Rachel Maddow: Romney surrogates: Friends with detriments:
President's message to Planned Parenthood.
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Saturday, March 31, 2012
Friday, March 30, 2012
Wisconsin Preps for Heated Recall Election of Gov. Scott Walker - Yahoo! News
Wisconsin Preps for Heated Recall Election of Gov. Scott Walker - Yahoo! News:
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While the national media attention has been focused on the upcoming GOP primary in Wisconsin, there's another political battle gearing up in the Badger State, and it involves bothDemocrats and Republicans.
On Friday, the Government Accountability Board of Wisconsin is expected to certify the 1 million petitions turned in in January to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker. With a special gubernatorial election pending, Democrats and Republicans in the state are bracing for a tight race ahead.
A special election is tentatively scheduled for June 5, with a Democratic primary to take place four weeks earlier, on May 8. (Those dates will be made official after the recall is certified.) Three Democrats have declared their candidacies - former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk,Wisconsin secretary of state Doug LaFollette and state senator Kathleen Vinehout.
Tom Barrett, the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee who ran against Walker for governor in 2010 and lost, is reportedly considering another run, but he has not declared his candidacy yet. He is expected to make a decision by the beginning of next week.
Democrats in the state are flying high ahead of the official start of what will be a relatively short election season.
"We're feeling great," Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Mike Tate told ABC News. "I think the people of Wisconsin are ready to fire Scott Walker and hire a new governor."
The overwhelming success of the efforts by United Wisconsin to collect the signatures necessary to bring about a recall election might be interpreted as a sign that Walker is going to face a seriously uphill battle in this special election. However, recent polling shows that is not the case.
A Marquette Law School poll out earlier in the week shows Walker with a narrow lead over Barrett and Falk. When matched against Barrett, Walker had a two-point lead, 47 to 45 percent. Against Falk, Walker's lead widened a little to four points- 49 percent to Falk's 45 percent.
Although these numbers demonstrate a decrease in support for Walker since the previous Marquette Law School poll in January, which showed Walker with 6- and 7-point leads against Barrett and Falk respectively, Wisconsin Republicans are still very confident about the state of the race.
"We at the Republican Party of Wisconsin, we feel extremely confident that Governor Walker will win this recall fight," spokesman Ben Sparks told ABC News. "It comes down to the fact that voters went to the polls in 2010 because they wanted to turn our state around. "
Walker has several advantages over his Democratic opponents. Because of a quirk in Wisconsin state law, Walker was able to take in unlimited amounts of money while petitions were being gathered to recall him. During this time his campaign reported raising $4.5 million in just five weeks.
Walker has also had the advantage of time. During the period when signatures were being gathered, Walker was on the airwaves running a series of positive advertisements. Wisconsin Democrats discouraged potential candidates from campaigning during this time, focusing instead on the immediate task at hand. This meant that Walker, who already enjoyed more name recognition than his potential challengers, had roughly two months of unopposed advertising time.
Democrats have one priceless commodity, however: momentum. Their ability to turn out so many signatures in the fall and winter months of Wisconsin suggests a high degree of enthusiasm.
Officials from both the Republican and Democratic parties tell ABC News they are gearing up for the election. Though the two parties are at odds over most things, there's one thing they do agree on: Turnout will be very high.
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Rachel Maddow: Running for office in a system controlled by the super-rich
Rachel Maddow: Running for office in a system controlled by the super-rich:
How to counter oligarch's money in election.
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How to counter oligarch's money in election.
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Sunday, March 25, 2012
Why Romney Is So Ripe for Parody
Why Romney Is So Ripe for Parody: by Frank Rich
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Almost everyone agrees that Romney locked up the nomination after his Illinois blowout. Why is no one in the GOP celebrating beyond Mitt’s wife and sons?
