect their working lives(democracy in the workplace,work councils...German model).This is going beyond the union/management bargaining(union membership around 8% today,down from 33% in the 60's and early seventies) to a shared workplace where councils are real partners with management to bring stability and health to their business.

The first theorist of unemployment was Karl Marx((1867).One of his theories is that a "reserve army"of unemployed is the instrument capitalists use to prevent significant wage increases and thereby maintain profitability.Like Marx,John Maynard Keynes(1936) understood clearly that the operations of capitalist economies could easily generate mass involuntary unemployment.For Keynes,mass unemployment resulted because of insufficiency in total spending(aggregate demand)When expectations of future profits are low,investment contracts which eventually produces involuntary unemployment.He felt is was government's responsibility to counteract this by increasing its own spending,borrowing money itself, and running fiscal deficits as needed,in order to support overall spending in the economy.Adjusting interest rates and  providing available credit(monetary policy) was also a part of his theory.Lastly,he wanted financial regulation that curtailed excessive speculation.

One of the major precept of neoliberalism is that government policies to promote full employment are doomed to failure and that the free market policies are themselves the most effective means for producing the fairest possible employment conditions for everyone.The most powerful voice in advancing this perspective was the late Milton Friedman(1967).He believed that if businesses pay workers more than they are worth,the business will see their profits disappear,and will eventually fold.

Another major thinker on this subject was Michal Kalecki(1943) who tried to synthesize the perspectives of Marx along with Keynes.He held that full employment could be beneficial to profits,because the economy will be operating with buoyant markets,at a high level of overall demand for products.Business profits could well be squeezed by high wage demands but they could compensate through a higher volume of sales combined with smaller,but still positive,profit margins.Despite the fact that businesses could benefit from full employment in this way,Kalecki reasoned they still would not support full employment as a goal because it would embolden workers excessively.Full employment could threaten the capitalists' control over the workplace,the pace and direction of economic activity,and even a society's political institutions.

British economist A.W.Phillips observed a long-term relationship between unemployment and inflation in 1958.Inflation goes up when unemployment goes down(Phillips Curve).Phillips suggested that business profits need not be squeezed by high employment.Rather,business could pass on higher labor costs to customers through price increases that causes a wage-price spiral.In the late seventies,economic policymakers worldwide became convinced that inflation resulting from low unemployment had become severe and uncontrollable.This perspective(Milton Friedman's natural rate of unemployment) eclipsed the full employment goals after WWII. Unfortunately,according to Pollin, inflation was caused at this period by two oil price shocks,not by low unemployment.

Rudolf Meidner and Gosta Rehn(Sweden 1960's) supported macroeconomic policies to stimulate demand and thereby expand the number of decent paying jobs but also favored a targeted rate of 3% unemployment to manage the wage-price spiral.Sweden's main unions accepted restrictions on macroeconomic stimulus policies and their own wage bargaining demands in order to help fight excessive inflationary pressures as full employment approached.Sweden succeeded at maintaining unemployment at an average rate of 2.1% between 1960 and 1989.Today,according to Pollin,the representatives of U.S. workers could bring significant new voices to the debate over inflation as well as employment,rather than giving free rein over the management of inflation to the Federal Reserve and Wall Street.Unfortunately,between 1993-2006,unemployment in Sweden rose to an average of 7.6%,while inflation fell to an average of 1.5%.Helen Ginsburg and Marguirite Rosenthal attribute the shift to the growing power of Swedish business,pressures from globalization and the race to join the EU,with its requirements for low budget deficits and inflation but none for low unemployment.

In the U.S. labor market,the neoliberal policy framework has exposed working people to increased competition from workers in poor countries.It has meant an expansion of the reserve army of labor (Marx) for jobs done by U.S workers.Wages have stagnated for forty years while average labor productivity has rose 111%.The services that the average U.S.workers produced in 2011 is more than double what they could manage in 1972.Their reward has been a 7% pay cut.The combination of falling real wages and rising productivity is a primary contributor to rising U.S. inequality over the past thirty years.30-40 million jobs in today's labor market can be performed in poor countries.Employers have gained leverage on these 40 million workers because their power to make credible threats to outsource will grow.

The late 90's were a time for successful economic growth where wages rose and unemployment fell below 4%.It was spurred by an overheated speculative stock market.This bubble created large scale spending as wealthy people borrowed unprecedented large amounts of money for consumption and investment.This bubble was unsustainable and the rise of wages ended and hasn't improved since.Pollin suggests that we shouldn't blame immigration for low wages or hinder the goal of decent jobs for all countries.The weight of evidence(David Card) supports that immigrants,including undocumented workers,are not hurting job opportunities or wages for native U.S.workers.One key factor is that immigrants do not just increase the supply of labor,but also increase overall market demand.

