BREVITAS

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

It ain't over 'til it's over. . . The 2000 Gallup tracking poll for Oct 2-4 had Gore ahead by eleven points. A warning for Democrats as well as another reminder of why Nader was not responsible for Gore's loss. He lost those votes.

At one of his rallies a woman said to McCain, "I've heard that Sen. Obama is an Arab." McCain cut the woman off, saying, "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man and citizen," McCain says. . . Change the word Arab to Jew or black and you'll get the import.

Dean Reynolds, CBS News - The Obama aides who deal with the national reporters on the campaign plane are often overwhelmed, overworked and un-informed about where, when, why or how the candidate is moving about. Baggage calls are preposterously early with the explanation that it's all for security reasons. If so, I would love to have someone from Obama's campaign explain why the entire press corps, the Secret Service, and the local police idled for two hours in a Miami hotel parking lot recently because there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. It was not an isolated case. The national headquarters in Chicago airily dismisses complaints from journalists wondering why a schedule cannot be printed up or at least e-mailed in time to make coverage plans. Nor is there much sympathy for those of us who report for a newscast that airs in the early evening . . . I suspect there is a feeling within the Obama campaign that the broadcast networks are less influential in the age of the internet and thus needn't be [accommodated] as in the days of yore. Even if it's true, they are only hurting themselves by dissing audiences that run in the tens of millions every night.

Governing - It took some chutzpah for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to suggest changing term limits law so that he could serve another term as mayor. New Yorkers, though, don't seem to mind chutzpah, as Quinnipiac finds. By a margin of 54 - 42 percent, New York City voters favor extending the eight-year term limit to 12 years so they can elect Mayor Michael Bloomberg to a third term, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released. This compares to a July 16 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University poll in which New Yorkers opposed 56 - 38 percent extending term limits for four more years of Mayor Bloomberg.

WATCHING THE COUNT

Brad Blog - We told you about the bogus challenges --- 6,000 of them --- made by the Montana GOP against voters in six Democratic-leaning counties in the state, based solely on the fact that the voters had filed change of address forms with the U.S. Postal Service within the last 18 months. The GOP claimed, with a straight face, they were fighting "voter fraud", even though there was indications of no such fraud, and the result was little more than chaos at the election offices, just 30 days out from a major election. One of the GOP's challenged voters turned out to be an Army Reservist who would be unable to verify his authenticity --- and thus would lose his right to vote under the challenge --- since he was in New Jersey, about to ship out for his second tour of duty in Iraq. . . On Monday, the state Democratic Party fought back, and announced a lawsuit against the Republicans, to stop the challenges on the basis that they were brought by the GOP only to intimidate voters and suppress turnout. . . Faced with a party actually willing to push back by taking them to court, the Montana GOP "waved the white flag of surrender" and backed off their phony challenges.

Wired - A month of primary recounts in the election battleground of Palm Beach County, Florida, has twice flipped the winner in a local judicial race and revealed grave problems in the county's election infrastructure, including thousands of misplaced ballots and vote tabulation machines that are literally unable to produce the same results twice. Experts say the brew of administrative bungling and mysterious technological failures raises new and troubling questions about the county that played a crucial role in the 2000 presidential election debacle, and is one of a handful of counties considered pivotal in the upcoming presidential election. Voting advocates are fearful that problems here -- and perhaps in other election hot spots -- could trigger a replay of the disputed 2000 election.. . . At issue is an Aug. 26 primary election in which officials discovered, during a recount of a close judicial race, that more than 3,400 ballots had mysteriously disappeared after they were initially counted on election day. The recount a week later, minus the missing ballots, flipped the results of the race to a different winner.

John Gideon, Voters United - I'm 61 years old. I've been doing this work full-time for nearly the last five years. I long for the days, before I learned so much, when I was ignorant about dirty tricks, phony voter fraud accusations, voter list purges, voter suppression, poorly designed and inaccurate voting machines, absentee paper ballots that have the voters' political parties on the mail-in envelopes, long lines at the polls, and every other attempt to keep voters from voting and votes from being counted accurately, if at all. . . It was nice thinking our democracy actually worked the way our founding fathers envisioned it would. It was nice thinking that, no matter for whom I voted, the majority voice was heard. Now, it just feels dirty and somewhat depressing.I know way too much. It was nice being ignorant. . .

HEALTH & SCIENCE

NY Times - The drug maker Pfizer earlier this decade manipulated the publication of scientific studies to bolster the use of its epilepsy drug Neurontin for other disorders, while suppressing research that did not support those uses, according to experts who reviewed thousands of company documents for plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the company. Pfizer's tactics included delaying the publication of studies that had found no evidence the drug worked for some other disorders, "spinning" negative data to place it in a more positive light, and bundling negative findings with positive studies to neutralize the results, according to written reports by the experts, who analyzed the documents at the request of the plaintiffs' lawyers.

THE TRUE CHARACTER OF MUSICAL KEYS

From Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806), translated by Rita Steblin in A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. UMI Research Press (1983

C Major - Completely Pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naivety, children's talk.

C Minor - Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key. . .

Eb Major The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God. . .

D# Minor Feelings of the anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key. . .

F Major - Complaisance & Calm. . .

G Major - Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,--in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.

G Minor Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike. . .

Ab Major Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.

Bb Major Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world. . .

JOHN LEWIS DRAWS PARALLEL BETWEEN MCCAIN AND GEORGE WALLACE

John Lewis, Politico - As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the civil rights movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign. What I am seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history. Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama.

As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy.

During a forum, John McCain described John Lews as one of the "three wisest men" he has known. He probably has now lost his title.

CRASH TALK SUNDAY

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Nation - More than a decade ago, a woman you're likely never to have heard of, Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission-- a federal agency that regulates options and futures trading--was the oracle whose warnings about the dangerous boom in derivatives trading just might have averted the calamitous bust now engulfing the US and global markets. Instead she was met with scorn, condescension and outright anger by former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and his deputy Lawrence Summers. In fact, Greenspan, the man some affectionately called "The Oracle," spent his political capital cheerleading these disastrous financial instruments.

