Preparing for the coup

Several blogs have been reporting on a little-known US military organization called USNORTHCOM. Established in April 2002 by President Bush, USNORTHCOM is the first military deployment on US soil since the Civil War. This is a very scary development, made possible by the exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 pushed through by the Bush Administration.

Posse Comitatus was enacted after the Civil War to prevent the US military from ever being deployed on US soil, and was meant to prevent US soldiers ever being ordered to fire on US citizens:

From and after the passage of this act it shall not be lawful to employ any part of the Army of the United States, as a posse comitatus, or otherwise, for the purpose of executing the laws, except in such cases and under such circumstances as such employment of said force may be expressly authorized by the Constitution or by act of Congress.

Note that exceptions to this law were limited to those permitted by the Constitution (namely fighting of an invasion force) or CONGRESS. However, the exceptions pushed through the Republican Congress has changed all of that. Now NORTHCOM has the authority to deploy on American soil, and kill Americans at the order of the President. Section 1076 of H.R. 5122, which was passed in 2006, says that military forces may now be used to:

"...restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States..., where the President determines that,...domestic violence has occurred..."

So, let's have a hypothetical. Let's say Obama wins, but Republicans are able to steal it again by caging voters, hacking voting machines, etc. I think it is safe to say that there would be mass demonstrations. I would join them if I lived in the US. This law would allow USNORTHCOM to gun down peaceful marchers if Bush (or a future President) decides that violence has occurred, even if it really hasn't.

Now, USNORTHCOM's website emphasizes their other domestic missions, including dealing with the aftermath of chemical, biological or nuclear attacks, natural disasters, etc. However, these have traditionally been the job of the National Guard. Of course, the Guard has been federalized to fight in Iraq, and is no longer available for state-level missions, as was famously declared by Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius (the future first female President IMO). Hence the supposed need for a military force for the homeland.

So, fresh off of near constant combat missions in Iraq, the Army's 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team has been assigned to missions on US soil. It is an ominous development that some of their first training for this mission has been for crowd control and civil disobedience response (from the Army Times):

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack...

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them...

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

Glenn Greenwald explains all of this much more coherently than me. However, I agree with Naomi Wolf (somewhat) that the Bush administration has been putting in place all of the pieces of a Fascist police state. Her 10 Steps To Tyranny read like the history of the last 7 1/2 years. Remember that we are not necessarily talking about Nazis when we use the term "fascist." Mussolini defined the term as "the convergence of state and corporate interests." It is not (necessarily) about racism or anti-semitism.

I take exception to Wolf's prediction that the Republicans are going to either cancel the election or throw it to McCain/Palin. Though they might like to do so, I don't think it will work. As Greenwald points out, a single brigade is not enough to enforce a police state, and there is little indication that soldiers will back the government in a coup of this type. The President also has his own private militia in the form of Blackwater, who were secretly deployed during Katrina. However, this is nothing like Mussolini's Brown Shirts. I am optimistic that the American people will elect Obama by a safe margin, and will not stand for such a thing. I also think that Obama, who is not the Messiah or FDR, will do a lot of good work to reverse Bush's damage to the Constitution.

That said, I think we need to be ready on November 5 to take back America if an attempt is made to flip the election. There are already signs that the Republican operatives are attempting to suppress the vote, hack voting machines, and incite violence against Obama. Americans of all parties, races and ideologies need to organize themselves to be ready to take to the streets on November 5 to PEACEFULLY contest a stolen election. We cannot repeat the mistake John Kerry made in 2004 when he chose not to contest Ohio, and just rolled over.

Enough for today.

An analysis by Jeffrey Sachs

How to Fix the U.S. Financial Crisis

Policies can avert disaster only if they interrupt the cascading threats to the U.S. economy

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

The origin of the [ http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=is-testosterone-to-blame-for-the-fi-2008-09-30 ]U.S. financial crisis is that commercial banks and investment banks lent vast sums—trillions of dollars—for housing purchases and consumer loans to borrowers ill-equipped to repay. The easy lending pushed up housing prices around the U.S., which then ratcheted still higher when speculators bought houses on the expectation of yet further price increases. When the easy lending slowed and then stopped during 2006-07, the housing prices peaked and began to fall. The housing boom began to unravel and now threatens an economy-wide bust.

The U.S. economy faces four cascading threats: First, the sharp decline in consumer spending on houses, autos and other durables, following the sharp decline in lending to households, will cause a [ http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=multifractals-explain-wall-street ]recession as construction of new houses and production of consumer durables nosedive. Second, many homeowners will default on their mortgage payments and consumer loans, especially as house values fall below the mortgage values. Third, the banking sector will cut back sharply on its lending in line with the fall in its capital following the write-off of bad mortgage and consumer loans. Those capital losses will push still more financial institutions into bankruptcy or forced mergers with stronger banks. Fourth, the retrenchment of lending now threatens even the shortest-term loans, which banks and other institutions lend to each other for working capital. Interbank loans and other commercial paper are extremely hard to place.

