Zuckerberg lives

I just watched "The Social Network".  (Why didn't they call it "Social Network"?  Cleaner.)

Mark Zuckerberg is still alive, despite being (portrayed as) a conscienceless user asshole.  No, I didn't believe the young associate putting a sweet Hollywood bow on him at the end.  Although it did look as though she might be trying to cheer up the poor little rich boy with a little white lie...

The apparent fact the Zuckerberg is such a creep and is still alive is actually good news.  Not for the business world, which is full of similar successful self-centered sociopaths, but for the political world.

Movies come out every year in which the entire government is run by venal conspiracies that would just as soon kill you as frame you for a crime you didn't commit.  "Enemy of the State" had both.  The Bourne abstraction movies have a shadow government immune from democratic control.  I'm sure I'll enjoy the matrix-y paranoia of "The Adjustment Bureau".

For me, the question has lately been, with trillions of dollars at stake and with humans' obvious willingness to kill over paltry amounts, is our government subject to even worse than the obvious perennial purchase by moneyed interests.  Goldman Sachs has run our economic policy, irrespective of the party in power, for decades.  They got to the top the old-fashioned way; they stole, uh, sorry, creamed off huge proceeds and bought power by contributing to both parties.

Yet if push came to shove and a less wishy-washy reformer than Barack Obama won the Presidency against all the elite cultural factors stacked against him (or her - but not Hillary, she's too DLC), how far would the interests of wealth go to retain their control?  Yeah, this sounds paranoid even to me, its thinker.  But...

Zuckerberg lives.  Maybe popular democracy remains possible, despite the current overwhelming dominance of the wealthy elite.

And I did really enjoy seeing Larry Summers portrayed as an arrogant, short-sighted, ignoramus asshole.  Too bad the filmmakers couldn't prevail upon him to play himself.

Harvard is everywhere in this movie, and it doesn't come off well.  But now Harvard has Drew Faust, and the federal government has Elizabeth Warren.  Maybe the problem all along has been Harvard men, and what we really need is Harvard women to save us.

(Shhh.  Don't tell the wealthy.  Let them get comfortable with Faust's and Warren's admission to the club.  Then bust up the club good and proper.)

How many seats

If we as a nation own more than a third of Citigroup, it should go without saying that we get to appoint the board chair. The question I have is how many other seats do we get on the board? And, no, Robert Rubin doesn't count.

I'm not happy with strictly proportional allocation, which understates the importance of our capital infusions. I'm looking for one less than a majority, thus chair plus six other seats on the board of 15.

Who should be kicked off? Start with the inside directors, Win Bischoff, Vikram Pandit, Richard Parsons, and Bob Rubin. They royally screwed up; this is known in my plebeian circles as accountability. But no:

Under the deal, a majority of Citigroup's independent directors will be replaced. Pandit and Chairman Richard Parsons will retain their positions.

The idiots in charge of the asylum are not in the mood for justice. They and their diluted (deluded, too) investors still feel entitled:

"Will Citigroup be run for the shareholders, or is Citigroup going to be run for public policy goals or some other purpose?" asked Michael Mayo of Deutsche Bank.

Uh, dipshit, we are the shareholders.

The truth is that these guys couldn't find their well-fed asses with both hands. (Don't they have people for that?)

"We do not think [the Citi brand has] been permanently damaged. We still have a very strong brand globally," [Ned Kelly, head of global banking for Citigroup,] said. "Clearly when you're in the spotlight, there's going to be some negative impact. But it's had no economic impact."

They're still dithering about their brand, when anyone with two brain cells to rub together can tell that the bank's survival is what's at stake.

They still think these times are normal, that their membership in the elite will protect them from justice. Self-perpetuating and mutually defending elites are a big part of what's wrong with the economy, the media, the government, and America in general. My proverbial pitchfork says they're wrong.

Why liberals think Republicans harbor racists

Because they do.

“Just from what little I’ve seen of her and Mr. Obama, Sen. Obama, they’re a member of an elitist-class individual that thinks that they’re uppity,” Westmoreland said, according to the Capitol Hill Newspaper [sic] the Hill.

Anyone who buys the transparently lying claim that Lynn Westmoreland of west fucking Georgia doesn't realize exactly what 'uppity' means to racist white people among his constituency and, no doubt, his goddamn household should just hook up to the Republican matrix, 'cause man you're already taking the bullshit by IV.

Next thing you know he'll be claiming 'nigra' is neutral and 'colored' is a compliment.

What is this, 1954?

