Tag: lobbyists

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Credit Shackles

It is quite amazing how the credit industry in the U.S. has convinced conservative and liberal legislators that extending easy credit to people without the means to pay off their loans is an act of kindness and generosity. As if they were not charging interest or demanding repayment.

That is what they will tell you if you bring up the fact that U.S. credit industry has essentially reintroduced indentured servanthood on the sly. The average American carries a balance of $5,000 to $8,000 (depending on your sources) on their credit cards, for which they are paying an interest rate that was regarded as illegal for most of American history– usually, about 28%.

Most of these credit card companies are headquartered in the state of Delaware (yes, Joe Biden’s home) because at one time it was illegal in most states to charge “usurious” interest rates on loans.

Why is this allowed? The cover story, as I stated, is that this is a service to people, especially people with low income who otherwise would not be able to buy the big-screen television or xBox or laptop, or lavish that trip to Disney World on their youngsters. It’s a clever ruse: they are only able to continue to consume until they have reached the limits of their credit; if their limits are extended, they go even deeper into debt, and are even less able to pay off the principal. In keeping with the Republican tradition of giving laws names that are the opposite of their real purpose, (like the “Clear Skies Act”, in 2005, Congress passed “The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005”. The BAPCPA should have been called “The Perpetual Credit Servitude Act” or the “Consumer Exploitation Act”. Some Democrats opposed it, some supported it. All Republicans supported it.  And that tells you a hell of a lot.

It is a tragedy that many otherwise sensible people take the attitude that if people are so stupid as to run up debts they can’t pay off quickly, they deserve what they get. To me, that is like asserting that a woman who goes to a party and drinks is asking to be raped. This attitude might make a little sense if most of the people you know are well-educated, have decent jobs and a decent income and an RRSP, and understand how they are being ripped off but do it anyway. But most people are not; they are drunk with consumer choice, bombarded by advertising, convinced by government and the media that they are entitled to enjoy the fruits of capitalism, lavishly.

But the essence of good government regulation is to protect vulnerable people from being exploited and abused by other people or corporations without a sense of right and wrong. And a corporation never has a sense of right or wrong: it has profits. The fact that the average credit card balance in the U.S. is so high tells you that the average citizen doesn’t understand credit or credit cards and is vastly over optimistic about his or her ability to pay off debt. The average consumer is vulnerable. They don’t understand that being able to buy the big screen tv and xBox now on credit means they will be able to buy a lot less in the future when their credit card payments are $400-500 a month, and barely cover the interest, while they continue to add on debt. It makes perfect sense for the government to step and restrict the ability of banks and credit agencies to offer them loans.

It made more sense when the government allowed some of these consumers to declare bankruptcy and crawl out from under an unbearable debt load. That’s what the BAPCPA was all about: tightening the noose. It imposed new, vast restrictions on the ability of any person to declare bankruptcy.

Why? The banks will tell you that they have to charge 28% on credit cards because of the great risk they take that people won’t pay these loans back. The only escape for many people was to declare bankruptcy and start over: risk taken, Mr. Banker, sometimes you lose. That’s why you were allowed to charge 28%– why are you complaining?

The only way Congress should have tightened the restrictions on bankruptcy law should have been by forcing the banks to drop their interest rates to something like 7% at the same time, in the same legislation.

The banks and the conservatives and their lobbyists and toadies would have howled to high heaven. For good reason. It’s easy profit. If you are in the investor class, it’s a fantastic way to extract money from poor people. Like taking candy from a baby, and just as ethical.

The banks and credit card agencies insisted that consumers would benefit because the tighter regulations would increase their profits and then– get this — allow them to pass on the savings to consumers in the form of lower credit costs.

Of course it did increase their profits. And of course, credit costs to consumers went up, not down.

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The Real Reason we go to War

The New York Times recently published a lengthy piece on General Barry McCaffrey which should make the military-industrial complex unusually transparent to everyone. General McCaffrey is a regular “military expert” on NBC and other media outlets and tirelessly advocates for a larger military and more defense spending and is an enthusiast for the so-called War on Terror.

What General McCaffrey does not tell his viewers or listeners or readers is that he is also an employee– they call him a “consultant”– of a company called Defense Solutions which makes a lot of money selling military equipment to the United States Government.

General McCaffrey wants your children to die so that Defense Solutions makes a good profit.

Now I am quite sure that General McCaffrey would never put things quite so bluntly for himself. He wants no one to die, of course. He only believes in wars of national defense, when absolutely necessary, after all other avenues of resolution have been completely exhausted, or we are running out of oil.

