Roy, watching the debate and noting that its somewhat open format gives both candidates “an opportunity for endless filibustering, especially on matters like the Wall Street bailout where both… are more interested in misdirecting our attention from the massive heist their parties are about to engineer than in explaining the situation,” concludes, appositely, that “[t]his country’s fucked.” I concur.
Really, with Democrats like these, who needs Republicans? Oh, I know — and I’m sure someone will be along shortly to remind me — that I’m an asshole, can’t be pleased, am boringly leftwing, and don’t I know about Hope? and Change? But before someone accuses me of being a crypto-Greenie, and thus being a rank rodent from the get-go, just waiting for any excuse to jump from the good ship Democrat, deluding myself that it has wrecked on the Cape of False Hope (because guided by the starry-eyed?) when anyone can see that it’s a smooth sail until port in November, lemme just say again that I’m still gonna vote for the fucker. (However, to conclude the out of control — and admittedly trite — nautical metaphor, I do plan on jumping ship immediately after it docks, and then doing my best to sink the heap unless a major retrofit and crew change is undertaken.)
But that vote is getting harder and harder to cast. I anticipated having to hold my nose at the ballot box, but a hazmat suit now seems more in order:
Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) — U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama each deserve credit for a breakthrough in talks on a $700 billion plan to revive the credit markets, their advisers said today.
And:
Mr. Obama, too, went from offering broad critiques of the proposal, and general outlines for changes, to calling Mr. McCain on Wednesday with the idea that they could present a united front on the issue, laying out the areas of common ground on a way forward. (Both have called for greater oversight and for assurances that taxpayer dollars not be used to enrich executives, among other provisions.)
And:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama on Sunday tentatively supported the $700 billion plan to bail out the U.S. financial system.
“This is something that all of us will swallow hard and go forward with,” McCain said on ABC’s “This Week.” “The option of doing nothing is simply not an acceptable option.”
“My inclination is to support it,” said Obama, his Democratic rival in the November 4 U.S. presidential election.
[…]
Both candidates refused to be pinned down on the economic plan during their first presidential debate on Friday. By Sunday, with a tentative deal in place, each gave general support with comments that the taxpayers had to be protected.
Later at a rally in Detroit, Obama called the bailout an “outrage.” “But we have no choice,” he said in prepared remarks. “We must act now. Because now that we’re in this situation, your jobs, your life savings and the stability of our entire economy are at risk.”
Supporters tried to play up their candidate’s roles.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told “Fox News Sunday” said Arizona Sen. McCain played a “decisive” role in getting balky House Republicans to focus on negotiating a compromise. McCain cut his campaign short last week to return to Washington to deal with the crisis at a White House meeting.
But Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts told the same program it was Obama who took the lead at that meeting while McCain remained silent.
They’re actually fighting over who gets credit for it. But then what else is ‘Unity’ and post-partisanship about? Aside the obvious ego and careerist jostling over who did the right thing, it’s all such quintessential American bullshit: in times of crisis, close ranks, wave the flag, [re]sell your soul to Mammon (by selling out your countrymen), be fucking stupid:
This is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem – this is an American problem. Now, we must find an American solution,” said Senator Barack Obama.
Riiight. The partisan blame-game, a superficial and short-term exercise, can indeed be a part of ‘Unity’ and kissy-kissy bi-partisanship, which is the substantial and ongoing project. It’s all in an American politico’s day’s work — and what work! This latest is nothing less than the hugest corporate welfare bill in the history of the universe.
I can’t help but think, in light of what American leaders like Mr. Hopey, who are allegedly reliable liberals, have done (and are doing) for ‘love of country’, if it wouldn’t be better for some (Democrats at least) to abandon their patriotism and adopt Disraeli’s hierarchy of party over country. Maybe then they actually could do America some good. But, nooooo. Even if I could excuse Hopey’s latest excusion in moral and political FAIL on the grounds that he’s trying to court independents (who are always assumed to be deeply conservative if not reactionary, and in this case specifically assumed to be investment bankers and their admirers), then there’s the problem of the Congressional Democratic Leadership, which should be twice shy when George Bush says there’s a crisis and demands instant action and a blank check. But, again, noooo:
Convincing their colleagues to back the plan despite thousands of angry phone calls, e-mails and letters pouring in from angry constituents proved a tall order for leaders in both parties.
