Month: July 2012

Goldman Sachs consolidates ill-gotten gains

by David Atkins

Goldman Sachs is getting into the business of being the bank of, by and for the 1%:

Goldman Sachs is building an in-house private bank to serve wealthy customers around the world as part of a cautious strategy to reshape its business, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The banking push, which has not been previously disclosed, will give Goldman more deposits, a source of low-cost funding less vulnerable to the vagaries of financial markets.

The new unit will also lend more directly to corporations, some of which already make investments and do business with Goldman. Bank executives have set a goal of $100 billion in loans, up from $12 billion at the end of March, the Journal said.

Goldman has no plans to open retail branches, build a network of automated teller machines, pitch credit cards or “give away toasters,” Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein told the Wall Street Journal.

Nifty move by Goldman. Start by driving the casino market’s reckless gambling to a fever pitch of leverage, then take a big government loan at no interest and clean up all the chips when everyone else loses their shirt. Dramatically increase the divide between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else, living high on the hog and believing that you’re doing God’s work.

Then once the gains of the 1% are most consolidated and the blackjack tables get a little too hot for comfort, offer nice, stable banking and investment services for the new plutonomic aristocracy.

It’s all perfectly legal, in the same sense that payday loan scammers, self-help cult leaders, bookies and porn kings do legal business. What’s more remarkable is that Goldman employees receive a greater level of respect, when in reality they do more damage to society than all of those professions combined.

.

Oh, fergawdsakes. What in the hell is Joe Klein talking about?

Indeed, that’s the Willie Horton argument building against Romney. Democrats were appalled by the Horton ads (the most devastating was produced by an “independent” committee, “unrelated” to the Bush campaign). They were, allegedly, racist. Horton was black. But they cut to the heart of a significant problem the Democratic Party had at the time: it was sort of soft on crime, in the midst of the post-Vietnam left’s “they’re depraved because they’re deprived” delusion. And Mitt Romney’s Willie Horton? His tax returns.

Huh? Is there any dispute about whether the Willie Horton ads were racist? And does Klein really still believe that the Democrats were “soft on crime”? Jesus, let’s do the time warp again.

The PBS documentary, Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, chronicles the life of Republican operative and campaign manager to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, Lee Atwater, who once said of Dukakis: “By the time I’m done … people will think Willie Horton is his running mate.” In the PBS film, former South Carolina state Sen. Tom Turnipseed stated of the Horton ads: “I think he was used primarily because he was black. Like Lee said before he died, you don’t call them ni**er, ni**er, ni**er anymore like you did 30 years ago. You know, you got to be more subtle than that. It wasn’t very subtle at all to me.”

Or to any other sentient being.

As for the soft on crime trope, it was a Republican strategy to entice northern white voters who were unnerved by the unrest among the you-know-who’s. It did succeed in making the Democrats eager to put even more people in jail than they already did, particularly as a result of their drug war, but that wasn’t saying much since they had already been quite eager to do it before. The whole thing was a political strategy to stoke racial animosity and fear. But hey, if Joe Klein doesn’t know that by now, he never will.

Apparently he believes the Willie Horton ad wasn’t racist, and because it represented the fact that Democrats really were soft on crime, Dukakis deserved the hit (not to mention black people.) Therefore, he thinks it’s also ok to demand to see Mitt’s tax returns because it represents that Republicans are all Masters of the Universe. (That’s going to be a stretch when it comes to Louis Gohmert, but ok …)

As racist as they wanna be

by digby

It never pays to give conservatives the benefit of the doubt.

Truth is, some conservatives lamented that he had indeed “grown” in office. He had gone out of his way to accommodate liberals and moderates, and to accommodate the Kremlin. He was raising taxes, spending like crazy, welcoming wetbacks, pursuing arms control. One common cry from the right was, “None of this would be happening if Ronald Reagan were alive.”

The term “welcoming wetbacks” was the offending passage, of course. And it is offensive. But my reaction to it was that he was speaking in the voice of a (crude) conservative of the time and not saying it himself. Obviously he should have put it in scare quotes and it would have been more clear, but I was willing to assume that he didn’t mean it to reflect his own, current vocabulary.

Look: I am not a politician. I’m a writer. And if you don’t like what I write — for heaven’s sake, there are 8 billion others you can click on. I would further say to the complainers, using a phrase I’ve never liked, frankly: Get a life. Get a frickin’ life.

One more word: If people wet their pants on seeing the word “wetback,” this country is as far gone as the most pessimistic and alarmist people say it is.

I think that clears it up.

How many racist writers does National Review employ anyway? They seem to come tumbling out of their closets every couple of months or so.

.

