The only political cartoon you'll ever need

Sat, 03/21/2009 - 9:57am — lambert

twas-him

"Who stole the people's money?"

"'Twas him!"

Now that the Obama administration has made it crystal clear that it will finish the job that Bush started -- the largest transfer of wealth in American history, with no accountability and no transparency -- it's also crystal clear that the problem isn't the parties; the problem is Versailles. True, the number of honorable Republicans and Conservatives is vanishingly small, and there are a number of honorable Democrats (see Glenn on Elijah Cummings, for example). Nor are the Democratic and Republican parties "the same"; they're institutions* with different personnel, histories, traditions, constituencies. But we have to look how policies net out: It's also crystal clear that the Bush+Paulson/Obama+Geithner bailouts are the priority for Versailles; and that priority structures everything else that "progressives" might wish to achieve. And, from that perspective, the net of this administration is turning out negative, just like the last one's was. A saner policy on marijuana, a White House garden, a slight pullback on executive power just don't outweigh the bailouts, which have continued from one administration to the next. I don't know what to do about this.

NOTE * After the primaries (caucus violations, RBC, convention shenanigans, role of the press), I think that any sentient being would also have to question the institutional health of the Democratic Party.

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Comments

Me Neither

By geneo on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 3:28pm

Don't know what to do about it, I mean.

Very disheartening. Have to be careful to pay attention, but not to let it sap my energy away. It will do that if I allow it, because it is the sort of thing that makes me feel as though I have no efficacy in the political system, or no agency, if you prefer. And if that's the case, why bother?

I bother a lot these days because it's better to go screaming than to go quietly.

You're right about the bailouts outweighing everything else. Matt Taibbi has a long article at Rolling Stone in which he tries to explain how the economic crisis is being (has been?) used to stage a revolution. if you haven't seen it. Worth the read, I think.

Matt Taibbi is part of the problem

By Davidson on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 4:45pm

Many others have long pointed out that the problem today is that corporations have a stranglehold on our democracy (Read Wealth and Democracy). Hell, John Edwards said that in the NH debate and over two years ago Harper's wrote about Wall Street's ownership of Congress and almost unshakeable trust in Obama:

Today, money has all but wrung such dissent from the Senate. Campaigns have grown increasingly costly; in 2004 it took an average of more than $7 million to run for a Senate seat. As Carl Wagner, a Democratic political strategist who first came to Washington in 1970, remarked to me, the Senate today is a fundamentally different institution than it was then. “Senators were creatures of their states and reflected the cultures of their states,” he said. “Today they are creatures of the people who pay for their multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns. Representative democracy has largely been taken off the table. It’s reminiscent of the 1880s and 1890s, when senators were chosen by state legislatures who were owned by the railroads and the banks.” Accordingly, as corporate money has grown increasingly important to candidates, we have seen the rise of the smothering K Street culture and the revolving door that feeds it—not just lobbyists themselves but an entire interconnected world of campaign consultants, public-relations agencies, pollsters, and media strategists.

All of this has forged a political culture that is intrinsically hostile to reform. On condition of anonymity, one Washington lobbyist I spoke with was willing to point out the obvious: that big donors would not be helping out Obama if they didn’t see him as a “player.” The lobbyist added: “What’s the dollar value of a starry-eyed idealist?”

Many Americans for quite some time have felt that the US government has been bought by the investor class to do its bidding, which is not revolutionary in that it's been done before here--and elsewhere (Argentina is the most glaring recent example).

To have any chance at all we need to deal with the rot that is truthiness. More than half of the Democratic primary voters chose to dismiss the media last year, but still we lost in part because the "progressive" blogs joined the media in their hate fest. The damage is done, but we don't have to continue causing more damage and listening to the likes of Taibbi does that. The asshat has no credibility (Nor does anyone else who didn't see past the primary bullshit of last year). Taibbi is a misogynistic bigot who rarely misses a chance to parade his ignorance and contempt for the unwashed masses in abrasive, self-righteous ways. It's all an entertainment spectacle for him, a way for him to prove what how cool and bad-ass he is, when he's just another member of the media village who thinks he's a rebel (e.g., Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, Thomas Friedman). He's another Olbermann when we need more Helen Thomases.

Thanks

By geneo on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 7:09pm

Wish I'd read this earlier.

Just looking at that one article there, and he was saying some things that stuck me as important.

No, he's right, but he's not credible and late to the game

By Davidson on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 7:49pm

I just don't want us feeding the beast that helped create this mess, and that's going back to Bush in 2000 (and earlier). Besides, he's saying what we've all known for a long time.

Well, you'll notice I didn't give Taibbi a post of his own

By lambert on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 8:09pm

But this perception is accurate, IMNHSO:

The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

If anybody wants to talk any more about 11-dimensional chess, this, to me, is the most succinct explanation of the game that's reallly being played.

Even a blind pig finds a truffle every so often.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

For the record...

