Plastic People: Frank, Pelosi Dont Want Credit
Card Interest Rates Capped

The Credit Card Holders Bill of Rights passed the House last week, and now we have an answer to the question -- Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank don't want caps on credit card interest rates. This despite the fact that TARP recipients like BofA and JP[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2009/05/04/plastic-people-frank-pelosi-dont-want-credit-ca
rd-interest-rates-capped/

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BuzzFlash Mailbag for May 4, 2009

BUZZFLASH MAILBAG

Want to join the conversation? Share your thoughts with other Mailbag readers by clicking here. You also may comment below; post articles yourself at BuzzFlash.net; or send urls for BuzzFlash to post to: www.buzzflash.com/contact/newstip.html.

Subject: Torture, religion and Hannity

Dear BuzzFlash:

We just returned from a mini-vacation out west to New Mexico and being from Northwest Arkansas that requires the majority of time travelling being spent on I-40. Not far east of Amarillo, in a little burg called Groom, Texas, is a huge cross that purports to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere. It's well placed as far as visibility is concerned, as the Texas Panhandle is flat and offers enormous vistas extending to the horizon. It's beautiful in its sparseness, and for those who want to clear their minds and get out into the "open", so to speak, it's hard to beat.

But naturally, a gaudy classical-age torture device has to mar the prairie/semi-arid grassland, promising a beautiful spiritual experience for travellers along the interstate. Please spare me.

On the other side of the road in the same town is a water tower off its base and leaning at about a 70 degree angle. Kinda like zealotry, if you ask me. Askew and off balance. So we have a religion that has taken a horrible torture device, used it as the symbol for its message of Christian love, and hid behind it to sanctify the Crusades, which still continue today, as far as I'm concerned, sanctify torture of other humans simply because they aren't Christian, which is about the only substantial crime most detainees are guilty of, and spread hate of gays while being peculiarly hush-hush about polygamy and child sex crimes.

I think those suspected of crimes against the country should be detained, but they should be given due legal process, with timely hearings, legal support, and treated with dignity, not tortured as a means of interrogations. Sean Hannity, who is a big fan of James Dobson and other right-wing lunatics, sounds tough enough, but I must confess that I'd love to see him waterboarded as he said he's willing to do. I'd ask him questions like "Do you hate anybody who disagrees with you on any issue?" "Do you favor elimination of 1st Amendment rights for anybody who disagrees with you?" And "Do you have a mind of your own?" Put your money where your fat mouth and fat head is, if you think torture is such a keen idea. Where can we get front row seats?

Scott
Fayetteville, Ar.

read more

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The Future Electorate: Race and Ethnicity

What will the electorate look like in twenty years? This is a question I have set out to answer[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/mwGUF7dqhPA/the-future-elect
orate-race-and-ethnicity

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Who Knew Discussing A Long Repealed Copyright Law
Could Be So Interesting...

from the copyright-geeking dept

(http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090501/0113064710.shtml)

I wasn't at all sure what to expect yesterday when I went to a conference in honor of the 100th anniversary of the US's Copyright Act of 1909. After all, that law was superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976, and so it hasn't even been in effect for 33 years. However, the program was organized, in part, by Eric Goldman and Pamela Samuelson, and had some really big names on the speaker list, so I figured I'd at least check it out. Looking over the schedule, I figured I'd sit in on a few sessions and probably head out. However, the program actually turned out to be so interesting, that I stuck around for almost the entire thing (had to duck out for a bit at one point). Bill Patry joked that only a bunch of lawyers could get excited to discuss a law that was "repealed" 33 years ago, but what was so interesting was how much of the discussion was really about what's going on today.

