If AIG Has The Best And Brightest Talent; We Are In A World Of Hurt.
Indictbushnow On The March This Saturday!
LONDON (Reuters) - Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees.
Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-force-feeding detainees who are on hunger strike.
The Pentagon said on Monday that it had received renewed reports of prisoner abuse during a recent review of conditions at Guantanamo, but had concluded that all prisoners were being kept in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
"According to my clients, there has been a ramping up in abuse since President Obama was inaugurated," said Ghappour, a British-American lawyer with Reprieve, a legal charity that represents 31 detainees at Guantanamo.
Tales From Torture’s Dark World
By MARK DANNER
Published: March 14, 2009
ON a bright sunny day two years ago, President George W. Bush strode into the East Room of the White House and informed the world that the United States had created a dark and secret universe to hold and interrogate captured terrorists.
“In addition to the terrorists held at Guantánamo,” the president said, “a small number of suspected terrorist leaders and operatives captured during the war have been held and questioned outside the United States, in a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.”
At these places, Mr. Bush said, “the C.I.A. used an alternative set of procedures.” He added: “These procedures were designed to be safe, to comply with our laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods extensively and determined them to be lawful.” This speech will stand, I believe, as George W. Bush’s most important: perhaps the only historic speech he ever gave. In his fervent defense of his government’s “alternative set of procedures” and his equally fervent insistence that they were “lawful,” he set out before the country America’s dark moral epic of torture, in the coils of whose contradictions we find ourselves entangled still.
At the same time, perhaps unwittingly, Mr. Bush made it possible that day for those on whom the alternative set of procedures were performed eventually to speak. For he announced that he would send 14 “high-value detainees” from dark into twilight: they would be transferred from the overseas “black sites” to Guantánamo. There, while awaiting trial, the International Committee of the Red Cross would be “advised of their detention, and will have the opportunity to meet with them.”
A few weeks later, from Oct. 6 to 11 and then from Dec. 4 to 14, 2006, Red Cross officials — whose duty it is to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and to supervise treatment of prisoners of war — traveled to Guantánamo and began interviewing the prisoners.
Their stated goal was to produce a report that would “provide a description of the treatment and material conditions of detention of the 14 during the period they were held in the C.I.A. detention program,” periods ranging “from 16 months to almost four and a half years.”
As the Red Cross interviewers informed the detainees, their report was not intended to be released to the public but, “to the extent that each detainee agreed for it to be transmitted to the authorities,” to be given in strictest secrecy to officials of the government agency that had been in charge of holding them — in this case the Central Intelligence Agency, to whose acting general counsel, John Rizzo, the report was sent on Feb. 14, 2007.
The result is a document — labeled “confidential” and clearly intended only for the eyes of those senior American officials — that tells a story of what happened to each of the 14 detainees inside the black sites.
A short time ago, this document came into my hands and I have set out the stories it tells in a longer article in The New York Review of Books. Because these stories were taken down confidentially in patient interviews by professionals from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and not intended for public consumption, they have an unusual claim to authenticity.
Indeed, since the detainees were kept strictly apart and isolated, both at the black sites and at Guantánamo, the striking similarity in their stories would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely. As its authors state in their introduction, “The I.C.R.C. wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information provided below.”
Beginning with the chapter headings on its contents page — “suffocation by water,” “prolonged stress standing,” “beatings by use of a collar,” “confinement in a box” — the document makes compelling and chilling reading. The stories recounted in its fewer than 50 pages lead inexorably to this unequivocal conclusion, which, given its source, has the power of a legal determination: “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
Perhaps one should start with the story of the first man to whom, according to news reports, the president’s “alternative set of procedures” were applied:
Mark Danner, a professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bard College, is the author of "Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror.” This essay is drawn from a longer article in the new issue of The New York Review of Books, available at www.nybooks.com.
"Secret" Red Cross Report Confirms More Torture at CIA Black Sites
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet
Prisoners described being put in dog collars, having their heads slammed against walls, and forced inside "coffin-like" boxes. Read more
Majority Receptive to Law Making Union Organizing Easier
PRINCETON, NJ -- A new Gallup Poll finds just over half of Americans, 53%, favoring a new law that would make it easier for labor unions to organize workers; 39% oppose it. This is a key issue at stake with the Employee Free Choice Act now being considered in Congress.
How a Leftist Third Party Could Gain Ascendancy
OpEdNews - Newtown,PA,USA
2010: Midterm elections. The Greens, Socialists and other leftist parties ... The Kucinich campaign that I saw here in Minnesota in 2004 had the right idea, ...