It is weird. I think the fact remains that he excites no one and there’s a sinking sense in his party that if the economy continues to improve (and even Romney is now saying it is), it has a candidate who is both pure wood and bereft of a message. Even the loyal Republican Bill Kristol said of last night's victory speech that it “consisted basically of the claim that the business of America is business” and that “he’s a businessman who understands business.” Not only is that an empty and increasingly dated pitch, but it also reveals that Romney somehow thinks he’s survived the attacks on his Bain career when in reality they have only just begun and he’s never figured out how to counter them.
It is weird. I think the fact remains that he excites no one and there’s a sinking sense in his party that if the economy continues to improve (and even Romney is now saying it is), it has a candidate who is both pure wood and bereft of a message. Even the loyal Republican Bill Kristol said of last night's victory speech that it “consisted basically of the claim that the business of America is business” and that “he’s a businessman who understands business.” Not only is that an empty and increasingly dated pitch, but it also reveals that Romney somehow thinks he’s survived the attacks on his Bain career when in reality they have only just begun and he’s never figured out how to counter them.
In his victory speech, Romney also said “It’s time to say this word: enough. We’ve had enough." Is that kind of hollow, fightin' mad rhetoric really going to be his line of attack against Obama?
The Republican right, not just Romney, seems to believe that the country is in a cataclysmic state of total meltdown. So much so that Santorum this week called the 2012 election the most important since 1860 — yes, 1860. And Joe Scarborough, the former GOP Congressman on Morning Joe, lamented Romney’s win on Wednesday morning by asking, “Is this the best we have, when we have such a historic opportunity in front of us?” It’s hard to understand for those of us outside the conservative bubble why this moment is regarded as so apocalyptic or historic. The whole GOP gestalt seems to be that Obama is such an epic disaster, and so radical, that the entire country is screaming “Enough!” Not only is that patently untrue of a president who is generally liked personally and whose approval rating is lapping up against 50 percent, but it’s a very gloomy theme for a presidential election campaign.
The Republican right, not just Romney, seems to believe that the country is in a cataclysmic state of total meltdown. So much so that Santorum this week called the 2012 election the most important since 1860 — yes, 1860. And Joe Scarborough, the former GOP Congressman on Morning Joe, lamented Romney’s win on Wednesday morning by asking, “Is this the best we have, when we have such a historic opportunity in front of us?” It’s hard to understand for those of us outside the conservative bubble why this moment is regarded as so apocalyptic or historic. The whole GOP gestalt seems to be that Obama is such an epic disaster, and so radical, that the entire country is screaming “Enough!” Not only is that patently untrue of a president who is generally liked personally and whose approval rating is lapping up against 50 percent, but it’s a very gloomy theme for a presidential election campaign.
Romney's other rhetorical attack is to keep repeating the word "believe," before attacking Obama as not believing in America. Could that really work against the man who got Bin Laden?
This isn’t about foreign policy — this is about trying to brand Obama as an alien who, in the Palin formulation, does not represent “real America.” We all recognize what that code is now. And it won’t work, except in the obvious “real American” districts in states that are mostly already sure-wins for the GOP.
The “Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up” video, which mashes up Mitt and Eminem, has gone viral. What could Romney learn from Slim Shady?
It is pricelessly funny because it shows exactly what Romney is incapable of learning: humor, any fluency with the pop culture devoured by his fellow citizens, or any understanding of any milieu beyond the gates of a patrician country club in Belmont, Grosse Pointe or La Jolla. Though Romney and Eminem are both white products of Detroit, they might as well be from two different countries. And as Jonathan Chait has argued in New York, the 2012 election is likely to be the last stand for the older, demographically antique America that Romney embodies.
This isn’t about foreign policy — this is about trying to brand Obama as an alien who, in the Palin formulation, does not represent “real America.” We all recognize what that code is now. And it won’t work, except in the obvious “real American” districts in states that are mostly already sure-wins for the GOP.
The “Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up” video, which mashes up Mitt and Eminem, has gone viral. What could Romney learn from Slim Shady?