The summary? Copyright law is so screwed up that even if you put a significant number of the top copyright scholars and students in an auditorium for a day, they'll disagree on almost everything, and only agree that the system is a total mess. Even simple questions like "how should copyright be handled on blogs" created a collective shoulder shrug, with everyone effectively admitting that copyright law has no answer for such basic questions. That should worry people. If the intention of copyright is to "promote the progress of science" then it shouldn't be so incredibly ambiguous and contentious. All in all, it seems to reinforce the point that copyright law has been stretched and twisted in so many different ways over the years, that it may be fundamentally broken. Basically, copyright law is adjusted every so often not based on any look at whether or not it actually promotes the progress, but based on whatever new technological innovation comes along that throws some legacy providers' business models into doubt. That industry freaks out, and politicians respond with some patch that protects that industry, but has little to nothing to do with actually promoting progress.

This goes all the way back throughout history. One speaker pointed out that the big innovation of the 1909 copyright was compulsory licensing on mechanical rights. This was put into place for one reason: fear about player pianos and how they would dominate the market and destroy the need for musicians. Within a matter of decades, the player piano market was effectively gone... and yet, these massive changes designed solely to deal with the player piano have stuck around ever since. Now apply that same story to basically every other technological innovation, and that gets you copyright law.

If there was a key theme running throughout the conference, though, it was on the single biggest change that the '76 Act brought into play: switching the copyright system from opt-in to everyone-automatically-in (not even to "opt-out" realistically speaking). In the terminology of copyright lawyers, in the '09 Act you had "formalities" to get copyright. In the '76 Act, you don't. While it was heartening to hear an awful lot of support for the idea of moving back to an opt-in system (i.e., if you want copyright protection, you need to proactively register/add a notice to get it, rather than automatically getting it on everything at the moment of expression), there was plenty of disagreement. Registrar of copyrights Marybeth Peters (who has a long history of supporting worrisome expansion of copyright law) kicked off the day by talking about why it was a good thing to switch to automatically in, because the old system resulted in too many questions about whether or not something was in the public domain.

Later on, Jon Baumgarten, who also participated in crafting the '76 Act, berated supporters of an opt-in system, saying that having practiced under it, it was only good for the lawyers, because everyone spent all of their time trying to determine ways to prove that someone had screwed up registering their copyrights, and thus the end result was lots of works accidentally fell into the public domain. On this last point, Peters concluded her remarks with the rather stunning statement "I'm so glad that copyright law no longer allows so much stuff to get into the public domain." (I'm paraphrasing the exact statement, but it was close... hopefully video will be up shortly and I can get the exact quote).

Think about that for a second. Yes, the context is important: her problem was mostly with items getting into the public domain because of confusion in the registration process, but it suggests a mindset that says "the public domain is bad." Later speakers pointed out that the difficulty of putting a copyright on creative works was actually a feature of the system, intended by the Founding Fathers to be difficult on purpose, because they believed how important it was to have a large and fruitful public domain.

Also, what was stunning was how much the "old guard" such as Peters and Baumgarten insist that an opt-in system can't work because it was such a mess under the '09 Act. They seem to be confusing the '09 implementation with the entire idea of opt-in. Sure, things were a mess before '76, but perhaps the problem was with the specifics of the "formalities" rather than with the concept itself. And, they don't even seem to acknowledge that modern technology could (and, in fact, should) change the entire thinking around copyright and how any sort of registration/opt-in process might work. And, in fact, David Nimmer's final keynote suggested that new technological solutions (he discussed a hypothetical system amusingly named "the panopticon") has shifted his thinking from being totally 100% against formalities to now believing that an opt-in system absolutely makes sense.

This post is long enough, even though there were plenty of other interesting discussions, but I did want to bring up three separate points that were interesting:

• Bill Patry (whose blog is seriously missed) tried to hammer home the point that it's absolutely ridiculous that Congress doesn't ever look at copyright law in terms of whether or not it promotes the progress, and totally trashed anyone (including Supreme Court Justices) who seem to think that the "to promote the progress..." part of the Constitution is meaningless preamble, even noting that in 1909 the legislative history made it quite clear that anything that did not promote the progress was outside the scope of Congress's power. It's sad that both Congress and the Supreme Court now seem to ignore this point.
• International trade agreements are evil when it comes to copyright. Sorry, but it needs to be said. There was a lot more talk about whether or not certain changes in copyright law would keep us in line with either the Berne Convention or TRIPs (and soon, ACTA!) than about whether or not it made sense. Basically, these trade negotiations, often pushed by industry reps without considering consequences for the public, have locked us into a narrow range of bad options. We simply can't do what's best for society and creativity, because we agreed to be bound by some really bad trade agreements. No wonder the industry loves them. They get to put a stranglehold on pertinent discussion (does this promote the progress?) and force people into discussing something entirely separate (does this violate our trade agreements?). It gets everyone focused on the trees and missing the forest.
• There's a lot of bubbling concern about conflicts between copyright law and the First Amendment. I'd mentioned how often this issue seemed to be coming up lately, and this event was no exception. While the old guard again insists this matter is settled and there's absolutely no conflict between the two, a large number of scholars disagree, and point out that it's a big open question, and some earlier rulings conflict and leave open some big loopholes to be challenged in court. Expect this issue to get a lot more play in the coming years.

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The war on small scale food producers moves into
brewing

Not for the first time, craft brewing is under attack by the big boys. The Brewer's Association, a consortium of professional and home brewers and the parent organization of the American Homebrewing Association, has formed a coalition to bring national[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Docudharma/~3/gR_0_iADIzk/the-war-on-small-scale-f
ood-producers-moves-into-brewing

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GOP Rep. Michelle Bachmann talks about orgies

Putting aside the comedic value for a moment, the Republicans have a real problem here. Their top representatives in the national spotlight are an ongoing source of embarrassment. Bachmann, Limbaugh, Steele, Palin, Gingrich, Boehner, Cantor. They're also, all, embarrassingly conservative - or like Steele and Romney, trying awfully hard to fool people into thinking they are. Either way, they don't present a very enticing picture for moderates.

"During the last 100 days we have seen an orgy. It would make any local smorgasbord embarrassed," Bachmann said. She then told the crowd that April 26 was National Debt Day, which conservatives commemorate as the moment government spending outpaces revenue. As Bachmann explains, "The government spent its wad by April 26. Every dime government spends after April 26 throughout the rest of this fiscal year is borrowed money."

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CAN BETTER DATA SAVE US

Barry Eichengreen has a long piece in the latest National Interest arguing that economics didn't miss the financial crisis so much as the relevant folks engaged in "a partial and blinkered reading of [the] literature" in order to ignore results that[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=05&year=2009&base_name
=can_better_data_save_us

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GOP Doubling Down On Southern
Crypto-Segregationists

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to become ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (albeit as a placeholder until 2011 for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA)).[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/wdMLph3vPJc/gop_doubling_do
wn_on_southern_crypto-segregationis.php

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Absurd But Useful

Atrios writes:

The absurdity is obvious. Dirty f---ing hippies like me were horrified at the illegal warrantless wiretapping program and general expansion of the surveillance state in part because of the potential for political abuse . . . Jane Harman and her pal Joe Klein heaped scorn on dirty f---ing hippies for such crazy views. Harman gets caught up . . . though the release of the details of it might be evidence of the kind of political abuse possible in any surveillance program. Suddenly Harman is a staunch defender the right of People Like Jane Harman to not be wiretapped.

I return to my first principle of politics - pols are pols and do what they do. When primaried by Winograd in 2006, Harman became an opponent of warrantless wiretapping. Now, for more political reasons, she is an even more vehement opponent of it. Our reaction should not be to just have fun at Harman's expense - but to USE HARMAN - to forward OUR policy goals. I do not see what is so hard to understand about this.