The U.S has a $700 billion annual gap between the imports we purchase and the exports we sell on global markets.According to Pollin,tariffs and dollar depreciation are weak policy tools.He also believes the U.S. economy can create a growth engine other than some type of asset bubble and that we have the means to reach near full employment even while carrying a large trade deficit.Public investment and the development of industrial policies(research and development) to support technical innovations,cheap credit,tax benefits and guaranteed markets will enhance global competitiveness of U.S businesses.We need a full employment agenda that takes into account the challenges presented by globalization.

John Taylor(Stanford economist) has argued that the Obama stimulus(ARRA) of 2009 had too much support for tax cuts or to ease the burden of state and local governments experiencing severe budgetary crises.It didn't inject new spending into the economy.The collapse of household wealth, the breakdown of credit flowing for productive investments and job creation were two large obstacles that also hindered recovery.Household wealth declined by 25%(17.6 trillion dollars) which reduced spending by $525 billion.At the same time,non-financial corporate borrowing fell from $871 billion to $4.3 billion between 2007 and 2009.It improved the following years for corporate borrowing but small businesses patterns of borrowing have been more severe. Small businesses borrowing fell from $526 billion in 2007 to negative$346 billion in 2009.This was a $900 billion reversal of financial flows,equal to 6% of GNP.Money that had been coming in for new investment,flowed out for debt repayments.Bankers were rejecting 60% of loan applications even while 95% of business owners wanted top execute a growth strategy.The commercial banks at this time could borrow from the Fed at a rate close to zero but were charging the small business owners 5.3% interest.As of 2012,commercial banks were hoarding cash and other liquid assets at an unprecedented $1.6 trillion while nonfinancial corporations were holding $2 trillion in liquid assets.They used their cash to buy back their own stocks instead of investing in new productive equipment and expanding their operations.

Pollin proposes a short-term agenda for job creation.His policy approach included further federal stimulus initiatives,measures to reduce the existing debt burden of homeowners,taxing the excess reserves of banks, and extending federal loan guarantees for small businesses.His long run plan to create a sustainable full employment focuses on four areas.First,dramatically increase investments in the areas of clean energy and education and correspondingly reduce spending on conventional energy sources and the military.Second,have industrial policies to undergird the clean energy transformation and promote innovative U.S. manufacturing sector.Third,have financial regulatory policies that direct the financial system toward promoting productive investments,the green economy,job creation and financial stability instead of hyper-speculative practices. Fourth,fiscal policies that can maintain the long-term federal government deficit within reasonable range without imposing austerity.

By a significant margin,education is the most effective source of job creation per $1 million in spending at a 27 job rate.Clean energy is second at 16.8 jobs,military at 11.2 and fossil fuels last at 5.2 jobs per million dollars.Clean energy investment utilizes far more of its budget to hire people than to acquire machines,supplies,land or energy itself.The relative domestic content per overall spending amount is the amount of work done in the U.S. Clean energy relies much more than the fossil fuel sector on economic activity taking place within the U.S. such as retrofitting homes or upgrading the electrical grid system.Consider the agenda in which we transfer about 25% of total spending in both the military($690 billion) and fossil fuel($635 billion) --about $330 billion a year in equal shares into education and clean energy.That would reduce class sizes immediately from 23 to 19,increase financial aid by $1500 for college and increase school building improvement/construction.This transfer would create about 4.8 million jobs and reduce the unemployment rate from 9% to 6%.Addition jobs would be created yearly to bring the rate down to 3.9 % as the transfers continue.Our industrial policies would be to build manufacturing capacity around clean energy technologies,including green buses, rail cars and automobiles.U.S industrial policies have operated as what Fred Block(2008) terms a "hidden developmental state",under the umbrella of the Pentagon's national security agenda,not as an open public policy effort to advance technical innovation,productivity,competitiveness, and jobs.