On Thursday, the New York Times ran a masterful and revealing front page article exposing the culpability of Greenspan, Rubin and Summers for the era of dangerous turbulence we live in. . .

In 1997, Brooksley Born warned in congressional testimony that unregulated trading in derivatives could "threaten our regulated markets or, indeed, our economy without any federal agency knowing about it." Born called for greater transparency--disclosure of trades and reserves as a buffer against losses.

Instead of heeding this oracle's warnings, Greenspan, Rubin & Summers rushed to silence her. As the Times story reveals, Born's wise warnings "incited fierce opposition" from Greenspan and Rubin who "concluded that merely discussing new rules threatened the derivatives market." Greenspan deployed condescension and told Born she didn't know what she doing and she'd cause a financial crisis. (A senior Commission director who worked with Born suggests that Greenspan and the guys didn't like her independence. " Brooksley was this woman who was not playing tennis with these guys and not having lunch with these guys. There was a little bit of the feeling that this woman was not of Wall Street.")

In early 1998, according to the Times story, one of the guys, Larry Summers, called Born to "chastise her for taking steps he said would lead to a financial crisis. But Born kept at it, unwilling to let arrogant men undermine her good judgment. But it got tougher out there. In June 1998, Greenspan, Rubin and the then head of the SEC, Arthur Levitt, Jr., called on Congress "to prevent Ms. Born from acting until more senior regulators developed their own recommendations." (Levitt now says he regrets that decision.) Months later, the huge hedge fund Long Term Capital Management nearly collapsed--confirming some of Born's warnings. (Bets on derivatives were a key reason.)

"Despite that event," the Times reports, " Congress (apparently as a result of Greenspan & Summer's urging, influence-peddling and pressure) "froze" Born's Commissions' regulatory authority. The next year, Born left as head of the Commission.

Portland Press Herald - In Maine, weekly unemployment claims hit 8,524 during the first week of October. That compares to 5,888 during the same period last year. . . New online job postings in Maine fell from 12,000 to 10,900. . . Year-over-year traffic on the Maine Turnpike plummeted 15 percent in September, to levels last seen in 1999. Beyond tourism travel, it reflects a decline in the movement of goods and commerce linked to jobs. . . L.L. Bean is one of the state's largest employers, with 4,000 year-round workers in Maine. It relies heavily on seasonal help to fill holiday orders, hiring 7,000 workers last fall. This season, it's bringing on 5,400 – a 23 percent reduction.

Market Watch - Federal regulators have ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to start buying $40 billion of troubled mortgage bonds each month as the U.S. government tries to revive the economy, according to a published report. . . The purchases would be separate from the U.S. Treasury's $700 billion bailout plan, which was signed into law earlier this month, Bloomberg noted. Fannie and Freddie were taken over by the U.S. government in early September, in the first of several bailouts the government has launched recently to try to halt the spread of the mortgage-fueled credit crisis.

Washington Post - The stock market's prolonged tumble has wiped out about $2 trillion in Americans' retirement savings in the past 15 months, a blow that could force workers to stay on the job longer than planned, rein in spending and possibly further stall an economy reliant on consumer dollars, Congress's top budget analyst said. . .

Despite the losses, companies will still be obligated to pay out the same pensions promised to employees but will have to recoup the extra costs in other ways, Orszag said. "When pension assets decline in 401(k) plans, the burden is on the workers," he said. "When pension plan assets decline in defined-benefit plans, the burden is on the firm to make up the difference. The firm will have to pass those costs on to their workers, to their shareholders or to consumers."

Defined-benefit plans are company-sponsored programs that provide retirement payouts based on an employee's salary and tenure. The company shoulders the bulk of the investment decisions and risk. Defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k)s, turn those tasks over to the worker and are subject to the whims of the stock market.

Increasingly, employers have switched workers into defined-contribution plans. The federal government has also pushed 401(k) plans heavily, approving a law late last year that makes it easier for employers to automatically enroll their employees in them and other similar retirement plans.

Defined-contribution plans tend to be more heavily weighted in stocks, either through individual holdings or mutual funds. As a result, said Orszag, "the value of assets in defined-contribution plans may have declined by slightly more than that of assets in defined-benefit plans."

Brady Wiseman - Talk about the Fed buying commercial paper is not new. It was in the title of the original Federal Reserve Act in 1913: "An Act To provide for the establishment of Federal reserve banks, to furnish an elastic currency, to afford means of rediscounting commercial paper, to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes." In fact, when the bankers were on their PR campaign to sell the system to the people, they plainly said that the Fed would serve private companies, not just well-connected banks, by buying their commercial paper, thus making the peoples' credit available to, well, the people. In those days, commercial paper was much more widely used by much smaller companies than have access to it today. Another historical fact: Mr. Goldman and Mr. Sachs got their start in banking by peddling commercial paper.

Robert J. Shiller, Washington Post - In his farewell address back in 1796, 20 years after the publication of Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations," George Washington defined the new republic's own distinctive national economic sensibility: "Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing." From the outset, Washington envisioned some government involvement in the commercial system, even as he recognized that commerce should belong to the people.

Capitalism is not really the best word to describe this arrangement. (The term was coined in the late 19th century as a way to describe the ideological opposite of communism.) Some decades later, people began to use a better term, "the American system," in which the government involved itself in the economy primarily to develop what we would now call infrastructure -- highways, canals, railroads -- but otherwise let economic liberty prevail. I prefer to call this spectacularly successful arrangement "financial democracy" -- a largely free system in which the U.S. government's role is to help citizens achieve their best potential, using all the economic weapons that our financial arsenal can provide.

So is the government's bailout a major departure? Hardly. Today's federal involvement offers bailouts as a strictly temporary measure to prevent a system-wide financial calamity. This is entirely in keeping with our basic principles -- as long as the bailout promotes, rather than hinders, financial democracy.

CRASH TALK SATURDAY

A reminder: No one has yet told us how much of the fiscal crisis is due to subprime loans and how much to various forms of casino capitalism such as investing with non existent money and how much to the collapse of laundered money for the drug trade and other illegal operations. It would be nice to know.