It is pricelessly funny because it shows exactly what Romney is incapable of learning: humor, any fluency with the pop culture devoured by his fellow citizens, or any understanding of any milieu beyond the gates of a patrician country club in Belmont, Grosse Pointe or La Jolla. Though Romney and Eminem are both white products of Detroit, they might as well be from two different countries. And as Jonathan Chait has argued in New York, the 2012 election is likely to be the last stand for the older, demographically antique America that Romney embodies.
Romney may be almost too ripe for parody. Won’t the gags and Web parodies get old?
Never. Letterman landed a new dog joke just this week. (“It was such a beautiful day today, Mitt Romney was riding on the roof of his car.”) Comedy is the only business we can be certain that a Romney presidency would grow.
Never. Letterman landed a new dog joke just this week. (“It was such a beautiful day today, Mitt Romney was riding on the roof of his car.”) Comedy is the only business we can be certain that a Romney presidency would grow.
Robert De Niro was caught making a totally innocuous joke about the country not being "ready for a white first lady." Both the White House and Newt Gingrich called it offensive. Does no one have a sense of humor anymore?
Yes, people do, but not in politics. It’s particularly ridiculous that Michelle Obama’s spokesperson weighed in on this. You know damn well that the current not-white First Lady found it funny.
Yes, people do, but not in politics. It’s particularly ridiculous that Michelle Obama’s spokesperson weighed in on this. You know damn well that the current not-white First Lady found it funny.
Speaking of race, what's going to happen when the GOP candidates respond when they are (perhaps inevitably) asked about the Trayvon Martin case in Florida?
Their party has very few African-American adherents and is prone to claiming that all cases like this are hoaxes trumped up by liberals. To make matters more complicated, the killer is a Hispanic and the GOP has been openly hostile to Latinos throughout this cycle, right through Santorum's dictum last weekend that Puerto Ricans learn English before they can qualify for statehood. Now that Michael Steele has abdicated, it would be no surprise if the GOP candidates outsourced the question to Herman Cain if he can be dragged out of whatever boudoir he's in.
Their party has very few African-American adherents and is prone to claiming that all cases like this are hoaxes trumped up by liberals. To make matters more complicated, the killer is a Hispanic and the GOP has been openly hostile to Latinos throughout this cycle, right through Santorum's dictum last weekend that Puerto Ricans learn English before they can qualify for statehood. Now that Michael Steele has abdicated, it would be no surprise if the GOP candidates outsourced the question to Herman Cain if he can be dragged out of whatever boudoir he's in.
Last year, Paul Ryan again proposed a budget that cut and privatized Medicare, and the GOP ran away from it after it polled terribly. Yesterday, he did it again. What gives? And does this play into the presidential race?
Again, you see the impenetrability of the GOP bubble, and just how far right the party has moved. Privatizing Medicare was one of Bush’s top domestic initiatives but it proved so politically toxic that he had to abandon it after his own party’s caucus in Congress bailed. Even the early tea-party protestors had placards saying “Get Government’s Hands Off My Medicare!” They may have been ignorant of the fact it’s a federal program, but they sure didn’t want anyone to fool with it. But here that idea is back again from Ryan — along with other bad ideas — and there are already some GOP radicals in the House saying his plan does not go far enough! This is a political gift to the Democrats. Since Obama tried in good faith to negotiate serious reform for Medicare and the other entitlements, only to be rebuffed by the Party of No, he can ram Ryan’s schemes down the GOP’s throat this fall with a clear conscience.
Again, you see the impenetrability of the GOP bubble, and just how far right the party has moved. Privatizing Medicare was one of Bush’s top domestic initiatives but it proved so politically toxic that he had to abandon it after his own party’s caucus in Congress bailed. Even the early tea-party protestors had placards saying “Get Government’s Hands Off My Medicare!” They may have been ignorant of the fact it’s a federal program, but they sure didn’t want anyone to fool with it. But here that idea is back again from Ryan — along with other bad ideas — and there are already some GOP radicals in the House saying his plan does not go far enough! This is a political gift to the Democrats. Since Obama tried in good faith to negotiate serious reform for Medicare and the other entitlements, only to be rebuffed by the Party of No, he can ram Ryan’s schemes down the GOP’s throat this fall with a clear conscience.
