Today's Stories

March 20-22, 2009

P. Sainath
Slumdogs vs. Billionaires

March 19, 2009

Dave Marsh
Sir Bono: the Knight Who Fled From His Own Debate

Paul Craig Roberts
Was the Bailout Itself a Scam?

Mike Whitney
Why Business is Hysterical About Card Check (And Why America Needs It)

Sam Smith
The Economy in Two Eras of Democrats

Harvey Wasserman
The Crash of France's Nuclear Poster Child

Binoy Kampmark
Back Into NATO: the End of French Exceptionalism

Kathy Sanborn
Broken Culture: the Desecration of Iraq's Art Treasures

Christopher Brauchli
Taxing Problems

George Wuerthner
Permanent Damage From Temporary Logging Roads

Diann Rust-Tierney
New Mexico Abolishes the Death Penalty

Website of the Day
Bailout Plan: "Cross Your Fingers and Hope"

March 18, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Real AIG Conspiracy

Paul Craig Roberts
Israel's American Chattel

Nelson P. Valdés
Why Obama's New Cuba Rules Violate the Constitution

Jonathan Cook
Bedouin Villages Left in the Dark Ages

John Ross
The Death of the American Newspaper

Yifat Susskind
Where Are We Leaving Iraqi Women?

Dave Lindorff
Who's Calling the Shots Now?

Frances Moore Lappé
The City That Ended Hunger

Richard Grossman
Beware the Madoff Diversion!

Rev. William E. Alberts
On Being Whole Not Holy

Website of the Day
Three Weeks in Cuba: a Painter's Perspective

March 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
Mr. Bernanke Spreads the Fire

James G. Abourezk
Show Business: AIG and the Posturing Democrats

Harry Browne
Ireland's Blast From the Past

Joanne Mariner
U.S. Human Rights Abuses in the War on Terror

Alan Farago
The National Ponzi Scheme

Dean Baker
Getting Lehman Bros. Wrong ... Again

Peter Morici
Cuts for Autoworkers, Bonuses for Derivatives Traders

Bill and Kathleen Christison
Obama and the Empire

Richard Gott
Victory for the Left in El Salvador

Walter Brasch
Dog Mutilations vs. Cosmetics

Website of the Day
Single-Payer Action

March 16, 2009

Pam Martens
Has a Comedian Just Saved America?

Uri Avnery
The Rape of Washington

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Witness Protection Program

Ralph Nader
Americans Want Justice for Wall Street Crooks

Nikolas Kozloff
Down But Not Out: the Latin American Right

John Walsh
Redbaiting on the Left

Ron Jacobs
A Call for Common Sense

Binoy Kampmark
The Case of Tim K

Stephen Fleischman
Coxey's Army Will March Again!

Christian Christensen
A 25-Year Misunderstanding: Springsteen's "Born in the USA"

Scott Handleman
Shooting Tristan Anderson

Website of the Day
Clean, Green, Sustainable

March 13 / 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Parable of the Shopping Mall

Peter Lee
What the Chas Freeman Fight Was Really About

Diana Johnstone
NATO's Global Mission Creep

David Harvey
Is This Really the End of Neoliberalism?

Petrino DiLeo
Inside Obama's Housing Plan: Will Millions be Left Out in the Cold

David Ker Thomson
Tender to the Earth

Eric Ruder
Massacre in Slow Motion: an Interview with Haider Eid on Gaza

Fred Gardner
Cannabidiol Now!

David Yearsley
Music Torture

Saul Landau
How Israel Gives Jews a Bad Name

Laura Carlsen
Drug War Doublespeak

Robert Weissman
We Told You So

John Goekler /
Merle Lefkoff
The Struggle in Saffron

Tom Barry
Imprisoning Immigrants for Profit

Kathy Sanborn
Money Out of Thin Air

Chris Mobley / Leela Yellesetty
Criminalizing Poverty: the Jail Seattle Doesn't Need

David Michael Green
The Perils of Being Right and Wrong

Alan Maass /
Lee Sustar
A Socialist Moment?

