Month: March 2010

Owing Their Souls

by digby

Yesterday, I wrote about a fascinating article on Huff Po regarding the revolving door between government and the financial industry. But that’s not the only revolving door that devastates our democratic system. That door between the Treasury and Wall Street works congress. The other one works us.

The following excerpt is from a great article in The Nation by Sebastian Jones called The Media-Lobbying Complex:

For lobbyists, PR firms and corporate officials, going on cable television is a chance to promote clients and their interests on the most widely cited source of news in the United States. These appearances also generate good will and access to major players inside the Democratic and Republican parties. For their part, the cable networks, eager to fill time and afraid of upsetting the political elite, have often looked the other way. At times, the networks have even disregarded their own written ethics guidelines. Just about everyone involved is heavily invested in maintaining the current system, with the exception of the viewer.

While lobbyists and PR flacks have long tried to spin the press, the launch of Fox News and MSNBC in 1996 and the Clinton impeachment saga that followed helped create the caldron of twenty-four-hour political analysis that so many influence peddlers call home. Since then, guests with serious conflicts of interest have popped up with alarming regularity on every network. Just examine their presence in coverage of the economic crash and the healthcare reform debate, two recent issues that have engendered massive cable coverage.

As the recession slammed the country in late 2008 and government bailouts followed, lobbyists and PR flacks took to the air with troubling regularity, advocating on behalf of clients and their interests while masquerading as neutral analysts. One was Bernard Whitman, president of Whitman Insight Strategies, a communications firm that specializes in helping “guide successful lobbying, communications and information campaigns through targeted research.” Whitman’s clients have included lobbying firms like BGR Group and marketing/PR firms like Ogilvy & Mather, which in turn have numerous corporate clients with a vested interest in shaping federal policies. Whitman is a veteran of the Clinton era and when making television appearances continues to be identified for work he did almost a decade earlier.

According to its website, Whitman Insight Strategies has worked for AIG to “develop, test, launch, and enhance their consumer brand,” and continues to assist the insurance giant “as it responds to ongoing marketplace developments.” Whitman Strategies has also posted more than 100 clips of Bernard Whitman’s television appearances on a YouTube account. During a September 18, 2008, Fox News appearance to discuss Sarah Palin, Whitman proceeded to lambaste John McCain for proposing to “let AIG fail,” saying that this demonstrated “just how little he understands the global economy today.”

On March 25, 2009, in the midst of a scandal over AIG’s executive bonuses, Whitman appeared on Fox News again. “The American people were understandably outraged about AIG,” he began. “Having said that, we need to move beyond anger, frustration and hysteria to really get down to the brass tacks of solving this economy,” he advised the public. In neither instance was Whitman’s ongoing work for AIG mentioned.

This is how “conventional wisdom” and village talking points are formed.

The business community, for whom so many of these people work, will work or have worked, needs to market its agenda to the people so that they will accept what the politicians they have in their pockets are selling and keep them in office. They use the credibility of those who’ve worked in government to do it. So, business and financial interests give huge contributions to politicians, hire the people who work in the government to lobby those politicians and provides the 24/7 cable media with PR people who pretend to be Republican or Democratic partisans to sell business friendly policies to the public.

One once would have expected the press to take up the slack for the people, but nowadays most people get their news from TV, much of which is presented in a he said/she said format by these same PR pros — or people who someday hope to be hired into those jobs. It’s a feedback loop that creates fake partisan battles and faux hissy fits, but never delves too deeply into the real problems.

It’s quite a racket. And it’s a bargain compared to what the Big Money Boyz spend on direct advertising.

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Teabag Poster Boys

by digby

Mother Jones reports:

If you ever wondered what type of candidate the Tea Party movement would like to see elected to Congress, look no farther than Kentucky Sen. Jim Bunning (R), the man who is single-handedly holding up unemployment benefit extensions and health insurance coverage for hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Americans. While the rest of his party is quietly trying to ignore him, Bunning is giving Tea Party activists in Kentucky much to love.