This weekend — Mad Men or Hunger Games?
I confess to having already seen the first, two-hour episode of Mad Men. The deal with the press is that you don’t give away any spoilers, and I won’t. But it is giving away nothing to say that one of the first props you see in the first scene is a handmade “Goldwater for President” poster, and that the ad men who posted it are behaving both badly and self-destructively.
I confess to having already seen the first, two-hour episode of Mad Men. The deal with the press is that you don’t give away any spoilers, and I won’t. But it is giving away nothing to say that one of the first props you see in the first scene is a handmade “Goldwater for President” poster, and that the ad men who posted it are behaving both badly and self-destructively.
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Paranoia Strikes Deeper - NYTimes.com
Paranoia Strikes Deeper - NYTimes.com:
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OP-ED COLUMNIST
Paranoia Strikes Deeper
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: March 22, 2012
Stop, hey, what’s that sound? Actually, it’s the noise a great political party makes when it loses what’s left of its mind. And it happened — where else? — on Fox News on Sunday, when Mitt Romney bought fully into the claim that gas prices are high thanks to an Obama administration plot.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Paul Krugman
Related News
Price of Gas Matters to Voters, but Doesn’t Seem to Sway Votes(March 17, 2012)
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Readers’ Comments
This claim isn’t just nuts; it’s a sort of craziness triple play — a lie wrapped in an absurdity swaddled in paranoia. It’s the sort of thing you used to hear only from people who also believed that fluoridated water was a Communist plot. But now the gas-price conspiracy theory has been formally endorsed by the likely Republican presidential nominee.
Before we get to the larger implications of this endorsement, let’s get the facts on gas prices straight.
First, the lie: No, President Obama did not say, as many Republicans now claim, that he wanted higher gasoline prices. He did once say that a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions would cause electricity prices to “skyrocket” — an unfortunate word choice. But saying that such a system would raise energy prices was just a factual statement, not a declaration of intent to punish American consumers. The claim that Mr. Obama wanted higher prices is a lie, pure and simple.
And it’s a lie wrapped in an absurdity, because the president of the United States doesn’t control gasoline prices, or even have much influence over those prices. Oil prices are set in a world market, and America, which accounts for only about a tenth of world production, can’t move those prices much. Indeed, the recent rise in gas prices has taken place despite rising U.S. oil production and falling imports.
Finally, there’s the paranoia, the belief that liberals in general, and Obama administration officials in particular, are trying to make driving unaffordable as part of a nefarious plot against the American way of life. And, no, I’m not exaggerating. This is what you hear even from thoroughly mainstream conservatives.
For example, last year George Will declared that the Obama administration’s support for train travel had nothing to do with relieving congestion and reducing environmental impacts. No, he insisted, “the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.” Who knew that Dagny Taggart, the railroad executive heroine of “Atlas Shrugged,” was a Commie?
O.K., this is all kind of funny. But it’s also deeply scary.
As Richard Hofstadter pointed out in his classic 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” crazy conspiracy theories have been an American tradition ever since clergymen began warning that Thomas Jefferson was an agent of the Bavarian Illuminati. But it’s one thing to have a paranoid fringe playing a marginal role in a nation’s political life; it’s something quite different when that fringe takes over a whole party, to the point where candidates must share, or pretend to share, that fringe’s paranoia to receive the party’s presidential nod.
And it’s not just gas prices, of course. In fact, the conspiracy theories are proliferating so fast it’s hard to keep up. Thus, large numbers of Republicans — and we’re talking about important political figures, not random supporters — firmly believe that global warming is a gigantic hoax perpetrated by a global conspiracy involving thousands of scientists, not one of whom has broken the code of omertà . Meanwhile, others are attributing the recent improvement in economic news to a dastardly plot to withhold stimulus funds, releasing them just before the 2012 election. And let’s not even get into health reform.
