Little girl on Leno show

 

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The Ones Who Got It Right

From: "Ralph Nader" <info@nader.org>
Date: April 3, 2009 6:40:33 PM EDT
To: alerts@lists.nader.org
Subject: The Ones Who Got It Right

Why is it that well regarded people working the fields of corporate
power and performance who repeatedly predicted the Wall Street bubble
and its bursting receive so little media and attention?

Instead, the public is still being exposed to the comments and
writings of people like Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, James Glassman
(of Dow 36,000 notoriety) while others like Timothy Geithner, Larry
Summers, and Gary Gensler are newly-appointed at high levels in the
Obama Administration. These men were variously architects,
rationalizers and implementers of the massive de-regulation and non-
regulation that unleashed the epic forces of greed, speculation and
ruination of millions of livelihoods and trillions of dollars other
peoples' money worldwide.

Here are some of the people who got it right—early and often:

1. William Greider—author and columnist with The Nation magazine—wrote
books (including Secrets of the Temple, 1988) and articles warning
about the Federal Reserve and the anti-democratic consequences of
rampant corporate globalization.

2. Robert Kuttner whose books (e.g. Everything for Sale, 1999) and
articles predicted what will happen to workers and pensions when the
regulatory state is tossed aside by the corporatists operating inside
and outside of government.

3. Jim Hightower whose books (If the Gods Has Meant Us to Vote, They
Would Have Given Us Candidates, 2000) and the monthly mass circulation
Hightower Lowdown newsletter pointed out again and again the abuses of
the "greedhounds" and vastly overpaid corporate bosses that have run
consumers of health care, credit, cars and banks into the ground.

4. Nomi Prins (Other Peoples Money, 2004) a former managing director
of Goldman Sachs, quit in disgust and began disclosing how these giant
Wall St. firms deal and how, with their ideological backers, they wove
their webs of deception and fraud against investors, students
borrowing money for college, taxpayers ripped off by corporate
contractors, sick people gouged and insurance companies denying
legitimate claims. (See her book Jacked: How "Conservatives" Are
Picking Your Pocket, 2008)

5. John R. MacArthur, author (The Selling of "Free Trade", 2001)
columnist and publisher of Harpers, authored a sharp, prophetic
criticism of NAFTA's effect on U.S. and Mexican workers. Finally, on
March 24, 2009 the New York Times featured a report titled "NAFTA's
Promise, UNfulfilled."

6. Robert A.G. Monks—the leading shareholder rights advocate in our
country warned for years in books (latest Corpocracy, 2008) ,
articles, testimony and standup challenges at corporate annual
meetings that keeping investors—the owners of these companies—
powerless and dominated by corporate executives would lead to big
trouble. Everyday, you can now see the ways that avaricious abuses of
executive compensation by Wall Street led to cooking the books, hiding
the debts and wildly losing other peoples' money.

7. Tom Stanton, whose 1991 book State of Risk, exposed the dangerously
undercapitalized condition of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and predicted
coming disaster if this reckless leveraging continued. By comparison,
a year ago Fannie and Freddie's federal regulator, James B. Lockhart
III called fears of a bailout "nonsense" and amazingly further lowered
the required capital levels months before their collapse and takeover
a few months later. Mr. Lockhart is still in his job heading a new
regulatory entity over these two goliaths.

8. Republican Kevin Phillips, (latest book Bad Money: Reckless
Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American
Capitalism, 2007) whose numerous writings on Wall Street power and
money and the dictatorial rule of the plutocracy were wise,
historically—rooted premonitions of future collapse.

9. Dean Baker, (latest Plunder and Blunder, 2004) Washington-based
economist, warned repeatedly earlier in this decade of the housing
bubble and the calamitous consequences once it burst. He even sold his
own home in 2004 and became a tenant, so convinced was he of the
housing precipice.

10. Then there is Naomi Klein who has been documenting how economic
disasters produced by corporations and their governmental cohorts end
up not with reforms but with further increasing the power of the
corporate state. (See Shock Doctrine the Rise of Disaster Capitalism,
2007)

Chances are that outside the independent media and an occasional
public tv-radio interview, you have not seen or read them in the mass
media. But they were right, so why haven't you? Well, first of all,
they took on commercial interests and called them out by name and
specific misdeeds. Take it from one who knows, big advertisers do not
hesitate to let their media outlets know about their displeasure.
Publishers, editors and producers will deny being affected by such
realities of the bottom line but money talks—not always but enough to
screen out or marginalize the provocative early warners.

