Former Clinton White House aide and Arizona prosecutor Andrei Cherny announced his run for Congress in Arizona’s 9th Congressional District. I had the pleasure of meeting and working with Andrei on John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you live in Arizona get involved here.

In related news on Arizona and the House, “Ron Barber, an aide to former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) who was wounded in the shooting spree that also injured Giffords, will run to replace her in the House.” Barber announced today he would run in the special election for Giffords seat, and said that she had asked him to run.

U.S. Eric Holder led Thursday's announcement of a settlement with banks over foreclosure fraud.

Critics of the fraud committed by the nation’s largest banks in the so-called “robo-signing” scandal are calling Thursday’s settlement deal just the first step in achieving justice for wronged U.S. homeowners.

State and federal officials announced the $26 billion settlement over the banks’ fraudulent foreclosure practices which led to wrongful foreclosures nationwide.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder led the announcement at a Washington news conference and says the settlement will be a step in “righting the wrongs that led to our nation’s housing-market collapse and economic crisis.”

About 1 million families will see some reduction in their mortgages, while another 750,000 homeowners who were wrongly foreclosed on will receive $2,000 checks, according to the terms of the settlement.

Critics, however, contend the deal lets banks off too easy.

The New Bottom Line, a grassroots organization which is distinct from but shares many of the goals of the nationwide Occupy movement, released a statement which calls the settlement “a tiny drop in a big bucket.”

“It does not do justice for the millions of homeowners who lost their homes or hold the banks fully accountable for their crimes,” the group says. “For homeowners who were defrauded and lost their homes, $2,000 is too little, too late. It is a paltry down payment toward full relief for homeowners.”

Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive Washington policy shop, agrees.

“The bank settlement of $25 billion over three years from five major banks for robo-signing forgeries is being hailed in Washington and scoured by leading bank critics.

“I’m reminded of Groucho Marx who said upon being invited to join a country club: ‘I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me.’ Similarly, it is hard not to be suspicious of any deal that the banks would sign,” he says. “But the deal should be seen for what it is –- a relatively small ante by the banks handed out before the real cards are seen.

“What’s clear is that the banks trampled the law in their wilding while blowing up the housing bubble. They abused homeowners, committed routine forgery and perjury before the courts, and defrauded investors. The housing market then collapsed, leaving homeowners about $700 billion below water (owing that much more on their mortgages than their houses are worth),” Borosage adds.

There also is agreement that the the fight is not over.

“The Obama Administration needs to make sure that its task force goes the distance and delivers at least $336 billion in principal reduction on underwater mortgages and $50 billion in restitution for affected homeowners,” The New Bottom Line says. “What happens next is critical. This is the President’s chance to show he is a champion for the 99%.”

A number of state attorneys general declined to sign on to Thursday’s settlement, preferring to press for a wider investigation of the banks’ wrongdoing, in which banks had employees, contractors and others not only process large volumes of paperwork, but also complete affidavits without fully verifying the information they were claiming to have knowledge of.

The Obama administration must now be pushed to do more, according to Borosage.

“The deal has been cut before the investigation so it is suspect on its face, but limited in its scope. Whether it will be enforced adequately remains to be seen. How homeowners benefit will differ from state to state,” Borosage says.

“The real question isn’t this ante. The real question is whether the federal investigation will finally turn over all the cards so we know just how bad a hand the banks are holding. Only then is there a possibility for real accountability –- and real relief for homeowners,” he adds. “So this settlement must be the beginning, not the end. We have to sustain pressure on the administration for an aggressive investigation. State criminal and civil suits, individual and investor relief have to continue. We are a far remove from achieving the justice and accountability that are due.”

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

AP News reports today that  ”Joseph Kennedy III has moved to a different Boston suburb ahead of an expected congressional bid to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Barney Frank.”

Brookline’s town clerk says the 31-year-old Kennedy came to town hall Tuesday and registered to vote as a Democrat, listing a Brookline address.

Kennedy had been living in Cambridge which is not in Frank’s district. A spokesman for Kennedy says he “is taking time to listen to families in the district.”

I just think it will be awesome to have Kennedy in Congress again, so my hope is he’ll run.

