By pressuring Congress to provide immediate authority for a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, the Bush/Cheney Administration is once again seeking to expand the unchecked power of the "unitary executive."
The Bush/Cheney brain trust used the same tactic of panicked urgency to expand warrantless wiretapping and data collection after 9/11, as well as to bludgeon Congress and the American public into supporting the pointless invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Now the Administration's goal is to cover all financial risk resulting from its own willful refusal to regulate the over-leveraged, Ponzi scheme excesses of Wall Street.
The Bush/Cheney Administration is creating what amounts to a Dictatorship of the Looting Class. Here is a quick look at the Administration's intent and tactics:
Looting class
noun
An aristocracy of wealth and privilege, usually inherited. Seeks to preserve and enhance its relative status by reducing its taxes, both income and inheritance. Does so by increasing the relative tax burden on the working class while reducing the commodity price of labor as near to zero as possible, often by exporting jobs to areas of even cheaper labor. Assumes that labor is a commodity input, the chief purpose of which is to help maximize speculative profits accruing to the looting class.
The core leadership and funding for this class are provided by the looting trinity of Big Guns, Big Oil, and Big Pharma (G.O.P.), with key coordination and enabling provided by Big Banking. Perpetual wars and foreign occupations invariably enhance the portfolios of members of the looting class, for such conflicts create demand for more sales of Big Guns, while providing ample opportunity to help favored corporations loot the resources of the occupied lands and uncover speculative opportunities in commodities markets. But it is Big Oil which receives the most benefit from constant wars and rumors of wars, and it is Big Banking which receives the most benefit from constructing Ponzi schemes of derivatives (such as pyramids of securitized sub-prime mortgages) based on astronomical, unregulated leverage ratios.
Labor, regarded as a mere commodity, is thought by the looting class to have no right to non-monetary benefits, such as health care, occupational or environmental safety, or reasonable amounts of leisure time. (If workers are permitted reasonable working hours and ample leisure and vacation time, they may find time to educate themselves and organize, rather than sit exhausted in the evenings in front a TV to watch the diversions and distractions provided by corporate media conglomerates, which of course are controlled by the looting class.) Such non-monetary benefits might reduce net profits.
The looting class seeks to preserve a system in which the workers are encouraged and even compelled to carry a huge burden of personal debt. The carefully instilled fear of losing one's job and facing bankruptcy helps to promote a docile work force disinterested in organizing to bargain collectively with the looters. Ever since the Reagan Administration crushed the Air Traffic Controllers, the looting class has waged a full-scale, generation-long, remarkably successful assault on the working class as represented by organized labor.
Government itself is purchased and manipulated by the looting class as a vehicle for promoting the looting class's particular interests, and the concept that government should promote the "greatest good for the greatest number" is utterly alien to the looter.
The ultimate goal of the looting class is to create a one-party state immune to political or financial challenge. The Corporatist Party may have more than one wing, such as a Republican Wing and a Democratic Wing, but the looting class seeks to ensure that its essential interests are fully preserved no matter which wing officially wields political power. And by putting in place the technology and statutes to create an Orwellian Surveillance State, the looting class seeks to ensure that no countervailing force can organize and arise from the public to challenge its supremacy.
The key precept of the looting class is the Corporate Golden Rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules. Profits are privatized, minimally taxed, and passed on to heirs. Losses are socialized and publicly funded. The looting class is relieved of all fiduciary risk, which is transferred to the working and middle classes, which are taxed to cover the looting class's losses at the Big Casino.
Now is a wonderful time to be a member of the looting class--maybe the best time in human history.
And here is the looting class's key slogan:
Privatize our profits! Socialize our losses!
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Bailouts.
At least some people on the Hill are asking the right questions.
I'm not surprised that Bernie Sanders is opposed to Paulson's plan.
If the far right and the far left are opposed, will this give the mushy middle cover to quickly pass the plan this week?
I'm curious to see what Barney Frank has to say on Face the Nation this morning. He's not mushy, but he's closer to the middle than Kristol or Sanders.
I content myself with checking on the latest wingnut memes online over at Drudge, who occasionally actually breaks an interesting story.
Schumer and Kyl on Fox News Sunday basically agreed to Paulson's plan.
Dodd and Boehner on ABC's This Week basically agreed to Paulson's plan.
I really think there is going to be a big bipartisan majority in Congress this week for Paulson's plan without much change to it, certainly nothing like what Sanders calls for.
[Barney Frank is doing a good job of insisting that adding stimulus for average people is not "dirtying up" the bill. It's too bad there aren't more courageous people like Frank.]
It would be an amazingly bold demonstration of true change if Obama were to take time off from his debate preparation and speak out about this on the Senate Floor.
Obama said the absolutely right thing about the fundamental folly of pre-emptive war in 2002 when there was very little political risk for him. He benefitted greatly from that position. I think that, combined with Clinton's refusal to apologize for her vote the other way, gave Obama the decisive edge in Iowa.
Obama truly can rise above partisan politics by showing leadership on this hugely significant proposal. It's not clear that he would be rewarded for it on election day, particularly if McCain and the powerful interests behind expediting the passage of Paulson's plan with as few add-ons as possible paint Obama as a reckless obstructionist. But that would free Obama to be the 21st century populist that his different type of campaign has been premised on thus far. He was audacious enough to get this far that way, it would be a shame if he slowed down this close to the finish line. Otherwise, he may regret (and we may regret) that he acted like Usain Bolt in the 100, but without the insurmountable lead.
In any event, on that same panel on Fox News Sunday, Fred Barnes is the more reliable free market Reaganesque blowhard, and he was stammering at the thought that the Paulson plan might not pass as is.
I think another way to get money into the hands of the banks and insurers is a bottom up approach.
Instead of simply giving the fed $1T to spend with as they choose - with no oversite - let the tax payers choose. Issue vouchers that can be placed in a 401k, IRA, apply apply towards a home loan or existing mortgage. This would expand the investor class and put people into homes.
$1T across every man, woman, and child is $13,000 per family of 4 or $3,300 per individual. I think it would be much smarter to allow individuals to gain directly from the money they will have to pay back anyways, in the form of taxes.
The current plan is to take from tax payers and give to lenders. That is robbery. And that won't work.
The difference between this plan and other stimulus packages is that people would be required to invest it in a 401k, IRA, or home - not on toys from Wal-Mart. It will help the banks, only from the bottom up. And it will directly benefit tax payers.