Category: US Politics

Bank CEO calls it “building relationships” – Senator Warren calls it what it is…a scam

~ jlpagano

If the above video doesn’t load for you, please follow this link and set aside under ten minutes to watch…it will be well worth it.

Senate committee hearings are meant to be an opportunity for high-profile people to be held accountable for their actions when they affect the wider public but as we all know, more often than not they are reduced to mere “love-ins” due to the fact that the bulk of politicians are “bought” thus making their levels of scrutiny extremely low.

When it comes to Wall Street and the American banking industry, you certainly could not accuse Senator Elizabeth Warren of going easy when she performed her duties on the Senate’s Banking Committee.

Should you be based in Ireland you may not know too much about Wells Fargo Bank but they have been in the US news quite a bit recently on account (pun intended) of their recently publicised practice of “cross-selling”.

The senator from Massachusetts in her extremely direct and properly forceful questioning of CEO Bill Stumpf (who couldn’t look more like a classic bank head honcho if he tried)  not only ignores all the media spin churned out by the company of late but it also leaves you in no doubt as to exactly what has been going on.

“Here’s what really gets me about this, Mr. Stumpf. If one of your tellers took a handful of $20 bills out of the crash drawer, they’d probably be looking at criminal charges for theft. They could end up in prison.

“But you squeezed your employees to the breaking point so they would cheat customers and you could drive up the value of your stock and put hundreds of millions of dollars in your own pocket.

Now I know these committees don’t have a whole lot of legal “teeth”.  I know that Mr Stumpf will continue to draw his massive salaries and bonuses.  And I know the establishment will redouble their efforts to silence Elizabeth Warren by fair means or foul, probably the latter (by finding ways to discredit her name most likely).

But there is a lot to be said for public representatives asking such people the real, sensible questions – that’s supposedly what we elect them to do.

Do you think it may be possible an Irish bank or two deserves a similar public grilling?

 

Protecting not protesting & Crushing the Black Snake #NoDAPL

~ jlpagano

It may be happening thousands of miles away but there is much about the Dakota Access pipeline controversy that is of interest to Irish readers.

Two things I’d like to focus on here…first, the coverage by The Guardian.  It may be a British paper but there is so much mistrust towards national media in the US that now many are turning to them for some semblance of truth in their reporting, and they are certainly working hard to provide it.

I listen to several US progressive podcasts like Best of the Left, The Young Turks, Democracy Now etc and all have quoted the publication often affectionately known as “The Guarniad” because if its supposed reputation for frequent typos.

Back in August a piece by Iyuskin American Horse in Canyon Ball, North Dakota was published titled “‘We are protectors, not protesters’: why I’m fighting the North Dakota pipeline“.  It offers the native Americans’ side of the story.

The fact that Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the pipeline, would use the word “Dakota”, which means “friend” or “ally”, in the name of its project is disrespectful. This pipeline is a direct threat to all Dakota, Lakota and Nakota people, especially our future generations. And we are not the only ones. We know that burning this oil is changing our climate and Indigenous people all over the world are bearing the brunt of the catastrophes that causes.

The other interesting aspect of this story is that of the black snake.

Our elders have told us that if the zuzeca sape, the black snake, comes across our land, our world will end. Zuzeca has come – in the form of the Dakota Access pipeline – and so I must fight.

I have absolutely no reason not to believe that American Indians have a legend of a black snake that was going to cross their land.  But it would certainly not surprise me if the oil barons and their sympathisers who would be keen to push this pipeline through raised doubts as to the validity of the folklore.

Well all I can say is that even if they did make it up, it’s nothing compared to the amount of shite big oil corporations fabricate to get past environmental studies and judicial processes in order to get the profits flowing in their direction as quickly as possible.

Best of luck to Iyuskin American Horse and his people.  May the Black Snake be driven away from their sacred land for all eternity.

Meanwhile, we could probably do with an external journalists source focusing on Irish affairs in a similar fashion to that of the Guardian.

Trump’s Tirade of Two-faced Tactics

~ jlpagano

They say in sporting circles that attack is the best form of defence.  In politics, more often than not from the “right”, they tend to take it one step further…not only should you defend yourself by going on the attack, you should also do so by accusing your opponent of doing exactly what it is that you are known to do.  Donald Trump has been a master of this in his presidential campaign.

