A Robin Hood Tax Would Be A Major Initiative Of The Bernie Sanders Administration

Germany, France, Sweden, Norway, Brazil, Chile, Finland all provide free college educations for qualified students. That's socially very healthy and encourages an egalitarian society. Free college education for all Americans shouldn't be looked at as a unicorn and, in fact, Bernie Sanders introduced a bill in the Senate this morning that would do just that-- and more. A companion bill, H.R.1464, by Keith Ellison was promptly bottled up in the House Ways and Means Committee by committee chair Paul Ryan.

Sanders wants to use a Robin Hood tax to finance free college in public universities and to rebuild and heal the country. His two bills also provide for investments in universal healthcare, affordable housing, eradicating HIV/AIDS and fighting poverty and climate change.

The legislation introduced by Sanders and Ellison calls for a 50-cent transaction tax on every $100 of trades on stock sales and lesser amounts on transactions involving bonds, derivatives and other financial instruments. Passage would mean the U.S. has joined dozens of other nations-- including every other major global financial market, including the U.K. and the E.U.-- in a growing system of financial transaction taxes.

Keith Ellison explained to Minneapolis voters what he's trying to accomplish. "America’s working families need their country to invest in them again. The money raised from a wafer-thin tax on Wall Street’s high frequency trades could raise hundreds of billions of dollars to invest in our families, protect our environment and increase opportunity for all Americans. If the United States joins the dozens of other nations already benefitting from a financial transaction tax, we can create millions of jobs, while also reducing dangerous market volatility."

Are you with Robin and Tuck or with the Sheriff of Nottingham? If we want a Robin Hood tax, we have to elect people like Bernie Sanders, not like Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton.

A Ray Of Light Amid The Austerity Blight In Washington

Paul Ryan and his cronies want to import failed European-style Austerity. A better idea would be importing the Robin Hood tax on stock speculators

It looks like the country that once brought the world democracy, is now on board with the worldwide shift towards plutocracy and oligarchy. This week, Forbes reports that there are politicians on the 2013 Forbes Billionaires List. That helps explain how an Austerity Agenda that is disastrous for upwards of 95% of the people in the Western democracies just keeps chugging along. And that's why it was so nice to watch Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Congressman George Miller (D-CA) introduce their bill to raise the minimum wage yesterday. Their legislation, which Republicans have already said they'll vigorously oppose, doesn't just raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, it also indexes it so it adjusts annually with inflation. Robert Borosage, head of the Campaign for America's Future, called it "a ray of light amid the austerity blight in Washington."

This common sense reform is long overdue. The current federal minimum wage-- $7.25 per hour-- is not enough for a full-time worker to lift a family out of poverty. The current rate is lower than it was in the 1960s, adjusted for inflation. If the minimum wage had kept pace with rising worker productivity, it would be $21.72 per hour.

The decline in the value of the minimum wage is a reflection of the failure of the conservative era that began with Ronald Reagan. It has produced Gilded Age inequality. Today corporate profits are at record levels as a percentage of the economy; workers wages at record lows. In the two years coming out of the Great Recession, the top 1 percent captured a staggering 121 percent of the nation’s income growth. The rest of us lost ground. The Wall Street Journal reports that nine Wall Street moguls pocketed a total of more than $1 billion in dividends and compensation last year. At the same time, a full-time minimum wage worker-- most of whom work not in small businesses but in large companies-- can’t earn enough to lift her family from poverty.  It is time to raise the floor.

The Miller-Harkin legislation is an essential piece of the fundamental reforms needed if this economy is to work for working people. If Washington had any sense, it would turn from the destructive fixation on austerity and begin debating-- and moving-- a bold agenda for good jobs and growth.

There was another worthwhile glimmer inside the Beltway yesterday as well. Keith Ellison's introduction of a robust Financial Transaction Tax, sometimes called the Robin Hood Tax. Ellison called it the Inclusive Prosperity Act and it would levy a 0.5 percent tax on stock trades and also tax, at a lower rate, trades in bonds, derivatives and currency.

That could add as much as $350 billion a year to the federal treasury, providing vital resources that-- in combination with the elimination of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy and aggressive moves to prevent the sheltering of assets in tax havens-- would make a mockery of Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan's fantastical claims about fiscal crisis.

“We’re not broke,” Ellison says of the United States. “We’ve got plenty of money. It’s just not in the hands of the American people because the people with so much of the wealth bought lobbyists and influence to get loopholes for themselves so that they would not have to pay for the civilization that is America.”

Paul Ryan and the rest of the legislators bought and paid for by the plutocracy are working hard to make Americans believe the country is broke. It isn't. The plutocrats-- enabled by the politicians they own-- have hoarded all the wealth. “The money," said Ellison, "is in the hands of the most privileged and well-to-do Americans, many of whom churn-- and I don’t say ‘trade,’ I mean ‘churn’-- stocks, bonds and derivatives on Wall Street... [O]ne of the ways for us as Americans to recoup the money is to tax them when they do this churning of these financial assets." Is it any wonder that one of the media's most notorious shills for the plutocracy, Sean Hannity, has gone on an unhinged rampage against Ellison, who his bosses see as a threat to their dominance?

Europeans Move Forward On A Robin Hood Tax On Financial Transactions-- U.K. And U.S... Dragging Their Feet

In December the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of the kind of financial transaction tax Wall Street has bribed conservatives in America to reject. And on Tuesday E.U. Finance Ministers OK-ed the new tax which will cover inter-bank trading in stocks, bonds and derivatives, something that's expected to bring in over $50 billion dollars in revenues in 2014 when it's up and rolling. There's a 0.1 per cent tax on stock and bond transactions and a 0.01 per cent tax on derivatives trades. David Cameron, who shares the distinction with Paul Ryan of being a deranged advocate of bone-crunching Austerity, has kept Britain from participating.

Just as David Cameron appeared to be grabbing his coat for an EU exit, other European countries took a step towards greater unity with agreement for eleven countries to implement a multi-billion pound tax on the banks.

Not tax rises on low income families, or cuts to public services to balance the books, but a tax on banks. It's not every day you get to write that. The eleven hope that the Financial Transaction Tax of between 0.1-0.01 per cent on stocks, bonds and derivatives could be implemented as early as next year and will raise around £30bn.

The FTT has for years stirred controversy. Banks, following the Mayan's lead, warned that the end of the world was nigh. As campaigners for a Robin Hood Tax we have often been told "you may have a nice video with Bill Nighy in it [see video above], but your idea won't wash in the complex world of finance, nor will it cut it at the coalface of Government."

