Dateline: The New York Times January 2, 2010  [print_link]

By FERNANDA SANTOS

Highly vulnerable, undocumented immigrants have fallen completely through the cracks. Carolina Villegas, left, and others from area churches provided food and items for day laborers in Queens (N.Y.) on a weekend last month. (Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)

CARLOS RUANO WAS DOWN TO HIS LAST $50 when his landlord kicked him out in September because he could no longer pay rent. He sent the money to his wife and children in Guatemala and spent the night riding the E train, which has a nickname among his fellow day laborers in Woodside, Queens: “hotel ambulante,” Spanish for roving hotel.

Mr. Ruano, 38, who had drawn his living from 69th Street and Broadway for six years, has been on the streets since. He and other hard-luck day laborers have slept wherever they can: in the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital Center, in unfinished buildings abandoned by bankrupt developers and under bridges along the freight railroad tracks that slice through western Queens, where dirty mattresses and work boots lay on the rocky ground one recent morning.

“The only reason we don’t go hungry is because there are people who offer us food,” Mr. Ruano said on a snowy Saturday as he clutched a cup of soup from a group of Pentecostals feeding day laborers at a park on Woodside Avenue.

With their isolation and day-to-day existence, the laborers are perhaps the most invisible and hardest-to-reach victims of the recession, advocates and city officials say.

No one knows for sure how many have become homeless since the downturn brought construction projects to a virtual standstill and sapped them of jobs that once paid as much as $200 a day. Most of them are illegal immigrants who may be on the streets one day and off the next, depending on their work.

The rules of the shelter system do not suit them, they said. They might be placed too far from the job pickup site or miss curfew if a job runs too late or is too far from the shelter.

Afraid that their immigration status might be exposed — outreach workers might ask for identification, though the shelters are open to everyone — they say they would rather sleep outside.

“We’re still learning about this population, about their needs,” said Robert V. Hess, the city’s commissioner of homeless services.

To the day laborers clustered on and around 69th Street from Broadway to Queens Boulevard, the downturn came on suddenly: There was work one week, and then there was not.

And for what little work there is, they have more competition — from men who used to be steady hands on roofing, painting and other construction crews and men who lost their full-time jobs in restaurants, at landscaping companies and in garages.

Living under bridges. The capitalist system, in its majesty, gives everyone, including the rich and the poor, the freedom to sleep under bridges.

With more people at the corners, day laborers said, contractors will hire whoever agrees to work for the lowest pay.

“We’ve all learned the meaning of the law of supply and demand the hard way,” said Roberto Meneses, 48, a day laborer from Mexico who has been trying to organize his peers under a fledgling group called United Day Laborers of Woodside.

They have had to adapt just as fast as they had learned to install drywall and unclog pipes. One man said he spent 20 days picking apples at a farm near Buffalo in November to earn some cash. Others started to make do with one meal a day. Many are no longer able to send money home.

Ignacio Sanchez, 50, who has a wife and three children in Mexico, said a week before Christmas that he had worked once since the beginning of the month. Rodrigo Saldaña, 41, who has a wife and five children in Ecuador, said he had not worked at all last month. Both said they had spent nights sleeping on the train or by the railroad tracks.

“Do you want to know what the worst part is?” Mr. Saldaña said. “My wife says I’m lying when I tell her there’s no more work in New York.”

Early last month, homeless-outreach workers from the city met with organizations that serve immigrant communities to hear about their work and to ask questions: Where could they go for free immigration advice? Can an illegal immigrant who has no ID get a new one at a consulate?

“There are a lot of practical issues that are very unique to the undocumented, to day laborers,” said Valeria Treves, executive director of New Immigrant Community Empowerment in Jackson Heights, Queens, one of the groups that attended the meeting. “But these guys also have incredible emotional needs.”

Sipping coffee at a Colombian bakery on Roosevelt Avenue, Mr. Saldaña, Mr. Sanchez and Carlos Orellana, an Ecuadorean who has worked for 14 years as a day laborer, told of the sadness of being far from their children, whom they have watched grow in pictures that come with the occasional letter from home.

At least there was a sense of empowerment while they were able to provide for them, they said. “We were the men of the family,” said Mr. Orellana, 40. But now that they have no money, all they are left with is disappointment and shame, he said.

By the railroad tracks, the ground was sprinkled with the instruments of coping: empty beer bottles, a tattered Bible, a crumpled picture of a young boy. A toy skull hovered over a mattress, dangling from a string tied to the tip of a rod, in a sight at once funny and macabre.

During the day, the place was empty. The only noise came from the hum of passing cars on the streets above and the rumble of the 7 train, visible in the distance.

“That’s how we live,” Mr. Orellana said.

His eyes cast on the tracks beneath his feet, Mr. Sanchez interjected, “This is no life.”

Dateline: January 29 – 31, 2010

Amen, Pass the Scotch ….

By JOE BAGEANT [print_link]

Jocotepec, Mexico.

I’VE MANAGED TO SIT STILL THROUGH still through a few state of the union speeches, through the remarks of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, one Bush (the pappy, I never could gut out one of The Dub’s ) and a Clinton. Brother Clinton finished me off, made me give up on state of the union speeches altogether.

Still, there was the off chance — OK, vain hope — that Obama might come out swinging in the wake of the Massachusetts massacre and the Supreme’s recent sale of Congress to corporations. As in: The senator from Wal-Mart now has the floor. So I poured myself a stiff one and fell into a deep cush recliner in front of a mongo brain-wrapping TV screen. Not that I would ever own one, mind you. I watch it at my friend and fellow writer Fred Reed’s house. That way he gets the rap for being a torpid brainwashed American pig.

Obama’s opener was predictable enough, the obligatory patriotic reference for the blood and balls crowd:

…when the Union was turned back at Bull Run and the Allies first landed at Omaha Beach…

Then came the hearkening back section, in this case to 1965, a time when blacks had hope and liberals had a few guts:

… and civil rights marchers were beaten on Bloody Sunday…

More than half of Americans were not yet born in 1965, and four fifths surely have never heard of Bloody Sunday at Selma. But what the hell, it’s a speech, right?

And again, we must answer history’s call…

Along with millions of other cranky old lefties, I wanted to scream back, Then pick up the fucking phone, damned ya!

And of course there were references to heartland towns, to show he can at least name a few:

…in places like Elkhart, Ind., and Galesburg, Ill.

And he reminded us if the many nights he spends in the Lincoln room crying over the mail:

… letters I read each night. The toughest to read are those written by children …

And, as always, the American people are resilient, industrious folks living in Norman Rockwell’s world:

…they remain busy building cars and teaching kids, starting businesses and going back to school. They’re coaching Little League and helping their neighbors. …I have never been more hopeful about America’s future than I am tonight.

Are we living in the same country here, guy? But shsssh! At last! He’s talking the economy. My man is gonna get down and grit with the peeps. Talk some real meat here.

It all begins with our economy. Our most urgent task upon taking office was to shore up the same banks that helped cause this crisis.

Wait, back up there big fella. Why?

It was not easy to do. And if there’s one thing that has unified Democrats and Republicans, it’s that we all hated the bank bailout.

That kicked off my little inner, the bullshit detector, the one that speaks in translative tongue. And the translation was: However, we of both parties all asked ourselves, do we really have the ass to take on the big money? The guys who pave the campaign trail with the bucks? No way Jose!

Obama rolls on.

So I supported the last administration’s efforts to create the financial rescue program. And when we took the program over, we made it more transparent and accountable.

Huh?

As a result, the markets are now stabilized, and we have recovered most of the money (the printing presses are white hot as I speak) we spent on (handed over to) the banks.

To recover the rest, I have proposed a fee on the biggest banks.

Which will be passed on to their customers.

…if these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them.

Pardon me, but we don’t remember ever being asked if we wanted to throw the rich bastards a line.

…we extended or increased unemployment benefits for more than 18 million Americans…

This is progress? It’s like creating more soup lines.

We made health insurance 65 percent cheaper for families who get their coverage through COBRA.

COBRA costs 12 grand a year for crying out loud! You’re still talking $5,500 a year for unemployed folks, uh, between jobs, people who are going to remain there unless the Chinese start a work visa program for them. COBRA?

Let me repeat: we cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families

Who just happen to be making less taxable dollars than ever.

We cut taxes for small businesses

Which are in the shitter, thus making less taxable dollars.

We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers

Assuming they can to get a bank to un-ass the money so they too can go in hock the rest of their lives.

We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children

Does that include the 46 million working class Americans who don’t make enough money to pay taxes at all? Much less need a tax cut?

