Crooks, Liars, Idiots and Plutocrats!

[KoKo]

However, it would be a mistake to conclude that we have been dominated by a group of rogue and irrational idiots hell-bent on destroying Western Civilization in the name of Christian values and some crazy, ill-defined notion of freedom. It is important to note that over the last two years the radical elements within the GOP have actually achieved something. They have consolidated a contractionary fiscal stance, barring any possibility of the fiscal expansion that we need for a healthy recovery. They play in the United States the same role that the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund) plays in Europe, and that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has traditionally played in developing countries. And austerity is at the service not only of cutting expenses on services that affect the neediest in society, but also keeping wage demands in line, and so protecting the interests of corporations and the few that benefit from that.

So if the public faces of the shutdown are the Tea Party-ites in Congress, with Ted Cruz and his filibuster as their poster child, it is important to remember that these groups have received the backing of foundations and shadow groups controlled by a few wealthy plutocrats, like the Koch brothers. It is those wealthy at the top, who are not affected by the shutdown, that should be blamed for the current crisis. Class warfare, not stupidity, and the crooks and liars at the top, not the “idiots” in the public spotlight, are the problem.
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Glen says:
October 13, 2013 at 2:45 pm

I agree with your point that the Tea Party should not be characterized as idiots or stupid, nor even that they represent anything other than the logical ultimate goal of the Republican party. We may be looking at the next level of kabuki all within the Republican party itself, “We cannot control them, they are crazy”. at the same time that other Republicans are downplaying the consequences of a default.
No, these people and their actions clearly make them members of the Republican party and clearly represent the goals of the Republican party. They are very successful at meeting their goals. By their actions, The House and Senate are essentially negotiating over the implementation details of the Ryan budget, By their actions, we have seriously reduced the Federal government’s ability to govern. By willingness to default on the debt, and yes, they are willing to push through this action, they may be able to fatally cripple the Federal government, and free those states they control to implement their policy goals. They must have big money backers that have gamed this out and think that their long term goals will benefit by these actions. So far, they have not been wrong.
So far, the Democratic party has been “forced” to allow the Republican party’s actions to set the budget, just as they will be forced to offer up Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to further cuts. And despite the fact that so far Obama has been unwilling to allow further cuts to Obamacare, there will come a time when the Democratic party will be “forced” into accepting a rollback of those parts of the plan which are not completely corporate controlled.
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
The Federal government is being dragged into the bathroom, and they will try to drown it. Their actions are not an aberration or “out of control” extremists, but the long stated goals of the Republican party.

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Jim says:
October 13, 2013 at 4:04 pm

It seems to be confidently assumed by a significant proportion of the growing NC community that some type of warmed-over neo-Marxist critique of modern capitalism is just what is needed to eventually mobilize our presently rather passive population to, at a minimum, eventually embrace a return to the glorious New Deal narrative which represented the status quo between 1933 and 1975 and, in my opinion, has served as the foundation for our, at present, terminal corruption– in both the public and private spheres.
While traditional class struggle ended in our county when the labor movement was integrated into State power after 1933, our majority commetariat, still seems to hope that class anger/rage and hatred can once again become the key foundation for future political mobilization (despite the catastrophic consequences of such successful mobilizations in the 20 th century (think Soviet Union, China, Germany).
If the foundation of our crisis in now cultural, not purely economic, then quite different strategies for eventual mobilization would seem to be necessary.
Some issues which could explored, if the key assumptions behind neo-Marxist thinking are ever questioned– might include the following:
What are the linkages between governing oneself and governing others?
Can we approach a new politics more obliquely, through ethics, offering the eventual potential to mobilize a portion of the evangelical right to our side?
Would a concern for individual self-transformation have a resonance far beyond class?
Could a new form of asceticism and virtue ever replace class hatred and rage as a more effective mobilizing strategy?
In order to have a different society do we need to go deeper to transform ourselves?

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James Levy says:
October 13, 2013 at 5:19 pm

The class that hates is the upper class. In America, the normal run of middling folk, and even many of the poor, were happy to leave the rich wealthy so long as they governed effectively, didn’t act like leeches, and gave some bright young people a chance to climb the ladder of “success.” The hate has come for years from people like Mitt Romney and his 47% taker bullshit and Ronnie Reagan’s “welfare queens”. Please don’t peddle any false equivalence nonsense here. We know a bit too much history for that. If the poor and middle class are finally getting angry at a strata of society that engineered the system that gave them 95% of the rewards in whatever kind of “recovery” we’ve been experiencing for the last four years then it is about time.

