Month: November 2010

New Rule: Don’t Step On Your Dogwhistle

by digby

I missed Bill Maher’s commentary about sane vs insane last night, but from the transcript it sounds great. (Too bad he found it necessary to diss Markos and Grayson a couple of weeks ago for using the “T” word and then went on the next week about how frightened he is that Mohammed is a popular baby name in England. But consistency isn’t his strong suit.)

But I do think he’s right:

And finally, New Rule, if you’re going to have a rally where hundreds of thousands of people show up, you might as well go ahead and make it about something. With all due respect to my friends Jon and Stephen, it seems to me that if you truly wanted to come down on the side of restoring sanity and reason, you’d side with the sane and the reasonable, and not try to pretend that the insanity is equally distributed in both parties. Keith Olbermann is right, when he says he’s not the equivalent of Glenn Beck. One reports facts, the other one is very close to playing with his poop. And the big mistake of modern media has been this notion of balance for balance’s sake, that the left is just as violent and cruel as the right, that unions are just as powerful as corporations, that reverse racism is just as damaging as racism. There’s a difference between a mad man, and a madman. Now, getting over 200,000 people to come to a liberal rally is a great achievement, and gave me hope. And what I really loved about it was that it was twice the size of the Glenn Beck crowd on the Mall in August! Although it weighed the same. But the message of the rally, as I heard it, was that if the media would just stop giving voice to the crazies on both sides, then maybe we could restore sanity. It was all non-partisan, and urged cooperation with the moderates on the other side, forgetting that Obama tried that, and found out there are no moderates on the other side. When Jon announced his rally, he said that the national conversation is dominated by people on the right who believe Obama’s a socialist, and people on the left who believe 9/11 was an inside job. But I can’t name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11 was an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama’s a socialist? All of them! McCain, Boehner, Cantor, Palin, all of them! It’s now official Republican dogma, like tax cuts pay for themselves, and gay men just haven’t met the right woman. As another example of both sides using overheated rhetoric, Jon cited the right equating Obama with Hitler, and the left calling Bush a war criminal. Except thinking Obama is like Hitler is utterly unfounded, but thinking Bush is a war criminal? That’s the opinion of General Anthony Taguba, who headed the Army’s investigation into Abu Ghraib. You see, Republicans keep staking out a position that is further and further right, and then demand Democrats meet them in the middle, which is now not the middle anymore. That’s the reason health care reform is so watered down; it’s Bob Dole’s old plan from 1994. Same thing with cap-and-trade; it was the first President Bush’s plan to deal with carbon emissions. Now the Republican plan for climate change is to claim it’s a hoax. But it’s not. I know that because I’ve lived in L.A. since ’83, and there’s been a change in the city: I can see it now. All of us who live out here have had that experience. Oh look, there’s a mountain there! Government, led by liberal Democrats, passed laws which changed the air I breathe for the better. OK, I’m for them! And not for the party that is, as we speak, plotting to abolish the EPA. And I don’t need to pretend that both sides have a point here. And I don’t care what left or right commentators say about it; I only care what climate scientists say about it. Two opposing sides don’t necessarily have two compelling arguments. Martin Luther King spoke on that Mall in the capitol, and he didn’t say, “Remember folks, those Southern sheriffs with the fire hoses and the German shepherds, they have a point too!” No, he said, “I have a dream, they have a nightmare!” This isn’t Team Edward and Team Jacob. Liberals, like the ones on that field, must stand up and be counted, and not pretend that we’re as mean or greedy or short-sighted or just plain batshit as they are. And if that’s too polarizing for you, and you still want to reach across the aisle and hold hands and sing with someone on the right, try church!

