The Death of Capitalism in America

Added to the legacy of George W Bush -- which is to say, thrown onto the ash heap of history:

Sounds pretty dramatic but that is the headline of a story on the front page of the Washington Post today. Maybe a bit exaggerated, but that the subject even comes up is amazing. None of the candidates are passing out the collected works of Marx and Lenin yet, but the next President is in for what candidates love to call (but hate to make) "tough decisions." It is far more likely that the scary phone call will come at 3 P.M. rather than 3 A.M. and will have to do with which other industries have to be nationalized to save them from going belly up.

For example, General Motors stock was off 31% to $4.76 a share yesterday. The Bush administration has turned the budget surpluses inherited from Bill Clinton into massive deficits financed by borrowing money from foreigners, especially in Asia. This means that Asian countries, especially China, own hundreds of billions of dollars worth of treasury bills. Now suppose the Chinese government decides it wants to get into the car manufacturing business so it makes a deal with Toyota, now the world's largest car manufacturer, to buy GM outright for a song and move its factories to China to be operated by Toyota but employing Chinese workers. All they keep is the U.S. dealer network and millions of American jobs are lost. If the next President nixes the purchase of GM, the Chinese sell their treasury bills and the dollar collapses. This is not science fiction any more. Which candidate is better prepared to deal with stuff like this could determine the election.

Auto sales slide as much as 50% and auto dealers go out of business as prospective buyers with impeccable credit could not get a car loan in the single digits last month. In response, even Toyota's credit arm begin offering 0% loans up to 72 months. That has long been the domain of the poor struggling Big Three (perhaps to become the Big Two in short order), but to see Toyota resort to giving away automobile credit is a stunner.

Newspaper companies -- they of the twenty- and thirty-percent profit margins not long ago -- cannot pay even the interest on their debt, and continue to shed employees (as do companies in all industries). And retail businesses are failing right and left:

Sharper Image filed for bankruptcy protection in February, and has since been liquidating itself, getting even lower prices for its assets than it had hoped. Several other well-known retailers have since gone bust. Steve & Barry’s, a casualwear retailer that is a core tenant of numerous shopping malls, terrified commercial-property investors when it entered bankruptcy protection in July. It emerged in August with new private-equity owners and a plan to close 103 of its 276 stores. Linens ’n Things filed in May, and at first hoped to reorganise itself and leave bankruptcy. After the collapse of a planned sale to Cerberus, a private-equity firm, it now plans to liquidate itself, with closing-down sales due to start at its remaining stores on October 16th.

These failures have contributed to a rise in bankruptcy filings in 2008 that is showing every sign of accelerating. Even before September’s record-breaking financial-sector bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, with assets of well over $600 billion, and the technical bankruptcy of Washington Mutual en route to its acquisition by JPMorgan Chase, there had already been more bankruptcies this year than in 2007.

For every store closing, for every company liquidating its assets, for every business bankruptcy filed, there are suppliers who don't get paid and who thus become the next business faced with insolvency. And there are employees who lose their jobs and their health care benefits, and who can't meet their mortgage payments.

It becomes a vicious cycle, as more and more people fear for their jobs and drastically curb their purchases, which leads to more stores closing and more layoffs for manufacturers and suppliers. The shippers who transport all these goods start to lose business as consumer spending dries up. And the businesses that provide services find that their clients can't or won't pay their bills. Bankruptcy lawyers and collection firms are busy, sure, but they can't sustain an entire economy. They are getting rich off those who still have the cash to buy stock and properties and inventories and other business assets at rock-bottom prices. We are entering the vulture stage of the Crash of 2008. And it could last for a very long time.

And I don't think more tax cuts for the rich can fix this, do you?

Is Barack Obama prepared to be this century's FDR? We have to hope so. Because we're just not going to be able to drill our way out of this one.

