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The Tea Party and Goldman Sachs: A Love Story
Face it. We live in two nations, sharply divided by an enormous economic chasm between the super-rich and everyone else. This should be an obvious fact of life for most Americans. Just read the story in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal headlined “Profits Thrive in Weak Recovery.” Or the recent New York Times story pointing out “that the median pay for top executives at 200 big companies last year was $10.8 million,” a 23 percent gain over the year before. 
In this photo taken on April 19, 2010, New Yorkers walk to work outside the Goldman Sachs mothership in Manhattan. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
In the midst of a jobless recovery, those same corporations are sitting on more than $2 trillion in reserves, refusing to invest in this country, as increasing percentages of their profits are garnered in tax-sheltered operations abroad. And the bankers who caused the economic meltdown have turned against President Barack Obama, who saved them; instead they favor a tea-party-dominated Republican Party that seeks to limit any restraint on corporate greed while destroying the ability of state and federal governments to bring some measure of relief to ordinary folk.
The whole point of the tea party is to focus concern over our stagnant economy on something called “big government” while ignoring the big corporations that have bought the government as an accessory to their marketing strategies. Big government is big precisely because it now exists primarily to make the world safe for multinational capitalism, whether through a bloated defense budget, trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement, or monetary policies that serve the interests of the largest companies.
It was their lobbyists who got Congress to end sensible regulations of financial shenanigans, and now, with the new tea party members of Congress as their most stalwart allies, they are yanking the teeth from the very mild regulations that Obama got through the last Congress. As The Associated Press reported: “Congressional Republicans are greeting the one-year anniversary of President Barack Obama’s financial overhaul law by trying to weaken it, nibble by nibble.”
It is nothing short of demagogic for the Republicans to be complaining about the debt when it was the radical deregulatory policies that they pursued which caused all that governmental red ink in the first place. What a hoax to pretend that teachers’ pensions or environmental protections are responsible for a debt that increased by 50 percent as a direct consequence of the banking collapse. Yet they want to gut even the tepid regulations that became law under the Obama administration, foaming at the mouth about sensible regulation as job killing when it is the uncontrolled greed of Wall Street that is at the root of our high unemployment.
Congressional Republicans are cutting funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as if those already underfunded agencies are centers of anti-business radicalism. The CFTC is run by former Goldman Sachs partner Gary Gensler, who, back when he was in the Clinton Treasury Department serving under another onetime Goldman leader, Robert Rubin, teamed up with Republicans in Congress to gut financial regulation. He is one of the Obama regulators who has managed to delay even the minor controls that the Dodd-Frank law requires for the still wildly out-of-control $600 trillion derivatives market.
What a joke that the tea party assertion that radicals have taken over the Obama government is embraced even by lobbyists for Goldman Sachs, whose former executives have populated the Obama administration as widely as they did the two previous administrations. All they are missing this time around is that they didn’t get to have one of their own named as treasury secretary, as was the case in both the Clinton and Bush cabinets.
This week, the Los Angeles Times reported on Goldman’s renewed lobbying efforts in Washington aimed at watering down what remains of the promise of Dodd-Frank. True to Washington tradition, Goldman has hired Michael Paese, a former top staffer for the “liberal” Rep. Barney Frank to head its Washington operation, which last year spent $4.6 million lobbying Congress to soften the bill, a task now made far easier with Goldman’s tea party allies in the new Republican-dominated House. As the Times noted, “Goldman has spent much of its money on hired guns from major Washington lobbying firms, including former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and former House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.).”
Between the faux populism of the tea party and the army of sellout ex-congressional staffers and politicians from both parties, the Washington fix is in. Short of hitting it big on a lottery ticket, the vast majority of Americans are sentenced to a future of lowered expectations, insurmountable personal debt and dismal job prospects.
They may not know it, however, thanks to the constant propaganda from a corporate culture dominated by images of a classless nation in which all consume the delights of the American dream, from the perfect smartphone to the perfect pill for bladder control, while merrily hacking away on the perfectly manicured golf course of one’s fantasies.