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Banger says:
October 13, 2013 at 5:24 pm

I don’t see the anger as pointed towards the elites. They are far too slick to let that happen–don’t forget they have at their hands the most sophisticated mind-control apparatus know to man. Large numbers of the poor are retreating into tribalism not critiquing the rich.

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Banger says:
October 13, 2013 at 5:21 pm

’ve been specifically arguing for something very much like this. I don’t think the current state of Marxian analysis is very good (no fault of Marx though).
The issue we have is that we don’t recognize the many dimensions of our political situation. The real conflict that the Tea Party reveals is the conflict between those of us who align ourselves with the general line of Western Civilization and those who oppose modernism (that is the foundation of our civilization) for some romantic idea of feudalism or the Wild West. If you accept rationalism, science and Western values you cannot possibly argue for Tea Party ideas or even, at this point, mainstream RP ideas.
And if you are rational you cannot, also, accept the Democratic Party as anything but a political party of operatives, hustlers, con artists, opportunists and cowards.
What to do? You are right a re-examination of ethics and values is key to any success of the left. Fortunately, there is no other game–the right is just floundering in it’s irrationalism and the center is too corrupt for anyone to take seriously that leaves the left to pick up the pieces. This is our opportunity.


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Jim says:
October 13, 2013 at 6:11 pm

“Starve the Beast!” “Cut Taxes!” “Eliminate social programs!”
That has been the Republican agenda for the past 30 years.
The Tea Party is on steroids to get to the ultimate ENDGAME!
What is the ENDGAME???
Sell off all of the government’s non-military assets, starting with its historical landholdings with valuable natural resources, national forests, and national parks. Eventually, even essential government buildings would be sold and leased back.
Who benefits from this? Foreigners and under-taxed wealth accumulators who have access to large funds to buy up our American legacy.

MUCH MORE AT: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/10/crooks-liars-idiots-and-plutocrats.html
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Economic historian Carlo Cipolla famously noted that human beings fall into four basic categories: the martyr who takes an action and suffers a loss while producing a gain to others; the genius or prodigy who takes an action by which he/she makes a gain while yielding a gain also to society; the crook (and liar too) who takes an action by which he/she makes a gain causing others a loss; and the stupid person who causes losses to others while deriving no personal gain and even possibly incurring losses. At first glance, the shutdown of the government and the looming debt-ceiling crisis seem to indicate that we are dealing with idiots, the likes of Michele Bachmann, Ted Cruz, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, and other Tea Party Republicans.

After all, there is no rational reason to shut down the government to preclude what is essentially a Republican-designed health law (created by the Heritage Foundation), that would create the conditions for finally attaining universal health coverage in the United States, a goal that all the other advanced nations have achieved decades ago. In particular, the alternative to “Obamacare” proposed by the GOP is nonexistent, and basically means leaving millions of Americans without proper medical care. On top of that, the shutdown, together with the previous sequestration, and the overall contractionary fiscal stance, will most likely make the very slow recovery even slower, maintaining an unnecessarily large portion of the labor force unemployed.

The debt ceiling, which we are still approaching, even if at a slower pace because of the shutdown, will make matters even worse. There is a certain degree of uncertainty of what could happen if an agreement on the debt ceiling is not reached. I tend to believe that there will be neither a run on the dollar nor a collapse of the world economy, as some expect. It seems unlikely that the euro, or the yen, let alone the yuan, would replace the dollar. Europe and Japan are not really thriving, and investors are not going to flock in mass to Chinese assets, since it is far from clear that an economy controlled by a single party with extensive ability to intervene in contracts provides more security than U.S. bonds. Markets might very well assume that the U.S. crisis is temporary, and as in previous crisis in the United States, like the Lehman Brothers collapse back in September 2008, flock to the security of the dollar.

But I do believe that it will force a significant additional fiscal contraction on an economy that cannot take it, and may very likely lead to a new recession. It must be emphasized that the actual net level of debt, once intra-government holdings (by the Fed and other agencies and trusts) are discounted, is actually not high by historical standard (around 60% of GDP rather than 100%, which is the gross amount), and the rate of interest on it is at historical lows. So actually borrowing more to get the economy out of the slow recovery would be the sensible thing to do.



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[applegrove]

1. I agree that the face of the tea party

is stupidity, which seems benign. In reality some evil rich and/or powerfull people have been investing in the creation of such tea party beliefs and have gone at it from hundreds of different ways. They play innocent today but are neither stupid or benign. They are very smart and are breaking the back of the middle class to maximize their own wealth.