Inside the Kochtopus
Hour One 

Fine for them. Weasels are expected to behave like weasels.

But not so much for the media and their alleged skills and scurrilously imputed “minds.”

Tonight on Countdown with Keith Olbermann — David Schuster substituting — Schuster (and the Countdown staff) revealed that the “Koch Brothers” had dumped $700K into Rick Walker’s anti-recall campaign in Wisconsin.

Then he explained that as a “501(c)3″ charity, they couldn’t openly politic for or against a candidate, which was almost right, except that the Americans for Prosperity twin 501(c)4 was actually doing the spending, and is NOT a “charity.”

I’ve explained too many times how the twinned C3 and C4 organizations are used to politic either on your dime or anonymously. Sad that Countdown STILL hasn’t figured out this fundamental distinction. Why?

Because they were too busy jerking off to the “upsets” of Santorum yesterday in three contests that allocate NOT A SINGLE DELEGATE.

Little better than straw polls for the Festival of the Inane that the GOP field is.

But while the “experts” crowed and cogitated and  arrogated, the actual “in the weeds” is jettisoned in favor of endless blather.

You see, all the cable news channels have the need to fill endless hours of space, and how they do that is with “experts” opining endlessly on the non-news of the non-horserace, while the REAL PRESENT AND DANGEROUS news is ignored.

Because it’s just TOO HARD, I guess.

Above and here is hour one of my interview yesterday. I’ve cleaned it up and taken out the commercials. (In the first hour, their phone feed kept dropping me. It pretty much goes away in the second and third hours. Apologies, but there’s nothing that I could do about it.)

And you’ll learn MORE about how the Kochs work than you will from months of the same old electoral blather.

You see, as long as they’re bloviating about the GOP race and all its moronic nuances, they don’t have to cover ACTUAL news.

Friess literally has Santorum’s back

Like the New Republic, who published this (behind their pay firewall) about Foster Friess dated today. (I found a back door, and here’s the whole thing):

Meanwhile, Friess had also been donating hundreds of thousands to conservative causes. In 1994, he helped finance Santorum’s narrow Senate victory, launching him to national prominence. Since 1989, Friess has contributed nearly $1.6 million to Republican campaigns—plus a few other massive donations, including $3 million to help start the conservative website The Daily Caller. Currently, he is considering a six- or seven-figure donation to the conservative Super PAC American Crossroads or its sister organization, Crossroads GPS.

Uh, that brings them right up to date … TO MY 2010 series on Foster Friess, without getting into the Council for National Policy (which was probably the group that met in Texas a few weeks ago and which infamously met in Salt Lake City, with then-Vice President Cheney and Mitt Romney and others addressing the ultra-secret Dominionist group) or the Biggest Foundation You Never Heard Of, which kicked back six figures to Foster’s son for “investment services” as I reported.

The New York Times similarly drops the ball today. No mention WHATSOEVER of his financial backing of The Daily Caller, and Tucker Carlson. (Gee. Might that have been important? Naw.)

I have been RIGHT, folks. I was on Friess two years ago. I was on the Kochs SIX years ago, and time has only proven me correct.

I have FREELY given my work and my research to you, the People, without hiding it behind a firewall for telling you NOTHING.

So: to the media, if you need an expert, here I am. I am available at your convenience.

Hart Williams (l) and Art Kunkin (founder of the
Los Angeles Free Press , taken in 1980) 

To the people, don’t bother with a bunch of jokers who aren’t even up to speed on a two-year old story.

I don’t mean to disparage you, or denigrate the great job you’re doing keeping us informed about stuff that’s literally in our FACES every day, media, when I call you SELF-ENTITLED PRETENTIOUS [expletive deleted] MORONS.

I say it with love.