Democrats are exploring proposing a tax that would be narrowly tailored to force the American International Group to pay back a percentage of the $165 million in bonuses it doled out. READ MORE
Political Economy: A Glass-Steagall Half Empty
By John Cranford
The system of financial supervision is broken, but calls to restore Depression-era rules miss the target
Democrat May Be Closing Gap In Special House Election
A new independent poll on the 20th District contest shows Republican Jim Tedisco, a state Assembly leader, losing ground. READ MORE
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Lawmakers Eye Tax Code as Means to Recoup AIG Bonuses
A day after anger at American International Group Inc. appeared to boil over, members of Congress got down to work Tuesday exploring legislative avenues to recoup $165 million in bonus money handed out by the company. [READ MORE]
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AIG Debacle Sparks Fresh Look at Insurance Regulation
The implosion of insurance giant American International Group, Inc. — and the political firestorm over the government's effort to prop up the company — may put a spotlight on long-debated efforts to overhaul regulation of the insurance industry. [READ MORE]
Federal reinsurance regulation gains support
Business Insurance - Chicago,IL,USA
Mark Warner, D-Va., echoed that assessment, saying that the global aspect of the reinsurance market means a federal regulator for that business "makes some ...
AIG's "Best and Brightest"
JON WIENER | The taxpayers own AIG. They should run it.
"We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent," AIG says, unless they pay those bonuses -- $165 million. Barney Frank had the best and brightest reply: on the Rachel Maddow Show Monday night, he said: "I don't want to retain them."
He's talking about the people at AIG who brought down the company and then the financial institutions and then the rest of the world economy. "If you are trying to undo mistakes," Frank said, "it‘s very often not a good idea to keep the people who made the mistakes in there."
But that $165 million is only the latest in outrageous payments to "the best and brightest" talent at AIG. The disaster was rooted in AIG's Financial Products Group in London. In 2008, when the unit was collapsing, "they were still paying the head of the unit a consulting fee of $1 million a month," according to Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times, interviewed Monday on "Fresh Air with Terry Gross."
That man's name, for the record, is Joe Cassano. He left AIG a year ago, and these days he is not giving interviews; Morgenson said he is "lawyered up."
And the claim that AIG needs to pay bonuses to the people who brought the company down is only the latest in outrageous arguments. AIG was collapsing because it didn't have sufficient capital reserves to pay the insurance claims on the risky financial instruments it insured. Normally insurance companies are required to have sufficient reserves to pay claims, but the people AIG was insuring against loss -- Deutsche Bank, Barclays, BNP Paribas - did not require it to put aside any reserve for future potential losses, Morgenson reports. That's because AIG had such a high credit rating from Moody's and Standard and Poor's.
But when people have tried to sue the rating companies for incompetence, Morgenson told Terry Gross, the companies claimed their ratings are "opinions, just like a newspapers opinions," and "are therefore protected by the First Amendment." The courts thus far have accepted that argument.
The Obama Treasury Department apparently has accepted AIG's argument that it is contractually obligated to pay the bonuses – because the government cannot order a private company to break its contracts. Barney Frank had a good idea: the government wouldn't have to order a private company to break its contracts; the owners of the company could do that. "I want the American government to assert its right of ownership in this company," Frank told Rachel Maddow. "We own 80 percent. We should run the company."
In a March 17 article about the Obama administration's "effort to undo bonuses at A.I.G.," The New York Times reported, "The Treasury ... said they had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall." But at no point in the article did reporters Edmund L. Andrews and Jackie Calmes note that the "Treasury" that "had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall" was then-President Bush's Treasury Department. Indeed, the article did not mention Bush or his Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson at all, much less report that the Bush Treasury Department worked with the Federal Reserve in carrying out last year's bailouts and bought AIG stocks notwithstanding the existence of these bonus contracts.
The Times reported, "President Obama and his top economic advisers scrambled to calm a nationwide furor on Monday over bonuses paid at the American International Group, even as administration officials acknowledged they had known about the issue for months." The Times further reported:
For all of the furor since details of the bonuses became public over the last several days, the issue of retention payments to A.I.G. employees globally has been percolating publicly since A.I.G. was bailed out in mid-September. About $1 billion in retention payments for 2008 and 2009 are in question, but the controversy involves about half of that, about $450 million over two years, that was intended for employees of A.I.G.'s financial products unit. That unit was the source of the financial derivatives blamed for the near-collapse at the heart of the economy's downturn.
The Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said they had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall. The program has provoked public protests from a handful of critics and at least one Democratic lawmaker in Congress -- Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, a member of the House Committee on Government Oversight, who demanded without success in December that A.I.G. provide information about the bonuses.
But in reporting that federal officials knew of the bonus programs as early as fall 2008, the Times failed to make the connection to the Bush administration, which negotiated bailouts with AIG, even with the retention bonuses in place.