“We’re all in support of Sen. Bunning,” says Wendy Caswell, the founder of the Louisville Tea Party. She says Tea Party activists believe that Bunning is being fiscally responsible, and that’s a core Tea Party value. “He is kind of one of our models of a good representative of the people of Kentucky.”

Both of the GOP candidates running for Bunning’s seat agree, with Rand Paul even holding a rally outside Bunning’s office.

I am getting the same sick feeling in my stomach about this that I got when I watched the torture “debate” unfold. This is yet another unraveling of certain pieces of the already threadbare social contract — the reflexive moral consensus on cruelty and selfishness that we all teach our children and at least pay lip service to if not always live up to. Things like whether or not it’s ok to torture — or to let people flounder with no income at all during a serious economic crisis. You can tell that this is one of those things by the punch drunk response of so many, even some on the GOP side, who are having a hard time wrapping their minds around the idea that this could happen.

It’s way outside the normal consensus about what is expected of our government during an economic downturn and it could be the beginning of something really ugly. Up until now there was no question that it would be political suicide, much less morally wrong, to make massive numbers of unemployed, working and middle class workers, pay in order to make an ideological point. But with these incoherent tea partiers and nihilistic libertarians pulling the same kind of out sized influence the neocons did during the Great GWOT scare, this is what happens. We lose our moral consensus.

Here are some more examples:

On the March 1 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh said: “Now, who knew? Who knew? But if you look at this story, folks, this is the worst thing that could have ever happened. Two-thousand federal workers are going to be furloughed, and there might be a delay in some unemployment benefits being paid. Oh my God, this is the worst thing that’s ever — who knew, folks, that one lone senator from the minority party could wreak so much damage to our economy?” Limbaugh later said, “Unemployment advocates are calling for Jim Bunning to be removed from the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

This is simple Randism, which is the real basis of Tea Party anti-government faux populism. They may not “believe in” Wall Street bailouts, but they don’t believe in unemployment insurance either.(And in return for no bailouts, they are ready to lift all regulations and constraints on business, while the average Joe gets the “freedom” to starve.)

The biggest problem is that this foolish tea party ignorance is having the effect of normalizing the adolescent “individualism” of the Ayn Rand cult beyond the boardrooms and estates of the Master of the Universe. The “parasites” are now anyone who has the misfortune to lose his or her job in the worst recession since the 1930s — a recession that was caused by millionaire con men who are reaping big bonuses these days.

Here’s your American ethos 2010:

Update: The pinheaded Chris Matthews is framing this as whether or not we should be borrowing money from the Yellow Peril to pay for unemployment insurance.

We’re screwed.

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Et Tu Rupert?

by digby

Here’s how the NY Post reports on the results of the Brooklyn DA’s investigation of the ACORN “stings”

ACORN set up by vidiots: DA

The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a “heavily edited” splice job that only made it appear as though the organization’s workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.

The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed.

Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.

Coming from Murdoch’s empire, that’s pretty impressive. (Maybe they’re jealous of Breitbart?)

Any glee, however, must be tempered by the comments, of which this is sadly representative:

If it looks like a bourough that produces nothing but crime, and everyone there looks and acts like a criminal, and the entire area is merely a parasite on manhattan’s hiney that produces nothing but crime and criminals, then its a given that the DA from this crimeridden cesspool is one of those more responsible for its creation then its elimination. Once we tighten up the welfare laws in this city (and we had durn well better do that soon before all the taxpayers leave), these entitled, criminal, protected, uneducated, incompetent ACORN types will continue to SCAM US ALL with impunity. Try feeding yourself for once in this life before you put your lips to the teat of social services and gubment money.