Christopher Brauchli
Pity, the Poor Tax Collectors

Richard Morse
Clinton in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Taking It From the Streets: From Springsteen to the Wu-Tang Clan

Poets' Basement
Springate and Johnston

Website of the Weekend
Hear the Buffalo

March 12 , 2009

Sharon Smith
Bottom Feeders at the Trough

Christopher Ketcham
Full Spectrum Penetration: Israeli Spying in the United States

Mike Whitney
Haircut Time for Bondholders

Ray McGovern
Obama Caves to the Lobby

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
The Doublespeak of a Discredited IMF

John Ross
The War is Not Over

M. Reza Pirbhai
Men in Black: Another View of Pakistan

Chris Floyd
Lost Liberty Blues: Prisons, Profits and the Banality of Evil

Steve Early
Why Labor Doesn't Need a "House of Lords"

Quentin Gee
Hiding the Costs of Coal

Website of the Day
Amadee Coral Reef: a Spherical Panorama

March 11 , 2009

Mike Roselle
From Birmingham to Coal River: Why is the Environmental Movement So Timid?

Paul Craig Roberts
The Criminal Injustice System

Henry A. Giroux
Academic Labor in Dark Times

Nikolas Kozloff
The Death Cries of the Salvadoran Right

Norm Kent
I am Patient Number 380206011

Mitu Sengupta
Reforming the World Bank: Different Image, Same Tune?

Ludwig Watzal
The Structure of Israel's Occupation

David Macaray
The Battle Over EFCA Has Begun

William S. Lind
Rounding Up the Usual Suspects

Martha Rosenberg
A Merger From the Folks Who Brought You Vytorin

Website of the Day
American Indicator: One in Fifty Kids are Homeless

March 10 , 2009

Franklin Spinney
What Israeli Peace Process?

Vijay Prashad
What Did Hillary Clinton Do?

Stan Cox
There's No Free Lunch on Your Browser: the Internet's Energy Drain

Zoltan Grossman
Coffee Strong: Listening to the G.I. Voice at Fort Lewis

Reuven Kaminer
Pure and Unadulterated Racism

Jonathan Cook
Memoricide in the West Bank

Dave Lindorff
Business Rules

Brian McKenna
How Anthropology Disparages Journalism

Harvey Wasserman
Is This the End of the Age of the Automobile?

Corey Pein
He Told You So

Website of the Day
AIG and Systemic Failure: $1.6 Trillion in Insured Deriviatives

March 9 , 2009

Pam Martens
Madoff and the Sorkin Affair

Ralph Nader
Too Big...Period

Peter Lee
Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: the US's Worst/Best Hope for Afghanistan?

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Charade

Peter Morici
Fixing the Banks: Treasury's Doomed Strategy

Dean Baker
Why Do We Need a Private Health Insurance Industry, Anyway?

Steve Ault
Kiss Thailand's Tolerance for Gays Goodbye

Stephen Lendman
Guantánamo Under Obama

Farooq Sulehria
Tennis Without Spectators

Belén Fernández
Chávez, a Cockfight and the Caracazo

Website of the Day
How Lincoln Learned to Read

March 6-8 , 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Harlots High and Low

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

Dave Lindorff
Kiss the Banks Goodbye

Mark Weisbrot
The Crisis vs. the Dogma

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

Phil Aliff
Soldier Suicides

Rebekah Ward
Georgia Injustice: Another Young Life Wrecked

Tracey Briggs
How Capitalism Feels in the Head

Dean Baker
Depression Nostalgia?

Daniel P. Wirt, M.D.
Remove the Handle From the Health Insurance Misery and Death Pump

Carl Finamore
The Recovery Plan: Save Us From Those Who Would Save Us

Wajahat Ali
The Pakistani Monster

David Michael Green
Smart is the New Stupid

David Macaray
The Minimum Wage Revisited

Michael Dickinson
On Financial Fools Day

Susie Day
Line in the Sand

Bob Sommer
Echoes of the Townhouse Explosion

Ben Sonnenberg
No Forgiveness for the Bourgeoisie: Buñuel's "The Exterminating Angel"

David Yearsley
Sonic Fakery in "Slumdog" From the Mozart of Chennai

DC Larson
They're Writing Those Depression Songs, Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Live Truth: Music Sans Headphones

Poets' Basement
Dominquez, MacNeil and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
The Environment & Obama: a Conversation with Jeffrey St. Clair

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

Weekend Edition
March 20-22, 2009

Feeding the Pigs

Obama and the Altar of Greed

By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

Barack Obama is dumber than a bag of hammers.

I never thought I’d say that about the guy.  I thought he would probably disappoint me with many of his policies.  I thought he would probably fail to be bold enough for his times.  I thought he might miss opportunities to do great things because of his seeming desire to be Mr. Rogers, complete with cardigan.  But I never expected him to be really dumb.

