Month: January 2013

Equating deficits and climate is stupid

by David Atkins

Tom Friedman has a column today equating progressive resistance to deficit reduction to conservative resistance to carbon reduction. It’s a tempting parallel for a climate-aware centrist pundit to make. I myself even brought up a certain parallelism between the two issues a couple of days ago in the sense that American democracy is ill-equipped to handle long-term problems.

But there are a few enormous differences between the two. Pundits like Friedman claim that progressives don’t want to do anything about the deficit because interest rates are low at the moment, so the deficit “problem” won’t rear its head for quite a while. In this way we are compared to conservatives who refuse to act on climate change.

But that’s not the actual reason most progressives oppose short-term austerity. The big differences between the two issues are:

1) Unlike runaway greenhouse effects, deficits will mostly decline naturally with economic growth. The biggest cause of the major debt-to-GDP ratio increase since 2007 is not surprisingly the Great Recession. Most of that problem will disappear with a robust, demand-driven recovery. Yes, there are certain problems to solve as the population ages, but those are almost entirely due to rising healthcare costs that are best controlled with a universal single-payer system. In the case of deficits, the “problem” really will mostly resolve itself by doing nothing. Not so with climate, which will spin out of control if nothing is done.

2) From a political point of view, progressives don’t deny the deficit exists. We simply contend it’s not the crisis others are claiming, and that the “solutions” of the conservative crowd aren’t solutions at all. Conservatives who refuse to act on climate change don’t admit the problem but refuse to act because it’s a long-term problem: they are science deniers who refuse to acknowledge the existence of the problem in the first place. Further, the dire projections of Chicago-school economists are simply not as reliable as the dire projections of climate scientists.

3) Unlike the climate crisis, the deficit isn’t a force of nature but a political balance sheet issue can never be “solved.” As the experience of the Clinton presidency demonstrated, deficit problems solved by Democrats can easily be recreated by Republicans who pass tax cuts for the wealthy and conduct illegal foreign wars. Weaning the nation off of carbon is a far more permanent thing.

4) The proposed “solutions” to cutting the deficit won’t work. Cutting Medicare, Social Security and other programs important to the poor and middle class will simply increase economic insecurity and drive down demand, leading to double dip recessions and increased deficits. As Europe’s austerity-mad failures have shown, the touted “solution” to the deficit “problem” only makes it worse. Eliminating carbon emissions, on the other hand, is the straightforward solution to the climate crisis.

Attempting to equate deficit reduction and climate change mitigation is yet another attempt by centrist pundits to place the stock market and governmental balance sheet juggling on a par with the forces of nature. They aren’t. Markets and government investments are man-made, with malleable sets of rules. Nature isn’t so forgiving.

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Cutting hours to make a point

by digby

This is a shame:

A Taco Bell employee in Guthrie, Okla., is speaking out after the fast-food franchise cut her hours to avoid costs associated with Obamacare, reports News9.

For Johnna Davis, a single mother of three who saw her hours fall in December to 28 hours a week, the change not only means a smaller paycheck. It also strips her of the right to receive health benefits from Taco Bell, a right that would have kicked in under Obamacare in 2014 had the franchise continued to give Davis a full-time schedule of hours.

Owners of fast-food franchises across the nation are blind-siding hourly employees by cutting their weekly hours — and, in turn, their paychecks — to dodge Obamacare costs.

In fairness, she might be eligible for subsidies and (if she lived in a state with something other than cretins running it) she might very well qualify for Medicaid. She should be able to get health insurance on her own if everything worked right.

But none of that will make up for the fact that she just lost a third of her income. And since they obviously don’t know yet how much their insurance costs will end up being, they using human beings to make a political point. Her bosses are clearly conservatives.

It’s going to take a while before all this is sorted out. It’s going to be a very tumultuous period in the workplace and the health care business.