32 Comments so far
Show AllAnd the slaves continue to vote for their masters !
Both Demublicans and Rethuglocrats.
Scheer bemoans Repub opposition to Obama's under-powered financial reform.
It's hard to stomach such utter mush. Obama didn't even care to appoint E. Warren to the brand spankin new consumer credit protection... just what is it: an Office, a Bureau or some trailer that the Fed Reserve rents for it in Maryland.
Those damn Republicans! Won't even want to allow us the scraps the Dems would throw us from the table.
Course, it's a gonzo fact that either way lies enslavement. The Dem path may be slightly slower.
Ain't That America
And BTW USA, they want the little pink houses back!
Excellent synopsis of what's happening in this, the Ultimate Fascist Plutocracy of the world.
And in 2012 the clueless masses will line up to vote for one or the other wings of the One Corporate Party that is so successfully raping them. Talk about irony.
So what should the American people do?
I'm starting to think we should simply enjoy today, because tomorrow will be worse.
Just like Madagascar!!! Bushmeat stew anyone?
Greg R speaks my sentiments exactly. Most of the people I know here in Fanta Se, New Mexico, especially many of the so-called progressives who should know better can not even be bothered to know the details of our complete moral and economic collapse. Let's not talk about unpleasant things. As long as my belly is full . . .
blank.
Vote 3rd party. Buy local produce, or grow your own. Buy used everything from local thrift shops or yard sales, as much as you can. Dump the TV. Unplug. Move your $ from the big bank to a local credit union. Don't feed the Plutocracy.
Well they can do what GregR suggests. That would make the ruling class happy.
Or, we can recognize that it is not capital that makes society run, it is workers; it is us. We can recognize our collective power - we can organize. Like in the 1930's, like in Tahir Square, like in Greece and Spain now, we rise up. It is only by our tacit acquiescence that the few can control the many. The time is coming for a global revolution. For now, join an anti-capitalist organization and help to make it stronger.
"Before long, Robert Sheer will be urging us to vote for the lesser evil.."
He appears to be heading that way, especially if you consider the columns he's written in the last few weeks. He's bending and twisting words around to paint Obama as better than any Republican running. There is no lesser or greater when it comes to the evil of the Republicans, the Democrats, and the wealthy. It should be evident to anyone who's paying attention that they're now all equally evil.
When government works, which is to say REPRESENTS its true constituents, i.e. the public, then it is the ONLY force capable of standing up to big business interests. By your arguing to take away the government, you're effectively taking the libertarian position that the same big industries that brought us such things as the calamity (nuclear power) in Japan, or the BP oil incident in the Gulf, or Massey Energy's raping mountains (and the health of miners) in West Virginia, or Monsanto's distributing toxic seeds, or the war profiteers making a continued ($) killing on killing should just be free (and unregulated) to do what they do.
Government's purchase by these entities does not mean that government, as a necessary entity, is THE evil. What's evil is when money/mammon takes control to the extent that even the purported highest court in the land, bows to its rapacious interests.What's evil is when corporations MELD into government to see to it that capital rules, and justice be damned.
You appear to want to throw the baby away with the bathwater.
MACIEK: If I made "your" points for you, it's due to the slippery way you confuse cause with effect.
There was a time we had a functioning government. It was before lobbyists took over Washington and everything thereafter has become political pay per view, i.e. the best "democracy" that $ can buy.
The fact there is an EPA at all, the fact that there were government protections afforded, or perhaps I should say extended, to people of color and women, were the types of inroads a good government makes to protect a balance of interests... as opposed to only those preferable to the fiscal elites. That is what government is intended to function for.. OF, BY and FOR The People!
You confuse the PURCHASE of government, due to all sorts of quid pro quo arrangements and a phase of uber: materialism with FLAWS in the government itself. Then, using the flawed government as the crux of your argument, you look for validation to stick a knife through it, or perhaps, a la Grover Norquist, prefer to drown "it" in a bath tub?
