Jerry Brown at the C-Bay Statewide Candidates Forum from VidSF on Vimeo.

As you all know Marin Energy Authority has waged a heroic battle with PG&E to be able to provide Marin residents with a choice of energy suppliers.  It looks like that all systems are go.
Dear Editor,

In Friday’s [Marin IJ] article regarding Marin Energy Authority’s contract with Shell, I was quoted as saying “Shell’s rates are significantly below PG&E’s.”  Based on MEA’s weekly pricing refreshes, that’s true and it’s really great news for MEA’s future customers. Shell’s lower prices, fixed for five years, allow MEA to do the following right away:

1) offer a 25% qualified renewable energy mix, as opposed to PG&E’s 12%
2) make good on our promise to “meet or beat” PG&E’s costs
3) develop a net metering policy that allows MEA to pay customers for excess power generated by roof-top solar
4) absorb customer transfer fees and set exit fees at zero
5) use ratepayer income to benefit our County, not PG&E’s huge service territory
6) fund MEA operations and its reserve account.

The Shell contract offers MEA an excellent start.  If PG&E will stop its legal harassment and fear-mongering and partner with MEA as the law says it must, MEA’s environmental and financial picture gets better over time.  As operations stabilize and voluntary deep-green customers come on line, MEA’s energy mix will substantially exceed 25% qualified renewables and our Board will consider lower electricity rates, new Marin-based energy efficiency and solar financing programs, and deeper discounts for low-income and senior customers.

Let us hold the vision, follow the plan, meet the benchmarks, and continue the battle for local energy choice.  It is the way of the future.

Shawn Marshall
Vice Chair
Marin Energy Authority

[Sent by Michael Dietrick]

This article is astounding on several levels, the central one being that Goldman Sachs possibly over stated its mortgage losses, which were insured by AIG, not only because there WERE in fact losses which should have been covered, but because the greater the losses known to the public the lower the market would go — which Goldman had bets on. In other words, by adding to the panic in the markets — by overstating its own losses– it would be able to profit.

It is also sort of amazing to wonder how exactly, in any situation like this, when an insured claims a loss, the insurer determines the value. In the case of loss of a car, or a house, there is something physical to look at, comparative values, etc. In the case of Goldman Sachs and AIG it seems there are only financial statements, created by the insured, Goldman Sachs, which refused to let a third party evaluate them. Sounds like a perfect scenario for ripping off the tax payer.

Well before the federal government bailed out A.I.G. in September 2008, Goldman’s demands for billions of dollars from the insurer helped put it in a precarious financial position by bleeding much-needed cash. That ultimately provoked the government to step in.

With taxpayer assistance to A.I.G. currently totaling $180 billion, regulatory and Congressional scrutiny of Goldman’s role in the insurer’s downfall is increasing. The Securities and Exchange Commission is examining the payment demands that a number of firms — most prominently Goldman — made during 2007 and 2008 as the mortgage market imploded.

The S.E.C. wants to know whether any of the demands improperly distressed the mortgage market, according to people briefed on the matter who requested anonymity because the inquiry was intended to be confidential.

In just the year before the A.I.G. bailout, Goldman collected more than $7 billion from A.I.G. And Goldman received billions more after the rescue. Though other banks also benefited, Goldman received more taxpayer money, $12.9 billion, than any other firm.

In addition, according to two people with knowledge of the positions, a portion of the $11 billion in taxpayer money that went to Société Générale, a French bank that traded with A.I.G., was subsequently transferred to Goldman under a deal the two banks had struck.

Goldman stood to gain from the housing market’s implosion because in late 2006, the firm had begun to make huge trades that would pay off if the mortgage market soured. The further mortgage securities’ prices fell, the greater were Goldman’s profits.

NYTimes: Morgenson

The SEC is examining some of this activity. Please send it calcium supplements to keep its teeth nice and strong.

In other Goldman Sachs news the financial world is astounded, ASTOUNDED!, that Llloyd Blankfein, CEO of the raptor of Wall Street, is only being paid a $9 million bonus.

“We really aren’t deaf and blind,” said Goldman Chief Financial Officer David Viniar in January, when the company released its 2009 results. “We see what is going on around us and on and we hear what regulators and the world is saying.”