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Negotiating do-si-doh

by digby

Here’s a good piece by Noam Scheiber on the ramifications of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations:

The problem is what happens when, having crafted a favorable backdrop to the negotiation, it comes time for him to close the deal. And this is where the just-completed “cliff” episode is still disconcerting. Because it turns out Obama made a critical if underappreciated mistake in the final hours of the back and forth: sending Joe Biden to haggle with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell once McConnell’s talks with his Democratic counterpart, Harry Reid, had broken down.

From my after-the-fact discussions with Democratic aides in the House and Senate leadership, it’s clear that Reid had a plan for resolving the cliff and considered the breakdown of his talks with McConnell very much a part of it. By involving Biden, Obama undercut Reid and signaled that he wanted a deal so badly he was unwilling to leave anything to chance, even when the odds overwhelmingly favored him. It suggested that even if Obama plays his cards exceedingly well in the run-up to the debt-limit showdown, he could still come away with a worse deal than he deserves because of his willingness to make concessions in the closing moments.

Here’s what happened near the end of the cliff talks, as I understand it.

Read on for the details.

I have to suspect at this point that this is not entirely a function of “bad negotiating.” It looks an awful lot like a subtle way to achieve desired policy outcomes which may be opposed by the president’s own party. The need to make a deal at all costs has become the negotiating strategy. And it conveniently means that all the demagogueing about the consequences of not making a deal will get more and more shrill as the negotiations go on and the Republicans will always take it to the very edge — at which point it becomes “necessary” to make a less than optimal deal than what might have been possible without all the hand wringing and rending of garments. And I hate to say it, but after several of these so-called hostage situations, it’s looking to me as if the Republican leaders are partners in a little square dance, not adversaries.

In other words, it serves both parties’ technocratic goal of austerity in the guise of “reform” to milk every contrived fiscal crisis to its last drop and then be “forced” to make a “compromise” that didn’t have to be made. Perhaps that’s cynical, but we’ve seen this dance enough times now to at least be skeptical.

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Happy birthday tricky Dick

by digby

It’s the 100th birthday of the most notorious modern Republican of them all. Kathy Geier reminded me of this memorable tribute from none other than Hunter S Thompson:

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he’s gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive — and he was, all the way to the end — we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon’s style — and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don’t fight fair, bubba. That’s why God made dachshunds.

And his legacy lives on today. This piece from 2005 called “Nixon’s babies” explains why the modern GOP, for all its hard core conservatism in contrast to Nixon’s more liberal (by today’s standards) agenda is still far more Nixon’s creation than Ronald Reagan’s:

The modern Republicans, from their earliest incarnation in the 60’s, starting with still active operatives like Morton Blackwell and Karl Rove to the next generation of Abramoff, Norquist and Reed, have always operated as dirty tricksters, and corrupt power brokers. The modern Republican Party is not, and never has been, the party of Ronald Reagan, not really. It’s the party of Richard Nixon.

Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist came together as a power in the College Republicans during the Reagan years. Blackwell, Rove, Atwater, and many others powerful operatives and strategists had cut their teeth there, as well, but these guys came in at the beginning of the heady Reagan years and they were fueled by the belief that they were on the permanent winning side of history. The triumverate of Norquist, Abramoff and Reed is legendary — and they are all implicated in the burgeoning Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay scandal.

They have come to represent the three most important wings of the modern conservative movement — the Christian Right (Reed), the movement ideologues (Norquist) and the big money boys (Abramoff.) They are the Republican party. And they are all corrupt.

Reed is a total phony. I had long assumed, as most people probably did, that he came up through the Christian Right, a conservative Christian who got into politics through religion. He sure does look the part, doesn’t he? This, of course, is not true. He wasn’t “born again” until 1983, long after he had committed himself to Republican politics and proved himself to be a ruthless, unprincipled operative. He helped to create the Christian Coalition, it didn’t create him. In fact, the Christian Right doesn’t really exist independently of the Party, it is a wholly owned subsidiary, consciously created and nurtured as a Republican voting block.
(Morton Blackwell famously gave the Moral Majority its name.) Ralph Reed is now entering electoral politics himself, making the big move. He’s probably the most dangerous Republican in America.