Michael Hudson, Democracy Now - Well, what upsets the Europeans and the foreigners is that the US plan has done nothing at all about the debt crisis itself. It's bailed out the creditors, but not a penny of the actual debts, the subprime mortgage debts, are addressed. Without any of the media knowing, the Federal Reserve over the last few months has given $850 billion of cash for trash already. This is what the $700 billion discussion in Congress was supposed to be about, but the Fed, without anyone knowing, has already been exchanging these securities. And the securities essentially have been swapped by the US bankers to their pals and not done anything at all to write down the actual subprime debts. . . And if you add up all of the subprime bad loans and defaults, that's altogether $1 trillion. So far, the government has given away $6 trillion already to Wall Street. That's much more than any of the subprime debt. And the volume of derivative trade has been estimated at $450 trillion, an unbelievable amount. So nobody has any idea about how much money is at stake.

And what really triggered a lot of this was the way in which Lehman went bankrupt. The day - and this has not been discussed either in America, but it's all over the European press. The day before Lehman went bankrupt, it basically looted all of its foreign offices. For instance, in England, it emptied out the English account of a few billion dollars, leaving the English employees only with the . . . the little cards they had to use in the vending machines. No salaries were paid. The London office was closed down immediately. And the next day, Lehman used the money that it took from London to pay its closest associates to redeem the derivative trades that it had done. So the English bankers [have] come to the conclusion that the American bankers - well, we won't say "crooks," but let's say they're cronies who deal among themselves and are willing to screw the foreigner.

And this has created such a mistrust abroad that Europeans and Asians and OPEC country investors are simply pulling their money out of the US, because they don't have a clue as to the solvency of the banks. We're seeing the end result of the Alan Greenspan deregulatory revolution, where he said markets are all self-regulating. Right now, you're seeing the markets self-regulate themselves. And the result is a wipeout of the American pyramiding. . .

Forty percent of American income is spent now on rent, and about 15 to 20 percent on interest payments. And without addressing the debt problem, no matter how much money the banks have, they are not going to lend money to somebody who can't afford to take on any more debt. And most people in America right now cannot afford to meet the bank's standards for taking on any more debt. So none of this money that's being given away has any effect at all on real people and purchasing power and cars and goods and services. It's all to settle debt pyramiding among the banks and Wall Street institutions themselves. . .

William Engdahl, Global Research - What's clear from the behavior of European financial markets over the past two weeks is that the dramatic stories of financial meltdown and panic are deliberately being used by certain influential factions in and outside the EU to shape the future face of global banking in the wake of the US sub-prime and asset-backed security debacle. The most interesting development in recent days has been the unified and strong position of the German Chancellor, Finance Minister, Bundesbank and coalition government, all opposing an American-style EU superfund bank bailout. Meanwhile Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pursues his crony capitalism to the detriment of the nation and benefit of his cronies in the financial world. It's an explosive cocktail that need not have been. . .

There is serious ground to believe that US Goldman Sachs ex CEO Henry Paulson, as Treasury Secretary, is not stupid. There is also serious ground to believe that he is actually moving according to a well-thought-out long-term strategy. Events as they are now unfolding in the EU tend to confirm that. As one senior European banker put it to me in private discussion, 'There is an all-out war going on between the United States and the EU to define the future face of European banking.'

In this banker's view, the attempt of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and France's Nicholas Sarkozy to get an EU common 'fund', with perhaps upwards of $300 billion to rescue troubled banks, would de facto play directly into Paulson and the US establishment's long-term strategy, by in effect weakening the banks and repaying US-originated asset backed securities held by EU banks. . .

It's becoming increasingly obvious that people like Henry Paulson, who by the way was one of the most aggressive practitioners of the ABS revolution on Wall Street before becoming Treasury Secretary, are operating on motives beyond their over-proportional sense of greed. Paulson's own background is interesting in that context. Back in the early 1970's Paulson started his career working for a rather notorious man named John Erlichman, Nixon's ruthless adviser who created the Plumbers' Unit during the Watergate era to silence opponents of the President, and was left by Nixon to 'twist in the wind' for it in prison.

Paulson seems to have learned from his White House mentor. As co-chairman of Goldman Sachs according to a New York Times account, in 1998 he forced out his co-chairman, Jon Corzine 'in what amounted to a coup' according to the Times. . .

Knowing that at a certain juncture the pyramid of trillions of dollars of dubious sub-prime and other high risk home mortgage-based securities would come falling down, they apparently determined to spread the so-called 'toxic waste' ABS securities as globally as possible, in order to seduce the big global banks of the world, most especially of the EU, into their honey trap. . .

What has emerged are the outlines of two opposite approaches to the unfolding crisis. The Paulson plan is now clearly part of a project to create three colossal global financial giants - Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase and, of course, Paulson's own Goldman Sachs, now conveniently enough a bank. Having successfully used fear and panic to wrestle a $700 billion bailout from the US taxpayers, now the big three will try to use their unprecedented muscle to ravage European banks in the years ahead. So long as the world's largest financial credit rating agencies - Moody's and Standard & Poors - are untouched by the scandals and Congressional hearings, the reorganized US financial power of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase could potentially regroup and advance their global agenda over the coming several years, walking over the ashes of a bankrupt American economy made bankrupt by their follies.

By agreeing on a strategy of nationalizing what EU finance ministers deem are 'EU banks too systemically strategic to fail,' while guaranteeing bank deposits, the largest EU governments, Germany and the UK, in contrast to the US, have opted for what will in the longer run allow European banking giants to withstand the anticipated financial attacks from the likes of Goldman or Citigroup. . .

Dean Baker, Prospect - The WSJ reports that Neel Kashkari, the bailout czar, told a group of Wall Street executives that the restrictions on executive compensation in the bailout bill really don't mean anything. Of course anyone who bothered to look at the bill already knew that the compensation restrictions were meaningless before the bill passed. So why do we only see this reported in the media after the fact? . . . It looks to me like the media went into full sales promotion mode on this bailout bill, but I'm open to other explanations.

