DON CORNELIUS, 1936-2012…
1217 by Jeff Hess
1 February 2012
1 February 2012
FURTHER EVIDENCE OF BIDEN/CLINTON SWAP…
0915 by Jeff HessA little more than a month ago I predicted that in the 2012 race, Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will swap jobs.
Yesterday I read further evidence that Biden is being positioned for such a move.
Slate reported that Biden argued against the raid that assassinated Osama Bin Laden. If there is one action during President Barack Hussein Obama’s presidency that a majority of voters think positively of, it is the killing of Bin Laden. That the man a heartbeat away from the presidency hesitated does not bode well for him as an asset this year.
Such is the nature of wonkishness.
I still think that Biden and Clinton will announce job swaps before the Democratic Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 3 September.
1 February 2012
CALL LARRY NIVEN, WE FOUND HIS PUPPETEER…
0832 by Jeff HessYeah, yeah, I know, puppeteers have three legs and two heads, but I still like the reference…
31 January 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON ENRICHING THE RICH RICHER…
1238 by Jeff HessNo one noticed. No one pays much attention. It’s only public money.
The County sent a check, as it does each January 15, to bondholders for the 1990s Gateway bailout.
We’ll see this week how it has added up substantially. The latest payment means Cuyahoga County taxpayers have sent $116.8 million to bondholders since 1992 to pay for Gateway overruns.
It doesn’t even make a ripple in the public consciousness. That’s because our main source of information is the Plain Dealer. And the Plain Dealer doesn’t Continue Reading »
29 January 2012
29 January 2012
HOW BAD CAN IT BE…?
0844 by Jeff HessBad. Really bad. Badder than the baddest bad ever badded…
There is only one way things will get better, and that is politicians and bankers and the oligarchs start fearing the population, and believing that the military and police can’t protect them. The longer citizens insist on being “nice” and letting oligarchs steal their future, beat them, imprison them, take their homes, their jobs and their lives, the longer the oligarchs and their servants will do so. Why shouldn’t they?
Since populations won’t do what it takes to make the oligarchs fear them, the situation will continue to get worse. You can have widespread prosperity and democracy, or you can have oligarchs. You can’t have both. You’ve already made your choice, and until you change your mind, your future is gone.
29 January 2012
HAVING ONE, HOWEVER, IS NO GUARANTEE…
0817 by Jeff Hess29 January 2012
28 January 2012
WHERE I GO BAT-SHIT CRAZY CONSPIRACY WONK…
1013 by Jeff Hess26 January 2012
24 January 2012
GREAT AND GREATEST VS. GREATNESS…
1310 by Jeff HessOur January Socrates Café invested ninety minutes exploring: Is greatness a matter of abnormal brain structure and chemistry? Attempting to understand greatness through example we listed famous leaders, scientists, poets, politicians, athletes and physicians in turn and found nearly all wanting. All were great or the greatest like Muhammad Ali or a world-class matchbook collector but, we decided, that was not greatness. What was the essential marker of greatness? Sleep provided my answer: transcendence, greatness must transcend a culture’s perception of the possible. The domesticator of fire, Leonardo da Vinci and Charles Dickens possessed greatness, Queen Elizabeth I and Pablo Picasso, both great persons, did not.
Was their greatness, however, necessarily the result of brain abnormality? We danced around the concept, suggesting will power, stick-to-itiveness and single-mindedness in turn, but these were all manifestations of a pre-existing state made clear for me in Exuberance by Kay Jamison and her focus on mania.
Mania, though not generally considered an illness like its dark twin depression, is not our normal condition. The malady’s rareness, and what those possessed of it may accomplish, make it desirable, but mania, in of itself, is insufficient for greatness. The accomplishment must arise from the unthought, must transcend, and that cannot be willed. Our desire to will, however, may drive our quest for consciousness altering practices and chemicals both natural and engineered. We want to believe that greatness is within our grasp if we but dedicate ourselves to that attainment.
Greatness is the ultimate progressive value because greatness has always been the only value that moves humanity forward; and on the greatest scale, what else has ever truly mattered?
24 January 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON THE PERCS OF BILLIONAIRES…
1246 by Jeff HessI don’t get around much these days. But I have had recent occasion to ride by Progressive Field at night. I saw it all brightly lit up.
I didn’t think the Indians were in town. I don’t even believe Spring Training has started yet. Has it?
Then I remembered. Oh, yeah.
The Indians run a winter-time extravaganza on the baseball field. They even put up a full hockey rink on the baseball infield. 150 tons of snow, they say. Must be good for second base.
Progressive Field is turned into a winter profit place with everything from snow tubing, ice skating, even a snow maze in the outfield. And it was the site this year for the Ohio State/University of Michigan hockey game.
Of course, they say they don’t make a dime. Do you believe them? Neither do I. The winter charges ranged from $10 to $25 a person and $100 a family. Food and drinks extra, of course. At fancy digs built by taxpayer bucks.
Larry Dolan and family can use the stadium we paid for – ANY WAY THEY WANT. The Dolans are billionaires.