But if you’re willing to risk the entirety of a potentially great presidency on making sure that a handful of already wealthy sociopaths who got rich destroying the global economy are not denied massive taxpayer-funded bonuses to keep them in jobs they’ve already completely mishandled, despite the fact that many of them took the money and left the job anyhow – if that’s you, and you’re the new president of the United States with a load of challenges and lots of public good will solidly behind you – well, then, you’re dumber than a bag of hammers.

Like I said, I never thought I’d say that about Barack Obama.  But then I never thought I’d witness such inane stupidity (or, worse – is it venality?) from the man.

If you think that I’m exaggerating when I say that Obama may be betting his entire promising presidency by taking the wrong side in this AIG scandal, think again.  His presidency rises and falls on essentially one question:  Is he doing everything he can to fix the economy?  In order to fix the economy, given the astonishing mess he’s inherited, he is going to continue to need unprecedented forbearance from the public and Congress so as to take unprecedented steps.  People are already freaking out at what has been done and what has been spent, and we’re only just starting the rescue, with all its enormous costs.  The Republicans, who made this mess, are going to try to block Obama at every turn.  The president needs to convince the public to trust him and follow him, if he is going to win the legislation necessary fix the economy.

But if people see that Obama is using their hard-earned tax money to reward the predatory parasites at AIG, even after they’ve wrecked everything in sight, how is he ever going to get public support for spending another trillion bucks to repair the economy?  And if he can’t get the tools necessary to do the job, how can he ever expect it to get fixed?  And if it doesn’t get fixed, how can he expect to have a successful presidency?

He can’t, and he won’t.  And, thus, it is no exaggeration to say that this vibrant and well-liked president, who carries the hopes and aspirations of a nation on his shoulders with a robust foundation of good will to match, is potentially giving away everything in order to make sure that a band of corporate pirates keep their stolen taxpayer money.  And doing that, ladies and gentlemen, is as dumb as...  Well, you know.

Or maybe even a lot dumber still.  Month after month of headlines detailing the latest scandal, many of them involving not just the theft of people’s savings but crashing the global economy as well, and you begin to wonder if there’s any bottom to the barrel of fiscal depravity and governmental enabling.  Obama is now charting new paths in that direction.  Just the concept that AIG executives who brought down the roof should get anything besides pink slips and orange jumpsuits is sickening, let alone that they should get bonuses.

But wait, it gets better.  Then we’re told that the bonuses are necessary because only these criminals can undo the mess they’ve created.  So they’re paid millions to stay.  As if those who know how to wreck a global economy also know how to fix it.  As if these are the only folks in the world who have these skills.

Okay, well, fine then.  At least they have to earn these ‘retention bonuses’, right?  Nah.  That would so responsible.  Turns out that a bunch of them took the money supposedly provided as incentives for them to stay and then split anyhow.  One guy grabbed $4.6 million in retention bonus cash from the taxpayers, funneled through AIG, then promptly unretained himself.  More than fifty others did the same, eleven of whom took over a million bucks to stay.  Except they didn’t.

Then we have Team Obama telling us that these are legal contracts that cannot be violated.  As knowledgeable legal commentators have pointed out, however, that seems highly unlikely for a whole slew of reasons.  There are all sorts of legitimate mechanisms recognized by the law through which contractual agreements can be bypassed in order to serve higher societal purposes.

But even apart from all that, let’s remember that these are bonuses!  Isn’t the very nature of a bonus – as opposed to salary – the idea of contingency on performance?  Do the contracts say, “We’ll reduce you bonus down to eight figures if you destroy the company, and a mere several million bucks if you take down the global economy”?  If not, why weren’t these people paid 23 cents in order to fulfill a legal obligation and told to go hide in Argentina or something?  And count their blessings?  Instead, over seventy employees of the AIG London-based unit that brought down the company and the rest of us to boot have become millionaires.

Why did Democrats in Congress creep in late at night and remove language from the bailout bill which would have prevented this noxious use of taxpayer money?  Why did Obama sign such a bill?  Is there really no depredation that greed cannot induce anymore?  Is there really no politician in America who actually thinks these crimes are crimes anymore?