Norquist, as most people know is a great admirer of Stalin’s tactics. He’s quoted as saying to Reed back in the College Republican days:

[Stalin] was running the personnel department while Trotsky was fighting the White Army. When push came to shove for control of the Soviet Union, Stalin won. Trotsky got an ice ax through his skull, while Stalin became head of the Soviet Union. He understood that personnel is policy.

To that end, Norquist more than anyone else has ensured through carefully constructed alliances that movement ideologues like himself peppered the Republican power structure to the extent that over time, they have come to define it. This is why people like John Bolton, who has no more business being a diplomat than does the Rude Pundit, have become mainstream Republicans, even though they are clearly radical. He has made sure that Republicans are interdependent on each other through money and influence and that the money and influence flow through him and his allies.

Norquist is the truest of true believers, but he understands the importance of certain other inducements to keep people in line. Tom DeLay and Norquist created the K Street project and it’s been a rousing success. Abramoff and DeLay were the guys who offered those needed inducements when true belief and solidarity weren’t enough. Delay wielded the hammer and Abramoff (among others) offered the goodies. This is how they hold the GOP majority together. Ask Nick Smith how that works.

It’s not surprising that Abramoff is the weak link in this. He was the front man back in the college republican days, but he doesn’t seem to have been a real strategist in the way that Reed, with his ruthless single mindedness was or Norquist with his long term Soviet style political vision. In fact, the strangest thing about Abramoff is his almost decade long movie producing career that resulted in only two movies being made — Dolph Lundgren’s “Red Scorpion” and “Red Scorpion II” — both of which were co-produced by his brother, a successful show business attorney. This is an odd chapter in Abramoff’s life. It’s hard to know why he was unable to parlay himself a real career in Hollywood, except to wonder if maybe Hollywood, for all its faults, just isn’t as easily bought off as his pals in the conservative movement. After all, these kind of perks are just standard in the Entertainment industry and can’t buy you much of anything at all (from Foer’s article in TNR):

Over time, Abramoff’s media management grew more sophisticated, and he dispensed largesse across conservative journalism. His junkets didn’t just comprise meetings and site visits, they also included plenty of recreation time. Trips to the Choctaw Reservation, for instance, featured gambling at the Silver Star resort and rounds on a lush new golf course. Clint Bolick recalls, “I left the trip early, because it seemed to be so much about golf and gambling, activities I’m not much into.” As an artful Washington schmoozer, Abramoff would go even further that. One former Washington Times staffer told me that Abramoff’s practice invited his family to watch the circus and a Bruce Springsteen concert from its box at the MCI Center. (By my count, six Washington Times editors and writers attended Abramoff trips.)

Abramoff came back to Washington when his pals came to power in 1994. They suddenly had it all; their triumphant public leader, Newt Gingrich, was even considering a run for the presidency in 1996. (The ever humble Newt was quoted as saying, “Am I going to have to get into this thing?”) This was the time to put into place their plans for a permanent Republican establishment (“personnel is policy”), with the power of big money behind them. The problem is that Abramoff got greedy, and so did his little college republican friends. Both Norquist and Reed have been named in the various scandals, right along with Delay. Everybody seems to be hold their breath waiting to see if this thing takes down The Hammer, but the undercurrent of excitement is really whether it will render Norquist, Reed and others impotent over time as the scandal unfolds. It’s possible. These guys have always had the problem of hubris and premature triumpalism. They operate on a very emotional level that is a weakness. And they are, of course, incredibly greedy.

He left his mark in so many ways. Happy birthday tricky Dick. Your legacy is alive and well.

Gunning for Mitch

by digby

Well, just a shot across the bow, so far:

A conservative advocacy group is targeting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with a series of online ads in his home state for helping to negotiate the fiscal cliff deal.

“It’s a statement we’re making and I suspect there will be more statements that are going to be coming out,” said Brent Bozell, president of ForAmerica, which is pushing the ads. “It is a statement to make it emphatically clear that what the minority leader did was 100 percent unacceptable. Conservatives are going to hold him responsible for this.”

