Robert Reich’s blog has the post Nike, Obama, and the Fiasco of the Trans Pacific Partnership. He concludes with the following:

No doubt Nike is supporting the TPP. It would allow Nike to import its Vietnamese and Malaysian-made goods more cheaply. But don’t expect those savings to translate into lower prices for American consumers. As it is, Nike spends less than $10 for every pair of $100-plus shoes it sells in the U.S.

Needless to say, the TPP wouldn’t require Nike to pay its Vietnamese workers more. Nikes’ workers are not paid enough to buy the shoes they make much less buy U.S. exported goods.

Nike may be the perfect example of life under TPP, but that is not a future many Americans would choose.

Along the way, he has facts and figures that refute the BS that you are hearing from President Obama.

Another thing he said is something that I should remember to emphasize in general, not just about Nike.

I’m not faulting Nike. Nike is only playing by the rules.

I’m faulting the rules.

Although, if Nike is using bribery to get the rules to be the way they want them, then I guess we would be justified in faulting Nike. So let me just apply this amnesty to innocent bystanders, like myself. I know how to play by the capitalist’s rule. I play by them to survive, but I didn’t vote to have the rules this way, and I would be happy to see them changed. If any other company or person has the same justification for playing by the rules they don’t like, then I don’t think their behavior is hypocritical.

Naked Capitalism has the article Exit Strategy, Part One: ZIRP.

The Fed has announced plans to raise rates in the imminent future, but the market does not believe it.  Why not?  Conventional wisdom appears to be that the Fed will chicken out, just as it did during the so-called Taper Tantrum.  The Fed has signaled its appreciation that “liftoff” will involve increased volatility, and has stated its resolve this time simply to let that volatility happen, but markets don’t believe it.

I want to suggest a slightly different source of disconnect, concerning expectations about what exactly will happen in the monetary plumbing when the Fed raises rates.

Some of it is reasonably easy to understand if you have a little knowledge of the Fed and finance. Other parts may require more knowledge to understand.

Here is my explanation of why this article is important to read, even if you don’t understand all of it in detail.

I hark back to what our <sarcasm>beloved</sarcasm> ex Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, once said.

1. There are things we know.
2. There are things we know that we don’t know.
3. And there are things that we don’t know that we don’t know

It is worthwhile to read an article that can move things from category 3 above into category 2. That is the best chance you have of ever getting them into category 1.

Politico has the article Dems: Hillary Clinton must campaign more.

Four in 10 Democratic insiders in the early states warn that Hillary Clinton is not spending enough time on the campaign trail, making her vulnerable to possible challenges from the left and dampening the enthusiasm of progressives who are already committed to her.

In all the verbiage in the article, I think Politico still leaves out a very significant issue. When you compare Hillary Clinton’s visibility on a day to day basis, she is nowhere to be seen compared to Bernie Sanders, and even Elizabeth Warren. I get plenty of material from the Sanders campaign every day to post on the Sturbridge For Bernie Sanders Facebook page. Even Elizabeth Warren, who is not running for President, issues more statements, video clips, and television interviews than Hillary Clinton.

Politico goes on to say:

One-third of GOP insiders said she’s smart to limit her appearances.

“She has no credible opponents,” said a New Hampshire Republican. “She could hibernate for the next 10 months and be totally absent from the campaign trail. And still be fine.”

I am sure that the GOP is happy to give this advice to Hillary Clinton. We in Massachusetts know how well that worked out for Martha Coakley in her run against Scott Brown for the Senate seat. She did try a little harder in her subsequent run for Governor, but she never was able to live down the image she established in her failed run for Senator.

At this stage of the campaign it is fine to be nearly invisible to the average voter who isn’t paying much attention this far ahead of the election. On the other hand, at this stage of the campaign, you need to fire up the political enthusiasts so that they will be volunteering in your campaign when the rest of the voters start paying attention.

MSNBC has at least two video segments that highlight the problem.

The first is Chris Hayes surveys crash site from helicopter.

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes retraces the route of Amtrak Northeast Regional 188 from the station to the crash site.

The second video clip is Former PA governor sounds off on ‘these SOBs…’

Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell sounds off on today’s House Appropriations Committee vote to cut Amtrak funding.

So infrastructure is no joke or simply a pet project of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

I go an email from Brave New Films with the subject It’s The Fed, Stupid.

On YouTube, they have headlined it Fed Up: Why The Federal Reserve Needs Reform • BRAVE NEW FILMS.

Here is the video.

I told them by email and by comment on YouTube:

No, it’s Brave New Films, stupid.

The FED doesn’t have the control you imply. Otherwise the economy would have been fixed already. If you are worried about the cost of a mortgage, shouldn’t you be complimenting the FED on the low interest rates?