Second, these early warners are not like their counterparts such as
the market fundamentalists and other active corporatists in the world
of writers and commentators. The latter meet and plan often and
ferociously attach themselves to political and corporate leaders.
While the progressive forecasters do not connect either with each
other or with their policy allies on Capitol Hill as much. The media
likes to see growing power like that of the intertwined Heritage
Foundation with the Reagan regime and their supporters in Congress.

Third, there is this sense that these progressives are exposing
conditions that the reporters themselves should be revealing. So why
not publish staff-driven magazine-style features instead of
publicizing outsiders and covering an unfolding story as reportage.
Journalistic prizes go to the former. But, they're not the same either
in reader impact or for change.

Finally, there are establishment figures who tried, in their own way,
to blow the whistle—James Grant, Henry Kaufman and, twenty five years
ago, Felix Rohatyn come to mind. Their astute alarms regarding
excessive risk-taking were ignored. They are not getting much media
play either.

Maybe it's also a cultural thing. Big book deals, radio talk shows,
promotions and quotable celebrity status go to the rogues, the grossly
negligent, the suppressors of truth and the wrongdoers. They're just
so much more exciting!

This is a fast road to a state of decay.

End.

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RONALD REAGAN'S SECRET

What most people want in a leader is something that's very difficult to find: we want someone who listens.

Why is it so had to find a leader who can listen?

Because it's easy to confuse listening to individuals with "going with the crowd" or "following the polls." It's easy for a leader with a vision to give up on listening because, after all, most people want you to be average, and that doesn't get you anywhere. If Henry Ford had listened, the old saying goes, we'd have better buggy whips today, not cars.

The secret, Reagan's secret, is to listen, to value what you hear, and then to make a decision even if it contradicts the very people you are listening to. Reagan impressed his advisers, his adversaries, and his voters by actively listening. People want to be sure you heard what they said - they're less focused on whether or not you do what they said.

When Graham Weston, executive chairman of Rackspace, wanted to persuade his talented and somewhat skittish staff to move with him to the new headquarters in a depressed area of town, he didn't lecture them or even try to cajole them. All he did was listen. He met with every one of the employees who was hesitating about the move and let them air their views. That's what it took to lead them: he listened.

Listen, really listen. Then decide and move on.

Seth Godin

Tribes - We Need You to Lead Us

(2008 - pp. 127-8)

SUPER FOODS - YOGURT

Though you may not live to 120, as commercials once playfully suggested, yogurt does have confirmed health benefits. An excellent source of protein (as much as 13 grams per 8 ounce) and calcium (450 milligrams), this cultured milk food is famous for its friendly bacteria, the Probiotics, which facilitate good digestion and strengthen immunity. Recent research shows that daily consumption of Yogurt reduces body fat and helps keep you slim and fit.

Hacking a VCR

KenKen - New Puzzle Challenges Math Skills

KenKen - New Puzzle Challenges Math Skills

How to KenKen

Robin Williams on Obama’s Election

http://politicalirony.com/2008/11/30/robin-williams-on-obamas-election/

Tell The Truth But Tell It Slant - Emily Dickinson

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Cirrcuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Umberto Eco's Antilibrary or How We Seek Validation

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with "Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?" and the others---a very small minority---who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.

We tend to treat our knowledge as personal property to be protected and defended. It is an ornament that allows us to rise in the pecking order. So this tendency to offend Eco's library sensibility by focusing on the know is a human bias that extends to our mental operations. people don't walk around with anti-résumés telling you what they have not studied or experienced (its the job of their competitors to do that), but it would be nice if they did. Just as we need to stand library logic on its head, we will work on standing knowledge itself on its head. Note that the Black Swan comes from our misunderstanding of the likelihood of surprises, those unread books, because we take what we know a little too seriously.

Let us call an antischolar---someone who focuses on the unread books, and makes an attempt not to treat his knowledge as a treasure, or even a possession, or even a self-esteem enhancement device---a skeptical empiricist.