Pollin,like Keynes,wants financial regulation to end Wall Street dominance.He supports the Dodd-Frank legislation and taming of the banks' proprietary trading through the Volcker Rule.He also supports a progressive agenda for deficit control.If unemployment could be driven downward to around 4%,the U.S. fiscal deficit could be cut by $500-600 billion.If the economy is operating at or near full employment,there is no longer any need to finance current expenditures through deficit spending.Running large structural deficits on operating budgets will likely be regressive.(tax revenues coming from the middle class and going to wealthy bondholders in New York,Tokyo,London or Beijing.Controlling health costs will help cut the deficit.The Medicare Trustees Report(2010) estimated that the ACA will generate savings of $90 billion a year by 2020 in Medicare and slash up to 40% of Medicaid by 2080.

Lastly,Pollin states that the  national minimum wage should be raised and set at the highest possible level without threatening to raise unemployment.This wage is around$12/hr. and would improve conditions for about 60 million working people and families(40% of the labor market).Creating decent employment opportunities for everyone is too fundamental a project to be left to the vagaries either of markets or governments.It is rather the task of an engaged citizenry to figure out how best to combine what is valuable both with markets and governments to create high standards of well being,fairness and a commitment to morality for the greater good of all.

Get Lucky - Vintage Irish Tenor Daft Punk Cover

Wu Man: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Moderate vs. Extremist Views in the Muslim World

Moderate vs. Extremist Views in the Muslim World

Earthship Global Model: Radically Sustainable Buildings.

Glenn Greenwald Speaks Out

Bailout:Some More Details About TARP(Barofsky)

John Hope III,chairman of Whitney National Bank in New Orleans, received $$300 million in TARP funds was quoted as saying "make more loans?We're not going to change our business model or our credit policies to accommodate the needs of the public sector". That statement summarizes the banks response to the mortgage relief problem effecting millions of American citizens during the  economic crises that began in 2008.It was a windfall ,no strings attached, that the banks used to pay down debt,acquire other businesses or invest for the future.They were self centered as usual to keep their stockholders happy with high levels of return and the hell with the public who put up the money in good faith.Larry Summers,the new director of President Obama's National Economic Council,had indicated that Treasury would impose new conditions on TARP recipients.Before the release of the second $350 billion in TARP money,Summers had said that it would require healthy banks to increase lending above baseline levels and preclude the purchase of other firms. Kashkari,assistant secretary of the Treasury and TARP Czar, dismissed Summer's point saying that the new conditions are purely political and Barofsky stated that he was correct and never saw the light of day. HAMP(Home Affordable Modification Plan) was announced by Geithner(New Treasury Secretary) and followed by President Obama that promised to help 3 to 4 million homeowners modify the terms of their mortgages to avoid foreclosure. The program would pay incentives to home owners,investors and servicers at a total cost of $75 billion($50 billion from TARP and $25 Billion from Fannie and Freddie).Geithner was more interested,according to Barofsky, in helping the banks than the home owners because he stated that the program would help foam the runway for them.This meant that Geithner looked at HAMP as an aid to the banks,keeping the full flush of foreclosures from hitting the financial system all at the same time.It gave the banks more time to absorb losses while the other parts of the bailouts juiced banks profits that could then fill the capital holes created by housing losses.So the homeowners got screwed again because the administration(banks)wanted to stretch this program out until profits returned. HAMP was an essential part of the bank bailouts.It didn't matter if modification failed after a year or two of trial payments or if struggling borrowers placed into doomed trial modifications ended up worse off,as long as the banks were able to stretch out their pain .As of 2012,only 500,000 modification plans have been operational out of 3 to 4 million homeowners.

Bailout :Barofsky And The Oversight of TARP

This book was written by Neil Barofsky who was the former Special Inspector General in charge of the oversight of TARP(Troubled Asset Relief Program).His office SIGTARP was created by Congress to enforce the laws and regulations contained in the $700 billion bank bailout in 2008. His office received $50 million as a law enforcement agency.The initial TARP proposal,made by Paulson(Goldman Sacks), was for money to buy large quantities of the toxic mortgages and mortgage-related bonds that were clogging banks' balance sheets.The decline in the value of those assets was what precipitated the crisis of 2008 and Paulson's argument was that the banks could not be stabilized until large quantities of them were taken off their books.The move,approved by Congress, would hopefully prevent the banks from failing and the Treasury would be in control of many of the troubled mortgage loans to give those households foreclosure relief through modification.This would also stabilize the housing market.The bill included broad oversight provisions and a virtually unlimited expansion of the definition of troubled assets that Treasury could purchase. Paulson took full advantaged of that discretion when he decided to switch to CPP(Capital Purchase Program) and use TARP funds to inject capital directly into banks by buying preferred shares of stock from them.$250 billion was used for this discretionary move that had nothing to do with helping individuals with their foreclosure problems.Under CPP, none of the toxic assets would be taken off the banks' books and no mortgages would be purchased or modified. The CPP,according to Paulson, would stimulate lending and get credit flowing. In truth,according to Barofsky, there was no real focus in CPP on either increasing lending or helping owners avoid foreclosure.The Treasury didn't have any conditions related to lending in the CPP contracts or having the banks account for how they were using TARP funds.