He attacks Hillary on her health…not only in recent days when she actually had some issues in that area, but also well before she was confirmed as the Democratic nominee, giving out about her arriving late on stage when debating Bernie Sanders.  Since then there have been a string of ridiculous conspiracy theories from the extreme right suggesting everything from using body doubles to actually having mental problems.

And all of this when Trump himself has only produced a medical report from a quack who offered this ridiculous claim:

If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency

Next up we have his childish name-calling…a supposedly serious candidate for President resorting to calling his opponent “Crooked Hillary” or “Hillary Rotten Clinton” in numerous speeches.

Well if she’s crooked, Donald, why don’t you show us your tax returns so we can be sure that you aren’t?

My personal favourite has been his attacks on the Clinton Foundation.   It ties in to the the “crooked” theme I know, but the persistent questions raised by Trump and his campaign which centred on the charitable organisation so much that you could only assume that the entity known as The Trump Foundation HAD to be beyond reproach.  Not the case at all.  In fact, if anything, the allegations on his side of the fence are far worse.

And they keep on coming.  The Clinton Foundation was accused of accepting charitable donations in return for access to Hillary as Secretary of State.  In Trump’s case, at first he was apparently using funds to help Republican politicians’ campaign in order to keep them sweet.

Now, Washington DC political blog the Hill suggests he was also using the charity money AGAINST people…

While New York’s attorney general was investigating Trump University in 2014, Donald Trump’s foundation donated $100,000 to a conservative group that sued that same attorney general, according to a Yahoo News report Friday.
It all seems to lead to a simple Rule of Trump – if he accuses you of something, be sure and investigate him for that very same thing…you are bound to strike gold.

Looks like both US Presidential campaigns could be built on “shaky Foundations”

~ jlpagano

Here at FPP, as things stand right now, our plan is not only to vote for Hillary Clinton but also to keep the pressure on her to come good on hers and the DNC’s pledge to adopt at least some policies from the Progressive platform during her administration.

Or to put it another way, we fully acknowledge that whatever we may say against her opponent, she herself is by no means perfect and her biggest pressure points in this campaign have been the seemingly never-ending amount of State Department emails and the suspicions surrounding The Clinton Foundation.

Naturally Donald Trump has been at pains to attack these pressure points, though rarely by being too specific…either he resorts to name-calling like “Crooked Hillary” or “Hillary Rotten Clinton” or he makes vague references to her alleged “terrible crimes”.

Well on the subject of dodgy dealings by a foundation bearing a candidate’s name, it would appear that he has his own questions to answer, as Rachel Maddow reports in this video from her show, and also in this follow-up blog where Steve Benen notes that the matter has caught the attention of NYT, WaPo and HuffPo.

Trump has been quite candid in his explanations for why he made so many political contributions to so many candidates and office-holders. “I’ve given to everybody,” he boasted earlier this year. “When I want something I get it. When I call, they kiss my ass. “It’s true. They kiss my ass.”…
…So the question in the Bondi controversy is obvious: was his $25,000 contribution an investment to an official he “needed something from”?

What particularly catches our attention is the contribution in the video from the WaPo’s David Fahrenthold who says that Trump stopped giving his own money to charities, even his own, back in 2008, ironically when Barack Obama was elected.  Maybe he was too busy paying people to look into the President’s birth certificate?  And maybe it helps explain why he won’t show us his tax returns?

If ever a story invited the saying “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”…

Exploring the true meaning behind USA’s “Labor Day”

~ jlpagano
You can always count on the good folks at Fair.org and their podcast Counterspin to give you the real story hiding behind the corporate media hype.

In her post ‘Invisibilizing the Workers Who Actually Do the Work’, Janine Jackson offers some history on the closest thing the US has to when we know as a “Bank Holiday”, namely today.

It’s presented by corporate media as, most importantly, a long weekend with a parade—or, more seriously, as a holiday fought for by US trade unions to honor American workers. But the day has more complex origins. A national holiday had been a goal of US labor—several states already celebrated—but Grover Cleveland declared Labor Day in the midst of an attack by federal troops on striking Pullman railway workers, leading many to see it as an attempt to appease workers more than honor them.

Some fascinating stuff there.  The post is an edited transcript of the podcast which is well worth a listen.

Oh and another thing…the US Presidential race is meant to crank up another gear after Labor Day – just sayin’

“Secrets of a Global Super Court” : essential reading to understand why we need to #StopTTIP

~ jlpagano

In the ongoing #AppleTax debacle one of the most common themes used by both Apple and the Irish government is that the ruling of the European Commission is essentially an “attack on our sovereignty”.   If they truly believe that, they must also surely be unified against the ISDS courts due to be used by the TTIP and other such proposed treaties should they come into effect.