The FED doesn’t decide things willy-nilly, the Congress has give them goals, and the fed has told us all what their targets are for meeting those goals. They are trying for 2% inflation and are having a devil of a time getting there no matter how much money that they pour into the economy.

If your understanding of all this is exemplified by your movie, then I am darn glad you don’t have a say in how the economy is run.

This is what happens when the liberals who don’t understand economics get to weigh in. It’s not any better than the right wingers opining about what they understand very weakly.

The FED has its problems, but neither Brave New Films, nor Rand Paul, nor Ron Paul have enough knowledge to tell us how to fix it. Primarily, the FED wouldn’t be forced to use its ineffective tools to stimulate the economy if only the Congress and the President would use the very effective tools that they have at their disposal.

The Congress and the President refuse to invest enough in infrastructure. Such investment would put people back to work and it would put money into the economy in a way which would stimulate growth. Not only that, but such investments could save the lives of railroad passengers. See my subsequent post It’s The Infrastructure.

If despite all I have said, you still want to support this idiotic move, here is the link.

Talking Points Memo has the article Stewart Rips F… N… For Attacking Obama On Poverty: ‘Buffet Of Bullsh*t’ (VIDEO).

Stewart rolled a barrage of clips … cataloging “Fox’s contempt for those in poverty,” including features named things like, “Entitlement Nation,” “freeloaders,” “moochers,” and poor people “sucking on the nipple of the government.”

Do the people who watch Faux Noise religiously have such short term memories that they cannot recognize the lies that they are being told?

I received an email from the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Occupy Democrats has the article Watch: Bernie Sanders Schools Wal-Mart Apologist On How Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages | Occupy Democrats.

“Do you think the Walton Family (owners of Wal-Mart), worth a hundred billion dollars, is in need of welfare from the middle class of this country, or do you think maybe we should raise the minimum wage so those workers can earn a living wage and not have to get Medicaid or food stamps?”

I have been mulling over how I might clarify Sanders question.

“Do you think Walmart should be able to drive the competition out of business by paying their workers such a low wage and thereby selling goods so cheaply that the workers need government help to survive and work for Walmart? Isn’t Walmart taking advantage of government programs that they claim they are against?”

You might try to come up with how you would phrase the question to better drive home the point.

As I was posting this article on Facebook, I came up with the following:

“So we get to buy stuff at Wal-Mart cheap, but we have to pay taxes to support Medicaid and food stamps for Wal-Mart workers. Is that really a good deal for us?”

Democracy Now has the interview Seymour Hersh Details Explosive Story on Bin Laden Killing & Responds to White House, Media Backlash.

Four years after U.S. forces assassinated Osama bin Laden, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has published an explosive piece claiming much of what the Obama administration said about the attack was wrong.

Before this, I had seen headlines on the internet to vague references to a story we were not supposed to believe. When I saw this headline that Seymour Hersh wrote the story, I realized it was something worth reading about.

As promised in the video, Democracy Now had the link to the London Review Of Books article The Killing of Osama bin Laden by Seymour Hersch.

Seymour Hersh says in the interview that he doesn’t think that when President Obama made his public announcement of the killing of Osama bin Laden that he was aware of how much of his words were untrue.

Now, start thinking of President Obama’s assurances that the Transpacific Trade Partnership (TPP) does not have the awful things in it that Elizabeth Warren claims the TPP does. How does he know, if he is just going by what his advisers tell him? He claims that the events Warren worries about coming from the TPP are hypothetical, and would never happen. Do you suppose that Elizabeth Warren might actually know more about how big Wall Street banks and big corporations cheat the rest of us than Barack Obama can even imagine?

Can we trust a President who is so naive that he thinks he is in control? He claims he studied law at Harvard University to find out where the levers of power were. We know he is not dumb enough to have come away from that experience without an appreciation of how power is actually exercised. What does he think of our naivete if he thinks we will buy his explanation?

Politicus Usa has the post Bernie Sanders Is Terrifying Wall Street By Pushing Hillary Clinton To The Left.

Bernie Sanders is having a large impact on the race for the Democratic nomination. The Senator from Vermont is shaping the debate. He has shown that he is not afraid to up the ante by taking solidly liberal policy positions.

The Politicus USA story talks about the story from The Hill, Banks brace for Bernie Sanders.

Sanders (I-Vt.) last week unveiled new legislation designed to break up the nation’s largest banks, declaring that “if an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.”
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Paul Merski, an executive vice president at the Independent Community Bankers Association, said many smaller community banks support Sanders’s effort.

If the big banks might think that Bernie Sanders’ legislation is “shrill, bombastic and misaligned,” it is interesting to note what the small banks think.

I also like the notion that Sanders’ opposition might might be underestimating him, while he is actually speaking for millions of Democrats that the party would like to pretend don’t exist.