Isn’t that the privilege of wealth? Doesn’t our system work Continue Reading »
22 January 2012
21 January 2012
ESCAPING THE STINKY CLOWN SUIT OF RUBBER…
1044 by Jeff HessThen at about 38 minutes Continue Reading »
19 January 2012
CATHERINE GRACE: TO NITE…
1244 by Jeff Hess
Music written and performed by Clevelander Catherine Grace…
17 January 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON SERFING AMERICA…
1423 by Jeff HessYou know folks, the 2012 Republicans are out to destroy working/middle class people and, of course, America with it. Everything goes to the top!
They cry, “Exceptionalism,” to describe America. Yet they push the nation toward mediocrity or worse. They don’t value freedom. They value the aristocracy of wealth.
They’d love to change Social Security to a private program open to Wall Street interests. Medicare? Do away with it, they say.
They want to stop the government. Or slow it as much as possible. Obstinate Obstruction is their political game. It has the Democrats Continue Reading »
17 January 2012
16 January 2012
ROLDO RIGHTS ON DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR….
1421 by Jeff HessThe Plain Dealer web site posted a front page from April 27 1967 for Martin Luther King, Jr. day. It resurrected an article written by me as a Plain Dealer reporter.
I don’t remember all the circumstances of the day’s coverage. I do remember covering Dr. King several times. I also remember seeing a young, slim Rev. Jesse Jackson during those days. Dr. King brought his Southern Christian Leadership program to Cleveland to help elect Carl Stokes Mayor of Cleveland.
The article was a major front page piece headlined: “Dr. King’s Plea: “Shun Violence.” He had spoken to some 8,000 Cleveland students.
Personally, his birthday isn’t the most memorable date for me. The March on Washington in 1963 means more to me. That was the occasion of Continue Reading »
15 January 2012
WHY (AND HOW) I WRITE EVERDAY…
0556 by Jeff HessAdapted from Walter Mosley’s For Authors, Fragile Ideas Need Loving Every Day:
The dream of the writer, of any artist, is a fickle and amorphous thing. One evening I’m remembering a homeless man, dressed in clothes that smelled like cheese rinds, whom I once stood next to on a street corner in New York. My memory becomes a reverie, and in this daydream I ask him where he’s from. With a thick accent he tells me that he was born in Hungary, that he was a freedom fighter, but that now, here in America, his freedom has deteriorated into the poverty of the streets. I write down a few sentences in my journal and sigh. This exhalation is not exhaustion but anticipation at the prospect of a wonderful tale exposing a notion that I still only partly understand.
A day goes by. Another passes. At the end of the next week I find myself in the same chair, at the same hour when I wrote about the homeless man previously. I open the journal to see what I’d written. I remember everything perfectly, but the life has somehow drained out of it. The words have no art to them; I no longer remember the smell. The idea seems weak, it has dissipated, like smoke. This is the first important lesson that the writer must learn. Writing a novel is gathering smoke. It’s an excursion into the ether of ideas. There’s no time to waste. I must work with that idea as well as I can, jotting down notes and dialogue. The first day the dream I gathered will linger, but it won’t last long. The next day I have to return to tend to my flimsy vapors. I have to brush them, reshape them, breathe into them and gather more.
I have to begin each day with my work because creation, like life, is always slipping away from me. I must write every day.
15 January 2012
WHY IS JEFFREY VERSCHLEISER NOT IN PRISON…?
0514 by Jeff HessAt one point during these deals, [Jeffrey] Verschleiser reamed out his immediate subordinate, co-head of mortgage finance Baron Silverstein, over the “problem” of the due diligence department taking too much time to do its work. Silverstein responded by issuing the following tirade to John Mongelluzzo, Bear’s VP for Due Diligence, demanding that he not get in the way of Bear’s insane goal of funding 500 mortgages a day:
I refuse to receive more emails from [Verchleiser] (or anyone else) questioning why we’re not funding loans every day. I’m holding each of you responsible for making sure we fund at least 500 each and every day… I was not happy when I saw the funding numbers and I knew NY would NOT BE HAPPY… I expect to see 500+ every day. I will do whatever is necessary to make sure you’re successful in meeting this objective.
Whenever any right-wing loon, or Bloombergite, tries to tell you the mortgage crisis was caused by the government forcing the poor banks to lend to broke black people, please direct them to this passage. The banks not only wanted to give out these loans, they wanted to give them out at the speed of light. They wanted to crank them out so fast that their own auditors literally couldn’t read the writing on the loan applications. This was greed, not policy. Anybody who says anything else is high on something.
Anyway, given that much of Verschleiser’s questionable behavior is in writing, his case sure seems court-ready. But for whatever reason, he has not been indicted.
One can almost understand a regulator not wanting to take on the whole circular securitization scheme — Bear lends money to corrupt mortgage firm, mortgage firm makes bad loans, Bear packages bad loans and sells to investors, then takes the proceeds and creates more bad loans — because it is so complex and difficult to prove.
But in this case there are simple issues of fraud and theft thatcould be taken on without having to prosecute broader crimes related to securitization. But prosecutors, apparently, just blew those off. In the current environment, regulators even miss the layups.
