What’s Wrong Today:

American Senators John
McCain and Lindsey Graham, in Afghanistan, proposed arming the Syrian rebels, while
saying they do not think that direct intervention by the United States is
necessary. McCain said at a press
conference in Kabul:

“I
believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United
States involvement,…People that are being massacred
deserve to have the ability to defend themselves,”

McCain insists that Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad’s army is relying on firepower being provided by Iran.  Sen. Graham suggested that an end to the
bloodshed would happen if the US and other nations could separate Syria from
Iran:

 “Breaking Syria apart from Iran could be as
important to containing a nuclear Iran as sanctions…If the Syrian regime is
replaced with another form of government that doesn’t tie its future to the
Iranians, the world is a better place.”

 The
Hill reported that McCain sent a letter last week to Armed Services
Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) calling for a hearing on military options in Syria: 

“All
options must now be on the table to stop the bloodletting in Syria…It is
incumbent on the committee to lead a frank and open debate about the merits of
the various options at our disposal.”

Separately, fellow traveler
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) also encouraged the US to arm Syrian rebels, insisting
on CNN that “I
think
it’s time to try to help the brave Syrian freedom fighters to carry out a fair
fight.”

So, What’s Wrong?

McCain and friends are beating the drum for
yet another hot, steaming pile of wrong:  First, the New
York Times reports that Russia is the primary arms provider to Syria, not Iran.
From 2007 to 2010, the value of Russian arms deals with Syria more than doubled
— to $4.7 billion from $2.1 billion. Second, McCain & Co have already picked
a winner in the fractured opposition in Syria. The Syrian National Council (SNC).

Ok, here are some facts to
go along with McCain’s posturing: According to Stratfor,
there are two Syrian groups that the West might side with, the SNC and the National Coordination Committee (NCC),
which have incompatible views on how to oust the regime.

And
neither has the clear support of Syria’s protesters. Way to go McClown!

First, the SNC: It is based in Paris, and while
it is predominantly Sunni, its
membership also consists of Syrian
Muslim Brotherhood members, grassroots
activists and traditional Syrian opposition figures who have been exiled. In December
2011, the SNC’s leadership called for
the establishment of safe zones and humanitarian corridors in Syria and
echoed calls by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) for a no-fly zone.

It
is the SNC that Sen. McCain said in a CBS interview, that
the US should back.

Next, the NCC: It is based in Damascus. It is largely comprised of leftist Syrian parties as well as other
traditional members of the Syrian opposition. The NCC does not have Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members in its
ranks. Unlike the SNC, the NCC
strongly opposes any foreign military intervention, and favors negotiating with the Assad regime.

These divergent views on how regime change should
be carried out make it highly unlikely that the two organizations will reach a
consensus to work together.

What about the Free Syrian Army (FSA)? The FSA claims to have roughly
15,000 fighters, but it is a loosely connected group, united mainly by their
anti-regime sentiments. Many have no relationship or communication with the FSA
leadership. The SNC and FSA however, have established a formal relationship and
the SNC also provides financing and guidance to the FSA.

Since it rejects militarization, the NCC does not have a relationship with the
FSA.

It
is the FSA that McCain wants to arm.

So, another middle-eastern country with a fractious
opposition that McCain wants to drive us into.  It is very unlikely that the SNC, NCC and FSA will
unite and stay united long enough to proclaim themselves a viable alternative
to the al Assad regime.

Yet,
we hear another dog whistle chorus: “Let’s support an underdog who wants to
be free from tyranny. Let’s use intermediaries to provide humanitarian support
and arms. Let’s bloody the nose of Iran along the way.”

Here’s the really important question: Who/what
are the Syrians fighting for? Is it democracy? Are they just religious sects fighting
to be in charge?

Tribalism runs throughout the social fabric
in the Middle East and usually trumps everything else.

The Wrongologist understands the human cost
in Syria today. We should not be against supporting a legitimate movement towards
democracy, if that’s what the Syrians are striving for. We should not retreat
into Fortress America.

On the other hand, should we be taking sides
in yet another ethnic conflict where one side may have legitimate grievances,
or they may simply be tired of the other side being in power? And they feel
like it’s their turn to be king for a generation or two? Should we act to prolong
another civil war in the Middle East?

Given what we know, the Wrongologist says: No!