Here’s Foster Friess:

• Koch Dominionists for Santorum (January 6, or A MONTH AGO, New Republic)

And …

The Foster Friess Series (all photos are linked and explained there,including Foster and the Ayatollahs, which is in “More Fake Cowboys”):

• Tucker Carlson is Keith Olbermann; I am Glenn Beck (18 July)
• More Fake Cowboys (23 July)
• The Biggest Foundation That You’ve Never Heard Of (1 Aug. )
• Following Foster’s Buddies’ Money (10 Aug.)
• Foster’s Dominionist Pals (13 Aug.)
• Rubber Baby Buggy Bunglers (18 Aug.)
• Tucker Carlson – Profeshunel Jurnuhlizzum Strikes Agin! (12 Nov.)
• How Friess Fosters Tuckers Out – Conclusion (Dec. 31, 2010)

Jeebus.

The public they’re serving isn’t any public that I have seen. Hell, I’d almost ascribe it to evil, save for this Occam’s Razor for Perfidy: Never presume malice where ignorance explains it just as well.

Courage.

=====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

President Obama prominently denounced the Citizens United decision during his 2010 State of the Union speech, but his campaign now supports a Super PAC.

The manager of President Obama’s re-election effort is defending the campaign’s decision to back a so-called super PAC, despite the president’s fierce criticism of the Supreme Court decision which led to the proliferation of such shadowy influence groups.

The Obama campaign is supporting Priorities USA, a super PAC founded by two former Obama White House aides, says Jim Messina in an email to supporters sent late Monday night.

“We decided to do this because we can’t afford for the work you’re doing in your communities, and the grassroots donations you give to support it, to be destroyed by hundreds of millions of dollars in negative ads,” Messina tells supporters.

During his 2010 State of the Union address, Obama famously denounced the ruling, Citizens United, which swept away decades of campaign-finance regulation and paved the way for today’s multitude of super PACs, many backing Republican candidates and causes.

Messina acknowledges the support for a super PAC is “a real risk.”

“In 2011, the Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney raised $30 million from fewer than 200 contributors. Ninety-six percent of what they’ve spent so far, more than $18 million, has been on attack ads. The main engine of Romney’s campaign has an average contribution of roughly $150,000,” he says. ” … The stakes are too important to play by two different sets of rules. If we fail to act, we concede this election to a small group of powerful people intent on removing the President at any cost.”

A recent Washington Post report finds that conservative-powered super PACs could make the eventual GOP nominee much more competitive against Obama in November.

Messina, however, also seeks to temper the influence of super PACs with the small-dollar donors backing Obama’s re-election bid.

“That’s why it’s up to us — the grassroots organization — to win this election where we have the real advantage, and that’s on the ground,” he says. “More than 1.3 million Americans have already donated. Our average donation is $55, and 98 percent are $250 or less.”

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

I remember quite well the empty seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum. And believe me, Madonna was perfect for this thing called the Superbowl, although it bears little resemblance to what I remember.

Football game, blah, blah, blah.

No, what I am talking about — divorced from a game that’s still worth watching — was the Roman/Babylonian spectacle that brought to mind not Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet (although the latter got their product placement in),  but more the spectacular sets of “Intolerance” or of “Cleopatra,” or the chariot race in the Chuckles Heston version of  Ben Hur.

Is this really what we’ve become?

Outside, thousands of protesters spent the week enraged at the stripping of collective bargaining rights in the middle of a deep recession, when so many are hurting, as the iron boot of the factory owner and the electoral martinet comes down on the throats of those who actually do the work.

No normal people are allowed into the Superbowl. If the ticket prices don’t dissuade you, without an “in” you’re pretty much out of luck. It has become the Roman orgy of the Ruling Classes, and I’ll bet there were more private jets parked at Indianapolis area airports than have been seen in a very long time.

The only “normals” inside were the obligatory contest winners, in a spectacle that has become less a super-bowl of football, but, rather, a spectacle of marketing — the only day of the year where anyone writes any serious copy about commercials outside of Advertising Age.

“The single most popular televised event in the country” the BBC announcer is squawking in my ear at this very instant.

It may be a big event, but it is also an unavoidable display of the American Id, the Collective Obnoxious, and that display tends to be unquestioningly accepted, as though it weren’t a lavish orgy for the Haves inside Lucas Oil Stadium and a non-coverage of the Have-Nots outside the stadium.

I saw nothing in the endless pre-game show, but then I might have been getting more chips and salsa when it was. Because NBC is still responsible media, and, having moved all their news, sports and entertainment divisions to Indianapolis, they couldn’t have helped but see it.