The ads read, “Mitch McConnell: Whose side are you on?” with the image of a morose McConnell wedged between pictures of a smiling Vice President Joe Biden and smirking President Barack Obama.
[…]
McConnell is up for reelection in 2014 and is hoping to fend off a conservative primary challenger.
[…]
“When Republicans agree to do what they did agree to do, then they are just as much tax-and-spend Democrats as Democrats are,” Bozell said.

“Do I have any confidence that Republicans will stand by [McConnell’s] statements a couple of days ago that the talk about tax increases are over? None,” Bozell said. “It is a fluid situation. There are some serious battles coming up. I’m not writing off anything. If Republicans find their mojo and rediscovered their soul and try to do the right thing, we’ll support them, but they just can’t count on us anymore.”

Who knows if this is serious? But McConnell could very well end up with a Tea Party challenger. Remember now Senator Rand Paul’s primary election night speech?

I have a message. A message from the Tea Party. A message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: We’ve come to take our government back.

Everyone says the Tea Party is dying. But it was never really alive. It was the wingnut zombie reanimated after the ignominious failure of their Dear Leader George W. Bush. They never really go away. And Kentucky is a place where they might just be able to get the job done. Rand Paul won his primary against McConnell’s handpicked candidate.

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Chait takes on the centrist debt fetishists

by David Atkins

I admit to having a love/hate relationship with Jonathan Chait. His points of view can be infuriatingly obtuse concern trolling one week, and then brilliantly clarion the next. Here he gets it right:

Gerald Seib has a column in today’s Wall Street Journal about how sad and disappointing it is that the two parties cannot come together and solve problems. (“What’s lacking is an attitude among the capital’s politicians that, while acknowledging they have different views, they must agree that they need to solve problems despite differences.”) That is the same point of a recent column by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, an editorial in The Economist, and vast swaths of commentary by the most respectable members of the mainstream media. It all runs together, day after day, an endless repetitive drone of elite sentiment.

The drone of right-thinking sentiment has certain distinct qualities. One is that it is, in almost the purest sense of the term, a meme — a way of looking at the world that individuals pass one to one another without a great deal of conscious thought, even though thoughtfulness, or the appearance of thoughtfulness, is one of the qualities the opinion imbues upon its proponents. They don’t engage with alternative analyses. They seem to have no idea that their own ideas even could be contested. They are merely performing the opinion journalism equivalent of wishing passersby a Merry Christmas.

All the analytic work lies instead in the unstated background assumptions — the most important of which is the premise that reducing the long-term budget deficit is the most urgent problem in American politics. Indeed, if you look closely at these columns, they uses phrases like “solve problems” and “reduce the deficit” almost interchangeably.

I consider the long-term deficit a problem worth solving, though I would argue that mass unemployment and, especially, climate change are more urgent problems. I would like to know the case to the contrary, but if there is an argument for elevating the deficit above those priorities, I am not aware of it. Overt argument is not the preferred style of respectable centrist pundits. It is too rude.

And so, when figures like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson are invited on to programs like Meet the Press, they are treated as disinterested wise men rather than political advocates. The host, David Gregory, asks them to hand down rulings on politicians. He does not question their own ideas. (Notably, the Sunday talk shows, a haven of right-thinking, deficit-obsessed centrism, have given over little attention to climate change in the last four years and have not quoted a single climate scientist during the entire span.)

After noting that the Democratic Party has essentially become the deficit-cutting centrist Party while Republicans show little real concern for it, Chait concludes:

Why, then, don’t they say this? Part of the answer is careerist. The elite centrist drone is emitted by people who deem non-partisanship an essential part of their job description. If they concede that one party is advocating their agenda, then you could flip the sentiment around and correctly conclude that they are advocating the agenda of a party; therefore, they would be partisan and have thus forfeited the entire basis of their claim to respectability.

I don’t believe that the centrist drones are so consciously cynical. This is where the dynamic of the meme usefully replaces overt thought. That the two parties must meet in the center and agree on a deficit plan is something that respectable people repeat to each other so often it becomes obviously, uncontroversially true. There is just so much partisanship these days. Whatever happened to the center? The two parties should come together and reduce the deficit. Merry Christmas.