And we haven’t raised income taxes by a single dime on a single person. Not a single dime.

I’m doing my taxes next week. Care to lay folding money on that statement? I’m reading your lips.

Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed.

They were lucky enough not to be fired. So you get to claim anyone who still has a job?

Economists on the left and the right say that this [stimulus] bill has helped saved jobs and avert disaster.

They also tend to agree that it is building an even bigger coming disaster in the process – debt collapse.

Now, the true engine of job creation in this country will always be America’s businesses

Those same folks you see cheerily waving at us from Seoul and Shenzhen.

But government can create the conditions necessary for businesses to expand and hire more workers.

Hmmm… Maybe in FDR’s time. But recent administrations have damned well proven to be capable of blowing our jobs out of the water. Can’t you just do whatever the Clinton administration did — but do it in reverse?

We should start where most new jobs do — in small businesses

Where benefits are the least or nonexistent, the pay is lowest and the jobs most insecure…

So tonight, I’m proposing that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid

the funny money we’ve printed up for them

and use it to help community banks

the local banking hustlers who never managed to sell their banks to Citicorp or Capital One while the selling was good.

… While we’re at it, let’s also eliminate all capital gains taxes on small business

Who knows, we may even get two or three Rotary Club Republicans to vote Democratic next time.

Next, we can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure … railroads to the interstate highway system …

But isn’t the effectiveness of those things predicated upon manufacturing something, having something to ship around?

… time to finally slash the tax breaks for companies that ship our jobs overseas

The horse has left the bar Nellie, but if we close the barn door the rest of the world might not notice they are gone. Maybe even loan us a few more bucks.

I do not accept second place for the United States of America.

Second place? We’re number one in external world debt per citizen ($7,000 a head), But yeah, we’re ninth in education in the industrial world, and battling Brazil and Mexico for the biggest net debtor nation slot. Which is its own sort of number one.

Look, I am not interested in punishing banks…

Why the hell not? They stole billions. We proles get beat up for a $50 IRS bill.

I’m interested in … [channeling] the savings of families into investments that raise incomes.

I thought we already tried that and got robbed by the Wall Street syndicate. Or are you talking buying each family a vegetable cart to put on the street in their off hours?

We need to make sure consumers and middle class families have the information they need to make financial decisions.

We tried that too. And we got mugged by Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney and that guy on Law and Order, Sam Waterson, who’s still hawking discount brokerage for T.D. Waterhouse.

We are creating more clean energy and clean energy jobs.

Now yer talkin!

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.

In other words, drill and nuke until the green starts showing.

Third, we need to export more of our goods.

So we will buy them from China, ship ‘em to Cleveland, then export them again. Twenty million new jobs in shipping and export!

To help meet this goal, we’re launching a national export initiative that will help farmers

Help corporate midwestern Republican corn growers and Archer Daniels Midland get bigger subsidies

and small businesses

assembling Chinese electronic parts in American maquiladoras

increase their exports… Fourth, we need to invest in the skills and education of our people.

Awwwww right!

To make college more affordable, this bill will finally end the unwarranted taxpayer subsidies that go to banks for student loans.

No longer will we let the banks run access to higher education into a racket. You the people must come up with the full freight from here on out. Or simply do it the good old American way. Hock your house. If you still have one. Which still puts the juice in the same bankers’ hands. But with different paperwork.

Instead, let’s take that money and give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college

like we all make enough to owe that kind of geet.

…and increase Pell Grants…

Just make sure you print enough greenbacks to cover the current 18 billion Pell Grant shortfall.

And let’s tell another 1 million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans…

Let’s see now, at 10 percent of say, 35 K a year if the kid is lucky enough to find a reasonably good job by current standards, it shouldn’t take more than a few decades to pay off that $50,000 education bill, which, with compound interest runs at least $80,000. Not as good for bankers as the old student loan racket, but nothing to piss at either.

… and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years

for those whose degree amounted to a lifetime clerk job at Blockbuster Video and proved uncollectible anyway.

and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service.

Military service. We’ve got more wars in the hopper

… we’re working to lift the value of a family’s single largest investment — their home. The steps we took last year to shore up the housing market have allowed millions of Americans to take out new loans and save an average of $1,500 on mortgage payments. This year, we will step up refinancing…

Here we go again! Pump the next bubble baby!

… so that homeowners can move into more affordable mortgages.

Borrow your way out of debt. All it takes is a new mortgage. Didn’t we try that already? I did.

Now let’s be clear — I did not choose to tackle this [health care] issue to get some legislative victory under my belt.

You tackled it so you could claim the certain legislative defeat?

After nearly a century of trying, we are closer than ever to bringing more [health care] security to the lives of so many Americans.

Are you sure? In 1966 I used to get total health care through my company for $1.67 a week. And I only made $270 a month. What century are we talking about here, bro? Closer to what?

…I want to acknowledge our first lady, Michelle Obama, who this year is creating a national movement to tackle the epidemic of childhood obesity and make our kids healthier.

Tip for Michelle: Take down the corporate corn famers ram-jamming government subsidized corn syrup into their fat little bodies.

By the time I’m finished speaking tonight, more Americans will have lost their health insurance. Millions will lose it this year. Our deficit will grow.

Thanks!

Do not walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close …

Close to total capitulation disguised as a meaningless compromise.

Let us find a way to come together and finish the job … [we are doing on] the American people.

At the beginning of the last decade, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion

Goddamned Bill Clinton’s shady bookkeeping.

By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars

Which I continue to prosecute

But we took office amid a crisis, and our efforts to prevent a second depression

by selling you into world debt slavery for generations to come

have added another $1 trillion to our national debt.

Tough break there folks.

I am absolutely convinced that was the right thing to do.

(sigh)

Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years.

Not the spending on our two wars mind you, or in aid to Israel, or on money to prime the bankers’ pumps, and certainly not on national security programs. But you will still keep your Medicare and Medicaid, if you can afford the new charges we’re adding. And naturally your Social Security, the one you paid for all your life as an insurance policy – which continues to be pillaged by Congress — will not be affected. Rest assured you will be paid in shrinking funny money until you croak.

We’ve already identified $20 billion in savings for next year

All you folks gotta do is come up with the $20 billion so we can show it on the books

…at a time of record deficits, we will not continue tax cuts for oil companies, investment fund managers and those making over $250,000 a year.

No further tax cuts, but they can keep the ones they enjoy now.

Now, even after paying for what we spent on my watch

Which world economists say can never be paid off anyway, so fuck it.

we will still face the massive deficit we had when I took office.

You get to hold that turd too.

More importantly, the cost of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will continue to skyrocket.

This is your idea of a political promise?

That’s why I’ve called for a bipartisan fiscal commission

Which should work about as well as all the other bipartisan commissions we use to blow smoke up your ass … assuming I can get it past the Senate, which petty much likes things the way they are.

… I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.

It will land in their laps anyway without any help from me.

And when the vote comes tomorrow, the Senate should restore the pay-as-you-go law …

Other nations are already threatening to quit loaning us money, so we’re gonna be paying as we go anyway. Why not claim the high ground now?

I know that some in my own party will argue that we cannot address the deficit or freeze government spending when so many are still hurting.

But none of us on Capitol Hill are on food stamps, so shut the fuck up and listen to me.

I agree, which is why this freeze will not take effect until next year, when the economy is stronger

When maybe we’ve managed to beat some oil out of one of these dust pits we’re presently bombing.

From some on the right, I expect we’ll hear a different argument — that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts for wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations and maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away. The problem is, that’s what we did for eight years.

Translation: I’m trying to pull it off, but your boy George fowled that pool for us. The man had no subtlety at all.

Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time to try something new. Let’s invest in our people.

By taking more of their money from then and giving it back. They’ve proven they don’t know the difference.

To do that, we have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now.

We’re printing all the dollars we need, so that’s not the problem.

We face a deficit of trust — deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years.

None of us in Congress believe anything in Washington works either. In fact, we are certain because we fucked it up.

But restoring the public trust demands more.

We need another sacrificial goat – another like Bernie Madoff. Ben Bernanke is off the table.

Tonight, I’m calling on Congress to publish all earmark requests on a single Web site before there’s a vote, so that the American people can see how their money is being spent. Of course, none of these reforms will even happen if we don’t also reform how we work with one another.

Which will never happen, so don’t let the website scare you off. The most that can happen is that the leftie bloggers blow a few capillaries.

Now, I am not naive. I never thought the mere fact of my election would usher in peace, harmony and some post-partisan era.