Of course, it’s not exactly shocking news when Washington politicians are found to be in bed with the corrupt captains of American finance.  Indeed, if there’s one thing that Democrats and Republicans can most readily agree upon, surely it’s how cool it is to whore for Wall Street.

Still, I can’t help being a little disappointed (some will no doubt say a lot naive) observing the degree to which Obama has joined this crowd.  Admittedly, I don’t get invited to the smoke-filled rooms where political deals are cut between politicians and the people who buy them, so maybe I have no clue what I’m talking about.  But it strikes me that Obama never had to be just another corporate Democrat, like Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer.

The Obama campaign was a political and, especially, a financial juggernaut, the likes of which we’ve never seen, from either party.  He was practically printing campaign dollars.  They were pouring in from so many ordinary contributors, in such a high volume, that he literally walked away from tens of millions of free federal funding he could have had simply by opting for government financing of his campaign.  But he actually pulled in way more by foregoing the matching funds and just opening up the floodgates for a public anxious to throw money at Change They Could Believe In.

So why does a guy in that happy situation staff his economic team with Wall Street mercenaries like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers?  Does he really believe that these people hold some sort of leverage over him and over the United States government?  It’s just astonishing to think so.

The reality is that the American overclass has just been on the most amazing feeding frenzy for three decades now, to the extent that they’ve simply lost any sense of proportion, whatsoever.  The sense of predatory entitlement has become what water is to fish.  It is so much a part of their world view that they no longer even have consciousness of it, or any alternative to it, any more than a tuna ever wonders what it might be like to walk on two legs and breathe air.

Fine.  I mean what a shock it is, eh?, to find that there are people in this world whose social conscience maxed out in kindergarten, where instead of coloring they instead cut business deals to trick the other kiddies out of their graham crackers.  It’s just a given that we have that sort of sicko running around.  That’s why we have jails, and that was once why we had the SEC.

Far less clear is why those who are supposed to represent the public’s interests need adopt such mentalities – though, of course, many of them are readily and frequently bought off.  But, again, it seems to me that Barack Obama had nothing to gain and everything to lose by carrying water for the mansion-on-every-continent set.  Obama has an independent base of support – some of it quite emphatic – and a national crisis or six on his plate compelling even those who are skeptical about the guy in the direction of wishing him every success as president, since his will be theirs as well.  So why is he turning his back on those hundreds of millions of supporters and instead looking out for the interests of what are the financial equivalent of serial rapists?

Is this a case of ideological osmosis?  Of a complete failure of imagination?  Have we simply reached the point where anyone who could plausibly be president in this country cannot fathom government existing for any other purpose than to enrich the already fabulously wealthy, any more than our friend the tuna could possibly dream of playing soccer?

Political analysts have long spoken of ‘regulatory capture’, the process by which industries which are meant to be regulated instead capture control of the government agencies which are meant to be regulating them.  A more contemporary version of this concept, and one more applicable perhaps to Obama than to his minions, is the arguably far more dangerous idea of ‘cognitive regulatory capture’.  Under that scenario, you don’t even need to infiltrate the agency, because you’ve already captured its mind and narrowed the range of what is thinkable therein.  Just as in Orwell’s “1984", the most powerful effect you can have on people is not by physically limiting their behavior, per se, but instead by getting them to limit themselves in terms of the concepts they are even capable of entertaining.

Has Barack Obama been the object of cognitive regulatory capture?  It’s hard to know.  But it is astonishing that time after time he keeps deferring to the interests of not only the economic elites, but of the outrageously criminal economic elites.  He puts Tim Geithner in his cabinet, not Bernie Sanders.  And when somebody floats the idea of capping salaries at companies on the government dole, or of limiting bonuses, or of the government truly acting like the owner it actually has become of many of these bailed out firms, there’s Geithner and Summers telling him (and, presumably, Robert Rubin telling them), “No, no, you can’t do that”.  And, in fact, no, no, Obama doesn’t.

Imagine that radical concept.  Limit executives who have crashed their firms, and the global economy as well, from taking multi-million dollar bonuses out of taxpayer-funded bailout money?  Sounds vaguely Marxist, doesn’t it?  After all, we can’t have government intervention in the private sector.  Don’t forget your catechism.  (And just ignore the seeming contradiction of government intervention in the form of bailouts.  I mean, why bother with having a religion if you’re not going to be hypocritical?)