Besides Viniar’s insult to the deaf and blind who understand far better than he what is going on around them it seems he has his analogs confused. He might have said, for example, “We really aren’t poisonous vipers,” or, “We really aren’t as abysmally ignorant as it seems…”
*

For an excellent series on Goldman Sachs, including some video, see this McClatchy link The McClatchy series triggered a new investigation by Carl Levin’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

As the elected Republicans are rubbing their hands in satisfaction over the dead Health Reform infant in the cradle another major insurer announced a 40% jump in premiums.

Anthem Blue Cross customers got a shock this week when the health insurer informed thousands of individual policyholders that their premium rates will jump as much as 39 percent on March 1.

That’s on top of a 68% hike last year

For Jeff Sher of San Francisco, who is both an independent health insurance agent and an Anthem customer, his 38 percent increase comes on top of a 41 percent increase last year. That means that in just a year, his premium increased from $273 to $530 per month, or 94 percent.

Sher, who is 59, said he hasn’t needed to see a doctor in seven or eight years.

“It’s all based on this illusion there is a free market in this product. But you can’t shop for health care, particularly after you’re already sick,” he said. “You can’t shop for a carrier because there is almost no competition.”

SF Gate

I wonder how many people dying at Senatorial doors it would take to make a convert or two? I’m going to send some of the choice text in this article to the Obama team in the White House on the handy comments link. Though it’s not Obama who needs the message. It’s 41 Republicans in the Senate who are carrying out their grand social experiment to prove their ideological fixation is right. “Let ‘em die” seems to be their motto. The people who ought to have some light shown on their faces are the electorate who send the heartless to represent them.

Bob Hunter reminds us there is super simple way to send messages to the President. At White House dot gov is a contact sheet. Couldn’t be simpler. If fact, you could send morning greetings everyday during your cup of coffee.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact

Personally, I think an attaboy followed by a disappointment gets more attention than merely expressing unhappiness. Every change I’ve made in my life was because I was being welcomed into something, not because I was being hounded….

The USS Dwight D Eisenhower, (CVN 69) and its battle group took over for the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) in the Gulf of Oman. This is a regular rotation, and as such is not indicative of anything new. The swap is not standing alone, however.

The strike force also includes the USS Hue City, a Ticonderoga class cruiser with the Aegis missile system. Part of Obama’s recent Iran surge is to have Aegis systems on patrol at all times. The Iranian’s will not forget that it was a mishandled Aegis system on the USS Vincennes, in 1988 which shot down Iranian Air Flight 655 with 290 souls aboard. Nor will many Americans be oblivious to the irony of the name of the ship, Hue City, after an enormous battle in that city, 50 miles south of the DMZ, early in the 1968 Tet offensive, which, whatever the results of the battle, or the military outcome of the Tet battles, the US lost.

Improved Patriot missiles are being deployed in 4 Persian Gulf countries: Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. Purely defensive say they, and their American patron. Not so say the Iranians. In fact, from their angle, these are the equivalent of Soviet missiles being parked on Cuba in 1963, and are likely linked to Israeli intentions and US blessings.

According to Debka, the on-line intelligence source, closely linked to Israel’s military, the preparations are to provide defenses against Iranian attacks, following US or Israeli attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Another on-line source, News-Armenian, carries a claim from a Turkish site that attack preparations against Iran are underway.

And Avatar? The popular 3-D war movie? [Review] It is making a special showing aboard the Eisenhower, with James Cameron himself, along with some of the stars, making an appearance. I’ll bet the message to the fly-boys of Carrier Air Wing 7 will not be how cool 3-D is.

The message will be hoo rah! Kill! They will be flying sorties over Afghanistan within hours of seeing the film.  They won’t be imagining lithe Na’avi on the ground when they pull the trigger;   below are only terrorists.  They won’t imagine themselves to be Trudy Chacon who turns her attack copter against the big gunship, even if Michelle Rodri guez herself has sent them off with a kiss.  They won’t have huge taloned Toruks but they will have lots of blow up stuff:

* M61 Vulcan 6-barrel rotary cannon with 520 rounds of 20mm ammunition is internally mounted in the nose
AIM-9 Sidewinder
AIM-7F Sparrow
AIM-120 AMRAAM
AGM-65E Maverick
AGM-84 Harpoon
AGM-88A HARM
MK82
10 CBU-87
10 CBU-89
GBU-12
GBU-24
JDAM
B-57 or B-61 Nuclear bomb

February 1, 1960 is the day when 4 young college students from AT&T State University in North Carolina seated themselves at the all-white lunch counter in a Woolworth’s dime store in Greensboro asking to be served coffee and donuts. Thus began the wild fire spread of sit-ins around the country that catalyzed the Civil Rights movement and changed America.