That was just a campaign promise.

Since the day I took office, we have renewed our focus on the terrorists who threaten our nation.

Don’t ask me how we renewed our focus, given that we were not here to focus at all before we took office. Ask the speech writers. I don’t know but we’re doing it.

We are filling unacceptable gaps revealed by the failed Christmas attack, with better airline security…

The new x-ray panty zappers may not be a hit with the ACLU, but the airport TSA employees love ‘em.

In Afghanistan, we are increasing our troops and training Afghan Security Forces so they can begin to take the lead in July of 2011 and our troops can begin to come home

At a rate of about six a week for the next 220 years.

As a candidate, I promised that I would end this [Iraq] war, and that is what I am doing as president.

Now that Afghanistan is frying hot enough to keep the military complex cooking, we can ease up on Iraq.

But make no mistake: This war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home …

On a three legged ticket with a connector in Kabul.

Tonight, all of our men and women in uniform …

I can’t refer to them as our kids getting their cods blown off by IEDs, so, like other presidents, I must say men and women in uniform.

… must know that they have our respect, our gratitude and our full support.

No jobs, but lots of support. Yellow ribbons and free prosthetic limbs for all. And if they still have doubts, they can watch for Michelle Obama and Jill Biden on TV. Because they have vowed to:

forge a national commitment to support military families.

A commitment, mind you, nothing beyond that. So don’t go getting any unrealistic expectations. Strap on your new battery powered robotic leg and hit the streets. Rumor is that there is a job out there.

Obama on the threat of nuclear weapons:

I have embraced the vision of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan through a strategy that reverses the spread of these weapons and seeks a world without them.

That should hold the bastards! Kennedy and Reagan in the same sentence.

And seek to reduce our stockpiles and launchers.

Let’s eliminate the deteriorated junk, which we would have done anyway, at some point, and call it a reduction.

Now comes the time to bring it on home, baby. Something for everybody.

America’s greatest source of strength has always been our ideals. … We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal…

We must continually renew this promise. My administration has a civil rights division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination. We finally strengthened our laws to protect against crimes driven by hate. This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. We are going to crack down on violations of equal pay laws — so that women get equal pay … And we should continue the work of fixing our broken immigration system — to secure our borders, enforce our laws and ensure that everyone who plays by the rules can contribute to our economy and enrich our nation.

In the end, it is our ideals, our values, that built America — values that allowed us to forge a nation made up of immigrants from every corner of the globe, values that drive our citizens still.

The national hand job breathlessly quickens.

Every day, Americans meet their responsibilities to their families and their employers. Time and again, they lend a hand to their neighbors and give back to their country. They take pride in their labor, and are generous in spirit. These aren’t Republican values or Democratic values they’re living by, business values or labor values. They are American values [!].

I campaigned on the promise of change — change we can believe in, the slogan went … But remember this — I never suggested that change would be easy or that I can do it alone.

But I knew you figured otherwise. So here I am up here in the catbird seat, and down there you are moaning the blues. That’s politics for ya!

We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation.
And why not? It’s always worked in the past.

Building to a crescendo:

… that fundamental decency that has always been at the core of the American people — lives on [!]. It lives on in the struggling small business owner … It lives on in the woman who said … We are strong. We are resilient. We are American. It lives on in the 8-year-old boy in Louisiana, who just sent me his allowance and asked if I would give it to the people of Haiti.

I personally gagged at this one. Which is surely some kind of saccharine set up, in hopes of gaining the smarm vote out there in Preciousville, Kansas.
And it lives on in all the Americans who … pull people they’ve never known from rubble, prompting chants of USA! USA! USA!

The spirit … lives on in you, its people.

Thank you. God Bless You. And God Bless the United States of America!

Well God, you don’t really have to bless us. You already did that once and we blew it.

From here on out, just preserve us from ourselves. OK?

Amen.

Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War. (Random House Crown), about working class America. He is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland (AK Press). A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on ColdType and Joe Bageant’s website, joebageant.com.

MEDIA CRITTERS WATCH—

Dateline: January 19, 2010

By Robert Parry [print_link]

[quote]

Instead, regarding Haiti, Matthews detected a silver lining in the catastrophe that may have killed more than 100,000 people. He said the horrific event might finally cause the people there to cast off their supposedly frivolous attitude toward politics.

Matthews might have shown a touch of seriousness himself by examining some of the real history that has put Haitians in their wretched condition. He might have talked about the ruthless efficiency of the 18th Century French plantation system that literally worked enslaved Africans to death for the enrichment of the pampered French aristocracy.

A year later, Clinton saw no choice but to oust Cedras through a U.S. military invasion. Aristide was restored to the presidency but his final months in office were tightly restricted with him serving primarily as a figurehead.

When Aristide was elected again in 2001, he faced renewed hostility from the Haitian elite and from the second Bush administration, which helped engineer his removal from office in 2004, airlifting him against his will to the Central African Republic.

Massachusetts Follies

Days later, without a blush for any inconsistency, Matthews was discussing the pivotal Massachusetts Senate race in the most frivolous terms, dividing his coverage between the latest poll numbers and commentary over the campaign gaffes of Democratic candidate Martha Coakley.

Plus, Coakley has taken some more progressive stances than Obama, opposing his troop build-up in Afghanistan and seeking to overturn the federal legal definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

For his part, Brown favors more Reagan-Bush-style tax cuts, supports the near-drowning interrogation method called waterboarding, and opposes same-sex marriage, even voting for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.

http://www.consortiumnews.com

January 22, 2010 [print_link]

By Paul Lehto

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion.

The five justice majority opinion, written by Kennedy, effectively declares that corporate treasury money has a constitutional right to be used in an unlimited fashion in campaign politics because it is protected by the First Amendment. This reverses approximately a century of congressional and state regulation of campaign finance. See http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf

The US Supreme Court case called Austin v. Michigan (494 U.S. 652 (1990)) is overruled.

The US Supreme Court case McConnell v FEC (2003) upholding limits on independent corporate expenditures is also overruled.

[quote]

Stevens, in partial dissent, wrote a 90 page dissent, joined by Sotomayor and Ginsburg and Breyer. Exactly what “Partial” means has to be sorted out still since this is breaking… The partial dissent by Thomas complains about the one part of the majority opinion upholding disclosure requirements. Without disclosure, the candidate contributions would be not only unlimited but effectively secret.

TECHNICALLY: The Citizens United case is reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded. However, the affirmed part is only as to requiring disclosure by Citizens United, the reversal is much bigger and strikes down any right on the part of the government to regulate corporations like Citizens United in any campaign activity.

This is a revolution against democracy, because We the People are being handcuffed and rendered helpless (by the courts) to have any kind of order in campaign finance. Rights are supposed to protect We the People from our government. Now the Supreme Court has weaponized the Constitution for use against We the People in elections of representatives to hold OUR power.

The ONLY thing preventing corporate charities from spending money on political campaigns is 501 (c)(3) federal law and regulations. These are federal laws of the same status as campaign finance regulations. One really has to wonder whether this will destabilize confidence in charities as well, who may decide to spend charitable contributions on politics and then challenge any restrictions on that as unconstitutional.

Paul Lehto is an independent legal scholar and author of many legal encyclopedia articles.

Dateline: December 18, 2009

Editor’s Alert:

BACKGROUND

WHEN PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA took office in January 2009, he had no shortage of challenges to address: an economy on the verge of complete meltdown, two wars, and a health care system so broken that 44,000 people a year die for lack of coverage in the wealthiest country in the world.

Accordingly, President Obama laid out an ambitious agenda, counting on the strong Democratic majority in Congress to help push it through.

But according to guests on BILL MOYERS JOURNAL, the President was also courting the help of industry. Matt Taibbi and Robert Kuttner, two journalists who cover the intersection of money and power in the nation’s capital, explain how two powerful industriese for them, and how that may stand in the way of real reform.

Health Care Reform

Progressive reformers welcomed the passage of what they considered a strong health care bill in the House, but were hoping for strong backing from the Obama administration to keep the Senate from weakening the bill.

The strong backing did not materialize [hardly a surprise to anyone who understands Obama and the democrats], and the Senate announced a compromise bill in mid-December without a public option or an opportunity for people over 55 to buy into Medicare. The public option had been a primary goal for progressive groups, who believed that it was an effective way to force insurance companies to lower their prices.

All this leaves many progressives wondering who to blame. Robert Kuttner argues that the Senate bill is the result of President Obama’s approach to reform:

There are two ways, if you’re the president of the United States sizing up a situation like this, that you can try and create reform. One is to say, well, the interest groups are so powerful that the only thing I can do is I can work with them and move the ball a few yards, get some incremental reform, hope it turns into something better.

