". . . The message Trump is sending seems loud and clear: Fraud and corruption are not serious crimes. And as such, these types of white-collar crimes can be ignored. As a former federal prosecutor, I could not disagree more. In fact, I believe fraud and corruption are among the most serious of crimes, because they are motivated by greed and erode our faith in government. . . White-collar crimes are, by definition, usually committed by offenders in positions to succeed financially. They simply want more. . ."
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The response from my esteemed representative in Washington DC to my rant about the commissioning of a bust of Dick Cheney to be placed in the United States Capitol and my urgings to refrain from memorializing a greedy, sanctimonious crook and war criminal with my tax dollars . . .
"November 8, 2015
Mr. Raymond M. Jozwiak
1049 Winsford Road
Towson, Maryland 21204
Dear Mr. Jozwiak:
Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with me.
It is important to be engaged in the democratic process, and I appreciate your interest in reaching out to me. It is always a pleasure to hear from my constituents.
To receive additional information about issues that are facing Congress, Maryland, and the Nation that may affect you and your community, please visit my website at www.dutch.house.gov and sign up for my periodic e-mail newsletter. I also encourage you to follow me on Facebook and Twitter.
My latest solo offering, Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak, featuring original, instrumental piano music is now available at - Just More Music by Ray Jozwiak
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(from Dylan Ratigan
Host, MSNBC's 'The Dylan Ratigan Show'; Author, 'Greedy Bastards'; Founder, Get Money Out Foundation
Auction 2012: Greedy Bastards and Student Debt)
".
. . In President Obama's first speech to a joint session of Congress,
he said "education in no longer a pathway to opportunity, it is a
prerequisite." It's no wonder - conventional wisdom says that those
with college degrees earn roughly a million more dollars over their
lives than those without them. And there is a vast apparatus of lending
institutions and Federal guarantees set up to help put people into
college. They do this not by keeping tuition free or low, as we did as a
country after World War II, but by helping people get access to student
loans.
This is the essence of what I've been calling
The Very Bad Deal, where costs are deferred while benefits accrue
upfront. If you get a student loan, you get to attend college, and
college is apparently the key to earning more over your lifetime, to
"opportunity". But student debt has some very nasty tricks and traps
that most 18 year olds aren't aware of when they sign on the dotted
line, and college may not be the opportunity gateway we've been assured
it is.
The scale of the deal is vast and getting bigger
- two thirds of those who attend college do so with borrowed money. In
August of 2010, the Wall Street reported that student loan debt
surpassed credit card debt for the first time in history. This amount
is now sitting at roughly a trillion dollars. Higher education
inflation is the higher than health care inflation, and two and a half
times the rate of normal inflation. Are students really learning two
and a half times as much?
Of course not. What is
happening is that universities have pricing power, and the Greedy
Bastard behavior encourages them to compete on facilities and brand-name
faculties rather than price and quality. The Chronicle of Higher
Education has described "an arms race of expenditures triggered by the
pursuit of prestige." Student debt also distorts pricing. If students
had to pay the full freight in college, they might be more
price-sensitive consumers. But since the costs of the education they
are receiving are hidden, they don't pressure universities to reign in
costs. Lavish living environments, pointlessly luxurious sports
facilities, and high salaries for administrators are just symptoms of a
system where costs have become irrelevant. . ."
I realize the importance of stimulating the economy and economic growth. I also know that when it comes to increasing profits (or should I say the 'accumulation of wealth'?) the human race is most certainly on board. Dylan Ratigan (in his book GREEDY BASTARDS) says that there is good, long-term greed - the type where someone provides a valuable product or service of high quality and reasonable price, and profits from it at a reasonable rate over a long term - and then there is bad, short-term greed (the one practiced by the 'bastards') where someone provides something of little to no value (or even swindles through questionable means) and reaps gigantic profits very quickly. I fear that pursuit of the latter type is much more prevalent these days than the former . . .
(from http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economywatch/nervous-retailers-hope-post-christmas-rush-1C7659314)
". . . The biggest holiday of the season is over, but retailers are hoping that you aren’t done with your holiday shopping quite yet.