Yet it has-- Europe's biggest economies including France, Germany, Italy and Spain are signed up. The group of eleven makes up an impressive 90 percent of Eurozone GDP. Other European nations agreed to let them press ahead. Yet there was one notable abstention, from the UK Government.

Why? It could be argued that a right of centre Government, a powerful financial sector and an economy struggling to return to growth would never add up to much of an appetite to take a chunk out of the banks. Yet all of this applies to Germany, one of the FTT's biggest champions.

The difference is that Germany sees the FTT as a necessary part of the economic equation. It too is implementing tough austerity measures. Germany understands the need to balance and indeed improve the economy by ensuring the financial sector pays its fair share. The richest sector in the world, paying a modest additional tax for causing the largest financial crisis of a generation: quid pro quo.

As Wolfgang Schauble, German finance minister said:

It’s in the interest of the financial sector itself that it should concentrate more on its proper role of financing the real economy and ensuring that capital is allocated in the most intelligent way, instead of banks conducting the bulk of their trading on their own account. That’s in the long-term interest of the financial sector.

Cameron, conversely, opted to call the Financial Transaction Tax "madness," fighting hammer and tong to protect the hallowed elite in the City, whilst cutting benefits and services for the poorest. The Government's much touted bank levy, will raise a just £2.5bn a year and be offset by a lowering of Corporation Tax that Osborne has boasted will be the lowest of any major western economy.

Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England pointed out the irony that "the price of the financial crisis is being borne by people who did absolutely nothing to cause it," adding that he was "surprised that the degree of public anger has not been greater than it has."

But if the moral argument doesn't sway you, then the fiscal case should. Leading City figure Avinash Persaud has calculated that if the UK were to join in with the European Financial Transaction Tax it would raise the Exchequer at least £8bn a year. This could lift over three million people struggling on minimum pay above the living wage threshold.

Ten thousand teachers lost their jobs in 2010/2011 and there are 5,780 fewer nurses than at the time of the last general election-- in eleven days an FTT could raise enough revenue to re-employ every one. In just a single day the tax could raise enough money to reinstate Sure Start centres for 25,000 children.

American efforts to do the same thing were defeated by Wall Street and their allies in 2011. But Pete DeFazio (D-OR) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) are going to try again, hoping to institute a minuscule o.o3% tax on some financial transactions that will yield something like $35 billion dollars a year.

A financial transactions tax would slow down high-frequency trading, which has exploded in the last five years. Such trading “has absolutely no social value,” according to one of its pioneers, and only increases volatility in the market. The tax would have little effect on normal traders.

And in response to Wall Street traders claiming "businesses" would move elsewhere-- Dubai? Beijing? Somalia?-- DeFazio has pointed out that 52 financial executives have endorsed the tax and rejected the scare tactics. “For 50 years we had a tax that was about seven times larger than this when the country was seeing the greatest growth in its history, post-World War II,” he said. “So we’ve proven this will not have a detrimental impact on growth. In fact, it perhaps is beneficial to growth. It’s not necessarily beneficial to salaries of hedge fund managers on Wall Street.”

And, it turns out, DeFazio and Harkin aren't the only Members of Congress talking about a financial transaction tax. Boehner pawn Dave Camp (R-MI), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee is reportedly about to introduce some kind of twisted, partisan version of the tax, that smacks of Republican revenge against businessmen asking them to cooperate with Democrats for the sake of the country.

The draft legislation, which may get significant revision before it's presented to a congressional committee, would be vehemently opposed by Wall Street and other major corporations that trade heavily in derivative securities.

Sleazy Boehner ally Dave Camp (R-MI)

They may have only themselves to blame. Congressional Republicans have been furious at top corporate executives lobbying heavily for a "grand bargain" that would include tax hikes and cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, according to congressional GOP insiders. Republican leaders were further piqued when business executives began lobbying for certain corporate tax reforms, leading to a sharply worded letter from Camp to the Business Roundtable, a lobbying group of corporate CEOs.

One Republican operative told HuffPost that Camp's bill is political payback for the CEOs collaborating with the Fix the Debt coalition, which worked with corporate chiefs who had pressured Republicans to accept tax increases as part of a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff at the close of 2012.

"This transaction tax was only a matter of time after Camp's letter to the Business Roundtable," the GOP operative said. "In just a few months, their lobbying campaign has resulted in Republicans initiating new revenues on their backs. Maybe the CEOs can kill it by Democrats insisting the taxes aren't high enough."

...Camp's new bill would harvest government revenues from complex financial transactions involving derivatives, some of which figured prominently in the 2008 banking collapse. Although the 2010 financial reform legislation would curb some excesses in the derivatives market, the legislation isn't yet fully implemented, and leaves much of the market unregulated. Financial reform advocates have urged new taxes on derivatives to deter excessive risk-taking by big banks.

...Camp's bill would establish a new tax regime for derivatives, requiring banks to declare the fair market value of the products at the end of each year. Any increase in value would be considered corporate income, subject to taxation. It's a more aggressive tax treatment than Wall Street enjoys for either derivatives or for trading in more traditional securities.

...The bill would significantly strengthen the Volcker Rule, which bans banks from speculating in securities markets with taxpayer money. The Volcker Rule's implementation has been delayed as bank lobbyists have flooded regulatory agencies in Washington, pillorying the ban with loopholes. Hefty tax burdens for proprietary trading would reduce bank incentives to engage in the risky activity.

Camp's legislation also would permanently establish a homeowner aid plan advocated by former Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), who retired this month. When banks grant homeowners mortgage relief, the IRS considers the debt-reduction taxable income. As a result, struggling homeowners can face an unmanageable tax burden. A $50,000 debt reduction can spark an $18,000 tax bill-- money that borrowers struggling to avoid foreclosure simply do not have. Miller successfully lobbied to include a one-year fix on the tax policy in the fiscal cliff deal. Camp's legislation would permanently end the tax policy.

Who Will Play Robin Hood To Rahm Emanuel's Sheriff Of Nottingham?

San Bernardino is at the vortex of the mortgage scandal crisis, a crisis caused by Wall Street greed and a crisis that Wall Street greed is keeping from being fixed. There are something like 150,000 homes in San Bernardino with mortgages worth less than what buyers paid for them (i.e., underwater). More than half of all homeowners countywide are underwater. If banksters were busy fighting to stay out of prison-- or, better, yet, to reduce their sentences or to be moved to federal prisons closer to home so their families could visit them more easily-- they wouldn't be threatening expensive legal action now against local governments trying to fix the problem. And when you see the kind of slime on the side of the banksters-- like wholly-owned Wall Street subsidiary Rahm Emanuel-- you get a pretty good idea that there's a clear path to solving the problem. It's called eminent domain and it's how San Bernardino and other municipalities could finally get Wall Street's mess behind them. Under the plan, cities would seize underwater mortgages through their power of eminent domain at a discounted price, and then reduce the principal owed on the homes, refinance them to lower homeowners' monthly payments and sell them back to the owners.