The other way you can do it is to try to rally the people against the special interests and play on the fact that the insurance industry, the drug industry are not going to win any popularity contests with the American people. And you, as the president be the champion of the people against the special interests. That’s the course that Obama’s chosen not to pursue.

WATCH THE VIDEO

[flv]https://www.greanvillepost.com/videos/moyers.kuttner-taibbi3.flv[/flv]

The bill, as it now stands, has divided Democrats (Republicans had signaled earlier that they wouldn’t be supporting any version), with some urging to kill the bill and try again later, and some arguing that it is better than nothing, and Democrats might not have another opportunity for 20 years.

Financial Regulation

Mike Taibbi argues that something similar may be happening as Congress attempts to reform our financial system. Many economists have argued that left unchanged the system still poses the risk of another epic collapse in the future. The banks were quick to try to stymie reform. In “Obama’s Big Sellout,” Taibbi connects the dots between a host of administration officials and Robert Rubin, the Treasury secretary under Clinton and an alumni at Goldman Sachs.

Taibbi argues on the Wall Street JOURNAL that all these ties to Wall Street get back to campaign financing:

Most people that I’ve talked to have taken one of two positions on this. One is that Obama was naAnd there’s another school of thought that look, he took more money from Wall Street than any other presidential candidate in history. Goldman Sachs was his number one private campaign contributor. And if you just look at the evidence, it’s just really business as usual. This is what the Democratic Party has done since the mid-’80s. They’ve relied heavily on the financial services industry to fund their campaigns. And it’s the quid pro quo. They gave a lot of money to help these guys run, and in return, they get the big jobs, you know, in the White House.

But, despite the immense power of Wall Street, Kuttner still believes that meaningful financial reform is possible, and that President Obama could change course, “I think there is a chance — I don’t think I would bet my life on it — but I think there’s a possibility that by the fall of 2010, looking down the barrel of a real election blowout, you could see him change course, if only for reasons of expediency, but hopefully for reasons of principle as well, if he feels that the public doesn’t have confidence that he is delivering the kind of recovery that the public needs. This is a guy who is a very smart, complicated man. And I think don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin. I don’t want to totally give up.”

Robert Kuttner

Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of THE AMERICAN PROSPECT magazine, as well as a distinguished senior fellow at the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for BUSINESS WEEK, and continues to write columns in the BOSTON GLOBE. Kuttner has written seven books. His most recent, The SQUANDERING OF AMERICA, explores the political roots of America’s narrowing prosperity and the systemic risks facing the U.S. economy. The book was recently honored with the Sidney Hillman Journalism Award. Kuttner has just begun work on a new book on trade, equality, efficiency, and the challenge of regulating global capitalism.

Kuttner’s best-known earlier book is EVERYTHING FOR SALE: THE VIRTUES AND LIMITS OF MARKETS (1997). The book received a page one review in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. Of it, the late economist Robert Heilbroner wrote, “I have never seen the market system better described, more intelligently appreciated, or more trenchantly criticized than in EVERYTHING FOR SALE.”

Kuttner’s other previous books on economics and politics include; THE END OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE (1991); THE LIFE OF THE PARTY (1987); THE ECONOMIC ILLUSION (1984); and REVOLT OF THE HAVES (1980).

Kuttner’s magazine writing has appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE and BOOK REVIEW, THE ATLANTIC, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORKER, DISSENT, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW, and HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW. He has contributed major articles to THE NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE as a national policy correspondent.

For four decades, Kuttner has considered it his intellectual and political project to revive the politics and economics of harnessing capitalism to serve a broad public interest. He has pursued this ideal as a writer, editor, teacher, lecturer, commentator and public official.

Matt Taibbi

ROLLING STONE contributing editor, Matt Taibbi, graduated from Bard College in New York in 1991 and finished his studies at Leningrad Polytechnichal University in Russia.

Over the years, Taibbi has had a varied career, working as a freelance reporter and professional baseball player in the Soviet Union and Uzbekistan, and later playing professional basketball in Mongolia. In between, he also worked as an investigator in a Boston-based private detective agency.

He eventually resettled in Moscow, where he founded, with writer Mark Ames, an English-language satire newspaper called the EXILE, which was known for a mixture of humorous stunts and hard-nosed reporting of corruption both in Russian government and the American aid community. The paper was the only publication to correctly predict the 1998 Russian financial crisis. In conjunction with the Russian paper STRINGER, for which Taibbi wrote in Russian, the EXILE also wiretapped the telephone of Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin in 2001.

In his time in Russia, Taibbi produced a great deal of participatory journalism, working in a variety of jobs to show readers the reality of Russian life. He worked at various times as a bricklayer in Siberia, a migrant farm laborer, a moonshine dealer, a professional clown, a keeper in an elephant cage, a security guard, and a construction worker in an Orthodox monastery.

Taibbi returned to the U.S. for good in 2002 and founded the Buffalo-based newspaper THE BEAST. He left that paper a year later to work as a columnist for the NEW YORK PRESS, and eventually as a contributing editor for ROLLING STONE.

Taibbi won the 2008 National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary for three columns he wrote in ROLLING STONE, “Worse Than Bush”; “My Favorite Nut Job”; and “Obama’s Moment.” His NEW YORK PRESS column on George Bush’s prewar press conference, “Cleaning the Pool,” was included in the BEST POLITICAL WRITING 2003 anthology, and a year later he was named one of the 35 most influential New Yorkers under 35 by the NEW YORK OBSERVER.

In his first original book, THE GREAT DERANGEMENT (2008), Taibbi dives into the heart of the American psyche in a madcap journey that brings into focus life in the American Empire, right here, right now.

He’s also the author of two essay collections, SPANKING THE DONKEY and SMELLS LIKE DEAD ELEPHANTS.

FULL TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS:

AIRED: December 18, 2009  ANNOTATIONS IN RED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE, EDITOR, TGP

 

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

Something’s not right here. One year after the great collapse of our financial system, Wall Street is back on top while our politicians dither. As for health care reform, you’re about to be forced to buy insurance from companies whose stock is soaring, and that’s just dandy with the White House.

Truth is, our capitol’s being looted, republicans are acting like the town rowdies, the sheriff is firing blanks, and powerful Democrats in Congress are in cahoots with the gang that’s pulling the heist. This is not capitalism at work. It’s capital. Raw money, mounds of it, buying politicians and policy as if they were futures on the hog market.

Here to talk about all this are two journalists who don’t pull their punches. Robert Kuttner is an economist who helped create and now co-edits the progressive magazine THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, and the author of the book OBAMA’S CHALLENGE, among others.

Also with me is Matt Taibbi, who covers politics for ROLLING STONE magazine where he is a contributing editor. He’s made a name for himself writing in a no-holds-barred, often profane, but always informative and stimulating style that gets under the skin of the powerful. His most recent article is “Obama’s Big Sellout,” about the President’s team of economic advisers and their Wall Street connections. It’s been burning up the blogosphere. Welcome to both of you.

BILL MOYERS: Let’s start with some news.  Some of the big insurance companies, Well Point, Cigna, United Health, all surged to a 52 week high in their share prices this week when it was clear there’d be no public option in the health care bill going through Congress right now. What does that tell you, Matt?

MATT TAIBBI: Well, I think what most people should take away from this is that the massive subsidies for health insurance companies have been preserved while it’s also expanded their customer base because there’s an individual mandate in the bill that’s going to provide all these companies with the, you know, 25 or 30 million new people who are going to be paying for health insurance. So, it’s, obviously, a huge boon to that industry. And I think Wall Street correctly read what the health care effort is all about.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Rahm Emanuel, the President’s Chief of Staff, was Bill Clinton’s Political Director. And Rahm Emanuel’s take away from Bill Clinton’s failure to get health insurance passed was ‘don’t get on the wrong side of the insurance companies.’ So their strategy was cut a deal with the insurance companies, the drug industry going in. And the deal was, we’re not going to attack your customer base, we’re going to subsidize a new customer base. And that script was pre-cooked so it’s not surprising that this is what comes out the other side. [SO FAR SO GOOD.]