The gravest risks to the economy come back to front. The fourth threat is by far the worst. If the short-term commercial paper and money markets were to break down, the economy could go into a severe collapse because solvent and profitable businesses would be unable to attract working capital. Unemployment, now at 6 percent of the labor force, could soar to more than 10 percent. That kind of liquidity collapse was the basic reason why Asian national incomes declined by around 10 percent between 1997 and 1998, and why the U.S. economy fell by around 25 percent during the Great Depression.

The third threat, the serious impairment of bank capital as banks write off their bad loans, could cause a severe recession, but not a depression. Unemployment might rise, for example, up to 10 percent, which would create enormous social hardships. The ongoing fall in bank capital as the housing boom turns to bust is already forcing banks to cut back their outstanding loans significantly, because they must keep the lending in proportion to their now-shrunken capital base. Major investment projects, such as acquisition of new buildings and major machinery, are being scaled back. Some major nonfinancial companies will likely go bankrupt as well.

The second threat, the financial distress of homeowners, will certainly be painful for millions of households, especially the ones that borrowed heavily in recent years. Many will lose their homes; some will be pushed into bankruptcy. Some may see their credit terms eased in renegotiations with their banks. Consumers as a group will start to become net savers again after years of heavy net borrowing. That trend will not be bad in the long term but will be painful in the short run.

The first threat, the cutback in sales of housing and other consumer durables, is the Humpty-Dumpty of the economy that cannot be put back together. The inventory of unsold homes is now large; housing demand and new construction will be low for many years. Consumer spending on appliances and autos is also plummeting. All these consequences are largely unavoidable and will force the U.S. into at least a modest recession, with unemployment likely to rise temporarily to perhaps 8 percent.

The goal of any new policy cannot be to prevent a recession. It's too late to stop such a downturn. The goal cannot be to save every bank. The U.S. economy has built up too many imbalances—consumer debt, overextended construction, impaired capital of banks—to avoid an economic downturn and a major retrenchment of the banking sector. The goal must be to avoid an outright collapse or deep recession. Two actions are therefore critical, and two more are subsidiary but still important.

Most important, the government and Federal Reserve Board must prevent the collapse of working capital by supplying short-term loans and taking other measures to sustain the commercial paper market, interbank lending and the smooth functioning of money market funds. They have the instruments to do so, and should use them aggressively. The government should also aggressively promote a recapitalization of the banking system so that bank lending is not squeezed for years to come. It can directly inject some public capital into banks, and can both pressure and entice the banks to raise additional private capital. Unfortunately, the $700-billion bailout nearing approval in Congress does not focus adequately on those liquidity or recapitalization challenges.The legislation is better than nothing (to help forestall panic) but the real work of stabilizing and recapitalizing the banking system will now await the next administration, and the Federal Reserve will need to stay aggressive in preventing a liquidity collapse."

Two additional steps will be useful. The first will be to ease the repayment terms on existing mortgage holders, to reduce the flood of defaults and foreclosures that will otherwise occur. The second is to encourage expansionary monetary and fiscal policies abroad (most notably in cash-rich Asia), so that the decline in U.S. consumer spending is smoothly offset by a rise in spending in other countries. This overseas expansion would allow the U.S. to offset the fall in housing construction by a rise in exports, and would allow other countries to offset the fall in their exports to the U.S. by a rise in their internal demand. All these steps will have to await the next administration.

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Tips for Saving Money

Here are some "Top Tips" for saving money in the economic downturn:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/5/145645/376

Good ideas here, though growing citrus in your basement using grow lights is not an option for many people (is "citrus" a euphemism here?).  I would add some, which my legions of readers can add to:

1) Sick Of It already mentioned hanging clothes to dry instead of using a dryer.  Just to amplify that, I wanted to point out the amazing energy sucking of the typical dryer.  The Which? Best Buy tumble dryer from Bosch, for example, uses about 2700 W (5.72 kWh per load).  As an example, using London Electricity's 19.86p/kWh, each load would cost you £1.14.  That doesn't seem like much, but my family seems to do about a wash a day (usually several on weekends and fewer during the week).  If we used a dryer, it would cost us £414.28 per year.  That savings covers the rest of our electricity use combined!

Now, you might be thinking that it isn't practical to dry everything on a line, especially in grey, rainy London.  Well, we worried about that as well, but it hasn't been a problem for us.  Even when we have to bring our wash inside to dry, it seems to dry in at most a day.  This might not work in extremely humid places like Lima, Peru, where I remember hanging jeans in the winter and finding them growing mold before they dried, but that is not the norm.  

2) Staying on the topic of electricity, it is a great idea to figure out which electronic devices in your home use "vampire power."  These are devices that use electricity even when on standby.  I bought an Ecosaver from Ethicalsuperstore.co.uk, and checked out all of my electronics.  It turned out that my Freeview box, phone charger, washer, microwave, and computer all use about 3 watts when not in use, which would cost me £26 per year FOR NOTHING.  Now I switch them off when not in use.