“The next few days are critical for retailers. They’ve got some catching up to do,” said Marshal Cohen, retail industry analyst with NPD Group.
On Wednesday, big chains including Macy's were already pushing their post-Christmas bargains, while major discounters including Wal-Mart were encouraging shoppers to redeem their gift cards right away. But the fallout from a big Christmas storm could hurt their efforts if shoppers decide they prefer a cozy rest of the week at home instead. . ."
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. . . I find the most gratifying way to react to the antics of our elected officials, is to use profanity
Ignoring the sad idiot who thinks the word 'rape' requires qualifiers, how about our 'friends' of the 'right' persuasion who, in 'their daily greed', are at it again, or are still at it, or who appear to always be at it. . . (forever and ever amen). . .
(from AlterNet / By Lynn Parramore)
"Ever since the Richmonder blog posted a story last weekend pointing to suspicious-looking stock trades made by Paul Ryan on September 18, 2008 – the day Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson met with Congressional leaders to warn of an economic collapse and the need for a giant bailout – the press has been at sixes and sevens. Was it insider trading? Wasn't it? First the story circulated rapidly. Then, when the Romney/Ryan campaign quickly issued denials, some journalists, most notably Benjy Sarlin of Talking Points Memo , leapt to “debunk” the story. Matt Yglesias of Slate , who first credited the story, apologized and backed off.
Earlier this week, I posted an article challenging the denials made by the Romney/Ryan campaign.
John Carney, a senior editor at CNBC.com has responded to my piece on Paul Ryan’s insider stock trades in September 2008. Unlike the Romney campaign, he does not try to claim that Congressman Ryan did not have time to do the trades before markets closed at 4pm. (There is, of course, the possibility that Ryan traded afterhours; that was no part of my story.) Nor does he take refuge in the pathetic argument that some anonymous trustee did it. His objection is that Congressman Ryan’s trading that day followed a larger pattern evident in other transactions that year.
Carney writes:
He did trade in and out of two financial names in 2008: Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. He sold shares in Citi in January, March, June, August, September and December. He bought Citi in February, April, July and October. In other words, Ryan was following a pattern of alternating between buying and selling shares of Citi throughout the year...
Ryan sold shares in Goldman in February, August, October, November and December. He bought shares in Goldman in January, March, June and September.
Notice a pattern here? Each of Ryan’s purchases of Goldman shares coincides with the sale of a share of Citi.
Ryan follows this pattern of going long Goldman when he sold Citi on September 18. That day, Ryan also took part in a meeting where Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke met with Congressional leaders to make their case that the situation in the financial sector had turned so dire as to threaten the entire economy.
Teasing out meaningful patterns from stock market data is a tricky business. It has a tendency to turn researchers into numerologists – they are constantly tempted to find all kinds of significance in some selection of numbers. But look closely at the qualification with which Carney introduced his discussion of the Goldman purchases:
“The only breaks in this pattern were (a) when he neither bought nor sold any stocks in his portfolio in May, (b) skipping November’s sale of Citi and selling in December instead, and (c) selling shares in Citi in both August and September .” [emphasis added]
In other words, Congressman Ryan followed a pattern, except when he didn’t. And in what month does Ryan depart from the pattern? Why, by marvelous coincidence, September, of course.
Perhaps half a loaf is better than none, but Carney began his piece suggesting that those who credit the Ryan insider trading story have fallen under the influence of “liberal fantasies.” Yes, he bought Goldman while selling Citi, but the quick second Citi sale was anomalous. Congressman Ryan, by Carney’s own admission, plainly broke from his routine on September 18, 2008. . . "
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and measuring against expectations.
Why should I accept that their expectations are realistic when for the past twenty years greed has become the driving force in U.S. business?