BILL MOYERS: So are you saying that this, what some call a sweetheart deal between the pharmaceutical industry and the White House, done many months ago before this fight really began, was because the drug company money in the Democratic Party?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, it’s two things. Part of it was we need to do whatever it takes to get a bill. Never mind whether it’s a really good bill, let’s get a bill passed so we can claim that we solved health insurance. Secondly, let’s get the drug industry and the insurance industry either supporting us or not actively opposing us. So that there was some skirmishing around the details, but the deal going in was that the administration, drug companies, insurance companies are on the same team. Now, that’s one way to get legislation, it’s not a way to transform the health system. Once the White House made this deal with the insurance companies, the public option was never going to be anything more than a fig leaf. And over the summer and the fall, it got whittled down, whittled down, whittled down to almost nothing and now it’s really nothing. [NO ARGUMENT HERE. HE’S SUMMING IT UP NICELY.]

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, and this was Howard Dean’s point this week that this individual mandate that’s going to force people to become customers of private health insurance companies, the Democrats are going to end up owning that policy and it’s going to be extremely unpopular and it’s going to be theirs for a generation. It’s going to be an albatross around the neck of this party.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Think about it, the difference between social insurance and an individual mandate is this. Social insurance everybody pays for it through their taxes, so you don’t think of Social Security as a compulsory individual mandate. You think of it as a benefit, as a protection that your government provides. But an individual mandate is an order to you to go out and buy some product from some private profit-making company, that in the case of a lot of moderate income people, you can’t afford to buy. And the shell game here is that the affordable policies are either very high deductibles and co-pays, so you can afford the monthly premiums but then when you get sick, you have to pay a small fortune out of pocket before the coverage kicks in. Or if the coverage is decent, the premiums are unaffordable. And so here’s the government doing the bidding of the private industry coercing people to buy profit-making products that maybe they can’t afford and they call it health reform. [KUTTNER’S 100% ON THE BALL. SO FAR. KEEP READING…]

BILL MOYERS: So explain this to the visitor from Mars. I mean, just this week, the Washington Post and ABC News had a poll showing that the American public supports the Medicare buy-in that-

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right.

BILL MOYERS: By a margin of some 30 points-

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right.

BILL MOYERS: And yet, it went down like a lead balloon.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Look, there are two ways, if you’re the President of the United States sizing up a situation like this that you can try and create reform. One is to say, well, the interest groups are so powerful that the only thing I can do is I can work with them and move the ball a few yards, get some incremental reform, hope it turns into something better. The other way you can do it is to try to rally the people against the special interests and play on the fact that the insurance industry, the drug industry, are not going to win any popularity contests with the American people. And you, as the president, be the champion of the people against the special interests. That’s the course that Obama’s chosen not to pursue. [KUTTNER STILL SPOT-ON.]

MATT TAIBBI: And I think, you know, a lot of what the Democrats are doing, they don’t make sense if you look at it from an objective point of view, but if you look at it as a business strategy- if you look at the Democratic Party as a business, and their job is basically to raise campaign funds and to stay in power, what they do makes a lot of sense. They have a consistent strategy which involves negotiating a fine line between sentiment on the left and the interests of the industries that they’re out there to protect. And they’ve always, kind of, taken that fork in the road and gone right down the middle of the line. And they’re doing that with this health care bill and that’s- it’s consistent.

BILL MOYERS: If you were Republican, wouldn’t you feel right now that it’s going your way? I mean, the Democrats control the White House, they control Congress and the only thing they’ve been able to make happen this year is escalate the war in Afghanistan.

MATT TAIBBI: The Democrats are in exactly the same position that the Republicans were in once the Iraq War turned bad. All the Republicans have to do now is sit back and watch the Democrats make a disaster out of this health care effort. And they’re going to gain political capital whether they’re in the right or not. And I think it’s a very- it’s a terrible thing for the party.

BILL MOYERS: Some of your progressive readers and colleagues are going to take issue with you, of course, because there are progressive figures like John Podesta, of the Center for American Progress, Kevin Drum, and others who say, look, this bill has its real problems. It’s got some real toxic qualities to it. But it’s not as bad as Kuttner and Taibbi think. This is the Senate bill, it covers 30 million-plus more people, has subsidies for low-income families, spreads the risk, lowers some premium costs, creates some exchanges where people can shop for better coverage and prices. You know, don’t be too hard on it.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, my co-editor, Paul Starr in the editorial in the current issue of “The Prospect” takes exactly that position. Don’t be too hard on Obama, he inherited a really difficult situation and we’re making incremental progress. If we could’ve done better we would’ve. Paul and I disagree about that. I mean, I think one of the challenges of a president is to transform the reality rather than just work within its parameters. I think the other problem, frankly, is that those of us who consider ourselves progressives invested so much in this remarkable figure, Barack Obama. And we read our own hopes into him. We saw him as a potentially great president. We saw this as a potentially transformative moment, I certainly did, where he could’ve chosen to be the kind of president Roosevelt was. And it turns out that’s not who [he] is characterologically and that’s not how he chose to play the moment. [KUTTNER’S BALL OF WAX BEGINS TO MELT. FIRST, HE ADMITS BEING ENTHUSED BY OBAMA, A BOURGEOIS POLITICIAN THAT ANY ELEMENTARY CLASS ANALYSIS/CAREER ANALYSIS WOULD HAVE IMMEDIATELY DISCREDITED.]

BILL MOYERS: Yes or no. If you were a senator, would you vote for this Senate health care bill?

MATT TAIBBI: No.

BILL MOYERS: Bob?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Yes.  [KUTTNER WOULD VOTE FOR SOMETHING HE KNOWS TO BE WORTHLESS.]

BILL MOYERS: Why? You just said it’s designed to enhance the fortunes of the industry.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, it’s so far from what I think is necessary that I don’t think it’s a it’s a good bill. But I think if it goes down, just because of the optics of the situation and the way the Republicans have framed this as a make or break moment for President Obama, it will make it easier for the Republicans to take control of Congress in 2010. It will make Obama even more gun-shy about promoting reform. It will create even more political paralysis. It will embolden the republicans to block what this President is trying to do, some of which is good, at every turn. So I would hold my nose and vote for it. [SEVERAL WRONG ASSUMPTIONS: FIRST, KUTTNER IS CLEARLY CAUGHT IN THE “LESSER EVIL” TRAP. HE’S AFRAID OF OPENING THE DOOR TO THE GOP, AS IF THE DEMOCRATS WERE SUBSTANTIVELY DIFFERENT, A MOMENTARILY DAMAGED BUT VALUABLE ALLY OF THE PEOPLE… INSTEAD OF JUST THE OTHER FACE OF A SINGLE CORPORATE PARTY. SECOND, HE FRETS ABOUT OBAMA BECOMING “GUN SHY ABOUT FUTURE REFORMS…” WHICH IS PLAIN SILLY. HE CONTINUES TO BELIEVE OBAMA HAS THE INTENTION, CHARACTER AND GUTS TO PUSH FOR REAL REFORMS, WHICH IS TOTALLY DENIED BY HIS ACTIONS AND CAREER SO FAR.]

MATT TAIBBI: My feeling on it is just looking more concretely at the health care problem, this is a bill that to me doesn’t address the two biggest problems with the health care crisis. One is the inefficiency and the bureaucracy and the paperwork which it doesn’t address at all. It doesn’t standardize anything. The other is price, which has now fallen by the wayside because there’s not going to be no public option that’s going to drive down prices. So, if a health care bill that doesn’t address those two problems, to me, is- and additionally is a big give-away to the insurance companies because it provides, you know- it creates this new customer base, it’s something I personally couldn’t vote for. [GOOD FOR TAIBBI.]

BILL MOYERS: [IN DISBELIEF] Aren’t you saying that in order to save the Democratic President and the Democratic Party in 2010 and 2012 you have to have a really rotten health insurance bill?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, when you come down to one pivotal moment where a bill is before Congress and the administration has staked the entire presidency on this bill and you’re a progressive Democrat are you going to vote for it or not? Let me put it this way, if I were literally in the position that Joe Lieberman is in and it was up to me to determine whether this bill live or die, I would hold my nose and vote for it even though I have been a fierce critic of the path this administration has taken. [MORE SELF-APPLIED NAILS IN KUTTNER’S LIBERALOID COFFIN…. HE’S DIGGING HIMSELF DEEPER.]

BILL MOYERS: [STILL SHOCKED BY KUTTNER’S LOGICAL GYRATIONS] But doesn’t that further the dysfunction and corruption of the system that you write so often about? I mean, you said a few weeks ago that our failed health care system won’t get fixed because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system, the political entity known as the United States of America. You said we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crisis. So if Bob votes for a bill that in his heart and in his mind he does not believe really helps the situation, isn’t he furthering a government that can’t solve the actual crisis?