Then again, General McCaffrey also argues that just because he is paid $10,000 or more a month by a defense contractor doesn’t mean he would ever recommend their products to the Pentagon unless he absolutely believed they were the best products on earth for the task required.

In other words– those fools at Defense Solutions! They’re wasting their money! They thought they were paying McCaffrey to get some kind of advantage when it comes to getting big fat Pentagon contracts! Ha ha! The joke is on you Defense Solutions– you didn’t get anything for your money that you wouldn’t have gotten anyway!!

I’m sure that once they see General McCaffrey’s comments, they will immediately cancel their wasteful contract with them.

And George Bush is going to go to work for Habitat for Humanity.

And the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny and Rudolph will all be there.

General McCaffrey Pimps War

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How to Buy the Government

For $5,000, a lobbyist can join lawmakers and staff members of the alliance, the Republican Main Street Partnership, for a lunchtime policy briefing by an outside expert. For $15,000, the lobbyist can attend four lunches, two of them with briefings by an outside expert and two with briefings from members of Congress.

And for $25,000, the lobbyist can have three lunch briefings with lawmakers, not to mention V.I.P. seating for eight at a black-tie dinner for the moderates’ coalition.
From the New York Times, April 30, 2006

Once again, John McCain disappoints. He is a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership. I have the feeling that rather than being a break from the legislature for politicians– the lunchtime “policy briefing” is the real business of being an elected representative. There is no question but that most politicians are there to get money for legislation. The only question is how elaborate or convoluted an organization you need to disguise what is happening from your constituents.

Your constituents, of course, keep demanding that you support legislation that reduces the influence of lobbyists. If you are a Republican, you create legislation that actually makes it easier for lobbyists to give you money for legislation and then you call it the “Integrity in Government Act” and you campaign on it as if it does the opposite of what it actually does. To make it all even more shameless, then you accuse your opponent of being in favor of lobbyists’ because he or she didn’t vote for your bill. Think of it as a “clean skies act” for money in politics.

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The Iraq Dollar Auction

Wow. I missed the shocking news — Saddam Hussein hated the United States and tried to think of ways to hurt it. ABC news with exclusive audio tape!

I saw that ABC News item. It wasn’t “news”. It was a tape they had acquired which did not provide any new information that was not already out there and widely known. In fact, the story largely substantiated the position that Saddam was not a real threat, and had no connection with Al Qaeda.

If you are watching the news, I presume you are also aware of the fact that Iraq is now near full civil war, and that the occupation is generating more new terrorists every day than Osama could have wished for in his wildest dreams, and that large Republican-connected corporations have been gleefully lining their own pockets while mismanaging the rebuilding of that pathetic little country, and that whenever a competent official emerges from the U.S. occupation administration, he says something truthful and is sacked.

I always find it strange that nobody seems to be demanding the simplest and most obvious measure of accountability from the Bush administration: tell us how long it will take and how much it will cost and how many people will die before you have what you promised us: a peaceful democratic Arab state in the Mid-east. So far, it is estimated to be over $20,000 per American household. How much would you say is too much, and how long, and how many lives, would you say is too many? $50,000? $100,000? And how long should the bulk of the U.S. military be tied up in Iraq? 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? Any reasonable person would want to know those things before committing to a course of action that will be almost impossible to extricate ourselves from, with decency and integrity.

Well, we know why nobody from the Bush administration will give us any kind of plan. If they did, it would immediately be apparent that the plan has failed. By saying “nobody can say how long it would take” and “it undermines the troops to insist that we have a clue about what we are doing and how much progress we are making” Bush can hope that some miracle will come along and save his ass from the embarrassment of having to admit, “we had no real idea, when we went in, of how difficult it was going to be to get out”. It’s a win-win proposition. If things go badly, it’s because we haven’t waited long enough. If things eventually go well, we knew it would.

Will anyone admit that Bush doesn’t know what he got into and has no clue how to get out? We are now into what John Nash (“Beautiful Mind”) called a “dollar auction”. You are bidding on a dollar under rules that require you to pay out even if you lose the auction. So, when you reach and pass the full “value” of the dollar, you have to keep bidding, because otherwise you still pay but get nothing. Yes, Viet Nam exactly.