This is typical behavior by Sens. McCain,
Graham and Lieberman:  They stood up and
led the chorus for invading Afghanistan and then didn’t want to leave. They piled
on about WMD’s to justify the war in Iraq, and then didn’t want to leave.

McCain is treating us to Bush-lite all over
again. Bush said, “Come up with a reason to invade Iraq because I want to”. In
2008, McCain said: “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran”.

Now, he wants to triangle the US into a war
with Iran via arming the Syrians with no
concept of what the consequences will be.

He remains a shameless war monger and once
again, he is WRONG!

 

What’s
Wrong Today:

Mitt
Romney is touring Michigan, trolling for votes in the primary next Tuesday.
Among the clever things he continues to talk about is Obama’s epic fail in
bailing out the auto industry.   He had
an op-ed in the Detroit News last Tuesday in which he stated:

“Three years ago,
in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama
stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is
that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally
indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management
of the American economy are evident in what he did.”

Elsewhere, Romney has said:

“The president tells us that without his
intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his
intervention things there would be better.”

The
crux of Romney’s argument is: If Obama had not acted, private companies would
have stepped in and run a “managed bankruptcy.”  

So,
What’s Wrong?

Romney
ignores that in the fall of 2008,
before Obama was even sworn in, no one on
Wall Street or anywhere else was willing to lend anything to GM and Chrysler, let alone the $81
billion they and their financial arms eventually needed.

You
may remember that a competitor to Bain Capital, Cerberus, bought Chrysler from
Mercedes (at a bargain price) with a plan to do what private equity firms do
best: slash overheads, cut deals with employees and pound on vendors. They
failed.

So it’s tough for
Romney to acknowledge that the government ended up accomplishing what a private
equity firm like Romney’s couldn’t accomplish. What must be even more galling to him, when the government bailed out Chrysler, the government also indirectly bailed out his competitor
Cerberus.

We should
also remember his prior op-ed in November, 2008 in the New York Times:

“With it [the
bailout] , the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of
declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy,
product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround,
not a check.”

Romney’s
argument against the TARP bailout shows that he misunderstands what happened in the government bailout. The TARP bailout not only helped support
aggregate demand, it created an opportunity to adjust the cost structures for
GM and Chrysler in a way that private equity firms were not able to accomplish.
Workers and middle management trusted agreements made with the government in a
way that they could never trust a private equity firm.

So,
Mitt thinks he could have done even better. Better? Better than this?

Just two years after it was rescued and reconstituted
through bankruptcy and a government bailout, General Motors Co. cruised through
2011 to post the biggest profit in its history.

The 103-year-old company, leaner and
smarter under new management, cut costs by taking advantage of its size around
the globe. And its new products boosted sales so much that it has reclaimed the
title of world’s biggest automaker from Toyota. […]


…The
company’s performance in North America and Asia still helped it earn $7.6
billion for the year, beating the record of $6.7 billion set during the truck
boom in 1997.

Wait!
Maybe Mitt means better than this:

Detroit’s Big 3 all turn
profits in 2010, pulling out of long skid.
US automakers General Motors, Ford Motor Co., and Chrysler LLC each reported a
profitable 2010 Tuesday, with combined unit sales of cars and light trucks
topping 5.6 million, a 19 percent increase from the previous year. The results
are expected to help push the automotive industry – domestic and foreign
manufacturers selling in the US – to its first profitable year since 2005.

Even
better than that? Really? Boy, Mitt must be a wizard! Especially since even after Obama took office, GM and Chrysler searched frantically for paths to
avoid bankruptcy, including possible mergers. Chrysler held a one-week garage
sale of its assets in February 2009, inviting anyone with enough money to bid
for parts of the company. And no one bit.

Posing
as an economics wunderkind is one of Romney’s fantasies. It’s gotta hurt when
he realizes that perhaps he really doesn’t have the magic business touch after all.

Romney
could be forgiven if he had simply gotten it wrong three years ago; after all,
plenty of people got it wrong. Even The Economist magazine got it wrong. The
difference is that The Economist recognized that they were simply wrong and
admitted they were wrong.

But
Romney continues denying reality and is doubling down. He continues to argue
that requiring GM and Chrysler to go through a managed bankruptcy and
restructuring through normal private lending channels was a viable
option.

It’s
not just that Romney was wrong in 2008/2009; but that he doesn’t seem to have learned anything. Romney could
have just admitted that things worked out okay, said Obama made the right
choice and then moved on with his carpet bombing strategy against Santorum and
Gingrich.