Was he drunk when he gave the quote at the top? Even if, the only honest thing he could say after would be: I was drunk and surrounded by people who didn't care, and so I let slip the racism I was trained in from birth.

Democratic coalition

It's always fun when Bill Maher and Paul Krugman agree:

Thus [Rudy] Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And [Sarah] Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.

What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you.

Republicans need to stop saying Barack Obama is an elitist, or looks down on rural people, and just admit you don't like him because of something he can't help, something that's a result of the way he was born. Admit it, you're not voting for him because he's smarter than you.

Not hard to sort out which quote is whose, is it? But read them both, and you'll see that Krugman gets in a lot of good, pithy slaps at the bullshit that pervades Republican talking points. Maher? Goes without saying.

How many refugees

I'm a little leery of giving the McCain press operation an idea for a craven political gimmick, but here goes anyway.

Now that Duhbya is trying to prove mastery of the difficult ass/hole in the ground distinction by saying, "Run away," how many refugees can fit into McCain's houses? Can he fly them there on his campaign jet on loan from Cindy's family business.

By the way, I really don't care if Cindy is offended. What matters to me is that McCain has tried to portray Obama as an out of touch elitist, yet the houses and the $5 million middle class and Phil Gramm's whiners remark and the health adviser's claim that ER service should count as health insurance all show that McCain is the out of touch elitist.

If the McCain people are desperate enough to take this suggestion, it will backfire on them anyway. It will be an obvious pander (though the press will need that pointed out to them), and they'll have long-term lodgers (Christmas with John and Cindy!), which will probably necessitate their purchase of even more houses.

Image used under CCA 2.5. Click photo for details.

Why not say it

Only a Democrat gives a shit about repairing New Orleans for the poor people who used to live there, yet there's no mention in the editorial of the yawning partisan divide. Instead, the liberal media as represented by the New York Times is too ... establishment to say something so direct and obvious and hurtful to one side of the great bipartisan elite who really run this country and most of the buffets that journalists might graze on.

(Wow. That sounds really bitter.)

How Republicans view the working class

Unfortunately, there are Americans of all classes who are still fooled. At this point, you have to say that they want to be fooled.

Click image for full Matt Wuerker/Politico cartoon.

It worked for Duhbya

For $300, Duhbya bought assent from the Reagan Democrats for his ridiculously plutocratic 2001 tax cuts. Now, John McCain and Hillary Clinton are trying the same stupid, pandering sort of back-handed insult at a $30 price point.

Insult? Isn't Obama the elitist? No, Clinton and McCain are insulting the intelligence of the voters. Of course, sad truth be told, the voters in the past have deserved this insult. They haven't been able to tell the difference between real populism and the fake kind that Republicans - and now Hillary - are so keen on.

Here's a hint:

"I'm not going to put my lot in with economists, because I know if we did it right . . . it would be implemented effectively," said Clinton, who was asked during an hourlong television appearance to name a credible economist who backed her plan to lift the 18.5-cent federal tax on gasoline for the summer.

In a barely veiled attack on Obama, Clinton added, "We've got to get out of this mind-set where somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans."

When someone says something like this that makes you go "huh?", bullshit is probably one of the top ingredients. My interpretation: "I'm not going to listen to smart people. I'm too smart to do that." Sheesh, smart people are often wrong even in consensus. So make an argument why they're wrong. But no. Then the second paragraph opposes her point if taken literally. It looks like a Freudian slip.

It's a sad fact about America that acting stupid probably helps Hillary's chances.

Corporate chiselers

American Airlines thinks it has found a way to screw its skycaps out of short money it couldn't win in court. It's despicable. Here's the money quote:

[Tim Smith] also said the skycaps' new hourly wage is "very much in line with the type of job that [the skycaps] are performing, their educational level, experience level."

For those of you following along to Obama's travails at home, this is what it is to be an out-of-touch elitist.

Image from Wikimedia Commons used under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Update: American's CEO made "only" $6.6 million last year.

Another elitist calls Obama elitist

Mitt Romney has enough money that he thought he could buy the common touch. Maybe he still does.

Not in a million ... years.

Republican platform

Finally getting back to how we got where we are today.

What Republicans want to do to America is not popular. Why have they had so much success implementing their platform?

First, what is their platform? I divide it into two parts, what the party elders really want and what issues they use to win votes. Naturally, there are issues that cross the line and play in both parts. There is even a small amount of heterodoxy in the Republican Party since it is a coalition between economic and social conservatives.