Obviously, everyone knows where I stand on this. But I have to defend Stewart and Colbert just a little. The whole rally wasn’t about false equivalency. Indeed, as I wrote at the time, the ironic subtext was a clear and piercing dogwhistle to the liberal tribe throughout. Those of us who follow liberal politics, and especially their shows, knew exactly who they were talking about. Even their silly, off tune song was dripping with sarcasm:

Mr. STEPHEN COLBERT:(Singing)I love America from USA to USZ. Mr. JON STEWART: (Singing)I’d marry Uncle Sam if I could do it legally. Mr. COLBERT: (Singing) I lull myself to sleep at night by counting detainees. Mr. STEWART: (Singing) I use French words like croissant and bourgeoisie. Mr. COLBERT: (Singing) I love NASCAR halftime shows with tons of TNT. Mr. STEWART: (Singing) My hybrid electric scooter gets 100 mpg. Mr. COLBERT and Mr. STEWART: (Singing) From gay men who like football, to straight men who like “Glee.” Mr. COLBERT: (Singing) From the shores of Idaho to the shores of Kentucky… Mr. COLBERT and Mr. STEWART: (Singing) …there’s no one more American… Mr. STEWART: (Singing) …there’s no one more compassionate… Mr. COLBERT and Mr. STEWART: (Singing) …there’s no one more American than we.

But at the end they took a wrong turn with the media equivalence and Jon got all earnest, as he is sometimes wont to do, and they ended up stepping all over the message they had up to then (with the exception of that stupid Kid Rock song) successfully conveyed throughout.

Stewart really does seem to believe that there’s some happy “middle” where most people live. But I think he believes that middle is pretty much like him. And that just isn’t true. People disagree, for real. Yes, we all put aside our politics at work because we have to in order to keep our jobs. And social mores require that we not break into heated political arguments all the time at the kids’ soccer practice. Our political disagreements haven’t made the society devolve into total anarchy (yet.) But the fact is that there are competing ideologies and philosophies at work in this country about how to govern ourselves. Denying that doesn’t make it go away. We can certainly argue for days about the best way to wage the battle, but a battle it is.

I think what disappointed me about Stewart’s closing was that I thought he’d staged a pretty nice gathering of the liberal tribe, replete with its hipster irony and inside jokes and recognizable signs of solidarity. No, it’s not “We Shall Overcome” but it is a response to the kooks on the right and it’s not an invalid way for the true believers to communicate with each other. (God knows the other side has no problem practically speaking in tongues amongst themselves.) No, nobody explicitly called for people to vote, but I think it’s fairly clear that anyone who watches Stewart and Colbert are engaged in politics enough to know that an election was imminent.

The problem was that by calling out both sides at the end, he sent a signal to the Villagers that their false equivalence, he said/she said, above it all, “view from nowhere” approach to politics was correct and I think that’s a shame. The right doesn’t give a damn about this phony construct and the only ones who lose are the liberals. Olberman under fire for being explicitly political is a good example of where that leads.

Anyway, I think Maher and Stewart and especially Colbert are brilliant political observers and satirists — the best communicators our side has — but they sometimes succumb to the same conceits to which all of us liberals have a tendency to succumb: the overriding desire to prove that we aren’t hypocrites. The problem is that everybody is a hypocrite on some level. And one thing Americans all obviously do agree on is that hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder.

Update: Woid in the comments makes a good point:

I watched the Maher show on Friday. The New Rule was funny and to the point. I absolutely agree with what he has to say about false equivalency — but there’s an interesting bit of context that’s worth mentioning. The commentary came at the end of a show where one of Maher’s panelists (and one who’s been a guest of his many times) was that reprehensible Replicant Representative Darrell Issa. (Issa is one of the worst. For details, look at some of Howie Klein’s posts over at Down With Tyranny.) Issa will be the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee. In that role, he’ll be conducting many the bogus “investigations” of the Obama administration that are sure to come next year. He’s already announced his intentions in that area, so we can expect a lot of show trials and Fox fodder coming from his committee. Maher did some needling and sparring with Issa, but basically let him evade questions and spout the usual evasive right-wing bullshit, accompanied by lame jokes and big happy grins. Maher pressed him to say that impeachment would be “off the table,” Pelosi-style. Issa wouldn’t say that, and for good reason. Maher almost always has right-wingers on the panel, sometimes two or even three out of three. I guess he thinks he’s matching wits with them and winning — but they don’t play that game. They do the usual, getting their message out by blatantly lying, and by out-shouting any dissenters. Maher rarely has the facts on hand to call them on their bullshit, so they get away with it. He’s enabling these people, giving them yet another platform, and acting like it’s all in good fun. If he wants to have right-wingers as “friends of the show,” fine — it’s his show. But to follow up his jokey non-confrontation with Issa by putting down Colbert & Stewart the way he did… well, there oughta be a New Rule against that.