By lambert on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 8:16pm

... could we get some links on Taibbi's asshattery?

(I mean "for the record" without irony; plenty of content now only exists in the form of blockquotes with links on blocks, either because it's been deleted, moved, or gone behind the pay wall.)

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

Good Idea

By geneo on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 8:26pm

I, for one, would be happy to see that info, and might find a way to make some use of it on down the road.

And all this has taken me right back to where I was with the first comment on this thread: WTF to do about it? This discussion is reminding me why I say things like:

"we've got problems that are going to have to be settled in the streets. Now, how do we go about equipping ourselves to do that?" (How ya' doin' today, NSA?)

I really do believe that. Just don't really know how to go about it and don't see the political will to get it done. YET.

In case it's not clear, that comment below labeled "Right" was intendened as a response to Davidson's "right, but not credible . . ." comment.

Demand "accountability and transparency"

By lambert on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 8:31pm

That is the unifying factor between PACT and the bailout.

Operationally, call your Congresscritter and say "SHOW ME THE LOAN TAPES!"

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

Ok Then

By geneo on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 8:46pm

That is very helpful and rings true. It's on my mind.

It's why I keep mentioning that securities loan program. Why I am encouraging havealittletalk to keep digging into the history of the money management and calling attention to what she's doing instead of my own work.

Why I am about to hit the research library next week and see if I can use some tools that are way more powerful than google to answer some of the questions that we've raised.

Consensus-building is tough. Takes time. Baby steps are required. Not convinced that me calling the Congresscritter right this minute is where I need to be spending my time and energy. What I need is to try and convince a couple of hundred or more people to do it at the same time. Or do the same to some deer-in-the-headlights state officials and pressure them open a window into that black box. And make my calls along with those people. Also, I am no genius, and making decisions in real time. So, there will be mistakes and missed opportunities. Am I making some sense here?

This has turned into a very useful discussion all of a sudden.

OK, here are just two from last year

By Davidson on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 9:03pm

I'm surprised most people don't know about Taibbi, especially his casual misogyny. He's another Olbermann, a fauxgressive. He's one of those media "liberals," the kind Somerby skewers.

Clinton is the new Nixon with a "tears gambit" and more:

Here's Obama, a black man, coming into a crucial debate having watched his white opponent and her henchmen slyly remind voters about what he was doing "in the neighborhood" as a kid and then point out that MLK couldn't secure his legacy without the help of a white man with a title. It was nasty, calculating politics, and any man with a pulse would have taken her to task for it here. But in the debate, Obama responded meekly by praising Hillary three times in the first five minutes, avoiding the word "black" as though it were a used Kleenex, and refusing to point out that he'd ever been against the war in Iraq.

Then there's Hillary's flimsy case, where he dismisses the fact Clinton was a much stronger candidate than Obama as the last desperate schemes of The Clintons (with a gratuitous "Bros before Hoes" picture included):

Clinton talks a lot about having visited "over eighty countries" —but then, Chelsea was with her on a lot of those trips, and I doubt folks are rushing to hand her the red phone. In case anyone has forgotten what exactly first lady Hillary Clinton really did all those years, here is a press account of a 1997 trip that she made to Senegal with her daughter: "Her first stop in Senegal was at Goree Island, where she peered through the 'Door of No Return,' through which slaves passed on their way to the dreaded Middle Passage of the Slave Trade. When she arrived in Dakar, the first lady was greeted by Senegalese who danced and serenaded her with lyrics written especially for the occasion." Shit, I feel better about that 3 a.m. phone call already!

It is worth noting that Hillary was being packed off on these trips into the heart of Africa at precisely the time when her husband was getting his knob polished by an intern in the Oval Office. That's not a reflection on her personally —but for the Hillary camp to tout her advantage in foreign affairs based on these trips into the marital wilderness, as compared to a candidate who has actually lived overseas and has actual relatives living in villages like the ones Hillary passed over in her glass-bottomed boat, is beyond absurd.

Yeah, OK. Nothing wrong there. [UPDATE: Let me just add it's amazing he thinks Obama has legitimate foreign affairs experience because he lived abroad as a little boy, yet Clinton can be dismissed has strong undertones of prejudice]. Let's look at his reasonings why it's OK to dismiss Clintons far more impressive performance in the primaries:

The Clinton strategy for winning the presidency is so simple, even a chimpanzee could grasp it. You win the blue states, the Massachusettses and the New Jerseys, almost automatically, just by being pro-choice and saying nice things about trees and gay people. You concede the really red states, the places like Tennessee and Kentucky where you're fucked anyway, places where huge pluralities believe the devil really exists and has thick red skin and a bull's horns. That leaves you free to compete hard in the mixed-bag states by drifting to the right as far as you can without losing your in-pocket blue territories, which is really hard to do unless you start wobbling on abortion or selling out the spotted owl. It is through the prism of this new Clintonian strategy that presidential politics has basically been reduced to winning Florida and Ohio.