According to reports, resistance from both France and Germany could ensure the TTIP doesn’t go ahead, but still I reckon it’s vitally important that the wider public appreciates just exactly what the proposed treaty entailed because I very much doubt the multinationals corporations are going to give up and not try to force something similar through down the line.

Thanks to the latest episode of the excellent Democracy@Work podcast featuring Richard Wolff, we have discovered a series of articles by Chris Hamby on Buzzfeed which expose exactly what these so-called super-courts are all about, who comprises them, and what kind of rulings they have made in the past.

The series kicks off like this :

Imagine a private, global super court that empowers corporations to bend countries to their will.

Say a nation tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution. Imagine that a company could turn to this super court and sue the whole country for daring to interfere with its profits, demanding hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars as retribution.

I urge you to read on.  There are four articles in total.  The third one is about Sri Lanka but should still be of particular interest to Irish readers.

Inside The Global “Club” That Helps Executives Escape Their Crimes

The Secret Threat That Makes Corporations More Powerful Than Countries

How Big Banks Bled A Tiny Island Nation

How America’s Gift To Trade Treaties Can Come Back To Hammer It

Has an Irish media outlet conducted a similar investigation?  A Google search of “ISDS” under the “Country : Ireland” setting produces nothing from national newspapers, if that means anything.

Unbelievably, something about these Paul LePage stories stinks more than his racism

~ jlpagano

We have our “tin foil hats” on here at FPP big time.

Paul LePage is the governor of Maine, the state at the northeastern tip of the USA.  He is a Republican with a big capital R.  And he is also a racist with an even bigger capital R.  These things have been well known on a national level for a while.

But what has us scratching our heads is the fact that he seems to have “upped his game” in recent times, as the NY Times reports…

Paul R. LePage, the Republican governor of Maine, faced a torrent of outrage and political pressure on Monday even from some members of his own party, after 48 hours last week in which he threatened a Democratic lawmaker in a profane voice mail message, made sweeping statements about race and ended the week by doubling down and seeming to endorse racial profiling to address the state’s drug crisis.

We won’t beat around the bush…we believe that this has something to do with the recent revamp by Donald Trump of his top advisers.

If there is one thing that Trump has done consistently, then it’s alienating immigrants and African Americans.  Now that the polls have the gap between himself and Hillary widening by the day, while he’ll hardly pick up too many votes on the “left” he surely now has to be mindful of those on the right who won’t be too keen on his reputation as a racist.

So what better way to deflect the attention of the media than to have a known bigoted politician like LePage ramp up the racist rhetoric?  Make sure he achieves  coast-to-coast recognition so that Trump looks moderate by comparison?

Why else would so many examples of his tirades come out over such a short period of time?

It’s not as though LePage had a hope in hell of being re-elected anyway.  So maybe the Trump campaign went to him and said “If you help us with this, we’ll look after you when you move out of the governor’s mansion”.  Perhaps create a new “Secretary of White Supremacy” post in the Trump administration?

Of course this is all pure speculation.  But while we’re not fans of any kind of racism, we could see a smattering of intelligence behind this plan if indeed it is the case.  Perhaps we’ll never know.

 

NFL quarterback takes a stand for #blacklivesmatter by not standing for US anthem before game

~ jlpagano

It is pretty well known that San Francisco is one of, if not the, most liberal cities in the USA.

It is also relatively well known that the NFL’s franchise owners make up arguably the most conservative group in world sport.

So what happens when the two come together?  We may be about to find out.

Democracy Now! has the story…

Colin Kaepernick remained seated while his teammates stood for the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” ahead of a match against the Green Bay Packers.

In the interest of full disclosure, the 49ers happen to be the author’s favourite football team.  Do I believe this to be an honourable action by Kaepernick?  In sentiment, definitely.  His heart is most certainly in the right place.

“I’ll continue to sit. I’m going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed. To me, this is something that has to change. And when there’s significant change and I feel like that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent, and this country is representing people the way that it’s supposed to, I’ll stand.”

Do I think it will actually lead to anything being done about race relations among US police?  To use a football term, it’s probably something of a “Hail Mary pass”.

It will be interesting to see how owners, fans & mainstream media react to this “stance”, especially if he proceeds to carry it through the upcoming season.