Any more questions about what motivated Breitbart or all the other “constitutional conservatives” to go after ACORN?

h/t to Eric Martin at Obsidian Wings who added:

Even the headline is worthy, “ACORN Set Up by Vidiots.” Only, it wasn’t only ACORN that was played by the “vidiots.” You’d have to include in that hall of shame the New York Times (who, after the faux revelations, decided to dedicate personnel to following “issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio” more intently so as not to miss the next ACORN-esque bombshell…or dud) as well as the Democrats in Washington, who defunded a legitimate, valuable community organization based on nothing short of malicious fraud.

Exactly.

Creating Chaos

by digby

FYI: the village, in the person of Mrs Alan Greenspan, just responded to the absurd assertion of GOP mouthpiece John Feehery that the Democrats are to blame for Jim Bunning’s obstruction because the Senate should have passed this extension of unemployment benefits bill months ago by saying:

You can certainly make the argument that the whole process has broken down and that no one is running the Senate.

Right. A Republican using an obscure parliamentary procedure to hold up unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of Americans in a time of double digit unemployment but the villagers agree that it is really the fault of Democrats because they are in charge and should be able to “ram it through” (except when “ramming it through” would be undemocratic and destructive to the comity of the Senate and the fabric of our nation.)

Let’s be clear. Bunning couldn’t have done this without the help of his Republican pals who have an interest in creating misery, which is their ticket back to the majority. And they are aided and abetted by a political establishment that is simultaneously demanding that Democrats capitulate and dominate, both of which are then subject to criticism and characterization as massive failures. They are creating chaos then blaming the Democrats for allowing it to happen.

The narrative is gelling — the Democrats are both hapless and ruthless and must be replaced by principled, conservative “grown-ups.” We’ve been here before.

And consider what’s driving these principled, conservative “grown-ups” this time:

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Coup de grâce

by digby

Last fall, I wrote:

Stupak is clearly trying to tank health care reform and think that abortion rights are the way to do it. But it’s really win win for them, either way. If it doesn’t tank the bill completely, it will likely be because the Democrats refuse to fight for abortion coverage, so the anti-choice zealots win a big one even if some form of withered health care reform passes.

Guess what?

Rep. Bart Stupak doesn’t plan to vote for Congress’s latest health overhaul package – and abortion isn’t the only reason why. The Michigan Democrat became a pivotal player in the health debate last fall when he threatened to sink the bill because it didn’t exclude insurance coverage of abortion from government-subsidized health plans. In recent days, he’s reiterated that he objects to the Senate’s more-lenient treatment of abortion coverage that would almost certainly be part of any final health legislation. In an interview today, Stupak said abortion isn’t the only issue that will keep him from voting for the Senate bill if Speaker Nancy Pelosi brings it to the House floor. “It’d be very hard to vote for this bill even if they fixed the abortion language,” he said. Asked whether there was any way he would vote for the current package, he had one word: “Nope.”

Stupak has been a bad faith player from the beginning.

Abortion-rights activists regard Stupak as “obsessed,” motivated by religious beliefs, and unwilling to compromise. They allege that he may not truly support the president’s effort to overhaul the health-care system, pointing out his ties to groups like Focus on the Family and the National Right to Life Committee, which opposed the expansion of S-CHIP, the state program that provides health care to poor children.

And he’s lying now when he says he can’t vote for health care reform because it isn’t generous enough. He’s done nothing but obstruct the thing from the beginning because he is owned by social conservatives who obsess over blastocysts but don’t even pretend to care about actual humans.

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Tweeting Meanie

The Queen Bee may have been demoted to nothing more than an common filthy blogger, but she still gets the last word:

Desiree Rogers resigned as White House Social secretary this week when she realized her job was not SOCIAL secretary but social SECRETARY.