Still, the economic conservatives dominate the party's power. They toss the religious conservatives a bone now and then (and sometimes the fundie foot soldiers do notice that they are being taken for a ride), but the wealthy interests always come first.

So, the real platform:

• Low taxes for the wealthy
• Power concentrated in the hands of a few
• The end of unions
• Return to economic organization closer to feudalism than to laissez-faire
  
• The end of science-based and meritocratic regulation
• Foreign policy based on the economic interests of their real constituency
  
• Oh, and even lower taxes for the wealthy

Of course, these are all fundamentally elite economic issues with concentrated power and wealth as the end goals.

This sort of platform is, needless to say, difficult to sell to well-informed voters in a democracy. The Republicans have responded over the past 40 years with a mixture of:

• Disinformation
• Distraction
• Wedge issues

Coming when I get around to it: Details on the Republican tactical mixture.

Visionary

Everything you've heard about David Broder is true - everything facile, ass-kissing, and committed to inside-the-Beltway elitism, that is. Here he sucks up to Newt Gingrich for his ideas, nevermind that Newtie is the original hyper-partisan, bomb-throwing, divisive Republican who couldn't give a shit about Broder's usual graven idol, bipartisanship.

Fidel Castro had ideas. Benito Mussolini must've had at least one idea.

But it's obvious that Broder's one idea is smooches to power, not any sort of meaningful bipartisan compromise. What a useless gasbag!

Update: Eric Alterman on Newtie.

Synonym for forever

As Atrios has said over and over again through gritted teeth until his blog is blue in the face, the Iraq hawks demand six months (one friedman unit) every six months. These "serious", "centrist" foreign policy "experts" can't imagine any response to quagmire other than staying indefinitely stuck bleeding in the dust.

In psychology, perseverating in the same behavior expecting different results is one definition of insanity.

In business, repeatedly slipping a deadline is bad enough. Slipping it by the same magnitude as your previous estimate can be a firing offense, especially if you do it over and over. Even the software industry can't get away with that kind of who cares attitude.

Six months is a synonym for forever among our political elites. They assume our attention span is less than half a year and that our memories are only slightly better than the typical end stage Alzheimer's patient.

They keep bringing us insanity completely devoid of accountability. And they expect us to continue paying the blood and tax bills and to keep watching them on TV as if they had something useful to say.

Comparative advantage

As a market incentive for the Chinese to continue to pirate everything that can be copied, Microsoft has lowered the price in China of Windows Vista by two thirds. No doubt, Microsoft was responding to its particular assessment of how to maximize revenue.

The irony, of course, is that Microsoft has just made it easier to do business in China than in the United States - with an American product. Software piracy is a comparative advantage in the global economy over the relative obedience to intellectual property law seen in the United States.

An American government that was interested in the fate of its people would protect its economy from this perverse incentive. Ours has failed at this under the bipartisan elite consensus that globalization can do no wrong.

Globalization is working out pretty well for CEOs and investors, who are willing to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. The future of the American middle class looks pretty grim, however.

Even techies are noticing IOKIYAR

Ed Foster writes:

In medieval days, a peasant could be executed for stealing a crust of bread, while the lord of the manor could abuse every peasant in sight without fear of legal retribution. Does it strike you that we seem to be reverting more and more to a similar society, one in which the punishments no longer fit the crimes?

The wingnuts love zero tolerance. It matches their angry and vengeful God.

But, to serve the limitless greed of Republican crony capitalists, it gets worse.

Even if we were to believe the exaggerated estimates the various copyright industries put forth for how much they lose to piracy each year, is it as much as the Enrons, Worldcoms, Adelphias, etc. cost us the economy? Notice also that while Congress is mandating increasingly severe punishments for the copyright equivalent of petty theft, it can't be bothered to do anything serious about crimes like identity theft that are costing millions of citizens billions of dollars. With powerful lobbying from the RIAA and MPAA, federal law enforcement agencies have no problem getting funding for enforcement of copyright crimes, but individuals who've had their bank accounts cleared out by a clever phishing scam have nowhere to turn.

There are many other examples: the bankruptcy bill, the way drug enforcement imprisons the little fish while it catches and releases those with something to trade, attempts to end overtime, the end of the billionaire playboy tax, tax reductions that prefer investment to labor, the effort to end Social Security, media emphasis on sensational crime over much greedier financial misbehavior, the continued destruction of unions, and on and on.

So, fellow peasants, had enough of droit du seigneur?

Originally posted on DailyKos.