Oh, wait.

I want to check and see how many “volunteers” worked the halftime show, and helped to spruce up the party for the ruling class. Tostitos® Über Alles!

No one comments on the strange disconnect that for one of the most lucrative commercial events of the year, the presence of unpaid labor is absurd, but accepted.

I am sure, however, that Madonna’s pagan festival at halftime will be the subject of lectures from the pulpit next Sunday morn.

I kept expecting a golden calf to be carried onstage, but perhaps I missed it, heading to the head to unrent my lone, ceremonial beer.

And yet, over-the-top though it was, it was perfect.

Which is why I wonder what we’ve come to.

I watched Chevrolet trucks survive the apocalypse, cars bungee-jumping, barrel rolling, and parachuting. I watched them traverse dream dimensions to unhorse damsels, create “music videos” by slapping guitars, keyboards and drums, and I watched cheetahs chasing cage openers as a car sped away.

But, I don’t want a skydiving car, a musical car, or  a car that races cheetahs.

So I guess I just don’t get it.

Coca-Cola did their computer animated polar bears, but then, at the bumper just before the second half, the “brought to you by” included this weird endorsement, “brought to you by Coca-Cola,” by the Polar Bears who remind you to open a bottle of Happiness.

(ad language simulated, and inexact).

“A bottle of Happiness”?

Guess Coke is aiming their marketing at the Chinese market.

Or something. Coca-cola is carbonated sugar water with caffeine. It is NOT happiness. It induces a diuretic cycle that NEVER quenches thirst, and the polar bears are unindividuated cartoon characters, without name or personality, and WHO the hell “authority” is that?

It is weirdly tautological for animations created to sell a product to ENDORSE that product as celebrities created by the advertising FOR that product.

Just as it is weird that volunteers worked to help make the Plutocrats’ Bacchanalia better and more spectacular for anyone who can afford a private jet.

I pray to ghod that we are NOT Rome, but nothing I saw today dispelled that opinion.

As I said, I have watched every Superbowl ever played, and from the Amateur Hour of the first Superbowl to the “Jet Pack” at the Sugar Bowl early on, and more and more — NOT less and less — they bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the Nuremberg Rallies.

Babylon set for D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance”

And that is NOT the America that I know. America is an IDEA, and this is nothing like my idea of America.

But, perhaps coincidentally, we have just passed the infamous “halftime flush” that strains sewer systems across the width and breadth of this increasingly feudal land.

As the superbowel spasms for the last time before the next Superbowl.

Outside, in the streets of Indianapolis, the peasants held silent vigil.

Courage.

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

But, despite the addition of 243,000 new jobs last month and another drop in the nation’s unemployment rate, many — not even all of whom are political opponents of the president — see a long way yet to go.

“Today’s jobs report is encouraging, but we should judge it against the overall sluggishness of the economic recovery and a persistently large jobs deficit that remains after 23 straight months of private-sector job creation,” says Chad Stone, chief economist at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a Washington think tank which has supported many of Obama’s initiatives. “Payroll employment is still 5.6 million jobs short of where it was at the start of the Great Recession in December 2007, there are four jobless workers for every job opening, and long-term unemployment remains at an historic high level.”

Ted Ellis, mayor of Bluffton, Ind., and president of the National League of Cities, wants Washington to take further action to create more jobs.

“We continue to urge our national leaders to take a page from our local officials. They must stop their partisan bickering and start working quickly,” Ellis says. “The American people need Washington to get to work on making the investments -– like infrastructure -– that will put all our people back to work and make the country economically competitive for decades to come.

“To everyone in Washington we say it again: Campaign on your record and not with people’s lives. It’s time to get to work,” Ellis adds.

Obama included increased federal spending on infrastructure as part of his overall American Jobs Act but Senate Republicans blocked action on those provisions.

Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a Washington progressive policy shop, quoted Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke saying, “We still have a long way to go before the labor market can be said to be operating normally. Particularly troubling is the unusually high level of long-term unemployment.”

‘True Casualties of Wall Street’s Excesses’

Borosage notes that nearly one-third of the unemployed have been out of work for a year or more.