While Chicago's City Council met to consider using eminent domain to solve that city's foreclosure crisis, Emanuel was mouthing the words of the Wall Street titans who financed his entire political career and made him a multimillionaire. "The idea of using eminent domain is not one I support ... because I don't think it's the right way to address the problem," Emanuel said. "I don't think it is the power of the city to deal with the housing issue. We have a national issue. I think we have to address the issue. I just don't think that is the right instrument."

Ben Hallman reported on the battle between San Bernardino and Wall Street's mortgage industry criminals. Wall Street is hysterical and threatening dire consequences. "We believe using eminent domain would reduce access to credit for borrowers and would, at a minimum, result in lengthy and costly litigation," said Timothy Cameron, a managing director of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Under the plan, Mortgage Resolution Partners would front money to local governments to purchase the loans at market value in exchange for a fixed fee of $4,500 each. Homeowners could then refinance at the lower value, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of dollars each month in mortgage payments-- while also injecting a shot of adrenaline into moribund local economies.

More than a dozen local governments, including those in Suffolk County, N.Y., in Berkeley, Calif., and in Chicago are considering the proposal. But government officials, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Edward DeMarco at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, have expressed skepticism of using eminent domain in this way, as has the mortgage and finance industry, which has not-so-subtly threatened an expensive legal fight should any governmental entity go forward with such a plan.

...Left unsaid by the mortgage industry is who, exactly, would mount a legal challenge, but it is likely that SIFMA, which represents hundreds of banks and asset managers, would lead the charge. Over the past few months the industry group has released a series of statements warning of dire consequences should San Bernardino-- or any of the dozen or so other local government groups considering an eminent domain measure -- pursue such a remedy.

SIFMA has described the proposal as unconstitutional, and claimed that using eminent domain in this fashion would harm everyday investors and pensioners and would undermine the U.S. mortgage market. Using eminent domain in such a fashion would actually "exacerbate the problem" of depressed property values, Cameron warned, because borrowers in any area that embraces eminent domain may find new mortgages and refinancings more costly and more difficult to obtain.

But homeowners who showed up at the meeting said they are skeptical of the mortgage finance industry's motives. "We've seen a bailout of the banking industry, but no bailout for homeowners," said Arie Giddens, a San Bernardino resident whose home is worth less than half the $300,000 she paid for it in 2005, according to an estimate by Zillow, a real estate website.

Giddens said she missed a few payments when she lost her job last year, and is now in a trial loan modification through her loan servicer, Citigroup. She has not been offered principal reduction by the bank, she said.

Giddens' loan is owned by a private investor, and thus would potentially qualify for a principal reduction under the Mortgage Resolution Partners plan-- but she lives in the city of San Bernardino, which is separate from the county now considering homeowner relief proposals. "I think it's time we got some help out here," she said

If only she lived in Spain instead of San Bernardino, more specifically in Marinaleda in Andalucia, she would, at least, get a more receptive hearing from government officials-- or one government official, Marinaleda Robin Hood mayor.

For Spain’s ruling politicians he is a criminal; for his supporters he is Robin Hood, stealing from supermarkets and redistributing the food to the poor.

Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, the mayor of Marinaleda, a southern town with a population of 2,600, has been catapulted to cult hero status in Spain after setting out this week on an anti-austerity march across Andalucia-- occupying banks and stealing food, and enraging the government of Mariano Rajoy.

Earlier this month Mr Sánchez Gordillo stood outside a supermarket with cheering supporters as trade unionists piled food into shopping trolleys and left without paying, later donating the items to food banks for the poor. The raid resulted in seven arrests.

The 59-year-old is also a member of the regional parliament, and enjoys immunity from prosecution. He says he will forgo this right on the march, which began this week with about 500 supporters.

“We are fighting a war for the poor ... going to jail is not important for me, it would be an honour,” Mr Sánchez Gordillo told the Financial Times.

“We are going to occupy all of the banks and supermarkets we are able to in Andalucia. The robbers who have caused this crisis must pay the consequences for what they have done.”

Mr Sánchez Gordillo, who wears a large beard and often sports a keffiyeh-style scarf, said he was attacking banks for repossessing the homes of people unable to pay their mortgages, and supermarkets for damaging local farmers.

“The euro is a fraud that enriches some and impoverishes the rest ... There are families going hungry, and small farmers who are ruined. We are asking for a change of the political model.”

His actions have infuriated Spain’s ruling Popular party, which has called for him to be stripped of his seat for the United Left party in Andalucia’s parliament.

“One can’t be Robin Hood and at the same time earning a salary as the sheriff of Nottingham,” said Alfonso Alonso, parliamentary spokesman for the ruling PP in Spain’s parliament.

“This man is looking for publicity at the cost of everyone else, and above all at the cost of the image of Spain,” he said.

During its first seven months in power, Mr Rajoy’s government has implemented swinging austerity measures that have damaged his popularity and triggered waves of demonstrations by public workers.

Andalucia, Spain’s largest region by population, has 30 per cent unemployment-- the highest of any region within the European Union. It has become a focal point for the government’s drive to rein in regional spending, and earlier this month Madrid clashed with the southern region over new budget cuts.

“This could close 19 hospitals, all of the Andalucian health service, or get rid of 60,000 public workers, one in four of the local governments workforce,” José Antonio Griñán, the region’s leader, said earlier this month.

On Friday, the marchers, who plan to sleep in the open or in parks, occupied a branch of Banco Santander in the town of Mancha Real in the province of Jaén before leaving later in the day.

Diego Canamero, head of the Andalucian Workers Union, was in the branch on Friday. He said critics of the protests were politicians protecting their own interests.

“These are symbolic actions against an unsustainable economic situation,” he said. “The bankers rob us, and take our money to tax havens, and the political parties are corrupt. We live in a culture of robbery.”

Mr Canamero said the marchers were under tight police surveillance, but they would try and “redistribute food for the most needy” if they could. Only staple items such as sugar, olive oil, milk and rice were being taken.

I hope if this catches on here, people realize how unhealthy sugar is and decide to redistribute fresh fruits and vegetables instead. And I hope it's brown rice and not that nutrition-free white polished garbage.