He’s got a point.

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Credit Gangsters

by digby

Even in good times, the lowest scum in the credit business are the debt collectors. In times like these they must be proliferating like a virus and I’ve been wondering when we’d start hearing stories like this:

Attorney General Tom Corbett today announced that a consumer protection lawsuit has been filed against an Erie debt collection company accused of using deceptive tactics to mislead, confuse or coerce consumers – including the use of bogus “hearings” allegedly held in a company office that was decorated to look like a courtroom.Corbett said the civil lawsuit was filed by the Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection against Unicredit America Inc., with corporate and business offices located at 1537 West 39th St., Erie, also identified as the “Unicredit Debt Resolution Center.””This is an unconscionable attempt to use fake court proceedings to deceive, mislead or frighten consumers into making payments or surrendering valuables to Unicredit without following lawful procedures for debt collection,” Corbett said. “Consumers also allegedly received dubious ‘hearing notices’ and letters – often hand-delivered by individuals who appear to be Sheriff Deputies – which implied they would be taken into custody by the Sheriff if they failed to appear at the phony court for ‘hearings’ or ‘depositions’.”Corbett said that in conjunction with the lawsuit, the Attorney General’s Office has also filed a petition for special and preliminary injunction, asking the court to freeze all Unicredit assets; prohibit the company from engaging in any debt collection; immediately cease all bogus hearings or depositions; and to provide detailed information about company bank accounts, assets and business records.According to the lawsuit, fictitious court proceedings were used to intimidate consumers into providing access to bank accounts, making immediate payments or surrendering vehicle titles and other assets – sometimes dispatching Unicredit employees to consumers’ homes in order to retrieve documents or have consumers sign payment agreements.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. If mortgage companies are stealing people’s homes out from under them, imagine what these sleazebags are doing to people all over the country. After all, the debt has been signed over to them and, unlike banks or credit card companies, they have no reputation or other businesses to protect. Their only job is coercing broke people to give them money. I’d imagine it’s quite a “market” at the moment. The New York Times did a short story on it last week:

When Michael Gazzarato took a job that required him to sign hundreds of affidavits in a single day, he had one demand for his employer: a much better pen. “They tried to get me to do it with a Bic, and I wasn’t going — I wasn’t having it,” he said. “It was bad when I had to use the plastic Papermate-type pen. It was a nightmare.” The complaint could have come from any of the autograph marathoners in the recent mortgage foreclosure mess. But Mr. Gazzarato was speaking at a deposition in a 2007 lawsuit against Asset Acceptance, a company that buys consumer debts and then tries to collect. His job was to sign affidavits, swearing that he had personally reviewed and verified the records of debtors — a time-consuming task when done correctly. Sound familiar? Banks have been under siege in recent weeks for widespread corner-cutting in the rush to process delinquent mortgages. The accusations have stirred outrage and set off investigations by attorneys general across the country, prompting several leading banks to temporarily cease foreclosures. But lawyers who defend consumers in debt-collection cases say the banks did not invent the headless, assembly-line approach to financial paperwork. Debt buyers, they say, have been doing it for years. “The difference is that in the case of debt buyers, the abuses are much worse,” says Richard Rubin, a consumer lawyer in Santa Fe, N.M. “At least when it comes to mortgages, the banks have the right address, everyone agrees about the interest rate. But with debt buyers, the debt has been passed through so many hands, often over so many years, that a lot of time, these companies are pursuing the wrong person, or the charges have no lawful basis.” The debt in these cases — typically from credit cards, auto loans, utility bills and so on — is sold by finance companies and banks in a vast secondary market, bundled in huge portfolios, for pennies on the dollar. Debt buyers often hire collectors to commence a campaign of insistent letters and regular phone calls. Or, in a tactic that is becoming increasingly popular, they sue.