MATT TAIBBI: I think so. I understand his point of view. But I …my feeling is that if you vote for this bill and it passes, that’s your one shot at fixing a catastrophic and completely dysfunctional health care system for the next generation maybe. And I think it’s much better for the Democrats to lose on this issue and then have to regroup maybe eight years later, or six years later, and try again and do a better job the next time than to have it go through.

ROBERT KUTTNER: We’re going to have to do that anyway.  In other words, these fights never end. We’re going to have to go back and make a fight another day.  [KUTTNER IS MAKING HERE ONE OF THE BIGGEST MISTAKES, OR, RATHER, SPREADING ONE OF THE BIGGEST FALLACIES IN THIS ENTIRE BOODOGGLE, NAMELY THAT OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS REALLY WERE…ARE FIGHTING TO PASS A DECENT BILL…PURE NONSENSE CONSIDERING WHAT IS KNOWN ALREADY ABOUT THIS SORDID AFFAIR. ] And hopefully, that won’t be 20 years from now. Hopefully, it will be six years from now. I think if this bill goes down it’s going to be even harder to get the kind of legislation we want because the Republicans are really going to be on the march. So, the Democrats are really between a rock and a hard place here, because if it loses, there’s one set of ways the Republicans gain. If it wins, there could be another set of ways that the Republicans gain. And this is all because of the deal that our friend, Rahm Emanuel struck back in the spring of passing a bill that’s a pro-industry bill that doesn’t really get at the structural problems. [KUTTNER BLAMES RAHM EMANUEL, ADMITTEDLY A ZIONIST WHEELER DEALER AND CONSUMMATE RIGHTWING OPPORTUNIST, BUT LEAVES OBAMA OFF THE HOOK. WHO PUT EMANUEL IN THAT POSITION? AT WHOSE PLEASURE DOES HE SERVE?]

MATT TAIBBI: But that’s the whole point. If the Democrats had used as a political strategy, we’re just going to do what the vast majority of our constituents want and pass a bill that was real, that had real teeth to it, that provided real benefits and actually fixed the problems then, you know, the political benefits that the Republicans could’ve had after the passage of the bill would’ve been very limited it seems to me. They could’ve only gone that one direction and criticized that you know, as a, you know, a socialist give-away. They couldn’t have criticized it as an industry give-away and ineffective.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Look, this is not Monday morning quarterbacking. [RATTLED AND CONDESCENDING TO TAIBBI, IN HIS ELDER LIBERAL STATESMAN PERSONA…]

MATT TAIBBI: Right.

ROBERT KUTTNER: I mean, I was making the same criticisms that you were at the time. But now we’re down to a moment of final passage. [SO? STILL WORTHLESS. MANURE IS MANURE.] And maybe my views are very ambivalent. But I would still vote for it because I think the defeat would be absolutely crushing in terms of the way the press played it, in terms of the way it would give encouragement to the far right in this country that we can block this guy if we just fight hard enough, if we just demagogue it. [PURE LIBERALOID MUMBO JUMBO]

MATT TAIBBI: But couldn’t that defeat turn into- that crushing defeat, couldn’t that be good for the Democrats? Couldn’t it teach them a lesson that, you know, maybe they have to pursue a different course in the future?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, you’re younger than I am.  [CONDESCENSION AGAIN. AS IF HE WERE AN OLD WARHORSE WITH THE SCARS OF BATTLE TO PROVE IT…JUST MORE HOT AIR.]

BILL MOYERS: Matt, Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a very progressive member of Congress who’s been at this table wanted a public option. He says this health care bill appears to be the legislation that the president wanted in the first place.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. Yeah, it’s quite obvious that at the outset of this process, the White House didn’t want, for instance, single payer even on the table, you know, when Max Baucus had his initial discussions in committee on this bill, he invited something like 43 people to give their ideas about, you know, how the bill might look in the future. And he didn’t invite a single person from- who was an advocate of single payer health care. So that was never on the table. And it’s quite clear that the public option was looked at more as a political obstacle for the White House as opposed to something that they really wanted. They kind of used it as something to scare the Republicans and the moderates with. And that’s really all it ended up turning out to be.

BILL MOYERS: Yeah, if he had wanted a public option, if he’d wanted a Medicare buy-in, he could have tried to persuade the public and the Congress.

ROBERT KUTTNER: That’s what’s so galling. Yeah. [GALLING INDEED, BUT NOT ENOUGH TO STOP SUPPORTING THIS TREACHEROUS MOB.]

BILL MOYERS: Galling?

ROBERT KUTTNER: I mean, if you if you roll back the tape he could’ve played it so differently and he could’ve gotten a better bill. But we are where we are. [BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO ACCEPT IT.]

MATT TAIBBI: I mean, that’s what George Bush did when he wanted to get something unpopular passed or something that was iffy. I mean, he just took, you know, if there were any recalcitrant members, he just took him in the back room and beat him with a rubber hose until they changed their minds. I mean, he could’ve taken Joe Lieberman back there and said, look, if Connecticut ever wants a dime of highway money again, you’re going to have to play ball on this thing. That’s what the president does. I mean, the president has an enormous amount of power. The leaders, the majority leaders have an enormous amount of power. And if they want to pass something, they can do it. And especially when there’s a tremendous public mandate to get something like this passed. I just- the idea that they couldn’t do this was- is a fallacy.

BILL MOYERS: But members of Congress, they take the same contributions from the same insurance and real estate and drug industry. You look at the list of contributions to members of Congress- they are as saddled by obligations as the President, right? [MOYERS IS MISTAKEN HERE. MONEY FROM THE BUSINESS SECTOR TO CONGRESS IS NOT “OBLIGATIONS” BUT PLAIN BRIBERY AND SHOULD BE ILLEGAL. PERIOD. CALL IT FOR WHAT IT IS, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.]

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, some are and some aren’t. I mean, the House, at least, just passed a bill that’s over $100 billion to extend unemployment, extend insurance benefits in the interim prevent lay-offs at the level of state and local government. Now, you have a group of Democrats, and this is the real pity of it. The Democrats are supposed to be the party of the average person. You have the so-called New Democrats who are really the party of Wall Street. And then you have the Blue Dogs who are fiscal conservatives. And if you look at what happened in Barney Frank’s committee to the financial reform bill, he’s a pretty good liberal, he ended up looking like a complete stooge for industry because in order to get a bill out of his own committee, he had to appease the 15 New Democrats, so-called, who were put on that committee mostly by Rahm Emanuel when he was the-

MATT TAIBBI: Sort of as a means to raise money.

ROBERT KUTTNER: As a means to raise money. So Melissa Bean, who’s a two-term Democratic Congressman ends up being the power broker because she controls 15 votes on Barney Frank’s committee of what she’s going to allow out of committee and what she isn’t.

BILL MOYERS: Why does she control 15 votes?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Because there are 15 New Dems, and this is the centrist caucus that particularly specializes in taking money from the financial industry.

BILL MOYERS: You call them centrist, don’t you mean corporate Democrats? I mean-  [GOOD, BILL. CALL THESE PEOPLE FOR WHAT THEY ARE.]

ROBERT KUTTNER: Corporate, yes, sorry. That’s too kind. They’re corporate Democrats who were put on that committee because Rahm Emanuel felt that there’s no better place than the House Financial Services Committee if you want to shake down Wall Street, to put it bluntly.  [THANK YOU, KUTTNER.]

MATT TAIBBI: There’s a great example of Melissa Bean’s power was when the banks wanted to pass an amendment into the bill that would have prevented the states from making their own tougher financial regulatory rules. And Bean put through this amendment that basically said that the federal government would have purview over all these laws. And it passed. And this was the kind of thing that the banks wanted. They just go to Melissa Bean, she puts that amendment in there and it and it gets through.

BILL MOYERS: If you were Barack Obama in a city that’s overrun by money, how would you try to fix it?

ROBERT KUTTNER: I would go over the heads of the special interests to the people. I think there’s a lot of sullen apprehension, frustration out in the country. And I think the people are hungry for leadership. He’s not doing that sufficiently. [KUTTNER IS RIGHT HERE, OF COURSE.  THERE’S A VACUUM OF LEADERSHIP, AND OBAMA IS NOT FILLING IT BECAUSE HE’S A FRAUD, A SHILL FOR THE CORPORATE INTERESTS THAT PUT HIM IN THE W.H.. SO AT BEST OBAMA LACKS VISION AND COURAGE TO BE A GREAT LEADER, WHICH SHOULD DENY HIM ALL THESE ADULATION…AT WORST HE’S A SALESMAN FOR THE PLUTOCRACY. ]

MATT TAIBBI: It’s absolutely a political winner for the president to hit Wall Street very hard and do all the things that he’s supposed to be doing right now. You know, that all the things that FDR did. If he did those things, if he remade Wall Street in the way that it needs to be remade, he would do nothing but gain popularity. And I think that’s the strategy he should have pursued.