Billionaires Are A Malignant Cancer... Romneyhood

"Romneyhood" is easy to understand-- a kind of bizarro world Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. That's exactly what his economic agenda boils down to. It is, in essence what Paul Ryan, John Boehner, Miss McConnell, Eric Cantor, Mitt Romney and the rest of these thugs in expensive suits have been chirping about all year. Let's keep in mind that the 10 most profitable U.S. companies-- including Exxon Mobil, Apple, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase and General Electric-- paid an average federal tax rate of just 9% last year. Yesterday the Huffington Post reported on a group of progressive academics-- the Scholars Strategy Network-- dissecting the Ryan budget in order to help shape the political discourse during the presidential campaign.

“We have a commitment to laying out the truth in a way that citizens can access and comprehend, including arcane ideas like taxes, budgets and health care reform,” said [co-founder Theda] Skocpol, a sociologist and political scientist at Harvard University. “But it's important for those issues to be clarified and for citizens to understand what's at stake.”

Yale University Professor Jacob Hacker, who serves on the SSN's steering committee, described the current push in support of the Ryan budget as a “big mobilization” that could be held up as an embodiment of conservative priorities. In this case, those priorities that the network of academics will highlight include across-the-board tax cuts, including steep ones for the wealthy, at the expense of investments in education, health care, job training, college loans and other domestic programs.

Hacker, a leading health care theorist known to many as the "godfather" of the public option, is convinced that if most Americans understand these details, it will change the debate in Washington.

“This time around, the Republicans are essentially using the deficit as the central organizing principle for their budget," Hacker said in an interview. "But what they are proposing are plans that every independent analyst says will increase the deficit."

The elimination of billionaires-- no guillotines (yet), just truly progressive tax policies going back to before JFK started the downward trend we have today-- should be an important policy goal for anyone who cares about democracy. Democracy is virtually impossible if there are billionaires in a society. That isn't how Romney or the GOP see it, of course. His whole tax plan is based on that reverse Robin Hood theory which would be such an incredible boon for the wealthy, but a tax hike for 95% of Americans.

The report by researchers at the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, examined Romney’s suggestion of an across-the-board 20% income tax cut financed by closing existing loopholes and concluded there was no way to make the numbers work without burdening the vast majority of Americans with higher taxes.

Romney has not said which tax breaks he would end to finance his plan, but he has suggested that he would only look to breaks that benefit the wealthy. The report concluded that notion is a fantasy no matter how it’s constructed: There simply are too many middle class tax breaks on the table to avoid skewing the burden against the average American.

“Even if tax expenditures are eliminated in a way designed to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible, there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion from those making over $200,000 to those making less than that amount,” the report reads.

That $86 billion should lend quite the boost to the luxury goods market: “Americans making over $1 million would see an increase in after-tax income of 4.1 percent (an $87,000 tax cut), those making between $500,000 and $1 million would see an increase of 3.2 percent (a $17,000 tax cut), and those making between $200,000 and $500,000 would see an increase of 0.8 percent (a $1,800 tax cut).”

As for the other 95% of Americans? Not so much. The average tax increase needed to pay for the elite’s gains would be $500 per household.

President Obama, who is speaking in Ohio on Wednesday, is planning to seize on the study.

“He’s not asking you to contribute more to pay down the deficit, or to invest in our kids’ education,” Obama is expected to say, according to prepared remarks released by the campaign. “He’s asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a tax cut.”

Nancy Pelosi, addressing a very specific problem related to these sociopaths, pointed out why the GOP is, in effect, the E. coli club.

“I say to [Republicans], do you have children that breathe air? Do you have grandchildren that drink water?,” Pelosi asked. “I’m a mom and I have five kids ... as a mom I was vigilant about food safety, right moms? If you could depend on the government for one thing it was that you had to be able to trust the water that our kids drank and the food that they ate. But this is the E. coli club. They do not want to spend money to do that.”

...“Bless their hearts, it’s the philosophy Republicans in Congress have,” Pelosi added. “And bless their hearts, they act upon their beliefs. It’s an ideology. We shouldn’t have a government role. So reduce the police, the firemen, the teachers, reduce their role and give tax cuts to the high end. That will stimulate the economy and everything will be good.”

Our Own Personal Robin Hood Hits Stratfor Clients

I'm a law-abiding person, and I know the difference between right and wrong, but I have an admission to make. Like most red-blooded Americans I grew up rooting for Robin Hood, a criminal, against the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, the representative of "legitimate" government, law and order and the 1%. Robin was the champion of the 99% of his day.

Today? Well, thank God there are men and women like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Alan Grayson, Raúl Grijalva and the stalwart, progressive candidates Blue America has found running for Congress. But these folks don't rise to a Robin Hood level; they're using a different means to encourage fairness and equality. Sometimes, if the whole Robin Hood thing is to be believed, you have to step beyond that-- like when the 1%t gets too demanding and their grasp on power too powerful. That would be now. And that would be... Anonymous. Their latest adventure inspired a short burst of tweets early this morning:


Cassandra Vinograd reporting from London:

The loose-knit hacking movement "Anonymous" claimed Sunday to have stolen thousands of credit card numbers and other personal information belonging to clients of U.S.-based security think tank Stratfor. One hacker said the goal was to pilfer funds from individuals' accounts to give away as Christmas donations, and some victims confirmed unauthorized transactions linked to their credit cards.

Anonymous boasted of stealing Stratfor's confidential client list, which includes a range of entities from banks to Apple, the U.S. Air Force to the Miami Police Department, and mining it for more than 4,000 credit card numbers, passwords and home addresses.

"Not so private and secret anymore?" the group taunted in a message on Twitter, promising that the attack on Stratfor was just the beginning of a Christmas-inspired assault on a long list of targets.

Anonymous said the client list it posted was a small slice of its 200 gigabytes worth of plunder it stole from Stratfor and promised more leaks. It said it was able to get the credit details in part because Stratfor didn't bother encrypting them-- an easy-to-avoid blunder which, if true, would be a major embarrassment for any security-related company.

Austin, Texas-based Stratfor provides political, economic and military analysis to help clients reduce risk, according to a description on its YouTube page. It charges subscribers for its reports and analysis, delivered through the web, emails and videos.

...Hours after publishing what it claimed was Stratfor's client list, Anonymous tweeted a link to encrypted files online with the names, addresses and account details.

"Not as many as you expected? Worry not, fellow pirates and robin hoods. These are just the "A's," read a message posted online that encouraged readers to download a file of the hacked information.

It also linked to images online that it suggested were receipts for charitable donations made by the group manipulating the credit card data it stole.

"Thank you! Defense Intelligence Agency," read the text above one image that appeared to show a transaction summary indicating that an agency employee's information was used to donate $250 to a non-profit.

One receipt-- to the American Red Cross-- had Allen Barr's name on it.