And keep in mind that as with the foreclosure fraud issue, according to this Federal Trade Commission report from a couple of months back called Repairing a Broken System, it’s very hard to assert your rights if you’ve been improperly targeted:

Creditors and collectors seek to recover on consumer debts through the use of litigation and arbitration. Based on its extensive analysis, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or “Commission”), the nation’s consumer protection agency, concludes that neither litigation nor arbitration currently provides adequate protection for consumers. The system for resolving disputes about consumer debts is broken. To fix the system, the FTC believes that federal and state governments, the debt collection industry, and other stakeholders should make a variety of significant reforms in litigation and arbitration so that the system is both efficient and fair.

I guess nobody feels sorry for people who have racked up credit card debt and are being harassed by thugs and charlatans so I have a feeling that we’re going to hear a lot about “moral hazard” and how people shouldn’t have gotten themselves into debt in the first place. We seem to be in an ugly age in which the only time people feel good about their situation is when their neighbor’s is worse.

But everyone should keep an eye on this one. As noted above, one of the big problems is that a large amount of the data is wrong and even fine upstanding, morally superior people are getting caught in this maw. And as the FTC reports, the system for straightening these mistakes out is broken. It could happen to anyone of us.

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Republican Dirty Tricks? No Way

by digby

This is just a useful reminder for anyone who forgets how the Republican dirty tricksters operate. Remember this?

Recall that nobody knew who those kids were and Democrats immediately accused the GOP of engineering the meltdown. And every single Republican in town swore they had nothing to do with it.

Well, in its in-depth report of the two year Republican campaign to take back congress NY Times reports today:

They also tried to push Democrats into retirement, using what was described in the presentation as “guerilla tactics” like chasing Democratic members down with video cameras and pressing them to explain votes or positions. (One target, Representative Bob Etheridge of North Carolina, had to apologize for manhandling one of his inquisitors in a clip memorialized on YouTube. Only this week did Republican strategists acknowledge they were behind the episode.)

There’s a reason why right wingers always accuse Democrats of “inciting” and “provoking” them purposefully embarrass them into behaving like bloodthirsty creeps and it’s because it’s what they do. Embarrassing Democrats in front of the press, pushing their buttons, setting them up, along with classic rat-fucking is their stock in trade and has been for a very long time. You’d think everyone would be on to them by now.

More here.

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No Stomach For The Fox Hunt

by digby

Am I the only one who finds it just a little bit interesting that every time the political zeitgeist turns, MSNBC seems to shift ideological direction? I guess there’s a reason why their new slogan is “Lean Forward” (which could be interpreted as something a little bit cruder…)

I have no idea what really went on with Olberman but I suspect it may have had at least something to do with our one-sided obsession lately with “civility.” He did, after all, suspend his “worst person in the world” segment last week although that may have been entirely his decision. I sense that there are misgivings about the strong anti-rightwing slant of an Olbermann or Shultz (as opposed to the populist, pox-on-both-their-houses approach of Uyger or Ratigan) and that they may be afraid of the financial consequences of being too hostile to the GOP.

Given the mores of the Village, I also expect that they do not like being seen as the liberal answer to Fox. Fox doesn’t mind being Fox, because it was created as an alternative to the mainstream media with a goal of advancing an ideological message (even though they wink and nod and pretend otherwise.) But the rest of the media have been fighting the “liberal” label for so long that they reflexively recoil and withdraw when they are accused of it, and especially when they are accused of being shrill and uncivil about it. In other words, they don’t have the guts to stake out a real position and when they see uncomfortable comparisons between themselves and “the crazies” they back off. It’s the oldest working the ref play in the book.