Oh snap. If only she still had a newspaper column, she could have written yet another in her series about uppity upstarts from “somewhere else” whom she ran out of town, their tails between their legs. Now she’ll have to content herself with tweeting into the ether or writing a post for her blog “On Faith” which requires her to desperately try to tie her nasty little back biting into God’s work. It’s tough.

ht to atrios

Let them Eat HoHos

by digby

It looks like the Republicans really are helping that lunatic Bunning. And they are letting their aristocratic slips show:

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting “because people are being paid even though they’re not working.” Unemployment insurance “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” Kyl said during debate over whether unemployment insurance and other benefits that expired amid GOP objections Sunday should be extended. “I’m sure most of them would like work and probably have tried to seek it, but you can’t argue that it’s a job enhancer. If anything, as I said, it’s a disincentive. And the same thing with the COBRA extension and the other extensions here,” said Kyl.

Of course. It’s fair to assume that most people are rolling in all the dough that’s left over from that 400 bucks a week after they’ve paid their COBRA extension. Why should they give up the high life?

I will grant him this much. If you take away unemployment insurance and health care coverage in a time when more than a tenths of the population are looking for work, it will incentivize quite a few of people — to commit crimes. People have to eat.

Maybe someone needs to send Kyl a copy of Les Miserables.

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Gold Plated Piranhas

by digby

Yesterday I wrote about how Chris Dodd has agreed to put the erstwhile independent Financial Consumer Protection Agency under the Treasury dept. I speculated that he did this not so much because of Republican recalcitrance but rather to please Wall Street, which doesn’t really want this agency to begin with, but will acquiesce as long as it will be staffed with “professionals,” preferably at the Fed or the OCC. I mused that Treasury might be a very nice faux compromise since it is staffed with may of the fine “professionals” preferred by the money men.

Lo and behold:

March 1, 2010 Advisors to Geithner, Paulson Join The Cypress Group; Open New York, Dallas Offices (Washington, D.C) — One of the first senior-level officials to leave the Obama Treasury Department is headed to The Cypress Group, a financial services lobbying and consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. Damon Munchus, who served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Banking and Finance in Treasury’s Office of Legislative Affairs, will open the firm’s New York office as a Managing Director. The Cypress Group will also open an office in Dallas headed by Managing Director Jeb Mason, who served as the as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Business Affairs under Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. With these additions, The Cypress Group now employs former senior-level advisors to the past three Secretaries of the Treasury as well as Secretary Geithner. At the Treasury Department, Mr. Munchus'[s] responsibilities included acting as principal liaison between the U.S. Congress and Treasury regarding financial institutions and capital markets, counseling senior Treasury officials on all pending financial matters, and creating and directing legislative strategy in order to achieve the Administration’s goals before Congress. Prior to his Treasury Department position, Mr. Munchus served as a member of President Obama’s FDIC Review Transition Team, a Vice President within the Investment Banking Division of Jefferies and Co., and a senior financial analyst for credit portfolio strategies at Fannie Mae. Mr. Mason, who served as Policy Advisor to Secretary Paulson, was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by the Secretary for his contributions during the financial crisis. Prior to joining Treasury, Mr. Mason served the White House as Associate Director for Strategic Initiatives, advising senior White House staff and Cabinet officials on a myriad of issues including tax, budget, economic, and international issues.

Update: From Jamie Dimon’s mouth to Dodd’s ear. They’re going to put it in the Fed.

Why even bother?

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Thanks Jim

by digby

From McClatchy

Hazardous Duty

by digby

Apparently, the anti-government types have decided that average Joe IRS workers are all “little Eichmans:”

Hazardous materials crews and the FBI were on the scene Monday at the IRS building in Ogden, Utah, where several people were subjected to decontamination showers. Two people were taken out of the building on stretchers for “medical emergencies,” but their conditions “do not appear to be related to this incident,” said the the FBI, which is leading the investigation. It released no further details. The IRS confirmed that “an unknown substance” was discovered but also gave no further details. Local news reports suggested that a suspicious white powder may have been found in mail delivered to the facility.

Being a government worker is becoming hazardous to your health.

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