Barr, of Austin, Texas, recently retired from the Texas Department of Banking and said he discovered last Friday that a total of $700 had been spent from his account. Barr, who has spent more than a decade dealing with cybercrime at banks, said five transactions were made in total.

"It was all charities, the Red Cross, CARE, Save the Children. So when the credit card company called my wife she wasn't sure whether I was just donating," said Barr, who wasn't aware until a reporter with the AP called that his information had been compromised when Stratfor's computers were hacked.

"It made me feel terrible. It made my wife feel terrible. We had to close the account."

Stratfor said in an email to members that it had suspended its servers and email after learning that its website had been hacked.

"We have reason to believe that the names of our corporate subscribers have been posted on other web sites," said the email, passed on to The Associated Press by subscribers. "We are diligently investigating the extent to which subscriber information may have been obtained."

The email, signed by Stratfor Chief Executive George Friedman, said the company is "working closely with law enforcement to identify who is behind the breach."

"Stratfor's relationship with its members and, in particular, the confidentiality of their subscriber information, are very important to Stratfor and me," Friedman wrote.

Repeated calls to Stratfor went unanswered Sunday and an answering machine thanked callers for contacting the "No. 1 source for global intelligence." Stratfor's website was down, with a banner saying "site is currently undergoing maintenance."

Wishing everyone a "Merry LulzXMas"-- a nod to its spinoff hacking group Lulz Security-- Anonymous also posted a link on Twitter to a site containing the email, phone number and credit number of a U.S. Homeland Security employee.

The employee, Cody Sultenfuss, said he had no warning before his details were posted.

"They took money I did not have," he told The Associated Press in a series of emails, which did not specify the amount taken. "I think why me? I am not rich."

One member of the hacking group, who uses the handle AnonymousAbu on Twitter, claimed that more than 90,000 credit cards from law enforcement, the intelligence community and journalists-- "corporate/exec accounts of people like Fox" news-- had been hacked and used to "steal a million dollars" and make donations.

It was impossible to verify where credit card details were used. Fox News was not on the excerpted list of Stratfor members posted online, but other media organizations including MSNBC and Al-Jazeera English appeared in the file.

Anonymous warned it has "enough targets lined up to extend the fun fun fun of LulzXmas through the entire next week."

The group has previously claimed responsibility for attacks on companies such as Visa, MasterCard and PayPal, as well as others in the music industry and the Church of Scientology.

I wonder if I'm too old to join.

Who's Side Were YOU On In The Battle For Sherwood Forest?

I wonder if, when he was still in knickers, young Paul Ryan was rooting for the Sheriff of Nottingham and hoping he'd catch Robin Hood. Or did his epiphany about which side he was on come after he'd read Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and his absorption into the Ayn Rand cult? As for Rand, even as a child she hated Robin Hood. Doesn't that make sense? I wonder how true it is not just for conscious Rand fanatics like Ryan but across the Republican Party spectrum. I've asked Ken to explain the significance of Rand having deemed Rachmaninoff superior to Bach, Mozart and Beethoven but I suspect it would be something like Paul Gosar declaring that REO Speedwagon is superior to The Beatles, Rolling Stones and The Doors.

As you may have noticed in the last couple of weeks, I'm busily devouring Corey Robin's new book, The Reactionary Mind. I keep linking to the DWT bookstore, not because I'm eager to make the 5 cent commission if someone buys the book but because I want everyone to read it. It's actually elucidating and elegantly written, a truly enjoyable read that opens the mind and explains the world. What more could you want? Oh... free? Well... good news on that front too. It would be hard to write about the reactionary mind without explaining the Ayn Rand phenomena. And Robin tackles it extraordinarily well-- a whole chapter's worth. And that whole chapter was previously (May, 2010) published by The Nation, Garbage And Gravitas.

Look, I hope Rob Zerban actually takes out Paul Ryan next year-- and I think he can. (By the way, you can help him do that at the Blue America Stop Paul Ryan page.) But if he doesn't, Wall Street fully intends to sentence the country to a Paul Ryan presidency at some point up the road. They've been grooming him for it and the political class they finance has acquiesced. And there is no way to understand what makes Ryan tick-- beyond checks from Big Business-- without understanding "Garbage and Gravitas." He's long seen himself as a totally Randian creation, in a way you might expect from a college freshmen... or even a sophomore. But whether you're a Ryan watcher or not (yet), here's an opportunity to get a chapter of Corey Robin's book gratis. In fact, here are some excerpts for your late afternoon enjoyment, just a couple of lines about Aristotle, Hitler, Goebbels, zombies and Nietzsche, nothing I'd suggest bringing up at a Paul Ryan town hall event.

Rand also liked to cite Aristotle's law of identity or noncontradiction-- the notion that everything is identical to itself, captured by the shorthand "A is A"-- as the basis of her defense of selfishness, the free market and the limited state. That particular transport sent Rand's admirers into rapture and drove her critics, even the friendliest, to distraction. Several months before his death in 2002, Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, the most analytically sophisticated of twentieth-century libertarians, said that "the use that's made by people in the Randian tradition of this principle of logic...is completely unjustified so far as I can see; it's illegitimate." In 1961 Sidney Hook wrote in the New York Times,

Since his baptism in medieval times, Aristotle has served many strange purposes. None have been odder than this sacramental alliance, so to speak, of Aristotle with Adam Smith. The extraordinary virtues Miss Rand finds in the law that A is A suggests that she is unaware that logical principles by themselves can test only consistency. They cannot establish truth.... Swearing fidelity to Aristotle, Miss Rand claims to deduce not only matters of fact from logic but, with as little warrant, ethical rules and economic truths as well. As she understands them, the laws of logic license her in proclaiming that "existence exists," which is very much like saying that the law of gravitation is heavy and the formula of sugar sweet.

Whether or not Rand read Aristotle, it's clear that he made little impression upon her, particularly when it came to ethics. Aristotle had a distinctive approach to morality, quite out of keeping with modern sensibilities; and while Rand had some awareness of its distinctiveness, its substance seems to have been lost on her. Like a set of faux-leather classics on the living room shelf, Aristotle was there to impress the company-- and, in Rand's case, distract from the real business at hand.