BILL MOYERS: But what if by nature, that’s not what he wants to do? What if, by nature, he prefers to head the establishment, than to change it?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Then he runs the risk of being a failed president. And I do have the audacity to hope that he’s a smart enough, principled enough guy, that some time in his second year in office, he’s going to realize that he’s at a crossroads. [KEEP WAITING FOR GODOT, BOB]

MATT TAIBBI: This isn’t a purely political problem. This isn’t just a question of how does Barack Obama get reelected. This is a serious problem. He has to put aside maybe his inclinations to think about what he can do to actually fix the country. And it’s, you know, desperately in need of fixing. And so, if he’s not that guy, he has to become that guy.

BILL MOYERS: You say it’s a serious problem. But isn’t from your own experiences, your long experience, your recent experience, isn’t this the fundamental question issue of why it’s not working, that there’s too much money canceling out other imperatives, other needs, other possibilities?

MATT TAIBBI: This is the fundamental question. Is there a way that we can have a politician get elected without the sponsorship of special interests? Can we get somebody in the White House who’s independent of the special interests that are in the way of real reform? And that’s the problem. We haven’t been able to have that happen. And we need to find a way to have that happen.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. And I think it’s not accidental that the last three Democratic presidents have been at best, corporate Democrats. And one hoped because of the depth of the crisis and the disgrace of deregulation and ideology, and the practical failure of the Bush presidency, this was a moment for a clean break. The fact that even at such a moment, even with an outsider president campaigning on change we can believe in, that Barack Obama turned out to be who he has been so far, is just so revealing in terms of the structural undertow that big money represents in this country. [NO, KUTTNER, AGAIN YOU’RE LETTING OBAMA OFF THE HOOK, AS IF THE MAN HAD MEANT ALL THAT BALONEY ABOUT “CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN”…THAT WAS SIMPLY A SLOGAN FOR SUCKERS, PART OF A WELL CRAFTED MARKETING CAMPAIGN. OBAMA AND HIS CREW NEVER INTENDED TO DELIVER ANYTHING CLOSE TO THEIR INFLATED RHETORIC. AND BY THE WAY, NO MAN TAPPED BY THE ESTABLISHMENT’S CORE IS AN “OUTSIDER”.] The question is: Is he capable of making a change — he’s only been in office less than a year — in time to redeem the moment, redeem his own promise?

BILL MOYERS: When you talk about corporate Democrats, exactly what do you mean?

ROBERT KUTTNER: I mean Democrats who are reluctant to cross swords with the corporate elite that has so much power in this country, whether it’s the Wall Street elite or whether it’s the health-industrial complex.

MATT TAIBBI: And I think, you know, back in the in the mid-’80s, after Walter Mondale lost, I think the Democrats made a conscious decision that they were no longer going to rely entirely on interest groups and unions to fund their campaigns, that they were going to try to close that funding gap with the Republicans. And they made a lot of concessions to the financial services industry to big corporations. And that’s who they are now. I mean–

ROBERT KUTTNER: That’s a little too harsh. [MY GOD, KUTTNER, WHO ARE YOU DINING WITH INSIDE THE BELTWAY? IN FACT, TAIBBI IS BEING MUCH TOO POLITE. ] Just the pity of it is there are probably 40 Democrats in the Senate who are not corporate Democrats. And there are probably 200 Democrats in the House who are not corporate Democrats. If we could push a little harder, we can take back our political system and have a democratically elected set of officials who are the kind of counterweight to big money that we need in order to get reform.

BILL MOYERS: So Democrats have their own obstructionists?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Yeah. You have Republican wall-to-wall obstructionism, which is partisan. And with a few exceptions, Republicans are totally in bed with big business. And you have just enough Democrats who are in bed with big business that it makes it much harder for progressive Democrats to follow the agenda that the country needs.

ROBERT KUTTNER: It just takes a lot of guts. It takes a lot of nerve. It takes a willingness to be somewhat radical.

BILL MOYERS: What you mean, radical?

ROBERT KUTTNER: I mean, confronting the elite that really has a hammerlock on politics in this country and articulating the needs of ordinary people. Now, in Washington, that’s considered radical.  [IF IT’S NOT RADICAL IT’S A NOVELTY AT LEAST.]

BILL MOYERS: I was thinking about both of you Sunday night when President Obama was on 60 MINUTES and he said…

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street.

BILL MOYERS: Then on Monday afternoon, he had this photo opportunity in which he scolded the bankers and then they took it politely and graciously, which they could’ve done because the Hill at that very moment was swarming with banking lobbyists making sure that what the President wants doesn’t happen. I mean, what did you think as you watched him on 60 MINUTES or watched that press conference? [AGAIN MOYERS NOW IS GIVING CREDIT TO OBAMA AS IF HE WAS GENUINE, A COMMON LIBERAL MISTAKE. WHEN–IF EVER-DO LIBERALS LEARN? THE PHOTO OPS AND POSTURING RE THE BANKERS WAS JUST THAT, MANIPULATION BY THE W.H.]

MATT TAIBBI: It seemed to me that it was a response to a lot of negative criticism that he’s been getting in the media lately, that they are probably looking at the President’s poll numbers from the last couple of weeks that have been remarkably low. And a lot of that has to do with some perceptions about his ties to Wall Street. And I think they felt a need to come out and make a strong statement against Wall Street, whether they’re actually do anything is, sort of, a different question. But I think that was my impression.

ROBERT KUTTNER: I was appalled. I was just appalled because think of the timing. On Thursday and Friday of last week, the same week when the president finally gives this tough talk on “60 Minutes,” a very feeble bill is working its way through the House of Representatives and crucial decisions are being made. And where is the President? I mean, there was an amendment to put some teeth back in the provision on credit default swaps and other kinds of derivatives. And that went down by a handful of votes. And to the extent that the Treasury and the White House was working that bill, at all, they were working the wrong side. There was a provision to exempt foreign exchange derivatives from the teeth in the bill. That–

MATT TAIBBI: Foreign exchange derivatives are what caused the Long Term Capital Management crisis–

ROBERT KUTTNER: Sure.

MATT TAIBBI: A tremendous problem.

BILL MOYERS: Ten or 12 years ago, right?

MATT TAIBBI: Right.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Yeah. And, Treasury was lobbying in favor of that. There was a provision in the bill to exempt small corporations, not so small, I believe at $75 million and under, from a lot of the provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requiring honest accounting. Rahm Emanuel personally was lobbying in favor of that.

BILL MOYERS: So you had the Treasury and the White House chief of staff arguing on behalf of the banking industry?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. Right. And so here’s the president two days later giving a tough speech. Why wasn’t he working the phones to toughen up that bill and, you know, walk the talk? [YOU SHOULD ANSWER THAT, BOB. YOU’RE CONSTANTLY GIVING OBAMA THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT. AS A POLITICIAN, AND IF HE’S INTELLIGENT, CAN’T HE TELL LEFT FROM RIGHT?]

BILL MOYERS: Get on the phone with the Chairman of the Committee and say, if you want that dam in your district, I want your vote on this.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right.

MATT TAIBBI: Right.

BILL MOYERS: And that’s what you mean?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: You might praise them in public, but you threaten them in private, right?

MATT TAIBBI: Exactly, yeah. They have–

BILL MOYERS: Nobody’s afraid of Obama, you know. You go to Washington as you do, report from Washington. Nobody’s afraid of him.

MATT TAIBBI: Right.

ROBERT KUTTNER: This style is rather diffident. His style is rather hands-off. He’s very principled. [PRINCIPLED???????????????????  PRINCIPLED ABOUT WHAT? WHERE DO YOU READ HIS “PRINCIPLED” STANCES? IN THE WAY HE DEFENDS THE CORPORATE INTEREST? ABOUT THAT HE’S PRETTY PRINCIPLED.] But, if you’re going to be a politician, you have to get in there and mix it up. And to the extent that his surrogates are mixing it up, when it comes to reforming Wall Street, they’re mixing it up on the wrong side.

BILL MOYERS: Well, explain this to me. What is your own take on why he chose Geithner and Summers and people from Goldman Sachs and Wall Street to come and be his financial advisors, instead of choosing Stiglitz–

MATT TAIBBI: Volker–

BILL MOYERS: Some of his advisors from the progressive wing of the Democratic system?

