A Sequester For Billionaires?

The Article: Whiny Billionaires in Need of Sequestration by Robert Scheer in The Nation.

The Text: Where is the Occupy movement now that the depravity of the super rich is on full display?
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The suddenly increased national debt is primarily the result of a deep recession caused by the top bankers and hedge fund hustlers of Wall Street, saved from their folly by massive and costly federal intervention. The result has been a season of obscene profit for them, while the rest of the nation has floundered. But instead of making the rich pay, ordinary citizens will be visited with job furloughs and a savaging of public services that often are lifesaving.

Consider two stories this week that make Karl Marx look prescient: one, in The Wall Street Journal, concerns the payout of $1 billion in bonuses to nine private equity executives; the other, under a New York Times headline, states that the jobless recovery has been a boondoggle for corporate profits. “Recovery in US Is Lifting Profits, but Not Adding Jobs,” the headline reads, by way of explaining why the stock market is nearing its unprecedented high while the unemployment picture remains so dismally bleak.

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The Shrinking Democrats

The Article: The Submissive, Indifferent Democrats by Falguni Sheth in Salon.

The Text: If you noticed that there was a lot of news this week in the Senate, but hardly any mention of Democrats, you weren’t alone. By mid-afternoon Thursday, after a 12-hour filibuster by Sen. Rand Paul, John Brennan was confirmed to be the next CIA director by a vote of 63-34. The “nay” votes were clearly short of a successful challenge to Brennan’s confirmation (whose nomination to the same office was undermined four years ago).

Much of Paul’s protest centered on the White House’s refusal to answer where it stood on targeted killings. Although it broke no records, Paul’s filibuster met with telling widespread negative reactions on the parts of liberals and progressives. Democrats were virtually invisible, with one or two notable (and weak) exceptions, during Paul’s time on the floor.

Prior to Wednesday, Paul and others in the Senate asked over and over for confirmation that American citizens were not in danger of being killed on American soil. The question was itself hospitably narrow: There was no challenge to the legality of killing foreigners on American soil, to the kill list, to drone strikes on international soil, to the arbitrary (secretive, procedure-less) executions of foreigners deemed a threat.

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The Crucifixion Of Tomas Young

The Article: The Crucifixion of Tomas Young by Chris Hedges in TruthDig.

The Text: I flew to Kansas City last week to see Tomas Young. Young was paralyzed in Iraq in 2004. He is now receiving hospice care at his home. I knew him by reputation and the movie documentary “Body of War.” He was one of the first veterans to publicly oppose the war in Iraq. He fought as long and as hard as he could against the war that crippled him, until his physical deterioration caught up with him.

“I had been toying with the idea of suicide for a long time because I had become helpless,” he told me in his small house on the Kansas City outskirts where he intends to die. “I couldn’t dress myself. People have to help me with the most rudimentary of things. I decided I did not want to go through life like that anymore. The pain, the frustration. …”

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Laundering Hundreds Of Millions? Acceptable In America

The Article: Laundering $881 Million Is Now Acceptable by Greg MacSweeney in Wall Street & Technology.

The Text: Elizabeth Warren, the newest member of the Senate Banking Committee, was at it again this week. This time the freshman Senator, who seemingly has more experience dealing with financial services matters than her more “senior” colleagues, interrogated banking regulators on HSBC’s money laundering settlement.

Remember that settlement from last December? HSBC was fined for failing to monitor over $670 billion in wire transfers and over $9.4 billion in purchases of physical U.S. dollars from HSBC Mexico from 2006 to 2010. At least $881 million of those funds were tied directly to drug trafficking proceeds, according to the Department of Justice.

Once again, Warren relied on a simple and direct approach to her questioning. In fact, she used the same method to grill regulators a few weeks ago about how no bank has been taken to trial for the financial crisis. The method: ask a simple question, and press for a direct answer.

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McCain Hates The GOP He Created

The Article: John McCain Hates the Ridiculous GOP He Created in The National Memo.

The Text: When Senator Rand Paul ended his nearly 13-hour filibuster of President Obama’s nominee for CIA director — to visit the restroom — Republicans were ecstatic. They’d found a way to attack President Obama from the left on drone policy while mentioning the Constitution, Jane Fonda and Hitler over and over.

It was like a Tea Party fever dream come to life on C-SPAN 2.

For some on the left, including The Nation‘s Jeremy Scahill, The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald, Esquire‘s Charles Pierce, Mother Jones‘ Adam Serwer, and Marcy Wheeler — many of whom Paul cited from the Senate floor — the junior senator from Kentucky was opportunely raising the issue of extrajudicial killings in a way their years of journalism could not. Other progressives joined Republicans in standing with Rand, knowing if a Republican ever got into the White House, it would be too late to check the broad executive power that’s been unfurled in the war against al Qaeda.

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