Unlike Kant, the emblematic modern who claimed that the rightness of our deeds is determined solely by reason, unsullied by need, desire or interest, Aristotle rooted his ethics in human nature, in the habits and practices, the dispositions and tendencies, that make us happy and enable our flourishing. And where Kant believed that morality consists of austere rules, imposing unconditional duties upon us and requiring our most strenuous sacrifice, Aristotle located the ethical life in the virtues. These are qualities or states, somewhere between reason and emotion but combining elements of both, that carry and convey us, by the gentlest and subtlest of means, to the outer hills of good conduct. Once there, we are inspired and equipped to scale these lower heights, whence we move onto the higher reaches. A person who acts virtuously develops a nature that wants and is able to act virtuously and that finds happiness in virtue. That coincidence of thought and feeling, reason and desire, is achieved over a lifetime of virtuous deeds. Virtue, in other words, is less a codex of rules, which must be observed in the face of the self's most violent opposition, than it is the food and fiber, the grease and gasoline, of a properly functioning soul.

If Kant is an athlete of the moral life, Aristotle is its virtuoso. Rand, by contrast, is a melodramatist of the moral life. Apprenticed in Hollywood rather than Athens, she has little patience for the quiet habituation in the virtues that Aristotelian ethics entails. She returns instead to her favored image of a heroic individual confronting a difficult path. Difficulty is never the result of confusion or ambiguity; Rand loathed "the cult of moral grayness," insisting that morality is first and always "a code of black and white." What makes the path treacherous-- not for the hero, who seems to have been born fully outfitted for it, but for the rest of us-- are the obstacles along the way. Doing the right thing brings hardship, penury and exile, while doing the wrong thing brings wealth, status and acclaim. Because he refuses to submit to architectural conventions, Roark winds up splitting rocks in a quarry. Peter Keating, Roark's doppelgänger, betrays everyone, including himself, and is the toast of the town. Ultimately, of course, the distribution of rewards and punishments will reverse: Roark is happy, Keating miserable. But ultimately is always and inevitably a long ways off.

In her essays, Rand seeks to apply to this imagery a superficial Aristotelian gloss. She, too, roots her ethics in human nature and refuses to draw a distinction between self-interest and the good, between ethical conduct and desire or need. But Rand's metric of good and evil, virtue and vice, is not happiness or flourishing. It is the stern and stark exigencies of life and death. As she writes in "The Objectivist Ethics":

I quote from Galt's speech: "There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or nonexistence-- and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of 'Life' that makes the concept of 'Value' possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil."

Rand's defenders like to claim that what Rand has in mind by "life" is not simply biological preservation but the good life of Aristotle's great-souled man, what Rand characterizes as "the survival of man qua man." And it's true that Rand isn't much taken with mere life or life for life's sake. That would be too pedestrian. But Rand's naturalism is far removed from Aristotle's. For him life is a given; for her it is a question, and that very question is what makes life, on its own, such an object and source of reflection.

What gives life value is the ever present possibility that it might (and one day will) end. Rand never speaks of life as a given or ground. It is a conditional, a choice we must make, not once but again and again. Death casts a pall, lending our days an urgency and weight they otherwise would lack. It demands wakefulness, an alertness to the fatefulness of each and every moment. "One must never act like a zombie," Rand enjoins. Death, in short, makes life dramatic. It makes our choices-- not just the big ones but the little ones we make every day, every second-- matter. In the Randian universe, it's high noon all the time. Far from being exhausting or enervating, such an existence, at least to Rand and her characters, is enlivening and exciting.

If this idea has any moral resonance, it will be heard not in the writings of Aristotle but in the drill march of fascism. The notion of life as a struggle against and unto death, of every moment laden with destruction, every choice pregnant with destiny, every action weighed upon by annihilation, its lethal pressure generating moral meaning-- these are the watchwords of the European night. In his famous Berlin Sportpalast speech of February 1943, Goebbels declared, "Whatever serves it and its struggle for existence is good and must be sustained and nurtured. Whatever is injurious to it and its struggle for existence is evil and must be removed and eliminated." The "it" in question is the German nation, not the Randian individual. But if we strip the pronoun of its antecedent-- and listen for the background hum of triumph and will, being and nonbeing, preservation and elimination-- the similarities between the moral syntax of Randianism and of fascism become clear. Goodness is measured by life, life is a struggle against death and only our daily vigilance ensures that one does not prevail over the other.

Rand, no doubt, would object to the comparison. There is, after all, a difference between the individual and the collective. Rand thought the former an existential fundament, the latter-- whether it took the form of a class, race or nation-- a moral monstrosity. And where Goebbels talked of violence and war, Rand spoke of commerce and trade, production and economy. But fascism is hardly hostile to the heroic individual. That individual, moreover, often finds his deepest calling in economic activity. Far from demonstrating a divergence from fascism, Rand's economic writings register its impression indelibly.

Here is Hitler speaking to a group of industrialists in Düsseldorf in 1932:

You maintain, gentlemen, that the German economy must be constructed on the basis of private property. Now such a conception of private property can only be maintained in practice if it in some way appears to have a logical foundation. This conception must derive its ethical justification from the insight that this is what nature dictates.

Rand, too, believes that capitalism is vulnerable to attack because it lacks "a philosophical base." If it is to survive, it must be rationally justified. We must "begin at the beginning," with nature itself. "In order to sustain its life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature." Because reason is man's "means of survival," nature dictates that "men prosper or fail, survive or perish in proportion to the degree of their rationality." (Notice the slippage between success and failure and life and death.) Capitalism is the one system that acknowledges and incorporates this dictate of nature. "It is the basic, metaphysical fact of man's nature-- the connection between his survival and his use of reason-- that capitalism recognizes and protects." Like Hitler, Rand finds in nature, in man's struggle for survival, a "logical foundation" for capitalism.

Far from privileging the collective over the individual or subsuming the latter under the former, Hitler believed that it was the "strength and power of individual personality" that determined the economic (and cultural) fate of the race and nation. Here he is in 1933 addressing another group of industrialists:

Everything positive, good and valuable that has been achieved in the world in the field of economics or culture is solely attributable to the importance of personality.... All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the select few.

And here is Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1967):

The exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants....It is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further.
If the first half of Hitler's economic views celebrates the romantic genius of the individual industrialist, the second spells out the inegalitarian implications of the first. Once we recognize "the outstanding achievements of individuals," Hitler says in Düsseldorf, we must conclude that "people are not of equal value or of equal importance." Private property "can be morally and ethically justified only if [we] admit that men's achievements are different." An understanding of nature fosters a respect for the heroic individual, which fosters an appreciation of inequality in its most vicious guise. "The creative and decomposing forces in a people always fight against one another."

Rand's appreciation of inequality is equally pungent. I quote from Galt's speech:

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains. Such is the nature of the "competition" between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of "exploitation" for which you have damned the strong.

Rand's path from nature to individualism to inequality also ends in a world divided between "the creative and decomposing forces." In every society, says Roark, there is a "creator" and a parasitic "second-hander," each with its own nature and code. The first "allows man to survive." The second is "incapable of survival." One produces life, the other induces death. In Atlas Shrugged the battle is between the producer and the "looters" and "moochers." It too must end in life or death.