#StopTTIP movement can work together with anti-TPP activists in the US

~ jlpagano

Thanks to my regular listening to progressive American podcasts (he said, as if there were progressive Irish ones with which to compare) I knew about the TPP about two years before I ever heard of the TTIP which actually affects the place where I live.  The media silence here has been deafening.

It was good to hear the latest episode of Best of the Left which featured segments on the TTP but also included mentions of the #StopTTIP movement in Europe, like the one above from Occupy.com.

In the coming months, those Europeans who have campaigned against TTIP should surely reach out to their American counterparts – even if TTIP is defeated, we still live in a world in which major corporations often have greater power than nation states.  

Only organised movements that cross borders can have any hope of challenging this unaccountable dominance.  From tax justice to climate change, the “protest never achieves anything” brigade have been proved wrong.  Here’s a potential victory to relish and build on.

Next up here from the Irish #StopTTIP movement is a march on September 17.  Unfortunately there is also a #Right2Water march in Dublin the same day…I’d love to know how or why that came about they really do seem like causes that much of the same people would support and thus should have protests on different days.

Anyway…we’ll deal with the water issue in other posts…here’s some info on the #StopTTIP and their Autumn of Action…

STOP CETA! Join us for a day of action on the 17th of September at 2pm at Christ Church.
This will be a solidarity march with Germany and other parts of Europe on the same day ..we hope to meet as a CETA/TTIP block group and join the RIGHT TO WATER march that will be meeting at Heuston Station AND Connolly Station also at 2pm.Bring your STOP CETA/TTIP BANNERS/POSTER or RED BALLOONS WRITE ON THEM STOP CETA.KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR MORE STOP CETA EVENTS OVER THE COMING WEEKS.

We are civil society, grassroots organizations, labour movements, farmer, environmental and social groups from all across Europe, Canada and the U.S. We want to put an end to secretive trade deals like CETA and TTIP, and any that follow; and we want to create an alternative trade policy, one that puts people and planet first and ends corporate impunity.

We are calling, not for a single day of protest, but for an Autumn of Action – because together, our actions will speak louder to those who need to hear us.
Right now – social movements and civil society are fighting against CETA: TTIP through the backdoor.

The process around CETA was EVEN MORE secretive than TTIP. No MEP or politician saw the texts until they were already finalised. CETA is ready to sign and the European Commission and many governments are pushing hard to get it through.

CETA means less democracy in favour of extensive investor rights, it endangers our public services, our small and medium businesses, our workers rights, our environmental and food standards and our planet. The biggest threat is that CETA is a blueprint for TTIP and allows already US corporations to use the ISDS system to sue us for democratic decisions. If CETA is passed it will be hard to oppose TTIP, we need to stand now together to ensure that we do not let our rights get sold off to multinational corporations.

Over the past few years a powerful movement against unfair trade policies has emerged in Europe and beyond. Farmers, judges, local business, trade unions, municipalities and many more stand up against CETA and TTIP.

We protest the way current trade policies profit the few, while the planet and the people suffer.
We reject a trade policy that undermines our hard won labor rights, that forces privatisation of public services and that is dependent on the exploitation of our natural resources and creating the destructive climate change that people across the globe are fighting
We won’t accept a trade system that perpetuates poverty in the global south and produces extreme wealth among the few.
It’s time to face our planetary limits and to share the wealth we can produce between everyone, this is simply impossible with trade agreements giving the opportunity to the most wealthy to win even more.

We therefore stand in solidarity with social movements and civil society in the global south that is fighting for a more just trade system also against our governments and corporations. Just like in Europe people in the Americas, Asia and Africa are going to take action against free trade agreements like TPP (Transpacific Partnership).

Now is the time to act!

This autumn of action will see a massive wave of actions, protest and disobedience in Europe and beyond. This autumn we will show the millions of voices that demand the suspenssion of CETA and TTIP. We are determined to defeat CETA and to win. Stoping CETA opens the space for alternatives. We call on organisations, individuals and alliances to participate by organising autonomous, decentralised actions across Europe. We welcome a diversity of tactics and solidarity actions from across the world that will help inform, engage and mobilise people locally. We will win against CETA because future and current generations deserve it.

Autunm of Action – September to November 2016
#stopCETA and #TTIP

There is also CETA/TTIP. Public Meeting. 
Hosted by Cllr Ray McHugh. With .
MEP Lynn Boylan.and TD Aengus OSnodaigh.
Wednesday 7th September 7/30 pm
Transport Club Clogher Rd.
All Welcome.