Hartford Courant - Police are investigating the apparent poisoning of a real estate agent who investigators say was fed a piece of tainted ginger cake by a woman whose house he was trying to sell. . . Police said they were called to the ERA Broder Group real estate office at 43 North Main St. at 11:34 a.m. Thursday on a medical call. A 28-year-old man was ill and ended up requiring treatment at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, police Capt. Paul Melanson said.
"The guy who is the victim is selling a house for Nancy Glass," Melanson said. "He met with her [Thursday] morning to talk about the sale of the house. She offered him a piece of cake. He ate it." When he returned to his firm's office, he began to feel ill and ultimately called 911.

Jason Zweig, Wall Street Journal - Robert Shiller, professor of finance at Yale University and chief economist for MacroMarkets LLC, tracks what he calls the "Graham P/E," a measure of market valuation he adapted from an observation [Benjamin] Graham made many years ago. The Graham P/E divides the price of major U.S. stocks by their net earnings averaged over the past 10 years, adjusted for inflation. After this week's bloodbath, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index is priced at 15 times earnings by the Graham-Shiller measure. That is a 25% decline since Sept. 30 alone. The Graham P/E has not been this low since January 1989; the long-term average in Prof. Shiller's database, which goes back to 1881, is 16.3 times earnings.

But when the stock market moves away from historical norms, it tends to overshoot. The modern low on the Graham P/E was 6.6 in July and August of 1982, and it has sunk below 10 for several long stretches since World War II -- most recently, from 1977 through 1984. It would take a bottom of about 600 on the S&P 500 to take the current Graham P/E down to 10. That's roughly a 30% drop from last week's levels; an equivalent drop would take the Dow below 6000.

Could the market really overshoot that far on the downside? "That's a serious possibility, because it's done it before," says Prof. Shiller. "It strikes me that it might go down a lot more" from current levels.

In order to trade at a Graham P/E as bad as the 1982 low, the S&P 500 would have to fall to roughly 400, more than a 50% slide from where it is today. A similar drop in the Dow would hit bottom somewhere around 4000. . .

Strikingly, today's conditions bear quite a close resemblance to what Graham described in the abyss of the Great Depression. Regardless of how much further it might (or might not) drop, the stock market now abounds with so many bargains it's hard to avoid stepping on them. Out of 9,194 stocks tracked by Standard & Poor's Compustat research service, 3,518 are now trading at less than eight times their earnings over the past year -- or at levels less than half the long-term average valuation of the stock market as a whole. Nearly one in 10, or 876 stocks, trade below the value of their per-share holdings of cash -- an even greater proportion than Graham found in 1932. Charles Schwab Corp., to name one example, holds $27.8 billion in cash and has a total stock-market value of $21 billion.

Those numbers testify to the wholesale destruction of the stock market's faith in the future. And, as Graham wrote in 1932, "In all probability [the stock market] is wrong, as it always has been wrong in its major judgments of the future."

In fact, the market is probably wrong again in its obsession over whether this decline will turn into a cataclysmic collapse. Eugene White, an economics professor at Rutgers University who is an expert on the crash of 1929 and its aftermath, thinks that the only real similarity between today's climate and the Great Depression is that, once again, "the market is moving on fear, not facts." As bumbling as its response so far may seem, the government's actions in 2008 are "way different" from the hands-off mentality of the Hoover administration and the rigid detachment of the Federal Reserve in 1929 through 1932. "Policymakers are making much wiser decisions," says Prof. White, "and we are moving in the right direction.

Investors seem, above all, to be in a state of shock, bludgeoned into paralysis by the market's astonishing volatility. How is Theodore Aronson, partner at Aronson + Johnson + Ortiz LP, a Philadelphia money manager overseeing some $15 billion, holding up in the bear market? "We have 101 clients and almost as many consultants representing them," he says, "and we've had virtually no calls, only a handful." Most of the financial planners I have spoken with around the country have told me much the same thing: Their phones are not ringing, and very few of their clients have even asked for reassurance. The entire nation, it seems, is in the grip of what psychologists call "the disposition effect," or an inability to confront financial losses. The natural way to palliate the pain of losing money is by refusing to recognize exactly how badly your portfolio has been damaged. A few weeks ago, investors were gasping; now, en masse, they seem to have gone numb. . .

This collective stupor may very likely be the last stage before many investors finally let go -- the phase of market psychology that veteran traders call "capitulation."

THE SWAMPOODLE REPORT: THE MYTH OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM

Sam Smith, Shadows of Hope, 1993 - Encomiums to the wonders of market forces fill speeches and media reports. One National Public Radio reporter even went so far as to describe a form of government called market democracy, apparently a blend of the Bill of Rights and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

In fact, most free workers in this country were self-employed well into the 19th century. They were thus economic as well as political citizens. Further, until the last decades of the 19th century, Americans believed in a degree of fair distribution of wealth that would shock many today. James L. Huston writes in the American Historical Review: "Americans believed that if property were concentrated in the hands of a few in a republic, those few would use their wealth to control other citizens, seize political power, and warp the republic into an oligarchy. Thus to avoid descent into despotism or oligarchy, republics had to possess an equitable distribution of wealth."

Such a distribution, in theory at least, came from enjoying the "fruits of one's labor" but no more. Businesses that sprung up didn't flourish on competition because there generally wasn't any and, besides, cooperation worked better. You didn't need two banks or two drug stores in the average town. Prices and business ethics were not regulated by the marketplace but by a complicated cultural code and the fact that the banker went to church with his depositors.

Although the practice was centuries old, the term capitalism -- and thus the religion -- didn't even exist until the middle of the 19th century. Americans were intensely commercial, but this spirit was propelled not by Reaganesque fantasies about competition but by the freedom that engaging in business provided from the hierarchical social and economic system of the monarchy. Business, including the exchange as well as the making of goods, was seen as a natural state allowing a community and individuals to get ahead and to prosper without the blessing of nobility.