Conservatives keep on shrieking 'fraud'

Following the revelations that ACORN registered Tony Romo and a few other Dallas Cowboys to vote in Nevada, the knee-jerk Republick outcry shifted suddenly from "ILL EAGLES" to "FRAUD". Closer to home, the Local Twos found a few dead folks who voted in the Texas primary in March.

That led, predictably, to a little LBJ bashing. (Really though, what do the conservatives have left to complain about? Since John McCain has been forced to talk down the bigots showing up at his rallies, they can no longer claim even with a half-straight face that Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist. Team Maverick sidekick Sarah Barracuda got gaffed by the Republican investigation in the Alaska legislature that found her guilty of abusing her authority, so her stock is going to keep plummeting. Republicans across the country from the White House to the statehouse to the courthouse are about to be washed out to sea under a blue tsunami, and the panic and desperation is palpable.)

Regarding ACORN:

ACORN registers lots of lower income and/or minority voters. They operate all across the country and do a lot of things beside voter registration. What's key to understand is their method. By and large they do not rely on volunteers to register voters. They hire people -- often people with low incomes or even the unemployed. This has the dual effect of not only registering people but also providing some work and income for people who are out of work. But because a lot of these people are doing it for the money, inevitably, a few of them cut corners or even cheat. So someone will end up filling out cards for nonexistent names and some of those slip through ACORN's own efforts to catch errors. (It's important to note that in many of the recent ACORN cases that have gotten the most attention it's ACORN itself that has turned the people in who did the fake registrations.) These reports start buzzing through the right-wing media every two years and every time the anecdotal reports of 'thousands' of fraudulent registrations turns out, on closer inspection, to be either totally bogus themselves or wildly exaggerated. So thousands of phony registrations ends up being, like, twelve.

And as for anybody voting with a deceased person's registration, they ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the task of updating voter registrations falls to the county tax assessor-collector (Matt), and because Harris County maintains a vital records database that includes death certificates, there's really no excuse beyond bureaucratic incompetence that allows for 4,000 dead people to remain on the voter rolls.

Fortunately we have a great alternative to Paul Bettencourt on the ballot next month, and her name is Dr. Diane Trautman.

Noriega-Cornyn just like Obama-McCain

The old balding white-haired pasty dude continuously leveled cheap shots and personal attacks, while the calm brown guy destroyed by simply laying out the record of the incumbent (party).

Where does a Washington insider find the gall to run his re-election campaign as a Washington outsider? How does a 95% lapdog for Bush Inc. claim with a straight face that he can fix all the problems he's helped make worse?

It's some kind of parallel universe the senator is living in. That, or he's smoking rocks.

Update: You thought I was kidding? He's sharing the crack with his wife ...

Let me tell you, the only person debate night is tougher on than the candidate is the candidate's spouse! It isn't easy to see your best friend of 30 years savagely attacked by his opponent, but my uneasiness quickly turned to pride when I watched John answer the questions calmly and with dignity. I may be biased, but it seems clear that John won the debate hands down last night!

Although tempted, I am not going to dignify the ludicrous statements of John's opponent last night with a response. How anyone could say some of that stuff and look themselves in the mirror is beyond me....

Unfortunately, John's opponent isn't going to let the truth get in the way of slinging mud these last 25 days, and that is why we need you more than ever.

Simply. Nucking. Futz.

And from the "You Can't Make This Shit Up" Department: Yvonne Schick is a Libertarian Scientologist who looks like Sarah Palin's not-as-cute older sister, and she thinks terrorists are like fire ants ("you don't treat your neighbor's yard, you treat your yard"). I believe that demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of how fire ants have spread throughout the United States, not to mention how terrorism has spread throughout the world.

Excuse me now, I'm off to the Home Depot for a bag of Anti-al-Qaeda Diazinon.

Voter suppression in the news

Our local counter-voter suppression task force completed its final strategy session Tuesday evening, but not without revealing one of the latest attempts to reduce Barack Obama's tally in Harris County. I'll let Gerry Birnberg take over:

There is a FALSE rumor going around by e-mail telling people that if they vote Straight Democratic Party, they must also cast a vote specifically for Barack Obama in order to have an Obama vote registered. THIS IS FALSE INFORMATION probably initiated by Republican dirty tricksters, but now being spread by well-meaning Barack Obama supporters.