Why is this happening? At least part of the answer must lie in the way right-wing media create an alternate reality. For example, did you hear about how the cost of Obamacare just doubled? It didn’t, but millions of Fox-viewers and Rush-listeners believe that it did. Naturally, people who constantly hear about the evil that liberals do are ready and willing to believe that everything bad is the result of a dastardly liberal plot. And these are the people who vote in Republican primaries.
But what about the broader electorate?
If and when he wins the nomination, Mr. Romney will try, as a hapless adviser put it, to shake his Etch A Sketch — that is, to erase the record of his pandering to the crazy right and convince voters that he’s actually a moderate. And maybe he can pull it off.
But let’s hope that he can’t, because the kind of pandering he has engaged in during his quest for the nomination matters. Whatever Mr. Romney may personally believe, the fact is that by endorsing the right’s paranoid fantasies, he is helping to further a dangerous trend in America’s political life. And he should be held accountable for his actions.
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Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Congressional Progressive Caucus : Budget for All
Congressional Progressive Caucus : Budget for All:
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Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus
Fiscal Year 2013
The Budget for All makes the American Dream a reality again. By putting Americans back to work, theBudget for All enhances our economic competitiveness by rebuilding the middle class and investing in innovation and education. Our budget protects Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, invests in America’s future, and asks those who have benefited most from our economy to pay their fair share.
Our Budget Puts Americans Back to Work
Our budget attacks America’s persistently high unemployment levels with more than $2.4 trillion in job-creating investments. This plan utilizes every tool at the government’s disposal to get our economy moving again, including:
• Direct hire programs that create a School Improvement Corps, a Park Improvement Corps, and a Student Jobs Corps, among others.
• Targeted tax incentives that spur clean energy, manufacturing, and cutting-edge technological investments in the private sector.
• Widespread domestic investments including an infrastructure bank, a $556 billion surface transportation bill, and approximately $1.7 trillion in widespread domestic investment.
Our budget attacks America’s persistently high unemployment levels with more than $2.4 trillion in job-creating investments. This plan utilizes every tool at the government’s disposal to get our economy moving again, including:
• Direct hire programs that create a School Improvement Corps, a Park Improvement Corps, and a Student Jobs Corps, among others.
• Targeted tax incentives that spur clean energy, manufacturing, and cutting-edge technological investments in the private sector.
• Widespread domestic investments including an infrastructure bank, a $556 billion surface transportation bill, and approximately $1.7 trillion in widespread domestic investment.
Our Budget Exhibits Fiscal Discipline
• Unlike the Republican budget, the Budget for All substantially reduces the deficit, and does so in a way that does not devastate what Americans want preserved.
• We achieve these notable benchmarks by focusing on the true drivers of our deficit – unsustainable tax policies, the wars overseas, and policies that helped cause the recent recession – rather than putting the middle class’s social safety net on the chopping block.
• Unlike the Republican budget, the Budget for All substantially reduces the deficit, and does so in a way that does not devastate what Americans want preserved.
• We achieve these notable benchmarks by focusing on the true drivers of our deficit – unsustainable tax policies, the wars overseas, and policies that helped cause the recent recession – rather than putting the middle class’s social safety net on the chopping block.