In the beginning, if you wanted to form a corporation you needed a state charter and had to prove it was in the public interest, convenience and necessity. During the entire colonial period only about a half-dozen business corporations were chartered; between the end of the Revolution and 1795 this rose to about a 150. Jefferson to the end opposed liberal grants of corporate charters and argued that states should be allowed to intervene in corporate matters or take back a charter if necessary.

With the pressure for more commerce and indications that corporate grants were becoming a form of patronage, states began passing free incorporation laws and before long Massachusetts had thirty times as many corporations as there were in all of Europe. Still it wasn't until after the Civil War that economic conditions turned sharply in favor of the large corporation.

These corporations, says Huston: . . . "killed the republican theory of the distribution of wealth and probably ended whatever was left of the political theory of republicanism as well. . . .[The] corporation brought about a new form of dependency. Instead of industry, frugality, and initiatives producing fruits, underlings in the corporate hierarchy had to be aware of style, manners, office politics, and choice of patrons -- very reminiscent of the Old Whig corruption in England at the time of the revolution -- what is today called 'corporate culture'."

Concludes Huston: "The rise of Big Business generated the most important transformation of American life that North America has ever experienced."

By the end of the last century the Supreme Court had declared corporations to be persons under the 14th Amendment, entitled to the same protections as human beings. As Morton Mintz pointed out in the National Law Journal, this 1888 case ignored the fact that "the only 'person' Congress had in mind when it adopted the 14th Amendment in 1866 was the newly freed slave." Justice Black observed in the 1930s that in the first fifty years following the adoption of the 14th Amendment, "less than one-half of 1 percent [of Supreme Court cases] invoked it in protection of the Negro race, and more than 50 percent asked that its benefits be extended to corporations."

During this period the courts moved to limit democratic power in other ways as well. For example, the Supreme Court restricted the common law right of juries to nullify a wrongful law; other courts erected barriers against third parties such as banning fusion slates. It was during this same time that the myth of competitive virtue sprouted, helping to justify one of the great rapacious periods of American business. It was a time when J.P. Morgan would come to own half the railroad mileage in the country -- the same J. P. Morgan who got his start during the Civil War by buying defective rifles for $3.50 each from an army arsenal and then selling them to a general in the field for $22 apiece.

The founding principles of what we now proudly call the "American free market system" flowered in an era of enormous bribes, massive legislative corruption, and the creation of great anti-competitive cartels. It was a time when the government, in a precursor to industrial policy, gave two railroad companies 21 million acres of free land. And it was also the time that American workers, who had once used commerce to free themselves from the economic and social straitjacket of the monarchy, found themselves servants of a new rigid hierarchy, that of the modern corporation.

The political movement of populism, which Jonathan Rowe calls the "last spasm of economic freedom in an American context," did battle with the new corporations but lost, as did the eurocentric socialists who followed. Save during the depression, generations of Americans would come to accept the myth of the free markets and free enterprise.

ACORN AND THE PROGRESSIVE COMMUNITY

Mark Winston Griffith, DMI - It's easy not to always feel love for ACORN, even if you are on the political left. Social justice advocates and organizers routinely complain that ACORN doesn't always work well in coalitions, or that they suck up all the air in a protest action or press conference, leaving their allies in the shadows. They use a bare-knuckled style of organizing that can be alienating for even those on the sidelines, and they are known to strike deals with their protest targets that can be too narrowly self-interested. . .

But, for all people who consider themselves to be progressive, let's be clear: The current right wing attack on ACORN is a frontal assault on all of us who fight for social and economic justice. ACORN may not always behave in the activist sandbox, but they are one of us, and we better close ranks around them, because the barrel of the right-wing attack gun will be focused on you and me next.

I don't know what the facts on the ground in Ohio and Nevada are, but it's clear that the right wing has declared open season on ACORN and all that it stands for, no matter how many lies need to be told to do it. For instance, over the last few weeks, the right wing has blanketed media airspace with the idea that the Community Reinvestment Act, as aggressively promulgated by ACORN over the past few decades, forced banks to lower their lending criteria, which led to the subprime crisis. They have also taken shots at organizations like the Center for Responsible Lending, which has led progressive, smart research and advocacy campaigns against predatory lending in all forms, not just mortgages.

Implicated are all the rest of us who have used the CRA, the only government edict against bank redlining, to own up to their obligations to lend in neighborhoods of color and low-income areas. Not only is this argument against the CRA and ACORN breath-takingly wrong - most subprime lenders were not even covered by the CRA - but it goes far to make the racist suggestion that the very people that ACORN represents - people of color, low income areas - are inherently high risk and unworthy of credit.

The kissing cousin to this argument is the right-wing's recent disparagement of community organizing and their suggestions that Barack Obama's community organizing activity was radical and un-American simply because he tried to help poor people build power. The RNC is issuing stories on a regular basis, trying not only to discredit ACORN and their voter registration efforts, but also manufacturing links between Obama and ACORN. . .

As a progressive community, we have an obligation to call out ACORN on their stuff. God knows I have. But we also have an obligation to stick up for one of the most effective grassroots social justice organizations this nation has ever seen, an organization that stands on the frontlines everyday, taking body blows for all of us.

WHY IRAQ NEWS STORIES ARE DISAPPEARING

Washington Post - The number of journalists traveling with American forces in Iraq has plummeted in the past year. U.S. military officials say they "embedded" journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number shrank to 39. Of the dozen U.S. newspapers and newspaper chains that maintained full-time bureaus in Baghdad in the early years of the war, only four are still permanently staffed by foreign correspondents. CBS and NBC no longer keep a correspondent in Baghdad year-round. . . Veteran journalists say stories about Iraq, where roughly 155,000 U.S. troops are deployed and where the United States spends approximately $10 billion a month, have become tougher to get on the air and into print. News coverage that once centered largely on the U.S. military experience is shifting, like the country itself, to a story of Iraqis taking the halting, often mundane steps toward building their own government.

PROBLEMS YOU MAY HAVE FORGOTTEN TO WORRY ABOUT

New Scientist: Why are Saturn's rings so spectacular? It could be that the planet managed to cling onto a moon when all the other gas giants in our solar system had already lost theirs. Today's rings formed when the moon was smashed up.