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". . . When it comes to influencing legislators; votes, nothing is more powerful than the threat of cutting off whatever resource an industry supplies to voters. Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodity Futures Trade Commission from 1996 to 1999, a small agency charged with regulating futures markets, saw the danger of the "swaps" market long before the financial collapse of 2008 and warned the CTFC to regulate it before problems snowballed. Michael Greenberger, former CFTC director of trading and markets told the 2009 PBS Frontline program "The Warning" that when Born proposed the new rules, which would have increased visibility and price integrity for the investment banks selling CDO monster bonds, then deputy secretary of the Treasury Larry Summers called to tell her to stop. Summers had thirteen bankers in his office at that minute with a lot to lose if her rules were put into effect. As Greenberger recollected, Summers told Born that all the bankers agreed that regulating "swaps" would "cause the worst financial crisis since the end of World War II." Those bankers had the leverage to say: stop what you want to do, or the system will go down and the voters won't forgive your party for decades.
Ten years later, after a series of financial crises like those Born had warned about, banksters were still using the same threats to protect their profits. Sheila Bair, chair of the FDIC from 2006 to 2011, to the New York Times Magazine as her term was ending, "They would say, 'You have to do this or the system will go down.' If I heard that once, I heard it a thousand times. 'Citi is systemic, you have to do this.' No analysis, no meaningful discussion. It was very frustrating. . . "
". . . "If you don't give me what I want, I can meaningfully disrupt the flow of something that your constituents can't live without. . . "
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. . . for a smart and savvy politician to step up and say, "These Wall Street protesters are correct" - Simply because THEY ARE. I don't think many people would argue that the housing bubble-burst and the financial meltdown were the result of excessive GREED on the part of those in a position to exhibit increasingly large amounts of GREED - OOOORRRR - show some RESTRAINT with regards to their POCKETBOOKS and simply accept a SMALLER PROFIT (or at least remain satisfied to cover costs) IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE NATION!!
from WBAL-TV, Baltimore... "President Barack Obama discussed the growing movement, saying demonstrators "are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works."
Speaking at a White House news conference, Obama also defended the country's financial sector, which has taken the brunt of protesters' criticism, focusing on Wall Street and its regulators' purported role in expanding economic disparities.
"We have to have a strong, effective financial sector in order for us to grow," the president said.
Still, Obama discussed a need to pursue action aimed at improving government oversight and blamed Republican lawmakers for obstructing financial reforms.
Friday marked the 21st day of the grass-roots Wall Street protests.
Demonstrations have erupted in more than a dozen cities throughout the week, ranging from thousands who marched in lower Manhattan Wednesday after receiving support from local unions, to the dozens of college students who staged walkouts at various college campuses.
The movement started in New York and some of the protests there have been marred by scuffles with police.
New York authorities set up at least one vehicle checkpoint as police appeared in larger numbers throughout the financial district Thursday and established a perimeter around Zuccotti Park, which is considered a rallying point for the largely leaderless movement in that city.
"We hope that our message continues to resonate with everyone who has felt disenfranchised by the current state of our country," said Tyler Combelic, a spokesman for the Occupy Wall Street group."
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. . . it comes back, over and over. Something to it? YE - AH!!!!
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI The New York Times updated 8/31/2011 5:12:26 AM ET 2011-08-31T09:12:26
"At least 25 top United States companies paid more to their chief executives in 2010 than they did to the federal government in taxes, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The companies — which include household names like eBay, Boeing, General Electric (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft Corp. and NBC Universal, which is jointly owned by Comcast Corp. and General Electric) and Verizon — averaged $1.9 billion each in profits, according to the study by the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal-leaning research group. But a variety of shelters, loopholes and tax reduction strategies allowed the companies to average more than $400 million each in tax benefits — which can be taken as a refund or used as write-off against earnings in future years.
The chief executives of those companies were paid an average of more than $16 million a year, the study found, a figure substantially higher than the $10.8 million average for all companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index.
The financial data in the report was taken from the companies’ regulatory filings, which can differ from what is actually filed on a corporate tax return. Even in a year when a company claims an overall tax benefit, it may pay some cash taxes while accumulating credits that can be redeemed in future years. For instance, General Electric reported a federal tax benefit of more than $3 billion in 2010, but company officials said they still expected to pay a small amount of cash taxes.