Reporting on the September 16 bailout of AIG, The New York Times stated in a September 17, 2008, article: "Fearing a financial crisis worldwide, the Federal Reserve reversed course on Tuesday and agreed to an $85 billion bailout that would give the government control of the troubled insurance giant American International Group." The Times continued:
The decision, only two weeks after the Treasury took over the federally chartered mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is the most radical intervention in private business in the central bank's history.
With time running out after A.I.G. failed to get a bank loan to avoid bankruptcy, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, convened a meeting with House and Senate leaders on Capitol Hill about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain the rescue plan. They emerged just after 7:30 p.m. with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke looking grim, but with top lawmakers initially expressing support for the plan. But the bailout is likely to prove controversial, because it effectively puts taxpayer money at risk while protecting bad investments made by A.I.G. and other institutions it does business with.
A September 18, 2008, New York Times article further reported on the Bush administration's role in bailing out AIG, a role ignored in theTimes' March 17 article:
The first call from the Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. came at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, and the message was innocuous, to avoid setting off alarms. And when he finally got through to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, Mr. Paulson simply said he wanted to brief Congressional leaders ''about recent developments on the economy.''
In fact, Mr. Paulson -- along with the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke -- would deliver stunning news that would reverberate throughout markets worldwide and leave top lawmakers ''petrified,'' in the words of a senior aide.
A frenzied effort to prop up the American International Group, the ailing insurance giant, had failed. The Fed had decided it had no choice but to do the unthinkable: bail out A.I.G. with an $85 billion loan or risk a potential financial catastrophe of unknown proportions.
Over the preceding five days, A.I.G., the world's largest insurance company, had exhausted every other option. The company had sought a lifeline from some of the nation's largest banks, as well as from big private investment funds on Wall Street, but no one dared come to the rescue. As potential saviors pored over A.I.G.'s books, the holes they discovered kept growing -- first from $20 billion, then to $40 billion, then to $80 billion, then even more. The sharpest minds on Wall Street could not fathom where the bottom was.
Further, in a November 10, 2008, article, the Times reported that the Bush Treasury Department and Federal Reserve announced a "revised bailout" of AIG, under which "the Treasury Department will use the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion financial system rescue plan, to buy $40 billion of newly issued A.I.G. preferred shares." From the November 10 article:
The federal government announced on Monday an overhaul of its bailout of the insurance giant American International Group, saying it would purchase $40 billion of the company's stock, after signs that the initial bailout was putting too much strain on the company.
In a joint statement, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury said the move was necessary "to keep the company strong and facilitate its ability to complete its restructuring process successfully." The new measures, they said, would help the company and promote market stability while protecting the interests of the federal government and taxpayers.
A.I.G. reported a loss on Monday of $24.47 billion, or $9.05 a share, in the third quarter, after a profit of $3.09 billion, or $1.19 a share, a year ago. The results included pretax losses of $18.31 billion from the declining value of A.I.G.'s investments.
Neel T. Kashkari, the assistant secretary of the Treasury who heads the Office of Financial Stability, said in a speech Monday morning that the new A.I.G. plan "was necessary to maintain the stability of our financial system."
A.I.G. shares were 8 percent higher, to $2.28 near the close of trading Monday. In the revised bailout, the Treasury Department will use the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the $700 billion financial system rescue plan, to buy $40 billion of newly issued A.I.G. preferred shares.
The government created an $85 billion emergency credit line in September to keep A.I.G. from toppling and added $38 billion more in early October when it became clear that the original amount was not enough. As part of the revision, the Federal Reserve said it would reduce that credit line to $60 billion.
From the March 17 New York Times article:
For all of the furor since details of the bonuses became public over the last several days, the issue of retention payments to A.I.G. employees globally has been percolating publicly since A.I.G. was bailed out in mid-September. About $1 billion in retention payments for 2008 and 2009 are in question, but the controversy involves about half of that, about $450 million over two years, that was intended for employees of A.I.G.'s financial products unit. That unit was the source of the financial derivatives blamed for the near-collapse at the heart of the economy's downturn.
The Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said they had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall. The program has provoked public protests from a handful of critics and at least one Democratic lawmaker in Congress -- Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, a member of the House Committee on Government Oversight, who demanded without success in December that A.I.G. provide information about the bonuses.
[...]
But administration officials said that the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, did not personally become aware until last week that an even bigger round of payments was due on March 15. Administration officials said Mr. Geithner learned of the deadline early last week, when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York alerted him that the bonus payments were coming due.