“Now we have to get the votes,” said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the majority leader. He said the measure could pass the Senate as early as Wednesday.
[…]
Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said he was inclined to oppose the bill. But he added: “A lot of people are going to hold their nose and vote for it, because they’ve been put in a bad position and they don’t have any other option.”
Leaders in both parties were scrambling to put the most positive face on the deeply unpopular plan. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. said it wasn’t a bailout but a “buy-in” for taxpayers to rescue the economy.
Still, lawmakers in both parties who are facing re-election were nervous about embracing such a costly plan proposed by a deeply unpopular president that would benefit perhaps the most publicly detested of all: companies that got rich off bad bets.
Not nervous enough. Obviously, we have one last chance to exert some pressure. I suggest we do it. Again. I plan on calling Mrs. Lincoln, Mr. Pryor, and Mr. Berry first thing in the morning. I ask that you call your Congresspeeps, too. If the bill passes anyway, then we start thinking about pitchforks and torches, ‘Tilden or blood,’ and building a new Bonus Army camp on Wall Street (where we’ll exchange recipes, my favorite being spit-roasted government-teat-suckled kleptocrat). In for 70 trillion pennies, in for extracting several pounds of the… umm, corporate structure, as it were.
Seriously, though, that Congress could even be thinking about giving 700$ billion to the wealthy criminal class just shows how deeply to heart both parties have taken the philosophy of “socialism for the rich, free enterprise for the poor.” Obama had enough presence of mind during the debate to mention how trickle down economics doesn’t work, yet… that’s exactly what this bailout is all about, and he and his party are going along with it: throwing money at people like this, horrible people who should be set on fire and then maybe or maybe not extinguished with fresh urine, and hoping that the benefits will in turn trickle-down to people like this, the decent if understandably pissed-off people who’ve repeatedly been pissed-on even when the economy was supposedly “great.” The Congressional Democrats (and maybe even quasi-Populist Republicans) could, at minimum, throw a legislative monkey-wrench into what amounts to the latest and greatest Business Plot, but being strategic reactionaries when it would actually benefit their constituencies really isn’t their bag (on the other hand, when the initiative is, say, the potential impeachment of war criminals, they are pleased to respond with an instant and adamant “No!”). Though alternatives to the bill exist there’s really no need to hurry (hence George Bush’s and Paulson’s insistence that everyone act now before it’s too late!!1!); yet, rushing headlong is exactly what they are doing, closing their ears to the sound of millions of Ackbars yelling, “it’s a trap!”
What the dirtbags want is pretty obvious even to retards like me. This WSJ article from relatively early in the “crisis” hints heavily at what the malefactors of great wealth expect from their prostitutes in government who, perversely, pay to get fucked:
In such circumstances, governments almost invariably experiment with solutions with varying degrees of success. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt unleashed an alphabet soup of new agencies and a host of new regulations in the aftermath of the market crash of 1929. In the 1990s, Japan embarked on a decade of often-wasteful government spending to counter the aftereffects of a bursting bubble. President George H.W. Bush and Congress created the Resolution Trust Corp. to take and sell the assets of failed thrifts. Hong Kong’s free-market government went on a massive stock-buying spree in 1998, buying up shares of every company listed in the benchmark Hang Seng index. It ended up packaging them into an exchange-traded fund and making money.
Plainly, they loathe remedies one and two, are neutral on three, but favor with finality the fourth solution, Hong Kong’s — unsurprisingly, as it is the best means to implement their longtime inverse Robin Hood strategy of stealing from the poor to give to the rich (i.e., themselves). But then as good social Darwinists (aka libertarians), it’s only natural that they feel they deserve a second or third or eleventieth chance when the stakes are billions of dollars; it’s the little people who should perish after a first “bad decision.”