But saying that Hillary is better qualified to take on John McCain because of her performance in those states only makes sense if (a) you believe that the people who voted for Clinton in the primaries will not vote for Obama in the general election, and (b) you believe that no Democrat can win the traditionally red states. In fact, Hillary has mostly been winning the traditionally blue states —places like New York, California, Massachusetts and New Jersey —that are going to go blue in November anyway, no matter who is running on the Republican ticket. And even in the states Hillary has won, it has been registered Democrats, not swing voters, who have carried her to victory, while Obama has dominated her in virtually every contest among registered independents. Even in her home state of New York, Obama whipped Hillary among independents by fifteen percent. In Missouri, that margin was twenty-eight percent. In California? Thirty percent.

Obama, meanwhile, has performed extraordinarily well in traditionally red states like Louisiana, Georgia and South Carolina. And sure, some of that is due to the black vote. But all of his victories have been marked by two things: larger-than-usual turnout and routs among independents, leading to the large number of blowout wins that are basically responsible for his delegate lead at the moment. On Super Tuesday, Hillary won sixty percent of the vote in only one contest, Bill's home state of Arkansas. Obama won seven states by that margin or more.

In other words, Hillary is winning the Democratic voters who are going to vote Democratic anyway. Obama is bringing in new voters, and he's winning large numbers of swing voters in red states.

Genius! Let's just forget about who wins blue states (Can you imagine how outrageous that would be if Obama had won those states?)! Hillary Clinton solidly winning the Democratic base with a broad coalition is bad, but Obama winning with a narrow coalition of upper class whites, blacks, and youths in deeply red states is good.

Nobody in American history has ever been better than the Clintons at calculating the electoral math of resentment, paranoia, media aggression and just flat-out, back-alley nastiness. Every day, the Clintons come up with some new and brilliantly devious way to color the subliminal background of the electoral canvas, from using comparisons to Jesse Jackson to buttonhole Obama as a "black candidate," to floating rumors of an "unstoppable" Hillary-Obama ticket —despite the fact that Hillary would rather eat a KFC bucket full of her own shit than run with Obama —in order to con on-the-fence voters into thinking that a vote for Hillary might also be a vote for Obama. That's why it seemed so weirdly appropriate that Samantha "she's a monster" Power was forced to resign from the Obama campaign, while Gerry Ferraro could all but call Obama a nigger and then claim that she was the victim of discrimination. We expect the Clintons to play dirty, and don't demand that they apologize for doing so. But we'd be disappointed in Obama if he went there.

Mind you, Taibbi says the Clintons weren't racists just opportunists who were trying co curry favor with working class whites. Yet the implication is overt. Oh, and Hillary Clinton is a "psycho-bitch" (Of course, it's heinous for Ferraro to "all but call Obama a nigger").

This is more of his mild stuff, but it's what I got in the few minutes I had to spare.

Thanks

By geneo on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 9:04pm

For digging that stuff up.

There's more out there, but I just don't have the time

By Davidson on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 9:06pm

Really, the guy is an asshole and generally blind on important issues when his major biases are in play (e.g., misogyny, classism). I've tried reading him for years, but he keeps fucking up.

Eew

By lambert on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 9:09pm

FITH.

Never did have the guy on my list; now I know why. Thanks, Davidson.

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi

That said

By CMike on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 8:20pm

Matt Taibbi provides an excellent narrative review of the collapse of AIG in the article Geneo recommends. It's a useful read. Taibbi concludes with a crack era insight into this old analysis:

With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent will produce eagerness, 50 percent positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime which it will not scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.

Right

By geneo on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 8:06pm

Get what you are saying about not feeding the beast.

I actually run into people on a very regular basis who really do not understand what's going on. And probably do not know who MT is. Read that piece once, and thought it had some potential.

And honestly, I can't keep all these people straight. Which is one reason I find the community here so valuable, and have for a long time.

Thanks to this discussion, that particular writer will not slip under my radar again, and if I deal with his work in the future, I will be able to provide more appropriate context.

Important for you to provide that critique of his work here, IMO.

My Second Rule of Engagement is: Better to stand corrected than to be ignorant.

He may be terminally cynical, insufferable, maladjusted yet ...

By CMike on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 9:02pm

Matt Taibbi is worth reading. Taibbi is an equal opportunity basher; a misanthrope not a misogynist. I submit this off topic article as Exhibit A.

Interesting

By geneo on Sat, 03/21/2009 - 9:13pm

Maybe evidence that he is a misanthrope, but can't really say this exhibit proves he is not a misogynist. It is possible to be a misogynist misanthrope, after all.

Note - if I just missed something there, happy to discuss further. Evidence of misanthropy and misogyny was all I was looking for there. Making no claims about the quality of the article beyond that.

Glad you (and other folks, too) found something worthwhile in that article l originally linked to. Helps to know I wasn't completely off-base with it.

but, I do think that critique Davidson is making is significant.