Indeed. Greg Sargent has more:

Self-styled “centrist” columnists have a perennial problem on their hands. They have built reputations by calling for middle-of-the-road solutions to our problems. Yet they can’t acknowledge that Obama and Democrats are the ones who are offering solutions that are genuinely centrist, because that would constitute “taking sides.” This would imperil their “brand,” which rests heavily on transcending partisanship, and on their ongoing insistence that the future depends on following a middle ground between the parties.

These commentators have found several routes around this problem. One is to continually call for a third party without admitting that the solutions they themselves envision any third party advancing have a good deal in common with what Dems are offering. Another is to simply pretend that Obama and Dems have not offered the solutions they have, in fact, offered.

Insofar as deficit-obsessed centrism is a calculated political stance by Democrats to curry Beltway and voter favor, it’s a failure. The Very Serious People they’re trying to please refuse to call out the wildly irresponsible Republican Party, either because they themselves are in on the safety net shredding con or because maintaining a non-partisan facade is an intrinsic part of their oh-so-serious credibility.

And insofar as it is based on real policy concerns, that too is a fool’s errand. Even if one ignores the obvious reality that austerity during a recession and weak recovery is a very bad idea that will actually increase the deficit (particularly when the cost of borrowing is cheap), any Grand Bargain that does manage to reduce the long-term deficit would be undone by the next Republican President who decides that with the “crisis” averted, the rich should be eligible to keep more of their money with another tax break.

The best thing Democrats can do is to ignore all the Sunday shows and all the Very Serious People. The poobahs will never be pleased because their entire shtick depends on calling out both sides as unreasonable. Far better to simply determine the best policy approach and stand tall in defense of it–especially when it widely outperforms the opposite side in the polls.

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QOTD: Glenn Beck

by digby

On Alex Jones’ appearance on CNN last night:

Want to know who the media wants to make the face of the pro-gun argument in America? Look no further than conspiratorial radio host Alex Jones, best known for his 9/11 Truther theories and his love of Charlie Sheen’s hernia. Jones is the man behind the petition to deport CNN host Piers Morgan for his views on gun control. Morgan invited Jones onto his show to debate the gun issue yesterday, and not surprisingly, Jones made a fool of himself, giving the left the perfect poster boy for their attempts to paint every logical conservative as an extremist nut job.

Yes, that’s the very same person as this one:

“The Archduke Ferdinand moment”

When it comes to making of fool of yourself, I’d say this guy knows what he’s talking about.

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What you’ve been missing: Stewart and Colbert

by digby

This one’s personal for Stewart:

From the time I started writing this blog I’ve been talking about the fact that Republicans have simply retired the very concept of hypocrisy. But sometimes they demonstrate it in such glorious obviousness that you just have to laugh.

And then … Colbert:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

I don’t think we can allow them to take time off anymore at times like these. We need them.

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Another sign of a broken system

by David Atkins

I mentioned earlier today that AIG’s suing the federal government, while offensive on many levels, is actually just the modern capitalism system working as intended, with AIG “innovating” products to meet quarterly expectations, the government stepping in to stabilize a crisis, and then AIG doing corporate duty to maximize shareholder return. If that system is offensive, then perhaps it’s time to change the system.

Here’s another example of a broken system:

It’s official: 2012 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States and the second most extreme in terms of weather events, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) annual “State of the Climate” report released Tuesday.

The average temperature for the entire year was 55.3 degrees Fahrenheit, a full degree warmer than the previous record warmest year, 1998, and 3.2 degrees above the entire 20th century average.

While one degree may not sound like very much in terms of temperature as humans experience on a day-to-day basis, it is actually an enormous increase in the country’s climate history, as NOAA scientists explained in a press conference on their results Tuesday afternoon.

“The difference between the record coldest year and previous record warmest year was four degrees,” said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, during the press conference. “So there’s 117 years of data that were encompassed by four degrees of an average temperature, and now the 2012 value is one degree outside of that envelope. So we’re taking quite a large step above what the period of record has shown for the contiguous U.S.”