The truth is that if you cast a Straight Democratic Party vote, you will be voting for Barack Obama and your Straight Democratic vote will count as a vote for Obama. But if you then go down and “vote” for Obama, you may actually be cancelling your Obama vote.

Don’t be fooled: Just cast a Straight Democratic Party vote and that will get Obama and all the Democratic candidates up and down the ballot.

If you vote on a Hart InterCivic e-Slate DRE (which you will in most all of our beloved Deep-In-The-Hearta) and emphasize your vote for a particular candidate after having clicked the "straight ticket" box, you have deselected that candidate. As in un-voting for him/her. And that's not a bug, it's a feature.

It takes a bit of devious thinking just to come up with a rumor like this to spread. And why would anybody want to go to the trouble of trying to fool people into not voting for Obama in Houston? They don't seriously believe he has a shot at winning Texas, do they?

This is just mischief-making, but it should be the least of anybody's worries. Don't believe me?

Despite bustling registration drives, population growth and excitement about the candidates, Harris County may head into the Nov. 4 election with the about same number of registered voters as in the 2004 presidential contest.

Ahead of Monday's registration deadline, about 1,912,000 citizens were on the voter roll as of Friday, county officials said. The number will grow as registrations continue through the weekend and mail postmarked by Monday arrives next week.

But the county must add 30,000 new eligible voters just to reach the 2004 level, and Tax Assessor-Collector Paul Bettencourt, the county voter registrar, acknowledged a strong chance that the sign-ups will go no higher than the figure from four years ago.

Why is that, Paul? Houston Votes added somewhere between 80,000 and 100,000 registrations alone. Yet with at least 100,000 registrations from all sources -- yes, Republicans too -- the county is still 30,000 short of 2004? What gives?

But unlike in past elections years, Bettencourt said, registration efforts are producing an exceptionally high number of voters who are re-registering to update their address and a relatively low number of people who have never registered before.

"The excitement we're seeing is among people already registered to vote," he said. He pointed to the record-high total turnout in the March primaries, in which 98 percent of the participants already had been registered here before this year. ...

Dee Young of the registration group Houston Votes said the county's refusal to seek an extension of the registration deadline while Ike victims got back on their feet ran against the public interest.

"After all of the frustration I have dealt with, with the county, I don't trust their numbers," she said of Bettencourt's latest projections. ...

The secretary of state's methods of maintaining the Texas voter roll may have helped put a lid on the Harris County numbers. Applying new federal and state laws for the first time, the state immediately removes from the Harris County rolls the registration of those who have registered this year in other counties, Bettencourt said. In comparison, the 2004 list may have contained many inactive registrations.

Purging voter rolls by removing voters who have moved within Texas, or because they have not voted in one of the last two federal elections, could be a violation of federal law. But that's exactly what has been happening in several states (the Lone Star isn't named as one), coincidentally all of them identified as "swing states" in the 2008 presidential election now three-and-one-half weeks away. The New York Times elaborates (without placing blame on nefarious intent, I would add):

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run.

Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party’s supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states — Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina — could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

Just go read the whole thing. There's more in the AP's summary of the Times' investigative report:

The six states seem to have violated federal law in two ways. Some are removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election, which is not allowed except when voters die, notify the authorities that they have moved out of state, or have been declared unfit to vote.

And some of the states are improperly using Social Security data to verify registration applications for new voters, the newspaper reported.

More on 2008 voter suppression across the United States. Still more from Amy Goodman, Greg Palast, and Robert Kennedy Jr.

Coming back home ...

I have no idea how Paul Bettencourt manages the database of Harris County voter registrations. There's very little voluntary transparency and FOI requests by media and Democratic party officials are often slow-walked and counter-offered (questions regarding Hart's electronic processing of votes are often met with the "proprietary information" block, for example).