But,
slogging on in this way, he proves he has limited business chops

and
is simply WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

The Indiana House is considering House Bill 1210, introduced by Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner
(R), that will make abortions illegal after 20 weeks. But this isn’t the action
of one pro-life zealot, the Indiana Senate has already passed a similar bill, but it is awaiting similar action in the House.

The proposed bill is
typical of what is happening in Republican controlled state legislatures across
the country: It requires physicians to inform a pregnant woman seeking an
abortion that the fetus could feel pain and require patients to view an
ultrasound. A patient could get out of doing so only if she stated her refusal
in writing.

But the most
controversial portion of the bill is the part that would require doctors to
inform women about the risks of abortion, including “the possibility of
increased risk of breast cancer following an induced abortion and the natural
protective effect of a completed pregnancy in avoiding breast cancer.”

So What’s Wrong?

There is no increased risk of breast cancer associated
with induced abortion. In June 2009, the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists Committee on Gynecologic Practice wrote,
“Early studies of the relationship between prior induced abortion and
breast cancer risk were methodologically flawed. More rigorous recent studies demonstrate no
causal relationship between induced abortion and a subsequent
increase in breast cancer risk.

The
American Cancer Society (ACS) and other major health organizations, have rejected this theory. In
February 2003, the U.S. National Cancer Institute brought together “more
than 100 of the world’s leading experts who study pregnancy and breast cancer
risk.” They found that neither induced nor spontaneous abortions lead to
an increase in breast cancer risk. In fact, the risk is actually increased for
a short period after a woman carries a pregnancy to full term. According to
ACS, these findings were considered “well established,” which is the
highest level for scientific evidence.

Indiana isn’t the only state to promote this theory. According to
the Guttmacher Institute, seven states — Alaska, Kansas, Mississippi,
North Carolina, Oklahoma, Texas and West Virginia — now inaccurately
describe a possible link between abortion and breast cancer in written
counseling materials.

Indiana Right to Life has hailed 13 measures introduced into the
state legislature this session, calling it the “largest array of pro-life
legislation in recent history.” The group’s website states, “The
flood of legislation is a direct result of the dramatic change in leadership at
the Statehouse following the November elections.”

The main
concern here is the idea that it could ever be right or ethical to misstate the truth between doctor and patient. The GOP is now actively getting in the
middle of the relationship between a patient and her doctor.

With the passage of this bill in
Indiana, they will be requiring doctors to provide
outright falsehoods. But since Indiana’s
unemployment rate is 9.5%, why don’t these legislators focus instead on adding
Indiana jobs?

Republicans
always say about national health care: “it is not the state’s right to tell
someone what they should do/not do with their bodies”, but the story flips when
it comes to being pro choice.

All of
a sudden there is a god-given right for government to do so!

And it that’s just WRONG!

 

“Welcome back to the fight. This time I
know our side will win.” (Victor Laszlo, Casablanca)

 

What’s Wrong Today:

On Tuesday, the PA House of
Representatives decided it made sense to declare 2012 the “Year of the
Bible”—and unanimously passed a resolution doing just that, 193-0.

The resolution, sponsored
by state Rep. Rick Saccone, of Allegheny and Washington Counties, is
about a page long.  Here’s an excerpt:

WHEREAS, Deeply
held religious convictions springing from the holy scriptures led to the early
settlement of our country; and

WHEREAS, Biblical
teachings inspired concepts of civil government that are contained in our
Declaration of Independence
 and
the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, Many of
our great national leaders, among them

President Washington, President Jackson, President Lincoln, President
Wilson and President Reagan, paid tribute to the influence of the Bible in our
country’s development, as exemplified by the words of President Jackson that
the Bible is “the rock on which our Republic rests”;  and

WHEREAS, The
history of our country clearly illustrates the

value of voluntarily applying the teachings of the scriptures in the lives of
individuals, families and societies; and…

You get the idea. It’s a
resolution. It holds no real power.  Rep.
Saccone thinks it’s just like recognizing Girl Scout Week, or honoring Jewish
chaplains…

So, What’s Wrong?

Way to go Pennsylvania! You are showing
America how to ignore the Establishment Clause of the first amendment to the
Constitution of the United States.

AND nice job of wasting
time and taxpayer money on ancient myths instead of real problems! The
Wrongologist’s message to state and local politicians in Pennsylvania and elsewhere:
Get
off your knees and get to work! The economy is in shambles, many
Americans are jobless and homeless.