I don’t watch Olberman all that often, mostly because of my schedule, but I think he — or someone like him — is a necessary part of the media landscape in this era. He’s a bombastic gasbag for sure, but he brings a point of view that’s not seen elsewhere in the cable universe. And the problem is that if MSNBC doesn’t want to carry that point of view, who will? .

Sadly, all the MSNBC hosts will undoubtedly be aware — if only subliminally — that regardless of Olberman’s eccentricities, the fact that the bosses are clipping his wings over something they could have technically overlooked (“it’s an opinion show”) is a message, particularly since he was getting good ratings. They don’t have a whole lot of rope and I’m sure they know it.

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Meet The Freshman Class

by digby

Here’s my favorite new freshman (so far.) He’s so far to the right that he made the right wing Walt Minnick look like Lynn Woolsey. He’s so far to the right, he actually beat a tea partier endorsed by Sarah Palin. And when you look at his record and his positions, he’s the quintessential teabagger.

Theocrat Bryan Fischer’s favorite teabagger, Raul Labrador from Idaho’s, got it all. From Right Wing Watch:

Labrador made his right-wing views clear when he announced his campaign in an email “to a former Idaho blogger known for his extreme conservative views.” He supports withdrawing the US from the United Nations, returning to the Gold Standard, and eliminating the Department of Education. Labrador even wants to repeal the 17th Amendment and end the right of voters to elect their Senators, bizarrely saying that it is “the constitutional position to take” and the only way to make sure “that US Senators are actually beholden to the people.”

In the State House, Labrador said he will work “tirelessly to defund and repeal Obamacare” and spearheaded the passage of a bill which compels the Attorney General to challenge the health care reform law in federal court and bars the government from mandating coverage. When speaking to radio talk show host Laura Ingraham, Labrador maintained that the law was “historic, but remember, Benedict Arnold was also historic, he betrayed our nation. And I think the Democratic Party betrayed our nation yesterday as well.” An anti-government zealot, he backed bills which seek to reaffirm Idaho’s sovereignty from the federal government, to limit “Congress’ power under the commerce clause,” and to stop the federal government from enforcing gun laws. He won support from the Religious Right community and the American Family Association’s director of public policy and talk show host Bryan Fischer, who compared gays to terrorists and believes that Muslims should be prohibited from building mosques in the US, called Labrador his “good friend” and the two hosted Tea Party rallies together. Labrador voted to make the federal government “provide for the presence of God in the public domain,” supports the ban on openly gay and lesbian soldiers from serving in the military, and opposes same-sex marriage rights. The Family Research Council Action PAC ran radio ads endorsing Labrador, who supported him as a result of his 100% anti-choice record: he voted to allow medical professionals to refuse contraceptives, voted in favor of increasing burdens on women seeking to terminate their pregnancy, and lauds his opposition to abortion in all cases. Penny Nance of the far-right Concerned Women for America showered praise on Labrador, the National Right to Life Committee extolled his “exemplary pro-life record,” and he was a principal legislative ally of Idaho Chooses Life. A proponent of corporate interests, Labrador wants to scrap the progressive income tax in favor of a national sales tax, supports the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, and signed Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge. Even though he opposes the Stimulus, as a State Representative he repeatedly voted in favor of spending federal money provided by the Stimulus. On immigration, Arizona’s notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio endorsed Labrador, who has said that illegal immigrants are “going to have to self-deport.”

And are you surprised to learn that he hails from the district which was the former home of the Aryan nation? Like I said, he’s got it all.

These are the people Jim DeMint is going to be recruiting to his Teabag army and they might not end up as amenable to the Big Money agenda as the GOP assumes. Mind, it’s not because they object to big money — it’s because DeMint is trying to build up his faction for a run at the majority and possibly the presidency. He needs money, but he’s not your usual political whore. This could get very interesting if he gets too far our of hand.