“These are the true casualties of Wall Street’s excesses,” he says. “American companies are producing more now than they did before the collapse. But Americans aren’t sharing in the rewards. Profits margins are at record heights; CEO salaries have soared, but there is no recovery in jobs, and wages and benefits continue to fall behind.”

There’s nothing in Friday’s jobs report to deter Congress from moving quickly to enact extensions either for Obama’s middle-class payroll tax cut or unemployment insurance (UI) through the end of the year — without cutting benefits or imposing new barriers to receiving benefits, according to CBPP’s Stone.

“The recovery still needs a boost, and besides giving critical support to unemployed workers, unemployment insurance is one of the highest bang-for-the-buck boosters that policymakers have in their arsenal,” he says. “Under current law, however, the provision of additional weeks of emergency UI to workers who exhaust their regular UI benefits (after 26 weeks in most states) and the payroll tax cut that policymakers enacted at the end of 2010 are scheduled to expire at the end of this month, contributing to [the Congressional Budget Office's] dim view of near-term economic growth. The President and Congress must extend them through the end of the year.”

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.Икони на светци

Uh, whoops. They reported FUTURE news, and The Donald, being such a model of consistency, changed his notion at the last minute and endorsed Romney.

And so, we finally know what that creature on top of his head is. Turns out, it was a groundhog all along, and, attached to “the Donald,” it couldn’t STAND for any other groundhog to upstage it.

Mystery solved. Case closed. What else?

Courage.

A prominent advocate says President Obama should not allow anything less than $300 billion from the banks to settle the robo-signing scandal.

With details soon to become public about a settlement between state attorneys general and big banks implicated in the huge, national “robo-signing” scandal, President Obama should make clear the deal can’t amount to less than $300 billion from the banks, a prominent homeowner- and corporate-accountability advocate says.

All 50 state attorneys general have been seeking a settlement with the nation’s five largest banks to address their foreclosure practices, such as the filing of thousands of false sworn statements with state courts. Some critics believe that the states have been speeding to an agreement without thoroughly investigating the banks’ abuses and letting them too easily off the hook.

Robo-signing refers to a practice among banks in which employees, contractors and others not only processed large volumes of paperwork, but also completing affidavits without fully verifying the information they were claiming to have knowledge of. This involved the mass production of false and forged execution of documents used to foreclose on troubled U.S. homeowners.

An advocate credited for working to narrow the scope of the settlement deal and not releasing the banks from broader mortgage fraud claims and criminal prosecution; and for the ongoing push to press the Obama administration for a thorough investigation of all aspects of the big banks’ mortgage fraud and make the banks provide $300 billion in principal reduction for underwater homeowners and restitution to foreclosed-on families calls the expected $25 billion settlement of robo-signing scandal “a paltry down-payment on justice for homeowners.”

The settlement process has been contentious even among the attorneys general, as New York’s Eric Schneiderman was removed last summer from the group’s executive committee because he wanted a stronger investigation into the banks’ practices.

“If President Obama wants to run as a champion of the middle class, he can accept no less than $300 billion from the banks after a full investigation of their fraud at every step of the mortgage crisis,” says George Goehl, executive director of National People’s Action, and a founding member of The New Bottom Line coalition.

“Anything less than $300 billion is a win for the one percent that lets the banks off too easily and falls short of helping both middle-class families and communities targeted most by big bank fraud,” adds Goehl, who recently appeared on MSNBC commentator Dylan Ratigan’s TV program.

Goehl contends that $750 billion represents the true scope of the problem of negative equity held by U.S. homeowners. Some $336 billion would cover owner occupied, underwater mortgages serviced by the five big banks at the settlement table, he adds. This $336 billion would also require the holders of the majority of home mortgages in the country, namely Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to finally come to the table for American homeowners and the broader economy, he adds.

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.художник на икони

Newt Gingrich’s campaign is reported to be in “serious disarray,” while the Las Vegas Review Journal reports today that a “new poll shows Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney headed for a blowout victory Saturday in Nevada’s GOP caucuses.”

Honestly this primary season has been like watching a very bad sitcom… And I don’t like to watch TV.