Working Life

One of the most grating parts about the Fix-The-Debt crowd is their sanctimoniousness — only *they* care about the country and only *they* know the truth and everyone else is an idiot and blind. The truth is this is a gang of phonies — led by the corporate hacks named Bowles and Simpson — who have an ideological hatred of anything that smells of a “social good” and mostly standout for the amount of riches they’ve siphoned off from various companies or investments they’ve tapped into. And here is hard evidence.

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You want a visual of what the phony fight about the fiscal “crisis” really is about? Here you go.

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So, it’s easy to capture our predicament today–though you’d never get that from the transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”). Here is is neatly summed up: we’ve been robbed, only little fish are being held accountable for relatively small crimes and, even more to the point, in a political rhetorical world where shareholders are revered, the shareholders are being left to pay the bill.

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Clarity in politics requires that you pay attention. It’s not hard to see the game being played. And it is often so easy — as easy as a campaign contribution — to see the game that you burst out laughing because, well, humor must never be abandoned, even if you see your country being sold off to the highest bidder.

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I guess it’s a function of inflation and/or a numbness to reality but the rhetoric about money isn’t what is used to be. Back in the day, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen (whose name probably means nothing to the shallow commentators who think political history started with Ronald Reagan) is alleged to have said, ” A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money”. Dirksen, who served in the 1950s and 1960s (and probably could never win a Republican primary in today’s wing-nut world), would have been a piker by today’s standards of throwing around figures without regard to reality. Which brings me to the Romney lie about taxes–which the president got right, admittedly, in a clumsy way, but most liberal-progressive pundits are getting wrong.

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Hey, Bank of America shareholder, how does it feel to have the executives deceive investors (in other words, lie), escape any personal responsibility for the lies, cause huge losses and, then, stick YOU with a bill for over $2 BILLION? Well, probably not a great feeling but, screw you, you are just an investor, not a coddled, overpaid executive who just got handed a stay-out-of-jail card.

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Wed Aug 29, 2012 at 07:30 PM EDT
Banksters Get Off Again: Citibank Pays Off Crimes, Robert Rubin Skates

by Tasini

Same old story. The crimes of the financial crisis remain, for the most part, unpunished-except if you are a shareholder of a financial institution who is paying the price for the misdeeds and crimes of the greedy, overpaid executives who destroyed the lives of millions of people. Today’s example: Citibank.

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    In my search to find something positive among the rubbish cascading across our eyes, let us behold a small ray of positive action. Citibank’s CEO Vikram S. Pandit tried to stuff his pockets full of millions of dollars more in bank money. The shareholders were not buying it–and turned thumbs down on his proposed […]

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   If I was a "one percenter", I’d love the debate under way in the U.S. right now. What’s not to love? You whine and cry about the "Buffett Rule", how unfair it is and hurts the "job creators", and, then, laugh all the way to the bank as you barely can see where the […]

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   A few months ago, I spent 5-6 hours interviewing Paul Krugman for Playboy magazine. It’s now on-line here. He speaks candidly–surprise–about the economic misdeeds of Wall Street, the foolishness of the current austerity obsession and focus on the non-existent debt crisis, and a whole range of topics including his view that the Obama Administration […]

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