Sorry, bud... a lot of people suffer when bodies of power lack regulation or counterbalances. History is WRIT in their blood. What we need is the $ to be taken out of politics. What we need are more referendums or direct democracy. What we need are judges who are not in industry's pocket, or a revolving door between heads of departments and the corporations they are later tasked with running.
As Nader pointed out the other day, as has Chris Hedges in his inflamed critiques of "The Liberal Class," the deans of law schools, along with many of the social agencies that used to act as society's moral barometer, have been co-opted by the system, and/or big money. Therefore no moral checks and balances seem to exist.
How different do you think you sound from Ronald Reagan in your anti-government rants? And that's especially true NOW given the financial clout of big industries... some have larger budgets than entire nations' economies. You want to let THAT force free to further loot, pillage and plunder? Are you SANE?
I'll leave it there... I am trying to finish a book... I got pulled onto the threads today, and need to focus my time elsewhere.
Hello Siouxrose,
I always read what you write and enjoy most of what you have written. Your last paragraph "You appear to want to throw the baby away with the bathwater." could be slightly changed to "You appear to want to throw the baby away with the Blackwater." Just a tiny suggestion.
Sheer has been set up here again on CD to be flogged by commenters for not attacking Demos as vigorously as he does Repubs. I counter those potential critics with a maxim that it is better for one to attack those who force one to eat the pig swallop they serve up than those who encourage one just to inhale the stench.
The ignorance of the public regarding their plight cannot continue indefinitely. AdAge has revealed that the only growing markets are in those households making $100,000 or more -- meaning that advertising (and therefore programmed media in general) will be directed more and more towards the upscale, with the rest of us living in an incidental economy. Here's a good article on the subject:
http://gawker.com/5815799/its-only-worth-advertising-to-the-rich-now
Totally agree.
Reich's and Scheer's assessments are not really at odds. The contradiction is internal to the Tea Party itself, which has no coherent platform. It has no coherent platform because it's not a grassroots movement, but rather a faux movement orchestrated by the fascists of the corporate elite, who use populist anti-government rhetoric to co-opt the angry but gullible masses, while at the same time cynically and hypocritically exerting undue influence over government for their own selfish ends.
While the Tea Party charade did at first attract some who had a glimmer of understanding that corporations are to blame for their troubles, that aspect of the "movement" was quickly tossed aside. Some of those anti-corporate people might still follow along, but the stance of Tea Party politicians is consistently to favor radical corporate takeover and the destruction of democracy - with a few little meaningless statements about upholding the Constitution thrown in, something they can do with impunity because none of their followers has ever bothered to read or understand the Constitution. Rand Paul is a perfect example.
The Teabaggers were born when a talking head on a financial channel cable show held up a little string teabag on teevee, as he stood in front of financial instrument traders at their trading screens, and rhetorically asked them if they wanted to help bail out those lousy deadbeats from the poorer classes from losing their homes, who were just welchers on their pledges to pay off outrageous debts to the big banks.
The teabag came in because he felt he was going to 'liberate' himself and his financial brethren from the 'tyranny' of being 'forced' by the tyrannical American government to help poorer people in trouble. Thus he was the starting the new Tea Party to overthrow taxation. No new taxes, no taxes at all, was his rallying cry. And no bailouts to preserve the homes of (9 milion) poorer families. The massive government bailouts of the banks and Wall Street were not mentioned by him AT ALL - not a peep!
His answer to the question of whether there should be help to people with economic hardship, with a resounding cheer from the financial traders, was NO FRIGGING WAY. Let the poor be foreclosed on and thrown into the street! Let them eat dirt! This from a group of TRADERS who actually were the exact same casino operators that caused the fraud/bubble in housing and the collapse of the economy. But hey, they made out. If you didn't, well, too bad, you weren't as smart as they were then, and so according to their idol, Ayn Rand, they win, and you can all just fukoff and die.