Doesn’t matter to him, does it? He’ll be out cashing out in a couple years. He doesn’t actually receive suitcases full of cash from all those corporations and billionaires he has served so diligently the last six years… until he gets out of office. And then watch the payback– it should be absolutely glorious! No individual in the history of the U.S. has transferred so much wealth to so many investors, shareholders, and corporate leaders. The oil industry alone should be falling over themselves to reward him– look at the deal they got in the Gulf of Mexico!– but the pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, credit institutions,– they’ll all be rushing forward to thank the man who did so incredibly much for their profit margins (while doing virtually nothing for the economy as a whole or people who actually work for a living).

Meanwhile, an adult will have to take over the presidency and sit there and think: how long do we let this shit go on before we admit it was a huge mistake? And stop bidding? And the same adult will have to do something adult about paying bills around here. I don’t think anything Bush has done is quite as remarkably, shamelessly, outrageously childish as the handing over of billions and billions of dollars in national debt to the next generation. Some of his most fanatical devotees compare him to Jesus Christ, and they have something there: I’m watching this man walk on water right now. It’s amazing.

It’s hard to call an administration “corrupt” when it does, openly and shamelessly, what other administrations would do only in secret. The lobbyists now enter through the front door, proudly and glibly, and meetings that used to be hidden are now simply “secret”. The Bush administration actually invites corporations to write legislation for themselves. The same people who defend this government would be horrified at the idea of a labour union writing it’s own contract or a teenager making his own house rules or an actor directing his own movie– and perhaps should be. But that’s the way the Bush administration operates.

There are ideological differences, which can be argued endlessly, but then there’s simple competency issues, of which a clear vision eventually emerges.

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Demonstrations

Some editorialists– including the Globe and Mail– are complaining that these demonstrators at these big trade conferences are a) wrong and b) undemocratic. Naomi Klein went on the CBC to set the record straight. Unfortunately, she stunk. So I’ll have to do it.

There is some legitimacy to the point of view that demonstrators try to short-cut democracy. We have elections here. The people voted for Al Gore and Jean Chretien in the U.S. and Canada, respectively, and they got their wishes: George Bush Jr. and Jean Chretien. So what right do these demonstrators have to try to change the law by short-circuiting the democratic process and trying to get their way by bullying and shouting?

Naomi argued that, well, what these big corporations are planning is so awful, well, somebody just has to do something. Of course, that begs the question of who gets to decide when something is so awful that undemocratic means must be used to change the law. Like abortion.

What she should have pointed out is that while “nobody elected the demonstrators” nor did they elect the lobbyists for those multi-national corporations. And under the Bush administration, those lobbyists often actually write the law, and they certainly play a powerful role– behind closed doors– in influencing legislators on how to write the law.

One example. When Tom Delay ran for election to the U.S. Congress, he did not campaign thusly: if you vote for me, I will hold expensive breakfast meetings with highly paid lobbyists for the biggest corporations on the planet so they can tell me what they would like to see in the next round of legislation governing mergers and environmental regulations and minimum wages and so on, while you, you working taxpayer dependent on your wages, why, you’d be lucky to smell a fart from my executive assistant. No sir. Mr. Delay tells everyone that he will represent their interests and do what’s right, regardless of “the special interests” and lobbyists. He campaigns on his sensitivity to the needs and aspirations of the majority of his voters. Then he turns around and spends all of his time– and I mean, all of his time– with corporate hacks, and meaningless totemic symbols like the boy-scouts and baseball players.

Does anyone seriously believe that corporations donate millions of dollars to election campaigns for nothing? Because they are civic minded??? Because they really think that what is good for America is good for IBM?

Those lobbyists see to it that Mr. Delay receives big fat contributions come election time, so he can run big fat television ads that show what a sensitive, caring, unimpeachable character he is, and get re-elected, so he can continue to serve his corporate masters.

As long as the election laws in the U.S. continue to permit this entrenched system of corruption and distortion, demonstrators can certainly make a case for the fact that they are trying to restore a balance to this democracy. Since they can’t get in those $300-a-plate fundraisers and since they can’t offer Mr. Delay a weekend at an exclusive private Hawaiian resort, and since they can’t send a couple of lawyers over to actually help Mr. Delay write the legislation– they have no choice but to take their issues to the streets.

Why don’t the leaders get smart: they should have initiated talks with Greenpeace and other issue-oriented groups– who do legitimately represent various interests– and brought them to the table. They should have invited them in. And they should have listened seriously to their concerns.

Ha ha ha! Had you going, didn’t I? You thought for one minute that I seriously believed that George Bush Jr. might want to meet with people who care about the environment!

Ha ha ha!

April Fools!