Brooks likes the nice little system that rewards him

by David Atkins

David Brooks, being his usual insufferably out-of-touch self, responds directly to Chris Hayes’ indictment of our failing “meritocracy”:

It’s a challenging argument but wrong. I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families. They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment. They work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room…

As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess. If you went to Groton a century ago, you knew you were privileged. You were taught how morally precarious privilege was and how much responsibility it entailed. You were housed in a spartan 6-foot-by-9-foot cubicle to prepare you for the rigors of leadership…

Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this.

If you read the e-mails from the Libor scandal you get the same sensation you get from reading the e-mails in so many recent scandals: these people are brats; they have no sense that they are guardians for an institution the world depends on; they have no consciousness of their larger social role.

The difference between the Hayes view and mine is a bit like the difference between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. He wants to upend the social order. I want to keep the current social order, but I want to give it a different ethos and institutions that are more consistent with its existing ideals.

Belief that only the wealthy work hard and prioritize their kids’ education? Check. Belief that the super-wealthy actually drive their own kids to preschool rather than having the nanny do it? Check. Belief that the Mitt Romneys of the world who take big paychecks for doing no work, work longer hours than people with two jobs? Check. Belief in boarding schools as the answer to Wall Street’s moral collapse? Check. Belief that the problem with society today is that young people and anti-authoritarians have too much influence? Check. Opposition to direct regulation in favor of vague talk of ethical transformations without any sort of plan to achieve those transformations? Check.

Wonkette’s response is delicious:

To be fair, if I churned out this kind of drivel a few times a week and had a four million dollar house to show for it, I’d probably want to keep the existing social order as well. So maybe David Brooks isn’t QUITE as stupid as his columns indicate. But yeah, totally. No need to regulate these elites; just TELL them how important they are, and how many Poors are affected by their decisions, and surely they’ll start acting with the magnanimity of their racist, sexist, anti-Semitic predecessors—now THEY had a moral code, amiright?

I’ll wager that a woman who leaves her abusive husband and works two jobs to take care of her kids works a lot harder and cares a lot more about her kids than Brooks does. The fact that Brooks remains on the New York Times payroll and does so well for himself churning out such garbage is Exhibit A in the evidentiary vault of our institutional moral decay.

.

QOTD: Junior Bush

Dear God, how did we survive it?

“Eight years was awesome and I was famous and I was powerful. But I have no desire for fame and power anymore.”

jayzuz.

.

Hustlers don’t change their spots. And Ralph Reed has been hustling since the day he met up with Abramoff and Grover Norquist three decades ago. In fact,the modern GOP, with all it’s ideological extremism and corporate submissiveness is substantially what it is today because of that triad of youthful political con men who gathered together during the Reagan administration and made over the party in their image.

Do yourself a favor and read Stan’s entire article. Whoever said there were no second acts in American life didn’t know about the Republican Party.

.

How to win over swing voters, by John McCain

Asked why he chose not to go with Romney, McCain said: “Oh come on, because we thought that Sarah Palin was the better candidate. Why did we not take [Tim] Pawlenty, why did we not take any of the other 10 other people. Why didn’t I? Because we had a better candidate, the same way with all the others. … Come on, why? That’s a stupid question.”

I don’t think he knows what he’s saying there, do you?

I would have thought that Palin would be worse than Romney in virtually every way, but I’ll take McCain’s word for it. He’s the one who vetted both of them and concluded that Mitt was second rate.

It isn’t just Pete Peterson, folks

by digby

Richard Eskow has a big piece at CAF today about the continuing assault on our intelligence by the “No Labels” crew of wealthy centrists. It’s worth reading in its entirety because we’re going to be confronted with the “sacrifice” (for average citizens) agenda again even before the election. (This is giving John Boehner heartburn apparently because he’s not sure he will be able to keep his crazies in line enough even to get a temporary extension.)

I’m just going to talk about this one little piece of the program:

There’s also Presidential “fast-track” authority, which the New York Times describes as “a proposal to allow the president to send legislation to Congress twice a year that could not be amended but only approved or rejected. .. By preventing lawmakers from changing such legislation, a president could get yes-or-no answers on his top priorities.”

How would this work? The Times interviewed former Clinton aide William Galson, who “suggested that one possible subject of fast-track authority could be the … the Simpson-Bowles plan (which) included a cornucopia of unpopular tax increases and spending cuts.” Adds the Times: “(U)nder this proposal Congress would have to accept or reject the whole plan.”

See what they did right there?

In fact, supporters of this ill-advised and unpopular austerity measure have already tried to “fast-track” it several times. Had the failed Simpson/Bowles Deficit Commission come up with a proposal, Congress had agreed to subject it to just such an up-or-down vote.