Then this new Teabagger movement was taken up by propagandist multimillionaire Rush Limbaugh and certain factions of the Republicans, who drummed up some idiots to disrupt town hall meetings about the single-payer healthcare issue with yellings about taking government hands off their Medicare, and such like mental rubbish. These ravings were meticulously covered by MSM and Fox teevee, though only a handful of these cranks, goaded on by Limbaugh and others, attended, and the meetings were in small out-of-the-way towns. (Meanwhile in comparison, the 36 Million people who protested the start of the Iraq War were relatively ignored by the MSM and denigrated by Fox). This strategem worked however, and the single-payer option was destroyed by the Teabaggers.
Then the Teabaggers were totally embraced by the corpo-fascist libertarians the brothers Koch, and Dick Armey's right-wing astroturf factory, and Karl Rove's minions, who continue to back this totally-corporate astroturf movement, the Tea Party, with big money to this day.
HOW this true history of the Tea-bag Party comes to be known as a history of "contempt for big business" is yet another chapter in the story of the effects of the mendacious MSM and right-wing propaganda, and another chapter in "What is the matter with Kansas."
It's simple.
Socialism is good government, a la Sweden.
Libertarianism is dog-eat-dog and may the "best man" take all; an anti-government, a la Somalia. Teabaggers are in this camp, whether they realize it or not.
Right now the Tea Party is a sideshow, an easy target. Rather than try to paint it as the bogeyman, "our side" needs to focus on the real problem and present real solutions, along the lines Siouxrose outlines above. Unless one is a libertarian or an anarchist, we must recognize that the role of government will always be a battleground of competing values. What would "our side" do differently if "we" controlled the government? Then start organizing and mobilizing so that we can't be ignored.
As for the likely electoral choice next year, if it's Obama up against a Bachmann, the choice in the voting booth should be obvious. If we don't like that choice, then we ought to be doing something about it NOW. But American history has not been kind to third parties, remember. Hard to build, hard to maintain. I suggest a looser coalition of like-minded people to put pressure where it can do the most good.
"Without a vision, the people perish."
Reich is not always credible. What you quoted from him commenting on the Tea Party are the standard myths associated with the Tea Party and repeated over and over again by mainstream media. That was the plan for the Tea Party from day one. Simplistic spin to con weak minds. And, Reich is indirectly marching in lockstep by repeating Tea Party myths. The Tea Party has always been a false front to gather votes appealing to the far right disappointed with Republican policy, and also to a white racist base. The Tea Party is only real in the minds of those who can't see through the lies. But, it has been a successful ploy considering the real Tea Party hidden agendas favor corporations and the wealthy. S.O.S. in a different wrapper.
Keep in mind Reich often preaches neoliberal views while posing as a progressive.
Just my opinion.
Thank-you Siouxrose for pointing out the obvious... that government is the only way for the people to effectively fight the runaway freight train we collectively call the MIC, Big Oil and a host of other predatory corporations. If the government represents the public interest (which it does not in the U.S.) then humanity can actually progress. It is corporate creations like the Tea Party that demand LESS government while ignoring the real benefits of a government that could one day represent the people.
Hi, Space. Although we didn't see eye to eye on another thread, I appreciate your polite acknowledgement here. Countering the BS this site is pilfered with could easily turn into a full time job. What with shills for Monsanto/GM, nuclear power, the Libertarian party, and the anti-global warming chanters... and on and on.
I appreciate someone else picking up the reins here. Peace.
Because both the Democrats and the Republicans get large campaign funds from the same contributors, there is not a dimes worth of difference between them. We vote the bums of one party out only to find we have voted the bums of the other party in. In order to focus the concerns of Congress away from their big campaign donors and back on "We the People," as those great Revolutionary War patriots intended, we must have a Constitutional Amendment that restricts campaign donors to being registered voters (no corporate, pac, or foreign donors), and that sets a reasonable limit on the amount a political donation can be. Even though the donor may deny it, an extremely large campaign donation certainly raises the appearance of a bribe. When the candidates must depend on the voters for their campaign money they will focus their attention on them instead of on the big banks and their other large contributors.