JP Morgan announced a $2 billion trading loss yesterday. The big banks and their lobbyists have been fighting to water down the regulations that we need to prevent another crisis — and today we find out that they’re still involved in trades that increase the risks in our financial system.
How many of you out there still believe that we need to cut regulations on the banks? Other than our current Senator, I mean.
You don’t suppose $2 billion is a big enough Oops! that Jamie Dimon might lose his job as CEO of JP Morgan?
I make no pretense about balance on this blog. If you want balance, read another blog.
and I am heavily into promoting Elizabeth Warren, but I will say this about Marisa DeFranco:
Damn, she is good.
If we could have both as our next Senator, then that would be wonderful. If we get Scott Brown because of the challenge from Marisa DeFranco, that would not be so wonderful. Because of my support for Elizabeth Warren, I’ll make no comment on a third possible outcome.
By the way, she may have referred to me without naming me in this interview. What is the equivalent of junk mail for a Facebook post?
As Goes Janesville follows the story of how the community of Janesville, Wisconsin recovers and reinvents itself after the loss of its century-old General Motors plant. The film will premiere in the summer of 2012 and is supported by The MacArthur Foundation, ITVS and the Sheldon and Marianne Lubar Family Foundation. Stay tuned for more details.
At one point in the trailer to the movie where one person was saying that it was all for the best, it instantly brought to mind the book, The Shock Doctrine. Administer a big enough shock to a populace, and they will accept almost any conditions as a remedy if it means any kind of a job at all. Seems to be working quite well.
I wonder how plainly the Republican’s have to speak before the union members recognize that politicians like Scott Walker are not their friends.
Documentary filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein videotaped this conversation in which Gov. Scott Walker says he would use “divide and conquer” as a strategy against unions. Video courtesy of Brad Lichtenstein
I have heard rumors that the postal workers in Massachusetts favor Scott Brown over Elizabeth Warren. I wonder if these postal workers are aware that part of the reason for layoffs in the Postal Service was the unusual demand put on them by Congress to prefund their retiree health care plan to the tune of $11 billion. No other public or private retiree health care plan has such an onerous requirement.
Maybe Brown has convinced the postal workers that he is their friend because of a recently floated plan that would give an $11 billion cash infusion to the Postal Service. Like this is a subsidy instead of restitution from the people who stole the money in the first place.
Wait, you haven’t seen the half of it. Go to the web site that you see in the above video, As Goes Janesville.
Nation Of Change is selling the video, Hot Coffee, to raise money.
Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman ranked it in his top ten list. And more than fifteen years later, its infamy continues. Everyone knows the McDonald’s coffee case. It has been routinely cited as an example of how citizens have taken advantage of America’s legal system, but is that a fair rendition of the facts? Hot Coffee reveals what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s, while exploring how and why the case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. After seeing this film, you will decide who really profited from spilling hot coffee.
If you look at the comments on YouTube, you see most people are not convinced by the trailer that McDonald’s was wrong.
To form an enlightened opinion yourself, I provide you with a balanced presentation of Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants from WikiPedia.
After reading WikiPedia, you may or may not agree that this is another example of something I noted in a previous post – once the media gets a story wrong, they just won’t let go of it. The previous post to which I refer isLukewarm US Support of Chinese Dissident – My Donkey.
The trailer doesn’t explain it, but the summary of the movie above does seem to hint that there is an explanation of what is the driving force behind all of the media telling you just one side of the story (and it is [almost] always the same side).
The lesson to be learned is that when you hear a news story that promotes only one side of a story, you need to be very skeptical. You have to wonder who is benefiting from this one sided approach, and why would the news outlet be so sloppy as to not report the other side? This is something that always comes to my mind when I hear or read news stories like this. It does not matter to me which one side is being promoted and which one side is left out. A one sided story is always suspect.
As for whether or not I practice what I preach on this blog, I refer you to the Introduction where I say:
This is my blog for commenting on politics.
I make no pretense about balance on this blog. If you want balance, read another blog.