Sebastien Charnoz and colleagues at the University of Diderot, Paris, suggest it was during the "late heavy bombardment", 700 million years after Saturn formed, that a chunk of debris collided with one of the planet's moons. Because the moon was orbiting at just the right distance from Saturn when it shattered - within the so-called Roche limit - the tiny pieces formed the rings instead of dispersing.

This could explain why other planets don't have rings like Saturn's. Even if other planets had moons within their Roche limits at the birth of the solar system, the team's calculations show that the moons would soon been dragged down into the planet or unshackled from their orbits. Yet

BREVITAS

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

Washington Times - In 1986 John McCain wrote a political note - on official House of Representatives stationary - apologizing to Charles H. Keating Jr. for his campaign having listed his good friend and supporter as part of McCain's Senate campaign finance committee. Keating responded with a handwritten note - addressed to "senator," seven months before McCain won his Senate seat - telling him not to sweat it, "I'm yours till death do us part.". . . McCain wrote: "As you know, I am deeply appreciative of your friendship and support over the years, and I would not want to do anything which would offend you. Please accept my apology, and be assured that there will be no future repetition of this kind."Six days later Keating sent a handwritten note back assuring McCain he has done, and can do, no wrong. "Don't be silly. You can call me anything, write anything or do anything. I'm yours till death do us part."

According to the latest Fox poll, the percentage gap between those who approved of Biden and those who don't is 28%, two points better than Obama. The gap fro McCain is only a3% and for Palin just 5%.

Third Party Watch The Nader/Gonzales Campaign is adding 22 offices and nearly 50 field-staff staff to its thousands of volunteers, aiming at securing votes in 49 states.

Third Party Watch - In Indiana's 9th congressional district, Libertarian Dr. Eric Schansberg is running against incumbent Rep. Baron Hill (Democrat) and former Rep. Mike Sodrel (Republican). According to his website, he's found a Republican proposal he likes: "On Wednesday, Dr. Eric Schansberg agreed to a debate proposal from 9th District Republican Party Chairman Larry Shickles. Shickles proposed that the three candidates would be allowed to ask each other a pre-determined number of questions-while connected to a polygraph lie detector."

Nan Garrett, co-chair, Green Party National Women's Caucus - Mr. Obama claims in a campaign ad that his health care plan avoids government-administered coverage, which would require higher taxes. This ad is misleading. It leaves out the fact that working people will pay far less for single-payer than for private coverage, because single-payer does away with profits for insurance and HMO middlemen, saving more than $300 billion every year. That's enough to cover the uninsured and eliminate co-payments and deductibles for all Americans. Even more important, no American would be denied treatment because of inability to pay, employment, age, or a prior medical condition.

PALIN'S CONNECTION WITH FAR RIGHT EXTREMISTS

WATCHING THE COUNT

NY TIMES - Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times. The actions do not seem to be coordinated by one party or the other, nor do they appear to be the result of election officials intentionally breaking rules, but are apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law, intended to overhaul the way elections are run. Still, because Democrats have been more aggressive at registering new voters this year, according to state election officials, any heightened screening of new applications may affect their party's supporters disproportionately. The screening or trimming of voter registration lists in the six states - Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Nevada and North Carolina - could also result in problems at the polls on Election Day: people who have been removed from the rolls are likely to show up only to be challenged by political party officials or election workers, resulting in confusion, long lines and heated tempers.

Washington Post - The D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics and the company that provides the city with its voting equipment are both responsible for last month's primary election blunder that caused thousands of phantom votes to appear in initial results, according to a preliminary report from a special D.C. Council committee. The report says Sequoia Voting Systems, a California-based firm, "was too quick to exonerate itself and the equipment used in the tabulation process. . . . To date, the evidence appears to indicate that there was a problem both in equipment (the server) and in the software." . . . The report dismisses Sequoia's theories that human error or static discharge, not defective software or hardware, was at fault when a cartridge from Precinct 141 added thousands of votes. . . But those issues cannot be resolved before the Nov. 4 election, which officials expect will draw a record number of voters. The committee's recommendations include actions to be taken Election Day. A significant step is to train poll workers to persuade voters to use optical-scan machines instead of electronic touch-screen ones, although the primary night blunder has been traced to a cartridge from an optical-scan machine. The committee -- composed of council members Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5) and Phil Mendelson (D-At Large) -- said the optical-scan machines, which use paper ballots, would create "a verified paper trail" that could be audited, should another mishap occur. The optical-scan machines are also faster, because more voters can fill out ballots at the same time. Just one person at a time can use a touch-screen machine, the report says.

Nationally, an estimated 5.3 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of laws that prohibit voting by people with felony convictions. Among the victims of this: an estimated 13%of black men.

MEDIA

Pop and Politics - According to several inside sources, the Village Voice continued its cost-cutting measures Thursday, dismissing two reporters for budgetary reasons. The paper's copy chief also resigned in protest after the deputy copy chief was laid off Wednesday. . . . Three staff writers remain to report for the newspaper-Wayne Barrett, Chloé Hilliard and Graham Rayman. The Voice also cut staff last Friday, laying off long-time photo editor Staci Schwartz and sex columnist Tristan Taormino. . . Recent turmoil has not been limited to print media publications. Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton said in a staff-wide memo Friday that 19 editorial positions (out of 133 total) were being cut, and pageview bonuses were being suspended beginning in the first quarter of 2009.

Hispanic Market Weekly - Hispanic viewership of the second presidential debate rose to 4.77 million - out of a 63.2 million U.S. total.

SUSTAIN YOURSELF

HOW TO MAKE COMPOST

HOW TO WASH CLOTHES WITHOUT ELECTRICITY

CANNING PICKLES, FRUITS, JAMS, JELLIES, ETC.

ECO CLIPS

BBC - The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study. It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion. The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide. The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change. . . Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets. "It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News. "So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year."