Our Budget Creates a Fairer America
• Ends tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans on schedule at year’s end
• Extends tax relief for middle class households and the vast majority of Americans
• Creates new tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires, in line with the Buffett Rule principle
• Eliminates the tax code’s preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends
• Abolishes corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies
• Eliminates loopholes that allow businesses to dodge their true tax liability
• Creates a publicly funded federal election system that gets corporate money out of politics for good
Our Budget Brings Our Troops Home
• Responsibly and expeditiously ends our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving America more secure at home and abroad
• Adapts our military to address 21st century threats; through modernization, the Department of Defense will spend less and stop contributing to our deficit problems
• Ends tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans on schedule at year’s end
• Extends tax relief for middle class households and the vast majority of Americans
• Creates new tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires, in line with the Buffett Rule principle
• Eliminates the tax code’s preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends
• Abolishes corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies
• Eliminates loopholes that allow businesses to dodge their true tax liability
• Creates a publicly funded federal election system that gets corporate money out of politics for good
Our Budget Brings Our Troops Home
• Responsibly and expeditiously ends our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving America more secure at home and abroad
• Adapts our military to address 21st century threats; through modernization, the Department of Defense will spend less and stop contributing to our deficit problems
Protects American Families
• Provides a Making Work Pay tax credit for families struggling with high gas and food cost 2013-2015
• Extends Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child and Dependent Care Credit
• Invests in programs to stave off further foreclosures to keep families in their homes
• Invests in our children’s education by increasing Education, Training, and Social Services
• Provides a Making Work Pay tax credit for families struggling with high gas and food cost 2013-2015
• Extends Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child and Dependent Care Credit
• Invests in programs to stave off further foreclosures to keep families in their homes
• Invests in our children’s education by increasing Education, Training, and Social Services
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FOCUS: Obama More Conservative Than Reagan?
FOCUS: Obama More Conservative Than Reagan?:
Obama's Spending Record: More Conservative Than Reagan's
[Re-posted from last night.]
This is the kind of reality that makes Sean Hannity's head explodes. So far, the GOP candidates have been running against a fictional president with a fictional record. Obama didn't campaign to increase government spending, but inheriting what was in the final quarter of 2008 an annualized contraction of 9 percent of GDP, he opted for a stimulus. That accounts for much of the spending.
I know we are supposed - along with Fox News - to have total amnesia about the spending record of George W. Bush, who had nothing like the recession Obama inherited to counter. But there it is. Along with the fact that of the last seven presidents, the top three spenders are all Republicans.
One worry I have about a president Romney is exactly such a scenario. He has proposed to slash all taxes and increase defense spending by a stupendous amount. He has yet to identify the massive cuts in discretionary and entitlement spending he would need not to explode the debt as his GOP predecessors have done in the modern era.
But if you're going by the records, and want fiscal restraint, you'd be crazy at this point to back a Republican, without examining the fine print in extreme detail. Pity there isn't any for Romney yet. Which tells you something in itself.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
J.P. Morgan Chase's Ugly Family Secrets Revealed
J.P. Morgan Chase's Ugly Family Secrets Revealed:
Matt Taibbi at Skylight Studio in New York, 10/27/10. (photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
n a story that should be getting lots of attention, American Banker has released an excellent and disturbing exposé of J.P. Morgan Chase's credit card services division, relying on multiple current and former Chase employees. One of them, Linda Almonte, is a whistleblower whom I've known since last September; I'm working on a recount of her story for my next book.
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Matt Taibbi at Skylight Studio in New York, 10/27/10. (photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
J.P. Morgan Chase's Ugly Family Secrets Revealed
14 March 12
n a story that should be getting lots of attention, American Banker has released an excellent and disturbing exposé of J.P. Morgan Chase's credit card services division, relying on multiple current and former Chase employees. One of them, Linda Almonte, is a whistleblower whom I've known since last September; I'm working on a recount of her story for my next book.One of the things we were promised by the lawmakers who passed the Dodd-Frank reform bill a few years back is that this would be a new era for whistleblowers who come forward to tell the world about problems in our financial infrastructure. This story now looms as a test case for that proposition. American Banker reporter Jeff Horwitz did an outstanding job in this story detailing the sweeping irregularities in-house at Chase, but his very thoroughness means the news may have ramifications for Linda, which is why I'm urging people to pay attention to this story in the upcoming weeks.