The
Freedom From Religion Foundation
is protesting the resolution, saying PA House Resolution 535 arrogantly exhorts
citizens to “study and apply the teachings of the holy scriptures.” FFRF Co-Presidents, Dan Barker and Annie Laurie
Gaylor go on to say “The Pennsylvania Assembly is strictly prohibited by the
Pennsylvania Constitution from controlling or interfering with the limits of
conscience, or showing any preference by law to any religious establishments or
modes of worship. It is no more permissible for members of the Assembly to
‘bless’ the bible than it would be for them to endorse the Koran.”

 

“Our
constitution grants sovereignty not to a deity or a ‘holy book,’ but to ‘We,
the People.’ There is no reference to God, the bible, the Ten Commandments or
Jesus in the U.S. Constitution, just as there are no references to ‘consent of
the governed,’ ‘civil liberties’ or ‘democracy’ in the bible. Those who have
truly studied the bible realize that it is a moral quagmire, a behavioral grab
bag, which has been used to justify automatic rule, tyranny, slavery, the
degradation of women and gays, child abuse, war, atrocity and mayhem,”
noted the FFRF.

Once the government enters into the religion business, conferring endorsement
and preference for some religions over others, it strikes a blow at religious
liberty, forcing taxpayers of all faiths and of no religion to support a
particular religious view. 

Which is probably the worst
part about this: It’s more fodder to the idea that our state governments can
take their sweet time writing resolutions such as this one, instead of focusing
on rebuilding the economy.

This nothing new, many
state legislatures are being taken over by nut cases. Readers of the
Wrongologist know that he follows the New Hampshire legislature’s antics
closely. In recent weeks it has proposed legislation grounded in nothing but
hate and ignorance. Here are a few examples:

• A bill to allow businesses to deny services
  to gay people

• A bill to defund Planned Parenthood

• Bills to weaken Domestic Violence laws

• A bill to allow the teaching of the bible
  in public school

A
quote we like: “Politicians are people who, when
they see the light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy more tunnel.” –(John
Quinton)

State legislators everywhere have always had the
capacity to be a little ridiculous, but now, things are getting downright
dangerous.

And it’s simply WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today

Review these two
statements, the first by President Obama, the second by Indiana Governor Mitch
Daniels, who gave the GOP response last night after the State of The Union
address:

President
Barack Obama, SOTU Address, January
24, 2012:

“But in return, we need to change our
tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay
our fair share of taxes. Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make
more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.
And my Republican friend Tom Coburn is right: Washington should stop
subsidizing millionaires. In fact, if you’re earning a million dollars a year,
you shouldn’t get special tax subsidies or deductions. On the other
hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families,
your taxes shouldn’t go up. You’re the ones struggling with rising costs and
stagnant wages. You’re the ones who need relief.”

/snip/

“Now, you can call this
class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as
his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

Governor Mitch Daniels, GOP Response, January
24, 2012: 

“It’s absolutely so
that everyone should contribute to our national recovery, including of course
the most affluent among us. There are smart ways and dumb ways to do this: the
dumb way is to raise rates in a broken, grossly complex tax system, choking off
growth without bringing in the revenues we need to meet our debts. The
better course is to stop sending the wealthy benefits they do not need, and
stop providing them so many tax preferences that distort our economy and do
little or nothing to foster growth.”    

(Underlining in both statements by the Wrongologist)

Keep
both statements in mind as you process the various responses to the President’s
speech, particularly comments by the Republican presidential
candidates, Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor.

Obama
and Daniels are essentially making the same point and suggest the same path forward.
Both identify the wealthiest Americans as an opportunity for a
correction/adjustment to our Federal tax policy. 

So
What’s Wrong?

Republicans
continually say that President Obama is using “class warfare” to
achieve a goal they call income redistribution. 

It
seems that Daniels is saying we should increase taxes on the 1%, i.e. the same
thing.

Are the statements different? 

Another example of hypocrisy by the Republicans…

and
it continues to be WRONG!

 

What’s Wrong Today:

MERS may not be a household
name, but it should be. MERS is the Mortgage
Electronic Registration System. It was created in 1995 as a privately held
venture of the mortgage banking industry. If you’ve bought a house or
refinanced in the last decade, there’s a good chance you signed a document at
closing that designates MERS as your new lender. Its founders
and Board of Directors includes executives from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, JP
Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and CitiBank.