Reuters - Environmental damage such as desertification or flooding caused by climate change could force millions of peoples from their homes in the next few decades, experts said. "All indicators show we are dealing with a major emerging global problem," said Janos Bogardi, director of the U.N. University's Institute on the Environment and Human Security in Bonn, Germany. "Experts estimate that by 2050 some 200 million people will be displaced by environmental problems, a number of people roughly equal to two-thirds of the United States today," the University said in a statement. Bogardi said presently the number of environmental migrants could be between 25 million and 27 million. Unlike political refugees fleeing their country, many seek a new home in their own country.

THE MIX

ABC News - Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled that gays and lesbians should be afforded the same basic right to marry as any other citizen of the state, paving the way for same-sex marriages to begin in that state before the end of the year. The court's opinion says that Connecticut's current "scheme [civil unions] discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation.". . . Today's ruling makes Connecticut the third state to legalize gay marriages, joining Massachusetts and California that have sanctioned same sex marriages. The California law, however, faces a challenge on this fall's ballot.

Washington Blade - Frank Kameny didn't know until this week that actor Paul Newman, who died Sept. 26, supported his bid to become Washington's first non-voting delegate to Congress in 1971. The $500 donation came too late to spend on the campaign, but Kameny's campaign staff used the money to travel to New York City, where they met with the Gay Activists Alliance. Upon their return to Washington, they founded the Gay Activists Alliance, which operates today as the Gay & Lesbian Activists Alliance. "I was well aware that they spent residual funds . . .for the trip, but I was totally unaware of Newman or any other specific person as the source," Kameny told the Blade in an e-mail this week. When asked why he thought Newman donated to his campaign, Kameny said, "I suppose it was simply something forward thinking. I was only the second person in the entire country to run as an openly gay candidate, so I got a good deal of publicity."

FREEDOM & JUSTICE

Washington Times - For decades, Sister Carol Gilbert and Sister Ardeth Platte have practiced their Roman Catholic faith with an unwavering focus on world peace. Their antiwar activities even landed them in federal prison earlier this decade for trespassing onto a military base and pouring blood onto a nuclear missile silo. Now they face fresh infamy as two nuns secretly branded by Maryland State Police as terrorists and placed on a national watch list. . . E-mails released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland show that Baltimore police were coordinating with the National Security Agency in 2003 and 2004 to spy on Quakers, who routinely protested outside the security agency's headquarters. And a member of the American National Socialist Workers Party, or Nazis, told lawmakers Wednesday that he was among the 53 to receive a letter from the state police informing him that he was on the list.. . . Nancy Kricorian, a member of Code Pink, also was entered into the database. She never lived or protested in Maryland, said David Rocah, a staff attorney for the ACLU, which represented the nuns in the effort to obtain information on the spying.

DRUG BUSTS

Bruce Mirken, AlterNet - The White House drug czar's office, aka the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has been claiming loudly and frequently for several years now that its aggressive anti-marijuana campaign has been a rousing success. As deputy ONDCP director Scott Burns put it in a recent California newspaper interview, "drug use is down in the United States dramatically since 2001 by every barometer and indicator that we use. ... Twenty-four percent reduction in marijuana use by young people 12 to 18 years old." In fact, ONDCP has not even come close to meeting its goal of reducing illegal drug use by 25 percent by 2007 in any age group. In fact, among adults, overall illegal drug use actually increased 4.7% from 2002 to 2007. Teen marijuana use is down a bit but still remains common: One in nine (12 percent) 14- and 15-year-olds and one in four (23.7 percent) 16- and 17-year-olds used marijuana in 2007.

FIELD NOTES

Real Simple Magazine offers a guide to recyling everything from A to Z. Did you know, for example, that the American Birding Association accepts donated backpacks? Here's the complete list.

FURTHERMORE. . . .

A judge in Urbana OH fined a driver for listening to rap too loudly in his car but was willing to reduce the fine if the offender listened to 20 hours of classical music. The guy only lasted 15 minutes because he didn't want to miss college basketball practice. So he paid the fine.

AN ECONOMIC HITMAN EXPLAINS HOW THE NSA & US POLICY TOWARDS POOR COUNTRIES REALLY WORKS

EVEN FIDEL CASTRO HAS A BLOG

CRASH TALK

Phil Mattera, Dirt Diggers Digest - Jerry Brown, once derided as Governor Moonbeam because of his unorthodox ideas while serving as the chief executive of California, today showed that he is much more in touch with reality than the U.S. Congress and the Bush Administration. Brown, currently California's attorney general, announced a settlement under which one of the worst predatory lenders will be compelled to spend more than $8 billion to assist borrowers who are confronting foreclosure.

Congress, at the behest of the Administration, approved a misguided bill that bails out major banks to the tune of $700 billion and provides little direct assistance for struggling homeowners-and still may not solve the credit crunch. Brown and the attorneys general of ten other states went to the real heart of the problem. Earlier this year, they sued subprime lender Countrywide Financial (now owned by Bank of America) and have now gotten the company to disgorge some of its ill-gotten gains tied to the subprime mortgages it was peddling.

The settlement with Countrywide - which Brown's office played a central role in bringing about - is by far the largest recovery from a predatory lender. . . The settlement . . . includes options such as interest rate and principal reductions as well as complete Federal Housing Administration refinancing under the HOPE for Homeowners Program. There is also financial assistance for those whose homes have already been foreclosed. This settlement by itself seems to do more to help homeowners than the whole ballyhooed federal bailout.

Market Watch - General Motors Corp. shares, already reeling from the widening credit crisis that has crippled Wall Street, fell as much as 22% in early trades Thursday, dropping to levels last seen around Christmas time in 1950.

Progressive Review - Two things we never expected showed up on the first page of the Washington Post. One was an article raising the question: "The End Of American Capitalism?" which is quite a query given the Post's role in encouraging casino capitalism over the past three decades. But the other thing was even more impressive and unusual: a chart showing the actual decline over the past year of the Dow compared with the1929 crash and the 2000 tech bubble collapse.