I further have no idea how much Harris County voter suppression can be allocated to malicious intent, garden-variety incompetence, or simple and somewhat blameless human error on the part of the registree, the volunteer registrar, or the assistant clerk processing it.

More than likely the determination of this sort of thing will rest with legal discovery after the fact of an epic fail.

Update: Oh yeah, almost forgot ...

Voter Suppression Wiki

Election Protection Wiki

Stocks, McCain plummet

After six consecutive days of huge losses -- the DJIA has lost nearly 35% of its value since hitting its high of 14,000 a year ago, and 10% just this week -- the markets actually look a little better this morning. But not even a half-point drop in the Fed's rate was enough to stop the bleeding yesterday as the two-hundred point loss added insult to portfolio injury. Update (4:30 pm): Oops. A 678-point crash in the final hour, due to the gloomy prospects of General Motors and the rest of the auto industry, leaves us at a 40% loss for 2008.

I'm so old I can remember when either a 50-basis-point rate cut or a 200-point decline was enough to be big financial news all by themselves.

If you have a 401K, your losses are all on paper -- like Warren Buffet's, or Boone Pickens'. Don't sell now and turn it into a real one. I'm not licensed to dispense financial advice, so don't take my words to the bank (... ugh).

If you were planning on retiring at the end of the year and cashing out ... well, you're screwed worse than anybody I can think of. You ought to rethink that.

But while the markets will eventually make a comeback, we can't say the same for John McNasty's presidential aspirations:

Three weeks of historic economic upheaval has done more than just tilt a handful of once-reliably Republican states in Barack Obama’s direction. Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory.

Four large states McCain once seemed well-positioned to win—Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida—have in recent weeks shifted toward Obama. If Obama were to win those four states—a scenario that would represent a remarkable turn of events—he would likely surpass 350 electoral votes.

Under almost any feasible scenario, McCain cannot win the presidency if he loses any of those four states. And if Obama actually captured all four states, it would almost certainly signal a strong electoral tide that would likely sweep the Southwestern swing states—Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada—not to mention battlegrounds from New Hampshire to Iowa to Missouri.

If I were to post my weekly EV projection early it would show Obama having captured Ohio, Florida and Nevada for a total of 338 electoral votes. But hey, I'm conservative.

(You won't see that phrase typed here very often, so mark the date.)

If this current scenario holds then the focus would turn to lengthening Obama's coattails to help Democrats down the ballot. As in everywhere across the country. But despite the good polling news and the favorable trends, Texas apparently will still not benefit, at least according to the senator responsible for getting more Democratic senators elected ...

Sen. Charles Schumer, (D-NY) head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, spoke to reporters this morning about his party's prospects for increasing their numbers this cycle. He seemed ready to count his chickens before they've hatched when he said, "The wind is more strongly at our backs than ever before."

For the record, Schumer declared Texas out of reach, as "too expensive. That's the problem."

Despite that, Schumer and the Democrats have added other previous-cycle crimson states to their target list: Georgia, North Carolina, Mississippi and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's seat in Kentucky. He went so far as to call Georgia and Kentucky "even-steven races." The DSCC put up their first ad in Kentucky today.

Adding to those states, he sees Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon and Virginia as likely pick ups.

Last night, Schumer walked that statement back, saying through a spokesperson that they are "in no way writing Texas off, and it doesn't mean that he (Noriega) won'tget some money in the future".

Tonight is the debate watch party at Noriega HQ for Rick's face-off with Big Bland John Cornyn. Noriega is closing the gap fast, and the conservatives comprising Cornyn's online mouthpieces are still seething over his yes vote on the bailout bill. Despite what Rob Jesmer thinks, Noriega is charging like Seabiscuit and is now poised to nip Corndog at the wire despite his $$$ advantage.

Senator Box Turtle is sinking. Let's throw him an anvil.