Speaking for me only

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Fox & Friends advanced disputed
allegation against Obama "auto czar"

During the May 4 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, guest co-host Dave Briggs and co-hosts Gretchen Carlson and Steve Doocy repeatedly touted, in Briggs' words, "an accusation by a lawyer, who represents ... one of those [hedge fund] lenders who says that" Steven Rattner, the Obama administration's choice to lead its Auto Task Force, "threatened to ruin their reputation, and by using the White House press corps." It was not until a subsequent discussion, approximately two hours later, that anyone on Fox & Friends mentioned that the Obama administration and the investment firm that allegedly came under pressure -- Perella Weinberg Partners -- have denied the allegation, made by lawyer Thomas E. Lauria, a partner at the White & Case law firm.

Indeed, even when Doocy stated during the initial discussion that Perella Weinberg "apparently, according to ABC News, was singled out by Rattner," he did not mention that ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper, who was reportedly the first national figure to report Lauria's allegation, also reported on May 2 that "[t]he White House and a spokesperson for the investment bank in question challenged the accuracy of the story."

During the initial Fox & Friends discussion, Briggs, Carlson, and Doocy had the following exchange:

BRIGGS: [T]here's an accusation by a lawyer, who represents one of those creditors who you're talking about, one of those lenders who says that the administration -- the auto czar, if you will -- threatened to ruin their reputation, and by using --

DOOCY: Yeah.

BRIGGS: -- the White House press corps even. And this becomes an issue because there is basically a handful of lenders that held out for a better deal in bankruptcy.

DOOCY: Yeah.

BRIGGS: But with GM, which could go bankrupt in the future, they have tens of thousands of lenders, not a dozen or so.

DOOCY: Yeah.

BRIGGS: And there are people all over this country, pensioners, not just hedge funds, that could hold out for a better deal in bankruptcy, as well. So this could have a lot more to come.

CARLSON: I don't think the story is going away, though, about this alleged threat with regard to Rattner, who, of course, is the guy who's been heading up the whole task force for the Obama administration with the auto industry. Remember, he's also potentially in trouble for his own dealings with his own investment firm -- an investigation underway there.

Now, allegations that he did strong-arm some of these hedge funds saying, "Look, you know, we're going to come after you if you don't take this deal." That's illegal. You can't do that. I got a little chuckle out of the fact that he was going to send the White House press corps after them.

BRIGGS: Right.

DOOCY: Yeah. Well --

CARLSON: The last time I checked, they were pretty much in the camp for Barack Obama.

DOOCY: Sure.

CARLSON: Maybe they would turn on hedge funds instead. I'm not sure.

Moments later, Doocy said: "I think -- look, if somebody is standing in the way of a publicly traded company from a government bailout, why not go ahead and say, 'OK, this is who is holding out.' For them to say -- but for this Steven Rattner guy to use these behind-the-scenes strong-arm tactics, is that so bad to say, 'Well, that company is holding out.' " Doocy later added, "It was this particular [hedge fund], though, that apparently, according to ABC News, was singled out by Rattner, and said, 'OK, I'm going to get -- come after you.' "

It was only during the subsequent Fox & Friends discussion, approximately two hours later, that Doocy noted, "The White House says that didn't happen. This hedge fund says it didn't happen."

Tapper reported on May 2 -- two days before Fox & Friends discussed the allegation -- that the administration and a spokesman for Perella Weinberg denied Lauria's account. From Tapper's May 2 entry on his Political Punch blog:

A leading bankruptcy attorney representing hedge funds and money managers told ABC News Saturday that Steve Rattner, the leader of the Obama administration's Auto Industry Task Force, threatened one of the firms, an investment bank, that if it continued to oppose the administration's Chrysler bankruptcy plan, the White House would use the White House press corps to destroy its reputation.

The White House and a spokesperson for the investment bank in question challenged the accuracy of the story.

"The charge is completely untrue," said White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton, "and there's obviously no evidence to suggest that this happened in any way."

A May 3 post on The New York Times DealBook blog reported that Lauria first made the charges in a Detroit radio interview, then did a follow-up interview with Tapper, during which he "identified Mr. Rattner":

In an interview with a Detroit radio host, Frank Beckmann, Mr. Lauria said that Perella Weinberg "was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under threat that the full force of the White House press corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight."