The similarities between the 2000 crash and the 1929 one has been a big secret in the press, because it began during the media cared for Clinton administration during an election year. But here's a chart we ran some years ago:

Progress Report - Dana Perino suggested that the Bush administration would oppose any effort to extend jobless benefits, a stance that the White House has taken before. She explained this position by saying, "[We want people to be able to return to the workplace as soon as possible" and concluded that "the best way to help" the economy and unemployed people is for the unemployed to start "getting back to work."

Wall Street Journal - Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, in a marked shift in rhetoric, played up Treasury's newfound authority to "to inject capital into financial institutions" in remarks Wednesday. Mr. Paulson, who won approval from Congress to buy $700 billion worth of distressed assets, had previously focused on Treasury's plan to buy mortgage-related securities from financial institutions that are having trouble getting the assets off their books. As the financial crisis continues to escalate, Treasury has begun fleshing out ways to use its authority to make direct injections into financial institutions, according to a person familiar with the matter. Treasury is figuring out how to structure such infusions so that banks can recapitalize and begin lending. No such moves are imminent, but the fact that the department is engaging in such discussions is an indication of how the crisis is constantly morphing. Such a move was not under consideration just a few days ago but has become more of a possibility in recent days as the stock market has plunged and the credit crunch shows no signs of easing.

Canoe, CA - High banking standards have kept Canada's financial institutions afloat and out of the kind of trouble that has sunk many of their international peers, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said. . . . "We've had a couple of financial institutions in Canada that ran the risk of falling outside the capitalization requirements," he said during a news conference on Wednesday. "We required them... to maintain the appropriate capital requirements and raise capital as necessary, which was done months ago.". .

Some of the fundamentals credited with keeping Canada's banks in the safe zone were put in place nearly a decade ago by the Liberal government of Jean Chretien, including a refusal to approve any Canadian bank mergers.

While Flaherty said government regulation has helped make Canada's banking industry more secure than financial sectors in the United States and many other countries, Canada has also benefited from a strong housing market and more conservative lending practices.

So-called subprime mortgages to risky borrowers, which were at the heart of the U.S. financial collapse, were only a tiny part of the Canadian mortgage industry and are non-existent today. Meanwhile, Canadian borrowers must put down at least five per cent of the cost of a home and the maximum payback period on federally insured mortgages has been reduced to 35 years from 40 years, lowering the risk of defaults.

Progress Report - A study released by the Center for American Progress has found that in every racial and ethnic group, women in America are more likely to be poor than men. "Over half of the 37 million Americans living in poverty today are women," and "the gap in poverty rates between men and women is wider in America than anywhere else in the Western world," the brief states. There are a number of factors contributing to the high proportion of women living in poverty. Women are paid less than men, segregated into low paying jobs, and are more likely to bear child care costs. Moreover, pregnancy affects women's work and educational opportunities more than men's and domestic and sexual violence can push women into a cycle of poverty. The report recommends "a range of decent employment opportunities with a network of social services that support healthy families, such as quality health care, child care, and housing support."

Dean Baker, Guardian, UK - This is the first time in the history of the United States that the president has sought to provoke a financial panic to get legislation passed through Congress. While this has proven to be a successful political strategy - after the House of Representatives finally passed the bank bail-out plan today - it marks yet another low point in American politics. . .

The scare tactics of President Bush, Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, created sufficient panic, so that by the time of the first vote on the emergency package in Congress, much of the public believed that the defeat of the bail-out may actually have had serious consequences for the economy. Millions of people have changed their behavior because of this fear, with many pulling money out of bank and money market accounts, and adjusting their financial plans in other ways.

The collapse of the housing bubble, while falling short of the magnitude of the Great Depression, is likely to lead to the worst recession since the second world war. Repairing the damage caused by this bubble will be a long and difficult process. Cleaning up the damage to the political system from President Bush's unprecedented fear campaign may prove to be even more difficult.

WHY YOU CAN'T BLAME THE HOUSING CRISIS ON POOR HOMEOWNERS

TWO LIES ABOUT ACORN

David Swanson - From 2000 to 2003 I was the communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. I don't know whether to be sorry or relieved that I don't have my old job now.

ACORN has been through some scandals of its own making, but it is currently all over the news because of a pair of absolutely fraudulent and nationally coordinated attacks. . .

Now, if some kid fills out bogus forms in order to make more money from ACORN for supposedly registering voters, ACORN is supposed to try to catch that stuff and not turn in those forms. On the whole, ACORN has registered huge numbers of people with only a tiny percentage of problems. But the more important point is that the kid trying to scam extra bucks has no intention of trying to vote multiple times, risking imprisonment, and no intention of bringing in corpses to have them vote, as CNN seems to imagine. There's no money in fraudulent voting, only enormous risk. But there is money and power in vote suppression and vote miscounting, the major stories that this one is meant to distract from.

The other attack on ACORN focuses on blaming the Community Reinvestment Act for the collapse of Wall Street. Most subprime loans, and therefore most predatory loans, are not made in order to comply with CRA. In fact, low-income and minority communities have seen a great deal of activism in recent years demanding that the predatory lenders stay out, not in. ACORN coined the phrase "predatory lending" and made news years ago by beginning a major campaign to keep loans that are worse than nothing out of neighborhoods.

Predatory loans are not loans made to the wrong kind of people. They are loans made in very deceptive ways with the aim of making the borrower believe they'll be able to pay it back, but with the aim of making them fail. Predatory mortgage lenders make money by refinancing repeatedly, extracting more fees each time, and eventually seizing the property. This is accomplished with misleading fine print that strips people of their equity through all sorts of hidden fees and charges and rate increases, and by consolidating credit card and other debt with house debt. Every year, ACORN produces a lengthy report documenting the targeting of racial minorities with these loans.

For years, ACORN has led efforts to ban predatory loans through local and state legislation, while the same gang that is now so upset about these loans being made has fought endlessly against bans and restrictions.

The good news is that the family of organizations known as ACORN is growing, raising wages, improving schools, reforming corporations, building housing, organizing active citizens, and clearly threatening the powers that be. ACORN has decidedly moved past the stage of being ignored and even the stage of being laughed at. ACORN is now being attacked. Next comes victory.

RECOVERED HISTORY: THE PLUNGE PROTECTION TEAM