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Now We’re Talking

by digby

Pelosi staying as minority leader is terrific of course, for many reasons. But the symbolic “fuck you” to the wingnut creeps of both parties who ran against her and her long-haired, world series winning, San Francisco liberal ways is awesome. But this is beyond my grandest hopes. Dday reports:

Could Nancy Pelosi’s decision to return as Minority Leader of the Democratic caucus end up squeezing Steny Hoyer out of the leadership entirely?

It looks possible. Hoyer may have been banking on Pelosi exiting quietly, with him moving from Majority Leader to Minority Leader. However, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the Majority Whip the past two Congresses, announced his intention to run for Minority Whip, traditionally the chief vote-counter of the caucus but also the #2 in command.

There should be a price to be paid for Blue Dogs crashing and burning and that’s the right one. Hoyer has no business being in the leadership now that he only leads a handful of fake Democrats. The caucus is much more progressive and they’re going to have to be cohesive and confrontational to do anything. Hoyer is not suited to that job since he sees himself as a GOP facilitator.

And Clyburn makes the “traditional conservatives” (if you know what I mean) absolutely crazy.

It’s possible that the minority Democrats are now going to be a real opposition party in the House. It’s impossible to know if they’ll have the stomach to confront Obama if he wants to make deals with Boehner, but there’s an excellent opportunity here to start drawing some real contrasts and making the Republicans show their true colors.

*For a good overview of how this could play well for progressives, read Ari Berman’s NY Times op-ed, called Boot the Blue Dogs. And read his great book about the netroots movementHerding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics.

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Economic Viagra

by digby

Here’s the Chief of Staff Pete Rouse:

[I]n a rare interview in September before his selection, he insisted Mr. Obama’s first two years would be judged well by history, but lamented that the economic crisis forced a series of actions that fueled the image of a traditional Democrat, even while staving off a depression.

“If we’d had our druthers,” Mr. Rouse said, “starting out with a $787 billion spending program that people don’t think benefited them, that reinforced the idea of big-spending liberal, isn’t the option we would have chosen, but it was what was called for.”

Another way of looking at it might have been that “traditional Democrats” always have to clean up after the catastrophes the “small government” conservatives create with their greed and irresponsibility whenever they get the reins of power. It happens over and over again, and for some reason the Democrats seem to prefer being treated like doormats instead of standing up for their philosophy.

If big spending liberals would spend half the time defending their tradition and principles that they spend apologizing for them, they might not have so many problems. But that assumes that the principles I attribute to them are their principles. At this point, it’s not evident that they are.

I’ll let Krugman explain again how we got to this juncture:

The aftermath of major financial crises is almost always terrible: severe crises are typically followed by multiple years of very high unemployment. And when Mr. Obama took office, America had just suffered its worst financial crisis since the 1930s. What the nation needed, given this grim prospect, was a really ambitious recovery plan.

Could Mr. Obama actually have offered such a plan? He might not have been able to get a big plan through Congress, or at least not without using extraordinary political tactics. Still, he could have chosen to be bold — to make Plan A the passage of a truly adequate economic plan, with Plan B being to place blame for the economy’s troubles on Republicans if they succeeded in blocking such a plan.

But he chose a seemingly safer course: a medium-size stimulus package that was clearly not up to the task. And that’s not 20/20 hindsight. In early 2009, many economists, yours truly included, were more or less frantically warning that the administration’s proposals were nowhere near bold enough.

Worse, there was no Plan B. By late 2009, it was already obvious that the worriers had been right, that the program was much too small. Mr. Obama could have gone to the nation and said, “My predecessor left the economy in even worse shape than we realized, and we need further action.” But he didn’t. Instead, he and his officials continued to claim that their original plan was just right, damaging their credibility even further as the economy continued to fall short.

Meanwhile, the administration’s bank-friendly policies and rhetoric — dictated by fear of hurting financial confidence — ended up fueling populist anger, to the benefit of even more bank-friendly Republicans. Mr. Obama added to his problems by effectively conceding the argument over the role of government in a depressed economy.