In a follow-up interview with ABC News's Jake Tapper, he identified Mr. Rattner, the head of the auto task force, as having told a Perella Weinberg official that the White House "would embarrass the firm."

Blogs like Clusterstock, Zero Hedge and Finem Respice have picked up on the reports, raising questions about whether the Obama administration acted improperly in negotiating with the debtholders.

But people briefed on the matter told DealBook that Mr. Rattner has never spoken to Mr. Lauria, and that participants on the conference call Mr. Lauria describes have denied his account.

The DealBook post further reported that "Perella Weinberg said in a statement that the firm decided to back the government-proposed settlement Thursday afternoon, after Mr. Obama criticized the lenders in harsh terms," and included the following "full statement by Perella Weinberg":

Suggestions have been made that the Perella Weinberg Partners Xerion Fund changed its stance on the Chrysler restructuring due to pressure from White House officials. This is incorrect. The decision to accept and support the proposed deal was made by the Xerion Fund after reflecting carefully on the statement of the President when announcing Chrysler's bankruptcy filing. In considering the President's words and exercising our best investment judgment, we concluded that the risks of potentially severe capital loss that could arise from fighting this in bankruptcy court far outweighed any realistic potential upside.

We have a very specific mandate from our investors, and that is to carefully weigh investment risks and rewards. It is not our investment mandate to pursue political or risky legal campaigns with our investors' money. This was our assessment of investment risk and reward, nothing else.

While we did and still do believe that the lenders would be justified in pressing their objections under conventional bankruptcy law principles, we believe a settlement would now be in the best interests of all parties in the context of avoiding a drawn out contested bankruptcy litigation proceeding, and we encourage our colleagues in the loan syndicate to pursue this immediately.

From the May 4 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

DOOCY: Four minutes after the top of the hour. If you are a Chrysler employee, you probably have today off. That's because, of course, they have -- ever since they declared bankruptcy last week, they are shuttering all of the factories. And here's what is happening now behind the scenes.

By -- it sounds like May 22nd -- they are going to have an auction of all the assets. And those stakeholders who drove it right up to the brink, it sounds like they're going to have to settle for between 9 cents on the dollar and 38 cents. So when you look at the fact that the government was saying, maybe you should take this 33 cents on the dollar thing, that could have been the best deal they were going to get.

DAVE BRIGGS (guest co-host): Could be. And that's at the center of this right now, because there's an accusation by a lawyer, who represents one of those creditors who you're talking about, one of those lenders who says that the administration -- the auto czar, if you will -- threatened to ruin their reputation, and by using --

DOOCY: Yeah.

BRIGGS: -- the White House press corps even. And this becomes an issue because there is basically a handful of lenders that held out for a better deal in bankruptcy.

DOOCY: Yeah.

BRIGGS: But with GM, which could go bankrupt in the future, they have tens of thousands of lenders, not a dozen or so.

DOOCY: Yeah.

BRIGGS: And there are people all over this country, pensioners, not just hedge funds, that could hold out for a better deal in bankruptcy, as well. So this could have a lot more to come.

CARLSON: I don't think the story is going away, though, about this alleged threat with regard to Rattner, who, of course, is the guy who's been heading up the whole task force for the Obama administration with the auto industry. Remember, he's also potentially in trouble for his own dealings with his own investment firm -- an investigation underway there.

Now, allegations that he did strong-arm some of these hedge funds saying, "Look, you know, we're going to come after you if you don't take this deal." That's illegal. You can't do that. I got a little chuckle out of the fact that he was going to send the White House press corps after them.

BRIGGS: Right.

DOOCY: Yeah. Well --

CARLSON: The last time I checked, they were pretty much in the camp for Barack Obama.

DOOCY: Sure.

CARLSON: Maybe they would turn on hedge funds instead. I'm not sure.

DOOCY: I know, and see, keep in mind the big banks said, OK, we'll take the deal. But it was those hedge funds, and in fact on -- I think it was Thursday -- Thursday, we gave the name of the three -- the names of the three hedge funds that were holding out, and this was one of them. The outfit was --

CARLSON: Perella Weinberg Partners.