Simpson Bowles isn’t a single policy prescription. It’s a smorgasbord of radical ideas which include the aforementioned benefit cuts; lowering the top tax rate for America’s millionaires and billionaires; deep cuts to other government programs; and the elimination of unnamed tax deductions that could slash employer health plans while raising the costs of paying a mortgage and raising children. And yet Congress and the President wanted to see it submitted for a single up-or-down vote, with no opportunity for amendments or changes.

A “fast track” vote creates enormous pressure on lawmakers to fall in line and denies the public the opportunity to hear an open debate about each provision of a bill. In other words, it’s ideal for unjust, impractical, and unpopular 1% proposals like Simpson Bowles.

An up or down vote on such a broad range of right-wing austerity ideas would make a travesty of the (small-“d”) democratic process. In fact, I’ll support any politician who signs a pledge against it.

Neat trick and one that I hadn’t realized was being pushed hard by the deficit fetishists. It makes sense.

In researching the Simpson-Bowles fast track solution and came upon a group called the Moment of Truth project: the era of deficit denial is over. It turns out that this is Simpson and Bowles own group, which is out there preaching the gospel. That’s to be expected. I suppose it’s also to be expected that this is also a project of the New America Foundation, one of our most revered establishment think tanks.

This is the heart of the Village, the studious centrism that also erroneously defines the leftward end of political power in our country. Certainly many people who are associated with the liberal side of the dial are involved, although it’s almost impossible to find any liberal policies among the group’s recommendations.

In case there was any doubt which party is the party of plutocracy

by David Atkins

Some people want a secret plutocracy. Some people don’t:

The Senate has failed to advance legislation that would require independent groups to disclose the names of contributors who give more than $10,000 for use in political campaigns.

The measure, known as the DISCLOSE Act, died in a 51 to 44 vote on a procedural motion. It needed 60 votes to move forward.

Its failure was widely expected, but Democrats pushed for the vote, believing that Republicans will be politically damaged by their opposition to bringing new transparency to campaigns. The vote could also serve to energize the Democratic base, which has been exercised over the role they believe secret corporate donations are playing in the campaign.

To press the point, bill sponsor Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), will lead Senate Democrats in a “midnight vigil” Monday night, with floor speeches scheduled into the early morning. The goal is to hammer Republicans for blocking the bill and push for another vote on the measure Tuesday.

“We are determined to prove that transparency is not a radical concept,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.). “Our bill is as simple and straightforward as it gets – if you are making large donations to influence an election, the voters in that election should know who you are.”

Republicans say the measure could have a chilling affect on political giving, subjecting campaign donors to intimidation from their political opponents.

It’s easy to declare a pox on both houses and say that voting doesn’t matter and both parties are equally corrupt. It’s harder when the evidence to the contrary is so obvious.

As long as these people are willing to spend billions of dollars stealing elections and can get away with doing so under cover of total darkness, they don’t really care how many people march in the streets. The little people mean nothing to them. And even if worst comes to worst, it still won’t matter to them. After all, it’s not as if the villains will be anywhere in the remote vicinity of the revolution even if it were to ever come, which it won’t. They’ll already be safely in the arms of Dubai, Nassau, or any other welcoming city whose country has low taxes and little will to extradite. Armed revolutions usually accomplish little except the slaughter of the innocent.

The alternative, of course, is to vote and fight like hell within the confines of the democratic system. Even if the choices aren’t necessarily between good and evil, non-participation in the process is inexcusable when it’s so abundantly clear which side is the far greater evil.

.

Yearning to take the deal

by digby

[R]ather than forcing Republicans to bow to him, Mr. Norquist is the one who is increasingly isolated politically. […] The problem with the pledge is that it is powerless to prevent future automatic tax increases and has failed to restrain past spending. The “starve the beast” strategy to shrink the size of the federal government by cutting revenue but not spending was a disaster. Every dollar we borrow is a tax increase on the next generation.

And in a debt crisis, higher interest rates and the debasement of our currency would be additional tax hikes. In that sense, no one is doing more to violate the spirit of the pledge than Mr. Norquist himself, who is asking Republicans to reject the very type of agreement that could prevent future tax increases.

I think Coburn misunderstands Norquist’s intentions, but then he’s not the brightest bulb. However Coburn isn’t the only one bucking Norquist and I suspect that some of these others are seeing what we’ve been seeing for some time now — a willingness on the part of Democrats to slash the safety net programs in exchange for some minor tax increases on the wealthy and some phony loophole closing. That is the best deal they’ve ever been offered and some of them aren’t so stupid that they don’t know it. The Democrats, after all, are offering up their greatest political achievement. The Republicans would be offering up insignificant portion of the tax cuts that George W. Bush put through in 2001.

At some point they are going to take yes for an answer.

.