So much for the “philosophical” and personal reasons behind the dirtbags’ desire for the bailout, now to address the political calculus. Thom Hartmann cuts it to the quick:
For Grover “Drown Government In The Bathtub” Norquist, this bailout deal will work out very well. At a proposed cost of $4,780 per taxpayer, it’ll further the David Stockman strategy of so indebting us that the next president won’t have the luxury of even thinking of new social spending (expanding health care, social security, education, infrastructure, etc.); taxes will even have to be raised just to pay for the bailout. It’ll debase our currency, driving up commodity prices and interest rates, which will benefit the Investor Class while further impoverishing the pesky Middle Class, rendering them less prone to protest (because they’re so busy working trying to pay off their debt). It’ll create stagflation for at least the next half decade, which can be blamed on Democrats who currently control Congress and, should Obama be elected, be blamed on him.
Bingo.
A more leftwing Congress and presidential candidate would reject this bailout because it’s the morally and ideologically decent thing to do. But beyond that it’s also the most politically conscious (in the sense of the politician’s first instinct: self-preservation in the form of re-election) thing to do. Alas, this candidate is a Clintonoid centrist and serial triangulator, as is the Congress. And they are falling into the trap just like their role model did. Obama is personally appealing, as was Bill; perhaps that will be enough to save him if not us (as for the Congress, forget it; 2012 is the next 1994). A while back, Zizek observed:
In the UK, the Thatcher revolution was, at the time, chaotic and impulsive, marked by unpredictable contingencies. It was Tony Blair who was able to institutionalise it, or, in Hegel’s terms, to raise (what first appeared as) a contingency, a historical accident, into a necessity. Thatcher wasn’t a Thatcherite, she was merely herself; it was Blair (more than Major) who truly gave form to Thatcherism.
The parallels are obvious: Reagan=Thatcher, Clinton=Blair; Obama’s well on his way to being Clinton II, institutionalizing Bushism, W. himself being a more bugfucky version of Reagan. Imagine the whole country and its historical trajectory as JFK’s exploding head: back, and the to right; back, and to the right. Overton Window. You know the litany. Yeah, blah blah blah: but it’s the fucking truth.
Give the Republicans, specifically Bush, credit for doubling-down on the evilness factor, going like Mr. Burns from everyday villainy to cartoonish super-villainy: they were worried that the trillion-dollar war wasn’t enough to hamstring the next president, thus the acte gratuit of demanding an extra 700$ billion of a Congress eager to please. As for me, I take a sort of solace in the symmetry of it all. Even after the Emperor had exhibited the beginnings of the cruel tyrannies which would eventually make his reign infamous, the Roman Senate offered to give Tiberius blanket approval to his all future proposals. At the time, still human enough to be horrified at the principle and leery of the precedent of it, he said no. But of course eventually he acted as if he’d said yes. Plainly the U.S. Congress has their historical analog, and George Bush has his. Most of the especially awful Roman Emperors left empty treasuries and heavy debts, which forced their heirs into doing more awful things to replenish the coffers which in turn they’d inevitably squander and… the trajectory is obvious. The heavens fall. I know it’s a very Glibertarian thing to fantasize about the apocalypse, but I can’t help myself. First thing I’m gonna do when the Vandals come and the Empire implodes? Shoot the Glibertarians who caused it all.
Update: Holy shit! The fuckin’ audacity:
One of the more contentious issues was how to limit the pay of executives whose firms seek government aid, a top priority for Democrats and even some Republican lawmakers. But it was a concern for Mr. Paulson, who worried about discouraging firms from participating in the rescue plan, which seeks to convince companies to sell potentially valuable assets to the government at relatively bargain prices.
MOAR: All this is pretty much right. And someone pat Ben Stein on the head; this is a righteous bit of populism (RTWT, it’s really that good). See also Ian and Sterling.
Exactly.