So why don’t we have the political will to do anything about it? Well, because climate change doesn’t really impact immediate corporate profits, so neither industry nor Wall St. seems much inclined to step in. It should theoretically be government’s job to step in with far-sighted regulations, but American democracy is specifically designed for politicians to respond to issues that immediately impact citizens within the timeframe leading up to the politicians’ re-election. Nothing in American corporate or state governance is designed to resolve problems today that will show up in 50 years. This is also a conservative complaint when it comes to much more easily manageable issue of deficits as well (insofar as deficit hysteria isn’t just an excuse to cut discretionary spending), which is why legislators set up ridiculous sequesters to force their own hands. In the case of deficits it’s an ephemeral non-problem. Climate change by contrast is a very real problem. But in both cases no one is interested in solving problems that won’t show up for decades.

Whether it’s AIG suing the American People who saved them, or Congress unable to deal with climate change, the systems are actually working as intended. So maybe it’s time to change the systems.

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No good deed: the chutzpah files

by digby

They’re baaaack:

Fresh from paying back a $182 billion bailout, the American International Group Inc. has been running a nationwide advertising campaign with the tagline “Thank you America.”

Behind the scenes, the restored insurance company is weighing whether to tell the government agencies that rescued it during the financial crisis: thanks, but you cheated our shareholders.

The board of A.I.G. will meet on Wednesday to consider joining a $25 billion shareholder lawsuit against the government, court records show. The lawsuit does not argue that government help was not needed. It contends that the onerous nature of the rescue – the taking of what became a 92 percent stake in the company, the deal’s high interest rates and the funneling of billions to the insurer’s Wall Street clients – deprived shareholders of tens of billions of dollars and violated the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the taking of private property for “public use, without just compensation.”

Maurice R. Greenberg, A.I.G.’s former chief executive, who remains a major investor in the company, filed the lawsuit in 2011 on behalf of fellow shareholders. He has since urged A.I.G. to join the case, a move that could nudge the government into settlement talks.

You know what? To hell with the shareholders. They’re lucky they still own a piece of a company that by all rights wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the US taxpayers.

But it’s typical. AIG has been whining and sniveling from the very beginning of the crisis they helped create. Remember this?

As saintly AIG executive Jake DeSantis plaintively wailed detailed in the NY Times:

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.

Breaks your heart, doesn’t it? How could anyone have asked such victims to suffer even more by asking them not to take their hard earned bonuses?

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Well … they were actually like employees of a housing contractor that burned down the whole town because they cut corners who then held up the residents for big bucks to clean up all the toxic waste. But whatever, there was no denying just how unfair it was to complain about these bonuses when these guys were such hard workers who had made such sacrifices:

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

Right:

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes

He said he was going to donate that full amount to charity as a political protest — yet another high-minded sacrifice.

The least the lazy unemployed can do is follow this noble person’s example and give up their 300 dollars a week in benefits. We all have to pitch in.

And that has been the operative argument ever since. If the big boys have to pay, then so do the rest of us. Except our fair share is to live in terrible financial insecurity, debt and joblessness while their’s is to suffer the indignity of being forced to donate their $750,000 bonus to charity in protest. (Or pay slightly higher tax rates as part of a balanced approach.)

Now go read this amazing new piece by Taibbi about the bailout. If you weren’t mad already you will be when you finish reading it:

It has been four long winters since the federal government, in the hulking, shaven-skulled, Alien Nation-esque form of then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, committed $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own chicanery and greed. To listen to the bankers and their allies in Washington tell it, you’d think the bailout was the best thing to hit the American economy since the invention of the assembly line. Not only did it prevent another Great Depression, we’ve been told, but the money has all been paid back, and the government even made a profit. No harm, no foul – right?

Wrong.

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite: committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it. The result is one of those deals where one wrong decision early on blossoms into a lush nightmare of unintended consequences. We thought we were just letting a friend crash at the house for a few days; we ended up with a family of hillbillies who moved in forever, sleeping nine to a bed and building a meth lab on the front lawn.

I think this AIG move illustrates that point perfectly.

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