LUV News: Progressive Tidings

THIS MORNING’S PROGRESSIVE ECONOMIC NEWS

“In an open letter published Thursday, 52 professionals from the financial sector urged the U.S. Congress to pass legislation mandating a tax on financial transactions,” begins a piece in IPS News, out of Rome this morning.  “The letter’s signatories, in a notable break from the sector, include seven former executives of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, two of the United States’ largest players in the financial services industry. They also include several hedge-fund operators and four current and former heads of European banks.”

Can it be that there are banksters with a conscience, after having crippled the world’s economy with their trading scams?  This tax is sometimes called by progressives a “Robin Hood” tax, because it brings the 1%, who own 80% of the investments, into a share of responsibility for their actions.  Congress, on its knees kissing bankster butt for the campaign bribes, needs to hear about this.

In other progressive economic news, the people of Mauritius have moved their economy to a fair trade status, certifying that decent labor and environmental standards are behind the goods they produce.  We urge our readers to buy fair trade goods when they can, a wonderful step toward creating a better world, ending slave labor, and contributing to saving our planet.

Mario Piperni’s Illustrated Late-Night Humor

Late Night Political Humor

June 22, 2012 By mario piperni

The best from Political Humor‘s collection of the week’s late night political humor.

Happy Friday

“With the presidential debates right around the corner, John Kerry is going to play Mitt Romney to help the President prepare for the debates. That’s kind of a stretch; a rich white guy from Massachusetts playing a rich white guy from Massachusetts.” –Jay Leno

“How does that make John Kerry feel? Hey John, we need a guy who is kind of stiff, out of touch, and a flip-flopper. You’d be perfect. Just be yourself.” –Jay Leno

“Last night on the premiere of a new reality show, Bristol Palin confronted a man in a bar and demanded to know why he hates her mother. In response, John McCain said ‘Leave me alone, I’m having a drink.’” –Conan O’Brien

“Obama went to Ground Zero. He went up in the new skyscraper being built in the shadow of the World Trade Center, and he inscribed one of the steel beams. He wrote, ‘We remember, we rebuild, we come back stronger.’ Which was very poignant, especially since Bush had written on it, ‘We got hit, I sat in a chair, I peed my pants.’ And he misspelled chair.” –Bill Maher

“Obama campaign unveils new ad to target Hispanics. It’s basically the president saying, “Yo soy el hombre who killed Osama bin Laden.” –Conan O’Brien

“Over the weekend President Obama issued an order that allows some illegal immigrants to stay in the country. Or as Fox News reported it, ‘Obama issues order allowing himself to stay in the country.’” –Conan O’Brien

“Mitt Romney said Obama is ignoring the real issues with illegals, which is that they keep blowing the grass clippings into his pool.” –Bill Maher

“Happy Flag Day. Flag Day is the day in which we honor the symbol of our nation and the 8-year-old Chinese kids who make them for us for a nickel apiece.” –Jimmy Kimmel

“For the first time in history, the number of Asian immigrants coming into America is larger than the number of Hispanic immigrants. Now even our immigrants are being made in China.” –Jimmy Kimmel

“Both Romney and Obama were in Ohio giving dueling speeches on the economy. Before Obama’s speech, Romney’s bus starts circling the Obama site honking their horns in the parking lot. They would have actually stayed and done it longer, but Mitt had to get back to his site to give his speech about how we need to put the grownups back in charge.” –Bill Maher

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Mario Piperni on Gay Repugs

Republican’s Pathetic GOProud Gay Wing

June 21, 2012 By mario piperni

Dan Savage tweeted this…

…in response to this announcement by the Republican Party’s Tea Party gay group, GOProud.

GOProud is prepared to commit significant resources to help make Mitt Romney the next President of the United States.

The Board of Directors of GOProud voted to enthusiastically endorse Governor Romney’s candidacy for President.

Most gay Americans – like their straight counterparts – are not better off than they were 4 years ago. The truth is that gay people are living in the disastrous failed Obama economy too.

Really? Are gay Americans worst off than they were 4 years ago?

Allow me to ask:

1. Are gay soldiers worst off now with the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?
2. Are gay Americans worst off now that 9 states recognize same-sex marriage and 6 states grant these licenses?
3. Are gay Americans worst off now that the Justice Department has declared that it will stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 act which recognizes marriage strictly as a union between a man and a woman?
4. Are gay Americans worst off now that they have a President who recently stated that he believes that every American should have the right to marry the person they love regardless of sexual orientation and who declared unequivocally that same-sex marriage should be legalized?

I could go on about the “disastrous failed Obama economy” and how it is in truth the result of policies set out by GOProud’s Republican party and how it is in fact a recovering economy (albeit a slow one, again thanks to the GOProud’s Republican Party) which is in a far better place than it was in 2008 when tens of thousands jobs were being lost each month. I could do this but what could be more relevant to a gay person than recognition that they as human beings have the same civil rights as every other American?

What the hell is the matter with these self-loathing people that they are willing to subjugate themselves to second class citizenry and support a homophobic political entity that despises their very existence? And don’t give me this “working from the inside” bullshit…it doesn’t work with Republicans. As long as the Religious Right remains a core component of the party’s base, conservative politicians will cater to every one of their bigoted, hate-filled whims.

Dan Savage had it perfectly right…GOProud’s members as well as Log Cabin Republicans are pathetic fools with very little to be proud of.

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Bank of America Settlement on Customer Overbilling Proves Bank Crime Pays

Here’s the Bloomberg story on one of today’s regulatory theater announcements:

Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch wealth-management unit was fined $2.8 million by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for overbilling customers by $32.2 million over an eight-year period.

Merrill Lynch charged the fees to about 95,000 accounts between April 2003 and December 2011, FINRA said in a statement today. New York-based Merrill Lynch, which was acquired by Bank of America in 2009, lacked an adequate supervisory system to ensure that customers were billed in accordance with their contracts and disclosure documents, the regulator said.

Now of course, the bank says this was all a mistake, but it’s pretty certain the way Finra found about about it was via customer complaints, since the average amount pilfered per customer was under $400. This means that even if it was an initially error, Merrill and later BofA refused to correct it when alerted (customers who noticed would presumably try to get the charge reversed, and only then try other routes).

One also assumes the money was disgorged.

But let’s make some simple assumptions. Since this took place over eight years, let’s assume the average amount outstanding of money the bank had that it wasn’t entitled to was half that, or $16 million. This was free money, absolutely no cost of funds. If you assume even a low rate of return, roughly 2% or higher, and factor in that the fine was paid in arrears, and a full year after the practice stopped, the fine wasn’t even a punishment. It’s almost certain to be less than the money Merrill/BofA made from this abuse (alternatively, you could use cost of funds, which has plunged in the wake of the crisis, but was a meaningful positive number prior to when the Fed started implementing ZIRP).

So much for regulatory competence.