Mr. Geithner, according to Treasury officials, insisted that the bonus plan was "unacceptable" and called Mr. Liddy on Wednesday to demand changes.
Obama Rebuffs Israeli Hawk
ROBERT DREYFUSS | So far at least, the White House isn't giving in to Jerusalem's increasingly threatening noises about Iran.
Obama using campaign-style tactics to get agenda through Congress
By DailyMe.com Inc
In addition, consultations on passing the president's budget have been taking place betweenMoveOn.org and the White House public liaison office, headed by Valerie Jarrett, a close friend of the president. Earlier this month, MoveOn ...
DailyMe - http://dailyme.com/rss.php
Dear Friend,
Last week, Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, took Jim Cramer and CNBC to task. As Stewart told Cramer, "You knew what the banks were doing, and yet were touting it for months and months. The entire network was." Stewart's showdown with Cramer was entertaining and thought-provoking television to say the least. It clearly demonstrated the need for CNBC to commit to making real, lasting change. That is why we need your help.
Yesterday, I joined several prominent writers, journalism professors, economists, media critics, and progressive leaders in signing a letter demanding that CNBC take substantial steps toward fixing its broken network. Among many others, the letter was signed by co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research Dean Baker, Columbia University journalism professor Todd Gitlin, president of the Economic Policy Institute Lawrence Mishel, economist at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Sylvia Allegretto, and senior economist at the Center for American Progress Heather Boushey.
By joining in our call for change at CNBC today, you can send a powerful message to the nation's premier financial news network.
Rather than fulfill its crucial role as a journalistic outlet seeking the truth, CNBC instead abdicated its responsibility to the American people in favor of years of uncritical repetition of spin by Wall Street CEOs. This denied the public accurate information about the causes of the current economic crisis, its consequences, and the effectiveness of proposed solutions.
CNBC should publicly declare a drastic change of direction, committing to responsible journalism in an effort to hold Wall Street accountable in the future. As a first step, it should bring new economic voices on the air with a focus on those who were right about this crisis in the first place.
The stakes are too high for CNBC to continue acting as the unofficial mouthpiece of Wall Street. This is not a game. Together we can bring about the much-needed change we seek. That is why it is so important that you sign this petition today and then encourage your friends, family and co-workers to do the same.
Regulators Say State Funds Can Handle Insurer Failure
Bloomberg - USA
“We all want you to be involved,” Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, told Keating today. McRaith and state regulators including Susan Voss of Iowa ...
See all stories on this topic
Sexual Politics
How long has it been since a First Couple seemed to want each other?
But we’re in uncharted territory here. The gesture is sweetly old-fashioned, redolent of letter sweaters, gallantry, and Cary Grant. The girl is spicy and newfangled. She’s ushering us around a social corner as much as a political one. Professional rivals, Rock and Doris leaped out of bed in those pj’s the year Obama was born; only now are we discovering what a functioning marriage between equals actually looks like. Michelle Obama promises to resolve the mystery Mrs. Spitzer, Mrs. Edwards, and Mrs. McCain left us helplessly to contemplate: What purpose does the political wife serve if she is neither accessory nor casualty? After decades of fake financials and fictitious balance sheets, WMDs that weren’t there and detention centers that were, our new First Lady is the genuine article. She has a real body—arms! Legs! Curves! And she has a real marriage.
Here are two people whose bodies speak as eloquently as their words, who hold each other up, who between them get the temperature just right.
DAILY FINANCE: Inspired by Jon Stewart, activists hound CNBC
BROADCASTING & CABLE: "Fix CNBC" Push from Progressive Change Campaign Committee Gathering Steam
They can sign the letter at FixCNBC.com.
MEDIA BISTRO: Web Petition Asks People to Help "Fix CNBC"
POLITICO: Liberals, profs target CNBC
MYDD: Finishing What Stewart Started
STOCKMASTERS .COM: FixCNBC.com - Online Petition to Hold CNBC Accountable
HUFFINGTON POST: Economists, Progressives Petition CNBC For Coverage Overhaul
HOTINE LAST CALL: Today economists, journalists, and progressive leaders launched an "open letter" to sign demanding that CNBC start holding Wall Street accountable
NPR ONLINE: Fix CNBC
BOING BOING: Fix CNBC -- sign the open letter
OPENLEFT: Can CNBC be reformed?
CROOKSANDLIARS' JOHN AMATO: Take Action: FIX CNBC or it will be business as usual!
ALTERNET: Fix CNBC: 'Jon Stewart Made the Case, Now We're Demanding Action'
JACK AND JILL POLITICS: Stop the Lies & the Hatred: Fix CNBC
THE GUARDIAN: Fix CNBC
Pretty nice momentum for FixCNBC.com, huh?
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