BRIGGS: Perella Weinberg Partners.

DOOCY: That's it exactly. I had to look --

CARLSON: I'm not so sure that they shouldn't hold out. I mean --

DOOCY: I think -- look, if somebody is standing in the way of a publicly traded company from a government bailout, why not go ahead and say, "OK, this is who is holding out." For them to say -- but for this Steven Rattner guy --

BRIGGS: OK.

DOOCY: -- to use these behind-the-scenes strong-arm tactics, is that so bad to say --

CARLSON: But why shouldn't they hold out?

DOOCY: -- "Well, that company is holding out."

CARLSON: 'Cause the union --

BRIGGS: See, I agree with you.

CARLSON: You know, the union, pretty much, I'm not sure --

BRIGGS: Well, they can -- no, they can --

CARLSON: -- that they had to take 50 cents on the dollar.

BRIGGS: You get pulled out -- if you're getting a better deal --

DOOCY: Oh, go ahead and hold out.

BRIGGS: The government --

DOOCY: Go ahead and hold out. Sure.

BRIGGS: -- was getting a much better deal --

DOOCY: Yeah.

BRIGGS: -- than these lenders were offered. The UAW is getting far better deal than these lenders were offered.

DOOCY: Right.

BRIGGS: Why not hold out? It's their own self-interest.

DOOCY: They can hold out, but --

BRIGGS: That's what capitalism is all about.

DOOCY: -- but why not go ahead and say, look, we had a deal except for this one company. This great, big hedge fund said they weren't going to take the money.

CARLSON: I don't think it was just one though.

BRIGGS: It wasn't just them.

CARLSON: There was 20 hedge funds.

BRIGGS: It was Oppenheimer --

CARLSON: The four largest creditors: J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. But then there's up to 20 hedge funds who made up the rest of the difference.

DOOCY: Right. It was this particular one, though, that apparently, according to ABC News, was singled out by Rattner, and said, "OK, I'm going to get -- come after you."

BRIGGS: Well, Oppenheimer was also a holdout. Stairway Capital Management was also a holdout, among --

DOOCY: There were four.

BRIGGS: -- among the few.

DOOCY: Four big ones.

[...]

BRIGGS: Let's talk the latest about the big three. Plants for Chrysler begin shutting down today for the next 30 to 60 days. All but four, at this point, will reopen. Four of those expected to shut down by September in Ohio, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Michigan.

Also some controversy, guys, as you know, about some of the lenders that may have been strong-armed before Chrysler went into bankruptcy.

DOOCY: That's right. This story came from ABC News that suggested that the car czar, Steven Rattner, apparently had threatened one particular hedge fund. And remember, hedge funds were the stakeholders. Hedge funds and big banks owed a lot of money by Chrysler.

Anyway, this one, Perella Weinberg Partners, apparently and reportedly the White House, in the form of Rattner said, unless you take this deal where we're offering 33 cents on the dollar, we're going to embarrass you. We're going to just drag you through the mud and make you look bad with the press corps and stuff like that.

The White House says that didn't happen. This hedge fund says it didn't happen. But, nonetheless, it is interesting to think that, that story was circulating, that they felt that they were being pressured by the White House to take the deal.

CARLSON: I believe it was an attorney for this particular hedge fund that went on the record saying that this, in fact, did happen. If this happened, folks, this is huge news. This is huge news, because a lot of people already concerned about government involvement in general in the car companies, in the banks, in other businesses.

And now, if there are strong-arm tactics being used -- I got a chuckle at least out of the fact that they were going to sic the White House press corps --

BRIGGS: Who is clearly in the tank.

CARLSON: -- on this hedge fund, who's -- yeah, who hasn't necessarily been siced on the Obama administration --

BRIGGS: Yeah.

CARLSON: -- that wholeheartedly, but it will be interesting to see what they could do to a hedge fund.

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