The idea behind MERS was to
eliminate the physical transfer of loan notes and ownership information. Lenders
previously were required to physically register with county clerk offices every
time a mortgage loan was extended or re-sold. Instead, MERS provides an
“electronic registry” of mortgage notes where all such transfers were
recorded in a computer instead of on paper. So now, when investors of real estate notes purchase mortgage loans from people who want to sell, the transfer goes through
a computer on MERS instead of through physical paper.

Instead of the individual
banks or lenders registering with the counties each time a loan was sold or
re-sold, MERS would handle the initial registration and then become the
“nominal” note-holder. Then, each time the note was passed on, MERS
would record the transaction in its computer — but no matter who the actual owner of the note
was, MERS would remain the legally registered assignee of the note with the
county.

Without MERS, the mortgage bubble
would not have been physically possible. By using MERS, lenders/buyers of mortgages no longer
had to document their transactions with county clerks, or pay the courthouse
registration and processing fees. And MERS holds the liens on behalf of all the
players in the game.

So, What’s Wrong?

Well, it’s now the subject
of controversy and litigation. After the collapse of the housing market, MERS has
been under attack in courts across the country for two reasons:

1.   It turns out that it is unclear that
MERS actually has the right to foreclose on the mortgages it says it holds,
since the chain of title to many of those mortgages is not well-documented.  Beyond that, MERS had designated thousands of
people around the country to sign foreclosure documents on its behalf, the “Robo-signing”
we have heard so much about. In effect, MERS hadn’t accurately documented the
chain of ownership of the mortgage. Then it filed for foreclosure with more falsified
documents. Judges in state appellate and Federal bankruptcy courts in more than
a dozen jurisdictions have determined that MERS did not have the right to
foreclose on many of the mortgages it held.

2.   Several local governments argue that
MERS has enabled the mortgage industry to avoid paying millions of
dollars in recording fees. Rolling Stone reports that upwards of $200
billion or so in recording fees (so far) have been lost by county
governments. Here are the details: Counties typically charge a small fee for mortgage registration, roughly $30.
But with MERS, you don’t need to pay the fee every time there’s an ownership
transfer. Multiply that by 60+ million mortgages and you’re talking about
billions in lost fees for local governments.

Think about what’s
happened: In less than 20 years, we’ve switched from democracy in
real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording.
The county clerks who established the ownership of land, who oversaw the
records, were democratically elected stewards of those records.

Now, a corporation headquartered
outside Washington DC, owned by the mortgage industry with less than 50
employees, oversees the records for 60 million mortgages.

There is no court case supporting
the takeover, no statue from Congress or from state legislatures, it was
accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.

The
big question is, if MERS controls the chain of title, where and what law
enables that?
Apparently, it is not found in state and local statutes, rules,
regulations, interpretations, or precedents that lawyers, officials and
citizens work with. Nope, today, “the code” is the computer code of the MERS
registration system itself, because the computer code controls the
chain of title.

It looks like we already
live in a libertarian paradise: If
MERS is the law for mortgages, then what about other State laws? If the law of the land is what the
banks have written in software and it is not controlled by the State — and it’s not, because with MERS, we know that “the banks just did it”
— then which State laws are next? And how should States regain control over their legal
processes?

MERS
is what a corporate kleptocracy is looks like.

And it is simply WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

The US Department of
Education reported
that the average cost of attending a 4 year For-Profit college surpassed costs at
both U.S. state and private nonprofit universities. Full-time students paid an
average of $30,900 annually at the For-Profit schools in the 2007-2008 academic
year, almost double the average of $15,600 paid at public universities. The
average cost of attending a private nonprofit college was $26,600, the study
said.

Consider graduation rates:  According to the Education Trust, among open-access institutions
that admit 100 percent of their applicants, the 6 year graduation rate is 36% at
private nonprofits, 31% at publics, and just 11% at For-Profits. Worse,
for those who graduate, the median debt associated with a bachelor’s degree
from a For-Profit college is $31,190,nearly twice what it is at a private,
nonprofit institution and almost four times greater than the average debt load
accumulated at a public university.

So,
What’s Wrong?

According
to reports, Mitt Romney really likes For-Profit
colleges. At a town hall meeting in New Hampshire last month, when asked
about the soaring cost of higher education, Romney said students should
consider For-Profit colleges like the
little-known Full Sail University in Florida.