How wonderfully appropriate that the very same Woolworths is the location of the new International Civil Rights Center and Museum — with the original counter and stools preserved to remind us where it all started.

Some good photos at www.nytimes.com/design

also…. Howell Raines remembrance

There’s a pretty good graphic on Obama’s proposed budget over at NY Times. Can’t post it cause it involves flash graphics. Notice the colors, detailed at the bottom. The darker the green, the greater the increase; the darker the orange, the greater the decrease.

You won’t be surprised to see Defense has gone up….

NY Times: Obama Budget

Chris Matthews, the loud mouthed commentator on MSNBC, is one of the reasons watching TV is so unpleasant, and even dangerous. An enormous bubble should be permanently drawn over his head with Mute Me Please! written in it. Following Obama’s State of the Union address Matthews added more sorry commentary to his bedraggled record. He was so pleased at the speech that…

“I forgot he was black for an hour.”.

My response was OMG! What did he say? pause pause MUTE. Here’s a better response, thoughtful and helpful to all of us as a way of getting a purchase on chrismatthewsism whenever we hear it.

I Just Remembered Chris Matthews Was White

Ta-Nehisi Coates

28 Jan 2010 10:30 am

“I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It’s interesting; he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. He’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country and past so much history in just a year or two. I mean it’s something we don’t even think about. I was watching and I said, wait a minute, he’s an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people and there he is, president of the United States, and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight — completely forgotten it. I think it was in the scope of the discussion, it was so broad ranging, so in tune with so many problems and aspects and aspects of American life. That you don’t think in terms of the old tribalism and the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard, a very subtle fact. It’s so hard to even talk about it. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about it, but I am.” (Chris Matthews)

I think it’s worth noting that Chris Matthews wasn’t trying to take a shot at anybody. I also think it’s worth noting that he was attempting to compliment Obama and say something positive about what he’s done for race relations. But I think it’s most worth noting that “I forgot Obama was black”–in all its iterations–is something that white people should stop saying, if only because it’s really dishonest.
(Continued…)

The Swiss government on Wednesday backed off an agreement with the United States that required it to hand over the names of wealthy American clients of the Swiss bank UBS who were suspected of tax evasion.

The announcement, which came after two Swiss courts ruled that the disclosure of client names would be illegal because it would violate the country’s secrecy laws, threatened to open a new front in the investigation into UBS by the Justice Department.

While the Swiss cabinet, known as the Swiss Federal Council, said in a statement that it would continue talks with the United States on the matter, it said there was a risk that the United States would resume civil proceedings filed against UBS in a Florida court last year. That case sought to force UBS to disclose the names of 52,000 wealthy American clients suspected of tax evasion through UBS’s private bank.

That lawsuit was suspended in August when the Swiss government, acting on behalf of UBS during months of intense negotiations, promised to hand over 4,450 UBS client names.

This could get very interesting. If instead of simply handing over what has been agreed upon, the Swiss, UBS and the US Feds go back to a full scale court battle, names of the greedy bastards will eventually make headlines. Paying up several million in tax arrears would be a lot more pleasant than finding screaming citizens at the gates of the mansion….

Kevin E. Packman, a tax lawyer at Holland & Knight in Miami, said that the Swiss courts “have put UBS and, to some extent, the Swiss government in an uncomfortable position. I suspect that if the courts don’t cooperate with the government to find a solution, things are going to get really ugly for UBS.”

UBS Scoflaws

Everytime I hear about UBS I think of the disgusting Phil Graham who, with his Graham-Leach-Bliley Act repealing the Glass-Steagall act and setting in motion the subprime mortgage crisis , created more destruction than this months Haitian earthquake. He joined UBS as vice chair of the Investment Bank Division. The company must have liked his track record in the US Senate. My prayer is that his fingerprints will be found in some of the dirty dealing we will be hearing much more about.