MATT TAIBBI: Most people that I’ve talked to have taken one of two positions on this. One is that Obama was na[SO WHY FRET SO MUCH ABOUT SAVING THIS BUNCH OF CROOKS?]

BILL MOYERS: But here’s how they repay him. This is on “The Huffington Post:” “Bank lobbyists launch call to action to crush financial reform. The American Bankers Association issued a call to action on Wednesday urging its lobbyist and member banks to make an all-out effort to crush regulatory reform in the Senate.” This is how they reward his own tolerance towards them, right?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Right. And you’ve got to play hardball against these guys now. I do not want to leave this show with your viewers thinking this has been just a council of despair. So will you allow me to play Pollyanna for 30 seconds? Because I think this guy is nothing if not a work in progress. He’s nothing if not a learner. And I think there is a chance. I don’t think I would bet my life on it but I think there’s a possibility that by the fall of 2010, looking down the barrel of a real election blowout, you could see him change course, if only for reasons of expediency, but hopefully for reasons of principle as well, if he feels that the public doesn’t have confidence that he is delivering the kind of recovery that the public needs. This is a guy who is a very smart, complicated man. And I think don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin. I don’t want to totally give up.

MATT TAIBBI: Yeah. I mean, obviously, it’s too early to completely abandon hope that he’s going to turn things around. But I think that’s a belief that’s not really based on evidence. [CORRECT, TAIBBI.] If you look at the evidence of how he’s behaved so far, and who he’s got, you know, working in the White House, and who he’s getting his money from, and how the party has behaved over the last couple of decades. You’re really basically relying upon the impression that he gives as a kind, decent, warm-hearted intellectual guy. That’s what the basis of that faith that there’s going to be this turnaround. It’s really not anything that’s actually concretely happened that would give you reason to think that. [MATT HAS HIS FEET ON THE GRUND, AND HE’S NOT EVEN A MARXIST. BUT HE ACCEPTS THE EVIDENCE WITHOUT CLAPTRAP IN HIS BRAIN.]

ROBERT KUTTNER: The other thing that’s missing, if you compare him with Roosevelt or LBJ or Lincoln, the other thing that’s missing is a social movement. In all of these great periods of transformation, you had social movements doing a complicated dance with the president, where sometimes they were working with him, sometimes they were beating up on him. That certainly describes the civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson. It describes the abolitionists and Lincoln. It describes the labor movement and Roosevelt. Where’s the movement?  [OBAMA COULD HAVE GIVEN WINGS TO A MOVEMENT, GIVEN THE THIRST FOR POPULIST LEADERSHIP IN THE NATION. BUT HE REFUSED AND REFUSES TO DO THAT, AND BY NOW HIS POLITICAL CAPITAL IS BADLY DEPLETED WITH BOTH HIS BASE, WHICH HE BETRAYED AND INDEPENDENTS.]

BILL MOYERS: Coming down to the office this morning, the cab driver turned and said, “You see the newspaper this morning?” And he turns and hands me the NEW YORK POST. “It’s Wall Good: Wall Street Earnings Soar to $49 Billion in the First Three Quarters of the Year … Profitability has soared because revenues rose … Wall Street bonuses for employees in the city may be as much as 40 percent higher than in 2008.” What would you say to the President about this? Does he know?

ROBERT KUTTNER: I think, to some extent, the White House lives in an echo chamber. They do these public events that are intended to demonstrate that the president’s listening, that he’s feeling our pain. Congress gets a very bad rap. But I was invited to speak to the House Democrat caucus a couple a weeks ago. And they are furious. They can’t publicly embarrass their president, but they go home on weekends and they talk to their folks and they hear the individual stories of suffering. And they feel that certainly the Treasury, to some extent the White House, just doesn’t get it and the Republicans are going to end up with a narrative and the Tea Party folks, it’s the far right that is on the march when ordinary people need a champion.

BILL MOYERS: So, what are people to do?

ROBERT KUTTNER: I think there are things that are not too complex for people to understand. If the value of your home is going down the drain because the government’s not doing anything about an epidemic of foreclosures, that’s the kind of thing that people can talk about across a kitchen table. They do talk about it across the kitchen table. And you need more leadership like a Marcy Kaptur or a Maria Cantwell, elected officials who get it, who have not been bought and paid for by Wall Street stirring up people and turning this into a movement.

MATT TAIBBI: And that’s really where Barack Obama’s failings are the biggest. This is exactly where we need a president with the communication skills that he has. I mean, he’s probably the one person who could help all of America make sense of all this stuff. And he’s not doing it. I mean, he’s doing these photo ops, you know, earlier in the week, with a couple of bankers. It’s a kabuki dance to show that he’s against Wall Street. But he’s not explaining to people how all this stuff works. And that’s the problem.

BILL MOYERS: Are you a cynic after all your reporting this year?

MATT TAIBBI: No, not at all. I mean, I think on the contrary. I think cynicism is accepting all this as, you know, politics, as the way it is. I think we have to not accept what’s going on. And that’s not being cynical. That’s being helpful.

BILL MOYERS: But is it naENTER MOYERS’ OWN LIBERAL CONFUSION. THE IDEA OF A COUNTRY “WITH SO MANY CLASHING INTERESTS” IMPLIES MANY INTERESTS WITH EQUAL CLAIMS TO THE SOCIAL PIE, WHICH IS NONSENSE. FROM A POLICY STANDPOINT, IT WOULD IMPLY A FLAT PRIORITY PLANE, WHICH IS NOT REALISTIC. THERE’S ONLY ONE SUPREME AND SOVEREIGN INTEREST, AND THAT’S THE INTEREST OF THE PEOPLE, THE MASSES, THE WORKERS WHO CONSTITUTE 95% OF THE NATION, A SECTOR WHICH INCLUDES PROFESSIONALS, SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS, THE MIDDLE CLASS, ETC. EVERYONE EXCEPT BIG BUSINESS, WHICH IS, AFTER ALL, THE INSTRUMENT FOR FINANCIAL AND POLITICAL POWER OF THE RULING PLUTOCRACY. IT SHOULD BE UNDERSTOOD BY ONE AND ALL THAT THE PLUTOCRACY’S INTERESTS ARE NOW AND FOREVER AT VARIANCE WITH THE PEOPLE’S INTEREST. ]

ROBERT KUTTNER: I think there are periods of American history when the political system rises to the occasion. It certainly did with the civil rights movement. It certainly did in the 1930s. But there’s no guarantee that it’s going to come out the way it needs their come out. So I wouldn’t give up on the political system. [HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE KUTTNER TO GIVE UP ON THIS SYSTEM? WHAT KIND OF CRIME AND HYPOCRISY MUST THE SYSTEM DEPLOY FOR HIM TO BAIL OUT AT LAST?] I mean, you have to keep fighting and working to rebuild democracy. Democracy is the only possible counterweight to concentrated financial power. [AS AN ARISTOCRATIC REPUBLIC, THE US HAS NEVER HAD A REAL DEMOCRACY, BUT A VERY IMPERFECT BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY, A FORMAL DEMOCRACY IN WHICH THE “THEATER OF DEMOCRACY” IS ENACTED, BUT THE CAPITALISTS CALL THE SHOTS. THESE DAYS EVEN THAT FLAWED ARRANGEMENT HAS BEEN FURTHER EVISCERATED BY THE ADVANCES OF THE CORPORATE RULING CLASS. See the WIKIPEDIA DISCUSSION OF “FORMAL DEMOCRACY”. ] And ideally, that takes a great president rendezvousing with a social movement. One way or another, there is going to be a social movement. Because so many people are hurting, and so many people are feeling correctly that Wall Street is getting too much and Main Street is getting too little. And if it’s not a progressive social movement that articulates the frustration and the reform program, you know that the right wing is going to do it. And that, I think, is what ought to be scaring us silly.

MATT TAIBBI: We are starting to see signs of a little bit of a grassroots movement. I mean, the stuff, you know, people who are refusing to leave their homes after they’ve been foreclosed upon. There are little pockets of movements you know, groups that are organizing against foreclosures all across the country. And this is one small slice of the economic picture that where it’s quite clear what’s going on, and people can really understand the relationship that they have with the financial services industry. And I think if, you know, there it’s possible to imagine a movement coalescing around something like that.

BILL MOYERS: Matt Taibbi, Robert Kuttner, thank you for being with me on the Journal.

MATT TAIBBI: Thank you.

ROBERT KUTTNER: Thanks, Bill.