A
week later in Iowa, Mr. Romney offered another endorsement for Full Sail, saying
that For-Profit institutions can “hold down the cost of education” and that
they help students get jobs without saddling them with excessive debt.

If
students look at the For-Profit option, Mr. Romney said, “you’re going to find
students saying: ‘You know what? That’s not a bad deal. I’m not willing to come
out of college with a hundred thousand dollars in debt.’ The alternative is to
say the government is going to pay for that.”

He
added: “I just like the fact that there’s competition. I like the fact that
institutions of higher learning will compete with one another, whether they’re
for-profit or not-for-profit.” (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Well
friends, what Romney really likes is finding another way to privatize
taxpayers’ funds.  Bloomberg reported For-Profit colleges
received about $30.2 billion dollars in revenue from government student loans and grants, called
Title IV funds, in the 2009-2010 school year, according to the Education
Department.

Nearly 25% of 1,890 For-Profit institutions
got from 80% to 90% their revenue in federal student aid in 2007 and 2008.

The Feds knew that there was an opportunity
for the For-Profits to abuse the system, so federal law requires they receive not
more than 90% of their revenues from federal student-aid programs. Well,
right now, eight For-Profit colleges are above the limit (including University of
Phoenix, Corinthian Colleges and Kaplan) and an additional 257 of them took in
nearly the legal limit, exceeding 85%, a report released in February
2011 by the Department of Education shows.

And there should be no surprise that Full
Sail’s chief executive, Bill Heavener, is a major Romney campaign donor and
co-chair of his funds raising team in Florida. Maybe it is no surprise
that Full Sail got $205.6M in federally
sourced revenue in 12 months ending 6/30/2010. 

The Pew Research
Center did a survey of students at For-Profit colleges. Among their key findings:

• One-quarter
  (24%) of 2008 bachelor’s degree graduates at For-Profit schools borrowed
  more than $40,000, compared with 5% of graduates at public institutions
  and 14% at not-for-profit schools.
• Graduates of For-Profit
  schools are demographically different from graduates in other sectors. Generally,
  For-Profit school graduates have lower incomes, and are older, more likely
  to be from minority groups, more likely to be female, more likely to be
  independent of their parents and more likely to have their own dependents.

The Wrongologist isn’t against for-profit
education,
his experience with DeVry graduates is excellent. The ability of a student to
work full-time and get a certification or a degree, possibly on-line, has value.

The questions are: 1). How is it that these
firms get such a high percentage of their revenue from the Feds? and 2). Why is
it that their programs generally cost more than the not-for-profits, even
though they do not incur the costs of those pesky buildings and
extra-curricular activities?

Finally, what is it with Mitt? Along with his Republican brothers, he wants to privatize public schools by taking tax
dollars and funneling them to for-profit grammar and high schools. They want to
privatize prisons, roads, parts of the military, social security and oh yeah,
medicare.

Privatize the taxpayers’ money. Tear down
the commons. Taxpayers take the risk, capitalists get the rewards.

Like TBTF banking, this is simply another
example of welfare-driven capitalism.

And
it is just as WRONG!

What’s Wrong Today:

No
American wants to live in a  repressive, regimented society where police are free to do whatever they
wish in order to punish suspected law breakers. Also, we know that cruel and unusual
punishment is outlawed by our Constitution.

As of now, we still have some
rights left (speech, assembly) of those originally guaranteed by the US
Constitution before its recent shredding by GW Bush, Barack Obama and Congress.  Anyway, in our society,
punishment is left to the courts to determine and the penal system to
administer, and there are many examples where state and federal courts have
held just that.

But
now we are seeing a growing number of examples where police, mayors and
municipalities are limiting access for the press, for demonstrators as well as for ordinary
citizens, to public spaces:

• The
  Zucotti Park early
  morning rousting of the Occupy Wall Street protestors

• The
  arrest of a man photographing the arrest of an unrelated woman in Austin,
  TX

• The
  over-the-top pepper spray
  response by campus cops to peaceful protestors at UCAL-Davis

• The
  violent Oakland CA OWS rousting

• Seattle
  suing a citizen who sought copies of police dash cam videos

•  The
  6000
  tickets (and 1600 arrests) by New York City in 2011 of subway riders simply for putting their
  feet up on subway seats

All of these and many more
incidents, are justified by mayors and chiefs of police as being necessary to
maintain civil order.

So,
What’s Wrong?