The Cliff's Notes version of the story goes something like this: Late in 2009, Chase's credit card services division sold a parcel of nearly $200 million worth of credit card judgments to a debt collector at a discount. This common practice in the credit-card industry is a little like a bookie selling the outstanding debts of his delinquent gamblers to a leg-breaker for 25 cents on the dollar. If the leg-breaker gets half the delinquents to pay, the deal works out for both sides - the bookie gets 25 percent of money he wasn't going to collect, and the leg-breaker makes a 100 percent profit.
In the case of credit cards, of course, you're selling the debts to collection agents, not leg-breakers, but aside from that unpleasantly minor distinction the process is the same. The most valuable kinds of sales in this world are sales of credit card judgments, in other words accounts in which the debtor has already been successfully brought to court. That, ostensibly, is what this bloc of accounts Chase sold in 2009 involved.
Almonte came to Chase in the summer of 2009 as a mid-level executive in the credit card services division's offices in San Antonio, and was quickly put in charge of preparing the documentation for this enormous sale of credit card judgments. When Chase regional offices from places like southern California and Illinois began sending in the papers for these "judgments," Almonte very soon found out that something was seriously wrong. From Horwitz's piece:
Nearly half of the files [Linda's] team sampled were missing proofs of judgment or other essential information, she wrote to colleagues. Even more worrisome, she alleged in her wrongful-termination suit, nearly a quarter of the files misstated how much the borrower owed.
In the "vast majority" of those instances, the actual debt was "lower that what Chase was representing," her suit stated.
Linda subsequently found an enormous range of errors. Some judgments, she told me, were not judgments at all. In some cases, she said, Chase actually owed the customer money.
When she brought these concerns to her superiors, what do you think their response was? They told her and others to shut up and just sell the stuff anyway. Her boss, Jason Lazinbat, allegedly told her "she had better go along with the plan to sell the misrepresented asset."
Think of the consequences of this: because Chase was so anxious to make money off this debt sale, countless credit card borrowers would now have collection agents chasing them for money they did not owe. The debt-buyer, too, was victimized by being sold accounts it could not collect on. It is almost impossible to estimate how many man-hours of pointless court proceedings would be lost because of this decision.
Anyway, when Linda refused to go along with the sale, she was fired. This was in November of 2009. She then went through a post-firing odyssey that is an epic tale in itself: her many attempts to get any of the major bank regulators interested in this case were disturbingly fruitless for a long time (although the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is apparently looking into it now), and she struggled to find work in the industry.
She has been repeatedly harassed and has gone through all sorts of personal hardship as a result of this incident. She filed a whistleblower claim with the SEC as part of the new whistleblower program created by Dodd-Frank, but so far there's been no progress there.
When I met Linda last year, my first reaction to her story was that I was skeptical. The tale she told went far beyond the bank knowingly selling millions of dollars worth of errors into the financial system. She also recounted, firsthand, the bank's elaborate robosigning operation, which Horvitz, talking to other Chase employees, also discussed:
"We did not verify a single one" of the affidavits attesting to the amounts Chase was seeking to collect, says Howard Hardin, who oversaw a team handling tens of thousands of Chase debt files in San Antonio. "We were told [by superiors] 'We're in a hurry. Go ahead and sign them.'"
And there were other stories...suffice to say that the picture Linda painted of life inside Chase reminded me a little of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle: they were putting just about everything into those sausages. When I was writing it all up for my book I went through a period where I was waking up nights, seized with the urge to close every credit account I had – her story makes you think that most credit card companies are essentially indistinguishable from giant identity theft operations.
Again, though, when I first heard the story, I was skeptical – until I found other people in the company who verified Almonte's account, all the way down the line. Horvitz, too, found numerous employees in Chase's credit card services division who confirmed the story of the company knowingly selling a mountain of errors into the market, and manufacturing robo-signed documents to the tune of thousands per week.
The financial crash wouldn't have happened if even a slim plurality of financial executives had done what Linda Almonte did, i.e. simply refuse to sign off on a bogus transaction. If companies had merely upheld their own stated policies and stayed within the ballpark of the law, none of these messes could have accumulated: fraudulent mortgages wouldn't have been sold, families wouldn't have been foreclosed upon based on robo-signed documentation, investors wouldn't have been duped into buying huge packets of "misrepresented assets."