The Treasury showered Wall Street with $250 billion to CPP,$40 million to AIG, $20 billion to TALF(Term Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility),another $20 to Citigroup and $300 billion with the Federal Reserve/FDIC to provide banks with a guarantee on toxic loans.The banks were using the money to buy securities,other banks,saving it..anything but lending it to help the economy.The Treasury's goal was to get as much TARP money out as quickly as possible to qualified banks and they(Kashkari.(TARP Czar...Goldman Sacks)(Hoyt..General Counsel..assistant to Bush) seemed completely unconcerned with what the banks did with the money,according to Barofsky. Kashkari refused to acknowledge the set of methods for reporting Barofsky recommended.The goal of the CPP of lending to create economic expansion was more of a public relations move than a real executable policy. Barofsky was stonewalled with his oversight requests at every turn.

Through TALF,Treasury and the Fed were proposing to put a huge new stake of taxpayer money into the purchase of bonds created by the very same securitization process backed by by a range of consumer loans.They wanted to also rely on credit rating agencies and investor due diligence to prevent a meltdown like the housing crises of 2007-8. Barofsky couldn't believe that the the Treasury(Paulson,Dudley,Kashkari,Miller...Goldman Sacks alumni) and chief investment officer,James Lambright(Credit Suisse) would run down this road again and believe in their former employers and other Wall St. institutions.

More to come.....

Richard Wolff - Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

Richard Wolff - Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism

Buddhism and Government:Venerable K.Sri Dhammananda Maha Thera

The thrust of the Buddha Dhamma is not directed to the creation of new political institutions and establishing political arrangements. Basically, it seeks to approach the problems of society by reforming the individuals constituting that society and by suggesting some general principles through which the society can be guided towards greater humanism, improved welfare of its members, and more equitable sharing of resources.

The Buddha encouraged the spirit of consultation and the democratic process. This is shown within the community of the Order in which all members have the right to decide on matters of general concern. When a serious question arose demanding attention, the issues were put before the monks and discussed in a manner similar to the democratic parliamentary system used today. This self-governing procedure may come as a surprise to many to learn that in the assemblies of Buddhists in India 2,500 years and more ago are to be found the rudiments of the parliamentary practice of the present day. A special officer similar to 'Mr. Speaker' was appointed to preserve the dignity of the Parliamentary Chief Whip, was also appointed to see if the quorum was secured. Matters were put forward in the form of a motion which was open to discussion. In some cases it was done once, in others three times, thus anticipating the practice of Parliament in requiring that a bill be read a third time before it becomes law. If the discussion showed a difference of opinion, it was to be settled by the vote of the majority through balloting.

In the Kutadanta Sutta, the Buddha suggested economic development instead of force to reduce crime. The government should use the country's resources to improve the economic conditions of the country. It could embark on agricultural and rural development, provide financial support to entrepreneurs and business, provide adequate wages for workers to maintain a decent life with human dignity.

In the Jataka, the Buddha had given to rules for Good Government, known as 'Dasa Raja Dharma'. These ten rules can be applied even today by any government which wishes to rule the country peacefully. The rules are as follows:

1) be liberal and avoid selfishness,
2) maintain a high moral character,
3) be prepared to sacrifice one's own pleasure for the well-being of the subjects,4) be honest and maintain absolute integrity,
5) be kind and gentle,
6) lead a simple life for the subjects to emulate,
7) be free from hatred of any kind,
8) exercise non-violence,
9) practice patience, and
10) respect public opinion to promote peace and harmony.