When Bill Clinton did this stuff it was surprising, only because he was the first Democratic president since Roosevelt to sell out the public’s interests as if he were a full-blown Republican.  What makes it surprising in Obama’s case is that he has so little need to do so, given the crisis we’re in and the support and good will that it automatically provides him, not to mention the self-mutilation of the opposition party’s credibility.

And what makes it really surprising is that Obama not only doesn’t need to go down this path, but he is potentially destroying his presidency by doing so.  There is a growing public anger out there, anger that is long overdue.  People are finally beginning to wake up, however foggily, to who is the real enemy of America’s interests and who is the real predator with its fingers rifling their pocketbooks.  If this populist rage is properly directed, we could get some sort of healthy outcome, like a reprise of the New Deal social safety net and a badly needed robust regulatory apparatus.  If it is not, it might instead be miraculously used to breathe political life back into the very corpses of those who brought this storm down on all of us.
Crawling into bed with Public Enemy Number One against the leading wedge of a populist revolt is about as stupid an idea as imaginable for the Obama administration.  Why doesn’t he offer another monotone denunciation while he’s at it, this one of pedophiles?  Perhaps adding a heartfelt expression of how disappointed he is that there just isn’t more that can be done, darn it.  Danged legal contracts!  Hey, maybe he could also staff up his Justice Department with paroled sexual predators, too, precisely as he has done in the equivalent manner at Treasury.

And while he’s at it, he can complete the job he began by putting so many Republicans in the cabinet.  The GOP has been busy committing suicide for years now, but has dramatically sped up the pace of late, trotting out clown-like figures the likes of which neither Barnum nor Bailey could ever have conceived, even on a particularly pungent acid trip.  Jindal, Steele, Limbaugh, Palin, Palin’s daughter.  Wow.  If there is a Hell, you can bet Barry Goldwater is down there right now furiously trying to change his party registration.  Best of all, not only are these losers the face of the Republican Party, lately they’ve taken it a step yet further and have been bringing out the long knives to eviscerate each other.  It’s hard to imagine a better situation to be in for a Democratic president.

Which makes Obama’s idiocy all the more astonishing.  Probably no one on the planet could rescue the GOP right now, except for Barack Obama.  So why on earth is he doing so?  Why is he throwing a rope to a drowning disease?  And then handing it a cudgel?  Why is he breaking into the vault at the CDC in order to cut loose the smallpox virus once more?  What could he be thinking?  Or is the bag of hammers thinking at all?

Republicans, in their usual fashion, have been highly successful at marketing disastrously pernicious ideas.  So, lately, they’ve been out there associating Obama’s massively expensive economic rescue plan with wasteful government spending.  In fact, it isn’t that at all.  In fact, it is the only hope remaining for reviving this horridly destructive economy that the greedy Wall Street sharks and their political minions created.  There will be no monetary policy solution.  Interest rates are close to zero, and there’s nowhere left to drop.  Demand from China is not going to rescue this economy.  Consumer spending?  Yeah, right.  Rising property values as ATMs for homeowners?  How very 2007.  This is likely the whole enchilada.  If wholesale Keynesianist countercyclical government spending doesn’t rescue the economy, it’s really hard to see what Plan B could possibly be.

But, of course, Republicans have never met a national interest they weren’t anxious to steamroll on the way toward achieving their own narrow self-interests, and this situation is no different.  If you’re in the GOP and all you care about is winning elections (and, if you are in the GOP, that is all you care about), your only bad scenario looking ahead is for Obama to successfully rescue the economy.  So you try to block him at every turn, and you lie about his program, calling a desperate last-ditch rescue effort straight out of the Macro Economics 101 textbook a porkbarrel exercise in wasteful government spending.

The public doesn’t necessarily want to hear that right now, and certainly doesn’t put a lot of trust in the source.  But then there’s old Brilliant Barack, staffing his economic team not only with Wall Street hacks, but tax-cheating, TARP-blowing, Wall Street hacks at that.  And then these flunkies tell us there’s just no way that public money can be stopped from being used as a reward for the scam artists who got us into this mess originally.  And guess what?  All of sudden, miraculously, the worst offenders in the Republican Party start to sound credible.

And if that happens, Obama’s already sinking chances of passing massive rescue legislation sufficient to end this nightmare will diminish fast.

And if that happens his chances of fixing the economy will fall rapidly.

And if that happens his presidency will swirl down the toilet.

And if that happens it will be Jeb Bush in a walkaway in 2012.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.  He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond.  More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

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