I should note that I was pleasantly surprised to find that the charger for my new iPhone does not use any power once the phone is charged.  This is new for phone chargers, and burnishes Apple's eco-reputation in my book (despite the ignorant Greenpeace condemnation that was debunked by Steve Jobs).

3) I used to keep the water running when I washed dishes and brushed my teeth.  It turns out that this is extremely wasteful.  For some reason, Thames water does not disclose their rates on their website.  So, I can't easily calculate how much that cost me.  However, I did a little test, and discovered that I used 2.7 liters of water to brush my teeth with the tap on, and only about 350 ml when I turned it off.  Brush twice a day, and you save 5 liters per person per day just this way!  I did not check the dishwashing, but I am sure washing a sinkfull with the tap running uses tens of liters. 

I will be posting more information like this in the future as soon as the election is over, since that is the actual focus of the blog. However, I will keep riffing on economics and politics from time to time after November...

Palin debate painful

I managed to restrain myself from staying up until 2 am to watch the Biden-Palin debate live.  I am a junkie, but I need my sleep, too.  My wife wanted to watch it too, so I waited until the next night to watch it in its entirety.  My reaction--painful.

I thought Gwen Ifil did a great job moderating the debate, but it irritated that she didn't pursue any of her questions.  When Palin stated clearly in the beginning that she would not answer the questions asked, she was never challenged.  She would be asked about Afganistan, and she would veer off into talking about her record as Mayor of Wasilla. In fact, she seemed capable of answering any question in terms of energy independence.

At first it bothered me that Biden never challenged any of her BS points.  When she went off about there being billions of gallons of oil in Alaska, Biden hardly laid a glove on her.  She talked about oil and gas in a question about climate change, for God's sake!

However, I now think that Biden was very smart.  Much of the punditry had written and talked about the danger he was in if he came off as sexist, patronizing, or arrogant.  He surely could have skinned her and made a pencil case from her shin bone if he wanted, but that might have backfired.  Instead, he treated her with respect, never attacked her personally, and so came off like a really nice, intelligent, and honorable man (which he is).  If he had gutted her (as I kind of hoped he would), the news would have been about the personal stuff, not the substance.  So, there was no benefit to that.  

So, what the Obama-Biden ticket has now done is to take her off the radar.  We will now see and hear little about her, which is very bad for McCain.  Palin is the only thing that has brought people to his rallies and phone banks.  Her negatives are rising, and the enthusiasm of the base is waning.  Great strategic move by the dems IMO.

History Repeating Itself

Just listened to Thom Hartmann's show from 1 October.  He had dug up NY Times articles from the days surrounding the stock market crash of 1929.  It is absolutely SPOOKY how much it is like today's events.  

1. First, the whole thing was caused by a mortgage crisis caused by a housing bubble--in Florida
   
2. It was followed by a runup of stock speculation, and people buying stocks on margin.  Everybody and their mother was in the stock market.
   
3. When things started looking bad, Hoover tried to bail out the BANKS. He used money from the treasury to buy up bad assets.
   
4. After the stock market crash, Hoover stated that the "fundamentals of the economy are sound," and the Rockefellers announced that they were buying lots of stock.  This caused a dead cat bounce in the market.
   
5. Things got MUCH worse after that.  
   
6. FDR came into office and started the New Deal, which included sensible regulation of the banking and investment industries (many of which are still protecting us today), converting 5 year balloon payment mortgages into 30 fixed rate mortgages for people in danger of default, and transaction taxes for stock transactions.
   
7. Things got much better, we won a war, infrastructure was strengthened, and the middle class was built.
   

So now we have:

1. A mortgage crisis caused by a housing bubble and deregulation of the mortgage industry, development of the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
   
2. Stocks have run up irrationally.
   
3. Now that things are getting hairy for the investment banks, Paulson wants to bail them out using $700 Billion from the Treasury.
   
4. McCain and Bush say that the "fundamentals of the economy are strong."
   
5. After the crash, there was a dead cat bounce, which followed Warren Buffett loaning $5 Billion to Goldman Sachs and planning to buy $6 Billion worth of GE.
   

It looks like the Senate has passed a modified stinker of a bailout bill, and we can expect the House to follow suit.  In my opinion, Obama has tied his dingy to Bush's sinking ship, and has sold out his first term. This may prevent him from taking the kind of bold action FDR did, even if he is so inclined.  Very disappointing.  

Is there any chance we can skip 5, 6, and 7 of the old list?  Maybe.  The bailout bill is set up to go out in stages, not all at once.   Thus, Obama can get political cover for helping usher this bill through (McCain is getting hammered for it), but can then put on the brakes after the first $350 Billion.  That is not great, but maybe not catastrophic, either.  I hope that he will also encourage Congress to repeal the draconian powers afforded to the Treasury Secretary.