The authors of the study, which examined the regulatory filings of the 100 companies with the best-paid chief executives, said that their findings suggested that current United States policy was rewarding tax avoidance rather than innovation.
“We have no evidence that C.E.O.’s are fashioning, with their executive leadership, more effective and efficient enterprises,” the study concluded. “On the other hand, ample evidence suggests that C.E.O.’s and their corporations are expending considerably more energy on avoiding taxes than perhaps ever before — at a time when the federal government desperately needs more revenue to maintain basic services for the American people.”
The study comes at a time when business leaders have been lobbying for a cut in corporate taxes and Congress and the Obama administration are considering an overhaul of the tax code to reduce the federal budget deficit.
'Repatriation holiday' Many business leaders say that the top corporate statutory rate of 35 percent, which is higher than any country except Japan, is hobbling the economy and making it difficult for domestic companies to compete with overseas rivals. A coalition led by high-technology companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers have been pushing for a “repatriation holiday,” which would let them bring as much as $1 trillion in foreign profits back to the United States at substantially reduced rates.
But the Obama administration has said it will consider lowering the corporate rate only if Congress agrees to eliminate enough loopholes and tax subsidies to pay for any drop in revenue. Many policy experts estimate that the United States could lower its corporate rate to the high 20s if it eliminated the maze of tax breaks that favor specific industries and investors. . ."
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Question: AT&T and T-Mobile merging? WHY???
Answer: Greed
(From FreePress.net. . . )"The Justice Department filed suit to block AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile. . . The DoJ lawsuit is built on the arguments that you and I have been making since this disastrous deal was first announced: If you remove a competitor from an already concentrated market, the results are bad for industry, bad for consumers and bad for society. And they're bad for jobs and the economy, too.
In today's Washington, corporations too often dictate policy. But what's good for AT&T isn't good for the rest of us. With today's decision, we see it's possible to challenge the most powerful corporations and make policy that actually serves the public interest.
In announcing the suit, the DoJ's top antitrust enforcer said, "Any way you look at it, this deal is anti-competitive."
Why can't all these greedy sumbiches just open their eyes, hunker down and BE CONTENT! If THEY can't do it, then we need more idealistic young (and old) people to take over the huge corporations and ensure that they provide the products and services they were created to provide without devoting ALL to enhancing the inflated and unrealistically decadent, almighty bottom line and luxuriously lining the pockets of the precious shareholders. We've got to work toward eliminating (or at least reducing) the inherent GREED in our society!
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. . . have squandered the economic recovery that was building before the debt-ceiling debacle.
By choosing to display their stubborn, partisan agenda instead of truly serving their constituency and contributing to the downgrading of long term U.S. Treasury bonds instead of making sincere efforts to balance the U.S. budget, our representatives in Congress have put the brakes on anything resembling an economic recovery and many analysts say this is the most serious issue of all.
A commentator on the news this morning said that the Feds need to reassure panicked investors. Duh, yes. And many thanks to the very same industry that provides that commentator a livelihood for the panic that occurred in the first place.
What are the real issues hindering our economy? I offer the following thought, albeit oversimplified and informed mainly by my gut, but still one about which I feel very strongly.
The word that comes to my mind is GREED. Listen to the business news and stock market reports when they say things like, 'gold has backed off of its high' or '3% growth, lower than expected. . . ' We, in and around Baltimore, Maryland depend upon a utilities provider called Constellation Energy who made revenues of $14.3 billion in 2010. Granted, these are 'revenues' not 'profits', but no matter how you slice it, it's big. The Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer of this company earned a total Compensation of $6.02 million. That's enough to feed an entire country. And this while our rates for gas and electricity continue to rise.
Why can't profits grow at less than astronomical rates? Why can't we learn contentment and not always crave MORE!!?? Instead of generating MORE, MORE, MORE for investors and providing outrageous compensation packages to executives, why can't these businesses provide jobs and settle for stability or modest growth?
Are any of these people in Congress REALLY leaders?
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