Erosion
of rights accompanied by the use of excessive force is what’s wrong.

What
we all risk through indiscriminate use of rough tactics, pepper spray and LRADs
by police and the para-police (and the defense of these tactics by our public
officials), is losing our civil society altogether.

Should
we be surprised when a NY Times reporter is roughed up by the NYC police while
working a story? Maybe. At a New Year’s Eve demonstration at
Zuccotti Park,
a police captain began pushing Colin Moynihan, a reporter covering the protest
for The Times. After the reporter asked the captain to stop, another officer
threatened to yank away his police press pass. “That’s a boss; you do what a boss tells
you,”
the officer said, adding a little later, “You
got that credential you’re
wearing from us, and we can take it away from you.”

In November, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, ordered every precinct in NYC to
read a statement. Officers, the commissioner said, must “respect
the public’s
right to know about these events and the media’s right of access to report.”
Any officer who “unreasonably
interferes”
with reporters or blocks photographers will be subject to disciplinary actions.

Hasn’t
happened that way, not at Zucotti Park in mid-November, or elsewhere in New
York since November, or around the country where similar “rules”
apply.

When
challenged, New York’s police commissioner and mayor both shrug off complaints
and fight court orders. Bloomberg even argued that to let the press watch the
police retake Zuccotti Park would
violate the privacy of the protesters. “It wouldn’t
be fair,”
he said.

As
arguments go, this is ass-backwards, and it reflects a scary mindset that is
growing throughout the country.

And there is more to this hot
steaming pile of Wrong:

We are seeing flowering of a
fundamental constitutional issue that has been years in the making. City ordinances about city property
have had the effect of quasi-privatizing public space, with the municipal
corporation as the owner.  Public space
is not owned.  Public space is supposed to be
available to the public, with only limited conditions.  The very act of having to ask the officers of a municipal corporation
for permission to use public space underscores that cities have privatized
this part of the commons.

The Occupy Wall Street encampments
exposed another little secret about municipal ordinances. They were designed in part to harass
homeless people and encourage them to leave town. The alliance of middle class Occupy Wall
Street protesters and the homeless and the many issues THAT raises, is what
spawned some of the initial crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street encampments.

And about those laws: The origins of
these permits and ordinances were to suppress particular groups.  In the South in the 1960s, cities
facing civil rights demonstrations passed parade permit ordinances.  And recently, towns that did not
already have anti-camping ordinances rushed to pass them after an Occupy Wall
Street encampment
appeared.  

All of these ordinances are designed
by and to work for a certain segment of “citizens”. The system is
first and foremost about working for the upper middle class and higher. Those
“citizens” want the pols to keep them insulated from unpleasantness
and fear. The deal between law enforcement and these “citizens” is
very simple – do whatever is necessary to keep them from being directly
affected by the masses (except when they want to score some pot).  If city councils do that, the
“citizens” will write the check and not actually look too closely at
what’s happening in public spaces or in neighborhoods not like theirs.

When our laws are manipulated in order
to suppress a free press, or personal speech, it shows contempt for the entire idea of a free people or a
government of laws.

Peaceful protest is and must remain a protected
constitutional right.

The
Nazi’s took over Germany one intimidated citizen at a time. People averted
their gaze and meekly stood by as their Jewish neighbors were arrested by
Swastika-banded “police” and shipped to concentration camps.

I agree that today, we are a country with limited
repression. Nazism is not what we are witnessing, but it isn’t
necessarily a long slide down the slippery slope from here to there.

I am reminded of the infamous words
of Mayor
Daley in 1968 at time of the Chicago Democratic Convention demonstrations: “Gentlemen, let’s get this
straight. The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there
to preserve disorder.”

Wouldn’t that be WRONG?

What’s Wrong Today:

Everyone is encouraged by recent economic news, it seems that our economy continues to slowly improve, more jobs, more car sales, maybe more sales of existing homes (depending on whether you believe the data this time).

So, What’s Wrong?

Take a look at this chart:

Don’t know about you, but I think this chart shows that real wages are stagnant for the past 6 months, while if we look at the past 12 months, real wages are down by 1.8%.

Although we have been adding private sector jobs, the pay for these new workers does not match the average wages of the workers that preceded them. And in fact, these low wage new jobs are helping to drag the average down significantly.

So, many thanks to the job creators and the wonderful job they are doing.  The average Joe is not “recovering” despite the headlined “Economic Recovery”.