We are politically worse off than we were before unless something magical happens and the economy turns itself around quickly. And this is a direct result of money in the system (for which Democrats feel they have to compete in order to compete) and, I think, the transition from accommodation to neo-liberalism for political reasons to true belief among the liberal intelligentsia.

The only way I can reconcile what Krugman says above (and what I think is about to happen) is that the administration and the top leadership of the Democratic Party truly do not believe in Keynesianism anymore except as a convenient excuse for tax cuts which are now seen as supernatural confidence potions. Economic Viagra. (If you look at the Europeans you can see the same thing, which I suspect is also driving the unsure and directionless Obama’s acquiesence to an austerity agenda.)

They are all magical thinkers now, which explains why Paul Krugman seems to be somewhat frantic and very, very worried. As we all should be. Peter Rouse’s apology for using government to stave off economic catastrophe says it all.

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Griftopia

by tristero

I just finished reading Matt Taibbi’s newest book, Griftopia, and it’s wonderful. Taibbi has a bloggy sense of outrage and a Heifetz-level virtuosity in the proper employment of profanity to advance an argument. He is also, despite his occasional digs (most well-deserved) – a liberal. He is mostly, though, one helluva talented reporter. Matt’s political/cultural beat for Rolling Stone has given him an opportunity to write in a thoroughly cynical voice but to do so, oddly enough, with an utterly sincere astonishment. Not too many people can pull off something as contradictory as that and make it seem perfectly natural – it really does take a kind of genius.

Here is an extraordinarily succinct – and outraged, and thoroughly entertaining – summary of the housing crisis:

…Almost everyone who touched that mountain turned out to be a crook of some kind. The mortgage brokers systematically falsified information on loan applications in order to secure bigger loans and hawked explosive option-ARM mortgages to people who either didn’t understand them or, worse, did understand them and simply never intended to pay. The loan originators cranked out massive volumes of loans with plainly doctored applications, not giving a shit about whether or not the borrowers could pay, in a desperate search for short-term rebates and fees. The securitizers used harebrained math to turn crap mortgages into AAA-rated investments; the ratings agencies slgned off on that harebrained math and handed out those AAA ratings in order to keep the fees coming in and the bonuses for their executives high. But even the ratings agencies were blindsided by scammers who advertised and sold, openly, help in rigging FICO scores to make broke and busted borrowers look like good credit risks. The corrupt ratings agencies were undone by ratings corrupters!

Meanwhile, investment banks tried to stick pensioners and insurance companies with their toxic investments, or else they held on to their toxic investments and tried to rip off idiots like [AIG sleazeball] Joe Cassano by sticking him with the liability of default. But they were undone by the fact that Joe Cassano probably never even intended to pay off, just like the thousands of homeowners who bought too-big houses with optionARM mortgages and never intended to pay. And at the tail end of all this frantic lying, cheating, and scamming on all sides, during which time no good jobs were created and nothing except a few now-empty houses (good for nothing except depressing future home prices) got built, the final result is that we all ended up picking up the tab, subsidizing all this crime and dishonesty and pessimism as a matter of national policy.

We paid for this instead of a generation of health insurance, or an alternative energy grid, or a brand-new system of roads and highways. With the $13-plus trillion we are estimated to ultimately spend on the bailouts, We could not only have bought and paid off every single subprime mortgage in the country (that would only have cost $1.4 trillion), we could have paid off every remaining mortgage of any kind in this country-and still have had enough money left over to buy a new house for every American who does not already have one.

But we didn’t do that, and we didn’t spend the money on anything else useful, either. Why? For a very good reason. Because we’re no good anymore at building bridges and highways or coming up with brilliant innovations in energy or medicine. We’re shit now at finishing massive public works projects or launching brilliant fairy-tale public policy ventures like the moon landing.

What are we good at? Robbing what’s left. When it comes to that, we Americans have no peer. And when it came time to design the bailouts, a monster collective project spanning two presidential administrations that was every bit as vast and far-reaching (only not into the future but the past)) as Kennedy’s trip to the moon, we showed It.