It should come as no surprise to find Rand in such company, for she and the Nazis share a patrimony in the vulgar Nietzscheanism that has stalked the radical right, whether in its libertarian or fascist variants, since the early part of the twentieth century. As Heller and especially Burns show, Nietzsche exerted an early grip on Rand that never really loosened. Her cousin teased Rand that Nietzsche "beat you to all your ideas." When Rand arrived in the United States, Thus Spake Zarathustra was the first book in English she bought. With Nietzsche on her mind, she was inspired to write in her journals that "the secret of life" is, "you must be nothing but will. Know what you want and do it. Know what you are doing and why you are doing it, every minute of the day. All will and all control. Send everything else to hell!" Her entries frequently include phrases like "Nietzsche and I think" and "as Nietzsche said."

Rand was much taken with the idea of the violent criminal as moral hero, a Nietzschean transvaluator of all values; according to Burns, she "found criminality an irresistible metaphor for individualism." A literary Leopold and Loeb, she plotted out a novella based on the actual case of a murderer who strangled a 12-year-old girl. The murderer, said Rand, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness-- resulting from the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning or importance of other people." That is not a bad description of Nietzsche's master class in The Genealogy of Morals.

What's Happened So Far In The Class War Reagan Started in 1981?

Boehner, who signed his pledge, referred to him as a "random person" today

This week, Beltway scold-- and former Wyoming senator-- Alan Simpson (R) was scolding the Republicans on the SuperCommittee.

“Just a quick note about Grover Norquist,” Simpson testified. “If Grover Norquist is now the most powerful man in America, he should run for president. There’s no question about his power. And let me tell you, he has people in thrall. That’s a terrible phrase. Lincoln used it. It means your mind has been captured. You’re in bondage with a soul."

Simpson went on: “So here he is. I asked him. He said, ‘My hero is Ronald Reagan.’ I said, ‘Well, he raised taxes 11 times in his eight years.’ And he said, ‘I know. I didn’t like that at all.’ I said, ‘Well, he did it. Why do you suppose?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. Very disappointing.’ I said, ‘He probably did it to make the country run, another sick idea.’”

Oh, boy... Grover got his weiner whacked. But why should he care? He's already won over and over and over-- and I mean won. Since 1981, when Reagan overtly aligned the government with the interests of the 1% again-- there was that brief New Deal and post-New Deal interregnum-- the rich whose interests Norquist (and the Republican Party and Blue Dogs) champion have scored knock out punch after knock out punch.

[T]he vast majority of the Rich Class really are engaged in a massive cover-up, a widespread conspiracy that includes the Super Rich, Forbes 400 billionaires, Wall Street bank CEOs, all their high-paid Washington lobbyists, all the Congressional puppets they keep in office by spending hundreds of millions on campaign payola and all the conservative presidential candidates praying the same Rich Class dogma.

They’re fighting you, winning big-time, and you’re the loser. It’s just one generation since conservatives put Reagan in office: In those three short decades the income and wealth of the top 1% has tripled while the income of the bottom 99% of all Americans has stagnated or dropped.

Yes, they are at war with you, fighting to gain absolute power over America … and they will never stop their brutal attacks.

...Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

In spite of that unequivocal declaration, Buffett’s Rich Class buddies still want you to believe that it’s the Occupiers, the lazy unemployed, the 99%, someone else, anyone other than their Rich Class that’s fomenting class warfare.

So you need occasional reminders, because the “Rich Class” has been spending mega-bucks for decades to shift responsibility. Fortunately today, folks like the Occupiers aren’t buying the con job. Here’s a few:

Rich Class warriors: puppet-politicians in GOP-controlled Congress

We know the GOP is the Party of the Rich Class. But the Dems are co-conspirators fighting the class war as pawns of the wealthy. No wonder the Occupy Wall Street crowd focuses on the inequality gap between America’s top 1% and the 99% who’ve seen no income growth since the Reaganomics ideology took over American politics. Many are like House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, clones of Ayn Rand’s narcissistic cult of selfish capitalism.
Listen, both parties are singing in harmony: “Yes, there’s class warfare. And yes, it’s our duty to fight for the richest class of capitalists who are making this war. We must help them win, get richer, squeeze more and more out of all Americans.”

Rich Class warriors: Federal Reserve-Wall Street bankers conspiracy

Yes, there are five banks in America that control about 90% of all the deposits … they control over 90% of America’s trading in the $650 trillion global derivatives casino … they control the Federal Reserve through directors and governors … their campaign payola and lobbyists virtually control the presidency, the Senate and Congress … they siphon huge bonuses from depositors, shareholders and pensioners alike:

“So yes, there is a class warfare running our banking system, every day. And yes, the CEOs in our rich class are leading that class war, and winning big. But more in never enough, so we want new ways to skim off profits, because we are invincible, too big and too greedy to fail.”

Rich Class warriors: Pentagon’s Perpetual War-Mongering Machine

The rich class loves war (war profiteering is a big business). Of course they often have to brainwash the 99% with fears like the mushroom-cloud lies Bush-Cheney used to get America into the $3 trillion Iraq War. Americans have a powerful love-hate relationship with war. Why else would we spend almost half our federal budget, several hundred billion dollars, on war every year?

“Yes, there’s class warfare, all right,” the former vice president might say as a one-time defense contractor CEO and oilman who continued profiting in office. He’d obviously admit:
“Yes, we’re in a class war, and it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we proud that we kept winning that war while we was in office.”

Rich Class fighting to turn America back into Reagan’s ol’ Wild West

The list goes on: The Rich Class wants to time-travel America back to a lawless Old Wild West, back to a free-market Reaganomics anarchy where the top 1% trickle down leftovers to the 99% using this kind of self-destructive programs:

• Privatize: Turn Social Security over to Wall Street bankers to run Main Street’s retirements into the dirt (worse than they did in 2008), a $20 trillion blunder that’s guaranteed to trigger total bankruptcy of the America economy.

• Vouchers: Turn our educational and health-care systems into a voucher system so that private companies owned by the Rich Class can siphon off even bigger profits from every little trickle-down bone the wealthy toss to parents, the sick and elderly.

• Regulations: They’ll also turn over environmental, drugs, food, banking and all other regulatory agencies back to be controlled by the very company executives they’re supposed to be regulating, just like Bush and Cheney did for eight years.

• Tax-Free: Extend Bush tax cuts to Rich Class, eliminate estate taxes and give Corporate America another tax–free holiday to return huge foreign profits so they can deposit those profits direct into pockets of the Rich Class.