But most executives didn't refuse to go along, precisely because powerful companies make it so hard on people who come forward. Almonte, after being fired, entered into a modest settlement with Chase that prohibited her from coming forward publicly. At the time she entered into the settlement she was in an extremely desperate state, and she made a bad decision, taking a very bad deal.
Still, like Jeffery Wygand, the tobacco scientist from the movie The Insider, she was sitting on top of a story that, morally speaking, should not ever be protected by a confidentiality agreement - and the subsequent lack of regulatory action eventually moved her to speak out to people like Horvitz and me. Of course, now that her story is out there in public, the concern is that the bank will move swiftly to take her to court.
This person does not have any money, so an action by Chase at this point would be purely punitive, to send a message to future whistleblowers. They'll be more likely to do it if they think no one is paying attention. I'll keep you posted on that score.
In the meantime, please check out Horvitz's piece. It should give everyone who has a credit card pause.
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Friday, March 9, 2012
Obama's dilemma: More jobs, same unemployment rate - Mar. 9, 2012
Obama's dilemma: More jobs, same unemployment rate - Mar. 9, 2012:
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Obama's dilemma: More jobs, same unemployment rate
@CNNMoney March 9, 2012: 11:49 AM ETI would like a lower unemployment rate, please.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The economy added 227,000 jobs in February, but the unemployment rate didn't change at all.
Woe is the White House -- which would love to have the lowest rate possible heading into the general election.
Before Obama even took office, America had lost 4.4 million jobs. Track his progress since then.
But why didn't the unemployment rate change if the economy added jobs?
The unemployment rate measures the percent of the labor force that is unemployed.
The unemployed are individuals who have actively looked for work over the previous four weeks. Looking for work can mean having a job interview, sending out resumes, or even something as simple as calling friends or relatives in hopes of finding a job.
The number of unemployed is then divided by the total labor force. And in February, the size of the labor force increased -- possibly as discouraged workers started looking for work again.
As the labor force swelled, so did the number of new jobs necessary to drop the unemployment rate.
Behind the jobs recovery
Just take a look at the last two months for an example of how this works.
In February, 227,000 jobs were added and the unemployment rate didn't change. Compare that to January, when the economy added 243,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped from 8.5% to 8.3%.
The difference?
In January, the labor force participation rate decreased by 0.3%. In February, it increased by 0.2%.
And that 0.2% increase in February translated to 476,000 extra people in the labor force, preventing a decline in the unemployment rate.
So it's possible that an improving economy can actually cause the unemployment rate to remain static, or even rise, as more discouraged workers start mailing resumes.
Much has been made of how low -- or high -- the unemployment rate might be on Election Day, and whether a particular number will be enough to ensure a victory for President Obama, or sink his candidacy.
Of course, the unemployment rate is not the best measure of economic strength, but the number plays a large role in campaign trail rhetoric.
Nuclear sentinel to help keep jobs data under wraps
Assuming the labor force participation rate holds steady, and the population grows at the same rate it has over the previous year, the economy needs to add 149,288 jobs per month to get the unemployment rate to 8%.
If the economy could produce 240,247 new jobs a month, under the same assumptions, the rate would fall to 7.5%.
But this is a fragile calculation. If the labor force participation rate ticks up by only half a percent, to 64.4%, the economy would need to add 371,916 jobs per month to reduce the unemployment rate to 7.5%. That's a tall order.
These calculations were made via a nifty calculator from the Atlanta Fed, which can be accessed here.
Now, no data shows 8% -- or 7.5% -- is the magic rate needed to guarantee re-election.
Indeed, no president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has won re-election with an unemployment rate over 7.2%, if anecdotal evidence is to serve as a guide.
Most election forecasters and political scientists say the way people feelabout the economy is far more important -- and if the economy is markedly improved each month leading up to November, that is a best-case scenario for the White House. 
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