Regarding the behavior of rulers, He further advised:

- A good ruler should act impartially and should not be biased and discriminate between one particular group of subjects against another.
- A good ruler should not harbor any form of hatred against any of his subjects.
- A good ruler should show no fear whatsoever in the enforcement of the law, if it is justifiable.
- A good ruler must possess a clear understanding of the law to be enforced. It should not be enforced just because the ruler has the authority to enforce the law. It must be done in a reasonable manner and with common sense. -- (Cakkavatti Sihananda Sutta)

 Sometimes the Buddha is said to be a social reformer. Among other things, He condemned the caste system, recognized the equality of people, spoke on the need to improve socio-economic conditions, recognized the importance of a more equitable distribution of wealth among the rich and the poor, raised the status of women, recommended the incorporation of humanism in government and administration, and taught that a society should not be run by greed but with consideration and compassion for the people. Despite all these, His contribution to mankind is much greater because He took off at a point which no other social reformer before or ever since had done, that is, by going to the deepest roots of human ill which are found in the human mind. It is only in the human mind that true reform can be effected. Reforms imposed by force upon the external world have a very short life because they have no roots. But those reforms which spring as a result of the transformation of man's inner consciousness remain rooted. While their branches spread outwards, they draw their nourishment from an unfailing source -- the subconscious imperatives of the life-stream itself. So reforms come about when men's minds have prepared the way for them, and they live as long as men revitalize them out of their own love of truth, justice and their fellow men.

End This Depression Now,Stimulate the Economy Today

Paul Krugman's new book"End This Depression Now" reviews the banking system that went wild,the dismantling of the 1930 laws that protected consumers against new banking crises,the big lie the right has filtered down to the citizenship on the crises and the way to reverse the destructive austerity conditions that has been imposed by the federal,state and local governments.

Bankers gone wild is his catch phrase for the financial instruments that led to the bursting of the financial,housing bubble and the collapse of the economy. As late as 2005,Alan Greenspan stated that complex financial instruments have contributed to the development of a far more flexible,efficient, and hence resilient financial system than the one that existed just a quarter century ago. The innovations Greenspan adored brought the financial system to the brink of collapse. Asset-backed securities, collateralized loan obligations and credit default swaps all contributed to the collapse by encouraging  reckless lending, slicing bad debt(with the help of debt rating companies),and insuring bad debt(AIG) without the money to pay for losses.The bailout cost $4.6 trillion.

Step by step, the rules and regulations that had been put in place in the 1930's to protect against a banking crises were dismantled and by 2008, the capital backing for banks were only a few percent of their assets and small losses could break them.Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 limited the amount of risk a bank could take.It was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Blilely Act in 1999 .It repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, removing barriers in the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies that prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and an insurance company. With the passage of the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms, and insurance companies were allowed to consolidate. The legislation was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Citicorp and Travelers merger joined investments with insurance to form Citigroup shortly after the bill was signed. Previously,the Monetary Control Act of 1980 ended the regulations preventing banks from paying interest on many kinds of deposits. Under Reagan, The Garn-St.Germain Act of 1982 relaxed restrictions on the kinds of loans banks could make and encouraged risk taking..survival of the most reckless ensued.There was no limits on interest rates or loans to customers that might not honor their promises.Banks financed their leading by borrowing from other banks. A "shadow banking" system developed that is bigger than the old-fashioned banking we knew before deregulation that was highly leveraged without regulation that could take even larger risks(Lehman Brothers).Money dominated the political system when all the deregulation began and continues to this day.

After the collapse,the right blamed the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 on the crises.This lie blamed the poor instead of the banks with their risk taking.The bubble was widespread and the biggest booms and busts were in the suburbs and exurbs rather than the inner-city owners. There was a similar housing crises in Europe with no Reinvestment Act. Commercial real estate on both continents defaulted. The risk taking was primarily done by private lenders. Subprime loans were made overwhelmingly by private firms that were not covered by the Community Reinvestment Act,nor supervised by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In fact, Fannie/Freddie were losing market share because private lenders would take on borrowers the government sponsored agencies wouldn't. Fannie and Freddie did buy subprime mortgages from loan originators but it was late in the game.

Krugman feels we have to fund state and local governments by $300 billion to bring back the half a million jobs that were lost and employ a total of 1.3 million state and local workers.The austerity measures hinder the recovery and diminishes consumer spending. There should be a restarting of all projects that were postponed or cancelled by state and federal governments. An increase in the safety net programs and unemployment insurance should also start as soon as possible.The Federal Reserve should let inflation grow modestly higher to 4% for the next five years and buy "unconventional" assets like long term bonds and private debts.The Fed could also keep interest rates on ten year bonds below 2.5% for five years while intervene on the Foreign Exchange Market to push down the value of the currency that would strengthen the export sector. He wants homeowners to have the chance to refinance their home debt to below 4% and sees the Home Affordable Refinance Program as too restrictive. The U.S should get tougher on China's manipulation of the currency and create incentives for business to upgrade their emission of greenhouse gases by announcing stricter targets.