Taibbi’s attitude towards the political landscape of America in the Third Millenium is, in some ways, similar to Thomas Frank’s, that there’s a bait and switch being pulled, that the real action is not the social issues – it never is – but rather the money. The looting of America by the Biggest, Ballsiest Crooks Ever is the only genuinely important story. For Taibbi, the teabaggers’ racism, sexism, xenophobia, libertarianism, and other extremisms seem to serve much the same function as geologists see for trees and grass: sure, it’s striking sometimes, but ultimately, it’s merely hair that covers the bald truth about the world. I’m not sure I entirely agree – but damn, when you read Matt describe what’s really been going on, without any sugar coating or euphemisms, and with that throat-slittingly sharp style… damn if Taibbi doesn’t have a point:

Here’s the real punch line. After playing an intimate role in three historic bubble catastrophes, after helping $5 trillion in wealth disappear from the NASDAQ in the early part of the 2000s, after pawning off thousands of toxic mortgages on pensioners and cities, after helping drive the price of gas up above $4.60 a gallon for half a year, and helping 100 million new people around the world join the ranks of the hungry, and securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in the year 2008?

Fourteen million dollars.

That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008: an effective tax rate of exactly 1, read it, one, percent. The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and bonuses that year and made a profit above $2 billion, and yet it paid the government less than a third of what it paid Lloyd Blankfein, who made $42.9 million in 2008.

How is this possible? According to its annual report, the low taxes are due in large part to changes in the bank’s “geographic earnings mix.” In other words, the bank moved its money around so that all of it earnings took place in foreign countries with low tax rates. Thanks to our completely fucked corporate tax system, companies like Goldman can ship their revenues offshore and defer taxes on those revenues indefinitely, even while they claim deductions up front on that same untaxed income. This is why any corporation with an at least occasionally sober accountant can usually find a way to pay no taxes at all. A Government Accountability Office report, in fact, found that between 1998 and 2005, two-thirds of all corporations operating in the United States paid no taxes at all.

This should be a pitchfork-level outrage- but somehow, when Goldman released its postbailout tax profile, barely anyone said a word: Congressman LLoyd Doggett of Texas was one of the few to remark upon the obscenity. “With the right hand begging for bailout money,” he said, “the left is hiding it offshore.”

Finally, I thought I’d leave you with Taibbi’s inspiring conclusion. It’s as pure an expression of the unshakeable faith Matt Taibbi has in the capability of America’s citizens to dig itself out of the mess the Biggest Assholes In The Universe created as ever we are likely to read:

…a country whose citizens purport to be mad as hell about growing government influence has still said little to nothing about that bizarre sequence of events in which the entire economy was rebuilt via this series of back-alley state-brokered mergers, which left fInancial power in America in the hands of just a few mostly unaccountable actors on Wall Street. We still know very little about what really went on during this period, who was calling whom, what bank was promised what. We need to see phone records, e-mails, correspondence, the minutes of meetings to know what the likes of Paulson and Geithner and Bernanke were doing during those key stretches of 2008.

But we probably never will,because the country increasingly is forgetting that any of this took place. The ability of its citizens to lose focus so quickly and to be distracted by everything from Lebronamania to the immigration debate is part of what makes America so ripe for this particular type of corporate crime. We have voters who don’t pay attention, a news !media that ignores key subjects or willfully misunderstands them, and a regulatory environment that bends easily to lobbying and campaign financing efforts, And we’ve got a superpower’s worth of accumulated wealth for the taking,You put that all together, and what you get is a thieves’ paradise-a Griftopia.

HOTD

by digby

Sarah Palin complains about invasion of her privacy in the first episode of her new reality TV show.

In other news, she takes the Dancing With The Stars judges to task for criticizing her daughter’s dancing in public.

As it happens I had sympathy for her not wanting a reporter camped out in the house next door. She does have a right to some privacy. But when you star yourself and your family — and that home — in a reality TV show, I think you’ve pretty much given up the right to be self-righteous about it.

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“We will stop the liberal onslaught”

by digby

And here I thought they already had:

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