What’s
Wrong Today:

Hire a Vet? The overall unemployment rate among our 21 million veterans was 7.4% in November. That is lower than the national unemployment rate of 8.6%. Since 9/11, a wide array of government programs have been initiated to get veterans back to work:

• The Post-9/11 GI Bill, signed into law by George W. Bush in 2008 and against considerable opposition, including from Newt Gingrich 2.0. It helps veterans go back to school, paying for education and training for all veterans who served more than 90 days in the armed forces after September 11th 2001.

• President Obama created a Council on Veterans Employment in 2009, and the federal government hired over 70,000 veterans in both 2009 and 2010.

• On November 21st, Mr. Obama signed a bill offering tax credits to employers who hire unemployed or disabled veterans.

• Michelle Obama and Jill Biden, the vice-president’s wife and the stepmother of a soldier, recently launched a Hire Vets awareness campaign on behalf of veterans and military families.

• The Department of Labor offers an online employment service, as well as counseling for veterans at its 3,000 career centers.
  

So What’s Wrong?

The overall national numbers mask a terrible and growing problem: The unemployment rates for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan is 11.1%. For younger veterans between the ages of 18 and 24, it is 37.9%. So the Great American Depression Recession strikes much harder at these returning veterans. Since so many soldiers lack a college degree, the fact that this recession has been particularly hard on the less educated hits our returning veterans disproportionately, there needs to be more opportunity for veterans to get on their feet once they are back on American soil, this Denver staffing agencies jobs listing should be empty, and the vets should have jobs. Despite our government’s efforts, this trend is continuing even as the last American troops leave Iraq. All told, more than 1 million new veterans are expected to join the civilian labor force over the next four years. This alone will cause our national unemployment level to be persistently high throughout the next 4 years of the Obama administration, or that of his Republican opponent.

Source: http://www.economist.com/node/21541835

The top line numbers are also depressing: around 1.55 million US veterans are jobless, 1.4 million live below the poverty line, and one in every three homeless adult men in America is a veteran. This is a much bigger problem than many people think. Veterans deserve support after fighting for the country, so it’s important that these statistics begin to change. For many unemployed veterans, they can struggle to get back to everyday life which leaves them without a job. By not having an income, many veterans experience poverty quickly. This makes their lives even more difficult as they struggle to cope financially. If this happens, there are so many ways for veterans to get support. Perhaps these veterans could consider visiting https://www.gofundme.com/c/blog/financial-help-for-veterans. By doing that, more veterans can learn about the organizations that want to help them.

If demographics are destiny, these terrible numbers may not be surprising: More soldiers are male than female, and the US male jobless rate exceeds women’s. Also, joblessness
keeps unemployed veterans on VA health care as opposed to receiving it from a private insurance program offered through an employer, as many employed Americans do, which will keep our costs of veteran’s benefits higher than they might otherwise be.

The transition from military life to civilian is difficult. Soldiers often have trouble translating their military skills into marketable civilian ones. The simple act of writing a resume can scare a lot of returning soldiers, accustomed to being told where to go and what to do and now suddenly having to figure out, rather than being told, what prospective employers want.

Who
Cares?

In an
interview in The Economist, Major Jon Soltz, who spent the past year serving in Iraq advising the Iraqi army, went to the bank a couple of days after he returned home from active duty. He told the teller he no longer lived at the address on file, and had spent the last year in Iraq. “She asked me if I was there on vacation…People aren’t going to understand. People aren’t living it. It was a chosen war, and the country was never really engaged in it.”

Although more than 2 million soldiers served in Iraq and Afghanistan that adds up to less than 1% of all Americans. Many soldiers returned to find themselves among very few people in their towns or communities to have served.

We are quick to say, “Thank you for your service”. Returning veterans today are getting more honor and respect than they did during the Wrongologist’s service during the Vietnam era. While returning veterans seem to have our nation’s gratitude, gratitude alone has never paid a bill.

This is another emergent American failure:
We were quick to bail out the banks and AIG, etc. Now, it’s time to put some of our resources and attention to a better use. We need a national conversation about the enormity of what veterans face when they come back from war, separate from service and try to find a civilian job.

We
also need a plan.
Hopefully, the American public and our idiot politicians will act on behalf of veterans
when it comes to both the fiscal and political decisions that affect this group
of people to whom we owe so much.

To do
otherwise, would be WRONG!