But, of course, there’s nothing new here. We just forget so easily, because it’s so bad. Which is why we’ll be reminding you often that the Rich Class has been fighting this war against you for 30 years, since Reagan.

And they’re so greedy they cannot stop fighting. So they will likely keep attacking the 99% for another decade, till the 2020 presidential elections, or more likely, till a catastrophic collapse of the economy coming soon.

Yes, folks, America really is under attack daily. We are fighting on the defense in an historic class warfare. Yes, the Rich Class really did start this war. And yes, they really are winning, big-time. And yes, they are addicted to winning at all costs, to get richer and richer just for the sake of getting richer and richer.

They have no conscience about the collateral damage done to the rest of Americans. They’ve lost their moral compass. In short, they will fight this war to the death, yours, theirs, even the death of America. Bet on it: Because more is never enough for America’s morally bankrupt Rich Class.

The Wall Street Journal made a little space on its editorial page yesterday for a non-1%-er, Ralph Nader, no less. He's not talking about guillotines. He's talking about a modest tax of speculation. "Elected representatives," he writes, "have virtually ignored the outrage expressed by protesters on Wall Street and across the country. But the message will keep coming until Congress finally demonstrates that it is listening. A good start would be a tax on financial speculation"-- the kind German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, both conservatives, are pressing on the Euro-zone.

Occupiers throughout the country are pushing elected officials to break the corporate stranglehold on our economy. Both Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) have proposed legislation in the past that would enact a 0.25% tax on the value of stock, bond and derivatives transactions.

But that is far too small. National Nurses United and other progressive groups believe that we would be better served by a rate of 0.5%. This could help curb the wheeling and dealing on Wall Street and raise hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue to help with our country's economic recovery. According to estimates from a 2009 Center for Economic and Policy Research paper, a small tax perhaps ranging from one-half to one-hundredth of a percent, depending upon which financial product is taxed, could reap $350 billion.

This tax offers another significant benefit: It has the potential to curb risky speculative trading that contributes little real economic value. The Capital Institute's John Fullerton has stated that a financial speculation tax could have a significant impact on the high-frequency trading and other "quant" trading strategies that now comprise an astonishing 70% of vastly bloated equity-trading volume. Over the past few decades, trading volume has grown exponentially. In 1995 the total shares of stock traded on the Nasdaq and the NYSE, not including derivatives and other options, was 188 billion. By the peak of the financial crisis, in 2008, this annual number had skyrocketed to three trillion.

Critics argue that this tax would be borne by ordinary investors, retirement funds or mutual funds. But these arguments fall flat when one considers the enormity of speculative trading that occurs in the stock market. Sen. Harkin, Rep. DeFazio and others in the past few years have proposed protecting ordinary investors from the direct effects of the tax by providing exemptions for mutual funds, retirement funds and for the first $100,000 in trades made annually by an individual.

Worth mentioning: DeFazio's Robin Hood tax is hated by the 1%-ers and their hacks-- from Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Fred Upton and John Boehner to Harold Ford, Ben Nelson and Dan Boren-- but you know who really hated Robin Hood? Yes, Ryan's very own personal anti-Jesus, Ayn Rand. And very childhood!

"The thing that Occupy Wall Street has done is give a clear visual image of the policies the three of us have been advocating since the collapse of our economy in 2007," said Rep. Bruce Braley, D-Iowa who joined DeFazio and Harkin at the news conference.

"The simple truth is, this speculation fee we're talking about is simply designed so those who have abused the system are paying to play," he said.

"These super computers are based on timing principles that have no consideration of how these companies are being managed, the shareholders who are being impacted or the employees who work at those companies.

The transaction fee, which the United States levied for decades until it was abolished in 1966, would also raise billions of dollars that could be used to reduce the deficit or for other purposes. DeFazio and Harkin said their current proposal has not yet been "scored" so there are no precise revenue estimates. Independent budget analysts calculated that their 2009 proposal would have raised $150 billion over 10 years.

DeFazio said that the rate he proposes is far lower than existing rates in most developed nations. He mocked arguments that adding the tax would drive investors overseas.

"I'd say 'sure,'" DeFazio said. "If you want to pay a tax that's three-times higher go to Europe."

It's also less than a fee currently being considered by the European Union. For the average worker who, according to federal data, invests $3,400 a year in a 401(k) retirement account, the transaction tax would add a $1 in addition cost each year.

I'm with Nader on this one-- DeFazio isn't asking for even nearly enough.

The Robin Hood Tax On The Banksters

Once we might have wished...

Last night you may have watched Alan Grayson on MSNBC with Ed Schultz talking about Obama's latest big blunder-- you know, not begrudging the thieving, crooked, corrupt banksters who line the pockets of virtually every politician in DC their stolen loot. The White House is trying to take it back but if you missed it, by all means click the first link (above) and watch it. Grayson looks at it a little differently. He didn't exactly appreciate the analogy Obama made between Wall Street banksters making millions and ball players making millions:

I see his point. Ball players entertain us and Wall Street steals from us... I think what people are missing is this: we had a national tragedy, an economic disaster that took place barely a year ago. In the last 18 months of the Bush Administration America lost 12 trillion dollars of its net worth. That's forty-thousand dollars-- forty-thousand dollars-- for every man, woman and child in this country. and I cannot think of a single person who was held responsible for that-- nobody in government, nobody on Wall Street, nobody nowhere. That's the fundamental problem right now. And if people on Wall Street are going to continue to get great bonuses in good times and in bad times we can kiss this economy good-bye; it's not gonna work. In capitalism, winners have to win and losers have to lose-- and nobody's been held responsible for that enormous erosion. Twenty percent of our accumulated wealth over the course of two centuries gone in 18 months. Nobody's been punished for that; that's the problem.

...We're going to be doomed to repeat another Great Recession, another Great Depression if we don't begin to find out who's responsible and hold them accountable.

My idea of holding them accountable is probably a little different from most in the political class. Remember, these people are the paymasters for almost all these politicians (though not for Grayson, who refuses to touch their filthy lucre or dance to their bittersweet tunes). I do, however, recognize that no one is rolling out any guillotines in this country-- especially not to punish the bad guys. So... instead why not look towards what might conceivably be attainable. something they're calling the Robin Hood Tax in Britain. You remember him, right? Take from the rich and give to the poor, right?

Bill Nighy is a British actor, probably not as familiar to DWT readers as Alan Grayson. But I thought you might enjoy seeing a video he made-- he plays the friendly neighborhood bankster-- as a way of discussing this Robin Hood tax which, keep in mind, is only on certain financial transactions that don't include consumers. Take a look; something that could work here?